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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13151 ***
+
+THE CHRISTIAN LIFE;
+
+ITS COURSE, ITS HINDRANCES,
+AND ITS HELPS.
+
+BY
+THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.,
+HEAD MASTER OF RUGBY SCHOOL,
+AND LATE FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD.
+
+From the Fifth London Edition.
+
+1856.
+
+
+
+     "As far as the principle on which Archbishop Laud and his
+     followers acted went to re-actuate the idea of the church, as
+     a co-ordinate and living power by right of Christ's
+     institution and express promise, I go along with them; but I
+     soon discover that by the church they meant the clergy, the
+     hierarchy exclusively, and then I fly off from them in
+     a tangent.
+
+     "For it is this very interpretation of the church, that,
+     according to my conviction, constituted the first and
+     fundamental apostasy; and I hold it for one of the greatest
+     mistakes of our polemical divines, in their controversies
+     with the Romanists, that they trace all the corruptions of
+     the gospel faith to the Papacy."--COLERIDGE,
+
+     _Literary Remains_, vol. iii. p. 386.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+LECTURE I.
+
+GEN. iii. 22.--And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one
+of us, to know good and evil.
+
+
+LECTURE II.
+
+1 COR. xiii. 11.--When I was a child I spake as a child, I understood as
+a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away
+childish things.
+
+
+LECTURE III.
+
+1 COR. xiii. 11.--When I was a child I spake as a child, I understood as
+a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away
+childish things.
+
+
+LECTURE IV.
+
+COL. i. 9.--We do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might
+be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual
+understanding.
+
+
+LECTURE V.
+
+COL. i. 9.--We do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might
+be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual
+understanding.
+
+
+LECTURE VI.
+
+COL. iii. 3.--Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.
+
+
+LECTURE VII.
+
+1 COR. iii. 21--23.--All things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or
+Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to
+come; all are yours, and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's.
+
+
+LECTURE VIII.
+
+GAL. v. 16, 17.--Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts
+of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit
+against the flesh; and these are contrary the one to the other, so that
+ye cannot do the things that ye would.
+
+
+LECTURE IX.
+
+LUKE xiv. 33.--Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he
+hath, he cannot be my disciple.
+
+
+LECTURE X.
+
+1 TIM. i. 9.--The law is not made for a righteous man, but for the
+lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy
+and profane.
+
+
+LECTURE XI.
+
+LUKE xxi. 36.--Watch ye, therefore, and pray always, that ye may be
+accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and
+to stand before the Son of Man.
+
+
+LECTURE XII.
+
+PROV. i. 28.--Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer: they
+shall seek me early, but they shall not find me.
+
+
+LECTURE XIII.
+
+MARK xii. 34.--Thou art not far from the kingdom of God.
+
+
+LECTURE XIV.
+
+MATT. xxii. 14.--For many are called, but few are chosen.
+
+
+LECTURE XV.
+
+LUKE xi. 25.--When he cometh he findeth it swept and garnished.
+
+JOHN v. 42.--I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you.
+
+
+LECTURE XVI.
+
+MATT. xi. 10.--I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare
+thy way before thee.
+
+
+LECTURE XVII.
+
+1 COR. ii. 12.--We have received not the Spirit of the world, but the
+Spirit which is of God.
+
+
+LECTURE XVIII.
+
+GEN. xxvii. 38.--And Esau said unto his father, Hast thou but one
+blessing, my father? Bless me, even me also, O my father.
+
+MATT. xv. 27.--And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs
+which fall from their master's table.
+
+
+LECTURE XIX.
+
+MATT. xxii. 32.--God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.
+
+
+LECTURE XX.
+
+EZEK. xiii. 22.--With lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad,
+whom I have not made sad; and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that
+he should not return from his wicked way, by promising him life.
+
+
+LECTURE XXI.
+
+ADVENT SUNDAY.
+
+HEB. iii. 16.--For some when they had heard did provoke; howbeit not all
+that came out of Egypt by Moses.
+
+
+LECTURE XXII.
+
+CHRISTMAS DAY.
+
+JOHN i. 10.--He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the
+world knew him not.
+
+
+LECTURE XXIII.
+
+SUNDAY NEXT BEFORE EASTER.
+
+MATT. xxvi. 40, 41.--What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch
+and pray, that ye enter not into temptation; the spirit indeed is
+willing, but the flesh is weak.
+
+
+LECTURE XXIV.
+
+GOOD FRIDAY.
+
+ROMANS v. 8.--God commendeth his love towards us, in that, while we were
+yet sinners, Christ died for us.
+
+
+LECTURE XXV.
+
+EASTER DAY.
+
+JOHN xx. 20.--Then the disciples went away again unto their own home.
+
+
+LECTURE XXVI.
+
+WHITSUNDAY.
+
+ACTS xix. 2.--Have you received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?
+
+
+LECTURE XXVII.
+
+TRINITY SUNDAY.
+
+JOHN iii. 9.--How can these things be?
+
+
+LECTURE XXVIII.
+
+EXOD. iii. 6.--And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon
+God.
+
+LUKE xxiii. 30.--Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on
+us; and to the hills, Cover us.
+
+
+LECTURE XXIX.
+
+PSALM cxxxvii. 4.--- How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange
+land?
+
+
+LECTURE XXX.
+
+1 COR. xi. 26.--For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup,
+ye do show the Lord's death till he come.
+
+
+LECTURE XXXI.
+
+LUKE i. 3, 4.--It seemed good to me, also, having had perfect
+understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in
+order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty
+of those things wherein thou hast been instructed.
+
+
+LECTURE XXXII.
+
+Luke i. 3, 4.--It seemed good to me, also, having had perfect
+understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in
+order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty
+of those things wherein thou hast been instructed.
+
+
+LECTURE XXXIII.
+
+JOHN ix. 29.--We know that God spake unto Moses; as for this fellow, we
+know not from whence he is.
+
+
+LECTURE XXXIV.
+
+1 COR. xiv. 20.--Brethren, be not children in understanding: howbeit, in
+malice be ye children, but in understanding be men.
+
+
+LECTURE XXXV.
+
+MATT. xxvi. 45, 46.--Sleep on now and take your rest; behold the hour is
+at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise,
+let us be going: behold he is at hand that doth betray me.
+
+
+LECTURE XXXVI.
+
+2 COR. v. 17, 18.--Old things are passed away; behold all things are
+become new, and all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself
+by Jesus Christ.
+
+
+LECTURE XXXVII.
+
+EZEK. xx. 49.--Then said I, Ah, Lord God! they say of me Doth he not
+speak parables?
+
+
+LECTURE XXXVIII.
+
+ISAIAH v. 1.--Now will I sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved
+touching his vineyard.
+
+
+LECTURE XXXIX.
+
+COL. iii. 17.--Whatsoever ye do in the word or deed, do all in the name
+of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him.
+
+
+NOTES.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+The contents of this volume will be found, I hope, to be in agreement
+with its title.
+
+Amongst the helps of Christian life, the highest place is due to the
+Christian church and its ordinances. I have been greatly misunderstood
+with respect to my estimate of the Christian church, as distinguished
+from the Christian religion. I agree so far with those, from whom I in
+other things most widely differ, that I hold the revival of the church
+of Christ in its full perfection, to be the one great end to which all
+our efforts should be directed. This is with me no new belief, but one
+which I have entertained for many years. It was impressed most strongly
+upon me, as it appears to have been upon others, by the remarkable state
+of affairs and of opinions which we witnessed in this country about nine
+or ten years ago; and everything since that time has confirmed it in my
+mind more and more.
+
+Others, according to their own statement, received the same impression
+from the phenomena of the same period. But the movement had begun
+earlier; nor should I object to call it, as they do, a movement towards
+"something deeper and truer than satisfied the last century[1]." It
+began, I suppose, in the last ten years of the last century, and has
+ever since been working onwards, though for a long time slowly and
+secretly, and with no distinctly marked direction. But still, in
+philosophy and general literature, there have been sufficient proofs
+that the pendulum, which for nearly two hundred years had been swinging
+one way, was now beginning to swing back again; and as its last
+oscillation brought it far from the true centre, so it may be, that its
+present impulse may be no less in excess, and thus may bring on again,
+in after ages, another corresponding reaction.
+
+[Footnote 1: See Mr. Newman's Letter to Dr. Jelf, p. 27.]
+
+Now if it be asked what, setting aside the metaphor, are the two points
+between which mankind has been thus moving to and fro; and what are the
+tendencies in us which, thus alternately predominating, give so
+different a character to different periods of the human history; the
+answer is not easy to be given summarily, for the generalisation which
+it requires is almost beyond the compass of the human mind. Several
+phenomena appear in each period, and it would be easy to give any one of
+these as marking its tendency: as, for instance, we might describe one
+period as having a tendency to despotism, and another to licentiousness:
+but the true answer lies deeper, and can be only given by discovering
+that common element in human nature which, in religion, in politics, in
+philosophy, and in literature, being modified by the subject-matter of
+each, assumes in each a different form, so that its own proper nature is
+no longer to be recognized. Again, it would be an error to suppose that
+either of the two tendencies which so affect the course of human affairs
+were to be called simply bad or good. Each has its good and evil nicely
+intermingled; and taking the highest good of each, it would be difficult
+to say which was the more excellent;--taking the last corruption of
+each, we could not determine which, was the more hateful. For so far as
+we can trace back the manifold streams, flowing some from the eastern
+mountains, and some from the western, to the highest springs from which
+they rise, we find on the one side the ideas of truth and justice, on
+the other those of beauty and love;--things so exalted, and so
+inseparably united in the divine perfections, that to set either two
+above the other were presumptuous and profane. Yet these most divine
+things separated from each other, and defiled in their passage through
+this lower world, do each assume a form in human nature of very great
+evil: the exclusive and corrupted love of truth and justice becomes in
+man selfish atheism; the exclusive and corrupted worship of beauty and
+love becomes in man a bloody and a lying idolatry.
+
+Such would be the general theory of the two great currents in which
+human affairs may be said to have been successively drifting. But real
+history, even the history of all mankind, and much more that of any
+particular age or country, presents a picture far more complicated.
+First, as to time: as the vessels in a harbour, and in the open sea
+without it, may be seen swinging with the tide at the same moment in
+opposite directions; the ebb has begun in the roadstead, while it is not
+yet high water in the harbour; so one or more nations may be in advance
+of or behind the general tendency of their age, and from either cause
+may be moving in the opposite direction. Again, the tendency or movement
+in itself is liable to frequent interruptions, and short
+counter-movements: even when the tide is coming in upon the shore, every
+wave retires after its advance; and he who follows incautiously the
+retreating waters, may be caught by some stronger billow, overwhelming
+again for an instant the spot which had just been left dry. A child
+standing by the sea-shore for a few minutes, and watching this, as it
+seems, irregular advance and retreat of the water, could not tell
+whether it was ebb or flood; and we, standing for a few years on the
+shore of time, can scarcely tell whether the particular movement which
+we witness is according to or against the general tendency of the whole
+period. Farther yet, as these great tendencies are often interrupted, so
+are they continually mixed: that is, not only are their own good and bad
+elements successively predominant, but they never have the world wholly
+to themselves: the opposite tendency exists, in an under-current it may
+be, and not lightly perceptible; but here and there it struggles to the
+surface, and mingles its own good and evil with the predominant good and
+evil of its antagonist. Wherefore he who would learn wisdom from the
+complex experience of history, must question closely all its phenomena,
+must notice that which is less obvious as well as that which is most
+palpable; must judge not peremptorily or sweepingly, but with reserves
+and exceptions; not as lightly overrunning a wide region of the truth,
+but thankful if after much pains he has advanced his landmarks only a
+little; if he has gained, as it were, but one or two frontier
+fortresses, in which he can establish himself for ever.
+
+Now, then, when Mr. Newman describes the movement of the present moment
+as being directed towards "something better and deeper than satisfied
+the last century," this description, although in some sense true, is yet
+in practice delusive; and the delusion which lurks in it is at the root
+of the errors of Mr. Newman and of his friends. They regard the
+tendencies of the last century as wholly evil; and they appear to extend
+this feeling to the whole period of which the last century was the
+close, and which began nearly with the sixteenth century. Viewing in
+this light the last three hundred years, they regard naturally with
+excessive favour the preceding period, with which they are so strongly
+contrasted; and not the less because this period has been an object of
+scorn to the times which have followed it. They are drawn towards the
+enemy of their enemy, and they fancy that it must be in all points their
+enemy's opposite. And if the faults of its last decline are too palpable
+to be denied, they ascend to its middle and its earlier course, and
+finding that its evils are there less flagrant, they abandon themselves
+wholly to the contemplation of its good points, and end with making it
+an idol. There are few stranger and sadder sights than to see men
+judging of whole periods of the history of mankind with the blindness of
+party-spirit, never naming one century without expressions of contempt
+or abhorrence, never mentioning another but with extravagant and
+undistinguishing admiration.
+
+But the worst was yet to come. The period which Mr. Newman and his
+friends so disliked, had, in its religious character, been distinguished
+by its professions of extreme veneration for the Scriptures; in its
+quarrel with the system of the preceding period, it had rested all its
+cause on the authority of the Scripture,--it had condemned the older
+system because Scripture could give no warrant for it. On the other
+hand, the partizans of the older system protested against the exclusive
+appeal to Scripture; there was, as they maintained, another authority in
+religious matters; if their system was not supported in all its points
+by Scripture, it had at least the warrant of Christian antiquity. Thus
+Mr. Newman and his friends found that the times which they disliked had
+professed to rely on Scripture alone; the times which they loved had
+invested the Church with equal authority. It was natural then to connect
+the evils of the iron age, for so they regarded it, with this notion of
+the sole supremacy of Scripture; and it was no less natural to associate
+the blessings of their imagined golden age with its avowed reverence for
+the Church. If they appealed only to Scripture, they echoed the language
+of men whom they abhorred; if they exalted the Church and Christian
+antiquity, they sympathised with a period which they were resolved to
+love. Their theological writings from the very beginning have too
+plainly shown in this respect the force both of their sympathies and
+their antipathies.
+
+Thus previously disposed, and in their sense or apprehension of the evil
+of their own times already flying as it were for refuge to the system of
+times past, they were overtaken by the political storm of 1831, and the
+two following years. That storm rattled loudly, and alarmed many who had
+viewed the gathering of the clouds with hope and pleasure; no wonder,
+then, if it produced a stormy effect upon those who viewed it as a mere
+calamity, an evil monster bred out of an evil time, and fraught with
+nothing but mischief. Farther, the government of the country was now,
+for the first time for many years, in the hands of men who admired the
+spirit of the age, nearly as much as Mr. Newman and his friends abhorred
+it. Thus all things seemed combined against them: the spirit of the
+period which they so hated was riding as it were upon the whirlwind;
+they knew not where its violence might burst; and the government of the
+country was, as they thought, driving wildly before it, without
+attempting to moderate its fury. Already they were inclined to recognise
+the signs of a national apostasy.
+
+But from this point they have themselves written their own history.--Mr.
+Percival's letter to the editor of the Irish Ecclesiastical Journal,
+which was reprinted in the Oxford Herald of January 80, 1841, is really
+a document of the highest value. It acquaints us, from the very best
+authority, with the immediate occasion of the publication of the Tracts
+for the Times, and with the objects of their writers. It tells us
+whither their eyes were turned for deliverance; with what charm they
+hoped to allay the troubled waters. Ecclesiastical history would be far
+more valuable than it is, if we could thus learn the real character and
+views of every church, or sect, or party, from itself, and not from its
+opponents.
+
+Mr. Percival informs us, that the Irish Church Act of 1833, which
+abolished several of the Irish Bishoprics, was the immediate occasion of
+the publication of the Tracts for the Times; and that the objects of
+that publication were, to enforce the doctrine of the apostolical
+succession, and to preserve the Prayer Book from "the Socinian leaven,
+with which we had reason to fear it would be tainted by the
+parliamentary alteration of it, which at that time was openly talked
+of." But the second of these objects is not mentioned in the more formal
+statements which Mr. Percival gives of them; and in what he calls the
+"matured account" of the principles of the writers, it is only said,
+"Whereas there seems great danger at present of attempts at unauthorized
+and inconsiderate innovation as in other matters so especially in the
+service of our Church, we pledge ourselves to resist any attempt that
+may be made to alter the Liturgy on insufficient authority: i.e. without
+the exercise of the free and deliberate judgment of the Church on the
+alterations proposed." It would seem, therefore, that what was
+particularly deprecated was "the alteration of the Liturgy on
+insufficient authority," without reference to any suspected character of
+the alteration in itself. But at any rate, as all probability of any
+alteration in the Liturgy vanished very soon after the publication of
+the tracts began, the other object, the maintaining the doctrine of the
+apostolical succession, as it had been the principal one from the
+beginning, became in a very short time the only one.
+
+The great remedy, therefore, for the evils of the times, the "something
+deeper and truer than satisfied the last century," or, at least, the
+most effectual means of attaining to it, is declared to be the
+maintenance of the doctrine of apostolical succession. Now let us hear,
+for it is most important, the grounds on which this doctrine is to be
+enforced, and the reason why so much stress is laid on it. I quote again
+from Mr. Percival's letter.
+
+"Considering, 1. That the only way of salvation is the partaking of the
+body and blood of our sacrificed Redeemer;
+
+"2. That the mean expressly authorized by him for that purpose is the
+holy sacrament of his supper;
+
+"3. That the security by him no less expressly authorized, for the
+continuance and due application of that sacrament, is the apostolical
+commission of the bishops, and under them the presbyters of the church;
+
+"4. That under the present circumstances of the church in England, there
+is peculiar danger of these matters being slighted and practically
+disavowed, and of numbers of Christians being left, or tempted to
+precarious and unauthorized ways of communion, which must terminate
+often in vital apostasy:--
+
+"We desire to pledge ourselves one to another, reserving our canonical
+obedience, as follows:--
+
+"1. To be on the watch for all opportunities of inculcating, on all
+committed to our charge, a due sense of the inestimable privilege of
+communion with our Lord, through the successors of the apostles, and of
+leading them to the resolution to transmit it, by his blessing,
+unimpaired to their children."
+
+Then follow two other resolutions: one to provide and circulate books
+and tracts, to familiarize men's minds with this doctrine; and the
+other, "to do what lies in us towards reviving among churchmen, the
+practice of daily common prayer, and more frequent participation of the
+Lord's Supper."
+
+The fourth resolution, "to resist unauthorized alterations of the
+Liturgy," I have already quoted: the fifth and last engages generally to
+place within the reach of all men, accounts of such points in our
+discipline and worship as may appear most likely to be misunderstood or
+undervalued.
+
+These resolutions were drawn up more than seven years ago, and their
+practical results have not been contemptible. The Tracts for the Times
+amount to no fewer than ninety; while the sermons, articles in reviews,
+stories, essays, poems, and writings of all sorts which have enforced
+the same doctrines, have been also extremely numerous. Nor have all
+these labours been without fruit: for it is known that a large
+proportion of the clergy have adopted, either wholly or in great part,
+the opinions and spirit of the Tracts for the Times; and many of the
+laity have embraced them also.
+
+It seems also, that in the various publications of their school, the
+object originally marked out in the resolutions quoted above, has been
+followed with great steadiness. The system has been uniform, and its
+several parts have held well together. It has, perhaps, been carried on
+of late more boldly, which is the natural consequence of success. It has
+in all points been the direct opposite of what may be called the spirit
+of English protestantism of the nineteenth century: upholding whatever
+that spirit would depreciate; decrying whatever it would admire. A
+short statement of the principal views held by Mr. Newman and his
+friends, will show this sufficiently.
+
+"The sacraments, and not preaching, are the sources of divine grace." So
+it is said in the Advertisement prefixed to the first volume of the
+Tracts for the Times, in exact conformity with the preamble to the
+resolutions, which I have already quoted. But the only security for the
+efficacy of the sacraments, is the apostolical commission of the
+bishops, and under them, of the presbyters of the Church. So it is said
+in the preamble to the resolutions. These two doctrines are the
+foundation of the whole system. God's grace, and our salvation, come to
+us principally through the virtue of the sacraments; the virtue of the
+sacraments depends on the apostolical succession of those who administer
+them. The clergy, therefore, thus holding in their hands the most
+precious gifts of the Church, acquire naturally the title of the Church
+itself; the Church, as possessed of so mysterious a virtue as to
+communicate to the only means of salvation their saving efficacy,
+becomes at once an object of the deepest reverence. What wonder if to a
+body endowed with so transcendant a gift, there should be given also the
+spirit of wisdom to discern all truth; so that the solemn voice of the
+Church in its creeds, and in the decrees of its general councils, must
+be received as the voice of God himself. Nor can such a body be supposed
+to have commended any practices or states of life winch are not really
+excellent; and the duty either of all Christians, or of those at least
+who would follow the most excellent way. Fasting, therefore, and the
+state of celibacy, are the one a christian obligation, the other a
+christian perfection. Again, being members of a body so exalted, and
+receiving our very salvation in a way altogether above reason, we must
+be cautious how we either trust to our individual conscience rather
+than to the command of the Church, or how we venture to exercise our
+reason at all in judging of what the Church teaches; childlike faith and
+childlike obedience are the dispositions which God most loves. What,
+then, are they who are not of the Church, who do not receive the
+Sacraments from those who can alone give them their virtue? Surely they
+are aliens from God, they cannot claim his covenanted mercies; and the
+goodness which may be apparent in them, may not be real goodness; God
+may see that it is false, though to us it appears sincere; but it is
+certain that they do not possess the only appointed means of salvation;
+and therefore, we must consider their state as dangerous, although, we
+may not venture to condemn them.
+
+I have not consciously misrepresented the system of Mr. Newman and his
+friends in a single particular; I have not, to my knowledge, expressed
+any one of their tenets invidiously. An attentive reader may deduce, I
+think, all the Subordinate points in their teaching from some one or
+more of the principles which I have given; but I have not wilfully
+omitted any doctrine of importance. And, in every point, the opposition
+to what I may be allowed to call the protestantism of the nineteenth
+century is so manifest, that we cannot but feel that the peculiar
+character of the system is to be traced to what I have before
+noticed--the extreme antipathy of its founders to the spirit which they
+felt to be predominant in their own age and country.
+
+It is worth our while to observe this, because fear and passion are not
+the surest guides to truth, and the rule of contraries is not the rule
+of wisdom. Other men have been indignant against the peculiar evils of
+their own time, and from their strong impression of these have seemed to
+lose sight of its good points; but Mr. Newman and his friends appear to
+hate the nineteenth century for its own sake, and to proscribe all
+belonging to it, whether good or bad, simply because it does belong to
+it.--This diseased state of mind is well shown by the immediate occasion
+of the organization of their party. Mr. Perceval tells us that it was
+the Act for the dissolution of some of the Irish bishoprics, passed in
+1833, winch first made the authors of the Tracts resolve to commence
+their publication. Mr. Perceval himself cannot even now speak of that
+Act temperately; he calls it "a wanton act of sacrilege," "a monstrous
+act," "an outrage upon the Church;" and his friends, it may be presumed,
+spoke of it at the time in language at least equally vehement. Now, I am
+not expressing any opinion upon the justice or expediency of that Act;
+it was opposed by many good men, and its merits or demerits were fairly
+open to discussion; but would any fair and sensible person speak of it
+with such extreme abhorrence as it excited in the minds of Mr. Perceval
+and his friends? The Act deprived the Church of no portion of its
+property; it simply ordered a different distribution of it, with the
+avowed object on the part of its framers of saving the Church from the
+odium and the danger of exacting Church Rates from the Roman Catholics.
+It did nothing more than what, according to the constitution of the
+Churches of England and Ireland, was beyond all question within its
+lawful authority to do. The King's supremacy and the sovereignty of
+Parliament may be good or bad, but they are undoubted facts in the
+constitution of the Church of England, and have been so for nearly three
+hundred years. I repeat that I am stating no opinion as to the merits of
+the Irish Church Act of 1833; I only contend, that no man of sound
+judgment would regard it as "a monstrous act," or as "a wanton
+sacrilege." It bore upon it no marks of flagrant tyranny: nor did it
+restrain the worship of the Church, nor corrupt its faith, nor command
+or encourage anything injurious to men's souls in practice. Luther was
+indignant at the sale of indulgences; and his horror at the selling
+Church pardons for money was, by God's blessing, the occasion of the
+Reformation. The occasion of the new counter-reformation was the
+abolition of a certain number of bishoprics, that their revenues might
+be applied solely to church purposes; and that the Church might so be
+saved from a scandal and a danger. The difference of the exciting cause
+of the two movements gives the measure of the difference between the
+Reformation of 1517, and the views and objects of Mr. Newman and
+his friends.
+
+There are states of nervous excitement, when the noise of a light
+footstep is distracting. In such a condition were the authors of the
+Tracts in 1833, and all their subsequent proceedings have shown that the
+disorder was still upon them. Beset by their horror of the nineteenth
+century, they sought for something most opposite to it, and therefore
+they turned to what they called Christian antiquity. Had they judged of
+their own times fairly, had they appreciated the good of the nineteenth
+century as well as its evil, they would have looked for their remedy not
+to the second or third or fourth centuries, but the first; they would
+have tried to restore, not the Church of Cyprian, or Athanasius, or
+Augustine, but the Church of St. Paul and of St. John. Now, this it is
+most certain that they have not done. Their appeal has been not to
+Scripture, but to the opinions and practices of the dominant party in
+the ancient Church. They have endeavoured to set those opinions and
+practices, under the name of apostolical tradition, on a level with the
+authority of the Scriptures. But their unfortunate excitement has made
+them fail of doing even what they intended to do. It may be true that
+all their doctrines may be found in the writings of those whom they call
+the Fathers; but the effect of their teaching is different because its
+proportions are altered. Along with their doctrines, there are other
+points and another spirit prominent in the writings of the earlier
+Christians, which give to the whole a different complexion. The Tracts
+for the Times do not appear to me to represent faithfully the language
+of Christian antiquity; they are rather its caricature.
+
+Still more is this the case, when we compare the language of Mr. Newman
+and his friends with that of the great divines of the Church of England.
+Granting that many of these believed firmly in apostolical succession;
+that one or two may have held general councils to be infallible; that
+some, provoked by the extravagances of the puritans, have spoken
+over-strongly about the authority of tradition; yet the whole works even
+of those who agree with. Mr. Newman in these points, give a view of
+Christianity different from that of the Tracts, because these points,
+which in the Tracts stand forward without relief, are in our old divines
+tempered by the admixture of other doctrines, which, without
+contradicting them, do in fact alter their effect. This applies most
+strongly, perhaps, to Hooker and Taylor; but it holds good also of Bull
+and Pearson. Pearson's exposition of the article in the Creed relating
+to the Holy Catholic Church is very different from the language of Mr.
+Newman: it is such as, with perhaps one single exception, might be
+subscribed by a man who did not believe in apostolical succession[2].
+Again, Pearson is so far from making the creeds an independent
+authority, co-ordinate with Scripture, that he declares, contrary, I
+suppose, to all probability, that the Apostles' Creed itself was but a
+deduction from our present Scriptures of the New Testament[3].
+Undoubtedly the divines of the seventeenth century are more in agreement
+with the Tracts than the Reformers are; but it is by no means true that
+this agreement is universal. There is but one set of writers whose minds
+are exactly represented by Mr. Newman and his friends, and these are the
+nonjurors.
+
+[Footnote 2: The sixth and last mark which he gives of the unity of the
+Church is, "the unity of discipline and government." "All the Churches
+of God have the same pastoral guides appointed, authorized, sanctified,
+and set apart by the appointment of God, by the direction of the Spirit,
+to direct and lead the people of God in the same way of eternal
+salvation; as, therefore, there is no Church where there is no order, no
+ministry, so where the same order and ministry is, there is the same
+Church. And this is the unity of regiment and discipline." Pearson on
+the Creed, Art. IX. p. 341, seventh edit. fol. 1701. It would be easy to
+put a construction upon this paragraph which I could agree with; but I
+suppose that Pearson meant what I hold to be an error. Yet how gently
+and generally is it expressed; and this doubtful paragraph stands alone
+amidst seventeen folio pages on the article of the Holy Catholic Church.
+And in his conclusion, where he delivers what "every one ought to intend
+when they profess to believe the Holy Catholic Church," there is not a
+word about its government; nor is Pearson one of those interpreters who
+pervert the perfectly certain meaning of the word "Catholic" to favour
+their own notions about episcopacy. I could cordially subscribe to every
+word of this conclusion.]
+
+[Footnote 3: "To believe, therefore, as the word stands in the front of
+the Creed, ... is to assent to the whole and every part of it as to a
+certain and infallible truth revealed by God, ... and delivered unto us
+in the writings of the blessed apostles and prophets immediately
+inspired, moved, and acted by God, out of whose writings this brief sum
+of necessary points of faith was first collected." (P. 12.) And in the
+paragraph immediately preceding, Pearson had said, "The household of God
+is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, who are
+continued unto us only in their writings, and by them alone convoy unto
+us the truths which they received from God, upon whose testimony we
+believe." It appears, therefore, that Pearson not only subscribed the
+6th Article of the Church of England, but also believed it.]
+
+Many reasons, therefore, concur to make it doubtful whether the authors
+of the Tracts have discovered the true remedy for the evils of their
+age; whether they have really inculcated "something better and deeper
+than satisfied the last century." The violent prejudice which previously
+possessed them, and the strong feelings of passion and fear which led
+immediately to their first systematic publications, must in the first
+instance awaken a suspicion as to their wisdom; and this suspicion
+becomes stronger when we find their writings different from the best of
+those which they profess to admire, and bearing a close resemblance only
+to those of the nonjurors. A third consideration is also of much
+weight--that their doctrines do not enforce any great points of moral or
+spiritual perfection which other Christians had neglected; nor do they,
+in any especial manner, "preach Christ." In this they offer a striking
+contrast to the religious movement, if I may so call it, which began
+some years since in the University at Cambridge. That movement, whatever
+human alloy might have mingled with it, bore on it most clear evidence
+that it was in the main God's work. It called upon men to turn from sin
+and be reconciled to God; it emphatically preached Christ crucified. But
+Mr. Newman and his friends have preached as their peculiar doctrine, not
+Christ but the Church; we must go even farther and say, not the Church,
+but themselves. What they teach has no moral or spiritual excellence in
+itself; but it tends greatly to their own exaltation. They exalt the
+sacraments highly, but all that they say of their virtue, all their
+admiration of them as so setting forth the excellence of faith, inasmuch
+as in them the whole work is of God, and man has only to receive and
+believe, would be quite as true, and quite as well-grounded, if they
+were to abandon altogether that doctrine which it is their avowed object
+especially to enforce--the doctrine of apostolical succession.
+Referring again to the preamble of their original resolutions, already
+quoted, we see that the two first articles alone relate to our Lord and
+to his Sacraments; the third, which is the great basis of their system,
+relates only to the Clergy. Doubtless, if apostolical succession be
+God's will, it is our duty to receive it and to teach it; but a number
+of clergymen, claiming themselves to have this succession, and insisting
+that, without it, neither Christ nor Christ's Sacraments will save us,
+do, beyond all contradiction, preach themselves, and magnify their own
+importance. They are quite right in doing so, if God has commanded it;
+but such preaching has no manifest warrant of God in it; if it be
+according to God, it stands alone amongst his dispensations; his
+prophets and his apostles had a different commission. "We preach," said
+St. Paul, "not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your
+servants for Jesus' sake." It is certain that the enforcing apostolical
+succession as the great object of our teaching is precisely to do that
+very thing which St. Paul was commissioned not to do.
+
+This, to my mind, affords a very great presumption that the peculiar
+doctrines of Mr. Newman and his friends, those which they make it their
+professed business to inculcate, are not of God. I am anxious not to be
+misunderstood in saying this. Mr. Newman and his friends preach many
+doctrines which are entirely of God; as Christians, as ministers of
+Christ's Church, they preach God's word; and thus, a very large portion
+of their teaching is of God, blessed both to their hearers and to
+themselves. Nay, even amongst the particular objects to which their own
+"Resolutions" pledge them, one is indeed most excellent--"the revival of
+daily common prayer, and more frequent participation of the Lord's
+Supper." This is their merit, not as Christians generally, but as a
+party, (I use the word in no offensive sense;) in this respect their
+efforts have done, and are doing great good. But they have themselves
+declared that they will especially set themselves to preach apostolical
+succession; and it is with reference to this, that I charge them with
+"preaching themselves;" it was of this I spoke, when I said that there
+was a very great presumption that their peculiar doctrines were not
+of God.
+
+Again, the system which they hold up as "better and deeper than
+satisfied the last century" is a remedy which has been tried once
+already: and its failure was so palpable, that all the evil of the
+eighteenth century was but the reaction from that enormous evil which
+this remedy, if it be one, had at any rate been powerless to cure.
+Apostolical succession, the dignity of the Clergy, the authority of the
+Church, were triumphantly maintained for several centuries; and their
+full development was coincident, to say the least, with the corruption
+alike of Christ's religion and Christ's Church. So far were they from
+tending to realize the promises of prophecy, to perfect Christ's body up
+to the measure of the stature of Christ's own fulness, that Christ's
+Church declined during their ascendancy more and more;--she fell alike
+from truth and from holiness; and these doctrines, if they did not cause
+the evil, were at least quite unable to restrain it. For, in whatever
+points the fifteenth century differed from the fourth, it cannot be said
+that it upheld the apostolical succession less peremptorily, or attached
+a less value to Church tradition, and Church authority. I am greatly
+understating the case, but I am content for the present to do so: I will
+not say that Mr. Newman's favourite doctrines were the very Antichrist
+which corrupted Christianity; I will only say that they did not prevent
+its corruption,--that when they were most exalted Christian truth and
+Christian goodness were most depressed.
+
+After all, however, what has failed once may doubtless be successful on
+a second trial: it is within possibility, perhaps, that a doctrine,
+although destitute of all internal evidence showing it to come from God,
+may be divine notwithstanding;--revealed for some purposes which we
+cannot fathom, or simply as an exercise of our obedience. All this may
+be so; and if it can be shown to be so, there remains no other course
+than to believe God's word, and obey his commandments; only the strength
+of the external evidence must be in proportion to the weakness of the
+internal. A good man would ask for no sign from heaven to assure him
+that God commands judgment, mercy, and truth; whatsoever things are
+pure, and lovely, and of good report, bear in themselves the seal of
+their origin; a seal which to doubt were blasphemy. But the cloud and
+the lightnings and thunders, and all the signs and wonders wrought in
+Egypt and in the Red Sea, were justly required to give divine authority
+to mere positive ordinances, in which, without such external warrant,
+none could have recognised the voice of God. We ask of Mr. Newman and
+his friends to bring some warrant of Scripture for that which they
+declare to be God's will. They speak very positively and say, that "the
+security by our Lord no less expressly authorized for the continuance
+and due application of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, is the
+apostolical commission of the bishops, and under them the presbyters of
+the Church." They say that our Lord has authorized this "no less
+expressly" than he has authorized the Holy Supper as the mean of
+partaking in his body and blood. What our Lord has said concerning the
+communion is not truly represented: he instituted it as one mean of
+grace among many; not as_the_ mean; neither the sole mean, nor the
+principal. But allow, for an instant, that it was instituted as_the_
+mean; and give this sense to those well-known and ever-memorable words
+in which our Lord commanded his disciples to eat the bread and drink of
+the cup, in remembrance of him. His words commanding us to do this are
+express; "not less express," we are told, is his "sanction of the
+apostolical commission of the bishops, as the security for the
+continuance and due application of the Sacrament." Surely these writers
+allow themselves to pervert language so habitually, that they do not
+consider when, and with regard to whom, they are doing it. They say that
+our Lord has sanctioned the necessity of apostolical succession, in
+order to secure the continuance and efficacy of the sacrament, "no less
+expressly" than he instituted the sacrament itself. If they had merely
+asserted that he had sanctioned the necessity of apostolical succession,
+we might have supposed that, by some interpretation of their own, they
+implied his sanction of it, from words which, to other men, bore no such
+meaning. But in saying that he has "expressly sanctioned it," they have,
+most unconsciously, I trust, ascribed their own words to our Lord; they
+make Mm to say what he has not said, unless they can produce[4] some
+other credible record of his words besides the books of the four
+evangelists and the apostolical epistles.
+
+[Footnote 4: "Scripture alone contains what remains to us of our Lord's
+teaching. If there be a portion of revelation sacred beyond other
+portions, distinct and remote in its nature from the rest, it must be
+the words and works of the eternal Son Incarnate. He is the one Prophet
+of the Church, as he is our one Priest and King. His history is as far
+above any other possible revelation, as heaven is above earth: for in it
+we have literally the sight of Almighty God in his judgments, thoughts,
+attributes, and deeds, and his mode of dealing with us his creatures.
+Now, this special revelation is in Scripture, and in Scripture only:
+tradition has no part in it."--_Newman's Lectures on the Prophetical
+Office of the Church_. 1837. Pp. 347, 348.]
+
+That their statement was untrue, and being untrue, that it is a most
+grave matter to speak untruly of our Lord's commands, are points
+absolutely certain. But if they recall the assertion, as to the
+expressness of our Lord's sanction, and mean to say, that his sanction
+is implied, and may be reasonably deduced from what he has said, then I
+answer, that the deduction ought to be clear, because the doctrine in
+itself bears on it no marks of having had Christ for its author. Yet so
+far is it from true, that the necessity of apostolical succession, in
+order to give efficacy to the sacrament, may be clearly deduced from any
+recorded words of our Lord, that there are no words[5] of his from which
+it can be deduced, either probably or plausibly; none with which it has
+any, the faintest, connexion; none from which it could be even
+conjectured that such a tenet had ever been in existence. I am not
+speaking, it will be observed, of apostolical succession simply; but of
+the necessity of apostolical succession, as a security for the efficacy
+of the sacrament. That this doctrine comes from God, is a position
+altogether without evidence, probability, or presumption, either
+internal or external.
+
+[Footnote 5: Since this was written, I have found out, what certainly it
+was impossible to anticipate beforehand, that our Lord's words, "Do this
+in remembrance of me," are supposed to teach the doctrine of the
+priest's consecrating power. But the passage to which I refer is so
+remarkable that I must quote it in its author's own words. Mr. Newman,
+for the tract is apparently one of his, observes, that three out of the
+four Gospels make no mention of the raising of Lazarus. He then goes on,
+"As the raising of Lazarus is true, though not contained at all in the
+first three Gospels; so the gift of consecrating the Eucharist may have
+been committed by Christ to the priesthood, though only indirectly
+taught in any of the four. Will you say I am arguing against our own
+Church, which says the Scripture 'contains all things necessary to be
+believed to salvation?' Doubtless, Scripture _contains_ all things
+necessary to be _believed_; but there may be things _contained_ which
+are not _on the surface_, and things which belong to the _ritual_, and
+not to _belief_. Points of faith may lie _under_ the surface: points of
+observance need not be in Scripture _at all_. The consecrating power is
+a point of ritual, yet it _is_ indirectly taught in Scripture, though
+not brought out, when Christ said, 'Do this,' for he spake to the
+apostles, who were priests, not to his disciples generally."--_Tracts
+for the Times_. Tract 85, p. 46.
+
+This passage is indeed characteristic of the moral and intellectual
+faults which I have alluded to as marking the writings of the supporters
+of Mr. Newman's system. But what is become of the assertion, that this
+security of the apostolical commission was "expressly authorized" by our
+Lord, when it is admitted that it is only indirectly taught in
+Scripture? And what becomes of the notion, that what our Lord did or
+instituted may be learned from another source than Scripture, when Mr.
+Newman has most truly stated, in the passage quoted in the preceding
+note, that our Lord's history, the history of his words and works, "is
+in Scripture, and Scripture only: tradition has no part in it?" I pass
+over the surprising state of mind which could imagine a distinction
+between things necessary to be believed, and necessary to be done; and
+could conceive such a distinction to be according to the meaning of our
+article. It would appear that this shift has been since abandoned, and
+others, no way less extraordinary, have been attempted in its place; for
+an extraordinary process it must be which tries to reconcile Mr.
+Newman's opinions with the declaration of the sixth article. But now for
+Mr. Newman's scriptural proof, that our Lord "committed to the
+priesthood the gift of consecrating the Eucharist." "When Christ said,
+'Do this,' he spake to the apostles, who were priests, not to his
+disciples generally." This would prove too much, for it would prove that
+none but the clergy were ordered to receive the communion at all: the
+words, "Do this," referring, not to any consecration, of which there had
+been no word said, but to the eating the bread, and drinking of the cup.
+Again, when St. Paul says, "the cup which we bless,'--the bread which we
+break," it is certain that the word "we," does not refer to himself and
+Sosthenes, or to himself and Barnabas, but to himself and the whole
+Corinthian church; for he immediately goes on, "for we, the whole number
+of us," ([Greek: oi polloi] compare Romans xii. 5,) "are one body, for
+we all are partakers of the one bread." Thirdly, Tertullian expressly
+contrasts the original institution of our Lord with the church practice
+of his own day, in this very point. "Eucharistiæ sacramentum et in
+tempore victus, et omnibus mandatum a Domino, etiam antelucanis coetibus
+nee de aliorum manu quam præridentium sumimus." (_De Coroná Mililis_,
+3.) I know that Tertullian believes the alteration to have been founded
+upon an apostolical tradition; but he no less names it as a change from
+the original institution of our Lord; nor does he appear to consider it
+as more than a point of order. Lastly, what shadow of probability is
+there, and is it not begging the whole question, to assume that our Lord
+spoke to his apostles as priests, and not as representatives of the
+whole Christian church? His language makes no distinction between his
+disciples and those who were without; it repels it as dividing his
+disciples from each other. His twelve disciples were the apostles of the
+church, but they were not priests. In such matters our Lord's words
+apply exactly, "One is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are
+brethren."]
+
+On the whole, then, the movement in the church, excited by Mr. Newman
+and his friends, appears to be made in a false direction, and to be
+incapable of satisfying the feeling which prompted it. I have not
+noticed other presumptions against it, arising from the consequences to
+which the original doctrines of the party have since led, or from
+certain moral and intellectual faults which have marked the writings of
+its supporters. It is enough to say, that the movement originated in
+minds highly prejudiced beforehand, and under the immediate influence of
+passion and fear; that its doctrines, as a whole, resemble the teaching
+of no set of writers entitled to respect, either in the early church, or
+in our own; that they tend, not to Christ's glory, or to the advancement
+of holiness, but simply to the exaltation of the clergy; and that they
+are totally unsupported by the authority of Scripture. They are a plant,
+therefore, which our heavenly Father has not planted; a speaking in the
+name of the Lord what the Lord has not commanded; hay and stubble,
+built upon the foundation of Christ, which are good for nothing but to
+be burned.
+
+I have spoken quite confidently of the total absence of all support in
+Scripture for Mr. Newman's favourite doctrine of "the necessity of
+apostolical succession, in order to ensure the effect of the
+sacraments." This doctrine is very different from that of the Divine
+appointment of episcopacy as a form of government, or even from that of
+the exclusive lawfulness of that episcopacy which has come down by
+succession from the apostles. Much less is it to be confounded with any
+notions, however exalted, of the efficacy of the sacraments, even though
+carried to such a length as we read of in the early church, when living
+men had themselves baptized as proxies for the dead, and when a portion
+of the wine of the communion was placed by the side of a corpse in the
+grave. Such notions may be superstitious and unscriptural, as indeed
+they are, but they are quite distinct from a belief in the necessity of
+a human priest to give the sacraments their virtue. And, without going
+to such lengths as this, men may overestimate the efficacy of the
+sacraments, to the disparagement of prayer, and preaching, and reading
+the Scriptures, and yet may be perfectly clear from the opinion which
+makes this efficacy depend immediately on a human administrator. And so
+again, men may hold episcopacy to be divine, and the episcopacy of
+apostolical succession to be the only true episcopacy, but yet they may
+utterly reject the notion of its being essential to the efficacy of the
+sacraments. It is of this last doctrine only that I assert, in the
+strongest terms, that it is wholly without support in Scripture, direct
+or indirect, and that it does not minister to godliness.
+
+In truth, Mr. Newman and his friends are well aware that the Scripture
+will not support their doctrine, and therefore it is that they have
+proceeded to such, lengths in upholding the authority not of the creeds
+only, but of the opinions and practices of the ancient church generally;
+and that they try to explain away the clear language of our article,
+that nothing "which is neither read therein (i.e. in holy Scripture,)
+nor may be proved thereby, is to be required of any man that it should
+be believed as an article of faith, or be thought requisite or necessary
+to salvation." It would be one of the most unaccountable phenomena of
+the human mind, were any man fairly to come to the conclusion that the
+Scriptures and the early church were of equal authority, and that the
+authority of both were truly divine. If any men resolve to maintain
+doctrines and practices as of divine authority, for which the Scripture
+offers no countenance, they of course are driven to maintain the
+authority of the church in their own defence; and where they have an
+interest in holding any particular opinion, its falsehood, however
+palpable, is unhappily no bar to its reception. Otherwise it would seem
+that the natural result of believing the early church to be of equal
+authority with the Scripture, would be to deny the inspiration of
+either. For two things so different in several points as the
+Christianity of the Scriptures and that of the early church, may
+conceivably be both false, but it is hard to think that they can both be
+perfectly true.
+
+I am here, however, allowing, what is by no means true, without many
+qualifications, that Mr. Newman's system is that of the early church.
+The historical inquiry as to the doctrines of the early church would
+lead me into far too wide a field; I may only notice, in passing, how
+many points require to be carefully defined in conducting such an
+inquiry; as, for instance, what we mean by the term "early church," as
+to time; for that may be fully true of the church in the fourth
+century, which is only partially true of it in the third, and only in a
+very slight degree true of it in the second or first. And again, what do
+we mean by the term "early church," as to persons; for a few eminent
+writers are not even the whole clergy; neither is it by any means to be
+taken on their authority that their views were really those of all the
+bishops and presbyters of the Christian world; but if they were, the
+clergy are not the church, nor can their judgments be morally considered
+as the voice of the church, even if we were to admit that they could at
+any time constitute its voice legally. But, for my present purpose, we
+may take for granted that Mr. Newman's system as to the pre-eminence of
+the sacraments, and the necessity of apostolical succession to give them
+their efficacy, was the doctrine of the early church; then I say that
+this system is so different from that of the New Testament, that to
+invest the two with equal authority is not to make the church system
+divine, but to make the scriptural system human; or, at the best,
+perishable and temporary, like the ceremonial law of Moses. Either the
+church system must be supposed to have superseded the scriptural
+system[6], and its unknown authors are the real apostles of our present
+faith, in which case, we do not see why it should not be superseded in
+its turn, and why the perfect manifestation of Christianity should not
+be found in the Koran, or in any still later system; or else neither of
+the two systems can be divine, but the one is merely the human
+production of the first century, the other that of the second and third.
+If this be so, it is clearly open to all succeeding centuries to adopt
+whichever of the two they choose, or neither.
+
+[Footnote 6: This, it is well known, has been most ably maintained by
+Rothe, (_Artfãnge der Christlichen Kirche und ihrer Verfassung_,
+Wittenberg, 1837,) with respect to the origin of episcopacy. He contends
+that it was instituted by the surviving apostles after the destruction
+of Jerusalem, as an intentional change from the earlier constitution of
+the church, in order to enable it to meet the peculiar difficulties and
+dangers of the times. To this belongs the question of the meaning of the
+expression, [Greek: oi tais deuterais ton Apostolon diataxesi
+parakolouthaekotes], in the famous Fragments of Irenæus, published by
+Pfaff, from a manuscript in the library of Turin, and to be found in the
+Venice edition of Irenæus, 1734, vol. ii. _Fragmentorum_, p. 10. But
+then Rothe would admit that if the apostles altered what they themselves
+had appointed, it would follow that neither their earlier nor their
+later institutions were intended to be for all times and all places, but
+were simply adapted to a particular state of circumstances, and were
+alterable when that state was altered: in short, whatever institutions
+the apostles changed were shown to be essentially changeable; otherwise
+their early institution was defective, which cannot be conceived. And
+thus it may well be that the early church may have altered, in some
+points, the first institutions of the apostles, and may have been guided
+by God's Spirit in doing so; but the error consists in believing that
+the now institutions were to be of necessity more permanent than those
+which they succeeded; in supposing that either the one or the other
+belong to the eternal truths and laws of Christ's religion, when they
+belong, in fact, to the essentially changeable regulations of
+his church.]
+
+To such consequences are those driven who maintain the divine authority
+of the system of Mr. Newman. Assuredly the thirst for "something deeper
+and truer than satisfied the last century," will not be allayed by a
+draught so scanty and so vapid; but after the mirage has beguiled and
+disappointed him for a season, the traveller presses on the more eagerly
+to the true and living well.
+
+In truth, the evils of the last century were but the inevitable fruits
+of the long ascendency of Mr. Newman's favourite principles. Christ's
+religion had been corrupted in the long period before the Reformation,
+but it had ever retained many of its main truths, and it was easy, when
+the appeal was once made to Scripture, to sweep away the corruptions,
+and restore it in its perfect form; but Christ's church had been
+destroyed so long and so completely, that its very idea was all but
+lost, and to revive it actually was impossible. What had been known
+under that name,--I am speaking of Christ's church, be it observed, as
+distinguished from Christ's religion,--was so great an evil, that,
+hopeless of drawing any good from it, men looked rather to Christ's
+religion as all in all; and content with having destroyed the false
+church, never thought that the scheme of Christianity could not be
+perfectly developed without the restoration of the true one. But the
+want was deeply felt, and its consequences were deplorable. At this
+moment men are truly craving something deeper than satisfied the last
+century; they crave to have the true church of Christ, which the last
+century was without. Mr. Newman perceives their want, and again offers
+them that false church which is worse than none at all.
+
+The truths of the Christian religion are to be sought for in the
+Scripture alone; they are the same at all times and in all countries.
+With the Christian church it is otherwise; the church is not a
+revelation concerning the unchangeable and eternal God, but an
+institution to enable changeable man to apprehend the unchangeable.
+Because man is changeable, the church is also changeable; changeable,
+not in its object, which is for ever one and the same, but in its means
+for effecting that object; changeable in its details, because the same
+treatment cannot suit various diseases, various climates, various
+constitutional peculiarities, various external influences.
+
+The Scripture, then, which is the sole and direct authority for all the
+truths of the Christian religion, is not in the same way, an authority
+for the constitution and rules of the Christian church; that is, it does
+not furnish direct authority, but guides us only by analogy: or it
+gives us merely certain main principles, which we must apply to our own
+various circumstances. This is shown by the remarkable fact, that
+neither our Lord nor his apostles have left any commands with respect to
+the constitution and administration of the church generally. Commands in
+abundance they have left us on moral matters; and one commandment of
+another kind has been added, the commandment, namely, to celebrate the
+Lord's Supper. "Do this in remembrance of me," are our Lord's words; and
+St. Paul tells us, if we could otherwise have doubted it, that this
+remembrance is to be kept up for ever. "As often as ye eat that bread or
+drink that cup ye do show the Lord's death _till he come_." This is the
+one perpetual ordinance of the Christian church, and this is commanded
+to be kept perpetually. But its other institutions are mentioned
+historically, as things done once, but not necessarily to be always
+repeated: nay, they are mentioned without any details, so that we do not
+always know what their exact form was in their original state, and
+cannot, therefore, if we would, adopt it as a perpetual model. Nor is it
+unimportant to observe that institutions are recorded as having been
+created on the spur of the occasion, if I may so speak, not as having
+formed a part of an original and universal plan. A great change in the
+character of the deacon, or subordinate minister's office, is introduced
+in consequence of the complaints of the Hellenist Christians: the number
+of the apostles is increased by the addition of Paul and Barnabas, not
+appointed, as Matthias had been, by the other apostles themselves, but
+by the prophets and teachers of the church of Antioch. Again, the
+churches founded by St. Paul were each, at first, placed by him under
+the government of several presbyters; but after his imprisonment at
+Rome, finding that they were become greatly corrupted, he sends out
+single persons, in two instances, with full powers to remodel these
+churches, and with authority to correct the presbyters themselves: yet
+it does not appear that these especial[7] visitors were to alter
+permanently the earlier constitution of the churches; nor that they were
+sent generally to all the churches which St. Paul had founded. Indeed,
+it appears evident from the epistle of Clement, that the original
+constitution of the church of Corinth still subsisted in his time; the
+government was still vested not in one man, but in many[8]. Yet a few
+years later the government of a single man, as we see from Ignatius, was
+become very general; and Ignatius, as is well known, wishes to invest it
+with absolute power[9]. I believe that he acted quite wisely according
+to the circumstances of the church at that period; and that nothing less
+than a vigorous unity of government could have struggled with the
+difficulties and dangers of that crisis. But no man can doubt that the
+system which Ignatius so earnestly recommends was very different from
+that which St. Paul had instituted fifty or sixty years earlier.
+
+[Footnote 7: The command, "to appoint elders in every city," is given to
+Titus, according to Paul's practice when he first formed churches of the
+Gentiles (Acts xiv, 2.) Nor did Timothy, or Titus, remain permanently at
+Ephesus, or in Crete. Timothy, when St. Paul's second Epistle was
+written to him, was certainly not at Ephesus, but apparently in Pontus;
+and Titus, at the same period, was gone to Dalmatia: nor indeed was he
+to remain in Crete beyond the summer of the year in which St. Paul's
+Epistle was written; he was to meet Paul, in the winter, at Nicopolis.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Only elders are spoken of as governing the church of
+Corinth. It is impossible to understand clearly the nature of the
+contest, and of the party against which Clement's Epistle is directed.
+Where he wishes the heads of that party to say, [Greek: ei di eme stasis
+kai eris kai schismata, ekchoro, apeimi, ou ean, boulaesthe, kai poio,
+ta, prostassomena upo tou plaethous], c. 54, it would seem as if they
+had been endeavouring to exercise a despotic authority over the church,
+in defiance of the general feeling, as well as of the existing
+government, like those earlier persons at Corinth, whom St. Paul
+describes, in his second Epistle, xi. 20; and like Diotrephes, mentioned
+by St. John, 3 Epist. 9, 10. But in a society where all power must have
+depended on the consent of those subject to it, how could any one
+exercise a tyranny against the will of the majority, as well as against
+the authority of the Apostles? And [Greek: ta prostassomena upo tou
+plaethous] must signify, I think, "the bidding of the society at large."
+Compare for this use of [Greek: plaethos], Ignatius, Smyrna. 8;
+Trallian. 1, 8. A conjecture might be offered as to the solution of this
+difficulty, but it would lead mo into too long a discussion.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Insomuch that he wished all marriages to be solemnized with
+the consent and approbation of the bishop, [Greek: meta gnomaes tou
+episkopou], that they might be "according to God, and not according to
+passion;" [Greek: kapa Theon kai mae kat epithomian].--_Ad.
+Polycarp_. 5.]
+
+On two points, however,--points not of detail, but of principle,--the
+Scripture does seem to speak decisively. 1st. The whole body of the
+church was to take an active share in its concerns; the various
+faculties of its various members were to perform their several parts: it
+was to be a living society, not an inert mass of mere hearers and
+subjects, who were to be authoritatively taught and absolutely ruled by
+one small portion of its members. It is quite consistent with this,
+that, at particular times, the church should centre all its own power
+and activity in the persons of its rulers. In the field, the imperium of
+the Roman consul was unlimited; and even within the city walls, the
+senate's commission in times of imminent danger, released him from all
+restraints of law; the whole power of the state was, for the moment,
+his, and his only. Such temporary despotisms are sometimes not expedient
+merely, but necessary: without them society would perish. I do not,
+therefore, regard Ignatius's epistles as really contradictory to the
+idea of the church conveyed to us in the twelfth chapter of St. Paul's
+First Epistle to the Corinthians: I believe that the dictatorship, so to
+speak, which Ignatius claims for the bishop in each church, was required
+by the circumstances of the case; but to change the temporary into the
+perpetual dictatorship, was to subvert the Roman constitution; and to
+make Ignatius's language the rule, instead of the exception, is no less
+to subvert the Christian church. Wherever the language of Ignatius is
+repeated with justice, there the church must either be in its infancy,
+or in its dotage, or in some extraordinary crisis of danger; wherever it
+is repeated, as of universal application, it destroys, as in fact it has
+destroyed, the very life of Christ's institution.
+
+But, 2d, the Christian church was absolutely and entirely, at all times,
+and in all places, to be without a human priesthood. Despotic government
+and priesthood are things perfectly distinct from one another. Despotic
+government might be required, from time to time, by this or that portion
+of the Christian church, as by other societies; for government is
+essentially changeable, and all forms, in the manifold varieties of the
+condition of society, are, in their turn, lawful and beneficial. But a
+priesthood belongs to a matter not so varying--the relations subsisting
+between God and man. These relations were fixed for the Christian church
+from its very foundation, being, in fact, no other than the main truths
+of the Christian religion; and they bar, for all time, the very notion
+of an earthly priesthood. They bar it, because they establish the
+everlasting priesthood of our Lord, which leaves no place for any other;
+they bar it, because priesthood is essentially mediation; and they
+establish one Mediator between God and man--the Man Christ Jesus. And,
+therefore, the notion of Mr. Newman and his friends, that the sacraments
+derive their efficacy from the apostolical succession of the minister,
+is so extremely unchristian, that it actually deserves to be called
+anti-christian; for there is no point of the priestly office, properly
+so called, in which the claim of the earthly priest is not absolutely
+precluded. Do we want him for sacrifice? Nay, there is no place for him
+at all; for our one atoning Sacrifice has been once offered; and by its
+virtue we are enabled to offer daily our spiritual sacrifices of
+ourselves, which no other man can by possibility offer for us. Do we
+want him for intercession? Nay, there is One who ever liveth to make
+intercession for us, through whom we have access to ([Greek:
+prosalogaen], admission to the presence of) the Father, and for whose
+sake, Paul, and Apollos, and Peter, and things present, and things to
+come, are all ours already. His claim can neither be advanced or
+received without high dishonour to our true Priest and to his blessed
+gospel. If circumcision could not be practised, as necessary, by a
+believer in Christ, without its involving a forfeiture of the benefits
+of Christ's salvation; how much more does St. Paul's language apply to
+the invention of an earthly priesthood--a priesthood neither after the
+order of Aaron, nor yet of Melchisedek; unlawful alike under the law and
+the gospel.
+
+It is the invention of the human priesthood, which falling in,
+unhappily, with the absolute power rightfully vested in the Christian
+church during the troubles of the second century, fixed the exception as
+the rule, and so in the end destroyed the church. It pretended that the
+clergy were not simply rulers and teachers,--offices which, necessarily
+vary according to the state of those who are ruled and taught,--but that
+they were essentially mediators between God and the church; and as this
+language would have sounded too profanely,--for the mediator between
+God and the church can be none but Christ,--so the clergy began to draw
+to themselves the attributes of the church, and to call the church by a
+different name, such as the faithful, or the laity; so that to speak of
+the church mediating for the people did not sound so shocking, and the
+doctrine so disguised found ready acceptance. Thus the evil work was
+consummated; the great majority of the members of the church, were
+virtually disfranchised; the minority retained the name, but the
+character of the institution was utterly corrupted.
+
+To revive Christ's church, therefore, is to expel the antichrist of
+priesthood, (which, as it was foretold of him, "as God, sitteth in the
+temple of God, showing himself that he is God,") and to restore its
+disfranchised members,--the laity,--to the discharge of their proper
+duties in it, and to the consciousness of their paramount importance.
+This is the point which I have dwelt upon in the XXXVIII^{th} Lecture,
+and which is closely in connection with the point maintained in the
+XL^{th}; and all who value the inestimable blessings of Christ's church
+should labour in arousing the laity to a sense of their great share in
+them. In particular, that discipline, which is one of the greatest of
+those blessings, never can, and, indeed, never ought to be restored,
+till the Church resumes its lawful authority, and puts an end to the
+usurpation of its powers by the clergy. There is a feeling now awakened
+amongst the lay members of our Church, which, if it can but be rightly
+directed, may, by God's blessing, really arrive at something truer and
+deeper than satisfied the last century, or than satisfied the last
+seventeen centuries. Otherwise, whatever else may be improved, the laity
+will take care that church discipline shall continue to slumber, and
+they will best serve the church by doing so. Much may be done to spread
+the knowledge of Christ's religion; new churches may be built; new
+ministers appointed to preach the word and administer the sacraments;
+those may hear who now cannot hear; many more sick persons may be
+visited; many more children may receive religious instruction: all this
+is good, and to be received with sincere thankfulness; but, with a
+knowledge revealed to us of a still more excellent power in Christ's
+church, and with the abundant promises of prophecy in our hands, can we
+rest satisfied with the lesser and imperfect good, which strikes thrice
+and stays? But, if the zeal of the lay members of our Church be directed
+by the principles of Mr. Newman, then the result will be, not merely a
+lesser good, but one fearfully mixed with evil--Christian religion
+profaned by anti-christian fables, Christian holiness marred by
+superstition and uncharitableness; Christian wisdom and Christian
+sincerity scoffed at, reviled, and persecuted out of sight. This is
+declared to us by the sure voice of experience; this was the fruit of
+the spirit of priestcraft, with its accompaniments of superstitious
+rites and lying traditions, in the last decline of the Jewish church;
+this was the fruit of the same spirit, with the same accompaniments, in
+the long decay of the Christian church; although, the indestructible
+virtue of Christ's gospel was manifest in the midst of the evil, and
+Christ, in every age and in every country, has been known with saving
+power by some of his people, and his church, in her worst corruptions,
+has taught many divinest truths, has inculcated many holiest virtues.
+
+When the tide is setting strongly against us, we can scarcely expect to
+make progress; it is enough if we do not drift along with it. Mr.
+Newman's system is now at the flood; it is daily making converts; it is
+daily swelled by many of those who neither love it nor understand it in
+itself, but who hope to make it serve their purposes, or who like to
+swim with the stream. A strong profession, therefore, of an opposite
+system must expect, at the present moment, to meet with little favour;
+nor, indeed, have I any hope of turning the tide, which will flow for
+its appointed season, and its ebb does not seem to be at hand. But
+whilst the hurricane rages, those exposed to it may well encourage one
+another to hold fast their own foundations against it; and many are
+exposed to it in whose welfare I naturally have the deepest interest,
+and in whom old impressions may be supposed to have still so much force
+that I may claim from them, at least, a patient hearing. I am anxious to
+show them that Mr. Newman's system is to be opposed not merely on
+negative grounds, as untrue, but as obstructing that perfect and
+positive truth, that perfection of Christ's church, which the last
+century, it may be, neglected, but which I value and desire as earnestly
+as it can be valued and desired by any man alive. My great objection to
+Mr. Newman's system is, that it destroys Christ's church, and sets up an
+evil in its stead. We do not desire merely to hinder the evil from
+occupying the ground, and to leave it empty; that has been, undoubtedly,
+the misfortune, and partly the fault of Protestantism; but we desire to
+build on the holy ground a no less holy temple, not out of our own
+devices, but according to the teaching of Christ himself, who has given
+us the outline, and told us what should be its purposes.
+
+The true church of Christ would offer to every faculty of our nature its
+proper exercise, and would entirely meet all our wants. No wise man
+doubts that the Reformation was imperfect, or that in the Romish system
+there were many good institutions, and practices, and feelings, which it
+would be most desirable to restore amongst ourselves. Daily church
+services, frequent communions, memorials of our Christian calling
+continually presented to our notice, in crosses and way-side oratories;
+commemorations of holy men, of all times and countries; the doctrine of
+the communion of saints practically taught; religious orders, especially
+of women, of different kinds, and under different rules, delivered only
+from the snare and sin of perpetual vows; all these, most of which are
+of some efficacy for good, even in a corrupt church, belong no less to
+the true church, and would there be purely beneficial. If Mr. Newman's
+system attracts good and thinking men, because it seems to promise them
+all these things, which in our actual Church are not to be found, let
+them remember, that these things belong to the perfect church no less
+than to that of the Romanists and of Mr. Newman, and would flourish in
+the perfect church far more healthily. Or, again, if any man admires Mr.
+Newman's system for its austerities, if he regards fasting as a positive
+duty, he should consider that these might be transferred also to the
+perfect church, and that they have no necessary connexion with the
+peculiar tenets of Mr. Newman. We know that the Puritans were taunted by
+their adversaries for their frequent fasts, and the severity of their
+lives; and they certainly were far enough from agreeing with Mr. Newman.
+Whatever there is of good, or self-denying, or ennobling, in his system,
+is altogether independent of his doctrine concerning the priesthood. It
+is that doctrine which is the peculiarity of his system and of Romanism;
+it is that doctrine which constitutes the evil of both, which
+over-weighs all the good accidentally united with it, and makes the
+systems, as such, false and anti-christian. Nor can any human being find
+in this doctrine anything of a beneficial tendency either to his
+intellectual, his moral, or his spiritual nature. If mere reverence be a
+virtue, without reference to its object, let us, by all means, do
+honour to the virtue of those who fell down to the stock of a tree; and
+let us lament the harsh censure which charged them with "having a lie in
+their right hand[10]."
+
+[Footnote 10: The language which Mr. Newman and his friends have allowed
+themselves to hold, in admiration of what they call reverential and
+submissive faith, might certainly be used in defence of the lowest
+idolatry; what they have dared to call rationalistic can plead such high
+and sacred authority in its favour, that if I were to quote some of the
+language of the "Tracts for the Times," and place by the side of it
+certain passages from the New Testament, Mr. Newman and his friends
+would appear to have been writing blasphemy. It seems scarcely possible
+that they could have remembered what is said in St. Matthew xv. 9-20,
+and who said it, when they have called it rationalism to deny a
+spiritual virtue in things that are applied to the body.]
+
+What does the true and perfect church want, that she should borrow from
+the broken cisterns of idolatry? Holding all those truths in which the
+clear voice of God's word is joined by the accordant confession of God's
+people in all ages; holding all the means of grace of which she was
+designed to be the steward--her common prayers, her pure preaching, her
+uncorrupted sacraments, her free and living society, her wise and
+searching discipline, her commemorations and memorials of God's mercy
+and grace, whether shown in her Lord himself, or in his and her
+members;--looking lovingly upon her elder sisters, the ancient churches,
+and delighting to be in communion with them, as she hopes that her
+younger sisters, the churches of later days, will delight to be in
+communion with her;--what has she not, that Christ's bride should have?
+what has she not, that Mr. Newman's system can give her? But because she
+loves her Lord, and stands fast in his faith, and has been enlightened
+by his truth, she will endure no other mediator than Christ, she will
+repose her trust only on his word, she will worship in the light, and
+will abhor the words, no less than the works, of darkness. Her sisters,
+the elder churches, she loves and respects as she would be herself loved
+and respected; but she will not, and may not, worship them, nor even,
+for their sakes, believe error to be truth, or foolishness to be wisdom.
+She dare not hope that she can be in all things a perfect guide and
+example to the churches that shall come after her; as neither have the
+churches before her been in all things a perfect guide and example to
+herself. She would not impose her yoke upon future generations, nor will
+she submit her own neck to the yoke of antiquity. She honours all men,
+but makes none her idol; and she would have her own individual members
+regard her with honour, but neither would she be an idol to them. She
+dreads especially that sin of which her Lord has so emphatically warned
+her--the sin against the Holy Ghost. She will neither lie against him by
+declaring that he is where his fruits are not manifested; nor blaspheme
+him, by saying that he is not where his fruits are. Rites and ordinances
+may be vain, prophets may be false, miracles may be miracles of Satan;
+but the signs of the Holy Spirit, truth and holiness, can never be
+ineffectual, can never deceive, can never be evil; where they are, and
+only where they are, there is God.
+
+There are states of falsehood and wickedness so monstrous, that, to use
+the language of Eastern mythology, the Destroyer God is greater than the
+Creator or the Preserver, and no good can be conceived so great as the
+destruction of the existing evil. But ordinarily in human affairs
+destruction and creation should go hand in hand; as the evergreen shrubs
+of our gardens do not cast their old leaves till the young ones are
+ready to supply their place. Great as is the falsehood of Mr. Newman's
+system, it would be but an unsatisfactory work to clear it away, if we
+had no positive truth to offer in its room. But the thousands of good
+men whom it has beguiled, because it professed to meet the earnest
+craving of their minds for a restoration of Christ's church with power,
+need not fear to open their eyes to its hollowness; like the false
+miracles of fraud or sorcery, it is but the counterfeit of a real truth.
+The restoration of the church, is, indeed, the best consummation of all
+our prayers, and all our labours; it is not a dream, not a prospect to
+be seen only in the remotest distance; it is possible, it lies very near
+us; with God's blessing it is in the power of this very generation to
+begin and make some progress in the work. If the many good, and wise,
+and influential laymen of our Church would but awake to their true
+position and duties, and would labour heartily to procure for the church
+a living organization and an effective government, in both, of which the
+laity should be essential members, then, indeed, the church would become
+a reality[11]. This is not Erastianism, or rather, it is not what is
+commonly cried down under that name; it is not the subjection of the
+church to the state, which, indeed, would be a most miserable and most
+unchristian condition; but it would be the deliverance of the church,
+and its exaltation to its own proper sovereignty. The members of one
+particular profession are most fit to administer a system in part, most
+unfit to legislate for it or to govern it: we could ill spare the
+ability and learning of our lawyers, but we surely should not wish to
+have none but lawyers concerned even, in the administration of justice,
+much less to have none but lawyers in the government or in parliament.
+What is true of lawyers with regard to the state, is no less true of the
+clergy with regard to the church; indispensable as ministers and
+advisers, they cannot, without great mischief, act as sole judges, sole
+legislators, sole governors. And this is a truth so palpable, that the
+clergy, by pressing such a claim, merely deprive the church of its
+judicial, legislative, and executive functions; whilst the common sense
+of the church will not allow them to exercise these powers, and, whilst
+they assert that no one else may exercise them, the result is, that they
+are not exercised at all, and the essence of the church is destroyed.
+
+[Footnote 11: The famous saying, "extra ecclesiam nulla salus," is, in
+its idea, a most divine truth; historically and in fact it may be, and
+often has been, a practical falsehood. If the truths of Christ's
+religion were necessarily accessible only to the members of some visible
+church, then it would be true always, inasmuch as to be out of the
+church would then be the same thing as to be without Christ; and, as a
+society, the church ought so to attract to itself all goodness, and by
+its internal organization, so to encourage all goodness, that nothing
+would be without its pale but extreme wickedness, or extreme ignorance;
+and he who were voluntarily to forfeit its spiritual advantages, would
+be guilty of moral suicide; so St. Paul calls the church the pillar and
+ground of truth; that is, it was so in its purpose and idea; and he
+therefore conjures Timothy to walk warily in it, and to take heed that
+what ought to be the pillar and ground of truth should not be profaned
+by fables, and so be changed into a pillar of falsehood. But to say
+universally, as an historical fact, that "extra ecclesiam nulla salus,"
+may be often to utter one of the worst of falsehoods. A ferry is set up
+to transport men over an unfordable river, and it might be truly said
+that "extra navem nulla salus;" there is no other safe way, speaking
+generally, of getting over; but the ferryman has got the plague, and if
+you go in the boat with him, you will catch it and die. In despair, a
+man plunges into the water, and swims across; would not the ferryman be
+guilty of a double falsehood who should call out to this man, "extra
+navem nulla salus," insisting that he had not swum over, when he had,
+and saying that his boat would have carried him safely, whereas it would
+have killed him?]
+
+The first step towards the restoration of the church seems to be the
+revival of the order of deacons; which might be effected without any
+other change in our present system than a repeal of all laws, canons, or
+customs which prohibit a deacon from following a secular calling, which
+confer on him any civil exemptions, or subject him to any civil
+disqualifications. The Ordination Service, with the subscription to the
+Articles, would remain perfectly unaltered; and as no deacon can hold
+any benefice, it is manifest that the proposed measure would in no way
+interfere with the rights or duties of the order of presbyters, or
+priests, which would remain precisely what they are at present. But the
+benefit in large towns would be enormous, if, instead of the present
+system of district visiting by private individuals, excellent as that is
+where there is nothing better, we could have a large body of deacons,
+the ordained ministers of the church, visiting the sick, managing
+charitable subscriptions, and sharing with their presbyter in those
+strictly clerical duties, which now, in many cases, are too much for the
+health and powers of the strongest. Yet a still greater advantage would
+be found in the link thus formed between the clergy and laity by the
+revival of an order appertaining in a manner to both. Nor would it be a
+little thing that many who now become teachers in some dissenting
+congregation, not because they differ from our Articles, or dislike our
+Liturgy, but because they cannot afford to go to the universities, and
+have no prospect of being maintained by the church, if they were to give
+up their secular callings, would, in all human probability, be glad to
+join the church, as deacons, and would thus be subject to her
+authorities, and would be engaged in her service, instead of being
+aliens to her, if not enemies.
+
+When we look at the condition of our country: at the poverty and
+wretchedness of so large a portion of the working classes; at the
+intellectual and moral evils which certainly exist among the poor, but
+by no means amongst the poor only; and when we witness the many partial
+attempts to remedy these evils--attempts benevolent indeed and wise, so
+far as they go, but utterly unable to strike to the heart of the
+mischief; can any Christian doubt that here is the work for the church
+of Christ to do; that none else can do it; and that with the blessing of
+her Almighty Head she can? Looking upon the chaos around us, one power
+alone can reduce it into order, and fill it with light and life. And
+does he really apprehend the perfections and high calling of Christ's
+church; does he indeed fathom the depths of man's wants, or has he
+learnt to rise to the fulness of the stature of their divine remedy, who
+comes forward to preach to us the necessity of apostolical succession?
