\ CHESHUNT COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE Library c.» ^ 5^ 11 Shelf Presented by Rev. Stuart Johnson Reid (Old student) April, 1928 PAKOCHIAL AND OTHEE SERMONS With the Publishers] Compliments. PAROCHIAL AND OTHER SERMONS BY THE RIGHT REV. JAMES ERASER, D.D. Second Bishop of Manchester EDITED BY JOHN W. DIGGLE, M.A. VICAR OF MOSSLET HILL, LIVERPOOL AUTHOR OF "godliness AND MANLINESS," ETC. AnOQANnN ETI AAAEITAI IToitbon MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK 1887 Tlie Right of Translation and Reprncbiction is Heserved Richaed Clay and Sons, london and bxjngay. YRt ce/^^|77^t^ PREFACE. Most of the Sermons in this vohime were preached while Bishop Fraser was rector of the Httle country village of Cholderton, A few of the Bishop's later Sermons have been added : and their character clearly shows that, as " the child is father to the man," so the Rector of Cholderton was " father " to the Bishop of Manchester. The same spirit speaks through all the Sermons : only, in later life, its voice was enlarged by the expansion of its opportunities for utterance. Bishop Fraser was a remarkable instance of a man made more outspoken, and less official, by his accession to Episcopal dignity. To him, dignity was but a high form of duty, and his Episcopate simply a splendid means of winning men to their Lord. The first eleven Sermons in the volume follow the Course of the Christian Year : the rest are, for the most part, arranged in chronological order ; and all have been selected for the sake of their simplicity, vi PREFACE. their directness, and their association of practical daily conduct with fundamental spiritual principles. The perusal of these Sermons will — it is hoped — reveal to the Christian world how deeply the life of one of the most popular, the most influential, the best appreciated. Bishops of the Nineteenth Century was " hid with Christ in God." May not, indeed, the true secret of his gi-eat influence with the masses have been just this hidden " power " of the Christian's " endless life " ? The Vicarage, Mossley Hill, Liverpool, Michaelmas Day, September 29, 1887. CONTENTS. I. PAGE Advent Thoughts 1 II. The Dominion of the Flesh 13 III. The Value op the Soul 23 IV. The Temptation of our Lord 30 V. The Tears of Jesus over Jerusalem 40 VI. The Cross of Christ 49 VII. Notes of a Sermon on the Love of Christ 59 viii CONTENTS. VIII. PAGE Thk Axgels' Easter Question 64 IX. The Power of Christ's Resurrection, especially as ILLUSTRATING THE DUTIES OF MaSTER AND SERVANT 74 X. The Gift of the Holy Ghost 88 XL Diversities of Gifts 99 XII. The Labourers in the Vineyard 105 XIII. Christ our Sacrifice and Example 115 XIV. The Limits of Christian Liberty 125 XV. Bible Knowledge 134 XVI. The Character of Jehu 144 XVII. Our Sufficiency of God 157 CONTENTS. ix XVIII. PAGE God a Refuge in Temptation 167 XIX. The Three Children in the Furnace 177 XX. The Righteousness of the Lord 189 XXI. Standing on our Watch 199 XXII. The Need op Circumspection 208 XXIII. The Warning of Dinah 220 XXIY. Cleansing the Temple 230 XXV. Speaking Parables 239 XXVI. Standing on Holy Ground 248 X CONTENTS. XXVII. PAGE The Power of Christ in His Ministers 259 XXVIII. The Peace of Christ 272 XXIX. The Work of the Christian Ministry 280 XXX. The Christian Church and the Christian Creed . . 292 XXXI. The Keys of the Kingdom 302 XXXII. Reality in Religion 313 XXXIII. The Righteousness of a Nation 321 PAEOCHIAL AND OTHER SERMONS PAROCHIAL SERMONS. ADVENT THOUGHTS. " Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily, while it is called To-day, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin." — Heb. iii. 12, 13. The beginning of a new twelvemonth is always a solemn season. Whether it is the anniversary of a birth or a marriage, or a death of some dear relative, or of any special providence that has happened to our- selves, its yearly recurrence awakens at least a passing thought of joy or sorrow, of satisfaction or regret, in almost every mind. The Church has chosen for her New Year's Day, the dreariest, darkest period of the natural year. Not in the joyous springtide, not in the bright and golden summer, not even in early, fruitful autumn, when the fields are white for harvest, does she proclaim the message of the coming of Christ, and bid us lift up our heads with joy. No! It is just when, if we cast our m 1 2 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. eyes upon tlie world without, everything looks cold and drear, when days are shortest, and nights are sharpest ; when trees are naked and leafless, and the sun himself, as it wei-e, hasteth to go down, and the powers of fruit- fulness in nature seem suspended, and the whole earth presents a barren, dead, cheerless landscape to the view — nay, when the influences of the season make them- selves most felt upon ourselves, when we are tempted to gather round our own firesides in self-seeking after comfort ; when neighbourly visitings grow few and far between ; when we are always too ready to grumble and complain of the cold or the wet, or the snow, or some other of the dispensations of Providence : then it is that the Church has chosen to recall to our minds the blessings, and hopes, and privileges, and tidings, which do not change like the physical seasons ; to the real- isation of which she is now inviting her children for more than the eighteen-hundredth time ; which have been sounded in our ears ever since we were able to hear and understand, but which to most of us hitherto have seemed but as idle tales — have created no emotions, poured no consolation into our hearts, but which, in spite of past unbelief, and past unthankfiilness, are again placed within our reach, again appeal to us with an ever-increasing earnestness and solemnity, again invite us to draw near and hear what great things God has wrought for us, whereof if our hearts are still susceptible to religious impulses at all, we may indeed rejoice. These spiritual tidings, thus ever breaking forth anew, are a kind of counterpoise to the tokens of the ADVENT THOUGHTS. 3 material world, now visibly hastening to rottenness and decay. While we see outward things thus perishing and coming to an end, the Word of the Lord endureth as steadfast as ever in heaven. When the earth is sinking into a dull, torpid, unproductive state, and vegetation ceases, and the days grow short and dim, the Christian is bidden to awake, to put on the armour of light, to behold anew the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, to arise and shine, for behold His light is come. If the material sun seems niggard of his beams, and they both fall more coldly and are withdrawn more speedily, it does but give an emphasis, and help us to fix our thoughts more vividly on the Sun of Righteous- ness who has arisen with healing on His wings, the Church's Incarnate Lord of Light and Life, to whom all that find this world cold and cheerless, the helpless, the forlorn, the poor, the disconsolate, may come and find warmth, and sustenance, and consolation. When the old heavens and the old earth are being wrapped in their winter's mantle of cold and darkness, the Church, the faithful interpreter of the mind of God, we may even say the Holy Ghost, true to His mission as a Comforter, directs our thoughts and lifts up our eyes to the new heaven and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, wherein there is no darkness nor dreariness, neither need they a candle nor the light of the sun, for the glory of God doth lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. The old prophecy is ever fulfilling itself more and more as time rolls on ; " Behold darkness shall cover the earth and gross dark- ness the people;" but. for the Church's comfort it is 1 2 4 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. added, " The Lord shall arise upon thee, and His glory- shall be seen upon thee." This day we are bidden to think of Christ, not so much as coming, as come. He is coming indeed, though the day and hour we know not. He is coming ; though to the world, and the men of the world, and the work of the world, that advent will be anything but a spring of gladness and joy. It will be a token of the final dissolution of all those things which even His elect far too eagerly pursue, though in their inmost hearts they are convinced of their vanity. Still, it is to Jesus Christ as come rather than as coming, to ourselves as redeemed and adopted into God's family, men who have known and seen, and believed and tasted that the Lord is gracioiis, (men who are already partakers of a divine nature and an eternal weight of glory) that to-day's message, as I understand the Church's deliverance of it, especially refers. It is a day for reckoning up our privileges and claiming them, and making them indeed our own, a day for kindling thoughts and affections such as must have been present to St. Paul's mind when he contrasts the hopeless portion of outcast Esau, or the awe-stricken quakings of the Israelites at Sinai, with the liberty, the blessings, the confidence, the promises, the full assurance, that are the riches of the Gospel and the birthright of the believer in Jesus Christ. Christ is come to us, and we are brought nigh — very nigh — to Him. He is in the midst of us now. He makes His coming felt in the hearts of those whom He calls His friends, and to whom He reveals Himself while He stands hidden from the world. We are all made ADVENT THOUGHTS. 5 •citizens of a city in which God dwells, not indeed visibly, but sacramentally, spiritually. The ordinances ■of the Church, the humble and contrite hearts of its worshippers — these are the places of His abode, the temples in which He will dwell continually and take ■delight therein. St. Paul tells us all this very plainly, though under highly figurative images. He does not say we are coming, but we are come " unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, and to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, which speaketh better things than that of Abel " (Heb. xii. 22-24). All these things are ours — ours to appropriate, ours to claim, ours to share, ours e\^en to make our boast of, to be the things we should talk and think about when we rise up and when we lie down, when we walk by the way and when we are standing still, if only we can realise them. To these things, let me repeat, we are not only coming, but come (TrpoaeXijXvdar e Heb. xii. 22). They are already given to us. They are our baptismal inheritance. They are the very things for which we are called Christians, and but for which we might as well have remained heathens. It is the office of faith to make them our own in such a sense that they cannot be taken from us, that, like our natural food they become assimilated to our system and form part of it, that they do indeed minister to our strength, and growth, 6 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. aud perfectness, making us more and more complete in Christ and conformable to Him. To have them a& dead truths, articles of a creed wljich we repeat, but do not understand, a way of talking that Ave fall into but do not realise, to treat them all as luorcls, not things,. — ay, and things too, with life and a power in them — is really not to have them at all. It is all very well to talk of " the blood of sprinkling," but if it does not " sprinkle our hearts from an evil conscience,'' it has no cleansing efficacy for us. It is well to believe that "the blood of Jesus speaketh better things than that of Abel ; " Abel's cried from the ground for vengeance, but Jesus pleads in heaven for mercy ; but there can be no comfort in that belief to those whose ungodly lives rank them among the enemies of the Cross of Christ, to those who are as truly His murderers as those who nailed Him to the cursed tree, seeing that they " crucify the Son of God afresh, and put Him to an open shame." It is indeed a blessed thought to every regenerate and truly converted soul to be reminded this day of what Christ has wrought for the souls and bodies of His redeemed : to be told of His laying aside His glory and visiting this earth in great humility, and taking upon Him the form of a servant, and being made in the likeness of men that He might call us brethren and redeem us from all iniquity, and make us His peculiar people and sanctify us with His Spirit, and change even our vile bodies into the likeness of His glorious body according to that mighty power whereby He is able to subdue even all things unto Himself. ADVENT THOUGHTS. 7 This is the message of every Advent season. This fills the tongue of the Church, and characterises all her services to-day. On this theme she will continue to speak, in some one or other of its manifold applications, till Christmas-tide. And yet I wonder in how many of us does it awaken a responsive note of joy ? How many of our hearts has it lifted up since we heard it, to higher views of duty, to nobler aspirations after holi- ness ? We know that Christ has come. We can count the years that have passed since He came. There have been more than eighteen hundred Advent Sundays, in fact, if not in name, since He was first born, a helpless babe, in Bethlehem. But it is with far the most of us an uninfluential knowledge. Christ is come to its, but we are not drawn to Him. We are none the better, none the stronger, none the holier, none even the wiser, for His coming. We know that He came, that where He is we might be ever also, but we say, " No, not yet. Wait a little ; by and by ; a little more of the world, a little more pleasure, a little more sin first." And so we go on, from twenty to thirty, and from thirty to fifty, and from fifty to seventy, and from seventy to our grave, unchanged, unconverted, with affections still set on things below, with our life, instead of being hid with Christ in God, eaten out and con-upted by the carnalism of the world ; these eternal truths, Avhich ministered strength and comfort and guidance to the saints of God in every age, still remaining as dead, and lifeless, and external to us, as when, as children, we first learnt them in our Catechism or repeated them mechanically in our Creed — nay, much more, for we had a kind of 8 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. simj)le faith in them tlicn, which a selfish and worldly way of looking at things has destroyed now. Christ has indeed come to us, but we have never cared to come to Him. He has, as it were, been standing at our doors and knocking, but we have never opened them and bid Him enter. He has come to us, but He has not taken up His abode with us. As in the days of His flesh, when He entered in triumph into Jerusalem, though He received enough Z^2^-welcoming, though the Hosannahs of the multitude were long and loud, yet when night came on He found none who loved Him enough to offer Him a home, and He went out to Bethany, to the house of Lazarus and his sisters, and lodged there. The world is loud enough in its outward acknow- ledgments of Christ's sovereignty, but in its heart of hearts it is little disposed either to treat or serve Him as a King. And the text explains the inconsistency. It is the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy, that is still at work. It is the evil heart of unbelief, tlie principle of Sadduceeism, which makes us depart from the living God, It is the deceitfulness of sin which hardens us, and stops our ears, and closes our eyes to all but earthly carnal influences, so that we cannot be converted, nor Christ heal us. I believe there is as much Pharisaism and Saddu- ceeism, and unbelief, and hypocrisy, and hardness of heart in the world now as ever there was. I believe that St. John's words about Christ are as applicable to our age as they were to the first age : "He came unto His own, and His own received Him not." We do not think we ADVENT THOUGHTS. 9 should get any good by receiving Him. We judge all things by the evidence of sight. We walk by a low, unscriptural standard. We think to put off or to blind God by pretexts, and compromises, and excuses ; and so we have no power given unto us to become indeed the sons of God. We are still slaves and bondmen, unable to conquer the commonest daily temptations ; unstead- fast even for a week to any good resolution ; unsettled in our opinions and inconsistent in our practice ; as far as possible from the stature of Christian men, because we neither love the strong meat, nor the hard exercise, nor the wholesome discipline that a state of manhood requires and implies. You cannot measure the amount of your love and faith towards Christ by any surer standard than your in- clination or disinclination to that Holy Sacrament which is His own aj^pointed memorial of the work He came upon this earth to do. Do not talk about loving Christ, or believing in Him, when you will not do this in remem- brance of Him. Do not talk about His being your " life," when you are strangers, or, at best, but irregular guests, at that heavenly feast which is His own ordained channel through which that life should be conveyed. Do not boast of being Christians, while you still refuse to be communicants. By your own act and deed you give your profession the lie. Be assured of this : as many of you of full age as turn your backs on that table — who do not feel the call to come a personal -one, who act as though it were made to others, not to you — commit an act of unbelief, depart from the living God, cast away a promise and a blessing, add one more link 10 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. to that chain of carnahsm and indifference which is binding you hand and foot, and from which, unless you break through it speedily, you will one day find it impossible to release yourselves. If you regret that you have so long delayed, if you really hope and wish to be ready, begin the work of preparation this very day ; make it the spiritual work of Advent-tide. Be ready by Christmas Day, when the same gTacious invitation will be renewed. As the text has it, " Exhort one another daily while it is called To-day, lest any of you be hardened through the deceit- fulness of sin." You know not how few opportunities, perhaps, remain to you for fulfilling one of the most essential of those obligations which have been lying upon you ever since you were confirmed. For Christ's first com- ing the world was in some measure prepared. Daniel's seventy weeks had expired. The sceptre had departed from Judah. There was a general expectation of the prophet foretold by Moses when Shiloh came. But at His second advent it will be otherwise. Of that day and hour knoweth no man. He will come as a thief in the night. He cuts down men often in a moment, in the midst of their dreams of long life, and security, and ease. To scarcely any does He give a longer notice than a few weeks or days. And is it for this wretched pittance of time, when perhaps our case will be as St. Paul's once was — " without, fightings, and within, fears," a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan buffeting you — is it for this that we are reserving what should have been the labour of a life, the task of our days of health ADVENT THOUGHTS. 11 and strength ? It is nothing less than downright, desperate madness to act in this way. Call it what we will, it IS plain, practical unbelief and atheism. I call atheism not the speculative negation of a God, but the practical disowning Him ; the living on day after day as if there were no such being as a present Saviour, a future Judge ; the cold, heartless, irreverent formalism, which wears indeed the garments of religion, and talks its language, but whose words are shams, and its clothing a disguise. " When the Son of Man cometh, shall He find faith upon the earth ? " It was our Lord's question, but He has left it to our discernment to return the answer. Let it at least be our resolve, though living in an unbelieving and irreligious age, to see that this sin of unfaithfulness, however general and subtle, shall at any rate not cleave to us, or to those over whom we have any influence. Let us exhort one another daily while it is called To-day. It is an old saying, that " to-morrow never comes." " Behold, now is the accepted time, behold, now is the day of salvation." Surely we have all of us, as St. Peter expresses it, "wrought the will of the Gentiles" too long already. We have gone on for too many years " pleasing ourselves." Let us at length try to please Christ, to do God's will, to walk after godliness, to seek peace, to bring down our high thoughts, to keep under our bodies, to lay aside every weight, to run with patience the race that is set before us, to conform our daily lives to the Gospel pattern, to be renewed in the spirit of our minds. Advent is perhaps the fittest season in the w^hole 12 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. year for entering on such altered ways. It tells us of the great High Priest in whose blood past sins may be washed out ; of the mighty and triumphant King in whose strength Satan may be conquered. It warns us more emphatically than any other season, of the danger of provoking His long-suffering. It assures us that " yet a little while, and He that shall come will come and will not tarry." And finally, it reminds us that our very profession as Christians means at least as much as this, that " we are not of them who draw back unto perdition ; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul." Preached — Cholderton, Advent Sunday, 1853. II. THE DOMINION OF THE FLESH. " Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize ? So run, that ye may obtain . And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown ; but we an in- corruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly ; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air : but I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection : lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, T myself should be a castaway." — 1 Cor. ix. 24—27. The Bible, amid its manifold revelations, enlightens us very little on a subject which long has puzzled, and still is puzzling, philosophers — the mysterious law which connects together in one tabernacle our bodies and our souls. All that it concerns itself with telling us is, how both body and soul, as integral elements of our nature, are to be disciplined and fashioned and subordinated to God's glory and our own salvation. In one passage St. Paul teaches us that " the body is for the Lord ; " in another, that we are to "glorify God both in our bodies and our spirits, which are His." He intimates that nothing short of this was his notion of an entire and perfect sanctification. 14 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. There were, in St. Paul's day, several speculative theories about the body, coming originally from the East, and afterwards called, when formulated, " Mani- cheism," which made this teaching very necessary to be borne in mind. These several theories, though speculatively the same, bore fruit in very different practical results. Starting with the maxim that all matter, by which the Manicheans meant the material substance, of which this visible world as well as the human body is made, was the work of an evil principle, itself the seat of evil, and hopelessly and radically corrupt, they taught their followers that their bodies, instead of being, as the Bible teaches us, created by God, were alien and mischievous appurtenances. They taught that the body, instead of being capable of use in the service of God, and sanctified by His Spirit, and partaker equally with the soul of the redemption which Christ has accomplished for all flesh, was a despicable and burdensome thing ; a shackle and a hindrance on the nobler aspirations of the soul ; a veil shutting out the light of the knowledge of God from their hearts ; a vile and earthly organism in which the spirit of evil was permitted for a while to imprison man's higher nature. The practical issue of these tenets was, in different instances, widely different. They led some — such as Tertullian and others of a somewhat morbid tempera- ment — to a stern and gloomy asceticism such as is even now largely practised in the East, thinking to please God and overcome Satan by acts of painful, self-imposed mortification, denying themselves the most pure and THE DOMINION OF THE FLESH. 15 innocent bodily pleasures. There was, of course, the usual reaction. Nature re-asserted herself. If they could conquer an unruly member, they failed to tame a rebellious will. In the history of many of these fanatics we find that, out of the dying embers of a carnal lust, arose the yet fiercer flame of religious intolerance or spiritual pride. Others, and those by far the larger number, the sensual part of this sect as opposed to the intellectual, found in this doctrine a most convenient outlet for every carnal desire and wanton appetite. If the body was thus vile and worthless, it mattered not how it was used, or what became of it. In yielding to the motions of sin, which dwelt in their members, they did nothing that could either taint or degrade the soul. That they had bodies was no fault of theirs. They could not help their corrupt and vicious tendencies : they were but following a law of their nature for which they were not responsible. And so deluding themselves into the notion that they could keep their souls pure while they let their bodily appetites range unrestrained, they gave themselves up recklessly to the wildest riot and most shameless licentiousness. Now these views, monstrous and soul-destroying as they became in their development and moral results, took their rise not so much in absolute falsehood as in perversion and misapplication of the truth. Indeed, there is something in the human mind so naturally alien and abhorrent from what is false, that no system of reli- gion or morals based on an absolute lie has ever been able to maintain or propagate itself in the world. It must have a foundation of truth, however slender, to rest upon. 16 PAROCHLIL SERMONS. These heretical teachers started with a true principle which is thus expressed by the author of the Book of Wisdom : " The corruptible body presseth down the soul, and the earthly tabernacle weigheth down the mind that museth upon many things." But they misapplied it. They borrowed St. Paul's image of " a law of sin in the members warring against the law of the mind ; " but they perverted it. They were not content with saying that the body was often Satan's instrument, but they affirmed it was his creation. It was not enough to assert that in our bodies, in their um-egenerate state, dwelleth no good thing, but they must further maintain that nothing good could be made to dwell there. It was the old perplexity — the origin of evil. The consciousness of concupiscence (which they could not otherwise explain than by admitting the existence of a co-ordinate evil principle in the moral and physical government of the world), led them to lose sight of, and practically to deny, those two great doctrines of the evangelical revelation — that our bodies as well as our souls are equally God's creation, and that both have been equally redeemed by His Son. What people thought and did eighteen hundred years ago would not be of much interest to us, or at least, not of much edification, did not the same notions and practices, though under other forms and names, prevail now. Manicheism, as far as the name goes, has been dead and buried long ago, but its essential principles remain, and indeed were perhaps never more active than they are at the present time. By " its essential principle," I mean the notion that the use or abuse of THE DOMINION OF THE FLESH. 17 tlie body is a thing almost entirely independent of the well- or ill- being of the soul It is a very pernicious notion, and the passage of Scripture which I have chosen for my text gives me an opportunity, which I am glad to take, of noticing it. Let me first say a few words in explanation of the image which St. Paul employs, for you must have perceived that his language is figurative. He talks of a race and of striving for the mastery. Such language must have conveyed a very vivid idea to the minds of Corinthian readers, in the immediate neighbourhood of whose city one of the great national games of Greece was celebrated every fourth year. He l^ictures to them their foot-races and their boxing- matches, in which the noble youths of the nation strove for the mastery. He reminds them of the careful training, the strict and temperate diet, the many re- straints, the painful and laborious discipline to which these ardent natures voluntarily submitted themselves. And all for the triumph of a moment, for that brief shout of applause that hailed the conqueror, for a quick fading crown of a few worthless parsley leaves ! Every Greek felt his heart stir within him when he heard tell of those exciting scenes ; and St, Paul, like an instructed scribe, knew well how to bring out of his treasures of earthly wisdom persuasives to a life of heavenly holiness. It is an argument, a fortiori, from weaker to stronger ground, from lower motives to higher. If a meed of earthly honour could so brace men's energies and kindle their hearts, how much more an eternal re- compense of reward ! If a corruptible wreath could 2 18 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. provoke sucli emulation, and sustain through so much self-imposed mortification, how much more a crown of glory ! If the praise of their assembled friends and countrymen was so quickening and inspiring, how much more the approving voice of God and the rejoicing sympathies of the holy angels ! He calls on them all to practise the same self-dis- cipline in their spiritual race which was allowed to be a needful preparation for a temporal. He tells them they would as much require a wary and resolute attitude in their combat with Satan, as to repel the buflfetings of any fleshly adversary. He gives them the result of his own experience, the secret by which he had been himself enabled to stand his ground, He had " kept rmder his body and brought it into subjection." He had fixed his eye upon the mark — " the prize of his high callinor in Christ Jesus " — and he suffered nothing of inferior worth to distract his gaze. He had planted his foot firmly, and dealt his blows lustily and with a de- finite aim. He should continue to do so till his warfare was accomplished, his victory achieved. It would be a life-long struggle, he knew. To his dying day he Avould still have some sinful lust to subdue, some fleshly member to mortify, some new artifice of Satan to baffle, some impatient temper of his own to reprove. His high gifts as a preacher did not exempt' him from the ordinary temptations and responsibilities of a man. He might win the souls of others and lose his own. He might see others — the poor, the halt, the maimed, the blind — welcomed by Christ ; and himself — the gifted, the intellectual, the master-mind — a castaway. Or, like THE DOMINION OF THE FLESH. 19 Demas, he might continue faithful and true for a while, but relaxing his watchfulness and self-control, the world might prove too strong for him after all. His one security, at least the only one he mentions here, and therefore in his eyes the chiefest and most imj)ortant, was the mastery of his lody. No doubt he had — and all men have — trials of the spirit as well as temptations of the flesh. Satan surely directed his assaults against the subtler and more refined elements of his nature, as well as against the grosser and more corporeal. But he says nothing about them here. Indeed, in another very remarkable passage, where he does speak of a directly spiritual temptation, it was through an infirmity of the body that his merciful Father saw fit to open a way of escape for him. The natural tendency to spiritual pride was kept down by the presence of painful bodily suffering. It enabled him to realise his own natural helplessness. He kissed the rod tliat smote him : or, to use his own simple and devotional words, "he rather gloried in his infirmities that the power of Christ might rest upon him ; for when he was weak then was he most truly strong." There can be no doubt, I think, in the mind of any person who ever stops to examine the state of his own soul, that the temptations to which we are most commonly exposed, by which our faith and patience are most sorely tried, and the stoutness of our Christian armour most effectually proved, reach us through our fleshly, rather than our spiritual nature — assault the body before they hurt the soul. Where we are tempted once to a simply spiritual sin, we are drawn a dozen 2 2 20 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. times into a carnal excess. Over-eatincr, over-drinking over-dressing, pampering our appetites, increasing our comforts, uttering falsehoods, or propagating ill-natured stories with our tongues, these are our commonest, most easily besetting sins. Some of you may be rather surprised to hear them called "sins" at all ; you would rather term them by a softer name ; but I prefer speaking of them as the Bible speaks. Nay, the more directly spiritual sins almost always wear some outward and bodily form. It is through the body that they pass from an intention to an act. Pride, selfishness, malice, hypocrisy, covetous- ness, always enlist the body in their service, and can seldom be gratified without its aid. It must be the nature of angels, and not of human beings constituted as we are, that can commit sin by the spirit alone. Take that commonest and most hateful of sins, selfish- ness; it almost always — I may say always — has some palpable, tangible end in view. It displays itself in the wish to get more than one's fair share of the good things of this life — more money, or more comforts, or more dainty food, or more amusement. These are the things, our Blessed Lord tells us, which overcharge the heart, and make it slow to perceive, and still slower to prepare itself for the day of His coming. These are the things, St. Paul tells us, which are pursued so eagerly by the enemies of the Cross of Christ. These are the things of which St. John warns us so earnestly. " 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, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life" — all of THE DOMINION OF THE FLESH. 21 them you will observe material objects of desire — " is not of the Father, but of the world." The Church has wisely set apart the season of Lent to bring these things more pointedly to our remem- brance. Our appetites and desires ought, of course, always to be under control, never suffered to run into excess, but at this season more especially so. The Christian feels that it is even something more. It is a preparation for Easter. It is a night of sorrow issuing into a morning of joy ; a dying with Christ, enabling him to rise with Him ; a condemnation of self that there may be a forgiveness by God ; a putting restraint upon the body that there may be the freer scope to the energies and aspirations of the soul. God give us all grace to spend it, not in formal abstinence, but in real self-mastery : not that we may " seem unto men to fast," but that we may humble our hearts before " Him Who seeth in secret " ; not in proud contempt of a godly ordinance, but with a faithful earnestness seeking to use it to the edification of our souls. Our Lord has told us that there are some evil spirits which go not forth " but by prayer and fasting." It were well if we looked into our hearts and saw what mes- senger of Satan has longest maintained his dominion there. Have we ever tried to cast him forth by these means ? He has defied us hitherto. Are we content to remain in bondage to him till our dying day ? Are uncleanness, and surfeiting, and drunkenness, and com- fort-loving to make us their slaves without our so much as " striving for the mastery ? " 22 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. Let us not be so cowardly and faithless as to think so ! Let us throw the same energy into our strivings to win heaven as we so often do into our efforts to gain the world. If to win a corruptible crown can make us submit to much that would be otherwise irksome and wearying, how much more an incorruptible ? If we are often content to forego immediate gratifications in the hope of future accumulated gain, how should we be encouraged to endure all things for the Gospel's sake, when we are bidden believe — and God's saints have ere now proved — that the " light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." Preached — Cholderton, Septuagesima Sunday, Feb. 12tli, 1854 ; and also on Feb. 5th, 1860. III. THE VALUE OF THE SOUL. What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul ? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul ? "—St. Matt. xvi. 26. The value of the soul is beyond the calculus of human arithmetic. We have nothing to measure it by. In a sense, it is like God Himself — immeasurable, incomprehensible, incomparable, infinite. The soul is that which is distinguished in man from his body ; it is that which constitutes his personality ; that in which dwells his consciousness, the seat of his will, his conscience, his affections, his desires, his im- agination, his reason, his mind. It is this of which we have to try to ascertain the value. The difficulty is aggravated by the introduction into this sphere of thought, by Christian philosophy, of a new idea — a new word, the word pieuma or spirit, a metaphorical word, equivalent to breath. So St. Paul, speaking as it were philosophically, as though these three elements made up the whole man, says, " I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." 