1, tii\}fm^^r^^'^tniij*i^j;^n^f^^fnfnt.},. LIBRARY 'of the University of California, Mrs. SARAH P. WALSWORTH. Received October, 1894. <^ccessions No,S^() 3$ . Class No, it ^ Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/ateventidediscouOOadamrich Y,^^1 THT. - ^ JiCjlcU^. AT EVENTIDE. DISCOURSES BY NEHEMIAH ADAMS D. D., II Senior Pastor of Union Church, Boston. BOSTON: D. LOTHROP AND COMPANY, FBANKLIK ST., COENER OF HAWLEY. A^ OF XILS Copyright by D. LOTHROP & CO. 1877. THE PAST AND PRESENT MEMBERS OF UNION CHURCH, BOSTON, AND TO MY BRETHREN IN THE MINISTRY, THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED BV NEHEMIAH ADAMS. ' 0? THE >^ Itjhitbesitt; Introductory Note. TuE Publication of this Volume of Ser- mons, ALL PREACHED NEAR THE CLOSE OF AN ACTIVE MINISTRY OF NEARLY FIFTY YEARS, IS ENTIRELY DUE TO THE FOLLOWING KIND AND COM- PLIMENTARY LETTERS: ^(^ OF THE ^ [ufivbrsitt; CORRESPONDENCE. Charleston, South Carolina. > January 22, 1874. ) Rev. Nehemiah Adams D. D., Boston, Mass. Dear Sir and Brother : The undersigned, Min- isters of the Gospel and Pastors of congregations in this city, remember with sentiments of unfeigned gratitude and pleasure, the visit you paid to our city, and the services you performed in our several churches, whilst you were the guest of your hon- ored son, our esteemed brother in Christ, Rev. William H. Adams. The frequent allusions to the pleasure and profit which your numerous friends derived from your ministrations whilst among us, have suggested the propriety of a more tangible memorial of these ser- vices than our unaided memories afford ; hence we have concluded to ask — if consistent with your iv COERESPONDENCE. V views — for the publication of the sermons prea^^hed in the different Churches, and in the Orphans' Chapel of this city, as well as those which have been prepared for several occasions when the de- livery of them was prevented by Providential inter- positions. In addition to the treasure we hope to possess in having your labors in this place reduced to this permanent form, we also desire on our part, to bear grateful testimony to your eminent services for the truth as it is in Jesus. Fof the space of half a century your voice and pen have been most industriously employed in de- fence of "the faith once delivered unto the saints," and in your hands the Gospel trumpet has never given an uncertain sound. We would therefore feel honored in having our churches and ourselves connected, however re- motely, with the liistory of a servant of Christ so justly distinguished as yourself. ******** In making this request, we would also cherish the hope that the publication of a book written by a Boston Divine, and its publication solicited by Charleston Ministers, may tend to the promotion of that "i^eace on earth and good will toward men," which is such a cardinal element in our holy reli- gion, and such an important desideratum in our com- mon country. With prayers for your continued health and use- VI COEEESPONDENCE. fulness, and with considerations of highest respect and esteem, We remain. Yours in the Gospel, TTT c -r»/-iTTnvT A XT f Pastor of the Wentworth W. S. BOWMAN, I g^ Lutheran Church. -r T /-.T-r. A-o-i^-ni ATT ( Pastor of Zion Presbyte- J. L. GIRARDEAU, | ,.;^„ chuich, Glebe St. C. S. VEDDER, {P'^^'°'- "^church^"®""""* ( Pastor of the Citadel ( Square Baptist Church. , ( Pastor of the Second Pres- ( byterian Church. J. A. CriAMBLISS, G. R BKACKETT, T?TrTT'r>-n ^MAT^T iP''^stor of the Spring St. RICHDD. bMAKl, ^ M. E. Church, South. J. T. WIGHTMAX, W. C. DANA, T. W. DOSH, L. H. SHUCK, X (Pastor of the Bethel M. I E. Church, South. ( Pastor of the Central Pres- ( , byterian Church. ( Pastor of St. John's Evan- ( gelical Lutheran Church. ( Pastor of the First Baptist \ Church. REPLY. Boston, February 3, 1874. To the Rev. W. S. Bowman ayid others^ Pastors of EvangelicaZ Churches in Charleston, S. C, Deak Brethren : Your letter of January 22, was read by me with a truly grateful heart. Your names, each of them, are associated with pleasurable recollec- tions of personal intercourse which can never fade from my memory, and your references to niiy visit among you last year will be a constant source of pleasure. The request which you so kindly make for the Sermons which I 23reached to your congre- gations shall be considered. Meanwhile accept the assurance of my wai*mest affection, with prayers for your continued prosperity. Most truly, Your friend and brother in Christ, N. ADAMS, vii Viii EEtLY. Letter from the Rev. Prop. Phelps of Andover Theological ^Seminary. Andover, Mass., February 7, 1876. N. Adams, D. D. : Dear brother, I am not sure that this letter is not a " twice told tale," — the object of it has been so often in my mind. I have read to-day, for my own comfort one of your own sermons in the vol- ume " Christ a Friend," and it suggests to me as your books have done a hundred times before, the query whether you have not among your manuscrij^t sermons, many which if published, would be an ad- dition to our homilitic literature. I have for many years recommended your sermons to my classes as illustrating a department of that literature which few sermons in the language illustrate as well. I have only wished that we had more of them in print. And now that the Biblical element in preaching is receiving increased attention, I am confident that a fresh volume of sermons from you would fall in with that reform in the pulpit, and be well received. I tell my pupils "Do this, do that, with your texts, preach thus and talk so, in your discourses;" and over and over again they ask me, " Who does it? Can you point us to the preacher who i)reaches so ? " I often direct them to your two volumes of Sermons and wish they were twenty. Will you not look over your silent drawers of manuscript, and REPLY. IX see if there is not something there which the Cliurch of Christ wants ? Hoping th more pre- cious than of gold which perisheth though it be tried with fire and was found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ. II. The cross of Christ is the Divine TESTIMONY TO MAN, NOT ONLY THAT HE MAY, BUT THAT HE MUST LOVE GOD. There seems to be an argument on this point, addressed to man as an intellectual being, in the three epistles of John. That man had written "the fourth Gospel," as free thinkers call it, some of whom would sacrifice much could they undermine the confidence of men in its apostolic HAVE WE PERMISSION TO LOVE GOD ? 47 authority. He had seen visions beyond the ex- perience of all the prophets. Now lie comes to write some farewell lines to the people of God in all ages. What mighty work shall that be which is to crown his earthly labors ? Some Epistle to the Romans, perhaps ; or, it is the Epistle to the Hebrews, whose opening chapter always seems like the tread of battalions. Instead of this, there is nothing in all the New Testament of more artless simplicity than those three epistles of John. It is given to him in those epistles to dwell upon this : God is love ; to enjoin upon Christians, not that they remember one and an- other of the important texts of the Christian faith, but that we have known and believed the love which God has toward us. God is not wisdom, nor power, nor holiness, nor justice ; though each of these attributes in him is infinite ; but the governing principle, motive, end, in his character is love. Strange would it be if love to God were not insisted on as the governing principle in his intelligent creatures, in man made after his own image and likeness, especially in the second birth conferred upon him by the Holy Ghost, the third person in the God- head, the author of the new creation. The Holy Ghost is the author of the human nature of Christ. Shall he be the author of Incarnate Love, yet fail to make man, renewed, for whom 48 HAVE WE PEKMISSION TO LOVE GOD ? Divine love is made incarnate, partaker of love to God? Shall man, his new creation, be a cold, phlegmatic, intellectnal being ? See man's Redeemer an infant, then a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, with no certain place where he could lay his head, despised and rejected of men, enduring every form of con- tumely, bound, buffeted, crowned Avith thorns ; consider him who endured such contradiction of sinners against himself; say, " He loved me and gave himself for me ; " recount each sorrow which he carried for us; then ask. From what region of the earth did a man proceed who pro- pounded to us the question, Have we permission to love God ? We would in reply counsel him to consider that marvellous sentence in the writ- iugs of the Apostle Paul who breaks forth with this strange utterance while sending^ messages of affection to the Corinthians : " If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ let him be anathema, maranatha." Let him explain why the absence of love to Christ should deserve denunciation ; and why may not the absence of love to God be equally criminal ? May we be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height ; and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that we may be filled with all the fulness of God. HAVE WE PERMISSION TO LOVE GOD ? 49 Nothing will probably occupy the thoughts of some through eternity with more profound as- tonishment than that they ever had to be asked twice to love God, except it be that God conde- scended to ask them twice to love him. Did the Almighty ever receive a refusal or neglect from me, and ask me a second time to love him ? Has he asked twice for my heart and asked in vain ? If the Final Judge pronounces upon one of us the sentence, " Depart from me," it will be the occasion of everlasting astonishment to that soul that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost could severally and together say to him, " How often would 1 have gathered 3'ou — and ye would not." Let this appeal now prevail. If not, God grant that it may not prove to be the last. III. PAUL'S ESTIMATE OF HIMSELF BE^ FORE AND AFTER CONVERSION, " If any man thinketh that he hath whereof he might glory in the flesh, I more.'' " But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ.'' — Phil. 3 : 4, 7. IN these words we have the apostle's different opinion of himself before and after conver- sion. We could not succeed in finding a better spec- imen of an apparently religious man before con- version, than Saul. He had deep reverence for God. He observed all the requirements of the faith in which he was brought up. We proba- bly err if we think that his conduct toward Christians was from a blood-thirsty disposition. It was zeal for his religion that made him a per- secutor. It grieved him to think that the Chris- tians should seek to overturn such a religion as Moses had received from God. No miracles claimed to be wrought by Christ, he thought (50) BEFORE AND AFTER CONVERSION. 51 could go beyond the miracles of the Old Testa- ment. That religion was built on miracles, be- ginning with Israel in Egypt, the burning bush, the Red Sea, Sinai, Horeb, the conquest of Ca- naan, Mount Ilor and Nebo. The idea that a man who had been crucified between two thieves, while his timid followers fled, should be deified, after being stolen away from his sepulchre, all power in heaven and on earth be claimed for him ; that such men as Jo- seph of Arimathea, Nicodemus a ruler, and Stephen, should be duped by him, only exasper- ated him ; he felt that strong measures were needed to crush the growing delusion. Not from mere love of giving pain, but from zeal for God, he became a persecutor. When it became necessary to put such a man as Stephen to death, he was glad, no doubt, that natural courage did not fail ; he consented to it, and kept the raiment of them that slew him. In all this, he was still an accomplished scholar, a prominent member of Jewish society, but an un- believer, which in view of demonstrative evi- dence was inexcusable. Yet if any one had ac- cused him of cruelty from the love of giving pain, no doubt he would have resented it, and would have defended himself by setting forth the enormous imposture which he would say he was piously seeking to expose. 52 Paul's estimate of himself No one can read the religious papers of our times in days of high rehgious excitement, with- out seeing how far even cultivated men can go in opposing others who differ from them. Let some one who has become prominent in the com- munity as a champion of their sect become a con- vert to an opposite faith, and you will see in the studied sarcasms of some, perhaps their vituper- ation, open pity, the abandonment of him to what they consider deserved neglect, not to say contempt, for daring to impugn their faith. If these things are done in our day by those who claim to be Christians, we cannot wonder that the growing success of the Nazarene's supposed im- posture, should have carried even such a man as Saul of Tarsus beyond the bounds of humanity. All this time he was a liberal scholar, a polite, courteous, and in private, kind man. He could talk about Moses and the prophets, the Levitical law, the ceremonies of religion, the rules which ought to regulate one's behaviour in society, how much mint, anise, and cummin were a proper meas- ure of one's piety, if he wished to be scrupulous in keeping the law. It was a great satisfaction to him that all the externals of his religious his- tory were so unexceptionable. There was no question that he had been cir- cumcised the eighth day ; his lineage was un- doubted ; the Scribes had verified it ; in the BEFORE AND AFTER CONVERSION. 53 tribe of Benjamin he delighted to find his name written. Young people loved to be told that they were of the tribe of " little Benjamin ; " they could not but feel even when grown up that there was fondness on the part of Provi- dence for all of that tribe. Young Saul had proved to the High Priest and all the. estate of the elders that he was a true Israelite of that tribe. All the paths of distinc- tion were open to him ; but more than all, liis pharisaic strictness in keeping the law, joined to his unquestionable Jewish descent, and his ar- dent piety evinced by his being willing to perse- cute for the defence of Moses and the prophets ; his determination to uphold the religion of the fathers, cost him what it might on the score of personal feelkig, made him willing to challenge comparison with any young religionist the world over. Indeed, from what we know of Paul in his writings we are ready to believe that all which he says of himself in the text is far from boast- ing. For we may venture to say that the world fails to furnish us with a more lovely natural character than he evidently possessed. We may not suppose that he grew at once from a malig- nant fiend to such a perfect specimen of a man as his epistles show him to be. He must have had in him the germ of those remarkable quali- 64 ties wliicli he manifested in his intercourse with the Christians of his day. We infer from his writings that he suffered greatly from the tem- pers of men ; that the behaviour; of some profes- sing to be Christians, was irksome to him in the extreme ; yet can we anywhere find such great- ness as marks his words of reproof? Instead of studying Lord Chesterfield for prin- ciples of politeness in our intercourse with one another, it may be safely said, that a careful ob- servance of the treatment by Paul, of people who had given him occasion for offence, is the best guide to men and manners, to that true polite- ness which springs from benevolence. One can- not read, for example, the words of Paul to the Corinthian Christians, and remember their con- duct at the Lord's table, and not wonder at the kindness which prevails in his reproofs. Paul must have had in his natural character a founda- tion for such things as he here and elsewhere ex- hibits ; much as he owed to sovereign grace we feel that he was a man greatly to be loved, and worthy to be studied ; he could not by imitation have acquired at once those traits of character which we find in his writings. Judging from the effects of conversion since his day, we are made to feel that he must have had many amia- ble traits either by nature or education. At the risk of seeming to digress from my sub- BEFORE AND AFTER CONVERSION. 55 ject, I feel constrained to say that we greatly err if we let our children go at large in the world with evil companions, or furnish them with money to gratify every expensive, worldly taste, neglecting to restrain them, and to bring them up after a godly sort, then, laying the blame of their not being converted, on ministers. Should they be converted we must not wonder to see them chastened by the hand of covenant love. If we spare the rod, God has one which he will surely use with our children, if he loves them. He will take them in hand, and, in dealing severely with them, break our hearts also. We see in Paul the beautiful effects of paren- tal culture. It seems, as though there had been verified to his parents the quaint saying, " Fill the waterpots with water and Christ will turn it into wine." Give the children right moral train-, ing, not neglecting it because it is not " the one thing needful," in the comparative sense of that term. Though the fruit may not be seen at once, it will be seen when regenerating grace is given in answer to prevailing prayer. But to return. Here we have a man who by nature and education is a model man. The mor- alists, the religionists of that day would place an}^ crown on his head which his ambition would have reached after. Indeed I shall gain the as- bQ Paul's estimate of himself sent of all when I say, — let young Saul of Tar- sus, the unconverted Saul, now appear in some parts of our country, and it would be deemed il- liberal, even bigoted, not to receive him into full communion in many of our religious circles. His differences of opinion on subjects of a relig- ious nature would be treated as mere matters of speculation ; it would be said, " If such a man cannot be saved, who will be ? Show us a pro- fessed Christian who is such an example of the virtues, the graces of character, of all which adorns humanity. " Listen to his lectures. The eloquence of Isaiah, the grace of Ecclesiastes, the tone of the old desert rhetoric of Moses and Elijah appear in his speech. Can he not be persuaded to modify his speculative belief about Christianity a little, that we may settle him over one of our churches? What audiences he would draw ! What a reve- nue would flow into that parish ! " Thus he would be the most admired of preachers, unless some accomplished Hindoo, for example, should arise, conceding things to Jesus Christ as a teacher ; and then the young Jew would prove to be superseded. All this excellence of natural character by it- self, however, is of no avail before God. Some would say. If Saul were such a man as you de- scribe, what need had he of being regenerated ? BEFORE AND AFTER CONVERSION. 57 Paul shall answer. We will now see this joiing Jew in the fulness of his attainments as a model man, casting it all away as a ground of justification, and, to use his most expressing fig- ure, counting it but dung. But tell us not that he has now become a fanatic, that he has gone from the extreme of pharisaism. Unless we are ready to believe that such a man became in one day a bigot, for nothing, yea, worse than nothing, for stripes, imprisonment, stoning, wearisome journeys, the loss of professional reputation, his standing as a scholar gone, death everywhere threatening him, we must candidly inquire, what is the explanation of so mysterious a change ? His writings prove beyond suspicion that he is upright, and not only so, but severely logical in all this ; for was the epistle to the Romans writ- ten by a fanatic ? Does the book of Acts record any vagaries ? It is an unvarnished tale of Saul's conversion by the appearance to him of Jesus Christ with a light at noon surpassing the brightness of the sun, with a superhuman voice, saying, " Why persecutest thou me ? " We can- not withhold our belief from the declaration, that straightway he preached in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God. We find the burden of his doctrine from that time till his death to be, that " this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Jesus 58 Paul's estimati^ of himself * Christ came into the world to save sinners," "and that for this cause he obtained mercy, that Jesus Christ might sliow forth in him a pattern of all long-suffering to them who should hereafter be- lieve on him to life everlasting." Four words contain the burden of his message : "Christ died for us." Going deeper into the explanation of the plan of salvation we find him dwelling con- stantly on this, that simply believing on Christ saves us ; that believing on Christ is imputed to a sinner for righteousness; so that pardon is given for nothing except the taking of it in the ordinary way in which a guilty person accepts pardon. Eternal life is a gift; this must be received freely, not be paid for by meritorious works on the part of the sinner. Then we learn from him that his previous good character, his excellence as a man was what he calls the righteousness which is of the law ; not the righteousness which is of faith ; that a man may strive to have the righteousness which is of the law, but it will perish ; that he tried the plan of being good as the way to be saved, but suffered intensely in do- ing it ; for this was his experience : "I find a law in my members warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me from the BEFORE AND AFTER CONVERSION. 59 body of this death ? " All the time so moml, yet so wretched ! Here is his answer to the ques- tion, " Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord." You would, perhaps, expect merely to find this man confessing only that he had made a mistake ; that now he had gained more light, and in consequence had changed his opinion concerning Jesus of Nazareth, that he still in- sisted on the moral virtues as the ground of sal- vation, taking Christ as an excellent teacher, admitting that the Sermon on the Mount was an improvement on the old law. You would, per- haps, look to see him come forth under the name of " the reformed Jew," retaining all his old opinions as to the way to be saved, admitting merely that Christ had given us more light than Moses. Nothing could be further from tlie truth. We may be surprised to find how he calls his ^hole past experience by severe names : " What things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea, doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things." And what things does it ap- pear that he includes in the expression, " gain to me ? " The answer to this important question 60 Paul's estimate of himself is seen in ascertaining the things for which he ex- changed them^ Because these were the op- posites of the things which were " gain to him." We find him prizing the following things as pre- eminent beyond any thing which he ever was, or possessed, or knew before : — The first which he specified is, To know Christ, " That I may know him." That the last thing which once he could have desired, should now be the first object in this enumeration is wonderful. His writings tell us what he had found Christ to be ; instead of an imposter, " God manifest in the flesh, seen of angels, preached unto the Gen- tiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory." Worship paid to Christ now took the place of contempt ; love supplanted hatred ; gratitude was the new, strange emotion which ruled in his feelings toward Him. He began at once to study a theme which was to be his employment for- ever, — the God-man, instead of an imposter, God manifest in the flesh, instead of a pretender. To know him and the power of his resurrection ; which opened to the mind of Paul the future eternal state of souls, the truth of which even if known by him before, now shone in his mind with the brightness of a sun. Never had he before such contemplations as this revelation of the resurrection seems to have BEFORE AND AFTER CONVERSION. 61 given : for he became at once enthusiastic in his dehght : " If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead." The prospect of being raised from the dead by the Lord Jesus, with a body like unto his Saviour's glorious body captivated him ; " it so filled his thoughts that nothing else seemed to bear any comparison with it : "I shall rise from the dead with a body like Christ's;" that expectation became his ruling mo- tive. He who before had such an aversion to the name of Christ that he entered into houses with authority from the rulers, dragging men and women to prison, compelling them by tor- ture to blaspheme the name of Jesus, now mak- ing it his chief joy " to know him and the power of his resurrection," when he would have a body " like unto hiis glorious body," is a marvel which even fiction has nothing to surpass. The fruit of it was a desire to have a " fellowship with him in his sufferings," longing to be like Christ to such an extent that he was glad even to be beaten, to be scourged for his name's sake ; even to be made " conformable unto his death." We have only to read passages from his pen such as the following, to see the secret of his en- thusiasm about Christ: "Who loved me and gave himself for me." " Kemember them that have the rule over you." " Whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation: 62 PAUL'S ESTIMATE OF HIMSELF Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever." " I can do all thing^s throuofh Christ Avhich strengtheneth me." " Who shall separate us from the love of Christ ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or nakedness, or peril, or sword ? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us." This wonderful change was not by a gradual process of amendment; it was an instantaneous change. "Suddenly there shone upon him a light from heaven above the brightness of the sun.'' As one brought to life has his powers of body and nlind put in action, though for a few days feebly, yet each hour gaining strength, so this marvel of regenerating grace became a new creature, "and straightway he preached Chiist in the synagogues that he was the Son of God." Let any one of us imagine a change of any kind to happen to him. Suppose yourself to be invested with a power to read strange languages. A friend lately gave me a book consisting of one of the creeds composed of twenty-four articles, printed in thirty-three tongues. A few of them I could read, the rest were unintelligible, though in the English characters, but the larger part of them, the Russian, the Chinese, the Assyrian, the Ethiopic, were in strange letters. Suppose that a power were given you at once to read such BEFORE AND AFTER CONVERSION. 63 a book from beginning to end, or that you had the ability to travel from star to star ; or, sup- pose that any other bodily or mental faculty equally marvelous, became j^ours to-day at noon, and in a week you found yourself using these faculties as familiarly as though you had always possessed them. Paul thus -suddenly found himself worship- ping, loving, and with all his mind and strength serving a man of Galilee, who he knew had been nailed to a cross between thieves, then was placed in a tomb, and stolen from it, he believed, by his friends, whom he himself was engaged but lately in tempting, while torturing them to blas- pheme. Standing chief among equals he had the pre- eminence, and kept the raiment of the men who stoned the first Christian martyr. In two or three weeks, or less, he was preaching in the synagogues that this same Jesus is the Son of God. Such is converting grace ; in all men the same, notwithstanding the phenomenal circum- stances may be wanting ; yet suUstantially, the change is in every regenerated man the same. We perceive that one who had experienced it, must have had a different estimate of himself before and after it took place. Two things appear to have be en the secret of the power wrought by Ol^ofl^^^^e mind of Paul. ^r^^ ^ ^'^' ^'*^ ^ufivbrsitt; ^rr^Tut^^ 64 Paul's estimate of himself I. Christ made him feel for the first TIME THAT HE WAS A SINNER. That was a new idea to liim. He a sinner? He had never sinned, he thought, beyond the common frailties of men. To atone for this, he had fasted, worn broad passages of Scripture on his dress, kept the Levitical law punctiliously, persecuted the Christians who offended against the religion of the Old Testament. Hear the man that once had no idea that he could be classed among sinners, afterward say, "Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief." We hear him who once had such an estimate of himself as this, " touching the righteousness which is of the law, blameless," afterward say, "in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing." How can we account for this? There is no such teacher of self knowledge as Christ. When he takes possession of the soul, he makes a light shine through it brighter than the sun. "All the churches shall know that I am he that searcheth the hearts and trieth the reins of the children of men." Simeon said to his mother, "This Child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel, and tliat the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed." The woman of Sama- ria understood this when she left her water pot BEFORE AND AFTEE CONVERSION. 65 at the well and went into the city and said, " Come, see a man that told me all that ever I did ; is not this the Christ ? " I quote the language of learned men from their biographies, that the disclosures made to them under conviction of sin has opened to them a knowledge of their nature more than they have learned from books. Said an eminent man who late in life became a Christian, "I once thought myself as good as any who lived, or had lived ; but in one day, reading the New Testament, I suddenly became convinced that probably thei'e never was a heart which was worse than mine." So Paul : " I was alive without the law once ; but when the commandment came sin revived and I died." All who have passed through this experience declare, that the belief of the aton- ing death of Christ for sin, brings into the mind a marvelous experience. Everything seems to be revolutionized, and all this in consequence of perceiving " how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. Finding himself under condemnation as a sinner with no means of recovery, II, Paxil discovered that through faith IN Christ a righteousness is provided for the sinner. 66 PAUL S ESTIMATE OF HIMSELF This is safer than the righteousness which Adam had, or the angels that sinned ; for Adam and fallen angels lost their original righteous- ness: Dr Watts says : " He raised me from the deep of sin, The gates of gaping hell. And fixed my standing more secure Than 'twas before I fell." For the righteousness which is imputed to one who believes in Christ cannot be lost ; it is " the righteousness which is of God by faith," not of man, by his works. So that it is better than the state of the first parents of our race, better than that of the angels who stood on their original sinlessness. Therefore, Paul made this the theme of his principal epistle, the Epistle to the Romans. Salvation by faith in Christ is thence- forth his theme. Through life it was uppermost in his thoughts. I cannot illustrate it better than by the following case. I was called to see an intelligent young lady who was sup- posed to be near her end. Though I Avent as soon as requested, she exclaimed, " You have come too late ! " adding, that she had sin- ned away the day of grace. I told her that I would disprove this by one passage of Scripture ; but as I was saying this, the mother, a Christian woman, interrupted me by asking that I would not sit so near the bed as to touch the bed BEFOEE AND APTER CONVEESION. 67 clothes, for the patient liad a brain fever, and the least jar or touch seemed almost to distract her. The passage, I said, was this : " To him that worketh not, but belie veth on him that jus- tifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted to him for rigliteousness." Helpless as she was, she turned herself over in the bed and said, " What I are such words in the Bible ? Say them again." After repeating them, I said, " If one feels that he has nothing to offer to God, but simply puts his trust in Him who died for him, pleading His merits instead of his own, his faith is imputed to him for righteousness. A calm came over lier troubled thoughts — she fell into a peaceful sleep. I said to her, on her recovery, as Paul said, " Eneas, Jesus Christ maketh thee whole." We meet with many who^are acknowledged to be eminently moral people, patterns of amiable tempers, generous, and as Paul said of himself, " blameless." He tells us that, before his conversion, he was as good as they. " If any other man thinketh that lie hath whereof he may trust in the flesh, I more." He felt that he was so good that he was willing to have Stephen put to death: "and when the blood of the martyr Stephen was shed, I also was consenting unto his death, and kept the raiment of them that slew him." In one hour he met with a change which made him a 68 PAUL'S ESTIMATE OF HIMSELF new man, because he became acquainted with Jesus Christ as the atoning Saviour. We infer from his preaching that the impres- sion which Christ made upon him was, that he came into the world to save sinners. Tiiis made him feel that he was a sinner ; that his righteous- ness was worthless ; he could not be saved by it ; while he had Avhereof to glory, yet not in the sight of God. When he came to see his need of perfeciion in order to be justified, he saw that it was not attainable by him ; that it was pro- vided for sinners by God, an imputed righteous- ness constituted by the merits of the Saviour ; a righteousness without works, perfection imputed to one deserving of hell, a constructive perfec- tion through faith in him who imputes his merits to the sinner that believes in him, and reckons faith for righteousness. Such is the plan of sal- vation by Christ, that it is declared to be " the power of God and the wisdom of God." The disclosure to him of this way of justifica- tion made him feel as nothing else ever did that he might be a sinner indeed, if he needed such justification. The ability of Christ to make a perfect righteousness not onl}^ for him, but for the whole world, seems to have convinced him, without argument, of the Saviour's divinity ; and he began at once to preach Christ crucified, to offer salvation to all men. The Avail of separa- BEFORE AND AFTER CONVERSION. 69 tion between Jew and Gentile disappeared at once from his view ; he proclaimed the righteous- ness of God which is by faith in Jesus Christ, given to every human being for nothing. He saw that he must come without meritorious preparation, waiting for no repentance, no re- morse for sin ; that faith in the atoning sacrifice must be the one all-sufficient act of every sin- ner, which will be followed spontaneously by godly sorrow working repentance unto life. Paul saw that " if the righteousness of God " by faith in Jesus Christ, was the appointed way of pardon, then he never could be good enough to be saved by his own merits. After being jus- tified by faith through the redemption that is iu Christ Jesus, he might become as nearly perfect as human nature is capable of being. But no one was ever saved by this, nor can be, for " Neither is there salvation in any other ; for there is none other name under heaven, given among men, whereby we must be saved." It is deeply interesting to know that this case of Paul's conversion, was intended as a pattern of all cases of conversion from his day. No one can suppose that circumstances of hours, place, language, and all the other incidents of each in- dividual can be the same, any more than the un- essential incidents of stature, place, and weather. 