+Grant even that it was of divine appointment, still as it is
+demonstrably and palpably unconnected with holiness, as it would be a
+mere positive and ceremonial ordinance, it cannot be the point of most
+importance to insist on; even if it be a sin to neglect this, there are
+so many far weightier matters equally neglected, that it would be
+assuredly no Christian prophesying which were to strive to direct our
+chief attention to this. But the wholly unmoral character of this
+doctrine, which if it were indeed of God, would make it a single
+mysterious exception to all the other doctrines of the Gospel, is, God
+be thanked, not more certain than its total want of external evidence;
+the Scripture disclaims it, Christ himself condemns it.
+
+I have written at considerable length: yet so vast is the subject, that
+I may seem to some to have written superficially, and to have left my
+statements without adequate support. I can only say that no one
+paragraph has been written hastily, nor in fact is there one the
+substance of which has not been for several years in my mind; indeed, in
+many instances, not only the substance, but the proofs in detail have
+been actually written: but to have inserted them here would have been
+impracticable, as they would have been in themselves a volume. Neither
+have I knowingly remained in ignorance of any argument which may have
+been used in defence of Mr. Newman's system; I have always desired to
+know what he and his friends say, and on what grounds they say it;
+although, as I have not read the Tracts for the Times regularly, I may
+have omitted something which it would have been important to notice.
+Finally, in naming Mr. Newman as the chief author of the system which I
+have been considering, I have in no degree wished to make the question
+personal; but Mr. Percival's letter authorizes us to consider him as one
+of the authors of it; and as I have never had any personal acquaintance
+with him, I could mention his name with no shock to any private feelings
+either in him or in myself. But I have spoken of him simply as the
+maintainer of certain doctrines, not as maintaining them in any
+particular manner, far less as actuated by any particular motives. I
+believe him to be in most serious error; I believe his system to be so
+destructive of Christ's church, that I earnestly pray, and would labour
+to the utmost of my endeavours for its utter overthrow: but on the other
+hand, I will not be tempted to confound the authors of the system with
+the system itself; for I know that the most mischievous errors have been
+promulgated by men who yet have been neither foolish nor wicked; and I
+nothing doubt that there are many points in Mr. Newman, in which I might
+learn truth from his teaching, and should be glad if I could come near
+him in his practice.
+
+
+
+NOTE.
+
+In order to prevent the possibility of misunderstanding, it is proper to
+repeat what has been often said by others, that the English word
+"priest" has two significations,--the one according to its etymology,
+through the French _prêtre_, or _prestre_, and the Latin _presbyterus_,
+from the Greek [Greek: presbuteros]; in which sense it is used in our
+Liturgy and Rubrics, and signifies merely "one belonging to the order of
+Presbyters," as distinguished from the other two orders of bishops and
+deacons. But the other signification of the word "priest," and which we
+use, as I think, more commonly, is the same with the meaning of the
+Latin word _sacerdos_, and the Greek word [Greek: iepeus], and means,
+"one who stands as a mediator between God and the people, and brings
+them to God by the virtue of certain ceremonial acts which he performs
+for them, and which they could not perform for themselves without
+profanation, because they are at a distance from God, and cannot, in
+their own persons, venture to approach towards him." In this sense of
+the word "priest," the term is not applied to the ministers of the
+Christian church, either by the Scripture, or by the authorized
+formularies of the Church of England; although, in the other sense, as
+synonymous with Presbyters, it is used in our Prayer Book repeatedly. Of
+course, not one word of what I have written is meant to deny the
+lawfulness and importance of the order of Presbyters in the church; I
+have only spoken against a priesthood, in the other sense of the word,
+in which a "priest" means "a mediator between God and man;" in that
+sense, in short, in which the word is not a translation of [Greek:
+presbuteros], but [iereus].
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE I.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+GENESIS iii. 22.
+
+_And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know
+good and evil_.
+
+
+This is declared to be man's condition after the Fall. I will not
+attempt to penetrate into that which is not to be entered into, nor to
+pretend to discover all that may be concealed beneath the outward, and
+in many points clearly parabolical, form of the account of man's
+temptation and sin. But that condition to which his sin brought him is
+our condition; with that, undoubtedly, we are concerned; that must be
+the foundation of all sound views of human nature; the double fact
+employed in the word fall is of the last importance; the fact on the one
+hand of our present nature being evil, the fact on the other hand that
+this present nature is not our proper nature; that the whole business of
+our lives is to cast it off, and to return to that better and holy
+nature, which, in truth, although not in fact, is the proper nature
+of man.
+
+All individual experience, then, and all history begins in something
+which is evil; all our course, whether as individuals or as nations, is
+a progress, an advance, a leaving behind us something bad, and a going
+forwards towards something that is good. But individual experience, and
+history apart from Christianity, would make us regard this progress as
+fearfully uncertain. Clear it is that we are in an evil case; we have
+lost our way; we are like men who are bewildered in those endless
+forests of reeds which line some of the great American rivers; if we
+stay where we are, the venomous snakes may destroy us; or the deadly
+marsh air when night comes on will be surely fatal; it is death to
+remain, but yet if we move, we know not what way will lead us out, and
+it may be that, while seeming to advance, we shall but be going round
+and round, and shall at last find ourselves hard by the place from which
+we set out in the beginning. Nay, we may even feel a doubt,--a doubt, I
+say, though not a reasonable belief,--but a doubt which at times would
+press us sorely, whether the tangled thicket in which we are placed has
+any end at all; whether our fond notions of a clear and open space, a
+pure air, and a fruitful and habitable country, are not altogether
+merely imaginary; whether the whole world be not such a region of death
+as the spot in which we are actually prisoned; whether there remains any
+thing for us, but to curse our fate, and lie down and die. Under such
+circumstances, although we should admire the spirit which hoped against
+hope; which would make an effort for deliverance; which would, at any
+rate, flee from the actual evil, although, other evil might receive him
+after all his struggles; yet we could forgive those who yielded at once
+to their fate, and who sat down quietly to wait for their death, without
+the unavailing labour of a struggle to avoid it.
+
+But when the declaration has been made to us by God himself, that this
+dismal swamp in which we are prisoners is but an infinitely small
+portion of his universe, that there do exist all those goodly forms
+which we fancied; and more, when God declares too that we were in the
+first instance designed to enjoy them; that our error brought us into
+the thicket, having been once out of it; that we may escape from it
+again; nay, much more still, when He shows us the true path to escape,
+and tells us, that the obstacles in our way have been cleared, and that
+he will give us strength to accomplish, the task of escaping, and will
+guide us that we do not miss the track; then what shall we say to those
+who insist upon, remaining where they are, but that they are either
+infatuated, or indolent and cowardly even to insanity; that they are
+refusing certain salvation, and are, by their own act, giving themselves
+over to inevitable death.
+
+This, then, is the truth taught us by the doctrine of the Fall; not so
+much that it is our certain destruction to remain where we are, for that
+our own sense and reason declare to us, if we will but listen to them;
+but that our present position is not that for which God designed us, and
+that to rest satisfied with it is not a yielding to an unavoidable
+necessity, but the indolently or madly shrinking from the effort which
+would give us certain deliverance.
+
+Now it is a part of our present evil condition from which we must
+escape, that we know good and evil. We are in the world where evil
+exists within us, and about us; we cannot but know it. True it is, that
+it was our misfortune to become acquainted with it; this noisome
+wilderness of reeds, this reeking swamp; it would have been far happier
+for us, no doubt, had we never become aware of their existence. But that
+wish is now too late. We are in the midst of this dismal place, and the
+question now is, how to escape from it. We may shut our eyes, and say we
+will not see objects so unsightly; but what avails it, if the marsh
+poison finds its way by other senses, if we cannot but draw it in with
+our breath, and so we must die? And such is the case of those who now
+in this present world confound ignorance with innocence. This is a fatal
+mistaking of our present condition for our past; there was a time when
+to the human race ignorance was innocence; but now it is only folly and
+sin. For as I supposed that a man lost in one of those noxious swamps
+might shut his eyes, and so keep himself in some measure in ignorance,
+yet the poison would be taken in with his breath, and so he would die:
+even thus, whilst we would fain shut the eyes of our understanding, and
+would so hope to be in safety, our passions are all the time alive and
+active, and they catch the poison of the atmosphere around us, and we
+are not innocent, but foolishly wicked.
+
+We must needs consider this carefully; for, to say nothing of wider
+questions of national importance, who that sees before him, as we must
+see it, the gradual change from childhood to boyhood, who that sees
+added knowledge often accompanied with added sin, can help wishing that
+the earlier ignorance of evil might still be continued; and fancying
+that knowledge is at best but a doubtful blessing?
+
+But our path is not backwards, but onwards. Israel in the desert was
+hungry and thirsty, while in Egypt he had eaten bread to the full;
+Israel in the desert saw a wide waste of sand, or sandy rock, around
+him, while in Egypt he had dwelt in those green pastures and watered
+gardens to which the Nile had given freshness and life. But that
+wilderness is his appointed way to Canaan; its dreariness must be
+exchanged for the hills and valleys of Canaan, and must not drive him
+back again to the low plain of Egypt. There is a moral wilderness which
+lies in the early part of our Christian course; but we must not hope to
+escape from it but by penetrating through it to its furthest side.
+
+Undoubtedly this place, and other similar places, which receive us when
+we have quitted the state of childhood, and before our characters are
+formed in manhood, do partake somewhat of the character of the
+wilderness; and it is not unnatural that many should shrink back from
+them in fear. We see but too often the early beauty of the character
+sadly marred, its simplicity gone, its confidence chilled, its
+tenderness hardened; where there was gentleness, we see roughness and
+coarseness; where there was obedience, we find murmuring, and self-will,
+and pride; where there was a true and blameless conversation, we find
+now something of falsehood, something of profaneness, something of
+impurity. I can well conceive what it must be to a parent to see his
+child return from school, for the first time, with the marks of this
+grievous change upon him: I can well conceive how bitterly he must
+regret having ever sent him to a place of so much, danger; how fondly he
+must look back to the days of his early innocence. And if a parent feels
+thus, what must be our feelings, seeing that this evil has been wrought
+here? Are we not as those who, when pretending to give a wholesome
+draught, have mixed the cup with poison? How can we go on upholding a
+system, the effects of which appear to be so merely mischievous?
+
+Believe me, that such questions must and ought to present themselves to
+the mind of every thinking man who is concerned in the management of a
+school: and I do think that we could not answer them satisfactorily,
+that our work would absolutely be unendurable, if we did not bear in
+mind that our eyes should look forward, and not backward; if we did not
+remember that the victory of fallen man is to be sought for, not in
+innocence, but in tried virtue. Comparing only the state of a boy after
+his first half-year, or year, at school, with his earlier state as a
+child, and our reflections on the evil of our system would be bitter
+indeed; but when we compare a boy's state after his first half-year, or
+year, at school, with what it is afterwards; when we see the clouds
+again clearing off; when we find coarseness succeeded again by delicacy;
+hardness and selfishness again broken up, and giving place to affection
+and benevolence; murmuring and self-will exchanged for humility and
+self-denial; and the profane, or impure, or false tongue, uttering again
+only the words of truth and purity; and when we see that all these good
+things are now, by God's grace, rooted in the character; that they have
+been tried, and grown up amidst the trial; that the knowledge of evil
+has made them hate it the more, and be the more aware of it; then we can
+look upon our calling with patience, and even with thankfulness; we see
+that the wilderness has been gone through triumphantly, and that its
+dangers have hardened and strengthened the traveller for all his
+remaining pilgrimage.
+
+For the truth is, that to the knowledge of good and evil we are born;
+and it must come upon us sooner or later. In the common course of
+things, it comes about that age with which we are here most concerned. I
+do not mean that there are not faults in early childhood--we know that
+there are;--but we know also that with the strength and rapid growth of
+boyhood there is a far greater development of these faults, and
+particularly far less of that submissiveness which belonged naturally to
+the helplessness of mere childhood. I suppose that, by an extreme care,
+the period of childhood might be prolonged considerably; but still it
+must end; and the knowledge of good and evil, in its full force, must
+come. I believe that this must be; I believe that no care can prevent
+it, and that an extreme attempt at carefulness, whilst it could not
+keep off the disorder, would weaken the strength, of the constitution to
+bear it. But yet you should never forget, and I should never forget,
+that although the evils of schools in some respects must be, yet, in
+proportion as they exceed what must be, they do become at once
+mischievous and guilty. And such, or even worse, is the mischief when,
+with the evil which must be, there is not the good which ought to be;
+for, remember, our condition is to know good and evil. If we know only
+evil, it is the condition of hell; and therefore, if schools present an
+unmixed experience, if there is temptation in abundance, but no support
+against temptation, and no examples of overcoming it; if some are losing
+their child's innocence, but none, or very few, are gaining a man's
+virtue; are we in a wholesome state then? or can we shelter ourselves
+under the excuse that our evil is unavoidable, that we do but afford, in
+a mild form, the experience which must be learned sooner or later? It is
+here that we must be acquitted or condemned. I can bear to see the
+overclouding of childish simplicity, if there is a reasonable hope that
+the character so clouded for a time will brighten again into Christian
+holiness. But if we do not see this, if innocence is exchanged only for
+vice, then we have not done our part, then the evil is not unavoidable,
+but our sin: and we may be assured, that for the souls so lost, there
+will be an account demanded hereafter both of us and you.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE II.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+1 CORINTHIANS xiii. 11.
+
+_When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I
+thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away
+childish things_.
+
+
+Taking the Apostle's words literally, it might appear that no words in
+the whole range of Scripture were less applicable to the circumstances
+of this particular congregation: for they speak of childhood and of
+manhood; and as all of us have passed the one, so a very large
+proportion of us have not yet arrived at the other. But when we consider
+the passage a little more carefully, we shall see that this would be a
+very narrow and absurd objection. Neither the Apostle, nor any one else,
+has ever stepped directly from childhood into manhood; it was his
+purpose here only to notice the two extreme points of the change which
+had taken place in him, passing over its intermediate stages; but he,
+like all other men, must have gone through those stages. There must have
+been a time in his life, as in all ours, when his words, his thoughts,
+and his understanding were neither all childish, nor all manly: there
+must have been a period, extending over some years, in which they were
+gradually becoming the one less and less, and the other more and more.
+And as it suited the purposes of his comparison to look at the change in
+himself only when it was completed, so it will suit our object here to
+regard it while in progress, to consider what it is, to ask the two
+great questions, how far it can be hastened, and how far it ought to
+be hastened.
+
+"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I
+thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish
+things." It will be seen at once, that when the Apostle speaks of
+thought and understanding, ([Greek: erronoun elogizomeaen],) he does not
+mean the mere intellect but all the notions, feelings, and desires of
+our minds, which partake of an intellectual and of a moral character
+together. He is comparing what we should call the whole nature and
+character of childhood with those of manhood. Let us see, for a moment,
+in what they most strikingly differ.
+
+Our Lord's well-known words suggest a difference in the first place,
+which is in favour of childhood. When he says, "Except ye be converted,
+and become as little children, ye can in no case enter into the kingdom
+of heaven," he must certainly ascribe some one quality to childhood, in
+which manhood is generally deficient. And the quality which he means is
+clearly humility; or to speak perhaps more correctly, teachableness. It
+is impossible that a child can have that confidence in himself, which
+disposes him to be his own guide. He must of necessity lean on others,
+he must follow others, and therefore he must believe others. There is in
+his mind, properly speaking, nothing which can be called prejudice; he
+will not as yet refuse to listen, as thinking that he knows better than
+his adviser. One feeling, therefore, essential to the perfection of
+every created and reasonable being, childhood has by the very law of its
+nature; a child cannot help believing that there are some who are
+greater, wiser, better than himself, and he is disposed to follow
+their guidance.
+
+This sense of comparative weakness is founded upon truth, for a child
+is of course unfit to guide himself. Without noticing mere bodily
+helplessness, a child knows scarcely what is good and what is evil; his
+desires for the highest good are not yet in existence; his moral sense
+altogether is exceedingly weak, and would yield readily to the first
+temptation. And, because those higher feelings, which are the great
+check to selfishness, have not yet arisen within him, the selfish
+instinct, connected apparently with all animal life, is exceedingly
+predominant in him. If a child then on the one hand be teachable, yet he
+is at the same time morally weak and ignorant, and therefore
+extremely selfish.
+
+It is also a part of the nature of childhood to be the slave of present
+impulses. A child is not apt to look backwards or forwards, to reflect
+or to calculate. In this also he differs entirely from the great quality
+which befits man as an eternal being, the being able to look before
+and after.
+
+Not to embarrass ourselves with too many points, we may be content with
+these four characteristics of childhood, teachableness, ignorance,
+selfishness, and living only for the present. In the last three of
+these, the perfect man should put away childish things; in the first
+point, or teachableness, while he retained it in principle, he should
+modify it in its application. For while modesty, humility, and a
+readiness to learn, are becoming to men no less than to children; yet it
+should be not a simple readiness to follow others, but only to follow
+the wise and good; not a sense of utter helplessness which catches at
+the first stay, whether sound or brittle; but such a consciousness of
+weakness and imperfection, as makes us long to be strengthened by Him
+who is almighty, to be purified by Him who is all pure.
+
+I said, and it is an obvious truth, that the change from childhood to
+manhood is gradual; there is a period in our lives, of several years,
+in which we are, or should be, slowly exchanging the qualities of one
+state for those of the other. During this intermediate state, then, we
+should expect to find persons become less teachable, less ignorant, less
+selfish, less thoughtless. "Less teachable," I would wish to mean, in
+the sense of being "less indiscriminately teachable;" but as the evil
+and the good are, in human things, ever mixed up together, we may be
+obliged to mean "less teachable" simply. And, to say the very truth, if
+I saw in a young man the changes from childhood in the three other
+points, if I found him becoming wiser, and less selfish, and more
+thoughtful, I should not be very much disturbed if I found him for a
+time less teachable also. For whilst he was really becoming wiser and
+better, I should not much wonder if the sense of improvement rather than
+of imperfection possessed him too strongly; if his confidence in himself
+was a little too over-weening. Let him go on a little farther in life,
+and if he really does go on improving in wisdom and goodness, this
+over-confidence will find its proper level. He will perceive not only
+how much he is doing, or can do, but how much there is which he does not
+do, and cannot. To a thoughtful mind added years can scarcely fail to
+teach, humility. And in this the highest wisdom of manhood may be
+resembling more and more the state of what would be perfect childhood,
+that is, not simply teachableness, but tractableness with respect to
+what was good and true, and to that only.
+
+But the danger of the intermediate state between childhood and manhood
+is too often this, that whilst in the one point of teachableness, the
+change runs on too fast, in the other three, of wisdom, of
+unselfishness, and of thoughtfulness, it proceeds much too slowly: that
+the faults of childhood thus remain in the character, whilst
+that quality by means of which these faults are meant to be
+corrected,--namely, teachableness,--is at the same time diminishing.
+Now, teachableness as an instinct, if I may call it so, diminishes
+naturally with the consciousness of growing strength. By strength, I
+mean strength of body, no less than strength of mind, so closely are our
+body and mind connected with, each other. The helplessness of childhood,
+which presses upon it every moment, the sense of inability to avoid or
+resist danger, which makes the child run continually to his nurse or to
+his mother for protection, cannot but diminish, by the mere growth of
+the bodily powers. The boy feels himself to be less helpless than the
+child, and in that very proportion he is apt to become less teachable.
+As this feeling of decreased helplessness changes into a sense of
+positive vigour and power, and as this vigour and power confer an
+importance on their possessor, which is the case especially at schools,
+so self-confidence must in one point at least, arise in the place of
+conscious weakness; and as this point is felt to be more important, so
+will the self-confidence be likely to extend itself more and more over
+the whole character.
+
+And yet, I am bound to say, that, in general, the teachableness of youth
+is, after all, much greater than we might at first sight fancy. Along
+with much self-confidence in many things, it is rare, I think, to find
+in a young man a deliberate pride that rejects advice and instruction,
+on the strength of having no need for them. And therefore, the faults of
+boyhood and youth are more owing, to my mind, to the want of change in
+the other points of the childish character, than to the too great change
+in this. The besetting faults of youth appear to me to arise mainly from
+its retaining too often the ignorance, selfishness, and thoughtlessness
+of a child, and having arrived at the same time at a degree of bodily
+vigour and power, equal, or only a very little inferior, to those
+of manhood.
+
+And in this state of things, the questions become of exceeding interest,
+whether the change from childhood to manhood can be hastened. That it
+ought to be hastened, appears to me to be clear; hastened, I mean, from
+what it is actually, because in this respect, we do not grow in general
+fast enough; and the danger of over-growth is, therefore, small.
+Besides, where change of one sort is going on very rapidly; where the
+limbs are growing and the bones knitting more firmly, where the strength
+of bodily endurance, as well as of bodily activity, is daily becoming
+greater; it is self-evident that, if the inward changes which ought to
+accompany these outward ones are making no progress, there cannot but be
+derangement and deformity in the system. And, therefore, when I look
+around, I cannot but wish generally that the change from childhood to
+manhood in the three great points of wisdom, of unselfishness, and of
+thoughtfulness, might be hastened from its actual rate of progress in
+most instances.
+
+But then comes the other great question, "Can it be hastened, and if it
+can, how is it to be done?" "Can it be hastened" means, of course, can
+it be hastened healthfully and beneficially, consistently with the due
+development of our nature in its after stages, from life temporal to
+life eternal? For as the child should grow up into the man, so also
+there is a term of years given in which, according to God's will, the
+natural man should grow up into the spiritual man; and we must not so
+press the first change as to make it interfere with the wholesome
+working of the second. The question then is, really, can the change
+from childhood to manhood be hastened in the case of boys and young men
+in general from its actual rate of progress in ordinary cases, without
+injury to the future excellence and full development of the man? that
+is, without exhausting prematurely the faculties either of body or mind.
+
+And this is a very grave question, one of the deepest interest for us
+and for you. For us, as, according to the answer to be given to it,
+should depend our whole conduct and feelings towards you in the matter
+of your education; for you, inasmuch as it is quite clear, that if the
+change from childhood to manhood can be hastened safely, it ought to be
+hastened; and that it is a sin in every one not to try to hasten it:
+because, to retain the imperfections of childhood when you can get rid
+of them, is in itself to forfeit the innocence of childhood; to exchange
+the condition of the innocent infant whom Christ blessed, for that of
+the unprofitable servant whom Christ condemned. For with the growth of
+our bodies evil will grow in us unavoidably; and then, if we are not
+positively good, we are, of necessity, positively sinners.
+
+We will consider, then, what can be done to hasten this change in us
+healthfully; whether we can grow in wisdom, in love, and in
+thoughtfulness, faster in youth, than we now commonly do grow: and
+whether any possible danger can be connected with such increased
+exertion. This shall be our subject for consideration next Sunday.
+Meantime, let it be understood, that however extravagant it might be to
+hope for any general change in any moral point, as the direct result of
+setting truth before the mind; yet, that it never can be extravagant to
+hope for a practical result in some one or two particular cases; and
+that, if one or two even be impressed practically with what they hear,
+the good achieved, or, rather, the good granted us by God, is really
+beyond our calculation. It is so strictly; for who can worthily
+calculate the value of a single human soul? but it is so in this sense
+also, that the amount of general good which may be done in the end by
+doing good first in particular cases is really more than we can
+estimate. It was thus that Christ's original eleven apostles became, in
+the end, the instruments of the salvation of millions: and it is on this
+consideration that we never need despair of the most extensive
+improvements in society, if we are content to wait God's appointed time
+and order, and look for the salvation of the many as the gradual fruit
+of the salvation of a few.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE III.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+1 CORINTHIANS xiii. 11.
+
+_When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I
+thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away
+childish things_.
+
+
+After having noticed last Sunday what were those particular points in
+childhood, which in manhood should be put away, and having observed that
+this change cannot take place all at once, but gradually, during a
+period of several years, I proposed to consider, as on this day, whether
+it were possible to hasten this change, that is, whether it could be
+hastened without injury to the future development of the character; for
+undoubtedly, there is such, a thing in minds, as well as in bodies, as
+precocious growth; and although it is not so frequent as precocious
+growth in the body, nor by any means so generally regarded as an evil,
+yet it is really a thing to be deprecated; and we ought not to adopt
+such measures as might be likely to occasion it.
+
+Now I believe the only reason which could make it supposed to be
+possible that there could be danger in hastening this change, is drawn
+from the observation of what takes place sometimes with regard to
+intellectual advancement. It is seen that some young men of great
+ambition, or remarkable love of knowledge, do really injure their
+health, and exhaust their minds, by an excess of early study. I always
+grieve over such cases exceedingly; not only for the individual's sake
+who is the sufferer, but also for the mischievous effect of his example.
+It affords a pretence to others to justify their own want of exertion;
+and those to whom it is in reality the least dangerous, are always the
+very persons who seem to dread it the most. But we should clearly
+understand, that this excess of intellectual exertion at an early age,
+is by no means the same thing with hastening the change from
+childishness to manliness. We are all enough aware, in common life, that
+a very clever and forward boy may be, in his conduct, exceeding
+childish; that those whose talents and book-knowledge are by no means
+remarkable, may be, in their conduct, exceedingly manly. Examples of
+both these truths instantly present themselves to my memory, and perhaps
+may do so to some of yours. I may say farther, that some whose change
+from childhood to manhood had been, in St. Paul's sense of the terms,
+the most remarkably advanced, were so far from being distinguished for
+their cleverness or proficiency in their school-work, that it would
+almost seem as if their only remaining childishness had been displayed
+there. What I mean, therefore, by the change from childhood to manhood,
+is altogether distinct from a premature advance in book-knowledge, and
+involves in it nothing of that over-study which is dreaded as so
+injurious.
+
+Yet it is true that I described the change from childhood to manhood, as
+a change from ignorance to wisdom. I did so, certainly; but yet, rare as
+knowledge is, wisdom is rarer; and knowledge, unhappily, can exist
+without wisdom, as wisdom can exist with a very inferior degree of
+knowledge. We shall see this, if we consider what we mean by knowledge;
+and, without going into a more general definition of it, let us see what
+we mean by it here. We mean by it, either a knowledge of points of
+scholarship, of grammar, and matters connected with grammar; or a
+knowledge of history and geography; or a knowledge of mathematics: or,
+it may be, of natural history; or, if we use the term, "knowledge of the
+world," then we mean, I think, a knowledge of points of manner and
+fashion; such a knowledge as may save us from exposing ourselves in
+trifling things, by awkwardness or inexperience. Now the knowledge of
+none of these things brings us of necessity any nearer to real
+thoughtfulness, such as alone gives wisdom, than the knowledge of a
+well-contrived game. Some of you, probably, well know that there are
+games from which chance is wholly excluded, and skill in which is only
+the result of much thought and calculation. There is no doubt that the
+game of chess may properly be called an intellectual study; but why does
+it not, and cannot, make any man wise? Because, in the first place, the
+calculations do but respect the movements of little pieces of wood or
+ivory, and not those of our own minds and hearts; and, again, they are
+calculations which have nothing to do whatever with our being better
+men, or worse, with our pleasing God or displeasing him. And what is
+true of this game, is true no less of the highest calculations of
+Astronomy, of the profoundest researches into language; nay, what may
+seem stranger still, it is often true no less of the deepest study even
+of the actions and principles of man's nature; and, strangest of all, it
+may be, and is often true, also, of the study of the very Scripture
+itself; and that, not only of the incidental points of Scripture, its
+antiquities, chronology, and history, but of its very most divine
+truths, of man's justification and of God's nature. Here, indeed, we are
+considering about things where wisdom, so to speak, sits enshrined. We
+are very near her, we see the place where she abides; but her very self
+we obtain not. And why?--but because, in the most solemn study, no less
+than in the lightest, our own moral state may be set apart from our
+consideration; we may be unconscious all the while of our great want;
+and forgetting our great business, to be reconciled to God, and to do
+his will: for wisdom, to speak properly, is to us nothing else than the
+true answer to the Philippian jailor's question, "What must I do to
+be saved?"
+
+Now then, as knowledge of all kinds may be gained without being
+received, or meant at all to be applied, as the answer to this question,
+so it may be quite distinct from wisdom. And when I use the term
+thoughtfulness, as opposed to a child's carelessness, I mean it to
+express an anxiety for the obtaining of this wisdom. And farther, I do
+not see how this wisdom, or this thoughtfulness, can be premature in any
+one; or how it can exhaust before their time any faculties, whether of
+body or mind. This requires no sitting up late at night, no giving up of
+healthful exercise; it brings no headaches, no feverishness, no strong
+excitement at first, to be followed by exhaustion afterwards. Hear how
+it is described by one who spoke of it from experience. "The wisdom that
+is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy to be
+entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without
+hypocrisy." There is surely nothing of premature exhaustion
+connected-with any one of these things.
+
+Or, if we turn to the third point of change from childhood to a
+Christian manhood, the change from selfishness to unselfishness, neither
+can we find any possible danger in hastening this. This cannot hurt our
+health or strain our faculties; it can but make life at every age more
+peaceful and more happy. Nor indeed do I suppose that any one could
+fancy that such a change was otherwise than wholesome at the earliest
+possible period.
+
+There may remain, however, a vague notion, that generally, if what we
+mean by an early change from childishness to manliness be that we should
+become religious, then, although it may not exhaust the powers, or
+injure the health, yet it would destroy the natural liveliness and
+gaiety of youth, and by bringing on a premature seriousness of manner
+and language, would be unbecoming and ridiculous. Now, in the first
+place, there is a great deal of confusion and a great deal of folly in
+the common notions of the gaiety of youth. If gaiety mean real happiness
+of mind, I do not believe that there is more of it in youth than in
+manhood; if for this reason only, that the temper in youth being
+commonly not yet brought into good order, irritation and passion are
+felt, probably, oftener than in after life, and these are sad drawbacks,
+as we all know, to a real cheerfulness of mind. And of the outward
+gaiety of youth, there is a part also which is like the gaiety of a
+drunken man; which is riotous, insolent, and annoying to others; which,
+in short, is a folly and a sin. There remains that which strictly
+belongs to youth, partly physically--the lighter step and the livelier
+movement of the growing and vigorous body; partly from circumstances,
+because a young person's parents or friends stand between him and many
+of the cares of life, and protect him from feeling them altogether;
+partly from the abundance of hope which belongs to the beginning of
+every thing, and which continually hinders the mind from dwelling on
+past pain. And I know not which of these causes of gaiety would be taken
+away or lessened by the earlier change from childhood to manhood. True
+it is, that the question, "What must I do to be saved?" is a grave one,
+and must be considered seriously; but I do not suppose that any one
+proposes that a young person should never be serious at all. True it is,
+again, that if we are living in folly and sin, this question may be a
+painful one; we might be gayer for a time without it. But, then, the
+matter is, what is to become of us if we do not think of being
+saved?--shall we be saved without thinking of it? And what is it to be
+not saved but lost? I cannot pretend to say that the thought of God
+would not very much disturb the peace and gaiety of an ungodly and
+sinful mind; that it would not interfere with the mirth of the bully, or
+the drunkard, or the reveller, or the glutton, or the idler, or the
+fool. It would, no doubt; just as the hand that was seen to write on the
+wall threw a gloom over the guests at Belshazzar's festival. I never
+meant or mean to say, that the thought of God, or that God himself, can
+be other than a plague to those who do not love Him. The thought of Him
+is their plague here; the sight of Him will be their judgment for ever.
+But I suppose the point is, whether the thought of Him would cloud the
+gaiety of those who were striving to please Him. It would cloud it as
+much, and be just as unwelcome and no more, as will be the very actual
+presence of our Lord to the righteous, when they shall see Him as He is.
+Can that which we know to be able to make old age, and sickness, and
+poverty, many times full of comfort,--can that make youth and health
+gloomy? When to natural cheerfulness and sanguineness, are added a
+consciousness of God's ever present care, and a knowledge of his rich
+promises, are we likely to be the more sad or the more unhappy?
+
+What reason, then, is there for any one's not anticipating the common
+progress of Christian manliness, and hastening; to exchange, as I said
+before, ignorance for wisdom, selfishness for unselfishness,
+carelessness for thoughtfulness? I see no reason why we should not; but
+is there no reason why we should? You are young, and for the most part
+strong and healthy; I grant that, humanly speaking, the chances of early
+death to any particular person among you are small. But still,
+considering what life is, even to the youngest and strongest, it does
+seem a fearful risk to be living unredeemed; to be living in that state,
+that if we should happen to die, (it may be very unlikely, but still it
+is clearly possible,)--that if we should happen to die, we should be
+most certainly lost for ever. Risks, however, we do not mind; the
+chances, we think, are in our favour, and we will run the hazard. It may
+be so; but he who delays to turn to God when the thought has been once
+put before him, is incurring something more than a risk. He may not die
+these fifty or sixty years; we cannot tell how that may be; but he is
+certainly at this very present time hardening his heart, and doing
+despite unto the Spirit of Grace. By the very wickedness of putting off
+turning to God till a future time, he lessens his power of turning to
+Him ever. This is certain; no one can reject God's call without becoming
+less likely to hear it when it is made to him again. And thus the
+lingering wilfully in the evil things of childhood, when we might be at
+work in putting them off, and when God calls us to do so, is an infinite
+risk, and a certain evil;--an infinite risk, for it is living in such a
+state that death at any moment would be certain condemnation;--and a
+certain evil, because, whether we live or not, we are actually raising
+up barriers between ourselves and our salvation; we not only do not draw
+nigh to God, but we are going farther from Him, and lessening our power
+of drawing nigh to Him hereafter.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE IV.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+COLOSSIANS i. 9.
+
+_We do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled
+with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual
+understanding_.
+
+
+This is the first of three verses, all of them forming a part of the
+Epistle which was read this morning, and containing St. Paul's prayer
+for the Colossians in all the several points of Christian excellence.
+And the first thing which he desires for them, as we have heard, is,
+that they should be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all
+wisdom and spiritual understanding; or, as he expresses the same thing
+to the Ephesians, that they should be not unwise, but understanding what
+the will of the Lord is. He prays for the Colossians that they should
+not be spiritually foolish, but that they should be spiritually wise.
+
+The state of spiritual folly is, I suppose, one of the most universal
+evils in the world. For the number of those who are naturally foolish is
+exceedingly great; of those, I mean, who understand no worldly thing
+well; of those who are careless about everything, carried about by every
+breath of opinion, without knowledge, and without principle. But the
+term spiritual folly includes, unhappily, a great many more than these;
+it takes in not those only who are in the common sense of the term
+foolish, but a great many who are in the common sense of the term
+clever, and many who are even in the common sense of the terms, prudent,
+sensible, thoughtful, and wise. It is but too evident that some of the
+ablest men who have ever lived upon earth, have been in no less a degree
+spiritually fools. And thus, it is not without much truth that Christian
+writers have dwelt upon the insufficiency of worldly wisdom, and have
+warned their readers to beware, lest, while professing themselves to be
+wise, they should be accounted as fools in the sight of God.
+
+But the opposite to this notion, that those who are, as it were, fools
+in worldly matters are wise before God; although this also is true in a
+certain sense, and under certain peculiar circumstances, yet taken
+generally, it is the very reverse of truth; and the careless and
+incautious language which has been often used on this subject, has been
+extremely mischievous. On the contrary, he who is foolish in worldly
+matters is likely also to be, and most commonly is, no less foolish in
+the things of God. And the opposite belief has arisen mainly from that
+strange confusion between ignorance and innocence, with which many
+ignorant persons seem to solace themselves. Whereas, if you take away a
+man's knowledge, you do not bring him to the state of an infant, but to
+that of a brute; and of one of the most mischievous and malignant of the
+brute creation. For you do not lessen or weaken the man's body by
+lowering his mind; he still retains his strength and his passions, the
+passions leading to self-indulgence, the strength which enables him to
+feed them by continued gratification. He will not think it is true to
+any good purpose; it is very possible to destroy in him the power of
+reflection, whether as exercised upon outward things, or upon himself
+and his own nature, or upon God. But you cannot destroy the power of
+adapting means to ends, nor that of concealing his purposes by fraud or
+falsehood; you take only his wisdom, and leave that cunning which marks
+so notoriously both the savage and the madman. He, then, who is a fool
+as far as regards earthly things, is much more a fool with regard to
+heavenly things; he who cannot raise himself even to the lower height,
+how is he to attain to the higher? he who is without reason and
+conscience, how shall he be endowed with the spirit of God?
+
+It is my deep conviction and long experience of this truth, which makes
+me so grieve over a want of interest in your own improvement in human
+learning, whenever I observe it, over the prevalence of a thoughtless
+and childish spirit amongst you. I grant that as to the first point
+there are sometimes exceptions to be met with; that is to say, I have
+known persons certainly whose interest in their work here was not great,
+and their proficiency consequently was small; but who, I do not doubt,
+were wise unto God. But then these persons, whilst they were indifferent
+perhaps about their common school-work, were anything but indifferent as
+to the knowledge of the Bible: there was no carelessness there; but they
+read, and read frequently, books of practical improvement, or relating
+otherwise to religious matters, such as many, I believe, would find even
+less inviting than the books of their common business. So that although
+there was a neglect undoubtedly of many parts of the school-work, yet
+there was no spirit of thoughtlessness or childishness in them, nor of
+general idleness; and therefore, although I know that their minds did
+suffer and have suffered from their unwise neglect of a part of their
+duty, yet there was so much attention bestowed on other parts, and so
+manifest and earnest a care for the things of God, that it was
+impossible not to entertain for them the greatest respect and regard.
+These, however, are such rare cases, that it cannot be necessary to do
+more than thus notice them. But the idleness and want of interest which
+I grieve for, is one which extends itself but too impartially to
+knowledge of every kind: to divine knowledge, as might be expected, even
+more than to human. Those whom we commonly find careless about their
+general lessons, are quite as ignorant and as careless about their
+Bibles; those who have no interest in general literature, in poetry, or
+in history, or in philosophy, have certainly no greater interest, I do
+not say in works of theology, but in works of practical devotion, in the
+lives of holy men, in meditations, or in prayers. Alas, the interest of
+their minds is bestowed on things far lower than the very lowest of all
+which I have named; and therefore, to see them desiring something only a
+little higher than their present pursuits, could not but be encouraging;
+it would, at least, show that the mind was rising upwards. It may,
+indeed, stop at a point short of the highest, it may learn to love
+earthly excellence, and rest there contented, and seek for nothing more
+perfect; but that, at any rate, is a future and merely contingent evil.
+It is better to love earthly excellence than earthly folly; it is far
+better in itself, and it is, by many degrees, nearer to the kingdom
+of God.
+
+There is another case, however, which I cannot but think is more
+frequent now than formerly; and if it is so, it may be worth while to
+direct our attention to it. Common idleness and absolute ignorance are
+not what I wish to speak of now, but a character advanced above these; a
+character which does not neglect its school-lessons, but really attains
+to considerable proficiency in them; a character at once regular and
+amiable, abstaining from evil, and for evil in its low and grosser
+forms, having a real abhorrence. What, then, you will say, is wanting
+here? I will tell you what seems to be wanting--a spirit of manly, and
+much more of Christian, thoughtfulness. There is quickness and
+cleverness; much pleasure, perhaps, in distinction, but little in
+improvement; there is no desire of knowledge for its own sake, whether
+human or divine. There is, therefore, but little power of combining and
+digesting what is read; and, consequently, what is read passes away, and
+takes no root in the mind. This same character shows itself in matters
+of conduct; it will adopt, without scruple, the most foolish,
+commonplace notions of boys, about what is right and wrong; it will not,
+and cannot, from the lightness of its mind, concern itself seriously
+about what is evil in the conduct of others, because it takes no regular
+care of its own, with reference to pleasing God; it will not do anything
+low or wicked, but it will sometimes laugh at those who do; and it will
+by no means take pains to encourage, nay, it will sometimes thwart and
+oppose any thing that breathes a higher spirit, and asserts a more manly
+and Christian standard of duty.
+
+I have thought that this character, with its features more or less
+strongly marked, has shown itself sometimes amongst us, marring the good
+and amiable qualities of those in whom we can least bear to see such a
+defect, because there is in them really so much to interest in their
+favour. Now the number of persons of extraordinary abilities who may be
+here at any one time can depend on no calculable causes: nor, again, can
+we give any reason more than what we call accident, if there were to be
+amongst us at any one time a number of persons whose whole tendency was
+decidedly to evil. But if, in these respects, the usual average has
+continued, if there is no lack of ability, and nothing like a prevalence
+of vice, then we begin anxiously to inquire into the causes, which,
+while other things remain the same, have led to a different result. And
+one cause I do find, which, is certainly capable of producing such a
+result: a cause undoubtedly in existence now, and as certainly not in
+existence a few years back; nor can I trace any other besides this which
+appears likely to have produced the same effect. This cause consists in
+the number and character and cheapness, and peculiar mode of
+publication, of the works of amusement of the present day. In all these
+respects the change is great, and extremely recent. The works of
+amusement published only a very few years since were comparatively few
+in number; they were less exciting, and therefore less attractive; they
+were dearer, and therefore less accessible; and, not being published
+periodically, they did not occupy the mind for so long a time, nor keep
+alive so constant an expectation; nor, by thus dwelling upon the mind,
+and distilling themselves into it as it were drop by drop, did they
+possess it so largely, colouring even, in many instances, its very
+language, and affording frequent matter for conversation.
+
+The evil of all these circumstances is actually enormous. The mass of
+human minds, and much more of the minds of young persons, have no great
+appetite for intellectual exercise; but they have some, which by careful
+treatment may be strengthened and increased. But here to this weak and
+delicate appetite is presented an abundance of the most stimulating and
+least nourishing food possible. It snatches it greedily, and is not only
+satisfied, but actually conceives a distaste for anything simpler and
+more wholesome. That curiosity which is wisely given us to lead us on to
+knowledge, finds its full gratification in the details of an exciting
+and protracted story, and then lies down as it were gorged, and goes to
+sleep. Other faculties claim their turn, and have it. We know that in
+youth the healthy body and lively spirits require exercise, and in this
+they may and ought to be indulged: but the time and interest which
+remain over when the body has had its enjoyment, and the mind desires
+its share, this has been already wasted and exhausted upon things
+utterly unprofitable: so that the mind goes to its work hurriedly and
+languidly, and feels it to be no more than a burden. The mere lessons
+may be learnt from a sense of duty; but that freshness of power which,
+in young persons of ability would fasten eagerly upon some one portion
+or other, of the wide field of knowledge, and there expatiate, drinking
+in health and strength to the mind, as surely as the natural exercise of
+the body gives to it bodily vigour,--that is tired prematurely,
+perverted, and corrupted; and all the knowledge which else it might so
+covet, it now seems a wearying effort to attain.
+
+Great and grievous as is the evil, it is peculiarly hard to find the
+remedy for it. If the books to which I have been alluding were books of
+downright wickedness, we might destroy them wherever we found them; we
+might forbid their open circulation; we might conjure you to shun them
+as you would any other clear sin, whether of word or deed. But they are
+not wicked books for the most part; they are of that class which cannot
+be actually prohibited; nor can it be pretended that there is a sin in
+reading them. They are not the more wicked for being published so cheap,
+and at regular intervals; but yet these two circumstances make them so
+peculiarly injurious. All that can be done is to point out the evil;
+that it is real and serious I am very sure, and its effects are most
+deplorable on the minds of the fairest promise; but the remedy for it
+rests with yourselves, or rather with each of you individually, so far
+as he is himself concerned. That an unnatural and constant excitement of
+the mind is most injurious, there is no doubt; that excitement involves
+a consequent weakness, is a law of our nature than which none is surer;
+that the weakness of mind thus produced is and must be adverse to quiet
+study and thought, to that reflection which alone is wisdom, is also
+clear in itself, and proved too largely by experience. And that without
+reflection there can be no spiritual understanding, is at once evident;
+while without spiritual understanding, that is, without a knowledge and
+a study of God's will, there can be no spiritual life. And therefore
+childishness and unthoughtfulness cannot be light evils; and if I have
+rightly traced the prevalence of these defects to its cause, although
+that cause may seem to some to be trifling, yet surely it is well to
+call your attention to it, and to remind you that in reading works of
+amusement, as in every other lawful pleasure, there is and must be an
+abiding responsibility in the sight of God; that, like other lawful
+pleasures, we must beware of excess in it; and not only so, but that if
+we find it hurtful to us, either because we have used it too freely in
+times past, or because our nature is too weak to bear it, that then we
+are bound most solemnly to abstain from it; because, however lawful in
+itself, or to others who can practise it without injury, whatever is to
+us an hindrance in the way of our intellectual and moral and spiritual
+improvement, that is in our case a positive sin.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE V.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+COLOSSIANS i. 9.
+
+_We do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled
+with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual
+understanding_.
+
+
+These words, on which I spoke last Sunday, appeared to contain so much,
+which concerns us all so deeply, and to suit the peculiar ease of many
+of us here so entirely, that I thought they might well furnish us with
+matter for farther consideration to-day. And though I noticed one
+particular cause, which seemed to have acted mischievously, in the last
+few years, upon the growth and freshness of the mind in youth, yet it
+would be absurd to suppose that before this cause came into existence
+all was well; or that if it could be removed, our progress even in
+worldly knowledge would henceforth be unimpeded. There are many other
+causes no doubt which oppose our growth in worldly wisdom; and still
+more which oppose our growth in the wisdom of God.
+
+One of these causes meets us at the very beginning; it exists at this
+very moment; it makes it difficult even to gain your attention for what
+is to be said. This cause is to be found in the want of sympathy between
+persons of very different ages, between what must be, therefore, in the
+common course of nature, different degrees of thoughtfulness. It is the
+want of sympathy, properly speaking, which creates in these matters a
+difficulty of understanding; for the attention and memory are alike apt
+to be careless where the mind is not interested; and how can we
+understand that to which we scarcely listened, and which we imperfectly
+remember? Nature herself seems to lead the old and the young two
+different ways: and when the old call upon the young to be thoughtful,
+it seems as if they were but calling them to a state contrary to their
+nature; and the call is not regarded.
+
+Is it then that we have here an invincible obstacle, which renders all
+attempts to inspire thoughtfulness utterly vain? and if it be so, what
+use can there be in dwelling upon it? None, certainly, if it were
+actually and in all cases invincible; but if it be every thing short of
+invincible, there is much good in noticing it. There is much good surely
+in trying to impress the great truth, that nature must be overcome by a
+mightier power, or we perish. There is much good in meeting and allowing
+to its full extent what we are so apt in our folly to regard as an
+excuse, and which really is the earnest of our condemnation. It is very
+true, and to be allowed to the fullest extent, that it is against the
+nature of youth in all ordinary cases to be thoughtful; that it is very
+difficult for you even to give your attention to serious things when
+spoken of, more difficult still to remember them afterwards and always.
+It is for the very reason because it is so difficult, because it is a
+work so against nature, to raise the young and careless mind to the
+thought of God; because it is so certain that, in the common course of
+things, you will not think of Him, but will follow the bent of your own
+several fancies or desires, that therefore He, who wills in his love to
+bring us to himself, knowing that without the knowledge of Him we must
+perish for ever, was pleased to give his only-begotten Son, that
+through Him we might overcome nature, and might turn to God and live.
+
+I wish that I could increase, if it were possible, the sense which, you
+have of the difficulty of becoming thoughtful, so that you could but see
+that out of this very difficulty, and indissolubly connected with it,
+comes the grace of Christ's redemption. You have not strength of purpose
+enough to shake off folly and sin; surely you have not, or else, why
+should Christ have died? It is so hard to come to God; undoubtedly, so
+hard that no man can come unto God except God will draw him. Nature
+herself leads us to be careless, our very strength and spirits of
+themselves will not allow us to reflect. Most true; for that which is
+born of the flesh, is flesh; and we inherit a nature derived from him in
+whom we all die.
+
+I believe that it is not idle to dwell upon tins; for it is scarcely
+possible but that good and earnest resolutions should often enter the
+minds of many of you; or, if not resolutions, yet at least wishes,
+wishes chilled but too soon, I fear, by the thought or feeling, that
+however much to will may be present with you, yet how to perform it you
+find not. Now, if this true sense of weakness might but lead any one to
+seek for strength where it may be found, then indeed it would be a
+feeling no less blessed than true; for it would urge you to seek God's
+help and Christ's redemption, instead of desperately yielding to your
+weakness, and so remaining weak for ever.
+
+You may look at the prospect before you in all its reality: you may see
+how much must be given up, how much withstood, bow much, endured; how
+hard it is to alter old ways, not in itself only, but because the change
+attracts attention, and is received, it may be, with doubts as to its
+sincerity, with irony, and with sneers. There is all this before you: it
+cannot be denied; it must not be concealed. The way to life is not broad
+and easy; it is not that way which is most trodden. To pass from what we
+are to what we may be hereafter, from an earthly nature to an heavenly,
+cannot be an easy work, to be done at any time, with no effort, with no
+pain. It is the greatest work which is done in the whole world, it is
+the mightiest change; death and birth are, as it were, combined in it;
+but the Lord of birth and of death is at hand, to enable us to effect
+it. Think that this is so; and the more you feel how hard a task is set
+before you, the more you will be able to understand the language of joy
+and thankfulness with which the Scripture speaks of a human soul's
+redemption.
+
+This great work may be wrought for every soul here assembled; the want
+of sympathy in sacred and serious things may be changed to sympathy the
+most intense; the carelessness of fools may be changed into spiritual
+wisdom. It may be wrought for all; but it is more happy to think that it
+will be wrought for some;--for whom, no mortal eye or judgment can
+discern; but it will be wrought for some. If many should yield in
+despair to their enemy, yet some will resist him: if Christ be to many
+no more than foolishness, if his name convey nothing more than a vague
+sense of something solemn, which passes over the mind for an instant,
+and then vanishes, yet to some undoubtedly, he will be found to be the
+wisdom of God, and the power of God. There are some here, we may be
+quite sure, who will be witnesses for ever to all the world of men and
+angels, that what truly was impossible to nature, is possible to nature
+renewed and strengthened by grace.
+
+Without such a change, it is vain, I fear, to look for any thing like
+wisdom or spiritual understanding; for how can such a seed be expected
+to grow in a soil so shallow as common thoughtlessness? and how can
+merely human motives have force to overcome so strong a tendency of
+nature? nay, how can such motives be brought to act upon the mind? for
+it is absolutely impossible that the middle-aged and the young should be
+brought into entire sympathy with each other, unless Christ's love be
+their common bond. Human wisdom in advanced life may be, and is to
+persons of strong faculties of mind, naturally pleasant: but how can it
+be made so to persons of ordinary faculties in early youth? There are
+faults which society condemns strongly, while the temptation to them in
+after life is slight. Persons in middle age may resist these easily, and
+abhor them sincerely; but how can we make young persons do the same when
+the temptation to commit them is strong, and the condemnation of them by
+their society is either very slight, or does not exist at all? And,
+therefore, we find that, do what we will, the same faults' continue to
+be common in schools, the same faults both of omission and commission;
+there is the same inherent difficulty of bringing persons of different
+ages and positions to think and feel alike, unless Christ has become
+possessed of the thoughts and feelings of both, and so they become one
+with each other in him.
+
+But it was our Lord's charge to Peter, "Thou, when thou art converted,
+strengthen thy brethren." As sure as it is that some who hear me are
+turned, or turning, or will turn, to God, so sure is it that these, be
+they few or many, will do something towards the strengthening of their
+brethren. Whatever good is to be done amongst us on a large scale, it
+must be done only in this way, the many half despairing prayer may be,
+"Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief;" but if any one is moved by
+Christ's call, and feels within himself that he should like to follow
+Christ, and to be with him always, let him cherish that work of the Holy
+Spirit within him, which has given him if it be only so much of the will
+to be saved. It is a spark which may be quenched in a moment; in itself
+it can give no assurance; but if any one watches it carefully, and prays
+that it may live and be kindled into a stronger spark, till at last it
+break out into a flame, then for him it is full of assurance; God has
+heard his prayer; and he has received the gift of the Holy Spirit, an
+earnest of his eternal inheritance. Will he not then watch and pray the
+more anxiously, lest the fruit which, is now partly formed should never
+ripen? Will he not see and feel that there is some reality in the things
+of God, that strength, and peace, and victory, are not vainly promised?
+Will he not hold fast the things which he has now not heard only, but
+known, lest by any means he should let them slip? May God strengthen
+such, whoever they may be, with all the might of his Spirit; and may he
+be with them even to the end.
+
+But for those,--who they are, again, we know not, nor how many; but
+here, also, there will too surely be some,--for those who hear now, as
+they have often heard before, words which, they scarcely heed, which,
+have at times partially caught their attention, but have not produced in
+them the slightest real effect, for them the words are coming to an end;
+they will soon be released from the irksome bondage of hearing them; and
+another opportunity of grace will have been offered to them in vain.
+Tomorrow, and the day after, they will walk as they have walked before,
+the wretched slaves of folly and passion; half despairing prayer may
+be, "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief;" but if any one is moved
+by Christ's call, and feels within himself that he should like to follow
+Christ, and to be with him always, let him cherish that work of the Holy
+Spirit within him, which has given him if it be only so much of the will
+to be saved. It is a spark which may be quenched in a moment; in itself
+it can give no assurance; but if any one watches it carefully, and prays
+that it may live and be kindled into a stronger spark, till at last it
+break out into a flame, then for him it is full of assurance; God has
+heard his prayer; and he has received the gift of the Holy Spirit, an
+earnest of his eternal inheritance. Will he not then watch and pray the
+more anxiously, lest the fruit which is now partly formed should never
+ripen? Will he not see and feel that there is some reality in the things
+of God, that strength, and peace, and victory, are not vainly promised?
+Will he not hold fast the things which he has now not heard only, but
+known, lest by any means he should let them slip? May God strengthen
+such, whoever they may be, with all the might of his Spirit; and may he
+be with them even to the end.
+
+But for those,--who they are, again, we know not, nor how many; but
+here, also, there will too surely be some,--for those who hear now, as
+they have often heard before, words which they scarcely heed, which have
+at times partially caught their attention, but have not produced in them
+the slightest real effect, for them the words are coming to an end; they
+will soon be released from the irksome bondage of hearing them; and
+another opportunity of grace will have been offered to them in vain.
+Tomorrow, and the day after, they will walk as they have walked before,
+the wretched slaves of folly and passion; leaving undone all Christ's
+work, and greedily doing his enemy's. Yet even these Christ yet spares,
+he still calls them, he has died for them. Still the word must be spoken
+to them, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear. It may
+be, that they will some day turn; and if not, Christ has perfected his
+mercy towards them; and Christ's servants have delivered their own souls
+in warning them. May there be but few of us on whom this horrible
+portion will fall; yet, is it not an awful thing to think of, that it
+will, in all human probability, fall on some? and that whoever hardens
+his heart, and resists the word spoken to him this day, he is one who
+has done as much as in him lies to make himself among that number.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VI.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+COLOSSIANS iii. 3.
+
+_Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God_.
+
+
+When I have spoken, from time to time, of denying ourselves for the sake
+of relieving others, although self-denial and charity are, in their full
+growth, amongst the highest of Christian graces, yet I have felt much
+hope that, up to a certain degree, in their lowest and elementary forms
+at least, there might be many that would be disposed to practise them.
+For these are virtues which do undoubtedly commend themselves to our
+minds as things clearly good: so much so that I am inclined to think
+that the much-disputed moral sense, the nature of which is said to be so
+hard to ascertain, exists most clearly in the universal perception that
+it is good to deny ourselves and to benefit others. I do not say merely
+that there is a perception that it is good to deny ourselves in order to
+benefit others; but that there is in self-denial, simply, something
+which commands respect; an unconscious tribute, I suppose, to the truth,
+that the self which, is thus denied is one which, if indulged, would
+run to evil.
+
+But a point of far greater difficulty, of absolutely the greatest
+difficulty, is to impress upon our minds the excellence of
+another quality, which is known by the name of spiritual or
+heavenly-mindedness. In fact, this,--and this almost singly,--is the
+transcendent part of Christianity; that part of it which is not
+according to, but above, nature; which, conscience, I think, itself, in
+the natural man, does not acknowledge. When Christianity speaks of
+purity, of truth, of justice, of charity, of faith and love to God, it
+speaks a language which, however belied by our practice, is at once
+allowed by our consciences: the things so recommended are, beyond all
+doubt, good and lovely. But when it says, in St. Paul's words, "Set your
+affections on things above, not on things on the earth: for ye are dead,
+and your life is hid with Christ in God," the language sounds so strange
+that it is scarcely intelligible; and if we do get to understand it, yet
+it seems to give a wrench, as it were, to our whole being, to command a
+thing extravagant and impossible.
+
+I am persuaded that this would be so, more or less, everywhere; but in
+how extreme a degree must it hold good amongst us! Even in poverty, in
+sickness, and old age, where this life would seem to be nothing but a
+burden, and the command to "set the affections on things above" might
+appear superfluous, still the known so prevails over the unknown, the
+familiar over the incomprehensible, that hope and affection find
+continually their objects in this world, there is still a clinging to
+life, and an unwillingness to die. But in a state the very opposite to
+this, in plenty, in health, in youth; with much of enjoyment actually in
+our hands, and more in prospect; with just so much mystery over our
+coming life as to keep alive interest, yet with enough known and
+understood in its prospects to awaken sympathy; what deafest ear of the
+deaf adder could ever be so closed against the voice of the charmer, as
+our minds, so engrossed with the enjoyments and the hopes of earth, are
+closed against the voice which speaks of the things of heaven?
+
+Again, I have said, when speaking of other subjects, that I looked upon
+the older persons among you as a sort of link between me and the
+younger, who communicated, in some instances, by their language and
+example, something of an impression of the meaning of Christian
+teaching. But when we speak of a thing so high as spiritual-mindedness,
+it seems as if none of us can be a link between Christ's words and our
+brethren's minds: as if we all stand alike at an infinite distance from
+the high and unapproachable truth. The mountain of God becomes veiled,
+as it were, with the clouds which rested upon Sinai; we cannot approach
+near it, but stand far off, for a moment, perhaps, in awe; but soon in
+neglect and indifference.
+
+Let any one capable of thinking, but in the full vigour of health of
+body and mind, placed far above want, and with the prospect, according
+to all probability, of many years of happy life before him, let such an
+one go forth, at this season of the year above all, let him see the vast
+preparation for life in all nature, amongst all living creatures, in
+every tree, and in every plant of grass; let him feel the warmth of the
+sun, becoming every day stronger and stronger; let him be possessed, in
+every sense, with an impression of the vigour and beauty and glory
+around him; and let him feel no less a vigour in himself, too, of body
+and mind, and infinitely varied power of enjoyment in so many faculties
+of repose and of energy,--and then let him calmly consider what St. Paul
+could mean, when he says generally to Christians, "Set your affections
+on things above, not on things on the earth; for ye are dead, and your
+life is hid with Christ in God."
+
+Let a person capable of thinking, and such as I have supposed in all
+other respects, consider what St. Paul could mean by calling him "dead."
+With an almost thrilling consciousness of life, with an almost bounding
+sense of vigour in body and mind, he is told that he is "dead." And
+stranger still, he is told so by one whose recorded life, and existing
+writings declare that he too must have had in himself a consciousness of
+life no less lively; that there was in him an activity and energy which
+neither age nor sufferings could quell; that he wielded an influence
+over the minds of thousands, such as kings or conquerors might envy. If
+St. Paul could stand by our side, think we that he, any more than
+ourselves, would be insensible to the power within him, and to the
+beauty and the glory without? Yet his words are recorded; he bids us not
+set our affections on things on the earth; he declares of himself, and
+of us equally, if we are Christ's servants, that we are dead, and that
+our life is hid with Christ in God.
+
+I have put the difficulty in its strongest form, for it is one well
+worth considering. What St. Paul here urges is indeed the highest
+perfection of Christianity, and therefore of human nature; but it is not
+an impossible perfection, and St. Paul's own life and character are our
+warrant that it is nothing sickly, or foolish, or fanatical. But let us
+first hear the whole of St. Paul's language: "If ye, then, be risen with
+Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the
+right hand of God. Set your affections on things above, not on things on
+the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.
+When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall we also appear
+with him in glory. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the
+earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil
+concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry." "Mortify," I need
+not say, is to make dead, to destroy. "Ye are dead;" therefore let your
+members on earth be dead; "fornication, uncleanness, inordinate
+affection," &c. As if he had said, By becoming Christians ye engaged to
+be dead; and therefore see to it that ye are so. But what he requires us
+to make dead or to destroy, are our evil affections and desires; it is
+manifest, then, that it is to these that, by becoming Christians, we
+engage to become dead.
+
+This is true; and it is most certain that Christ requires us to be dead
+only to what is evil. But the essence of spiritual-mindedness consists
+in this, that it is assumed that with earth, and all things earthly,
+evil or imperfection are closely mixed; so that it is not possible to
+set our affections keenly upon, or to abandon ourselves to the enjoyment
+of, any earthly thing without the danger of those affections and that
+enjoyment becoming evil. In other words, there is that in the state of
+things within and around us, which, renders it needful to be ever
+watchful; and watchfulness is inconsistent with an intensity of delight
+and enjoyment.
+
+For, consider the case which I was just supposing; that lively sense of
+the beauty of all nature, that indescribable feeling of delight which
+arises out of the consciousness of health, and strength and power.
+Suppose that we abandon ourselves to such impressions without restraint,
+and is it not manifest that they are the extreme of godless pride and
+selfishness? For do we not know that in this world, and close to us
+wherever we are, there is, along with all the beauty and enjoyment which
+we witness, a large portion also of evil, and of suffering? And do we
+not know that He who gave to the earth its richness, and who set the sun
+to shine in the heavens, and who gave to us that wonderful frame of body
+and mind, whose healthful workings are So delightful to us, that He gave
+them that we might use both body and mind in His service; that the
+soldier has something else to do than to gaze like a child on the
+splendour of his uniform or the brightness of his sword; that those
+faculties which we feel as it were burning within us, have their work
+before them, a work far above their strength, though multiplied a
+thousand fold; that the call to them to be busy is never silent; that
+there is an infinite voice in the infinite sins and sufferings of
+millions which proclaims that the contest is raging around us; that
+every idle moment is treason; that now it is the time for unceasing
+efforts; and that not till the victory is gained may Christ's soldiers
+throw aside their arms, and resign themselves to enjoyment and to rest?
+
+Then when we turn to the words, "our life is hid with Christ in God,"
+the exceeding greatness of Christ's promises rises upon us in something
+of the fulness of their reality. Some may know the story of that German
+nobleman[12], whose life had been distinguished alike by genius and
+worldly distinctions, and by Christian holiness; and who, in the last
+morning of his life, when the dawn broke into his sick chamber, prayed
+that he might be supported to the window, and might look once again upon
+the rising sun. After looking steadily at it for some time, he cried
+out, "Oh! if the appearance of this earthly and created thing is so
+beautiful and so quickening, how much more shall I be enraptured at the
+sight of the unspeakable glory of the Creator Himself!" That was the
+feeling of a man whose sense of earthly beauty had all the keenness of a
+poet's enthusiasm; but who, withal, had in his greatest health and
+vigour preserved the consciousness that his life was hid with Christ in
+God; that the things seen, how beautiful soever, were as nothing to the
+things which are not seen. And so, if from the feeling of natural
+enjoyment we turn, at once thankfully and earnestly, to remember God's
+service, and to address ourselves to his work; and sadly remember, that,
+although we can enjoy, yet that many are suffering; and that, whilst
+they are so, enjoyment in us for more than a brief space of needful rest
+cannot but be sin; then there must come upon us, most strongly, the
+impression of that life where sin and suffering are not; where not God's
+works only, but God Himself is visible; where the vigour and faculties
+which we feel within us are not the passing strength of a decaying body,
+nor the brief prime of a mind which in a few years must sink into
+dotage; but the strength of a body incorruptible and eternal, the
+ripeness of a spirit which shall go on growing in wisdom and love
+for ever.
+
+[Footnote 12: The Baron Von Canitz.]
+
+Thus, then, if we consider again St. Paul's meaning, we shall find that,
+high and pure as it is, it is nothing unreasonable or impossible; that
+what he requires us to be dead to absolutely is that which is evil;
+that, because of the mixture of evil with ourselves and all around us,
+this life must not and cannot be a life of entire enjoyment without
+becoming godless and selfish; that, therefore, our affections cannot be
+set upon earthly things so as to enjoy them in and for themselves
+entirely, without becoming inordinate, and therefore evil. He does
+require us, old and young alike, to set our affection on things above:
+to remember that with God, and with Him alone, can be our rest, and the
+fulness of our joy; and amidst our pleasure in earthly things to retain
+in our minds, first, a grateful sense of their Giver; secondly, a
+remembrance of their passing nature; and thirdly, a consciousness of the
+evil that is in the world, which makes it a sin to resign ourselves to
+any enjoyment, except as a permitted refreshment to strengthen us for
+duty to come. Above all, let one feeling be truly cherished, and it
+will do more, perhaps, than any other to moderate our pleasure in
+earthly things, and to render it safe, and wholesome, and Christianlike.
+That feeling is the remembrance of our own faults. Let us bear these in
+mind as God does; let us consider how displeasing they are in His sight;
+how often they are repeated; how little they deserve the enjoyments
+which are given us. If this does not change our selfish pleasure into a
+zealous gratitude, then, indeed, sin must have a dominion over us; for
+the natural effect would be, that our hearts should burn within us for
+very shame, and should enkindle us to be thankful with all our strength
+for blessings so undeserved; to show something of our love to God who
+has so richly shown his love to us.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CORINTHIANS iii. 21-23.
+
+_All things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the
+world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are
+yours; and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's_.
+
+
+It is very possible, that all may not distinctly understand the force of
+the several clauses of this passage, yet, all, I suppose, would derive a
+general impression from it, that it spoke of the condition of Christians
+in very exalted language, and made it to extend to things in this world,
+as well as to things in the world to come. But can it be good for us to
+dwell on our exaltation? And if we do, may we not dread lest such
+language might be used towards us as that which St. Paul uses in the
+very next chapter to the Corinthians, "Now ye are full, now ye are rich,
+ye have reigned as kings without us; and I would to God ye did reign,
+that we also might reign with you." It would seem, however, that it
+would be good for us to dwell on the greatness of our condition and
+privileges, because St. Paul, who thus upbraids the Corinthians with
+their pride, had yet himself immediately before laid the picture of
+their high privileges, in the words of the text, in full detail before
+them, as if he wished them carefully to consider it. And so indeed it
+is. It feeds pride to dwell upon our good qualities or advantages, as
+individuals, or as a class in society, or as a nation, or as a sect or
+party; but, to speak generally, our advantages and privileges, as
+Christians, have not a tendency to excite pride; for some reasons in the
+nature of the case; for this reason amongst ourselves particularly,
+because the very essence of pride consists in contrast; we are proud
+that we are, in some one or more points, superior to others who come
+immediately under our observation. Now, we have so little to do with any
+who are not Christians, that the contrast is in this case wanting; we
+have none over whom to be proud; none whom we can glory in surpassing;
+and, therefore, a consideration of our Christian advantages, in the
+absence of that one element which might feed pride, is likely with us to
+work in a better manner, and to lead rather to thankfulness and
+increased exertion.
+
+I say to increased exertion; for what would stop exertion is pride. It
+is the turning back, and pausing to look with satisfaction on what is
+below us, rather than the looking upward to the summit, and thinking how
+much our actual elevation has brought us on the way towards it. And,
+further, there is coupled with every consideration of Christian
+privileges, the thought of what it must be to leave such privileges
+unimproved. In this respect, how well does the language of the two
+lessons from Deuteronomy suit the lesson from the Epistle to the
+Corinthians. We heard the description of the beauty and richness of the
+land which God gave to his people,--there were their advantages and
+privileges,--we heard also, the declaration of their unworthiness, and
+the solemn threatening of vengeance if, after having received good, they
+did evil. And as the vengeance has fallen upon them to the utmost, so we
+are taught expressly to apply their example to ourselves. "If God spared
+not the natural branches," such was St. Paul's language to the church at
+Rome, "take heed lest he also spare not thee."
+
+Let us not fear, then, to consider more nearly the high privileges
+which, as Christians, we enjoy: let us endeavour to understand, not
+merely generally, but in detail, the exalted language of the text, where
+it is said, that all things are ours; Paul, Apollos, and Cephas, the
+world, and life, and death, the things of time, and the things of
+eternity. These are ours because we are Christ's, and Christ is God's;
+they are ours so long as we are Christ's, and so far as we are his
+truly. They are not ours so far as we are not his: they are ours in no
+degree whatever the moment that he shall declare that we are his
+no longer.
+
+"Paul, and Apollos, and Peter, are ours." This, perhaps, is the
+expression which we should understand least distinctly of any. It is an
+expression, however, of deep importance, though perhaps less so here
+than in congregations of a different sort. I need not, therefore, dwell
+on it long now. But the Corinthians, as many Christians have done since,
+were apt to think more of their being Christians of a certain sort, than
+of being Christians simply: some said, "We have Paul's view of
+Christianity, the true and sound view of it, free from superstition:"
+others said, "But we have Peter's view of Christianity, one of Christ's
+own apostles, who were with him on earth; ours is the true and earliest
+view of it, free from all innovations:" and others, again, said, "Nay,
+but we have been taught by Apollos, an eloquent man, and mighty in the
+Scriptures; one who best understands how to unite the law and the
+gospel; one who has given us the full perfection of Christianity." No
+doubt there were some differences of views even between Paul, and Peter,
+and Apollos; for while, on the one hand, they were all enlightened by
+the Spirit of God, yet, on the other hand, they retained still their
+human differences of character and disposition, which must on several
+occasions have been manifest. But St. Paul does not tell us what these
+were, nor how far they extended, nor to what degree they had been
+exaggerated by those who heard them. He does not insist upon the truth
+of his own view, nor wish the Corinthians to lay aside their divisions,
+after the manner so zealously enforced by some persons now, namely, that
+those who said they were of Peter, or of Apollos, should confess that
+they had been in error, and declare themselves to be now only of Paul.
+Such a condemnation of schism he would have held to be in itself in the
+highest degree schismatical. But St. Paul was earnest, that schism
+should be ended after another way than this, by all parties remembering,
+that whatever became of the truth or falsehood of their own particular
+views of Christianity, yet, that Christianity according to any of their
+views was the one great thing which was their glory and their salvation.
+"Paul, and Apollos, and Peter, are all yours: but you are Christ's." You
+should not glory in men; that you belong to a purer church than other
+Christians; but that you belong to the church of Christ; that church,
+which, in its most pure particular branches, has never been free from
+some mixture of human infirmity and error; nor yet, in its worst
+branches, has ever lost altogether the seal of Christ's Spirit, nor
+ceased to believe in Christ crucified.
+
+But the next words are of more particular concern to us here. "The
+world, and life, and death, and things present, and things to come, are
+all ours." They are all ours, so far as we are Christ's. The world is
+ours; its manifold riches and delights, its various wisdom, all are
+ours. They are ours, not as a thing stolen, and which will be taken from
+us with a heavy over-payment of penalty, because we stole it when it did
+not belong to us; but they are ours by God's free gift, to minister to
+our comfort, and to our good. And this is the great difference; the good
+things of this world are stolen by many; but they belong, by God's gift,
+to those only who are Christ's: and there is the sure sign, generally,
+to be seen of their being stolen,--an unwillingness that He to whom of
+right they belong should see them. What a man steals, he enjoys, as it
+were, in fear: if the owner of it finds him with it, then all his
+enjoyment is gone; he wishes that he had never touched it; it is no
+source of pleasure to him, but merely one of terror. And so it is often
+with our stolen pleasures,--stolen, I mean, not in respect of man, but
+of God,--stolen, because we do not feel them to be God's gift, nor
+receive them, as from him, with thankfulness. They may be very lawful
+pleasures, so far as other men are concerned; pleasures bought, it may
+be, with our own money, or given to us by our own friends, and enjoyed
+without any injury to any one. They may be the very simplest enjoyments
+of life, our health, the fresh air, our common food, our common
+amusements, our common society; things most permitted to us all, as far
+as man is concerned, but yet things which are constantly stolen by us,
+because we take them without God's leave, and enjoy them not as his
+gifts. They are all his, and he gives them freely to his children. If we
+are his children, he gives them to us; and delights in our enjoyment of
+them, as any human father loves to see the pleasure of his children in
+those things which it is good for them to enjoy. But then, is any child
+afraid of his father so seeing him? or is the thought of his father any
+interruption to his enjoyment? If it would be, we should be sure that
+there was something wrong; that the enjoyment, either in itself, or with
+respect to the particular case of that child, was a stolen one. And even
+as simple is the state of our dread of God, of our wish to keep his
+name and his thought away from us. It is the sure sign that our
+pleasures are stolen, either as being wrong in themselves, or much
+oftener, because we have taken them without being fit for them, have
+snatched them for ourselves, instead of receiving them at the hands of
+God. Two of us may be daily doing the very same thing in most
+respects,--enjoying actually the very same pleasures, whether of body or
+of mind; the same exercises, the same studies, the same indulgences, the
+same society,--and yet these very same things may belong rightfully to
+the one, and be stolen by the other. To the one they may come with a
+double blessing, as the assurance of God's greater love hereafter: to
+the other, they are but an addition to that sad account, when all good
+things enjoyed here, having been not our own rightly, but stolen, shall
+be paid for in over measure, by evil things to be suffered hereafter.