24 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. (I Thess. V. 23.) A very familiar distinction with St. Paul is that between the natural man (psuchiJcos) and the spiritual man {pncumatihos) : the man with a soul, the man with a spirit. (Compare 1 Cor. ii. 14, 15, and XV. 44—46.) Greek philosophy knew nothing of the spiritual man. because it knew nothing of the Incarnation, nothing of the work of a Divine Spirit in the world. Plato talked of man's mind and intellect, but not of his spirit. He believed in a state in which the soul, delivered from the burden of the flesh, should see God face to face. To him, as to the Christian, the value of the soul was beyond price. But the soul of the Greek philosopher's psychological system was a strange phenomenon : the home at once of noble desires, inexplicable yearnings after a beauty and a truth more than earth could offer ; yet a home also, of foul lusts, loose, unbridled appetites, violent passions and desires. In vain did Plato teach how to restrain the passions ; Aristotle how to purge them ; the Stoics how to extingu- ish them. Man remained in the hands of the philosophers an inexplicable enigma, struggling to be free, yet help- lessly a slave : Godlike at once and brutish ; full of the noblest thoughts, full also of the foulest, basest desires. But the problem of man's existence was not destined to remain insoluble for ever. In the fullness of time, when the world was waiting for Him — the eager ex- pectation of the creature waiting for the manifestation of the Son of God — Christ came, and with Him there entered a new power into the moral world. Old things passed away, all things became new. THE VALUE OF THE SOUL. £5 The psuchc, or soul, to them that are in Christ Jesus, to the children of the kingdom, to those born again, has become a new creation, a spirit, or pneuvia. The soul is endued with new powers. Ever heir to an immortal destiny, it has become conscious of this destiny. Ever gi'oaning under the bondage of sin, it has found a means to set itself free. Its faculties are the same, but its powers are new. It is no longer weak through the flesh, it is strong in Christ. Its vision is clearer; its horizon ampler ; its hopes grander ; its faith deeper ; there is a transfiguring power at work within. It is in the world but not of the world ; its home is else- where. Its joys are supernatural ; the air it breathes divine. This is the condition of the regenerate soul : a spirit, tabernacling in a body, but instinctively revolted by sin ; vindicating its title to a divine origin and a divine destiny by the more than human power which, in great spiritual exigencies, it is enabled to put forth in its wrestling with the mighty powers of darkness that are arrayed against it. The true Christian saint is a man, and yet more than a man. He is a spiritualised man : a man of like passions with his fellows, but unlike them, because he is a partaker of a divine nature, endowed with a divine power. I wish you to realise the value of this part of your complex nature by which you feel, think, reason, will, desire, act. It is the part of you which is conscious of a destiny. The body, as such, has no destiny ; at any rate no consciousness of one. It is, as has been well said, " mine. 26 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. not me." We shall be judged, indeed, as we are told, " according to the deeds done in the body." But the real agent in those deeds, the responsible agent, is not the body, but the soul. The body will rise again, yet hardly the same body. " Thou sowest not that body that shall be." It will be a spiritual body, one more fitted, that is, for the abode of a glorified and transfigured spirit. But the soul that we have now is the same soul we shall have then. There will be no solution in the continuity of its existence. We shall not have a different personal identity. We shall be the same. And tve are what our spirits are. And so there is no need of taking extravagant flights of rhetoric — of saying that one single soul outweighs in value all that the earth contains besides ; but at an}^ rate, there is nothing to you comparable in value to the value of your soul. The eternity you dream of will be to you what your soul makes it. " The kingdom of God is within us," as Christ spake ; in the sense that within us — in our souls — we are each of us building up slowly, imperceptibly, but surely, inevitably, our heaven or hell. If you can, however inadequately, measure the rela- tion of eternity to time — of the unknown, infinite hereafter, to the fleeting, precarious, uncertain "now,'' you have in the same proportion a measure of the value of the soul. Another and hardly less important element in this value is to be found in the relation of the higher faculties of the soul — and especially of the supreme faculty, conscience — to our physical and even to the THE VALUE OF THE SOUL. . 27 subordinate parts of our moral being. The spiritual- ised soul, raised above the things of sense and time, holding mysterious yet strengthening communion with God, full of yearnings " after what is good, and pure, and honest, and lovely," is, and was intended to be, the dominant element in human nature. Bishop Butler has shown, in his philosophical sermons, that " to live according to nature " does not mean to live according to every impulse, passion, appetite that may happen to be most imperious at the moment, but to live in obedience to the conscience, the sovereign faculty of the soul. To follow every wayward passion, to be led by every earthly appetite, is the surest of all ways to degrade and brutalise the soul. For though the soul is not of the body, it can be depraved through the body. St. Paul talks of the motions of sin working in his members, working in him all manner of concupiscence and bringing fortli fruit unto death. (Rom. vii. 5-8.) Diverse as they are in their natures — the one material, the other immaterial, the one regnant, the other legitimately subordinate — there is a most mysterious connection between the body and the soul. A pampered body produces a lethargic spiritual state. Wild desires are set loose within us when we feed high, or drink deeply, or sleep in over softness, or in any other way choose for ourselves the brutish life. And so our wise Prayer^ Book bids us " subdue the flesh and the spirit ; " and St. Paul cries, " I keep under ray body " ; and the complete sanctification of which he speaks to the Thessalonians includes body, soul, and spirit. 28 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. You may, it is true, put a false measure of value on your soul. You may think it so exceeding precious to you that it shall become the only thing you care for in the world. You may become absorbed in the one work, as you phrase it, " of saving your soul." And this will make your religion selfish, narrow, idolatrous. You will reckon yourself of the elect, and look with a proud pity upon the outer world, lying dead, as you deem it, in its trespasses and sins. You will become a Pharisee, not of the narrow Jewish type, but of the equally narrow Christian type. You will count yourself to be righteous, and " despise others." You will lay down for the governance of your conduct all kinds of minute, scrupulous rules, instead of being content to be guided with a few great controlling principles. And you will gradually lose all sympathy, all desire to share, or even to know, the struggles, the triumphs, the joys, the sorrows, of the thousands of human souls that are dear to God, possibly as dear to Him as you are. You will make no sacrifice, attempt no self- denial, practise no large-hearted beneficence, engage in no generous scheme for the melioration of the race ; but will live a shrivelled, stunted, useless life, con- cerning yourself only with the salvation of your own soul. This is to find the soul and yet to lose it. This is, as a heathen poet phrased it, " For sake of life, to lose the very cause of living." Friend, thou art a member of a vast body. Thou art in a Communion of Saints. Thine own salvation will be but advanced by doing something to promote the salvation of thy fellow men. If thou hast the THE VALUE OF THE SOUL. 29 light, it was given thee to set it in a candlestick, that others might see it too. Christ did not take His people out of the world, but left them to fight their oft-times weary battle in it, because the world needed them. The Church is " the salt of the earth." One great element in the value of a soul is its value to the souls of other men, " When thou art converted, strengthen then thy brethren." A selfish religion can hardly have been touched by the breath of Christ. " None of us liveth unto himself," cries noble Paul, " and none of us dieth to himself. Whether we live or die, therefore, we are not our own, but the Lord's." Preached — Lancaster, Asli Wednesday, 1872. IV. THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LOED. " Then was Jesus led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil." — St. Matt. iv. 1. I CANNOT pretend to explain to you the whole mystery of our Blessed Lord's temptation. Why He condescended to listen to the voice, and to be assailed by the wiles of that fallen angel whose kingdom He had Himself come down from heaven to destroy, is a fact for which I could venture to give you very few reasons. We must be content to receive it as one of those mysteries which as yet we can see but as "through a glass darkly," and which wait for their fuller illumination till the day when " we shall know even as we are known." There are some considerations, however, which may help to a partial apprehension of some of its signifi- cances. The Son of God took upon Him the nature of man to be a kind of new root of a regenerate humanity ; or, as St. Paul exjDresses it, " to be the first-bom of every creature." He has recovered for us all that we THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 31 lost in our first forefather. As Satan was the instru- ment of our fall, so also was he the instrument of our regeneration. As he conquered human nature in Adam, so he was conquered by human nature in Christ. Our Blessed Lord saved men by tasting their sorrows as well as by bearing their sins, " He was tempted m all 2'>oints," we are told, " like as we are." And so we see the temptation of our Blessed Lord was neces- sary : — 1, To the destruction of Satan ; 2, To our deliverance from bondage ; and 3, For the more effectual performance of His own mediatorial work. Much of this, after all, we cannot pi'ofess to under- stand ; and more than this, so far as I am aware, the Holy Spirit has not seen fit to reveal. But however imperfectly we may comprehend what I will venture to call the theology of our Blessed Saviour's struggle with the wicked one in the wilder- ness of Judea — as it jalainly is a matter rather for contemplative reverence than for speculative curiosity — yet the practical lessons we may draw from it are so important, though often so entirely overlooked in the presumptuous attempt to explain its mysteries, that time may be well spent in considering it under this view. It is in this, as in so many other points of His blessed life on earth, we get out of our depth the moment we begin to speculate about Him as our Atonement ; but we never need feel the least difficulty, if we will only take moderate pains, in gathering w^ the lessons of wisdom that are to be drawn from His JEx'cmijyle. And the reason is obvious. The former is 32 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. proposed simply to our faith, but the latter to our imitation also. We have but to believe the one ; we have further to follow, to be made conformable to, the other. As St. Peter groups the two together, " Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that we should walk in His steps." Let us see, then, whether the Scripture narrative of our Lord's temptation, in its exemplary aspect, may not be made, not only perfectly intelligible, but deeply profitable to us all. (1) And, first, we see that no real or imaginary nearness to God, no fancies of election nor reality of personal righteousness, no earnestness of faith or long continuance in well doing, can secure us against the crafts and assaults of that ghostly enemy, who, "as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he maj'^ devour." Our Blessed Lord had just come up out of the waters of Jordan, full of the Spirit of God ; had just been sealed as the beloved Son of the Father by a voice from heaven ; had just by His baptism pledged Himself, as it were, '• to fulfil all righteousness," " when the tempter came to Him." And mark how the tempter began by assailing Him through those very spiritual prerogatives which the heavenly voice had just proclaimed to the world. "If Thou Ic the Son of God," — if that voice spake true — if thou wouldst be received as such by men, prove it by a sign ; faint not with hunger here in the wilderness, 23ut forth thy creative power, " command that these stones be made bread." It was an artful suggestion; an appeal to a presumiatuous abuse of spiritual privi- THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 33 leges, addressing itself to the will through the selfish impulse of a bodily appetite. It was thus he had succeeded in his first machination with the mother of us all. He convinced poor foolish Eve — whose self- trustful heart was all too ready to listen to h's smooth lies — that the forbidden fruit was not only good for food and pleasant to the eye, but also that it was only God's jealousy that had laid an interdict upon it, as though He wished to keep our first parents in a degraded condition, and knew that " in the day they ate thereof" their eyes should be opened, and they should " be as gods, knowing good and evil." If there had been any pettiness, or vanity, or self- seeking in the nature of the Holy Jesus ; if He had thought of Himself and His own glory, instead of being absorbed by the purpose to do His Father's will ; if He had been impatient to be acknowledged as the '■' Son of God with power," and had snatched eagerly at the Crown before He had taken up the Cross, He too might perchance have yielded to the enemy of souls, and by prematurely grasping at a title which as yet the Avorld in general were not prepared to own, but the confession of which His obedience and sufferings would ere long extort from the reluctant lips even of those who shed His blood, — He might have marred and hindered, if not have entirely frustrated, the work that His Heavenly Father had given Him to do. At least, humanly speaking, such a result is plainly supposable. The whole narrative implies that it was a real temptation ; and if so, then, addressed to a human nature which, as it was in all things like to ours, must 3 34 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. also have been open to the possihility of a fall. What sustained Him, both now and through His whole after- course of suffering, was that Spirit — that Indwelling Consubstantial Divinity — of which we are told that it was given Him by His Father, " not by measure," but in all its fullness. But the point for us to notice is that the very richness and plenitude of our privileges may become an instrument of our temptation. If Satan can only persuade us to think that because we are the sons of God there shall no harm happen unto us, " that He has given His angels charge over us," and so we need exercise no forethovight, no watchfulness of our own; if he can puff us up with spiritual conceit, get us to talk of our being " children of the light, and all the world around us lying in wickedness," — statements in all of which there is a certain mixture of truth, and which thus become the more dangerous and delusive, — his victory is Avon ; he claims us for his own both in body and soul. Have you never heard people talk in this way whose daily lives give every word they utter the lie ? Have you never heard persons boasting of their faith, though they gave no proof of it by their works ; relating their experience of conversion, though the grace that has wrought such wonders has not been sufficient to cast out the spirit of uncleanness or pride or selfishness from their hearts ; lamenting the darkness and rebellion of others, while the most careless stander-by can see that they themselves are walking quite uncertainly, often stumbling very grievously in the way ? ' THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 35 Such forms of spiritual self-delusion are rife on all sides of us. There are thousands who make their boast very loudly of Christ now, whom I fear, at the great day when He comes as Judge, He will never own ; thousands who say, " Lord, Lord," " who shall never enter into the kingdom of heaven." It is in these dreams of security that the greatest dangers lie. It is when men say " peace and all things are safe, that sudden destruc- tion cometh upon them, and they cannot escape." It was when he was dreaming of ease and comfort for many years that the soul of that rich man in the parable was " required " of him. It was when David had, as he thought, gotten him the victory over all his enemies round about him and was sitting at peace in his own house at Jerusalem that he fell into that deadly sin that destroyed all his bright visions of happiness, and though on his true repentance he was forgiven as to the eternal consequences of his sin, yet as a warning to them " who afterwards should live un- godly," the effects of the sin brought down his gray hairs with sorrow to the grave. And so each of us has great need to remember St. Paul's wise caution, if haply we see a brother fall, while we by God's mercy are enabled to stand our ground, " Be not high-minded, but fear." Let the sight of human frailty in others only make us the more apprehensive and mistrustful of our own. (2) The story of our Blessed Lord's temptation shows us, further, what weapons we must use if we too would conquer Satan. Jesus Christ overcame by a faith anchored on God's Word. It was by Scripture rightlj 3 2 3G PAROCHIAL SERMOXS. understood and rightly applied that He baffled the sophisms of the Wicked One. St. Paul bids us take " the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God." But "the word of God" only becomes " the sword of the Spirit" in the hands of a soldier who can wield it skilfully. Satan could quote Scripture for his purpose- St. Peter tells us of some, the like of whom have been found in every age, who " wrest the Scriptures to their own destruction." Hence the frequent admonitions of Holy Writ " to rightly divide the word of truth " ; to " prophesy according to the proportion of faith " ; to " compare spiritual things with spiritual." Otherwise our Bibles may easily become a snare to us. If we read them for any other purpose than that of godly edifying in the faith, they icill become a snare to us. They will fill us with a thousand fancies that are merely the offspring of our foolish prejudices or dis- eased imaginations. It is indeed sad to see that Blessed Book apiDcaled to, as it so often is, simply to furnish weapons for con- troversy ; to strengthen men in their uncharitable judgment of their neighbours, to bind them only the more strongly to error ; to encourage them in their courses of self-pleasing and self-will. It was put into our hands by God's providence for far other ends than these, — to teach us to know ourselves; to make us feel our weakness ; to lead us to look to God for strength; to open our eyes to the duties that lie at our feet ; to enable us to walk, not, as the Gentiles walk, " in the vanity of their mind," but soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world ; and so to enlighten us THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 37 about God's purposes concerning us, as under all cir- cumstances never to leave us in doubt for a moment as to what He would have us to do. (3) Another noticeable fact in our Saviour's tempta- tion is one related by St. Luke, though not mentioned by St. Matthew, that " when the devil had ended all the temptation he departed from Him for a season." We know when it was that he returned to renew his malignant purpose of frustrating man's salvation, for Christ Himself intimated it to His disciples. While sitting with the twelve in that upper chamber at Jerusalem, on the night of His betrayal, He said, " Hereafter I will not talk much with you, for the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me." He was coming to more than one on that memorable night. He had already entered into one heart — that of the traitor Judas — and filled it full of all iniquity. He was even now desiring to have the bold but unstable Peter, that he might " sift him as wheat." He was already spurring on the emissaries of the chief priests and scribes to their dastardly and vindictive purpose. To all these he came, and not in vain. He found in one some sin, in another some infirmity, to lay hold of and use for his ends. On the Lord Jesus alone — He who was still learning " obedience by the things which He suffered " ; He in whose will there was the same strong conflict manifested in Gethsemane that always takes place when the path of duty seems hard, and our indolent, ease-loving natures instinctively shrink from it — did Satan spend every weapon of his fiendish armoury in vain. There were the great drops of sweat, 38 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. as of blood, bearing witness to tlie throes of that struggle, the tremendous issues of that agony. But there was nothing in that pure and guileless and loving heart on which temptation could fasten or wdiere Satan could find a home. There w^as the re- sistance unto blood in the strife against sin. This is the part of our Blessed Lord's example that St. Paul especially bids us contemplate. We may have beaten off Satan once, ay, twice and oftener, but he is not one to be easily dismayed. Like all who play a desperate game, he will return to what is to him the business of his life aojain and a^ain. You know the story of the unclean spirit cast out of his house, yet anon finding means to enter again with " seven other spirits more wicked than himself," and dwelling there with sevenfold more than his former tyranny. He is always spoken of throughout the Bible as a " strong man." St. Paul, as it were, exhausts the resources of language to make us feel the fearful ness of the strife in which we are for life engaged. " We wrestle not," he says, "against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wicked- ness in high places." Good need have w^e, therefore, to take unto us " the whole armour of God " — prayer, and fasting, and Holy Scripture, and continual circumspection — that we may be proof against devices which it is impossible wholly to avoid. Be assured that in no other way is an escape open to us. The careless, the prayerless, the selfish, the unwise are overcome of Satan as often as he thinks THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 39 it worth his while to bind them in his chains. The sKghtest temptation is enough to unsettle their stead- fastness and to draw them from the path of duty. The Lord Jesus has taught us, by the manner in which He met His temptation, how, and how only, Satan may be conquered. When, therefore, you are tempted, resist the temptation in Christ's strength and in Christ's way, ever remembering that " to him that overcometh will He grant to sit with Him on His throne, even as He also overcame, and is set down with His Father on His throne." Preached — Cliolderton, First Sunday in Lent, March 5th, 1854. V. THE TEAES OF JESUS OVER JERUSALEM. "And when He was come near, He beheld the city, and wept over it, saying, If tliou 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." — St. Luke xix. 41, 42. The last Sunday in Lent is often called Palm Sun- day, because it is believed to bave been tbe day in wbich tbe lifelong eartbly sorrows and bumiliations of our Blessed Lord were relieved by one brief hour of glory and triumpb — when, fulfilling the insj)ired vision of Zecbariah, the King of Zion entered His city, "just, and having salvation : lowly and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt, the foal of an ass," while the air was rent by the hosannas of assembled thousands, who spread their garments under His feet (as was the custom of welcoming home some mighty conqueror) or cut dowm branches from the palm trees that lined the roadside, and " strewed them in the way." For a moment it seemed as though the picture that was ever in the disciples' hearts was on the eve of being realised ; as though He wdio was thus hailed as the Son of David was indeed at this time about " to restore THE TEARS OF JESUS OVER JERUSALEM. 41 the Kingdom unto Israel ; " as though His sceptre was about to be set up visibly upon earth, and those who had forsaken all and followed Hini were presently to enter into His joy, and at length be satisfied with the promised thrones. Some such thoughts may have occurred to St. James and St. John and some others among His followers whose minds had not yet been taught by the Holy Ghost to apprehend the spiritual character of His service, and who, in spite of their Master's express warning, still seemed to look for the Kingdom of God " to come with observation." If so, what followed must have been a sad casting down of soaring hopes. We can easily understand " what manner of communications " they must have been which the two disciples " had one with another as they walked towards Emmaus and were sad." The Agony,, the Betrayal, the Arraignment, the Condem- nation, the Mockery, the Scourging, and last and sorest trial of all, the Cross and Passion, must all have been as so many irons entering their soul. He whom they thought should have redeemed Israel thus taken from them, and themselves left, forlorn and without a friend, to bear a name and sustain a cause which had already brought Him in Whom they trusted to what they deemed an untimely and dishonoured grave. It is thus that the Gospel and the Cross always look to those who have not yet learnt to raise their eyes above this lower world and to realise and dwell with the unseen. The whole picture seems sad and gloomy and cheerless ; nothing to compensate for what we are called upon to forego ; the sacrifices immediate and the 42 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. reward remote ; life a scene of mourning and self- denial and repentance, instead of a place for taking our ease, eating, drinking, and making merry. Such is the view which thousands take of the Gospel, and so they have no heart for it, and put it away from them, at any rate for the present, as an irksome and distasteful thing. And, indeed, if the hopes of the Christian rise no higher than this ; if he thinks that, for his individual benefit, the kingdom of Christ shall immediately ap- pear ; if he looks for some direct, tangible compensation for taking up the Cross and following Christ ; if he has not faith enough to wait yet for a little season, and thus be a partaker with those who inherit the promises, he is " of all men the most miserable." He seems to be re- nouncino- the world without winning heaven ; he knows not the pleasures of sin (if, indeed, those wretched gratifications deserve to be called pleasures at all), but neither has he tasted of that " j)eace which passeth understanding." Living thus, as we do, in the midst of such imperfect notions of the spiritual nature of Christ's kingdom, it will not be unprofitable if we dwell on some of the circumstances which marked this day, and made it stand out in such broad contrast with every other day of our Divine Saviour's brief sojourning upon earth. It was His only day of earthly triumph. His Trans- figuration was 'zmearthly — a sort of intermediate transaction between earth and heaven ; a drawing aside as for a moment of a curtain, and showing us some of the mysteries of the world of spirits. But His THE TEARS OF JESUS OVER JERUSALEM. 43 triumphant entry into Jerusalem was such as might have marked the progress of a mere earthly conqueror. It showed itself in the usual demonstrations of joy and shouting and excited crowds. And yet even it was wonderfully of a piece with that portion of meekness and humiliation which our glorious Redeemer, in the days of His flesh, chose for His own. In the midst of all this enthusiasm and rejoicing, He still remained " a man of sorrows." " As He drew near the city " — whose whole population came pouring out of its gates to welcome Him — the thoughts of the past and of the future came rushing on His mind, — the fore- sight of its impending desolation ; the memory of His own unheeded warnings ; the voices which now uttered their " Hosannas, Blessed be the King that cometh," so soon to change into malignant yells, calling for His blood and "requiring that He might be crucified"; the fatal Calvary, even now visible " from the descent of the Mount of Olives," on which He stood. All this must have produced an overpowering conflict of painful sensations ; and as once before at the grave of Lazarus, so now He found relief from the thoughts of which His mind was full in a flood of tears : " When He was come near He beheld the city, and wept over it." It was not for Himself that He wept, but for them. No word or action of His life was selfish. His whole •care was for others — their bodies and souls. Even in Gethsemane — though a veil rests upon much that must have passed there — we can well believe that it was our impenitence and obstinacy in sin, our still continued refusal to wash ourselves in the fountain for uncleanness 44 PAROCHIAL SERMOXS. which He was about to open, and not His own suffer- ings or sorrows, that formed the bitterest element of that cup which it was the Father's will that He should drink even to the" dregs. This was the thought that rent His heart and moistened His cheek with tears as He gazed upon the city — the doom of impenitent sinners. He could die Himself without a murmur. What gave the sting to death was that even the spectacle of His Cross, the merits of His sufferings, would be insuffi- cient to reclaim a lost and perishing world, or to save more than an elect soul here and there, even as a " brand plucked from the burning." It is not that God's arm is shortened, but that we will not be saved. As the offer of salvation is universal, so is it God's wish that it should be universall}^ accepted. It is we Avho are too slothful, or too worldly, or too hardened by the deceitfulness of sin, manfully and persistently to take God's side. We love our gains and our pleasures more than Christ ; or even if we think it better to accept the invitation and profess to be thankful for it, we will not be at the pains to make preparation ; we venture into the King's presence without a wedding Qfarment ; we come to church mthout reverence and remain there without devotion; we leave it with- out having derived one particle of spiritual strength from what might have been, if we had used it rightlv, an opportunity of communion with Christ — a draught of that living water which He has to give to quench all thirst, and to be in us a " well of water, springing up into everlasting life." Yes, so it is. Christ has shed His blood, and the THE TEARS OF JESUS OVER JERUSALEM. 45 great majority of those for wliotu He poured it forth are none the better for it — no nearer heaven, no safer from helL Nay, our godless, carnal lives do but "crucify the Son of God afresh," and involve us in their fearful doom who with their own lips called down the vengeance for His blood upon themselves and on their children. There are many of us for whom Christ perhaps weeps now as mournfully as once He wept over outcast and imj)enitent Jerusalem. If He can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, be sure He can be touched also with sorrow for our sins. He is the same merciful High Priest that He ever was. He is still the Good Shepherd, and it cannot but be pain and grief to Him to see sheep for whom He laid down His life refusing to hear His voice and follow Him. Oh, my friends, have you ever really considered with yourselves what a solemn, awful thing it is to be a Christian ? to be one of those redeemed by the Blood of the Lamb ? one of God's children, privileged to have access by the Spirit to the Father ? what kind of life it requires to answer to all this at our hands ? how watchful, how prayerful, how jDure, how sober, how full of love and earnestness ? Can vou think that cominsf to church once a day, or hardly that, the reading of a chapter in the Bible, the saying a few set prayers as a matter of form — anything, indeed, merely outward and formal — is all the acknowledgment Almighty God asks for, is all that the Scriptures mean when they tell us of faith and holiness and obedience ? Do not read your Bibles with such self-deceiving hearts, with such one-sided views. Believe that he 40 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. who would follow Christ here and be owned of Christ hereafter must do what the Bible bids him — keep under his body, and set a watch at the door of his lips, and "let no filthy communication proceed out of his mouth," and "do justice, and love mercy, and Avalk humbly," and " abstain from all appearance of evil," and " walk circumspectly," and " have no fellow- ship with the unfruitful works of darkness," and " speak truth with his neighbour," and " study to be quiet and do his own business," and "flee youthful lusts," and " follow after righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart." It is a fearful text for us all to think upon, that " vnthout holiness no man shall see the Lord." Decency, honest}^ diligence, by themselves, will never bring a man to heaven : they are found to answer in a worldly point of view, and are often practised on worldly motives. But holiness is something greater and nobler. It is God's gift and not our own creation ; and yet a gift not arbitrarily bestowed on a chosen few, but to be won by all who will seek for it by earnest prayer. It is, indeed, seldom gained, because it is seldom sought for. Men keep putting off the search because it is troublesome and encroaches upon their worldly engagements and amusements, and would require the surrender of many things that they cannot yet prevail on themselves to resign, Alas ! that so few of us ever seem " to know the things that belong unto our peace until they are hid from our eyes." We go on to the last hardened, THE TEARS OF JESTTS OVER JERUSALEM. 47 blinded, reprobate ; always promising ourselves a day when we will repent, but as often putting it off again Avlien it arrives. What fearful words are these which Wisdom uttereth in the streets : " Because I have called, and ye refused, I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded ; but ye have set at nought all my counsel and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh." With such unmistakable plainness does the Word of God speak to us all. If words mean anything, they tell us this, that every day we put off the work of repentance and conversion makes it less likely and, indeed, less possible that we should ever repent and be converted at all. Death-bed repentances — true saving conversions at the eleventh hour — are the rarest things in the world. I speak the words of soberness when I say that I do not believe one sick bed in a hundred witnesses that blessed change of a soul — a whole lifetime wedded to the world in those few last distracted days softened and " turned as it were from idols to serve the living God." And yet I can see that many — must [ not say most among you ? — are waiting for this which you fondly deem a " more convenient season." How is it else that so many of you, not only young people, but those well grown in years — though the young have no surer hold on life than the old — are such rare frequenters of God's house, entire strangers to Christ's Table, so weak in grace that you cannot resist the devil when he assails you, but are overcome by the least temptation to wrath or 48 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. quanelling, or swearing, or druukenness. Alas ! again I say, that we should not know " the time of" our visitation " ; alas ! that instead of " pressing towards the mark of our high calling in Christ Jesus," we should rather be of those who draw back unto perdition ; alas ! that neither the tears of Christ nor the wrath of God should awaken us from the slumber of death ! O Blessed Saviour, Who wouldest so often have gathered us together unto Thee, " even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wing," oh ! call us unto Thee yet again by such constraining tones, either of love or fear, that we cannot choose but hear, and that before "our house is left unto us desolate" our unloving hearts and wayward wills may be strengthened to adore Thee and obey ! Preached— Cliolderton, Palm Sunday, March 20th, 1853. VI. THE CROSS OF CHRIST. {A Good Friday Sermon.) " Looking unto Jesns the Autlior and Finisher of our faith : Whi) for the joy that was set before Him endured tlie cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the ris^ht hand of the throne of God."— Heb. xii. 2. On Good Friday we are bidden to look to the Cross of Christ. Though it is a thought that should never, even for a single day, be absent from our minds ; though in every sermon the preacher of the gospel must deter- mine to know nothing else amongst his hearers " but Jesus Clirist, and Him Crucified " ; yet, upon this day, it is a subject that is more emphatically brought before us. On Good Friday the preacher's tongue should savour more strongly of it ; to-day above all other days of the year, the devout Christian, walking in the steps of saints that have gone before, will endeavour to " lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset him, and run with patience the race that is set before him, looHng unto Jcsics, the AutJior and Fiiiisher of his faith:' 4 50 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. For to-day it was, more thari 1800 years ago, from nine o'clock in the morning till three o'clock in the afternoon, that the Cross of Christ was seen set up on Calvary ; the fulfilment of types and prophecies which had gone on pointing to it for full four thousand years ; the anchor of the hopes, the emblem of the faith, of all generations to the end of time. The Lamb, slain in the eternal counsels of the Father " before the foundations of the world," was then offered up, an atoning sacrifice for the sins of the world, in very deed. It was the same Lamb that God had promised Abraham that He would provide in the place of Isaac, his only son. It was the same Lamb, the efficacy of whose sprinkled blood had arrested the hand of the destroying aogel in Egypt, and saved His chosen people from the plague. It was the same Lamb that St. John the Baptist indicated, when with more than a prophet's distinct- ness he showed Him to the gazing multitude, as the " Lamb of God Which taketh away the sins of the world." It Avas the same Lamb Which the rapt seer beheld in his apocalyptic vision, when he saw the throne of God in heaven, " and in the midst of the throne, and of the four beasts and the twenty-four elders " — the four evangelists, and the glorious company of the apostle.s, and the goodly fellowshijj of the prophets (as some have read these numbers) — "there stood a Lamb as it had been slain.'' Oh ! what a moving and unspeakable sight it must have been, which, on this day, must have riveted many an eye in Jerusalem. Outside the city gate, on the brow of a low, sloping hill, stand three crosses. On THE CROSS OF CHRIST. 