70 Paul's estimate of himself. But this passage makes it plain that conversions are the same all around the globe. " Howbeit, for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show forth all long-suffering for a pattern to them which should hereafter be- lieve on him to life everlasting." It is loving-kindness in God, our Saviour, that He works by a plan in redemption, doing the self same things for all from age to age ; from Paul to each heir of grace in our day. Let ever}' one, therefore, looking to Christ for converting mercy be assured of this, that " the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him." There is great encouragement in this to every one who may now and hereafter be a suppliant for his grace. Perhaps, some of us may be tempted to think, " there never was such a sinner as I ; no one ever trespassed against such long- suffering, abused such forbearance." Let him who is tempted thus to test the willingness of Christ to make him a subject of his grace, re- member, that the man who said that "Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief," sets himself forever as a pat- tern of tlie Saviour's long-suffering to them who from that time forth should believe on him to life everlasting. You may prove that He is able and willing to save you, by believing on Him, " to-day." IV. GOD OUR DWELLlNa, AND IN OUR DWELLING, " He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High, shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty." — Psalm 91 : i. WHERE is the secret place of the Most High ? There is such a place, a habita- ble place, for the text speaks of dwelling there. We can find it by two spiritual lines of meas- urement, as by latitude and longitude at sea. Longitude is not sufficient of itself, nor latitude, but bring the two together, and a child who has used a map knows how we determine places. These two measures, both of which being used, determine the question suggested by the text. As there can be no other place like this in which a man can abide, it is an inconceivable privilege to liave directions by which we can find it. This we can do with more certainty than we can find latitude and longitude. We will call it the rule of spiritual latitude and longitude. The longi- 72 GOD OUR DWELLING, tude, we will say, is the omnipresence of God. All do not practically believe tliat God is every- where. " He that cometh to God must believe that he is," we may say without assumption. But tliis is not enough. Many will acknowledge this in words, while they have no realizing sense of it, as it is called, which makes it of practical value. To know the longitude at sea would be of lit- tle use without another element in the calcula- tion, the latitude ; as to know the latitude with- out the longitude leaves themariiler bewildered. Frequently, a passing ship will set her signals to inquire of another ship. What is your longi- tude ? though the latitude may have been deter- mined by the sun at noon. Hence the other ele- ment of measure to find the secret place of tlie Most High, though we know him to be every- where, is, A praying heart. As there is not a place on laiid or at sea whose location cannot be determined by the two meas- ures already given, so every place in this, world of faith, which serves for sight, can be determined whether it be the secret place of the Most High. For as one does not know at sea where he is, without reckoning, so no oi>e knows any place in the secret place of the Most High, unless he brings these two things in conjunction. 1st, God is here. 2d, I desire to draw near to Him in AND IN OUR DWELLING. 16 prayer. By these two elements you may infal- libly ascertain that your heart is the secret place of the Most High. It is interesting to know that the place here men- tioned is not confined to one spot. A man may al- ways live under the same tent; the place where he eats and sleeps will always be a secret place to him ; yet the tent may be moveable, sometimes in a valley, then on the side of a hill ; then upon tlie hill top. So the secret place of the Most Pligh is moveable. At the risk of dwelling too long on the figure, I will venture to say, that as there is no latitude at the poles, no longitude at Greenwich, because longitude is the distance east or west from Greenwich and latitude is the distance from either pole, this represents that which heaven will be to us, where there are no seeming distances from God ; for we shall no more walk by faith but by continual sight. But on earth in all our journeyings toward heaven, we have constant need to find the secret place of the Most High, that is, a place of communion with God. The promise in the text is to such as make praying their breath ; who hold continued com- munion with God, referring all things to him as their fixed habit ; breathing out love, adoration, confession, supplication, more intimately than they commune with the dearest friend. The 74 GOD OUR DWELLING, promise is, that they shall a])i(le under the shadow of the Almighty. This may signify several tilings, as 1st, Nearness. A child walking with you abides under your shadow ; you are never far from him, you keep him in sight, within reach. 2d, Protection ; you shade him against sun-stroke. So " the sun shall not smite them by day." As though encouraged by the declaration in this verse, this good man resolves to make ex- periment of it. " I will say of the Lord he is my refuge, and my fortress." Such is the life of one who is godly. He applies the principles of earthly friendship to intercourse with God. Not a day passes when we do not need a refuge from apprehension. This good man says, " Be thou my strong habitation whereunto I may continu- ally resort." There are assaults of conscience, temptation- affliction, calamity, pain. " I will say of the Lord, He is — my QodJ''' Every thing seems to be summed up in these two words. They are the best which we can use ; they were the best which the Saviour could employ in the hour of his greatest need. " My God, my God ! " He who can affectionately adopt them has all things. He never need fear. He may say, " In him will I trust." Some one here seems to speak in reply : "Surely AND IN OUB DWELLING. 75 he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler and from the noisome pestilence." Tire snare of the fowler is the peril of birds ; they more easily see the sportsman and fly; but the snare with leaves and grain scattered over it, is laid in secret. Such is our source of danger. We do not see what a mistake we are about to fall into in a bargain, or investment, or friend- ship, or connection. Pei'haps a winning pleasure is cunningly devised by the great fowler for your soul. God's eye is on you when yours is not on him, if it be your habit to dwell with God. We look back in the course of the day in which we have experienced some great blessing, and remember that we reproached ourselves with not using such importunity or child-like love as would have been becoming ; or perhaps a sudden call prevented our devotion ; yet a wonderful mercy, or, some gratifying intelligence has arrived, and we say, " Thou preventest me with the blesshigs of goodness," anticipatest my wishes. You know by your words that you dwell in the secret place of the Most High, and God has rewarded you by looking after your interests. We cannot estimate the benefit of frequent prayer. Influences to prayer should be followed ; impressions which come over us when at work, or reading, or journeying, or waking from sleep. " Prayer and provender hinder no man's journey." 76 GOD OUR DWELLING, God stirs us up to pra}-, it may be, because he sees our coming need, or, because he will do us some ^ood and would prepare us for it. Birds flying into noxious atmosphere sometimes fall dead. There was nothing to mark between the pure and pestilential air. Thus, perhaps, we are venturing into error by hearing or reading something, or resorting to baleful companies. God may, perhaps, restrain you while you are not aware of it. You may wonder at some accident or interruption which kept you from going some- where, as you intended ; you murmured, perhaps, at the rain or snow storm, you were disappointed, but God was thereby delivering you from the noisome pestilence. We see calamity happen to others through foolish mistakes. God has cov- ered you with his feathers. Under protection from the parent bird, its young lie safe from the fowling piece, arrow, or bird of prey. One source of security to the good is confi- dence in the truth of God. It serves as a shield and buckler. It was so with Joseph in Egypt, with Daniel in Babylon, and the three cliildren in the fiery furnace ; such is their safety, that if a plague raged, and thousands die, they may es- cape. In battle, no weapon formed against them may prosper. It is related in the life of Washington, that an Indian took aim at him several times when he AND IN OUR DWELLING. 77 had reason to expect to see him fall, and he won- dered thiit liis shot failed. Perhaps he who guided David's sling turned aside the rifle-ball. I heard a minister say in his pulpit -that he knew a man who came to a friend's Jiouse at midnight, on horse back in a storm of rain, to the astonishment of the family who knew that the bridge had been carried aWay. In the morning they went to the river and found one of the timbers standing in the place across the stream, serving for a path to the horse's feet, so that the horse with more than animal sagacity, gave ]jis rider to say of Him who preserved man and beast, " He maketh my feet like Jiind's feet." But terrible oftentimes is the end of the wicked. " Surely thou didst set them in slippery places." True, one event outwardly seerhs often to hap- pen to all, both to the righteous and the wicked ; but far different to good men and bad men is death by accident. Sudden death is sudden glory to the good, while to the wicked it is sud- den destruction. In cases of detection, exposure, conviction, "only with their eyes shall they behold and see the reward of the wicked." Then to the good man is known the blessedness of a good con- science. Many are the congratulations in the book of Pisalms and in Job to a good man, in con- trast with the fate of the wicked. The sense of 78 GOD OUR DWELLING, safety which the righteous man has when he pours out his heart to his preserver, appealing to him for a witness, " Thou knowest that I am not wicked," is a full recompense for self-denial in refusing to court human praise. God loves and rewards confidence in him. We are moved to do the same when it is showed to us. Few things are more grateful to us. We are always liable to suspicion in some minds. You do things which perhaps you cannot explain. Some, therefore, speak ill of you, and forsake you. Others give you credit for good motives when some things are dark. So we are led to feel confidence in God. Then, "because thou hast made the Lord, which is thy refuge, even the Most High, thy habitation ; there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling." Strange promise in such an evil world as this : " there shall no evil befall thee." It will prove to be " no evil." The promises are fulfilled by equivalents ; thereby faith is encouraged, per- haps rewarded. If we take God as he offers himself to us, he takes us with all our concerns, our frailties, mistakes ; he identifies us with him- self ; it is practically the same as though every one who makes God his refuge, his habitation, were omnipotent. " If God be for us," not only who is, but " who can be against us ? " The AND IN OUR DWELLING. 79 forces of the universe are on oUr side. Think of the meaning in such words as these : " thy habitation." Then, God is our dwelling. What is your dwelling to you ? Such is God. Nor is it an accidental expression ; " he that loveth dwel- leth in God and God in hhn." Can any plague come nigh such a dwelling to do real harm ? But dwellings can be plagued in other ways than by pestilence. We experience other forms of sal- vation when we are kept from being plagued, by evil dispositions, from annoyances which make life burdensome. When sickness is healed, and the joy of restoration succeeds trouble, rich fruits of gratitude, spiritual benefits of many kinds, compensate for the sickness ; that which is called an evil is converted into a blessing. Ko doubt there are angels in the dwelling of every one who fears God. If we thought that angels were moving about in our habitations, those dwellings would seem hallowed. " He shall give his angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways." God says. Behold my servant is beginning a journey, or entering into a ship. Go with him in all his ways. Keep the ship from collisions ; fly before the locomotive ; see that the track is right, watch every revolution of the wheels, " lest at any time he dash his foot against a stone." If it be necessary in order to accomplish some 80 GOD OUR DWELLING, important purpose that there should be ship- wreck or other cahimity, He can sa}^, Guard Ijis life ; defend the vital part ; he is an heir of glory ; minister to liim. Every one who discharges his duty, sooner or later meets with opposition. All who live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer some form of tribulation. It is easy in some cases to evade it. Some dread responsibility ; which it is true we ought neither to seek nor shun ; but when God lays it upon us, we may incur both secret and open hostilities. There is " the lion and adder," the dragon, with power at least to terrify. If you have truth on your side, if you meekly trust in God, he will cause you to tread on them all. " Behold I will make them which are of the synagogue of Satan which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie, behold I will make them to come and to worship at thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee." Not by our own right hand or wisdom will this appear ; God will shape events, who alone doeth wonders. He can turn the Euphrates from its channel in one night, and fill Babylon with her enemies as with caterpilhirs; He can make a barley cake tumble into the camp of Alidian and over- throw a multitude ; He can cause an iron gate to open of its '' own accord," and let the won- dering prisoner pass through ; He can make even AND IN OUR DWELLING. 81 tlie wrath of man to praise him and restrain the remainder. He turns. the tides of popular feel- ing. To-day one is caressed, to-morrow the .world is in arms against him. Yesterday one was contemned, to-morrow there may be none like him in almost universal esteem. Now a set of principles are repudiated ; soon they are adopted as the only salvation. A good man seldom need go about to defend his character by hunting down reports. He has onl}^ to do right, trust in God, and everything will be well. People often judge at once by re- sults. If a viper fastens on a man's hand, the barbarians think that he is doomed; but when he shakes it off feeling no harm, they change their minds and say that he is a god. Now . God speaks, confirming the Psalmist's woids ; and we cannot doubt that the Most High reciprocates every act of love : " Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him." There never was any .misplaced confidence in God, however we may have erred in our judgment of ourselves. " For the Lord is good to them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him. The prophet Isaiah says, " For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, what he hath prepared for liim that wait- eth for him." Not only will God deliver the righteous man : )^ Of tbgr"^ 82 GOD OUR DWELLING, "I will set him on hic^li because lie liath known my name." It would not always be safe for God to set us on high ; it is only safe wlieri lie has made us humble ; when we have forborne to avenge ourselves. If one undertakes to avenge himself, God may stand aloof and let him try. But if we have made him our strong tower into which we run for safety, in due time he not only delivers us, but sets us on high. • He causes us to triumph ; lie exalts us above destruction, shields us from malice, gives us signal prosperity. What can be better than this : " He shall call upon me and I will answer him." Let God an- swer when we speak, and all is well. Let a rich man say that he will honor any draft you may make upon him, and it may put you at ease. Let one feel that he has only to speak and friends come and stand around him ; and he is at peace. But will he never be troubled T God says that he will. "I will be with him in trouble." We are not worth much till we have been in trouble. We would not part with troubles which we feel have been blest to us. You would not but have had a sorrow which has proved a spiritual bles- sing. What would Daniel now take for the lions' den? or the Hebrew children for their being cast into Nebuchadnezzar's furnace ? or Peter, for his experience in Herod's prison ? or John, for his history while in the isle which is called Patmos ? AND IN OUR DWELLING. 83 The best thing which God can do for a man sometimes, is to put him in a phice like one of these, aiid be with him in it. Truly, this may be better than prosperity. When we are in pros- perity he may only keep us there. But if he is with us in trouble he says, " I will deliver him and honor him." It makes men afraid when they see God appear in behalf of a man. As we read the songs (f Hannah and Mar}', we are particu- larly struck with their allusions to theii* enemies, the exultation with which they triumph over ad- versaries. We are made to sa}", " Blessed are all they that put their trust in him." Thus it will be with the righteous till life has been so' full of the goodness of God that the man will say, It is enough. When his time to die arrives, though it be sudden, he may start, nature may tremble ; but soon he grows calm and reflects: I have had full experience of God's love ; all that life can teach me and do for me, I have known ; its J03's, its trials have had their designed effect upon me. " Why should not fruit when it is mellow, fall ; What do we longer here when God doth call ? " By " showing him my salvation," God does not mean merely ""bring him safely to heaven," but in getting him there will reveal the w^onders of the way. 84 GOD OUR DWELLING, A party of persecuted Huguenots fled, and mounted up a high place in a stormy night. When the sun rose they came down and saw the way by which they came, narrow, precipitous, full of sudden turns. They stood and prayed, and sung ; God showed them his salvation. Thus 3^ou will be led by the Most High and re- visit all the eventful places 'of your earthly pil- grimage ; places now dark and sad. " And show him my salvation." As the morning of the third day of creation broke on the former world, revealing some of the works of God and disclos- ing further designs, so the light of heaven will fall on his doings with you, and you will see tliat all was good. We have been considering some of the richest and sweetest of the blessings which God be- stows on man. The Psalm which we have but imperfectly analyzed, contains in one of its pas- sages the conditions on which they are given. " He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty." We have seen that this pas- sage has a paraphrase in the second verse : " I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress ; my God ; in him will I trust." It may seem a truism to say that religion is a most simple thing ; but a poet has ventured to say the same of the firmament : AND IN OUR DWELLING. 85 " Like that which o'er our head we see, Majestic in its own simplicity." The Apostle John, in his Epistles, gives us in his style of thought, some wonderful correspon- dent incidents of simplicity which awaken sur- ' prise, as for example : " This then is the message wliicli we have heard of him, that God is light, and in liim is no darkness at all." " No lie is of the truth." " If we ask any thing according to his will he heareth us." Religion is to love God, "to whom we have access by faith, through our Lord Jesus Christ." Religion is so simple that the young may under- stand it as well as the learned. We see this con- firmed now and then in some young persons who have decided not to go the first half of the jour- ney of life without him ; that it is best to have God for their guard and guide at the outset. Even one who is old enough to have a conscience may consider whether lie is not old enough to love God. We should not fail to notice the con- nection of these words : '' I love them that love me." We say then confidently to the 3'oung ; This Psalm may be yours. The piece of paper on which it can be written is not so large as a title deed to a ten foot dwelling; yet the Lord who dictated it, you may have made your refuge, and the Most High your habi- tation. God manifest in the flesh in the person 86 GOD OUR DWELLING. of Jesus, who was once precisely at j^our age, and without whom not a sparrow falleth to the ground, will not be more pleased with the love of angels, who always behold his face, than He is Avith the love of the young, whom the Saviour bids men take heed that they do not despise. Seek ear^y this God and Saviour; the promise to all such is, They shall find me. Let every one set up an altar in their hearts and at their hearths. Make God your dwelling, and the Most High will make your house His habitation. THE JEW AND THE ROMAN WATCE- IJSra THE SEPULCHRE. " Pilate said unto them, Ye have a watch : go your way, make it as sure as you can. So they went, and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, and setting a watch." — Matthew 27 : 65, 66. HERE we see the Jew and the Roman watch- ing the Sepulchre of Christ while lie lies entombed. God was about to complete the work of man's redemption by raising up Christ from the dead. Notwithstanding their avowed unbelief, we can- not but think the approaching resurrection of Christ threw a shadow on the liearts of his ene- mies. Had tliey been thoroughly satisfied that he was an impostor, all that they would need to show would be the proofs of his dying, to answer any future pretence of liis being alive. Their en- deavors to forestall tlie expected assertion of his disciples, that Christ had come to life, proves that they regarded his resurrection possible. (87) 88 THE JEW AND THE EOMAN Patting a Uviirg man in the tomb and stealing away the dead Clirist, seem^ too clumsy a trick to give the enemies of Christ any real apprehen- sion. Concerning whom else did men ever feel it necessarj^ to use precautions against his pre- tended resurrection, beyond an undoubted evi- dence that he had died ? We would not bring a hast}^ accusjLtion against the enemies of Christ, it would be in marked contrast with the evange- lists so to do. But when j^ou remember that men liad seen Lazarus raised from the dead by the Avord of Christ, the daughter of Jairus and the widow of Nain's son brought back from death by his command, would it not have been strange had they not expected something supernatural at his tomb? Graves had opened when he died; might not the same luippen at his tomb ? The disciples probabl}'' had little if any confidence that he who could suffer himself to be betrayed and crucified, was able to make good any pro- mise of rising from the dead. Guilty consciences frequently will apprehend dangers when the innocent -fail to expect help. Therefore, the fears of the Jews were more than the hopes of the Christians ; so that they used measures to prevent the evidence of a resurrec- tion from transpiring ; not merely to keep thieves awa}^ from the tomb. They enlisted the Roman authority to aid them in confuting the Saviour's WATCHING THE SEPULCHKE. 89 promise to re-appear on the third da}^ The chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate, saying, '* Sir, we remember that that de- ceiver said, while he was yet alive. After three days I will rise again. Command, therefore, that the sepulchre be made sure until the third da}', lest his disciples come by night, and steal him awa}^, and say unto the people. He is risen from the dead ; so the last error shall be worse than the first." Their fears of the resurrection and their efforts to prevent it,.show how reason- able it is for the Scriptures to lay such stress on the resurrection as- the crowning proof of the Saviour's claims. The life and the death of Christ had not failed to make his enemies feel uneasy. A voluntary watch could have sufficed in ordinary cases, but they would juive something more imperative, an official guarantee from tiie government, which would admit of no suspicion nor resistance. Having no civil authorit}^ they were obliged to invoke the aid of the Roman Pilate for an official watch. He granted their request. " Ye have a watch," (a government guard stationed near the temple) " go your way, make it (the sepulchre) as sure as ye can. So they went their way and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone and setting a watch." Sealing it so that the soldiers and the Christians could not conspire without detection. 90 THE JEW AND THE ROMAN The sepulchre being hewn out of a rock, it is supposed that a shib was fitted to the opening and a cord was stretched across it, the ends of it being fastened with wax bearing an official seal. The door, therefore, could not be opened without cutting or tearing away the cord, thereb}^ violat- ing the government seal. Thus, the Roman power, in some sense, assumed the guardianship of the Saviour's tomb when the body was there. Doing this, the Roman government and the Jew unwittingly performed a stupendous service for the Christian religion. For it was important to Christ and his cause that his dead body should not be removed, and that even his friends should be prevented from doing it, though with the best motives. Every thing depended on his rising from the dead on the third day, being proved. But what if friends of his in their affectionate zeal to get possession of his bod}^, had succeeded in removing it from the sepulchre? It was the last resort of his enemies to fasten upon them the charge that they had done this, though to pre- vent it, the aid of the Roman government had been invoked. It was desirable therefore, that his friends should be wholly removed from all suspicion of being able to get possession of his body. Moreover, by enlisting the Roman govern- ment to assume the custody of it and of the toaib, the Jews prevented their own people from inter- WATCJEIING THE SEPULCHRE. 91 feriiig with it; and thus they forever barred themselves from pretending that they liad med- dled with the body, by doing which they would make it difficult for the Christians to prove that the identical body which was crucified .and buried had not disappeared. In the tomb where he was confessedly laid, everything depended on his being kept, till after the third day. All the un- speakably precious interests which centered in Christ, required that his dead body should not be disturbed ; nay, that it should not be visited by his friends. For suppose, for example, that medical men had been allowed to enter that tomb, it could be easily pretended by the enemies of Jesus that some professional skill had been used to "bring Christ to life. They could also have made the pretext, if friends had entered the tomb, that a man resembling the crucified one had been placed there alive and that the dead Christ had been conveyed away ; and then a new impostor released from the tomb could be said to have palmed himself on the credulous as the risen Christ. It would have been for the interest of the Christians themselves could they have contrib- uted " large money " to make it sure by means of a state guard that no one of them had ap- proached that sepulchre to tamper with it. It would have well repaid them had every believer 92 THE JEW AND THE EOMAN ill Christ volunteered to spend the two nights and the one day, on guard before the tomb, to place it beyond doubt that it was He who had slept there that had returned to life. But God who did not forsake his soul in Hades, provided for the Saviour a surer testimony. For we im- mediately see that however honestly intended, so partial, so interested a guardianship as that of his disciples would not have been wise. Tlie Jews could have said, The Cliristians had a guard of their own ; of course they had oppor- tunity^ to do as they pleased in the sepulchre. The best thing for the Christians, therefore, was to be drawn away from the tomb. The less they were seen there, the better it would be for their reputation with their enemies. Let those enemies watch over the dead body of the Lord, thereby doing the thing most essential to plachig the resurrection beyond all possible doubt. This his enemies did of their own accord. Tlie wisest of men could not have contrived so excellent a scheme. If some of the Chris- tians, say, Joseph of Arimathea himself, wishing that tlie Saviour's promise to rise on the third day should have a perfectl^^ fair triid, had re- quested Pilate to set a guard over the sepulchre, Pilate might have been suspected of conniving to favor the impression of the Saviour's having risen. Pilate's wife, who had suffered many WATCHING THE SEPULCHRE. 93 tilings ill a dream because of him, could have been charged as accessory to the pk)t. No, let the enemies of Christ in their malice, be known as having sole custody of the Saviour's tomb, for so they will be able to satisfy themselves of his resurrection if he is to rise. His enemies will not surely steal the body, nor use surgical arts ; it is for their interest to keep the tomb so sealed up as to prevent a resurrection, or a removal of the body which might give semblance to a pre- tended resurrection. That which no wisdom nor contrivance of the Saviour's friends could by any means accomplish, was done for them without their agency, by their foes. The faithful Joseph and Nicodemus were superseded as watchers over the crucified Re- deemer, by the civil power. The very murder- ers of Jesus were used by God to take the best possible care of his body, and of his tomb. None but God, liowever, could influence them to as- sume it. The Christians could not have made them do it. Suppose that the Christians liad challenged them to keep watch. Their cowardly consciences, struck with the bold assurances, might have shrunk from the test. The last divinely appointed passover had now come. The moon which lighted Israel out of Egypt after the first, now rose on the last of the passovers ; their appointment receiving its ful- 94 THE JEW AND THE ROMAN filment in the completed mission of the Son of God. Our earth must have become intensely inter- esting to angels, with the Prince of life sealed up in one of its sepulchres, and with him the hopes of prophets and the whole church of God, past, present, and to come. What if that tomb is now sealed up forever? He who said, "I am tlie resurrection and the life,"* is dead. The Roman power has taken in charge the sepulchre by id- lowing its guard to watch there. Ail the Chris- tians have gone from the spot in fear ; or such is their distrust of their Lord's promise to rise again that they have brought sweet spices to embalm his body, as if God were about to suffer his Holy One to see corruption. Had tliey expected him to rise the third day, of course no sweet spices had been necessary. Grief and bewildering fear are in their hearts, triumph fills their enemies, for imperial Rome itself, lias condescended to help the crucifiers of Jesus, in demonstrating the falsehood of *' that deceiver." And when at length God had fully served him- self of the Roman arm through its representa- tive, Pontius Pilate, when the royal authority had stood guard long enough over the tomb of his dear Son to make it as clear as demonstration that the tomb had not been violated, that neither an ingenious plot nor a mistaken friendship had WATCHING THE SEPULCHRE. 95 thrown the shadow of a doubt on the question whether the Christ that was laid in the tomb was there still, then, very early in the morning of the third day, while it was yet dark, a single angel descended from heaven and rolled away the stone from the door of the sepulchre and sat upon it. What became of that cord which was stretched across the tomb door? Who dared to break those seals with the device of the Jewish princi- pal men upon them ? See you not those three crosses standing yet on Calvary ? Beware lest you be hurried to one of them by the same power which sent the impostor of Nazareth to die there. O, that moment unequalled in the history of this planet, and not to be surpassed at the con- summation of all things, when the victim of Cal- vary walked forth from that sepulchre and stood upon the earth. Not when he shall stand upon the earth at the latter day, will his triumph be more sublime. Not then will adoring angels greet him with stronger love than that which must have flooded their souls when they cried "one to another. He is risen ! Honored angels ! who can you be among the sons of the mighty to have gained that distinc- tion from God to lay your Iiand on that stone and unseal that door? One might have given you 96 THE JEW AND THE ROMAN every thtone on earth for that seat of jours upon that stone. We fancy that you are that Gabriel who appeared to a virj^in espoused to a man named Joseph of the house of David, say- ing, " Hail, thou that art highly favored among women, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women." How appropriate for that same angel to announce before her the resurrection of her son. But no ! for the mother of Jesus is not among the women at the tomb. Can we* believe it ? Consonant with our thoughts and wishes it would have been, had Gabriel repeated his annunciation to her at the door of her son's deserted sepulchre. Surely this angel is no Papist. Raphael, Ru- bens, all the papal artists, would have had Mary at the door of the sepulchre in her Son's arms. But there is not a word concerning Mary in con- nection with the Resurrection. We do not hear of her till in the Acts of the Apostles we find her mentioned among those who assembled after the ascension. What a divine touch is there in the absence of Mary, and of the mere human af- fectionateness of mother and child. Earthly re- lationships which we are all so apt to exalt over the spiritual and heavenly, are not recognized in the stupendous scenes of the Resurrection. Therefore, it may not have been Gabriel, — perhaps it was Michael the archangel who sat WATCHING THE SEPULCHRE. 9? Upon that stone. For it was Michael who dis- puted with the devil in Moab about the body of Moses ; now, perhaps he disputes with Caesar, and Pontius Pilate, and Rome, and Jerusalem, about the- body of Jesus. Thus Moses and the Lamb were both of them, perhaps, for a time in charge of the archangel. His first dispute with Satan was safely ]>uryiiig the bod}^ of Moses. This was to pluck from him that had the power of death, the Resurrection and the Life. We are strongly impelled to fancy that it was the archangel who has in charge the resurrection of the dead, who rolled away tlie stone from the door of the sepulchre. Most appropriate would it be that he who has in charge the graves of God's elect, should be detailed to preside at the resurrection of Him who is the Resurrection and the Life. If the archangel Michael is one principal figure of this drama, who is the principal figure on the other side ? Pontius Pilate ! Think of this, ye followers of Jesus, and be not faithless but be- lieving. Unbeliever ! Pontius Pilate is your re- presentative ; ours is Jesus, the Resurrection and the Life. If there were ever any raptures in tliis world equalling the raptures of heaven, it must have been when the Christians saw how God had raised up Jesus. We remember how much is said in 98 THE JEW JCND the ROMAN the New Testament of. the "mighty power " of God in raising up Christ, — "according to the working of his mightj^ power whicli he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead." But it was not so much the simple act of omni- potence in bringing him to life which illnstruted the power of God, as the scheme by which his wisdom was employed to counteract the designs of the wicked. Prominent among the great acts of God in connection with this event, no doubt, was the divine contrivance by which he made his enemies and the enemies of his Son keep possession of that crucified body till it came to life. God has placed the body of his Son in the hands of his enemies to make plainly certain his resurrection. A man never feels more humbled ; is never placed in a more embarrassing predica- ment, than wlien his adversary makes him the means of showing the folly of his own doings. We may venture to imagine liow the Chief Priests and Pharisees bit their lips and hardly looked each other in the face when they saw that their own cunning was the evident means of proving the identity of Christ at his resurrection. " How much better," no doubt they said, " if in- stead of sealing up the sepulchre and keeping watch over it, we had let the tomb remain open, and so had given the Christians a chance to steal the bod}^ ; then there could have been no possi- WATCHING THE SEPULCHRE. 99 bility of proving conclusively that Christ came to life. But we ourselves have furnished the es- sential evidence of his identity. No friends could so well have done this. We are caught la our own net, and in the pit which we have dig- ged have we fallen ourselves." You see what power of meaning is thus given to such passages as these : "But God raised him from the dead," and those words once before quoted: "According to the working of his mighty power which He wrought in Christ when He raised him from the dead." It shows more wisdom to do a thing by wise contrivance against opposition ■ than by a mere word of omnipo- tence. Therefore, when the Christians saw what was done, and received again from the dead their infinite Friend, we may ask. Which filled them with "the greatest pleasure, which imparted the greatest strength to their hearts, — that Christ was risen, or the manifest interposition of the Almighty in effecting it? Surely that word, " Thou didst it," was after all the foundation of their joy. I. This passage of sacred history il- lustrates THE truth that GoD HAS "MADE ALL THINGS FOR HIMSELF, YEA, EVEN THE WICKED FOR THE DAY OF EVIL." " There is no counsel nor wisdom nor under- standing against the Lord." 100 THE JEW AND THE ROMAN Many think of God, of his attributes and provi- dence, as mere conveniences, useful upon oc- casions. Human Jiifairs, they seem to think, are governed by an eternal necessity they know not what, and God appears in them to keep them steady with a little help, no more, however, than a steersman renders in keeping a ship true to the wind, over which wind, however, he has no con- trol. The true doctrine in opposition to this is, that man and his affairs are appointed instru- ments in the hands of One of whom, and by whom, and through whom are all things, to make God himself known, for the one hundred and seventh Psalm, and all the Hebrew triumphal odes are mainly occupied in glorifiying God ; nob in chronicling the marching of a host, but the stately goings of the Most High. The Red Sea \yas for God to show his power, the famine was for his gift of the manna and quails, the thirst was for the rock to be smitten ; the rebellion against Moses and Aaron was for the earth to open ; the hard pursuit of Saul around t^he hill to cut off David was for God to send the messenger to Saul saying. The Philis- tines are invading the land. Jehosaphat's inva- sion by the children of the east was for an angel of the Lord to slay a hundred and eighty-five thousand of them in one night. Peter was im- prisoned that an earthquake might open the WATCHING THE SEPULCHRE. 