+
+And what I have said of the world, will apply also to life and to death.
+Oh, the infinite difference whether life is ours, or but stolen for an
+instant; whether death is ours, our subject, ministering only to our
+good; or our fearful enemy, our ever keen pursuer, from whose grasp we
+have escaped for a few short years, but who is following fast after us,
+and when he has once caught us will hold us fast for ever! Have we ever
+seen his near approach--has he ever forced himself upon our notice
+whether we would or no? But two days since he was amongst us,--we were,
+as it were, forced to look upon him. Did we think that he was ours, or
+that we were his? If we are his, then indeed he is fearful: fearful to
+the mere consciousness of nature; a consciousness which no arguments can
+overcome; fearful if it be merely the parting from life, if it be
+merely the resigning that wonderful thing which we call our being. It is
+fearful to go from light to darkness, from all that we have ever known
+and loved, to that of which we know and love nothing. But if death, even
+thus stingless, is yet full of horror, what is he with his worst sting
+beside, the sting of our sins? What is he when he is taking us, not to
+nothingness, but to judgment? He is indeed so fearful then, that no
+words can paint him half so truly as our foreboding dread of him, and no
+arguments which the wit of man can furnish can strip him of his terrors.
+
+But what if death too, as well as life, be ours?--which he is, if we are
+Christ's; for Christ has conquered him. If he be ours, our servant, our
+minister, sent but to bring us into the presence of our Lord, then,
+indeed, his terrors, his merely natural terrors, the outside roughness
+of his aspect, are things which the merest child need not shrink from.
+Then disease and decay, however painful to living friends to look upon,
+have but little pain for him who is undergoing them. For it is not only
+amidst the tortures of actual martyrdom that Christians have been more
+than conquerors,--in common life, on the quiet or lonely sick bed, under
+the grasp of fever or of consumption, the conquest has been witnessed as
+often and as completely. It is not a little thing when the faintest
+whisper of thought to which expiring nature can give utterance breathes
+of nothing but of peace and of forgiveness. It is not a little thing
+when the name of Christ possesses us wholly; not distinctly, it may be,
+for reason may be too weak for this; but with an indescribable power of
+support and comfort. Or even if there be a last conflict,--a season of
+terror and of pain, a valley of the shadow of death, dark and
+gloomy,--yet even there Christ is with his servants, and as their trial
+is so is his love. Thus it is, if death be ours; and death is ours, if
+we be Christ's. And are we not Christ's? We bear his name, we have his
+outward seal of belonging to his people,--can we refuse to be his in
+heart and true obedience? Would we rather steal our pleasures than enjoy
+them as our own; steal life for an instant, rather than have it our sure
+possession for ever? Would we rather be fugitives from death, fugitives
+whom he will surely recover and hold fast, than be able to say and to
+feel that death, as well as life is ours, things to come, as well as
+things present, because we are truly Christ's?
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VIII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+GALATIANS V. 16, 17.
+
+_Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh. For
+the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh;
+and these are contrary the one to the other, so that ye cannot do the
+things that ye would_.
+
+
+"We cannot do the things that we would." These are words of familiar and
+common use; this is the language in which we are all apt to excuse,
+whether to ourselves or to others, the various faults of our conduct. We
+should be glad to do better, so we say and think, but the power to do so
+fails us. And so far it may seem that we are but echoing the apostle's
+language; for he says the very same thing, "Ye cannot do the things that
+ye would." Yet the words as we use them, and as the apostle used them,
+have the most opposite meaning in the world. We use them as a reason why
+we should be satisfied, the apostle as a reason why we should be
+alarmed; we intend them to be an excuse, the apostle meant them to be a
+certain sign of condemnation.
+
+The reasons of this difference may be understood very easily. We, in the
+common course of justice, should think it hard to punish a man for not
+doing what he cannot do. We think, therefore, that if we say that we
+cannot do well, we establish also our own claim to escape from
+punishment. But God declares that a state of sin is and must be a state
+of misery; and that if we cannot escape the sin, we cannot escape the
+misery. According to God's meaning, then, the words, "Ye cannot do the
+things which ye would," mean no other than this: "Ye cannot escape from
+hell; ye cannot be redeemed from the power of death and of Satan; the
+power is wanting in you, however much you may wish it: death has got
+you, and it will keep you for ever." So that, in this way, sickness or
+weakness of the soul is very like sickness or weakness of the body. We
+cannot help being ill or weak in many cases: is that any reason why,
+according to the laws of God's providence, we should not suffer the pain
+of illness? Or is it not, rather, clear that we suffer it just because
+we have not the power to get rid of it; if we had the power to be well,
+we should be well. A man's evils are not gone because he wishes them
+away; it is not he who would fain see his chains broken, that escapes
+from his bondage; but he who has the strength to rend them asunder.
+
+Thus, then, in St. Paul's language, "Ye cannot do the things that ye
+would," means exactly, "Ye are not redeemed, but in bondage; ye are not
+saved, but lost." But he goes on to the reason why we cannot do the
+things which we would, which is, "because the flesh and the Spirit are
+contrary to one another," and pull us, as it were, different ways. Just
+as we might say of a man in illness, that the reason why he is not well,
+as he wishes to be, is because his healthy nature and his disease are
+contrary to one another, and are striving within him for the mastery.
+His blood, according to its healthy nature, would flow calmly and
+steadily; his food, according to his healthy nature, would be received
+with appetite, and would give him nourishment and strength; but, behold,
+there is in him now another nature, contrary to his healthy nature: and
+this other nature makes his blood flow with feverish quickness, and
+makes food distasteful to him, and makes the food which he has eaten
+before to become, as it were, poison; it does not nourish him or
+strengthen, but is a burden, a weakness, and a pain. As long as these
+two natures thus struggle within him, the man is sick; as soon as the
+diseased nature prevails, the man sinks and dies. He does not wish to
+die,--not at all,--most earnestly, it may be, does he wish to live; but
+his diseased nature has overcome his healthy nature, and so he must die.
+If he would live, in any sense that deserves to be called life, the
+diseased nature must not overcome, must not struggle equally; it must be
+overcome, it must be kept down, it must be rendered powerless; and then,
+when the healthy nature has prevailed, its victory is health
+and strength.
+
+So far all is alike; but what follows afterwards? As "ye cannot do the
+things which ye would, because the flesh and the Spirit are contrary to
+one another,"--what then? "Therefore," says the apostle, "walk in the
+Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh." Surely there is
+some thing marvellous in this. For, let us speak the same language to
+the sick man: tell him, "Follow thy healthy nature, and them shalt not
+be sick," what would the words be but a bitter mockery? "How can you bid
+me," he would say, "to follow my healthy nature, when ye know that my
+diseased nature has bound me? Have ye no better comfort than this to
+offer me? Tell me rather how I may become able to follow my healthy
+nature; show me the strength which may help my weakness; or else your
+words are vain, and I never can recover." Most true would be this
+answer; and therefore disease and death do make havoc of us all, and the
+healthy nature is in the end borne down by the diseased nature, and
+sooner or later the great enemy triumphs over us, and, in spite of all
+our wishes and fond desires for life, we go down, death's conquered
+subjects, to the common grave of all living.
+
+This happens to the bodies of us all; to the souls of only too many. But
+why does it not happen also to the souls of all? How is it that some do
+fulfil the apostle's bidding? that they do walk in the Spirit, and
+therefore do not fulfil the lusts of the flesh; and therefore having
+conquered their diseased nature, they do walk according to their
+healthful nature, and are verily able to do, and do continually, the
+very things that they would? Surely this so striking difference, between
+the universal conquest of our diseased nature in the body, and the
+occasional victory of the healthy nature in the soul, shows us clearly
+that for the soul there has appeared a Redeemer already, while for the
+body the redemption is delayed till death shall be swallowed up
+in victory.
+
+For most true is it that in ourselves we could not deliver ourselves
+either soul or body. "Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the
+lusts of the flesh," might have been as cruel a mockery to us, as the
+similar words addressed to the man bodily sick,--"Walk according to thy
+healthy nature, and thou shalt not suffer from disease." They might have
+been a mockery, but blessed be God, they are not. They are not, because
+God has given us a Redeemer; they are not, because Christ has died, yea
+rather has risen again; and because the Spirit of Christ helpeth our
+infirmities, and gives us that power which by ourselves we had not.
+
+Not by wishing then to be redeemed, but by being redeemed, shall we
+escape the power of death. Not by saying, "Alas! we cannot do the things
+that we would!" but by becoming able to do them. Walk in the Spirit, and
+ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh; but if ye do fulfil them,
+ye must die.
+
+The power to walk in the Spirit is given by the Spirit; but either all
+have not this power, or all do not use it. I think rather it is that all
+have it not, for if they had it, a power so mighty and so beneficent,
+they surely could not help using it. All have it not; but I do not say
+that they all might not have it; on the contrary, all might have it, but
+in point of fact they have it not. They have it not because they seek it
+not: for an idle wish is one thing; a steady persevering pursuit is
+another. They seek not the Spirit by the appointed means, the means of
+prayer and attending to God's holy word, and thinking of life and death
+and judgment.
+
+Do those seek the spirit of God who never pray to God? Clearly they do
+not. For they who never pray to God never think of Him; they who never
+think of Him, by the very force of the terms it follows that they cannot
+seek his help. And yet they say, "Oh, I wish to be good, but I cannot!"
+But this, in the language of the Scripture, is a lie. If they did wish
+to be good they would seek the help that could make them so. There is no
+boy so young as not to know that, when temptation is on him to evil,
+prayer to God will strengthen him for good. As sure as we live, if he
+wished really to overcome the temptation, he would seek the strength.
+
+Consider what prayer is, and see how it cannot but strengthen us. He who
+stands in a sheltered place, where the wind cannot reach him, and with
+no branches over his head to cause a damp shade, and then holds up his
+face or his hands to the sun, in his strength, can he help feeling the
+sun's warmth? Now, thus it is in prayer: we turn to God, we bring our
+souls, with all their thoughts and feelings, fully before Him; and by
+the very act of so doing, we shelter ourselves from every chill of
+worldly care, we clear away every intercepting screen of worldly thought
+and pleasure. It is an awful thing so to submit ourselves wholly to the
+influence of God. But do it; and as surely as the sun will warm us if we
+stand in the sun, so will the Giver of light and life to the soul pour
+his Spirit of life into us; even as we pray, we become changed into
+his image.
+
+This is not spoken extravagantly. I ask of any one who has ever prayed
+in earnest, whether for that time, and while he was so praying, he did
+not feel, as it were, another man; a man able to do the things which he
+would; a man redeemed and free. But most true is it that this feeling
+passes away but too soon, when the prayer is done. Still for the time,
+there is the effect; we know what it is to put ourselves, in a manner,
+beneath the rays of God's grace; but we do not abide there long, and
+then we feel the damp and the cold of earth again.
+
+Therefore says the Apostle, "Pray without ceasing." If we could
+literally pray always, it is clear that we should sin never: it may be
+thus that Christ's redeemed, at his coming, as they will be for ever
+with him and with the Father, can therefore sin no more. For where God
+is, there is no place left for sin. But we cannot pray always: we cannot
+pray the greatest portion of our time; nay, we can pray, in the common
+sense of the term, only a very small portion of it. Yet, at least, we
+can take heed that we do pray sometimes, and that our prayer be truly in
+earnest. We can pray then for God's help to abide with us when we are
+not praying: we can commit to his care, not only our hours of sleep, but
+our hours of worldly waking. "I have work to do, I have a busy world
+around me; eye, ear, and thought will be all needed for that work, done
+in and amidst that busy world; now, ere I enter upon it, I would commit
+eye, ear, thought and wish to Thee. Do thou bless them, and keep their
+work thine; that as, through thy natural laws, my heart beats and my
+blood flows without my thought for them, so my spiritual life may hold
+on its course, through, thy help, at those times when my mind cannot
+consciously turn to Thee to commit each particular thought to
+thy service."
+
+But I dare not say that by any the most urgent prayers, uttered only at
+night and morning, God's blessing can thus be gained for the whole
+intervening day. For, in truth, if we did nothing more, the prayers
+would soon cease to be urgent; they would become formal, that is, they
+would be no prayers at all. For prayer lives in the heart, and not in
+the mouth; it consists not of words, but wishes. And no man can set
+himself heartily to wish twice a day for things, of which he never
+thinks at other times in the day. So that prayer requires in a manner to
+be fed, and its food is to be found in reading and thinking; in reading
+God's word, and in thinking about him, and about the world as being
+his work.
+
+Young men and boys are generally, we know, not fond of reading for its
+own sake; and when they do read for their own pleasure, they naturally
+read something that interests them. Now, what are called serious books,
+including certainly the Bible, do not interest them, and therefore they
+are not commonly read. What shall we say, then? Are they not interested
+in becoming good, in learning to do the things which, they would? If
+they are not, if they care not for the bondage of sin and death, there
+is, of course, nothing to be said; then they are condemned already; they
+are not the children of God. But one says, "I wish I could find interest
+in a serious book, but I cannot." Observe again, "Ye cannot do the
+things that ye would," because the flesh and the Spirit are contrary to
+one another. However, to return to him who says this, the answer to him
+is this,--"The interest cannot come without the reading; it may and
+will come with it." For interest in a subject depends very much on our
+knowledge of it; and so it is with, the things of Christ. As long as the
+life and death of Christ are strange to us, how can we be interested
+about them? but read them, thinking of what they were, and what were
+their ends, and who can help being interested about them? Read them
+carefully, and read them often, and they will bring before our minds the
+very thoughts which we need, and which the world keeps continually from
+us, the thoughts which naturally feed our prayers; thoughts not of self,
+nor selfishness, nor pleasure, nor passion, nor folly, but of such
+things as are truly God's--love, and self-denial, and purity, and
+wisdom. These thoughts come by reading the Scriptures; and strangely do
+they mingle at first with the common evil thoughts of our evil nature.
+But they soon find a home within us, and more good thoughts gather round
+them, and there comes a time when daily life with its various business,
+which, once seemed to shut them out altogether, now ministers to their
+nourishment.
+
+Wherefore, in conclusion, walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil
+the lusts of the flesh; but do even the things which ye would. And ye
+can walk in the Spirit, if ye seek for the Spirit; if ye seek him by
+prayer, and by reading of Christ, and the things of Christ. If we will
+do neither, then most assuredly we are not seeking him; if we seek him
+not, we shall never find him. If we find him not, we shall never be able
+to do the things that we would; we shall never be redeemed, never made
+free, but our souls shall be overcome by their evil nature, as surely as
+our bodies by their diseased nature; till one death shall possess us
+wholly, a death of body and of soul, the death of eternal misery.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE IX.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LUKE xiv. 33.
+
+_Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot
+be my disciple_.
+
+
+In order to show that these words were not spoken to the apostles alone,
+but to all Christians, we have only to turn to the 25th and 26th verses,
+which run thus:--"And there went great multitudes with him, and he
+turned and said unto them, If any man come to me, and hate not his
+father and mother, and wife and children, and brethren and sisters, yea
+and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." The words were not,
+then, spoken to the twelve apostles only, as if they contained merely
+some rule of extraordinary piety, which was not to be required of common
+Christians; they were spoken to a great multitude; they were spoken to
+warn all persons in that multitude that not one of them could become a
+Christian, unless he gave himself up to Christ body and soul. Thus
+declaring that there is but one rule for all; a rule which the highest
+Christian can never go beyond; and which the lowest, if he would be a
+Christian at all, must make the foundation of his whole life.
+
+Now take the words, either of the text or of the 26th verse, and is it
+possible to avoid seeing that, on the very lowest interpretation, they
+do insist upon a very high standard; that they do require a very entire
+and devoted obedience? Is it possible for any one who believes what
+Christ has said, to rest contented, either for himself or for others,
+with that very low and very unchristian standard which he sees and knows
+to prevail generally in the world? Is it possible for him not to wish,
+for himself and for all in whose welfare he is interested, that they may
+belong to the small minority in matters of principle and practice,
+rather than to the large majority?
+
+And because he so wishes, one who endeavours to follow Christ sincerely
+can never be satisfied with the excuse that he acts and thinks quite as
+well as the mass of persons about him; it can never give him comfort,
+with regard to any judgment or practice, to be told, in common language,
+"Everybody thinks so; everybody does so." If, indeed, this expression
+"everybody" might be taken literally; if it were quite true, without any
+exception, that "everybody thought or did so;" then I grant that it
+would have a very great authority; so great that it would be almost a
+mark of madness to run counter to it. For what all men, all without a
+single exception, were to agree in, must be some truth which the human
+mind could not reject without insanity,--like the axioms of science, or
+some action which if we did not we could not live, as sleeping and
+eating; or if there be any moral point so universally agreed upon, then
+it must be something exceedingly general: as, for instance, that truth
+is in itself to be preferred to falsehood; which to dispute would be
+monstrous. But, once admit a single exception, and the infallible virtue
+of the rule ceases. I can conceive one single good and wise man's
+judgment and practice, requiring, at any rate, to be carefully attended
+to, and his reasons examined, although millions upon millions stood
+against him. But go on with the number of exceptions, and bring the
+expression "everybody," to its real meaning, which is only "most
+persons," "the great majority of the world;" then the rule becomes of
+no virtue at all, but very often the contrary. If in matters of morals
+many are on one side and some on the other, it is impossible to
+pronounce at once which are most likely to be right: it depends on the
+sort of case on which the difference exists; for the victories of truth
+and of good are but partial. It is not all truth that triumphs in the
+world, nor all good; but only truth and good up to a certain point. Let
+them once pass this point, and their progress pauses. Their followers,
+in the mass, cannot keep up with them thus far: fewer and fewer are
+those who still press on in their company, till at last even these fail;
+and there is a perfection at which they are deserted by all men, and are
+in the presence of God and of Christ alone.
+
+Thus it is that, up to a certain point, in moral matters the majority
+are right; and thus Christ's gospel, in a great many respects, goes
+along with public opinion, and the voice of society is the voice of
+truth. But this, to use the expression of our Lord's parable, this is
+but half the height of that tower whose top should reach unto heaven.
+Christianity ascends a great deal higher; and therefore so many who
+begin to build are never able to finish. Christ's disciples and the
+world's disciples work for a certain way together; and thus far the
+world's disciples call themselves Christ's, and so Christ's followers
+seem to be a great majority. But Christ warns us expressly that we are
+not his disciples merely by going a certain way on the same road with
+them. They only are His, who follow Him to the end. They only are His,
+who follow him in spite of everything, who leave all rather than leave
+him. For the rest, He does not own them. What the world can give they
+may enjoy; but Christ's kingdom is shut against them.
+
+Speaking, then, according to Christ's judgment, and we must hold those
+to be of the world, and not of Him,--and therefore in God's judgment, to
+be the evil and not the good,--who do not make up their minds to live in
+His service, and to refer their actions, words, and thoughts to His
+will. Who these are it is very true that we many times cannot know: only
+we may always fear that they are the majority of society; and therefore
+we are rather anxious in any individual's case to get a proof that he is
+not one of them, because, as they are very many, there is always a sort
+of presumption that any given person is of this number, unless there is
+some evidence, or some presumption at any rate, for thinking
+the contrary.
+
+When we speak, then, of the good and of the evil side in human life, in
+any society, whether smaller or larger,--this is what we mean, or should
+mean. The evil side contains much that is, up to a certain point, good:
+the good side,--for does it not consist of human beings?--contains,
+unhappily, much in it that is evil. Not all in the one is to be
+avoided,--far from it; nor is all in the other by any means to be
+followed. But still those are called evil in God's judgment who live
+according to their own impulses, or according to the law of the society
+around them; and those are to be called good, who, in their principles,
+whatever may be the imperfections of their practice, endeavour in all
+things to live according to the will of Christ.
+
+And in this view the characters of Jacob and Esau are, as it seems to
+me, full of instruction; and above all to us here. For I have often
+observed that the early age of an individual bears a great resemblance
+to the early age of the human race, or of any particular nation; so that
+the characters of the Old Testament are often more suited, in a
+Christian country, for the instruction of the young than for those of
+more advanced years. To Christian men, looking at Jacob's life, with the
+faults recorded of it, it is sometimes strange that he should be spoken
+of as good. But it seems that in a rude state of society, where
+knowledge is very low, and passion very strong, the great virtue is to
+be freed from the dominion of the prevailing low principle, to see and
+resolve that we ought and will live according to knowledge, and not
+according to passion or impulse. The knowledge may be very imperfect,
+and probably is so: the practice may in many respects offend against
+knowledge, and probably will do so: yet is a great step taken; it is
+_the_ virtue of man, in such a state of society, to follow, though
+imperfectly, principle, where others follow instinct, or the opinion of
+their fellows. It is the great distinguishing mark, in such a state of
+things, between the good and the evil; for this reason, amongst many
+others, that it is the virtue, under such, circumstances, of the hardest
+attainment.
+
+Now, the Scripture judgment of Jacob and Esau, should be in an especial
+manner the basis of our judgment with regard to the young. None can
+doubt, that amongst the young, when they form a society of their own,
+the great temptation is to live by impulse, or according to the opinion
+of those around them. It is like a light breaking in upon darkness, when
+a young person is led to follow a higher standard, and to live according
+to God's will. Esau, in his faults and amiable points alike, is the very
+image of the prevailing character amongst boys; sometimes violently
+revengeful, as when Esau looked forward with satisfaction to the
+prospect of his father's death, because then we should be able to slay
+his brother Jacob; sometimes full of generosity, as when Esau forgot all
+his grounds of complaint against his brother, and received him on his
+return from Mesopotamia with open arms;--but habitually careless, and
+setting the present before the future, the lower gratification before
+the higher, as when Esau sold his birth-right for a mess of pottage. And
+the point to be noted is, that, because of this carelessness, this
+profaneness or ungodliness, as it is truly called in the New Testament,
+Esau is distinguished from those who were God's people; the promises
+were not his, nor yet the blessing. This is remarkable, because Esau's
+faults, undoubtedly were just the faults of his age: he was no worse
+than the great majority of those around him; he lived as we should say,
+in our common language, that it was natural for him to live. He had,
+therefore, precisely all those excuses which are commonly urged for the
+prevailing faults of boys; yet it is quite certain that the Scripture
+holds him out as a representative of those who were not on the side
+of God,
+
+If the Scripture has so judged of Esau and Jacob, it must be the model
+for our judgments of those whose circumstances, on account of their
+belonging to a society consisting wholly of persons young in age,
+greatly resemble the circumstances of the early society of the world. I
+lay the stress on the belonging to a society wholly formed of young
+persons; for the case of young persons brought up at home, is extremely
+different; and their circumstances would be best suited by a different
+scriptural example. But here, with you, I am quite sure that the great
+distinguishing mark between good and evil, is the endeavouring, or not
+endeavouring, to rise above the carelessness of the society of which you
+are members; the determining, or not determining, to judge of things by
+another rule than that of school morality or honour; the trying, or not
+trying, to please God, instead of those around you: for the notions and
+maxims of a society of young persons are like the notions and maxims of
+men in a half-civilized age, a strange mixture of right and wrong; or
+rather wrong in their result, although with some right feeling in them,
+and therefore as a guide, false and mischievous. That it is natural to
+follow these maxims, is quite obvious: they are the besetting sin of
+your particular condition; and it is always according to our corrupt
+nature to follow our besetting sin. It is quite natural that you should
+be careless, profane, mistaking evil for good, and good for evil; but
+salvation is not for those who follow their nature, but for those in
+whom God's grace has overcome its evil; it is for those, in Christ's
+language, who take up their cross and follow him; that is, for those who
+struggle against their evil nature, that they may gain a better nature,
+and be born, not after the flesh, but after the Spirit of God.
+
+What is to be said to this? or what qualification, or compromise, is to
+be made in it? The words of the text will authorize us, at any rate, to
+make none: their language is not that of indulgent allowance; but it is
+a call, a loud and earnest, even a severe, call, it may be, in the
+judgment of our evil nature,--to shake off the weight that hangs about
+us; to deliver our hearts from the dominion of that which cannot profit,
+and to submit them to Christ alone. This is God's judgment, this is
+Christ's word; and we cannot and dare not qualify it. They are evil, for
+God and Christ declare it, who judge and live after the maxims of the
+society around them, and not after Christ; they are evil who are
+careless; they are evil who live according to their own blind and
+capricious feelings, now hot, now cold; they are evil who call evil
+good, and good evil, because they have not known the Father nor Christ.
+This, and nothing less, we say, lest we should be found false witnesses
+of God: but if this language, which is that of Scripture, seem harsh, to
+any one, oh! let him remember how soon he may change it into the
+language of the most abundant mercy, of the tenderest love; that if he
+calls upon God, God is ready to hear; that if he seeks to know and to do
+God's will, God will be found by him, and will strengthen him; that it
+is true kindness not to disguise from him his real danger, but earnestly
+to conjure him to flee from it, and to offer our humblest prayers to
+God, for him and ourselves, that our judgments and our practice may be
+formed only after his example.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE X.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+1 TIMOTHY i. 9.
+
+_The law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and
+disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy
+and profane_.
+
+
+These words explain the meaning of a great many passages in St. Paul's
+Epistles, in which also he speaks of the law, and of not being under the
+law, and other such expressions. And it is clear also, that he is not
+speaking solely, or chiefly, or, in any considerable degree, of the
+ceremonial law; but much more of the law of moral good, the law which
+told men how they ought to live, and how they ought not. This law, he
+says, is not made for good men, but for evil: a thing so plain, that we
+may well wonder how any could ever have misunderstood it. It is so
+manifest, that strict rules are required, just exactly in proportion to
+our inability or want of will to rule ourselves; it is so very plain,
+that, with regard to those crimes which we are under no temptation to
+commit, we feel exactly as if there were no law. Which of us ever
+thinks, as a matter of personal concern, of the law which sentences to
+death murderers, or housebreakers, or those who maliciously set fire to
+their neighbours' property? Do we not feel that, as far as our own
+conduct is concerned, it would be exactly the same thing if no such law
+were in existence? We should no more murder, or rob, or set fire to
+houses and barns, if the law were wholly done away, than we do now that
+it is in force.
+
+There are, then, some points in which we feel practically that we are
+not under the law, but dead to it; that the law is not made for us: but
+do we think, therefore, that we may murder, and rob, and burn? or do we
+not rather feel that such a notion would be little short of madness? We
+are not under the law, because we do not need it; not because there is
+in reality no law to punish us if we do need it. And just of this kind
+is that general freedom from the law, of which St. Paul speaks, as the
+high privilege of true Christians.
+
+But yet St. Paul would not at all mean that any Christian is altogether
+without the law: that is, that there are no points at all in which his
+inclination is not to evil, and in which, therefore, he needs the fear
+of God to restrain him from it. When he says of himself, that he kept
+under his body lest that by any means he should become a castaway; just
+so far as this fear of being a castaway possessed him, that is, just so
+far as there were any evil tendencies in him, which required him to keep
+them under by an effort, just so far was he under the law. And this is
+so, as we full well know, with us all; for as there is none of us in
+whom sin is utterly dead, so neither can there be any of us who is
+altogether dead to the law.
+
+Yet, although this be so, there is no doubt that the gospel wishes to
+consider us as generally dead to the law, in order that we really may
+become so continually more and more. It supposes that the Spirit of God,
+presenting to our minds the sight of God's love in Christ, sets us free
+from the law of sin and death; that is, that a sense of thankfulness to
+God, and love of God and of Christ, will be so strong a motive, that we
+shall, generally speaking, need no other; that it will so work upon us,
+as to make us feel good, easy, and delightful, and thus to become dead
+to the law. And there is no doubt also, that that same freedom from the
+law, which we ourselves experience daily, in respect of some particular
+great crimes, (for, as I said, we do not feel that it is the fear of the
+law which keeps us from murder or from robbing,) that very same freedom
+is felt by good men in many other points, where it may be that we
+ourselves do not feel it. A common instance may be given with respect to
+prayer, and the outward worship of God. There are a great many who feel
+this as a duty; but there are many also to whom it is not so much a
+duty, as a privilege and a pleasure; and these are dead to the law which
+commands us to be instant in prayer, just as we, in general, are dead to
+the law which commands us to do no murder.
+
+This being understood, it will be perfectly plain, why St. Paul, along
+with all his language as to the law being passed away, and our being
+become dead to it, yet uses, very frequently, language of another kind,
+which shows that the law is not dead in itself, but lives, and ever will
+live. He says, "We must all stand before the judgment seat of Christ,
+that every one may receive according to what he has done in the body."
+And he adds, "Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade
+men." But the judgment, and the terror of the Lord, mean precisely what
+are meant by the law. And this language of St. Paul shows more clearly,
+that, unless we are first dead to the law, the law is not, and never
+will be dead to us.
+
+I should not have thought it useless, to have offered merely this
+explanation of a language, which is very common in the New Testament,
+which, forms one of its characteristic points, (for St. John's
+expression of "Perfect love casteth out fear," is exactly equivalent to
+St. Paul's, "That we are dead to the law,") and which has been often
+misunderstood, or misrepresented. But yet I am well aware, that mere
+explanations of Scripture cannot be expected to interest those to whom
+Scripture is not familiar. The answer to a riddle would be very soon
+forgotten, unless the riddle had first at once amused and puzzled us.
+Just so, explanations of Scripture, to be at all valued, must suppose a
+previous knowledge of, and desire to understand, the difficulty; and
+this we cannot expect to find in very young persons. Thus far, then,
+what I have said has been necessarily addressed, I do not say, or mean,
+to the oldest part of my hearers only, but yet to the older, and more
+considering part of them. But the subject is capable, I think, of being
+brought much more closely home to us; for what St. Paul says of the law,
+with reference to all mankind, is precisely that state of mind which one
+would wish to see here; and the mistakes of his meaning are just such as
+are often prevalent, and are likely to do great mischief, with regard to
+the motives to be appealed to in education.
+
+Now, what is the case in the Scripture? Men had been subject to a strict
+law of rewards and punishments, appealing directly to their hopes, and
+to their fears. The gospel offered itself to them, as a declaration of
+God's love to them; so wonderful, that it seemed as though it could not
+but excite them to love him in return. It also raised their whole
+nature; their understandings, no less than their affections; and thus
+led them to do God's will, from another and higher feeling than they had
+felt heretofore; to do it, not because they must, but because they loved
+it. And to such as answered to this heavenly call, God laid aside, if I
+may venture so to speak, all his terrors; he showed himself to them only
+as a loving father, between whom and his children there was nothing but
+mutual affection; who would be loved by them, and love them forever. But
+to those who answered not to it, and far more, who dared to abuse it;
+who thought that God's love was weakness; that the liberty to which they
+were called, was the liberty of devils, the liberty of doing evil as
+they would; to all such, God was still a consuming fire, and their most
+merciful Saviour himself was a judge to try their very hearts and reins;
+in short, the gospel was to them, not salvation, but condemnation; it
+awakened not the better, but the baser parts of their nature; it did not
+do away, but doubled their guilt, and therefore brought upon them, and
+will bring through all eternity, a double measure of punishment.
+
+Now all this applies exactly to that earlier and, as it were,
+preparatory life, which ends not in death, but in manhood. The state of
+boyhood begins under a law. It is a great mistake to address always the
+reason of a child, when you ought rather to require his obedience. Do
+this, do not do that; if you do this, I shall love you; if you do not, I
+shall punish you;--such is the state, most clearly a state of law, under
+which we are, and must be, placed at the beginning of education. But we
+should desire and endeavour to see this state of law succeeded by
+something better; we should desire so to unfold the love of Christ as to
+draw the affections towards him; we should desire so to raise the
+understanding as that it may fasten itself, by its own native tendrils,
+round the pillar of truth, without requiring to be bound to it by
+external bands. We should avoid all unnecessary harshness; we should
+speak and act with all possible kindness; because love, rather than
+fear, love both of God and man, is the motive which we particularly wish
+to awaken. Thus, keeping punishment in the background and, as it were,
+out of sight, and putting forward encouragement and kindness, we should
+attract, as it were, the good and noble feelings of those with, whom we
+are dealing, and invite them to open, and to answer to, a system of
+confidence and kindness, rather than risk the chilling and hardening
+them by a system of mistrust and severity.
+
+And for those who do answer to this call, how really true is it that
+they do soon become dead, in great measure, to the law of the place
+where they are living! How little do they generally feel its restraints,
+or its tasks, burdensome! How very little have they to do with its
+punishments! Led on by degrees continually higher and higher, their
+relations with us become more and more relations of entire confidence
+and kindness; and when at last their trial is over, and they pass from
+this first life, as I have ventured to call it, into their second life
+of manhood, how beautifully are they ripened for that state! how
+naturally do all the restraints of this first life fall away, like the
+mortal body of the perfected Christian; and they enter upon the full
+liberty of manhood, fitted at once to enjoy and to improve it!
+
+But observe, that St. Paul does not suppose even the best Christian to
+be without the law altogether: there will ever be some points in which
+he will need to remember it. And so it is unkindness, rather than
+kindness, and a very mischievous mistake, to forget that here, in this
+our preparatory life, the law cannot cease altogether with any one; that
+it is not possible to find a perfect sense and feeling of right existing
+in every action; nay, that it is even unreasonable to seem to expect it.
+Little faults, little irregularities, there always will be, with which
+the law is best fitted to deal; which should be met, I mean, by a system
+of rules and of punishments, not severe, certainly, nor one at all
+inconsistent with general respect, kindness, and confidence; but which
+check the particular faults alluded to better, I think, than could be
+done by seeming to expect of the individual that he should, in all such
+cases, be a law to himself. There is a possibility of our over-straining
+the highest principles, by continually appealing to them on very
+trifling occasions. It is far better, here, to apply the system of the
+law; to require obedience to rules, as a matter of discipline; to visit
+the breach of them by moderate punishment, not given in anger, not at
+all inconsistent with general confidence and regard, but gently
+reminding us of that truth which we may never dare wholly to
+forget,--that punishment will exist eternally so long as there is evil,
+and that the only way of remaining for ever entirely strangers to it, is
+by adhering for ever and entirely to good.
+
+This applies to every one amongst us; and is the reason why rules,
+discipline, and punishments, however much they may be, and are, kept in
+the background for such, as have become almost wholly dead to them, must
+yet continue in existence, because none are, or can be, dead to them
+altogether. But now, suppose that we have a nature to deal with, which,
+cannot answer to a system of kindness, but abuses it; which, when
+punishment is kept at a distance, rejoices, as thinking that it may
+follow evil safely; a nature not to be touched by the love of God or
+man, not to be guided by any perception of its own as to what is right
+and true. Is the law dead really to such as these? or should it be so?
+Is punishment a degradation to a nature which, is so self-degraded as to
+be incapable of being moved by anything better? For this is the real
+degradation which we should avoid; not the fear of punishment, which is
+not at all degrading, but the being insensible to the love of Christ and
+of goodness; and so being capable of receiving no other motive than the
+fear of punishment alone. With such natures, to withhold punishment,
+would be indeed to make Christ the minister of sin; to make mercy, that
+is, lead to evil, and not to good. For them, the law never is dead, and
+never will be. Here, of course, in this first life, as I have called it,
+punishment indeed goes but a little way: it is very easy for a hardened
+nature to defy all that could be laid upon it here in the way of actual
+compulsion. Our only course is to cut short the time of trial, when we
+find a nature in whom that trial cannot end in good. Still there may be
+those in whom this life here, like their greater life which shall last
+for ever, will have far more to do with punishment than with kindness;
+they will be living all their time under the law. Continue this to our
+second life, and the law then will be no less alive, and they will never
+be dead to it, nor will it be ever dead to them. And however a hardened
+nature may well despise the punishments of its first life,--punishments,
+whose whole object is correction, and not retribution,--yet, where is
+the nature so hard as to endure, in its relations with God, to feel more
+of his punishment than of his mercy; to know him for ever as a God of
+judgment, and not as a Father of love?
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XI.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+ST. LUKE xxi. 36.
+
+_Watch ye, therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy
+to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before
+the Son of Man_.
+
+
+This might be a text for a history of the Christian Church, from its
+foundation to this hour, or to the latest hour of the world's existence.
+We might observe how it Lad fulfilled its Lord's command; with what
+steadiness it had gone forward on its course, with the constant hope of
+meeting Him once again in glory. We might see how it had escaped all
+these things that were to come to pass: tracing its course amidst the
+manifold revolutions of the world, inward and outward. In the few words,
+"all these things that shall come to pass," are contained all the events
+of the last eighteen hundred years: indistinct and unknown to us, as
+long as they are thus folded up together; but capable of being unrolled
+before our eyes in a long order, in which should be displayed all the
+outward changes of nations, the spread of discovery, the vicissitudes of
+conquest; and yet more, the inward changes of men's minds, the various
+schools of philosophy, the successive forms of public opinion, the
+influences of various races, all the manifold elements by which the
+moral character of the Christian world has been affected. We might
+observe how the Church had escaped all these things, or to what degree
+it had received from any of them good or evil. And then, stopping at
+the point at which it has actually arrived, we might consider how far it
+deserves the character of that Church, "without spot, or wrinkle, or any
+such thing," which should be presented before the Son of Man at his
+coming again.
+
+This would be a great subject; and one, if worthily executed, full of
+the deepest instruction to us all. But our Lord's words may also be made
+the text for a history or inquiry of another sort, far less
+comprehensive in time and space, far less grand, far less interesting to
+the understanding; yet, on the other hand, capable of being wrought out
+far more completely, and far more interesting to the spiritual and
+eternal welfare of each of us. They may be made the text for an inquiry
+into the course hitherto held, not by the Church as a body, but by each
+of us individual members of it; an inquiry how far we, each of us, have
+watched and prayed always, that we might be accounted worthy to escape
+all the things which should come to pass, and to stand before the Son of
+Man. And, in this view of the words, the expression "all these things
+which shall come to pass" has reference no longer to great political
+revolutions, nor to schools of philosophy, nor to prominent points of
+national character; but to those humbler events, to those lesser
+changes, outward and inward, through which we each, pass between our
+cradle and our grave. How have we escaped these, or turned them to good
+account? Have earthly things so ministered to our eternal welfare, that
+if we were each one of us, by a stroke from heaven, cut off at that very
+point in our course to which we have severally attained this day, we
+should be accounted worthy to stand before the Son of Man?
+
+Here is, indeed, a very humble history for us each to study; yet what
+other history can concern us so nearly? And as, in the history of the
+world, experience in part supplies the place of prophecy, and the fate
+of one nation is in a manner a mirror to another, so in our individual
+history, the experience of the old is a lesson to the middle-aged, and
+that of the middle-aged a lesson to the young. If you wish to know what
+are the things which shall come to pass with respect to you, we can draw
+aside the veil from your coming life, because what you will be is no
+other than what we are. If we would go onwards, in like manner, and ask
+what are the things which shall come to pass with respect to us, our
+coming life may be seen in the past and present life of the old; for
+what we shall be is no other than what they have been, or than what
+they are.
+
+Let us take, then, the actual moment with, each of us, and suppose that
+our Lord speaks to each of us as he did to his first disciples: "Watch
+and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these
+things which shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man." We
+ask, naturally, "What are the things which shall come to pass?" and it
+is to this question that I am to try to suggest the answer.
+
+Those arrived at middle age may ask the question, "What are the things
+which shall come to pass to us?" Now, setting aside extraordinary
+accidents, on which we cannot reckon, and the answer would, I think, be
+something of this sort: There will not come to pass, it is likely, any
+great change in our condition or employment in life. In middle age our
+calling, with all the duties which it involves, must generally be fixed
+for each of us. Our particular kind of trial will not, it is probable,
+be much altered. We must not, as in youth, fancy that, although our
+actual occupation does not suit us, although its temptations are often
+too strong for us, yet a change may take place to another line of duty,
+and the temptations in that new line may be less formidable. In middle
+age it will not do to indulge such fond hopes as these. On the contrary,
+our hope must lie, not in escape, but in victory. If our temptations
+press us hard, we cannot expect to have them exchanged for others less
+powerful: they will remain with us, and we must overcome them, or
+perish. Have we tastes not fully reconciled to our calling,--faculties
+which seem not to have found their proper field? We must seek our remedy
+not from without, humanly speaking, but from within: we must discipline
+ourselves; we must teach our tastes to cling gracefully around that duty
+to which else they must be helplessly fastened. If any faculties appear
+not to have found their proper field, we must think that God has, for
+certain wise reasons, judged it best for us that they should not be
+exercised; and we must be content to render him the service of others.
+In this respect, then, the immediate prospect for middle age is not so
+much change as steadfastness. Fortune will not suit herself to our
+wishes: we must learn to suit our wishes to her.
+
+But go on a little farther, and what are the things which must come to
+pass then? A new and most solemn interest arising to us in the entrance
+of our children into active life. Hitherto they have lived under our
+care, and our duty to them was simple; but now there comes the choice of
+a profession, the watching and guiding them, as well as we can, at this
+critical moment of their course. What cares await us here; and yet what
+need of avoiding over care! What a trial for us, how we value our
+children's worldly interests when compared with their eternal--whether
+we prefer for them the path which may lead most readily to worldly
+wealth and honour, or that in, which they may best and safest follow
+Christ! This is a danger which will come to pass to us ere long: do we
+watch and pray that we may be delivered from it?
+
+The interest of life, which had, perhaps, something begun to fade for
+ourselves, will revive with vigour at this period in behalf of our
+children; but after this it will go on steadily ebbing. What life can
+offer we have tasted for ourselves; we have seen it tasted, or in the
+way to be tasted, by them. The harvest is gathered, and the symptoms of
+the fall appear. Is it that some faculty becomes a little impaired, some
+taste a little dulled; or is it that the friends and companions of our
+life are beginning to drop away from us? Long since, those whom we loved
+of the generation before us have been gathered to the grave; now those
+of our own generation are falling fast also--brothers, sisters, friends
+of our early youth, a wife, a husband. We are surrounded by a younger
+generation, to whom the half of our lives, with all their recollections
+and sympathies, are a thing unknown. Impatience, weariness, a clinging
+to the past, a vain wish to prolong it in an earthly future,--these are
+the things which shall befal us then: and they will befal us too surely,
+and too irresistibly, unless, by earlier watchfulness and prayer, we may
+have been enabled to avoid them. For vain will it be, with faculties at
+once weakened by the decay of nature and perverted by long habits of
+worldliness, to essay, for the first time, to force our way into the
+kingdom of heaven. Old age is not the season for contest and victory;
+nor shall we then be so able to escape unharmed from the temptations of
+life as to stand before the Son of Man.
+
+These are the things which will come to pass for us and for you. But for
+you there is much more to come, which to us is not future now, but past
+or present. With you, for a time, it will be all a course forwards and
+upwards. From the preparation for life, you will come to the reality;
+from a state of less importance, you will be passing on to one of
+greater. Your temptations, whatever they may be now, will not certainly
+become weaker. As outward restraint is more and more taken off from you,
+so your need of inward restraint will be greater. Will those who are
+extravagant now on a small scale, be less extravagant on a large scale?
+Will those who are selfish now, become less selfish amidst a wider field
+of enjoyment? Will those who know not or care not for Christ, while yet,
+as it were, standing quietly on the shore, be led to think of him more
+amidst the excitement of the first setting sail, amidst the interest of
+the first newly-seen country?
+
+You know not yet, nor can know, the immense importance of that period of
+life on which many of you are entering, or have just entered. You are
+coming, or come, to what may be called the second beginning of life: to
+which, in the common course of things, there will succeed no third.
+Ignorance, absence of temptation, the presence of all good impressions,
+constitute much of the innocence of mere childhood,--so beautiful while
+it lasts, so sure to be soon blighted! It is blighted in the first
+experience of life, most commonly when a boy first goes to school. Then
+his mere innocence, which indeed he may be said to have worn rather
+instinctively than by choice, becomes grievously polluted. Then come the
+hardness, the coarseness, the intense selfishness; sometimes, too, the
+falsehood, the cruelty, the folly of the boy: then comes that period, so
+trying to the faith of parents, when all their early care seems blasted;
+when the vineyard, which they had fenced so tenderly, seems all
+despoiled and trodden under foot. It is indeed a discouraging season,
+the exact image of the ungenial springs of our natural year. But after
+this there comes, as it were, a second beginning of life, when principle
+takes the place of innocence. There is a time,--many of you must have
+arrived at it,--when thought and inquiry awaken; when, out of the mere
+chaos of boyhood, the elements of the future character of the man begin
+to appear. Blessed are they for whom the confusion and disarray of their
+boyish life is quickened into a true life by the moving of the Spirit of
+God! Blessed are they for whom the beginnings of thought and inquiry are
+the beginnings also of faith and love; when the new character receives,
+as it is forming, the Christian seed, and the man is also the Christian.
+And, then, this second beginning of life, resting on faith and conscious
+principle, and not on mere passive innocence, stands sure for the middle
+and the end: those who so watch and pray as to escape out of this
+critical period, not merely unharmed, but, as it were, set clearly on
+their way to heaven, will, with God's grace, escape out of the things
+which shall befal them afterwards, till they shall stand before the
+Son of Man.
+
+But the word is, "Watch and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy
+to escape." We see the time with many of you come, or immediately
+coming; out of your present state _a_ character will certainly be
+formed; as surely as the innocence of childhood has perished, so surely
+will the carelessness of boyhood perish too. _A_ character will be
+formed, whether you watch and pray, or whether you do neither; but the
+great point is what this character may be. If you do not watch the
+process, it will surely be the character of death eternal. Thought and
+inquiry will satisfy themselves very readily with an answer as far as
+regards spiritual things: their whole vigour will be devoted to the
+things of this world, to science or to business, or to public matters,
+all alike hardening rather than softening to the mind, if its thoughts
+do not go to something higher and deeper still. And as years pass on, we
+may think on these our favourite or professional subjects more and more
+earnestly; our views on them may be clearer and sounder, but there comes
+again nothing like the first free burst of thought in youth; the
+intellect in later life, if its tone was not rightly taken earlier,
+becomes narrowed in proportion to its greater vigour; one thing it sees
+clearly, but it is blind to all beside. It is in youth that the after
+tone of the mind is happily formed, when that natural burst of thought
+is sanctified and quickened by God's Spirit, and we set up within us to
+love and adore, all our days, the one image of the truth of God, our
+Saviour Jesus. Then, whatever else may befal us afterwards, it rarely
+happens that our faith will fail; his image, implanted in us, preserves
+us amid every change; we are counted worthy to escape all the things
+which may come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XII
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PROVERBS i. 28.
+
+_Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me
+early, but they shall not find me_.
+
+
+Christ's gospel gives out the forgiveness of sins; and as this is its
+very essence, so also in what we read connected with Christ's gospel,
+the tone of encouragement, of mercy, of loving-kindness to sinners, is
+ever predominant. What was needed at the beginning of the gospel is no
+less needed now; we cannot spare one jot or one tittle of this gracious
+language; now, as ever, the free grace, that most seems to be without
+the law, does most surely establish the law. But yet there is another
+language, which is to be found alike in the Old Testament and in the
+New; a language not indeed so common as the language of mercy, but yet
+repeated many times; a language which we also need as fully as it was
+ever needed, and of whose severity we can no more spare one tittle than
+we can spare anything of the comfort of the other. And yet this language
+has not, I think, been enforced so often as it should have been. Men
+have rather shrunk from it, and seemed afraid of it; they have connected
+it sometimes with certain foolish and presumptuous questions, which we,
+indeed, do well to turn from; but they have not seen, that with such it
+has no natural connexion, but belongs to a certain fact in the
+constitution of our nature, and is most highly moral and practical.
+
+The language to which. I allude is expressed, amongst other passages,
+by the words of the text. They speak of men's calling upon God, and of
+his refusing to hear them; of men's seeking God, and not finding him.
+Remember, at the same time, our Lord's words, "Ask, and ye shall
+receive; seek, and ye shall find." I purposely put together these
+opposite passages, because the full character of God's Revelation is
+thus seen more clearly. Do we doubt that our Lord's words are true, and
+do we not prize them as some of the most precious which he has left us?
+We do well to do so; but shall we doubt any more the truth of the words
+of the text; and shall we not consider them as a warning no less needful
+than the comfort in the other case? Indeed, as true as it is, that, if
+we seek God, we shall find him; so true is it that we may seek him, and
+yet not find him.
+
+Now, then, how to explain this seeming contradiction? We can see at
+once, that these things are not said of the same persons, or rather of
+the same characters at the same time. They are said of the same persons:
+that is, there is no one here assembled who is not concerned with both,
+and to whom both may not be applicable. Only they are not and cannot be
+both applicable to the same person at the very same time. If God will be
+found by us, at any given moment, on our seeking him, it is impossible
+that, at that same moment, he should also not be found. Thus far is
+plain to every one.
+
+And now, is it true of us, at this present time, that God will be found
+by us if we seek him, or that he will not be found? If we say that he
+will be found, then the words of the text are not applicable to us at
+present, although at some future time they may be; and then we have that
+well-known difficulty to encounter, to attempt to draw the mind's
+attention to a future and only contingent evil. If we say that he will
+not be found, then of what avail can it be to say any word more? Why sit
+we in this place, to preach, or to listen to preaching, if God, after
+all, will not be found? Or, again, should we say that there are some by
+whom he will not be found, then who are they that are thus horribly
+marked out from among their brethren? Can we dare to conceive of any one
+amongst us that he is such an one; that there are some, nay, that there
+is any one amongst us, to whom it is the same thing whether he will
+hear, or whether he will forbear; who may close his ears as safely as
+open them, because God has turned his face from him for ever? It were
+indeed horrible to suppose that any one of us were in such a state; and
+happily it is a thought of horror which the truth may allow us to repel.
+
+But what, if I were to say, that now, at this very moment, the words of
+the text are both applicable to us, and not applicable? Is this a
+contradiction, and therefore impossible? Or is it but a seeming
+contradiction only, and not only possible, but true? Let us see how the
+case appears to be.
+
+We should allow, I suppose, that the words of the text were at no time
+in any man's earthly life so true as they will be at the day of
+judgment. The hardest heart, the most obdurate in sin, the most closed
+against all repentance, is yet more within the reach of grace, we should
+imagine, whilst he is alive and in health, than he will be at the day of
+the resurrection. We can admit, then, that the words of the text may be
+true, in a greater or less degree; that they will be more entirely true
+at the last day, than at any earlier period, but yet that they may be
+substantially true, true almost beyond exception, in the life that now
+is. Now carry this same principle a little farther, and we come to our
+very own case. The words of the text will be more true at the day of
+judgment, than they ever are on earth; and yet on earth they are often
+true substantially and practically. And even so, they may be more true
+to each of us a few years hence, than they are at this moment; and yet,
+in a certain degree, they may be true at this moment; true, not
+absolutely and entirely, but partially; so true as to give a most solemn
+earnest, if we are not warned in time, of their more entire truth
+hereafter,--first, in this earthly life; then most perfectly of all,
+when we shall arise at the last day.
+
+It may be, then, that the words of the text, although not applicable to
+us in their full and most fatal sense, may yet be applicable to us in a
+certain degree: the evil which they speak of may be, not wholly future
+and contingent, and a thing to be feared, but present in part, actual,
+and a matter of experience. This is not contradiction: it is not
+impossible; it _may be_ our case. Let us see whether it really is so,
+that is, whether it is in any degree true of us, that when we call upon
+God he will not answer; that when we seek him, we shall in any manner be
+unable to find him.
+
+It is manifest that, in proportion as Christ's words "Seek, and ye shall
+find," are true to any man, so are the words of the text less true to
+him; and in proportion as Christ's words are less true to any one, so
+are the words of the text more true to him. Now, is Christ's promise,
+"Seek, and ye shall find," equally true to all of us? Conceive of
+one--the thing is rare, but not impossible,--of one who had been so kept
+from evil, and so happily led forward in good, that when arrived at
+boyhood, his soul had scarcely more stain upon it than when it was first
+fully cleansed, and forgiven, in baptism! Conceive him speaking truth,
+without any effort, on all occasions; not greedy, not proud, not
+violent, not selfish, not feeling conscious that he was living a life
+of sin, and therefore glad to come to God, rather than shrinking away
+from him! Conceive how completely to such an one would Christ's words be
+fulfilled, "Seek, and ye shall find!" When would his prayers be
+unblessed or unfruitful? When would he turn his thoughts to God without
+feeling pleasure in doing so; without a lively consciousness of God's
+love to him; without an assured sense of the reality of things not seen,
+of redemption and grace and glory? Would not the communion with God,
+enjoyed by one so untainted, come up to the full measure of those high
+promises, "It shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer,
+and while they are yet speaking, I will hear?" Would it not be plain,
+that God was as truly found, by such a person, as he was sought in
+sincerity and earnestness?
+
+But now, take the most of us: suppose us not to have been kept carefully
+from evil, nor led on steadily in good; suppose us to have reached
+boyhood with bad dispositions, ready for the first temptation, with
+habits of good uncultivated; suppose us to have no great horror of a
+lie, when it can serve our turn; with much love of pleasure, and little
+love of our duty; with much, selfishness, and little or no thought of
+God: suppose such an one, so sadly altered from a state of baptismal
+purity, to be saying his prayers as he had been taught to say them, and
+saying them sometimes with a thought of their meaning and a wish that
+God would hear them. But does God hear them? I ask of your own
+consciences, whether you have had any sense that he has heard you?
+whether death and judgment, Christ and Christ's service, have become
+more real to you after such prayers? If not, then is it not manifest,
+that you have sought God, and have not found him; that you have called
+upon him and he has not heard? You know by experience, that you are not
+as those true children who are ever with him, who listen to catch the
+lightest whisper of his Spirit, for whom, he, too, vouchsafes to bless
+the faintest breathing of their prayer.
+
+Or, again, in trying to turn from evil to good, have you ever found your
+resolutions give way, the ground which you had gained slide from under
+your feet, till you fell back again to what you were at the beginning?
+Has this ever happened to us? If it has, then in that case, also, we
+sought God, but failed to find him; the victory was not yours, but the
+enemy's; the Spirit of Christ did not help you so as to conquer.
+
+Take another case yet again. Has it ever happened to any of you, to have
+done a mischief to yourselves which you could not undo? It need not be
+one of the very highest kind; but has it ever happened, that, by
+neglect, you have lost ground in the society in which you are placed,
+which you cannot recover; that your contemporaries have gained an
+advance upon you, while you have not time left to overtake them? Does it
+ever happen that, from neglecting some particular element of learning in
+its proper season, and other things claiming your attention afterwards,
+you go on with a disadvantage, which you would fain remove, but cannot?
+Does it, in short, ever happen to any, that his complete success here is
+become impossible; that whatever prospects of another kind may be open
+to him elsewhere, yet that he cannot now be numbered amongst those who
+have turned the particular advantages here afforded them to that end
+which they might and ought to have done?
+
+To whomsoever this has happened, the truth of the words of the text is
+matter of experience, not in their full and most dreadful extent, but
+yet quite enough to prove that they are true; and that just as he now
+feels them in part, so, if he continues to be what he is, he will one
+day feel them wholly. He feels that it is possible to seek God, and not
+to find him; he has learnt by experience that neglected good, or
+committed evil, may be beyond the power of after-regret to undo. It is
+true, that as yet, to him, other prospects may be open: prospects which,
+probably, he may deem no less fair than those which he has forfeited.
+This may be so; but the point to observe is, that one prospect was lost
+so irretrievably by his own fault, that afterwards, when he wished to
+regain it, he could not. Now God gives him other prospects, which he may
+realize: but as he forfeited his first prospect beyond recovery, so he
+may do also with his last: and though ill-success at school may be made
+up by success in another sphere, yet what is to make up for ill-success
+in the great business of life, when that, too, has been forfeited as
+irrecoverably; when his last chance is gone as hopelessly as his first?
+
+Now, surely there is in all this an intelligible lesson. I am not at all
+exaggerating the importance of the particular prospect forfeited here:
+but I am pressing upon you, that this prospect may be, and often is,
+forfeited irrecoverably; that when you wish to regain it, it is too
+late, and you cannot. And I press this, because it is a true type of the
+whole of human life; because it is just as possible to forfeit salvation
+irrecoverably, as to forfeit that earthly good which is the prize of
+well-doing here, with this infinite difference, that the last forfeit is
+not only irretrievable, but fatal; it can no more be made up for, than
+it can be regained. Here, then, your present condition is a type of the
+complete truth of the text: but there are other points, to which I
+alluded before, in which it is more than a type; it is the very truth
+itself, although, happily, only in an imperfect measure. That unanswered
+prayer, of which I spoke, those broken resolutions,--are they not
+actually a calling on God, without his hearing us; a seeking him,
+without finding him? We remember who it was that could say with truth to
+his Father, "I know that thou nearest me always." We know what it is
+that hinders God from hearing us always; because we are not thoroughly
+one in his Son Christ Jesus. But this unanswered prayer is not properly
+the State of Christ's redeemed: it is an enemy that hath brought us to
+this; the same enemy who will, in time, make all our prayers to be
+unanswered, as some are now; who will cause God, not only to be slow to
+listen, but to refuse to listen for ever. Now we are not heard at once,
+we must repeat our prayers, with more and more earnestness, that God, at
+last, may hear, and may bless us. But if, instead of repeating them the
+more, we do the very contrary, and repeat them the less; if, because we
+have no comfort, and no seeming good from them, we give them up
+altogether; then the time will surely come when all prayer will be but
+the hopeless prayer of Esau, because it will be only the prayer of fear;
+because it will be only the dread of destruction that will, or can, move
+us:--the love of good will have gone beyond recall. Such prayer does but
+ask for pardon without repentance; and this never is, or can
+be, granted.
+
+So then, in conclusion, that very feeling of coldness, and unwillingness
+to pray, because we have often prayed in vain, is surely working in us
+that perfect death, which is the full truth of the words of the text. Of
+all of us, those who the least like to pray, who have prayed with the
+least benefit, have the most need to pray again. If they have sought
+God, without finding him, let them take heed that this be not their case
+for ever; that the truth, of which the seed is even now in them, may not
+be ripened to their everlasting destruction, when all their seeking, and
+all their prayer, will be as rejected by God, as, in part, it has
+been already.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XIII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MARK xii. 34.
+
+_Thou art not far from the kingdom of God_.
+
+
+Whoever has gone up any hill of more than common height, may remember
+the very different impression which the self-same point, whether bush,
+or stone, or cliff, has made upon him as he viewed it from below and
+from above. In going up it seemed so high, that we fancied, if we were
+once arrived at it, we should be at the summit of our ascent; while,
+when we had got beyond it, and looked down upon it, it seemed almost
+sunk to the level of the common plain; and we wondered that it could
+ever have appeared high to us.
+
+What happens with any natural object according to the different points
+from which we view it, happens also to any particular stage of
+advancement in our moral characters. There is a goodness which appears
+very exalted or very ordinary, according as it is much above or much
+below our own level. And this is the case with the expression of our
+Lord in the text, "Thou art not far from the kingdom of God." Does this
+seem a great thing or a little thing to be said to us? Does it give us a
+notion of a height which we should think it happiness to have readied;
+or of a state so little advanced, that it would be misery to be forced
+to go back to it? For, according as it seems to us the one or the other,
+so we may judge of the greater or less progress which we have made in
+ascending the holy mountain of our God.
+
+But while I say this, it is necessary to distinguish between two several
+senses, in which we may be said to be near to the kingdom of God, or
+actually in it. These two are in respect of knowledge, and in respect of
+feeling and practice. And our Lord's words seem to refer particularly to
+knowledge. The scribe to whom he used them, had expressed so just a
+sense of the true way of pleasing God, had so risen above the common
+false notions of his age and country, that his understanding seemed to
+be ripe for the truths of that kingdom of God, which was to make the
+worship of God to consist in spirit and in truth. Now as far as the
+knowledge of the kingdom of God is concerned, although, undoubtedly,
+there are many amongst us who are deficient in it, yet it is true also,
+that a great many of us are in possession of it; we are familiar enough
+with the truths of the kingdom of God, and our understandings fully
+approve them. But we may be near to or far from the kingdom of God, in
+respect also of feeling and practice; and this is the great matter that
+concerns us. It is here, then, that we should ask ourselves what we
+think of our Lord's words in the text; and whether he to whom they were
+spoken appears to us an object of envy or of compassion; one whom we
+envy for having advanced so far, or pity for not being advanced further.
+
+"Not far from the kingdom of God." Again, if we take the words Kingdom
+of God in their highest sense, then the expression contains all that we
+could desire to have said of us in this life; hope itself on this side
+of the grave can go no higher. For as, in this sense, the kingdom of God
+cannot be actually entered before our death; so the best thing that can
+be said of us here, is, that we are not far from it; but we are in the
+land of Beulah, so happily imagined in the Pilgrim's Progress; all of
+our pilgrimage completed, save the last act of crossing the river; with
+the city of God full in sight, and with hearts ready to enter into it.
+In this sense, even St. Paul himself, when he wrote his last epistle
+from Rome, could say no more, could hope for, could desire no more, than
+to be not far from the kingdom of God.
+
+Yet again, take the words "Kingdom of God" in their lowest sense, and
+then it is woe to us all, if the expression in the text is all that can
+be said of us; if, in this sense, we are only not far from the kingdom
+of God. For take the kingdom of God as God's visible Church, and then,
+if we are not Christians at all, but only not far from becoming so; if
+we have not received Christ, but are not far from receiving him; this is
+a state so imperfect, that he who is in it, has not yet reached to the
+beginning of his Christian course; and we need not say how far he must
+be from its end, if he have not yet come as far as its beginning.
+
+Thus, in one sense, the words express something so high that nothing can
+be higher; in another, something so low, that, to us, nothing can be
+lower. We have yet to seek that sense, in which they may afford us a
+useful criterion of our own several states, by appearing high, perhaps,
+to some of us, and to others low.
+
+The sense which we seek is given by our Lord, when he declares that the
+kingdom of God is within us; or by St. Paul, when he tells us, that it
+is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. And now it is no
+more a thing which we cannot yet have reached, or, on the other hand,
+which we all have reached: there is now a great difference in us, some
+are far from it, some are near it, and some are in it; and thus it is,
+that they who are near it, seem in it to those who are afar off, and
+far from it to those who are in it.
+
+Now, first, do they seem far from it? Then, indeed, ours is a happy
+state, as many of us as can truly feel that they live so constantly in
+holy and heavenly tempers, in such lively faith and love, so tasting all
+the blessings of God's kingdom, its peace, and its hope, and its joy,
+that they cannot bear to think of that time, when these blessings were
+not enjoyed except in prospect; when they rather desired to have faith
+and love, than could be said actually to have them; when their tempers
+were not holy and heavenly, although they were fully alive to the
+excellence of their being so, and had seen them already cleansed from
+the opposites of such a state, from ill-nature, and passion, and pride.
+
+If any such there be, in whom good resolutions have long since ripened
+into good actions, and the continued good actions have now led to
+confirmed good habits, how miserable will they think it to be only "not
+far from the kingdom of God!" How ill could they bear to go over again
+the struggle which used to accompany every action, when it was done in
+defiance of habits of evil; or to be called back to that condition when
+resolutions for good were formed over and over again, because they were
+so often broken, but had as yet rarely led to any solid fruit! How
+thankful will they be to have escaped from that season when they were
+seeking, but had not yet found; when they were asking of God, but had
+not yet received; when they were knocking, but the door had not yet been
+opened! They were then, indeed, not far from the kingdom of God, but
+they were still without its walls; they were still strangers, and not
+citizens. It had held out to them a refuge, and they had fled to it as
+suppliants to the sanctuary; but they had not yet had the word of peace
+spoken, to bid them no more kneel without, as suppliants, but to enter
+and go in and out freely; for that all things were theirs, because they
+were Christ's.
+
+I have dwelt purposely somewhat the longer upon this, because the more
+that we can feel the truth of this picture, the more that we can put
+ourselves into the position of those who are within the kingdom of God,
+and who, living in the light of it, look back with pity upon those who
+are only kneeling without its gates,--the more strongly we shall feel
+what must be our condition, if those who are without its gates appear to
+us to be objects of envy rather than pity, because they are so near to
+that place from which we feel ourselves to be so distant. Or, to speak
+without a figure, if we could but understand how persons advanced in
+goodness would shrink from the thought of being now only resolving to be
+good, then we shall perceive how very evil must be our condition, if
+this very resolving to be good seems to us to be an advance so
+desirable; if we are so far from being good actually, that the very
+setting ourselves in earnest to seek for good strikes us as a point of
+absolute proficiency in comparison of our present degradation.
+
+Yet is not this the case with many of us? Do we not consider it a great
+point gained, if we can be brought to think seriously, to pray in
+earnest, to read the Bible, to begin to look to our own ways and lives?
+We feel it for ourselves, and others also feel it for us: it is natural,
+it is unavoidable, that we feel great joy, that we think a great deal is
+done, if we see any of you, after leading a life of manifest
+carelessness, and therefore of manifest sin, beginning to take more
+pains with himself, and so becoming what is called somewhat more steady
+and more serious. I know that the impression is apt to be too strong
+upon us: we are but too apt to boast for him who putteth on his armour
+as for him who putteth it off; because he who putteth on his armour at
+least shows that he is preparing for the battle, which so many never do
+at all. We observe some of these signs of seriousness: we see perhaps,
+that a person begins to attend at the Communion; that he pays more
+attention to his ordinary duties; that he becomes more regular. We see
+this, and we are not only thankful for it,--this we ought to be,--but we
+satisfy ourselves too readily that all is done: we reckon a person,
+somewhat too hastily, to be already belonging to the kingdom of God,
+because we have seen him turning towards it. Then, if he afterwards does
+not appear to be entered into it; if we see that he is not what we
+expected, that he is no longer serious, no longer attentive to his
+common duties, we are overmuch disappointed; and, perhaps are tempted
+too completely to despair for him. Is it not that we confounded together
+the beginning and the end; the being good, and the trying to become so:
+the resolution with the act; the act with the habit? Did we not forget
+that he is not at once out of danger who begins to mend: that the first
+softening of the dry burning skin, the first abating of the hard quick
+pulse, is far removed from the coolness, and steadiness, and even vigour
+of health restored, or never interrupted?
+
+But what made us forget truths so obvious? What made us confound things
+so different that the most ignorant ought to be able to distinguish
+them? Cannot we tell why it is? Is it not because there are so many in
+whom we cannot see even as good signs as these,--of whom we cannot but
+feel that it would be a great advance for them, a matter of earnest
+thankfulness, if we could only see that they were not far from the
+kingdom of God,--nay, even that their steps were tending thither? Let us
+look ever so earnestly, let us watch ever so carefully, let us hope
+ever so charitably, we cannot see, we can scarcely fancy that we see,
+even the desire to turn to God. We do not see gross wickedness; it is
+well; we see much that is amiable; that is well also: but the desire to
+turn to God, the tending of the steps towards the kingdom of
+heaven,--that we cannot see. But this is a thing, it may be said, that
+man cannot see: it may exist, although we cannot perceive it. Oh, that
+it might and may be so! Yet, surely, as out of the abundance of the
+heart the mouth speaketh, so a principle so mighty as the desire of
+turning to God cannot leave itself without a witness: some symptoms must
+be shown to those who are eagerly watching for them; some ground for
+hope must be afforded where hope is so ready to kindle. If no sign of
+life appears, can the life indeed be stirring? And if the life be not
+stirring; if the disorder is going on in so many cases, raging, with no
+symptom of abatement; is it not natural, that when we do see such
+symptoms, we should rejoice even with over-measure, that we should
+forget how much is yet to be done, when we see that something has
+been done.
+
+To such persons, it would be an enviable state, to be not far from the
+kingdom of God. But what, then, must be their state actually? A hopeful
+one, according to many standards of judgment; a state that promises
+well, it may be, for a healthy and prosperous life, with many friends,
+perhaps with much distinction. We know that all this prospect may be
+blighted; still it exists at present;--the healthy constitution, the
+easy fortune, the cheerful and good-humoured temper, the quickness and
+power of understanding; all these, no doubt, are hopeful signs for a
+period of forty, or fifty, or perhaps sixty years to come. But what is
+to come then? what is the prospect for the next period, not of fifty, or
+sixty, not of a hundred, not of a thousand, years; not of any number
+that can be numbered, but of time everlasting? Is their actual state one
+of hopeful promise for this period, for this life which no death shall
+terminate? Nay, is it a state of any promise at all, of any chance at
+all? Suppose, for a moment, one with a crippled body, full of the seeds
+of hereditary disease, poor, friendless, irritable in temper, low in
+understanding; suppose such an one just entering upon youth, and ask
+yourselves, for what would you consent that his prospects should be
+yours? What should you think would be your chance of happiness in life,
+if you were beginning in such a condition? Yet, I tell you that poor,
+diseased, irritable, friendless cripple has a far better prospect of
+passing his fifty, or sixty, years, tolerably, than they who have not
+begun to turn towards God have of a tolerable eternity. Much more
+wretched is the promise of their life; much more justly should we be
+tempted, concerning them, to breathe that fearful thought, that it were
+good for them if they had never been born. And now if, as by miracle,
+that cripple's limbs were to be at once made sound, if the seeds of
+disease were to vanish, if some large fortune were left him, if his
+temper sweetened, and his mind became vigorous, should not we be
+excused, considering what he had been and what he now was, if we, for a
+moment, forgot the uncertainty of the future; if we thought that a
+promise so changed, was almost equivalent to performance? And may not
+this same excuse be urged for some over-fondness of confidence for their
+well-doing whom we see so near to the kingdom of God, when we consider
+how utter is the misery, how hopeless the condition of those who do not
+appear to have, as yet, stirred one single step towards it?
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XIV.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MATTHEW xxii. 14.
+
+_For many are called, but few are chosen_.
+
+
+The truth here expressed is one of the most solemn in the world, and
+would be one of the most overwhelming to us, if habit had not, in a
+manner, blunted our painful perception of it. There is contained in it
+matter of thought more than we could exhaust, and deeper than we could
+ever fathom. But on this I will not attempt to enter. I will rather take
+that view of the text which concerns us here; I will see in how many
+senses it is true, and with what feeling we should regard it.
+
+"Many are called, but few are chosen." The direct application of this
+was to the parable of those invited to the supper; in which it had been
+related, how a great multitude had been invited, but how one among
+them--and the application as well as the fact in human life, require
+that this _one_ should be taken only as a specimen of a great
+number--had been found unworthy to enjoy the feast prepared for them.
+They had not on the wedding garment; they had not done their part to fit
+themselves for the offered blessing: therefore they were called, but not
+chosen. God had willed to do them good, but they would not; and
+therefore, though he had called them at the beginning, he, in the end,
+cast them out.
+
+We have to do, then, not with an arbitrary call and an arbitrary choice,
+as if God called many in mockery, meaning to choose out of them only a
+few, and making his choice independently of any exertion of theirs. The
+picture is very different; it is a gracious call to us all, to come and
+receive the blessing; it is a reluctant casting out the greatest part of
+us, because we would not try to render ourselves fit for it.
+
+I said, that we would take the words of the text in reference to
+ourselves, for here, too, it is true, that many are called, but few are
+chosen. It is a large number of you, which I see before me; and if we
+add to it all those who, within my memory, have sat in the same places
+before you, we shall have a number very considerable indeed. All these
+have been called; they have been sent here to enjoy the same advantages
+with each other; and those advantages have been put within their reach.
+They have entered into a great society which, on the one hand, might
+raise them forward, or, on the other, depress them. There has been a
+sufficient field for emulation: there have been examples and
+instructions for good; there have been results of credit and of real
+improvement made attainable to them, which might have lasted all their
+lives long. To this, they have been all, in their turns, called; and out
+of those so called, have all, or nearly all, been chosen? I am not
+speaking of those, who, I trust, would be a very small number, to whom
+the trial has failed utterly, who could look back on their stay here
+with no feelings but those of shame. But would there not be a very large
+number, to whom their stay here has been a loss, compared with what it
+might have been; who have reaped but a very small part of those
+advantages to which they had been at first called? Are there not too
+many who must look back on a part, at least, of their time here as
+wasted; on the seeds of bad habits sown, which, if conquered by
+after-care, yet, for a long time, were injurious to them? Are there not
+too many who carry away from here, instead of good notions, to be
+ripened and improved, evil notions, to be weeded out and destroyed? Are
+there not, in short, a great number who, after having had a great
+advantage put within their reach, and purchased for them by their
+friends, at a great expense, have made such insufficient use of their
+opportunities, to say nothing stronger, as to make it a question
+afterwards, whether it might not have been better for them had they
+never come here at all?