51 them liano- three liuman forms for six lonsf hours; then' hands and their feet pierced, and men standing and looking on them. They are called " malefactors " (it was part of the prophecies which had to be accom- plished, that He of whom we speak " should be num- bered with the transgressors"), and so indeed two of them are; suffering, as they themselves confessed, "justly " for their sins. But Who is He in the midst ? and of what is He accused ? What fault found they in Him that they have condemned Him to die the painfullest death that liuman cruelty can devise — the death which they inflicted on none but the vilest criminals and slaves ? The scroll written over His head tells us something of Him : " This is Jesus, the King of the Jews." There is something in His face that speaks of agony and suffering unutterable, something worse than the pains of death, bitter and sharp though these be. And the words that He utters from time to time, how strange they sound: " Uli, Eli, lama sahachthani" — "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken Me ? " Surely He must be a righteous and God-fearing man ! And then again, presently to a weeping woman who stood nigh, " Woman, behold thy son " ; and to a man who has seemingly known Him, — " Behold thy mother." Surely He must be tender-hearted and pitiful thus to think of others' woes in the midst of His own deep agony. Presently we again hear His voice, waxed faint and feeble now, " I thirst " ; and then again, as the rude passers-by shoot out their lips and wag their heads, mocking what they deemed His vain and impotent 4 2 52 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. pretensions, we hear Him pray, " Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Surely it must be some angel's spirit, and not one of us rude and violent and revengeful men, that can thus pray for His murderers and bear their insults meekly. And once more, the sad tragedy now drawing to its close, we hear two more strange and awful utterances — "It is finished " — " Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit." And now all is over. The spirit has returned to the God who gave it — it is but a lifeless, earthy corpse that hangs there. And yet no : methinks the day grows dull, and there is a noise of rending heard, and a trembling of the solid ground. It is even so. For three hours there has been darkness over the land, though the sun is still only in his mid-course through the sky. And now the veil of the temple is rent in twain from the tojD to the bottom, and the earth quakes, nnd the rocks are rent, and the graves are opened and give forth their dead, and all the people that have come together to see this sight, " beholding the things which are done, smite their breasts and return " with downcast eyes and musing hearts to their homes : one only, and he a poor uninstructed Roman soldier, is moved to give utterance to his feelings in Avords, than which none were ever more truly spoken. Lifting up his eyes he glorifies God, and says, "Certainly this was a righteous man ; truly this was the Son of God." That rude and untaught soldier read the signs of that day aright. He had not stood, keeping watch at the foot of the Cross, in vain. Whether he fully fathomed the THE CROSS OF CHRIST. 53 depth of Lis own words or not — whether they were an invohmtary ejaculation or a dehberate confession — ^an angel from heaven could not have told us more. He Who had been hanging for six weary hours on that accursed tree, He on Whom men had spat, Whom the very thieves in the same coudenmation had reviled, He though suffering the death of a sinner and a slave, '' crucified," as St. Paul says, through "' weakness," was a righteous man : " He was the son of God." Yes, my friends, you and I have reason to thank God that it was so : that they were not His own sins for which He was punished, that He was no fel'.ow-mortal of ours who endured such things. In the beautiful words of the prophet, " Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows." " Neither," as St. Peter tells us, " is there salvation in any other ; for there is none other name under heaven, given among men, whereby we must be saved." Not only upon this day, but every day of our lives, are we bidden by the apostle to " look unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith." Gaze on Him " enduring the Cross, despising the shame " ; follow Him with the eye of faith to where, with the marks of His sufferings still upon Him, He is now " set down at the right hand of the throne of God." The print of the nails may still be seen in those hands and feet ; the side is still gashed by the wound, where entered the savage Roman's spear. For even at the last day, when He shall again be visible to the eye, they that pierced Him shall behold their handiwork. " I saw in the midst of the throne a Laml> as it had Iccn slain." 54 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. " Of course," you will say to me, " we must look to Christ. We do look to Him. We are continually thinking about Him and talking about Him. We are here now to show that we are looking to Him We call ourselves Christians, and the name would have no meaning did we not believe the doctrine of the Atonement. You are only preaching to us about a duty that we have always acknowledged and are per- fectly familiar with." It may be so, my brethren, and I trust that it is so. But I cannot conceal from myself, or from you, that there are many " who call themselves Christians," who talk glibly about religious feelings and religious sub- jects, who are still no better than those whom St. Paul describes as " enemies of the Cross of Christ, crucifying the Son of God afresh, and putting Him to an open shame ; whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things." Every drunkard is one of these ; every whore- monger ; every profane swearer ; every Sabbath- breaker ; every liar ; every scoffer at holy things ; every hard-hearted man ; the selfish, the envious, the wrathful, the proud, the covetous, the prayerless. Every one is an enemy of the Cross of Christ who does not help, like Simon of Cyrene, to bear the Cross of Christ. In this case, he that is not with Jesus is against Him. He that loves any earthly thing better than the Lord Who redeemed him, who sets gain before godliness, pleasure before duty, comfort before self-denial, acts of self-indulgence before acts of mercy, cannot be His disciple. Jesus Christ knows nothing of him, be he THE CROSS OF CHRIST. 55 young or old; rich or poor, who lives only for amuse- ment, or for covetousness, or for ease — in a word, for self. All I say is, beware of unreality ; beware oiprofessing to know God, but in works denying Him ; beware of cant ; of words that mean nothing as you use them ; of feeling^s that are unfruitful. Still " look unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith," but look practically, look earnestly, look humbly. Look till you feel within you some holy influence issuing from that bruised and pierced body, some secret power derived from that mystical Cross, making you have fellowship with those sufferings, conforming you to that death. Look till you feel a desire to take up your own cross too. Look till you have learnt what faith, and patience, and humility, and resignation, and contentment mean. Look till you become a Christian in deed; thyself crucified, and dead to the world ; " always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in thy body." And there is one lesson esj^ecially that we cannot afford to lose sight of, in presence of the Cross. The world worships success ; and, dazzled by its brilliancy, we are too apt to forget that disappointment and failure would be to many, perhaps to most men, the more wholesome discipline. I am sure that for ministers of the Gospel what is called " success," as the world measures it at least, is a most perilous trial. Better a thousand times to fail, and hioiu that we have failed. We shall then go forth again to the battle with more trust in God, and less confidence in ourselves. 56 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. Ill every department of human activity, the men, I take it, whose names now stand highest on the roll of fame are those who have succeeded ly failure ; men whom disappointment has crossed, but whom it has'not turned aside ; whom truth has bafiSed, but by whom she has at last been won ; whom, beaten in many battles, the world has been forced to own as conquerors after all. And the same law holds in spiritual things. '•' Tribu- lation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope." To have failed is no sign that we are forsaken of God. " The gifts and calling of God are without repentance." The promise stands sure and steadfast, " I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.' Only let us banish two things — banish vain regrets, and baoish guilty despair. The past is irrevocable, but the present and the future are our own. To have failed before is no ground, to any but a superstitious man, for the fear that he must fail again, or always fail. It is simply a motive to greater watchfulness and more earnest faith. God hath called us to salvation. " We can do all things through Christ which strengtlieneth us." The Holy Ghost's heart-cheering call is, " Work out your salvation while it is called to-day." Whatever may be our condition in life, or the circumstances of our trial, or the lamentableness of our past failures, the Cross of Christ is what we may always look to for strength and instruction, and enduring hope. Though a single fact. it is pregnant with manifold influences. Not only in saving efficacy, but also in sanctifying exavvple, " He tasted death for every man." THE CROSS OF CHRIST. 57 Look to it then in the time of trouble, when distress and anguish come upon you, \vl13n you are out of work, or things turn out ill for you, or you are slandered and evil spoken of — look to the Cross of Christ, and draw from it a lesson of patience and confidence. Look, then, thou forlorn one, who hast no friends, on Avhom the world gazes coldly, and who seest " no man" to pity thee ; look to the Cross of Christ and see there Him Who in His own deep sufferings still thought of finding a home for His weeping mother, and believe thou hast a place in His heart and that He careth for thee ! Look there, thou penitent, who, like the sad prodigal, findcst that thou hast sinned very grievously, and would fain return to thy father's home, but fearest lest thou shouldest be refused admission and disowned : look to the Cross of Christ, and see there One whose blood, if thou hast faith, can wash out thy deepest stains, and present thee faultless before the throne with exceeding joy. Above all — for it is a picture that has two sides — look to the Cross of Christ thou who art in prosperity ; thou who callest thyself "aliapjDy man"; thou with whom " to- day is as yesterday, yea, and much more abundant " ; thou of whom all men speak well, who hast no cares, no discomforts, no privations ; " who canst take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry " — look thou, above all, to the Cross of Christ, and see that thou hast fellowship with it. Remember that faithful saying, " If we sicffer, we shall also reign with Him," lut surely not otherwise. " For all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution." " We must, through much trilulaiion enter into the kinfjdom of God." It is the laic of the 58 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. Gospel, the portion of God's elect. It must then, in some sense, be ou7' portion. Let us look about us and see whether, if we know it not and cannot realise it, it is because we are giving up ourselves too entirely to the world, and the things of the world. If we look for the Cross we shall soon find it. We shall see what it is that Christ would have us take and bear after Him. We shall discover some work of God lying before our feet — as masters or servants, or fathers, or children, or ministers, or people — which we have not done yet, and which we had better do while it is still day. " For the grace of God that bringeth salvation, hath appeared unto all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world; looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto Himself a peculiar people zealous of good works." Preached— Choklerton, Good Friday, March 25th, 18.o3 ; April 10th, 1857 ; April 6th, 1860 ; Kersaf, Manchester, Good Friday, April 15th, 1870. VII. Notes of a Skrmon ON THE LOVE OF CHRIST. " The love of Christ constraineth us " — 2 CORIXTHIAXS, V. 14. What is it that draws our thouglits to the Cross with so strong a fascination ? It is the ineffable thought of God's love thus, there, manifested. The spectacle in itself, whether we gaze on it in pictures, or raise it before our minds by an act of ima- gination, is horrible, piteous, agonising. Yet on that scene have been fixed the highest, tenderest, holiest thoughts of men for nineteen centuries. It filled St. Paul's heart, and formed his life, and sustained as well as constrained him. It is strange that it should be so hard for the heart of men to reaUse this love of God. Yet plainly it is hard. Till Christ came, men feared God rather than loved Him. Even in the evangelical prophecies of Isaiah there is the deep undertone of a solemn fear. The powers of Nature, man feels, cannot proclaim God's 60 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. love. Earthquakes only make men doubt and tremble. John Stuart Mill could discern in the physical, and even in the moral world, no token of God's benevolence, or at best only of a limited benevolence. The poet has spoken of " nature, red in both tooth and claw " ; and of her seeming carefulness of the type alone, careless meanwhile of single lives. And so the better, fuller revelation — the better covenant established on better premises — the bringing in of the better hope, came. It was needed, and it came. The Cross of Christ proclaimed it. "God so loved the world that He gave His onlj^-begotten Son" ; " He spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all " ; " For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly." " God com- mendeth His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us." We may not understand the exact method of the Atonement, and I do not pretend to be able to explain it. I have no theories wherewith to reconcile it with our abstract theories of justice or wisdom. Others — the great Bishop Butler for instance — have attempted this with more or less success. I approach the subject, as it is best approached, not from the high a priori road, but from the ground of Christian faith and experience. I see what it has done for humanity. I recognise the power of such a statement as this : " Seeing then that we have a great High Priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not a High Priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, THE LOVE OF CHRIST. 61 but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet with- out sin. Let us therefore come boJly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need." I know what it has done to sweeten and sanctify beds of sickness, hours of suffering, which before, at least, were only endured with a kind of stoical apathy or despair. I contrast even the patience of Job with the patience of St. Paul, and I see the difference — the higher level to which the human heart, at once so Aveak and so strong, has, by virtue of this great sustaining belief, attained. No wonder that symbols of the Cross meet us every- where — in our churchyards, in the shajDe of our churches, even in our women's ornaments ; for it is the symbol of the love of God, His last, best revelation of Himself and of His character to the heart of man. And it is the heart rather than the intellect which has embraced it. The intellect has raised difEculties which the heart has had to remove. The " I know," '•' I am persuaded," of St. Paul were conclusions not of his reason, but of his faith — of his heart, that is, rather than of his head. When we talk of '■ love," we are talking of a passion of the soul, not of an inference of the understanding. Does this "love of Christ" draw out any correspond- ing affection in our souls ? Indeed, the phrase — the love of Christ — is doubtful. Does it mean my love towards Christ, or Christ's love towards me ? The two indeed act and react. "We love Him because He first loved us." And though the first spring comes from the thought of God's love to us vet this thought 02 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. branches out into a thousand forms. '" In this was manifested the love of God towards us, because that God seat His only-begotten Son into the world that we misrht live throiio-h Him. Herein is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." Beloved, if God so loved us we ought also to love one another. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and His love is per- fected in us. Cold, careless, selfish hearts can hardly be objects of God's love. Christ showed love that He might win love. He drew us " with cords as of a man, with bands of love." In it we may bask as in the sunshine, till its warmth has penetrated our whole nature. And yet perhaps this is not a happy metajDhor. For nothino- is less like basking in the sunshine than the energy of faith — faith which worketh by love ; or rather perhaps, faith energised by love, of which love is the moving and sustaining power. No ' the Aprici scncs of the past are hardly types of Christian manhood, or even of Christian old age. I don't like to talk — sweet as the book is which bears that title — of "the Shadow of the Cross," True, its shadow fell darkly on Hira who bore it, and I cannot penetrate the mystery of that suffering ; but to me, to you, it has made the whole world full of light. No shadow of it fell on the gi-eat heart of St. Paul — " Yea, God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." We should be strong indeed if we could lay hold of this Cross with equal faith and firmness. THE LOVE OF CHRIST. 63 Some there are who in their worship ahnost degrade, certainly unspiritualise, the power of this Cross, by attempting to associate it with all the emblems and accessories of a sensuous and almost physical worship. How the poor >veak human heart, unable to reach the higher is always falling back upon the lower ! It must have something outside itself to rest upon, and it is so much easier to fall back upon what is carnal than to rise to what is spiritual. A repeated sacrifice upon the altar — to use a ^phraseology which, however unscript- ural, is in vogue — seems so much easier to conceive than the finished sacrifice on Calvary and the new and risen life with Christ in heaven. It is easier to gaze upon, if that is all that is aimed at : but is it more helpful to sustain ? How is it that men, like the Galatians, having begun in the spirit, are made perfect — or think they are — by the flesh ? Oh friends, rise higher in your conception of this great mystery ! Let these words help you : " Yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more. All things are of God, who hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation, to wit that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not imjjuting their trespasses unto them. For He hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we ]night be made the righteousness of God in Him." Yes, this is the love of God in its fullness and in its power, Preaclied — Ker.sal Moor, Manchester, Good Friday morning, 1884. YIII. THE ANGELS' EASTER QUESTION. " Why seek ye tlie living among the dead ? " — St. Luke xxiv. 5. Such was the angels' address to the holy women of Galilee, who had come from Jerusalem to the sepulchre, where the body of their Lord had been laid, " on the first day of the week very early in the morning," bringing with them " spices which they had prepared," to anoint His body for the burying. There had not been time to do this perfectly on the Friday evening when He was slain. The next day was the Sabbath of more than usual solemnity (a " high day " as it is called), and the bodies had to be taken down from the cross and laid with as much decency as haste allowed in the nearest tomb. The last offices to the lifeless corpse were performed by Joseph of Arima- thea and Nicodemus, both members of that Jewish council which had condemned to death the Lord of life ; both disciples of Jesus, " but secretly, for fear of the Jews-." The one brought the linen clothes and spices, a mixture of myrrh and aloes about one hundred pounds weight, " as the manner of the Jews is to bury " ; the THE ANGELS' EASTER QUESTION. C5 other lent his new sepulchre in the garden, wherein was never yet man laid. " There laid they Jesus there- fore, because of the Jews' preparation day : for the sepulchre was nigh at hand." And now the Sabbath, with its appointed rest from labour, was past and gone. The sun had scarce shown himself in the east on the morning of the first day of the week when " Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and certain others with them," issued on their errand of love and duty from the well-warded gates of Jerusalem. Their hearts were sad within them, and they journeyed musing on many things. They questioned one another, perhaps, whether the rude soldiers who watched the tomb would suffer them to perform their last office of affection to Him they loved. They thought, too, of the difficulty which their weak women's hands would find in rolling away the stone. Nor, may we be sure, was their perplexity lessened when, on drawing near, they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre, and, entering in, " they saw not the body of the Lord Jesus" ; for as yet, like the Apostles themselves, " they knew not the scripture, that He must rise again from the dead." " And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments. And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth '" — conscious that they were in the presence of messengers from heaven — " they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead ? He is not here, but is risen. Remember how He spake unto you when 5 C6 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. He was yet in Galilee " — words which they had never rightly understood till now — " saying, The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again ? And they remembered His words." This then explained the mystery. He whom they sought — the Saviour of the world — was risen. He was not there. They had been looking for the living among the dead. The days of familiar intercourse, " the speaking face to face as a man speaketh to his friend," the strength, and the weakness also, of an abiding presence in the hodi/ are passed way ; " behold, all things are become new." Death was now robbed of its sting ; the grave of its victory ; Satan of his power. The Messiah's personal sufferings were finished ; the King- dom of His glory was begun. " They that had known Christ Jesus after the flesh were henceforth to know Him as such no more." In one word, sight gave place to faith. From this time the blessing was for those " who had not seen, but yet had believed." Mary Magdalene, for- bidden to touch Him with a fleshy embrace, was told of a spiritual contact by which she might still apprehend Him, when He should have ascended to " her Father and His Father, her God and His God." Everything jDointed the same way. His forty days sojourning upon earth after His resurrection was but a condescension to His disciples' infirmity. He would not have His leave-taking too abrupt, lest their weak faith should be shocked and overpowered. He prepared them for the new state of things — the ministration of His kingdom henceforth to be carried on by the Holy THE ANGELS' EASTER QUESTION. 67 Spirit, tenderly and gradually ; herein, as in so many other things, showing Himself that merciful High Priest, who can be touched with a feeling of our infirmities ; who will not try us beyond what our strength is able to bear. Accordingly St. Paul uses this new feature of the Gospel dispensation — I mean its purely spiritual charac- ter — as the most constraining motive to heavenly- mindedness : " If ye be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth, for ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God." As in His Passion, so also in His Resurrection, Jesus has left us an example. As we must be " crucified with Him " and " buried with Him," so we must " rise with Him " — rise from the grave of corrupt affections and carnal lusts and earth-bound thoughts to high and heavenly things ; to an appreciation of our birthright^ to a sense of our calling, to self-renouncement, to newness of life. " He was delivered," we are told, " for our offences : He was raised for our justification." His Resurrection was the earnest and pledge of that train of glorious privileges which His death purchased for them that believe — predestination, election, justifi- cation, glory — privileges which will run their appointed course and issue in their preordained consequences in. all who do not themselves " frustrate the grace of God " by their own carnal and ungodly lives. They are as a strong cable, bearing up and sustaining all who will lay hold on it, through the storms and waves of time, to the 5 2 68 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. safe waters and peaceful haven of eternity. " Who' shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect ? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth ? It is Christ that died, yea, rather that is risen again, Who is ever at the right hand of God, Who also maketh intercession for us." Nothing, indeed, " can sej^arate us from the love of Christ " but our own cold hearts and feeble faith. Satan has no longer power against us except we give him leave. The commandment is no more " found to be unto death," because, by the help of grace, it can be fulfilled, as it is wrtiten, " Sin shall have no more dominion over you, for ye are not under the Law." If all this be true — and that it is true we have the sure warrant of God's most Holy Word — one cannot help asking, How then is it that this fair picture of a Christian's condition in the Kingdom of God is so seldom realised ? How is it that Satan is still un- bound, and " walketh about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour " ? that sin is still fulfilled in the lusts thereof? that men, though redeemed and born again of grace, are either unable or unwilling to " stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made them free " ? The answer may be given in the language of the text. It is because " they seek the living among the dead." It is because they busy themselves about things which perish in the using, fashions that pass away, objects that can neither profit nor deliver, instead of rising with Christ, '" and forgetting the things that are behind," and throwing all their care upon God, and living as men " who have here no continuing city, but who seek one to come." THE ANGELS' EASTER QUESTION. 69 Look at the world and see what it is doing. Take nine men out of ten and see what they are doing. Are they labouring " for the meat that perisheth, or for that which shall endure unto life eternal " ? Are they ^' making provision " for the flesh, or for the spirit ? Are they " crucifying " the old man, or pampering him? Are they counting gain godliness, or " godliness with contentment " gain ? Are tliey professing to serve God, or in works denying Him ? Are they walking by faith or by sight ? Are they ready to spend and be spent for their brethren or for themselves ? Do they rise early and late take rest, and eat the bread of carefulness, that they may have to give to him that needeth, or that they may " buy and sell and get gain " ? The Scriptures paint both pictures. Which is the one we see most frequently exhibited before our eyes ? There cannot be a moment's doubt. The world is still carnal ; and so far as it is so, " Christ is dead in vain." Its works are dead ; its faith is dead : and yet it still looks, or professes to look, to be saved by Him " that liveth." The thing cannot be. It is impossible. It is a simple perversion of the doctrines of grace. We must seek Christ where He is, " at the right hand of God." We must " know the power of His resurrection " to transform us " in the spirit of our mind." We must " purify ourselves even as He is pure." We must walk as " partakers of a heavenly calling " here, if we are ever to reign with Christ in heaven hereafter. We are called to be saints ; we must be saintly. Now we can never do this unless we live by rule. No man ever went to sleep a sinner and woke up and 70 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. found himself a saint. The great change of heart which is commonly expressed by the term "conversion" is no sudden impulse, perfect from the very outset, but the gradual and often slow result of pain and discipline and watchfulness. The man who seeks to turn with his whole heart to God, " sets a watch at the door of his lips," and "makes a covenant with his eyes," and "takes heed what he hears," and " keeps his foot," not only when he " goes to the house of the Lord," but at other times also, and has his "loins girt about and his light burning." He puts on that attitude of watchfulness and self-control which his own reason, no less than the Bible, tells him is alone safe and prudent for his soul. It is as unreasonable as it is unscriptural to expect to have all done for us and nothing left to be ^vrought for and by ourselves. We have " to work out our own salvation," and that " with fear and trembling." This can only be done by living by rule ; by setting before our eyes a standard and trying to live up to it ; by acting upon principle, not upon passion; from a sense of duty and not merely as suits our convenience. This is the only way to make progress, to grow in gi'ace. It is the only thing that can give us consistency. Men are irregular and make mistakes and contradict themselves, because they have no settled rule within themselves to determine questions by. They act right to-day and wrong to-morrow. They spend the morning of Sunday at church and the evening at a public-house. Out of the same mouth will proceed blessing and cursing on the same day. Or again, the law is kept in some jDoints, but broken in others. A man is sober, but THE ANGELS' EASTER QUESTION. 71 lie is also covetous ; or generous-hearted, but also pro- fligate ; or honest, but cross and peevish ; or honourable, but vain and proud. Here still the secret history of his heart is, he lives by no rule. He puts himself under no constraint. He cannot bear to be crossed in an inclination. There is no "patient waiting" for grace. I am describing a spiritual state that is more or less true of us all. None of us, it is to be feared, makes it as much a matter of conscience " to live godly in Christ Jesus " as he might do. None of us perhaps takes all the pains he might to " to mortify his members upon the earth." None of us resists with his whole energy " the motions of sin." Some probably do not even try to do so at all. It is mere chance work whether they are conquerors or conquered in any conflict with the wicked one. No one can tell beforehand how they will behave. They never stop to calculate consequences or think where roads must lead ; but " do even what they list," and walk on heedlessly, just where the mood takes them. Now surely this cannot be the Christian race. This is not the way to win the " incorruptible crown." " He that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things," that is, puts a bridle on his appetite and lives by rule. So must we. We must " bring every thought into captivity unto the obedience of Christ." At least this is what the Bible says, and he is hardly wise who disregards it. It is nothing better than " seeking the living among the dead " to think that we shall find Christ, or rather be found of Him, while our afi'ections are wholly burier 72 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. in these earthly things. We must set them, we are taught, " on things above." It was wliile men ate and drank, and bought and sold, and builded and planted, that the Flood came and destroyed them all. Even so shall it be in the day in which the Son of man is re- vealed. He will come upon those men whose hearts are taken up with the care of this world and the deceitful- ness of riches, unaivarcs. Let the day of His Resurrection remind us of the day of His Judgment. As St. Paul warned the Athenians on Mars' Hill, God " hath appointed a day in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom He hath ordained ; whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead." Oh ! let us seek Him where and while He may be found ; " for in the great water floods they who have never begun to seek Him till then shall not come nigh Him." Let us seek Him by a " new and living way " ; by the renewing of our minds ; by the putting off the body of the sins of the flesh ; by a faith which worketh by love. Let us seek Him in those living channels of grace which He hath opened in His Church — the new Jerusalem — as fountains to cleanse from sin and from uncleanness. Let us seek Him in private prayer, in common worship, in Holy Com- munion. The two disciples with whom He supped at Emmaus knew Him not till " He had taken bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them." Then, we are told, were their eyes opened, and they knew Him. Their hearts, indeed, had " burned within them " before, as He opened to them the Scriptures ; but now, by a THE ANGELS' EASTER QUESTION. 73 Sacramental illumination, they knew Him to be indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world. Let us seek to know Him in the same way. His Table is spread, and all things are ready, and the Master of the house is "waiting for His guests. He bids us come, and shall we ungratefully turn our backs and go away ? Come, then, in your wedding garments — not the putting on of gold or apparel, the only way that some have of keeping their Eastertide, but " wdth the orna- ment of a meek and quiet spirit," " with your hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and your bodies washed with pure water." In one sense it is indeed still true that " He is not here ; He is risen." It is a spiritual presence that we must realise in the heavenly feast : His dwelling in our hearts is by faith. And this is to be realised sacramentally. We have His own word for it : " He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood dwelleth in Me, and I in him." Let us believe that what He hath promised He is able also to perform. Let us pray God to strengthen us " with might by His Spirit in the inner man," that so our dull hearts may be quickened, and our cold affections kindled to know the love of Christ which " passeth knowledge," and " to ascend in heart and mind to whither our Saviour Christ is gone before," and " is now seated at the right hand of the Throne of God." Preached — Cholderton, Easter Sunday, April lltli, 1852. IX. THE POWER OF CHRIST'S RESURRECTION, ESPECIALLY AS ILLUSTRATING THE DUTIES OF MASTER AND SERVANT. " For as yet they knew not the scripture, that He must rise again from the dead. — St. John xx. 9. The text gives us the explanation of a phenomenon that, without it, would be somewhat perplexing — viz. the incredulity and slowness of heart with which the disciples received Mary Magdalene's and the other women's news, that the tomb in the garden was tenant- less and the body of the Lord Jesus had disappeared. Instead of " remembering the words that He had spoken to them in Galilee," and instantly welcoming the fact as a sure token of His resurrection, they knew not what to make of it ; " their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not." So opposed do the tidings appear to have been, not only to all their experience but even to their expecta- tions, that, like Thomas himself, they were indisposed to accept any evidence short of personal sight and actual handling. Mary Magdalene was the first to announce to them both that the sepulchre was empty THE POWER OF CHRIST'S RESURRECTION. 75 and, soon afterwards, that He Whom they had laid there " was risen indeed." And they, when they had heard that He was alive and had been seen of her, believed not. After that He appeared in another form — a sig- nificant fact, and very much of a piece with the changed and mysterious character of the intercourse which He held with His followers after His resurrection — unto two of them, Cleopas and his companion, on their way to Emmaus. And they went and told it unto the residue : " neither believed they them." Indeed, so entirely was their usually simple and teachable faith overpowered by the suggestions either of a carnal doubt or fear, as to require, not only the actual assurance of their senses, but a formal Scrijstural proof, and even some asperity of rebuke, before they were in a condition to be witnesses of a fact, much less preachers of a doctrine founded upon a fact, which as yet troubled instead of comforting them, and caused " thoughts to rise in their hearts," instead of restoring them at once to confidence and joy. He appeared, we are told, to the eleven " as they sat at meat, and u'pbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart," because they believed not them which had seen Him after He was risen. Then opened He their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures, and said unto them : " Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day. And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His Name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And ye are witnesses of these things." 76 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. The text explains this phenomenon and accounts for this feeemingly strange and obstinate scepticism. It • appears to have been a fact, for which they were absolutely unprepared, and which, therefore, when it was presented to them, in the cogency of all but physical demonstration, their minds refused to realize. " As yet they knew not the scripture, that He must rise again from the dead." Yet their ignorance is as marvellous as their in- credulity. If they knew not the scripture, it was not for want of having had it brought before them. While they abode still in Galilee, Jesus had said unto them, " The Son of Man shall be betrayed into the hands of men, and they shall kill Him, and the third day He shall be raised again." They certainly understood the outward meaning of the words, for it is added, " And they were exceeding sorry." And again, as they were on this very last journey to Jerusalem which issued in such memorable circumstances, scarce ten days perhaps before, Jesus had taken them apart in the way and said unto them, " Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and scribes, and they shall condemn Him to death, and shall deliver Him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify Him ; and the third day He shall rise again." Here we have every event detailed exactly in its historical sequence, no longer under the sign of the prophet Jonah or the parable of a destroyed and rebuilt temple, but in the plainest and most unam- biguous language ; and yet, though they had drunk them in with their ears, the words had never settled in THE POWER OF CHRISrS RESURRECTION. 