101 doors of the prison. Paul and and Silas were beaten and put in the stocks, to make their jailor ask a question, echoing through all ages, " What must I do to be saved ? " And so the sleeping Saviour was affectionately guarded against any injudicious act on the part of his friends, and was delivered over to his ene- mies for safe-keeping against them, and to con- vince the world that no stratagem had con- founded his identity ; in order that he who was to be the Resurrection and the Life might be de- clared to be the Son of God with power by the Spirit of holiness which raised him from the dead. • * II. Some Christians are chosen of God TO display by their great trials His POWER AND WISDOM, AS ChRIST WAS BY HIS DEATH AND BURIAL AND RESURRECTION. Such Christians may be said to have been statuary marble, while other blocks were used merely for doorsteps and posts, employed for the divine artisan to show some immortal statue. So that we shall hereafter say, " Behold, happy is the man Avhom God correcteth : " and we would gladly send from heaven this message to surviving friends, — '* therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty." It is an honor to have God interest himself in your affairs, 102 THE JEW AND THE ROMAN making use of them as He does of the black cloud, to bend the raiubow upon it. The wickedness of men instead of casthig us down, ought to make us look for the appointed time when God will show his power and make his wrath known. Is there a more terrible thing said against bad men than this ? *' When the wicked spring as the grass and when all the workers of iniquity do flourish, it is that they shall be destroyed forever." Thus if the pros- perity of the wicked shall destroy them, it should never dishearten us. In bad times, moreover, we may be sure God is* carrying on his work in many an upright heart. The dreadful temptations which infest our cities and large towns, appealing to the senses with arts which venture closer every year to the brink of shamelessness, are strengthening the virtue of such as make the first Psalm -their rule, and " walk not in the counsel of the un- godly, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of the scornful." III. Bad MEN SHOULD BE OBJECTS OF PITY KATHER THAN OF FEAR OR ANGER. In the first place, there is an eternity of weep- ing before them unless they repent ; and in the next place, one of their chief sorrows there will WATCHING THE SEPULCHRE. 103 be that all their deep hiid plots were made use of by the Most High to accomplish his purposes. We do not see how the work of redemption could have been accomplished had it not been for such men (is Judas and Pontius Pilate. " The Lord hath made all tilings for himself, 3'ea, even the wicked for the day of evil." Some enemy must draw the cord across the door of the sepul- chre and seal it and set the guard, to keep the dead Christ from the well-meant approach of his friends ; else the proofs of his coming forth alive will not be complete. Finally,— Every thing relating to the resurrec- tion OF Christ is unspeakably interesting EOR THIS REASON, " He WAS RAISED AGAIN FOR OUR JUSTIFICATION." Many do not see the reason of this ; they do not appreciate the evident stress which the Scrip- tures lay upon Christ's rising from the dead. So long as he died, they feel that their redemption was made complete. Let us submit our pre-con- ceived opinions to the Divine will. • The satis- faction which Christ made to divine justice was not publicly acknowledged by God till he had raised Christ from the dead. Had he not been raised, the plan of redemption would not have 104 THE JEW AND THE ROMAN been completed. He " was declared to be the Son of God with power by the spirit of holiness which raised him from the dead." We were not to be saved by a dead Christ. In Roman Catholic countries we see many dead Christs. He must die for our sins, it is true, but as a Saviour he is not made perfect till it can be said, "It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again." Had his bones been broken on the cross like those of the thieves, his death, indeed, would have been equally effectual ; but it was not the purpose of God to redeem us by subjecting the crucified body of his Son to the needless indignity of maiming. The same Di- vine wisdom chose that a dead Christ should not be a perfected Redeemer. We are glad that we are not justified by a dead Christ. Had we been, we should receive him as now we accept the whole mystery of redemption, — " but God raised him from the dead," and " by him we be- lieve in God who raised him from the dead and gave him glory," and we receive him just as he is revealed, a risen Redeemer, all his work of satisfaction for our sins sealed by the Almighty when he raised him from the dead. Therefore consider what a glorious thing it is to be justified by faith in Christ, seeing that such an event as his resurrection was essential to make him perfect as your Redeemer. If everything else in j^our Redeemer is as WATCHING THE SEPULCHRE. 105 great and glorious as liis resurrection, you who have had this Christ imputed to you as your righteousness, liave received from God the great- est of all his gifts. Believer ! God has ah-eady done for you spirit- ually tliat " which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places." You are redeemed if you are in Christ. All that Christ is, all that Christ has done, is made over to you by your simply believing in Him. All the pow- ers of sin in earth and hell cannot hinder your salvation. The sign of the cross is to you the symbol of the atoning death of your Redeemer ; the break- ing, by the hand of God, of that seal which the Jew and the Roman had placed upon the Re- deemer's tomb, is the sign and pledge of your completed redemption. "Rejoice evermore." " Pray without ceasing." " In every thing give thanks." "• Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ," to eveiy one who yet needs his grace ; " as though God did beseech you by us ; we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God." We preach unto you Jesus and the Resurrection. The hour is at hand when nothing else will seem to you of any importance. Therefore " seek the things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God." VI. THE MAN AT THE WHEEL. (written at sea.) " Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory." — Psalm 73 : 24. DURING a loDg voyage few things inter- ested me more than the man at the wheel. While some of the crew were heaving the an- chor, one sailor took his place at the wheel, point- ing the ship on her course before the anchor had risen a few feet from the ground. In a voyage of a hundred and eleven days to San Francisco, and thence to the Sandwich Is- lands, China, the East Indies and New York, there was a man at tlie wheel every moment, day and night, in storm and sunshine. Every man, except the officers, was in his turn two hours at a time during the whole voyage, the man at the wheel. Not till the word of command was given (106) THE MAN AT THE WHEEL. 107 inside the Golden Gate, "Let go the anchor," was the wheel deserted. Every two hours, the man at the wheel was reliev,ed by some ship- mate who knew when it came his turn. The man at the wheel would say what point of the compass must be kept in mind ; the man taking his place would repeat his words. "South west by south half south," says the man who seizes the wheel to take his place. Going on deck at midnight there is the man at the wheel. Coming up to watch the sunrise you salute the man at the wheel. During a gale, if you venture on deck curious to see the swell- ing ocean, you find the man at the wheel. In a dead calm, the ship motionless, there stands the man at the wheel. The sea runs high, the wave looks down upon you as though it would swal- low you up. "Meet her! " cries the mate ; the man at the wheel swings the bowsprit in the teeth of the billow ; you go up to the heavens ; then down again into the deep. You always feel on shipboard that there is one man doing something for you. During divine, service on Sabbath morning, two men at least, are always absent, one, the officer of the deck, the other, the man at the wheel. If you start in your sleep you instantly think, There is at least one who is awake, the man at the wheel. I never passed him day or night, without giving 108 THE MAN AT THE WHEEL. and receiving a salutation. You feel that he is your personal friend. The compass lies directly in front of the wheel ; the binnacle lamp shines all night upon the compass, which points the way the ship is headed, and the man at the wheel is told to keep her so. If the wind sets her off her course the endeavor is to get as near to it as the wind will allow, keeping the sails "full and by " the wind, the steersman using his discretion how to do so. One cannot see himself thus continually kept on his course through the deep without being re- minded that if he is a child of God, he has Christ Jesus as the man at the wheel to his soul as truly as at every moment of a voyage, how- ever long, he has a man at the wheel of his ship. Without presumption, but with the utmost con- fidence, with full assurance of faith, every one who loves God may say to the Saviour, " Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory." He may be as confident of the incessant guidance of his soul by Christ, as the passenger is of the perpetual service of a man at the wheel. It used to occur to me. Suppose that instead of having twenty-eight men taking turn, each of them two hours at a time, to steer me across the globe, the service were done by a single man who, day and night should be my steersman, standing THE MAN AT THE WHEEL. 109 eveiy moment at the wheel, buffetted by the gale, pelted by the rain, scorched by the sun, straining everj^ sense in the dark nights to guard against collisions, till finally I should see the an- chor dropped in the desired haven, without any casualty, delay, loss, damage, from the beginning to the end of the A^oyage, I could not part with that man without emotions unutterable. Yet here I am on the voyage of life 'with One at the wheel who has been there from my infancy to the present hour, to whom I may with joyful confidence repeat these words, " Thou shalt guide me wilh thy counsel, and afterwards re- ceive me to glory." We bless the memory of this translator who used the word "shalt" in this passage, instead of " wilt." He lets David here speak not pro- phetical 1}^ but trustfully, confiding himself to di- vine guidance, not merely foretelling that he will be guided, but declaring his willingness to be. There may be all the difference between a be- liever and unbeliever in saying " shalt *' rather ' than " wilt " in such a. case as this ; whether you as from the heart, avouch the Lord God to be your Supreme ruler, or merely declare that He will be. Using here the word '' shalt," implies a cordial choice of divine guidance. He who has made such choice has the hand of infinite love on his helm. Some helms seem to have no 110 THE MAN AT THE WHEEL. hand upon them. They steer wild. They are blown about ; sometimes they are in the trough of the sea ; the}^ have broached to ; some of them go down forever. One would think that none would need to be repeatedly told, '' In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths." We meet vessels of every marititne country at sea, and ^every one of them has a man at the wheel. It is not thus with all on the voyage of life. By the way in which some steer, you might al- most imagine Satan at the helm. But there are others who have made that inspired direction their rule : *•'• In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths." It was so with a good man, foreign born, who had lately found a home in one of our cities as missionary, who was offered a situation instead of one which he then filled. The gentleman urgently requested his answer at once. The good man replied, " O, not now ; I have not mentioned it to the Lord." The Old Testament everywhere makes the im- pression on a serious reader, of God's particular providence. If any are ever inclined to unbe- lief, there is a portion of Scripture biography where we should suppose that they would as soon as any where, stumble. We might ask them, not, " Do 3'Ou believe that Joshua made the sun and moon to stand still ; but, Can you believe THE MAN AT THE WHEEL. Ill that the being who made the worlds, once came to the bedside of a boy, called to him, " Samuel ! Samuel ! " and wheu the child awoke he ran to Eli, and was told by him to lie down again for he did not call him ; God came the second time and called, " Samuel ! Samuel ! " .and the child went to Eli again, and again was sent back to his bed, and the third time God came and called, and again he insisted that Eli did speak, and Eli per- ceiving that God had called the child, told him to answer accordingly, and the fourth time God came and said, " Samuel 1 Samuel ! " and then broke to him his purposes and made the child his messenger, acquainting him with some of his purposes, — I repeat the question, can you be- lieve this ? Will 3'ou believe it? Do you be- lieve it? then you are in one good sense a believer ; you have a commendable faith ; you only need to exercise the same simple confidence in the New Testament, to have in a more impor- tant sense, faith, which, accompanied by heart- felt reliance on Christ as the sinners substitute before the law of God, answering its righteous demands by his atoning death, would make you to be in all respects a believer, as truly as Abra- ham was who, in an exemplary sense, was the father of all them that believe. If you believe in the historical narratives of any of the Old Testament miracles, it may be gratifyiDg to you ^^^OF THT?> 112 THE MAN AT THE WHEEL. to know that the words of David in the text, can by the help of the Holy Spirit be acted upon by you, will be, as soon as you are willing to say with David, to David's Lord and David's son, "Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory." This faith may be exercised by you through the operation of God at any moment. For wherein does • the greatness of God consist ? There is one thing in the acts of God too great for some men to believe. .Not that he made the distant planet Uranus. I never met with one who could not believe that which astrono- mers tell us of his perturbations and their prob- able cause. But I have met with men who, while they believed all this, could not believe that this God numbers the hairs of their heads, or that not a sparrow falls to the ground with- out him. That was too much for their faith ; which proves that God's condescension is more incredible to many, than his omnipotence. It is not too much to believe that God may have arranged and has in mind at one and the same moment myriads of worlds, their geolog}^, mineralogy, crystallogeny, botany, their animals and birds ; but that such a Being will guide a man with his counsel, and afterward receive him to glor}^, is oftentimes too much for faith. With no more power to explain this than others, you THE MAN AT THE WHEEL. 113 believe it. That willingness to believe it so im- plicitly is one kind of faith ; only exercise it with the heart in regard to the words of Christ in what he says of the soul, its present character, its destiny, the way in which alone it can be saved ; and then, for there is still one thing with- out whicli all this faitli will prove useless, with all your heart accept the offers of this Re- deemer, love him, be his disciple, and consent- ingly say to him, " Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterwards receive me to glory." There are some who have believed all this who do not have the consolation to which they are entitled, because they fail to keep this faith in exercise. Instead of reading treatises on faith, and try_ ing to understand speculations on things beyond our knowledge, they will be far more happy, for they will make more progress in religious knowledge, if they will sit by the side of Sam- iiel's bed, listening to the Almighty as he talked with him I owe more to talk with children after they had gone to bed than to books, if I ever have had lessons in faith. Their in- quiries, which I could not answer ; their implicit but wondering acquiesence in my statements, have taught me more than the teachings of men, liow to receive with meekness, the engrafted word wiiich is able to save the soul. Their confidence in my love and care has done more than 114 THE MAK AT THE WHEEL. many otlier things esteemed among men, to make me understand how I am to love God, and how God loves them who trust in Ilini. That which tlie sailor when he is at tlio wheel does for all on board, He wlio is the " Wonder- ful, Counsellor," accomplishes, but in a far higher sense, every moment day and night, for his believing child. The hands of the man at the wheel are in effect tied to it while he is on duty as steersman. There is One who can at the same time act for us in the capacity of the man at the wheel, but also do everything else needed by us on the voyage. It was kind in the captain of our ship to close our window shutters for us one night in a ter- rific storm of lightning off the Rio de la Plata, that we might sleep. So tlie watchman of Israel sometimes closes the senses of a dying friend when about to pass through the valley of the shadow of death ; suffering the friendly delirium to act the part of a veil. In numberless ways does he make kind offices act the part of friends when indeed friends could not discern our need; or fender aid, even could they discern our ne- cessity, Christ is doing wondrous acts of kind- ness for us all the time. When you are asleep he is perhaps directing the thoughts of some who on the other side of the globe are at that instant, under their noonday sun, inditing, letters which may deeply affect your welfare. THE MAN AT THE WHEEL. 115 While we are under the guidance of this om- niscient, omnipotent Friend, it is wonderful that we are in full possession of free agency. I have already quoted the command which the mate sometimes gives to one steering, when he sees an enormous wave ready to break over the side of the ship. " Meet her ! " he cries ; an elliptical sea phrase, meaning, make her meet it ; so in- stead of suffering the billow to swamp the ship by coming upon her broadside, she by turning a little out of course rides the wave safely. Thus he sometimes says to us in view of a coming duty or danger, " Meet her." With the word he fills the heart with inward strength. We seem to be making use of self-inspired courage, but it is God that worketh in us to will and to do of his good pleasure. Was it mere fancy when I said that some souls make one feel as though Satan was at their helm ? No, for the Bible speaks of the spirit that now worketh in the childien of disobedience ; it tells us to admonish them, that they may re- cover themselves " out of the snare of the devil, who are led captive by him at his will." In the days of Odin and Thor in Great Britain, and in times of witchcraft in some parts of our countr}^, we know how fearful a thing it was for one to believe himself possessed by an evil spirit. It is enough to make the stoutest heart shudder to 116 THE MAN AT THE WHEEL. read in the New Testament of one wholly given up to the possession of the devil and liis legions. The Apostle Peter says to Christians, " Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil, walketh about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour ! " If then, even the best of men are liable to be his pre}^, how must it be with those who tempt the devil with hearts standing wide open, filled with Avicked passions and evil desires, thus soliciting the devil instead of wait- ing to be tempted. Such are we, if not under the protection of Christ. Every heart is either under the protec- tion of, or led captive hy^ the evil one. If we are under the protection of Christ, guided by his counsel, we are safe in any place, in the worst company, if we are there against our will or without our choice. Daniel and his companions were safe in the palace of Bab\ Ion. Joseph Avas safe in Potiphar's house. I have known young mien and bo3's subject day and night to the w^orst examples, in the forecastle and on shore, who seemed to be purified by the fiery furnace of sin which burned around them. In their prayers they could say, " Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel." We notice the way in which God is said to guide " with his counsel," and not by force. "I will guide thee with mine eye." We must THE MAN AT THE WHEEL. 117 give heed to the suggestions of conscience. "Be- hold also the ships, which though they be so great and are driven of fierce winds, yet are they turned about with a very small helm, whither- soever the governor listeth." When we take the Bible in our hands it should be with prayer. The suggestions of the Holy Spirit are " the man at the wheel" in our souls. God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, it is not too much to say, will be to each one that which is repre- sented by a human hand upon the helm of a ship. It is not too late to regain Him if we have lost his guidance. When we find ourselves in evil company, we may be sure that we have not been led thither by the Divine Author of the First Psalm. Some will have this for their painful re- flection without end: — My Saviour, the Judge, offered to be " the man at the wheel " to my soul. We may from this hour have him whose name is "Wonderful, Counsellor," to guldens through life and afterward receive us to- glory. It was not a meaningless record. " Then they willingly received him into the ship, and immediately the ship was at the land whither they went." VII. THE BRIEF MENTION OF ASTRON- OMY IN GENESIS. "He made the stars also." — Genesis i : 16. The narrative of creation passes over the stars with brief notice. After saying that God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night, it saj^s in the Hebrew, — "the stars also." The words, *' He made " are in italics. The stars had been created when Genesis was written, The nearest fixed star was twenty bil- lions of miles from the earth. As light travels two hundred thousand miles a second, if a star in Centaur us for example, had been struck out of existence at the death of Moses, it would be more than eleven thousand years hence before its light would disappear; the star would for that length of time be appaj-ently in the same place. The planets being at their nearest ap- (118) ASTRONOMY IN GENESIS. 119 proach to one another so distant, there must be" solitudes between them inconceivable ; so that could we measure the universe by its solitudes alone, no finite mind can conceive of its boun- daries. While this was before the mind of God, noth- ing is disclosed in revelation unless in keeping with the limited knowledge of the age when the Bible began to be written. That limited knowl- edge was to be stationary for thousands of years. We can conceive wliat perplexity would confuse the minds of men should the pen of inspiration write in a way transcending the knowledge of men, on a subject which takes such liold upo*i human curiosity as astronomy. A benevolent regard for human happiness would need to say a great deal, if it said anything, upon this sub- ject. This would be opening the gates of knowl- edge more than was consistent with the scheme of providence. None but infinite wisdom could keep the gates of knowledge so closely barred that some disclosure would not inadvertently be- tray the secrets of nature ; say something which would make men half insane to know what was meant when they could not be told without dis- closing things so many and so profound, that many would turn astrologers. We know what mischief was wrought by as- trology. We may confidently say tliat the silence 120 THE BRIEF MENTION OF of the Bible is a powerful proof that it is the book of -God. There is something more interesting than science, something more important than the starry world. It is not life eternal to know what are the sweet influences of Pleiades, the bands of Orion. The book which the Most High wrote for men is not a book of science. You would suppose from much of the literature of the day, that the very best thing is to be scientific, by all means literary. While the Bible inculcates early in- struction with discipline, it seeks to make men. feel that to know God and the way of peace with him, are the first things to be understood. Having learned these, we are taught that there are to be no bounds to our knowledge. But the Bible is not a book of science ; yet science is of practical use. Had the Romans, for example, understood the scientific truth that water in pipes under or above ground conveyed even to great distances, will rise as high as its source, it would have been of immense practical use ; for the knowledge that water in a pipe could after going down into a valley, come up of itself, would have saved untold wealth besides labor. None of these things, however, were subjects of divine revelation ; yet none but the wisdom which is infinite would have omitted them in its disclosures ; for had men been allowed to dictate ASTRONOMY IN GENESIS. 121 a divine revelation, undoubtedly we should have had at the veiy beginning an encyclopedia of useful knowledge. The history of such a people as the Jews, we imagine, would have been disposed of in a brief space, with all the lessons which it teaches con- cerning the character of God and our duty to- ward him. Such an age and people as that of the Greeks at their highest advancement, would no doubt have been celebrated in revelations, yet the Bible speaks of them disparagingly in com- parison with that which it declares to be its great theme. " The Greeks seek after wisdom ;" — more than intimating that the wisdom which dis- tinguished Greece was not the principal thing. There was something which Greece never found, greater than all its lost arts. Seeing the disproportioned value which men place on human learning, we can easily think what stimulus would have been given to curi- osity, had the Most High set the example of ele- vating mere knowledge to the first place in our estimation. Wisely has our Divine instructor refrained from setting us such an example as to make his revelation a series of disclosures con- cerninsj mere scientific truth. The Apostle Paul tells us that " whether there shall be prophecies they shall fail, whether there be tongues they shall cease, whether there be 122 THE BRIEF MENTION OF knowledge it shall vanish away." For after we reach heaven, the humblest of our race who shall be saved, will in a brief period know more of the universe than the wisest of men liere who* know not God. In a recent eulogy on Humbolt who, all agree had not a superior, if he had an equal, in scien- tific knowledge, the author, a great naturalist, discussed the question whether he was an Athe- ist. He had found a sentence in his volumin- ous works which contains a mention of God as Creator. Think of this, fellow men ! The greatest of your race in mere scientific knowl- edge in modern times, the most adventurous ex- plorer among the works of God, instead of over- tiowing with adoring tributes of love to Him, makes it necessary for his eulogist to search' his books in order to find whether he did really be- lieve in God. If he did not, the least in the. kingdom of heaven is greater than he, for the Bible tells us in the passage just quoted about prophecies and tongues and knowledge, that all distinctions of knowledge in this world will vanish away. The light of heaven will make our present in- quries with their most brilliant results pale by the noon-day brightness then to flood them. There the man who did nothing but study na- ture, neglecting that truth, "he that loveth ASTRONOMY IN GENESIS. 123 knoweth God," will be left to confusion, when some of the weakest men shall come to know by intuition all which the other had arrived at after years of toil. If there is one of our race who will be most pitiable hereafter, it will not be so much the rich fool who said to himself, " Thou hast much goods laid up for many years," as the great scholar, who had he been a worshipper of God with faith in his Son, our Saviour, would have been greatly prepared by his earthly studies for immediate advancement in knowledge con- cerning the works of God. Having only sought and found the knowledge of material things he will see hereafter that those who worshipped God in Christ are at once abreast of him in such knowl- edge ; that then and ever after they are to be his superiors, while he must be consigned to dark- ness with his misused powers. While the Bible is in effect the most literary of all books, has given existence to more vol- nmes than any other stimulant of thought, more of the master pieces of painting, for example, being suggested by it, than by any other, so that the human mind has been in a larger measure cultivated by works of imagination drawn from it than from any other source, — still the Book of God was not written for that as its avowed pur- pose, but is continually admonishing us that to know God, to love, obey and enjoy Him is bet- 124 THE BRIEF MENTION OF ter than the knowledge of material things. We learn this from the' remarkable silence of the Bible as to scientific subjects, particularly from the wonderful conciseness in its information about the stars, saying only that God made two great lights ; " the stars also." Let any one ask himself whether we do not find in this reserve, a proof of a superior hand. This is not the manner of man. Human wisdom does not refuse to teach the things which men are most curious to know. It does not set science by lightly, when it seeks to instruct men in things pertaining to God. Therefore, if we believe this book to have been given by inspiration of God, we shall do well to follow the instruction afforded by its example of preferring the knowledge of God, especially to know his will, above every thing which science or literature can impart. While the desire for divine knowledge is not in- consistent with personal improvement, there are occasions, questions, which give opportunity to show that we are to consider this to be " Life eternal, to know Him, the true God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent." Having considered that the brief way in which astronomy is treated in the Bible is a proof of its divine inspiration, we shall admit that n. While God says so little about ASTRONOIVIY IN GENESIS. 125 THE STARS, IT IS WONDERFUL THAT He HAS SAID SO MUCH ABOUT MAN AND HUMAN AF- FAIRS. One would think on reading the Bible only, that there is nq other world than this under the care of the Almighty. While we can never cease to blame the persecu- tors of Galileo for not consenting: to look through his telescope, we can account for the incredulity of many who would not believe his doctrine, from the fear which they probably had of losing their belief in the exclusive regard which the Most High seems in the Bible to feel for our earth. It Avas a satisfaction to think that this earth was the sole object of Jehovah's care as an in- habited sphere. The Bible, they thought, taught them so ; it would be a loss to their sense of im- portance, if Galileo could prove that there were other worlds ; for if like this in other respects, why might they not prove to be inhabited ; and if inhabited, what becomes of our Bible ? for the Bible made them feel that there could be no other world than this ; else how could the Al- mighty seem to bestow upon men such minute regard ? Whatever may be our speculations on this topic, no one can read the Bible and not be filled 126 THE BRIEF MENTION OF with amazement if lie suffers himself to dwell upon the minute regard which God shows for in- dividual men and human affairs. Some illustra- tions will make this appear. There are places in the sacred history which, no doubt, try the faith of every one who believes in God. I will refer to a passage in Exodus for an example. The God of the universe giving directions for making the tabernacle in the wilder- ness, is so minute as to describe how the candle- stick should be shaped, then ornamented. Not only so, he even speaks of the tongs ; then of the snufp-dishes. He who made the orbit of Ju- piter to be two hundred and seventy thousand miles, who had ordained Saturn to wander twenty-nine of our years before completing one revolution, the comet of 1843 to move at the rate of a million three hundred thousand miles in an hour, wrote in His book how the pins of the tabernacle should be fixed, what the loops, tas- sels, fringes should be, how much carved \i-ork should adorn the furniture. When we come to the sacrifices, there is anatomical minuteness : mention is made of clean and unclean creatures as discriminately as would l^e done by a natural- ist. The exact measures of flour and oil are given ; parts of the animal are specified for use or to be rejected. It seems strange to notice the frequent use of ASTRONOIVIY IN GENESIS. 127 the expression in speaking of bullocks, rams, and kids, " a sweet-smelling savor unto the Lord." Can this be He who made " the stars also ? " Will He designate the color of the skins to be used for the roof of the tabernacle in the wilderness ? And when He legislates, will He do anything more than ordain a nation, then leave it to rulers how to frame enactments? We have a remarkable case in point. The daughters of Zelophehad came to Moses repre- senting that their father did not die in Korah's rebellion, but for his own sin ; therefore they petitioned that the right of inheritence might be restored to them. What did Moses answer ? He told them to wait till he had referred the matter to the Almighty. Having laid the case before God, he received from Him an enactment that the females of a family might in certain cases inherit ! While God was ruling among those orbs which led Job to exclaim, " is there any number of His armies ? and on whom doth not His light arise," He bestowed as particular attention to the juris- prudence relating to family inheritances among this migratory people, as though they had been a constellation, or zone of the heavens. We are led to question whether the people of Galileo's time. read their Bibles in a way to show that they were more noble than those of Thessa- 128 THE BRIEF MENTION OF lonica in searching the Scriptures ; for they could not have considered such revelations of the mi- nute attention of the Infinite God to individu- als, yet hesitate to look through a telescope from fear of seeing. more worlds than they could be- lieve that the Almighty was able to comprehend in his regard. The New Testament takes up the subject. If five sparrows were sold for two farthings in the Saviour's time, and not one of them was forgotten before God, all questions as to the doctrine of a particular providence, we would suppose, should cease in every mind which is willing to accept the God of the Bible. The smallest occasion may be great. A spider stretched his web across the entrance of the cave where Mahomet had secreted himself. The men in pursuit of him said : " He cannot have entered here ; for he would have brushed away the web on going in : there has not been time, since we knew he was on the road, for the spider to have done his work." They, therefore, passed on. Hence, Mohammedanism. We live under the government of a Being who, while He guides a comet in a spliere which a radius of hundreds of thousands of miJes must be taken to describe, legislates about birds' nests ; rules in the armies of heaven, yet understands your thoughts afar off. " Behold ! God is great, and we know Him not ; neither can the number ASTRONOMY IN GENESIS. 