+
+Thus far I have been speaking of what are called the advantages of this
+place in our common language. That argument, which Butler has so nobly
+handled, in one of the greatest works in our language, the resemblance,
+namely, between the course of things earthly and that of things
+spiritual, is one which we should never fail to notice. We can discern
+the type, as it were, of the highest truth of our Lord's sayings in the
+experience of our common life in worldly things. When he tells us,
+speaking of things spiritual, that "many are called, but few are
+chosen;" that "whoso hath, to him shall be given; but from him that hath
+not shall be taken away even that which he hath,"--although the highest
+truth contained in these words be yet, in part, matter of faith, for we
+have not yet seen the end of God's dealings with us: yet what we do see,
+the evident truth of the words, that is, in respect to God's dealings
+with us in the course of his earthly providence, may reasonably assure
+us of their truth no less in respect to those dealings of God which as
+yet are future. I began, therefore, with reminding you of the truth of
+the words of the text with regard to worldly advantages; that even here,
+on this small scale, the general law holds good; that more things are
+provided for us than we will consent to use; that, in short, "many are
+called, but few are chosen."
+
+But it were ill done to limit our view to this: we are called to much
+more than worldly advantages; and what if here, too, we add one more
+example to confirm our Lord's words, that "many are called, but few
+chosen?" Now here, as I said, it is very true that God's choice is as
+yet not a matter of sight or of certainty to us; we cannot yet say of
+ourselves, or of any other set of living men, that "few are chosen." But
+though the full truth is not yet revealed, still, as there is a type of
+it in our worldly experience, so there is also a higher type, an
+earnest, of it in our spiritual experience: there is a sense, and that a
+very true and a very important one, in which we can say already, say
+now, actually, in the life that now is; say, even in the early stage of
+it, that some are, and some are not, "chosen."
+
+We have all been called, in a Christian sense, inasmuch as we have been
+all introduced into Christ's church by Baptism; and a very large
+proportion of us have been called again, many of us not very long since,
+at our Confirmation. We have been thus called to enter into Christ's
+kingdom: we have been called to lead a life of holiness and happiness
+from this time forth even for ever. Nothing can be stronger than the
+language in which the Scripture speaks of the nature of our high
+calling: "All things," says St. Paul to the Corinthians, "all things are
+yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Peter, or the world, or life, or
+death, or things present, or things to come, all are yours; and ye are
+Christ's, and Christ is God's." Now, if this be the prize to which we
+are called, who are they who are also chosen to it? In the first and
+most complete sense, no doubt, those who have entered into their rest;
+who are in no more danger, however slight; with whom the struggle is
+altogether past, and the victory securely won. These are entered within
+the veil, whither we can as yet penetrate only in hope. But hope, in
+its highest degree, differs little from assurance; and even, as we
+descend lower and lower, still, where hope is clearly predominant, there
+is, if not assurance, yet a great encouragement; and the Scripture,
+which delights to carry encouragement to the highest pitch to those who
+are following God, allows of our saying of even these that they are
+God's chosen. It gives them, as it were, the title beforehand, to make
+them feel how doubly miserable it must be not only not to obtain it, but
+to forfeit it after it had been already ours. So then, there are senses
+in which we may say that some are chosen now; although, strictly
+speaking, the term can by us be applied, in its full sense, to those
+only who are passed beyond the reach of evil.
+
+Those, then, we may call chosen, who, having heard their call, have
+turned to obey it, and have gone on following it. Those we may call
+chosen,--I do not say chosen irrevocably, but chosen now; chosen so that
+we may be very thankful to God on their behalf, and they thankful for
+themselves,--who, since their Confirmation, or since a period more
+remote, have kept God before their face, and tried to do His will. Those
+are, in the same way, chosen, who having found in themselves the sin
+which did most easily beset them, have struggled with it, and wholly, or
+in a great measure, have overcome it. Thus, they are chosen, who, having
+lived either in the frequent practice of selfish, extravagance, or of
+falsehood, or of idleness, or of excess in eating and drinking, have
+turned away from these things, and, for Christ's sake, have renounced
+them. They are chosen, I think, in yet a higher sense, who, having found
+their besetting sin to be, not so much any one particular fault, as a
+general ungodly carelessness, a lightness which for ever hindered them
+from serving God, have struggled with this most fatal enemy; and, even
+in youth, and health, and happiness, have learnt what it is to be
+sober-minded, what it is to think. Now, such as these have, in a manner,
+entered into their inheritance; they are not merely called, but chosen.
+God and spiritual things are not mere names to them, they are a reality.
+Such persons have tasted of the promises; they have known the
+pleasure--and what pleasure is comparable to it?--of feeling the bonds
+of evil passion or evil habit unwound from about their spirit; they have
+learnt what is that glorious liberty of being able to abstain from the
+things which we condemn, to do the things which we approve. They have
+felt true sense of power succeed to that of weakness. It is a delightful
+thing, after a long illness, after long helplessness, when our legs have
+been unable to support our weight, when our arms could lift nothing, our
+hands grasp nothing, when it was an effort to raise our head from the
+pillow, and it tired us even to speak in a whisper,--it is a delightful
+thing to feel every member restored to its proper strength; to find that
+exercise of limb, of voice, of body, which had been so long a pain,
+become now a source of perpetual pleasure. This is delightful; it pays
+for many an hour of previous weakness. But it is infinitely more
+delightful to feel the change from weakness to strength in our souls; to
+feel the languor of selfishness changed for the vigour of benevolence;
+to feel thought, hope, faith, love, which before were lying, as it were,
+in helplessness, now bounding in vigorous activity; to find the soul,
+which had been so long stretched as upon the sick bed of this earth, now
+able to stand upright, and looking and moving steadily towards heaven.
+
+These are chosen; and they to whom this description does in no degree
+apply, they are not chosen. They are not chosen in any sense, they are
+called only. And, now, what is the proportion between the one and the
+other; are there as many chosen as there have been many called? Or do
+Christ's words apply in our case no less than in others; that though
+they who are called are many, yet they who are chosen are few?
+
+This I dare not answer; there is a good as well as an evil which is
+unseen to the world at large, unseen even by all but those who watch us
+most nearly and most narrowly. All we can say is, that there are too
+many, who we must fear are not chosen; there are too few, of whom we can
+feel sure that they are. Yet hope is a wiser feeling than its opposite;
+it were as wrong as it would be miserable to abandon it. How gladly
+would we hope the best things of all those whom we saw this morning at
+Christ's holy table! How gladly would we believe of all such, that they
+were more than called merely; that they had listened to the call: that
+they had obeyed it; that they had already gained some Christian
+victories; that they were, in some sense, not called only, but chosen.
+But this we may say; that hope which we so long to entertain, that hope
+too happy to be at once indulged in, you may authorize us to feel it;
+you may convert it into confidence. Do you ask how? By going on steadily
+in good, by advancing from good to better, by not letting impressions
+fade with time. Now, with many of you, your confirmation is little more
+than three months distant; when we next meet at Christ's table, it will
+have passed by nearly half-a-year. It may be, that, in that added
+interval, it will have lost much of its force; that, from various
+causes, evil may have abounded in you more than good; that then shame,
+or a willing surrender of yourselves to carelessness, will keep away
+from Christ's Communion, many who have this day joined in it. But, if
+this were not to be so; if those, whom we have seen with joy this day
+communicating with us in the pledges of Christian fellowship, should
+continue to do so steadily; if, in the meantime, traits shall appear in
+you in other things that our hope was well founded; if the hatred of
+evil and the love of good were to be clearly manifest in you; if by
+signs not to be mistaken by those who watch earnestly for them, we might
+be assured that your part was taken, that you were striving with us in
+that service of our common Master, in which we would fain live and die;
+if evil was clearly lessened among us--not laughed at, but discouraged
+and put down; if instead of those turning away, who have now been with
+us at Christ's table, others, who have now turned away, should then be
+added to the number; then we should say, not doubtingly, that you were
+chosen: that you had tasted of the good things of Christ; that the good
+work of God was clearly begun in you. We might not, indeed, be without
+care, either for you or for ourselves: God forbid, that, in that sense,
+any of us should deem that we were chosen, until the grave has put us
+beyond temptation. But how happy were it to think of you as Christ's
+chosen, in that sense which should be a constant encouragement to us
+all: to think of you as going on towards God; to think of you as living
+to him daily; to think of you as on his side against all his enemies; to
+think of you as led by his Spirit, as living members of his holy and
+glorious Church,--militant now, in heaven triumphant!
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XV.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LUKE xi. 25.
+
+_When he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished_.
+
+
+JOHN v. 42.
+
+_I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you_.
+
+
+These passages, of which the first is taken from the gospel of this
+morning's service, the other from the second lesson, differ in words,
+but their meaning is very nearly the same. The house which was empty,
+swept and garnished, was especially one empty of the love of God.
+Whatever evil there may not have been in it; whatever good there may
+have been in those of whom Christ spoke in the second passage: yet it
+and they agreed in this; one thing they had not, which alone was worth,
+all the rest besides; they had not the love of God.
+
+And so it is still; many are the faults which we have not; many are the
+good qualities which we have; but the life is wanting. What is so rare
+as to find one who is not indifferent to God? What so rare, even rarer
+than the other, as to find one who actually loves him?
+
+Therefore it is that those who go in at the broad gate of destruction
+are many, and those who go in at the narrow gate of life are few. For
+destruction and life are but other terms for indifference to God on the
+one hand, and love to him on the other. All who are indifferent to him,
+die; a painless death of mere extinction, if, like the brute creation,
+they have never been made capable of loving him; or a living death of
+perpetual misery, if, like evil spirits and evil men, they might have
+loved him and would not. And so all who love him, live a life, from
+first to last, without sin and sorrow, if, like the holy angels, they
+have loved him always; a life partaking at first of death, but
+brightening more and more unto the perfect day, if, like Christians,
+they were born in sin, but had been redeemed and sanctified to
+righteousness.
+
+Whoever has watched human character, whether in the young or the old,
+must be well aware of the truth of this: he will know that the value of
+any character is in proportion to the existence or to the absence of
+this feeling, or rather, I should say, this principle. An exception may,
+perhaps, be made for a small, a very small number of fanatics; an
+apparent exception likewise exists in the case of many who seem to be
+religious, but who really are not so. The few exceptions of the former
+case are so very few, that we need not now stop to consider them, nor to
+inquire how far even these would be exceptions if we could read the
+heart as God reads it. The seeming exceptions being cases either of
+hypocrisy, or of very common self-deceit, we need not regard either; for
+they are, of course, no real objection to the truth of the general
+statement. It remains true, then, generally, that the value of any
+character is in proportion to the existence, or to the absence, in it of
+the love of God.
+
+But is there not another exception to be made for the case of children,
+and of very young persons? Are they capable of loving God? and are not
+their earthly relations, their parents especially, put to them, as it
+were, in the place of God, as objects of trust, of love, of honour, of
+obedience, till their minds can open to comprehend the love of their
+Father who is in heaven? And does not the Scripture itself, in the few
+places in which it seems directly to address children, content itself
+with directing them to obey and honour their parents? Some notions of
+this sort are allowed, I believe, to serve sometimes as an excuse, when
+young persons are blamed for being utterly wanting in a sense of duty
+to God.
+
+The passages which direct children to obey their parents, are of the
+same kind with those, directing slaves to obey their masters, and
+masters to be kind to their slaves; like those, also, which John the
+Baptist addressed to the soldiers and publicans: in none of all which
+there is any command to love God, but merely a command to fulfil that
+particular duty which most arose out of the particular relation, or
+calling of the persons addressed. In fact, when parents are addressed,
+they are directed only to do their duties to their children, just as
+children are directed to do theirs to their parents; in both cases
+alike, the common duty of parents and children to God is not dwelt upon,
+because that is a duty which does not belong to them as parents, or as
+children, but as human beings; and as such, it belongs to all alike. In
+fact, the very language of St. Paul's command to children implies this;
+for he says, "Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is
+right:" right, that is, in the sight of God: so that the very reason for
+which children are to discharge their earthly duties is, because that
+earthly duty is commanded by, or involved in, their heavenly duty; if
+they do not do it, they will not please God. But it is manifest that, in
+this respect, there is for all of us one only law, so soon as we are
+able to understand it. The moment that a child becomes capable of
+understanding anything about God and Christ,--and how early that is,
+every parent can testify,--that moment the duty to love God and Christ
+begins. It were absurd to say, that this duty has not begun at the age
+of boyhood. A boy is able to understand the force of religious motives,
+as well as he can that of earthly motives: he cannot understand either,
+perhaps, so well as he will hereafter; but he understands both enough,
+for the purposes of his salvation; enough, to condemn him before God, if
+he neglects them; enough to make him derive the greatest benefit from
+faithfully observing them.
+
+And what can have been the purpose with which the only particular of our
+Lord's early life has been handed down to us, if it were not to direct
+our attention to this special truth, that our youth, no less than our
+riper age, belongs to God? "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's
+business?" were words spoken by our Lord when he was no more than twelve
+years old. At twelve years old, he thought of preparing himself for the
+duties of his after-life; and of preparing himself for them, because
+they were God's will. He was to be about his Father's business. This is
+Christ's example for the young; this, and scarcely anything more than
+this, is recorded of his early years. Those are not like Christ who, at
+that same age, or even older, never think at all of the business of
+their future lives, still less would think of it, not as the means of
+their own maintenance or advancement, but as the duty which they owe
+to God.
+
+Such as these are the very persons whose hearts are like the house in
+the parable, empty, swept, and garnished. The house so described in the
+parable is one out of which an evil spirit has just departed. In case of
+the young, the evil spirit in this sense, that is, as representing some
+one particular favourite sin, may perhaps have never entered it. That
+empty, swept, and garnished house, how like is it to what I have seen,
+to what I am seeing so continually, when a boy comes here with much
+still remaining of the innocence of childhood! Evil spirit, in the sense
+of any one particular vice, there is none to be found in that heart, nor
+has there been any ever. It is empty, swept, and garnished: there is the
+absence of evil; there are the various faculties, the furniture, as they
+may be called, of the house of our spirits, which the spirit uses either
+for evil or for good. There is innocence, then; there is, also, the
+promise of power. God hath richly endowed the earthly house of our
+tabernacle: various and wonderful is the furniture of body and mind with
+which it is supplied. How can we help admiring that open and cheerful
+brow which, as yet, no care or sin has furrowed; those light and active
+limbs, full of health and vigour; the eye so quick; the ear so undulled;
+the memory so ready; the young curiosity so eager to take in new
+knowledge; the young feelings, not yet spoiled by over-excitement, ready
+to admire, ready to love? There is the house, the house of God's
+building, the house which must abide for ever; but where is the spirit
+to inhabit it? Evil spirit there is none: is it, then, possessed by the
+Spirit of God? Has the fire from heaven as yet descended upon that
+house,--the living sign of God's presence, which alone can convert the
+house of perishable clay into the everlasting temple?
+
+Can that blessed Spirit of God be indeed there, and yet no sign of his
+presence be manifest? It may be so, or to speak more truly, it might
+have been supposed to be so, if God's word had not declared the
+contrary. What God's secret workings are; in how many ways, to us
+inscrutable, he may pervade all nature; in how many cases he may be near
+us, and we know it not; may, perhaps, be amongst those real mysteries,
+those truths revealed to none, nor to be revealed; those yet uncleared
+forests, so to speak, of the world of nature, into which the light of
+grace has not been permitted to penetrate. But all such mysteries are to
+us as if they did not exist at all: we have nothing to do with them. God
+has told us nothing of his unseen and undiscernible presence; when and
+where he is so present, he is to us as if he were not present at all.
+God was in the wilderness of Horeb before the bush was kindled; but he
+was not there for Moses. God, in some sense discernible, it may be, to
+other beings, may be in that house which, to us is empty; but God, our
+own God, the Holy Spirit, into whose service we were baptized, where he
+is, the house is not empty to us, but full of light. Invisible in
+himself, the signs of his presence are most visible: where no works, no
+fruits of the Holy Spirit are to be discerned, there, according to our
+Lord's express declaration, there the Holy Spirit is not.
+
+But the light which declares his presence may indeed be a little spark;
+just to be seen, and no more. It may show that he has not abandoned all
+his right to the house of our tabernacle as yet; that he would desire to
+possess us fully. Such a little spark, such an evidence of the Holy
+Spirit's presence, is to be found in the outward profession of
+Christianity. They who call Jesus Lord, do it by the Holy Ghost; and,
+therefore, it is quite true in this sense, that in every baptized
+Christian, who has not utterly apostatized, there is that faint sign of
+the Holy Spirit's still having a claim upon him; he is not yet utterly
+cast off. This is true; but it is not to our present purpose; such a
+feeble sign is a sign of God's yet unwearied mercy, but no sign of our
+salvation. The presence with which the parable is concerned, is a far
+more effectual presence than this; the house in which there is no more
+than such a faint sign of a divine inhabitant, is, in the language of
+the parable, empty. To no purpose of our salvation is the Spirit of God
+present in the house, when the light of his presence does not flash
+forth from every part of it, when it is not manifest, not only that he
+has not quite cast it off to go to ruin, but that he has been pleased to
+make it his temple.
+
+In this sense, therefore, in this practical, scriptural, Christian
+sense, those many young minds, which we have seen so often, may truly be
+called empty. But will they remain so long? How often have I seen the
+early innocence of boyhood overcast; the natural simplicity of boyhood,
+its open truth, its confident affection, its honest shame, perverted,
+blunted, hardened! How often have I seen the seven evil spirits enter in
+and dwell there,--I know not, and never may know, whether to be cast out
+again, or to abide for ever. But I have seen them enter, and, whilst the
+person was yet within my view, I have not seen them depart. And why have
+they entered; why have they marred that which was so beautiful? For one
+only reason,--because the house was empty, because the Spirit of God was
+not there: there was no love of God, no thought of God. Mere innocence
+taints and spoils as surely before the influence of the world, as true
+principle flourishes in spite of it, and strengthens. This, too, I have
+seen, not once only: I have seen the innocence of early boyhood
+sanctified by something better than innocence, which gave a promise of
+abiding. I have seen, in other words, that the house was not empty; that
+the Spirit of God was there. I have watched the effect of those
+influences, which you know so well: the second half-year came, a period
+when mere innocence is sure to be worn away, greatly tainted, if not
+utterly gone; but still, in the cases which I am now alluding to, the
+promise of good was not less, but greater, there was a more tried, and,
+therefore, a stronger goodness. I have watched this, too, till it passed
+on, out of my sight. I never saw the blessed Spirit of God depart from
+the house which he had chosen: I well believe that he abides in it
+still, and will abide in it even to the day of Jesus Christ.
+
+This I have seen, and this I shall continue to see; for still the great
+work of evil and of good is going on; still the house, at first empty,
+is possessed by the spirits of evil, or by the Spirit of God. And if we
+do not see the signs of the Spirit of God, we are but too sure that the
+evil spirit is there. We know him by the manifold signs of folly,
+coarseness, carelessness; even when we see not, as yet, his worse fruits
+of falsehood and profligacy. We know him by the sign of an increased,
+and increasing selfishness, the everlasting cry of the thousand passions
+of our nature, all for ever calling out, "Give, give;" all for ever
+impatient, complaining, when their gratification is withheld, when the
+call of duty is set before them. We know him by pride and
+self-importance, as if nothing was so great as self, as if our own
+opinions, judgment, feelings were to be consulted in all things. We know
+him by the deep ungodliness which he occasions--no thought of God, much
+less any love of him; living utterly without him in the world, or, at
+least, whilst health and prosperity continue. These are the fatal signs
+which show that the house is no longer empty; that the evil spirits have
+entered in, and dwell there, to make it theirs, as too often happens,
+for time and for eternity.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XVI.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MATHEW xi. 10.
+
+_I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way before
+thee_.
+
+
+If it was part of God's dispensation, that there should be one to
+prepare the way before Christ's first coming, it may be expected much
+more, that there should be some to prepare the way before his second.
+And so it is expressed in the collect for the third Sunday in Advent: "O
+Lord Jesus Christ, who at thy first coming didst send thy messenger to
+prepare thy way before thee; grant that the ministers and stewards of
+thy mysteries may likewise so prepare and make ready thy way, by turning
+the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, that at thy
+second coming to judge the world we may be found an acceptable people in
+thy sight, who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit,
+ever one God, world without end. Amen." NOW, in what does this preparing
+for him consist; and what is its object? The Scripture will inform us as
+to both. The object is, "Lest he come and smite the earth with a curse;"
+lest, when he shall come, his coming, which should be our greatest joy
+and happiness, should be our everlasting destruction; for there can
+abide before him nothing that is evil. This is the object of preparing
+for Christ's coming. Next, in what does the preparation consist? It
+consists in teaching men to live above the common notions of their age
+and country; to raise their standard higher; to live after what is right
+in God's judgment, which often casts away, as faulty and bad, what men
+were accustomed to think good. And as the people of Israel, although
+they had God's revelation among them, had yet let their standard of good
+and evil become low, even so it has been in the Christian Israel. We
+have God's will in our hands, yet our judgments are not formed upon it;
+and, therefore, they who would prepare us for Christ's coming, must set
+before us a commandment which is new, although old: in one sense old, in
+every generation, inasmuch as it is the same which we had from the
+beginning; in another sense, in every generation more new, inasmuch, as
+the habits opposed to it have become the more confirmed; and the longer
+the night has lasted, the more strange to our eyes is the burst of the
+returning light.
+
+But when we thus speak of the common notions of our age and country
+being deficient, and thus, in effect, commend notions which would be
+singular, do we not hold a language inconsistent with our common
+language and practice? Do we not commonly regard singularity as a fault,
+and attach a considerable authority to the consent of men in general?
+Nay, do we not often appeal to this consent as to a proof which a sane
+mind must admit as decisive? Even in speaking of good and evil, have not
+the very words gained their present sense because the common consent of
+mankind has agreed to combine notions of self-satisfaction, of honour,
+and of love, with what we call good, and the contrary with what we
+call evil?
+
+A short time may, perhaps, not be misapplied in endeavouring to explain
+this matter; in showing where, and for what reasons, the common opinion
+of our society is to be followed, where it is to be suspected, and
+where it is absolutely to be shunned or trampled under foot, as clearly
+and certainly evil.
+
+I must begin with little things, in order to show the whole question
+plainly. Take those tastes in us which most resemble the instincts of a
+brute; and you will find that in these, as with instinct, common consent
+becomes a sure rule. When I speak of those tastes which most resemble
+instincts, I mean those in which nature, doing most for us at first,
+leaves least for us to learn for ourselves. This seems the character of
+instinct: it is far more complete than reason in its first stage, but it
+admits of no after improvement; the brute in the thousandth generation
+is no way advanced beyond the brute in the first. Of our tastes, even of
+those belonging to our bodily senses, that which belongs to what are
+called particularly our organs of taste is the one most resembling an
+instinct: we have less to do for its improvement than in any other
+instance. Men being here, then, upon an equality, with a faculty given
+to all by nature, and improved particularly by none, those who differ
+from the majority are likely to differ not from excellence but from
+defect: not because they have a more advanced reason, but because they
+have a less healthy instinct, than their neighbours. Thus, in those
+matters which relate to the sense of taste--I am obliged to take this
+almost trivial instance, because it so well illustrates the principle of
+the whole question--we hold the consent of men in general to be a good
+rule. If any one were to choose to feed upon what this common taste had
+pronounced to be disgusting, we should not hesitate to say that such an
+appetite was diseased and monstrous.
+
+Now, let us take our senses of sight and hearing, and we shall find that
+just in the proportion in which these less resemble instincts than the
+sense of taste, so is common consent a less certain rule. Up to a
+certain point they are instincts: there are certain sounds which, I
+suppose, are naturally disagreeable to the ear; while, on the other
+hand, bright and rich colours are, perhaps, naturally attractive to the
+eye. But, then, sight and hearing are so connected with our minds that
+they are susceptible of very great cultivation, and thus differ greatly
+from instincts. As the mind opens, outward sights and sounds become
+connected with a great number of associations, and thus we learn to
+think the one or the other beautiful, for reasons which really depend
+very much on the range of our own ideas. Consider, for a moment, the
+beautiful in architecture. If the model of the leaning tower of Pisa
+were generally adopted in our public buildings, all men's common sense
+would cry out against it as a deformity, because a leaning wall would
+convey to every mind the notion of insecurity, and every body would feel
+that it was unpleasant to see a building look exactly as if it were
+going to fall down. Now, what I have called common sense is, in a
+manner, the instinct of our reason: it is that uniform level of reason
+which all sane persons reach to, and the wisest in matters within its
+province do not surpass. But go beyond this, and architecture is no
+longer a matter of mere common sense, but of science, and of cultivated
+taste. Here the standard of beauty is not fixed by common consent; but,
+in the first instance, devised or discovered by the few: and, so far as
+it is received by the many, received by them on the authority of the
+few, and sanctioned, so to speak, not so much from real sympathy and
+understanding, as from a reasonable trust and deference to those who are
+believed the best judges.
+
+Here, then, we suppose that the common judgment is right; but we
+perceive a difference between this case and the one mentioned before,
+inasmuch as in the first instance the right judgment of the mass of
+mankind is their own; in the second instance, they have adopted it out
+of deference to others. Not only, then, will men's common judgment be
+right in matters of instinct and of common sense, but also in higher
+matters, where, although they could not have discovered what was right,
+yet they were perfectly willing to adopt it, when discovered by others.
+And this opens a very wide field. For in all matters which come under
+the dominion of fashion, where the avowed object is the convenience or
+gratification of society, men listen to those who profess to teach them
+with almost an excess of docility: they will adopt sometimes fashions
+which are not convenient. But yet, as men can tell well enough by
+experience whether they do find a thing convenient and agreeable or not,
+so it is most likely that fashions which continue long and generally
+prevalent are founded upon sound principles; because else men, being
+well capable of knowing what convenience is, and being also well
+disposed to follow it, would neither have been very long or very
+generally mistaken in this matter; nor would have acquiesced in their
+mistake contentedly.
+
+We do perfectly right, then, to regard the common opinion as a rule in
+all points of dress, in our houses and furniture, in those lighter
+usages of society which come under the denomination of manners, as
+distinguished from morals. In all these, if the mass of mankind could
+not find out what would best suit them, yet they are quite ready to
+adopt it when it is found out; and so they equally arrive at truth. But
+take away this readiness, and the whole case is altered. If there be any
+point in which men are not ready to adopt what is best for them; if they
+are either indifferent, or still more, if they are averse to it; if
+they thus have neither the power of discovering it for themselves, nor
+the will to avail themselves of it, when discovered for them; then it is
+clear that, in such a point, the common judgment will be of no value,
+nay, there will even be a presumption that it is wrong.
+
+Now as the common consent of mankind was most sure in matters where
+their sense most resembled instinct, that is, where nature had done most
+for them, and left them least to do for themselves; as here, therefore,
+they who are sound are the great majority, and the exceptions are no
+better than disease; so if there be any part of us which is the direct
+opposite to instinct, a part in which nature has done next to nothing
+for us, and all is to be done by ourselves; then, here the common
+consent of mankind will be of the least value; here the majority will be
+helpless and worthless; and they who are happy enough to be exceptions
+to this majority, will be no other than Christ's redeemed.
+
+Now, again, if this deficient part of our nature could be seen purely
+distinct from every other; if it alone dictated our language, and
+inspired our actions, then it would follow, that language which must
+ever be fixed by the majority, would be, in fact, the language of the
+world of infinite evil; and our actions those of mere devils. Then,
+whoever of us would be saved, must needs begin by forswearing,
+altogether, both the language and the actions of his fellow-men. But
+this is not so; in almost every instance this deficient part of our
+nature acts along with others that are not so corrupted; it mars their
+work, undoubtedly; it often confuses and perverts our language; it
+always taints our actions; but it does not wholly usurp either the one
+or the other; and thus, by God's blessing, man's language yet affords a
+high witness to divine truth, and even men's judgments and actions
+testify, though with infinite imperfection, to the existence and
+excellence of goodness.
+
+And this it is which forms one of the great perplexities of life; for as
+there is enough of what is right in men's judgments and conduct to
+forbid us from saying, that we must take the very rule of contraries,
+and think and do just the opposite to the opinions and practice of men
+in general; so, on the other hand, there is always so much wrong in
+them, that we may never dare to follow them as a standard, but shall
+find, that if trusted to as such, they will inevitably betray us. So
+that in points of greater moment than mere manners and fashion, it will
+ever be true, that if we would be prepared for Christ's coming, we must
+rise to a far higher standard than that of society in general; that in
+the greatest concerns of human life, the practice of the majority,
+though always containing something of good, is yet in its prevailing
+character, as regards God, so evil, that they who are content to follow
+it cannot be saved.
+
+This is the explanation of the apparent difficulty in the general, and
+thus, while acknowledging that there are points in which men, by common
+consent, make out what is best; and others in which, although they do
+not make it out, nor at first appreciate it, yet they are very willing
+to adopt it upon trust, and so come by experience to value it; while,
+therefore, there are a great many things in which singularity is either
+a disease or a foolishness; so again there are other points in which men
+in general have not the power to make out what is good, nor yet the
+docility to adopt it; and, therefore, in these points, which relate to
+the great matters of life, singularity is wisdom and salvation, and he
+who does as others do, perishes. That is what is called the corruption
+of human nature. I shall attempt, on another occasion, to go into some
+further details, and show, by common examples, how strangely our
+judgment and practice contain, with much that is right, just that one
+taint or defect which, as a whole, spoils them. And this one defect will
+be found to be, as the Scripture declares, a defect in our sense of our
+relation towards God.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XVII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+1 CORINTHIANS ii. 12.
+
+_We have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is
+of God_.
+
+
+And, therefore, he goes on to say, our language is different from that
+of others, and not always understood by them; the natural man receiveth
+not the things of God, for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he
+know them, because they are spiritually discerned. That is, they are
+discerned only by a faculty which he has not, namely, by the Spirit;
+and, therefore, as beings devoid of reason cannot understand the truths
+of science, or of man's wisdom, for they are without the faculty which
+can discern them; so beings devoid of God's Spirit cannot understand the
+truths of God.
+
+Now, in order to turn this passage to our profit, we need not consider
+those who are wholly without God's Spirit, or inquire whether, indeed,
+there be any such; it is not that there are two broadly marked divisions
+of all men, those who have not the Spirit of God at all, and those who
+have it abundantly: if it were so, the separation of the great day of
+judgment would be begun already, nor would it require, in order to
+effect it rightly, the wisdom of Him who trieth the very hearts and
+reins. No doubt there will be at last but two divisions of us all, the
+saved and the lost; but now the divisions are infinite; so much so that
+the great body of us offer much matter for hope as well as for fear. We
+cannot say, that they are without the Spirit of God; yet neither can we
+say that they are led by the Spirit, so as to be God's true servants. We
+cannot say, that the things of God's are absolutely to them as
+foolishness; yet certainly, we cannot say either, that they are to them
+as the divinest wisdom.
+
+And here we return to the subject on which I was speaking last Sunday.
+It is because we are not led by the Spirit of God, but have within us
+much of the spirit of the world, that our judgments of right and wrong
+are so faulty; and that this faultiness is particularly seen in our
+faint sense of our relations to God. These relations seem continually
+foolishness to us, because they are spiritually discerned, and we have
+so little of God's Spirit to enable us to discern them. And our
+blindness here affects our whole souls; we have, in consequence of it, a
+much fainter perception even of those truths which reason can discern by
+herself; or, at any rate, if we do not doubt them, they have over us
+much less influence.
+
+Now we will first see how much of natural reason, and even of the Spirit
+of God, does exist in our common judgments; for it is fair to see and to
+allow what there is of right in our language and sentiments, as well as
+to note what is wrong. Reason influences thus much, that we not only
+commend good generally, and blame evil; but even, in particular cases,
+we commend, I think, each separate virtue, and we blame each separate
+vice. I never heard of justice, truth, kindness, self-denial, &c., being
+other than approved of in themselves; or injustice, falsehood, malice,
+and selfishness being other than condemned. And the Spirit of God
+influences at least thus much, that we shrink from direct blasphemy and
+profaneness; we cannot but respect those whom we believe to be living
+sincerely in the fear of God; and further, if we thought our death
+near, we should desire to hear of God, and to depart from this life
+under his favour. No doubt, all such feelings, so far as they go, are
+the work of God's Spirit: whatever is good and right in our minds
+towards God, that proceeds not from the spirit of the world, but from
+the Spirit of God.
+
+Where, then, is the great defect which yet continually makes our
+practical judgments quite wrong; which makes us, in fact, so often
+countenance and support evil, and discountenance and discourage good?
+First, it is owing to the spirit of carelessness. One of the most
+emphatic terms by which a good man is expressed in the language of the
+Greek philosophers, is that of [Greek: opdouiaos], "one who is in
+earnest." To be in earnest is, indeed, with, most of us, the same as to
+be good; it is not that we love evil, but that we are indifferent both
+to it and to good. Now, many of us are very seldom in earnest. By this I
+mean, that the highest part of our minds, and that which judges of the
+highest things, is generally slumbering or but half awake. We may go
+through, a very busy day, and yet not be, in this true sense, in earnest
+at all; our best faculties may, as it were, be all the while sleeping or
+playing. It is notorious how much this is so in the common intercourse
+of society in the world. Light anecdotes; playful remarks; discussions,
+it may be, about the affairs of the neighbourhood, or, in some
+companies, on questions of science or party politics; all these may be
+often heard; but we may talk on all these brilliantly and well, and yet
+our best nature may not once be called to exert itself. So again, in
+mere routine business, it is the same: the body may toil; the pen move
+swiftly; the thoughts act in the particular matter before them
+vigorously; and yet we our proper selves, beings understanding and
+choosing between good and evil, have never bestirred ourselves at all.
+It has been but a skirmishing at the outposts; not a sword had been
+drawn in the main battle. Take younger persons, and the same thing is
+the case even more palpably. Here there is less of business in the
+common sense of the term; the mind is almost always unbraced and
+resting. We pass through the good and evil of our daily life, and our
+proper self scarcely ever is aroused to notice either the one or
+the other.
+
+But the worst of it is, that this carelessness is not altogether
+accidental: it is a carelessness which we do not wish to break. So long
+as it lasts, we manage to get the activity and interest of life, without
+a sense of its responsibility. We like exceedingly to lay the reins, as
+it were, upon the neck of our inclinations, to go where they take us,
+and to ask no questions whether we are in the right road or no.
+Inclination is never slumbering: this gives us excitement enough to save
+us from weariness, without the effort of awakening our conscience too.
+Therefore society, expressing in its rules the feelings of its
+individual members, prescribes exactly such a style of conversation as
+may keep in exercise all other parts of our nature except that one which
+should be sovereign of all, and whose exercise is employed on
+things eternal.
+
+Not being, then, properly in earnest,--that is, our conscience and our
+choice of moral good and evil being in a state of repose,--our language
+is happily contrived so as that it shall contain nothing to startle our
+sleeping conscience, if her ears catch any of its sounds. We still
+commend good and dispraise evil, both in the general and in the
+particular. But as good and evil are mixed in every man, and in various
+proportions, he who commends, the little good of a bad man, saying
+nothing of his evil,--or he who condemns the little evil of a good man,
+saying nothing of his good,--leads us evidently to a false practical
+conclusion; he leads us to like the bad man and to dislike the good.
+Again, the lesser good becomes an evil if it keeps out a greater good;
+and, in the same way, the lesser evil becomes a good. If we have no
+thought of comparing good things together, if our sovereign nature be
+asleep, then we shall most estimate the good to which we are most
+inclined; and where we find this we shall praise it, not observing that
+it is taking up the place of a greater good which the case requires,
+and, therefore, that it is in fact an evil. So that our moral judgments
+may lead practically to great evil: we may join with bad men and despise
+good; we may approve of qualities which, are, in fact, ruining a man;
+and despise others which, in the particular case, are virtues; without
+ever in plain words condemning virtue or approving vice.
+
+But, farther, this habit of never being in earnest greatly lowers the
+strength of our feelings even towards the good which we praise and
+towards the evil which we condemn. It was an admirable definition of
+that which excites laughter, that it was that which is out of rule, that
+which is amiss, that which is unsightly, (these three ideas, and other
+similar ones, are alike contained in the single Greek word [Greek:
+aischron],) provided that it was unaccompanied by pain. This definition
+accounts for the otherwise extraordinary fact, that there is something
+in moral evil which, in some instances, affects the mind ludicrously.
+That is to say, if moral evil affects us with no pain; if we see in it
+nothing, so to speak, but its irregularity, its strange contrast with
+what is beautiful, its jarring with the harmony of the system around us;
+then it does acquire that character which is well defined as being
+ridiculous. Thus it is notorious that trifling follies, and even gross
+vices, are often so represented in works of fiction as to be
+exceedingly ludicrous. It is enough, as an instance of what I mean, to
+name the vice of drunkenness. Get rid for the moment of the notions of
+vice or sin which, accompany it, and which give moral pain; get rid also
+of those points in it which awaken physical disgust; retain merely the
+notion of the incoherent language, and the strange capricious gait of
+intoxication; and we have then an image merely ridiculous, as much, so
+as the rambling talk and absurd gestures of the old buffoons.
+
+Here, then, we have the secret of vice becoming laughable; and of things
+which are really wicked, disgusting, hateful, being expressed by names
+purely ludicrous. Where no great physical pain or distress is occasioned
+by what is evil, our sense of its ludicrousness will be exactly in
+proportion to the faintness of our sense of moral evil; or, in other
+words, to our want of being in earnest. The evil that does not seriously
+pain or inconvenience man, is very apt to be regarded with feelings
+approaching to laughter, if we have no sense of pain at the notion of
+its being an offence against God.
+
+Thus, then, we have seen how, from the want of being in earnest, from
+the habitual slumber of conscience, or that sovereign part of us which
+looks upon our whole state with reference to its highest interests, and
+passes judgment upon all our actions,--how, from the practical absence
+of these, we may get to follow evil persons, and be indifferent to the
+good; to admire qualities which, from usurping the place of better ones,
+are actually ruinous; and, finally, to regard all common evil not so
+much with deep abhorrence, as with a disposition to laugh at it. And
+thus the practical judgment and influence of the society around us may
+be fatally evil; while the society all the time shall contain, even in
+its very perversion, various elements of truth and of good.
+
+I have kept to general language, to general views, perhaps too much; but
+all the time my mind has been fixed on the particular application of
+this, which lies scarcely beneath the surface, but which I cannot well
+bear more fully to unveil. But whoever has attended to what I have been
+saying, will be able, I should trust, to make the application, for
+himself, to those points in our society which most need correction. He
+will be able to understand how it is that the influence of the place is
+not better, while it undoubtedly contains so much of good; how the
+public opinion of a Christian school may yet be, in many respects, very
+unchristian. If he has attended at all to what I have said about our so
+rarely being in earnest, he will see something of the mischief of some
+of those publications, of those books, of that tone of conversation,
+which, I suppose, are here, as elsewhere, in fashion. Utterly impossible
+is it to lay down a rule for others in such matters: to say this book is
+too light, or this is an excess of light reading, or this laugh was too
+unrestrained, or that tone of trifling too perpetual. But, in these
+things, we should all judge ourselves; and remember that you are so
+little under outward restraint, your choice of reading is so free, your
+intercourse with one another so wholly uncontrolled, that, enjoying thus
+the full liberty of more advanced years, you incur also their
+responsibility. There is, doubtless, an excess of light reading, both in
+kind and in quantity; there is such a thing as a tone of conversation
+and manner too entirely, and too frequently, trifling. And you must be
+quite aware that we are placed here for something else than to indulge
+such a temper as this. Cheerfulness and thoughtlessness have no
+necessary connexion; the lightest spirits, which are indeed one of the
+greatest of earthly blessings, often play around the most earnest
+thought and the tenderest affection, and with far more grace than when
+they are united with the shallowness and hardness of him who is, in the
+sight of God, a fool. It were a strange notion, that we could never be
+merry without intoxication, yet not stranger than to think that mirth is
+the companion only of folly or of sin. But, setting God in Christ before
+us, then the conscience is awake; then we are in earnest; then we
+measure things rightly; then we feel them strongly; then we love those
+that are good, and shun those that are evil; then we learn that sin is
+no matter of laughter, that it ill deserves to be clothed under a
+ludicrous name; for that thing which we laugh at, that which we so
+miscall, is indeed the cause of infinite evil; for that Christ died; for
+that there are some who die that death which lasts for ever.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XVIII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+GENESIS xxvii. 38.
+
+_And Esau said unto his father, Hast thou but one blessing, my father?
+Bless me, even me also, O my father_.
+
+
+MATTHEW xv. 27.
+
+_And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall
+from their master's table_.
+
+
+Of these two passages, the first, as we must all remember, is taken from
+the first lesson of this morning's service; the second is from the
+morning's gospel. Both speak the same language, and point out, I think,
+that particular view of the story of Jacob obtaining the blessing which
+is most capable of being turned to account; for, as to the conduct of
+Jacob and his mother, it is manifestly no more capable of affording us
+benefit, as a matter of example, than the conduct, in some respects
+similar, of the unjust steward in our Lord's parable. The example,
+indeed, is of the same kind as that. If the steward was so anxious about
+his future worldly welfare, and Jacob about the worldly welfare of his
+descendants, that they did not scruple to obtain their ends, the one by
+dishonesty, the other by falsehood, much more should we be anxious about
+the true welfare of ourselves and those belonging to us, which no such
+unworthy means can be required to gain. But the point of the story to
+which the text refers, and which is illustrated also by the words of
+the Syrophoenician woman, is one which very directly concerns us all,
+being no other than this,--what should be the effect upon our own minds
+of witnessing others possessed of greater advantages than ourselves,
+whether obtained by the immediate gift of God, through the course of his
+ordinary providence, or acquired directly by some unjust or unlawful act
+of those who are in possession of them?
+
+Now, it is evident that, as equality is not the rule either of nature or
+of human society, there must be many in every congregation who are so
+far in the condition of Esau and of the Syrophoenician woman, as to be
+inferior to others around them in some one or more advantages. The
+inferiority may consist in what are called worldly advantages, or in
+natural advantages, or in spiritual advantages, or in some or all of
+these united. And it is not to be doubted that the sense of this
+inferiority is a hard trial, both as respects our feelings towards God
+and towards men. It is a hard trial; but yet, no trial overtakes us but
+such as is common to man: and here, as in all other cases, God will,
+with the trial, also make a way for us to escape, that we may be able
+to bear it.
+
+Let us consider, then, some of the most common cases in which this
+inferiority exists amongst us. With regard to worldly advantages, the
+peculiar nature of this congregation makes it less necessary than it
+generally would be, to dwell upon inequality in these: in fact, speaking
+generally, we are a very unusual example of equality in these respects;
+the advantages of station and fortune are enjoyed not, literally, in an
+equal degree by all of us, but equally as compared with, the lot of the
+great mass of society; we all enjoy the necessaries, and most of the
+comforts of life. What differences there are would, probably, appear in
+instances seemingly trifling, if, indeed, any thing were really
+trifling by which the temper and feelings, and through them the
+principles, of any amongst us may be affected for good or for evil. It
+may possibly happen that, in the indulgences, or means of indulgence,
+given to you by your friends at home, there may be sometimes, such a
+difference as to excite discontent or jealousy. It may be, that some are
+apt to exult over others, by talking of the pleasures, or the liberty,
+which they enjoy; and which the friends of others, either from necessity
+or from a sense of duty, are obliged to withhold. If this be ever felt
+by any of you as a trial; if it gall your pride, as well as restrict
+your enjoyments; then remember, that here, even in this seemingly little
+thing, the inferiority of which you complain may be either increased
+ten-fold, or changed into a blessed superiority. Increased ten-fold,
+even as from him that hath not, shall be taken away even that which he
+hath, if by discontent, and evil passions towards God and man, you make
+yourselves a hundred times more inferior spiritually than you were in
+outward circumstances; but changed into a blessed superiority, if it be
+borne with meekness, and patience, and thankfulness, even as it was said
+of the Gentile centurion, that there had not been found faith equal to
+his, no, not in Israel.
+
+But turning from worldly advantages to those which are called natural,
+and the inequality here is at once as great as elsewhere. In all
+faculties of body and mind; in the vigour of the senses, of the limbs,
+of the general constitution; in the greater or less liability to disease
+generally, or to any particular form of it; or, again, in powers of
+mind, in quickness, in memory, in imagination, in judgment; the
+differences between different persons in this congregation must be
+exceedingly wide. But, with regard to bodily powers, the trial is little
+felt, till the inferiority is shown in actual suffering from pain or
+from disease. So long as we are in health, our enjoyments are so many,
+and we so easily accommodate our habits to our powers, that a mere
+inferiority of strength, whether it be of limb or of constitution, is
+not apt to make us dissatisfied. But if it comes to actual illness or to
+pain, if we are deprived of the common enjoyments and occupations of our
+age, then perhaps the trial begins to be severe; and when we look at
+others who have taken the same liberties with their health as we have
+done, and see them notwithstanding perfectly well and strong, while we
+are disabled or suffering, we may think that God has dealt hardly with
+us, and may be inclined to ask with Esau, "Hast thou but one blessing,
+my Father? bless me, even me also, O my Father!" Now this language,
+according to the sense in which we use it, is either blameable or
+innocent. If we mean to say, "Hast thou health to give to others only
+and not to me? give me this blessing also, as thou hast given it to my
+brethren:" then it has in it somewhat of discontent and murmuring; it
+implies a claim to which God never listens. But if we mean, "Hast thou
+only one kind of blessing, my father? If thou hast blest others in one
+way, I murmur not nor complain: but out of thine infinite store, give me
+also such a blessing as may be convenient for me;" then God hears the
+prayer, then he gives the blessing, and gives it so richly, and makes it
+bear so evidently the mark of his love, that they who were last are
+become first; if others have health, and we have sickness, yet the
+spirit of patience and cheerful submission which God gives with it is so
+great a blessing, and makes us so certainly happy, that the strongest
+and healthiest of our friends have often far more reason to wish to
+change places with us, than we with them.
+
+Let us now take inequality in powers of mind. And here, undoubtedly, the
+difference is apt to be a trial. Not that, probably, it excites
+discontent or murmuring against God; nor jealousy against those whose
+faculties are better than our own: the trial is of another kind; we are
+tempted to make our inferiority an excuse for neglect; because we cannot
+do so much nor so easily as others, we do far less than we might do. But
+the parable shows us plainly, that if one talent only has been given us,
+while others have ten, yet that the one, no less than the ten, must be
+made to yield its increase. Here is the feeling expressed so earnestly
+by the woman entreating Christ to heal her daughter. "The dogs eat of
+the crumbs which fall from their master's table." Small as may be the
+portion of power given us, when compared with the plenty vouchsafed to
+others, still it is capable of nourishing us if we make use of it; still
+it shows that we too have our blessing. And if using it with
+thankfulness, if doing our very best with it, knowing that "a man is
+accepted according to what he hath, and not according to what he hath
+not," we labour humbly and diligently; then, not only does the talent
+itself become increased, so that our Lord, when he comes to reckon with
+us, may receive his own with usury: but a blessing of another kind is
+added to our labours, again, as in the former case, making those who
+were last to become first. For if there be one thing on earth which is
+truly admirable, it is to see God's wisdom blessing an inferiority of
+natural powers, when they have been honestly, humbly, and zealously
+cultivated. From how many pains are they delivered, to which great
+natural talents are continually exposed; irritation, jealousy, a morbid
+and nervous activity, bearing fruits not of peace, but of gall! With
+what blessings are they crowned, to which, the most powerful natural
+understanding is a stranger! the love of truth gratified, without the
+fear that truth will demand the sacrifice of personal vanity; the line
+of duty clearly discerned, because those mists of passion and
+selfishness which obscure it so often from the view of the keenest
+natural perception, have been dispersed by the spirit of humility and
+love; imperfect knowledge patiently endured, because whatever knowledge
+is enjoyed is known to be God's gift, and what he gives, or what he
+withholds, is alike welcome. This is the blessing of those who having
+had inferior natural powers, have so laboured to improve them according
+to God's will, that on all there has been grafted, as it were, some
+better power of grace, to yield a fruit most precious both for earth
+and heaven.
+
+But I spoke of an equality of spiritual advantages also, and this is
+perhaps the hardest trial of all. Oh, how great is this inequality in
+truth, when it seems to be so little! All of you, the children of
+Christian parents; all members of the Christian Church; all partaking
+here of the same worship, the same prayers, the same word of God, the
+same sacrament; are you not all the Israel of God, and not, like Esau,
+or the Syrophoenician woman, strangers to the covenant of blessing? Yet
+your real condition is, notwithstanding, very unequal. How unlike are
+your friends at home; how, unlike, also, are your friends here! Are
+there not some to whom their homes, both by direct precept and by
+example, are a far greater help than to others? Are there not some,
+whose immediate companions here may encourage them in all good far more
+than may be the case with, others? So, then, there may be some to whom
+this great blessing has been denied, whilst others enjoy it. What then?
+Shall we say, that, because we have it not, we will refuse to go in to
+our Father's house; that we will not walk as our brother walks, unless
+we have his advantages? Then must we remain cast out; vessels fashioned
+to dishonour; rejected of God, and cursed. Nay rather let us put a
+Christian sense on Esau's prayer, and cry, "'Hast thou but one blessing,
+my Father? bless me, even me also, O my Father.' If thou hast given to
+others earthly helps, which thou hast denied to me, give me thyself and
+thy own Spirit the more! If father and mother forsake my most precious
+interest, do thou take me up. If my nearest friends will not walk with
+me in the house of God, be thou my friend, and abide with, me always,
+making my house as thine. Outward and earthly means thou givest or
+takest away at thy pleasure; but give me help according to my need, that
+I yet may not lose thee."
+
+How naturally are we interested at the thought of any one so
+circumstanced, and uttering such a prayer! How earnestly do we wish to
+help him, to show our respect and true love for a faith so tried and so
+enduring! And think we that God cares for it less than we do? or have we
+not already the record of his love towards it, when Christ answered the
+Syrophoenician woman, "O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even
+as thou wilt?" He may not, indeed, see fit to give the very same
+blessing which was in the first instance denied: we may still have fewer
+spiritual advantages than others, as far as human helps are concerned;
+fewer good and earnest friends; fewer examples of holiness around us;
+fewer to join with us in our prayers and in our struggles against evil.
+But though this particular blessing may be denied,--as Esau could not
+gain that blessing which had been given to Jacob,--yet there is a
+blessing for us also, which may prove, in the end, even better than our
+brother's. He who serves God steadily, amidst many disadvantages, enjoys
+the blessing of a more confirmed and hardier faith; he has gone through
+trials, and been found conqueror; and for him that overcometh is
+reserved a more abundant measure of glory.
+
+But on the other side, we who, like Jacob, or Jacob's posterity, have
+the blessing,--whether it be natural, worldly, or spiritual,--let us
+consider what became of it when it was not improved. What was the sin
+of Esau,--speaking not of the individual, but of the less favoured
+people of Edom,--compared with the sin of Jacob? Nay, not of Edom only;
+but it shall be more tolerable for Sodom, in the day of judgment, than
+for the unbelieving cities of Israel. So it is, not only with the
+literal, but with the Christian Israel; so it is, not only with the
+Church as a whole compared with heathens, but with all those individuals
+amongst us, who enjoy in any larger measure than others any of God's
+blessings. They are blessings; but they may be made fatal curses. This
+holds true with blessings of every kind: with station and wealth, with
+bodily health and vigour, with, great powers of mind, with large means
+of spiritual improvement. To whom much is given, of him shall be much,
+required. It is required of us to enjoy our blessings by using them: so
+will they be blessings indeed. So it is with money and influence, with
+health, with talents, with spiritual knowledge, and good friends and
+parents. There are first who shall be last; that is, those who began
+their course with advantages which set them before their brethren, if
+they do not exert themselves, will fall grievously behind them: for the
+blessing denied may be, in effect, a blessing given; and the blessing
+given, in like manner, becomes too often a blessing taken away.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XIX.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MATTHEW xxii. 32.
+
+_God is not the God of the dead, but of the living_.
+
+
+We hear these words as a part of our Lord's answer to the Sadducees;
+and, as their question was put in evident profaneness, and the answer to
+it is one which to our minds is quite obvious and natural, so we are apt
+to think that in this particular story there is less than usual that
+particularly concerns us. But it so happens, that our Lord, in answering
+the Sadducees, has brought in one of the most universal and most solemn
+of all truths,--which is indeed implied in many parts of the Old
+Testament, but which the Gospel has revealed to us in all its
+fulness,--the truth contained in the words of the text, that "God is not
+the God of the dead, but of the living."
+
+I would wish to unfold a little what is contained in these words, which
+we often hear even, perhaps, without quite understanding them; and many
+times oftener without fully entering into them. And we may take them,
+first, in their first part, where they say that "God is not the God of
+the dead."
+
+The word "dead," we know, is constantly used in Scripture in a double
+sense, as meaning those who are dead spiritually, as well as those who
+are dead naturally. And, in either sense, the words are alike
+applicable: "God is not the God of the dead."
+
+God's not being the God of the dead signifies two things: that they who
+are without him are dead, as well as that they who are dead are also
+without him. So far as our knowledge goes respecting inferior animals,
+they appear to be examples of this truth. They appear to us to have no
+knowledge of God; and we are not told that they have any other life than
+the short one of which our senses inform us. I am well aware that our
+ignorance of their condition is so great that, we may not dare to say
+anything of them positively; there may be a hundred things true
+respecting them which we neither know nor imagine. I would only say
+that, according to that most imperfect light in which we see them, the
+two points of which I have been speaking appear to meet in them: we
+believe that they have no consciousness of God, and we believe that they
+will die. And so far, therefore, they afford an example of the
+agreement, if I may so speak, between these two points; and were
+intended, perhaps, to be to our view a continual image of it. But we had
+far better speak of ourselves. And here, too, it is the case that "God
+is not the God of the dead." If we are without him we are dead; and if
+we are dead we are without him: in other words, the two ideas of death
+and absence from God are in fact synonymous.
+
+Thus, in the account given of the fall of man, the sentence of death and
+of being cast out of Eden go together; and if any one compares the
+description of the second Eden in the Revelation, and recollects how
+especially it is there said, that God dwells in the midst of it, and is
+its light by day and night, he will see that the banishment from the
+first Eden means a banishment from the presence of God. And thus, in the
+day that Adam sinned, he died; for he was cast out of Eden immediately,
+however long he may have moved about afterwards upon the earth where
+God was not. And how very strong to the same point are the words of
+Hezekiah's prayer, "The grave cannot praise thee, Death cannot celebrate
+thee; they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth;" words
+which express completely the feeling that God is not the God of the
+dead. This, too, appears to be the sense generally of the expression
+used in various parts of the Old Testament, "Thou shalt surely die." It
+is, no doubt, left purposely obscure; nor are we ever told, in so many
+words, all that is meant by death; but, surely, it always implies a
+separation from God, and the being--whatever the notion may extend
+to--the being dead to him. Thus, when David had committed his great sin,
+and had expressed his repentance for it, Nathan tells him, "The Lord
+also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die:" which means, most
+expressively, thou shalt not die to God. In one sense, David died, as
+all men die; nor was he, by any means, freed from the punishment of his
+sin: he was not, in that sense, forgiven; but he was allowed still to
+regard God as his God; and, therefore, his punishments were but fatherly
+chastisements from God's hand, designed for his profit, that he might be
+partaker of God's holiness. And thus although Saul was sentenced to lose
+his kingdom, and although he was killed with his sons on Mount Gilboa,
+yet I do not think that we find the sentence passed upon him, "Thou
+shalt surely die;" and, therefore, we have no right to say that God had
+ceased to be his God, although be visited him with severe chastisements,
+and would not allow him to hand down to his sons the crown of Israel.
+Observe, also, the language of the eighteenth chapter of Ezekiel, where
+the expressions occur so often, "He shall surely live," and "He shall
+surely die." We have no right to refer these to a mere extension, on the
+one hand, or a cutting short, on the other, of the term of earthly
+existence. The promise of living long in the land, or, as in Hezekiah's
+case, of adding to his days fifteen years, is very different from the
+full and unreserved blessing, "Thou shalt surely live." And we know,
+undoubtedly, that both the good and the bad to whom Ezekiel spoke, died
+alike the natural death of the body. But the peculiar force of the
+promise, and of the threat, was, in the one case, Thou shalt belong to
+God; in the other, Thou shalt cease to belong to him; although the veil
+was not yet drawn up which concealed the full import of those terms,
+"belonging to God," and "ceasing to belong to him:" nay, can we venture
+to affirm that it is fully drawn aside even now?
+
+I have dwelt on this at some length, because it really seems to place
+the common state of the minds of too many amongst us in a light which is
+exceedingly awful; for if it be true, as I think the Scripture implies,
+that to be dead, and to be without God, are precisely the same thing,
+then can it be denied, that the symptoms of death are strongly marked
+upon many of us? Are there not many who never think of God, or care
+about his service? Are there not many who live, to all appearance, as
+unconscious of his existence as we fancy the inferior animals to be? And
+is it not quite clear, that to such persons, God cannot be said to be
+their God? He may be the God of heaven and earth, the God of the
+universe, the God of Christ's church; but he is not their God, for they
+feel to have nothing at all to do with him; and, therefore, as he is not
+their God, they are, and must be, according to the Scripture, reckoned
+among the dead.
+
+But God is the God "of the living." That is, as before, all who are
+alive, live unto him; all who live unto him, are alive. "God said, I am
+the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob;" and,
+therefore, says our Lord, "Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, are not and
+cannot be dead." They cannot be dead, because God owns them: he is not
+ashamed to be called their God; therefore, they are not cast out from
+him; therefore, by necessity, they live. Wonderful, indeed, is the truth
+here implied, in exact agreement, as we have seen, with the general
+language of Scripture; that, as she who but touched the hem of Christ's
+garment was, in a moment, relieved from her infirmity, so great was the
+virtue which went out from him; so they who are not cast out from God,
+but have any thing whatever to do with him, feel the virtue of his
+gracious presence penetrating their whole nature; because he lives, they
+must live also.
+
+Behold, then, life and death set before us; not remote, (if a few years
+be, indeed, to be called remote,) but even now present before us; even
+now suffered or enjoyed. Even now, we are alive unto God, or dead unto
+God; and, as we are either the one or the other, so we are, in the
+highest possible sense of the terms, alive or dead. In the highest
+possible sense of the terms; but who can tell what that highest possible
+sense of the terms is? So much has, indeed, been revealed to us, that we
+know now that death means a conscious and perpetual death, as life means
+a conscious and perpetual life. But greatly, indeed, do we deceive
+ourselves, if we fancy that, by having thus much told us, we have also
+risen to the infinite heights, or descended to the infinite depths,
+contained in those little words, life and death. They are far higher,
+and far deeper, than ever thought or fancy of man has reached to. But,
+even on the first edge of either, at the visible beginnings of that
+infinite ascent or descent, there is surely something which may give us
+a foretaste of what is beyond. Even to us in this moral state, even to
+you advanced but so short a way on your very earthly journey, life and
+death have a meaning: to be dead unto God, or to be alive to him, are
+things perceptibly different.
+
+For, let me ask of those who think least of God, who are most separate
+from him, and most without him, whether there is not now actually,
+perceptibly, in their state, something of the coldness, the loneliness,
+the fearfulness of death? I do not ask them whether they are made
+unhappy by the fear of God's anger; of course they are not: for they who
+fear God are not dead to him, nor he to them. The thought of him gives
+them no disquiet at all; this is the very point we start from. But I
+would ask them whether they know what it is to feel God's blessing. For
+instance: we all of us have our troubles of some sort or other, our
+disappointments, if not our sorrows. In these troubles, in these
+disappointments,--I care not how small they may be,--have they known
+what it is to feel that God's hand is over them; that these little
+annoyances are but his fatherly correction; that he is all the time
+loving us, and supporting us? In seasons of joy, such, as they taste
+very often, have they known what it is to feel that they are tasting the
+kindness of their heavenly Father, that their good things come from his
+hand, and are but an infinitely slight foretaste of his love? Sickness,
+danger,--I know that they come to many of us but rarely; but if we have
+known them, or at least sickness, even in its lighter form, if not in
+its graver,--have we felt what it is to know that we are in our Father's
+hands, that he is with us, and will be with us to the end; that nothing
+can hurt those whom he loves? Surely, then, if we have never tasted
+anything of this: if in trouble, or in joy, or in sickness, we are left
+wholly to ourselves, to bear as we can, and enjoy as we can; if there is
+no voice that ever speaks out of the heights and the depths around us,
+to give any answer to our own; if we are thus left to ourselves in this
+vast world,--there is in this a coldness and a loneliness; and whenever
+we come to be, of necessity, driven to be with our own hearts alone, the
+coldness and the loneliness must be felt. But consider that the things
+which, we see around us cannot remain with us, nor we with them. The
+coldness and loneliness of the world, without God, must be felt more and
+more as life wears on: in every change of our own state, in every
+separation from or loss of a friend, in every more sensible weakness of
+our own bodies, in every additional experience of the uncertainty of our
+own counsels,--the deathlike feeling will come upon us more and more
+strongly: we shall gain more of that fearful knowledge which tells us
+that "God is not the God of the dead."
+
+And so, also, the blessed knowledge that he is the God "of the living"
+grows upon those who are truly alive. Surely he "is not far from every
+one of us." No occasion of life fails to remind those who live unto him,
+that he is their God, and that they are his children. On light occasions
+or on grave ones, in sorrow and in joy, still the warmth of his love is
+spread, as it were, all through the atmosphere of their lives: they for
+ever feel his blessing. And if it fills them with joy unspeakable even
+now, when they so often feel how little they deserve it; if they delight
+still in being with God, and in living to him, let them be sure that
+they have in themselves the unerring witness of life eternal: God is the
+God of the living, and all who are with him must live.
+
+Hard it is, I well know, to bring this home, in any degree, to the minds
+of those who are dead: for it is of the very nature of the dead that
+they can hear no words of life. But it has happened that, even whilst
+writing what I have just been uttering to you, the news reached me that
+one, who two months ago was one of your number, who this very half-year
+has shared in all the business and amusements of this place, is passed
+already into that state where the meanings of the terms life and death
+are become fully revealed. He knows what it is to live unto God, and
+what it is to die to him. Those things which are to us unfathomable
+mysteries, are to him all plain: and yet but two months ago he might
+have thought himself as far from attaining this knowledge as any of us
+can do. Wherefore it is clear, that these things, life and death, may
+hurry their lesson upon us sooner than we deem of, sooner than we are
+prepared to receive it. And that were indeed awful, if, being dead to
+God, and yet little feeling it, because of the enjoyments of our worldly
+life, those enjoyments were on a sudden to be struck away from us, and
+we should find then that to be dead to God was death, indeed, a death
+from which there is no waking, and in which there is no sleeping
+for ever.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XX.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+EZEKIEL xiii. 22.
+
+_With lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad, whom I have not
+made sad; and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not
+return from his wicked way, by promising him life_.
+
+
+The verses which immediately precede this, require explanation, but
+perhaps our knowledge is hardly sufficient to enable us to give it
+fully. There are allusions to customs,--to fashions rather,--common
+amongst the Israelites at the time, which we can now scarcely do more
+than guess at; but we may observe, that there was a general practice,
+which even God's own prophets were directed often to comply with, of
+enforcing what was said in word by some corresponding outward action, in
+which the speaker made himself, as it were, a living image of the idea
+which he meant to convey. Thus, when Zedekiah, the son of Chenaanah, was
+assuring Ahab, that he should drive the Syrians before him, he made
+himself horns of iron, and said, "With these shalt thou push the
+Syrians, until thou have consumed them." In the same way, it is imagined
+that the false prophetesses spoken of in the text were in the habit of
+wearing pillows, or cushions, fastened to their arms, and directed those
+who came to consult them to do the same, as a sign of rest and peace;
+that they who trusted to them had nothing to fear, but might lie down
+and enjoy themselves at their feasts, or in sleep, with entire security.
+Or, again, if we connect what is said of the pillows with what
+immediately follows about the kerchiefs put upon the head, we may
+suppose that both are but parts of a fantastic dress, such as was often
+worn by pretended prophets and fortune-tellers, and which they may have
+made those wear, also, who came before them. We know that the covering
+on the head was, for instance, a part of the ceremonial law of the Roman
+augurs, when they began their divinations. But, however this be, the
+exact understanding of these particular points is not necessary to our
+deriving the lesson of the passage in general. I know that there is
+something naturally painful to an active mind in being obliged to
+content itself with an indistinct notion, or still more, with no notion
+at all, of the meaning of any words presented to it. But, whilst we
+should highly value this sensitiveness, as, indeed, few qualities are
+more essential in the pursuit of truth, yet we must be careful not to
+let our disappointment carry us too far, so as to pass over a whole
+passage, or portion, of Scripture, as if in despair, because we cannot
+understand every part of it. Much of the supposed obscurity of the
+prophets arises from this cause--that we find in them particular
+expressions and allusions, which, whether from a, fault in the
+translation, or from our imperfect knowledge of the times of which the
+prophets speak, and of the language in which they wrote, are certainly
+quite unintelligible. But these are only a few expressions, occurring
+here and there; and it is a great evil to fancy that their writings, in
+general, are not to be understood, because of the difficulty of
+particular passages in them. Thus, with the very chapter of which we are
+now speaking, the expression to which I have alluded can only be
+uncertainly interpreted, yet the lesson of the chapter, as a whole, is
+perfectly clear, notwithstanding. The dress, or fashions, or particular
+rites, of the false prophets of Jerusalem and their votaries, may offer
+no distinct image to our minds; but the evil of their doings, how they
+deceived others, and were themselves deceived; the points, that is,
+which alone concern us practically, these are set before us plainly.
+"With their lies they made the heart of the righteous sad, whom God had
+not made sad; and they strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he
+should not return from his wicked way, by promising him life." Where the
+way of life was broad, they strove to make it narrow; and where it was
+narrow, they strove to make it broad: by their solemn and superstitious
+lies, they frightened and perplexed the good, while, by their lives of
+ungodliness, they emboldened and encouraged the wicked.
+
+It may not, at first sight, seem necessary that these two things should
+go together; there might be, it seems, either the fault of making the
+heart of the righteous sad, without that of strengthening the hands of
+the wicked: or there might be the strengthening of the hands of the
+wicked, without making sad the heart of the righteous. And so it
+sometimes has been: there has been a wickedness which has not tried to
+keep up superstition: there has been a superstition, the supporters of
+which have not wilfully encouraged wickedness. Yet, although this has
+been so, with respect to the intention of the parties concerned, yet in
+their own nature, the tendency of either evil to produce the other is
+sure and universal. We cannot exist without some influences of fear and
+restraint, on the one hand, and without some indulgence of freedom, on
+the other. God has provided for both these wants, so to speak, of our
+nature; he has told us whom we should fear, and where we should be
+restrained, and where, also, we may be safely in freedom: there is the
+fruit forbidden, and the fruit which we may eat freely. But if the
+restraint and the liberty be either of them put in the wrong place, the
+double evil is sure to follow. Restrained in his lawful liberty,
+debarred from the good and wholesome fruit of the garden, man breaks out
+into a liberty which is unlawful; he eats of the forbidden fruit, whose
+taste is death; or, surfeited with an unholy freedom, and let to run
+wild in a space far too vast for his strength to compass, he turns
+cravingly for that support to his weariness which a narrowed range would
+afford him; and he limits himself on that very quarter in which alone he
+might expatiate freely. Superstition, in fact, is the rest of
+wickedness, and wickedness is the breaking loose of superstition.
+
+But, however true this may be, are we concerned in it? First of all,
+when we find an evil dwelt upon often in the Prophets, and find it dwelt
+upon again by our Lord and his Apostles with no less earnestness, there
+is, at least, a strong presumption, that an evil of this sort is nothing
+local or passing, but that it is fixed in man's nature, and is apt to
+grow up in all times, and in all countries. Now, the double evil spoken
+of in the text, occurs again in the gospel; there we find men spoken of,
+who, in like manner, insisted upon what was trifling, and were careless
+of what was important; and in the epistles, we find, again, the same
+characters holding up as righteous others than those who worked
+righteousness: men, who spoke lies in hypocrisy, having their conscience
+seared with a hot iron. We may presume, therefore, that this evil is of
+an enduring character; but if we look back to the history of the
+Christian Church, or look around us, the presumption becomes the sad
+conviction of experience.
+
+Nor is the evil merely one which exists in the country at large; a thing
+which might be fully dwelt upon any where but here. On the contrary, I
+hardly know of an age more exposed to it than youth. There exist in
+youth, in a very high degree, those opposite feelings of our nature,
+which I have before spoken of; a tendency to respect, to follow, to be
+led, on the one hand; and on the other, a lively desire for independence
+and freedom. These feelings often exist in the greatest strength in the
+same individual; and when they are not each turned in their proper
+direction, ruin is the consequence. Nothing is more common than to see
+great narrowness of mind, great prejudices, and great disorderliness of
+conduct, united in the same person. Nothing is more common than to see
+the same mind utterly prostrated before some idol of its own, and
+supporting that idol with the most furious zeal, and at the same time
+utterly rebellious to Christ, and rejecting with scorn the enlightening,
+the purifying, and the loving influences of Christ's Spirit.
+
+The idols of various minds are infinitely various, some seducing the
+loftiest natures and some the vilest. But of this we may be sure, that
+every one of us has a tendency to some one idol or other, if not to
+many; and our business is especially each to watch, ourselves, lest we
+be enslaved to our peculiar idol. I will now, however, speak of those
+which, tempt the highest minds; which, by their show of sacredness and
+excellence, make us fancy, that while following them we are following
+Christ. And let none be surprised, if I rank among idols many things,
+which, in themselves and in their proper use and order, are indeed to be
+loved and reverenced. It was most right to respect the Apostle Peter,
+and listen to his word; but that great Apostle would have been ruin to
+Cornelius, and not salvation, if he had suffered him, without reproof,
+to fall down before him, and render to him the service due to Christ
+alone. How many good and pious feelings must have been awakened from age
+to age in many minds, at the sight of the brazen serpent on the pole,
+the memorial of their fathers' deliverance in the wilderness! But when
+this awakening, this solemn memorial was corrupted into an idol, when
+men bowed down before it in superstition, it was the part of true piety
+to do as Hezekiah did, to dash it, notwithstanding all its solemn
+associations, into a thousand pieces.
+
+Thus things good, things noble, things sacred, may all become idols. To
+some minds truth is an idol, to others justice, to others charity or
+benevolence; and others are beguiled by objects of a different sort of
+sacredness: some have made Christ's mother their idol; some, Christ's
+servants; some, again, Christ's sacraments, and Christ's own body, the
+Church. If these may all be idols, where can we find a name so holy, as
+that we may surrender up our whole souls to it; before which obedience,
+reverence, without measure, intense humility, most unreserved adoration,
+may all be duly rendered. One name there is, and one only; one alone in
+heaven and in earth; not truth, not justice, not benevolence, not
+Christ's mother, not his holiest servants, not his blessed sacraments,
+not his very mystical body, but Himself only, who died for us and rose
+again, Jesus Christ, both God and Man.
+
+He is truth, and he is righteousness, and he is love; he gives his grace
+to his sacraments, and his manifold gifts to his Church; whoever hath
+him hath all things; but if we do not take heed, whenever we turn our
+mind to any other object, we shall make it an idol and lose him. Take
+him in all his fulness, not as God merely, not as man merely; not in his
+life on earth only, not in his death only, not in his exaltation at
+God's right hand only; but in all his fulness, the Christ of God, God
+and Man, our Prophet, our Priest, our King and Lord, redeeming us by his
+blood, sanctifying us by his Spirit; and then worship him and love him
+with all the heart, and with, all the soul, and with all the strength;
+and we shall see how all evil will be barred, and all good will abound.
+No man who worships Christ alone, can be a fanatic, nor yet can be a
+more philosopher; he cannot be bigoted, nor yet can he be indifferent;
+he cannot be so the slave of what be calls amiable feelings as to cast
+truth and justice behind him; nor yet can he so pursue truth and justice
+as to lose sight of humbler and softer feelings, self-abasement,
+reverence, devotion. There is no evil tendency in the nature of any one
+of us, which has not its cure in the true worship of Christ our Saviour.
+Let us look into our hearts, and consider their besetting faults. Are we
+indolent, or are we active; are we enthusiastic, or are we cold; zealous
+or indifferent, devout or reasonable; whatever the inclination, or bias
+of our nature be, if we follow its kindred idol, it will be magnified
+and grow on to our ruin; if we worship Christ, it will be pruned and
+chastened, and made to grow up with opposite tendencies, all alike
+tempered, none destroyed; none overgrowing the garden, but all filling
+it with their several fruits; so that it shall be, indeed, the garden of
+the Lord, and the Spirit of the Lord shall dwell in the midst of it.
+
+And who shall dare to make sad the heart of him who is thus drinking
+daily of the well-spring of righteousness, by telling him that he is not
+yet saved, nor can be, unless he will come and bow down before his idol?
+And if, rather than do so, he break the idol in pieces, who shall dare
+to call him profane, or cold in love to his Lord, when it was in his
+very jealousy for his Lord, and in his full purpose to worship him
+alone, that he threw down all that exalted itself above its due
+proportion against him? And if a man be not so worshipping Christ only,
+who shall dare to encourage him in his evil way, by magnifying the
+sacredness of his idol, and ascribing to it that healing virtue which
+belongs to Christ alone?