77 their hearts ; had not even enlightened, still less consoled or guided or strengthened them. Of course, in estimating such a state of mind as this, we must not forget to take into account the moral and spiritual disadvantages under which, as compared with ourselves, the disciples laboured. He Who had been their constant strength and stay, Who, they had trusted, " would have redeemed Israel," at Whose either hand they had hoped to sit on thrones in all the pomp of earthly sovereignty, was suddenly taken away ; and the " other Comforter," Who was " to guide them into all truth, and bring all things to their remembrance that Jesus had said unto them," was not yet sent from the Father to supply the void, Christ's death and resurrection and ascension ; the spiritual nature of His Kingdom and its propagation by the force of inward influences, and not by the more imposing power of observation and outward show — truths which are now familiar even to the children of our village schools — were dark mysteries or disappoint- ing revelations to them. From the strength of national prejudices or the dreams of personal ambition, their notion of the new dispensation was simply secular. They had thought of a Redeemer of Israel from the Roman bondage, not a Ransomer of mankind from the yoke of sin; of a triumphant Conqueror, not of a dying Saviour; of a literal fulfilment of Jeremiah's words, '■ Kings and princes entering into Jerusalem, and sitting on the throne of David, and riding in chariots and on horses, and the city itself remaining for ever," not of One Who, by washing us in His blood, should 78 PAR0CHL4L SERMONS. make " us kings and priests unto His Father," or of a " Jerusalem which is above, and is free, and the mother of us all." And so what they beheld on Calvary had completely unmanned them, had shipwrecked their faith by vio- lently severing it from the anchor of their hopes. A great mental " tempest lay upon them " ; they saw no haven to flee unto, and their hearts not unnaturally sank in the depths of perplexity and fearfulness and despair. It is a moral phenomenon analogous to what w^e sometimes witness physically — a strong constitution breaking down all at once ; a general derangement resulting to the system from the inroads of disease at a single point. So here, a fervent faith and an enthu- siasm that had never yet stopped to count the cost, was suddenly checked by an unforeseen disappointment ; and as a consequence the whole current of the disciples' being was thrown out of its channel, to burst the banks by which hitherto it had, for the most part mechanically, been confined. We do not speedily recover from any crushing blow. They to whom the Cross had been so painful a stumbling-block were not likely to be in a mood to understand the mystery or appreciate the comfort of the Resurrection. Memory is but a weak help in such emergencies. If we have ever experienced or can imagine the force of any strong reaction, we shall perhaps cease to wonder that the eleven poor, friendless Galileans, in sj^ite of all they had been told beforehand, " as yet knew not the scripture, that He must rise acfain from the dead." THE POWER OF CHRIST'S RESURRECTION. 79 Let us see whether the text does not convey some practical instruction and warning to ourselves. Do we as yet know the scripture that He Whom we call our Lord has risen again from the dead ? No doubt we accept the fact historically. We are satisfied that " the proofs " were " infallible " by which He " showed Him- self alive to the Apostles after His passion," We do not question the testimony of Peter and James and John and the rest who tell us that they "ate and drank with Him after that He rose from the dead." But this is very different from the " excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord " of which St. Paul speaks, and which it was the aim and object of his life to attain, " that he might know Him and the j^otvcr of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death, if by any means he might attain unto the resurrection of the dead." We may be fully conversant with the faet without being in the smallest degree, or at least only very imperfectly, penetrated by its power. Without this, however great our biblical or theological attain- ments, we " as yet know nothing as we ought to know." The great truths of the Gospel, the stories of the Evangelists, are not a mere collection of unproductive facts, to be stored in the memory, or paraded in con- troversy, or taught in a catechism, or squared to a system ; but they are the basis of a Christian faith, the pattern of a Christian life, at once effectual and exemplary ; mighty, living influences, welcomed and cherished and felt in every renewed and converted soul ; for indeed they are the secret springs of its 80 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. renewal and conversion. It is the resurrection of Christ in the teaching of St. Peter that makes Baptism a saving ordinance and inspires the regenerate with " a lively hope " of an incorrujitible inheritance. Take away this doctrine from the Creed, and St. Paul tells us that " faith is vain," sin unforgiven, joy imjDossible. It is not only the motive, the pattern, but the enabling principle, the effectuating source of " the death unto sin and the life unto righteousness." At least this is how the Bible speaks of it. If it has not been so to us, it must be because we have only known it his- torically, not realized it spiritually. It is indeed difficult to speak of so high and trans- cendent a doctrine, even though one use the very words of inspiration, without one's language seeming to savour of dreaminess and unreality. It is not easy to translate the mysteries of the faith into phrases intelligible to common minds. I am afraid that some of the most striking passages in St. Paul's writings in connection with this doctrine sound very much like mysticism to most of you. We can hardly enter into those deep feelings and that earnest faith and those kindled hopes which saw in the single article of the Besurrection of Christ, as in a germ, the whole scheme of Redemption, the entire mystery of godliness. Who can thoroughly comprehend what it is " to be dead, and have his life hid with Christ in God " ? what it is to be " quickened together with Christ, and made to sit with Him in heavenly places " ? what it is to " have the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead" dwelling in us ? what it is to be delivered from condemnation THE POWER OF CHRIST'S RESURRECTION. 81 through Him who died for us, yea rather that is risen again ? And yet I fear St. Paul would have replied to us that we were but babes and unskillful in the word of righteousness, if we had told him that such language as this conveyed no distinct ideas, no guidance, no strength, no consolation to our minds. We are become such " as have need of milk, and not of strong meat." Our worldly, self-indulgent lives, our low notions of the sinfulness of sin, our self-complacency, our waj'wardness, our reluctance to acknowedge that we stand in need of a teacher ; all help to make us " dull of hearing," and slow to believe, and slower still to act upon those " principles of the doctrine of Christ " which, in a moral aspect, alone distinguish the Gospel from a mere philo- sophy ; and which appeal for acceptance rather to the teachable temper of a little child than to the shrewd discernment of the man of the world, or the inquiring spirit of the man of science. Thus, to take a single instance, the precept, " Mortify your members which are upon the earth," would be congenial with the philosophies either of the Academy or of the Porch. Plato would say, "Do it, that you may have your soul freer for its proper function of speculative contemplation" ; Zeno, " that you may be indifferent to carnal gratifications, and be the better able to realise the highest good, and supreme perfection of man," Contrast these motives but for one moment with that inculcated by St. Paul. With them the precept is but a rule of prudence, grounded on nothing better than a psychological theory ; with him it is a moral duty, 6 82 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. issuing at once from the relation in which we stand to Him upon Whom our whole spiritual life depends. " Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God ; when Christ Who is our life shall appear then shall we also appear Avith Him in glory." The Bible is never satisfied unless it runs up even the meanest duties to the highest principles. We are to pay taxes for conscience, sake. If we esteem one day above another it is on the principle of " o^egarding it to the Lord." The thought that we may perchance destroy with our meat one for whom Christ died, is to determine both the quantity and quality of our food. We are to let no corrupt communication proceed out of our mouth lest we should "grieve the Holy Spirit of God." We are to submit ourselves to the laws of the land — to every ordinance of man — "for the Lord's sake." We are to love the brethren because " ive are horn of God." Who will say that these are obvious or naturally influential motives ? What disputer of this world would have ever thought of them ? Even now, what Christian adequately comprehends, or consistently acts upon them ? To the natural man they still are " fool- ishness." The schools of the day ignore them. The princes of this world repudiate them. But " God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit," and " he that is spiritual," feels their force ; and though " through the weakness of the flesh " often serving " the law of sin," yet he acknowledges " with the mind " the obligation and suj^remacy of the law of God. THE POWER OF CHRIST'S RESURRECTION. 83 It is what God has done and is still doing for us, that determines all our duties both towards one another and to Him. His acts to us all seem to centre in the Resurrection of His Blessed Son. It is, as it were, a focus, which first collects and then transmits, both the light and warmth of the Divine Love. As by it, more emphatically than by anything else, Jesus was " declared to be the Son of God with power," so St. Paul tells us, it is the " power of His Resurrection " above all other articles of the faith that we must make it our chief business to know. By way of illustration how the doctrine may be brought to bear on every point of Christian duty, and every variety of individual condition, I will endeavour to apply it to the circumstances of a portion of this congregation, that is, college servants ; to whom, from the peculiar diffi- culties of their trial, spiritual counsel should be specially profitable, as it is unhappily, specially necessary. You, my friends, are j^laced by the Providence of God in the condition of servants, a state of life which — what- ever to a worldly eye may be its temporal disadvantages — can never be I'egarded without deep interest and sympathy by a religious mind, as being that which our Blessed Saviour, when " He took ujDon Him our flesh," chose as His own. He " made himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men." If it is the state of life which Providence has marked out for us, no true follower of the Cross will rejiine at it, or envy others who are differently situated, or think that he is unfavourably placed for forming Christian habits, 6 2 84 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. or carrying out Christian principles. If it was Christ's lot it may well be ours. St. Paul, having laid down the general rule that " every man should abide in the same calling wherein he is called," at once applies it to such a case as yours. " Art thou called," he asks, " being a servant ? care not for it ; but if thou mayest be made free, use it " — that is thy servitude — " rather." " He that is called in the Lord, being a servant, 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." Oh, how blessed to spiritual ends might be the relation of master and servant, if it were always under the influence of these two great constraining principles ! The servant remembering that he is the " Lord's freeman," and the master not forgetting that he is " Christ's servant." What honest self-respect and in- dependence on one side, " with good will doing service as unto the Lord, and not unto men " : what con- siderateness and forbearance on the other, as " knowinsr that there is a Master also in heaven, neither is there respect of persons with Him." You see at once that the thought of the Risen, Ever-Living Lord, of Him Who was once Himself a servant but in Whom now every believer is made free, is the true Scriptural foundation of the relative duties of either party. The forgetfulness of it is the real cause of all that domestic discomfort of which any one who chooses may hear complaints made every day. We have eye service instead of fidelity on one side ; and oppression and imperiousness instead of justice and gentleness on the THE POWER OF CHRIST'S RESURRECTION. 85 other. Servants complain of their masters as harsh, and exacting and suspicious : and masters speak of their servants as thankless, and evasive, and untrust- worthy. I fear that this state of things prevails even more extensively in colleges than in private households — at least I know it used to do. I would fain hope that a better sjDirit towards one another is rising up amongst us all. Your masters are mostly young men, and it is un- happily too common with young men to be insolent towards those whom they deem inferiors, careless of the trouble they cause, expecting orders to be executed without ever stopping to consider whether they are I^roper or even possible. And the peculiar difficidty of your position is that you are always serving such masters. One generation succeeds another with jjretty much the same tempers, and tastes and habits. You have con- tinually to deal with young men, in the first flush of imaginary independence, with very little self-control, surrounded by temptations to frivolity, and extravagance, if not to vice. You have to minister to their whims, to bear their humours ; often I am afraid to connive at their delinquencies, perhaps even asked to aid them in what both you and they know to be wrong. It is a hard trial, and Satan will make the most of his opportunity. He will always be pointing out to you indirect ways of advancing your worldly interests by taking advantage of the extravagance or inexperience of your masters. He will whisper to you that you are but a servant, and have no business to ask questions ; and that if a service involve a wrong, the blame will fall, not on those who execute it, but on those who enforce it 86 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. How shall you escape, but by never letting slip from your thoughts even for a single moment the Apostle's words, that " though called to be a servant, you are the Lord's freeman." He bought you with His blood : He rose from the dead to set you free : He is your true Master which is in heaven. " He that doeth wrong, shall receive for the wrong which he hath done ; and there is no respect of persons." On the other hand, " Whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, ^yhether he be bond or free." Your trial may be, and is, hard. You are subjected to influences that make a conscientious conformity to the law of God difficult, but not impossible, "As your day is so shall your strength be." Our Lord has said " My grace is sufficient for thee : for my strength is made j^erfect in weakness." In the living strength of the prevailing Advocate and Intercessor, your temp- tations may be avoided, or overcome. But you must seek that Intercession and have faith in that Advocacy. Be sure that your cry if earnest, if springing from a sense of spiritual need, will at length enter into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. He will show you how to ^^alk and please Him. He will teach you the narrow path of duty, even towards unbelieving masters. He will make you know the poAver of His Eesurrectiou. He will claim you as His own servants, in Whom alone you can have perfect freedom. And may we, who are masters, have grace also to remember our own grave responsibilities. The cajriital sin that drew down God's judgment upon the in- THE POWER OF CHRISTS RESURRECTION. 87 habitants of Jerusalem, in the days of Jeremiah, was because they "dealt harshly and untruly with their servants." If we occupy different positions in the kingdom of God's Providence, yet in the Kingdom of His grace " we are in no wise better than they." What law determines the appointments of Providence we do not know ; but it is no fighting against God to en- deavour by gentleness, and forbearance, and brotherly kindness, to mitigate, as far as we can, their seeming inequality. In Christ Jesus all these distinctions cease and are done away. In Him " is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female." We are "all one" in Christ Jesus. As brethren together in Christ are we baptised : as brethren, we approach the Table of the Lord, there, in faith and charity to receive those tokens of His sustaining love and care, which testify now as freshly as they did in the cottage at Emmaus, that He liveth ; and because He liveth, " we shall live also." Preaclied— Oriel College Chapel, March 27, 1853. X. THE GIFT OF THE HOLY GHOST. {A Sermon for Whit Sunday.) " For as many as are led by tlie Spirit of God they are the sons of God ; for ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear ; but ye have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father ! The Spirit itself beareth witness with onr spirit that we are the children of God : and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ ; if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified to- gether." — Rom. viii. 14-17. Whitsuntide is one of those great Christian festivals on wliich the preacher need have the tongue of an angel, and use words that burn like living fire, to deliver his message of great joy, and raise every hearer's heart to an adequate sense of the blessed privileges that he may call his own. There is perhaps no festival of the Church that is more peculiarly and emphatically Christian than this. It marks and commemorates a gift that is the special heritage of the Church, the distinctive privilege of the baptised, the gift without which all that Christ wrought, and spoke, and suffered for man would have been insufficient to achieve the salvation of a single soul. For it is the Spirit of God — the third person in the Blessed and Undivided Trinity, the Comforter Who THE GIFT OF THE HOLY GHOST. 89 proceeds from the Father and the Son, Who spake by the prophets and sanctifies the elect — He it is who alone enables God's people to do unto Him " a true and laudable service." He it is Who inspires us to accept, and appropriate, and realise, the Redemption wrought out upon the Cross. He it is Who teaches us the depth of our spiritual need, and sends us to Jesus as alone able to stand between our sins and God's consuming ■fire. He it is Who enables us to say, with any vital meaning in our words, " that Jesus Christ is Lord," and brings us " boldly to the throne of grace," and lifts up our voice in confident, but not presumptuous, utterance, to cry " Abba, Father." Indeed, it is because this gift of the Holy Ghost, to be with us and dwell in us, is the property in common of the whole Church, and specially of every Christian, that we do not estimate the blessedness of enjoying it so fully as we should do if to some of us it were given and to others denied. If we had living by our side men sunk in the hopeless darkness of heathenism, bowing down to images of wood and stone, human beings degraded almost to the level of the beasts that perish, and that not only in their spiritual but also in their moral nature ; we should then be in a better position to judge what a blessed thing it is to "have the mind of Christ," and to be taught by the Spirit of truth ; to see the end of our being, and to be able to unlock the mystery of this puzzling world ; to hear of " a shedding of blood " that can take away sin ; of a " house not made with hands eternal in the heavens " ; of a God that is " very pitiful and of a tender mercy " and of 90 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. tilings passing the power of man to conceive " which He has prepared for them that love Him." Though I do not mean to say that all who have heard of these things, and are ready enough to talk about them, have received their knowledge by direct communication from the Spirit of God — though I know that all men, even in a Christian land and with Divine ordinances lying as it were before their feet " have not the Spirit," and when they talk about religion only do it in an unreal way, at second-hand, in phrases that they borrow from the religious world, but which their own experience does not verify, and which their lives belie — still it remains true all the same that the Holy Ghost is the fount and spring of this knowledge. It is He Who first taught Christians those truths and that language which many who are not Christians, save in name, venture to use. If He had never been sent by Christ from the Father, no living man would have " known the mind of the Lord," or been able to speak of the things which are freely given unto us of God. Accordingly, St. Paul represents the whole visible creation, both men and beasts, as " groaning and travailing in pain together until now " ; as possessed by an inexplicable yearning for something they feel they want but cannot express ; as living in "earnest expec- tation, waiting for the manifestation of the sous of God." And each Christian though himself, too, groaning inwardly, and " waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption, of his body," and "knowing not what he should pray for as he ought," feeling that he is not yet fully delivered from "the bondage of corruption into the THE GIFT OF THE HOLY GHOST. 91 glorious liberty of the children of God," " having a heavenly treasure in earthly vessels " — still feels also that he has a heavenly treasure, has the first-fruits of the Spirit, "the earnest of his inheritance" ; feels "the Spirit helping his infirmities " and sustaining him by hope ; has a witness within him of his adoption as God's child, and so has a livinsf faith that " all thino-s work together for good " unto one that loves God and is called according to His purpose. This is the Christian's privilege ; the advantage of the spiritual over the natural man — to feel that God is his Father, and that He is enabling him, it may be slowly, but on the whole surely, to overcome the world, by that renewing influence of the Holy Ghost which He has shed on him abundantly in Jesus Christ our Lord- The worldling may use the same language ; he may talk of the " consolation in Christ," " the comfort of love," the "fellowship of the Spirit," the "bowels of mercies"; but he uses words without meaning. In his mouth they are not realities ; they neither guide nor strengthen him. He is "intruding into things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind." St. Paul, when he speaks of " spiritual gifts," is describing the state, not of the nominal Christian, but of the earnest believer ; of his comforts, and supports, and hopes, and confidences ; how he may sjDeak and what he may trust : in a word, what God's faithful servants have gained by that Gospel "which is preached with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven." And of these, of God's faithful servants, of the earnest believers in Christ, it is written that they have " received the Spirit of adoption," and have " the Spirit 92 PAROCHIAL SERMON^S. itself bearing witness with tbeir spirit that they are the children of God." The very purpose of the mission of the Holy Ghost was to make us feel, with an experi- mental sense, what we have won in Christ ; in what respect the Christian is better than the Jew ; what is the profit of that title of access to the Father which our regeneration invested us withal. He was sent that we might " know the things that are freely given unto us of God." He came to write the law of Christ not in tables of stone, but " in the fleshly tables of the heart." It is His work to make God's strength " perfect in our weak- ness " ; to make us feel that out of our lowest estate and most embarrassing circumstances we can rise " more than conquerors through Him Who loved us;" to build us up together, not singly but collectively in a Church, " for an habitation of God " ; " to set us free from the law of sin and of death " ; to make obedience possible ; " to strenfjthen us with miyht in the inner man " ; to assure us, with all the power of a living conviction, of the riches of our inheritance. So long as we abide faithfuL doing God's work diligently " in the calling wherewith we are called," there is nothing — so says the Spirit — either in earth or heaven, " neither death, nor life, nor things present, nor things to come, which shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." This is what the Bible tells us of the work and office of that Blessed Spirit of Promise, for Which our Divine Lord bade the Apostles tarry in Jerusalem till they had received it ; Which, as on this day of Pentecost, came from heaven " with a sound as of a rushing mighty THE GIFT OF THE HOLY GHOST. 93 wind," "and in the likeness of cloven tongues of fire " ; Which enabled those poor ignorant fishermen and trades- men of Galilee to go forth boldly and powerfully, and " preach the Gospel to every creature" ; Which we are taught to believe dwells in each of us who has been baptised, making our bodies His Temple, and through Whom Christ verifies still the last words He spoke on earth, " Lo ! I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." All these are burning words, too high and excellent, it would seem, for sinful, earthly creatures to use, and yet such as the Bible plainly puts into the mouth of every Christian, and bids him utter them fearlessly. Observe ! I say, " into the mouth of every Christian " ; for here lies the point of the whole matter. The inspired writers of the New Testament, when address- ing us on the subject of our common salvation, plainly suppose that they are speaking to, and of, persons who see a value in Christianity, who would be thankful to be told what things God has done for their souls ; who would prize the hope of their calling, and do all that lay in their power to make it " sure " ; who would seek grace in every channel in which it was ordained to flow ; who, in St, Paul's comprehensive phrase, " know- ing that their bodies are temples of the Holy Ghost which is in them," and that they "are not their own, but bought with a price," would recognise in such acts of Divine Love manifested towards them a plain and constraining obligation to " glorify God both in their bodies and their spirits, which are God's." But whatever might have been the influence of the 94 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. Gospel upon men's hearts in the Apostolic times, it plainly is not of this transforming and renewing power now. Not that the power of the Gospel itself is less, but that our hearts seem harder and our ears more dull of hearinor. "We listen to the same unchansrinof messao-e O COO of God's love to fallen man, of the method of redemp- tion and the means of grace, of the nature of faith and the duties of the believer, but it makes no impression upon us. It sounds like " an idle tale," or at best but a pretty picture. It does not stir up the ground of our liearts, or awaken us to a sense of our own danger, or determine us to any real effort after godliness, or bring home that solemn question to our fears which brought the trembling jailer at Philippi on his knees before Paul and Silas, saying, " Sirs, wdiat must I do to be saved ? " If this be the amount of our spiritual discernment, this the measure of our religious life ; if, though baptised and boru again in Christ, and pledged thereby to a life of faith and holiness, though once enlightened and made partakers of the Holy Ghost, we have not led the rest of our life " answerably to this beginning" ; "have counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith we were sanctified, an unholy thing " ; " have put Christ to an open shame, and done despite unto the Spirit of grace," it would be the madness of presumption to apply to ourselves that blessed language in w^hich St. Paul and St. John describe the strength of the believer, the privileges of the regenerate, the comforts of the justified, the liberty of the redeemed, the assurance of the elect. The text only speaks of those " who are led by the Spirit of God." The burden of the whole chapter from THE GIFT OF THE HOLY GHOST. 95 which it is taken is that " to be carnally minded is death ; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace." Can a man be " led " by the Spirit of God who is a Sabbath-breaker, a drunkard, a profane swearer ? who has an evil eye at his neighbour's pros23erity ? who is only hasting to get rich ? who is proud or imperious, or selfish and impatient ? who turns his back on God's ordinances, and, as the prophet speaks, " snuffs at the table of the Lord " ? who thinks he is good enough and all safe, instead of " forgetting the things which are behind and reaching forward unto the things which are before"? who never sacrifices any whim or humour or inclination for the sake of duty, and so is a stranger to all the exemf)lary teaching of the Cross ? who takes no pains to conquer bad habits and unruly tempers ? who is rude and coarse in his language, careless of his company, negligent of his duties as a father or a husband, and in no part of his conduct keeping the fear of God, as an abiding restraint, before his eyes ? Some parts of this description, I fear, will apply to every one of us — to some, perhaps, a good deal. There are some who go to church and who, I am afraid, get little good by going : upon whom the words spoken, the invitations to the Holy Table, the voice of prayer and thanksgiving, the blessed opportunities of public wor- ship, produce no visible effect, ojDerate no perceptible change : who, instead of living by faith and growing spiritually wiser and stronger, seem to be standing still, if not positively drawing back — strangers, I am sure, to all the true comforts of the Spirit, because they are not yet delivered from the bondage of the world. 93 PAROCHIAL SERMOXS. The Holy Spirit will not dwell in a defiled or a neglected temple. He will go and seek another home if He be not welcomed in ours ; He will only abide in a holy 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." He cannot put up with " proud looks and high stomachs, which say, We are they which ought to speak : who is Lord over us ? " He has no good news to tell, no comfortable hope of acceptance to offer, the formalist, the lip-server, the covetous, the dishonest, the slothful, the filthy. It must be a pure and upright heart for Him to place His habitation in ; a heart weaned from the world, and with "affections set on things above"; a heart " risen with Christ," and seeking to taste of the fulness of that joy which no human potentate can either give or take away. Like some rich and fertilising manure cast upon a barren and unkindly soil, His presence is revealed by its fruits. They are fruits which, if we are not bringing forth ourselves, w^e can at least recognise and appreciate in others. Every one in his conscience bears witness to the beauty of such graces as " Love, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, good- ness, faith, meekness, temperance." "Against these there is no law " ; for indeed they render all law superfluous. Their animating motive is not fear, but love ; the love of Him " Who first loved us," not the dread of a Being Who cannot be touched with a feeling of our infirmities ; it is an obedience issuing from the pure devotion of the heart to a kind Benefactor, not from slavish bondage to a hard task-master. THE GIFT OF THE HOLY GHOST. 97 These fruits must be manifested in each one of up. " We have received the Spirit of adoption," been made sons of God, been chosen out of the world for this very- end, that we should " show forth the praises of Him who hath called us out of darkness into His marvellous light," that we should be "a kind of first-fruits of His creatures." We have no right to speak of ourselves as " free," except so far as we have refused to make ourselves the slaves of sin. Oh ! pray the Father of Mercies, the God of all Comfort, to make you feel the strength and privilege of this adoption ; to break Satan's yoke from off your neck ; to make you " free indeed ; " free from carnal ap- petites and selfish tempers, free from covetousness and worldly lusts, free from a cold and fashionable form- alism, free from the tyranny of confirmed but unchristian habits. Pray to God the Son that He would keep His word to you individually, that He would send unto you " the promise from the Father," that He would endue you " with power from on high," that He would enable you to realise the " expediency " of His going away by an experimental conviction that a mightier Comforter — mightier because more abiding — is dwelling in your souls. Pray, too, to that Comforter that He would teach and enlighten you, and bring Christ's " words to remembrance," and show you the breadth of the com- mandment, and bruise Satan under your feet, and spiritualise your affections, and help your prayers, and take away whatever veil is upon your hearts, and enable you " with open face to behold as in a glass the glory of the Lord." 7 98 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. Be sure if His light is not burning in your souls it ougJit to be. If you have never found Him " a very present help in time of trouble," it is because you have sought after other comforters. If you find your way dark and difficult, it is because you have never asked Him to make it plain. If He bears not " His witness with our spirit that we are the children of God," it is because a life of worldliness and disobedience has made us strangers to the feeling, as well as forfeited the title, of " sons." Preached- Cholderton, Whitsunday, June 5, 1854 ; May 23, 1858. XI. DIVERSITIES OF GIFTS. " There are diversities of gifts ; but tlie same Spirit." — I Cor. xii. 4. There is au ordinary theological distinction of the manifestation of the Holy Ghost, into "gifts" and "graces." I do not know that the distinction rests on any ground of ScriiDture, or is worth much in itself. At the most I presume it to mean that when the Holy Ghost manifests His presence in a man's moral or s^Diritual nature we call the result a " grace ; " and when the epiphany is in his intellectual or mental nature we call it a " gift." Thus, we should call eloquence, poetic genius, musical talent, philosophical power, " gifts ; " and gentleness, patience, chastity, truthfulness, "graces." If the distinction is helpful to us, we may of course retain and use it : but I am afraid that it has sometimes exercised a prejudicial and narrowing influence upon the conception we form of the work of the Holy Ghost in the new creation. For though we have been ready enough to recognise the presence of the Holy Ghost in the graces of the saints, we have been much slower of heart to believe that He is equally manifest in the intellectual gifts of man. 7 2 100 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. And yet, mark the gifts which the Apostle distinctly enumerates as tokens of the manifestation of the Spirit : not as though they had not existed before in what might be called the dispensation of nature, but as though now, in the dispensation of grace, their authorship and divine original were unequivocally recognised. " To one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom : to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit ; to another faith ; to another the gifts of healing ; to another the working of miracles ; to another, pro- phecy " — i.e. the power of preaching in demonstration of the Spirit and of power ; " to another discerning of spirits," winnowing false doctrine from true ; " to another divers kinds of tongues ; to another the inter- pretation of tongues." Though these gifts have ceased in these latter days — for some inscrutable purpose of the divine counsel — to be miraculous, they still exist, every one of them, as the fruit of labour and reward of toil ; tokens of a great and blessed law, the necessity of man's co-operation with God, as in his spiritual, so in his intellectual develop- ment ; tokens of the Holy Spirit's continued presence with the Church, and that the promise of the Lord Jesus has been abundantly fulfilled. To some persons, whose notions have been formed upon a narrow, and, as it seems to me, untenable theory, this language will appear overstrained and extravagant. They will say " Do you mean to assert that these gifts of which the Apostle speaks can really be claimed for men and women now ? " I do mean it, and that in very truth and soberness. I do not wish to put forth a DIVERSITIES OF GIFTS. 