129 of His years be searched out. For He maketh small the drops of water which the clouds do drop and distil upon man abundantly." " Also, can any understand the balancing of the clouds, — the wondrous work of Him who is perfect in knowledge ? " There cannot be greater happiness (we might infer from the light of nature, without the aid of personal experience) than to be on terms of per- sonal friendship with the Being who is at the same time swaying his sceptre over the universe, yet a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without Him. If God has kindled in our hearts love to them, He has done for us a greater act than for the heavenly bodies, none of which can hold com- munion with Him. It is better to be a Christian, though ignorant, than an undevout astronomer, though in possession of every secret in nature. God cares as little for the man who has mere •knowledge, as we care for the ant whose hill of sand we perceive to be larger than that of his fellows. " Behold, He put no trust in His servants, and His angels He charged with folly." Knowledge involves no exercise of the will. The human will is the seat of free agency, therefore, of moral character. One who has ex- ercised his will in owning allegiance to God has done that, though, in his knowledge, he be the least of all, which the man who is familiar with 130 THE BEIEF MENTION OF the laws of the heavenly bodies, but does not spiritually know God, has failed to do. If God charges His angels with folly. He cannot respect a man, whose wisdom a child or a fool can baffle by simple questions. When men die who were eminent only for learning, eloquence, statesman- ship, what value is placed on their learning, their eloquence, their statesmanship, among celestial inhabitants ? These things, which may have made them conspicuous here, in another world are like street-lamps left burning after sunrise. The humblest of the heavenly inhabitants could make an unregenerate man feel that, being ig- norant of spiritual things, he knows nothing. Had he known God, his eminent intellectual powers, of course, might have helped him greatly in his heavenly career. To man}^ of earth's Avise men it must be said, hereafter, of the first principles of spiritual knowledge: "Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things ? " Let the young, who are ambitious of literary distinction, let all who are leaders among men in worldly knowl- edge, — remember that, to know God in the Scriptural sense of that expression, is the great- est attainment. We cannot know God but by loving Him, — which we may do by accept- ing Christ as our Redeemer. And he that lov- eth knoweth God ; for God is Love ! ASTRONOMY IN GENESIS. 131 Again : " He that loveth is born of God." Let any one consider what it must be to come into that relation with this Infinite Being which a child has to its father. Such a relation we have, when we begin to love God, and not before. One might appear before him with an exact description of the heavenly bodies ; but God could open befor-e his eyes in a moment one of those nebulaB which now puzzle the wisest astronomer, — thereby making his knowledge fade before that superior light. There is no ex- hortation, therefore, more important than the one which Joshua gave Israel at the close of his life, — an exhortation worthy of the man who had been the conqueror of Canaan ; an exhorta- tion which even so great a warrior was not ashamed to make ; an exhortation never made by Napoleon, nor by a modern Field-Marshal to their troops : " Take good heed to yourselves that ye love the Lord your God." Think of Him who made the stars, causing to be prepared two tables of stone ; those fingers whose work the heavens had been, making He- brew letters, so becoming penman for the chil- dren of men. In which do we see most to adore ? That He made the planet Jupiter with his moons, together with Saturn and his belt, shining on the hill tops, into the valleys of the wilderness of Sinai ; or, that He who made Jupiter and Saturn 132 THE BRIEF MENTION OF caused those tablets to be made, wrote the char- acters of a human alphabet with the same hand which drew the orbits for the comets, made laws for the heavenly bodies, ages before Kepler was born or man arose from the dust ; and when man had ruined himself by sin, wrote on stone for men to read, "Thou slialt have no other.gods before me ? " One thing is a climax to all which has been said, being at once proved by it and proving it. Need I say it is the work of Redemption by Christ? Perhaps it has seemed to some too much to believe that God could condescend to this little earth, become flesh, and as God-man be a sacrifice for sins. But is there anything more condescending in Redemption than we find in the books of Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy ? If I can believe that the same God who made the stars made the laws, especi- ally the regulations in Leviticus, I can believe whatever the Bible may declare ; and can be- lieve it without demanding explanations ; I can accept any declaration concerning it, made by the condescending God. It was God manifest in the flesh who washed the feet of Simon Peter and Judas Iscariot. He who hung on the cross made the stars also ; " all things were created by him and for him ; with- out him was not anything made that was made." ASTKONOMY IN GENESIS. 133 Whoever lives and dies insensible to all this, will have for his chief reflection hereafter, that the God who made the stars made him and redeemed him by giving Christ to die for him ; and all in vain. It should be to us a source of the richest pleasure in this world to believe. At every ex- perience of God's goodness to. us we may say, " He made the stars also ;" thus deepening our sense of his marvelous loving-kindness. It will seem to ennoble the future greatness of redemp- tion in each particular case for an angel in con- templating it to say, " He made the stars also." It will be a joy to liave walked by faith in this world with such a Bible ; we thus accomplish- ing, each of us, the great purpose of our redemp- tion, which is, to believe. Or, must we have every thing explained? Do we require the God who made the constellations to help us under- stand every thing before we receive it? Ex- cept we see in the Saviour's hand the print of the nails, and put our finger in the print of the nails, and thrust our hand into his side, will we refuse to believe ? Simply refusing to believe God in the wil- derness, postponed the entrance of Israel into Caanan one generation, till the unbelievers had all perished. Inspiration speaks of them as car- cases ; " Whose carcases fell in the wilderness." 134 THE BRIEF MENTION OF Unbelief is the great human sin. It will cost more people the loss of heaven than any other one thing. Christ himself is set to be with every man a corner stone, or a stone of stumbling. We sliould never ask, Do 3^ou believe our heav- enly Father would do thus and thus ? but we should ask, Has He done it ? Does the Bible de- clare it? Then implicitly believe, nor make your intellectual apprehensions nor 3'our moral sentiments the rule for the divine proceedings. When a discoverer or thinker embraces a theory which conflicts with revelation, we should class it at once with " science, falsely so called." We are prone to exalt our wisdom above inspi- ration. If men would remember of how little importance they are in themselves, and that it is infinite condescension in God to ask for their love ; if they would ponder that question of the inspired words, " Is it gain to the Almighty that thou makest thy way perfect? Avill he reprove thee for fear of thee ? will he enter with thee into judgment," the exhortations of the Gospel would not make us think, as perhaps they do, that God solicits our love for benefit to himself. He who made the stars also, made us, a little lower than the angels, and crowned us with glory and honor. This God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, made us and redeemed us by the sacrifice of the Son in the flesh. He offers ASTRONOMY IN GENESIS. 135 to sanctify our natures by the Holy Ghost, the third person of this adorable Trinity. Will any one of us fail of so great salvation ? " Where- fore, as the Holy Ghost saith. To day, if ye Avill hear bis voice, harden not your hearts." I VIII. EMULATION IN HEAVEN AMONG THE REDEEMED, "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners ; of whom I am chief." — i Timothy i: 15- If there is anything like emulation among the redeemed in heaven, we may suppose that it is of a kind unknown on earth. It was written long ago by a good man, that if certain men should enter heaven as they now are, their great surprise would be not to find angels laying schemes to make themselves archangels. Per- haps these words of Paul in the text, express the chief subject of emulation among the re- deemed, " sinners, — of whom I am chief." With them it may be, that emulation consists in harmonious strife to settle among themselves who of them were chief sinners, and are now chief debtors to the grace of God. It would not be easy for any of us to conceive (136) ^ AMONG THE KEDEEMED. 137 of such emulation, unless we have already come to the deliberate opinion, that anything which we can experience short of hell is to us mercy. Who will probably seem in heaven to have the highest claim as the chief of sinners, to be greatest debtors to infinite grace ? Let us suppose the inhabitants of heaven from among men engaged in this rivalry, pleading each his claim of owing most to divine mercy. We will judge between them in this harmonious strife. I. The Apostle Paul fiest brings for- ward HIS CLAIM. " I persecuted the Church of God. That in- fant church, the fruit of a Saviour's tears and blood was my prey. I hated it with implacable hatred. I went into houses and dragged Chris- tians to prison. Neither age nor sex found mercy at my hands. " Being exceedingly mad against them I com- pelled some of them to blaspheme. I saw their agony with heartfelt satisfaction. Around you in the heavenly company are the witnesses of my crimes. Behold the spirits of those whom I persecuted even to death. They came out of great tribulation, inflicted on them by me. " The most affecting thing in my heavenly his- 138 EMULATION IN HEAVEN toiy, was my first interview with the martyr Stephen. When I saw him last on earth, he was kneeling to receive the stones from the murder- ers hands, and I was consenting unto his death, and kept the raiment of them that slew him. I did it not from love of pain and blood, but as a religious duty. Little did I ever think of meet- ing him in heaven ; but his must have been the greater surprise to meet me here, though with his last breath he prayed for me : ' Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.' His blood infuri- ated me with more zeal for Christian blood. " On my way to Damascus with full authority to bind, imprison and kill every Christian, He -who loved me and gave himself for me,,appeared and spake to me, and in a tone of mingled re- monstrance and pity, said, ' Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me ? ' When he might have consumed me with his lightnings, he spoke to me with gentle upbraiding. He could have suffered me to go on and fill up the measure of my ini- quity, and be the most guilty spirit in hell ; in- stead of which he has made me, as you will all acknowledge, chief debtor to his love. " In contrast with my former life of blood, see what he permitted me to do. When it pleased God who separated me from my birth, to reveal his Son in me, forthwith I became a preacher AMONG THE REDEEMED. 139 and an Apostle to the Gentiles. I preached to the nations who had never known Him, the un- searchable riches of Christ. I was permitted to write a large part of the New Testament to be the guide of thousands of generations to heaven. I was permitted for Christ's sake to be in dangers more abundant tlian all my companions, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. " I appeal to what I once was, and what I was permitted to do ; to Avhat I was by the grace of God, and to my present bliss in looking upon millions who by my influence were brought to heaven, if I was not in the first place the chief of sinners ; if I am not now the greatest debtor to the grace of God." II. Our attention is noAV demanded by a small company of men who cannot admit the claims of their beloved brother Paul, to be a greater sin- ner and a greater debtor to mercy than they. They are The Crucifiers of Christ, whom we will suppose to have been converted at the day of Pentecost. "Is it possible," they say, "that blood can fall with so deep a stain on a murderer's liand as the blood of the Son of God ? " " With my hands," says one of them, " the crown of thorns ' 140 EMULATION IN HEAVEN was forced upon his head." " But I bound his hands." says another. " I scourged him," says another. " I drove the nails into his hands and feet." " I am the Centurion who thrust the spear into his side." " It is a great crime to have been the means of death to a good man ; but to have killed the Prince of Life, to have been the betrayers and murderers of the Son of God, is the chief transgression. Better to have been the murderers of the universal Church than to have platted a thorn of the Saviour's q,rown, to have driven one nail into that mysterious flesh of the God-man. Why did not the graves re- lease their dead and swallow us up ? Why did not the rocks of Calvary crush our bodies, and. the darkness of the ninth hour leave us in ever- lasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day ? *' Instead of this, the Saviour sent his Apostles first of air to us; — 'beginning at Jerusalem,' he said, ' with offers of pardon through my blood.' On us was the first descent of the Holy Spirit, at Pentecost ; we were the . early fruits of the harvest from that corn of wheat which on Calvary fell into the ground and died. " If any guilt surpasses ours, declare it ; men- tion one thing which surpasses this : ' and killed the Prince of Life.' Tell us, if 3^ou can, who owes more to divine forbearance than we. The AMONG THE EEDEEMED. 141 guilt of the Apostle Paul, — it sinks into insig- nificance by the side of ours. Never did he know such sensations, not even in his meeting with the martyr Stephen, as we had, when we first looked upon the face of our Redeemer in heaven. ' When we last saw thee,' we said, ' we were nailing thee to the accursed tree ; ' but ere we could repeat our thanks for pardon, we were filled with full assurance of his love. We walk these golden streets, we range these heavenly fields, and talk of Calvary with feelings un- known to all the heavenly host. If any are to be recognized here as chief sinners on earth and chief debtors to the grace of God, they must be The crucifiers of Christ." III. "Give room," says a company of shin- ing ones, whom we recognize as A Band of ONCE HEATHEN CHIEFS AND WAERIOES. •" We shall c(»nclude this contest by our re- hearsal. We were the Gentiles that knew not God. We worshipped the" devil, and faithful subjects we were to our lord. No souls went lower than we in degradation ; no vices, no crimes were too abominable for us. Some of us were worshipped as gods ; on our altars human victims bled and burned. Tribes fell by tribes into our hands, and we were following them down to darkness and the pit. The Son of God sent 142 EMULATION IN HEAVEN missionaries to our islands ; they told us about the true God; of the Sacrifice for our sins; of pardon, regeneration, holiness, heaven. Then we were washed, justified, sanctified, by the renew- ing of the Holy Ghost. God never found souls lower in guilt than we ; of course, none were ever raised so far by divine grace. " Here is the martyr of Raratonga, whom we slew, the missionary John Williams; but instead of Christians sending fleets to destroy us, the children of Great Britain sent a missionary packet to our shores and her name was, ' John Williams ;' as though they would heap coals of fire on our heads ; and the children of America sent the Morning Star with Bibles, to which they .told us we should do well to take he.ed until the day dawned, and the day-star should arise in our hearts. In all this we saw the hand, we felt the heart, of God ,*• this was the Gospel of peace ; it melted our hearts; we were led captive by mercy. We almost question the claim of angels to the highest tokens of the love of God. At least we can say, if they are the height, we are the depth, of the love of God ; and it was more for that love to i"each down to us than up to them. " What unmerited love, to find us out in our islands, and bring salvation to us ! True, we can speak of no striking exhibition of God's power J AMONG THE EEDEEMED. 143 that is uncommon, in the conversion of sinners, like that whicli Paul experienced, and our breth- ren at Pentecost. But we were the lost sheep in the wilderness of ocean : the Good Shepherd found us, and brought us liome to His fold. We cannot yield to any who have yet spoken, in our conviction that we were the greatest sinners, be- cause our guilt was sickening: we were more than brutal ; we had the instincts of brutes, and the passions of animals. Hideous, loathsome, fiendish, as we were, we are now companions with the saints in light. If the contrast of the heavenly with the earthly condition may enter into the account, whose robes seem to them so resplendent as ours ? And if distance from God enhances the love which brings back the lost, give us the joy of confessing that we are debt- ors- to. His mercy more than you all." IV. Before the eyes of the assembled multi- tude appears a company who represent The Children of Heaven. Peculiar beauty dwells in their faces and forms ; immortal youth breathes from their looks and motions. The at- tention of the multitude is chained while they thus proceed : — " We represent the innumerable host of spir- its who came to heaven in infancy ; we are from every tribe under heaven. There was not one 144 EMULATION IN HEAVEN of all the tribes of men who.did not send some infants to heaven. Some of us were murdered by our parents as soon as we were born. Each heathen river, each island shore, is the burying- place of our bodies. Among us is the compau}^ of those who were slain by Herod, — martyrs for the Child Jesus, — and those who have per- ished by the wars, famines, and diseases which have swept the earth. With us are the children of Christian families, baptized in Christian tem- ples or homes, buried amid broken hearts, but waiting with surprising beauty and glory to wel- come pious parents hither. Do you speak of the grace of God ? If grace consists in the absence of all merit, who are debtors at all to divine grace compared with us? We did not even be- lieve on Christ, — for we never knew him ; but, being involved in the first father's transgression, without opportunity of repentance and faith in the Saviour, we were included in the free gift : salvation was bestowed on us, who never sought it. Consider, too, the goodness of God, in our early death. If those of us who were born in heathenism had lived to manhood, we should have perished in our sins ; but God removed us from such exposure, to heaven. Some of us, though born in Christian lands, were the chil- dren of irreligious parents, whose example and influences, if we had lived, might have prevented AMONG THE REDEEMED. 145 our salvation. Look at some of our homes, — our parents and all our brothers and sisters un- converted I See what peril we have escaped, by the merciful hand of death ! God in His good- ness interposed to save us. He has made our death, in many instances, the means of the con- version of parents. Such joy as we behold in the recognition of a glorified child by the parents as they enter heaven, we cannot utter : angels cannot witness it without emotion. We have seen fathers and mothers meeting the children who died in infancy, and left their parents with- out hope ; and God sanctified the affliction, and the parents ascribe their salvation and eternal union with their children in heaven, to the re- moval of the children by an early death. Those of us whose parents lived and died impenitent, and are lost, though the first budding instinct of filial affection remained in our hearts, and made us hope to meet our parents here, neverLheless, are made to see what a mercy it is that God snatched us away from an irreligious, prayerless influence, and saved us. Why did He not leave us to perish with our parents ? Because lie set His love upon us, therefore did He deliver us ; and our rescue from such imminent danger and the peculiar love of God in our early death bids us not to weep for those who would have destroyed us by their influence, if God had not 146 EMULATION IN HEAVEN interposed to save us. God and heaven are our father and mother, sister and brother. ' O Death ! where is thy sting ? ' The monster Death was the means of our salvation. ' O grave ! where is thy victory ? ' Oiir graves received our bodies each for safe-keejjing against the resur- rection of the just, and the strange union of soul and body, of which we have no remembrance, and can form no conception, is to be ours, with sensations of pleasure unknown to tlie rest of the rising dead. Though every saint will have im- mortal youth, our youth will have in it some- thing peculiar; for the only homes, the only scenes of childhood, which we can remember, are are those of heaven. We were children in heaven ; and through eternity the vivid recollec- tions of the first impressions made upon our opening minds by the scenes of heaven will make our whole being an eternal morning. We were never conscious of sinning against God. Had we lived, we should have had consciousness of sin. We never rejected the Saviour, or cruci- fied Him afresh, or grieved the Holy Spirit of God ; and it is the subject of our grateful praise that by death God prevented us from so doing, and, instead of letting us spend years in sin, gave us those years in the purity of heaven. Adore with us that grace which selected us from a ruined world, and saved us of its own accord, AMONG THE REDEEMED. 147 when we were unconscious of it. You all seem to have had grace bestowed on you ; but we are, as it were, grace itself. Boasting is, indeed, ex- cluded from any share in our salvation. Grace, grace in us is all in all." • V. There follows these words, from the army of children in heaven, — a deep, rich song, its joy mingled with pensive strains, from a host whose feelings burst forth in notes of praise whenever the grace of God is mentioned in their hearing. They are The Converts of Chris- tian Congregations. Most of them declare that their Christian privileges and their long re- sistance of God's call and His forbearance with them under their great guilt, make them the chief debtors to divine grace. " What is the guilt of Paul," they say, " who did not sin un- der the clear strivings of the Divine Spirit, but ignorantly, in unbelief? What is the guilt of the crucifiers of Christ, and of barbarians, who did not enjoy the teachings of that Spirit? What are the obligations of the children, com- pared with ours, when you think that we were saved, not only without merit, but against infin- ite demerit ? Was not blasphemy against the Holy Ghost the unpardonable sin ? Does it not follow that any sins against the Holy Spirit are greater than others, — because, to sin against ^^ OF THB 148 EMULATION IN HEAVEN right and conviction constitutes tlie most inex- cusable sin? We had the whole Bible from childhood, and Sabbatlis and sanctuaries, and with us the Holy Spirit early began to strive. But for a long time we grieved him every day, We despised his warnings, turned away from the Gospel, walked after our own hearts: one year after another ended, and left us without God. With a full impression of what we ought to do, we refused to do it. Should not the servant who knew his Lord's will, and did it not, be beaten with many stripes? Who of all this heavenly company, professing to have been the chief of sinners, knew their Lord's will so well as we ? Think of us as members of Bible- classes, studying the Word of God, knowing it by heart, hearing earnest, affectionate appeals from our teachers and companions, — yet resist- ing all. " In yonder world of punishment, there are none who suffer so much from conscience as those who died under the preaching of the Gospel, and now remember the awakenings, the convictions, the sermons, the solemn scenes of religious inter- est, — the times when they were 'almost per- suaded.' Souls who went from the sight of the Lord's table to lie down in sorrow, have no keener anguish than when they recall that table as it stood in the house of God, — its white AMONG THE BEDEEMED. 149 cloth, its silver flagon and cup, the bread ready- to be broken, the looks and words of the pastor, repeating the invitation of Jesus, ' This do in re- membrance of me ; ' and then- the dividing as- sembly, — such an emblem of the separations at the last day ! Now, had we, with all our culti- vation of minds, our enlightened consciences our memories stored with Scripture and hymns — had we perished, you all admit that no souls in hell would be so tormented as we. For us to have lost heaven and to have spent eternity with the wicked, would have been the severest suffer- ing which God can inflict. Some who worship- ped with us, and sang out of the same book now suffer it. How near we came to the brink of ruin ! Our feet had well-nigh slipped. The centuries of our heavenly life have not abated our astonisliment at being saved. We find our- selves, often repeating that inspired description of ourselves, — ' For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, serving divers lusts aind pleasures, living in malice and envy, harteful and hating one another.' It is our de- liberate opinion that the greatest sinners and the greatest debtors to the grace of God are to be found among members of Christian Congre- gations." The controversy might be prolonged ; it doubt- less is. May we hear it forever ! 150 EMULATION IN HEAVEN If asked now what our judgment is, in view of this friendly contest in lieaven for the chief place as debtor to the grace of God, could we hesitate for a reply? When we think of the criminality of rejecting, of simply neglecting Jesus Christ, under all the influences of educa- tion, of Christian example, of persuasion, of pro- vidence, of death, of conscience enlightened by the Bible and illuminated by the suggestions of the sanctuary, beginning with childhood, extend- ing through mature years, and in some cases to old age, of living under the persuasive influen- ces of the Christian religion ; sacraments, pro- vidences, the Holy Spirit, prayer, special bless- ings ; the rich gifts of an all-bounteous loving kindness and tender mercy ; and then when we consider what we should have suffered had we perished under these influences, what our reflec-. tions would have been, what an eternit}^, ours, witli all our knowledge, opportunities, — and heaven lost ! forever lost ! Tell us, ye who fell from heaven, would not our loss of heaven have been greater to us than it would have been»to any others of the children of men? This question, my hearers, may none of us have occasion to ponder when it is forever too late for the consideration of it to be of any avail. Some of the most amiable of this congregation in the esteem of their fellow men, might be told , AMONG THE REDEEMED. 151 by their Judge, " It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you." None have move occasion than you who liave enjoyed the privileges of the sanctuary to say, " How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation ! " Let me then strive to impress these few truths upon you by the help of this subje.ct. I. Of all the titles of Christ this holds the chief place., Saviour of Sinners. The Apostle Paul tells us, assuredly true and worthy of the fullest acceptance is tliis, that " Jesus Christ came into the world to save sin- ners." The full acceptance of this truth will put an end to the idea, that Christ's mission was one of philanthropy ; that he was a great "reformer ; that human salvation is merely development. He came into the world to save sinners. Ev- ery thing else, civilization, science, culture, arts, social human happiness, is each a fruit of redemp- tion and of pardon. Other blessings are merely the things, which Robert Hall says, " Christian- ity scatters about her profusely on her sublime march to immortality." But the great woi'k of Christ is to save sin- ners. If you are a sinner, you are an object of redeeming grace ; if you are not a sinner in need 152 EMULATION IN HEAVEN of an infinite atonement, you may, indeed, gather many of the scattered blessings of Chris- tianity ; but you will at the most, only eat of the crumbs which fall from the Master's table. But believe and feel yourself to be, in view of your privileges, one of the chief debtors to the grace of God, and you will be a rival with Paul for the distinction. There probably is not a bet- ter unconverted man among us, than the young man at the feet of Gamaliel. Many a virtuous man, many an estimable woman, has feelings to- wards evangelical j-eligion which compare well with those which Saul of Tarsus had towards Stephen. They would be willing to keep the raiment of those who would stone it. It is to be doubted if Saul was more conscien- tious than some people among us are, in their strong dislike of the doctrines of the cross. " And such were . some of you, but ye are washed ;" and have taken place with the claim- ants for the largest indebtedness to divine grace. It is plain from what has been said. Secondly, that nothing on earth is more unlike the spirit of heaven than a self -justifying spirit. Some of our friends say, " I am no worse than others ; I shall fare as well as others ; I have suffered enough here without suffering hereaf- AMONG THE REDEEMED. 153 ter ; God will not punish me for a few sins ; I am less guilty than some who profess more than I." If this be our spirit we may be sure that we have no inheritance with the company of heaven. The spirit of heaven is a humble self-condemn- ing spirit. The language of heaven is, " Unto him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his blood." It appears from our subject, Thirdly, The greatness of guilt may he a ground of hope rather than of despair. Some of the greatest sinners on earth will be in heaven ; indeed we may say that if there be one whose guilt we are ready to feel, is unpar- alleled, we may have hope that heaven will con- tain him when they bring the glory and honor of the nations into it ; the greatest glory and honor will be penitent thieves, the woman who was a sinner, and Saul of Tarsus. Has any one here been a great transgressor ? Will 3^ou have uncommon happiness in heaven? Will you be a conspicuous monument of the grace of God ? To find great sinners, those whom God adjudges to be such, we would not probably be sent to the haunts of vice, to the ignorant, the neglected, or even the abandoned ; 154 EMULATION IN HEAVEN but perhaps to the house of God where some, exalted to heaven in their opportunities of know- ing God and their duty, are in their hearts without God. They probably would have more to reflect upon if lost, than any ; and, if saved, will not admit that any deserved it less than they. There are among us those who are ready to dispute with Paul his claim to be the chief debtor to the grace of God. Should opportunity be given, some would humbly but earnestly declare that they would not admit that there is a soul on earth or in heaven who has greater reason than they to adore the grace of God, or one who owed more to divine forbearance, long-suffering, gentleness and compassion. We are each destined to spend eternity in re- viewing life ; and unquestionably the most ab- sorbing object of our thoughts will be Jesus Christ : and the theme on which we shall chiefly dwell will be that " Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners." But it may prove to be the case that some one of us will have occasion to say, No one has lost more in losing heaven than I ; no one lost it for less than I ; so that of all who have occasion to weep and wail, I am chief. No doubt every one of you will have occasion in heaven or hell either to claim that he is chief debtor to the grace of God, or that he is of all men most miserable. AMONG THE REDEEMED. 155 You will say, Who had more to enlighten, re- strain, subdue, in parentage, religious instructions, warnings, escapes from destruction, recoveries from sickness, the death of companions, awaken- ings, forgivenesses, answers to prayer when on the brink of destruction. " As for me, ray feet were almost gone, my steps had well nigh slip- ped." Many and many a time there was but a step between me and death. How I abused the mercy of God, how defiant I was to his threat- enings, how insensible to sparing mercy ; I feel willing to contest with any sinner from earth his claim as owing most to the grace of God. I would demand of him to prove, if he could, that there was more long-suffering, gentleness, unde- served mercy in his case than mine. Others may be heard to say, Come and see if there be any sorrow, like unto my sorrow. To whom of you, companions in misery, is heaven more of a loss than to me ? Who of you came nearer to being saved. Who had more done to save him ? Who gave up heaven for less than I ? To whom is the company of the lost more distressing than to me ? Is there any sorrow like unto my sorrow ? And so forever and ever, succeeding ages will but repeat our assertion, that no one owes more than each of us to the grace which bringeth sal- vation ; or has more occasion to lift up his voice 156 EMULATION IN HEAVEN in loudest lamentations. And all this in conse- quence of one act of accepting or neglecting the great salvation. One single submission to the call of God, or one refusal to accept his offers, will be the decisive act which will determine whether we spend eternity claiming to be chief debtor to the grace of God, or chief debtor to His avenging law and neglected gospel. It is indeed a solemn thing to die, but is it not a more solemn thing to live under such lia- bilities? I would not close my eyes in sleep till I had committed my soul to those hands which on the cross had on one side the impenitent thief and on the other the penitent thief, Jesus in the midst, proclaiming as it does to all men their danger and their only refuge. Some stand on slippery places. " Their feet shall slide in due time." No one has listened to the voice of mercy but will see the time when he will say as Bradford tlie martyr once did when he looked on a felon going to execution, " There, but for the grace of God goes John Bradford ;" or who would not be willing to ex- change his conscience for that of the felon ; sup- posing, in the greatest of his agony, that any and every burden must be lighter than his. Therefore, " Escape for thy life; neither stay thou in all the plain, escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed." Come, take up this moment AMONG THE REDEEMED. 157 the endless song of praise to divine grace ! Enter the lists of competitors for the chief crown which shall be cast at the feet of your Re- deemer ! '' We, then, as workers together with Him, be- seech you that ye receive not the grace of God in vain. For He saith, I have heard tliee in an accepted time and in the day of salvation have I succored thee ; behold, now is the accepted time, behold now is the day of salvation." IX. TEE COUNSEL OF ELIHU TO TEE DESPONDENT " Although thou sayest thou shalt not see him, yet judgment is before him ; therefore trust thou in him," — Job 35 : 14. THERE is no word which the worshippers of God need to have whispered to their hearts more frequently than this : " Trust thou in Him." We are in a world and under a system of events wonderfully adapted to try our faith. We have reason to think that angels look with astonishment when they see one who is iii great affliction trusting in God. Angels can trust in Him without effort. Indeed what would become of them at times when they see His great judg- ments, if they could not? They see more that calls for faith than we : for they not' only wit- ness, but are called to execute His dark designs. They never start back from fulfilling His com- (158) TO THE DESPONDENT. 159 mands, saying, This is too dreadful. But let us hear wliat they say: "And the third augel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters, and they became blood." "And I heard the angel of the waters say, Thou art righteous, O Lord, which art and wast and shalt be, because Thou hast judged thus." "And I lieard another angel out of the altar say. Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are Thy judgments." Seeing so many of the terrible acts of the Al- mighty, perhaps it is well for them that they are not required to walk by faith ; so that without question they look on us under great bereave- ments in this dark world, and say, " What should we do if we had to suffer thus and knew no more than they ? " So when they see one be- reft of a child, for example, under circumstances peculiarly trying, perhaps following the loss of a companion, or of one child after another, till at length the last coal is quenched, no doubt they say, "Earth is indeed a spectacle to us angels." While we wonder how angels endure such revelations as God makes to them, they wonder how Christians endure such m3^sterious chastise- ments. It is easy for angels to love God ; they always did ; there is nothing in His works and ways to baffle their trust, nothing in themselves to call in question His justice: to make them 160 THE COUNSEL OF ELIHTJ doubt His goodness. So when tliey see us en- during shaip trials not only with long-suffering, but joyfull}^ they do not question the truth which they often hear from our pulpits, that there is more that is wonderful in the faith of some Christians than in the obedience of the angels. Our faith also fills tliem with astonishment because it is not universal among men. They see many nominal Christians who have very lit- tle ; some have none at all. I was once called to minister consolation to a mother who had lost a child under trying circumstances. She replied thus to my remarks : "I cannot see why God should afflict me so ; my sister has brought up a large family of children, nor lost one ; and here my only daughter who would have been such a comfort to me, is snatched away." Angels took no pleasure in her faith ; and now twenty- five years from that time she herself is wast- ing away, having no hope, and without God in the. world. In contrast, they did take pleas- ure in a bereaved mother 'who anticipated all which I was ready to say to her, by exclaiming, " Can you tell me why this affliction malces me love God so ? " Said I, " perhaps you have learned to say with the Psalmist, ' Whom have I in heaven but thee ! and there is none on earth that I desire besides thee.' " — Consider I. If without faith it is impossible to • TO THE DESPONDENT. 161 PLEASE God, we might infer that faith is EMINENTLY PLEASING. If faith, such as I have mentioned, makes an- gels wonder as they see it in the clouds and darkness under which we suffer, there can be no question that God himself is pleased with it. For you have time and again noticed in the New Testament, that Christ was more pleased with faith than anything else. Once he said, " O woman, great is thy faith, be it unto thee, even as thou wilt ! " At another time, he turned from a suppliant and said to the people : " Yerily, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel ! " There is in Scripture no list of those who dis- tinguished themselves for zeal, or humility, or hope ; but the eleventh of Hebrews emblazons the names of men and women who through faith did marvellous things. God made Abraham the heir of the greatest blessings for his faith. Faith is the crowning glory of the Christian character. Faith in Christ saves the soul. The trial of it is said to be much more precious than of gold that perisheth ; it is to be found unto praise and honor, and glory, at the appearing of Jesus Christ. Such being the distinguishing glory of trust- ing in God in this distant dark world, it so ex- cites the wonder of angels, and commands the 162 THE COUNSEL OF ELIHU * approbation of God himself, we shall do well to make it our study to live a life of faith. Every one has abundant opportunity to practise it. Could the secrets of our hearts be unfolded, we should find that every one is ready to confess that he needs nothing so much as ti'ust in God. II. A PRINCIPAL DESIGN OF THE OlD TES- TAMENT IS TO TEACH US FAITH. We have before us in the book from w^hich the text is taken, a wonderful illustration of our subject. The oldest of all writings is the book of Job. It is marvellous to see what the subject of it is ; how God began to teach the children of men. Wise men among us would, perhaps, have prescribed that the oldest record in the Book of God should be a plain statement of truths relat- ing to science, when and how the world was made ; how many worlds were created at once ; were they peopled ? the number, character, em- ploj^ments of their inhabitants. Instead of these things, the subject chosen is a man reduced from affluance to abject poverty, loathsome disease, excruciating pain. The devil is allowed to ex- periment with him by bereaving him, by torment- ing him, by setting against him all his friends, some of them good men. His wife conjures him to abandon his confidence in the Almighty:, "curse God and die ! " TO THE DESPONDENT. 163 The- Scripture says : " Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord, how that the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy." We are bold to say, that God meant to .teach mankind by the first writing which He has communicated to us, that the great business of man in this world is to trust God; that He does this by opening first before the eyes of men, not the book of Proverbs, not the book of Ecclesiastes, not the Psalms, not the story of creation, but the duty of implicit trust in God. As an example. He gives us a rich man, the greatest of all the men of the East, stripped at Oiice of every thing, sitting down in the ashes, scraping himself with a piece of potsherd, yet giving the sacred historian occasion to say, " In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God fool- ishly." There came three men to talk with him ; they intended to teach him, as we all think that we know so well, perhaps, how to do when we see others in trouble. Among the wonders of in- spiration I know of nothing more remarkable than this, (and it may be accounted one of the chief proofs of the inspiration of the Bible), that while these three friends of Job were wholly mistaken in tlieir judgment of him, and said many things which were wholly wrong as applied to Job, so that God was angry with 164 THE COUNSEL OF ELIHU them, 3-et not one word did they say which in its general application is not true. So that a minister can take a passage from any part of their speeches for a text and preach from it as the word of God. The Homers and Miltons " pale their ineffec- tual fires " in comparison with this first poem, this master-piece of wisdom, ingenuity, wisdom, eloquence, religion ; three men talking wrong- fully, so that they moved the wrath of God against them ; for He said to Eliphaz, seemingly the best of the -three, '' My wrath is kindled against thee and against thy two friends ; for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right as my servant Job hath ; " yet neither of them saying one word which in itself and by itself, and with a right application, was unsuitable to be recorded in the Bible. Let the students of language, proficients in logic, rhetoric, eloquence, come and see this great sight, and acknowledge that the Book of Job must have been inspired to have accomp- lished this unparalleled feat of wisdom ; and if this one book is inspired, why not all the rest from the same hand, bearing the same seal of the apostles and of Christ ? Our text is both an example and illustration of what I have now said. No wonder that it made God angry to hear those good but mistaken TO THE DESPONDENT. 165 men say to Job, " Acquaint now thyself with Him and be at peace;" — a man who probably knew more of God than they. Yet that pas- sage is a truthful, a beautiful word. So is the text. Very little did Job need such an exhor- tation ; but we all need it, and by divine help we will profit by it. III. The counsel of Elihu in the te±t IS PKOFITABLE TO A SINKING HEAET. "Although thou sayest thou shalt not see Him." If Job did not say this, perhaps we do ; and we are grateful for this counsel. Job said, "He knoweth the way that I take ; when He hath tried me I shall come forth as gold." The meaning of the text is, "Although 'you say you will never see Him appear for you, yet He will exercise judgment when to do so ; therefore trust thou in Him." There are times, we have all seen them, we may be seeing them now, when a dark provi- dence has settled down like a cloud on our pros- pect. Something has happened which is the very worst thing which it seems to us God could 'have chosen wherewith to afflict us. There is no ex- planation; there is no mitigation, no cheerful outlook ; all is dark, bewildering ; the wisest thing which our best friends can do is to keep silence ; they are mistaken if they tell us not to 166 THE COUNSEL OF ELIHU weep ; only He who can touch the bier and raise the dead can properly say, " Weep not." " Je- sus wept ; " it was a relief to Him ; it is to us. Nature finds comfort in cries, groans, tears ; but still we say, " All is in vain;" and as Job said, " Though I speak, m}^ grief is not assuaged ; and though I forbear, yet what am I eased ? " We say, *' It is impossible not to weep ; sluill tlie dead be raised ? can the past be recalled ; can the bit- terness of this affliction be soon taken away ? Stern, inexorable providence has done what Job said God had done to him. ' He hath compas- sed my way with hewn stone ; ' not with lieaps of stones, but each one cut, ' taken out of wind,' mortised, set up with plumb and level, all de- signed, a perfect piece of work, built so as ex- actly to confound me. There is no use in argu- ment ; all is hopeless ; God was my friend once ; now He has set me up as His mark. ' The ar- rows of the Almighty are within me, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit.' " To such afflicted souls the Word of God says, "Although thou sayest thou shalt not see Him, yet judgment is before Him." You think that you will never see His design to accomplish good in you and by you in this affliction. It seems to you without plan, confused, reckless. God seems to have let chaos overspread you ; infinite wis- dom does not appear to have had any thing to do TO THE DESPONDENT. 167 with the events which have befallen you. To gather np the thread of your broken history hereafter, seems to you as impossible as it would to pick out your carriage-track from the multi- tude of tracks which fill the streets of a city. Even if it were not so, we learn from the inferior creatures that animal instinct is capable of scent- ing a track even more confused. You have seen an animal that has lost liis master, finding his steps among ten thousand which have been im- printed there during that day, and finally tracing his way home for miles by that fine sense. How^ can one who knows this to be so, question the ability of Infinite Wisdom to keep the remem- brance .of all his affairs distinct ? This good man. Job, says, " Doth not He see my ways and count all my steps ? " David makes this appeal to the all-knowing God : " Put thou my tears in Tliy bottle ; are they not in Thy book?" God keeps a record of every tear, when, why it was shed ; David prays him to be still more observant of them ; — " Put my tears into thy bottle," he says : catch every falling drop. O the infinite, yes, the infinite love of God for every child of His here appears. We speak of God as a father ; He does more ; He' speaks of Himself as a mother." As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you, and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem." " Can 168 THE COUNSEL OF ELIHU a woman forget?" says God ; " yea tbey may for- get ; yet will I not forget thee." Judgment is before him as it is before the tenderest friend. God never forgets ; never mistakes. He keeps the time-table of the comets ; He knows when one planet is to cross another's track ; He remem- bered Israel in Egypt ; and in the last two verses of the second chapter of Exodus we read these remarkable words : " And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob ; and God looked upon the children of Israel, and God had respect unto them." Four times in those few lines is that adoral^le name repeated in con- nection with His remembrance of His afflicted people. Judgment is before Him, whenever a child of His suffers; the arrow that pierces us, wounds His heart ere it reaches ours. IV. Our duty in daek houks is iieiie MADE PLAIN. " Therefore trust in Him." This is done by special heartfelt address to God by word of mouth. It is not enough to think a prayer, unless we are speechless by reason of sickness, then our thoughts are prayers. • We cannot but think that when the Psahnist says, "My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O Lord ; in the morning will I di- TO THE DESPONDENT. 169 rect my prayer unto thee and will look up," he means to be understood literally; that he would not as a rule lie in bed and think a prayer to God. There is meaning in his resolution to let God hep-r his voice. Speaking requires an effort of mind which is not made when we lie still and muse, unless, as I said before, we are under some infirmity. To rise and go upon our knees, im- plies a serious determination to seek God, and the act of framing our speech, shows that we are in earnest. Cotton Mather says of Rev. N. Rogers of Ipswich, that every morning for many years, while in health, it was his custom on ris- ing from his bed immediately to fall upon his knees. So that when we are in trouble it is a good thing for us to draw nigh to God with Avords. " Take Avith you words and turn unto the Lord ; say unto him. Take away all iniquity, and heal us graciously ; so will we render the calves of our lips." We do well if we remem- ber this in our approach to God. When David says, " Awake up, my glory," he means, 'my tongue, the glory of my frame.' An effort to speak is often a sure sign that our powers are summoned by us to a serious effort. The time, the place, the manner, the attitude of our approach to God are regarded by Him. There may be a serious deficiency in our habit of approach to God ; a carelessness, a negli- 170 THE COUNSEL OF ELIHU gence, which we would not be guilty of in our intercourse with one another. A solemn, delib- erate expression of our trust in God is sure to be regarded by Him. " Trust in Him at all times ; ye people, pour out your hearts before Him ; God is a refuge for us." You may not be aware that your address to God has been heard ; but David says, " I will direct my praj^er unto thee and will look up," as one who shoots an arrow follows it with his eye to see how it speeds. Having committed our prayer to God, declaring our trust in Him, we must show our sincerity by a quietness of mind which, be it remembered, is not inconsistent with importunity. Yet we need not suspect ourselves of impatience if we find ourselves saying, "How long wilt thou forget me, O'Lord, forever ? " " Make no tarrying, O my God." But there are some events in which we feel it proper to abstain from specific requests in pray- er, as, in hopeless, sickness, the recovery of aged persons whose restoration cannot be desired by themselves or their friends. Again, there are sorrows which neither earth nor time can heal. In such cases, " it is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord ! " Eternity will- witness great surprises. Some who never awaken any solicitude, no doubt will prove to have no oil in their vessels with their lamps Avheii the Bridegroom comes.. TO The despondent. 171 It has fallen to my lot to meet with more than one case like this: A maii has • suddenly died who followed false doctrine, giving no sign of recantation. His young widow said, "His friends of course suppose that he failed to be saved. If so, let me perish with him." So she resolutely embraced his erroneous views, becom- inor more zealous than he in defending them. One day I startled her with this question : " What makes you feel so sure that your hus- band did not recant in his last hours ? Perhaps he did, though for two days he could not speak to inform jou. of the change in his views. Sup- pose tliat when you die you should find that he is saved by accepting Christ in those last days, and that you, trying to follow his steps in unbe- belief, have missed him, and he is comforted and you are not. What a sad mistake you will make, to have persisted in following a mortal in- stead of listening to the suggestions of the Holy Spirit, urging you to Christ. Believe the Gos- pel ; then you will either find your companion in heaven, or have a satisfactory reason given you why he is not there. Do not conclude that your husband is not saved because you did not hear him make a confession of faith. It might have had a disastrous effect on survivors to know that he, after such a life, was saved in the last hour. Make your own calling sure." It was gratifying 172 THE COUNSEL OF ELIHU to see her confess Christ, choosing rather to fol- low His plain kistructions than the bewildering light which was leading her among tombstones, over graves. It is wrong to assume that we are possessed of full knowledge concerning that which has taken place between the soul and God. His ways are not as our ways, neither His thoughts as our thoughts. Many times He shuts up a man and there is no opening, not a gleam of light ; there is silence and he hears a voice, "Be still and know that I am God." All that one can do at such a time is to fulfil the ordinary duties of life, faithfull}^, patiently, bearing the grievous burden. Some people seem unwilling to forgive God, if He has done thus and thus : but who shall say to Him, " What doest thou? " We should never abandon ourselves to incon- solable grief in the darkest hours. God takes pleasure in those who against hope, believe in hope, taking part with God by insisting that He is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think. While faith in Jesus Christ is the superior act of faith, it cannot be questioned that before Christ came, believing in God was imputed to Abraham for righteousness, and that God will justify many of the heathen through faith, whose knowledge of God does not reach beyond those invisible things of Him which are TO THE DESPONDENT. 173 clearly seen, being understood from the things which are made. " Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he had offered Isaac, his son, upon the altar ? " Thunder never strikes ; it is only lightning that strikes. At the same time while thunder never strikes, the lightning which has no thun- der is only heat-lightning. So repentance can- not save ; faith only saves ; yet faith without repentance is only heat-lightning. Repentance has no power to save ; yet it is essential to faith. Thus, works have no saving power; yet faith with- out works is dead. So while faith in Jesus Christ is the power of God and the wisdom -of God unto salvation, and nothing can supplant it, Abraham's offering of Isaac on the altar showed a readiness to- accept Christ; therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness, as it is writ- ten, ''Abraham believed God, iand it was im- puted unto him for righteousness." Therefore say, " Why art thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me ? Hope thou in God, for I «hall yet praise Him who is the health of my countenance." Did we but know it, God is wooing those whom He is afflicting. "He scourgeth every son whom He receiveth." Therefore be of good courage, desponding souls. Submit yourselves under His rod. If you are of a melancholy dis- 174 THE COUNSEL OF ELTHU position, read in the epistle of James. " Paul and Peter require three or four verses to finish their salutatories before they begin their doc- trine ; but James seems so full of something good to tell us that he cannot wait beyond one verse, biit bursts forth with these words of cheer in his second verse : "My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations." If you are despondent, seek out the poor, many of whom are rich in faith, and talk with them. A good man who was .melancholy, began in a gloomy tone to say to a colored woman, "Does it not seem strange to you that God should pass by the rich people who live in these mansions and come to your hovel to make you a Christian ? " "No, sir, it is not strange," said she, "it is just like Him." The answer did more to cure his melancholy than did his books. So Ave say to you who are cast down : " Wait on the Lord." " Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord." I have asked 3^ou to consider I. 'If without faith it is impossible to please God, we may infer that faith is eminently pleas- ing to Sim. IF. A principal design of the Old Testament is to teach us faith. TO THE DESPONDENT. 175 III. The Counsel of Elihu in iJie text is pro- fitable to a sinking heart. IV. Our duty in dark hours is here made plain. finally. eveeything which has been said of trust in god in times of despon- dency, is eminently true of faith in the Saviour. ^ It is one proof of His equality with God that Christ said, "Let not your heart be troubled j ye believe in God, believe also in me." An im- poster might aay this arrogantly ; but none save a divine being could properly speak of himself in comparison with God. Despondency is never so* much out of place as in coming to Christ. There it is sinful. God classes the fearful and unbelieving with all liars ; and we know where they are to have their part. Afraid to trust yourself in those hands which were nailed to the cross for the sins of the whole world ! The hands of Him who said, "All power is given unto Me in heaven and on earth ? " " All that the Father hath given Me shall come to Me^ and him that Cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out ? " if confidence, if boldness, is proper at any 176 THE COUNSEL OF ELIHU time, and in any, it is eminently so in a guilty creature coming to the Saviour of sinners. Let a trembling soul hear these words: "Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy." Paul says of Christ, " In whom we have boldness and access with con- fidence by the faith of Him." To the Hebrews who saw the High Priest going alone once a year into the Holy of holies, he says, " Having there- fore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus — let us draw near." John uses this astonishing expression : "Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have bold- ness in the day of judgment." Come then, one and all, and oiriy believe. Be- lieve and you shall be established. " He that believeth shall be saved." Begin with believing in Jesus Christ, the author and finisher of our faith. In every event of life, in trials, sorrows, losses, disappointments, remember this : " With patience, then, the course of duty run : " God never does, nor suffers to be done, ." But thou would 'st do thyself could 'st thou but see " The end of all events as well as He." " Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed." Happy is he here and hereafter, TO THE DESPONDENT. ' 177 who can sa}^ not as an intellectual, philosophical truth, but with the heart, " Lord, I know that Thy judgments are right." Verily it will be said of such as of Israel, "He led them forth by ,the EIGHT way." [IJFIVBRSITI X. THO UART THE a UIDE OF MY YO UTH, " Wilt thou not from this time cry unto me, My father, thou art the guide of my youth ? " — Jeremiah 3 : 4. THERE is nothing more wonderful than prayer. One would think that every child might agree to this. If asked to prove it, he would need only to point to the text. God invites the youngest to pray to Him. There can be nothing more wonderful than this. It is indeed astonishing that God should listen to prayer; much more, that He should invite us to pray ; but a child may well say, that for God to wonder at him for not praying, thus apparently deeming a child's prayer of sufficient importance to be inquired into if neglected, almost exceeds belief. One who admits this truth, that God really pays attention to prayer, not only invit- ing but exhorting to it, will be prepared to ap- preciate the remark of Daniel Webster to a kinsman who spent a night at his house at Marsh- (178) THOU AKT THE GUIDE OF MY YOUTH. 179 field, and related the conversatioa to me. He said " that of all the things which ever inter- ested his mind this was chief: The personal re- lation of a soul to God." He explained, saying, that he perceived in the Scriptures that God re- cognized every man as accountable to Him for his conduct, even to his thoughts and words ; that He took a personal interest in all that transpired within him, listening to his words of supplica- tion, understanding his thoughts afar off, making him feel that he and every one has an individual relation to God which does not seem to be de- pendant on rank and endowments ; but every soul is the liandiwork of God. This appeared to Mr. Webster the chief subject of interest among the things which had ever engaged his thoughts. God may be said to solicit our prayers. The Old Testament seems to instruct us how men formerly walked by sight ; the New Testament teaches us that now men are to walk by faith. Visions, voices, dreams, messages from God by His servants the prophets, are now withdrawn. But God has not changed ; He is educating us to trust in Him, giving us His written Word in- stead of signs and wonders. It must have been of thrilling interest, when messages, instructions, promises passed from heaven to earth, some of them direct answers to prayer ; and not to a man 180 THOU ART THE GUIDE OF MY YOUTH. only, but even to young persons. George Her- bert says : " Sweet were the days when Thou didst lodge with Lot, Struggle with Jacob, sit with Gideon, Advise with Abraham, when Thy power could not Encounter Moses' strong complaint and moan." We cannot wonder if it should seem to >any tliat the greatness of God consists in His conde- scension ; certainly if to them nothing is more sur- prising in the Most High than His notice of inferior things. God himself directs our attention to this. " For thus saith the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth eternity,"" (surely such a Being cannot intend to speak to me,) " whose name is Holy ;" (then, of course there can be no hope that he can have regard for sinners;) • " I dwell in the high and holy place ;" (and what more could be said to make us feel that He is unapproachable ; but hear the words which follow,) " 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." Such being the disposition of the Most High, we cannot doubt that He loves the child who loves Him. As David told Solomon, his son, " If thou seek Him He will be found of thee.'' We may conclude that the younger a child is, the THOU ART THE GUIDE OF MY YOUTH. 181 * more disposed God is to take notice of him. If we were called to say what attracts the special notice of Gt)d, we should reply, a young person praying. The younger you are the more notice- able are you to God. Therefore, we may say that young people should be considerate in their prayers, think seriously of what they say, re- membering that the Most High God of heaven and earth hears every word, knows the thoughts of the heart. No one may say with more assurance than a child, "The Lord thinketh upon me." God says, " When Israel was a child then I loved him and called my son out of Egypt." And in the text He says to the nation of Israel, " Wilt thou not from this time cry unto me. My Fatlier, Thou art the guide of my youth ? " From which we infer that God is in a peculiar manner inter- ested in youth ; whether a nation or individual is young, the period of youth is in an espe- cial manner interesting to God ; He in the text invites a'nation to think of this, to love him as having been their guide when they were help- less as a people. We are warranted in apply- ing these words to every young person as an in- vitation from God to choose Him to be the guide of his youth. I will show you why we may suppose that God feels this peculiar interest in young per- sons. 182 THOU ART THE GUIDE OF MY YOUTH. I. God sees that YouTit is the form- ing PERIOD OF OUR BEING. His eye surveys eternity, and along its meas- ureless paths He sees your spirit capable of joy or woe. He who says, " I know all the fowls of the mountains, and the wild beasts of the field are mine," of course has a kind regard for you, wlio, the Saviour says, " are of more value than many sparrows." " Your heavenly Father feedeth them ; are ye not much better than the fowls?" God says of Himself: " Of my years there is no end." We may, each of us who love Him, lie in the dust ])efore Him and joyfully saj^. Of my years there is no end. God says, "For I lift up my hand to heaven and say, I live forever." We may lay our hand upon our mouth and our mouth in the dust and say, I live forever. We know that this is as true as the words of God, when He says the same of Himself. We cannot but believe that God feels an unutterable interest in every one who is to inhabit a coming eternity. He looks upon every one destined to such an ex- istence with peculiar interest in the opening years of life, for He knows that the first few years of that life determine in a great degi'ee what we shall be. We who have lived to manhood, look back to THOU ART THE GUIDE OF MY YOUTH. 183 tlie time when 'we were at the age of some of you ; we could at tliat age as well as later, have yielded to the invitation of God ; would that we had done so ; we should have been spared bit- ter sorrows, unavailing tears. We did not be- lieve then, as we now see it to be true, that we were in the most important period of our being ; forming habits, committing sins, indulging tem- pers, cherishing dispositions, which years have been spent in correcting, if indeed we have up to the present time succeeded in conquering them. We should have been kept from displeas- ing God, awakening His lament over us : " O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end." We hope now through infinite grace to stand accepted before God in Christ Jesus. But we say, " Would that we had never sinned against Thee ; that we had barkened to Thy voice ; that our first 3'ears had been spent in obedience to Thy commands ; that we had, like the child Je- sus when twelve years old, been " about our Fa- ther's business," which would have been keep- ing His commandments, loving Him and loving others, — His two great precepts. Then we should have been spared regrets which forever will live in our memories, and in the memories of tliose who were witnesses of our sins. In heaven we shall esteem those of our race 184 THOU ART THE GUIDE OF MY YOUTH. as greatly to be honored, who began in early 3^outh to love God, instead of spending their first years in sinful ways. Perhaps we would willingly return to earth and renew our proba- tion, to put our promise to the test of instantly obeying the commands of God ; but in vain should we desire another probation; the good and the .wicked will have lived their allotted time on earth, and it cannot be repeated; if ut- terly wasted it will be the subject of never end- ing sorrow ; if partly misimproved and we are saved, though we have spent years in disobedi- ence, we shall remember the words of God which we learned in youth: "O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would con-, sider their latter end." God foreseeing this, calls upon us to be wise betimes. He cries to us, " Wilt thou not' from this time cry unto me. My Father, Thou art the guide of my youth ? " J I. Another reason why God makes THIS APPEAL TO US IS, He REJOICES IN A YOUNG child's LOVE. We iione of us set any value on our love to God ; especially it is difficult to persuade chil- dren that it is a precious thing to God to be loved by them. Yet we are told that God re- THOU AET THE GUIDE OF MY YOUTH. 185 joiced in His works, He is pleased with th« objects of His creative wisdom ; the wonders of the uni- verse, stupendous as they are, make us ready to adore Him who gave them being. Tlie colors which He has painted on the miner-als, the vege- table kingdom, the waters, the sky ; the curious things which abound every where in the works of His hands ; the notes of music which greet •us on all sides, do not fail to excite in us the be- lief that the Most High takes pleasure in these proofs of His divine wisdom. Many a young per- son has felt reproved for needlessly taking the life of a harmless creeping thing, by thinking, " I have destroyed that which it is beyond the skill of men and angels to restore. God alone gave the life of this creature which I have now destroyed ! " That which could excite this just reflection in us is not to be compared with the interest which a human soul excites in God. Though, we are chief among the works of God, yet our foundation is the dust and we perish before the moth, and in the sight of God we are less than nothing, and vanity, yet we see plainly in the Scriptures that God is pleased to set a value on human affection above all things. As we read in the Old Testament, we cannot but notice that nothing occupies the thoughts of God so much as the feelings of men toward Him. You may have noticed that the 186 THOU AKT THE GUIDE OF MY YOUTH. thing which is always mentioned first in the Books of the Kings and Chronicles is, whether each of those kings did right or did evil in the sight of the Lord ; and according as they did either, they had the blessing of the Almighty, or they incurred His displeasure. We are to infer that the pleasure which it ex- cites in the readers of the Bible who notice the commendable conduct of the young persons who are brought to view in Scripture, is but an echo of that which is called the yoice of God in the soul. Great as His works are, none of them are capable of the emotion of love to God. The planet- ary world cannot feel like a child when it says, " Our Father which art in heaven." The poet represents them singing as they shine, " The hand that made us is divine ; " but none of them framed a prayer, nor conceived of an utter- ance such as breathes from the Psalms: "I will love thee, O Lord my strength." There are, it may be, many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification ; but it is only a devout heart which interprets their motions and brightness to represent its own love to God. We do not err if we suppose our own feelings on witnessing a child's love to its parents, to be a transcript of the feel- ings of God towai-d a child who loves Him. " Take heed that ye despise not one of these lit- TgOU ART THE GUIDE OF MY YOUTH. 187 tie ones ; for I say unto you," the Saviour tells us, (for so we interpret His words), " angels ap- pointed to guard them are angels of my presence, who do always behold the face of my father which is in heaven." We are prepared to be- lieve that God loves the affection of a child if we fully receive the Saviour's testimony as to the love which is felt for them by the Most High God. If God loves the young with a tender compas- sion, and merely for their being young, I ob- serve in. He honoks the young peeson who RENOUNCES SaTAN AND THE WICKED, FOR Him. Probably Satan is never more ashamed than when defeated by a child. Young persons are right in believing that the wicked one tempts them ; they allege this when they are persuaded that there is something preternatural in certain violent impulses which they are conscious of, cer- tain temptations which they feel persuaded could not have originated from themselves ; and they insist on this when they are in a mood which is far from a self-justifying spirit. The apostle John speaks to the young as par- ticularly liable to Satan's devices : " I write un- to you, young men, because ye have overcome 188 THOU AET THE GUIDE OF MY YOUTH. the wicked one." Satan has great designs on the young. He would do more to succeed with the young, than with those who are confirmed in sin by evil habits ; for such persons need less solici- tude on his part to accomplish their ruin. It is affecting to notice that in addressing fathers, young men, and children, the apostle John speaks first to children ; and more especially it is inter- esting to observe that which he says to them : " I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven jon for His name's sake." The sins of childhood need the atonement as really as the sins of the whole world. It seems to have been a great pleasure of the beloved disciple, who, at the time of writing this was in extreme old age, to assure these pious children that the great propitiation reached even to them. One other source of joy to him in connection with them he adds in the verse following : " I write unto you, little children, because ye have known the Father." He in these words gives us an assurance of the love of God to children who love Him ; for if they love Him, it is be- cause He first loved them. We may feel confi- dent that it excites the love of God and of holy beings to see the young resist temptation ; and here we repeat a remark just now made, that Sa- tan is never filled Avith shame in a measure so marked, as when that Goliath is humbled by the sling and stone of a cliild. THOU AET THE GUIDE OF MY YOUTH. 