+
+What has been here said might bear to be followed up at far greater
+length than the present occasion will admit of. But the main point is
+one, I think, of no small importance, that all fanaticism and
+superstition on the one hand, and all unbelief and coldness of heart on
+the other, arise from what is in fact idolatry,--the putting some other
+object, whether it be called a religious or moral one,--and an object
+often in itself very excellent,--in the place of Christ himself, as set
+forth to us fully in the Scriptures. And as no idol can stand in
+Christ's place, or in any way save us, so whoever worships Christ truly
+is preserved from all idols and has life eternal. And if any one demand
+of him further, that he should worship his idol, and tells him that he
+is not safe if he does not; his answer will be rather that he will
+perish if he does; that he is safe, fully safe, and only safe, so long
+as he clings to Christ alone; and that to make anything else necessary
+to his safety, is not only to minister to superstition, but to
+ungodliness also; not only to lay on us a yoke which neither our fathers
+nor we were able to bear; but, by the very act of laying this
+unchristian yoke upon us, to tear from us the easy yoke and light burden
+of Christ himself, our Lord and our life.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXI.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+ADVENT SUNDAY.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+HEBREWS in. 16.
+
+_For some, when they had heard, did provoke: howbeit not all that came
+out of Egypt by Moses_.
+
+
+I take this verse as my text, rather than those which immediately go
+before or follow it, because it affords one of the most serious
+instances of mistranslation that are to be met with in the whole New
+Testament. For the true translation of the words is this: "For who were
+they who, when they had heard, did provoke? nay, were they not all who
+came out of Egypt through Moses?" And then it goes on--"And with whom
+was he grieved forty years? was it not with them that had sinned, whose
+carcases fell in the wilderness? And to whom sware he that they should
+not enter into his rest, but to them that believed not?" I call this a
+serious mistranslation, because it lessens the force of the writer's
+comparison. So far from meaning to say that "some, but not all did
+provoke," he lays a stress on the universality of the evil: it was not
+only a few, but the whole people who came out of Egypt, with only the
+two individual exceptions of Caleb and Joshua. All the rest who were
+grown up when they came out of Egypt did provoke God; and the carcases
+of that whole generation, fell in the wilderness.
+
+Had the lesson from the Hebrews been actually chosen for the service of
+this day, it could hardly have suited it better. For this day is the
+New-year's day of the Christian year; and it is probably for this reason
+that the service of the first day of the common year is confined
+entirely to the commemoration of our Lord's circumcision, and takes no
+notice of the beginning of a new year. It is manifest that it could not
+do so without confusion: for the first of January is not the beginning
+of the Christian year, but Advent Sunday; the last Sunday of the
+Christian year is not Christmas-day, as it would be this year if we
+reckoned by the common divisions of time; but it is the last Sunday
+after Trinity. Now, then, we are at the beginning of our year; and well
+it is that, as our trial is now become shorter by another year, as
+another division of our lives has passed away, we should fix our eyes on
+that which makes every year so valuable,--the Judgment, for which it
+ought to be a preparation. In fact, if we observe, we shall see that
+these Sundays in Advent are much more regarded by the Church as the
+beginning of a new year, than as a mere prelude to the celebration of
+the festival of Christmas. That is, Christmas-day is regarded, so to
+speak, in a two-fold light, as representing both the comings of our
+Lord, his first coming in the flesh, and his second coming to judgment.
+When the day actually arrives, it commemorates our Lord's first coming:
+and this is the beginning of the Christian year, historically regarded,
+that is, so far as it is a commemoration of the several events of our
+Lord's life on earth. But before it comes, it is regarded as
+commemorating our Lord's second coming: and wisely, for his first coming
+requires now no previous preparation for it; we cannot well put
+ourselves into the position of those who lived before Christ appeared.
+But our whole life is, or ought to be, a preparation for his second
+coming; and it is this state, of which the season of Advent in the
+Church services is intended to be the representation.
+
+There is something striking in the season of the natural year at which
+we thus celebrate the beginning of another Christian year. It is a true
+type of our condition, of the insensible manner in which all the changes
+of our lives steal upon us, that nature, at this moment, gives no
+outward signs of beginning: it is a period which does not manifest any
+striking change in the state of things around us. The Christian Spring
+begins ere we have reached the half of the natural winter. Nature is not
+bursting into life, but rather preparing itself for a long period of
+death. And this is a type of an universal truth, that the signs and
+warnings which we must look to, must come from within us, not from
+without: that neither sky nor earth, will arouse us from our deadly
+slumber, unless we are ourselves aroused already, and more disposed to
+make warnings for ourselves than to find them.
+
+If this be true of nature, it is true also of all the efforts of man. As
+nature will give no sign, so man cannot. Let the Church do all that she
+may; let her keep her solemn anniversaries, and choose out for her
+services all such passages of Scripture as may be most fitted to impress
+the lesson which she would teach; still we know that these are alike
+powerless and unheeded; that unless there be in our own minds something
+beforehand disposed to profit by them, they are but the words of
+unavailing affection, vainly spoken to the ears of the dead.
+
+Oh that we would remember this, all of us; that there is no voice in
+nature, no voice in man, that can really awaken the sleeping soul. That
+is the work of a far mightier power, to be sought for with most earnest
+prayers for ourselves and for each other: that the Holy Spirit of God
+would speak, and would dispose our hearts to hear; that so being
+awakened from death and our ears being truly opened, all things outward
+may now join in language which we can hear; and nature, and man, life
+and death, things present and things to come, may be but the manifold
+voices of the Spirit of God, all working for us together for good. Till
+this be so, we speak in vain; our words neither reach our own hearts,
+nor the hearts of our hearers; they are but recorded in God's book of
+judgment, to be brought forward hereafter for the condemnation of
+us both.
+
+Yet we must still speak; for the Spirit of God, who alone works in us
+effectually, works also secretly; we know not when, nor how, nor where.
+But we know, that as the Father worketh hitherto, and the Son worketh
+hitherto, so the Holy Spirit worketh hitherto, and is still working
+daily. We know that, every year, he creates in thousands of God's people
+that work which alone shall abide for ever. We know that in the year
+that is just past he has done this; that in the year which is just
+beginning he will do it. Have we not here, also, many in whom he has
+wrought this work? may we not hope, and surely believe, that there are
+many in whom he is even now preparing to work it?
+
+We know not who these are; still less do we know, what were the
+occasions which the Holy Spirit so blessed as to work in them his work
+of life. But this we know, that we are bound to minister all the
+occasions which we can; we must not spare our labour, although it is God
+alone who gives the increase. We must speak of life and of death, of
+Christ and of judgment, not forgetting that we speak often, and shall
+speak, utterly in vain; yet knowing that it is by these very thoughts,
+though long unheeded, that God's Spirit does in his own good time awaken
+the heart; he takes of the things of Christ and shows them to us; and
+then, what was before like a book in a strange language--we saw the
+figures, but they conveyed no meaning to our minds--becomes, on a
+sudden, instinct with the language of God, which we hear and understand
+as readily as if it were our own tongue wherein we were born.
+
+Therefore, we speak and say, that another year has now dawned upon us;
+and we would remind you, and remember, ourselves, in what words the
+various Scriptures of this day's service point out its inestimable
+value. "Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed." So says St.
+Paul in the epistle of this day; and how blessed are all those amongst
+us who can feel that this is truly said of them! Then, indeed, a new
+year's day is a day of rejoicing; we are so much nearer that period when
+all care, all anxiety, all painful labour will be for ever ended. But
+there is other language of a different sort, which, it may be, will suit
+us better. "I have nourished and brought up children, and they have
+rebelled against me." "Their land is full of idols; they worship the
+work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made;" which
+means to us, the work of our own hearts, that which our own fancies and
+desires have made. "Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, for
+fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty." For in the very
+temple of God, his Church, all manner of profane thoughts and words and
+works are crowded together; the din of covetousness and worldliness is
+loud and constant, and will ill abide the day of his coming, who will, a
+second time, cast out of his temple all that is unclean. And is there
+not also in us that evil heart of unbelief and disobedience which
+departs from the living God? are there not here those who are becoming
+daily hardened through the deceitfulness of sin? How are they passing
+their time in the wilderness, and with what prospects when they come to
+the end of it? God said, "I sware in my wrath, that they shall not enter
+into my rest." By the way that they came, by the same shall they return;
+they shall go back to that bondage from which they were once redeemed,
+and from which they will be redeemed again no more for ever.
+
+These are some of the passages of this day's service which speaks to us
+at the beginning of this new Christian year. Let me add to all this
+language of warning, the language in which God, by his apostle Paul,
+answers every one of us, if we ask of him in sincerity of heart, "Lord,
+what wilt thou have me to do?" He answers, "The night is far spent, the
+day is at hand: let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and
+drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and
+envying: but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for
+the flesh, to fulfil the works thereof." Now, I grant, that this day, of
+which the apostle speaks, has never yet shone so brightly, as he had
+hoped and imagined; clouds have, up to this hour, continually
+overshadowed it. I mean, that the lives of Christians have hindered them
+from being the light of the world. It has been a light pale and dim, and
+therefore the works of darkness have continued to abound. But admit
+this, and what follows? Is it, or can it be, anything else but a more
+earnest desire not to be ourselves children of darkness, lest what we
+see to have happened in part should happen altogether; namely, that the
+day should never shine on us at all? We see that God's promises have
+been in part forfeited; we see that Christ's kingdom has not been what
+it was prophesied it should be. Is not this a solemn warning, that for
+us, too, individually, God's promises may be forfeited? that all we read
+in Scripture of light, and life, and glory, and happiness, should really
+prove to us words only, and no reality? that whereas the promise of
+salvation has been made to us, we should be in the end, not saved, but
+lost? If, indeed, God's kingdom were shining around us, in its full
+beauty; if every evil thing were driven out of his temple; if we saw
+nothing but holy lives and happy, the fruits of his Spirit, truth, and
+love, and joy; then we might be less anxious for ourselves; our course
+would be far smoother; the very stream would carry us along to the end
+of our voyage without our labour: what evil thoughts would not be
+withered, and die long ere they could ripen into action, if the very air
+which we breathed were of such, keen and heavenly purity! It is because
+all this is not so, that we have need of so much watchfulness; it is
+because the faults of every one of us make our brethren's task harder;
+because there is not one bad or careless person amongst us who is not a
+hindrance in his brother's path, and does not oblige him to exert
+himself the more. Therefore, because the day is not bright, but
+overclouded; because it is but too like the night, and too many use it
+as the night for all works of darkness; let us take the more heed that
+we do not ourselves so mistake it; let us watch each of us the light
+within us, lest, indeed, we should wholly stumble; let us put on the
+Lord Jesus Christ. You know how often I have dwelt on this; how often I
+have tried to show that Christ is all in all to us; that to put on
+Christ, is a truer and fuller expression, by far, than if we had been
+told to put on truth, or holiness, or goodness. It includes all these,
+with something more, that nothing but itself can give--the sense of
+safety, and joy unspeakable, in feeling ourselves sheltered in our
+Saviour's arms, and taken even into himself. Assuredly, if we put on the
+Lord Jesus Christ, we shall not make provision for the flesh to fulfil
+the lusts thereof; such a warning would then be wholly unnecessary. Or,
+if we do not like language thus figurative, let us put it, if we will,
+into the plainest words that shall express the same meaning; let us call
+it praying to Christ, thinking of him, hoping in him, earnestly loving
+him; these, at least, are words without a figure, which all can surely
+understand. Let us be Christ's this year that is now beginning; be his
+servants, be his disciples, be his redeemed in deed; let us live to him,
+and for him; setting him before us every day to do his will, and to live
+in his blessing. Then, indeed, if it be his pleasure that we should
+serve him throughout this year, even to its end, we may repeat, with a
+deeper feeling of their truth, the words of St. Paul; we may say, when
+next Advent Sunday shall appear, that now is our salvation nearer than
+when we became believers.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CHRISTMAS DAY.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JOHN i. 10.
+
+_He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew
+Him not_.
+
+
+When we use ourselves, or hear others use, the term "mystery," as
+applied to things belonging to the gospel, we should do well to consider
+what is meant by it. For our common notion of the word mystery is of
+something dark; whereas Christ and his gospel are continually spoken of
+as being, above all other things, light. Then come others, and say,
+"Light and darkness cannot go together: what you call the mysteries of
+Christianity are no part of it, but the fond inventions of man:
+Christianity is all simple and clear:" and thus they strike away some of
+the very greatest truths which God has revealed to us. Thus they deal in
+particular with the great truth declared in the text, that He who made
+the world visited it in the likeness of man. Now, if this truth were a
+mystery, in the common notion of that term; if it were a thing full of
+darkness, defying our minds to understand it, or to draw any good from
+it; then, indeed, it would be of little consequence whether we received
+it or no. It is because it is a mystery in a very different sense, in
+the sense in which the word is used commonly in the Scriptures; that
+is, a thing which was a secret, but which God has been pleased to
+reveal, and to reveal for our benefit, that therefore the loss of it
+would be the loss of a real blessing, a loss at once of light
+and comfort.
+
+But we must go a little further, and explain from what this sad
+confusion in the use of the term "mystery" has arisen. There are many
+things relating to ourselves and to things around us, which by nature we
+cannot understand; and of God we can scarcely understand anything. Now,
+while the gospel has revealed much that we did not know before, it yet
+has not revealed everything: of God, in particular, it has given us much
+most precious knowledge, yet it has not removed all the veil. It has
+furnished us with a glass, indeed, to use the apostle's comparison; but
+the glass, although, a great help, although reflecting a likeness of
+what, without it, we could not see at all, is yet a dark and imperfect
+manner of seeing, compared with, the seeing face to face. So, when the
+gospel tells us that He who made the world visited it in our nature, it
+does not indeed enable us yet fully to conceive what He is who made us,
+and then became as one of us; there is still left around the name of God
+that light inaccessible which is to our imperfections darkness; and so
+far as we cannot understand or conceive rightly of God, so far it is
+true that we cannot understand all that is conveyed in the expression
+that God was in the world dwelling among us. Yet it is still most true
+that by the revelation thus made to us we have gained immensely. God, as
+he is in himself, we cannot understand; but Jesus Christ we can. When we
+are told to love God, if we look to the life and death of Christ, we can
+understand and feel how truly he deserves our love; when we are told to
+be perfect as God is perfect, we have the image of this perfection so
+truly set before us in his Son Jesus, that it may be well said, "Whoso
+hath seen Him hath seen the Father;" and why, then, should we ask with
+Philip, that "He should show us the Father?"
+
+What, then, the festival of Christmas presents to us, as distinct from
+that of Easter, is generally the revelation of God in the flesh. True it
+is, that we may make it, if we will, the same as Easter: that is, we may
+celebrate it as the birth of our Saviour, of him who died and rose again
+for us; but then we only celebrate our Lord's birth with reference to
+his death and resurrection: that is, we make Christmas to be Easter
+under another name. And so everything relating to our Lord may be made
+to refer to his death and resurrection; for in them consists our
+redemption, and for that reason Easter has ever been considered as the
+great festival of the Christian year. But yet apart from this, Christmas
+has something peculiarly its own: namely, as I said before, the
+revelation of God in the flesh, not only to make atonement for our
+sins,--which is the peculiar subject of the celebration of the season of
+Easter,--but to give us notions of God at once distinct and lively; to
+enable us to have One in the invisible world, whom we could conceive of
+as distinctly as of a mere man, yet whom we might love with all our
+hearts, and trust with all our hearts, and yet be guilty of no idolatry.
+
+It is not, then, only as the beginning of an earthly life of little more
+than thirty years, that we may celebrate the day of our Lord's birth in
+the flesh. His own words express what this day has brought to us:
+"Henceforth shall ye see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending
+and descending upon the Son of man." The words here, like so many of our
+Lord's, are expressed in a parable; but their meaning is not the less
+clear. They allude evidently to Jacob's vision, to the ladder reaching
+from earth to heaven, on which the angels were ascending and descending
+continually. But this vision is itself a parable; showing, under the
+figure of the ladder reaching from earth to heaven, and the angels going
+up and down on it, a free communication, as it were, between God and
+man, heaven brought nearer to earth, and heavenly things made more
+familiar. Now, this is done, in a manner, by every revelation from God;
+most of all, by the revelation of his Son. Nor is it only by his Spirit
+that Christ communicates with us even now; though, he is ascended again
+into heaven, yet the benefits of his having become man, over and above
+those of his dying and rising again for us, have not yet passed away. It
+is still the man Christ Jesus who brings heaven near to earth, and earth
+near to heaven.
+
+It has been well said by Augustine, that babes in Christ should so think
+of the Son of man as not to lose sight of the Son of God; that more
+advanced Christians should so think of the Son of God as not to lose
+sight of the Son of man. Augustine well understood how the thought of
+the Son of man is fitted to our weakness; and that the best and most
+advanced of us in this mortal life are never so strong as to be able to
+do without it. Have we ever tried this with our children? We tell them
+that God made them, and takes care of them, and loves them, and hears
+their prayers, and knows what is in their hearts, and cannot bear what
+is evil. These are such notions of God as a child requires, and can
+understand. But, if we join with them some of those other notions which
+belong to God as he is in himself; that he is a Spirit, not to be seen,
+not to be conceived of as in any one place, or in any one form; what do
+we but embarrass our child's mind, and lessen that sense of near and
+dear relation to God which, our earlier accounts of God had given him?
+Yet we must teach him something of this sort, if we would prevent him
+from forming unworthy notions of God, such as have been the beginning
+of all idolatry. Here, then, is the blessing of the revelation of God in
+Christ. All that he can understand of God, or love in him, or fear in
+him--that is to be found in Christ. Christ made him, takes care of him,
+can hear his prayers, can read his little heart, loves him tenderly; yet
+cannot bear what is evil, and will strictly judge him at the last day.
+But what we must teach when we speak of God, yet which has a tendency to
+lessen the liveliness of our impressions of him, this has no place when
+we speak of Christ. Christ has a body, incorruptible and glorified
+indeed, such as they who are Christ's shall also wear at his coming, yet
+still a body. Christ is not to be seen, indeed, for the clouds have
+received him out of our sight: yet he may be conceived of as in one
+place--at the right hand of God; as in one certain and well-known
+form--the form of the Son of man. Yet let us observe again, and be
+thankful for the perfect wisdom of God. Even while presenting to us God
+in Christ; that is to say, God with all those attributes which we can
+understand, and fear, and love; and without those which, throw us, as it
+were, to an infinite distance, overwhelming our minds, and baffling all
+our conceptions; even then the utmost care is taken to make us remember
+that God in himself is really that infinite and incomprehensible Being
+to whom we cannot, in our present state, approach; that even his
+manifestation of himself in Christ Jesus, is one less perfect than we
+shall be permitted to see hereafter; that Christ stands at the right
+hand of the Majesty on high; that he has received from the Father all
+his kingdom and his glory; finally, that the Father is greater than he,
+inasmuch as any other nature added to the pure and perfect essence of
+God, must, in a certain measure, if I may venture so to speak, be a
+coming down to a lower point, from the very and unmixed Divinity.
+
+I have purposely mentioned this last circumstance, although it is not
+the view that I wish particularly to take to-day, because such passages
+as that which I quoted, where Christ tells his disciples that his Father
+was greater than he, and many others of the same sort, throughout the
+New Testament, are sometimes apt to embarrass and perplex us, if we do
+not consider their peculiar object. It was very necessary, especially at
+a time when men were so accustomed to worship their highest gods under
+the form of men, that whilst the gospel was itself holding out the man
+Christ Jesus as the object of religious faith, and fear, and love, and
+teaching that all power was given to him, in heaven and in earth,--it
+should, also, guard us against supposing that it meant to represent God
+as, in himself, wearing a human form, or having a nature partaking of
+our infirmities; and, therefore, it always speaks of there being
+something in God higher, and more perfect, than could possibly be
+revealed to man; and for this eternal and infinite, and inconceivable
+Being, it claims the reserve of our highest thoughts, or, rather, it
+commands us to believe, that they who shall hereafter see God face to
+face, shall be allowed to see something still greater than is now
+revealed to us, even in him who is the express image of God, and the
+brightness of his glory.
+
+But, now, to return to what I was dwelling on before. It is not only for
+children, that the revelation of God in Christ is so valuable; it is
+fitted to the wants of us all, at all times, and under all
+circumstances. Say, that we are in joy; say, that we are enjoying some
+of the festivities of this season. It is quite plain, that, at whatever
+moment the thought of God is unwelcome to us, that moment is one of sin
+or unbelief: yet, how can we dare to mix up the notion of the most high
+God with any earthly merriment, or festivity? Then, if we think of him
+who was present at the marriage in Cana of Galilee, and who worked a
+miracle for no other object than to increase the enjoyment of that
+marriage supper, do we not feel how the highest thoughts may be joined
+with the most common occasions? how we may bring Christ home with, us to
+our social meetings, to bless us, and to sanctify them? Imagine him in
+our feasts as he was in Cana:--we may do it without profaneness; being
+sure, from that example, that he condemns not innocent mirth; that it is
+not merely because there is a feast, or because friends and neighbours
+are gathered together, that Christ cannot, therefore, be in the midst of
+us. This alone does not drive him away; but, oh consider, with what ears
+would he have listened to any words of unkindness, of profaneness, or of
+impurity! with what eyes would he have viewed any intemperance, or
+revelling; any such, immoderate yielding up of the night to pleasure,
+that a less portion of the next day can be given to duty and to God!
+Even as he would have heard or seen such things in Cana of Galilee, so
+does he hear and see them amongst us; the same gracious eye of love is
+on our moderate and permitted enjoyments; the same turning away from,
+the same firm and just displeasure at every word or deed which turns
+pleasure into sin.
+
+But if I seek for instances to show how God in Christ is brought very
+near to us, what can I choose more striking than that most solemn act of
+Christian communion to which we are called this day? For, what is there
+in our mortal life, what joy, what sorrow, what feeling elated or
+subdued, which is not in that communion brought near to Christ to
+receive his blessing? What is the first and outward thing of which it
+reminds us? Is it not that last supper in Jerusalem, in which men,--the
+twelve disciples, the first members of our Christian brotherhood,--were
+brought into such solemn nearness to God, as seems to have begun the
+privileges of heaven upon earth? They were brought near at once to
+Christ and to one another: united to one another in him, in that double
+bond which, is the perfection at once of our duty and of our happiness.
+And so in our communion we, too, draw near to Christ and to each other;
+we feel--who is there at that moment, at least, that does not
+feel?--what a tie there is to bind each of us to his brother, when we
+come to the table of our common Lord. So far, the Lord's Supper is but a
+type of what every Christian meeting should be: never should any of us
+be gathered together on any occasion of common life, in our families or
+with our neighbours; we should sit down to no meal, we should meet in no
+company, without having Christ also in the midst of us; without
+remembering what we all are to him, and what we each therefore are to
+our brethren. But when we further recollect what there is in the Lord's
+Supper beyond the mere meeting of Christ and his disciples; what it is
+which the bread and the wine commemorate; of what we partake when, as
+true Christians, we eat of that bread, and drink of that cup; then we
+shall understand that God indeed is brought very near to us; inasmuch,
+as he who is a Christian, and partakes sincerely of Christian communion,
+is a partaker also of Christ: and as belonging to his body, his living
+spiritual body, the universal Church, receives his share of all those
+blessings, of all that infinite love which the Father shows continually
+to the head of that body, his own well-beloved Son.
+
+Say not then in your hearts, Who can ascend up into heaven, that is, to
+bring Christ down? As on this day, when he took our nature upon him, he
+came down to abide with us for ever; to abide with, us, even when we
+should see him with our eyes no more: for whilst he was on earth he so
+took part in all the concerns of life, in all its duties, its sorrows,
+and its joys, that memory, when looking back on the past, can fancy him
+present still; and then let the liveliest fancy do its work to the
+utmost, it cannot go beyond the reality; he is present still, for that
+belongs to his almightiness; he is present with us, because he is God;
+and we can fancy him with us, because he is man. This is the way to
+lessen our distance from God and heaven, by bringing Christ continually
+to us on earth: the sky is closed, and shows no sign; all things
+continue as they were from the beginning of the world; evil abounds, and
+therefore the faith of many waxes cold; but Christ was and is amongst
+us; and we need no surer sign than that sign of the prophet
+Jonah--Christ crucified and Christ risen--to make us feel that we may
+live with God daily upon earth, and doing so, shall live with him for an
+eternal life, in a country that cannot pass away.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXIII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+SUNDAY NEXT BEFORE EASTER.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MATTHEW xxvi. 40, 41.
+
+_What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, that ye
+enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the
+flesh is weak_.
+
+
+These words, we cannot doubt, have an application to ourselves, and to
+all Christians, far beyond the particular occasion on which they were
+actually spoken. They are, in fact, the words which Christ addresses
+daily to all of us. Every day, when he sees how often we have gone
+astray from him, he repeats to us, Could ye not watch with me one hour?
+Every day he commands us to watch and pray, that we enter not into
+temptation; every day he reminds us, that however willing may be our
+spirits, yet our flesh is weak; and that through that weakness, sin
+prevails over it, and having triumphed over our flesh, proceeds to
+enslave our spirit also.
+
+And as the words are applicable to us every day, so also are they in a
+particular manner suitable now, when the season of Lent is so nearly
+over, and Easter is so fast approaching. Have we been unable to watch,
+with Christ one hour? Already are the good resolutions with which, we,
+perhaps, began Lent, broken in many instances; and the impressions, if
+any such were made in us, are already weakened. They have been a
+burden, which we have shaken off, because the weakness of our nature
+found it too heavy to bear. Sad it is to think how often this same
+process has been repeated in all time, how often it will be repeated
+to the end.
+
+Let us just review what the course of this process has probably been.
+Now, as the parable of the Sower describes three several sorts of
+persons, who never bring forth, fruit; so in the very same persons,
+there is at different times something of each of the three characters
+there described. We, the very same persons, are at one time hard, at
+another careless, and at another over-busy; although, if compared with,
+other persons, and in the general form of their characters, some are
+hard, and others are careless, and others over-busy; different persons
+having different faults predominantly. But even the hardness of the road
+side, although God forbid that it should be our prevailing temper, yet
+surely it does sometimes exist in too many of us. In common speech, we
+talk of a person showing a hard temper, meaning, generally, a hard
+temper towards other men. We have done wrong, but being angry when we
+are reproved for it, we will not acknowledge it at all, and cheat our
+consciences, by dwelling upon the supposed wrong that has been done to
+us in some over-severity of reproof or punishment, instead of confessing
+and repenting of the original wrong which we ourselves did. But is it
+not true, that a hard temper towards man is very often, even
+consciously, a hard temper towards God? Does it never happen, that if
+conscience presents to us the thought of God, whether as a God of
+judgment to terrify us, or as a God of love to melt us, we repel it with
+impatience, or with sullenness? Does not the heart sometimes almost
+speak aloud the language of blasphemy: Who is God, that I should mind
+him? I do not care what may happen, I will not be softened. Do not all
+sorts of unbelieving thoughts pass rapidly through the mind at such
+moments; first in their less daring form, whispering, as the serpent did
+to Eve, that we shall not surely die; that we shall have time to repent
+by and by; that God will not be so strict a judge as to condemn us for
+such a little; that by some means or other, we shall escape? But then
+they come, also, in their bolder form: What do I or any man know about
+another world, or God's judgments? may it not be all a fiction, so that
+I have, in reality, nothing to fear? In short, under one form or
+another, is it not true, that our hearts have sometimes displayed
+actually hardness towards God; that the thought of God has been actually
+presented to our minds, but that we have turned it aside, and have not
+suffered it to make any impression upon us? And thus, we have not only
+not watched with Christ according to his command, but have actually told
+him that we would not. But this has been in our worst temper, certainly;
+it may not have happened,--I trust that it has not happened often. More
+commonly, I dare say, the fault has been carelessness. We have gone out
+of this place; sacred names have ceased to sound in our ears; sights in
+any degree connected with, holy things have been all withdrawn from us.
+Other sounds and other sights have been before us, and our minds have
+yielded to them altogether. There are minds, indeed, which have no
+spring of thought in themselves; which are quiet, and in truth empty,
+till some outward objects come to engage them. Take them at a moment
+when they are alone, or when there is no very interesting object before
+them, and ask them of what they are thinking. If the answer were truly
+given, such a mind would say, "Of nothing." Certain images may be
+faintly presented to it; it may be that it is not altogether a blank;
+yet it could not name anything distinctly. No form had been vivid enough
+to produce any corresponding resolution in us; we were, as it were, in a
+state between sleeping and waking, with neither thoughts nor dreams
+definite enough to affect us. This state finds exactly all that it
+desires in the presence or the near hope of outward objects; the mind
+lives in its daily pursuits, and companions, and amusements. What
+impressions have been once produced are soon worn away; and in a soil so
+shallow nothing makes a durable impression: everything can, as it were,
+scratch upon its surface, while nothing can strike deeply down within.
+
+Or, again, take the rarer case of those who are over-busy. There are
+minds, undoubtedly, which are as incapable of rest as those of the
+generality of men are prone to it; there are minds which enter keenly
+into everything presented to them by their outward senses, and which,
+when their senses cease to supply them, have an inexhaustible source of
+thought within, which furnishes them with abundant matter of reflection
+or of speculation. To such a mind, doing is most delightful; whether it
+be outward doing, or the mere exercise of thought, either supplies alike
+the consciousness of power. Where, then, is there room for the less
+obtruding things of God? Into that restless water, another and another
+image is for ever stepping down, pushing aside and keeping at a distance
+the sobering reflections of God and of Christ. Alas! the thorns grow so
+vigorously in such a soil, that they altogether choke and kill the seed
+of God's word.
+
+So, then, we are either asleep, or, if we are awake, we are not waking
+with Christ. On one side, in that garden of Gethsemane were the
+disciples sleeping; below, and fast ascending the hill,--not sleeping,
+certainly, but with lanterns and torches and weapons,--were those whose
+waking was for evil. Where were they who watched with Christ one hour
+then,--or where are those who watch with him now?
+
+HOW gently, yet how earnestly, does he call upon us to "watch and pray,
+lest we enter into temptation." To watch and to pray: for of all those
+around him some were sleeping, and none were praying; so that they who
+watched were not watching with him, but against him. In our careless
+state of mind the call to us is to watch; in our over-busy state the
+call to us is to pray; in our hard state there is equal need for both.
+And even in our best moods, when we are not hard, nor careless, nor
+over-busy, when we are at once sober and earnest and gentle, then not
+least does Christ call upon us to watch and to pray, that we may retain
+that than which else no gleam of April sunshine was ever more fleeting;
+that we may perfect that which else is of the earth, earthly, and when
+we lie down in the dust will wither and come to dust also.
+
+Jesus Christ brought life and immortality, it is said, to light through
+the gospel. He brought life and immortality to light:--is this indeed
+true as far as we are concerned? What do we think would be the
+difference in this point between many of us--who will dare say how
+many?--and a school, I will not say of Jewish, but even of Greek or
+Roman or Egyptian boys, eighteen hundred, or twenty-four hundred, or
+three or four thousand years ago? Compare us at our worship with them,
+and then, I grant, the difference would appear enormous. We have no
+images, making the glory of the incorruptible God like to corruptible
+man; we have no vain stream of incense; no shedding of the blood of
+bulls and calves in sacrifice: the hymns which are sung here are not
+vain repetitions or impious fables, which gave no word of answer to
+those questions which it most concerns mankind to know. Here, indeed,
+Jesus Christ is truly set forth, crucified among us; here life and
+immortality are brought to light. But follow us out of this place,--to
+our respective pursuits and amusements, to our social meetings, or our
+times of solitary thought,--and wherein do we seem to see life and
+immortality more brightly revealed than to those heathen schools of old?
+Do we enjoy any worldly good less keenly, or less shrink from any
+worldly evil? Death, which to the heathen view was the end of all
+things, is to us (so our language goes) the gate of life. Do we think of
+it with more hope and less fear than the heathen did? Christ has risen,
+and has reconciled us to God. Is God more to us?--God now revealed to us
+as our reconciled Father--do we oftener think of him, do we love him
+better, than he was thought of and loved in those heathen schools, which
+had Homer's poetry for their only gospel? We talk of light, of
+revelation, of the knowledge of God, while verily and really we are
+walking, not in light, but in darkness: not in knowledge of God, but in
+blindness and hardness of heart.
+
+"The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." How great is the
+loving-kindness of these words,--how gently does Christ bear with the
+weakness of his disciples! But this thought may be the most blessed or
+the most dangerous thought in the world; the most blessed if it touches
+us with love, the most dangerous if it emboldens us in sin. He is full
+of loving-kindness, full of long-suffering; for days, and weeks, and
+months, and years he bears with us: we grieve him, and he entreats; we
+crucify him afresh, yet he will not come down from the cross in power
+and majesty; he endures and spares. So it is for days, and months, and
+years; for some years it may be to most of us,--for many years to some
+of the youngest. There may be some here who may go on grieving Christ,
+and crucifying him afresh, for as much as seventy years; and he will
+bear with them all that time, and his sun will daily shine upon them,
+and his creatures and his word will minister to their pleasure; and he
+himself will say nothing to them but to entreat them to turn and be
+saved. This may last, I say, to some amongst us for seventy years; to
+others it may last fifty; to many of us it may last for forty, or for
+thirty; none of us, perhaps, are so old but that it may last with us
+twenty, or at the least ten. Such is the prospect before us, if we like
+it: not to be depended upon with certainty, it is true, but yet to be
+regarded as probable. But as these ten, or twenty, or fifty, or seventy
+years pass on, Christ will still spare us, but his voice of entreaty
+will be less often heard; the distance between him and us will be
+consciously wider. From one place after another where we once used
+sometimes to see him, he will have departed; year after year some object
+which used once to catch the light from heaven, will have become
+overgrown, and will lie constantly in gloom; year after year the world
+will become to us more entirely devoid of God. If sorrow, or some
+softening joy ever turns our minds towards Christ, we shall be startled
+at perceiving there is something which keeps us from him, that we cannot
+earnestly believe in him; that if we speak of loving him, our hearts,
+which can still love earthly things, feel that the words are but
+mockery. Alas, alas! the increased weakness of our flesh, has destroyed
+all the power of our spirit, and almost all its willingness: it is bound
+with chains which it cannot break, and, indeed, scarcely desires to
+break. Redemption, Salvation, Victory,--what words are these when
+applied to that enslaved, that lost, that utterly overthrown and
+vanquished soul, which sin is leading in triumph now, and which will
+speedily be given over to walk for ever as a captive in the eternal
+triumph of death!
+
+Not one word of what I have said is raised beyond the simplest
+expression of truth; this is our portion if we will not watch with
+Christ. We know how often we have failed to do so, either sleeping in
+carelessness, or being busy and wakeful, but not with him or for him.
+Still he calls us to watch and pray, lest we enter into temptation; to
+mark our lives and actions; to mark them often; to see whether we have
+done well or ill in the month past, or in the week past, or in the day
+past; to consider whether we are better than we were, or worse; whether
+we think Christ loves us better, or worse; whether we are more or less
+cold towards him. I know not what else can be called watching with
+Christ than such a looking into ourselves as we are in his sight. It is
+very hard to be done;--yes, it is hard--harder than anything probably
+which we ever attempted before; and, therefore, we must pray withal for
+his help, whose strength is perfected in our weakness. And if it be so
+hard, and we have need so greatly to pray for God's help, should we not
+all also be anxious to help one another? And knowing, as we do from our
+own consciences, how difficult it is to watch with Christ, and how
+thankful we should be to any one who were to make it easier to us,
+should we not be sure that our neighbour is in like case with ourselves;
+that our help may be as useful to him as we feel that his would be to
+us? This is our bounden duty of love towards one another; what then
+should be said of us if we not only neglect this duty, but do the very
+contrary to it; if we actually help the evil in our brother's heart to
+destroy him more entirely; if we will not watch with Christ ourselves,
+and strive to prevent others from doing so?
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXIV.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+GOOD FRIDAY.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+ROMANS v. 8.
+
+_God commendeth his love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners,
+Christ died for us_.
+
+
+We all remember the story in the Gospel, of the different treatment
+which our Lord met with in the same house, from the Pharisee, who had
+invited him into it, and from the woman who came in and knelt at his
+feet, and kissed them, and bathed them with her tears. Our Lord
+accounted for the difference in these words, "To whom little is
+forgiven, the same loveth little;" which means to speak of the sense or
+feeling in the person's own mind, "He who feels that little is or needs
+to be forgiven him, he also loves little." And this same difference
+which existed toward him when he was present on earth, exists no less
+now, whenever he is brought before our thoughts. The same sort of
+persons who saw him with indifference, think of him also with
+indifference; they who saw him with love, think of him also with love.
+There is no art, no power in the world, which can give an interest to
+words spoken concerning him, for those who feel that little is and that
+little needs to be forgiven them, or to those who never consider about
+their being forgiven at all. To such, this day, with its services, what
+they hear from the Scriptures, or what they hear from men, must be
+alike a matter of indifference: it is not possible that it should be
+otherwise. Yet, God forbid that we should design what we are saying this
+day only for a certain few of our congregation, as if the rest neither
+would nor could be interested in it. So long as any one is careless, he
+cannot, it is true, be interested about the things of Christ; but who
+can say at what moment, through God's grace, he may cease to be
+careless? Is it too much to say, that scarcely a service is performed in
+any congregation in the land, which does not awaken an interest in some
+one who before was indifferent? I do rot say a deep interest, nor a
+lasting one, but an interest; there is a thought, a heeding, an
+inclination of the mind to listen, created probably by the Church
+services in some one or other, every time that they are performed. As we
+never can know in whom this may be so created, as all have great need
+that it should be created, as all are deeply concerned whether they feel
+that they are so or no, so we speak to all alike; and if the language
+does pass over their ears like an unknown or indistinct sound, the fault
+and the loss are theirs; but the Church has borne her witness, and has
+so far done her duty.
+
+But again, for ears not careless, but most interested; for hearts to
+whom Christ is more than all in the world besides; for minds, before
+whom the wisdom of the gospel is ever growing, rising to a loftier
+height, and striking downwards to a depth more profound,--yet without
+end in its height or its depth; is there not, also, a difficulty in
+speaking to them of that great thing which the Church celebrates to-day?
+Is there no difficulty in awakening their interest, or rather how can we
+escape even from wearying or repelling them, when their own affections
+and deep thoughts must find all words of man, whether of themselves or
+others, infinitely unworthy to express either the one or the other? To
+such, then, the words of the preacher may be no more than music without
+any words at all; which does but serve to lead and accompany our own
+thoughts, without distinctly suggesting any thoughts of another to
+interrupt the workings of our own minds. We would speak of Christ's
+death; most good it is for us and for you to think upon it; so far as
+our words suit the current of your own thoughts, use them and listen to
+them; so far as they are a too unworthy expression of what we ought to
+think and feel, follow your own reflections, and let the words neither
+offend you nor distract you.
+
+I would endeavour just to touch, upon some of the purposes for which the
+Scripture tells us that Christ died, and for which his death was
+declared to be the great object of our faith. This done in the simplest
+and fewest words will best show the infinite greatness of the subject;
+and how truly it is, so to speak, the central point of Christianity.
+
+First of all, Christ died as a proper sacrifice for sin; as a sacrifice,
+the virtue of which, is altogether distinct from our knowledge of it, or
+from any effect which it has a tendency to produce on our own minds. We
+are forgiven for his sake; we are acquitted through his death, and
+through faith in his blood. What a view does this open, partially,
+indeed,--for what mortal eye can reach to the end of it?--of the evil of
+sin, and of God's love! of what God's justice required, and of what
+God's love fulfilled! This great sacrifice was made once, but it will
+not be made again; for those who despise this there remains no more
+offering for sin, but their sin abideth with them for ever.
+
+Secondly, Christ's death is revealed to us as a motive capable of
+overcoming all temptations to evil. "How much more shall the blood of
+Christ purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?"
+"He suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us
+to God;" that is, that a consideration of what Christ's death declares
+to us should have power to melt the hardest heart, and to sober the
+lightest: that, when we think of Christ dying, dying for us, and so
+purchasing for us the forgiveness of sins, and everlasting life, such a
+love, and such a prospect of peace with God, and of glory, should in the
+highest degree soften and enkindle us; and from love for him, and
+confidence of hope through the prospect which he has given us, we should
+be able to overcome all temptations. "I am persuaded," says St. Paul,
+"that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor
+powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth,
+nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of
+God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
+
+Thirdly, Christ suffered for as, leaving us an example that we should
+follow his steps. He left us an example of all meekness, and patience,
+and humility; he left us an example of perfect submission to God's will;
+he left us an infinite comfort by letting us feel when we are in any
+trouble, or pain, or affliction, that he was troubled too; that he knew
+pain, and endured affliction. Above all, in that hour which must come to
+all of us, he has left us the greatest of all supports;--for he endured
+to die; and we may enter with less fear into the darkness of the grave,
+for even there Christ has been for our sakes, and arose from out of it a
+conqueror.
+
+Fourthly, Christ died that he might gather together in one the children
+of God that were scattered abroad; he died to purchase to himself his
+universal Church. So it is said in the Scriptures: and on this
+particular purpose of his death, it may not be amiss to dwell, for none
+so needs to be held in remembrance. Many there are, and ever have been,
+who have rested their whole hope towards God on his sacrifice; many who
+have learnt from his cross to overcome sin; from his resurrection to
+overcome the world; many who, amidst all the troubles of life, and in
+the hour of death, have been supported by the thought of his example.
+But where is his universal Church? where the company of God's children
+gathered together into one? where is the city set upon the hill, that
+cannot be hid? where is the visible kingdom of God, where all its people
+are striving under one Divine Head, against sin, the world, and the
+devil? This is the sign which we look for and cannot find; this is the
+fulfilment of the prophecies for which we seem destined to wait in vain.
+
+And what if, on the contrary, that which is called the Church act rather
+the part of the world; if our worst foes be truly those of our own
+household: if they who should have been for our help, be rather an
+occasion of falling: if one of our greatest difficulties in following
+Christ steadily, arise from the total want of encouragement, yea, often
+from the direct opposition of those who are themselves pledged to follow
+him to the death; if that Church, which was to have been the clearest
+sign to the world of the truth of Christ's gospel, be now, in many
+respects, rather a stumbling-block to the adversary and unbeliever, so
+that the name of God is through us blasphemed among the heathen, rather
+than glorified; may we not humble ourselves before God in sorrow and in
+shame? and must we not confess, that through our sin, and the sin of our
+fathers, Christ, in respect of this one purpose of his death, has as yet
+died in vain?
+
+Israel after the flesh, lamenting their Jerusalem which is now not
+theirs, and mourning over their ruined temple, in all their synagogues
+repeat constantly the prayer, O Lord, build thou the walls of Jerusalem!
+O Lord, build! O Lord, build! O Lord, build! is the solemn chorus,
+marking by its repetition the earnestness of their desire. And should
+not this be the prayer of the Israel of God, scattered now as they are
+into their thousand divided and corrupted synagogues, and no token to be
+seen of the pure and universal Church, the living temple of the Spirit
+of God; should not we too, privately and publicly, join in the prayer of
+the earthly Israel, and pray that Christ would build for us the walls of
+our true Jerusalem? For only think what it would be, if Christ's Church
+existed more than in name; consider what it would be if baptism were a
+real bond; if we looked on one another as brethren, redeemed by one
+ransom, pledged to one service; if we bore with one another's
+weaknesses; if we helped one another's endeavours; if each saw and
+heard, in the words and life of his neighbour, an image of Christ, and a
+pledge of the truth of his promises. Consider what it would be, if, with
+no quarrels, with no jealousies, with no unkindness, we sought not every
+man his own, but every man also another's welfare; as true members one
+of another,--of one body, of which Christ is the head. Consider what it
+would be, if our judgments of men and things were like Christ's
+judgments; neither strengthening the heart of the careless and sinful by
+our laxity, nor making sad the heart of God's true servant by our
+uncharitableness; not putting little things in the place of great, nor
+great things in the place of little; not neglecting the unity of the
+Spirit; not stickling for a sameness in the form. Or, if we carry our
+views a little wider; if we look out upon the world at large, and hear
+of rumours of wars, and see the signs of internal disorders, and
+perhaps may think that the clouds are gathering which, herald one of the
+comings of the Son of man to judgment, whether the last of all or not it
+were vain to ask; how blessed would it be, if we could see such an ark
+of Christ's Church as should float visibly upon, the stormy waters;
+gathering within it, in peace and safety, men of various dispositions
+and conditions, and opinions; those who held much of truth, and those
+who had mixed with it much of error: those whom Christ would call clean,
+and those, too, whom some of their brethren call unclean, but whom
+Christ has redeemed, and will save no less than their despisers; all, in
+short, who fled from sin and from the world to Christ, and to the
+company of Christ's people! O if we could but see such an ark preparing
+while God's long-suffering yet withholds the flood! O that all God's
+scattered and divided children would join together in one earnest
+prayer, O Lord, build thou the walls of Jerusalem! O Lord, build! O
+Lord, build! O Lord, build!
+
+Yet, for this, among other purposes of mercy, did the Son of God, as on
+this day, suffer death upon the cross: he died that we might be one in
+him. Let us turn, then, from the thought of the general temple in ruins,
+and let us see whether we cannot, at any rate, within the walls of our
+own little particular congregation, fulfil also this object of Christ's
+death, and be one in him. Let us consider one another, to provoke unto
+love and to good works: we too often consider one another for the very
+contrary purpose, to provoke to contempt or ill-will. True it is, that
+if we look for it we can find much of evil in our brethren, and they can
+find much also in us; and we might become all haters of one another, all
+in some sort deserving to be hated. But where is he who is entitled to
+hate another's evil when he has evil in himself; and when Christ, who
+had none, did not hate the evil of us all, but rather died to save it?
+And is it not true also, that, if we look for it, we can also find in
+every one something to love? something, undoubtedly, even in him who has
+in himself least: but much, infinitely much in all, when we look upon
+them as Christ's redeemed. Not more beautifully than truly has it been
+said, that Christian souls--
+
+     "Though worn and soiled by sinful clay,
+     Are yet, to eyes that see them true,
+     All glistening with baptismal dew."
+
+They have the seal of belonging to Christ; they are his and our
+brethren. And, as his latest command, and his beloved Apostle's also,
+was that we should love one another; so, if we would bring all our
+solemn thoughts of Christ's death to one point, and endeavour to derive
+from it some one particular lesson for our daily lives, I know not that
+any would be more needed or better for us, than that we should
+especially apply the thought of Christ dying on the cross for us to
+soften our angry, and proud, and selfish feelings; to restrain us from
+angry or sneering words; from unkind, offensive, rude, or insulting
+actions; to excite us to gentleness, courtesy, kindness; remembering
+that he, be he who he may, whom we allow ourselves to despise, or to
+dislike, or to annoy, or to neglect, was one so precious in Christ's
+sight, that he laid down his life for his sake, and invites him to be
+for ever with, him and with his Father.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXV.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+EASTER DAY.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JOHN xx. 20.
+
+_Then the disciples went away again unto their own home_.
+
+
+With this verse ends the portion of the scripture chosen for the gospel
+in this morning's service. It finishes the account of the visit of Peter
+and John to the sepulchre; and, therefore, the close of the extract at
+this point is sufficiently natural. Yet the effect of the quiet tone of
+these words, just following the account of the greatest event which
+earth has ever witnessed, is, I think, singularly impressive; the more
+so when we remember that they were written by one of the very persons,
+whose visit had been just described; and that the writer, therefore,
+could tell full well, to how intense an interest there had succeeded
+that solemn calm. They went away from the very sight, if I may so speak,
+of Christ risen, to their own homes. And what thoughts do we suppose
+that they carried with them? Let us endeavour to recall them, for our
+benefit, also, who, like them, are going, as it were, to the ordinary
+tenure of our daily lives from this day's high solemnity.
+
+The disciples went away to their own homes; and there they waited,
+either in Jerusalem or in Galilee, pursuing, as we find from the last
+chapter of St. John, their common occupations, till, after their Lord's
+ascension, power was given them from on high, and the great work of
+their apostleship began. During this period, Christ appeared to them
+several times: he conversed with them, he ate and drank with them: but
+he did not live continually with them, as he had done before his
+crucifixion: he did not take them about with him as before, while he was
+performing the part of the great prophet of the house of Israel. They
+were now at their own homes waiting for his call to more active duties.
+They had seen him dead, and they had seen, him risen, and they were
+receiving into their souls all the lessons of his life and death and
+resurrection, brought before them, and impressed upon them by that Holy
+Spirit, who, according to Christ's promise, was to take of the things
+which are Christ's, and to show them to Christ's disciples.
+
+It is true that there came upon them, after this, an especial visitation
+of the Spirit of power, to fit them for their particular work of
+apostles or messengers to mankind. Having been converted themselves,
+they were to strengthen their brethren. And as this especial visitation
+of the Holy Spirit was given to them only, and to those on whom they
+themselves laid their hands, so none have ever since been called to that
+particular work to which they were called, in any thing of the same
+degree of fulness. What is peculiar to them as apostles is not
+applicable exactly to us; but we are all concerned in what belongs to
+them as Christians: in this respect, their case is ours; and they, when
+at their own homes, and engaged in their own callings, stand in the same
+situation as we all.
+
+We may, however, still make a two-fold division; we may regard the
+apostles going away to their own homes, as a temporary thing, as a mere
+term of preparation for the duties which they were afterwards called to;
+or we may look upon it as complete so far as earth is concerned, since,
+taking them as Christians only and not as apostles, they might have so
+lived on to the end of their lives, having received all those helps
+which were needed for their own personal salvation, and having only to
+use them daily for their soul's benefit. This same distinction we may
+apply to ourselves. We may consider ourselves as going to our own homes
+for a time only, awaiting our call to active life; or we may consider
+ourselves as withdrawing, after every celebration of Christ's
+resurrection, to that round of daily duties which on earth shall never
+alter; and to which all the helps derived from our communion with Christ
+are to be applied, with nothing future, so for as earth is concerned,
+for which we may need them. So then, of whatever age we may be, what is
+said of the apostles in the text may apply to us also: after having
+witnessed, as it were, Christ's resurrection, we go away to our own
+homes. Let us first take that part of the text which is common to us
+all, though not in the same degree--the having been witnesses of
+Christ's resurrection. John and Peter found him not in the sepulchre;
+they found the linen clothes and the napkin lying there, but he was
+gone. And upon this, as John assures us, both for himself and his
+companion, "they believed." They believed, we should observe, when as
+yet they had no more seen Jesus himself after his resurrection, than we
+Lave now. They only knew that he had been dead, and that he was not in
+the sepulchre. And this we know also; we have not seen him, indeed,
+since his resurrection: but we are sure he is not in the sepulchre. We
+are sure that the malice of his enemies did not do its work: we are
+sure, for we are ourselves witnesses of it, that that name, and that
+word, which they hoped would have been destroyed for ever, like the
+names of many, not only of false prophets and deceivers, but even of
+good men and of wise, have not perished, but have brought forth fruit
+more abundantly, from the very cause that was intended to put them out.
+Christ's gospel, assuredly, is a living thing, full of vigour and full
+of power; it has worked mightily for good, and is working; it is so full
+of blessing, it tends so largely towards the happiness that is enjoyed
+upon earth, that we are quite sure it is not lying still buried in
+Christ's sepulchre.
+
+They (the two disciples) then went away believing, because they found
+that he was not in the sepulchre. But Mary Magdalene came and told them,
+that she had seen him risen, and had heard his voice with her ears. What
+she told Peter and John, Peter and John are now telling to us. They tell
+us that they have heard him, have seen him with their eyes, have looked
+upon him, yea, that their hands have handled him. They tell us even more
+than Mary Magdalene told them; for she had not been allowed to touch
+him. We may well trust their testimony, as they trusted hers, being
+quite ready indeed to believe that he was alive, because they had found
+that he was not amongst the dead. And so we, finding that he is not
+amongst the dead, seeing and knowing the fruits of his gospel, the
+living and ever increasing fruits of it, may well believe that its
+author is risen, and that the pains of death were loosed from off him,
+because it was not possible that he should be holden by them.
+
+In this way, we, like the two disciples, may be all said to be witnesses
+of Christ's resurrection. May it not be said still more of those amongst
+us who assembled this morning round Christ's table, to keep alive the
+memory of his death; when we partook of that bread, and drank of that
+cup, of which so many thousands and millions, in every age and in every
+land, have eaten and drunken, all receiving them, with nearly the same
+words,--the body that was given for us, the blood that was shed for
+us,--all, making allowances for human weakness, finding in that
+communion the peace and the strength of God; all alike receiving it with
+penitent hearts, and with faith, and purposes of good for the time to
+come? Did we not then witness that Christ is not perished? that he has
+been ever, and still is, mighty to save? That command given to twelve
+persons, in an obscure chamber in Jerusalem, by one who, the next day,
+was to die as a malefactor, has been, and is obeyed from one end of the
+world to another; and wherever it has been obeyed, there, in proportion
+to the sincerity of the obedience, has been the fulness of the blessing.
+
+But this is now past, as with the two disciples, and we are going again
+to our own homes. There, neither the empty sepulchre nor the risen
+Saviour are present before us, but common scenes and familiar
+occupations, which, in themselves have nothing in them of Christ. So it
+must be; we cannot be always within these walls; we cannot always be
+engaged in public prayer; we cannot always be hearing Christ's word, nor
+partaking of his communion; we must be going about our several works,
+and must be busied in them; some of us in preparation for other work to
+come, others to go on till the end of their lives with this only. May we
+not hope that Christ, and Christ's Spirit, will visit us the while in
+these our daily callings, as he came to his disciples Peter and John,
+when following their business as fishers on the lake of Gennesareth?
+
+How can we get him to visit us? There is one answer--by prayer and by
+watchfulness. By prayer, whether we are in our preparatory state, or our
+fixed one; by prayer, and I think I may add, by praying in our own
+words. Of course, when we pray together, some of us must join in the
+words of others; and it makes little difference, whether those words be
+spoken or read. But when we pray alone, some, perhaps, may still use
+none but prayers made by others, especially the Lord's prayer. We should
+remember, however, that the Lord's prayer was given for this very
+purpose, to teach us how to pray for ourselves. But it does not do this,
+if we use it alone, and still more, if we use it without understanding
+it. If we do understand it, and study it, it will indeed teach us to
+pray; it will show us what we most need in prayer, and what are our
+greatest evils; but surely it may be said, that no man ever learnt this
+lesson well without wishing to practise it; no man ever used the Lord's
+prayer with understanding and with earnestness, without adding to it
+others of his own. And this is not a trifling matter. We know the
+difficulty of attending in prayer; and if we use the words of others
+only, which we must, therefore, repeat from memory, it is perfectly
+possible to say them over without really joining with them in our minds:
+we may say them over to ourselves, and be actually thinking of other
+things the while. And the same thing holds good, of course, even with
+prayers that we have made ourselves, if we accustom ourselves to repeat
+them without alteration; they then become, in fact, the work of another
+than our actual mind, and may be repeated by memory alone. Therefore, it
+seems to be of consequence to vary the words, and even the matter of our
+private prayers, that so we may not deceive ourselves, by repeating
+merely, when we fancy that we are praying. Ten words actually made by
+ourselves at the moment, and not remembered, are a real prayer; for it
+is not hypocrisy that is the most common danger; our temper, when we are
+on our knees, is apt indeed to be careless, but not, I hope and believe,
+deceitful. This, of course, must be well known to a very large
+proportion of us; but, perhaps, there are some to whom it may be
+useful; some to whom the advice may not yet have suggested itself, that
+they should make their own prayers, in part, at least, whenever they
+kneel down to their private devotions.
+
+And this sort of prayer, with God's blessing, is likely to make us
+watchful. We rise in the morning: we say some prayers of our own; we
+hear others read to us; and yet it is possible that we may not have
+really prayed ourselves in either case; we may not have brought
+ourselves truly into the presence of God. Hence our true condition, with
+all its dangers, has not been brought before our minds; the need of
+watchfulness has not been shown to us. But with real prayer of our own
+hearts' making it is different; God is then present to us, and sin and
+righteousness: our dream of carelessness is, for a moment at least,
+broken. No doubt it is but too easy to dream again; yet still an
+opportunity of exerting ourselves to keep awake is given us; we are
+roused to consciousness of our situation; and that, at any rate, renders
+exertion possible. There is no doubt that souls are most commonly lost
+by this continued dreaming, till at length, when seemingly awake (they
+are not so really), they are like men who answer to the call that would
+arouse them, but they answer, in fact, unconsciously. We cannot tell for
+ourselves or others any way by which our souls shall certainly be saved,
+in spite of carelessness; or any way by which, carelessness shall be
+overcome necessarily; all that can be done is, to point out how it may
+be overcome, by what means the soul may be helped in its endeavours; not
+how those endeavours and holy desires may be rendered needless.
+
+Thus, then, we may gain Christ to visit us at our own homes and in our
+common callings, when we are returned to them. And that difference which
+I spoke of as existing between us, that some of us are waiting for
+Christ's call to a higher field of action, while others are engaged in
+that sort of duty which will last their lives, I know not that
+this--though it be often important, and though I am often obliged to
+dwell on it--need enter into our considerations to-day. Rather, perhaps,
+may we overlook this difference, and feel that all of us here
+assembled--those in their state of earliest preparation for after
+duties; those to whom that earliest state is passed away, and who are
+entered into another state, in part preparatory, in part partaking of
+the character of actual life; and those also whose preparation, speaking
+of earth, only, is completed altogether, who must be doing, and whose
+time even of doing is far advanced--that all of us have in truth one
+great call yet before us: and that, with respect to that, we are all, as
+it were, preparing still. And for that great call, common to all of us,
+we need all the same common readiness; and that readiness will be
+effected in us only by the same means,--if now, before it come, Christ
+and Christ's Spirit shall, in our homes and daily callings, be persuaded
+to visit us.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXVI.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+WHITSUNDAY.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+ACTS xix. 2.
+
+_Have you received the Holy Ghost since ye believed_?
+
+
+It appears, by what follows these words, that the question here related
+especially to those gifts of the Holy Ghost which were given, in the
+first age of the church, as a sign of God's power, and a witness that
+the work of the gospel was from God. Yet although this be so, and
+therefore the words, in this particular sense, cannot to any good
+purpose be asked now; yet there is another sense, and that not a lower
+but a far higher one, in which we may ask them, and in which it concerns
+us in the highest degree, what sort of answer we can give to them, I
+say, "what sort of answer;" for I think it is true of all Christians
+that, in a certain measure, they have received the Holy Ghost. Not only
+does the doctrine of our own, and I believe every other, church,
+concerning baptism, show this: but it seems also necessarily to follow,
+from those words of St. Paul, that "No man can say that Jesus is the
+Lord but by the Holy Ghost." And yet the Scripture and common experience
+alike show us, that a man may call Jesus Lord, and yet not be really
+his, nor one who will be owned by Him at the last day. So that what is
+of real importance to us is, the degree of fulness and force with which
+we could give the answer to the words of the text; not simply saying
+that we have received the Holy Ghost, which would be true, but might be
+far from sufficient; but saying that we have received Him and are
+receiving Him more and more, so that our hearts and lives are showing
+the impression of his heavenly seal daily more and more clearly and
+completely.
+
+And this must really have always been the answer which it concerned
+every Christian to be able to make; although it has been in various
+instances, and by very opposite parties, tried to be evaded. It is
+evaded alike by those who set too highly the grace given in baptism, and
+by those who, setting this too low, direct our attention to another
+point in a man's life, which they call his justification or conversion.
+For both alike would give an exaggerated importance to one particular
+moment of our lives, and to the grace then given. Now, the importance of
+particular moments in men's lives differs exceedingly in different
+persons; but yet in all may be exaggerated. I suppose that if ever in
+any man's life a particular point was of immense importance, it was the
+point of his conversion in the case of St. Paul. There were here united
+all that grace which according to one view accompanies baptism
+especially, and all which according to the other view accompanies
+conversion and justification. Here was a point which separated St.
+Paul's later life from his earlier with a broader line of separation
+than can possibly be the ease in general. There can be no doubt that he,
+if ever man did, received at that particular time the Holy Ghost. But
+if, ten or twenty years afterwards, St. Paul had been asked concerning
+what the Holy Ghost had done for him, he would not certainly have
+confined himself in his answer to the grace once given him at his
+conversion and baptism, but would have spoken of that which he had been
+receiving since every hour and every day, carrying forward and
+completing that work of God which had been begun at the time of his
+journey to Damascus. And as he had received more and more grace, so was
+his confidence in his acceptance with God at the last day more and more
+assured. For he writes to the Corinthians, many years after his
+conversion and baptism, that he kept under his body, and was bringing it
+into subjection, lest that by any means, after having preached to
+others, he should be himself a castaway. And some years later still,
+though he does not use so strong an expression as that of becoming a
+castaway, yet he still says, even when writing to the Philippians from
+Rome, that he counted not himself to have apprehended, nor to have
+attained his object fully; but forgetting what was behind, even the
+grace of his conversion and baptism, he pressed on to the things which
+were before, even that continued and increasing grace which was required
+to bring him in safety to his heavenly crown. But if we go on some years
+yet farther, when his labours were ended, and the sure prospect of
+speedy death was before him; when the past grace was everything, and
+what he could expect yet to come was scarcely any other than that
+particular aid which we need in our struggle with the last enemy--death;
+then, his language is free from all uncertainty; then, in the full sense
+of the words, he could say that he had received the Holy Ghost, that his
+spirit had been fully born again for its eternal being, and that there
+only remained the raising up also of his mortal body, to complete that
+new creation of body and soul which Christ's Spirit works in Christ's
+redeemed. "I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I
+have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me my crown of
+righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me at
+that day."
+
+It seems, then, that the great question which we should be anxious to
+be able to answer in the affirmative, is this, "_Are we receiving_ the
+Holy Ghost since we believed?" "Since we believed," whether we choose to
+carry back the date of our first belief to the very time of our baptism,
+when grace was given to us,--we know not to what degree nor how,--yet
+given to us, as being then received into Christ's flock; or whether we
+go back only to that time when we can ourselves remember ourselves to
+have believed, and so can remember that God's grace was given to us.
+Have we been ever since, and are we still, receiving the Holy Ghost? O
+blessed above all blessedness, if we can say that this is true of us! O
+blessed with a blessedness most complete, if we only do not too entirely
+abandon ourselves to enjoy it! Elect of God; holy and beloved; justified
+and sanctified; there is nothing in all the world that could impair or
+destroy such happiness, except we ourselves, in evil hour, believed it
+to be out of the reach of danger.
+
+But if the witness of memory and conscience be less favourable; if we
+can remember long seasons of our lives during which we were not
+receiving the Holy Ghost; long seasons of a cold and hard state, in
+which there was, as it were, neither rain nor dew, nor yet sun to ripen
+what had grown before; but all was so ungenial that no new thing grew;
+and what had grown was withering and almost dying; what shall be said,
+then, and how can the time be made up which was so wasted? But we
+remember, it may be, that this deadly season passed away: the rain fell
+once more, and the tender dew, and the quickening sun shone brightly:
+our spiritual growth began again, and is now going on healthily; we have
+not always been receiving the Holy Ghost since we believed, but we are
+receiving him now. How gracious, then, has God been to us, that he has
+again renewed us unto repentance; that he has shown that we have not, in
+the fullest sense, sinned against the Holy Ghost, seeing that the Holy
+Ghost still abides with us! we grieved him, and tried his
+long-suffering, but he has not abandoned us to our own evil hearts; we
+are receiving him who is the giver of life, and we still live.
+
+But must not we speak of others? is not another case to be supposed
+possible? may there not be some who cannot say with truth that they are
+receiving the holy Ghost now? They received him once; we doubt it not;
+perhaps they were receiving him for some length of time; their early
+childhood was watched by Christian care; their youth and early manhood,
+when it received freshly things of this world, received also, with
+lively thankfulness, the grace of God; they can remember a time when
+they were growing in goodness; when they were being renewed after the
+image of God. But they can remember, also, that this time passed away;
+the grace of early childhood was put out by the temptations of boyhood;
+the grace of youth and opening manhood died away amid the hardness of
+this life's maturity. It is so, I believe, often; that boyhood, which
+is, as it were, ripened childhood, destroys the grace of our earliest
+years; that again, when youth offers us a second beginning of life, we
+are again impressed with good; but that ripened youth, which is manhood,
+brings with it again the reason of hardness, and again our spiritual
+growth, is destroyed. We can remember, I am supposing, that this fatal
+change did take place; but can we date it to any particular act, or
+month, or day, or hour? We can do so most rarely: in this respect the
+seed of death can even less be traced to its beginning than the seed of
+life. And yet there _was_ a beginning, only we do not remember it. And
+why do we not remember it? Because the real beginning was in some act
+which seemed of so little consequence that it made no impression; in the
+altering some habit which we judged to be a mere trifle; in the
+indulging some temper which even at the time we hardly noticed. Some
+such little thing,--little in our view of it,--made the fatal turn; we
+received the grace of God less and less: we heeded not the change for a
+season; and when it was so marked that we could not but heed it, then we
+had ceased to regard it; and so it was that the spring of our life was
+dried up: and it is of no more avail to our present and future state,
+that we once received grace, than the rain of last winter will be
+sufficient to ripen the summer's harvest, if from this time forward we
+have nothing but drought and cold.
+
+Some few, again, there may be, who, within their own recollection, could
+not say that they have received the Holy Ghost: persons who have lived
+among careless friends, to whom the way of life has never been steadily
+pointed out; while the way of death, with all its manifold paths,
+meeting at last in one, has been continually before them. Shall we say
+that these, because they have been baptized, are therefore guilty of
+having rejected grace given? that this sin is aggravated, because a
+mercy was offered them once of which they were unconscious? We would not
+say this; but we would say that it is impossible but that they must have
+received the Holy Ghost within their memory; it is impossible but that
+conscience must have sometimes spoken, and that they must have sometimes
+been enabled to obey it; it is impossible but that they must have had
+some notions of sin, and some desires to struggle against it; and so far
+as they ever felt that desire, it was the work of God's Holy Spirit.
+Man cannot dare to say how great the amount of their guilt may be; but
+guilt there certainly is; they have grieved the Holy Spirit; and, though
+we dare not say that they have utterly blasphemed him, yet they have a
+long hardness to overcome, and every hour of delayed turning to God
+increases it: it may be possible still to overcome it, but meanwhile it
+is not overcome; they are not receiving the Holy Spirit; they are not
+being renewed into the likeness of Christ, without which no man can
+see God.
+
+Here, then, are the four cases, one of which must belong to every one of
+us here assembled. Either we have been always and still are receiving
+the Holy Ghost; or we can remember when we were not, but yet are
+receiving him now; or we can remember when we were, but yet now are not;
+or we cannot remember to have received him ever, nor are we yet
+receiving him. I cannot say which of the last two states is the most
+dreadful, nor scarcely which of the first two states is the most
+blessed. But yet as even those happy states admit not of
+over-confidence, so neither do the last two most unhappy states oblige
+us to despair. Not to despair; but they do urge us to every degree of
+fear less than despair. There is far more danger of our not fearing
+enough than of our being driven to despair. There is far more danger of
+your looking on the season of youth, of our looking on to old age; you
+trusting to the second freshness and tenderness of the first,--we to the
+calmness and necessary reflection of the last. There is far more danger
+of our thus hardening ourselves beyond recall; there is not only the
+danger, but there is the sin, the greatest sin, I suppose, of which the
+human mind is capable, that of deliberately choosing evil for the
+present rather than good, calculating that, by and by, we shall choose
+good rather than evil. I believe, that it is impossible to conceive of
+any state of mind more sinful than one which should so feel and so
+choose; and this is the state which we incur, and which we persist in
+whenever we put off the thought of repentance. Now, then, it only
+remains, that we apply this each to ourselves; I say all of us apply it,
+the young and the old alike; for there is not one here so young as not
+to have cause to apply it; there is not one of us who would not, I am
+sure, be a different person from what he now is, if he were to ask
+himself steadily every day, Have I been and am I receiving the Holy
+Ghost since I believed?
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXVII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+TRINITY SUNDAY.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JOHN iii. 9.
+
+_How can these things be_?
+
+
+This is the second question put by Nicodemus to our Lord with regard to
+the truths which Jesus was declaring to him. The first was, "How can a
+man be born when he is old?" which was said upon our Lord's telling him
+that, "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."
+Now, it will be observed, that these two questions are treated by our
+Lord in a different manner: to the first he, in fact, gives an answer;
+that is, he removes by his answer that difficulty in Nicodemus's mind
+which led to the question; but to the second he gives no answer, and
+leaves Nicodemus--and with Nicodemus, us all also--exactly in the same
+ignorance as he found him at the beginning.
+
+Now, is there any difference in the nature of these two questions, which
+led our Lord to treat them so differently? We might suppose beforehand
+that there would be; and when we come to examine them, so we shall find
+it. The difficulty in the first question rendered true faith impossible,
+and, therefore, our Lord removed it; the difficulty in the second
+question did not properly interfere with faith at all, but might,
+through man's fault, be a temptation to him to refuse to believe. And
+as this, like other temptations, must be overcome by us, and not taken
+away from our path before we encounter it, so our Lord did not think
+proper to remove it or to lessen it.
+
+We must now unfold this difference more clearly. When Christ said,
+"Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God,"
+Nicodemus could not possibly believe what our Lord said, because he did
+not understand his meaning. He did not know what he meant by "a man's
+being born again," and, therefore, he could not believe, as he did not
+know what he was to believe. Words which we do not understand, are like
+words spoken in an unknown language; we can neither believe them nor
+disbelieve them, because we do not know what they say. For instance, I
+repeat these words, [Greek: tous pantas haemas phanerothaenai dei
+emprosaen tou baematos tou Christou.] Now, if I were to ask, Do you
+believe these words? is it not manifest that all of you who know Greek
+enough, to understand them may also believe them; but of those who do
+not know Greek, not a single person can yet believe them? They are as
+yet words spoken as to the air. But when I add, that these words mean,
+"We must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ;" now we can all
+believe them because we can all understand them.
+
+It is, then, perfectly impossible for any man to believe a statement
+except in proportion as he understands its meaning. And, therefore, our
+Lord explained what he meant to Nicodemus, and told him that, by being
+born again, he did not mean the natural birth of the body; but a birth
+caused by the Spirit, and therefore itself a birth of a spirit: for, as
+that which is born from a body is itself also a body, so that which is
+born of a spirit is itself also a spirit. So that Christ's words now are
+seen to have this meaning,--No man can enter into the kingdom of God
+except God's Spirit creates in him a spirit or mind like unto himself,
+and like unto Christ, and like unto the Father. Nicodemus, then, could
+now understand what was meant, and might have believed it. But he asks
+rather another question, "How can these things be?" How can God's Spirit
+create within me a spirit like himself, while I continue a man as
+before? Many persons since have asked similar questions; but to none of
+them is an answer given. How God's Spirit works within us I cannot tell;
+but if we take the appointed means of procuring his aid, we shall surely
+find that he has worked and does work in us to life eternal.
+
+We must, then, in order to believe, understand what it is that is told
+us; but it is by no means necessary that we should understand how it is
+to happen. It is not necessary, and in a thousand instances we do not
+know. "If we take poison, we shall die:" there is a statement which we
+can understand, and therefore believe. But do we understand how it is
+that poison kills us? Does every one here know how poisons act upon the
+human frame, and what is the different operation of different
+poisons,--how laudanum kills, for instance, and how arsenic? Surely
+there are very few of us, at most, who do understand this: and yet would
+it not be exceedingly unreasonable to refuse to believe that poison will
+kill us, because we do not understand the manner _how_?
+
+Thus far, I think, the question is perfectly plain, so soon as it is
+once laid before us. But the real point of perplexity is to be found a
+step further. In almost all propositions there is something about the
+terms which we do understand, and something which we do not. For
+instance, let me say these few words:--"A frigate was lost amidst the
+breakers." These words would be understood in a certain degree, by all
+who hear me: and so far as all understand them, all can believe them.
+All would understand that a ship had sunk in the water, or been dashed
+to pieces; that it would be useful no more for the purposes for which it
+had been made. But what is meant by the words "frigate" and "breakers"
+all would not understand, and many would understand very differently:
+that is to say, those who had happened to have known most about the sea
+and sea affairs would understand most about them, while those who knew
+less would understand less; but probably none of us would understand
+their meaning so fully, or would have so distinct and lively an image of
+the things, as would be enjoyed by an actual seaman; and even amongst
+seamen themselves, there would again be different degrees of
+understanding, according to their different degrees of experience, or
+knowledge of ships, or powers of mind.
+
+I have taken the instance at random, and any other proposition might
+have served my purpose as well. But men do not speak to one another at
+random; when they say anything to their neighbour, they mean it to
+produce on his mind a certain effect. Suppose that we were living near
+the sea-coast, and any one were suddenly to come in, and to utter the
+words which I have taken as my example: should we not know that what the
+man meant by these words was, that there was a danger at hand for which
+our help was needed? It matters not that we have no distinct ideas of
+the terms "frigate" or "breakers;" we understand enough for our belief
+and practice, and we should hasten to the sea-shore accordingly. Or
+suppose that the same words were told us of a frigate in which we had
+some near relation: should we not see at once that what we were meant to
+understand and to believe in the words was, that we had lost a relation?