101 paradox, but to proclaim what I believe to be a real doctrine of the Gospel. The power to heal ; the power to prophesy ; the jiower to discern between the spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood ; the power to in- terpret tongues, are gifts that are actually enjoyed and exercised by living men. Surely Mezzofanti, with his knowledge of thirty-seven languages, had the gift of " divers kinds of tongues " ! Surely they who, with such wonderful ingenuity, deci- phered the hieroglyphics of Egypt, or the cuneiform inscriptions of Assyria, had the gift of the " inter- pretation of tongues." Are the things less " gifts " be- cause they are not instantaneously acquired ? Are they less worthy tokens of the Spirit because He thus sees fit to reward patient dihgence, and to verify in every department of human nature the Lord's word " Ask, and ye shall have ; seek, and ye shall find." If you still think that at any rate the faith which could remove mountains and which wrought miracles is at least an extinct gift, I would only ask you to read the story of George Miiller, of Bristol, who feeds, clothes, and educates I know not how many hundreds of orphan children simply in faith ; dispensing with the usual eleemosynary machinery, not knowing what each day may bring forth, but finding himself, as he would say, " miraculously " sustained and encouraged and provided for — mountains removed and his way made plain. We often raise unnecessary difficulties about this word " miracle ; " and yet religious philosophy has taught us that it does not mean a violation of one of Nature's laws — which, remember, are God's laws — but 102 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. simply a result which the mind of man, with its im- perfect apprehension of the scope and range of those laws, could not have foreseen or calculated. It is not necessaiy that a miracle should be something sudden, instantaneous, effectual in an instant. The man to whom our Lord restored the gift of vision, saw " men as trees walking," before the film cleared utterly away from his eyes. The sustentation of the Israelites in the Avilderness was a standing miracle for forty years. In nearly the same sense the history of George Mliller is a standino; miracle — a miracle too rewarding faith : a result, if not contrary to experience, at least outrunning all the ordinary laws of probability and reasonable anticipation. I say this, not to degrade our notions of a miracle — God forbid ! — but to raise and enlarge our notions of the works of God. In the popular theology of the day, large departments of human life are cut off utterly from the domain of God's administration. Philosophical discovery, literature, the mechanical arts and trades, political systems, are spoken of as thougli they lived by an inherent power of their own, and were, in fact, influences independent of, and extraneous to, the kingdom of God. Such a system of theology will hardly square with the express language of the Bible. " For His God doth instruct him to dis- cretion, and doth teach him," says the prophet Isaiah, speaking of the ploughman and his labour. And if the simple skill of the husbandman is thus distinctly ascribed to the teaching of God, shall we not in all the mighty inventions of Watt, and Arkwright, and DIVERSITIES OF GIFTS. 103 Stephenson, which have revohitionised the world, and are exertins: such an incalculable influence on the con- dition and destinies of the race, shall we not in these too trace the finger of God — the gifts of the Spirit — and say, " This also cometh from the Lord of Hosts, which is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working ! " These conclusions, if true, have some important practical bearings : — 1. How they ennoble every man's calling ! It is a " gift " of God. It is the sphere in which God means him to work out his salvation. 2. How they extend the range of faith ! It becomes — at least it ought to become — the animating principle of all I do. Believing that it is God that worketh in me, I am supplied with an inexhaustible resource of elasticity and energy, and power. " Genius," said Buffon, "is patience." Newton and Stephenson, and all men of true genius have been emphatically men of faith, content to " bide " their time. If the vision tarried, they waited for it, and at length it came. 3. What a wider domain is thus thrown open to the power of prayer ! What a privilege to feel that we may safely ask God to bless the work of our hands ! What a check upon undertaking anything which our con- sciences tell us we dare not pray God to approve ! 4. And, lastly, how clearly in the power of this conviction do we perceive that all things work together for good to them that love God ! The poet Wordsworth, says : " I could wish my dtays to be Bound each to each by natural piety." 104 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. Here is God's own provision for realising the wish. For thus everything is brought under the influence of rehgion. Thus, the whole of life, so to speak, would be saturated with the Gospel. Thus, the Sjairit of God I^enetrates every part of our coniplete nature, and consecrates, sanctifies, elevates the whole. Wherefore, brethren, "covet earnestly the best gifts ;" the best bodily gifts, the best intellectual gifts, the best spiritual gifts. And if you covet them labour to win them. And if you win them, see to it how you use thern. For each gift carries with it a proportionate responsibility. It is to be turned to account in jDro- moting the glory of God and the happiness of man. It must not be wrapped up in a napkin. It is not given to advance mere selfish ends. " The manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to 'projit tvithal." And again another scripture : " As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God." Preached- — Salisbury Cathedral, Thursday in Whitsun. Week, 1860 ; St. John's, Bruughton, II. after Epiphanv, January 15, 1871. XII. THE LABOURERS IN THE VINEYARD. " So the last shall be first, and the first last : for many be called, but few chosen." — St. Matthew xx. 16. St. Peter tells us that there are many things in the Bible " hard to be understood," which " they that are unlearned and unstable wrest to their own destruction." I am afraid that the parable of the labourers in the vine- yard has been one of " these things," that it has often had directly the opposite effect to that which it was intended to have, and which, if rightly weighed and compai-ed with other Scriptures, it would have had. It has encouraged sloth, and fanaticism, and presumption, instead of begetting earnestness, diligence, and lowliness of mind. This has been because people will not be at the pains to ascertain what its lesson really is, or how far it may be explained by the other passages in connection with which it is found. The parable occurs in the course of a continuous conversation which Jesus had with His disciples ; and we cannot rightly understand the parable unless we take the whole of the conversation into account. A young- man, it seems, came to our Lord with a good deal of confidence and pretension, asking " What good thing he 106 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. "was to do, that he might inherit eternal life." He appears to have entertained no doubt that he should finally be saved. He had found no difficulty, he said, in keeping the Commandments ; and perhaps he had not, in Ms way of keeping them. He was very decent, very respectable, very wealthy, very self-satisfied ; and when Jesus quietly referred him to the two great principles of love towards God and man, as the sum and the substance of religious duty, it is in a tone of triumphant self-complacency that he replies — as though tired of hearing: the familiar words — " All these things have I kept from my youth up ; what lack I yet ? " Poor young man ! He little thought how soon his vain confidence and self-righteousness were to be dashed to the ground. He who reads the heart knew, that in the midst of a formal profession and outward respectability, there had never been any real sacrifice, or a single moment's true self-denial. Mammon had more of his heart than God ; though till now he knew it not. When he heard of " selling what he had, and giving to the poor," of "laying up treasure in heaven and following Christ," he " went away sorrowful : for he had great possessions." Our Lord was thus naturally led to speak of the exceeding danger of earthly riches, when they enslave the heart, and dull the spiritual perception, to the extent they had done in this young man. " It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man " — one, that is, who trusts in riches — " to enter the kingdom of God." Then answered Peter — his thoughts naturally led to dwell upon the difference THE LABOURERS IN THE VINEYARD. 107 between his own case and his fellow-disciples' and that of this rich young man — and said unto His Master, " Behold we have forsaken all and followed Thee : what shall we have therefore ? " And Jesus said unto him, " Verily I say unto you, that ye Avhich have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of His glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands for my name's sake, shall receive an hundred fold, and shall inherit ever- lasting life. But many that are first " — the case of this young man again perhaps coming across His mind, so wealthy, surrounded with so many advantages of rank and fortune, and yet unhappily with his heart so far from God — " many, therefore, that are first shall be last, and the last first." And then, according to His wont, illustrating this solemn truth by a familiar and homely example, showing that the method of God's government, far from being harsh or unfair, is the very best principle upon which, under similar circumstances, we should act in the world, He introduces this parable of the labourers in the vineyard, which ends, as in the text, with the same weighty saying with which it begins — " So the last shall be first, and the first last ; for many are called, but few are chosen." The details of the parable must be familiar to all. It is the picture of a farmer going out at different hours in the day, hiring such labourers as he found unemployed, and when the evening was come, paying them all the 108 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. same wages. Those who had borne the burthen and heat of the day would doubtless have been quite content with what they got — it was indeed the rate at which they had agreed to work — if they had not seen others, who had worked fewer hours, receiving the same. They did not complain that they were underpaid ; but they felt aggrieved that the last should be put upon an equality with themselves. They forgot that their complaint really amounted to this — a restriction upon their employer, who was behaving with perfect fairness to them, from doing in the case of others as he chose with his own. Now the dangerous practical perversion to which the parable is liable is twofold. As I have said, it may be made to foster either sloth or presumption. People may say, " Oh ! I must wait till I am called before I set to work at all, I am idle because no man hath hired me. When God Avants me He will let me know, and come and look after me." Or on the other hand, they may fancy that they have j^lenty of time before them, and that they will fare just as well at the great payment of wages if they begin to work at the eleventh hour as if they spend their lives in God's service, or, in the language of the parable, " bear the burthen and heat of the day." It is impossible to conceive anything more unreason- able or more unscrijrtural than either of these notions. I would ask in all soberness is there any one, from the merest child who has learnt to discern good from evil, to the hoariest head, who can either say or think that God has not called him : that God has siven him notbinof THE LABOURERS IN THE VINEYARD. 109 to do — left liim without work — permitted him to be idle ? Every baptised Christian " as soon as he knows to refuse the evil and to choose the good," is reckoned by God among His " called." At our baptism God took us into His service ; told us what He required us to do ; promised us our wages ; and we undertook the work and bound ourselves to execute it under the most solemn vows. In our families, in our households, in our business, as husbands, as wives, as masters, as servants, as employers, as labourers, as tradesmen, as customers, as neighbours, as parents, as children, as teachers, as learners — there lies the sphere of our duties : within those limits we have to serve God, and " make our calling and election sure." If you will follow out the exhortation of the Apostle " to walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called," into the practical rules by which he explains his meaning, you will find they relate almost exclusively to duties of this kind. By courtesy, by forbearance, by truth-speaking, by honesty, by purity of thought and word, by sobriety, by attention to family duties — husbands loving their wives, children obeying their parents, householders bringing up their families in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, servants doing their master's work in singleness of heart as unto Christ — by this daily course of watchfulness and circumspection, the Christian's calling is fulfilled, and he himself grows up more and more " unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." After this, how can anybody say that God has not given him enough to do ? God has called us one and all 110 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. to " holiness." He has put His Spirit upon us for no other end. Our duties lie under our feet. They awake with us every morning. They go forth with us every time we leave our door. In our homes, at our shop- board, behind our plough, in the sheepfold, in the stable, on a journey, on an errand, in household work, in pro- fessional employment, there the^y are, and there they must be discharged. Alas ! that in a Christian land any should be so blind and slow of heart as to supjDose that God has excepted him from the universal law of labour, has sent him into this world without giving him any duty to do ! It is the peculiar prerogative of the Christian not only that all his duties rest on spiritual motives and bear a religious aspect, but that he has supernatural power vouchsafed to him also to enable him to perform them. What St. Paul says of himself is true, according to his measure, of every member of Christ. "He can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth him." God's strength is " made perfect in our weakness." If the poor heathen African stands idle, living only to himself, doing nothing to God's glory ; or if the thousands in the dark lanes and by-places of our great cities, still living in the shadow of death though in a land where light has sprung up, whose ears the message of the Gospel has never reached, among whom — to our shame be it spoken — the ministrations of our Church are not known — if these stand idle tlicy have much to plead in their excuse, they may well think that " no man hath hired them." They belong to those of whom it is written, "they shall be beaten with fciu stripes," because they knew not what the will of THE LABOURERS IN THE VINEYARD. Ill their Lord was. If, haply, one of these is by God's converting grace brought to a knowledge of the truth, and turns from his evil ways, and brings forth the fruits of righteousness, in him we see one of those labourers hired at the eleventh hour, and yet who shall receive at his heavenly Master's hand as much as those who have borne the burthen and heat of the day. God measures our claims upon His favour by our earnestness and by our 02)portunitics. He will not ask us hoiv long we have known His will, but whether, since we have known it, we have done it. There is not a single individual among ourselves who can lay the bJame either of ignorance or lack of opportunity at God's door. We are all within the reach of the means of grace and instruction if only we cared to use them. There are few families without a Bible. The Church is free to all. You may all partake of that enlightening grace that flows through her sacraments. Be assured God marks your advantages even if you do not. Every Lord's Day, according as it is spent, is one of these precious oppor- tunities either treasured or cast away. Every Lord's Supper is another. Every sermon is another. The very fabric of the Church, pointing heavenwards, is a witness of our duties and of the purpose for which we came into the world. Of course, if we please, we can disregard all these things. We can spend our Sabbath evenings in an alehouse. We can turn our backs on the Lord's Table. We can sleep through a sermon. We can think as little of God in His church as in our own homes. But do not let us say, as an excuse, that we do not know any better. 112 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. and that we cannot help bad habits or bad thoughts coming into our minds. We do know better, and we can conquer bad thoughts and bad actions ; the in- dulgence in which forms bad habits. When I say we can conquer, I mean that Christians can conquer, for Christians have the Holy Ghost given to them for this very purpose. St. Paul tells us that in " all these things they may be more than conquerors through Christ who loved them." The very object of our Lord's ascension was "to receive gifts for us," that we too might be enabled to ascend with Him. If our affections are still set on the earth, it is because we have never tried to raise them. God waits to be gracious ; and we have only to ask for the Spirit in order to receive Him. I have dwelt at such length upon the necessity of religious earnestness and religious diligence as the two grand elements of that judgment of God which will determine our positions in the future world, that I can do no more than barely notice other points in the parable which are well worthy of an attentive con- sideration. I could have wished to say something on that jealousy, which seems to be the last infirmity, even of spiritual minds ; which Ave see to be at the bottom of the complaint of the labourers who were first called ; and which is also illustrated in so striking a manner in the behaviour of the elder brother in the beautiful parable of the prodigal son. I suppose it will be the element of the old Adam that will stick longest by us — that grudging spirit of envy which always thinks its own claims superior to its neighbours', and feels aggrieved at others beincr admitted to advantages which we have THE LABOURERS IN THE VINEYARD. 113 been in the habit of considering exclusively our own. I would gladly also have endeavoured to show you in what sense God has an undoubted right " to do what He wills with His own ; " because in so dispensing His favours, He follows no arbitrary whim or caprice, but a just and unchangeable law — the law of measuring men's work by their motives and judging every man by his opportunities. In conclusion I would only press one warning upon you. As I have cautioned you to beware of thinking that you may stand all the day idle because God has given you no work to do ; so beware no less carefully of another, and not less fatal delusion — the delusion of supposing that you have done your work and may pass the rest of your time in ease. God's days are of different lengths. Twenty-four hours for one purpose make a day. In another sense we are told " a thousand years are a day " also. In spiritual things a day is a lifetime. As long as we are in the world God's work is still before us to do. On this side of the grave it is all work ; on the other, it will be all rest. Oh ! thrice blessed are they who enter into that rest with " their works following them " ! Rest remaineth only for them that have laboured. The idle, unprofit- able servant shall not taste of it. It is not for those who ran well, but only for a time. It is for the faithful, the earnest, the humble, the persevering. It is for those who ran " with patience " their race, " looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of their faith." It is for Paul and not for Demas ; for those who have fought their fight out, not for those who, after a while, grew 114 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. Aveary of well-doing. It is for you and me in proportion as we realise that blessed promise, " Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." In the beautiful words of the Christian poet : — " The gray-liaired saint may fail at last, The surest guide a wanderer prove : Death only binds us fast To the bright shore of love." Preached — Cholderton, Septuagesima Sunday, January 23, 1853 ; January 31, 1858 ; Third after Epiphany, January 22, 1860. XIII. CHRIST OUR SACRIFICE AND EXAMPLE. " Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example. "- I. Pet. ii. 21. The death of Jesus was at once vicarious and ex- emplary ; a propitiation and a pattern : an inestimable benefit and a perfect model : a " sacrifice for sin," and also an " example of godly life." To look at the Cross under any one of these points of view taken alone is to miss half the lesson it was intended to teach us. It leads to false faith and corrupt practice. The Antinomian, the man who thinks that all religion is centred in the single grace of faith, looks at Christ as his Saviour, but forgets that He is also his Example. The Socinian professes to follow Jesus as an Example, but rejects Him as a Saviour. The Bible-taught Christian unites these two opposite systems into one. Confessing with St. Peter that "there is none other Name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved," he also allows with St. Paul that he who would taste of this salvation must " so walk as He walked." In the simple and unmistakable language of 8 2 116 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. the text, believing with all his heart that " Christ suffered for him," he has an equally deep conviction that He has " left us an example that we should follow His steps." Without the Atonement there would have been little use of the Example. Moses is an example, and Abraham, and Joseph, and David, and every holy man or woman that ever lived — many in our own times and neighbourhood, whom we may ourselves have known. St. Paul, who was the last person in the world to speak presumptuously or vain-gloriously, exhorts the Philip- pians to " be followers together of him, and to mark those who walked so as they had him for an ensample." And yet in another epistle, after calling his readers' attention to the great cloud of witnesses witli whom they were encompassed, all of them " examples " of patience, faith, and other heavenly graces, he does not suffer their thouglits to rest there, or on any merely human object, but carries them on with him still further, even to the foot of the Cross, there bidding them " look to Jesus, the Author and Finisher of their faith. Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the Cross, despising the shame, and was now set dowu at the right hand of God." He wished them to feel that there was something about the life and death of Christ which placed it quite above the level of other men's lives or deaths, and invested it with an awfulness, and value, and interest all its own. Jesus was no mere " Martyr for truth," as some have represented Him, but He was made unto us of God "wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and re- demption." He " gave Himself a ransom for all." " By CHRIST OUR SACRIFICE AND EXAMPLE. 117 His stripes we are healed." He was " the reconciliation of the world." In Him sinners have hope of pardon. He is " our righteousness." " In Him, whosoever believeth shall never die." As the doctrine is all summed up in one verse, " He was once offered to bear the sins of many, and unto them that look for Him shall He appear again the second time without sin unto salvation." His is that "blood of sprinkling which speaketh better things than that of Abel." Abel was a righteous man, but nothing more. He had sins of his own to answer for, and " could make no agreement with God" for the iniquities of others. His "blood cried" unto God " from the ground " for vengeance upon his murderer. It spoke not a syllable of peace, or propitia- tion, or cleansing, or redemption. Of One, and of One only, is it written, that " His blood cleanseth us from all sin." In" One, and One only, " being justified by faith," can we have " peace with God," and not peace only, but joy- It was the mystery of the Licarnation that gave this efficacy to the mystery of the Atonement. It was because " He was found in fashion as a man, and became obedient unto death," being also the Eternal, Only-begotten Son of God, that that death became fruitful of such precious and everlasting consequences. Though we do not pretend to be able either to explain or understand so deep a revelation, though the fact of salvation will remain a mystery to the end of time, yet all who have any serious concern for their souls must feel their need of a Saviour. Weak, heli3less, sin-stained as we are in ourselves, we could never 118 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. endure the judgment, or venture to appear in the presence of God. If " in His sight the very heavens are not clean, and He charges even His angels with folly," what must man be, " who is a worm, and the son of man, who is a worm " ? The very heathen acknowledged, with tears and groans, their need of a redemption, though they had never heard the name of their Redeemer. Ignorant of the true propitiation, they went about to devise all sorts of sacrifices — many of them monstrous and horrible in the extreme — to stand between themselves and the sentence of divine wrath under which they felt they lay. In Christ crucified we behold, in the prophet's striking words, " the desire of all nations " ; " a light to lighten the Gentiles," as well as " the glory of His people Israel." The doctrine of the Atonement, then, is this : that we who were by nature " afar off from God," in Christ are " brought nigh " : that God, for His sake, "hath blotted out our trespasses," " and our sins and iniquities will He remember no more " : that He gives " the water of life," to all that will take it, freely : that we are not, and cannot be, saved by our own righteousness : that God's purpose towards us is full of mercy and tenderness in His Blessed Son : that " He willeth not that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance" : that those will be saved who, renouncing their own merits and all carnal titles to God's favour, look for salvation only through the blood of Christ; who come unto Him that they may have life ; who appropriate the benefits of His sacrifice by personal faith, confessing that " they are CHRIST OUR SACRIFICE AND EXAMPLE. 119 bought with a price," and feeling that " he who glorieth must glory in the Lord." It is a blessed and comfortable doctrine ! the anchor of our hopes as well as the object of our faith ; the only sure ground of peace, and confidence, and joy; not only enabling but impelling us to "come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need." It has bridged over the wide gulf that lay betwixt ourselves and God ; and shows even to the most obdurate sinner, if he will only follow it, a way by which he may yet hear of joy and gladness ; and to the heaviest-laden a place where they may find rest unto their souls." " God hath made Him to be sin for us, Who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." If I stopped here, comfortable and consolatory, and cheering as these truths are, I should only have given you a one-sided, and therefore a dangerous view of them. I have been talking of Christ's death only as a Sacrifice ; I have said nothing about it as an Example. I have spoken oi faith ; I have not as yet mentioned obedience. I have bidden you take comfort in the thought of Christ having suffered for you ; but I have yet to speak of the duty of following His steps. There is a reciprocal feeling of love and interest be- tween Christ and His redeemed ; or as it is figuratively expressed in the Gospel, between the Good Shepherd and His sheep. " I know My sheep and am known of Mine." " My sheep hear My voice, and I know them and they follow Me." " He that loveth me I will love." " He that loveth Me not keepeth not My sayings." -120 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. There is an awful verity contained in those few pregnant words of Our Divine Saviour, " Many are called, hut fevj are chosen"; or in the kindred, and not less fearful, saying, that " Strait ia the gate and narrow the way that leadeth unto life ; and few there be that find it." Many ill-instructed and ill-read persons — who read their Bible by patches and not as a whole, j)icking out favourite texts and building up one-sided views upon them — when they hear of the doctrine of Christ having made upon the Cross " a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world," immediately, and without any serious thought, appro- priate the blessed tidings to themselves, say consciously, or else unconsciously, " Oh, then, I am safe ! My sins are blotted out : God has forgiven me." They feel quite easy about themselves. They know nothing of that " fear " which St. Paul sets off as the proper corrective of high-mindedness. They talk of other people, who seem to them to have a less vivid ap- prehension of the doctrine, as " lying in darkness and the shadow of death," and claim for themselves all the high and glorious privileges which the Bible enumerates as the inheritance of God's elect. r am not describing a fanciful creation of my own mind, but a living existent phase of the popular religion of the day. There is scarcely perhaps a parish in the land in which you will not find half-a-dozen people who think and talk in this Avay. I believe these to be most dangerous and unscriptural delusions ; mere presumptuous handlings of Gospel truth ; as much l^erversions of " the doctrine which is according to CHRIST OUR SACRIFICE AND EXAMPLE. 121 godliness " as anything can be conceived to be. They not only assert that Christ has done everything for us, which in one se]ise is true, but they also assert that we have nothing to do for ourselves beyond a mere inactive acceptance, which is the very reverse of truth. Great as may be the theoretical difficulty of reconcil- ing the sufficiency of Christ's sacrifice with the necessity of our co-operation — just as there is a theoretical difficulty in reconciling the sentence of Divine Pre- destination Avith our own consciousness of Free-Will — yet I am sure that no simple, earnest-hearted Christian ever found any practical incongruity between them. He can accept unquestioningly both parts of the Apostle's sayings, and find no clashing or jarring between them. He can " worh cut Ms own salvation with fear and trembling," at the same time that he is the first to con- fess, with humility and thankfulness, that it is " God who worketh in him, both to will and to do." Exactly in the same spirit he accepts such Scriptures as the text. He feels not only that " Christ suffered for him," but that " He left him an example." Nay ; he feels more than this ! His conscience tells him that these two statements are only true when they are held together. They cannot be separated. They are eter- nally indissoluble. As the mere Example would have been worthless, or at any rate ineffectual, without the Sufferings; so are the Sufferings of no saving import to those who are strangers to the power of the Example, I do not remember that our Lord ever said, " Look .at my Cross and you shall be saved " ; but He did say more than once, " Take up thine own Cross, and follow Me.'* 122 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. It is indeed nothing better than madness, as St. Paul says, " to profess to know God, but in works deny Him " ; to think that we are "in Christ" while we are not " new creatures." The old Adam must be " crucified " in us as the New Adam was crucified for us. The Apostle teaches that we are to " put off all these ; anger, wrath, malice, blasj^hemy, filthy communication out of our mouth ; " some of them subtle and stealthy sins that lie hid in the self complacent Christian's heart without his knowing of them ; others open and pro- fane sins, " going," as it were, " beforehand unto judgment." " Put them all off," says he, and "put on " in their stead "as the elect of God," " bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering " — those patient, homely, modest graces which, though the world mark them not, form the true garniture of a converted soul ; " the ornament," as St. Peter calls them, " of a meek and quiet spirit, which in the sight of God is of great price." If then we would be saved ly Christ we must be followers of Christ. We must not think that faith is the barren acceptance of any external doctrines, or the indolent play of any internal feelings. It is neither mere belief nor mere excitement. It consists not in utterances of the mouth, or in emotions of the breast. It is a living principle of conformity to Christ : a " growing up unto Him in all things, Who is our Head : " " a continual looking on the things that are not seen : " " a patient waiting upon God : " a cheerful contentment with our lot : "a victory that overcometh the world." CHRIST OUR SACRIFICE AND EXAMPLE. 123 Of such a principle and of no other it is written) " Whatsoever is not of faith is sin." We cannot rise above the corrupt influences that surroundus, we cannot conquer the thousand temptations that beset us, without it. " Repentance towards God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ " ; there you have, in St. Paul's woi'ds the sum and substance of religion, the beginning and end of the Gospel. They are the twin elements of that renewal of the heart which the Scriptures mean when they speak of that " holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord." To be perfectly holy, without spot or blemish is for flesh and blood, impossible. But we must be continually " reaching after " it, and mourn- ing that we cannot attain it, and sighing over our short- comings, and trying to recover our backslidings ; and so, in spite of many lets and hindrances, advancing on the whole, " bringing forth more fruit in our age," and the shorter the time is the more carefully gathering together " the fragments of it that remain that nothing be lost," For a man to say " I have done my work : I am safe : I may fold my hands, and lay aside my armour, and rest my weary limbs a while, and wait at ease for my Master's summons," is the language either of the grossest ignorance or of the most fearful presumption. The Master whom we serve has " given every man his work," and commanded all " to watch." He has warned us of the danger of His coming " suddenly and finding us sleeping." Patience must have her " perfect work," even unto the coming of the Lord. But to those alone will that cominor brin^ comfort and joy who, like holy David, have looked for Christ's 124 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. presence in righteousness ; who have not only embraced the Cross, but helped to bear it ; who, if in a moment- ary weakness, like Peter, have been ashamed of their Master, and taken the world's side instead, have also, like Peter, wiped out their disloyalty with their tears ; have, like David, " hated the sin of unfaithfulness " ; and like the woman that was a sinner, who anointed the feet of Jesus, as they Avere the more forgiven, have loved also the more. Have you understood these things ? If you have, happ}^ are ye if ye do them. It is, in my conscience I believe, the only true view of our duties and privileges, of the work and of the reward of faith. " This is the will of God, to beHeve on Him whom He hath sent ; " a belief not of the head, but of the heart, of the life ; a beholding, " as in a glass the glory of the Lord," trans- figuring us into the same image ; a continual appre- hension of Christ in the literal sense of tnat word ; " a death unto sin and a birth unto righteousness," the one work which we pledged ourselves to achieve in our baptism, and which we must be accomplishing more and more perfectly unto our dying day. Thus in our gen- eration shall we have held forth the word of life, and find for ourselves, to our unspeakable joy and triumph, " in the day of Christ," that " we have neither run in vain nor laboured in vain." Preached — Cholderton, Second Sunday after Easter, April 10, 1853 ; AprH 29, 1854 ; April 26, 1857. XIV. THE LIMITS OF CHRISTIAN LIBERTY. " For po is the will of God, that with well-doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men : as free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as the servants of God."— I. Pet. ii. 15, 16. If there is one prerogative of our regeneration more emphatically dwelt on in the Bible than another, it is our moral and spiritual freedom ; our deliverance from the bondage, not only of sin and Satan, but of opinion, of fashion, of worldly maxims, of customs, of prejudices. The Christian is free to act independently ; according to his own judgment ; as his conscience directs him ; as " he is fully persuaded in his own mind." He is not bound to pause every moment before he acts, and ask himself, " Does the world sanction this ? " " Shall I be justified in the eyes of men ?" "Is this usual, customary?" and so forth. In a certain sense every Christian is " a law unto himself" He carries a standard of what is right and becoming within him. He " needs not that any should testify of him." He is satisfied with the approval of his own conscience. He has confidence in his own discernment. He refuses to acknowledge 126 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. the self-constituted tribunal of fashion, or honour, or custom, or whatever else the world sets up and worships in the place of God. He feels that this is not the judge before whom he shall have to give " an account of his works ; " and therefore looks ujson the censures which mere worldly people may pass upon his conduct with proportionate indifference and unconcern. He realises the force, and acts upon the principle of the Apostle's maxim, " Ye are bought with a price : be not the servants of men." Now such a view of the Christian's spiritual con- dition, if carelessly taken up, or indiscriminately applied, is plainly liable to a very dangerous perversion. It may engender conceit, and pride, and an overbearing and self- complacent temper, and an insufferable self-confidence, and a contempt for lawfully constituted authority, and a presumptuous defiance of all the restraints of custom or law. A man may say, " I will call no man my master upon earth ; I will recognise no supremacy but that of my own conscience; I will not be brought into bondage to any set of opinions ; I will follow the light that the Holy Spirit gives me, because it is written, ' Where the Sj^irit of the Lord is, there is liberty.' " If such a person could prove to us that he was " led by the Spirit of God," we could have nothing to say against him. We should have to allow that he was right and we were wrong. But unhapj^ily there is room for great delusion here. " All men have not " the Spirit who think they have. We are bid to judge everything " by its fruits " : and the fruits of the Spirit, we are told, are "kindness, gentleness, humbleness of THE LIMITS OF CHRISTIAN LIBERTY. 