189 We imagine the heavenly host, angels and saints, looking on with delight when a young person is steadfastly resisting his temptations, saying to him as the man Christ Jesus did when tempted of the devil : " Get thee behind me, Sa- tan ;" nor do the evil spirits probably feel more humbled than when they see the prince of hell overcome by a child. Perhaps it seems a little thing to a young child, tempted to do wrong to say, " How shall I do this great wickedness and sin against God ? " Yet for saying this young Joseph in Egypt became " the shepherd and the stone of Israel ; " he saved his father and breth- ren in famine, thus laying the corner stone of the nation of Israel. Saying this when tempted of the devil, as Joseph did, a young person may have it recorded of him on high, " then the devil leaveth him, and behold angels came and minis- tered unto him." Probably Satan dreads the derision of angels as they see him skulking away from a little child Avho has resisted him, more than to meet Michael and his battalions in array against him. What means yonder shout ? A child has refused to do wickedly when tempted by the devil ; the devil retreats from him ashamed ; the angels of God look on, and as they see their enemy and ours hieing away defeated by a young person, their exultation, perhaps, mortifies the hosts of hell 190 THOU AET THE GUIDE OF MY YOUTH. • more than their shouts of conquest w.hen he and they are defeated by the archangel and his cherubs. So the evangelist John tells us, '^ I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the wicked one." It is more to have the apostle who " saw the Apocalypse," write those few words to you than to have an emperor write your name in his legion of honor. For him to write it twice in two successive verses to young people, " I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the wicked one," is more to be desired than any earthly distinction. Such a crown fades; but to overcome the wicked one, is to have that young person's name emblazoned to the everlasting shame of wicked angels and wicked men. The God of lieaven is standing here making direct appeal to you in these affectionate words : " Wilt thou not from this time cry unto me, My Father, Thou art the guide of my youth ? " He has His eye on one and another young person who has occasion to say, " When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up." God is interested in such, for " A father of the fatherless and a judge of the widow is the Lord in His holy liabitation ; " by which we infer that in heaven where many who dwell with Him have left tlieir wives and children mourning THOU ART THE GUIDE OF MY YOUTH. 191 for them, God is known in a pe3uliar manner the lather and the judge of the bereaved ones. Therefore, it is alwaj^s peculiarly iiiteresting to preach to those who have God for their God in a special sense. To them we may suppose tliat God intends the words of the text to be peculi- arly addressed. I will take it for gi-anted that each one who hears this kind appeal from God will, in retire- ment, kneel and make response to it. Your an- swer may decide the course of your whole future life. God may connect blessings with your an- swer, for He has never said to the seed of Jacob, "Seek ye my face in vain." The heart of one and another will happily prompt them to say, " When tliou saidst. Seek ye my face, my heart said unto Thee, Thy face. Lord, will I seek." If so, there will be joy in heaven, because young persons whom I here address, are to make a cove- nant with God. A young man slept in a field. He took of the stones of the place and set them up for a pillow. No one would have anticipated for him such an experience as there befel him, for he was obliged to take that journey in flight from his brother whom he had defrauded. But the angels of God had appeared to him ascending and descending upon a stairway reaching from heaven to earth, and God stood above it and made covenant pro^ 192 THOU ART THE GUIDE OF MY YOUTH. mises to him and to his posterity which extend to the present day. This same God speaks now to every one on the journey of life, offering to be the guide of his youth. Methinks I hear some say, We would like to have this God for our guide ! Blessed emotion ! Cherish it, for it is a whisper of the divine Spirit. Use the means by which the spark of holy desire shall kindle to a flame. Seriously consider that declaration of Jesus Christ: "No man cometh unto the Father but by me." He who said this is He that came into the world to save sinners. He saves them by His death en- dured on the cross as an atonement for the sins of the world. This death was endured for us as individuals, and must be applied to yon as an atonement for your sins. Believing on Christ is the way by which you can be at peace with God, and there is none other way under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. God will not be the guide of one who has not made application to this Saviour, with faith in Him ; but him that cometh unto Him, " He will in no wise cast out." Put yourself as a condemned sinner in His hands, trusting in His sufferings and death for you. Then a covenant-keeping God; — Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, will be your Guide. This Guide will not only take you safe home, but will keep 3^ou and bless you by THOU ART THE GUIDE OF MY YOUTH. 193 the way. You will feel constrained to talk with Him ; you will read His Word ; you will find it your constant support and joy. Your exulting song will be, " Wherever He may guide me No want shall turn me back ; My Shepherd is beside me, And nothing can I lack. " His wisdom ever waketh. His sight is never dim ; He knows the way He taketh, And I will walk with Him." Thus commit yourself to the Saviour who has been knocking at the door of your heart, and God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, will be your Guide and Portion forever. XL THE DOQTBmE OF QERIZIM AND EBAL. "Are they not on the other side Jordan, by the way where the sun goetb down?" — Deuteronomy xi : 30. When Israel was about to cross the Jordan, God commanded Moses to set apart two mountains in Moab soon to be in the possession of Israel, to be symbolical places, proclaiming from the first entrance of the nation into the promised land, by an observance to be estab- lished upon them, a doctrine of which their future history would be an emphatic illustration. The views of prophets from age to age re- peated that doctrine. Isaiah, a prophet of kingly origin, uttered it five hundred years from the time of Moses, when he said, " Say ye to the righteous it shall be well with him, for he shall eat the fruit of his doings. Woe unto the wicked, it shall be ill with him, for the reward of his hands shall be given him." Even to the (194) THE DOCTRINE OF GERIRIM AND EBAL. 195 time of Hosea, not many years before the carry- ing away captive into Babylon, the doctrine was declared by that prophet to be destined still to continue. For he says, " Tlien shall ye return and discern between the righteous and the wicked : between him that serveth God and him that serveth Him not." That it was to be per- petuated to the end of time, is manifest in the last chapter of the Book of Revelation, at its close. Therefore the appointment of those two mountains, Gerizim and Ebal, before the children of Israel were settled in Canaan, to be as it were oracular places from which this doctrine alone should be statedly proclaimed, is impressive. Moses was directed before the people had en- tered the promised land, to put the blessing on mount Gerizim, and the curse on mount Ebal, six of the tribes to stand over against the one and six over against the other; between the two, several hundred thousand people would assem- ble. With loud voices six of the Levites would read, or repeat from the lips of the leader of the nation, the blessings from Gerizim and the curses from Ebal. When assemblies were held in the open air, the sense of the hearing was more acute than now, as we also know that memory was more re- tentive before printing was discovered, when the bards used to recite their poems and historians 196 THE DOCTRINE OF GEKIZLM AND EBAL. their histories to great assemblies, showing a fa- cility both on the part of the speakers and of the audiences, respectively, of uttering from memory and retaining long discourses. It may not be unsuitable to remind ourselves as a help to faith with regard to certain representations in the Scriptures, what power of voice is acquired by venders of articles in streets, also by command- ers, by navigators, which gives us some idea of the distinctness as well as strength of those voices resounding through the plain ; blessings from Gerizim and curses from Ebal, heard by many thousands at once. This was the earliest form of preaching, under the impression of which the tribes kept up the memory of their duties to their Maker, enforced by the reliearsal of bles- sings and curses received by dictation from God. The Bible, written book after book in the ages following the settlement of Israel in Canaan, is a repetition of the feature in the government of God which seems to have been hung over the doorway into Canaan. From the Red Sea into the Promised Land through the times of the Judges and of the Kings till the Captivity, and through the Captivity to the coming of Christ's blessings and curses, are continually announced with the same distinctness ; though if either the blessings or the cursings can be said to liave the greater prominence, one thing inclines us to say, THE DOCTRINE OF GERIZIM AND EBAL. 197 that the ciirses have the predominence. For it is to be observed that the curses engraven on the altar are rehearsed, while the blessings are not given. The New Testament continues the same strain of blessing and cursing ; if heaven is promised, hell is with equal distinctness declared to be the portion of the unregenerate ; everlasting life and everlasting damnation are the two distinguish- ing phrases which set forth the destiny of the righteous and the wicked. If there be one sacred writer who is peculiarl}^ emphatic in his distinctions between the two classes of mankind, or singular in his descriptions of the respective allotments which are to fall to either class, it is the beloved disciple who writes the Book which closes the Bible. Peter, Jude and John seem to be charged with special electric force in setting forth the doom of the wicked, as well as with special energy in depicting the rewards of the righteous. To them succeed a long line of min- isters, whom Christ, when He ascended up on high, received as gifts to men ; they were charged by their master with this message : — " He that believeth shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned." With varying degrees of faithfulness they have made this their message to men. When in times of apostasy the people and their teachers have degenerated, God 198 THE DOCTKINE OF GEEIZIM AND EBAL. has now and then raised up one and another who have made the people feel that the duty of every minister is to be continually saying, " Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel." There is a temp- tation not to preacli it, for it is a self-denying task to be continually prophesying evil to the sinner. The experience of Jeremiah is seen to be the certain lot of those who like him are reprovers. So ministers lower their tone. Some persuade them that they can more easily draw than drive their hearers to repentance. Therefore, they prophesy smooth things ; they preach about the Gospel instead of enunciating its Avarnings, mak- ing men see and feel the certain doom which awaits the impenitent ; they fall into moral dis- quisitions, portray the beauties of Christianity, the character of Christ, the love of God ; but the great theme of endless retribution is by some of them seldom mentioned ; indeed those who dwell upon salvation from endless perdition by . Christ, and warn men night and day with tears, are loaded with opprobrious epithets. The natural consequence of this is, union with pulpits who deny this doctrine, a most ominous feature of our times. But here and there we find those who preach as the Levites uttered the words of the Most High on Gerizim and Ebal. George White- THE DOCTRINE OF GERIZIM AND EBAL. 199 field was an example ; our large towns, North and SoU'th, record his faithful ministr}^ which set forth with the impartiality of Gerizim and Ebal the goodness and the severity of God. Some of the places where he preached bear wit- ness that even his wonderful eloquence did not avail to make tlie doctine of retribution accepta- ble to the human heart. Another example of faithful enunciation of the doctrine of endless retribution, was seen in the preaching of the Rev. Jonathan Edwards of Northampton, Massachusetts. Considering how far the times have lapsed from his standard of preaching, we can scarcely believe that a man was bold enough, since the days of the prophets and apostles to preach as he did. He was celebrated in England and Scotland as a prince among di- vines ; in this country, no stated preacher ever had greater celebrity among the churches and pastors. Owing to his ministry, the influence of which was widely diffused, one part of our country was favored of God with a revival of religion in 1740, which was seldom if ever sur- passed in this or any land, — a signal testi- mony to the power of a stated ministry, to the diffusive influences of a single pastor aided by the influences of the Holy Spirit. But what were the themes which this great man with his feeble voice, inanimate gesticulation, dwelt upon 200 THE DOCTRINE OF GERIZIM AND EBAL. in his preaching ? for while we adore the sover- eignty of God in the success of such a man, we cannot fail to recognize the connection which the Holy Spirit institutes between truth and the be- stowment of His influences. Here is a list of his principal discourses, though in several in- stances when delivered, it was a series of dis- courses. In the seventh volume of his Works, some of the principal are these : " Justifica- tion by Faith alone ; Men naturally God's ene- mies; The True Christian's Life a Journey to- ward Heaven ; True Grace Distinguished from the Experience of Devils ; The Excellency of Christ; Ruth's Resolution ; The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners ; Eternity of Hell Torments; The Punishment of the Wicked In- tolerable ; The Folly of Looking back when fleeing out of Sodom ; The Unreasonableness of Indetermination in Religion ; Unbelievers con- temn the Excellency and Glory of Christ ; God glorified in Man's Dependence ; Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." The last of these sern^ons when preached at Enfield in 1741, is said to have electrified the congregation; it made them weep aloud; and this was not owing to the speaker's manner of delivery, for nothing could be more in contrast with the rhetorical power of Whitefield than the oratory of Edwards. A minister who sat in the THE DOCTRINE OF GEEIZIM AND EBAL. 201 pulpit was so much affected by the preacher's inculcation of his subject, that he reached for- ward and pulled him by the coat saying, " But, Mr. Edwards, remember that God is merciful." Mr. Edwards knew that, and in its proper place "he made it to be felt ; but he was preaching then from the second clause in the thii-ty-second chap- ter of Deuteronomy : '•'• their feet shall slide in due time." No man's published sermons are more full of Christ than his. It was his intense conviction of what Christ is and has done, as appears in his History of Redemption and other. treatises, the most of them being the substance of discourses from the pulpit, which made him feel the power of the apostle's question : " How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? " O, that we who preach were willing to speak to men under the solemn impression that our hearers who die without accepting the great pro- pitiatory sacrifice for sin, " shall not see life, but the wrath of God abide th on them." We are not called of God to preach to scholars, as such, any more than Paul regarded himself ordained to preach so as to gratify those who were seek- ing after a sign or wisdom, but to those who may be hearing from us for the last time the way of salvation from endless punishment. If we wish to please God we must tread popularity under 202 THE DOCTEINE OF GERIZIM AND EBAL. foot, urging men to accept the ransom Avhicli Je- sus Christ has made for them in his own body on the tree. We shall not be popular with the unbelieving world if we preach distinctively on retribution. It is not in place here to rehearse the history of this faithful preacher, his unpopularity at last with the rising generation, his fruitless efforts to maintain the way of the fathers. He yielded to the current and retired to be president of a col- lege ; but the foe of God and man has not ceased to this day to cast out his name as evil. You see him mentioned with reviling in our own day. So the enemies of Wickliffe, 5^ears after his death, dug up his bones and burned them and threw his ashes into the brook "Swift," which as it was said, " conveyed them into the Severn and the Severn into the sea, and so like his doctrine they have been spread the world over." We must tread popularity under foot, and be ready to suffer the loss of all things. Doing this we shall indeed verify the words of the Saviour, " He that, hateth his life shall keep it unto life eternal." We shall secure the lasting approval of good men in tliis world if we make it mani- fest that our constant aim is to preach salvation. Here this question arises: Salvation from what ? Salvation implies damnation. There is no salvation if there be no damnation. Who THE DOCTEINIE OF GSRIZIM AKD EBAL. 203 hesitates to admit that Jesus Clirist is a Saviour ? But, Saviour from what ? Tell me what is the opposite of Salvation ? lu other words, What will happen to a man who is not saved ? We are told that " God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever be- lieveth in Him should not perish but have ever- lasting life." What does " perish " mean ? In what sense did the old world, being overflowed with water, " perish " ? We can have no argu- ment with one who says. It means that God took them to heaven ; that Sodom and Gomorrah are now under discipline, and not suffering the ven- geance of eternal fire. This impressive ordinance of God, Gerizim and Ebal, was to keep before the minds of Is- rael the truth that the government of God over the children of men had inscribed over it, as it were, these words, " Behold, therefore, the good- ness and the severity of God ; on them which fell, severity, but to\>'ard thee goodness, if thou continue in His goodness ; otherwise thou shalt be cut off." If there were any among them who were disposed to argue that God was too merci- ful to punish men for a few crimes committed in this short life ; that He would wink at their short comings, that He would not suffer His in- finite goodness to be overpowered by His dis- pleasure against sin, they must have felt rebuked 204: THE DOCTRINE OF GEEIZIM AND EBAL. when they saw one half of the nation gathered together to hear the promises of God, and the other six tribes employed to read the curses which God had threatened against sin. Some may say, No doubt, each tribe would have preferred to read tlie blessings. It may seem hard to you that the same six should always stand on Ebal. It seems like compelling the same minister to be always preaching sermons on punishment, and allowing his brother to dispense good tidings. But God does not take the same view with men of His ministry of wrath ; if He did He would appoint bad angels only to execute Plis threat- ning^s a™nst him. But we may doubt if the angel who cut off the first-born of Egypt was any the less amiable than the angel who led Joseph and Mary out of Egypt with the child Jesus, or that the angel who cut off Sennacherib's army, a hundred and eiglit3'-five thousand Assyrians in one night, was less lovely than the angel who appeared to Gid- eon as he threshed wheat by the wine-press. That is a striking passage in the fifteenth chapter of Revelation : " And the seven angels came out of the temple clothed in pure and white linen and having their breasts girded with golden gir- dles." Executioners, in modern literature, are not arrayed in white linen or girded with gold. Po- ets and painters represent the officers of justice THE DOCTRINE OF GERIZEVf AND EBAL. 205 as short, stout men, bow-legged, savage. Shake- speare has such executionei'S of kings, roj-al la- dies and children. None of God's acts of jus- tice are cruel ; so that the executors of them are arrayed in white with golden girdles. Will this life be an end of retribution for sin ? Such is the expectation of manj^ They pic- ture the Most High as employing the agencies of woe to make men submissive under Him ; having accomplished which they say. He will take all who submit, to heaven. All who continue to rebel will, they think, endure farther discipline, by which all of them will be forced to yield ; so that the universe will finally be set free from sin. Who has been his counsellor to teach the Most High so beneficient a scheme ? We would all be willing to see snch a happy consummation. There would not be one of our race who would not say Amen ! to this good hope, did the Scrip- tures countenance it. Singular it is that the readers of the Bible have none of them pre- vailed on the learned, humane, philanthropic, of whom there have been so many in every age, to substitute *that scheme for the theory of endless retribution. If the Word of God furnished the semblance of an argument or less than that, of an inquiry like that of Job about a future state, " If a man die shall he live again ? " may we 206 THE DOCTEINE OF GEKIZIM AND EBAL. not suppose that some Christian nation would by this time have witnessed the formation of a party of believers who would have rallied a multitude around them ? But the silence of evangelical men with regard to any intimation in Scripture that the expectation of the wicked will not per- ish, is appalling. One of the ablest men who has written on the subject resorts to mathematics for an argument. He says for substance, " Reckon up all the sins which a mortal or even a devil can have com- mitted, the mortal in his three-score and ten years of probation, the fiend in his ten thousand years of depravity. A fearful sum. Take the largest. Call in as many millions as you will. Then think of eternity, which by and by will overpass all this, and suppose the following prob- lem: — the dividend eternal retribution, the divisor the number of sins committed by an individual, the quotient the number of years of suffering al- lotted to each sin, which in due space of being will be millions of years of suffering for each sin. What can you say to this? we are confi- dently asked. Any one who is willing to attempt to answer had best be at the foot of* the cross, where the God-man is making expiation for the sins of the whole world, the sum of which is larger than the small sum above stated. There let him propose this question : " How shall we THE DOCTRINE OF GERTZIM AND EBAL. 207 escape if we neglect so great salvation ? " Let , him not feel it necessary to answer questions with wliicli some will try to perplex him about the heathen, infants, imbeciles, backsliders ; but insist on saying after a divine example, " I will also ask you one thing," " How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? " It must be a great salvation if He who came into the world to save sinners was God made flesh, a propitiation not for our sins onl}^, but for the sins of the whole world. Let me repeat an illustration used elsewhere. Columbus argued that there must be a western continent to bal- ance the globe. So we say that this great salva- tion implies that there must be a great damna- tion. The unutterable horror with wlrich the mind is filled in contemplathig endless punish- ment may be regarded as having its equivalent in the astonishment with which the mind is filled in contemplating God made flesh for sinful men, going to the cross, thence being the tenant of the tomb, delivered for our offences, raised for our justification. Let him who tries to measure with the eye of an insect, the great gulf fixed to make impassable the return of the impenitent dead from hell to heaven, first measure with his eye the distance traversed by the Incarnate God from the throne which was before all things, to close the prison-door of lost angels, ere the morning 208 THE DOCTEINE OF GERIZIM AND EBAL. stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy over this world ordained to be the scene of man's redemption. Could we institute the comparison, we should learn, perhaps, that for the Word to make Himself of no reputation, and take upon Himself the form of a servant, stands first among the things into which angels desire to look rather than the everlasting pun- ishment of those wlio pierced Him, crucifying Him afresh, compelling the remonstrance, " How often would I* have gathered you, — and ye would not." If we stumble at the assignment of intermin- able misery for sin committed in a mere span of time, let us ask ourselves why do we begin to stumble at this, when there is long before, more than enough to confound us. The Bible says, that by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin ; that by one man's disobedience many were made sinners ; that by one man's of- fence death reigned by one ; that by the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condem- nation. This has continued Tor at least five thousand eight hundred and seventy-three years ; all in consequence of one man's disobedience. Reckon, if you can, the misery of the human race for these fifty or sixty centuries, the consequence of one man's disobedience ; say how long it took that one man to commit that one act of disobe- THE DOCTEINE OF GEEIZIM AND EBAL. 209 dience. Can you believe tliat by one man's of- fence committed in a brief space of time, there have been fifty or sixt}- centuries of human sin and misery ? Believe it or not, the truth stands recorded; yet men say, God cannot surely in- flict ages of misery for the consequences of sins committed in a life time ; whereas He has done it in consequence of one man's disobedience. The added transgressions of each and every sin- ner make it no less true that by one man's of- fence death reigned by one. All through the New Testament there is the same parallelism of blessing and cursing which there was in the Old Testament. Gerizim and Ebal stand with responsive blessings and curses on the saint and sinner. The language of the blessings and curses from Gerizim and Ebal were not so terrible as the language of the Saviour in the New Testament. Revelation does not as- sume milder tones as it approaches the evening. There are words in the Saviour's discourses re- lating to future retribution which we are more disposed to read in a lowered tone than anything in Deuteronomy. Then we come to the apostle Paul in the Epistle to the Romans, in the first two chapters of whicli language is brought to the highest pitch of intensity in describing the in- dignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish threatened against every soul that^ettf evil. ^^ 210 THE DOCTRINE OF GEEIZIM AND EBAL. At last comes the beloved disciple and closes the sacred book with imagery, because literal speech was not adequate to express the intense- ness of his conceptions. One expression is used by him to denote the future punishment of the wicked which has no equivalent in the Old Tes- tament : " And said to the mo,untains, Fall on us, and to the hills. Cover us from tlie face of Him that sitteth upon the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb." Thus we are brought down to the end of the world and find the Gerizim and Ebal of Deuteronomy extending their symboli- cal presence through the last book of the Bible, where the waves of a dread ocean come ashore. I come now to propose the question in the text. If it is in figurative language, the great- ness of the theme justifies it. Gerizim and Ebal extend their influence down to the boundary line of this world and the next. The question is : " Are they not on the other side Jordan by the way where the sun goeth down ?" Is there not a Gerizim and Ebal in eternity ? forever a heaven and hell ? Do not blessing and cursing follow us ? Is not God the same on the other side Jor- dan by the way where the sun goeth down, as He is here ? I once looked from the window of a hotel in Switzerland on the lake of Geneva, one morning just before sunrise, and was astonished to see im- THE DOCTRmB OF GERIZIM AKD EBAL. ages of mountains in the lake. No mountains were near, or in the horizon. An intelligent fellow traveler said to me, " They are the Alps. You cannot see them, but the refraction of tjie rising sun-light throws down their images upon the lake from the upper air." The Bible is a lake on the surface of which the light beyond Jordan throws down images of things which are there, among which are Gerizim and Ebal. On this subject of the eternity of retribution after death, one consideration has for a long time settled the question which used to agitate my mind when I thought if it could be just to award an endless penalty for sins committed here. Leaving to the omniscient Judge many things which the light of eternity alone can make plain, I said, If the Word was made flesh and suffered death for me, and I reject or neglect that propi- tiation for my sins, I believe that there is no other remedy. He that spared not His own Son, will not spare him who treads the blood of that Son under foot. We must not think the hein- ousness of sin is in the number or character of our misdeeds ; but in not believing on Christ. No one can be lost who believes in Christ, fla- grant, numberless, though his sins may have been. Observation and reflection have deepened my conviction that more are saved by simple faith in Christ at the last than may have been feared ; 212 THE DOCTRINE OF GERIZIM AND EBAL. and this I say, without abating one tittle of con- viction that too much cannot be said of the haz- ard which there is in delaying compliance with tfee terms of salvation. Such cases as the following make a happy im- pression on my mind : A young sailor fell from the yard-arm of his ship into the sea. The ship was put about, lie was found, but senseless. Re- storatives were successful. On regaining his consciousness he soon turned over upon his knees and uttered a prayer of consecration to Christ, saying to those around him, "This is what I did when I supposed myself to be drowning. I gave my soul to Clndst. I felt that I was ac- cepted through that one simple act of faith in the Saviour." It will not be your sin that will destroy you. Unbelief will be the perdition of more under tlie Gospel than all gins. All the curses of Mount Ebal will light on him who had the offers of pardon from the Son of God and died in unbelief. The blessings of a thous- and Mount Gerizims will be imputed to the greatest sinner who simply believes in Jesus. " Who is wise, and he shall understand these things ; prudent, and he shall know them ; for the ways of the Lord are right, and the just shall walk in them, but the transgressors shall fall therein." XII. ONLOVma THE UNSEEN REDEEMER. " Whom having not seen, ye love ; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory." — i Peter i:8. THE most remarkable illustration of human love is and always has been, the personal attachment of Christian believers to Jesus Christ. The larger part of his Apostles suffered martyr- dom from love to Him. The history of Christi- anity under the emperors shows that inge- nuity was exhausted in the invention of tor- tures for them. Letters, hymns and prayers written in the early ages, rehearsing the words and deeds of the first Christians show, that whether they were fanatics or otherwise, their love to their Lord and Master was unpar- alleled. The*apostle Paul tells us that from per- sonal love to Christ, 'he had suffered the loss of all things ; and many things had he to lose. He lost a lucrative practice as a Roman, and Jewish lawyer; his reputation was utterly destroyed; (213) 214 ON LOVING THE UNSEEN EEDEEMEE. lie having no friends left to him but the despised Christians. It would seem strange to us if some member of the bar in great repute, should be publicly beaten with rods by the civil authorities and several times stoned; well might he say that as a professional man he had suffered the loss of all things ; after that, none would entrust their lives, fortunes, characters in his hands. His was a specimen of the treatment which the followers of Jesus of Nazareth endured, from love to Him. One specification of their treatment might have been expressed in these words: "they were tempted." It was not all stones, dens and caves, wandering in sheepskins and goatskins ; bland- ishments, flattery, tears, the loss of most desirable connections, prospects of wealth, reputation, fame, solicited many of them ; and we may sup- pose that in resisting these things, especially when pressed upon them with kindness, disinter- ested affection, and gentleness, some of them actually suffered more than others did who en- dured martyrdom. It was hard parting with en- deared friends ; but there were times when some of them had to give and receive the last embrace, see their friends going back to home and a'fiflu- ence, and the sweet securities of law and order, and they themselves consigned to want and ob- loquy ; homeless ; outcast, among tlie dens of wild beasts. And all this when a single word of ON LOVING THE UNSEEN EEDEEMER. 215 recantation, abjuring the name of Jesus Christ, would make their fortune, would put the crown of professional or social distinction upon them. But their motto was one which was perpetuated down to the sixteenth century, used by Lambert the martyr when at the stake for his religion, he said, in answer to the men who offered him life and liberty if he would sign a recantation, "None but Christ, none but Christ." Pliny the younger wrote to the Emperor Trajan : " They are accus- tomed to meet before daylight, and sing hymns to Christ as to God." This love to Christ is perpetually mani- festing itself from the dawn of Chi-istianity, as though the multitude of the heavenly host had given the melody, and it were learned and sung by all who loved the babe of Bethlehem. But the most remarkable thing in this love to Christ is, that it was felt by those who had never known, personally, this wonderful being. Peter being then alive, of course there may have been others living who Avere cotemporaries of Christ. None of them it seems, were included in this address. The people to whom Peter now writes were not, therefore, a small company of enthusi- asts, who by association, with celebrations, lec- tures, and mystical ceremonies, had created a fictitious kind of enthusiasm among their own clan. Such clans were common, especially when 216 ON LOVING THE UNSEEN EEDEEMEK. a new teacher or founder of some school arose. But there was no society. These epistles are not addressed to any body of people in one place, organized, and keeping up each other's zeal and love, or even their faitli, by their rites, proces- sions, harangues. The words of the text are ad- dressed to "strangers scattered abroad through- out Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithy- nia." You will observe, therefore, that it is to individuals that these words of the text are ad- dressed. They might reach a man in a prison, or hidden in a den from persecutors, or working in the mines as a slave ; or a solitary believer in the household of the emperor ; no meetings for exhortation within reach ; forgotten, it may be, by all ; jet in the solitary heart of each of these strangers, scattered abroad, Peter knew that his words would find a response. Like a great magnet passing over heaps of rubbish there would be pieces of steel, which, as the attraction went by would turn. And so it is now. When this text is read, there are hearts which say, " Now we shall liear something about Christ." His name is as ointment poured forth. His name is " above every name." It is the only name which among believers is universal, sover- eign. They will differ over 'the name of every thing else, even in religion ; but when it comes to this name, there is a power like that of the morn- ON LOVING THE UNSEEN EEDEEMER. 217 iiig light in nature. May His Spirit guide us as it shall now be set forth. The subject of my discourse is The love of Christians to the unseen Redeemer, I. Who is He ? One word expresses Him : "Wonderful." Within a few weeks, by steam, from any of our ports, you could reach a place where a child was born who is now at the head of the universe. You will not understand this as a figure of speech, nor am I indulging in large expressions. As you, once an infant, are no^y at man's estate, He is now Lord of all. He was a man like us, hungry, athirst, asleep, limited in the exercise of His powers of mind and body. Yet "all things were made by Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made." Now, He has " gone unto heaven and is at the right hand of God ; angels, authorities, and powers being made subject unto Him." He will one day sit as Judge of all ; before Him shall be gathered all nations, and He shall separate them one from another. He is " God manifest in the flesh." II. By His death He made an atone- ment FOK SIN, REACHING IN ITS INFUENCE FROM THE BEGINNING TO THE END OF TIME. 218 ON LOVING THE UNSEEN REDEEMER. He was " slain from the foundation of the world." They who have believed in this unseen Re- deemer, have had personal experience of His power to effect their peace with God. Had He been made known to them merely as a prodig}^, though the most wonderful of beings, this would not have excited their enthusiasm. The powers of nature do not so affect the hearts of men as Christ has affected them. They believed in Him as the God-man whom the apostles dwelt with as a personal friend, with whom they sat at meat, who called them " friends," had compassion on their ignorance, prayed for them, laid His hands on them and blessed them. They thus believed that all which He had been and promised to be to His immediate disciples. He would be to them. Some of His words, no doubt, were reported by ear witnesses; for example, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." That passage re- peated, when two or three of them met in a desert, created enthusiasm. Take another : "If any man love Me my FatJier will love him, and I will love him and will manifest myself to him." Tliey lived on those words, no doubt, from day to day. Then came those gracious promises; " M}^ sheep shall never perish ; " " All that the Father hath given Me shall come to Me ; and him that ON LOVING THE UNSEEN EEDEEMEE. 