+That is the truth with which we are concerned; and this we can
+understand and feel, although we may be able to understand nothing more
+of the words in which that truth is conveyed to us. Now, in like manner,
+in whatever God says to us there is a purpose: it is intended to produce
+on our minds a certain impression, and so far it must be understood. But
+when God speaks to us of heavenly things, the terms employed can only be
+understood in part, and so far as God's purpose with regard to our minds
+reaches; but there must be a great deal in them which we can no more
+understand than one who had never seen a ship, or a picture of one,
+could understand the word "frigate." Our business is to consider what
+impression or what actions the words are intended to produce in us. Up
+to this point we can and must understand them: beyond this they may be
+wholly above the reach of our faculties, and we can form of them no
+ideas at all.
+
+It is clear that this will be the case most especially whenever God
+reveals to us anything concerning himself. Take these few words, for
+example, "God is a spirit;" take them as a mere abstract truth, and how
+little can we understand about them! Who will dare to say that he
+understands all that is contained in the words "God" and "spirit?" We
+might weary ourselves for ever in attempting so to search out either.
+But God said these words to us: and the point is, What impression did he
+mean them to have upon us? how far can we understand them? This he has
+not by any means left doubtful, for it follows immediately, "They who
+worship him should worship Him in spirit and in truth." For this end the
+words were spoken, and thus far they are clear to us. God lives not on
+Mount Gerizim or at Jerusalem: but in every place he hears the prayers
+of the sincere and contrite heart, in no place will he regard the
+offerings of the proud and evil.
+
+Or again, "God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son,
+to the end that all who believe in him should not perish, but have
+eternal life." Here are words in themselves, as abstract truths,
+perfectly overwhelming; "God," "God's only-begotten Son," "Eternity."
+Who shall understand these things, when it is said, that "none knoweth
+the Son, save the Father; that none knoweth the Father, save the Son?"
+But did God tell us the words for nothing? can we understand nothing
+from them? believe nothing? feel nothing? Nay, they were spoken that we
+might both understand, and believe, and feel. How must He love us, who
+gives for us his only-begotten Son! how surely may we believe in Him who
+is an only-begotten Son to his Father,--so equal in nature, so entire in
+union!--What must that happiness be, which reaches beyond our powers of
+counting! Would we go further?--then the veil is drawn before us; other
+truths there are, no doubt, contained in the words; truths which the
+angels might desire to look into; truths which even they may be unable
+to understand. But these are the secret things which belong unto our
+God; the things which are revealed they are what belong to us and to our
+children, that we may understand, and believe, and do them.
+
+Again, "the Comforter, whom Christ will send unto us from the Father,
+even the Spirit of Truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall
+testify of Christ." What words are here! "The Spirit of Truth," "the
+Spirit proceeding from the Father;" the Spirit "whom Christ will send,"
+and "send from the Father." Can any created being understand, to the
+full, such "heavenly things" as these? But would Christ have uttered to
+his disciples mere unintelligible words, which could tell them nothing,
+and excite in them no feeling but mere wonder? Not so; but the words
+told them that Christ was not to be lost to them after he had left them
+on earth; that every gift of God was his: that even that Spirit of God,
+in which is contained all the fulness of the Godhead, is the Spirit of
+Christ also; that that mighty power which should work in them so
+abundantly, was of no other or lower origin than God himself; as
+entirely God, as the spirit of man is man. But can we therefore
+understand the Spirit of God, or conceive of him? How should we, when we
+cannot understand our own? This, and this only, we understand and
+believe, that without him our spirits cannot be quickened; that unless
+we pray daily for his aid, and listen to his calls within us, our spirit
+will never be created after his image, and we cannot enter into the
+kingdom of God.
+
+It is thus, and thus only, that the revelations of God's word are beyond
+our understandings: that in them, beings and things are spoken of,
+which, taken generally, and in themselves, we should in vain endeavour
+to comprehend. But what God means us to know, or feel, or do, respecting
+them, that we can understand; and beyond this we have no concern. It is,
+in fact, a contradiction to speak of revealing what is unintelligible;
+for so far as it is a revealed truth it is intelligible; so far as it is
+unintelligible, it is not revealed. But though a thing revealed must be
+intelligible in itself, yet it by no means follows that we can
+understand _how_ it happens. When we are told that the dead shall rise
+again, we can understand quite well what is meant; that we beings who
+feel happiness and misery, shall feel them again, either the one or the
+other, after we seemingly have done with them for ever in the grave. But
+"How are the dead raised up, and with what body do they come?" are
+questions to which, whether asked scoffingly or sincerely, we can give
+no answers; here our understanding fails, and here the truth is not
+revealed to us.
+
+How, then, has Christianity no mysteries? In one sense, blessed be God
+for it, it has many. Using mysteries in St. Paul's sense of great
+revelations of things which were and must be unknown to all, except God
+had revealed them: then, indeed, they are many; the pillar and ground of
+truth, great without controversy, and full of salvation. But take
+mysteries in our more common sense of the word,--as things which are
+revealed to none, and can be understood by none,--then it is true that
+Christianity leaves many such in existence; that many such she has done
+away; that none has she created. She leaves many mysteries with respect
+to God, and with respect to ourselves; God is still incomprehensible;
+life and death have many things in them beyond our questioning; we may
+still look around us, above us, and within us, and wonder, and be
+ignorant. But if she still leaves the veil drawn over much in heaven and
+in earth, yet from how much has she removed it! Life and death are still
+in many respects dark; but she has brought to light immortality. God is
+still in himself incomprehensible; but all his glory, and all his
+perfections, are revealed to us in his only-begotten Son Christ Jesus.
+God's Spirit who can search out in his own proper essence? yet
+Christianity has taught us how we may have him to dwell with us for
+ever, and taste the fulness of his blessings. Yea, thanks be to God for
+the great Christian mystery which we this day celebrate; that he has
+revealed himself to us as our Saviour and our Comforter; that he has
+revealed to us his infinite love, in that he has given us his
+only-begotten Son to die for us, and his own Eternal Spirit to make our
+hearts his temple.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXVIII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+EXODUS iii. 6.
+
+_And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God_.
+
+
+LUKE xxiii. 30.
+
+_Then shall they begin to say to the mountains. Fall on us; and to the
+hills, Cover us_.
+
+
+These two passages occur, the one in the first lesson of this morning's
+service, the other in the second. One or other of them must have been,
+or must be, the case of you, of me, of every soul of man that lives or
+has lived since the world began. There must be a time in the existence
+of every human being when he will fear God. But the great, the infinite
+difference is, whether we fear him at the beginning of our relations to
+him, or at the end.
+
+The fear of Moses was felt at the beginning of his knowledge of God.
+When God revealed himself to him at the bush, it was, so far as we are
+told, the first time that Moses learnt to know him. The fear of those
+who say to the mountains, "Fall on us," is felt at the very end of their
+knowledge of God; for to those who are punished with everlasting
+destruction from the presence of the Lord, God is not. So that the two
+cases in the text are exact instances of the difference of which I
+spoke, in the most extreme degree. Moses, the greatest of the prophets,
+fears God at first; those who are cast into hell, fear him at last.
+
+The appearance of God, as described in this passage of Scripture, is an
+image also of his dealings with us at the beginning of our course, when
+we fear him with a saving fear. "The bush burned with fire, but the bush
+was not consumed." God shows his terrors, but he does not, as yet,
+destroy with them. It is the very opposite to this at last, for then he
+is expressly said to be a consuming fire.
+
+Moses turned aside to see this great sight, why the bush was not burnt.
+That sight is the very same which the world has been offering for so
+many hundreds of years: God's terrors are around it, but, as yet, it is
+not consumed, because he wills that we should fear him before it is
+too late.
+
+There is, indeed, this great difference;--that the signs of God's
+presence do not now force themselves upon our eyes; so that we may, if
+we choose, walk on our own way, without turning aside to see and observe
+them. And thus we do not see God, and do not, therefore, hide our faces
+for fear of him, but go on, and feel no fear, till the time when we
+cannot help seeing him. And it may be, that this time will never come
+till our life, and with it our space of trial, is gone for ever.
+
+Here, then, is our state, that God will manifest himself no more to us
+in such a way as that we cannot help seeing him. The burning bush will
+be no more given us as a sign; Christ will no more manifest himself unto
+the world. And yet, unless we do see him, unless we learn to fear him
+while he is yet an unconsuming fire, unless we know that he is near, and
+that the place whereon we stand is holy ground, we shall most certainly
+see him when he will be a consuming fire, and when we shall join in
+crying to the mountains, to fall on us, and to the hills, to cover us.
+
+Every person who thinks at all, must, I am sure, be satisfied, that our
+great want, the great need of our condition, is this one thing--to
+realize to ourselves the presence of God. It is a want not at all
+peculiar to the young. Thoughtfulness, in one sense, is indeed likely to
+come with advancing years: we are more apt to think at forty than at
+fifteen; but it by no means follows that we are more apt to think about
+God. In this matter we are nearly at a level at all times of our life:
+it is with all of us our one great want, to bring the idea of God, with
+a living and abiding power, home to our minds.
+
+This is illustrated by a wish ascribed to a great and good man--Johnson,
+and which has been noticed with a sneer by unbelievers, a wish that he
+might see a spirit from the other world, to testify to him of the truth
+of the resurrection. This has been sneered at, as if it were a
+confession of the unsatisfactory nature of the evidence which we
+actually possess: but, in truth, it is a confession only of the weakness
+which clings to us all, that things unseen, which our reason only
+assures us to be real, are continually overpowered by things affecting
+our senses; and, therefore, it was a natural wish that sight might, in a
+manner, come to the aid of reason; that the eye might see, and the ear
+might hear, a form and words which belonged to another world. And this
+wish might arise (I do not say wisely, or that his deliberate judgment
+would sanction it, but it might arise) in the breast of a good man, and
+one who would be willing to lay down his life in proof of his belief in
+Christ's promises. It might arise, not because he felt any doubt, when
+his mind turned calmly to the subject; not because he was hesitating
+what should be the main principle of his life; but because his
+experience had told him, that there are many times in the life of man
+when the mind does not fully exert itself; when habit and impressions
+rule us, in a manner, in its stead. And when so many of our impressions
+must be earthly, and as our impressions colour our habits, is it not
+natural (I do not say wise, but is it not natural) to desire some one
+forcible unearthly impression, which might, on the other side, colour
+our habits, and so influence us at those times when the mind, almost by
+the necessity of our condition, cannot directly interpose its own
+deliberate decision as our authority?
+
+No doubt the wish to which I have been alluding is not one which our
+reason would sanction; but it expresses in a very lively and striking
+manner a want which is most true and real, although it proposes an
+impossible remedy. But the question cannot but occur to us, Can it be
+that our heavenly Father, who knows whereof we are made, should have
+intended us to live wholly by faith in this world? That is, Can it have
+been his will that all visible signs of himself should be withdrawn from
+us; and that we should be left only with the record and the evidence of
+his mighty works done in our behalf in past times; and with that other
+evidence of his wisdom and power which is afforded by the wonders of
+his creation?
+
+We look into the Scriptures and we learn that such was not his will. We
+were to live by faith, indeed, with, respect to the unseen world, there
+the sign given was to be for ever only the sign of Christ's
+resurrection. But yet it was not designed that the evidence of Christ's
+having redeemed us should be sought for only in the records of the past;
+he purposed that there should be a living record, a record that might
+speak to our senses as well as to our reason; that should continually
+present us with impressions of the reality of Christ's salvation; and so
+might work upon the habits of our life, as insensibly as the air we
+breathe. This living witness, which should last till Christ came again,
+was to be no other than his own body instinct with his own Spirit--his
+people, the temple of the Holy Ghost, his holy universal Church.
+
+If we consider for a moment, this would entirely meet the want of which
+I have been speaking. It is possible, certainly, to look upon the face
+of nature without being reminded of God; yet it is surely true, that in
+the outward creation, in the order of the seasons, the laws of the
+heavenly bodies, the wonderful wisdom and goodness displayed in the
+constitution of every living thing in its order, there is a tendency at
+least to impress us with, the thought of God, if nothing else obstructed
+it. But there is a constant obstruction in the state of man. Looking at
+men, hearing them, considering them, it is not only possible not to be
+reminded of God; but their very tendency is to exclude him from our
+minds, because the moral workmanship which is so predominant in them has
+assuredly not had God for its author. We all in our dealings with one
+another, lead each other away from God. We present to each other's view
+what seems to be a complete world of our own, in which God is not. We
+see a beginning, a middle, and an end; we see faculties for acquiring
+knowledge, and for receiving enjoyment; and earth furnishes knowledge to
+the one and enjoyment to the other. We see desires, and we see the
+objects to which they are limited; we see that death removes men from
+all these objects, and consistently with this, we observe, that death is
+generally regarded as the greatest of all evils. Man's witness, then, as
+far as it goes, is against the reality of God and of eternity. His life,
+his language, his desires, his understanding appear, when we look over
+the world, to refer to no being higher than himself, to no other state
+of things than that of which sight testifies.
+
+Now, Christ's Church, the living temple of the Holy Ghost, puts in the
+place of this natural and corrupt man, whose witness is against God,
+another sort of man, redeemed and regenerate, whose whole being breathes
+a perpetual witness of God. Consider, again, what we should see in such
+a Church. We should see a beginning, a middle, but the end is not yet
+visible; we should see, besides the faculties for knowledge and
+enjoyment which were receiving their gratification daily, other
+faculties of both kinds, whose gratification was as yet withheld; we
+should see desires not limited to any object now visible or attainable.
+We should see death looked to as the gate by which these hitherto
+unobtained objects were to be sought for; and we should hear it spoken
+of, not as the greatest of evils, but as an event solemn, indeed, and
+painful to nature, but full of blessing and of happiness. We should see
+love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness,
+temperance; a constitution of nature as manifestly proclaiming its
+author to be the God of all holiness and loving-kindness, as the
+wonderful structure of our eyes or hands declares them to be the work of
+the God of all wisdom and power. We should thus see in all our
+fellow-men, not only as much, but far more than in the constitution of
+the lower animals, or of the plants, or of the heavenly bodies, a
+witness of God and of eternity. Their whole lives would be a witness;
+their whole conversation would be a witness; their outward and more
+peculiar acts of worship would then bear their part in harmony with all
+the rest. Every day would the voices of the Church be heard in its
+services of prayer and thanksgiving; every day would its members renew
+their pledges of faithfulness to Christ, and to one another, upon
+partaking together the memorials of his sacrifice.
+
+What could we desire more than such a living witness as this? What sign
+in the sky, what momentary appearance of a spirit from the unseen world,
+could so impress us with the reality of God, as this daily worshipping
+in his living temple; this daily sight, of more than the Shechinah of
+old, even of his most Holy Spirit, diffusing on every side light and
+blessing? And what is now become of this witness? can names, and forms,
+and ordinances, supply its place? can our unfrequent worship, our most
+seldom communion, impress on us an image of men living altogether in the
+presence of God, and in communion with Christ? But before we dwell on
+this, we may, while considering the design of the true Church of Christ,
+well understand how such excellent things should be spoken of it, and
+how it should have been introduced into the Creed itself, following
+immediately after the mention of the Holy Ghost. That holy universal
+Church was to be the abiding witness of Christ's love and of Christ's
+promises; not in its outward forms only, for they by themselves are not
+a living witness; they cannot meet our want--to have God and heavenly
+things made real to us; but in its whole spirit, by which renewed man
+was to bear as visibly the image of God, as corrupted man had lost it.
+This was the sure sign that Christ had appointed to abide until his
+coming again; this sign, as striking as the burning bush, would compel
+us to observe; would make us sure that the place whereon we stand is
+holy ground.
+
+Then follows the question: With this sign lost in its most essential
+points, how can we supply its place? and how can we best avail ourselves
+of those parts of it which still remain? and how can we each endeavour
+to build up a partial and most imperfect imitation of it, which may
+yet, in some sort, serve to supply our great want, and remind us daily
+of God? This opens a wide field for thought, to those who are willing to
+follow it; but much of it belongs to other occasions rather than this:
+the practical part of it,--the means of most imperfectly supplying the
+want of God's own appointed sign, a true and living universal Church,
+shall be the subject of my next Lecture.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXIX.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PSALM cxxxvii. 4.
+
+_How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land_?
+
+
+This was said by the exiles of Jerusalem, when they were in the land of
+their captivity in Babylon. There is no reason to suppose that their
+condition was one of bondage, as it had been in Egypt: the nations
+removed by conquest, under the Persian kings, from their own country to
+another land, were no otherwise ill-treated; they had new homes given
+them in which they lived unmolested; only they were torn away from their
+own land, and were as sojourners in a land of strangers. But the
+peculiar evil of this state was, that they were torn away from the
+proper seat of their worship. The Jew in Babylon might have his own
+home, and his own land to cultivate, as he had in Judæa; but nothing
+could replace to him the loss of the temple at Jerusalem: there alone
+could the morning and evening sacrifices be offered; there alone could
+the sin-offering for the people be duly made. Banished from the temple,
+therefore, he was deprived also of the most solemn part of his religion;
+he was, as it were, exiled from God; and the worship of God, as it was
+now left to him,--that is, the offering up of prayers and praises,--was
+almost painful to him, as it reminded him so forcibly of his changed
+condition.
+
+Such also, in some respects, was to be the state of the Christian
+Church after our Lord's ascension. The only acceptable sacrifice was now
+that of their great High Priest interceding for them in the presence of
+the Father: heaven was their temple, and they were far removed from it
+upon earth: they, too, like the Jews in Babylon, were a little society
+by themselves living in the midst of strangers. "Our citizenship," says
+St. Paul to the Philippians, "is in heaven:" here they were not
+citizens, but sojourners. Why, then, should not the early Christians
+have joined altogether in the feeling of the Jews at Babylon? why should
+not they, too, have felt and said, "How can we sing the Lord's song in a
+strange land?"
+
+The answer is contained in what I said last Sunday; because Christ had
+not left them comfortless or forsaken, but was come again to them by his
+Holy Spirit; because God was dwelling in the midst of them; because they
+were not exiles from the temple of God, but were themselves become God's
+temple; because through the virtue of the one offering for sin once
+made, but for ever presented before God by their High Priest in heaven,
+they, in God's temple on earth, were presenting also their daily and
+acceptable sacrifice, the sacrifice of themselves; because also, though
+as yet they were a small society in a land of strangers, yet the stone
+formed without hands was to become a mighty mountain, and cover the
+whole earth: what was now the land of strangers was to become theirs;
+the whole earth should be full of the knowledge of the Lord; the
+kingdoms of the world were to become his kingdom; and thus earth,
+redeemed from the curse of sin, was again to be so blessed that God's
+servants living upon it should find it no place of exile.
+
+But if this, in its reality, does not now exist; if, although God's
+temple be on earth, the appointed sacrifice in it is not offered, the
+living sacrifice of ourselves; if the society has, by spreading, become
+weak, and the kingdoms of the earth are Christ's kingdoms in name alone;
+are we, then, come back once more to the condition of the Jews in
+Babylon? are we exiles from God, living amongst strangers? and must we,
+too, say, with the prophet, "How can we sing the Lord's song in a
+strange land?"
+
+This was the question which I proposed to answer: What can we do to make
+our condition unlike that of exiles from God: to restore that true sign
+of his presence amongst us, the living fire of his Holy Spirit pervading
+every part of his temple? I mean, what can we do as individuals? for the
+question in any other sense is not to be asked or answered here. But we,
+each of us, must have felt, at some time or other, our distance from
+God. Put the idea in what form or what words we will, we must--every one
+of us who has ever thought seriously at all--we must regret that there
+is not a stronger and more abiding influence over us, to keep us from
+evil, and to turn us to good.
+
+Now, the vestiges of Christ's church left among us are chiefly these:
+our prayers together, whether in our families or in this place; our
+reading of the Scriptures together; our communion, rare as it is, in the
+memorials of the body and blood of Christ our Saviour. These are the
+vestiges of that which was designed to be with us always, and in every
+part of our lives, the holy temple of God, his living church; but which
+now presents itself to us only at particular times, and places, and
+actions; in our worship and in our joint reading of the Scriptures, and
+in our communion.
+
+It will be understood at once why I have not spoken here of prayer and
+reading the Scriptures by ourselves alone. Most necessary as these are
+to us, yet they do not belong to the helps ministered to us by the
+church; they belong to us each as individuals, and in these respects we
+must be in the same state everywhere: these were enjoyed by the Jews
+even in their exile in Babylon. But the church acts upon us through one
+another, and therefore the vestiges of the church can only be sought for
+in what we do, not alone, but together. I, therefore, noticed only that
+prayer, and that reading of the Scriptures, in which many of us took
+part in common.
+
+Such common prayer takes place amongst us every morning and evening, as
+well as on Sundays within these walls. Whenever we meet on those
+occasions, we meet as Christ's church. Now, conceive how the effect of
+such meeting depends on the conduct of each of us. It is not necessary
+to notice behaviour openly profane and disorderly: this does not occur
+amongst us. We see, however, that if it did occur in any meeting for the
+purposes of religious worship, such a meeting would do us harm rather
+than good: its witness to us would not be in favour of God, but against
+him. But take another case: when we are assembled for prayers, suppose
+our behaviour, without being disorderly, was yet so manifestly
+indifferent as to be really indecent; that is, suppose every countenance
+showed such manifest signs of weariness, and impatience, and want of
+interest in what was going forward, that it was evident there was no
+general sympathy with any feeling of devotion. Would not the effect here
+also be injurious? would not such a meeting also shock and check our
+approaches towards God? would it not rather convince us that God was
+really far distant from us, instead of showing that he was in the
+midst of us?
+
+Ascend one step higher. Our behaviour is neither disorderly, nor
+manifestly indifferent: it is decent, serious, respectful. What is the
+effect in this case? Not absolutely unfavourable certainly; but yet far
+from being much help towards good. We bear our witness that we are
+engaged in a matter that should be treated with reverence: this is very
+right; but do we more than this? Do we show that we are engaged in a
+matter that commands our interest also, as well as our respect? If not,
+our witness is not the witness of Christ's church: it does not go to
+declare that God is in us of a truth.
+
+Let us go on one step more. We meet together to pray: we are orderly, we
+are quiet, we are serious; but the countenance shows that we are
+something more than these. There is on it the expression, never to be
+mistaken, of real interest. Remember I am speaking of meetings for
+prayer, where the words are perfectly familiar to us, and where the
+interest therefore cannot be the mere interest of novelty. Say, then,
+that our countenances express interest: I do not mean strong and excited
+feeling; but interest, which may be very real yet very quiet also. We
+look as if we thought of what we were engaged in, of what we are
+ourselves, and of what God is to us. We are joined in one common feeling
+of thankfulness to him for mercies past, of wishing for his help and
+love for the time to come. Now, think what would be the effect of such a
+meeting. Would it not be, clearly, positively good! Would not every
+individual's earnestness be confirmed by the manifest earnestness of
+others? Would not his own sense of God's reality be rendered stronger,
+by seeing that others felt it just as he did? Then, here would be the
+church of God rendering her appointed witness: she would be giving her
+sure sign that God is not far from any one of us.
+
+Now, then, observe what we may lose or gain by our different behaviour,
+whenever we meet together in prayer; what we lose, nay, what positive
+mischief we do, by any visible impatience or indifference; what we
+should gain by really joining in our hearts in the meaning of what was
+uttered. It is a solemn thing for the consciences of us all; but surely
+it must be true, that, whenever we are careless or indifferent in our
+public prayers, we are actually injuring our neighbours, and are, so far
+as in us lies, destroying the witness which the church of Christ should
+render to the truth of God her Saviour.
+
+I do not know that there is anything more impressive than the sight of a
+congregation evidently in earnest in the service in which they are
+engaged. We then feel how different is our own lonely prayer from the
+united voice of many hearts; each cheering, strengthening, enkindling
+the other. We then consider one another to provoke unto love and good
+works. How different are the feelings with which we regard a number of
+persons met for any common purpose, and the same persons engaged
+together in serious prayer or praise! Then Christ seems to appear to us
+in each of them; we are all one in him. How little do all earthly
+unkindnesses, dislikes, prejudices, become in our eyes, when the real
+bond of our common faith is discerned clearly! There is indeed neither
+Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian,
+bond nor free, but Christ is all, and in all. And to look at our
+brethren, once or twice in every day, with these Christian eyes, would
+it not also, by degrees, impress us at other times, and begin to form
+something of our habitual temper and regard towards them?
+
+Thus much of our meetings for prayer. One word only on those in which we
+meet to read the Scriptures. Here I know, that difference of age, and
+our peculiar relations to each other, make us very apt to lose the
+religious character of our readings of the Scriptures, and to regard
+them merely as lessons. No doubt, the object here is instruction; it is
+not so much in itself a religious exercise, as a means to enable you to
+perform religious exercises with understanding and sincerity. Still
+there is a peculiar character attached even to lessons, when they are
+taken out of the Scriptures: and the duty of attention and interest in
+the work becomes even stronger than under other circumstances. But with
+those of a more advanced age, I think there is more than this; I think
+it must be our own fault, if, whilst engaged together in reading the
+Scriptures, which we only read because we are Christians, we do not feel
+that there also we are employed on a duty belonging to the Church
+of Christ.
+
+Lastly, there is our joint communion in the bread, and in the cup, of
+the Lord's Supper. Here there is seriousness; here there is always, I
+trust and believe, something of real interest; and, therefore, we never,
+I think, meet together at the Lord's table, without feeling a true
+effect of Christ's gifts to and in his Church; we are strengthened and
+brought nearer to one another, and to him. But this most precious pledge
+of Christ's Church we too often forfeit for ourselves. That we have lost
+so much of the help which the Church was designed to give, is not our
+fault individually; but it is our fault that we neglect this means of
+strength, so great in bearing witness to Christ, and in kindling love
+towards one another. What can be said of us, if, with so many helps
+lost, we throw away that which still remains? if, of the great treasure
+which the Church yet keeps, we are wilfully ignorant? How much good
+might we do, both to ourselves and to each other, by joining in that
+communion! How surely should we be strengthened in all that is good, and
+have a help from each other, through his Spirit working in us all, to
+struggle against our evil!
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXX.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+1 CORINTHIANS xi. 26.
+
+_For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the
+Lord's death till he come_.
+
+
+When I spoke last Sunday of the benefits yet to be derived from Christ's
+Church, I spoke of them, as being, for the most part, three in
+number--our communion in prayer, our communion in reading the
+Scriptures, and our communion in the Lord's Supper; and, after having
+spoken of the first two of these, I proposed to leave the third for our
+consideration to-day.
+
+The words of the text are enough to show how closely this subject is
+connected with that event which we celebrate to-day[13]: "As often as ye
+eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he
+come." The communion, then, with one another in the Lord's Supper is
+doing that which this day was also designed to do; it is showing forth,
+or declaring the Lord's death; it is declaring, in the face of all the
+world, that we partake of the Lord's Supper because we believe that
+Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us.
+
+[Footnote 13: Good Friday.]
+
+God might, no doubt, if it had so pleased him, have made all spiritual
+blessing come to us immediately from himself. Without ascending any
+higher with the idea, it is plain that Christianity might have been made
+a thing wholly between each individual man and Christ; all our worship
+might have been the secret worship of our own hearts; and in eating the
+bread, and drinking the cup, to show forth the Lord's death, each one of
+us might have done this singly, holding communion with Christ alone. I
+mean, that it is quite conceivable that we should have had Christianity,
+and a great number of Christians spread all over the world, but yet no
+Christian Church. But, although this is conceivable, and, in fact, is
+practically the case in some particular instances where individual
+Christians happen to be quite cut off from all other Christians,--as has
+been known sometimes in foreign and remote countries; and although,
+through various evil causes, it has become, in many respects, too much
+the case with us all; for our religion is with all of us, I am inclined
+to think, too much a matter between God and ourselves alone; yet still
+it is not the design of Christ that it should be so: his people were not
+only to be good men, redeemed from sin and death and brought to know and
+love the truth, in which relation Christianity would appear like a
+divine philosophy only, working not only upon individuals, but through
+their individual minds, and as individuals; but they were to be the
+Christian Church, helping one another in things pertaining to God, and
+making their mutual brotherhood to one another an essential part of what
+are called peculiarly their acts of religion. So that the Church of
+England seems to have well borne in mind this character of Christianity,
+namely, that it presents us not each, but all together, before God; and
+therefore it is ordered that even in very small parishes, where "there
+are not more than twenty persons in the parish of discretion to receive
+the communion, yet there shall be no communion, except four, or three at
+the least, out of these twenty communicate together with the priest."
+Nay, even in the Communion of the Sick, under circumstances which seem
+to make religion particularly an individual matter between Christ and
+our own single selves; when the expected approach of death seems to
+separate, in the most marked manner, according to human judgment, him
+who is going hence from his brethren still in the world; even then it is
+ordered that two other persons, at the least, shall communicate along
+with the sick man and the minister. Nor is this ever relaxed except in
+times of pestilence; when it is provided, that if no other person can be
+persuaded to join from their fear of infection, then, and then only upon
+special request of the diseased, the minister may alone communicate with
+them. So faithfully does our Church adhere to this true Christian
+notion, that at the Lord's Supper we are not to communicate with Christ
+alone, but with him in and together with our brethren; so that I was
+justified in regarding the Holy Communion as one of those helps and
+blessings which we still derive from the Christian Church--from Christ's
+mystical body.
+
+It is the natural process of all false and corrupt religions, on the
+contrary, to destroy this notion of Christ's Church, and to lead away
+our thoughts from our brethren in matters of religion, and to fix them
+merely upon God as known to us through a priest. The great evil in this
+is, (if there is any one evil greater than another in a system so wholly
+made up of falsehood, and so leading to all wickedness; but, at any
+rate, one great evil of it is,) that whereas the greatest part of all
+our lives is engaged in our relations towards our brethren, that there
+lie most of our temptations to evil, as well as of our opportunities of
+good, if our brethren do not form an essential part of our religions
+views, it follows, and always has followed, that our behaviour and
+feelings towards them are guided by views and principles not religious;
+and that by this fatal separation of what God has joined together, our
+worship and religious services become superstitious, while our life and
+actions become worldly, in the bad sense of the term, low principled,
+and profane.
+
+If this is not so clear when put into a general form, it will be plain
+enough when I show it in that particular example which we are concerned
+with here. Nowhere, I believe, is the temptation stronger to lose sight
+of one another in our religious exercises, and especially in our
+Communion. Our serious thoughts in turning to God, turn away almost
+instinctively from our companions about us. Practically, as far as the
+heart is concerned, we are a great deal too apt to go to the Lord's
+table each alone. But consider how much we lose by this. We are
+necessarily in constant relations with one another; some of those
+relations are formal, others are trivial; we connect each other every
+day with a great many thoughts, I do not say of unkindness, but yet of
+that indifferent character which is no hindrance to any unkindness when
+the temptation to it happens to arise. This must always be the case in
+life; business, neighbourhood, pleasure,--the occasions of most of our
+intercourse with one another,--have in them nothing solemn or softening:
+they have in themselves but little tendency to lead us to the love of
+one another. Now, if this be so in the world, it is even more so here;
+your intercourse with one another is much closer and more constant than
+what can exist in after life with any but the members of your own
+family; and yet the various relations which this intercourse has to do
+with, are even less serious and less softening than those of ordinary
+life in manhood. The kindliness of feeling which is awakened in after
+years between two men, by the remembrance of having been at school
+together, even without any particular acquaintance with each other, is a
+very different thing from the feeling of being at school with each
+other now. I do not wonder, then, that any one of you, when he resolves
+to come to the Holy Communion, should rather try to turn away his
+thoughts from his companions, and to think of himself alone as being
+concerned in what he is going to do. I do not wonder at it; but, then,
+neither do I wonder that, when the Communion is over, and thoughts of
+his companions must return, they receive little or no colour from his
+religious act so lately performed; that they are as indifferent as they
+were before, as little furnishing a security against neglect, or
+positive unkindness, or encouragement of others to evil. Depend upon it,
+unless your common life is made a part of your religion, your religion
+will never sanctify your common life.
+
+Now consider, on the one hand, what might be the effect of going to the
+Holy Communion with a direct feeling that, in that Communion, we, though
+many, were all brought together in Christ Jesus. And first, I will speak
+of our thoughts of those who are partakers of the Communion with us,
+then of those who are not. When others are gone out, and we who are to
+communicate are left alone with each other, then, if we perceive that
+there are many of us, the first natural feeling is one of joy, that we
+are so many; that our party,--that only true and good party to which we
+may belong with all our hearts,--that our party,--that Christ's party,
+seems so considerable. Then there comes the thought, that we are all met
+together freely, willingly, not as a matter of form, to receive the
+pledges of Christ's love to us, to pledge ourselves to him in return. If
+we are serious, those around us may be supposed to be serious too; if we
+wish to have help from God to lead a holier life, they surely wish the
+same; if the thought of past sin is humbling us, the same shame is
+working in our brethren's bosoms; if we are secretly resolving, by
+God's grace, to serve him in earnest, the hearts around us are, no
+doubt, resolving the same. There is the consciousness, (when and where
+else can we enjoy it?) that we are in sympathy with all present; that,
+coloured merely by the lesser distinctions of individual character, one
+and the same current of feeling is working within us all. And, if
+feeling this of our sympathy with one another, how strongly is it
+heightened by the thought of what Christ has done for us all! We are all
+loving him, because he loved us all; we are going together to celebrate
+his death, because he died for us all; we are resolving all to serve
+him, because his Holy Spirit is given to us all, and we are all brought
+to drink of the same Spirit. Then let us boldly carry our thoughts a
+little forward to that time, only a short hour hence, when we shall
+again be meeting one another, in very different relations; even in those
+common indifferent relations of ordinary life which are connected so
+little with Christ. Is it impossible to think, that, although we shall
+meet without these walls in very different circumstances, yet that we
+have seen each other pledging ourselves to serve Christ together? if the
+recollection of this lives in us, why should it not live in our
+neighbour? If we are labouring to keep alive our good resolutions made
+at Christ's table, why should we think that others have forgotten them?
+We do not talk of them openly, yet still they exist within us. May not
+our neighbour's silence also conceal within his breast the same good
+purposes? At any rate, we may and ought to regard him as ranged on our
+side in the great struggle of life; and if outward circumstances do not
+so bring us together as to allow of our openly declaring our sympathy,
+yet we may presume that it still exists; and this consciousness may
+communicate to the ordinary relations of life that very softness which
+they need, in order to make them Christian.
+
+Again, with regard to those who go out, and do not approach to the
+Lord's table. With some it is owing to their youth; with others to a
+mistaken notion of their youth; with others to some less excusable
+reason, perhaps, but yet to such as cannot yet exclude kindness and
+hope. But having once felt what it is to be only with those who are met
+really as Christians, our sense of what it is to want this feeling is
+proportionably raised. Is it sad to us to think that our neighbour does
+not look upon us as fellow Christians? is it something cold to feel that
+he regards us only in those common worldly relations which leave men in
+heart so far asunder? Then let us take heed that we do not ourselves
+feel so towards him. We have learnt to judge more truly, to feel more
+justly, of our relations to every one who bears Christ's name: if we
+forget this, we have no excuse; for we have been at Christ's table, and
+have been taught what Christians are to one another. And let our
+neighbour be ever so careless, yet we know that Christ cares for him;
+that his Spirit has not yet forsaken him, but is still striving with
+him. And if God vouchsafes so much to him, how can we look upon him as
+though he were no way connected with us? how can we be as careless of
+his welfare, as apt either to annoy him, or to lead him into evil, or to
+take no pains to rescue him from it, as if he were no more to us than
+the accidental inhabitant of the same place, who was going on his way as
+we may be on ours, neither having any concern with the other?
+
+And, now, is it nothing to learn so to feel towards those around us; to
+have thus gained what will add kindness and interest to all our
+relations with others; and, in the case of many, will give an abiding
+sense of the truest sympathy, and consequently greater confidence and
+encouragement to ourselves? Be sure that this is not to profane the
+Lord's Supper, but to use it according to Christ's own ordinance. For
+though the thoughts of which I have been speaking, have, in one sense,
+man and not God for their object, yet as they do not begin in man but in
+Christ, and in his love to us all, so neither do they, properly
+speaking, rest in man as such, but convert him, as it were, into an
+image of Christ: so that their end, as well as their beginning, is with
+Him. I do earnestly desire that you would come to Christ's table, in
+order to learn a Christian's feelings towards one another. This is what
+you want every day; and the absence of which leads to more and worse
+faults than, perhaps, any other single cause. But, then, this Christian
+feeling towards one another, how is it to be gained but by a Christian
+feeling towards Christ? and where are we to learn brotherly love in all
+our common dealings, but from a grateful thought of that Divine love
+towards us all which is shown forth in the sacrament of the Lord's
+Supper; inasmuch as, so often as we eat that bread and drink that cup,
+we do show the Lord's death till He come.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXXI.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LUKE i. 3, 4.
+
+_It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all
+things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent
+Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of those things
+wherein thou hast been instructed_.
+
+
+These words, from the preface to St. Luke's Gospel, contain in them one
+or two points on which it may be of use to dwell; and not least so at
+the present time, when they are more frequently brought under our notice
+than was the case a few years ago. On a subject which we never, or very
+rarely hear mentioned, it may be difficult to excite attention; and, as
+a general rule, there is little use in making the attempt. But when
+names and notions are very frequently brought to our ears, and in a
+degree to our minds, then it becomes important that we should comprehend
+the matter to which they relate clearly and correctly; and a previous
+interest respecting it may be supposed to exist, which make further
+explanation acceptable.
+
+St. Luke tells Theophilus that it seemed good to him to write in order
+an account of our Lord's life and death, that Theophilus might know the
+certainty of those things in which he had been instructed; and this, as
+a general rule, might well describe one great use of the Scripture to
+each of us, as individual members of Christ's Church--it enables us to
+know the certainty of the things in which we have been instructed. We do
+not, in the first instance, get our knowledge of Christ from the
+Scriptures,--we, each of us, I mean as individuals,--but from the
+teaching of our parents first; then of our instructors, and from books
+fitted for the instruction of children; whether it be the Catechism of
+the Church, or books written by private persons, of which we know that
+there are many. But as our minds open, and our opportunities of judging
+for ourselves increase, then the Scripture presents itself to acquaint
+us with the certainty of what we had heard already; to show us the
+original and perfect truth, of which we have received impressions
+before, but such as were not original nor perfect; to confirm and
+enforce all that was good and true in our early teaching; and if it
+should so happen that it contained any thing of grave error mixed with
+truth, then to enable us to discover and reject it.
+
+It is apparent, then, that the Scripture, to do this, must have an
+authority distinct from, and higher than, that of our early teaching;
+but yet it is no less true that it comes to us individually recommended,
+in the first instance, by the authority of our early teaching, and
+received by us, not for its own sake, but for the sake of those who put
+it into our hands. What child can, by possibility, go into the evidence
+which makes it reasonable to believe the Bible, and to reject the
+authority of the Koran? Our children believe the Bible for our sakes;
+they look at it with respect, because we tell them that it ought to be
+respected; they read it, and learn it, because we desire them; they
+acquire a habit of veneration for it long before they could give any
+other reason for venerating it than their parents' authority. And
+blessed be God that they do; for, as it has been well said, if we their
+parents do not endeavour to give our children habits of love and respect
+for what is good and true, Satan will give them habits of love for what
+is evil: for the child must receive impressions from without; and it is
+God's wisdom that he should receive these impressions from his parents,
+who have the strongest interest in his welfare, and who have besides
+that instinctive parental love which, more surely, as well as more
+purely, than any possible sense of interest, makes them earnestly desire
+their child's good.
+
+But when our children are old enough to understand and to inquire, do we
+then content ourselves with saying that they must take our word for it;
+that the Bible is true because we tell them so? Where is the father who
+does not feel, first, that he himself is not fitted to be an infallible
+authority; and, secondly, that if he were, he should be thwarting the
+providence of God, who has willed not simply that we should believe with
+understanding. He gladly therefore observes the beginnings of a spirit
+of inquiry in his son's mind, knowing that it is not inconsistent with a
+belief in truth, but is a necessary step to that which alone in a man
+deserves the name of belief--a belief, namely, sanctioned by reason.
+With what pleasure does he point out to his son the grounds of his own
+faith! how gladly does he introduce him to the critical and historical
+evidence for the truth of the Scriptures, that he may complete the work
+which he had long since begun, and deliver over the faith which had been
+so long nursed under the shade of parental authority, to the care of his
+son's own conscience and reason!
+
+We see clearly that our individual faith, although grounded in the first
+instance on parental authority, yet rests afterwards on wholly different
+grounds; namely, on the direct evidence in confirmation of it which is
+presented to our own minds. But with regard to those who are called the
+Fathers of the Church, it is contended sometimes that we do receive the
+Scriptures, in the end, upon their authority: and it is argued, that if
+their authority is sufficient for so great a thing as this, it must be
+sufficient for every thing else; that if, in short, we believe the
+Scriptures for their sake, then we ought also to believe other things
+which they may tell us, for their sake, even though they are not to be
+found in Scripture.
+
+In the argument there is this great fault, that it misstates the
+question at the outset. The authority of the Fathers, as they are
+called, is never to any sound mind the only reason for believing in the
+Scriptures; I think it is by no means so much as the principle reason.
+It is one reason, amongst many; but not the strongest. And, in like
+manner, their authority in other points, if there were other and
+stronger reasons which confirmed it,--as in many cases there are,--is
+and ought to be respected. But, because we lay a certain stress upon it,
+it does not follow that we should do well to make it bear the whole
+weight of the building. Because we believe the Scriptures, partly on the
+authority of the Fathers, as they are called, but more for other
+reasons, does it follow that we should equally respect the authority of
+the Fathers when there are no other reasons in support of it, but many
+which make against it?
+
+In truth, however, the internal evidence in favour of the authenticity
+and genuineness of the Scriptures is that on which the mind can rest
+with far greater satisfaction than on any external testimonies, however
+valuable. On one point, which might seem most to require other
+evidence--the age, namely, and origin of the writings of the New
+Testament--it has been wonderfully ordered that the books, generally
+speaking, are their own witness. I mean that their peculiar language
+proves them to have been written by persons such as the apostles were,
+and such as the Christian writers immediately following them were not;
+persons, namely, whose original language and habits of thinking were
+those of Jews, and to whom the Greek in which they wrote was, in its
+language and associations, essentially foreign. I do not dwell on the
+many other points of internal evidence: it is sufficient to say that
+those who are most familar with such inquiries, and who best know how
+little any external testimony can avail in favour of a book where the
+internal evidence is against it, are most satisfied that the principal
+writings of the New Testament do contain abundantly in themselves, for
+competent judges, the evidence of their own genuineness and
+authenticity.
+
+That the testimony of the early Christian writers goes along with this
+evidence and confirms it, is matter indeed of sincere thankfulness;
+because more minds, perhaps, are able to believe on external evidence
+than on internal. But of this testimony of the Christian writers it is
+essential to observe, that two very important points are such as do
+indeed affect this particular question much, but yet do not confer any
+value on the judgment of the witness in other matters. When a very early
+Christian writer quotes a passage from the New Testament, such as we
+find it now in our Bibles, it is indeed an argument, which all can
+understand, that he had before him the same Bible which we have, and
+that though he lived so near to the beginning of the gospel, yet that
+some parts of the New Testament must have been written still nearer to
+it. This is an evidence to the age of the New Testament, valuable indeed
+to us, but implying in the writer who gives it no qualities which confer
+authority; it merely shows that the book which he read must have existed
+before he could quote it. A second point of evidence is, when a very
+early Christian writer quotes any part of the New Testament as being
+considered by those to whom he was writing as an authority. This, again,
+is a valuable piece of testimony; but neither does it imply any general
+wisdom or authority in the writer who gives it: its value is derived
+merely from the age at which he lived, and not from his personal
+character. And with regard to the general reception of the New Testament
+by the Christians of his time, which, in the case supposed, he states as
+a fact, no doubt that the general opinion of the early Christians,
+where, as in this case, we can be sure that it is reported correctly, is
+an authority, and a great authority, in favour of the Scriptures:
+combined, as it is, with the still stronger internal evidence of the
+books themselves, it is irresistible. But it were too much to argue
+that, therefore, it was alone sufficient, not only when destitute of
+other evidence, but if opposed to it; and especially if it should happen
+to be opposed to that very Scripture which we know they acknowledged to
+be above themselves, but which we do not know that they were enabled in
+all cases either rightly to interpret or faithfully to follow.
+
+When, therefore, we are told that, as we believe the Scriptures
+themselves upon tradition, so we should believe other things also, the
+answer is, that we do not believe the Scriptures either entirely or
+principally, upon what is called tradition; but for their own internal
+evidence; and that the opinions of the early Christians, like those of
+other men, may be very good in certain points, and to a certain degree,
+without being good in all points, and absolutely; that many a man's
+judgment would justly weigh with us, in addition to other strong reasons
+in the case itself, when we should by no means follow it where we were
+clear that there were strong reasons against it. This, indeed, is so
+obvious, that it seems almost foolish to be at the trouble of stating
+it; but what is so absurd in common life, that the contrary to it is a
+mere truism, is, unfortunately, when applied to a subject with which we
+are not familiar, often considered as an unanswerable argument, if it
+happen to suit our disposition or our prejudices.
+
+But, although the Scripture is to the Church, and to the individual,
+too, who is able to judge for himself, the only decisive authority in
+matters of faith, yet we must not forget that it comes to us as it did
+to Theophilus, to persuade us of the certainty of things in which we
+have been already instructed; not to instruct from the beginning, by
+itself alone, those to whom its subject is entirely strange: in other
+words, it is and ought to be the general rule, that the Church teaches,
+and the Scripture confirms that teaching: or, if it be in any part
+erroneous, reproves it. For some appear to think, that by calling the
+Scripture the sole authority in matters of faith, we mean to exclude the
+Church altogether; and to call upon every man,--nay, upon every
+child,--to make out his own religion for himself from the volume of the
+Scriptures. The explanation briefly given is this; that while the
+Scripture alone teaches the Church, the Church teaches individuals; and
+that the authority of her teaching, like that of all human teaching,
+whether of individuals or societies, varies justly according to
+circumstances; being received, as it ought to be, almost implicitly by
+some, as a parent's is by a child, and by others listened to with
+respect, as that which is in the main agreeable to the truth, but still
+not considered to be, nor really claiming to be received as, infallible.
+But this part of the subject will require to be considered by itself on
+another occasion.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXXII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LUKE i. 3,4.
+
+_It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all
+things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent
+Theophilus, that than mightest know the certainty of those things in
+which thou hast been instructed_.
+
+
+I said at the conclusion of my lecture, last Sunday, that when we of the
+Church of England assert that the Scripture is the sole authority in
+matters of faith, we by no means mean to exclude the office of the
+Church, nor to assert any thing so extravagant, as that it is the duty
+of every person to sit down with the volume of the Scriptures in his
+hand, and to make out from that alone, without listening to any human
+authority, what is the revelation made by God to man. But I know that
+many are led to adopt notions no less extravagant of the authority of
+the Church and of tradition,--even to the full extent maintained by the
+Church of Rome,--because they see no other refuge from what appears to
+them, and not unreasonably, so miserable and so extreme a folly; for an
+extreme and a most miserable folly doubtless it would be, in any one, to
+throw aside all human aid except his own; to disregard alike the wisdom
+of individuals, and the agreeing decisions of bodies of men; to act as
+if none but himself had ever loved truth, or had been able to discover
+it; and as if he himself did possess both the will and the power to
+do so.
+
+This is so foolish, that I doubt whether any one ever held such
+notions, and, much more, whether be acted upon them. But is it more wise
+to run from one form of error into its opposite, which, generally
+speaking, is no less foolish and extravagant? What should we say of a
+man who could see no middle course between never asking for advice, and
+always blindly following it; between never accepting instruction upon
+any subject, and believing his instructors infallible? And this last
+comparison, with our particular situation here, will enable us, I think,
+by referring to our own daily experience, to understand the present
+question sufficiently. The whole system of education supposes,
+undoubtedly, that the teacher, in those matters which he teaches, should
+be an authority to the taught: a learner in any matter must rely on the
+books, and on the living instructors, out of which and from whom he is
+to learn. There are difficulties, certainly, in all learning; but we do
+not commonly see them increased by a disposition on the part of the
+learner to question and dispute every thing that is told him. There is a
+feeling rather of receiving what he is told implicitly; and, by so
+doing, he learns: but does it ever enter into his head that his teacher
+is infallible? or does any teacher of sane mind wish him to think so?
+And observe, now, what is the actual process: the mind of the learner is
+generally docile, trustful, respectful towards his teacher; aware, also,
+of his own comparative ignorance. It is certainly most right that it
+should be so. But this really teachable and humble learner finds a false
+spelling in one of his books; or hears his teacher, from oversight, say
+one word in his explanation instead of another: does he cease to be
+teachable and humble,--is it really a want of childlike faith, and an
+indulgence of the pride of reason, if he decides that the false spelling
+was an error of the press; that the word which his teacher used was a
+mistake? Yet errors, mistakes, of how trifling a kind soever, are
+inconsistent with infallibility; and the perceiving that they are errors
+is an exercise of our individual judgment upon our instructors. To hear
+some men talk, we should think that no boy could do so without losing
+all humility and all teachableness; without forthwith supposing that he
+was able to be his own instructor.
+
+I have begun on purpose with an elementary case, in which a very young
+boy might perceive an error in his books, or in his instructors,
+without, in any degree, forfeiting his true humility. But we will now go
+somewhat farther: we will take a more advanced student, such as the
+oldest of those among you, who are still learners, and who know that
+they have much to learn, but who, having been learners for some time
+past, have also acquired some knowledge. In the books which they refer
+to, and from which they are constantly deriving assistance, do they
+never observe any errors in the printing? do they never find
+explanations given, which they perceive to be imperfect, nay, which they
+often feel to be actually wrong? And, passing from books to living
+instructors, should we blame a thoughtful, attentive, and well-informed
+pupil, because his mind did not at once acquiesce in our interpretation
+of some difficult passage; because he consulted other authorities on the
+subject, and was unsatisfied in his judgment; the reason of his
+hesitation being, that our interpretation appeared to him to give an
+unsatisfactory sense, or to be obtained by violating the rules of
+language? Is he proud, rebellious, puffed up, wanting in a teachable
+spirit, without faith, without humility, because he so ventures to judge
+for himself of what his teacher tells him? Does such a judging for
+himself interfere, in the slightest degree, with the relation between us
+and him? Does it make him really cease to respect us? or dispose him to
+believe that he is altogether beyond the reach of our instruction? Or
+are we so mad as to regard our authority as wholly set at nought,
+because it is not allowed to be infallible? Doubtless, it would be
+wholly set at nought, if we had presumed to be infallible. Then it would
+not be merely that, in some one particular point, our decision had been
+doubted, but that one point would involve our authority in all; because
+it would prove, that we had set up beforehand a false claim: and he who
+does so is either foolish, or a deceiver; there is apparent a flaw
+either in his understanding, or in his principles, which undoubtedly
+does repel respect.
+
+Let me go on a step farther still. It has been my happiness to retain,
+in after years, my intercourse with many of those who were formerly my
+pupils; to know them when their minds have been matured, and their
+education, in the ordinary sense of the term, completed. Is not the
+relation between us altered then still more? Is it incompatible with
+true respect and regard, that they should now judge still more freely,
+in those very points, I mean, in which heretofore they had received my
+instructions all but implicitly? that on points of scholarship and
+criticism, they should entirely think for themselves? Or does this
+thinking for themselve mean, that they will begin to question all they
+had ever learnt? or sit down to forget purposely all their school
+instructions, and make out a new knowledge of the ancient languages for
+themselves? Who does not know, that they whose minds are most eager to
+discern truth, are the very persons who prize their early instruction
+most, and confess how much they are indebted to it; and that the
+exercise of their judgments loads them to go on freely in the same path
+in which they have walked so long, here and there it may be departing
+from it where they find a better line, but going on towards the same
+object, and generally in the same direction?
+
+What has been the experience of my life,--the constantly observing the
+natural union between sense and modesty; the perfect compatibility of
+respect for instruction with freedom of judgment; the seeing how Nature
+herself teaches us to proportion the implicitness of our belief to our
+consciousness of ignorance: to rise gradually and gently from a state of
+passively leaning, as it were, on the arm of another, to resting more
+and more of our weight on our own limbs, and, at last, to standing
+alone, this has perpetually exemplified our relations, as individuals,
+to the Church. Taught by her, in our childhood and youth, under all
+circumstances; taught by her, in the great majority of instances,
+through our whole lives; never, in any case, becoming so independent of
+her as we do in riper years, of the individual instructor of our youth;
+she has an abiding claim on our respect, on our deference, on our
+regard: but if it should be, that her teaching contained any thing at
+variance with God's word, we should perceive it more or less clearly,
+according to our degrees of knowledge; we should trust or mistrust our
+judgment, according to our degree of knowledge; but in the last resort,
+as we suppose that even a young boy might be sure that his book was in
+error, in the case of a manifest false print, so there may be things so
+certainly inconsistent with Scripture, that a common Christian may be
+able to judge of them, and to say that they are like false prints in his
+lesson, they are manifest errors, not to be followed, but avoided. So
+far he may be said to judge of his teacher; but not the less will he
+respect and listen to her authority in general, unless she has herself
+made the slightest error ruinous to her authority by claiming to be in
+all points, great or small, alike infallible.
+
+Men crave a general rule for their guidance at all times, and under all
+circumstances; whereas life is a constant call upon us to consider how
+far one general rule, in the particular case before us, is modified by
+another, or where one rule should be applied, and where another. To
+separate humility from idolatry, conscience from presumption, is often
+an arduous task: to different persons there is a different besetting
+danger; so it is under different circumstances, and at different times.
+Every day does the seaman, on a voyage, take his observations, to know
+whereabouts he is; he compares his position with his charts; he
+considers the direction of the wind, and the set of the current, or
+tide; and from all these together, he judges on which side his danger
+lies, on what course he should steer, or how much sail he may venture to
+carry. This is an image of our own condition: we cannot have a general
+rule to tell us where we should follow others, and where we must differ
+from them; to say what is modesty, and what is indolence; what is a
+proper deference to others, and what is a trusting in man so far, that
+it becomes a want of trust in God. Only, we are sure that these are
+points which we must decide for ourselves; the human will must be free,
+so far as other men are concerned. If we say, that we will implicitly
+trust others, then there is our decision, which no one could have made
+for us, and which is our own choice as to the principle of our lives;
+for which choice, we each of us, and no one else in all the world, must
+answer at the judgment-seat of God. Only, in that word there is our
+comfort, that, for our conduct in so doubtful a voyage as that of life,
+amidst so many conflicting opinions, each courting our adherence to
+it,--amidst such a variety of circumstances without, and of feelings
+within, and on which, notwithstanding, our condition for all eternity
+must depend,--we shall be judged, not by erring man, not by our own
+fallible conscience, but by the all-wise, and all-righteous God. With
+him, after all, even in the very courts of his holy Church, we yet, in
+one sense, must each of us live alone. On his gracious aid, given to our
+own individual souls, and determining our own individual wills, depends
+the character of our life here and for ever. Trusting to him, praying to
+him, we shall then make use of all the means that his goodness has
+provided for us; we shall ask counsel of friends; we shall listen to
+teachers; we shall delight to be in the company of God's people, of one
+mind, and of one voice, with the good and wise of every generation; we
+shall be afraid of leaning too much to our own understanding, knowing
+how it is encompassed with error; but knowing that other men are
+encompassed with error also, and that we, and not they, must answer for
+our choice before Christ's judgment, we must, in the last resort, if our
+conscience and sense of truth cannot be persuaded that other men speak
+according to God's will,--we must follow our own inward convictions,
+though all the world were to follow the contrary.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXXIII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JOHN ix. 29.
+
+_We know that God spake unto Moses; as for this fellow, we know not from
+whence he is_.
+
+
+The questions involved in the conversations recorded in this chapter,
+are of great practical importance. Not perhaps of immediate practical
+importance to all in this present congregation; but yet sure to be of
+importance to all hereafter, and of importance to many at this actual
+moment. Nay, they are of importance to those who, from their youth,
+might be thought to have little to do with them, either where the mind
+is already anxious and inquiring beyond its years, or where it happens
+to be exposed to strong party influences, or that its passions are
+likely to be engaged on a particular side, however little the
+understanding may be interested in the matter. In fact, in religious
+knowledge, as in other things, the omissions of youth are hard to make
+up in manhood; they who grow up with a very small knowledge of the
+Scriptures, and with no understanding of any of the questions connected
+with them, can with difficulty make up for this defect in after years;
+they become, according to the influences to which, they may happen to be
+subjected, either unbelieving or fanatical.
+
+If we were to question the youngest boy about the language held in this
+chapter by the Pharisees, and by the man who had been born blind, we
+should, no doubt, be answered, that what the Pharisees said, was wrong;
+and what the man born blind said, was right. This would be the answer
+which it would be thought proper to give; because it would be perceived
+that the Pharisees' language expressed unbelief in Christ; and that the
+man born blind was expressing gratitude and faith towards him. Nor,
+indeed, should we expect a young boy to go much farther than this; for
+such general impressions are, at his age, as much many times as can be
+looked for. But it is strange to observe how much this want of
+understanding outlasts the age of boyhood; how apt men are to judge
+according to names, and to see no farther: to say, that the language of
+the Pharisees was wrong, because they find it employed against Christ;
+but yet to use the very same language themselves, whilst they think that
+they are all the while speaking for Christ.
+
+But in this conversation between the Pharisees and the blind man, there
+are, indeed, as I said, points involved of very great importance; it
+contains the question as to the degree of weight to be attached to
+miracles; and the question, no less grave, with what degree of tenacity
+we should reject what claims to be a new truth, because it seems to be
+at a variance with supposed old truths to which we have been long
+accustomed to cling with undoubting affection.
+
+The question as to the weight of miracles is contained in the sixteenth
+verse. Some of the Pharisees said, This man is not of God, because he
+keepeth not the Sabbath day. Others said, How can a man that is a sinner
+do such miracles? That is to say, the first party rejected the miracles
+because they seemed to be wrought in favour of a supposed false
+doctrine; the other accepted the doctrine, because it seemed warranted
+to their belief by the miracles.
+
+The second question is contained in the words of the text, "We know
+that God spake to Moses; as for this fellow, we know not from whence he
+is." We have been taught from our childhood, and have the belief
+associated with every good and pious thought in us, that God spake to
+Moses, and gave him the law as our rule of life; but as for this fellow,
+we know not from whence he is. His works may be wonderful, his words may
+be specious; but we never heard of him before, and we cannot tear up all
+the holiest feelings of our nature to receive a new doctrine. We will
+hold to the old way in which, we were taught by our fathers to walk, and
+in which they walked before us.
+
+This last question is one which, as we well know, is continually
+presented to our minds. No one says, that the Pharisees were right, any
+more than those very Pharisees thought that their fathers were right who
+had killed the prophets. But as our Lord told them, that they were in
+truth the children in spirit of those who had killed the prophets;
+because, although they had been taught to condemn the outward form of
+their fathers' action, they were repeating it themselves in its
+principles and spirit; so many of those who condemn the Pharisees are
+really their exact image, repeating now against the truths of their own
+days the very same arguments which the Pharisees used against the truths
+of theirs.
+
+For the arguments of these Pharisees, both as regards miracles, and as
+regards the suspicion with which we should look on a doctrine opposed to
+the settled opinions of our lives, have in fact, in both cases, a great
+mixture of justice in them; and it is this very mixture which we may
+hope beguiled them; and also beguiles those, who in our own days repeat
+their language.
+
+For most certain it is that the Scripture itself supposes the
+possibility of false miracles. The case is especially provided against
+in Deuteronomy. It there says, "If there arise among you a prophet or a
+dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or
+the wonder come to pass whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go
+after other gods which thou hast not known, and let us serve them: thou
+shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet or that dreamer of
+dreams, for the Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the
+Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul." Observe how
+nearly this comes to the language of the Pharisees, "This man is not of
+God, because he keepeth not the Sabbath day." "Here," they might have
+said, "is the very case foreseen in the Scriptures: a prophet has
+wrought a sign and a wonder, which is at the same time a breach of God's
+commandments. God has told us that such signs are not to be heeded, that
+he does but prove us with them to see whether we love him truly: knowing
+that where there is a love of him, the heart will heed no sign or
+wonder, how great soever, which would tempt it to think lightly of his
+commandments." Shall we say that this is not a just interpretation of
+the passage in Deuteronomy? shall we say that this is the language of
+unbelief or of sin? or, rather, shall we not confess that it is in
+accordance with God's word, and holy, and faithful, and true? And yet
+this most just language led those who used it to reject one of Christ's
+greatest miracles, and to refuse the salvation of the Holy One of God.
+Can God's truth be contrary to itself? or can truth and goodness lead so
+directly to error and to evil?
+
+Now, then, where is the solution to be found? for some solution there
+must be, unless we will either condemn a most true principle, or defend
+a most false conclusion. The error lies in confounding God's moral law
+with his law of ordinances; precisely the same error which led the Jews
+to stone Stephen. The law had undoubtedly commanded that he who
+blasphemed God should be stoned; the Jews called Stephen's speaking
+against the holy place and against the law blasphemy against God, and
+they murdered God's faithful servant and Christ's blessed martyr. Even
+so the law had said, Let no miracle be so great as to tempt you to
+forsake God: the Jews considered the forsaking the law of the Sabbath to
+be a forsaking of God, and they said that Christ's miracle was a work of
+Satan. There is no blasphemy into which we may not fall, no crime from
+which we shall be safe, if we do not separate in our minds most clearly
+such laws as relate to moral and eternal duties, and such as relate to
+outward or positive ordinances, even when commanded or instituted by God
+himself. It is most false to say that the fact of their being commanded
+sets them on a level with each other. So long as they are commanded to
+us, it is no doubt our duty to obey them equally: but the difference
+between them is this, that whereas the first are commanded to us and to
+our children for ever, and no possible evidence can be so great as to
+persuade us that God has repealed them; (for the utmost conceivable
+amount of external testimony, such as that of miracles, could only lead
+to madness;--the human mind might, conceivably, be overwhelmed by the
+conflict, but should never and could never be tempted to renounce its
+very being, and lie against its Maker;) the others, that is, the
+commands to observe certain forms and ordinances, are in their nature
+essentially temporary and changeable: we have no right to assume that
+they will be continued, and therefore a miracle at any time might justly
+require us to forsake them; and not only an outward miracle, but the
+changed circumstances of the times may speak God's will no less clearly
+than a miracle, and may absolutely make it our duty to lay aside those
+ordinances, which to us hitherto, and to our fathers before us, were
+indeed the commands of God.
+
+Now let us take the other question,--which may indeed be called a
+question as to the allowableness of resting confidently in truth already
+gained, without consenting to examine the claims of something asserting
+itself to be a new truth, yet which seems to interfere with the old. Is
+nothing within us to be safe from possible doubt, or is everything? Or
+is it here, as in the former case, that there are truths so tried and so
+sacred that it were blasphemy to question them; while there are others,
+often closely intermixed with these, which are not so sacred, because
+they are not eternal; which may and ought to be examined when occasion
+requires; and which may be laid aside, or exchanged rather, for some
+higher truth, if it shall reasonably appear that their work is done, and
+that if we retain them longer they will change their character, and
+become no longer true but false. "David having served his own generation
+by the will of God, fell asleep, and was gathered unto his fathers, and
+saw corruption; but He whom God raised again saw no corruption." This is
+the difference between positive ordinances and moral: the first serve
+their appointed number of generations by the will of God, and then are
+gathered to their fathers, and perish; the latter are by the right hand
+of God exalted, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.
+
+"We know," said the Jews, "that God spake to Moses; but for this fellow,
+we know not from whence he is." There was a time when their fathers had
+held almost the very same language to Moses: "they refused him, saying
+Who made thee a ruler and a judge over us?" But now they knew that God
+had spoken to Moses, but were refusing Him who was sent unto them after
+Moses. God had spoken unto Moses, it was most true: he had spoken to him
+and given him commandments which were to last for ever; and which
+Christ, so far from undoing, was sent to confirm and to perfect; he had
+spoken to him other things, which were not to last for ever, but yet
+which were not to be cast away with dishonour; but having, in the
+fulness of time, done their work, were then, like David, to fall asleep.
+All that was required of the Jews, was not to reject as blasphemy a
+doctrine which should distinguish between these two sorts of truths:
+which in no way requires to believe that God had not spoken to
+Moses,--which, on the contrary, maintained that he had so spoken,--but
+only contended that he has also, in these last days, spoken unto us by
+his Son; and that his Son, bearing the full image of Divine authority,
+might well be believed if he spoke of some parts of Moses's law as
+having now fulfilled their work, seeing that they were such parts only
+as, by their very nature, were not eternal: they had not been from the
+beginning, and therefore they would not live on to the end.
+
+The practical conclusion is, that, whilst we hold fast, with an
+undoubting and unwavering faith, all truths which, by their very nature,
+are eternal, and to deny which is no other than to speak against the
+Holy Ghost, we should listen patiently to, and pass no harsh judgment
+on, those who question other truths not necessarily eternal, while they
+declare that they are, to the best of their consciences, seeking to obey
+God and Christ. When I say, that we should listen patiently, and not
+pass harsh judgments upon those who question such points, I say it
+without at all meaning that we should agree with them. It would be
+monstrous indeed, to suppose that old opinions are never combated
+wrongly; that old institutions are never pronounced to have lived out
+their appointed time, when, in fact, they are still in their full
+vigour. But the language of those who defend the doctrines and the
+ordinances of the Church may, and often does, partake of the sin of that
+of the Pharisees, even when those against whom they are contending, are
+not, like Christ, bringing in a new and higher truth, but an actual
+error. To point out that it is an error, to defend ourselves and the
+Church from it, is most right, and most highly our duty; but it is
+neither right, nor our duty, but the very sin of the Pharisees, to put
+it down merely by saying, "As for this fellow, we know not from whence
+he is;" to treat the whole question as an impiety, and to deny the
+virtues and the holiness of those who maintain it, because they are, as
+we call it, "speaking blasphemous things against the holy place and
+against the law." The mischief of this to ourselves is infinite; nay, in
+its extreme, it leads to language which is fearfully resembling the very
+blasphemy against the Holy Ghost; for, when we say, as has been said,
+that where men's lives are apparently good and holy, and their doctrines
+are against those of the Church, the holiness is an unreal holiness, and
+that we cannot see into their hearts, this is, in fact, denying the Holy
+Spirit's most infallible sign--the fruits of righteousness; and being
+positive rather of the truth of the Church, than of the truth of God.
+There is nothing so certain as that goodness is from God; nothing so
+certain as that sin is not from God; nothing so certain as that sin is
+not from him. To deny, or doubt this, is to dispute the greatest
+assurance of truth that God has ever been pleased to give to us. It does
+not, by any means, follow, that all good men are free from error, nor
+that error is less error because good men hold it; but to make the error
+which is less certain, a reason for disputing the goodness which is more
+certain, is the spirit, not of God, nor of the Church of God, but of
+those false zealots who put an idol in God's place; of such as rejected
+Christ and murdered Stephen.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXXIV.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+1 CORINTHIANS xiv, 20.
+
+_Brethren, be not children in understanding: howbeit, in malice be ye
+children, but in understanding be men_.
+
+
+It would be going a great deal too far to say, that they who fulfilled
+the latter part of this command, were sure also to fulfil the former;
+that they who were men in understanding, were, therefore, likely to be
+children in malice. But the converse holds good, with remarkable
+certainty, that they who are children in understanding, are
+proportionally apt to be men in malice: that is, in proportion as men
+neglect that which should be the guide of their lives, so are they left
+to the mastery of their passions; and as nature and outward
+circumstances do not allow these passions to remain as quiet and as
+little grown as they are in childhood,--for they are sure to ripen
+without any trouble of ours,--so men are left with nothing but the evils
+of both ages, the vices of the man, and the unripeness and ignorance of
+the child.
+
+It is indeed a strange and almost incredible thing, that any should ever
+have united in their minds the notions of innocence and ignorance as
+applied to any but literal children: nor is it less strange, that any
+should ever have been afraid of their understanding, and should have
+sought goodness through prejudice, and blindness, and folly. Compared
+with this, their conduct was infinitely reasonable who weakened and
+tormented their bodies in order to strengthen, as they thought, their
+spiritual nature. Such conduct was, by comparison, reasonable because
+there is a great deal of bodily weakness and discomfort, which really
+does not interfere with the strength and purity of our character in
+itself, although, by abridging our activity, it may lessen our means of
+usefulness. But what should we say of a man who directed his ill usage
+of his body to that part of our system which is most closely connected
+with the brain; who were purposely to impair his nervous system, and
+subject himself to those delusions and diseased views of things which
+are the well-known result of any disorder there? Yet this is precisely
+what they do who seek to mortify and lower their understanding. It is as
+impossible that they should become better men by such a process, as if
+they were literally to take medicines to affect their nerves or their
+brain, in the hope of becoming idiotic or delirious. It is, in fact, the
+worst kind of self-murder; for it is a presumptuous destroying of that
+which is our best life, because we dread to undergo those trials which
+God has appointed for the perfecting both of it and of us.
+
+But from the wilful blindness of these men, let us turn to the Christian
+wisdom of the Apostle: "In malice be ye children, but in understanding
+be men." Let us turn to what is recorded of our Lord in his early life,
+at that age when, as man, the cultivation of his understanding was his
+particular duty--that he was found in the temple, sitting in the midst
+of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions: not asking
+questions only, as one too impatient or too vain to wait for an answer,
+or to consider it when he had received it; not hearing only, as one
+careless and passive, who thinks that the words of wisdom can improve
+his mind by being indolently admitted through the ears, with no more
+effort than his body uses when it is refreshed by a cooling air, or when
+it is laid down in running water; but both hearing and asking questions;
+docile and patient, yet active and intelligent; knowing that the wisdom
+was to be communicated from without, but that it belongs to the vigorous
+exercise of the power within, to apprehend it, and to convert it to
+nourishment.
+
+Now, what is recorded of our Lord for our example, as to the manner in
+which he received instruction when delivered by word of mouth, this same
+thing should we do with that instruction, which, as is the ease with
+most of ours, we derive from reading. Put the Scriptures in the place of
+those living teachers whom Christ was so eager to hear; the words of
+Christ, and of his Spirit, instead of those far inferior guides from
+whom, notwithstanding, he, for our sakes, once submitted to learn; and
+what can be more exact than the application of the example? Let us be
+found in God's true temple, in the communion of his faithful
+people,--his universal Church, sitting down as it were, surrounded by
+the voices of the oracles of God--prophets, apostles, and Jesus Christ
+himself: let us be found with the record of these oracles in our hands,
+both reading them and asking them questions.
+
+It is quite clear that what hinders a true understanding of anything is
+vagueness; and it is by this process of asking questions that vagueness
+is to be dispelled: for, in the first place, it removes one great
+vagueness, or indistinctness, which is very apt to beset the minds of
+many; namely, the not clearly seeing whether they understand a thing or
+no; and much more, the not seeing what it is that they do understand,
+and what it is which they do not. Take any one of our Lord's parables,
+and read it even to a young child: there will be something of an
+impression conveyed, and some feelings awakened; but all will be
+indistinct; the child will not know whether he understands or no, but
+will soon gain the habit of supposing that he does, as that is at once
+the least troublesome, and the least unpleasant to our vanity. And this
+same vague impression is often received by uneducated persons from
+reading or bearing either the Scriptures or sermons; it is by no means
+the same as if they had read or heard something in an unknown language;
+but yet they can give no distinct account of what they have heard or
+read; they do not know how far they understand it, and how far they do
+not. Here, then, is the use of "asking questions,"--asking questions of
+ourselves or of our book, I mean, for I am supposing the case of our
+reading, when it can rarely happen that we have any living person at
+hand to give us an answer. Now, taking the earliest and simplest state
+of knowledge, it is plain that the first question to put to ourselves
+will be, "Do I understand the meaning of all the words and expressions
+in what I have been reading?" I know that this is taking things at their
+very beginning, but it is my wish to do so. Now, so plain and forcible
+is the English of our Bible, generally speaking, that the words
+difficult to be understood will probably not be many: yet some such do
+occur, owing, in some instances, to a change of the language; as in the
+words "let," and "prevent," which now signify, the one, "to allow, or
+suffer to be done," and the other "to stop, or hinder," but which
+signified, when our translation was made, the first, "to stop or
+hinder," and the second, "to be beforehand with us;" as in the prayer,
+"Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings, with thy most gracious favour;"
+the meaning is, "Let thy favour be with us beforehand, O Lord, in
+whatever we are going to do." In other instances the words are difficult
+because they are used in a particular sense, such as we do not learn
+from our common language; of which kind are the words "elect," "saints,"
+"justification," "righteousness," and many others. Now, if we ask
+ourselves "whether we understand these words or no," our common sense,
+when thus questioned, will readily tell us, whether we do or not;
+although if we had not directly asked the question, it might never have
+thought about it. Of course, our common sense cannot tell us what the
+true meaning is; that is a matter of information, and our means of
+gaining information may be more or less; but still, a great step is
+gained, the mist is partly cleared away; we can say to ourselves, "Here
+is something which I do understand, and here is something which I do
+not; I must keep the two distinct, for the first I may use, the second I
+cannot; I will mark it down as a thing about which I may get explanation
+at another time; but at present it is a blank in the picture, it is the
+same as if it were not there." This, then, is the first process of
+self-questioning, adapted, as I have already said, to those whose
+knowledge is most elementary.