127 mind, meekness, long-suffering." And therefore if we saw any man professing to be guided by the Spirit of God, but at the same times " covetous, proud, un- thankful, incontinent; fierce, a despiser of them that are good, heady, high-minded, having the form of godliness, but denying its power," we should say that he was only deluding himself or others. We should call him a hypocrite, or a self-deceiver, should be slow to allow his claim to superior discernment, and should question the right he had to set himself up as a " guide to the blind or an instructor of the foolish," when he had plainly made such little progress in the education and mastery of himself. Indeed, so far is this doctrine of individual Christian liberty, which the New Testament evidently inculcated as the great prerogative of the Gosj)el dispensation, from having a natural tendency to beget conceit or foster pride, that its legitimate influence on the truly spiritualised character should be directly of the contrary effect. For the freer we are, the more responsible we become. The higher we rise above the state of a servant, the more we have to answer for, both towards God and man. When our Blessed Saviour would impress the obligations of obedience with greatest emphasis upon His disciples, it is by addressing them as His personal friends. " Ye are my friends," He says, " if ye do what- soever I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth : but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you." 128 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. The fulness and freeness of His communication de- manded a corresponding willingness and frowardness of obedience in return. A slave has no responsibility. He is the mere creature of his owner's will. He has simply to do what he is bid, and need not trouble himself with questions of fitness, and expediency, and duty. Christ by His death — by laying down His life for His friends — has ransomed us from this slavery, has made us free, has delivered us, in St. Paul's glowing language, " from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God." It is indeed this very thought that is the strongest check to prevent this imagined privilege of liberty from becoming an abuse and a snare and a delusion to our souls. " He that is called, being free, is Christ's servant." Because we are bought with a price, St. Paul tells us not to become " servants of inen'' but for the self-same reason we are " servants of God." God's law is still supreme over us, though man's oiDinion is not. The unchangeable Word is to be our guide, though the shifting code of fashion or of honour must not. While " we are not careful to answer " any self-constituted human questioner about the reasons of our conduct, or the ground of our hopes, we must remember that "we must all stand before the judgment seat of God to give an account " of every thought we have entertained, every word we have spoken, every deed we have done. The Bible puts forth two great counterpoises, or checks to the doctrine of Christian liberty, lest it should degenerate into licentiousness. The first I have men- tioned — the recollection of our duty of obedience to THE LIMITS OF CHRISTIAN LIBERTIES. 129 God : the second, not perhaps so fundamental, but hardly less extensive, a regard to the consciences of weaker brethren. Before engaging in any matter, or gratifying himself with any indulgence, he that has *' the mind of Christ " will ask himself not only whether it is consistent with conformity to God's law, but also whether it is conducive to his "neighbour's edification." St, Paul is very strong on this point, " If meat," he says, " make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the worl(J standeth lest I make my brother to offend." It is in this sense that he is to be understood when he says, " All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient : all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not. Let no man seek his own, but every man another's wealth." It is easy to see the application of such a rule. For instance, there are many worldly amusements which may be innocent within due limits in the case of others, but which I should consider unseemly in myself, as a clergyman, however fond I might naturally be of them ; because if I indulged in them I might "give offence to the Church of God," or cause my own office to fall into disrepute, or afford a handle for the enemies of religion to blaspheme. Again, my position as a master of a family, a father, a husband, an employer, requires at my hand a stricter and more circumspect conversation than if I had no one depending upon me upon whom my example and influence might tell. It w^ould be an abuse of my liberty to set at nought all these restraints ; to " look only on my own things " ; to be indifferent to the duty of " pleasing my neighbour for his good to 9 130 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. edification." The stronger we are in ourselves, the greater obligation lies on us " to bear the infirmities of the weak." Of Christ, our Great Example, it is specially recorded that He " pleased not Himself." The motive of all He did was not what He liked himself — else He would have put from Him the cup of suffering, and prayed to His Father for the twelve legions of angels — but what might best set forward the salvation of men, and the glory of Him who had sent Him into the world. It is only in proportion as we recognise these obliga- tions that we taste any real or genuine freedom. Of the spurious allurements of the world we may truly say with St. Peter, " while they promise us liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption : for of whom a man is overcome of the same he is brought in bondage." It is only Christ's yoke that is " easy " : God's service that is " perfect freedom." As the world's sorrow worketh death, so its so-called liberty forges chains for the soul. It is really slavery to some corrupt inclination, some carnal infirmity, some besetting sin. Look at the drunkard's liberty. Every public-house he passes is his master. He is the slave of every coarse boon-companion that " puts his bottle to him," or, as it is called, " offers him a drink." " He suffers," to use St. Paul's language, " if a man bring him into bondage, if a man devour him, if a man take of him, if a man exalt himself, if a man smite him on the face." He reaches his home at last, degraded in point of intelligence- — for I say nothing about religion : the drunkard has no true religion, it is merely a form to him, not a yowcr — below the level of the very THE LIMITS OF CHRISTIAN LIBERTIES. 131 beasts that perish, a laughing-stock to the ungodly and careless ; to his own household, and to all who remember that man was created in the image of God, a source of sorrow, and regret, and shame. Alas, that any among us should be found to rejoice in such a liberty ! a liberty to work wickedness and to cast God's laws behind us: a liberty of following our own pernicious ways and selling ourselves to Satan, both body and soul! "All such rejoicing is evil." It is only " glorying in our shame." He only is truly free who " has power over his own will " ; who can check wrong inclinations ; who has learnt the lesson of self-denial ; who can forego gain that he may ensue godliness : who can " cast down imaginations, and every high thing that ex- alteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bring into captivity every thought unto the obedience of Christ." It is one of the many paradoxes, or seeming con- tradictions, of the Gospel, " Christ's servant is the only freeman." As He Himself told the Jews, " If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed. And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. They answered Him, We be Abraham's seed and were never in bondage to any man." They were C[uite indignant at any imputation being cast, even by implication, either on their personal or national freedom. " How sayest Thou then," they continued, " ye shall be made free ? Jesus answered them. Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that committeth sin is the servant of sin. And the servant abideth not in the house for ever : but the Son abideth ever. If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." 9 2 132 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. Aud 3' et we boast of our freedom, and talk proudly of the liberties of Engiishmen. We pique ourselves as much on our " glorious constitution " as the Jews did on their being " Abraham's seed." And yet these very liberties are only used by many of us as a " cloke of maliciousness." As long as we keep out of the reach of the law we think we may do what we please ; and we forget or disown that higher law, the Word of God, which is " quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart : neither is there any creature that is not manifest in His sight, but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with Avhom we have to do." What the maxims of the world allow us, or the example of others justifies us in doing, is of little consequence. We have to satisfy the searching scrutiny of One by Whom actions and the secrets of the heart are " weighed." He has set before us life and death, good and evil, and has left vis free to choose. And yet He has guided our choice. " He left not Himself without w^itness," He hath said, " Choose life, that thou and thy seed may live, and that thou mayest love the Lord thy God, and mayest obey His voice and cleave unto Him : for He is thy life and the length of thy days." It is a poor bargain that " gains the whole world," and " loses " a man's own " soul." And yet it is a bargain that thousands upon thousands all round us are making, and flattering themselves that they are great gainers by the trade. So they seem to the eye that judges by the THE LIMITS OF CHRISTIAN LIBERTIES. 133 outward ajjpearance : that knows nothing of those unspeakable, unconceivable joys that " God has pre- pared for them that love Him." May ours be a better wisdom than theirs ! May one of the things we learn by coming into the sanctuary of the Lord be " the end of such men." May we be taught more and more " to cast all our care " upon One who has told us that " He careth for us." While " we stand fast in our liberty," "let us not use it for an occasion to the flesh," " but in love serve one another." Let us cherish a tender conscience and a genuine humility, and a deep thank- fulness, and an unstinted charity." Let us be among those " who use this world, as not abusing it, for the fashion of this world passeth aw^ay." Preached — Choldtrton, Third Sunday after Easter, April 17th, 1853 ; May 15, 1859. XV. BIBLE KNOWLEDGE. " If tliey hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead." — St. Luke xvi. 31. Most persons are familar with the very solemn warning which the story, in connection with which these words occur, contains : of the portion that is in store for all those, whether rich or poor, who have abused their opportunities of usefulness, and lived in this world only to please and indulge themselves, instead of seeing how far they could be of service to others. It would be a great mistake to suppose that it is a lesson only needed by, or applicable to, rich men ; though to rich men it is especially applicable, because of the greater extent of responsibility of their steward- ship. A poor man may be just as selfish, just as regardless of the wants and feelings of others, just as hard- hearted, just as thoughtless and reckless of a future world, just as much occupied with the cares and vanities of this world, as was this rich Israelite, who shut his heart, no less than his doors, against the wretched Lazarus. However small our share of this world's goods, it is always in our power to lend a helping hand to a BIBLE KNOWLEDGE. 135 neighbour's need. It is not the amount of the aid, but the spirit and motive of it, that God regards. I am not speaking of cases of distress produced by a person's own recklessness or dishonest conduct — which are to be regarded as punishments on such ways, and contribute no claim for assistance, and where indeed assistance would do more harm than good by encouraging, instead of checking, a continuance in the same courses — but I refer to such cases as this of Lazarus : cases of sickness, poverty, friendlessness, bodily infirmity, old age ; cases in which no man in whose heart the love of God is shed abroad can pass by without interest and concern. But T. pass on to draw out the particular teaching of the text, and endeavour to apply it in a practical way to our own circumstances. The rich man in torment, finding no way of procuring relief for himself, bethought him of " five brethren " whom he had left living at home — living very likely in the same selfish, godless manner that he had lived himself — and he could not help feeling the natural concern of a kinsman for what he noio saw was a situation of exceeding peril to them. How easy this is — to talk and express concern for others, while we do not mind our own way ! St. Paul was aware of the danger when he tells us what pains he took to avoid it. It is a danger to which all those who have to watch over others as they that must give an account — pastors, school-teachers, fathers of families, employers, householders — are peculiarly exposed : the danger, in their carefulness for others, of forgetting themselves. 136 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. And so this rich man, who had never, so fav as we know, shown one spark of concern for his own spiritual welfare and future destiny, now that he is in the torment of hell (now that he finds out by a bitter, but too late, experience, what a fearful thing it is for an impenitent sinner to fall into the hands of the living God), is filled not so much with remorse and com- punction for himself, which he saw was unavailing, as with fear and concern for his five brethren. He remembered they had all lived together in the same jovial, self-indulgent, God-forgetting way, and he had no doubt too good reason to be afraid " lest they also should come to that place of torment." He felt convinced that " if one went unto them from the dead they would repent." It was his prayer, therefore, that Lazarus might be sent to " testify unto them." He was sure they could not resist such a solemn testimony. They must be persuaded and converted, and God would heal aud spare them. So he reasoned, and who shall say unnaturally ? It needed One "Who knows what is in man" — what a world not only of iniquity but of self-deceit the heart is ; what an impossibility it is, even by a miracle, to chansre the heart of one who has set his face like a flint and will not be turned — One who knew us better than we know ourselves to teach us this salutary lesson — that it is " an evil and adulterous generation that seeketh after a sign " : that men who have their Bibles in their hands and the Gospel sounded into their ears, and still remain deaf of ear and hard of heart, are incapable of being influenced by anything simply supernatural. As it BIBLE KNOWLEDGE. 137 is written, " neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead." We shall never know again, till the day when every secret of the heart is revealed, how men who are gone, like the traitor Judas, " to their own place," look back upon their past lives. We shall never be told by anybody besides this rich man how he would give the whole world, all the riches this earth contains, for the hopeless permission of living his life over again, retracing his ways, undoing his evil deeds, abhorring his iniquities, his drunkennesses and uncleannesses and oaths and lies, and making him a new heart, so that, through God's mercy, he might escape coming to that "place of torment." This is the only place of Scripture where the veil is for a moment lifted up, and we are permitted to catch a glimpse of the awful realities of the unseen world — the torments of the cursed side by side with the rest of them that die in the Lord. If one did rise from the dead he could tell us no more, he could speak no plainer. We know now the end of all these ungodly, carnal, self- seeking schemes, with which the minds of so many men of business and of every man of the world are wholly occupied, just as well as though we could " raise spirits from the vasty deep " to relate to us their experiences. If this parable has not taught us, depend on it nothing will, "If we hear not Moses and the prophets, neither sliould we be persuaded though one rose from the dead." I think it will be well not to evade the conclusions to which this will lead us. That is a dangerous and fatal habit into which we are all so ready to fall, of deceiving our own souls and lulling to sleep our own consciences, or 138 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. prophesying smooth things to ourselves, and saying peace where there is no peace. What a folly it is thus to play the hypocrite with ourselves ! to wish to seem better than we are, not so much to the world around us as to the judge icitUin when he would take account of our lives. Do not, then, let us try to escape the conclusion of this story, even though it tell against ourselves. It is far better to be too strict with ourselves than too lenient. For if we would judge ourselves we should not be judged, " But when we are judged we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world." The standard by which we are to judge ourselves — by which we are to ascertain our present state and future destiny — is God's Word. It is not fashion, or other people's opinion, or any private impressions and fancies, which are all shifting and uncertain, and often contra- dictory, but it is the unchangeable, living, eternal Word, manifested in an Incarnate Saviour, enshrined in an inspired Book, witnessed to and preached by a visible Church, in which is no " variableness, neither shadow of turning." It has indeed its mysteries, its dark places, its hard passages ; and therefore I have spoken of the teaching of the Church as a divinely ordained instrument for the right understandino; of it. But no one who is familiar with his Bible will say that these dark places make up the bulk of it. It was expressly written for the " way- faring men, though fools " ; and it is writ so plain upon tables that " he that runs may read," The merest child, who has just begun to frame letters into words, can go BIBLE KNOWLEDGE. 139 to that Book and learn something. He can read the Sermon on the Mount, and imbibe the spirit of Christ- ianity. He can study the parable of the Ten Virgins, or the Servants with the Talents, or the Prodigal Son, or the Good Samaritan, and gain an insight into Christian faith and duty. Even if he cannot understand the first eleven chapters of the Ej)istle to the Komans, he can hardly fail to gather instruction from the last five. Or of the Epistle to the Ephesians, if the first half be dark and difficult, the latter half, at any rate, is clear and plain. No man can miss the path of salvation if he look for it in earnest. It may be narrow, but it is not hidden. The gate may be strait, but it is open. Even if we are over- taken for a moment by any perplexity — if a case occurs in which we are doubtful how we ought to act — even then an earnest prayer for the enlightening help of the Spirit of God, a committing of our way unto Him as unto a faithful. Creator, an ear listening keenly to catch the tones of the guiding voice within, will probably clear up the difficulty, and cause the light of undoubting assurance to shine upon our way. The misfortune is that though we have Bibles we do not use them. We may use them for curiosity, from habit, for show, but not for " reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." Even to those who l^rofess to set most store by their Bible it is often a sealed book, a mere lifeless idol before which they bow their heads with unmeaning homasre, but not their hearts with a living obedience. And yet it is the Book which God has given us to be 140 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. the rule of life. Do you suppose it has been treasured in the Church with so much care, and so wonderfully multiplied by the discovery of the art of printing, and so diligently distributed by Societies, and reduced to so low a cost as to be within the reach of the poorest man or woman that can read — do you suppose that God has taken all this care for this Book over all other books in the world, that we should merely go to it to pick out entertaining stories, to have a string of texts running glibly off our tongue, to dabble in mysterious surmises about predestination, election, justification, and so forth? instead of learning practical lessons, daily duties, a personal faith, a saving wisdom ? Alas ! that the most precious gift of God in the whole world should be so abused, so misapplied : that the very thing that should have been for our good, should be to so many an occasion of falling : that the Bible should, in so inany cases, darken men's eyes instead of enlightening them, or set them upon judging others, while they w^ould be better employed in considering themselves. And so, the sum of the whole matter is that we are not to be looking for signs, and wonders, and mysteries, and revelations, and prophecies, but for plain instruction in home duties ; for knowledge of the way in which the temptations which meet us in our daily employments may be overcome ; that, as St. Paul says, " the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works." Other enquiries may be curious, interesting, instructive ; but it is this only which is edifying. Be sure of this, except so far as we read the Word of God for guidance, for clearing up the difficulties that beset BIBLE KNOWLEDGE. 141 our path, for self-knowledge, for ability to discharge the duties of our station, it is but labour in vain. God's purpose in j^utting that Book into our hands was to counterbalance the knowledge of evil — the inheritance of our fall — by the knowledge of good. It is the work of the Holy Spirit striving against the wiles of the evil spirit. It is the Divine stamp upon what is righteous, and seemly, and true. Of course we can follow other guides, or profess to be waiting for fuller revelations. We shall never have them. The Gospel is the final manifestation of the Divine Will to the world. Nay, One has risen from the dead, even the Lord Jesus Christ ; not, however, to contradict the testimony of Moses and the prophets, but to set His seal upon it. All He did, we are told, was " to open their understanding, that they might under- stand the Scriptures." This is what we must daily pray Him to do for ourselves — not to send to us one from the dead, or break through the ordinary laws of nature — but that He would grant us, according to the riches of His glory, " to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith, that we being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all saints, what is the breadth and length and depth and height of the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that we may be filled with all the fulness of God." It is only thus that the curse of knowledge can be averted. There is no spiritual state more sad, more hopeless, than that of those who " are ever learning, yet never come to the knowledge of the truth." The home 142 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. of our knowledge must be the Leart, not the head. It must make us wise unto salvation, not armed for con- troversy. It must humble us with the sense of our shortcomings, not lift us up with a conceit of our attainments. Above all, we must remember that ohcdiencc is the condition, as of spiritual j^ouvr, so also of spiritual discernment. " He that will do God's will shall know of the doctrine." If we only take up our Bibles for a serious, pi'actical purpose— for instruction in righteousness — we shall find them not only throw light upon our paths, but speak peace unto our souls. And remember further, that the Bible is the only revelation of God's will to which we must look, and by which we must be guided, as the ultimate standard and determiner of all that relates to the lines of our duty or the state of our souls. It is there — and not by any fancied secret whisperings — that God is calling us to Himself: bidding us repent and be converted, and become as little children, and take up our Cross, and follow the example of our Saviour. We can cast those words behind us if we please, but we shall find no other teacher to supply us with better or wiser ones. O that we all would read our Bible with more teachable hearts ; with more determined will to find out what it has to say to us about our calling here, our destiny hereafter ! that we would store up its j^^YCfp^s in our memory, to be our strength in the moment of sudden temptation : its cxam'ples in our imagination, to be the pattern and model of our daily lives ! Do not think that having a Bible, or reading a Bible, is any good, except so far as we live by the Bible. It is the BIBLE KNOWLEDGE. 143 rule of life as well as oi faith : of Avhat we are to do. as well as of what we are to helicve. We know from a beautiful jDarable that it is a seed which, though scattered on all sides, only takes root and bears fruit in the soil of " an honest and good and patient heai't." Pray God to give you this. Pray Jesus Christ, the great Prophet of the Church, to strengthen you to walk in the path which He has marked out, both by His teaching and His example, for the journey of every Christian. Pray the Holy Ghost, the Giver of all truth, to keep you from the many deceitful dealings with this Blessed Book, which abound in these latter days. So shall it be indeed to you a Book of life, making your way plain before your face, teaching you how to walk and please God ever more and more ; and preparing you, slowly it may be, but surely, for that fulness of Divine knowledge when the Elect shall see God face to face, and know all things perfectly, " even as they are known." Preached — Cholderton, First Sunday after Trinity, May 29, 1853; May 25, 1856 ; June 6, 1858. XVI. THE CHARACTER OF JEHU. " So tlie youn^ man, even the young man the prophet, went to Ramoth-Gilead. And wlien he came, behokl, the captains of the host were sitting ; and he said, I have an errand to thee, captain. And Jehu said, Unto which of all us ? And he said, To thee, captain. And he arose, and went into the house ; and he poured the oil on his head, and said unto him, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, I have anointed thee king over the people of the Lord, even over Israel. And thou shalt smite the house of Ahab thy master, that 1 may avenge the blood of my servants the prophets, and the blood of all the ser- vants of the Lord, at the hand of Jezebel." — II. Kings ix. 4-7. These verses contain the account of the anointing and mission of Jehu ; and the rest of the chapter^ together with the following one, informs us how he accomjjlished it. I will make a general observation at the outset. Scripture-Biography, the study of the sayings and doings of the men and women whose names catch our eye on the sacred page, is perhaps one of the most profitable ,as it certainly is the most interesting, method of instruction in Divine things, if it be pursued in a proper spirit and a right way. But it may, at the same time, be most hazardous and deceiving. If we bring our own prejudices and prei^os- THE CHARACTER OF JEHU. 145 sessions to interpret the simple letter of the story, if Ave fix our thoughts on one or two striking incidents in the life of a man, instead of gathering together the scattered notices that constitute the whole ; if we add an un- authorised fancy of our own here, or shut our eyes to an actually recorded fact there — because u-itliout the one or with the other we cannot fit the man to the character which beforehand we have made up our minds he must liave been — this is " wresting Scripture " and, it may be, '' to our own destruction," from its fair and legitimate teaching, just as much as building up a theory of doctrine upon one or two isolated texts can be. For instance, if we took by itself, and were much struck, as we could hardly help being, with the narrative of the affecting interview between Nathan — at once the messenger of God's displeasure and of His forgiveness, on the one hand — and David, so suddenly changed from a self-complacent sinner to a self-condemning penitent, on the other ; without stopping to read the history of those after years, in which he seems hardly to have known a day of peace and comfort — all traceable to this single sin and its manifold consequences — without calling to mind tliose psalms of exquisite heartrending agony, in which the still accusing voice of conscience seems ever to make him doubt whether the Lord could indeed forgive the exceeding wickedness of his sin — if, forgettinof or not knowing all this, we should conclude that all the Lord requires of a sinner to say is, " I have sinned," and that he who says so will immediately hear those words of peace and comfort, " Tlie Lord also hath put away thy sin," and were thereupon to set up a theory of 10 liG PAROCHIAL SERMONS. our own about the instantaneousness of conversion and the fulness of God's mercy, v/e should be plainly doing no less violence to the very facts of the history than to the sober doctrines of the Gospel. We should be weaving a most entangling net of error against our own souls. Or again, a man who only thinks of Judas Iscariot as the traitor who sold his Master for thirty pieces of silver, without having watched how Satan had been laying snares for him in this very way all along ; how he had always had thievish thoughts in his heart ; how his very position — "he bare the bag" — was turned against him, and became an instrument in his ruin ; how all the Sfood advice and wurninij words he must have been continually hearing from that Master's tongue were so much wasted breath, pearls thrown before swine, insuffi- cient to open his eyes and show him the pit on the edo^e of which he was even then standing — to miss all these little points, which do not lie together, but are only to be jjicked up by careful pondering here and there, bat which are absolutely necessary, not only to profit by the example but even to understand the clmractcr, is a way of reading Scripture which most people think sufficient for its comjsrehension, but which robs it of all that jaower " for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness which may make the man of God perfect, and throughly furnish him unto all good works." This caution is even more necessary in reading the account of those mixed characters, like Jehu, which form the staple of the Bible-story, just as they are what THE CHARACTER OF JEHU. 147 constitute the mass of everyday society. It can never be too carefully remembered that the Bible is not a history of heroes or saints — of moral and spiritual giants — far beyond our compass, or of sinners whom we are not likely to imitate. We are told again and again that Abraham and Moses, and David, and Elijah, and Paul, on the one hand, and Esau, and Korah, and Saul, and Jeroboam, and Gehazi on the other, were simple men — men of like passions with ourselves, tempted as we are, strengthened as we must be. They were not exceptions to the average, but examples to all, which they could not be if their trials had been different, or their spiritual experiences different, from those by which ottr characters are formed, and the steadfastness of our faith tried. We miss the whole point of the exemplary teaching of the Bible when we read it in this way. There is not a man or woman whose character is drawn in the Old Testament, not even of those who served God most faithfully, of whom not only we may be sure that they fell into some sin, but of whom some sin is not actually recorded. Noah, Abraham, Lot, Moses, David, were none of them perfect, and the Scripture does not conceal their imperfections. There is only one j^erfect example — that of our Blessed Saviour. The rest, though saints, still were men, and were tempted as men, and sometimes sinned as men. You do not suppose that Abraham, that great pattern of faith, when he denied his wife in Egypt, was acting faithfully. You must surely see that this was one of those moments of weakness — to which we are all liable 10 2 148 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. as often as we forsjet that our strencfth is not in ourselves — when Satan had him at advantage, and betrayed him into an act the very contrary of his general character — an act of faithlessness and mistrust in God. The Bible never says he did right in thus equivocating. If we were to say so because we have a general notion that Abraham was " a friend of God," and that everything he did must therefore have been inspired, we should not only be adopting a view that has no Scriptural warrant, but should be confounding those eternal distinctions of right and wrong which God has planted to be unerring guides in every soul. There is no reason in the world, except in our own sloth and carnalism, why every one of us should not be as much God's friend as Abraham was. We are living in far fuller light, and under, as St. Paul tells us, " a far better covenant founded upon better promises." It was " by the grace of God " that he was what he was, and the same grace is even more plent- eously offered to us than to him. If you have followed me in what I have said, you will be in no danger of making the mistake of supposing, because you are told that " the Lord God of Israel anointed Jehu to be king over the people of the Lord," and sent him to smite Ahab and avenge the blood of His servants the prophets slain at the hand of Jezebel, that, therefore, he was an approved or righteous man. You will look at his ^vhole history before you draw a conclusion as to his character. You would no more feel Sure that he was actuated by a right spirit when he bade the eunuchs throw Jezebel out of the window than Samson was when he sent the foxes to burn up the THE CHARACTER OF JEHU. 149 Philistines' corn ; or Jael, when she drove the nail into Sisera's temples. Indeed, I think, if you make up your mind at starting that whatever Jehu does will be right, you will be sorely perplexed and startled before you get to the end of his history. Even when engaged on God's errand of smiting Ahab's house, and taking vengeance on Jezebel, and destroying the worshippers of Baal, he does it all in such a bloodthirsty, and withal in such a calculating and even deceitful way, that we could nob but be most miserably puzzled if we were as sure that God approved or suggested the means, as we are that He willed and fore -ordained the end. Jehu was simply an instrument, like Jeroboam, of a Divine purpose, and that a purpose of visiting a house and a nation for their sins. A fitter instrument for the purpose could hardly be conceived. A soldier by profession, and familiarised with scenes of blood, he seems to have possessed just that bold, adventurous, fearless character which was necessary to play' the part that was assigned to him. He took his own way of fulfilling his mission : whether by craft or open violence was all one to him. Though a minister of Divine vengeance, all he did was coloured by his own strong passions ; just like that brutal judge, Lord Jeffreys, with whose name every reader of English history is familiar, who, even in passing legal sentences upon unhappy criminals, made the very standers-by shudder at the inhuman and fiendish vehemence with which he seemed to thirst for blood. The character of Jehu, regarded as a whole, seems to be as nearly as possible the opposite of that of Jeho- 150 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. sliaphat. Jehoshaphat, you will remember, was a man whose general rectitude of conduct was man-ed by a single infirmity. Jehu, on the other hand, was one who was only redeemed from utter godlessness by a single course of obedience to God's command. The one, in St. James's words, " kept the w^hole law, but offended in one point " : the other kept his one point, but if he did not break, at any rate disregarded, all the rest of the v-holc law. Jehoshaphat was God-fearing, just, gentle, anxious for his people's welfare, zealous against idolatry, but he had one weakness. He did not take pains enough to avoid the company of sinners, to make a stand against the lax morality of the fashionable world. Jehu was selfish, artful, bloodthirsty, cruel, "He could go quietly in, and eat his meal, while the dogs were mangling the unburied corpse of Jezebel outside his door. But what God bade him do he did, I will not say in God's spirit, but at any rate with a right good will. For, indeed, it was a mission that just jumped with his own humour. His work was after his own heart. To shed blood, and to get a kingdom, were just the things that the bold-hearted soldier was most ready to do. He smote Jehoram with his bow, and trode Jezebel under foot, and slew the worshippers of Baal with the edge of the sword. But in all that he did I fail to discover one token of a high or holy motive ; one sign of a hatred of sin, or a love for righteousness, or a zeal for God's true honour, or a heart purposing to keep His commandments. Compare him with Josiah, who had the like work criven him to do in rooting out THE CHARACTER OF JEHU. 151 idolatry from Judali, and you will recognise at once the difference in their characters. Of Josiah it is par- ticularly said that " his heart was tender, and that he humbled himself before the Lord " ; from which any- thing more remote than Jehu's temper it is impossible to conceive. Still Jehu did his work, thouo-h with a rough hand, and so he received his reward, though the reward sets no stamp of approval upon his conduct, nor indeed reached beyond this present world. Because he had executed what was right in God's eyes upon the house of Ahab, " his children of the fourth generation were to sit on the throne of Israel." And yet, as though to show us that this reward is very far from being intended to make us fancy that Jehu's general chai-acter is one of Avhich God approves ; in the very next verse, side by side with this qualified commendation, we are expressly told that " Jehu took no heed to walk in the law of the Lord God of Israel xoith all his heart : for he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam, which made Israel to sin." As far as he had served God he found his account in it. All obedience has its reward, though it be a partial and imperfect one. But for his failures of duty he found that God had scourges ready for him, as well as for Ahab and Jezebel. " In those days," the historian tells us, " the Lord began to cut Israel short ; and Hazael smote them in all their coasts." As God had sent Jehu from Ramoth-Gilead to slay Ahaziah, so now He bade Hazael go forth from Damascus to smite and distress him. Each was an instrument in God's hand, though permitted to do their work in their own way. 152 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. Mysterious, and in this life, inexplicable problem ! How God can accomplish His foretold purposes, and Ave, His creatures, still continue free. How %m, the instruments, may be self-seeking and defiled, and He, the Ordainer, remain Holy, and Just, and True ! Yet, that so it