219 Cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out." "• As My Father hath loved Me, even so have I loved you ; continue ye in my love." Then those affecting words foretelling His death : — " Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." " I lay down my life for the sheep." " Every one which seeth the Son and belie veth on Him hath everlasting life, and I will* raise him up at the last day." Then the story of His betrayal, and His volun- tary surrender of Himself, and His furnishing the testimony on which His life was taken ; of His words and actions on the cross to His mother and to the beloved disciple, and the penitent thief, and His prayer for His murderers. His death. His burial by Joseph and Nicodemus, His resurrection attested by the eleven and by other companies, and by five hundred brethren at once; His ascension, the appearance of the two men in white apparel declaring His coming again ; — all this made believers love Him, trust in Him, "rejoice in Him with joy unspeakable and fall of glory," and " suffer the loss of all things for His name's sake," and die for Him. Ignatius bared his breast to the lions in the amphitheatre when led forth to die for the Lord Jesus. Polycarp said, " Eighty and six years have I served Him and He has never failed me ; shall I now forsake Him ? " This was " joy un- speakable and fall of glory." 220 ON LOVIKG THE UNSEEN EEDEEMER. One thing lie could not have said unless he were either an arrant imposter, or, divine: "He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me, and he that loveth son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me." A young father and mother are bending over their first-born asleep, and they think of those words ; there is one who claims a stronger love than they feel for the little childj not that they must not love their little one, but this unseen Friend says, " there is more in me to love than natural affection can find in that child." The young parents acknowledge it and give them- selves and their child to their unseen Redeemer. Never, never was there such love on earth, never, we may safely say, was there such love in heaven till redeemed sinners bore it thither. It has been well said, that but for sin there would have been no minor key in music ; and what would music be without that key ? The fall of angels, the vacant thrones, their harps hung up, inspired angelic strains no doubt, with the impassioned wail which so wonderfully varies the earthly hallelujah; but the death of Christ and all the melting themes inspired by that event, have given to tlie song of redemption that unequalled power which made the writer- of the Revelation say of it as he listened, " And no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty OK LOVING THE UNSEEN EEDEEMEE. 221 and four thousand which were redeemed from 55 III. The love* of Christians for Jesus Christ is the same now as ever. This love to an unseen Saviour which Peter in the text describes as felt hy those believers to whom he wrote, continues to our day. It is a love Avhich absorbs every other, supplants every other, compensates for the loss of every other. There was a j'oung Christian engaged to be united in sacred bonds to one who, on further acquaintance, proved not to be as she at first supposed, a believer in Christ. It cost her a mighty sacrifice to dissolve the tie, as she felt constrained to do. She gave up a competency and something more ; she sacrificed relationship)S which were inviting, because she could not take for her nearest and dearest earthly friend one who did not love her Redeemer. And what was the consequence ? By this experience that young Christian was qualified to write the hymn beginning, " Jesus, I my cross have taken, All to leave and follow Thee ; Naked, poor, despised, forsaken, Thou henceforth my all shalt be." All over the world wherever the name of Je- 222 ON LOVING THE UNSEEN EEDEEMEE. sus is known, there are hearts which love Him with this joy Avhich is unspeakable and full of glory. Among the powers oLnature there is one "which reminds us of it: The supposed influence of the moon over the tides. Dark, and even stormy may be the night, and the sky give no sign of the moon, yet the mariner in mid ocean may feel the influence of the tide, and every shore will record its ebb and flow. The sand rows on the beach, and the small pools with their tiny inhabitants, tlie lifted keel and the floating vessel, witness every six hours its changes. He who thus influences the sea by the earth's satellite, controls unseen, the hearts of all His people, scattered over continents and oceans, in islands, deserts, and the city. IV. It is NOTICEABLE IN LOVE TO AN UN- SEEN Christ, that those who had never SEEN Him loved Him as much as those WHO WERE His personal associates. Indeed we may go further ; they loved Him more than these did when He was yet alive. After His ascension, Peter might be expected still to love Christ. James and John with Peter had peculiar reasons for loving Him. All who personally knew Him and were touched by His character, words and sufferings, might be ox- ON LOVING THE UNSEEN EEDEEMEE. 223 pected to cherish a life-long affection for Him. But you will notice in the words of the text and context that Peter does not exhort these Chris- tians on this subject, — no, he merely describes them and rejoices over them ; he speaks twice of their overflowing: love to the unseen Christ. If love to Christ, then, is not dependent on sight, and those who have lived since His day have loved Him even more than His first disci- ples could before His death and resurrection, one thing follows of exceeding great importance and interest to ns. I observe then, V. All may love Him. - This is important to us, because without it the subject of love to Christ is of no more interest to us than the love of Joseph and Benjamin, or of David and Jonathan, or, in profane history, of Damon and Pythias. If they to whom Peter wrote, scattered everywhere, loved Christ more than Peter himself during the Saviour's life ac- tually did, we see that love to Christ can be felt by us, can be enjoyed by us, as well as by them. Joyful thought ! we are included in those to whom Peter addressed his epistles, — "to all who in every place call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, both theirs and ours ; and with 224 ON LOVING THE UNSEEN REDEEMEK. those on whom another apostle pronounces that benediction : " Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity." If the characteristic of love to the Saviour is love to an unseen Christ, A Christian ought NEVER TO FEEL UNHAPPY AT HiS SUPPOSED ABSENCE FROM HIM. We should so feel toward Christ as to warrant those words being addressed to us when cast down : " In whom though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory." Let Him manifest Himself as much or as little as He pleases, we should not allow our feelings to depend on this. Much of the despondency in Christians is owing to their not understanding one object which there evidently is in these words : "Whom not having seen ye love." We are to love Him by faith ; love Him unseen as though we saw Him ; for faith is a substitute for sight. " Ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory." FINALLY. If so much is true as re- gards THE LOVE OF CHRISTIANS TO THE SA- VIOUR, WE MAY BE ASSURED THAT THERE IS RECIPROCAL LOVE ON THE PART OF ChRIST TO THEM. Strange would it be if He who is love incar- ON LOVING THE UNSEEN REDEEMER. 225 nate should prove cold and heartless, He who inspired His servant Joim to write such loving words to us as we find in His gospel. Let us take heed to the whispers of the Holy- Spirit, whose mission it is to reveal Christ unto us. His name closes the word of God, who is called the Word : " He which testifieth these things saith. Surely, I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come Lord Jesus. XIII. ON PAS SIN a BY ANGELS TO RE- DEEM MEN " For verily he took not on him the nature of angels, but he took on him the seed of Abraham." — Hebrews 2 : 16. Apart of an angelic race, superior to man, apostatized from God. No Redeemer interposed to help them. The inhabitants of this world apostatized from God, and a Redeemer took on Him their nature to redeem them. Who He was, we learn from these inspired words : "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth." Here is a disclosure ; and then a veil is drawn over it. Doubtless this is best for us. We could not have understood a clearer revelation. As it (226) ON PASSING BY ANGELS TO REDEEM MEN. 227 is, we cannot solve one of tlie questions which human curiosity would ask. He " was with God and He was God." If any one will resolve that mystery, he may, perhaps, proceed and explain the dark things which multiply as we proceed. One who is God " was made flesh and dwelt among us." And of Him we are told in the text, " He took not on Him the nature of angels, but He took on Him the seed of Abraham." Someone, then, in the Jewish line took on Him the nature of man, and did not take on Him the nature of angels. Who was He ? One is spoken of here who existed first not as man or angel, but took on Him the nature of man, not of angels. He, tlierefore, has two natures ; one of them is ours. But it is implied in the text that it was optional with Him which of these two natures He should take; In the plainest terms, therefore, an incarnation is here declared; and the first chapter of John makes it certain that the Divine Word joined human nature to Himself, and with these two natures in one per- son. He became the Redeemer of men. Why did He not for the same purpose for which He took on Him our nature, take the na- ture of angels? Here is the interesting point which the text brings to view. Among the spheres which compose our solar system, this world is the smallest of the primary 228 ON PASSING BY ANGELS planets but two. But we greatly err if we esti- mate the worth of a world by its size. We are in the habit of supposing that our Earth must be inferior in all respects because it is small. The Creator has not adopted such a standard of value. The wise men of the East came to Jerusalem no doubt expecting that the King of kings was was born there ; but they found His birthplace to be Bethlehem, which was little among the thous- ands of Judah. " He chose David also, and took him from the sheepfold, to feed Jacob his people and Israel His inheritance." We may expect to find that the Creator has made use of this world of a size thus inferior, to pour contempt on pride. If He who made all things took upon Him man's nature, we may feel sure that there is in that nature some intrinsic excellence and greatness, one proof of which is that it is capable of being united with the per- son of the Word who was in the beginning with God, and was God. But so, unquestionably, was the angels' nature; for man is a little lower than the angels. Here were two fallen races before the eye of the Re- deemer, and we cannot doubt that it was optional with Him to redeem either of them, or both. Why He did not redeem both must be left to sovereign wisdom ; to Him who giveth no account of any of His matters. Why in deciding to re- i TO REDEEM MEN". 229 deem one of them He chose to save man aud not angels is the subject before ns, not for our opin- ion or judgment, but for our contemplation and humble fear. I. Fallen angels, if redeemed, would NO DOUBT BECOME AS GREAT AND GLORIOUS AS BEFORE. An angel certainly is as precious as the soul of a Hottentot. Why are the inhabitants of Labra- dor or of the South Seas redeemed by Christ, and not angels ? What can be said of a pagan's soul as to its future development and happiness which cannot be said of an angel redeemed ? There would have been one consideration at least in favor of redeeming an angel. The pagan does not know what he has lost. The auG^el is con- scious of his depravity. An angel's memory surely is worth redeeming. He recollects the moment when he waked into life in heaven; when he first looked upon the face of God ; Avhen consciousness first possessed him ; when he said. What am I ? who am I ? where am I ? and joy began to course through him and the whispers of divine love soothed him and made him acquainted with himself, and the first-born of his companions drew near and taught him, and at last he came to the full knowledge of what existence is. All the succession of the 230 ON PASSING BY ANGELS heavenly hours, days, years, and centuries, or whatever they are called, is remembered by him ; his loves, his joys, his discoveries, his first ad- ventures into unknown latitudes of bliss open- ing still into new and more ecstatic joys ; and all those quiet, meditative hours when in com- munion with God and his own so-ul he said, This is lieaven, eternity in heaven ; and looking upon beings superior to himself and gazing abroad on a universe unexplored, he said, "It doth not yet appear what we shall be." Though it is revolting to the thoughts to con- template the condition of fallen angelic beings on account of their unspeakable degradation, it is only more so than to contemplate Satan, be- cause his chiefdom gives him a dignity in our eyes, much as we respect a principal bandit, while we detest his men. There is no reason to doubt that those evil spirits who took possession of the souls and bodies of human beings in the time of Christ were fallen angels, because Satan is called their prince. Moreover, they were an- ticipating a day of judgment, which is some con- firmatory evidence that they were those for whom a day of doom is prepared, when they will be sent out into the abyss. It was a legion of fal- len angels who had possession of that poor de- moniac among the tombs, crying and cutting him- self with stones. It was a fallen angel who tor- TO REDEEM MEN. 231 men ted that child at the foot of the mount of transfiguration ; and tJiey were fallen angels who be^Gfed to be sent into the swine. DO We see in this world enough of degradation made by sin to keep us from doubting the power of sin to degrade fallen angels into devils, and devils into alliance with swine. But the mem- ory of innocence and of bliss in heaven no doubt remains in them. Whftt a good Avork it would have been to redeem that memory and restore that angel. How sad, one might say, to think thait Christ would not redeem him, but went af- ter South Sea Islanders and the Aborigines of the British Isles, than whom none was ever more lost to shame, or more distant from God. And what a wicked Avorld this, which He redeemed, has proved. How hard to bring any portion of it right and to keep it so. In countries where the Gospel has had influence for generations, scenes are enacted which equal the deeds of bar- barous tribes. After a long conflict between good and evil in this world, the end will be that the earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Thus far the few are saved; the many hate God. n. But in reply it may be said. His suc- cess MIGHT HAVE BEEN NO BETTER HAD Christ made redemption for angels in- stead OF FOR MEN. 232 ON PASSING BY ANGELS Suppose that Christ had become angelic in- stead of becoming flesh, taking the nature of an- gels instead of ours, and in their abode had lifted up His voice, " Repent ye and believe the Gos- pel ;" " Behold I stand at the door and knock ; " " Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest." "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, to open the prison doors, to set at liberty tliem that Hre. bound; " and then that He had suffered an ignominious punishment there as He did here, stooping as low in sluwne as on Calvary, bearing some awful emblem of woe as He bore the cross ; and thus, making atonement for angels, had pointed them to heaven through His sufferings for them ; would they have fled for refuge to lay hold on the hope set before them ? would there have been a for- mer occupant of a throne in heaven but would have believed on the Lord Jesus Christ and been saved ? While we cannot settle this question, it may be well to ask, What has His success been with men who have actually been slipping on the brink of perdition ? How has it been in our congregations ? Are there any among your acquaintances who have been brought near to death and who in their own just apprehension would have perished had they died, but are now as careless as ever, as far from God, as ignorant TO REDEEM MEN. 233 of Christ? Wliat would keep fallen angels from saying in answer to kind and earnest appeals, " I know all this, but I do not feel it ; how am I to believe in Christ; how can I love Him; liow can I love God, with such a heart as mine ? " and would they not say this up to the last moment of probation, as members of Christian congrega- tions do when they come to their end ? Angels might have invented objections to Him as men did ; some might go so far as to deny His Godhead and incarnation, and ask whether a good God would let His innocent Son visit such an abode, to suffer and die for devils ; and what virtue there could be in the sufferings of one for the sins of others ; and whether it is just to substitute an innocent being for the guilty? If any one supposes that every fallen angel would at once have accepted the offers of Christ and would have returned to his allegiance with godly sorrow and repentance, it may be asked why men in full view of perdition refuse to ac- cept pardon by Christ? Does any one say. The experience of the infernal prison and the pros- pect of returning to heaven would prevail where all other reasons might have been fruitless? Being in the prison would not of itself change the feelings of the sinner toward God. Some might think it would. But a feeling of degra- dation and humiliation, of having been a coii- 234 ON PASSING BY ANGELS vict, of going back to the old service and scenes with the recollection of apostasy is no prepara- tion to accept forgiveness. We are inclined to think that if rational crea- tures called to repentance are treated as free agents, they stand a better chance to accept for- giveness and the offer of restoration in such a world as this, than in a place where they have been subjected to ignominious torture. In this world, no distinction is made by the common providence of God between the evil and the good; but the same sun and rain, the fruits of the earth and all the blessings of life come alike to the good and to the sinner. Therefore, however great our sins against God may be, we need none of us feel abandoned, or made ignominious. We cannot conceive of more favorable circum- stances than ours for accepting the offers of par- don ; or a condition less likely to predispose the mind toward accepting them than the loss of heaven would be, and the degradation of being thrust down to hell. It is seriously to be questioned whether fallen angels ever could be disposed by their punish- ment to love God. We will not argue the point, for it is not debatable. They never will, and whether they ever would requires more knowledge than we possess to decide. But, per- haps it may be said, one reason why Christ did TO REDEEM MEN. 235 not take upon Him the nature of angels to re- deem them is, that having fallen into the pit they could not consistently with the laws of their na- ture be recovered; that an intelligent being sub- jected to such punishment would not accept any efforts to save him, or if saved, that his recovery would not exalt the grace of God so much as the restoration of the effeminate races of men. "While we recognize this as a possible second cause, we must not forget that the power and grace of God could overcome all such second causes ; that the God who found a ransom for man could find a way of redeeming lost angels; but that being hopelessly lost the sinning angel is given over to the direct operation of natural laws ; these laws being such as are now de- scribed. While God is not hindered by natural laws from doing His pleasure. He does not vi- olate them ; but He can find a way to maintain and even exalt them while He suspends them as to the sinner himself; which we see was done by the atonement. So we see this world won- derfully adjusted as a probationary state ; every- thing in it says, "Be ye reconciled to God." Mercies and afflictions come hand in hand to our dwellings and our hearts, and the affliction seems to be equally our friend with mercy ; all things being arranged to spare our feelings of pride and shame, making it reputable and be- 236 ON PASSING BY ANGELS coming to be a Christian, instead of its being like standing in the stocks or coming out of a peni- tentiary, or going into one in joining the Chris- tian church. Without making any statement which would properly be construed as limiting the power of divine grace, we are justified in saying that according to Llie laws which govern free agents, it was a more hopeful work to redeem man, than the angels who kept not their first estate. He who took nob on Him the nature of angels has not met with these results which reason would have predicted. Jesus Christ has not won the hearts of the nations, or the hearts of any one of them, even where His Gospel is perfectly understood. He knew from the beginning that it would be so. He knew it when He was about to make the atonement. It is a sad representa- tion for us to say that He will finally console Himself by declaring that on the whole He is glad that things are no worse, that as many are saved as could be expected, and though He re- grets His failure to save all. He is grateful that so many have accepted His offers. Christ will never be the object of commisera- tion, of sympathy and condolence. "These \Aords spake Jesus and lifted up His e3'es to heaven and said. Father, the hour is come ; glo- rify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify I TO REDEEM MEN. 237 thee. As thou hast given Him power over all flesli that He may give eternal life to as many as thou hast given Him." While the atonement is sufficient for all, and all a7:e invited to avail them- selves of it, there is a certain portion of the race .for whom it is efficient who will assuredly be saved; and of course the Saviour liad special re- ference to them when He gave Himself a ran- som for all. He " is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe." We cannot find fault with tliis on the ground of its being partial, unless we begin further back and impugn the justice of God in passing by fal- len angels and determining to provide for the salvation of men. He did not take upon Him- self the nature of angels ; He might have done so ; He left them where He found them, where they had chosen to be. He finds all men in a state of ruin ; if they will acknowledge it and avail themselves of His interposition in their be- half, they may be saved ; but some will not be- lieve, and they prefer to run the risk and take the consequences. It is optional with God to let them all perish, or interpose and make some willing to believe. He does no injustice to any if He prevails on some ; none can find fault with God for leaving them to have their own way ; it will Avith perfect truth be said to every one who fails to be saved, " Ye would not come to 238 ON PASSING BY ANGELS Me tluat ye might have life." Every one is as religious as, on the whole, he wishes to be. It is the great mystery of wisdom that while God does His pleasure, it is in such a way that every man exercises his free choice. III. Those who do not accept redemp- tion PROVIDED FOR THEM BY THE SON OF God are to be associated hereafter with a race of sinners whom Christ did not REDEEM. Nothing surely is better adapted to make us accept the offers of the Gospel ; for if Christ passed them by and came to save us, no fancy can i)icture what it must be to receive from His lips a consignment to their abode and to their society. It is well known on the authority of the early Christian writers that the power of evil spirits over men was wonderfully abridged with the coming of Christ. He told the seventy whom He sent out, when they returned and told Him, "Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name," " I beheld Satan as light- ning fall from heaven." Their power contin- ued for a while after the coming of Christ ; as we see in the New Testament, where we learn their awful malice and also their power, no doubt that we may be warned lest we fall into TO REDEEM MEN. 239 their hands. If they took possession of a human being, a legion of them at once, they must be cruel and brutal ; nor can fancy picture the dire- ful miseries of the poor victims who fell into their hands. People do not like to be reminded of such a fearful liability; but if too pamful to be re- fninded of it in a world of mercy, let us think what it must be to have the last sentence upon all who did not love Christ sufficiently to give Him common hospitality. " I was an hungered and ye gave me no meat." Then mercy will have finished all her invitations and returned for- ever to the bosom of her injured, her slighted God. IV. The subject opens to us a view OF HUMAN happiness FOR ALL WHO ACCEPT OF SALVATION. If the Redeemer sought the greater amount of happiness in those for whom He decided to make atonement, He surely will find it in us who enter heaven, not as a recovered seat from which we were ignominiously expelled, but a world new, untried, awakening in us sensations of wonder and joy which now it doth not enter into the heart of man to conceive. There will be a quality in our joy which could never be 240 ON PASSING BY ANGELS known to those who fell from heaven. And shall we lose it ? Are we looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God ? " And these shall go away into everlasting punishment, prepared" (not for them, but) " for the devil and his an- gels." God exercises the same sovereignty now in choosing whom to save which He did in choos- ing men rather than angels. There is often a feeling of wonder at the class of people who are called into the kingdom of God, and at the same time astonishment at the omission of many whom we should consider an acquisition, and creditable to Him who saves them. Look- ing into the community we may often question why certain persons of remarkable endowments are not brought into the number of the faithful, while some are added to it whom we never would have chosen. So in the Christian church, we see some who we cannot doubt are regenerate per- sons, but it requires forbearance and Christian charity to regard them as members of the body of Christ: and some are passed by whom we would choose first if the selection had been con- fided to our judgment and taste. We forget that, perhaps, to the searcher of hearts we and those interesting people give more occasion for forbearance than those who repel us. But whether it be so or not, we must apply our text, TO EEDEEM MEN. 241 and remember Him wlio " took not on Him the nature of angels but the seed of Abraham." The wise, the mighty, the noble, are not all the subjects of the divine call ; indeed " not many " of them are so distinguished ; but " base things, and things which are not hath God chosen to bring to nought things that are, that no flesh may glory in His presence.'- Lady Huntington said that she thanked God for the letter " m," without which the Scripture must have read, " iU)t any noble are called." It will exalt the grace of God to behold high in honor and power hereafter, some whom we thought hardly worth saving except as objects of compassion, and however much joy there may have been among the angels of God at their re- pentence, it made little sensation here. "And, behold, there are last that shall be first." Let us take heed how we despise one of these little ones. Find a soul in whom there are Scriptural evidences of regeneration, and it is one whom Almighty God has quarried and hewn, and is preparing for some honorable place in His build- ing which that soul will fill with a most remark- able adaptation. As the stone which the builders refused is become the head of the corner, so will it be with much of the material in the whole building. And, therefore, if we are highly cul- tivated or possess great natural endowments, it 242 ON PASSING BY ANGELS does not increase our prospect of being saved ; for unless we are humble God will pass us by ; " for verily He took not on Him the nature of angels." " He will beautify the meek with sal- vation." Perhaps one reason why angels are forever passed b}^ while to the poor the Gospel is preached, and very common people are made kings and priests unto God, is to show all the subjects of God's government, that none are too high for God to reach if they sin, none too pre- cious for Him to spare if they keep not their first estate. V. There are limits to mercy and pro- bation. While we must ascribe this wholly to the sov- ereign pleasure of God, we perceive that apos- tacy makes recovery in the Scriptural sense im- possible. " It is impossible for those who were once enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift, — if they shall fall away to renew them again to repentance." Hence apostate angels were less likely to be redeemed, and we have seen that they were not recovered. Here we have an argument against probation after death. If Christ fails to redeem us in this world, the abandonment of fallen angels who were once on probation shows us the probability that re- TO EEDEEM MEN. 243 demption with us will cease forever. Consign- ment to the company and doom of those who fell from heaven confirms this anticipation. Punish- ment is not the power of God and the wisdom of God unto salvation. Angels have not been made better by punishment. They have sunk to a level with the swine among the Gadarenes. Christ crucified is the power of God and the wisdom of God. " Neither is there salvation in any other." We are presekted by this subject with a view of the future company of the GOOD. We are going to dwell with the unf alien sons of God ; — '• And heaven He gives us to possess Whence those apostate angels fell." Only two orders of beings, angels and men, are represented as being in heaven. This world seems unlikely to be repaired, at least for our use ; for we are destined for the metropolis, where the throne of God and the Lamb is. "Fa- ther, I will that they whom thou hast given me be with me where I am." We are to behold His glory. We are to be the redeemed whom Christ came to save, and passed by the former occupants 244 ON PASSING BY ANGELS TO REDEEM MEN. of thrones in heaven. You will instruct the un- fallen sons of God how to love and praise Him who created them, and redeemed us to vie with them in service. Then do not fail to be of the number of the redeemed. Make your calling sure. Think what it must ,be to spend eternity with those who lost heaven and to be subjected to their taunts ! "Seize the kind promise while it waits, And march to Ziori's heavenly gates, Believe, and take the promised rest, Obey, and be forever blest." XIV. THE BROKEN IN HEART HEALED: THE STARS NUMBERED AND NAMED. A THANKSGIVING DISCOURSE. " He healeth the broken in heart, and biudeth up their wounds. He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names." — Psalm 147 : 3> 4- WITH New England people the histories of the Annual Thansgiving days from child- hood would be a good epitome of life. No recol- lections of childhood and youth are more vivid. The weeks of vacation, of visits paid or received, the excursions and sports, the preparations for the feast assailing every sense, the rich joy afforded by being sent on errands of love to the needy, the visits to the market-places where nature seemed to have brought togetlier her stores as though for some great sacrifice, the throng of people and vehicle in the streets, show- ing that some great movement was going on, (245) 246 THE BROKEN IN HEART HEALED: the innocent satisfaction of being employed, — " Something between a hindrance and a help," to do a little service the evening before the im- portant day, the careful observance of the weather signs, the necessity of being detained from meeting by pressing need of your service at home, or for errands, or if you went to church, the demonstration in the singing seats, the pleas- ures of a good conscience in being in the house of God and not at the games on the Common, and the satisfaction in hearin^: somethinGf from the pulpit which was not so admonitory as usual, and then the grand climax around the table where feasting and merriment were suc- ceeded by the household games till tired nature welcomed forgetfulness in sleep, all combined to make Thanksgiving Day to many of you as full of true enjoyment as probably any festival of any kind, in any nation, in any age of the world. So you grew up, and each returning Thanks- giving was better than the last, and was height- ened by the return of one and another who had gone out from the homestead. Then the little high chairs, long disused were brought down from the attic, with the forgotten cradle for one who like a diamond added to a full dress, was last, and least, and best. We loved to hear the minister read some of THE STAES NUMBERED AND NAMED. 247 those five or six concluding Psalms, in which every imaginary thing is called upon to praise God, and which blazing forth with joy and thanksgiving, seemed like the last piece in the exhibition of fireworks on the other great festi- val of the year when the heavens were ablaze with the closing outburst of the demonstration. Perhaps never in childhood and youth was there more enjoyment crowded into the same space. And so, from year to year, the keen sense of pleasure grew more intense, being helped by memory and anticipation. As we became older we were less turbulent in our joy ; the duties and responsibilities of life looked in upon us, one by one, with serious face. Then came the first great sorrow, and at the fes- tival there was a vacant chair, and you began to wonder why you ever thought Thanksgiving Day the best in the year. Some of the family were far off and could not return , and one and another had gone, alas ! for us, where thanksgiving had become their cease- less employment. And when years were multi- plied the festival had a large memorial tablet with inscriptions of lost ones, of changes, of sorrows, the recollection of all which, mixed with natural anticipations of thickening troubles, made Thanksgiving season a time of deep reli- gious thought, never more profitable, yet clad in 248 THE BEOKEN IN HEART HEALED: russet garb instead of gay colors. At the same time, probably no one who has experienced all this and has made right improvement under it, will fail to testify that such sorrow was better than laughter, or that in the multitude of his thoughts within him, there are consolations and comforts which he would not exchange for hilarity, not even for the innocent pleasures of his child- hood. Let not the young think by any means that Thanksgiving Day turns into a day of mourning as we grow old; for on the contrary, it may be increasingly a day of deeper, richer joy. We always regret to have the season of blossoms end, and to look on the trees, recently laden with beauty and fragrance, of a sudden changed to a sombre state. But in that change. Spring has taken an exulting step. The trees are more precious than under their flowery crown. For, as we advance in life, we have an accu- mulated debt of gratitude for the past, with its ever growing experience of lovingkindness and tender mercy; for capacity of enjoyment, for treasures not lost but laid up for us; for in- creased qualification to do good and to make others happy ; nor can we forget the goodness of God to our childhood ; the care taken of us, the friends we had, and special favors of preser- vation and blessing when we were heedless and THE STAKS NVMBERED AND NAMED. 