+
+Suppose, however, that we are got beyond difficulties of this sort--that
+the words and particular expressions of the Scriptures are mostly clear
+to us. Now, take again one of our Lord's parables; say, for instance,
+that of the labourers in the vineyard: we read it, and find that he who
+went to work at the eleventh hour received as much as he who had been
+working all the day. This seems to say, that he who begins to serve God
+in his old age shall receive his crown of glory no less than he who has
+served him all his life. But now try the process of self-questioning:
+what do I think that Christ means me to learn from this? what is the
+lesson to me? what is it to make me feel, or think, or do? If it makes
+me think that I shall receive an equal crown of glory if I begin to
+serve God in my old age, and therefore if it leads me to live
+carelessly, this is clearly making Christ encourage wickedness; and such
+a thought is blasphemy. He cannot mean me to learn this from it: let me
+look at the parable again. Who is it who is reproved in those words
+which seem to contain its real object? It is one who complains of God
+for having rewarded others equally with himself. Now this I can see is
+not a good feeling: it is pride and jealousy. In order, then to learn
+what the parable means me to learn, let me put myself in the position of
+those reproved in it. If I complain that others are rewarded by God as
+much as I am, it is altogether a bad feeling, and one which I ought to
+check; for I have nothing to do with God's dealings to others, let me
+think of what concerns myself. Here I have the lesson of the parable
+complete: and here I find it is useful for me. But if I take it for a
+different object, and suppose that it means to encourage waiting till
+the eleventh hour--waiting till we are old before we repent--we find
+that we make it only actually to be mischievous to us. And thus we gain
+a great piece of knowledge: namely, that the parables of our Lord are
+mostly designed to teach, some one particular lesson, with respect to
+some one particular fault: and that if we take them generally, as if all
+in them was applicable to all persons, whether exposed to that
+particular fault or not, we shall absolutely be in danger of deriving
+mischief from them instead of good. It is true, that in this particular
+parable, the gross wickedness of such an interpretation as I have
+mentioned is guarded against even in the story itself; because those who
+worked only at the eleventh hour are expressly said to have stood idle
+so long only because no man had hired them; their delay, therefore, was
+no fault of their own. But even if this circumstance had been left out,
+it would have been just the same; because the general rule is, that we
+apply to a parable only for its particular lesson, and do not strain it
+to any thing else. Had this been well understood, no one would have ever
+found so much difficulty in understanding the parable of the
+unjust steward.
+
+This is another great step towards the dispelling vagueness, to apply
+the particular lesson of each part of Scripture to that state of
+knowledge, or feeling, or practice in ourselves, which it was intended
+to benefit; to apply it as a lesson to ourselves, not as a general truth
+for our neighbours. And the very desire to do this, makes us naturally
+look with care to the object of every passage--to see to whom it was
+addressed, and on what occasion; for this will often surely guide us to
+the point that we want. But in order to do this, we must strive to
+clothe the whole in our own common language; to get rid of those
+expressions which to us convey the meaning faintly; and to put it into
+such others as shall come most strongly home to us. This I have spoken
+of on other occasions; and I have so often witnessed the bad effects of
+not doing so, that I am sure it may well bear to be noticed again; I
+mean the putting such words as "persecution," "the cares and riches of
+the world," "the kingdom of God," "confessing Christ," "denying Christ,"
+and many others, into a language which to us has more lively reality,
+which makes us manifestly see that it is of us, and of our common life,
+and of our dangers, that the scripture is speaking, and not only of
+things in a remote time and country, and under circumstances quite
+unlike our own. Therefore I have a strong objection to the use of what
+is called peculiarly religious language, because I am sure that it
+hinders us from bringing the matter of that language thoroughly home to
+us; our minds do not entirely assimilate with, it; or if they fancy that
+they do, it is only by their becoming themselves affected, and losing
+their sense of the reality of things around them. For our language is
+fixed for us, and we cannot alter it; and into that common language in
+which we think and feel, all truth must be translated, if we would think
+and feel respecting it at once rightly, clearly, and vividly. Happy is
+he, who, by practising this early, has imbued his own natural language
+with the spirit of God's wisdom and holiness; and who can see, and
+understand, and feel them the better, because they are so put into a
+form with which he is perfectly familiar.
+
+More might be said, very much more, but here I will now pause. In this
+world, wherein heavenly things are, after all, hard to seize and fix
+upon, we have great need that no mists of imperfect understanding darken
+them, over and above those of the corrupt will. To see them clearly, to
+understand them distinctly and vividly, may, indeed, after all be vain:
+a thicker veil may yet remain behind, and we may see and understand, and
+yet perish. Only the clear sight of God in Christ can be no light
+blessing; and there may be a hope, that understanding and approving with
+all our minds his excellent wisdom, the light may warm us as well as
+assist our sight; that we may see, and not in our vague and empty sense,
+but in the force of the scriptural meaning of the word,--may see, and
+so believe.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXXV.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MATTHEW xxvi. 45, 46.
+
+_Sleep on now and take your rest; behold, the hour is at hand, and the
+Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be.
+going; behold, he is at hand that doth betray me_.
+
+
+I take these verses for my text, in the first place, because some have
+fancied a difficulty in them, and have even proposed to alter the
+translation, and read the first words as a question, "Do ye still sleep
+and take your rest?" and because they are really a very good
+illustration of our Lord's manner of speaking, a manner which it is of
+the highest importance to us fully to understand. And, secondly, I take
+them as a text for the general lesson which they convey to us; their
+mixture of condemnation and mercy; their view, at once looking backwards
+and forwards, not losing sight of irreparable evils of a neglected past,
+nor yet making those evils worse by so dwelling upon them as to forget
+the still available future; not concealing from us the solemn truth,
+that what is done cannot be undone, yet warning us also not to undo by a
+vain despair that future which may yet be done to our soul's health.
+
+First, a difficulty has been fancied to exist in the words, as if our
+Lord had bade his disciples to do two contradictory things: telling
+them, first, to sleep on and take their rust, and then saying, "Rise,
+let us be going." And because in St. Luke's account, when our Lord
+comes to his disciples the last time, his words are given thus, "Why
+sleep ye? rise and pray, that ye enter not into temptation:" therefore,
+as I have said, his words in the text have been translated, "Are ye
+sleeping and resting for the remainder of the time?" Now, I should not
+take up your time with things of this sort, where I believe our common
+translation to be most certainly right, were it not for the sake of one
+or two general remarks, which I think may not be out of place. It is a
+general rule, that in passages not obscure, but appearing to contain
+some moral difficulty, if I may so speak; that is, something which seems
+inconsistent with our notions of God's holiness, or wisdom, or justice;
+something, in short, of a stumbling-block, which we fear may occasion a
+triumph to unbelievers; it is a rule, I say, that in passages of this
+kind the difficulty is not to be met by departing from the
+common-received translation. And the reason of this is plain; that had
+not the commonly received translation in such cases been clearly the
+right one, it would never have come to be commonly received. Amongst the
+thousands of interpreters of Scripture, all, from the earliest time,
+anxious to remove grounds of cavil from the adversaries of their faith,
+a passage would never have been translated so as to afford such a
+ground, if the right translation of it could have been different. Such
+places are especially those in which the common translation needs not to
+be suspected: and it is merely leading us astray from the true
+explanation of the apparent difficulty, when we thus attempt to evade it
+by tampering with the translation. A notable instance of this was
+afforded some few years since in a new translation of some of the books
+of the Old Testament; in which it was pretended that most of those
+points which had been most attacked by unbelievers were, in fact, mere
+mistranslations, and that the real meaning of the original was
+something totally different; and, in order to show the necessity of his
+alterations, the writer entirely allowed the objections of unbelievers
+to the common reading; and said that no sufficient answer had been or
+could be made to them. This was an extreme case, and probably imposed
+only on a very few: but less instances of the same thing are common: St.
+Paul's words about being baptized for the dead, have been twisted to all
+sorts of senses, from their natural and only possible meaning, because
+men could not bear to believe that the superstition of being baptized as
+proxies for another could have existed at a period which they were
+resolved to consider so pure: and so in the text, a force has been put
+upon the words which they cannot bear, in order to remove a supposed
+contradiction: and all that would have been gained by the change would
+be, to have one instructive illustration the less of our Lord's peculiar
+manner of discourse, and one instance the less of the inimitable way in
+which his language, addressed directly to the circumstances before him,
+contains, at the same time, a general lesson, for the use of all his
+disciples in all ages.
+
+Our Lord's habitual language was parabolical; I use the word in a wide
+sense, to include all language which is not meant to be taken according
+to the letter. Observe his conversation with the Samaritan woman; it
+begins at once with parable, "If thou hadst known who it was that asked
+of thee, saying, Give me to drink, thou wouldst have asked of him, and
+he would have given thee living water." And again, "Whoso drinketh of
+the water that I shall give him shall never thirst, but it shall be in
+him a well of water, springing up unto life eternal." This seems to have
+been, if I may venture to say so, the favourite language in which he
+preferred to speak; but when he found that he was not understood, then,
+according to the nature of the case, he went on in two or three
+different manners. When he, to whom all hearts were open, saw that the
+misunderstanding was wilful, that it arose out of a disposition glad to
+find an excuse, in his pretended obscurity, for not listening to him and
+obeying him, then, instead of explaining his language, he made it more
+and more figurative; more likely to be misunderstood, or to offend those
+whom he knew to be disposed beforehand to misunderstand and to be
+offended. A famous example of this may be seen in the sixth chapter of
+St. John; there he first calls himself the Bread of Life, and says, that
+whosoever should eat of that bread should live for ever: but when he
+found that the Jews cavilled at this language, instead of explaining it,
+he only added expressions yet more strongly parabolical; "Except ye eat
+the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in
+you:" and he dwells on this image so long, that we find that many of his
+disciples, bent on interpreting it literally, and, in this sense,
+finding it utterly shocking, went back and walked no more with him.
+Again, when he found not a disposition to cavil, but yet a profound
+ignorance of his meaning, arising from a state of mind wholly unused to
+think of spiritual good and evil, he neither used, as to those who
+wilfully misunderstood him, language that would offend them still more,
+nor yet did he offer a direct explanation; but he broke off the
+conversation, and adopted another method of instruction. Thus, when the
+Samaritan woman, thinking only of bodily wants, answered him by saying,
+"Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to
+draw," he neither goes on to speak to her in the same language, nor yet
+does he explain it; but at once addresses her in a different manner,
+saying, "Go, call thy husband, and come hither." Thirdly, when he was
+speaking to his own disciples, to whom it was given to know the
+mysteries of the kingdom of God, he generally explained his meaning,--at
+least so far as to prevent practical error,--when he found that they had
+not understood him. Thus, when he had said to them, "Beware of the
+leaven of the Pharisees, and of the leaven of Herod," and they thought
+only of leaven and of bread in the literal sense, he upbraids them,
+indeed, for their slowness, saying, "Are ye also yet without
+understanding?" but he goes on to tell them in express terms that he did
+not mean to speak to them of the leaven of bread. And the words of the
+text are an exactly similar instance: his first address is parabolical;
+that is, it is not meant to be taken to the letter; "Sleep on now, and
+take your rest," meaning, "Ye can now do me no good by watching, for the
+time is past, and he who betrayed me is at hand; ye might as well sleep
+on now and take your rest, for I need not try you any longer." But, as
+the time was really pressing, and there was a possibility that they
+might have misunderstood his words, and have really continued to sleep,
+he immediately added in different language, "Rise, let us be going;
+behold, he is at hand that doth betray me." We must be prepared, then,
+to find that our Lord's language, not only to the Jews at large, but
+even to his own disciples, is commonly parabolical; the worst
+interpretation which we can give to it is commonly the literal one. His
+conversation with his disciples, just before he went out to the garden
+of Gethsemane, as recorded in the thirteenth, and following chapters of
+St. John, is a most striking proof of this. If any one looks through
+them, he will find how many are the comparisons, and figurative manners
+of speaking, which abound in them, and how often his disciples were at a
+loss to understand his meaning, And he himself declares this, for, at
+the end of the sixteenth chapter, he says expressly, "These things I
+have spoken unto you in proverbs;"--that is, language not to be taken
+according to the letter;--"the time is coming when I will no more speak
+unto you in proverbs, but will show you plainly of the Father." And
+then, when he goes on to declare, what he never, it seems, had before
+told them in such express and literal language, "I came forth from the
+Father, and am come into the world: again I leave the world, and go to
+my Father," his disciples seem to have welcomed with joy this departure
+from his usual manner of speaking, and said immediately, "Lo! now
+speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb: now we know that thou
+knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask thee: by
+this we believe that thou earnest forth from God."
+
+But let us observe what it is that he said: "A time is coming when I
+shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but shall show you plainly of
+the Father." That time came immediately. He spoke to them after his
+resurrection, opening their understandings to understand the Scriptures:
+he spoke yet more fully, by his Spirit, after the day of Pentecost,
+leading them into all truth. And what they thus heard in the ear, they
+proclaimed, according to his bidding, upon the house-tops. When the Holy
+Spirit brought to their remembrance all that he had said to them, and
+gave their minds a spiritual judgment, to compare what they thus had
+brought before them, to see his words in their true light and their true
+bearings, comparing spiritual things with spiritual, they were no
+niggards of this heavenly treasure; nor did they, according to the vain
+heresy of the worst corrupters of Christ's gospel, imitate and surpass
+that sin which they had so heavily judged in Ananias. They kept back no
+part-of that which they professed and were commanded to lay wholly and
+entirely at the feet of God's church. They did not so lie to the Holy
+Ghost, as to erect a wicked system of priestcraft in the place of that
+holy gospel of which they were ministers. They had no reserve of a
+secret doctrine for themselves and a chosen few, keeping in their own
+hands the key of knowledge, and opening only half of the door; but as
+they had freely received, so they freely gave; all that they knew, they
+taught to all: and so, through their blessed teaching, we too can
+understand our Lord's words as they were taught to understand them: and
+what is parabolical, is no longer on that account obscure, but full of
+light and of beauty, fulfilling the end for which it was chosen, the
+most effective of all ways of teaching, because the liveliest.
+
+I have left myself but little space to touch upon the second part of the
+subject--the general lesson conveyed in our Lord's-words to his
+disciples: "Sleep on now, and take your rest.--Rise; let us be going."
+How truly do we deserve the reproof; how thankfully may we accept the
+call. We have forfeited many opportunities which we would in vain
+recover; we have been careless when we should have been watchful; and
+that for which we should have watched, is now lost by our neglect; and
+it is no good to watch for it any more. Let us remember this, while it
+is called to-day; for how often is it particularly applicable to us
+here, from the passing nature of your stay amongst us! To both you and
+us too often belongs our Lord's remonstrance, "What, could ye not watch
+with me one hour?" So short a time as you stay here, could we not be
+watching with Christ that little period: from which, if well improved,
+there might spring forth a fruit so lasting? But, alas! we too often
+sleep it away: we do not all that we might do, nor do you; evil grows
+instead of good, till the time is past, and you leave us; and we may as
+well sleep on, and take our rest, so far as all that particular good
+was concerned--the improvement, namely, of your time at this place, for
+which we are alike set to watch. But are we to take the words of
+reproach literally? May we really sleep on, and take our rest? Oh vain
+and wilful folly, so to misunderstand! But, lest we should
+misunderstand, let us hear our Lord's next words: "Rise; let us be
+going," and that instantly: the time and opportunity already lost for
+ever is far more than enough.--"Rise; let us be going:" so Christ calls
+us; for he has still other work for us to do, for him, and with him. The
+future is yet our own, though the past be lost. We have sinned greatly
+and irreparably; but let us not do so yet again: other opportunities are
+afforded us; the disciples would not watch with him in the garden, but
+he calls them to go with him to his trial and his judgment; and one, we
+know, watched by him even on his cross:--so he calls to us; so he calls
+now; but he will not so call for ever. There will be a time when we
+might strike out the words, "Rise; let us be going;" they will concern
+us then no more. It is only said, "Sleep on now, and take your rest: all
+your watching time has been wasted, and you can now watch no more;"
+there remains only to sleep--to sleep that last sleep, from which we
+shall then never wake to God and happiness, but in which we shall be
+awake for ever to sin and to misery.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXXVI.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+2 CORINTHIANS v. 17, 18.
+
+_Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new: and all
+things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ_.
+
+
+I have, from time to time, spoken of that foolish misuse of the
+Scriptures, by which any one opening the volume of the Bible at random,
+and taking the first words which he finds, straightway applies them
+either to himself or to his neighbour; and then boasts that he has the
+word of God on his side, and that whosoever differs from him, is
+disputing and despising the word of God. The most extreme instances of
+this way of proceeding are so absurd, that they could not be noticed in
+this place becomingly; and these, of course, stand palpable to all,
+except to those who have allowed themselves to fall into them. But far
+short of these manifest follies, great errors have been maintained on
+general points, and great mistakes, whether of over presumption or of
+over fear, have been committed as to men's particular state, by quoting
+Scripture unadvisedly; by taking hold of its words to the neglect or
+actual violation of its spirit and real meaning. This is a great and a
+very common mischief, but yet there is a truth at the bottom of the
+error; it is true, that the greatest questions relating to God and to
+ourselves, may find their answer in the Scriptures; it is true, that if
+we search for this answer wisely we may surely find it.
+
+Consider the words of the text, and see how easily they may be
+perverted, if with no more ado we take them, as said of ourselves, each
+individually, and as containing to each of us a statement positive of
+truth. "Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."
+If we believe that this is God's word respecting each of us, what
+violence must we do to our memory of the past, and our consciousness of
+the present, if we do try to persuade ourselves that so total a change
+has taken place in each of us, that what we once were, we are no longer;
+that what we are, we once were not; and this not in some few particular
+points, but in the main character of our minds. Again, "All things are
+of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ." If we apply
+these words to each of us, what exceeding presumption would they breed!
+If all things in us and about us are now of God, what room can there be
+for sin? If God hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, what room
+can there be for fear or for danger? And thus, while we say we are
+quoting and believing the word of God, we do in fact turn it into a lie;
+we make it assert a falsehood as to our past state, and a falsehood as
+to our future state; we make it say, that our old nature is passed away,
+when it is not; that we have got a new nature when we have not; that we
+are reconciled to God, and therefore in safety, when we are, in fact, in
+the extremest danger.
+
+But it is easy to see that we have no right to apply to ourselves words
+written by St. Paul eighteen hundred years ago, and applied by him to
+other persons. I go, then, farther; and I say, that if every member of
+the church of Corinth, to which they were written, had applied them to
+himself in the manner which I have shown above, the words would in many
+instances have been perverted no less, and would have been made to state
+what was false, and not what was true. And the same may be said of many
+other passages of St. Paul's Epistles, which, having been similarly
+misinterpreted, have furnished matter for endless controversies, and on
+which opposite theories of doctrine have been fondly raised, each of
+them alike unchristian and untrue.
+
+Thus our present position is this:--that oftentimes by taking the
+representations of Scripture as true in fact, whether of ourselves or of
+others, we come to conclusions at once false and mischievous; being, as
+the case may be, either presumptuous, or fearful, or uncharitable, and
+claiming for each of these faults the sanction of the word of God.
+
+A similar mistake in interpreting human compositions, has led to faults
+of another kind. Assuming as before, in interpreting St. Paul's words,
+that the language of our Liturgy is meant to describe, as a matter of
+fact, the actual feelings and condition of those who use it, or for whom
+it is used; and seeing manifestly that these feelings and condition do
+not agree with the words; we do not here, as with the Scripture, do
+violence to our common sense and conscience, by insisting upon it that
+we agree with the words, but we find fault with the words as being at
+variance with the matter of fact. Some say that the language of the
+General Confession is too strong a statement of sin; that the language
+of the Communion Service, of the Baptismal Service, and above all, of
+the Burial Service, is too full of encouragement and of assurance; that
+men are not all so bad as to require the one, 'nor so good as to deserve
+the other; that in both cases it should be lowered, to agree with the
+actual condition of those who use it.
+
+Now it is worthy of notice, at any rate, that the self-same rule of
+interpretation applied to the Scripture and the Liturgy is found to suit
+with neither. We adhere positively to our rule: and thus, as we hold the
+words of Scripture sacred, we force common sense and conscience to make
+the facts agree with them; but not having the same respect for the words
+of the Liturgy, we complain of them as faulty and requiring alteration,
+because they do not agree with the facts.
+
+I will not enter into the question whether the Liturgy has done wisely
+or not in thus imitating the Scripture; but I do contend that, in point
+of fact, there is this resemblance between them. St. Paul's Epistles, in
+particular, although it is true of other parts of the Scripture also,
+contain, as does the Liturgy of our Church, a great many passages which,
+if taken either universally or even generally as containing a matter of
+fact, will lead us into certain error. Is it, therefore, so very certain
+that we do wisely in so interpreting them?
+
+With regard to our Liturgy I need not follow up the question now; but
+with regard to St. Paul, it is certain that he, in many parts of his
+Epistles, chooses to represent that which ought to be as that which
+actually was: he chooses to regard those to whom he is writing as being
+in all respects true Christians, as being worthy of their privileges, as
+answering to what God had done to them, as forming a church really
+inhabited by the Holy Spirit, and therefore being a true and living body
+of due proportions to Christ its Divine head. Nor does he trust
+exclusively to the common sense and conscience of those to whom he was
+writing to interpret his language correctly. He might Lave thought
+indeed that if he wrote to them as redeemed, justified, sanctified, as
+having all things new, as being the children of God, and the heirs of
+God, and the temples of the Holy Ghost, any individual who felt that he
+was none of these things, that sin was still mighty within him, and that
+he was sin's slave, would neither deny his own conscience, nor yet call
+St. Paul a deceiver; but would read in the difference between St. Paul's
+description of him and the reality, the exact measure of his own sin,
+and need of repentance and watchfulness. But he does not rely on this
+only: he notices sins as actually existing; he mingles the language of
+reproof and of anxiety, so as to make it quite clear that he did not
+mean his descriptions of their holiness and blessedness to apply to them
+all necessarily; he knew full well that they did not: but yet he knew
+also that, considering what God had done for them, it was monstrous that
+they should not be truly applicable.
+
+But why then, you will say, did he use such language? why did he call
+men forgiven, redeemed, saved, justified, sanctified?--he uses all these
+terms often as applicable generally to those to whom he was
+writing;--why did he call them so, when in fact they were not so? He
+called them so for the same reason which, made prophecy foretell
+blessings upon Israel of old, and on the Christian church afterwards,
+which were fulfilled on neither:--in order to declare, and keep ever
+before us, what God has done and is willing to do for us: what he fain
+would do for us, if we would but suffer him; what divine powers are
+offered to us, and we will not use them; what divine happiness is
+designed for us, and we will not enter into it. Let us ponder all the
+magnificence of the scriptural language,--the words of the text for
+example, not as describing what we are when we are full of sin; nor yet
+as mere exaggerated language, which must be brought down to the level of
+our present reality. Let us consider it as containing the words of
+truth and soberness; not one jot or one tittle needs to be abated; it
+must not be lowered to us, but we rather raised to it. It is a truth, it
+is the word of God, it is the seal of our assurance: it is that which
+good men of old would have welcomed with the deepest joy; which, to good
+men now is a source of comfort unspeakable. For it tells us that God has
+done for us, is doing, will do, all that we need; it tells us that the
+price of our redemption has been paid, the kingdom of heaven has been
+set open, the power to walk as God's children has been given: that so
+far as God is concerned we are redeemed, we are saved, we are
+sanctified; it is but our own fault merely that we are not all of these
+actually and surely.
+
+This is not a little matter to be persuaded of; if it be true, as I fear
+it is, that too many of us do not love God, is it not quite as true that
+we cannot believe that God loves us? Have we any thing like a distinct
+sense of the words of St. John, "We love God because he first loved us?"
+We believe in the love of our earthly friends; those who have so lately
+left their homes have no manner of doubt that their parents are
+interested in their welfare, though absent; that they will often think
+of them; and that, as far as it is possible at a distance from them,
+they are watching over their good, and anxious to promote it. The very
+name home implies all this; it implies that it is a place where those
+live who love us; and I do not question that the consciousness of
+possessing this love does, amidst all your faults and forgetfulnesses,
+rise not unfrequently within your minds, and restrain you from making
+yourselves altogether unworthy of it. Now, I say, that the words of the
+text, and hundreds of similar passages, are our assurance, if we would
+but believe them, that we have another home and another parent, by whom
+we are loved constantly and earnestly, who has done far more for us
+than our earthly parents can do. I grant that it is hard to believe this
+really; so infinite is the distance between God and us, that we cannot
+fancy that he cares for us; he may make laws for a world, or for a
+system, but what can he think or feel for us? It is, indeed, a thought
+absolutely overpowering to the mind; it may well seem incredible to us,
+judging either from our own littleness or our own forgetfulness; so hard
+as we find it to think enough of those to whom we are most nearly bound,
+how can the Most High. God think of us? But if there be any one particle
+of truth in Christianity, we are warranted in saying that God does love
+us; strange as it may seem, He, whom neither word nor thought of created
+being can compass; He, who made us and ten thousand worlds, loves each
+one of us individually; "the very hairs of our heads are all numbered."
+He so loved us, that he gave his only-begotten Son to die for us; and
+St. Paul well asks, "He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him
+up for us all, will he not also with him freely give us all things?"
+
+Believe me, you could have no better charm to keep you safe through, the
+temptations of the coming half year, than this most true persuasion that
+God loves you. The oldest and the youngest of us may alike repeat to
+himself the blessed words, "God loves me;" "God loves me; God has
+redeemed me: God would dwell in my heart, that I might dwell in him: God
+has placed me in his church, has made me a member of Christ his own Son,
+has made me an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven." I might multiply
+words, but that one little sentence is, perhaps, more than all, "God
+loves me." Oh that you would believe him when he assures you of it, for
+then surely you would not fail to love him. But whether you believe it
+or not, still it is so: God loves every one of us; he loves each one of
+us as belonging to Christ his Son. He does love each, of us; let us not
+cast his love away from us, and refuse to love him in return; he does
+love each of us now, but there may be a time to each of us,--there will
+be, assuredly, if we will not believe that he loves us, when he will
+love us no more for ever.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXXVII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+EZEKIEL xx. 49.
+
+_Then said I, Ah, Lord God I they say of me, Doth he not speak
+parables_?
+
+
+Nothing is more disheartening, if we must believe it to be true, than
+the language in which some persons talk of the difficulty of the
+Scriptures, and the absolute certainty that different men will ever
+continue to understand them differently. It is not, we are told, with
+the knowledge of Scripture as with that of outward nature: in the
+knowledge of nature, discoveries are from time to time made which set
+error on the one side, and truth on the other, absolutely beyond
+dispute; there the ground when gained is clearly seen to be so; and as
+fresh sources of knowledge are continually opening to us, it is not
+beyond hope that we may in time arrive infinitely near to the enjoyment
+of truth,--truth certain in itself, and acknowledged by all unanimously.
+But with Scripture, it is said, the case is far otherwise; discoveries
+are not to be expected here, nor does a later generation derive from,
+its additional experience any greater insight into the things of God
+than was enjoyed by the generations before it. And when we see that
+actually the complete Scriptures have been in the world not much less
+than eighteen hundred years; that within that period no other book has
+been so much studied; and yet that differences of opinion as to the
+matters spoken of in it have ever existed, and exist now as much as
+ever, what reasonable prospect is there, it is asked, of future harmony
+or of clearer demonstrations of divine truth; and will not the good on
+these points ever continue to differ from the good, and the wise to
+differ from the wise?
+
+This language, so discouraging as it is, may be heard from two very
+opposite parties, so that their agreement may appear to give it the more
+weight: it is used by men who are indifferent to religious truth, as an
+excuse for their taking no pains to discover what the truth really is;
+it is echoed back quite as strongly by another set of persons who wish
+to magnify the uncertainties of the Scripture in order to recommend more
+plausibly the guidance of some supposed authoritative interpreter of it.
+But yet it ought to be at any rate a painful work to any serious mind to
+be obliged to dwell not only on the obscurities of God's word, but on
+its perpetual and invincible obscurities; and, though an interpreter may
+be necessary if we know not the language of those with whom we are
+conversing, yet how much better would it be that we should ourselves
+know it: nay, and if we are told that we cannot know it, that our best
+endeavours will be unable to master it, the suspicion inevitably arises
+in our minds, that our pretended interpreter may be ignorant of it also;
+that he is not in truth better acquainted with it than we, but only more
+presumptuous or more dishonest.
+
+Still a statement may be painful, but at the same time true. There is
+undoubtedly something in such language as I have been alluding to, which
+appears to be confirmed by experience. There is no denying the fact,
+that the Scriptures have been a long time in the world; that they have
+been very generally and carefully read; and yet that men do differ
+exceedingly as to religious truth, and these differences do not seem to
+be tending towards agreement. It seems to me, there fore, desirable
+that every student of the Scriptures should know, as well as may be,
+what the exact state of the question is; for if the subject of his
+studies is really so hopelessly uncertain, it is scarcely possible that
+his zeal in studying it should not be abated; nay, could we wisely
+encourage him to bestow his pains on a hopeless labour?
+
+Now, in the very outset, there is this consideration which many of us
+here are well able to appreciate. We read many books written in dead
+languages, most of them more ancient than any part of the New Testament,
+some of them older than several of the books of the Old. We know well
+enough that these ancient books are not without their difficulties; that
+time, and thought, and knowledge are required to master them; but still
+we do not doubt that, with the exception of particular-passages here and
+there, the true meaning of these books may be discovered with undoubted
+certainty. We know, too, that this certainty has increased; that
+interpretations, which, were maintained some years ago, have been set
+aside by our improved knowledge of the languages and condition of the
+ancient world, quite as certainly as old errors in physical science have
+been laid to rest by later discoveries. Farther, our improved knowledge
+has taught us to distinguish what may be known from what may be probably
+concluded, and what is probable from what can merely be guessed at. When
+we come to points of this last sort, to passages which cannot be
+interpreted or understood, we leave them at once as a blank; but we
+enjoy no less, and understand with no less certainty, the greatest
+portions of the book which, contain them. And this experience, with
+regard to the works of heathen antiquity, makes it a startling
+proposition at the very outset, when we are told that with the works of
+Christian antiquity the case is otherwise.
+
+We thus approach the statement as to the hopless difficulty of
+Scripture, confirmed, as we are told it is, by the actual fact of the
+great disagreements among Christians, with a well-grounded mistrust of
+its soundness; we feel sure that there is something in it which is
+confused or sophistical. And considering the fact which appears to
+confirm it, I mean the actual differences between Christians and
+Christians, it soon appears by no means to bear out its supposed
+conclusion. For the differences between Christians and Christians by no
+means arise generally from the difficulty of understanding the Scripture
+aright, but from disagreement as to some other point, quite independent
+of the interpretation of the Scriptures. For example, the great
+questions at issue between us and the Roman Catholics turn upon two
+points,--Whether there is not another authority, in matters of
+Christianity, distinct from and equal to the Scriptures,--and whether
+certain interpretations of Scripture are not to be received as true, for
+the sake of the authority of the interpreter. Now, suppose for a moment,
+that the works of Plato or Aristotle were to us in the place of the
+Scriptures; and that the question was, whether these works of theirs
+could be understood with certainty; it would prove nothing against our
+being able to understand them, if, whilst we look to them alone, another
+man were to say, that, to his judgment, the works of other philosophers
+were no less authoritative; or, if he were to insist upon it, that the
+interpretations given by the scholiasts were always sure to be correct,
+because the scholiasts were the authorized interpreters of the text. No
+doubt our philosophical opinions and our practice might differ widely
+from such a man's; but the difference would prove nothing as to the
+obscurity of Plato's or Aristotle's text, because another standard had
+been brought in, distinct from their works, and from the acknowledged
+principles of interpretation, and thus led unavoidably to a
+different result.
+
+The same also is the case as to the questions at issue between the
+Church of England and many of the Dissenters. In these disputes it is
+notorious that the practice and authority of the church are continually
+appealed to, or, it may be, considerations of another kind, as to the
+inherent reasonableness of a doctrine; all which are, again, a distinct
+matter from the interpretation of Scripture. One of the greatest men of
+our time has declared, that, in the early part of his life, he did not
+believe in the divinity of our Lord; but he has stated expressly, that
+he never for a moment persuaded himself that St. Paul or St. John did
+not believe it; their language he thought was clear enough, upon the
+point; but the notion appeared to him so unreasonable in itself, that he
+disbelieved it in spite of their authority. It is manifest, that, in
+this case, great as the difference was between this great man's early
+belief and his later, yet it in no way arose from the obscurity of the
+Scripture. The language of the Scripture was as clear to him at first as
+it was afterwards; but in his early life he disbelieved it, while, in
+his latter life, he embraced it with all his heart and soul.
+
+It must not be denied, however, that we are here arrived at one of the
+causes which are likely, for a long time, to keep alive a false
+interpretation of Scripture, and which do not affect our interpretation
+of heathen writings. For most men, in such a case as I have referred to,
+when they do not believe the language of the Scripture, but wish to
+alter it, whether by omission or addition, do not deal so fairly with it
+as that great man did to whom I have alluded. They have neither his
+knowledge nor his honesty; a false interpretation is more easily
+disguised from them, owing to their ignorance, and they let their wishes
+more readily warp their judgment. Thus, they will not say as he did,
+"The Scripture clearly says so and so, but I cannot believe it;" they
+rather say, "This is very unreasonable and shocking, the Scripture
+cannot mean to say this;" or, "This is very pious and very ancient, the
+Scripture cannot but sanction this." And certainly, if men will so deal
+with it, there remains no certainty of interpretation then. But this is
+not the way that we deal with other ancient writings; and its unfairness
+and foolishness, if ever attempted to be practised there, are so
+palpable as to be ridiculous. No doubt it is difficult to convince men
+against their will; nevertheless, there is a good hope, that, as sound
+principles of interpretation are more generally known, they will put to
+shame a flagrant departure from them; and that those who try to make the
+Scripture say more or less than it has said, will be gradually driven to
+confess that Scripture is not their real authority; that their own
+notions in the one case, and the authority of the Church in the other
+case, have been the real grounds of their belief, to which they strove
+to make the Scriptures conform.
+
+Nothing that I have said is, in any degree, meant to countenance the
+opinions of those who talk of the Bible,--or rather, our translation of
+it,--being its own interpreter; meaning, that if you give a Bible to any
+one who can read, he will be able to understand it rightly. Even in this
+extravagance, there is indeed something of a truth. If a man were so to
+read the Bible, much he would, unquestionably, be able to understand;
+enough, I well believe, if honestly and devoutly used, to give him, if
+living in a desert island by himself, the knowledge of salvation. But
+when we talk of understanding the Bible, so as to be guided by it
+amidst the infinite varieties of opinion and practice which beset us on
+every side, it is the wildest folly to talk of it as being, in this
+sense, its own interpreter. Our comfort is, not that it can be
+understood without study, but with it; that the same pains which, enable
+us to understand heathen writings, whose meaning is of infinitely less
+value to us, will enable us, with God's blessing, to understand the
+Scriptures also. Neither do I mean, that mere intellectual study would
+make them clear to the careless or the undevout; but, supposing us to
+seek honestly to know God's will, and to pray devoutly for his help to
+guide us to it, then our study is not vain nor uncertain; the mind of
+the Scriptures may be discovered; we may distinguish plainly between
+what is clear, and what is not clear; and what is not clear will be
+found far less in amount, and infinitely less in importance, than what
+is clear. I do not say, that a true understanding of the Scriptures will
+settle at once all religious differences;--manifestly, it cannot; for,
+although I may understand them well, yet if a man maintains an opinion,
+or a practice, upon some other authority than theirs, we cannot agree
+together. Nevertheless, we may be allowed to hope and believe, that in
+time, if men could be hindered from misinterpreting the Scripture in
+behalf of their own opinions, their opinions themselves would find fewer
+supporters; for, as Christianity must come, after all, from our blessed
+Lord and his apostles, men will shrink from saying that that is no truth
+of Christianity which Christ and his apostles have clearly taught, or
+that that is a truth of Christianity, however ancient, and by whatever
+long line of venerable names supported, which they have as clearly, in
+our sole authentic records of them, not taught. It is not, therefore,
+without great and reasonable hope, that we may devote ourselves to the
+study of the Scriptures; and those habits of study which are cultivated
+here, and in other places of the same kind, are the best ordinary means
+of arriving at the truth. We are constantly engaged in extracting the
+meaning of those who have written in times past, and in a dead language.
+We do this according to certain rules, acknowledged as universally as
+the laws of physical science: these rules are developed gradually,--from
+the simple grammar which forms our earliest lessons, to the rules of
+higher criticism, still no less acknowledged, which are understood by
+those of a more advanced age. And we do this for heathen writings; but
+the process is exactly the same--and we continually apply it, also, for
+that very purpose--with what is required to interpret the Word of God.
+After all is done, we shall still, no doubt, find that the Scripture has
+its parables, its passages which cannot now be understood; but we shall
+find, also, that by much the larger portion of it may be clearly and
+certainly known; enough to be, in all points which really concern our
+faith and practice, a lantern to our feet, and an enlightener to
+our souls.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXXVIII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+ISAIAH v.1.
+
+_Now will I sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved touching his
+vineyard_.
+
+
+Whatever difficulties we may find in understanding and applying many
+parts of the prophetical Scriptures, yet every thinking person could
+follow readily enough, I suppose, the chapter from which these words are
+taken, as it was read in the course of this morning's service; and he
+would feel, while understanding it as said, immediately and in the first
+instance, of the Jewish Church or nation, seven centuries and a half
+before the birth of our Lord, that it was no less applicable to this
+Christian church and nation at the present period. We cannot, indeed,
+expect to find a minute agreement in particular points between ourselves
+and the Jews of old; the difference of times and circumstances renders
+this impossible; both they and we stand, on the one hand, in so nearly
+the same relation to God, and we both so share, on the other hand, in
+the same sinful human nature, that the complaints, and remonstrances of
+the prophets of old may often, be repeated, even in the very same words,
+by the Christian preacher now.
+
+If this be so, then the language of various parts of the service of the
+Church in this season of Advent ought to excite in us no small
+apprehension; for whilst the lessons from the Old Testament describe
+the evil state of the Jewish people in the eighth century before Christ,
+and threaten it with destruction, so the gospels for this day, and for
+last Sunday, speak of the evil state of the same people when our Lord
+was upon earth; and the chapter from which the gospel of this day is
+taken, contains, as we know, a full prophecy of the destruction that
+was, for the second time, going to overwhelm the earthly Jerusalem. We
+cannot but fear, therefore, that if our state now be like that of God's
+people of old, eight centuries before our Lord's coming, and again like
+their state at his coming: and if, after the first period, their city
+and temple were burnt, and they were carried captive to Babylon,--and
+again, after the second period, the city and temple were burnt again,
+and the people were dispersed, even to this day,--that, as the
+punishment has twice surely followed the sin, so it will not fail to
+find it out in this third case also.
+
+And be it remembered that the people, or church of God, as such, can
+receive their punishment only in this world: for, taken as a body, it is
+an institution for this world only. We each of us, no doubt, shall have
+our own separate individual judgment after death; and, in the mean time,
+our fortunes and our character often bear no just correspondence with
+each other. But nations and churches have their judgments here: and
+although God's long-suffering so suspends it for many generations that
+it may seem as if it would never fall, yet does it come surely at the
+last; and almost always we can ourselves trace the connexion between the
+sin and the punishment, and can see that the one was clearly the
+consequence of the other. And thus our church and nation may feel their
+national judgments in this world quite independently of the several
+personal judgments which will be passed upon us each hereafter
+individually, when we stand before Christ's judgment seat.
+
+I have thus ventured to bring the condition of the church as a body
+before our minds, although well knowing how much more we are concerned
+with the state of our own souls individually. Yet still the more general
+view is not without great use; and indeed it bears directly upon our
+individual state: our actions and our feelings having often a close
+connexion with, general church matters; and these actions and feelings
+being necessarily good or bad, according to the soundness of our
+judgment on the matter which occasions them. Besides which, it seems to
+me that general views, rather than what relates to particular faults,
+may be with most propriety dwelt on by those who have no direct
+connexion with the congregation which they are addressing.
+
+In the first place, then, whenever we think of the state and prospects
+of Christ's church, whether for good or for evil, it is most desirable
+that we should rightly understand our own relations to it. "The vineyard
+of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel;" or, in the language of the
+New Testament, "Christ is the vine, and we are the branches." Men
+continually seem to forget that they are members of the church;
+citizens, to use St. Paul's expression, of Christ's kingdom, as much as
+ever they are citizens of their earthly country. But they speak of the
+church as they might speak of any useful institution or society in their
+neighbourhood, whose object they approved of, and which they were glad
+to encourage, but without becoming members of it, or identifying
+themselves with its success or failure. For example, they speak of the
+church as they might speak of the universities, which indeed are
+institutions of great importance to the whole country, but yet they are
+manifestly distinct from the mass of the community: they have their own
+members, their own laws, and their own government, with which, people in
+general have nothing to do. And so many persons speak and feel of the
+church, regarding it evidently as consisting only of the clergy: our
+common language, no doubt, helping this confusion, because we often
+speak of a man's going into the church when he enters into holy orders,
+just as if ordination were the admission into the church, and not
+baptism. Now, if the clergy did indeed constitute the church, then it
+would very much resemble the condition of the universities: for it would
+then be indeed a society very important to the welfare of the whole
+country, but yet one that was completely distinct, and which had its
+members, laws, and government quite apart: for men in general do not
+belong to the clergy, nor are they concerned directly in such canons as
+relate to the peculiar business of the clergy, nor does the bishop's
+superintendence, as commonly exercised, extend at all to them. But God
+designed for his church far more than that it should contain one order
+of men only, or that it should comprise commonly but one single
+individual in a parish, preaching to and teaching the rest of the
+inhabitants, like a missionary amongst a population of heathens. Look at
+St. Paul's account of the church of Corinth, in the 12th chapter of his
+1st epistle to the Corinthians, and see if any two things can be more
+different than his notion of a church, and that which many people seem
+to entertain amongst us. Compare the living body there described, made
+up of so many various members, each having its separate office, yet each
+useful to and needed by the others and by the body,--and our notion of a
+parish committed to the charge of a single individual: as if all the
+manifold gifts which the church requires could by possibility be
+comprised in the person of any one Christian; as if the whole burden
+were to rest upon his shoulders, and the other inhabitants might regard
+the welfare of the church as his concern only, and not theirs.
+
+But not only is the church too often confined in men's notions to the
+single class or profession of the clergy, but it has been narrowed still
+farther by the practical extinction of one of the orders of the clergy
+itself. Where the laity have come to regard their own share in the
+concerns of the church as next to nothing, the order of deacons,
+forming, as it were, a link between the clergy and the laity, becomes
+proportionably of still greater importance. The business of the deacons,
+as we well know, was in an especial manner to look after the relief of
+the poor; and by combining this charge with the power of baptizing, of
+reading the Scriptures, and of preaching also, when authorized by the
+bishop, they exhibited the peculiar character of Christianity, that of
+sanctifying the business of this world by doing everything in the name
+of the Lord Jesus. No church, so far as we know, certainly no church in
+any town, existed without its deacons: they were as essential to its
+completeness as its bishop and its presbyters.
+
+Take any one of our large towns now, and what do we find? A bishop, not
+of that single town only, but of fifty others besides: one presbyter in
+each, church, and no deacons! Practically, and according to its proper
+character, the order of deacons is extinct; and those who now bear the
+name are most commonly found exercising the functions of presbyters;
+that is, instead of acting as the assistants of a presbyter, they are
+often the sole ministers of their respective parishes; they alone
+baptize; alone offer up the prayers of the church, alone preach the
+word: nothing marks their original character, except their inability to
+administer the communion; and thus, by a strange anomaly, the church in
+such parishes is actually left without any power of celebrating its
+highest act, that of commemorating the death, of Christ in the Lord's
+supper; and if it were not for another great evil, the unfrequent
+celebration of the Communion, the system could not go on: because the
+deacon would be so often obliged to apply to other ministers to perform
+that duty for him, that the inconvenience, as well as the unfitness, of
+the actual practice, would be manifest to every one.
+
+Again, what has become of church discipline? That it has perished, we
+all well know: but its loss is the consequence of that fatal error which
+makes the clergy alone constitute the church. It is quite certain that
+men will not allow the members of a single profession to exercise the
+authority of society; to create and define offences; to determine their
+punishment, and to be the judges of each particular offender. As long as
+the clergy are supposed to constitute the whole church, church
+discipline would be nothing but priestly tyranny. And yet the absence of
+discipline is a most grievous evil; and there is no doubt that, although
+it must be vain when opposed to public opinion, yet, when it is the
+expression of that opinion, there is nothing which it cannot achieve.
+But public opinion cannot enforce church discipline now, because that
+discipline would not be now the expression of the voice of the church,
+but simply of a small part of the church, of the clergy only.
+
+So deeply has this fatal error of regarding the clergy as the church
+extended itself, that at this moment a man's having been baptized is no
+security for his being so much as a believer in the truth of
+Christianity: no matter that he was made in his baptism a member of
+Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven; no
+matter that at a more advanced period of his life he was confirmed, and
+entered into the church by his own act and deed; still the church
+belongs to the clergy; they may hold such and such, language, and teach
+such and such doctrine; it would be very improper in them to do
+otherwise; and he has a great respect for the church, and would
+strenuously resist all its enemies, but truly, as for his own belief and
+his own conduct, these he will guide according to other principles, as
+imperative upon him as the rules of the church upon churchmen. Well
+indeed, do such men bear witness that they are not of the church,
+indeed; that their portion is not with God's people; that Christ is not
+their Saviour, nor the Holy Spirit their Comforter and Guide: but what
+blasphemy is it to call themselves friends of the church! as if Christ's
+church could have any friends except God and his holy angels: the church
+has its living and redeemed members; it may have those who are craving
+to be admitted within its shelter, being convinced that God is in it of
+a truth; but beyond these he who is not with it is against it; he who is
+not Christ's servant, serves his enemy.
+
+Farther, it is this same deadly error which is the root and substance of
+popery. There is no one abuse of the Romish system which may not be
+traced to the original and very early error of drawing a wide
+distinction between the clergy and the laity; of investing the former in
+such a peculiar degree with the attributes of the church that at last
+they retained them almost exclusively. In other words, the great evil of
+popery is, that it has destroyed the Christian church, and has
+substituted a priesthood in its room. This is the fault of the Greek
+church, almost as much as of the Roman; and the peculiar tenet of the
+Romish church, that the supreme government is vested in one single
+member of this priesthood, the Bishop of Rome, is in some respects
+rather an improvement of the system, than an aggravation of it. For
+even an absolute monarchy is a less evil than an absolute aristocracy;
+and an infallible Pope is no greater corruption of Christ's truth, than
+an infallible general council. The real evils of the system are of a far
+older date than the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome, and exist in places
+where that supremacy is resolutely denied. And if we attend to them
+carefully, we shall see that these evils have especially affected the
+Christian church as distinguished from the Christian religion. It is
+worth our while to attend to this distinction; for the Christian
+religion and the Christian church together, and neither without the
+other, form the perfect idea of Christianity. NOW, by the Christian
+religion, I mean the revelation of what God has done or will do for us
+in Christ; the great doctrines of the Trinity, the incarnation, the
+atonement, the resurrection, the presence of the Holy Spirit amongst us,
+and our own resurrection hereafter, to an existence of eternal happiness
+or misery. And these truths, if revealed to any single person living in
+an uninhabited island, might be abundantly sufficient for his salvation;
+if God disposed his heart to receive them, and to believe them
+earnestly, they would be the means of his overcoming his corrupt nature,
+and of passing from death unto life. But because men do not generally
+live alone, but with one another; and because they cannot but greatly
+hinder, or help each other by their mutual influence, therefore the
+Christian church was instituted for the purpose of spreading and
+furthering the growth of the Christian religion in men's hearts; and its
+various ministeries, its sacraments, its services and festivals, and its
+discipline were all designed with that object. And it is all these which
+popery has perverted; popery, whether in the Roman church or in the
+Greek church, or even in the Protestant church, for it has existed more
+or less in all. But even in the Roman church, where the perversion has
+been most complete, it has comparatively affected but little the truths
+of the Christian religion; all the great doctrines, which I mentioned,
+are held as by ourselves; the three creeds, the Apostles' creed, the
+Nicene, and the Athanasian, are used by the Roman church no less than by
+our own. Thus it often happens that we can read with great edification
+the devotional works of Roman Catholic writers, because in such works
+the individual stands apart from the Christian church, and is concerned
+only with the Christian religion: they show how one single soul, having
+learnt the tidings of redemption with faith, and thankfulness, improves
+them to its own salvation. But the moment that he goes out of his
+closet, and begins to speak and act amongst other men, then the
+corruption of popery shows itself. The Christian church was designed to
+help each individual towards a more perfect knowledge and love of God,
+by the counsel and example of his brethren, and by the practices which,
+he was to observe in their society. But the corrupt church exercises its
+influence for evil; it omits all the benefits to be derived from a
+living society, and puts forward, in their place, the observance of
+rites and ceremonies; knowledge and love are no longer looked to as the
+perfections of a Christian, but ignorance and blind obedience; not the
+mortifying all our evil passions universally, but the keeping them
+chained up, as it were under priestly control, to be let loose at the
+priest's bidding, against those whom he calls the church's enemies; that
+glorious church which he has destroyed and converted it into an idol
+temple, in that he, as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself
+that he is God.
+
+To resist this great and monstrous evil, we must not exclaim against it
+under one of its forms only, even although that form exhibit it,
+indeed, in its most complete deformity; but we must strive against it
+under all its forms, remembering that its essence consists in putting
+the clergy in the place of the church; and taking from the great mass of
+the church their proper share in its government, in its offices, and
+therefore in its benefits, and in the sense of its solemn
+responsibilities. We speak often of church extension, meaning by this
+term the building new places of public worship, and the appointing
+additional ministers to preach the word and administer the sacraments.
+And no doubt such church extension is a good and blessed work, for it
+brings the knowledge of the truths of Christ's religion, and the benefit
+of his ordinances, the sacraments, within the reach of many who might
+otherwise have been without them. But it were a yet truer and more
+blessed church extension which should add to the building and the single
+minister, the real living church itself, with all its manifold offices
+and ministries, with its pure discipline, with its holy and loving sense
+of brotherhood. Without this, Christ will still, indeed, as heretofore,
+lay his hands on some few sick folk and heal them; his grace will convey
+the truths of his gospel to individual souls, and they will believe and
+be saved. But the fulfilment of prophecy; the triumph of Christ's
+kingdom; the changing an evil world into a world redeemed; this can only
+be done by a revival of the Christian church in its power, the living
+temple of the Holy Ghost, which, visibly to all mankind, in the wisdom
+and holiness of its members, showed that God was in the midst of it. It
+may be that this is a fond hope, which we may not expect to see
+realized; but looking on the one hand to the strong and triumphant
+language of prophecy, I know not how any hope of the advancement of
+Christ's kingdom can be more bold than God's word will warrant: and on
+the other, tracing the past history of the church, its gradual
+corruption may be deduced distinctly from one early and deadly mischief,
+which has destroyed its efficacy; so that, if this mischief can be
+removed, and the church become such as Christ designed it to be, it does
+not seem presumptuous to hope that his appointed instrument, working
+according to his will, should be enabled to obtain the full blessings of
+his promise.
+
+And now, in conclusion, if we ask, what should follow from all that has
+been said? what it should lead us all, if it be true, to feel or to
+do?--the answer is, that considerations of this sort are not such as
+lead at once to some distinct change in our conduct; to the laying aside
+some favourite sin, or the practising some long neglected duty. And yet
+the thoughts which I have endeavoured to suggest to your minds may, if
+dwelt upon, lead, in the end, to a very considerable alteration, both in
+our feelings and in our practice. First of all, it is not a little
+matter to be convinced practically, that it is baptism, and not
+ordination, which makes us members of the church; that it is by sharing
+in the communion of Christ's body and blood, not by being admitted into
+the ministry, that the privileges and graces of Christ's church are
+conferred upon us. And most wisely, and most truly, does our Church
+separate ordination from the two Christian sacraments, as an institution
+far less solemn, and conferring graces far less important: for the
+difference between a Christian and a Christian minister is but one of
+office, not of moral or spiritual advancement, not of greater or less
+nearness to God. One is our master, even Christ; and all we are
+brethren. Words which certainly do not imply that all members of the
+church are to have the same office, or that all offices are of equal
+importance and dignity; but which do imply, most certainly, that any
+attempt to convert the ministry into a priesthoood, that is, to
+represent them as standing, in any matter, as mediators between Christ
+and his people, or as being essentially the channel through which his
+grace must pass to his church, is directly in opposition to him; and is
+no better than idolatry. It was by baptism that we have all been
+engrafted into Christ's body; it is by the communion of his body and
+blood that we continue to abide in him; it is in his whole body, in his
+church, and not in its ministers, as distinct from his church, that his
+Holy Spirit abides.
+
+Thus feeling that we each are members of the church, that it is our
+highest country, to which we are bound with a far deeper love than to
+our earthly country, is not its welfare our welfare; its triumph our
+triumph; its failures our shame? We shall see, then, that church
+questions are not such merely, or principally, as concern the payment of
+the clergy, or their discipline, but all questions in which God's glory
+and man's sins or duties are concerned; all questions in the decision of
+which, there is a moral good and evil; a grieving of Christ's Spirit, or
+a conformity to him. And in such questions as concern the church, in the
+more narrow and common sense of the word, seeing that we are all members
+of the church, we should not neglect them, as the concern of others, but
+take an interest in them, and act in them, so far as we have
+opportunity, as in a matter which most nearly concerns ourselves. We
+feel that we have an interest in our country's affairs, although we are
+not members of the government or of the legislature; we have our part to
+perform, without at all overstepping the modesty of private life: and it
+is the constant influence of public opinion, and the active interest
+taken by the country at large in its own concerns, which, in spite of
+occasional delusion or violence, is mainly instrumental in preserving to
+us the combined vigour and order of our political constitution. And so,
+if we took an equal interest in the affairs of our divine commonwealth,
+our Christian church, and endeavoured as eagerly to promote every thing
+which tended to its welfare, and to put down and prevent every thing
+which might work it mischief, then the efforts of the clergy to advance
+Christ's kingdom would be incalculably aided, while there would then be
+no danger of our investing them with the duties and responsibilities
+which belong properly to the whole church; they could not then have
+dominion over our faith, nor by possibility become lords over God's
+heritage, but would be truly ensamples to the flock, the helpers of our
+joy, the glory of Christ.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXXIX.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+COLOSSIANS iii. 17.
+
+_Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus,
+giving thanks to God and the Father by Him_.
+
+
+This, like the other general rules of the gospel, is familiar enough to
+us all in its own words; but we are very apt to forbear making the
+application of it. In fact, he who were to apply it perfectly would be a
+perfect Christian: for a life of which every word and deed were said and
+done in the name of the Lord Jesus, would be a life indeed worthy of the
+children of God, and such as they lead in heaven; it would leave no room
+for sin to enter. The art of our enemy has been therefore to make us
+leave this command of the apostle's in its general sense, and avoid
+exploring, so to speak, all the wisdom contained within it. Certain
+actions of our lives, our religious services, the more solemn
+transactions in which we are engaged, we are willing to do in Christ's
+name; but that multitude of common words and ordinary actions by which
+more than sixty-nine out of our seventy years are filled, we take away
+from our Lord's dominion, under the foolish, and hypocritical pretence
+that they are too trifling and too familiar to be mixed up with the
+thought of things so solemn.
+
+This is one fault, and by far the most common. We make Christ's service
+the business only of a very small portion of our lives; we hallow only
+a very small part of our words and actions by doing them in his name.
+Unlike our Lord's own parable, where he compares Christianity to leaven
+hidden in the three measures of meal till the whole was leavened, the
+practice rather has been to keep the leaven confined to one little
+corner of the mass of meal; to take care that it should not spread so as
+to leaven the whole mass; to keep our hearts still in the state of the
+world when Christ visited it--"the light shineth in darkness, and the
+darkness comprehended it not;" that is, it did not take the light into
+itself so as to be wholly enlightened: the light shone, and there was a
+bright space immediately around it; but beyond there was a blackness of
+darkness into which it vainly strove to penetrate.
+
+On the other hand there has been, though, more rarely, a fault of the
+opposite sort. Men have said that they were in all their actions of
+ordinary life doing Christ's will, that they endeavoured always to be
+promoting some good object; and that the peculiar services of religion,
+as they are called, were useless, inasmuch as in spirit they are
+worshipping God always. This is a great error; because, as a matter of
+fact, it is false. We may safely say that no man ever did keep his heart
+right with God in his ordinary life, that no one ever became one with
+Christ, and Christ with him, without seeking Christ where he reveals
+himself, it may not be more really, but to our weakness far more
+sensibly, than in the common business of daily life. We may be happy if
+we can find Christ there, after we have long sought him and found him in
+the way of his own ordinances, in prayer, and in his holy communion.
+Even Christ himself, when on earth, though his whole day was undeniably
+spent in doing the will of his heavenly father,--although to him
+doubtless God was ever present in the commonest acts no less than in the
+most solemn,--yet even he, after a day spent in all good works, desired
+a yet more direct intercourse with God, and was accustomed to spend a
+large portion of the night in retirement and prayer.
+
+Without this, indeed, we shall most certainly not say and do all in the
+name of the Lord Jesus; much more shall we be in danger of forgetting
+him altogether. But supposing that we are not neglectful of our
+religious duties, in the common sense of the term, that we do pray and
+read the Scriptures, and partake of Christ's communion, yet it will
+often happen that we do not connect our prayers, nor our reading, nor
+our communion, with many of the common portions of our lives; that there
+are certain things in which we take great interest, which,
+notwithstanding, we leave, as it were, wholly without the range of the
+light of Christ's Spirit. There is a story told that, in times and
+countries where there prevailed the deepest ignorance, some who came to
+be baptized into the faith of Christ, converted from their heathen
+state, not in reality but only in name, were accustomed to leave their
+right arm unbaptized, with the notion that this arm, not being pledged
+to Christ's service, might wreak upon their enemies those works of
+hatred and revenge which in baptism they had promised to renounce. It is
+too much to say that something like this unbaptized right arm is still
+to be met with amongst us--that men too often leave some of their very
+most important concerns, what they call by way of eminence their
+business--their management of their own money affairs, and their conduct
+in public matters--wholly out of the control of Christ's law?
+
+Now at this very time public matters are engaging the thoughts of a
+great many persons all over the kingdom: and are not only engaging their
+thoughts, but are also become a practical matter, in which they are
+acting with great earnestness. Is it nothing that there should be so
+much, interest felt, so much pains taken, and yet that neither should be
+done in the name of the Lord Jesus, nor to the glory of God? It cannot
+be unsuited to the present season to dwell a little on this subject,
+which has nothing whatever to do with men's differences of opinion, but
+relates only to their acting, whatever be their political opinions, on
+Christian principles, and in a Christian spirit.
+
+First, consider what we pray for in the prayer which we have been using
+every week for the high court of parliament: we pray to God, that "all
+things may be so ordered and settled by the endeavours of parliament,
+upon the best and surest foundations, that peace and happiness, truth,
+and justice, religion and piety, may be established among us for all
+generations." These great blessings we beg of God to secure to us and to
+our children through the endeavours of parliament; if, therefore, we are
+any ways concerned in fixing who the persons are to be who are to
+compose this parliament, it is plain that there is put into our bands a
+high privilege, if you will; but along with it, as with all other
+privileges, a most solemn responsibility.
+
+But, if it be a solemn responsibility in the sight of God and of Christ,
+surely the act of voting, which many think so lightly of, and which many
+more consider a thing wholly political and worldly, becomes, indeed, a
+very important Christian duty, not to be discharged hastily or
+selfishly, in blind prejudice or passion, from self-interest, or in mere
+careless good nature and respect of persons; but deliberately,
+seriously, calmly, and, so far as we can judge our deceitful hearts,
+purely; not without prayer to Him who giveth wisdom liberally to those
+that ask it, that he will be pleased to guide them aright, to his own
+glory, and to the good of his people.
+
+Do I say that if we were to approach this duty in this spirit, and with
+such prayers, we should all agree in the same opinion, and all think the
+same of the same men? No, by no means; we might still greatly differ;
+but we should, at least, have reason to respect one another, and to be
+in charity with one another; and if we all earnestly desired and prayed
+to be directed to God's glory, and the public good, God, I doubt not,
+would give us all those ends which we so purely desired, although in our
+estimate of the earthly means and instruments by which they were to be
+gained, we had honestly differed from one another.
+
+Now, supposing that we had this conviction, that what we were going to
+do concerned the glory of God and the good of his people, and that we
+approached it therefore seriously as a Christian duty, yet it may be
+well that many men might feel themselves deficient in knowledge; they
+might not understand the great questions at issue; they might honestly
+doubt how they could best fulfil the trust committed to them. I know
+that the most ignorant man will feel no such hesitation if he is going
+to give his vote from fancy, or from prejudice, or from interest; these
+are motives which determine our conduct quickly and decisively. But if
+we regard our vote as a talent for which we must answer before God that
+we may well be embarrassed by a consciousness of ignorance; we may well
+be anxious to get some guidance from others, if we cannot find it in
+ourselves. Here, then, is the place for authority,--for relying, that
+is, on the judgment of others, when we feel that we cannot judge for
+ourselves. But is their no room for the exercise of much good sense and
+fairness in ourselves as to the choice of the person by whose judgment
+we mean to be guided? Are we so little accustomed to estimate our
+neighbours' characters rightly, as to be unable to determine whom we may
+consult with advantage? Surely if their be any one whom we have proved,
+in the affairs of common life, to be at once honest and sensible, to
+such an one we should apply when we are at a loss as to public matters.
+If there is such an one amongst our own relations or personal friends,
+we should go to him in preference: if not, we can surely find one such
+amongst our neighbours: and here the authority of such of our neighbours
+as have a direct connexion with us, if we have had reason to respect
+their judgment and their principles, may be properly preferred to that
+of indifferent persons; the authority of a master, or an employer, or of
+our minister, or of our landlord, may and ought, under such
+circumstances, to have a great and decisive influence over us.
+
+On the other hand, supposing again that we have this strong sense of the
+great responsibility in the sight of God of every man who has the
+privilege of a vote, we shall be exceedingly careful not to tempt him to
+sin by fulfilling this duty ill. Nothing can be more natural or more
+proper than that those who have strong impressions themselves as to the
+line to be followed in public matters, should be desirous of persuading
+others to think as they do; every man who loves truth and righteousness
+must wish that what he himself earnestly believes to be true and
+righteous, should be loved by others also; but the highest truth, if
+professed by one who believes it not in his heart, is to him a lie, and
+he sins greatly by professing it. Let us try as much as we will to
+convince our neighbours; but let us beware of influencing their conduct,
+when we fail in influencing their convictions: he who bribes or
+frightens his neighbour into doing an act which no good man would do for
+reward or from fear, is tempting his neighbour to sin; he is assisting
+to lower and to harden his conscience,--to make him act for the favour
+or from the fear of man, instead of for the favour or from the fear of
+God; and if this be a sin in him, it is a double sin in us to tempt him
+to it. Nor let us deceive ourselves by talking of the greatness of the
+stake at issue; that God's glory and the public good are involved in the
+result of the contest, and that therefore we must do all in our power to
+win it. Let us by all means do all that we can do without sin; but let
+us not dare to do evil that good may come, for that is the part of
+unbelief; it becomes those who will not trust God with the government of
+the world, but would fain guide its course themselves. Here, indeed, our
+Lord's command does apply to us, that we be not anxious; "Which of you
+by taking thought can add to his stature one cubit?" How little can we
+see of the course of Providence! how little can we be sure that what we
+judged for the best in public affairs may not lead to mischief! But
+these things are in God's hand; our business is to keep ourselves and
+our neighbours from sin, and not to do or encourage in others any thing
+that is evil, however great the advantages which we may fancy likely to
+flow from that evil to the cause even of the highest good.
+
+There is no immediate prospect, indeed, that we in this particular
+congregation shall be called upon to practise the duty of which I have
+been now speaking; and, indeed, it is for that very reason that I could
+dwell on the subject more freely. But what is going on all around us,
+what we hear of, read of, and talk of so much as we are many of us
+likely to do in the next week or two about political matters, _that_ we
+should be accustomed to look upon as Christians: we should by that
+standard try our common views and language about it, and, if it may be,
+correct them: that so hereafter, if we be called upon to act, we may
+act, according to the Apostle's teaching, in the name of our Lord Jesus.
+And I am quite sure if we do so think and so act, although our
+differences of opinion might remain just the same, yet the change in
+ourselves, and I verily believe in the blessings which God would give
+us, would be more than we can well believe; and a general election,
+instead of calling forth, as it now does, a host of unchristian passions
+and practices, would be rather an exercise of Christian judgment, and
+forbearance, and faith, and charity; promoting, whatever was the mere
+political result, the glory of God, advancing Christ's kingdom, and the
+good of this, as it would be then truly called, Christian nation.
+
+
+
+NOTES.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE A. P. 5.
+
+"_But our path is not backwards but onwards_"--This thought is expressed
+very beautifully in lines as wise and true as they are poetical:
+
+     "Grieve not for these: nor dare lament
+       That thus from childhood's thoughts we roam:
+     Not backward are our glances bent,
+       But forward to our Father's home.
+     Eternal growth has no such fears,
+       But freshening still with seasons past,
+     The old man clogs its earlier years,
+       And simple childhood comes the last."
+
+_Burbridge's Poems_, p. 309.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE B. P. 102.
+
+"_Some may know the story of that German nobleman_," &c.--The Baron von
+Canitz. He lived in the latter half of the seventeenth century, and was
+engaged in the service of the electors of Brandenburg, both of the great
+elector and his successor. He was the author of several hymns, one of
+which is of remarkable beauty, as may be seen in the following
+translation, for the greatest part of which I am indebted to the
+kindness of a friend: but the language of the original, in several
+places, cannot be adequately translated in English.
+
+     Come, my soul, thou must be waking--
+     Now is breaking
+       O'er the earth another day.
+     Come to Him who made this splendour
+     See thou render
+       All thy feeble powers can pay.
+
+     From the stars thy course be learning:
+     Dimly burning
+       'Neath the sun their light grows pale:
+     So let all that sense delighted
+     While benighted
+       From God's presence fade and fail.
+
+     Lo! how all of breath partaking,
+     Gladly waking,
+       Hail the sun's enlivening light!
+     Plants, whose life mere sap doth nourish,
+     Rise and flourish,
+       When he breaks the shades of night.
+
+     Thou too hail the light returning,--
+     Ready burning
+       Be the incense of thy powers;--
+     For the night is safely ended:
+     God hath tended
+       With His care thy helpless hours.
+
+     Pray that He may prosper ever
+     Each endeavour
+       When thine aim is good and true;
+     But that He may ever thwart thee,
+     And convert thee,
+       When thou evil wouldst pursue.
+
+     Think that He thy ways beholdeth--
+     He unfoldeth
+       Every fault that lurks within;
+     Every stain of shame gloss'd over
+     Can discover,
+       And discern each deed of sin.
+
+     Fetter'd to the fleeting hours,
+     All our powers,
+       Vain and brief, are borne away;
+     Time, my soul, thy ship is steering,
+     Onward veering,
+       To the gulph of death a prey.
+
+     May'st thou then on life's last morrow,
+     Free from sorrow,
+       Pass away in slumber sweet;
+     And released from death's dark sadness,
+     Rise in gladness,
+       That far brighter Sun to greet.
+
+     Only God's free gifts abuse not,
+     His light refuse not,
+       But still His Spirit's voice obey;
+     Soon shall joy thy brow be wreathing,
+     Splendour breathing
+       Fairer than the fairest day.
+
+     If aught of care this morn oppress thee,
+     To Him address thee,
+       Who, like the sun, is good to all:
+     He gilds the mountain tops, the while
+     His gracious smile
+       Will on the humblest valley fall.
+
+     Round the gifts His bounty show'rs,
+     Walls and tow'rs
+       Girt with flames thy God shall rear:
+     Angel legions to defend thee
+     Shall attend thee,
+       Hosts whom Satan's self shall fear.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE C. P. 122.
+
+"_But, once admit a single exception, and the infallible virtue of the
+rule ceases_."--Thus the famous Canon of Vincentius Lirinensis is like
+tradition itself, always either superfluous or insufficient. Taken
+literally, it is true and worthless;--because what _all_ have asserted,
+_always_, and in _all places_, supposing of course that the means of
+judging were in their power, may be assumed to be some indisputable
+axiom, such as never will be disputed any more than it has been disputed
+hitherto. But take it with any allowance, and then it is of no use in
+settling a question: for what _most_ men have asserted, _most commonly_,
+and in _most places_, has a certain _à priori_ probability, it is true,
+but by no means such as may not be outweighed by probabilities on the
+other side; for the extreme improbability consists not in the prevalence
+of error amongst millions, or for centuries, or over whole
+continents,--but in its being absolutely universal, so universal, that
+truth could not find a single witness at any time or in any country. But
+the single witness is enough to "justify the ways of God," and reduces
+what otherwise would have been a monstrous triumph of evil to the
+character of a severe trial of our faith, severe indeed as the trials of
+an evil world will be, but no more than a trial such as, with God's
+grace, may be overcome.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE D. P. 189.
+
+_"It was an admirable definition of that which excites laughter,"_
+&c.--[Greek: To geloion apurtaepa ti chai aiochos auodnnoy chai on
+phthartichon oion enthus to geloion prosopon aischron ti chai
+dieotruppenon anen odunaes]--_Aristotle, Poetic,_ ii.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE E. P. 245.
+
+"_I would endeavour just to touch upon some of the purposes for which
+the Scripture tells us that Christ died_."--The Collects for Easter
+Sunday and the Sundays just before it and after it, illustrate the
+enumeration here given. The Collect for the Sunday next before Easter
+speaks of Christ's death only as an "example of his great humility." The
+Collect for Easter-day speaks of the resurrection, and connects it with
+our spiritual resurrection, as does also the Collect for the first
+Sunday after Easter. But the collect for the Second Sunday after Easter
+speaks of Christ as being at once our sacrifice for sin and our example
+of godly life,--a sacrifice to be regarded with entire thankfulness, and
+an example to be daily followed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE F. P. 282.
+
+"_Such also was to be the state of the Christian Church after our Lord's
+ascension_."--And therefore, as I think, St. Peter applies to the
+Christians of Asia Minor the very terms applied to the Jews living in
+Assyria or in Egypt; he addresses them as [Greek: parepidaemois
+diasporas], (1 Peter i. 1,) that is, as strangers and sojourners,
+scattered up and down in a country that was not properly their own, and
+living in a sort of banishment from their true home. That the words are
+not addressed to Jewish Christians, and therefore are not to be
+understood in their simple historical sense, seems evident from the
+second chapter of the Epistle, verses 9, 10, and iv. 2,3.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE G. P. 315.
+
+"_Not only an outward miracle, but the changed circumstances of the
+times may speak God's will no less clearly than a miracle_," &c.--What I
+have here said does not at all go beyond what has been said on the same
+subject by Hooker: "Laws, though both ordained of God himself, and the
+end for which they were ordained continuing, may, notwithstanding,
+cease, if by alteration of persons or times they be found insufficient
+to attain unto that end. In which respect why may we not presume that
+God doth even call for such change or alteration as the very condition
+of things themselves doth make necessary?... In this case, therefore,
+men do not presume to change God's ordinance, but they yield thereunto,
+requiring itself to be changed."--_Ecclesiastical Polity_, b. iii. § 10.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE H. P. 320.
+
+_"Nor is it less strange that any should ever have been afraid of their
+understandings, and should have sought goodness through prejudice, and
+blindness, and folly_."--For some time past the words "Rationalism" and
+"Rationalistic" have been freely used as terms of reproach by writers on
+religious subjects; the 73d No. of the "Tracts for the Times" is
+entitled, "On the introduction of Rationalistic Principles into
+Religion," and a whole chapter in Mr. Gladstone's late work on Church
+Principles is headed "Rationalism." Yet we still want a clear definition
+of the thing signified by this name. The Tract for the Times says, "To
+rationalize, is to ask for _reasons_ out of place; to ask improperly how
+we are to _account_ for certain things; to be unwilling to believe them
+unless they can be accounted for, i.e. referred to something else as a
+cause, to some existing system, as harmonizing with them, or taking them
+up into itself.... It is characterised by two peculiarities;--its love
+of systematizing, and its basing its system upon personal experience, on
+the evidence of sense."--P. 2. Mr. Gladstone says more generally,
+"Rationalism is commonly, at least in this country, taken to be the
+reduction of Christian _doctrine_ to the standard and measure of the
+human understanding."--P. 37. But neither of these definitions will
+include all the arguments and statements which have been called by
+various writers "rationalistic;" and while the terms used are thus
+vague, they are often applied very indiscriminately, and the tendency of
+this use of them is to depreciate the exercise of the intellectual
+faculties generally. The subject seems to deserve fuller consideration
+than it has yet received; there is a real evil which the term
+Rationalism is meant to denounce; but it has not been clearly
+apprehended, and what is good has sometimes been confounded with it, and
+denounced under the same name.