is, we need no other proof than the history of Jehu to be assured. How often do we meet characters like his ! Men with a bold hand, or a free heart, or a high spirit, or generous impulses ; capable of great things, and perhaps achieving them, whom after all we cannot pronounce to be " men of God," with no token of saintliness about them : who, we are sure, cannot on the whole please God, though to some extent, and in temporal things, they may be blessed by Him ! Jehu had all those moral qualities that might have made a David, or an Elijah, or a Paul. He was brave, and bold, and zealous, and high-spirited. No danger daunted him ; nothing that God set him to do was more than he dared venture on. But it was a temper wholly savouring of the old Adam ; never chastened by suffering or dis- ciplined by self-contol ; and so, without the least regard for the feelings of others, under the guidance of no principle, at the mercy of circumstances, wrong in spirit, even when it was right in deed. There is no temper that more needs to be brought under the discipline of the Cross of Christ than this. If you will think what St. Paul was when he persecuted the Church, and was puffed up with the conceit of his own righteousness in the Law, and compare him with what he became when, like his Divine Master, " he had THE CHARACTER OF JEHU. 153 learnt obedience by the things which he suffered," and " determined to know nothing else but Jesus Christ and Him crucified " — compare, I mean, Saul the pur- secutor with Paul the Apostle ; Saul breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, with Paul at Thessalonica, "gentle among them even as a nurse cherisheth her children" — and you will understand that what I mean, when I speak of the need of discipline for such tempers, is the converting influence, without which they are just as likely to be weapons in the hands of Satan as instruments in the hands of God. Perhaps you still have a difficulty in accepting this account of Jehu, because you see that he actually did receive a blessing from God. For ivliat he did, he is told that " his children of the fourth generation should sit on the throne of Israel." No family, as yet, had sat so long on that apostate throne. Jeroboam's son had been slain by Baasha : Baasha's by Zimri. Jehu cut off the house of Ahab. But to his own family a kind of stability is promised. Is not this, you will ask me, a proof that there must have been something really good about him after all ? Not necessarily so, by any means. He had vindicated God's honour, it was true. He had slain the idolatrous race, and he had crushed Baal-worship. This was the lesson that this stiflf-necked people had most need to learn. Elijah had failed to teach it them by miracles : it was to be seen whether Jehu would impress it more forcibly upon them hy the sivord. And so Aliab's hovise was cut off root and branch ; 154 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. and Jehu was exalted, to let men see that " those who honoured God He would honour, and they who despised Him should be lightly esteemed." Indeed, we see in the course of daily experience that obedience to God's law, whether of nature or of grace, however incomplete and partial, still, so far as it is obedience, never wholly misses its reward. The man who is sober and tem- perate, even though he is so on no high and religious grounds, still wins the reward of sobriety and temperance. He prolongs his days, and sees, perhaps, his children's children round about his table. The tradesman who is thrifty and diligent in business reaps the fruit of thriftiness and diligence ; sees his till full of money and himself getting on in the world, even though the highest object of his desire is not godliness, but gain. But in all these cases, as in Jehu's, as it has been a -partial obedience, so it only wins a partial and imperfect reward. It has the promise, perhaps, of this world, but not of that which is to come. Nay, even the worldly blessing that falls to it may be embittered by a thousand sad accompaniments. The long life is not necessarily a happy one. The full purse may bring little comfort to the careworn body or the aching heart. The thought of our stored garners, or our richly-furnished houses, or our sumptuous tables, or our fine dresses — though they were what excited the envy and admiration of our neighbours, and perhaps led us to count ourselves happy men — will hardly be that on which we shall care to dwell with satisfaction in the night when our souls shall be required. They alone are truly blessed of God who serve Him THE CHARACTER OF JEHU. 155 faithfully with their vA^olc heart : who, having ascer- tained what He would have them to do, do it just as heartily when it crosses their inclinations as when it humours them : who feel that Esau's blessing, " to have their dwelling of the fatness of the earth, and to break the yoke of another from off their neck " — as we should say, riches and independence — is, after all, not the blessing God has reserved for His saints, nor that at which the follower of Christ is taught primarily to aim. The children of this world no doubt have their blessings, their advantages, their wisdom, as well as the children of light. But they are carnal, unsatisfying, transitory. While, like Jonah under his gourd, we are basking beneath their shade, God may be preparing a worm to canker them at the root, so that instead of a sweet smell there shall be a stink, and loathsomeness in the place of beauty. Whatever our natural gifts or tempers, remember, we must all be created anew; fashioned into the likeness of Christ ; the old leaven purged out, and the whole body and soul and spirit transformed. It is the work of the Holy Ghost, always gradual and often slow. We are to be workers together with Him by prayer, by com- munion of the body and blood of Clirist ; by Bible- reading and holy meditation ; by watchfulness and self-mastery ; by gentleness and love unfeigned ; by the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left ; by labouring not for the meat that perisheth, but for that which Christ has to give to us ; by checking and conquering all proud and self-willed tempers ; by looking not only on our own things but also every man 15G PAROCHIAL SERMONS. on the tilings of others. Thus, and thus only, is the snare of such dispositions as Jehu's to be escaped. Tlius, and thus only, shall we prove what is " that good and acceptable and perfect will of God." Thus, and thus only, will ouv present issue in a /w^^tre regeneration. Thus, and thus only, shall we show ourselves " blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom it is our Christian calling to shine as lights in the world." Preached — Cliolderton, Eleventh Sunday after Trinity, August 7, 1853. XVII. OUR SUFFICIENCY OF GOD. " Our sufficiency is of God." — 2 Cor. iii. 5. What St. Paul here asserts of himself, and his fellow- labourers in the Gospel, is equally true of every Christian man. The Scriptures teach us this, under a great variety of figures and expressions. St. Paul says of himself, " By the grace of God I am what I am " : and again, "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me " : and as^ain, when he besought the Lord thrice that the thorn in his flesh might depart from him, the answer he got was not, " Thy prayer is heard, and I will ease thee of thy pain," but " My grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness." The fact of man's natural helplessness, of his inability in and by himself to do any good tiling, or to lay hold on eternal life, is the very foundation stone of the whole Gospel scheme. It is attested alike by history and personal experience. The universal cry of nature is " O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death ? " The very root of all Christian joy 138 PAROCHIAL SERMOXS. and tlmiikfuliioss is the revelation of that " uew and living way, consecrated for us through Christ's flesh," by which " we come boldly to the throne of grace, and ob- tain mercy, and find grace to help us in time of need." And yet this doctrine, though so generally acknow- ledged with the lips, and often so flippantly uttered with the tongue, is received wdth two great practical denials and perversions by the world. The very people who talk most about it are often the least under the influence of its power. If you will observe attentively the language of the text you will see that it is hardly possible to find five wairds with a more pregnant meaning. It is our sufficiency, and therefore there is, as our Lord tells us, " nothing impossible to him that believeth " ; but it is a sufficiency not inherent, but imparted. " Our sufficiency is of God." It is precisely the same truth that is imjDlied in the passage, " w'ork out your ovrii salvation with fear and trembling." It is expressly called, you see, our ovjn salvation, and yet any false inference that might have foUow^ed from such language is immediately corrected by the sequel, '" It is God that worketh in us, both to wall and to do." • The two perversions of this doctrine have a common origin, though a different tendency. The}'' sj)ring from that faulty — and in a matter of such jDractical concern dangerous — habit of naiud, which is ever j^utting asunder what God has joined. It separates grace from the Sacraments, and faith from works ; and the heart from the lips, and the lips from the heart, in congre- gational w^orship ; and God's justice from His mercy; and repentance from its fruits ; and Christ's Atonement OUR SUFFICIENCY OF GOD. 159 from Christ's Example ; and religion from the bearing of the Cross ; and charity from self-denial ; and obe- dience from love ; and the profession of the Gospel from the government of the temper or the bridling of the tongue. And as it thus divorces what Almighty God, in His revelation, has knit together with an indissoluble bond, so, on the other hand, it is ever contriving the strangest alliances and fellowships of its own. Thus the profession of religion is supposed to agree very well with a full measure and unlimited enjoyment of the pleasures and attractions of the world. Men say they can at once live to Christ and to themselves : they can be absorbed in the love of gain, and yet follow after godliness : they can be drunkards or profane swearers, and still reckon themselves within the covenant : they can habitually turn their backs on the Lord's table, and still say they love Christ : they can adorn themselves with good works, they think, while half their time and more than half their thoughts are occupied about " broidered hair, and gold, and pearls, and costly array." They partition out their hearts between the Gospel and the world ; and though the latter gets I know not how rauch the larger share, they can discover no inconsistencies ; they feel no conflicting claims ; inclination and duty, in them, never quarrel, or, if they do, duty always obligingly gives way. They think it a very comfortable arrangement which allows them, with so little discomfort, to make the most of this life without foresfoins', or endangerinof, their expectations and prospects in the life which is to come. IGO PAROCHIAL SERMONS. Whether this is indeed the doctrine of Christ Cruci- fied, whether the Eternal Son of God left His Father's bosom and lowered Himself to such a depth of humi- liation as to become obedient even unto death, to set up such a standard of religion, and to purchase unto Himself such a " peculiar people " as this, you can judge as well as I. I proceed to show you how the grand and fundamental doctrine of the text is perverted by the false glosses and lying traditions of men. It is perverted in two ways : first by those who, fixing their attention wholly on the latter half of the words, cry out, " Oh, then, if our sufficiency is of God, we have nothing to do with it ourselves : it does not depend upon us in any way : we must leave God to do His own work in His own measures and His own time ! " Secondly, by those who, with a too painful consciousness of their own imperfections, say, " What is the use of talking about sufficiency at all to a poor, weak, erring creature like man ? If the word means anything it must mean a measure of grace and holiness which is con- sistent with many shortcomings, with much blindness, with large allowances for human infirmity, with the facts and conditions of human nature." These are the two views — widely spread in a practical shape in the world — acted on unconsciously even where they are not entertained deliberately — and which seem to me to empty not only the text, but the whole doctrine that is according to godliness — the whole Gospel Dispensation — of its meaning, its reasonableness, its power. It is indeed strange that such erroneous notions of OUR SUFFICIENCY OF GOD. 161 God's gracious purposes towards fallen man are not cor- rected by the very experience and phenomena of the physical world. In this aspect, at least, God's providence and God's grace appear to move precisely by the same laws. A farmer will hardly get a crop from his land unless he dresses it, and digs it, and plants it, and keeps it free from weeds. And yet we are told, and we know it by experience to be true, that it is " God that giveth seed to the sower, and bread to the eater" : " that sendeth the former and the latter rain in his season " : " that maketh His sun to rise " : " that reserveth unto us the appointed weeks of the harvest." We are workers together ivith God in Um-poral things : why not then in spiritual things ? The labour of our hands is needed in the dressing of the fields : how should our co-operation be useless and superfluous in the training and preparing of our souls ? In spite of the confessed difficulty of some few isolated texts, it is quite marvellous, to my mind, how such a notion as that of God's grace being not the one, but the only thing needful could ever gain possession of the faith of any one of us who reads and meditates on his Bible, as a whole. The history of every one of God's saints recorded there gives the direct lie to such a theory. St. Paul practised a resolute and watchful and daily self-mastery, lest that good thing which he felt God had hegnn in him should be frustrated by his own abuse or neglect of the gift. He himself describes his whole spiritual history in eight words, " I do not frustrate the grace of God." He could frustrate it, and it was the 11 162 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. knowledge tliat he had this power which made him all the more careful of his ways. It is God who gives the grace ; but we ourselves have the using of it. But while we avoid the first error we must not fall into the second. While asserting the necessity of man's own conscious co-operation in the work of his salvation, we must not measure the degree of per- fection to which he may attain by any fancied limit of the extent of his own natural powers. We must not get into the way of excusing sin, or even infirmity, by that easy and perfunctory formula — " Oh ! after all we are but men : weak, erring, sinful men ! " What we are now is no criterion of what we might be, what we ought to be. God's grace is always forestalling and 2Jrevcnting our own endeavours. It is from Him, and not from ourselves, that we get the very rudiments of holiness — the power not only to do, but even to will, after His good pleasure. There is not a good desire or a holy habit in our nature that did not originally come from Him, liowever much it may now seem to be part of ourselves. Those who have ever fought long and earnestly against any besetting sin — wrestled as it were like Jacob with the angel till they have prevailed — can speak of how grace is won, and how " out of weakness they became strong." As there are no limits to the marvels of divine power, so are there no limits to the height of man's perfection. There is no more danger- ous or damnable heresy of these latter days than that which lays down a kind of average standard of human goodness, and asserts that all who attain to that are J OUR SUFFICIENCY OF GOD. 163 quite safe, and that even great allowances will be made for many shortcomings on the score of man's infirmity. You hear it constantly said, " Oh ! we are not expected to be saints." Not expected to be saints ! What are you to be then ? Do not the opening words of almost every Epistle of St. Paul carry a solemn reminder to his hearers' hearts that they are " called to be saints ? " Are we not expressly told that " without holiness " — that is, without the grace of saintliness — " no man shall see the Lord ? " We should be Pauls in sainthness, were we only Pauls in earnestness, in watchfulness, in prayer, in fasting. We might use his words did we only lead his life. We shall sit as near Christ in heaven if we only love and serve him as faithfully on earth. St. Paul had plainly as many natural infirmities to struggle against — as hasty a temper, as proud a spirit, as ungovernable a self-will — as any of us ; but, as he tells us, " by the grace of God he became what he was." " The grace which was bestowed on him was not given in vain, bi;t he laboured more abundantly than they all, yet," as he adds with a deep and unfeigned humility, " not I, but the grace of God which was with me." Thus we come back to the point from which we started, " the sufficiency of the grace of God." For this we have to labour, for this we have to take heed, lest we come short of it. God's work is hindered not more by Satan than by ourselves — by our sloth, our unconcern, our lukewarmness, our comi^romises, our deadness to spiritual things. We know our natural weakness, and yet we do not seek God's strength. 11 2 164 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. As one instance of this I refer you to the very solemn and remarkable words recorded by St. John : " Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, hath eternal life ; and I will raise him up at the last day." Now I ask what meaning you attach to these words ? That they mean somethinj — something definitely and awfully practical — something bound up mth the very life and death of our souls, you will hardly deny. But what is that something ? The Church gives you an answer. She tells you that these words enforce the duty and explain the necessity of Sacramental Communion with the Lord's body and blood. St. Paul teaches the same, if I understand the meaning of words, when he says " The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ ? " If you choose to say the words mean some- thing else, I ask you not to tell me, but to answer satisfactorily to yourselves, what spiritual act in your lives you consider equivalent to this eating the flesh and drinking the blood of your Saviour, without which. He has told you Himself, you have no life in your souls. I think you will agree with me that the words can bear no other sense than that which the Church and St. Paul both put upon them as setting before us the bounden duty and the inestimable advantage of feeding upon Christ, by faith, in the Supper of His own divine institution. OUR SUFFICIENCY OF GOD. 165 How can we expect God's grace if we do not use an ordinance which He has appointed for one of its chiefest channels ? Is there one of our excuses that will stand God's searching eye — nay even satisfy our own ? " We are waiting." So some of you have been these forty years, and will these twenty years more, if your life is spared so long. In a case of life and death I never knew any good come of waiting. I never found one more drawn to Christ by the cords of love at sixty than he was at twenty years of age. "We have so many cares and troubles." And so you think under such circumstances you will do better without God and Christ than with them ! " We are too young." For what? to die ? If not, you are not too young to live for God, which is the only preparation for a safe, a holy, a comfortable death. But what need to go through all these vain excuses ? They all come to this — I have no heart for God's service, I do not like a religious life. Disguise it how you will from your minister — even from yourselves — the truth of it all is in David's words, " Your hearts are not set upon righteousness, O ye congregation : you do not seek after God, O ye sons of men." You will not be Christ's servants, and so you are the world's and Satan's slaves. Oh, my friends, break these unworthy bonds while the Spirit of the Lord is still offered to enable you. Draw nigh to God, before the time of the great water-floods. Feel that if you are to have either part or lot in this matter your heart must be right in the sight of God. Oh, that my words could make you realize the ex- ceeding perilousness of thus halting between two 166 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. opinions — or rather it is not halting between ; for while you fancy you are still free to choose, you are in reality only becoming more and more estranged from God, more and more in bondage to the world. It is our life, our youth^ our health, our strength that God demands for His service ; not oiu* decrepit limbs, or " the days in which we have no pleasure," or the hour when we see gathering round us the fearful shadow of the valley of death. Be assured of this : God sets down against us all those opportunities which we have had within our reach, but have not used. These despised sacraments, and neglected prayers, and unfamiliar Bibles, and untended warnings will all bear their damning- witness against us at the last day. We shall be called to account for every talent that we have not improved. Our wealth, our worldly position, our personal in- fluence, our religious knowledge, our intellectual gifts, will all be so many grounds of our condemnation if they have been perverted to selfish purposes, or the Giver has been either forgotten or profaned in the gift. May God Almighty teach you to do, as well as to know, all the good pleasure of His will, that so, although feeling weak in yourselves yet being sufficient in Him, " you may make your calling and election sure;" and " that an entrance may be ministered unto you abund- antly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ." Preached — Cholclerton, Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity, August 28, 1853. XYIII. GOD A REFUGE IN TEMPTATION. " There liatli no temptation taken you but such as is common to man : but God is faithful,who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it." — 1 Cor. x.13. If these words are true, there can be no such thing as pleading an excuse for any act or habit of sin. There is uo use in saying, " I could not help it " : " the tempta- tion was so very strong " : " human nature is so very weak " : '" God never stretched out His right hand to help me " : " I was left alone to encounter the powers of darkness." There is no use in thinking that thus we make out a good case for ourselves, or flattering ourselves that the memory of abominable sins may thus be lightly cast aside, partly because such a way of talking is not true ; and partly because, even if it were true, it would not be to the purpose. It is not true to say of any sin that we could not help it, or were left to battle with it unassisted and alone. It is not to the purpose to allege, even if truly, that the temptation was strong and human nature weak, because the nature of every regenerate person is not simply human. As St. Peter says, " we are made partakers of 168 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. the divine nature," and however strong the temptation, it is after all but " such as is common to man " ; and the text assures us that "God is faithful, who will not suifer us to be tempted above that we are able, but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that we may be able to bear it." Through all the passages of Scripture illustrative of this principle one common idea runs — that tempta- tion is man's portion, the inheritance he has received from his first parents ; but, so far from its being repre- sented as necessary or unavoidable that we should yield to it or be overcome by it, it is here lies the very essence of our discipline, the very function of faith, the very trial of our spiritual strength and courage ; the point, or article, of difference between the wicked and the profane — " between him that serveth God and him that serveth Him not"; or, to borrow St. Peter's in- stances, between Noah and the world of the ungodly, between Lot and the sinners of Sodom. Nay, more : to be overcome by temptation, to yield to unclean lusts or passionate tempers or even unbridled appetites, is attributed not so much to iceakness as to faithlessness : to a faint-hearted, cowardly mistrust of God ; to a voluntary acquiescence in, or indifference to, sin ; to a lack of patience and watchfulness ; to a vain confidence in our owa strength and a forgetfulness of the maxim that " all our sufficiency is of God." It is not God's way, we are told, to tempt men, or even to leave them when they are tempted. He is always close at hand, if they had only eyes purged to discern Him, " making a way to escape," " strengthening the weak," GOD A REFUGE IN TEMPTATION. 169 " delivering the godly," and ever listening to the pi'ayers of the elect when " they cry day and night unto Him." If they fall, it is not because God is not there, with His hand ready to lift them up ; bvit because, like Peter on the water of Gennesaret, they forget for the moment their heavenly Friend, and then find their own strength utterly unable to bear them up against the waves and storms of this troublesome world. This is the invariable way in which Scripture speaks to us of the nature and power of temptation ; but I think it is hardly the way in which we think or speak of it ourselves. Our own weakness we are ready enough to allow — though even this often merely in set forms of speech, and not in real sincerity of feeling — but we are not equally ready to acknowledge God's strength. We say often enough, " Of mine own self I can do nothing " ; but we do not say equally often, " In Christ I can do all things." It is very easy to throw the blame of our sins on " the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts " ; but we forget that we " have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him." We plead the weak- ness of nature, but we do not remember the efficacy of grace. We speak of our bondage to Satan, but forget that God has delivered us " from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son " ; and that thus we encounter temptation on an entirely new ground, with every advantage on our side, clothed in bright and invulnerable armour on the right hand and on the left. As St. Paul says, we are " more than conquerors through Him that loved us" — angels 170 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. and principalities and powers are unable to separate us from Him, and there is nothing of which we need be afraid, save our own unloyal hearts and treacherous right hands. I think that all who have endeavoured, with ever so little earnestness, to lead a watchful and decent life, must be able to confirm, by their own experience, the truth of these statements of the Word of God. We must have felt — if not constantly, yet at least occa- sionally — how strong we were when we have put our- selves in God's hands and committed our cause wholly to Him. There have been times surely when our Divine Master's words have come home with a living force to our hearts — " I will never leave thee nor forsake thee " — so that we have been enabled boldly to say, " The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me." At least if we have not known such moments, moments of such unspeakable strength and comfort, moments when we have indeed felt what faith is, and what mighty deeds, through God, it is capable of accomplishing, it must be because our lives have been nothing but one long course of carnalism — a constant acquiescence in fetters which we have felt, but have not had the spirit to attempt to break — a poor, wretched, Laodicean state of worldly-mindedness, which has alike prevented us from being conscious of our needs, or seeking help from God. And what some of us perhaps have experienced sometimes we should experience always, if the thought of the goodness of the Lord were that which always first occurred to us in seasons of difficulty and distress. GOD A REFUGE IN TEMPTATION. 171 If, when poverty or misfortune or trials of any kind came upon us, we were in the habit of looking up at once to heaven for succour and relief — not from a mere momentary impulse, but with a patieut and trustful steadfastness — we should find a deeper meaning than we have hitherto done in those hard sayings of the Bible which tell us so often that affliction, however grievous for the moment, " nevertheless afterward yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby " ; and that " whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth." It is because, in spite of all our lip-profession, we do not really put our trust in God, that we are so often entangled in temptation and overcome. Instead of trying to find out what God would teach us by the visitation; seeking anxiously to ascertain whether by any past misconduct we have brought it down as a punishment upon ourselves, and if we find it to be so, then humbling ourselves under His mighty hand, thankinsr Him for thus " bringins our sin to remom- brance," instead of suffering us to go down with it unatoned-for to our graves; instead of acting in this, which is the only really Christian and religious way, we grumble, and murmur, and complain, and say we are hardly dealt with, and cannot think how it is we come into trouble so much oftener than other folk, and are sure we have done nothing to deserve it ; or at least content ourselves with a few cant phrases, which we keep in stock for such occasions, about " the Lord's will being done," and " the Lord giving and the Lord 172 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. taking away " ; when all the while, in the secret depths of our hearts, we are arraigning God for His severity, and are unable to read one sign of mercy in the visitation, and are almost tempted, like the idle servant in the parable, to call the Master whom we serve " an austere man," whom it is alike unprofitable and wearisome to profess to regard. I do not think I am uttering any over-statement. Take the case of unruly and disobedient children, which — I will not say ahoays, but in nine cases out of ten — is the result either of the ill-advised fondness, or inexcusable neglect, of parents. The same may be said of sickness, or poverty, or any other form of affliction. The}'' are not sent, we may be sure, simply that we may acknowledge that God sent them, but that we may feel that they are sent /or our good ; that there is a lesson in them ; that God saw that we needed them ; that there is something in us wants correction — some idol that we have set up in our hearts that must be cast down ; some hold that carnal things have on us which for our soul's health had best be broken ; some careless way into which we have fallen, and from wliich we need to be awakened ; some lesson of patience, or resignation, or faith, or meekness, which we have not yet leai-nt and which in this way can best be taught us. I do not say that this is the spirit in which trials are generally borne — far otherwise — but it is the spirit in which they may be emptied of their bitterness and turned, like balm of Gilead, to the healing of our souls. All those circumstances which the w^orld calls " hard " wear a different aspect when viewed by the eye of GOD A REFUGE IN TEMPTATION. 173 faith, and in the light reflected on them from the Cross of Christ. He who so uses them can realize what David meant when he said, " Before I was troubled, I went wrong : but now have T kept thy word. I know, Lord, that Thy judgments are right, and that Thou of very faithfulness hast caused me to be troubled." This then must be our strength and comfort under all circumstances of trial or temptation, to know upon the warrant of God's Holy Word that there is a way open to us to escape, if we only choose to look for it. Of course, if we prefer sitting down and folding our hands, and letting things take their course, as though possessed by a kind of Mahometan spirit of fatalism, we shall never find comfort in our trials, or strength in our temptations. Whether we like it or not, our whole life is a warfare, a fighting not simply against flesh and blood, but, " against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." The only practical question is, Shall we enter the battle naked and unarmed, or with the shield of faith on our arm, " and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God," in our right hand ? Shall we despair of victory, or hope on confidently to the end ? Shall we make terms and compromises with our foe, or hold fast that we have, that no man take our crown ? Shall we rather confess our own weakness, or make our boast of God's strength ? Shall we say, as David was once almost tempted to say, " it is my own infirmity," or rather with the same saint, recovering his confidence, *' remember the years of the right hand of the Most 174 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. Highest " ? One or the other we must do, and our fate depends upon our choice. Theirs is the saddest and most hopeless doom of all whom, like the Jewish people of old, " the Lord hath stricken, but they have not grieved ; He has consumed them, but they have refused to receive correction ; they have made their faces harder than a rock ; they have refused to return." Be assured of this : not a sparrow falls to the ground without your Father which is in heaven. Nay, " the very hairs of our head are all numbered." We have no need to fear anything that either the devil or man can work against us, if we only "commit our souls unto Him, in well-doing, as unto a faithful Creator." We know that He has never failed His people who trusted in Him. If ever we have felt faint and discouraged in the presence of trials or difficulties, it is because our faith has grown dim for a while, like Elijah's when he fled for his life to Horeb ; or our hands have grown weary of being lifted up to heaven, like Moses when he stood on the rock while the people fought against Amalek, and have need of fresh supplies of grace to recruit their strength and energy. Our power to resist evil will only continue, like Samson's supernatural prowess, as long as we acknow- ledge its dependence upon God. If once we cut ourselves off from the means of grace, if we think we can do without prayer, and sacraments, and the presence of the Spirit, as that Israelitish champion thought his strength might remain, though he suffered the cunning Dehlah to rob him of his lock of hair, we shall find to GOD A REFUGE IN TEMPTATIOK 175 our cost, as he found, when the Philistines are upon us, that the Lord has departed from us, and that we are weak and but as other men. The Christian's strength h'es in his uninterrupted access to, and communion with, God. As St. Paul beautifully expresses it, " the life he now lives in the flesh he lives by the faith of the Son of God, V7ho loved him, and gave Himself for him." In all his sufferings and trials upon earth he can, like the holy martyr, St. Stephen, " steadfastly look up to heaven," and feel that he is but helping to bear that Master's Cross " Who suffered for us, leaving us an example that we should follow His steps." As He was made perfect by overcoming temptation, and " though a Son, yet learnt obedience by the things which he suffered," so must His disciples too. "If ye be without chastisement," says the Scripture, " of which all are partakers, then are ye bastards and not sons." Little has he learnt the very first lessons of the Cross of Christ who, though perhaps he receives the Word with joy, is fond of reading his Bible, glad to hear sermons, and has a text always ready at his tongue's end, yet has, after all, " no root in himself, but dureth for a while ; for when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the Word, by and by he is offended." He is one of those who would sit at Christ's right hand, but not drink of His cup, or be baptized with His baptism. We must take the Gospel, as men do their wives, "for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health," or we can have no part or lot in it at all. If it has its comforts and promises, it has also its trials and 176 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. temptations. " My son " says the wise son of Sirach, " if thou come to serve the Lord, prepare thy soul for temptation." That which in all these things makes us " more than conquerors," that which enables us even to take a pleasure " in infirmities, in reproaches, in distress, in necessities " ; that which is the balm under every suffering of this present time, is the undoubting con- viction of every truly spiritualized mind, that " all things work together for good to them that love God" : that " He in Whom vre trust will not suffer us to be tempted above that we are able " ; and that " neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, can sepai'ate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Preached — Cholderton, Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity, September 25, 1853. XIX. THE THREE CHILDREN IN THE FURNACE. " ShadracL, Meshach, and Abeduego answered and said to the king, Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up." — Daniel iii. 16-18. What a living faith in the unseen Providence of Almighty God must men have had who could answer a proud and cruel tyrant — one too who had their lives in his hand — in such words as these ! In spite of the dreadful alter- native to which their refusal to obey Nebuchadnezzar's idolatrous command exposed them, what a cheerful confidence breathes in every syllable they utter ; what a sustaining conviction of rectitude; what an unhesi- tating discernment of duty ; what a bold and unfaltering resolution to do that duty, let the consequences to themselves be what they may ! It is a striking picture. There, in that plain of Dura, stands an image of gold, threescore cubits high at whose gigantic feet the representatives of every nation that acknowledged the sovereignty of the great Babylon- 12 178 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. isli kin(T are seen to bow. There stood too the king; him- self; the mightiest monarch who had yet sat upon that throne ; the proud conqueror of Egypt, and Tyre, and Jerusalem, " whose greatness reached unto heaven, and his dominion to the end of the earth," watching, in the fulness of kingly pride, the abject creatures that bowed their bodies before the idol he had set up ; pluming himself perhaps on their absolute submission to his will, thinking how great a thing it was thus to lord it over the consciences of his fellow-men ; but never dreaming of a day when he, as well as the meanest subject he saw before him, wovdd have to give an ac- count to the Judge of all the earth of the use he had made of all these prerogatives and opportunities. Bred up, as he had been, in all the notions of an Oriental despot, it probably never once occurred to him that there would be found in all that vast assemblage any one rash or bold enough to resist his will. He looked for obedience to his commands, however un- reasonable, as a matter of course. He had never known the checks of constitutional law, and he expected that his behest would pass unquestioned now. He needed to be taught a lesson, and He in whose rule and governance are the hearts of kings saw fit to teach him in a strange way. From three men of that nation over which he had achieved his most signal triumph, from three weak captive Jews, he , learnt for the first time the lesson that there is One above who claims obedience before any earthly king, as whose vice-gerent he himself alone had any power, and the slightest intimations of Whose will have more THE THREE CHILDREN IN THE FURNACE. 