249 unthankful. So that when the moons of life wane we must remember that they are hasten- ing to new moons, and that to them who fear God it will be so without end. It will be safe to say, that amid all the festiv- ity of these occasions, the most enviable happi- ness will be possessed by ^ome who are reminded by them, of the various dealings of God with them in years past. Perhaps, if we should be called upon by different classes to hear their reasons for thanksgiving, none would be urged more earnestly than the wonderful ways in which the God of all comfort who comforteth them that are cast down, has comforted many who were in tribulation. It would seem to us among the wonderful things of God, how He healeth the broken in heart and bindeth up their wounds. But what have the stars to do with the broken in heart, or comforts with the number and names of the heavenly bodies ? There is a remarkable conjunction of ideas in the two verses in the text. It seems a very sud- den, abrupt transition from one to the other, was it intended to be so ? Or was there an as- sociation of ideas and a real connection between the thought of divine power in healing broken hearts, and the knowledge and ordering of the heavenly bodies ? Without attempting to answer this assuredly, 250 THE BKOKEN IN HEART HEALED: we are at liberty to examine whether there be any connection between the two by fair inter- pretation. Can we pass from one to the other by any perceived analogies ? How may it be made apparent that it is the same God that healeth the broken in heart and bindeth up their wounds, who telleth the num- ber of the stars and calleth them all by their names ? I. It REQUIRES THE SAME DIVINE KNOWL- EDGE TO HEAL THE BROKEN IN HEART, AS TO TELL THE NUMBER OF THE STARS AND CALL THEM BY NAME. When we say this, we speak far within the truth. The number of the stars is to the divine mind a simple matter of arithmetic, however compli- cated they may be to our apprehension. They stand apparent to Him whose all seeing eye takes them in at one view. But before we proceed, let us consider what power it is to do this. For although to the unaided eye there are not more than six thousand heavenly bodies, yet science discloses a multitude in the hosts of heaven which is beyond comprehension, and even 'fancy cannot convey any adequate idea of them. The language of science here is itself THE STARS NUMBERED AND NAMED. 251 appalling. For when we see the expressions, thousands of millions of millions, we give up all attempt at grasping the sum. We should not feel it if the astronomer made a mistake of sev- eral millions. So when Sir William Herschel tells us that lie has penetrated with his tele- scope seventy-five million times further than with the naked eye, and can see stars the near- est of v/hich is fifteen billions of miles from us, thiit is, a hundred and seventy million times the distance of the sun from the earth, and that the light of some of the nearest neighbors to that star, traveling one hundred and ninety-two thou- sand miles a second, must have set out seven hundred thousand years ago ; that in a portion of the Milky Way, not larger than one tenth of the moon's disc, he computed that there were twenty thousand stars, and that by the most moderate estimate the number of stars in the whole firmament reached by the telescope can- not be less than one hundred millions, and that beyond these there are clusters and nebulse which have not been resolved, and that each of the fixed stars which can be seen has a system of unseen worlds revolving about it, with great voids be- tween them to keep the planets from disturbing each other, billions of miles being necessary for this purpose, we have an idea of creatorship, and of the extent of the universe, and of divine om- Ot THB // 252 THE BROKEN IN HEART HEALED: niscience which, as David sa3^s, " is too wonder- ful " for us ; it is " high," we " cannot attain un- to it." The astronomers themselves feel and confess their weakness. They wished to meas- ure the space through which one of those distant heavenly bodies moved. Could they ascertain this, however small it might be, they could cal- culate its orbit, size, distance and rate of motion. They took for a base line the distance from Greenwich to the Cape of Good Hope, and drew imaginary lines from the extremities of that base line to get an angle ; but in vain ; there was no angle at the star, and the star did not seem to move. Their base line therefore proving too short, they took one represented by the diameter of the earth's orbit, that is measuring from the place where the earth is on the first of January, to where it is on the first of July, a distance of one hundred and ninety million six hundred thousand miles. Even then they could not see an appreciable movement in that most remote orb. At last, in 1839, two astronomers succeeded in finding a movement in a star, but it was only one second in a degree. The base line was still too short for more distant explorations. " Is there any number of his armies ? and on whom doth not his light arise ? " How can broken hearts, though every human heart were L THE STARS NUMBERED AND NAMED. 253 broken, find any representation in such enor- mous measurements as these ? The answer is this : The God who can span from earth to the remotest world and then sweep that radius through all space, and number and name those heavenly bodies, can easily know ev- ery earthly mourner. He wJio follows that swift traveler in the heavens, Arcturus, with his fifty- four miles each second, or three times faster than our earth, knows our wanderings, and all the succession of our sorrows. There may not have been more broken hearts than there are stars; yet the number is such that none but the power which numbers the heavenly bodies can comprehend them. But in those hearts there have been more wounds which needed to be healed than there are stars. It is not so great a thing to number the stars as to search the hearts and try the reins of the chil- dren of men. IT. The same divine wisdom which ar- ranges THE HEAVENS, OVERRULES OUR INDI- VIDUAL AFFAIRS. We may be tempted to think that there is no plan or reason in the things which happen to us, for they sometimes throw us into confusion, our desolation is apparently wild and reckless. But 254 THE BEOKEN IN HEAET HEALED: it is easy to show that all which happens to us is ordered by a plan, notwithstanding the seeming littleness of our affairs when compared with the extent of the universe and the number of worlds. Indeed the astronomical view hither tends to dis- hearten us unless we call in the aid of faith. To help our faith, look at the minute things which God has made ; we see in them the same God at work as in the celestial spheres. The micro- scope reveals a hidden color of great beauty on a beetle's wing, curious form and order on the scale of a fish, prismatic colors on a particle of dust, architectural design in the tiniest shell ; which all the worlds above us do not surpass as products of divine handicraft. We feel the power of God in the revelations of the micro- scope as much as in those of the telescope. Some who have been most distinguished in the use of the telescope go further, and say that the microscope by its disclosures has affected them more than has the telescope. Perhaps this was the effect of contrast, but surely we know of nothing in God which affects us more than that the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth eternity and who dwells in the high and holy place de- clares that He dwells also with him who trembles at His word. If God chooses to manifest His glory in this way, surely we must not make ob- jection. We must not say to our Lord, " Thou THE STAES NUMBERED AND NAMED. 255 slialt never wash my feet." Especially when Christ Himself teaches us that not a sparrow falleth to the ground without our Father, and that the very hairs of our head are all numbered, we must not hesitate to think that the Creator of the worlds is to each of us the God of provi- dence, that He "telleth" our "wanderings," puts our " tears into " His " bottle," and that they are " in " His " book." So that each one may confidently say, " When my spirit was over- whelmed within me. Thou knewest my path." Nor can we refuse to believe in the perfect knowledge and watchful providence of God in our affairs when we read, " For there is not a Avord in my tongue, but lo ! O Lord thou know- est it altogether." " Thou understandest my thoughts afar off." The God who comprehends the spaces of the universe and peoples them, is not only able to com- prehend us, but He who has made order His first law among the spheres, has reduced every thing relating to us into a wise arrangement in which there is nothing confused. We may therefore feel assured that Ho who has made of this seem- ing infinitude of worlds one great system, and creates every atom by a perfect pattern and in reference to a general design, has also a wise pur- pose in breaking and binding up our hearts. Probably that which will most affect us here- 256 THE BROKEN IN HEAKT HEALED: after with a sense of divine wisdom and power as well as goodness, will be our personal history. We shall be better acquainted with this than with any thing else. We shall be able to judge concerning this better than with things foreign to us, and perhaps this will be our chief wonder, that the God who made Arcturus, Orion, Pleia- des, and the chambers of the South, did actually consult for each of us ; that He who sends the comet on his errands round this measureless space and secures its return at the appointed min- ute did watch over the heedless steps of your childhood, and that He who maketh peace in his high places, so that these worlds, many of them crossing each other's track, do not interfere, has made your orbit, and had regard to all its dan- gerous exposures, and brought you safely on your way, while not for one moment you had an absolute control of yourself, or defence against destruction. We shall see that stupendous as the universe is in its plan, the history of our redemption up to the hour when you will be presented faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, involves more that is astonishing than the stars, and that He who is ^' the brightness of the Father's glory," and is now "upholding all things by the word of His power," by Himself purged your sins, and then, and not till then as THE STARS NUMBERED AND NAMED. 257 God and man, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high, thus dechiring human redemp- tion to be the chief of all His works. Let every one, therefore, who has been called to great sorrow, rejoice that God has been occu- pied with his afPiiirs even though it be by afflic- tion. For in the creation of worlds, no doubt there is great confusion at first. " The earth w^as without form and void and darkness was upon the face of tlie deep," and a spectator might have tliought that annihilation was coming sooner than order and beauty. We feel that our losses and sorrows will de- stroy us ; but not so if we love God. We are " of more value" not only than " many sparrows," but many worlds. Indeed those billions of fixed stars with all their planets considered as mere matter, are not worth your soul. They cannot love God, nor can they glorify Him as much as your. redemption and salvation. Were the ques- tion to arise whether to save you all those orbs shall perish, the answer has already been given, m that He who made them has given Himself for you, and " He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?" "He that built the house hath more honor than the house ; " therefore, if the Maker of suns and planets gave Himself for 258 THE BEOKEN IN HEART HEALED: your sins, if you, every time you pray, make mention of a sacrifice for your soul more costly than all this astronom}^, do not think that when it is said that He who binds up broken liearts numbers the stars and calls them all by their names, there is any exaggeration. If there be exaggeration it is on the other side, in compar- ing the material universe with your incompara- ble being, as a son, an heir, of God, a joint heir Avith Christ. When we travel throughout this great ex- panse of suns and planets, wearing, each of us, a glorified body like unto the Son of God, we shall perhaps find that to be a member of the human family redeemed by Christ, "which is tlie head of all principality and power, is the chief distinction among the creatures of God. Reflect on the wisdom and power of the Most High in the waj^s by which He has comforted you. He has compensated you for losses, or made them the means of good which is worth all it cost. He has shed abroad in your heart a peace wliich passe th all understanding. He has made some of your sorrows like a discovered star, a centre to some system of truth, or new order of things in your life revolving around that affliction. None but God could do this, " who turneth the shadow of death into the morning," who giveth " joy for mourning and THE STARS NUMBERED AND NAMED. 259 the garment of praise for the spirit of heavi- ness." The more we reflect upon it the less shall we be surprised at the connection of these two verses seemingly so unlike. For the God who may have sowed the year for you with sorrow, is the God who planted the heavens with those heavenly bodies which make up the several con- stellations, all having a plan and order, as in the purpose of God your trials have, which at last will evolve themselves into a cluster to the praise of Him who holds the seven stars in His right hand. It is better to have hearts broken, and to have God heal them than that they should not have been broken, better to be wounded and have God bind us up, than not to have been wounded. Look- ing back upon our troubles and seeing how they helped us on to heaven, and finding again, as many will, all whom they lost for a season, we shall say that if there be one cause of thanks- giving above another in our personal experience, it is, that a faithful God broke our hearts to heal them ; wounded us, to bind us up. But, if we have not been afflicted, can we on such an occasion as this ; can we, in view of un- mingled happiness in the past, derive instruc- tion and comfort from this theme ? Yes, for if you love God, losing these bless- ings will work for your good. 260 THE BROKEN IN HEAET HEALED: We are sometimes made to sigh even when we are merrj. " Surely in laughter the heart is sad." On every annual festival we involuntarily repeat, What changes another year may bring ! But they who love God are sure that nothing will happen to them by His appointment which will not be for the purpose of enlarging the sphere of their spiritual vision. Christian peace and joy, therefore, are well founded ; they are rational. It is not fanciful to suggest that every miraculous gift bestowed on the apostles has a spiritual counterpart in the experience of all who are born of the Spirit. Our Saviour, speaking of His own marvellous works, says to the apostles, " And greater works than these shall je do, because I go to my Fa- ther." That we do not err in supposing that there is a designed connection between these two pas- sages, and that the contemplation of the heavens is here designed to illustrate the wisdom and power of God in His treatment of the afflicted whom He loves, we have onlj- to recall the fol- lowing words : " Lift up your eyes on high," says the Great God, " behold, who hath created these things? that bringeth out their hosts by number ; He calleth them all by their names by the greatness of His might, for that He is strong in power, not one faileth. Why say est THE STARS NUMBERED AND NAMED. 261 thon, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, my way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is pas- sed over from my God ? Hast thou not known, hast thou not heard that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainted not neither is weary? There is no searching of His understanding. He giveth power to the faint ; and to them that have no might He increaseth strength." XV. TEE REMOVAL OF ISRAEL'S CLOUD TO THE REAR. "And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them ; and the pillar of the cloud went from before their face, and stood behind them." — Exodus 14 : 19. ON the border of the Red sea the children of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold the Egyptians marched after thgm, and they were sore afraid. Six hundred chosen chariots were there and with them all the cliariots of Egypt, and captains over every one of them. Destruc- tion seemed sure. The Israelites were an un- disciplined host ; their wives and children were mingled with them ; no munitions of war ; a desert on either side ; the Red sea in front ; all Egypt in pursuit infuriated by the plagues which the God of these Hebrews had sent upon them. The faith of Israel gave way to despair. They said to Moses, " Because there were no graves in Egypt hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness? Is not this the word that we did tell thee in Egypt, saying, Let us alone that we may serve the Egyptians? For it had been bet- (262) THE REMOVAL OF ISRAEL'S CLOUD. 263 ter for us to serve the Egj^ptians than tljat we should die in the wilderness." Little did they dream, however, that they were brought there to be a spectacle to the world through all ages ; they did not remember that man's extremity is God's opportunity. The pillar of cloud which had been to them a pioneer in the desert now began to countermarch, and took its position at tke entrance of the camp. D;irk as a rising storm to the Egyptians the cloud shed light upon Israel, "So that the one came not near to tlie other. all night." The leader of Israel, by divine command, stretched his hand over the sea and straightway the waters saw it and fled ; the bottom of the sea, which for ages had not seen the light, became a floor for their feet, a solid road for their beasts of burden ; the waters stood up like a heap on either hand. " They went through the flood on foot, there did they rejoice in Him." But as much as they en- joyed the wall of waters on either hand and the marvellous faith which gave them firm foot- hold over the bottom of the deep, they were ever thinking of the whole military force of Egypt in their rear. What if they should be suddenly overwhelmed by horses and chariots? These walls of water hemmed them in ; flight was im- possible. Has God dried up the sea to make a grave for Israel ? With an eye of faith one and 264 THE REMOVAL OF another looked beliind to tlie pillar of fire which had now planted itself in their rear. God was there, the angel Jehovah who smote Egypt in their first-born, whose mercy endureth forever. While before them the light from the clond reached to the further shore, the cloud itself formed an impenetrable veil between Israel and the pursuers : no sight of horses and chariots af- frighted them any more'; they saw their ene- mies only when the returning waters washed their dead bodies to the shore. All this was effected by the removal of the pillar of cloud from before them to a position in their rear, mercifull}^ bringing darkness between them and their enemies. The veil hung down to keep the pursued from seeing the pursuers, while it hid them from their enemies. Some of the painters, and an artist in the mother country who has illustrated the " Pil- grim's Progress," have had wonderful skill in throwing light forward and making darkness be- hind it. .But no pencil is like the hand of Him who at creation divided the lic^ht from the dark- ness ; which He did here, making the past dark and the onward way bright. He can let down a veil from heaven to earth, and on one side of it there shall be darkness which can be felt, and on the other side light. Though Israel had seen the power of God in Israel's cloud to the eear. 265 the plagues of Egypt, we doubt if any one or all of those plagues affecte 1 them as did the re- moval of that pillared cloud from their front to their rear at this crisis in their history, closing up to their eyes the terrifying sight of their ene- mies, and to the enemies all sight of their help- less victims. This passage leads me to speak of God our Rearward. It is God alone who can make the past a source of peace and comfort. We think much of the future ; we desire greatly to have an assurance that all will be well with u^ in time to come. But do we sufficiently reflect how much this* depends on liaving the past mer- cifully considered by our Almighty Friend? We accept with gratitude the promise, " The Lord shall go before thee ; " but do we fully consider how important the concluding part of that passage is : — " and be thy rearward ? " Never, in any stage of their history, did Israel need God to go before them more than when with the Red Sea in front and Pharaoh pursuing them, they needed that God should be their rearward. Our happiness depends much at times on having the angel of God *' which went before " us seem to remove and stand behind us. For I. We often need to ije deeply im- 266 THE EEMOVAL OF PRESSED WITH THE MEMORY OF PAST BLES- SINGS. Perhaps at the present time, we have, and in coming days shall have, occasion to recall the interposition of God in our past history. There will be times when we shall only need that God should do for us according to His past mercies to make us perfectly happy; times when we shall say, " Lord, where are Thy former loving- kindnesses which Thou swaresfc unto David in Thy truth?" The burden of many a prayer will be, " O continue Thy loving-kindness unto them that know Thee." Time after time it will be the richest comfort in trial, to recall the favors which God did for us in days gone by ; " I was brought low and He helped me," will be the all-power- ful rebuke to every fear. We are brought into straits oftentimes merely for God to show His power, or His wisdom, or His surprising good- ness; and therefore it is wise at such times, in- stead of murmuring, to think of past experience, saying, " How can the God who did such won- derful things for me, fail me now ? " The 136th Psalm. has twenty-six Verses, each of whicli ends with this: "For His mercy en- duretli forever." We feel ashamed when we read how Israel said, "Can God furnish a table Israel's cloud to the rear. 267 in the wilderness? Behold He smote the rock that the waters gushed out, and the streams over- flowed ; can He give bread also ? Can He pro- vide flesh for His people ? " We acquiesce in the punishment which followed,- and then, per- haps, we sin in like manner. O that the cloud would go behind us now and then', to keep us from foro^ettiuijr all His benefits. The remem- brance of the past is sometimes as good as new mercies. We need and still shall need to be im- pressed with the memory of past blessings. II. We need the pillar of cloud be- hind us FOR OUR protection FROM THE EVIL CONSEQUENCES OF THE PAST. It availed nothing to Israel that God had brought them out of Egypt with a stretched out arm, if they were now to fall a prey before tlie pursuing army of Pharaoh. So they cried out, " It had been better for us to serve the Egyp- tians than that we should die in the wilderness." Then the cloud rose and went behind them to intercept any evil consequences of their flight from Egypt. Thus we shall need, in future, protection from the mistakes, follies, sins of the past. We may have already erred, and the con- sequences, if not arrested, may be a Pharaoh and his host. Therefore, let the angel of the 268 THE eemjVal of covenant go behind us, and let the fiery pillar stand tliere, to prevent us from direful memor- ies. For it is safe to say that a large part of liuman misery arises from regretful recollections. We would gladl}?- atone for hasty words and rasli actions ; 'but perhaps the wish is vain. We omitted some duty and we feel the effects^ We took a wrong step, and it led into snares. We gave occasion for hatred, perhaps lasting en- mity. What would we not give if we could for- get some uni:)leasant passage in our behavior! Must we go through life with a Pharaoh and his chariots and their captains behind us ? We feel it were better for us to die than to live. But we should gain nothing by dying ; we should re- trieve nothing, unless we should sleep in Jesus, and be at peace with God through our Lord Je- sus Christ. " Son I remember " this. For other- wise there would be added to these dreadful recol- lections which we invoke the grave to bury, ten- fold more which a quickened memory would bring to mind, enmities, sense of loss, partings with loved ones, indented in our memories. It is better to live and make memory our friend through the blood of Jesus. There are also remembered joys, and it is the na- ture of memory to make remembered joys the source of sadness unless faitli in Jesus and hope through grace be in active exercise. Worse than ISRAEL'S CLOUD TO THE REAR. 269 all there is the recollection of our sins. With the memory of them there mingles self-reproach per- haps, exceeding everything else in our recollec- tion of them. Better for us always if we could then say, " Against Thee, Thee only have I sin- ned and done this evil in Thy sight." Better for us to fall into the hands of God with sor- row for sin. For God can forgive us, and does forgive us many a time when we do not forgive ourselves ; our pride is wounded, we see we are not humbled, when we are unwilling to be forgiven. God can confer no greater favor upon us in the way of making us happy, than by standing behind us with the tokens of forgive- ness, declaring His righteousness for the re- mission of the sins that are past, through the forbearance of God. Were we only as just in our intercourse with God as we are with men, in one respect, it would be for our comfort. For are we not uneasy w^hen a man has inadver- tently paid his bill the second tinie ? Do we not make haste and send him word that the account was settled once ? We are not willing to sleep till we have returned the money ; we cannot endure to be twice paid. God may be said to have such feelings toward us ; in proof of which hear these words: '*If we confess our sins. He is fiiithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness ; " — " faithful and 270 THE REMOVAL OF just," — implying that there would be injustice in His exacting any thing of one who lias accepted the atonement, pleaded the substitution which has been made. It is wonderful that we may say this ; but " having boldness by the blood of Jesus " we may. Some will inquire " Is it not presumption in 3^ou to say that ? Do you think that confessing our sins lays God under obligation?" I reply, He la3^s Himself under obligation ; I fear that 3^ou are timid, unwilling to take God at His word. There would be a scriptural hope of accept- ance with God in many, if they would believe this simple trxith, that confession of sin and ac- ceptance of offered pardon through Christ saves the soul at once and forever. Divine justice will not suffer itself to be paid twice for sin. The reason is, Christ died for us; and "in than He died, he died unto sin once." Some think that they cannot have the pleasure of repentance if they are forgiven. Let them know that they do not repent at all till they are forgiven. "R3- turn unto Me for I have redeemed Thee.'' — Jer- emiah 44 : 22. Repentance after pardon, is not only proper; but there is no repentance so deep as that which comes witli a sense of forgiveness. We see this in a child to whom we sa}^, 1 for- give you. How the little heart breaks, how the ISRAELS CLOUD TO THE REAR. 271 tears flow, how passionately the arms enfold your neck. So through the Christian life. We all testify that we never have felt such sorrow for sin as when at the foot of the cross we em- brace the feet which were nailed there for our sins. Rowland Hill said, "If when I lay down my pilgrim staff at the gate of heaven I should drop a tear, it would be at taking leave forever of that sweet, safe, profitable companion. Repent- ance. There is less danger of conviction of sin being counterfeit than anything else. We may be de- ceived when a child tells us how he loves the Saviour ; the child may err in thinking its emo- tions under the pathetic representations of the Saviour's appeals, to be Christian love. But when we have seen a child rationally convinced of its sinfulness and yet weeping with gratitude with a sense of forgiveness, seldom have we erred in believing its repentance to be genuine. Repentance is the sorrow of love. If we confess our sins, pleading the satisfaction which Christ has made and which God has accepted, and then do not believe that we are forgiven, we are pay- ing justice twice ; and that is unbelief. Not be- lieving, after all that God through Christ has done for us, is surely wrong. To say " I have not repented enough," shows that we are trying to make atonement for sin. You cannot do it ; 272 THE REMOVAL OF even eternal misery Avoiild not be an adequate satisfaction for sin, for it is not the sacrifice wliicli divine justice Las ap^^ointed. The Word made flesli is the sacrifice. A soul that pleads it, need not say, " I have not repented enough." You never can i*epent enough as a satisfaction' to divine justice, for repentance is not an atone- ment. It is a great mystery, an adorable mys- ter}^, it never ceases to amaze the mind of a be- liever that trusting in the atonement satisfies the conscience of a sinner at once, and he cannot explain why it is. Dr. Watts has expressed the idea, Jesus, my Great High Priest, Offered his blood and died ; My guilty conscience seeks No sacrifice beside, flis powerful blood did once atone, And now it pleads before the throne. Why a guilty conscience -which has found the sacrifice of Christ, is at once quieted, as every believer' testifies, is a 'Question which no doubt the inquisitive Israelites might have asked about the brazen serpent, by faith in which, the people were restored. Therefore desist at once from trying to " feel more," as many say ; as though that could atone for you. Believe this : If you accept the atonement of Christ as a free gift, you Israel's cloud from the rear. 273 are saved. One might stake his own personal hope of acceptance with God, If he. could, on the truth of this decLaration, tliat every one who confesses to God his sinfuhiess and accepts Je- sus Christ as his substitute, has repented, is jus- tified, "shall not come unto condemnation, but is passed from death unto life." Therefore you may look behind you over the whole of life, and see the pillar of cloud moving over all, standing behind all, shedding its beau- tiful radiance over all 3'our history, as though it were saying, " Who is he that condemneth ? It is Christ that died." One may boldly plead for pardon before he is conscious of having satisfied himself with sorrow for sin. Sorrow for sin without looking at Christ is self-righteousness. The greatest experience in Israel's historj^, forever mentioned in their songs of thanksgiving, was this act of grace, bestowed upon them when they were unbelieving, weak, ready to despair, seemingly on the brink of ruin : — wonderful sight ! the angel of the Lord breaking camp and going to their rear ! that beautiful meteor, the guiding cloud, sailing back over their six hun- dred thousand fighting men, powerless as their infants, while Egypt was pouring out its swarm- ing myriads to swallow them up. So, my soul ! thy sins and the hosts of hell are ready this day to destroy thee ; but the angel of the covenant 2-74 THE EEMOYAL OF has not forsaken thee ; faith can see Him, as plainly as Israel beheld Him going to their rear to stand between them and danger ; are not His promises a pillar of cloud to you, and do they not stand, between you and the past, saying, " I, even T, am He that blottetli out thy trans- gressions for mine own sake, and will not remem- ber thy sins ? " This removal, mentioned in the text, of the angel Jehovah and His pavilion of cloud from the front to the rear of Israel's camp, on the oc- casion of their going out of Egypt, is peculiarly fitted to instruct us in reviewing the past. So it instructed Israel going out of Egypt into the untrodden desert. Good people in Israel must have been deeply affected to see that wonderful meteor which had led their way, taking its posi- tion behind tliem. They must have felt safe, as safe as omnipotence could make them, seeing that fiery sign hanging down between them and Egypt. No dark night or tempest had yet been able to quench or even eclipse its preternatural light. Egypt finds it as dark as Israel had found it luminous. The Israelites were baptized unto Moses by this evolution of the cloud and by his guidance of them through the sea; we would have been willing to predict their confidence in him their leader, until they had reached the Prom- ised Land. And as for God, He, by one act Israel's cloud to the reae. 275 passing from front to rear in that critical hour, the cloud shedding darkness on Pharoah, and light on Israel, the waters too, standing up on either side of tliem, stretched His line upon them, and His hand gave the sea His decree that the waters should not pass over. Of all that host that came out of Egypt by Moses, only two adults reached Canaan ; because they believed not God, but forsook the counsel of tlie Most Higli. Therefore, God kept the na- tion wandering forty years in the wilderness ; unbelief postponed the settlement of Israel in Canaan for a whole generation. Now I will point you to several things and ask 3^ou a question. See that angel who is destroy- ing all the first-born of man and beast in Egypt pausing before each door* where the liyssop branch had sprinkled the passover blood, leaving the little company within unharmed. Take your place in imagination where you can see the hosts of Egypt struggling in the waters; seethe light thrown forward on the hindmost of Isi'ael's company arriving safe ashore. Now as you join in the song of Moses there, or follow the corn- pan}^ of women with their timbrels, this is my question ; Are you not willing to make prophecy that a people with such a God is sure be a na- tion of believers? For still look on : Nation af- ter nation melts away before them ; Jordan emu- 276 THE EEMOVAL OF lating the Red sea, and the people passing out of its dried bed ; from which twelve stones are taken, for an altar of witnesses. See them going round a great city in silence six days ; on the seventh day blowing rams' horns, and without a javelin thrown, those walls fall as by an earth- quake ; a great city is made defenceless in a moment. Isi'ael is soon in possession, not only of that city but of the land of the Canaanites, Ilittites, Amorites, Gerizzites, Hivites and Jebu- sites. O, had they hearkened to the voice of God and walked in His wa^^ ! We cannot conceive of the national greatness to which that people would have attained; or of the progress which they would have made in the arts of life, discoveries, inventions, and all that can ennoble the human race. Contemptuous word of inspiration, " their carcasses fell in the wilderness." Carrj-ing out their unbelief they killed the Prince of life, of whom they were the betrayers and murderers, and they have never repented of it ; they are now in their dis- persion a standing monnment of unbelief and its consequences. God lielp us to do contrary to their example. We are worse than the}^ if we are unbelievers in Christian congregations. Bulieve God. Believe on His Son whom He has sent. Obey His gospel. Keep His command- ments. ISRAELS CLOUD TO THE REAR. 277 And now, Angel of that covenant ! stand we pra}^ you over against the past ; cover our sins with the atoning blood ; remind us of past mer- cies ; be a shield to us against the evil conse- quences of our sins and of our follies ; make the way behind us a Red Sea, burying unpleasant recollections, fears, transgressions ; then go be- fore us on our heavenward way. Fin all}', Tliis reanvard angel and this pillar of cloud seem to bid me to say to believers^ It shall he well with you. For these two things are true concerning all who believe in Jesus. First, You have not seen your best days ; and, Secondl}^ You never- will. Never through eternity, will you arrive at that summit of bliss from which you will anticipate declension. Onward and up- ward is to be 3'our way. " Thou wilt sliow me the path of life ; in Thy presence is fulness of joy ; at Thy right hand are pleasures forever- more." Such is the prospect of all who repent and believe. To all others remaining in unbelief it is equally true. Firsts You have not seen your worst days. No angel of tlie covenant is standing beliind you ; for you have made no covenant with God. No pillared cloud has been leading you ; uncov- eiKinted merc}^ liable at any time to leave j^ou, good fortune, luck, chance, is your only security. Bitter as ^M^ur [sufferings may have been, tliore 278 THE REMOVAL OF ISRAEL'S CLOUD. are greater in store if you continue without Clu'ist. Great as your losses have been, 3'Ou have more to lose ; bereavements can make you still more desolate ; enmities more excruciating are laid up for you ; your Avay is into a Red sea with the waters standing round to bury 3-ou; and, Secondly^ As you have not yet seen your worst days, so, remaining without Christ, you never will. There will be always something worse to come. Prevent this by immediate acceptance of that Gospel which you have heard so long in vain. Now, he who with one act of faith Shall confidently say, I look for pardon through Thy blood, Is saved, saved now ; ahvay. "And the Spirit and the Bride say. Come. And let him that heareth say. Come. And let him that is athirst Come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely." 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 28Api5 8J2 REC'U LO APR 141958 i 1 1 General Library LD 21A-50m-8,'57 University of California (C8481sl0)476B Berkeley YB 30993