179 weight with His faithful servants than all the threats and angry words of those who can indeed kill the body, but after that have no more that they can do- In the words I have borrowed for my text, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to acknowledge Nebuchadnezzar's sovereignty of the conscience, or to worship a creature instead of the Creator, " Who is over all, God blessed for evermore." There is a boldness in their words, bat no impertin- ence. -They do not forget the respect due to the office and person of a king, though they refuse absolutely to obey his command. If they are ready to submit to the doom of martyrdom it is only from the homage and allegiance which they pay to truth, and not from any desire to excite popular sympathy or commotion, at which our would-be modern martyrs aim. They jDut their cause simply in God's hand, feeling sure that as long as they had Him on their side they need not " fear what man could do unto them." They were not careful, they say, to cast about for an answer. They had no need to premeditate. It was given them from above what they ought to say. Their con- sciences instantaneously suggested the proper reply, and they declare their unalterable resolution not to com- ply with this idolatrous worship in so cheerful a tone that one might think they expected their answer to se- cure their deliverance instead of imperilling their lives. I do not mean to say that any of us living in England in the nineteenth century are likely to be exposed to such a trial as were these three men. But we should read these ancient histories to little profit if we could 12 2 180 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. not discern the application of which they are capable to our own trials and circumstances. So I think that these Hebrews may still be an example to many a Christian man who may much need their strength of faith, though he may never be called upon to encounter the exact form of their trial. For though the outward circumstances of our in- dividual probation differ infinitely, the inward prin- ciple that is to bear us through them is universally the same. No two men or women perhaps are tempted alike, but all are sustained alike, by the power of faith and hope " which entereth within the veil." Indeed St. Peter speaks of our discipline of suffering in language that may almost make us think he had this scene in the plain of Dura before his eyes. " Beloved," he says, " think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you. But rejoice, inas- much as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings ; that, when His glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy." Let me endeavour to adapt the lessons of this story to our own use, and to show you that this record of faith and constancy was not intended merely to make an interesting narrative, but was indeed written and may be applied " to our admonition, on whom the ends of the world are come." I think that one of the most obvious and at the same time most useful lessons that we should draw from it is, that we are not to suppose our conduct is right and laudable simply because it happens to have in its favour THE THREE CHILDREN IN THE FURNACE. 181 the maxims and fashions of the world. These may be very good ; but they are just as likely to be, and often are, very corrupt and bad. No really religious man takes his neighbour's fashions as his standard, or the current maxims as his guide. He refers them, as he does everything else, to the one unfailing criterion of right and wrong, of false and true — the law and the testimony : if they speak not according to this word, he reckons there is no light in them. These three Jews, if they had wished to deal deceit- fully with their consciences, might easily have stifled all uncomfortable sensations by the ready excuse, that to fall down before this image was a mere compliance with a fashion. Everybody else did it. There was no call on them to be over-scrupulous. It would be folly to run any risk for so trivial a point. Even if it were an offence, with so many to share it its guilt and punish- ment would be infinitesimally small. This is the way we are, each individually, in danger of deceiving ourselves every day. If Satan can only per- suade us, by any subtlety, to act and think like the careless world around us, he knows we are his both in body and soul. For though there are some classes of sins which the world treats with excessive and indeed unjust severity — not allowing even the sincerest repent- ance to restore the offender to his good name, or replace him in his once-forfeited position — there are others, to which it has more inclination of its own, on which it looks much more indulgently, and calls them by soft names, and says it is uncharitable to speak sternly about them, and would fain persuade us that they are 182 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. compatible with perfect respectability and with a very sufficient amount of religion. We Protestants are in the habit of finding fault with Papists for their vain distinction between venial and mortal sins : and yet, in our own practice and language, we are constantly doing exactly the same. We measure sins, not by their inherent sinfulness, not by the extent to which they trample on God's law, not by the abandonment of heart which they evince in the doer; but by an infinitely baser and more selfish standard — by their consequences to ourselves, by their departure from a fanciful, and often false, code which we call honour or fashion ; by the discredit which attaches to them ; by that shiftiug, variable rule which takes public opinion, not the Word of God — wretched conventionalities, not an enlightened conscience — for its direction and guidance. Surely, W'hen we stop for a moment to think what most men and women really are ; what a cold, heart- less, calculating, self-indulgent world this is ; how few of our neighbours seem in earnest to promote the cause of godliness in their families, and households, and parishes; w^hat poor and niggard sacrifices are laid upon the altar of duty ; how the idol of Self, in one form or another, is universally worshipped ; how little vital, heart-penetrating devotion there is in the fashionable customary religion of the day; when we can scarce at length discern a faithful servant of God here and there ; one who by a divine charm that he bears about him seems to have escaped the universal contagion of worldliness : it can be but sorry comfort to THE THREE CHILDREN IN THE FURNACE. 183 us to be able to say, " Well, there are thousands like ourselves : we are just as decent and God-fearing as half the people in the parish : if so and so is safe, I think I may consider myself so too." Ah ! if so and so is safe : but is he ? Perhaps he is measuring himself exactly in the same way by you. And so you are all en- couraging yourselves in a monstrous delusion because you will persist in taking up a false standard — the average of men instead of the pattern of Christ — and stunting down all your ideas of faith, and sacrifice, and duty, and worship, and self-control to these miserable worldly dimensions. We cannot really believe that this world, by whose fashions and maxims we are content to be led, is in the right after all. We cannot deliberately adopt the blasphemous language of those who say " The voice of the people is the voice of God." When has it ever been so since the earth was made ? When have the current languacre of men and the revelation of the Divine Will been in harmony ? What great Reformation in fact has there ever been where, I will not say the devout but even the philosophic, cannot trace the Almighty's sovereign hand controlling the madness of the people, educing good out of evil, moulding men's unruly passions into conformity with His eternal purposes, and, one scarcely knows how, maintaining truth and right at the very crisis when they seemed in utter danger of being overborne ? No : as in the researches of a merely human wisdom its mysteries reveal themselves only to a few, as it is only here and there we meet with a man who has 184 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. penetrated into the secret causes of things, and lives superior to the errors and prejudices of the day ; so in- finitely more in spiritual things is the truth of God hidden from the natural man, and he gropes his way in darkness, taking shadows for substances, misreading the signs of the times, tossed about by every blast of vain doctrine — in the emphatic words of St. Paul, " deceiving and being deceived." And it is by the maxims and opinions of these people that we are to be ruled. We are to act as they act and think as they think. We are to be as careless, as vain, as trivial, as unprofitable, as unprogressive as they are, and reckon ourselves safe, as though we were of God's elect, and " our seed within the covenant." We are to bow with them before the images of gold which are set up in our plains and cities, running as greedily as they do after gain, or pleasure, or vanity, and think we are in good company, and travelling to heaven by a safe, as it certainly is an easy, road ! So far from this, our very duty, as followers of Christ, is to protest, not simply by our words but by our lives, against those very things that we see going on all around us ; against those very sins of surfeiting, and drunkenness, and uncleanness, and swearing, and lying, and covetousness, and selfishness, and indifference, Avhich must effectually quench the smallest spark of true religion in the soul. The Christian's daily prayer is to be, not that he may be taken out of the world, but that he may be " kept from its evil," from its blindness, from its wilfulness, " from its putting sweet for bitter and bitter for sweet," from the worse than Egyptian THE THREE CHILDREN IN THE FURNACE. 185 darkness with which it is covered, so that men cannot see the destruction which is overhanging them, though it is nigh, even at the doors. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were Protestants in the true sense of the word — against all forms of false- hood, and profaneness, and idolatry; vindicating for God a true supremacy, and sustained themselves by the inward power of a living faith. I wish our English Protestantism was of the same kind. I wish it did not all evaporate in intemperate agitations, followed, by the necessary law of reaction, by a period of com- placent, undisturbed self-righteousness. When I speak of every follower of Christ being bound to be a Protestant, I do not mean that he must be familiar with the stock arguments against Popery or Dissent. I do not mean that he must condemn the Council of Trent, or be always quoting the Thirty-nine Articles, or think it part of his religious duty to call the Pope " Antichrist," or Rome " the city of harlots." I never knew much good come of calling hard names. I mean that his life must be Protestant — a continual contradic- tion to the vanities and delusions of his age ; a visible example of the power and fruits of faith, a standing witness of the truth of God ; a living conformity to the law of Christ ; a weighing all things in the balances of the sanctuary. This was the spirit of the Protestantism of Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Daniel. In this temper Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were content to yield their bodies to the flames, rather than surrender a truth ■which was to them the very stay and anchor of their 186 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. souls. There is nothing noisy, or agitating, or ostenta- tious in such a spirit. It is calm, because assured ; secure from the perils of false doctrine and unstead- fastness, because " fully persuaded in its own mind ; " bold to speak the truth, yet withal speaking it in love, because experience has proved that persecution and coercion in such cases alike fail of their purpose. He that would win souls to Christ must prove himself tendtr as well as wise. It is this kind of witness for Christ, and against the world, that every Christian, by virtue of his regenera- tion, is called upon to bear. No greater curse can happen to any religious community than the notion that the duty of " correction, reproof, and instruction in righteousness" belongs to tlie clergyman alone. Each in his place it is true, and with some differences perhaps of practical detail, but all in principle and spirit, all in aim and purpose, all by example and prayer, are to be " fellow-labourers with God " in the evangelization of mankind ; holding forth in their own conversation the word of life, as a light whose diffusive radiance may at once illuminate and warm the dark, drear places which may easily be found, if we take the trouble to look for them in our neighbourhood, ^osst/j^y even in the narrower circle of our own homes. That w^as a noble sentiment of Moses, when some one jealous of his honour told him that there were two men prophesying in the camp, and would have him forbid them. " And Moses said unto him, Enviest thou for my sake ? Would God that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put His Spirit upon THE THREE CHILDREN IN THE FURNACE. 187 them ! " It may be a glorious distinction to stand alone doing God's work, or, like Daniel and his three com- panions in Babylon, to be of the elect few who are uncontaminated by the universal unbelief and ungod- liness around them : but it is more glorious and more blessed still to be an instrument in God's band for propagating the same spirit. It is to every Christian man and woman that the apostolic exhortation was addressed, " Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him ; let him know, that he Avhich converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins." Here tlien let us see the application of this history to ourselves. What are we doing as parishioners, as householders, as parents, as masters, as employers, to bear a faithful witness to the truth of God in the face of an unbelieving and careless world ? Do we look upon our daily words and deeds as important not only to ourselves, in the way of forming habits and developing character, but as constituting, each one of them, more or less preponderance to that aggregate amount of good and evil which, in the most retired country village as truly as in the most thickly-peopled town, are battling together for the mastery ? Whether we have ever regarded it as such or not, this is our simple, primary duty. " For no man liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself." We are as members set in a body. It was God's purpose, we are told, in thus placing us, that " there should be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the 188 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. same care one for another." I am sure of this, that if we do not care for others, we cannot care, as we ought to do, for ou7'sclves. No man need ask for a surer proof of the unsatisfactory state of rehgion in his own soul than when he finds himself indifferent to the spiritual welfare of his brethren. Not a day of our lives probably passes in which we have not some opportunity of being "fellow-helpers of the truth," of sowing seed that may bring forth fruit to life eternal, if only we had the heart to embrace it. It is as absurd as it is mischievous to throw the responsibility of all this upon the clergyman. The most zealous minister can do but little towards building up God's spiritual temple, unless he has fellow-labourers among the laity : the help of parents bringing up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord ; the help of masters ruling well their own households ; the help of employers discountenancing what is corrupt and ungodly in their work-people, and encouraging what is seemly and decent, and sober ; the help of all striving together in prayer one for another, and for all saints, that having not been ashamed of Christ here. He may not be ashamed of us when He comes " in the glory of the Father with the holy angels." Preaclied — Cholderton, jSTineteentli Sunday after Trinity, October 2, 1853. XX. THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE LORD. " my people, remember now wliat Balak king of Moab consulted, and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him from Shittim unto Gilgal ; that ye may know the righteousness of the Lord. Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the High God 'i Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old ] Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil 1 Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul ? He hath shewed thee, man, what is good ; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ? " — Micah vi. 5-8, We must all feel that there is something very solemn and awakening in this scripture. It Avould be hard to find in the whole Bible, in the cornj^ass of so few verses, so distinct a declaration of what the prophet emphatically calls "the righteousness of the Lord." They do not seem to be his own words, or the immediate inspiration of the Holy Ghost that he is here uttering, but the traditional substance of a conversation held full seven hundred and fifty years before, between Balak king of Moab and Balaam the Mesopotamian diviner, whom that monarch fetched from the East to curse God's people Israel. I call it a traditional 190 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. conversation, because there is no mention of it where the story of Balaam is found. But it appears to have been preserved in the memory or in other records of the Jews, and is here appealed to by Mieah as a circumstance familiar to them all. No doubt much more j^fissed between Balaam and the king of Moab than Moses has in terms related. He only embodied in his history as much as was consistent with his plan. It is to the prophet Micah, confirming an ancient tradition with the stamp of divine authorit}-, that we are indebted for the preservation of this striking illustration of the doubts and difficulties that beset, and of the light and truth that guided, the steps of the men of old time. The king of Moab is represented as consulting the eastern seer on a point of personal religion. He would fain know how he could make himself acceptable in the sight of God, and secure an " inheritance among them that are sanctified." Though bred up in the habits of a fond and idolatrous superstition, his conscience seems to mistrust the efficacy of the means he had hitherto employed, and makes him anxious to ascertain, from one in whom he believed the Spirit of God to dwell, whether he had been trusting to a religious system that could jDrofit and deliver or no. The very tone of the questions seems to imply that there were painful doubts working in the mind of the questioner. He appears inwardly dissatisfied with the methods of propitiating the divine displeasure and attracting the divine blessing which he had used out- vjardly. He seems to feel the truth of what St. Paul THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE LORD. 191 states so forcibly — that it was not " possible that the blood of bulls and of goats could ever take away sin " ; that there was need of some better sacrifices than these ; that there must be something more deep, more personal, more heart-searching than this, or any other kind of formal services, to deserve the name of true religion. And so with this faint glimmering of truth breaking in upon his mind — discontented with what he was, yet unable of himself to solve the problem of his being — the heathen monarch comes to one whom he regarded as a prophet, and in whose mouth, at least for this once, God did put His word, to have his jDerplexities removed, and the path in which be should walk made clear. And from that prophet he got an answer which, even now, is pregnant with wisdom and instruction to every one that hath ears to hear. Surely it was not uttered for Balak's sake alone, but for ours too, who perhaps need it to the full as much as he. " He hath shewed thee, O man," so spake the prophet with more than royal dignity, as feeling himself charged wnth a higher than royal office, " lie hath shewed thee, O man, what is good." He hath shewed it thee in thy conscience, in thy heart of hearts, in those secret whispers and disquietudes which even now have prompted thee to question me : in thy nobler nature, in thy aspirations, in the very weariness thou seemest to feel at this endless round of carnal unsatisfying ordinances. " He hath shewed thee what is good ; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ? " Could there be a more high-toned utterance, a loftier morality, a more 192 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. evangelical counsel ? Pity that he who thus could speak spoke of what he never himself either aimed at or realized ! a mere talker and theorizer, who, while he could thus " preach to others," himself became, there is every reason to fear, " a castaway." And this is the weighty lesson that the words of the text teach us : that it is in the ordinary, everyday business of our lives, not in any amount of periodic customary service — in our weekly rather than our Sunday behaviour — that the range of true religion really lies, and that we may discover whether we do, in any practical saving sense, either knov: or do " the righteousness of the Lord." " To do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God," are duties that cannot be discharged in our seats at church, but in our homes ; in the dealings of our trade ; among our customers, our workpeople, our servants ; in the control we habitually keep over our tongues and tempers ; in the spirit of kindliness and charity which we carry into all the relations of life ; in the zeal with which we forward good works ; in the care we take to conquer all feelings of pride, and vanity, and envy, and fretfulness. We must not measure the spiritual progress, either of ourselves or others, by the frequency of our com- munions, or the number of times of our coming to church, or by liking to read now and then a chapter in our Bibles, or by our being able to talk readily about the love of Christ, or by anything that may be, and I fear often is, merely formal and outward, having no root in the heart, and bearing no fruit in the life. Like the corn that grows in our fields, the seed of grace must be THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE LORD. 193 first planted inwardly before it can bear fruit outwardly. We must judge of the good we have got from sacra- ments and church services by the increased power we feel we have gained to stand our ground against our three great spiritual enemies — the devil, the tiesh, and the world. If there is no progress in us, no growth, no daily recognition of the doctrine of the Cross, no more and more earnest endeavour to reach after the work of our high calling in Christ; if we are satisfied in our formalities, boastful of the regularity of our services, consciously accepting a low standard of life and con- versation, we may be sure that all our outward worshippings have but little profited us ; we have but been feeding ourselves as it were with the husks which the swine eat. Like the Jews in Jeremiah's day we have '' trusted in lying words, saying. The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord are these ; " as though we could be saved by sitting in church for a couple of hours on a Sunday, or by mechanically repeating prayers Avhich awaken no re- sponse in our hearts, or by listening to sermons which, however searchingly they may set forth God's counsel, we have made up our minds beforehand to disregard. I would have you judge of your spiritual state in the sight of God, of your love for Christ, and your hopes of heaven, by something more trustworthy, more substantial than this. The " assembling of ourselves together " for the con- gregational purpose of pra3^er and praise is represented in the Epistle to the Hebrews as a token of Cln'istian 13 194 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. men, a part of Christian duty. The receiving of Christ's Body and Blood in the Sacrament of His Last Supper is so essential an element in our religion, so indis- pensable a means of grace, that our Lord Himself has warned us that those who " do it not have no life in them." But these are the vieans of grace, and must not be confounded with its fruits. They are the ways and methods in which God bestows His favours upon us rather than the services in which He expects us in turn to manifest our love to Him. We come to church not so much rendering to God as receiving from Him. Public prayer and sacraments should be regarded rather as 'privileges than as duties ; except that all privileges become duties, when we recollect in Whose strength alone they can be done and how far exceeding all claim will be the amount and overflowing richness of their reward. Further, as these services of an outward worship are offerings that can be made at so slight a cost, often in so carnal a spirit, with so much hypocrisy and formalism, and with so little true devotion and sincerity, we must indeed feel that this must not be the standard by which to ascertain whether we have or not " tasted that the Lord is gracious," or to what extent we are growing up to the " measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." • No ; follow yourselves to your own homes and your daily occupations, and see how you behave yourselves there ! See whether you do indeed " do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God." These are large words, but they comprehend an immense range of I THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE LORD. 195 duties, and are susceptible of the minutest personal application, I do not take it that they are arranged casually, but in a natural and necessary order. Justice — mercy — humility : justice before mercy ; and the crown of both, humility ; as feeling that after all we have been able to do nothing of ourselves, but that all our grace and '' sufficiency is of God." We cannot suppose that sobriety, and purity, and contentment, and patience, and faith were meant to be disparaged, though they do not happen to be expressly named. Balaam is here giving to Balak rather a sample of the spirit in which God was to be served than enumerating all the excellences that go to make up the ideal of a religious man. He who is just will hardly think he may safely be intemperate or impure ; he who has learnt the lesson of genuine humility will also be no stranger to the influences of patience and con- tentment. See then how you spend your daily lives. See what fruit Christ's Gospel is bringing forth in your own homes. " Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith," by marking the company you keep, the language you utter, the indulgences you allow yourselves, the faith- fulness with which you discharge your daily employment, the spirit you carry into your dealings with your fellow-men, the principles upon which you govern your own households, the care with which you train your children, the forwardness with which you are ready to engage in every good word and work. These are signs and tokens which any of us may ascertain ; and in which it is next to impossible to be 13 2 196 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. mistaken. No man can think that oaths, or drunken- ness, or impurity, or selfishness, or peevish tempers, or envy, or slandering, or falsehood, or dishonesty are things compatible, I will not say with a high standard of religion, but with any amount of it that can minister hope or assurance to its professors at all. " The god of this world " must have effectually " blinded the eyes " of that man from whom the true power and influence of the Gospel is thus entirely hid. It is a mere mockery to bow ourselves before the High God with ever so much outward semblance of adoration while we neglect such elementary duties of circumspection and watch- fulness. But, remember, there is no use in feeling convinced of this, as you can hardly help being if you think seriously on the subject, without also acting on the feeling. Balaam felt it all. He knew the hollowness of these outward services standing alone. He could pray that the blessed end of the righteous might be his too. But he never strove to live the life of the righteous. While he talked of doing justice he was seeking " the wages of unricfhteousness," and his heart was exercised with covetous practices. While he spoke of loving mercy, he had come from his home for the express j^urpose of cursing a people who had never done him any harm. While he preached to Balak about walking humbly with God, he himself was in open rebellion against his Maker, Whose Spirit he had tempted and Whose warn- ings he had despised. Nothing is so easy as to tcdh about these things : the difficulty is to do them. Balaam's is perhaps the most THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE LORD. 197 melancholy instance of self-deceit that the Bible or the history of the world contains. A man pre-eminently enlightened to discern the truth, but with no heart to love the truth ! Better had it been for him " not to have known the way of righteousness " than, after he had known it, to " turn from the holy commandment delivered to him " ! Better shall it be for us too. Beware of the crying heresy of these latter days — hearing but not doing the Word. We live in an age of high profession, and there is all the greater need of self- mistrust and watchfulness. We find so many people thinking and speaking well of themselves, of whose ways the Bible does not speak well, that there may be some danger to ourselves too, as to St. Peter at Antioch, of being " carried away with the like dissimulation." We can have no doubt of the general spirit in which God is to be served, and if we once fully and fairly comprehend that, we shall have no difficulty in accom- modating it as a rule to our individual case and cir- cumstances. It is far better, because it is far more practical, that we should form our own principles of action than take them up second-hand at the mouth of another. Each case requires special consideration, and perhaps somewhat different treatment. The Gospel is a law of liberty, and so long as we set about the work in an honest and good heart, not trusting to ourselves, but looking for hght and guidance from God, we are not likely to miss the road. I have done little more than offer suggestions, which I wish you to follow up each for yourselves. Remember that it is a weighty matter: one that will not brook 108 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. delay : one that cannot be attended to on a sick-bed : one that is even now settling itself for eternal good or evil in our souls. The hardening of the heart is a sure, though subtle, process. It is brought about, St. Paul tells us, by the deceitfulness of sin, by its putting on false appearances, and persuading us that we have plenty of time and it will be all right in the end ; and that as we are plainly in the company of so many decent, respectable people we cannot be altogether wrong. I have warned you of this snare of "respectability." Balaam was a most respectable man, and highly thought of in his neighbourhood. The Bible tells us what God thought of him. Whether we think it worth while to mark the fact or not, our feet are silently and daily advancincr either heavenwards or hellwards. We cannot stand still in a kind of neutral ground of " decency." It is worth while to ascertain in which direction we are moving. The Bible will give us a thousand tests for doing so. There is the light if you choose to go to it. " He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good : and what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ? " Do this first and then thou wilt find that a principle has taken root in thy heart, which will prevent thy leaving anything else undone. Preached — Cholderton, Twentieth Sunday after Trinity, October 9, 1853. XXI. STANDING ON OUR WATCH. " I will stand upon my watch." — Habakkuk ii. 1. The prophet's language is probably figurative, but it describes the attitude of a man expecting a message from God, and, with no more than a becoming concern, preparing himself to receive it. It was the attitude of Elijah when he was bid "go forth" out of the cave in which he had sought refuge at Horeb, and stand upon the mount before the Lord : or of Moses when, with the two tables of stone in his hand, he stood in the cleft of the rock of Sinai, and saw the glory of the Lord " pass by " before him in a cloud. Whether any such revelation of the divine presence was vouchsafed or not to the prophet Habakkuk we cannot pretend to say ; but we know that he received a supernatural communication, addressed either to his outward ear or to his inner heart, of the approach of which he was previously aware, and which awakened in his breast deep thoughts of anxiety — I had almost said of fear. He felt no doubt, as Jacob and Gideon had felt before, that it was an awful thing for one so frail 200 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. and imperfect as even the best of men to be brought into such close communion with the " High and Holy One Who inhabiteth eternity." He knew not what the meeting portended, or what the issue of it might be, but one thing he did know : that he who is summoned to meet his God has indeed too much need to question himself anxiously and seriously ; to " search and try the ground of his heart," to sanctify himself and make himself clean : and he was thankful that any time of preparation was allowed, and that he was not hurried off as by a whirlwind into the immediate presence of the Great Father, in Whom he professed to believe, though as yet he had never seen Him. You must, I think, have anticipated the application of all this to ourselves. You must have recalled to your memories the thousand passages in the New Testament where watchfulness, sobriety, circumspection, carefulness, are insisted upon again and again as the normal con- dition of a Christian ; as the very posture and state indicated by the laws of our being ; as the merest, commonest, earthliest prudence ; as " the one thing needful," without which the day of the Lord is sure to come on us unawares. It is not only clergymen that are bidden to watch. If any of you have been entertaining the notion that a clergyman, by virtue of his office, is bound to be a more watchful, circumspect person than any other Christian man or woman : if you fancy that a less degree of personal holiness will do for his parishioners than for him ; you are encouraging a delusion extremely perilous and utterly unscriptural. The law by which we shall STANDING ON OUR WATCH. 201 all be judged is the same. You have exactly the same means of attaining personal inwrought graces as I. The one unvarying note of the Scriptures is that we shall one and all " stand before the throne," to receive, according as our works have been, our eternal portion of weal or woe. The example of Habakkuk, though a prophet, ought to be of universal influence, as it is of universal appli- cation. It is not so much our duty as our interest — though all duties involve our highest, truest interests — to " stand upon our watch," and as it were " set us upon a tower, and watch to see what He will say unto us, and what we shall answer when we are reproved." And the reason and wisdom of such a posture is obvious. We may see in a thousand instances every day of our lives the verification of our Saviour's words that " He cometh as a thief," unexpectedly, and when men are not looking for Him ; and that when people are speaking of " peace, and taking their ease " for many years, in a single night perhaps " their soul is required" of them. I do not mean that what are called " sudden deaths" are common, though even they are frequent enough to act as a warning aud indication of the general law that I have stated. But I call a notice of a few weeks' or even a few months' illness a very sudden one when the whole previous life has been spent in carelessness ; when we have left everything to do to these last fleeting restless hours ; when the whole work of repentance and con- version has to be not completed only, but begun from the very beginning ; when we have all along been quieting our consciences with the thought that we had 202 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. plenty of time before us ; when the time which promised to be so suitable for our preparation for eternity is now arrived, and we find, not only that it is reduced to a few weeks or days, but that it is of all others the most un- fitted for the work we had designed to accomplish in it. Habits are not formed in a moment ; still less can they be formed in an hour of weakness and failing powers, when they need all a strong man's force and energy for their development. Every death is sudden tvhich is not the crown of a ivcll-spcnt life. Every man goes to his grave unprepared who has not realised and acted on the Apostle's warning of "walking circumspectly, redeeming the time, because the days are evil." If we did habitually place ourselves in this post and attitude of watchfulness we should often discern the tokens of our Lord's nearness to us, and catch the notes of His voice in utterances as distinct as ever were those which filled the heart of the rapt Jewish prophet with fear and awe. The religiously trained mind looks upon every circumstance of life as a divine encourage- ment or a divine warning. To such a man there is no such thin