+
+I cannot pretend to discuss the subject fully in a mere note, even if I
+were otherwise competent to do it. But one or two points may be noticed,
+as likely to assist the inquiry, wherever it is worthily entered on.
+
+1st. It is important to bear in mind the distinction which Coleridge
+enforces so earnestly between the understanding and the reason. I do not
+know whether Mr. Gladstone, in the passage quoted above, uses the word
+"understanding" as synonymous with reason, or in that stricter sense in
+which Coleridge employs it. But the writer of the Tract seems to allude
+to the stricter sense, when he calls it a characteristic of rationalism
+"to base its system upon personal experience, on the evidence of sense."
+If this be the case, then it would seem that rationalism is the
+appealing to the decision of the understanding in points where the
+decision properly belongs not to the understanding, but to the reason.
+This is a great fault, and one to which all persons who belong to the
+sensualist school in philosophy, as opposed to the idealist school,
+would be more or less addicted. But then, this fault consists not in an
+over-estimating of man's intellectual nature generally, but in the
+exalting one part of it unduly, to the injury of another part; in
+deferring to the understanding, rather than to the reason.
+
+2d. Faith and reason are often invidiously contrasted with each other,
+as if they were commonly described in Scripture as antagonists; whereas
+faith is more properly opposed to sight, or to lust, being, in fact, a
+very high exercise of the pure reason; inasmuch as we believe truths
+which our senses do not teach us, and which our passions would have us,
+therefore, reject, because those truths are taught by Him in whom reason
+recognises its own author, and the infallible source of all truth.
+
+3d. It were better to oppose reason to passion than to faith; for it may
+be safely said, that he who neglects his reason, so far as he does
+neglect it, does not lead a life of faith afterwards, but a life of
+passion. He does not draw nearer to God, but to the brutes, or rather to
+the devils; for his passions cannot be the mere instinctive appetites of
+the brute, but derive from the wreck of his intellectual powers, which
+he cannot utterly destroy, just so much of a higher nature that they are
+sins, and not instincts, belonging to the malignity of diabolic nature,
+rather than to the mere negative evil of the nature of brutes.
+
+4th. Faith may be described as reason leaning upon God. Without God,
+reason is either overpowered by sense and understanding, and, in a
+manner, overgrown, so that it cannot comprehend its proper truths; or,
+being infinite, it cannot discover all the truths which concern it, and
+therefore needs a farther revelation to enlighten it. But with God's
+grace strengthening it to assert its supremacy over sense and
+understanding, and communicating to it what of itself it could not have
+discovered, it then having gained strength and light not its own, and
+doing and seeing consciously by God's help, becomes properly faith.
+
+5th. Faith without reason, is not properly faith, but mere power
+worship; and power worship may be devil worship; for it is reason which
+entertains the idea of God--an idea essentially made up of truth and
+goodness, no less than of power. A sign of power exhibited to the senses
+might, through them, dispose the whole man to acknowledge it as divine;
+yet power in itself is not divine, it may be devilish. But when reason
+recognises that, along with this power, there exist also wisdom and
+goodness, then it perceives that here is God; and the worship which,
+without reason, might have been idolatry, being now according to
+reason is faith.
+
+6th. If this were considered, men would be more careful of speaking
+disparagingly of reason, seeing that it is the necessary condition of
+the existence of faith. It is quite true, that when we have attained to
+faith, it supersedes reason; we walk by sunlight, rather than by
+moonlight; following the guidance of infinite reason, instead of finite.
+But how are we to attain to faith? in other words, how can we
+distinguish God's voice from the voice of evil? for we must distinguish
+it to be God's voice before we can have faith in it. We distinguish it,
+and can distinguish it no otherwise, by comparing it with that idea of
+God which reason intuitively enjoins, the gift of reason being God's
+original revelation of himself to man. Now, if the voice which comes to
+us from the unseen world agree not with this idea, we have no choice but
+to pronounce it not to be God's voice; for no signs of power, in
+confirmation of it, can alone prove it to be God. God is not power only,
+but power, and truth, and holiness; and the existence of even infinite
+power, does not necessarily involve in it truth and holiness also; else
+the notion of the world being governed by an evil being would be no more
+than a contradiction in terms; and the horrible strife of the two
+principles of Manicheism would be a mere matter of indifference; for if
+power alone constitutes God, whichever principle triumphed over the
+other, would become God by the very fact of its victory; and thus
+triumphant evil would be good.
+
+7th. Reason, then, is the mean whereby we attain to faith, and escape
+the devil worship of idolatry; but the understanding is not a necessary
+condition of faith, and very often impedes it; for the understanding
+having for its basis the reports of sense and experience, has no direct
+way of arriving at things invisible, and rather shrinks back from that
+world with which it is in no way familiar. It has a work to do in regard
+to revelation, and an important work; but divine things not being its
+proper matter, its work concerning them must be subordinate, and its
+tendency is always to fall back from the invisible to the visible,--from
+matters of faith to matters of experience. Its work, with respect to
+revelation, is this--that it should inquire into the truth of the
+outward signs of it; which outward signs being necessarily things
+visible and sensible, fall within its province of judgment. Thus
+understanding judges the external witnesses of a revelation: if miracles
+be alleged, it is the business of understanding to ascertain the fact of
+their occurrence; if a book claim to be the record of a revelation, it
+belongs to the understanding to make out the origin of this book, the
+time when it was written, who were its authors, and what is the first
+and grammatical meaning of its language. Or, again, if any men profess
+to be the depositaries of divine truth, by an extraordinary commission
+from God, the understanding, being familiar with man's nature and
+motives, can judge of their credibility--can see whether there are any
+marks of folly in them, or of dishonesty, or whether they are at once
+sensible and honest. And in all such matters, the prerogative of the
+understanding to judge is not to be questioned; for all such points are
+strictly within its dominion; and our Lord's words are of universal
+application, that we should render to Cæsar the things which are
+Cæsar's, no less than we should render to God the things that are God's.
+
+Faith may exist, as I said, without the action of the understanding, but
+never without that of the reason. It may exist independent of the
+understanding, because faith in God is the natural result of the idea of
+God: and that idea belongs to the reason, and the understanding is not
+concerned with it. But when a special revelation has been given us,
+through human instruments; when the understanding is called in to
+certify the particular fact, that in such and such particular persons,
+writings, or events, God has made himself manifest in an extraordinary
+manner; it is the human instrumentality which requires the judgment of
+the understanding; the bringing in of human characters, and sensible
+facts, which are matters of sense and experience; and, therefore, it is
+mere ignorance when Christians speak slightingly of the outward and
+historical evidences of Christianity, and indulge in very misplaced
+contempt for Paley and others who have worked out the historical proof
+of it. Such persons may observe, if they will, that where the historical
+evidence has not been listened to, there a belief in Christianity,
+properly so called, is wanting. Living examples might, I think, be named
+of men whose reason entirely acknowledges the internal proofs of a
+divine origin which are contained in the Christian doctrines, but whose
+understandings are not satisfied as to the facts of the Christian
+history, and particularly as to the fact of our Lord's resurrection.
+Such men are a remarkable contrast to those whose understandings are
+fully satisfied of the historical truth of our Lord's resurrection, but
+who are indifferent to, or actually deny, those doctrinal truths of
+which another power than the understanding must be the warrant. It is
+important to observe, therefore, that in a revelation involving, as an
+essential part of it, certain historical facts, there is necessarily a
+call for the judgment of the understanding, although in religious faith
+simply the understanding may have no place.
+
+8th. Now, then, the clearest notion which can be given of rationalism
+would, I think, be this: that it is the abuse of the understanding in
+subjects where the divine and the human, so to speak, are intermingled.
+Of human things the understanding can judge, of divine things it
+cannot;--and thus, where the two are mixed together, its inability to
+judge of the one part makes it derange the proportions of both, and the
+judgment of the whole is vitiated. For example, the understanding
+examines a miraculous history; it judges truly of what I may call the
+human part of the case; that is to say, of the rarity of miracles,--of
+the fallibility of human testimony,--of the proneness of most minds to
+exaggeration,--and of the critical arguments affecting the genuineness
+or the date of the narrative itself. But it forgets the divine part,
+namely, the power and providence of God, that He is really ever present
+amongst us, and that the spiritual world, which exists invisibly all
+around us, may conceivably, and by no means impossibly, exist, at some
+times and to some persons, even visibly. These considerations, which the
+understanding is ignorant of, would often modify our judgment as to the
+human parts of the case. Things not impossible in themselves are
+believed upon sufficient testimony; and with all the carelessness and
+exaggeration of historians, the mass of history is notwithstanding
+generally credible. Again, with regard to the history of the Old
+Testament, our judgment of the human part in it requires to be
+constantly modified by our consciousness of the divine part, or
+otherwise it cannot fail to be rationalistic; that is, it will be the
+judgment of the understanding only, unchecked by the reason. Gesenius'
+Commentary on Isaiah is rationalistic, for it regards Isaiah merely as a
+Jewish writer, zealously attached to the religion of his country, and
+lamenting the decay of his nation, and anxiously looking for its future
+restoration. No doubt Isaiah was all this, and therefore Gesenius'
+Commentary is critically and historically very valuable; the human part
+of Isaiah is nowhere better illustrated; but the divine part of the
+prophecy of Isaiah is no less real, and the consciousness of its
+existence should actually qualify our feelings and language even with
+reference to the human part.
+
+9th. The fault, then, of rationalism appears to me to consist not so
+much in what it has as in what it has not. The understanding has its
+proper work to do with respect to the Bible, because the Bible consists
+of human writings and contains a human history. Critical and historical
+inquiries respecting it are, therefore, perfectly legitimate; it
+contains matter which is within the province of the understanding, and
+the understanding has God's warrant for doing that work which he
+appointed it to do; only, let us remember, that the understanding cannot
+ascend to things divine; that for these another faculty is
+necessary,--reason or faith. If this faculty be living in us, then there
+can be no rationalism; and what is called so is then no other than the
+voice of Christian truth. Where a man's writings show that he is keenly
+alive to the divine part of Scripture, that he sees God ever in it, and
+regards it truly as his word, his judgments of the human part in it are
+not likely to be rationalistic; and if his understanding decides
+according to its own laws, upon points within its own province, while
+his faith duly tempers it, and restrains it from venturing upon
+another's dominion, the result will, in all probability, be such as
+commonly attends the use of God's manifold gifts in their just
+proportions,--it will image, after our imperfect measure, the holiness
+of God and the truth of God.
+
+It is very true, and should be acknowledged in the fullest manner, that
+for the study of the highest moral and spiritual questions another
+faculty than the understanding is wanting; and that without this faculty
+the understanding alone cannot arrive at truth. But it is no less true,
+that while there is, on the one side, a faculty higher than the
+understanding, which is entitled to pronounce upon its defects; "for he
+that is spiritual judgeth all things," ([Greek: auachriuei];) so there
+is a clamour often raised against it, not from above, but from
+below,--the clamour of mere shallowness and ignorance, and passion. Of
+this sort is some of the outcry which is raised against rationalism. Men
+do not leap, _per saltum mortalem_, from ordinary folly to divine
+wisdom: and the foolish have no right to think that they are angels,
+because they are not humanly wise. There is a deep and universal truth
+in St. Paul's words, where he says, that Christians wish "not to be
+unclothed but clothed upon, that mortality may be swallowed up of life."
+Wisdom is gained, not by renouncing or despising the understanding, but
+by adding to its perfect work the perfect work of reason, and of
+reason's perfection, faith.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE I. P. 331.
+
+"_A famous example of this may be seen in the sixth chapter of St.
+John,"_ &c.--The interpretation of this chapter, and particularly of the
+part alluded to in the text, is of no small importance; for it is
+remarkable, that the highest notions with respect to the presence of
+our Lord in the Holy Communion are often grounded upon this passage in
+St. John's Gospel, which yet, in the judgment of others, most decisively
+repels them.
+
+The whole question resolves itself into this--Are our Lord's words in
+this place co-ordinate with the Holy Communion, or subordinate to it?
+That is, do they and the communion alike point to some great truth
+superior to them both: or do our Lord's words, in St. John, point to the
+communion itself as their highest meaning?
+
+The communion itself expresses a truth above itself by a symbolical
+action; the words of our Lord, in St. John, are exactly the same with
+that symbolic action; it is natural, therefore, to understand them not
+as referring to it, but to the same[14] higher truth to which it refers
+also: and the more so as the communion is not once mentioned by St. John
+either in his Gospel or in his Epistles; but the idea which the
+communion expresses appears to have been familiar to his mind; at least,
+if we suppose that his mention of the blood and water flowing from our
+Lord's side in his Gospel, and his allusion again to the same fact in
+his Epistle, have reference in any degree to it, which seems to me
+most probable.
+
+[Footnote 14: The common tendency to make the Christian sacraments an
+ultimate end rather than a mean, is exhibited in the heading of the
+tenth chapter of the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians, in our authorized
+version, where we find the first verses described as stating, that "the
+Jews' sacraments were types of ours." Whereas, so far is it from the
+apostle's argument to represent our sacraments as the reality of which
+the Jews' sacraments were the type, that he is describing theirs and
+ours as co-ordinate with each other, and both alike subordinate to the
+same truth; and he argues, that if the Jews, with their sacraments, did
+notwithstanding lose the reality which those sacraments typified, so we
+should take heed lest we, with our sacraments, should lose it also. The
+erroneous heading is not given in the Geneva Bible, where we have, on
+the contrary, the true observation; "the sacraments of the old fathers
+were all one with ours, for they respected Christ only." It is true that
+if no more were meant than that "the Jews' sacraments were like ours,"
+there would be no reason to object to the expression; but apparently
+more is meant, as the word type seems to imply that what it is compared
+with is the reality, of which it is itself only the image; and one thing
+cannot properly be called the type of another, when both are but types
+of the same third thing. But the divines of James the First's reign and
+of his son's, were to the reformers exactly what the so-called fathers
+were to the apostles: the very same tendencies, growing up even in
+Elizabeth's reign, becoming strengthened under the Stuart kings, and
+fully developed in the nonjurors, which distinguish the divines of the
+seventeenth century from those of the sixteenth, distinguish also the
+church system from the gospel. There are many who readily acknowledge
+this difference in the English church, while they would deny it in the
+case of the ancient church. Indeed, it is not yet deemed prudent to avow
+openly that they prefer the so-called fathers to the apostles, and
+therefore they try to persuade themselves that both speak the same
+language. And doubtless, if the Scriptures are to be interpreted
+according to the rule of the writers of the third, and fourth, and fifth
+centuries, the thing can easily be effected; as, by a similar process,
+the Articles of the Church of England, if interpreted according to the
+rule of the nonjurors and their successors, might be made to speak the
+very sentiments which their authors designed to condemn.]
+
+Our Lord repels the notion of a literal acceptation of his words, where
+he says,--"It is the Spirit which profiteth, the flesh profiteth
+nothing; the words which I speak unto you, they are Spirit and they are
+life." It seems impossible, therefore, to refer these words, which he
+tells us expressly are Spirit and life, to any outward act of eating and
+drinking as their highest truth and object.
+
+But the words in the sixth chapter of St. John do highly illustrate the
+institution and purpose of the communion, and especially the remarkable
+words which our Lord used in instituting it. They show what infinite
+importance he attached to that truth which he expressed both in
+symbolical words and action under the same figure, of eating His body
+and drinking His blood. But to suppose that that truth can only be
+realized by one particular ritual action, so that the one great work of
+a Christian is to receive the Lord's supper,--which it must be, if our
+Lord's words in the sixth chapter of St. John refer to the
+communion,--is so contrary to the whole character of our Lord's
+teaching, and not least so in the very words so misinterpreted, that to
+maintain such a doctrine, leading, as it does, to such manifold
+superstitions, is actually to preach another Gospel than Christ's--to
+bring in a mystical religion instead of a spiritual one,--to do worse
+than to Judaize.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE K. P. 345.
+
+_"A set of persons, who wish to magnify the uncertainties of the
+Scripture in order to recommend more plausibly the guidance of some
+supposed authoritative interpreter of it."_--"The high church party," we
+have been lately told, "take Holy Scripture for their guide, and, in the
+interpretation of it, defer to the authority of primitive antiquity: the
+low church party contend for the sufficiency of private judgment." It is
+become of the greatest importance to see clearly, not what one party, or
+another, may contend for, but what is the real truth, and what,
+accordingly, is the duty of every Christian man to do in this matter.
+The sermon to which this note refers, is an attempt to show that
+Scripture is not hopelessly obscure or ambiguous; but it may not be
+inexpedient here to consider a little, what are the objections to the
+principle of the high church party; to clear away certain difficulties
+which are supposed to beset the opposite principle; and to state, if
+possible, what the truth of the whole question is.
+
+I. The objections to the principle of the high church party are these:
+1st. Its extreme vagueness. What is primitive antiquity? and where is
+its authority to be found? Does "primitive antiquity" mean the first
+three centuries? or the first two? or the first five? or the first
+seven? Does it include any of the general councils? or one of them? or
+four? or six? Are Irenæus and Tertullian the latest writers of
+"primitive antiquity?" or does it end with Augustine? or does it
+comprehend the venerable Bede? One writer has lately told us, that our
+Reformers wished the people to be taught, "that, for almost seven
+hundred years, the church was most pure." Are we, then, to hold that
+"primitive antiquity" embraces a period of nearly seven centuries? Seven
+centuries are considerably more than a third part of the whole duration
+of the church, from its foundation to this hour: can the third part of a
+nation's history be called its primitive antiquity? Is a tenet, or a
+practice taught when Christianity had been more than six hundred years
+in the world, to be called primitive? We know not, then, in the first
+place, what length of time is signified by "primitive antiquity."
+
+But let it signify any length of time we choose, I ask, next, where is
+its authority to be found? In the decisions of the general councils? But
+if we call the first four centuries "primitive antiquity," we find in
+this period only two general councils; if we include the fifth century,
+we get four; if we take in the sixth and seventh centuries, we have
+then, in all, six general councils. Will the decisions of any, or all,
+of these six councils furnish us with an authoritative interpretation of
+Scripture? They give us the Nicene and the Constantinopolitan creeds;
+they condemn various notions with respect to the person of our Lord, and
+to some other points of belief; and they contain a variety of
+regulations for the discipline and order of the church; but, with the
+exception of some particular passages, there is no authority in the
+creeds, or canons, or anathemas of those councils, for the
+interpretation of Scripture; they leave its difficulties just where they
+were before. It is but little then, which the first six general
+councils will do towards providing the student of Scripture with an
+infallible standard of interpretation.
+
+Where, however, except in the councils, can we find any thing claiming
+to be the voice of the church? Neither individual writers, nor yet all
+the writers of the first seven centuries together, can properly be
+called the church. They form, even altogether, but a limited number of
+individuals, who, in different countries, and at different periods,
+expressed, in writing, their own sentiments, but without any public
+authority. Origen, one of the ablest and most learned of them all, was
+anathematized by the second council of Constantinople; Tertullian was
+heretical during a part of his life; Lactantius was taxed with
+heterodoxy. How are we to know who were sound? And if sound generally,
+that is to say, if they stand charged with no heretical error, yet it
+does not follow that a man is infallible because he is not heretical;
+and none of these writers have been distinguished like the five great
+Roman lawyers whom the edict of Theodosius[15] selected from the mass,
+and gave to their decisions a legal authority. Or again, if it be said
+that the agreement of the great majority of them is to be regarded as
+decisive, we answer, that as no individual amongst them is in himself an
+authority legally, so neither can any number of them be so; and if a
+moral authority only be meant, such as we naturally ascribe to the
+concurring judgment of many eminent men, then this is a totally
+different question, and is open to inquiry in every separate case; for
+as, on the one hand, no one denies that such a concurring judgment is
+_an_ authority, yet, on the other hand, it may be outweighed, either by
+the worth of the few who differ from the judgment, or by the reason of
+the case itself; and the concurring judgment of the majority may show no
+more than the force of a general prejudice, which only a very few
+individuals were sensible enough to resist.
+
+[Footnote 15: Cod. Theodos. lib. i. tit. iv. The edict is issued in the
+name of the emperors Theodosius (the younger) and Valentinian (the
+younger), in the year A.D. 426.]
+
+In fact, it would greatly help to clear this question if we understand
+what we mean by allowing, or denying, the authority of the so-called
+fathers. The term _authority_ is ambiguous, and according to the sense
+in which I use it, I should either acknowledge it or deny it.--The
+writers of the first four, or of the first seven centuries, have _an_
+authority, just as the scholiasts and ancient commentators have: some of
+them, and in some points, are of weight singly; the agreement of many
+of thorn has much weight; the agreement of almost all of them would have
+great weight. In this sense, I acknowledge their authority; and it would
+be against all sound principles of criticism to deny it. But if, by
+authority, is meant a _decisive_ authority, a judgment which may not be
+questioned, then the claim of authority in such a case, for any man, or
+set of men, is either a folly or a revelation. Such an authority is not
+human, but divine: if any man pretends to possess it, let him show God's
+clear warrant for his pretension, or he must be regarded as a deceiver
+or a madman.
+
+But it may be said, that an authority not to be questioned was
+conferred, by the Roman law, on the opinions of a certain number of
+great lawyers: if a judge believed that their interpretation of the law
+was erroneous, he yet was not at liberty to follow his own private
+judgment in departing from it. Why may not the same thing be allowed in
+the church? and why may not the interpretations of Cyprian, or
+Athanasius, or Augustine, or Chrysostom, be as decisive, with respect to
+the true sense of the Scripture, as those of Gaius, Paulus, Modestinus,
+Ulpian, and Papinian, were acknowledged to be with respect to the sense
+of the Roman law?
+
+The answer is, that the emperor's edict could absolve the judge from
+following his own convictions about the sense of the law, because it
+gave to the authorized interpretation the force of law. The text, as the
+judge interpreted it, was a law repealed; the comment of the great
+lawyers was now the law in its room. As a mere literary composition, he
+might interpret it rightly, and Gaius, or Papinian, might be wrong; but
+if his interpretation was ever so right grammatically or critically,
+yet, legally it was nothing to the purpose;--Gaius's interpretation had
+superseded it, and was not the law which he was bound to obey. But, in
+the church, the only point to be aimed at is the discovery of the true
+meaning of the text of the divine law: no human power can invest the
+comment with equal authority. The emperor said, and might say to his
+judges, "You need not consider what was the meaning of the decemvirs,
+when they wrote the twelve tables, or, of Aquillius, when he drew up the
+Aquillian law. The law for you is not what the decemvirs may have meant,
+but what their interpreters may have meant: the decemvirs' meaning, if
+it was their meaning, is no longer the law of Rome." But who can dare to
+say to a Christian, "You need not consider what was the meaning of our
+Lord and his apostles; the law for you now is the meaning of Cyprian, or
+Ambrose, or Chrysostom;--that meaning has superseded the meaning of
+Christ." A Christian must find out Christ's meaning, and believe that he
+has found it, or else he must still seek for it. It is a matter, not of
+outward submission, but of inward faith; and if in our inward mind we
+are persuaded that the interpreter has mistaken our Lord's meaning, how
+can we by possibility adopt that interpretation in faith?
+
+Here we come to a grave consideration--that this doctrine of an
+infallible rule of interpretation may suit ignorance or scepticism: it
+is death to a sincere and reasonable and earnest faith. It is not hard
+for a sceptical mind to deceive itself by saying, that it receives
+whatever the church declares to be true: it may receive any number of
+doctrines, but it will not really believe them. We may restrain our
+tongues from disputing them, we may watch every restless thought that
+would question them, and instantly, by main force, as it were, put it
+down; but all this time our minds do not assimilate to them; they do not
+take them up into their own nature, so as to make them a part of
+themselves, freshening and supplying the life-blood of their very being.
+Truth must be believed by the mind's own act; our souls must be drawn
+towards it with a reasonable love; some affinity there must be between
+it and them, or else they can never really comprehend it. The sceptic
+may desperately become a fanatic also, but he is not become, therefore,
+a believer.
+
+Authority cannot compel belief; the sceptic who knows not what it is to
+grasp anything with the firm grasp of faith, may mistake his
+acquiescence in a doctrine for belief in it; the ignorant and careless,
+who believe only what their senses tell them, may lay up the words of
+divine truth in their memory, may repeat them loudly, and be vehement
+against all who question them. But minds to which faith is a necessity,
+which cannot be contented to stand by the side of truth, but must become
+altogether one with it,--minds which know full well the difference
+between opinion and conviction, between not questioning and
+believing,--they, when their own action is superseded by an authority
+foreign to themselves, are in a condition which they find intolerable.
+Told to believe what they cannot believe; told that they ought not to
+believe what they feel most disposed to believe; they retire altogether
+from the region of divine truth, as from a spot tainted with moral
+death, and devote themselves to other subjects: to physical science, it
+may be, or to political; where the inherent craving of their nature may
+yet be gratified, where, however insignificant the truth may be, they
+may yet find some truth to believe. This has been the condition of too
+many great men in the church of Rome; and it accounts for that
+bitterness of feeling with which Machiavelli, and others like him,
+appear to have regarded the whole subject of Christianity.
+
+The system, then, of deferring to the authority of what is called the
+ancient church in the interpretation of Scripture, is impracticable,
+inasmuch as, with regard to the greatest part of the Scripture, the
+church, properly speaking, has said nothing at all; and if it were
+practicable, it would be untenable, because neither the old councils,
+nor individual writers, could give any sign that they had a divine gift
+of interpretation; and if such a gift had been given to them, it would
+have been equivalent to a new revelation, the sense of the comment being
+thus preferred to what we could not but believe to be the sense of the
+text. Above all, the system is destructive of faith, having a tendency
+to substitute passive acquiescence for real conviction; and therefore I
+should not say that the excess of it was popery, but that it had once
+and actually those characters of evil which we sometimes express by the
+term popery, but which may be better signified by the term idolatry; a
+reverence for that which ought not to be reverenced, leading to a want
+of faith in that which is really deserving of all adoration and love.
+
+II. But it is said that the system of relying on private judgment is
+beset by no less evils: that it is itself inconsistent, and leads to
+Socinianism and Rationalism, and, in the end, to utter unbelief; so
+that, the choice being only between two evils, men may choose the system
+of church authority as being the less evil of the two. If this were so,
+I see not how faith could be attained at all, or what place would be
+left for Christian truth. But the system of the Church of England[16]
+is, I am persuaded, fully consistent, and has no tendency either to
+Socinianism or Rationalism. Let us see first what that system is.
+
+[Footnote 16: Much has been lately written to show that the Church of
+England allows the authority of the ancient councils and writers, and
+does not allow the right of private judgment. But it is perfectly clear,
+from the 21st Article, that it does not allow the authority of councils;
+that is to say, it holds that a council's exposition of doctrine may be
+false, and that such an exposition is of no force "unless it may be
+declared that it be taken out of Holy Scripture." Who, then, is to
+declare this? for to suppose that the declaration of the council itself
+is meant is absurd: the answer, I imagine, would be, according to the
+mind of the Reformers, "Every particular or national church," and
+especially the King as the head of the church. They would not have
+allowed private judgment, because they conceived that a private person
+had nothing to do but to obey the government; and it was for the
+government to determine what the truth of Scripture was. The Church of
+England, then, expressly disclaims the authority of councils, and, in
+its official instruments, it neither allows nor condemns private
+judgment; but the opinions of the Reformers, and the constitution of the
+church in the 16th century, were certainly against private judgment:
+their authority for the interpretation of Scripture was undoubtedly the
+supreme government of the church, i.e. not the bishops, but the King and
+parliament. But then this had respect not to the power of discerning
+truth, but to the right of publishing it, which is an wholly different
+question. That an individual was not bound _in foro conscientiæ_ to
+admit the truth of any interpretation of Scripture which did not approve
+itself to his own mind, was no less the judgment of the Church of
+England than that if he publicly disputed the interpretation of the
+church, he might be punished as unruly and a despiser of government. But
+then it should ever be remembered that the church, with the Reformers,
+was not the clergy. And now that the right of publication is conceded by
+the church, it is quite just to say that the Church of England allows
+private judgment; and if that judgment differ from her own, she condemns
+not the act of judging at all, but the having come to a false
+conclusion.
+
+It is urged that the act of I Elizabeth, c. 1, allows that to be heresy
+which the first four councils determined to be so. This is true; but it
+also adjudges to be heresy whatever shall be hereafter declared to be so
+by "the high court of parliament, with the assent of the clergy in their
+convocation." The Church of England undoubtedly allowed the decisions of
+the first four councils, in matters of doctrine, to be valid, as it
+allowed the three creeds, because it decided that they were agreeable to
+Scripture; but the binding authority was that of the English Parliament,
+not of the councils of Nicæa or Constantinople.
+
+As to the canon of 1571, which allows preachers to teach nothing as
+religious truth but what is agreeable to the Scriptures, "_and_ which
+the catholic fathers and ancient bishops have collected from that very
+doctrine of Scripture," it will be observed that it is merely negative,
+and does not sanction the teaching of the "catholic fathers and ancient
+bishops," generally, or say that men shall teach what they taught; but
+that they shall not teach as matter of religious faith, a new deduction
+from Scripture of their own making, but such truths as had been actually
+deduced from Scripture before, namely, the great articles of the
+Christian faith. Farther, the canons of 1571 are of no authority, not
+having received the royal assent.--_See Strype's Life of Parker_, p.
+322, ed. 1711.]
+
+It is invidiously described as maintaining "the sufficiency of private
+judgment." Now we maintain the sufficiency of private judgment in
+interpreting the Scriptures in no other sense than that in which every
+sane man maintains its sufficiency, in interpreting Thucydides or
+Aristotle; we mean, that, instead of deferring always to some one
+interpreter, as an idle boy follows implicitly the Latin version of his
+Greek lesson, the true method is to consult all[17] accessible
+authorities, and to avail ourselves of the assistance of all. And we
+contend, that, by this process, as we discover, for the most part, the
+true meaning of Thucydides and Aristotle with undoubted certainty, so we
+may also discover, not, indeed, in every particular part or passage, but
+generally, the true meaning of the Holy Scriptures with no less
+certainty.
+
+[Footnote 17: Of course no reasonable man can doubt the importance of
+studying the early Christian writers, as illustrating not only the
+history of their own times, but the New Testament also. For the Old
+Testament, indeed, they do little or nothing, and for the New they are
+of much less assistance than might have been expected; but still there
+is no doubt that they are often useful.]
+
+But if another man maintains that a different meaning is the true one,
+how are we to silence him, and how are we justified in calling him a
+heretic? If by the term heretic we are to imply moral guilt, I am not
+justified in applying it to any Christian, unless his doctrines are
+positively sinful, or there is something wicked, either in the way of
+dishonesty or bitterness, in his manner of maintaining them. The guilt
+of any given religious error, in any particular case, belongs only to
+the judgment of Him who reads the heart. But if we mean by heresy "a
+grave error in matters of the Christian faith, overthrowing or
+corrupting some fundamental article of it," then we are as fully
+justified in calling a gross misinterpretation of Scripture "heresy," as
+we should be justified in calling a gross misinterpretation of a profane
+Greek or Latin author, ignorance, or want of scholarship. There is no
+infallible authority in points of grammar and criticism, yet men do
+speak confidently, notwithstanding, as to learning and ignorance; Porson
+and Herman are known to have understood their business, and a writer who
+were to set their decisions at defiance, and to indulge in mere
+extravagances of interpretation, would be set down as one who knew
+nothing about the matter. So we judge daily in all points of literature
+and science; nay, we in the same manner venture to call some persons
+mad, and on the strength of our conviction we deprive them of their
+property, and shut them up in a madhouse: yet if madmen wore to insist
+that they were sane, and that we were mad, I know not to what infallible
+authority we could appeal; and, after all, what are we to do with those
+who deny that authority to be infallible? we must then go to another
+infallible authority to guarantee the infallibility of the first, and
+this process will run on for ever.
+
+But, in truth, there is more in the matter than the being justified or
+not justified in calling our neighbour a heretic. The real point of
+anxiety, I imagine, with many good and thinking men is this: whether a
+reasonable belief can be fairly carried through; whether the notion of
+the all-sufficiency of Scripture is not liable to objections no less
+than the system of church-authority; whether, in short, our Christian
+faith can be consistently maintained without a mortal leap at some part
+or other of the process; nay, whether, in fact, if it were otherwise,
+our faith would not seem to stand rather on the wisdom of man than on
+the power of God.
+
+I use these words, because these and other such passages of the
+Scripture are often quoted as I have now quoted them, and produce a
+great effect on those who do not observe that they are quoted
+inapplicably; for the question is not between man's wisdom and God's
+power, but simply whether we have reason to believe that God's power has
+been here manifested; or, rather, to see whether we cannot give a reason
+for the faith which is in us, such faith resting upon God's power and
+wisdom as manifested in Christ Jesus; for if no reason can be rendered
+for our faith, then our minds, so far as they are concerned, are
+believing a lie; they are believing in spite of those laws by which God
+has determined their nature and condition.
+
+Yet, however we believe, blindly or reasonably, (for some men, by God's
+mercy, are accidentally, as it were, in possession of the truth, the
+falsehood of their own minds in holding it not being, it is to be hoped,
+imputed to them as a sin;) however we believe, I never mean to say that
+our faith is not God's gift, to be sought for and retained by constant
+prayer and watchfulness, and to be forfeited by carelessness or sin.
+That is no true faith in which reason does not accord; yet neither can
+reason alone and without God ever become perfected into faith. For
+although intellectually, the grounds of belief may be made out
+satisfactorily, yet we are not able to follow our pure reason by
+ourselves; and no work on the evidences of Christianity can by itself
+give us faith; and much less can amid the manifold conflicts of life
+maintain it. That faith is thus the gift of God, and not our own work, I
+would desire to feel as keenly and continually, as with the fullest
+conviction I acknowledge it.
+
+Now, to resume the consideration of that which, as I said, is the real
+point of anxiety with many. They doubt whether the course of a
+reasonable belief can be held to the end without interruptions: they say
+that the received notions of the inspiration, and consequently of the
+complete truth of the Scriptures cannot reasonably be maintained; that
+he who does maintain them does so by a happy inconsistency;--he is to
+be congratulated for not following up his own principles; but why should
+he then find fault with others who do that avowedly and consistently to
+which he is driven against his professions by the clear necessity of
+the case?
+
+This argument was pressed by Mr. Newman, some time since, in one of the
+Tracts for the Times; and it was conducted, as may be supposed, with
+great ingenuity, but with a recklessness of consequences, or an
+ignorance of mankind, truly astonishing; for he brought forward all the
+difficulties and differences which can be found in the Scripture
+narratives, displayed them in their most glaring form, and merely
+observed, that as those with whom he was arguing could not solve these
+difficulties, but yet believed the Scriptures no less in spite of them,
+so the apparent unreasonableness of his doctrine about the priesthood
+was no ground why it should be rejected--a method of argument most
+blameable in any Christian to adopt towards his brethren; for what if
+their faith, being thus vehemently strained, were to give way under the
+experiment? and if, being convinced that the Scriptures were not more
+reasonable than Mr. Newman's system, they were to end with believing,
+not both, but neither?
+
+Therefore the question is one of no small anxiety and interest; and it
+is not idly nor wantonly that we must speak the truth upon it, even if
+that truth may to some seem startling; for by God's blessing, if we do
+go boldly forward wherever truth shall lead us, our course needs not be
+interrupted, neither shall a single hair of our faith perish.
+
+The same laws of criticism which teach us to distinguish between various
+degrees of testimony, authorize us to assign the very highest rank to
+the evidences of the writings of St. John and St. Paul. If belief is to
+be given to any human compositions, it is due to these; yet if we
+believe these merely as human compositions, and without assuming
+anything as to their divine inspiration, our Christian faith, as it
+seems to me, is reasonable;--not merely the facts of our Lord's miracles
+and resurrection; but Christian faith, in all its fulness--the whole
+dispensation of the Spirit, the revelation of the redemption of man and
+of the Divine Persons who are its authors--of all that Christian faith,
+and hope, and love can need. And this is so true, that even without
+reckoning the Epistle to the Hebrews amongst St. Paul's writings,--nay,
+even if we choose to reject the three pastoral epistles[18]--yet taking
+only what neither has been nor can be doubted--the epistles to the
+Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and
+Thessalonians, we have in these, together with St. John's Gospel and
+First Epistle,--giving up, if we choose, the other two,--a ground on
+which our faith may stand for ever, according to the strictest rules of
+the understanding, according to the clearest intuitions of reason.
+
+[Footnote 18: I say this, not as having the slightest doubt myself of
+the genuineness of any one of the three, but merely to show how much is
+left that has not been questioned at all, even unreasonably.]
+
+I take the works of St. John and St. Paul as our foundation, because, in
+the first place, we find in them the historical basis of Christianity;
+that is to say, we find the facts of our Lord's miracles, and especially
+of his resurrection, and the miraculous powers afterwards continued to
+the church, established by the highest possible evidence. However pure
+and truly divine the principles taught in the gospel may be, yet we
+crave to know not only that we were in need of redemption, but that a
+Redeemer has actually appeared; not only that a resurrection to eternal
+life is probable, but that such a resurrection has actually taken place.
+This basis of historical fact, which is one of the great peculiarities
+of Christianity, is strictly within the cognizance of the understanding;
+and in the writings of St. John and St. Paul we have that full and
+perfect evidence of it which the strictest laws of the understanding
+require.
+
+But the historical truth being once warranted by the understanding,
+other faculties of our nature now come in to enjoy it, and develop it;
+the highest reason and the moral and spiritual affections find
+respectively their proper field and objects, which, whenever presented
+to them in vision or in theory, they must instinctively cling to, but to
+which they now abandon themselves without fear of disappointment,
+because the understanding has assured them of their reality. We must
+suppose, on any system, the existence of reason and spiritual affections
+as indispensable to the understanding of the Scriptures; external
+authority can do nothing for us without these, any more than the mere
+faculties of the common understanding. But with these we apprehend the
+view which St. John and St. Paul afford to us: it opens before us one
+truth after another, one glory after another. St. John evidently
+supposes that his readers were familiar with another account of our
+Lord's life and teaching; and we find accordingly, another account
+existing in the writings of the three other evangelists. One and the
+same account is manifestly the substance of their three narratives, to
+which they thus bear a triple testimony, because none of the three has
+merely transcribed the others, and none of them apparently was the
+original author of it. Thus having now the full record of our Lord's
+teaching, we find that he everywhere refers to the Old Testament as to
+the word of God, and the record of God's earlier manifestations of
+himself to man. He has cleared up those especial points in it which
+might have most perplexed us, as I shall notice more fully hereafter,
+and he represents himself as the perpetual subject of its prophecies. We
+thus receive the Old Testament, as it were, from his hand, and learn
+while sitting at his feet to understand the lessons of the law and
+the prophets.
+
+Thus we make Christ the centre of both Testaments, and by so doing, we
+cannot be blind to the divinity pervading both. For the amazing fact
+that God should come into the world and be in the world cannot by
+possibility stand alone; it hallows, as it were, the whole period of the
+world's existence, from the beginning to the end, placing all time and
+every place in relation to God; it disposes us at once to receive the
+fact of the special call of the people of Israel;--it gives, I had
+almost said, an _à priori_ reason why there must have been in earlier
+times some shadows, at least, or images, to represent dimly to former
+generations that great thing which they were not actually to witness; it
+leads us to believe that there must have been some prophetic voices to
+announce the future coming of the Lord, or else "The very stones must
+have cried out."
+
+But those writings of St. John and St. Paul which were our first lessons
+in Christianity, and those other accounts of our Lord's life and
+teaching to which they introduced us,--can we conceive it possible, that
+the real meaning of all these shall be hopelessly obscure and uncertain;
+that if we seek it ever so diligently, we shall not find it? With an
+humble mind ready to learn, with a heart fully impressed with the sense
+of God's presence, so as to be morally and spiritually in a condition to
+receive God's truth, can we believe, then, that the use of those
+intellectual means, which open to us certainly the sense of human
+writers, shall be applied in vain to those writers who were commissioned
+to be the very heralds of a divine message, whose especial business it
+was to make known what they had themselves heard? Surely if a sufficient
+certainty of interpretation be attainable in common literature, the
+revelation of God cannot be the solitary exception.
+
+But we may be mistaken: we may _believe_ that we interpret truly, but
+we cannot be _infallibly sure_ of it; we want an authority which shall
+give us this assurance. This is no doubt the natural craving of our
+weakness; but it is no wiser a craving than if we were to long for the
+heaven to be opened, and for a daily sight of our Lord standing at the
+right hand of God. To live by faith is our appointed condition, and
+faith excludes an infallible assurance. We must earnestly believe that
+we have the truth, and die for our belief, if necessary, but we cannot
+_know_ it. No device which the human mind can practise, can exclude the
+possibility of doubt. If we would find an armour which should cover us
+at every point from this subtle enemy, it would be an armour that would
+close up the pores of the skin, and stop our breath; our fancied
+security would kill us. Is it really possible that, with our knowledge
+of man's nature, our belief in any human authority can really be more
+free from doubt than our belief in the conclusions of our own reason?
+There must ever be the liability to uncertainty; we can put no moral
+truth so surely as that our minds shall always feel it to be absolutely
+certain. Where is the infallible authority that can assure us even of
+the existence of God? And will the scepticism that can believe its own
+conclusions in nothing else rest satisfied with one conclusion
+only--that the writers of the first four centuries cannot err? Surely to
+regard this as the most certain proposition that can be submitted to the
+human mind, is no better than insanity.
+
+But we will consent to trust, it may be said, with God's help, to our
+own deliberate convictions that we have interpreted Scripture truly; but
+you tell us that the Scripture itself is not inspired in every part; you
+tell us that there are in it chronological and historical difficulties,
+if not errors; that there are possibly some interpolations; that even
+the apostles may have been in some things mistaken, as in their belief
+that the end of the world was at hand. Where shall we find a rest for
+our feet, if you first take away from us our infallible interpreter, and
+now tell us, that even if we can ourselves interpret it aright, yet that
+we cannot be sure that the very Scripture itself is infallibly true?
+
+It is very true that our position with respect to the Scriptures is not
+in all points the same as our fathers'. For sixteen hundred years
+nearly, while physical science, and history, and chronology, and
+criticism, were all in a state of torpor, the questions which now
+present themselves to our minds could not from the nature of the case
+arise. When they did arise, they came forward into notice gradually:
+first the discoveries in astronomy excited uneasiness: then as men
+began to read more critically, differences in the several Scripture
+narratives of the same thing awakened attention; more lately, the
+greater knowledge which has been gained of history, and of language, and
+in all respects the more careful inquiry to which all ancient records
+have been submitted, have brought other difficulties to light, and some
+sort of answer must be given to them. Mr. Newman, as we have seen, has
+made use of those difficulties much as the Romanists have used the
+doctrine of the Trinity when arguing with Trinitarians[19] in defence of
+transubstantiation. The Romanists said,--"Here are all these
+inexplicable difficulties in the doctrine of the Trinity, and yet you
+believe it." So Mr. Newman argues with those who hold the plenary
+inspiration of Scripture, that if they believe that, in spite of all the
+difficulties which beset it, they may as well believe his doctrine of
+the priesthood; and many, if I mistake not, alarmed by this
+representation, have actually embraced his opinions.
+
+[Footnote 19: On this proceeding of the Romanists, Stillingfleet
+observes, "Methinks for the sake of our common Christianity you should
+no more venture upon such bold and unreasonable comparisons. Do you in
+earnest think it is all one whether men do believe a God, or providence,
+or heaven, or hell, or the Trinity, and incarnation of Christ, if they
+do not believe transubstantiation? We have heard much of late about old
+and new popery: but if this be the way of representing new popery, by
+exposing the common articles of faith, it will set the minds of all good
+Christians farther from it than ever. For upon the very same grounds we
+may expect another parallel between the belief of a God and
+transubstantiation, the effect of which will be the exposing of all
+religion. This is a very destructive and mischievous method of
+proceeding; but our comfort is that it is very unreasonable, as I hope
+hath fully appeared by this discourse."--_Doctrine of the Trinity and
+Transubstantiation compared_, at the end.]
+
+It has unfortunately happened that the difficulties of the Scripture
+have been generally treated as objections to the truth of Christianity;
+as such they have been pressed by adversaries, and as such Christian
+writers have replied to them. But then they become of such tremendous
+interest, that it is scarcely possible to examine them fairly. If my
+faith in God and my hope of eternal life is to depend on the accuracy of
+a date or of some minute historical particular, who can wonder that I
+should listen to any sophistry that may be used in defence of them, or
+that I should force my mind to do any sort of violence to itself, when
+life and death seem to hang on the issue of its decision?
+
+Yet what conceivable connexion is there between the date of Cyrenius's
+government, or the question whether our Lord healed a blind man as he
+was going into Jericho or as he was leaving it; or whether Judas bought
+himself the field of blood, or it was bought by the high priests: what
+connexion can there be between such questions, and the truth of God's
+love to man in the redemption, and of the resurrection of our Lord? Do
+we give to any narrative in the world, to any statement, verbal or
+written, no other alternative than that it must be either infallible or
+unworthy of belief? Is not such an alternative so extravagant as to be a
+complete reductio ad absurdum? And yet such is the alternative which men
+seem generally to have admitted in considering the Scripture narratives:
+if a single error can be discovered, it is supposed to be fatal to the
+credibility of the whole.
+
+This has arisen from an unwarranted interpretation of the word
+"inspiration," and by a still more unwarranted inference. An inspired
+work is supposed to mean a work to which God has communicated his own
+perfections; so that the slightest error or defect of any kind in it is
+inconceivable, and that which is other than perfect in all points cannot
+be inspired. This is the unwarranted interpretation of the word
+"inspiration." But then follows the still more unwarranted
+inference,--"If all the Scripture is not inspired, Christianity cannot
+be true," an inference which is absolutely entitled to no other
+consideration than what it may seem to derive from the number of those
+who have either openly or tacitly maintained it.
+
+Most truly do I believe the Scriptures to be inspired; the proofs of
+their inspiration rise continually with the study of them. The
+scriptural narratives are not only about divine things, but are
+themselves divinely framed and superintended. I cannot conceive my
+conviction of this truth being otherwise than sure. Yet I must
+acknowledge that the scriptural narratives do not claim this inspiration
+for themselves; so that if I should be obliged to resign my belief in
+it, which seems to me impossible, I yet should have no right to tax the
+Scriptures with having advanced a pretension proved to be unfounded;
+their whole credibility as a most authentic history of the most
+important facts would remain untouched; the gospel of St. John would
+still be a narrative as unimpeachable as that of Thucydides, which no
+sane man has ever disbelieved.
+
+So much for the unwarranted inference, that if the Scripture histories
+are not inspired, the great facts of the Christian revelation cannot be
+maintained. But it is no less an unwarranted interpretation of the term
+"inspiration," to suppose that it is equivalent to a communication of
+the Divine perfections. Surely, many of our words and many of our
+actions are spoken and done by the inspiration of God's Spirit, without
+whom we can do nothing acceptable to God. Yet does the Holy Spirit so
+inspire us as to communicate to us His own perfections? Are our best
+words or works utterly free from error or from sin? All inspiration does
+not then destroy the human and fallible part in the nature which it
+inspires; it does not change man into God.
+
+In one man, indeed, it was otherwise; but He was both God and man. To
+Him the Spirit was given without measure; and as his life was without
+sin, so his words were without error. But to all others the Spirit has
+been given by measure; in almost infinitely different measure it is
+true: the difference between the inspiration of the common and perhaps
+unworthy Christian who merely said that "Jesus was the Lord," and that
+of Moses, or St. Paul, and St. John, is almost to our eyes beyond
+measuring. Still the position remains, that the highest degree of
+inspiration given to man has still suffered to exist along with it a
+portion of human fallibility and corruption.
+
+Now, then, consider the epistles of the blessed Apostle St. Paul, who
+had the Spirit of God so abundantly, that never we may suppose did any
+merely human being enjoy a larger share of it. Endowed with the Spirit
+as a Christian, and daily receiving grace more largely, as he became
+more and more ripe for glory; endowed with the Spirit's extraordinary
+gifts most eminently; favoured also with an abundance of revelations,
+disclosing to him things ineffable and inconceivable,--are not his
+writings to be most truly called inspired? Can we doubt that, in what he
+has told us of things not seen, or not seen as yet,--of Him who
+pre-existed in the form of God before he was manifested in the form of
+man,--of that great day, when we shall arise incorruptible, and meet our
+Lord in the air, and be joined to him for ever,--can any reasonable mind
+doubt, that in speaking of these things he spoke what he had heard from
+God; that to refuse to believe his testimony is really to
+disbelieve God?
+
+Yet this great Apostle expected that the world would come to an end in
+the generation then existing. When he wrote to the Thessalonians some
+years before his first imprisonment at Rome, he warned them, no doubt,
+against expecting the end immediately: but he appears still to have
+supposed that it would come in the lifetime of men then living. At a
+later period, when writing to the Corinthians, his dissuasion of
+marriage seems to rest mainly upon this impression; it is good not to
+marry, "on account of the distress which is close at hand;" ([Greek:
+dia taen enestosan anankaen]; compare 2 Thess. ii. 2, [Greek: hos hoti
+enestaeken hae haemera tou Kyriou].) "The time is short," he adds; "the
+fashion of this world is passing away." And again, when speaking of the
+resurrection, he says emphatically, "the dead shall rise incorruptible,
+and _we_ shall be changed;" where the pronoun being expressed in the
+original, [Greek: chai haemeis allagaesometha], shows that by the term
+"_we_," he does not mean the dead, but those who were to be alive at
+Christ's coming. So again, still later, when writing from Rome to the
+Philippians, he tells them "the Lord is at hand;" and later still, even
+in his first epistle to Timothy, he charges Timothy "to keep his
+commandment without spot, unrebukable, until the appearing of our Lord
+Jesus Christ." These and other passages cannot without violence be
+interpreted even singly in any other sense; but taking them together,
+their meaning seems absolutely certain. Shall we say, then, that St.
+Paul entertained and expressed a belief which the event did not verify?
+We may say so, safely and reverently, in this instance; for here he was
+most certainly speaking as a man, and not by revelation; as it has been
+providentially ordered that our Lord's express words on this point have
+been recorded--"Of that day and hour knoweth no man; no, not the angels
+in heaven." Or again, shall we say, that St. Paul advised the
+Corinthians not to marry, chiefly on this ground; and that this throws a
+suspicion over his directions in other points? But again it has been
+ordered, that in this very place, and no where else in all his writing,
+St. Paul has expressly said that he was only giving his judgment as a
+Christian, and not speaking with divine authority;--the concluding words
+of the chapter, [Greek: doko de kago pneuma theou echein] do not
+signify, as our Version renders them, "And I think also that I have the
+Spirit of God," as if he were confirming his own judgment by an
+assertion of his inspiration in a sense beyond that of common
+Christians; but the words say, "And I think that I too have the Spirit
+of God," "I too as well as others whom you might consult, so that my
+judgment is no less worthy of attention than theirs." But it is his
+Christian judgment only that he is giving, as he expressly declares, and
+not his apostolical command or revelation; a distinction which he never
+makes elsewhere, and which is in itself so striking, that we seem to
+recognise in it God's especial mercy to us, that our faith in St. Paul's
+general declarations of divine truth might not be shaken, because in one
+particular point he was permitted to speak as a man, giving express
+notice at the same time that he was doing so.
+
+Now it is at least remarkable, that in the only two instances in which
+the existence of any absence of divine authority is to be discerned in
+St. Paul's epistles, provision is actually made by God's fondness to
+prevent them from prejudicing our faith in St. Paul's divine authority
+generally. And so in whatever points any error may be discoverable in
+Scripture, we shall find either that the errors are of a kind wholly
+unconnected with the revelation of what God has done to us, and of what
+we are to do towards Him; and therefore are perfectly consistent with
+the inspiration of the writer, unless we take that unwarranted notion of
+inspiration which considers it as equivalent to a communication of God's
+attributes perfectly; (and of this kind are any errors that may exist
+either in points of physical science, or of chronology, or of history;)
+or if there be any thing else which appears inconsistent with
+inspiration, in the sense in which we really may and do apply it to the
+Scriptures, namely, that they are a perfect guide and rule in all
+matters concerning our relations with God, then we shall find that God
+has made some special provision for the case, to remove what it
+otherwise might have had of real difficulty.
+
+This merciful care is above all to be recognised with regard to one
+point, which otherwise would, I think, have been a difficulty actually
+insuperable: I mean the manifestly imperfect moral standard, which in
+some cases is displayed in the characters of good men in the Old
+Testament. Put the gospel by the side of the law and history of the
+Israelites; observe what the law permitted, and public opinion under the
+law did not condemn; observe the actions recorded of persons who are
+declared to have been eminently good, and to have received God's
+especial blessing; and it is manifest that had not our Lord himself
+vouchsafed his help, one of two things must have happened--either that
+we must have followed the old heresy of rejecting the Old Testament
+altogether, or else that our respect for the Old Testament must have
+impeded the growth of the more perfect law of Christ. The true solution
+I do not think that we could have discovered, or ventured to admit on
+less authority than our Lord's. But his express declaration, that some
+things in the law itself were permitted, because nothing higher could
+then have been borne, and his stating in detail that in several points
+what was accounted good or allowable in the former dispensation was not
+so really, while at the same time he constantly refers to the Old
+Testament as divine, and confirms its language of blessing with respect
+to its most eminent characters, has completely cleared to us the whole
+question, and enables us to recognize the divinity of the Old Testament
+and the holiness of its characters, without lying against our
+consciences and our more perfect revelation, by justifying the actions
+of those characters as right, essentially and abstractedly, although
+they were excusable, or in some cases actually virtuous, according to
+the standard of right and wrong which prevailed under the law.
+
+After observing God's gracious care for us in this instance, as well as
+in those which I have noticed before, I cannot but feel that we may
+safely trust Him for every other similar case, if any such there be, and
+that he will not permit our faith either in him or in his holy word to
+be shaken, because we do not attempt to close our eyes against truth,
+nor seek to support our faith by sophistry and falsehood. Feeling what
+the Scriptures are, I would not give unnecessary pain to any one by an
+enumeration of those points in which the literal historical statement of
+an inspired writer has been vainly defended. Some instances will
+probably occur to most readers; others are perhaps not known, and never
+will be known to many, nor is it at all needful or desirable that they
+should know them. But if ever they are brought before them, let them not
+try to put them aside unfairly, from a fear that they will injure our
+faith. Let us not do evil that evil may be escaped from; and it is an
+evil, and the fruitful parent of evils innumerable, to do violence to
+our understanding or to our reason in their own appointed fields; to
+maintain falsehood in their despite, and reject the truth which they
+sanction. If writers of Mr. Newman's school will persist in displaying
+the difficulties of the Scripture before the eyes of those who had not
+been before aware of them, let those who are so cruelly tempted be
+conjured not to be dismayed; to refuse utterly to surrender up their
+sense of truth,--to persist in rejecting the unchristian falsehoods
+which they are called upon to worship; sure that after all that can be
+said, that system will remain false to the end; and their Christian
+faith, if they do not faithlessly attempt to strengthen it by unlawful
+means, will stand no less unshaken.
+
+In conclusion, Christian faith rests upon Scripture; and as it is in
+itself agreeable to the highest reason, so the authenticity of the
+Scriptures on which it rests is assured to us by the deliberate
+conclusions of the understanding; nor is any "mortal leap" necessary at
+any part of the process: nor any rejection of one truth, in order to
+retain our hold on another. And if it should happen, as in all
+probability it will, that we shall be called upon to correct in some
+respects our notions as to the Scriptures, and so far to hold views
+different from those of our fathers, we should consider that our
+fathers did not, and could not stand in our circumstances; that the
+knowledge which may call upon us to relinquish some of their opinions,
+was a knowledge which they had not. Till this knowledge comes to us, let
+us hold our fathers' opinions as they held them; but when it does come,
+it will come by God's will, and to do his work: and that work will,
+assuredly, not be our separation from our father's faith; but if we
+follow God's guidance humbly and cheerfully, clinging to God the while
+in personal devotion and obedience, we may be made aware of what to them
+would have been an inexplicable difficulty, and which was, therefore,
+hidden from their knowledge; and yet, "through the grace of our Lord
+Jesus Christ, we believe that we shall be saved even as they."
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Christian Life, by Thomas Arnold
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13151 ***
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13151 ***</div>
+
+<h2>THE</h2>
+<h1>CHRISTIAN LIFE;</h1>
+<h2>ITS COURSE, ITS HINDRANCES,<br>
+AND ITS HELPS.</h2>
+<h4>BY</h4>
+<h3>THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.,</h3>
+<h5>HEAD MASTER OF RUGBY SCHOOL,</h5>
+<h6>AND LATE FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD.</h6>
+<h5>From the Fifth London Edition.</h5>
+<h4>1856.</h4>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>"As far as the principle on which Archbishop Laud and
+his followers acted went to re-actuate the idea of the church, as a
+co-ordinate and living power by right of Christ's institution and
+express promise, I go along with them; but I soon discover that by
+the church they meant the clergy, the hierarchy exclusively, and
+then I fly off from them in a tangent.<br>
+<br>
+"For it is this very interpretation of the church, that, according
+to my conviction, constituted the first and fundamental apostasy;
+and I hold it for one of the greatest mistakes of our polemical
+divines, in their controversies with the Romanists, that they trace
+all the corruptions of the gospel faith to the
+Papacy."--COLERIDGE,<br>
+<br>
+<i>Literary Remains</i>, vol. iii. p. 386.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#INTRODUCTION.">INTRODUCTION.</a></p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_I.">LECTURE I.</a>.</p>
+<p>GEN. iii. 22.--And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become
+as one of us, to know good and evil.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_II.">LECTURE II.</a></p>
+<p>1 COR. xiii. 11.--When I was a child I spake as a child, I
+understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a
+man, I put away childish things.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_III.">LECTURE III.</a></p>
+<p>1 COR. xiii. 11.--When I was a child I spake as a child, I
+understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a
+man, I put away childish things.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_IV.">LECTURE IV.</a></p>
+<p>COL. i. 9.--We do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that
+ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and
+spiritual understanding.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_V.">LECTURE V.</a></p>
+<p>COL. i. 9.--We do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that
+ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and
+spiritual understanding.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_VI.">LECTURE VI.</a></p>
+<p>COL. iii. 3.--Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in
+God.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_VII.">LECTURE VII.</a></p>
+<p>1 COR. iii. 21--23.--All things are yours; whether Paul, or
+Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things
+present, or things to come; all are yours, and ye are Christ's; and
+Christ is God's.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_VIII.">LECTURE VIII.</a></p>
+<p>GAL. v. 16, 17.--Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the
+lusts of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and
+the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary the one to the
+other, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_IX.">LECTURE IX.</a></p>
+<p>LUKE xiv. 33.--Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all
+that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_X">LECTURE X.</a></p>
+<p>1 TIM. i. 9.--The law is not made for a righteous man, but for
+the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for
+the unholy and profane.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XI.">LECTURE XI.</a></p>
+<p>LUKE xxi. 36.--Watch ye, therefore, and pray always, that ye may
+be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to
+pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XII.">LECTURE XII.</a></p>
+<p>PROV. i. 28.--Then shall they call upon me, but I will not
+answer: they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XIII.">LECTURE XIII.</a></p>
+<p>MARK xii. 34.--Thou art not far from the kingdom of God.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XIV.">LECTURE XIV.</a></p>
+<p>MATT. xxii. 14.--For many are called, but few are chosen.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XV.">LECTURE XV.</a></p>
+<p>LUKE xi. 25.--When he cometh he findeth it swept and
+garnished.</p>
+<p>JOHN v. 42.--I know you, that ye have not the love of God in
+you.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XVI.">LECTURE XVI.</a></p>
+<p>MATT. xi. 10.--I send my messenger before thy face, who shall
+prepare thy way before thee.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XVII.">LECTURE XVII.</a></p>
+<p>1 COR. ii. 12.--We have received not the Spirit of the world,
+but the Spirit which is of God.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XVIII.">LECTURE XVIII.</a></p>
+<p>GEN. xxvii. 38.--And Esau said unto his father, Hast thou but
+one blessing, my father? Bless me, even me also, O my father.</p>
+<p>MATT. xv. 27.--And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of
+the crumbs which fall from their master's table.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XIX.">LECTURE XIX.</a></p>
+<p>MATT. xxii. 32.--God is not the God of the dead, but of the
+living.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XX.">LECTURE XX.</a></p>
+<p>EZEK. xiii. 22.--With lies ye have made the heart of the
+righteous sad, whom I have not made sad; and strengthened the hands
+of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way, by
+promising him life.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXI.">LECTURE XXI.</a></p>
+<p>ADVENT SUNDAY.</p>
+<p>HEB. iii. 16.--For some when they had heard did provoke; howbeit
+not all that came out of Egypt by Moses.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXII.">LECTURE XXII.</a></p>
+<p>CHRISTMAS DAY.</p>
+<p>JOHN i. 10.--He was in the world, and the world was made by him,
+and the world knew him not.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXIII.">LECTURE XXIII.</a></p>
+<p>SUNDAY NEXT BEFORE EASTER.</p>
+<p>MATT. xxvi. 40, 41.--What, could ye not watch with me one hour?
+Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation; the spirit
+indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXIV.">LECTURE XXIV.</a></p>
+<p>GOOD FRIDAY.</p>
+<p>ROMANS v. 8.--God commendeth his love towards us, in that, while
+we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXV.">LECTURE XXV.</a></p>
+<p>EASTER DAY.</p>
+<p>JOHN xx. 20.--Then the disciples went away again unto their own
+home.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXVI.">LECTURE XXVI.</a></p>
+<p>WHITSUNDAY.</p>
+<p>ACTS xix. 2.--Have you received the Holy Ghost since ye
+believed?</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXVII.">LECTURE XXVII.</a></p>
+<p>TRINITY SUNDAY.</p>
+<p>JOHN iii. 9.--How can these things be?</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXVIII.">LECTURE XXVIII.</a></p>
+<p>EXOD. iii. 6.--And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look
+upon God.</p>
+<p>LUKE xxiii. 30.--Then shall they begin to say to the mountains,
+Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXIX.">LECTURE XXIX.</a></p>
+<p>PSALM cxxxvii. 4.--- How shall we sing the Lord's song in a
+strange land?</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXX">LECTURE XXX.</a></p>
+<p>1 COR. xi. 26.--For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink
+this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he come.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXXI.">LECTURE XXXI.</a></p>
+<p>LUKE i. 3, 4.--It seemed good to me, also, having had perfect
+understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee
+in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the
+certainty of those things wherein thou hast been instructed.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXXII.">LECTURE XXXII.</a></p>
+<p>Luke i. 3, 4.--It seemed good to me, also, having had perfect
+understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee
+in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the
+certainty of those things wherein thou hast been instructed.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXXIII.">LECTURE XXXIII.</a></p>
+<p>JOHN ix. 29.--We know that God spake unto Moses; as for this
+fellow, we know not from whence he is.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXXIV.">LECTURE XXXIV.</a></p>
+<p>1 COR. xiv. 20.--Brethren, be not children in understanding:
+howbeit, in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXXV.">LECTURE XXXV.</a></p>
+<p>MATT. xxvi. 45, 46.--Sleep on now and take your rest; behold the
+hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of
+sinners. Rise, let us be going: behold he is at hand that doth
+betray me.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXXVI.">LECTURE XXXVI.</a></p>
+<p>2 COR. v. 17, 18.--Old things are passed away; behold all things
+are become new, and all things are of God, who hath reconciled us
+to himself by Jesus Christ.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXXVII.">LECTURE XXXVII.</a></p>
+<p>EZEK. xx. 49.--Then said I, Ah, Lord God! they say of me Doth he
+not speak parables?</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXXVIII.">LECTURE XXXVIII.</a></p>
+<p>ISAIAH v. 1.--Now will I sing to my well-beloved a song of my
+beloved touching his vineyard.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXXIX.">LECTURE XXXIX.</a></p>
+<p>COL. iii. 17.--Whatsoever ye do in the word or deed, do all in
+the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by
+Him.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#NOTES.">NOTES.</a></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="INTRODUCTION."></a>INTRODUCTION.</h2>
+<br>
+<p>The contents of this volume will be found, I hope, to be in
+agreement with its title.</p>
+<p>Amongst the helps of Christian life, the highest place is due to
+the Christian church and its ordinances. I have been greatly
+misunderstood with respect to my estimate of the Christian church,
+as distinguished from the Christian religion. I agree so far with
+those, from whom I in other things most widely differ, that I hold
+the revival of the church of Christ in its full perfection, to be
+the one great end to which all our efforts should be directed. This
+is with me no new belief, but one which I have entertained for many
+years. It was impressed most strongly upon me, as it appears to
+have been upon others, by the remarkable state of affairs and of
+opinions which we witnessed in this country about nine or ten years
+ago; and everything since that time has confirmed it in my mind
+more and more.</p>
+<p>Others, according to their own statement, received the same
+impression from the phenomena of the same period. But the movement
+had begun earlier; nor should I object to call it, as they do, a
+movement towards "something deeper and truer than satisfied the
+last century<a name="FNanchor1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1">[1]</a>."
+It began, I suppose, in the last ten years of the last century, and
+has ever since been working onwards, though for a long time slowly
+and secretly, and with no distinctly marked direction. But still,
+in philosophy and general literature, there have been sufficient
+proofs that the pendulum, which for nearly two hundred years had
+been swinging one way, was now beginning to swing back again; and
+as its last oscillation brought it far from the true centre, so it
+may be, that its present impulse may be no less in excess, and thus
+may bring on again, in after ages, another corresponding
+reaction.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor1">[1]</a>
+See Mr. Newman's Letter to Dr. Jelf, p. 27.</blockquote>
+<p>Now if it be asked what, setting aside the metaphor, are the two
+points between which mankind has been thus moving to and fro; and
+what are the tendencies in us which, thus alternately
+predominating, give so different a character to different periods
+of the human history; the answer is not easy to be given summarily,
+for the generalisation which it requires is almost beyond the
+compass of the human mind. Several phenomena appear in each period,
+and it would be easy to give any one of these as marking its
+tendency: as, for instance, we might describe one period as having
+a tendency to despotism, and another to licentiousness: but the
+true answer lies deeper, and can be only given by discovering that
+common element in human nature which, in religion, in politics, in
+philosophy, and in literature, being modified by the subject-matter
+of each, assumes in each a different form, so that its own proper
+nature is no longer to be recognized. Again, it would be an error
+to suppose that either of the two tendencies which so affect the
+course of human affairs were to be called simply bad or good. Each
+has its good and evil nicely intermingled; and taking the highest
+good of each, it would be difficult to say which was the more
+excellent;--taking the last corruption of each, we could not
+determine which, was the more hateful. For so far as we can trace
+back the manifold streams, flowing some from the eastern mountains,
+and some from the western, to the highest springs from which they
+rise, we find on the one side the ideas of truth and justice, on
+the other those of beauty and love;--things so exalted, and so
+inseparably united in the divine perfections, that to set either
+two above the other were presumptuous and profane. Yet these most
+divine things separated from each other, and defiled in their
+passage through this lower world, do each assume a form in human
+nature of very great evil: the exclusive and corrupted love of
+truth and justice becomes in man selfish atheism; the exclusive and
+corrupted worship of beauty and love becomes in man a bloody and a
+lying idolatry.</p>
+<p>Such would be the general theory of the two great currents in
+which human affairs may be said to have been successively drifting.
+But real history, even the history of all mankind, and much more
+that of any particular age or country, presents a picture far more
+complicated. First, as to time: as the vessels in a harbour, and in
+the open sea without it, may be seen swinging with the tide at the
+same moment in opposite directions; the ebb has begun in the
+roadstead, while it is not yet high water in the harbour; so one or
+more nations may be in advance of or behind the general tendency of
+their age, and from either cause may be moving in the opposite
+direction. Again, the tendency or movement in itself is liable to
+frequent interruptions, and short counter-movements: even when the
+tide is coming in upon the shore, every wave retires after its
+advance; and he who follows incautiously the retreating waters, may
+be caught by some stronger billow, overwhelming again for an
+instant the spot which had just been left dry. A child standing by
+the sea-shore for a few minutes, and watching this, as it seems,
+irregular advance and retreat of the water, could not tell whether
+it was ebb or flood; and we, standing for a few years on the shore
+of time, can scarcely tell whether the particular movement which we
+witness is according to or against the general tendency of the
+whole period. Farther yet, as these great tendencies are often
+interrupted, so are they continually mixed: that is, not only are
+their own good and bad elements successively predominant, but they
+never have the world wholly to themselves: the opposite tendency
+exists, in an under-current it may be, and not lightly perceptible;
+but here and there it struggles to the surface, and mingles its own
+good and evil with the predominant good and evil of its antagonist.
+Wherefore he who would learn wisdom from the complex experience of
+history, must question closely all its phenomena, must notice that
+which is less obvious as well as that which is most palpable; must
+judge not peremptorily or sweepingly, but with reserves and
+exceptions; not as lightly overrunning a wide region of the truth,
+but thankful if after much pains he has advanced his landmarks only
+a little; if he has gained, as it were, but one or two frontier
+fortresses, in which he can establish himself for ever.</p>
+<p>Now, then, when Mr. Newman describes the movement of the present
+moment as being directed towards "something better and deeper than
+satisfied the last century," this description, although in some
+sense true, is yet in practice delusive; and the delusion which
+lurks in it is at the root of the errors of Mr. Newman and of his
+friends. They regard the tendencies of the last century as wholly
+evil; and they appear to extend this feeling to the whole period of
+which the last century was the close, and which began nearly with
+the sixteenth century. Viewing in this light the last three hundred
+years, they regard naturally with excessive favour the preceding
+period, with which they are so strongly contrasted; and not the
+less because this period has been an object of scorn to the times
+which have followed it. They are drawn towards the enemy of their
+enemy, and they fancy that it must be in all points their enemy's
+opposite. And if the faults of its last decline are too palpable to
+be denied, they ascend to its middle and its earlier course, and
+finding that its evils are there less flagrant, they abandon
+themselves wholly to the contemplation of its good points, and end
+with making it an idol. There are few stranger and sadder sights
+than to see men judging of whole periods of the history of mankind
+with the blindness of party-spirit, never naming one century
+without expressions of contempt or abhorrence, never mentioning
+another but with extravagant and undistinguishing admiration.</p>
+<p>But the worst was yet to come. The period which Mr. Newman and
+his friends so disliked, had, in its religious character, been
+distinguished by its professions of extreme veneration for the
+Scriptures; in its quarrel with the system of the preceding period,
+it had rested all its cause on the authority of the Scripture,--it
+had condemned the older system because Scripture could give no
+warrant for it. On the other hand, the partizans of the older
+system protested against the exclusive appeal to Scripture; there
+was, as they maintained, another authority in religious matters; if
+their system was not supported in all its points by Scripture, it
+had at least the warrant of Christian antiquity. Thus Mr. Newman
+and his friends found that the times which they disliked had
+professed to rely on Scripture alone; the times which they loved
+had invested the Church with equal authority. It was natural then
+to connect the evils of the iron age, for so they regarded it, with
+this notion of the sole supremacy of Scripture; and it was no less
+natural to associate the blessings of their imagined golden age
+with its avowed reverence for the Church. If they appealed only to
+Scripture, they echoed the language of men whom they abhorred; if
+they exalted the Church and Christian antiquity, they sympathised
+with a period which they were resolved to love. Their theological
+writings from the very beginning have too plainly shown in this
+respect the force both of their sympathies and their
+antipathies.</p>
+<p>Thus previously disposed, and in their sense or apprehension of
+the evil of their own times already flying as it were for refuge to
+the system of times past, they were overtaken by the political
+storm of 1831, and the two following years. That storm rattled
+loudly, and alarmed many who had viewed the gathering of the clouds
+with hope and pleasure; no wonder, then, if it produced a stormy
+effect upon those who viewed it as a mere calamity, an evil monster
+bred out of an evil time, and fraught with nothing but mischief.
+Farther, the government of the country was now, for the first time
+for many years, in the hands of men who admired the spirit of the
+age, nearly as much as Mr. Newman and his friends abhorred it. Thus
+all things seemed combined against them: the spirit of the period
+which they so hated was riding as it were upon the whirlwind; they
+knew not where its violence might burst; and the government of the
+country was, as they thought, driving wildly before it, without
+attempting to moderate its fury. Already they were inclined to
+recognise the signs of a national apostasy.</p>
+<p>But from this point they have themselves written their own
+history.--Mr. Percival's letter to the editor of the Irish
+Ecclesiastical Journal, which was reprinted in the Oxford Herald of
+January 80, 1841, is really a document of the highest value. It
+acquaints us, from the very best authority, with the immediate
+occasion of the publication of the Tracts for the Times, and with
+the objects of their writers. It tells us whither their eyes were
+turned for deliverance; with what charm they hoped to allay the
+troubled waters. Ecclesiastical history would be far more valuable
+than it is, if we could thus learn the real character and views of
+every church, or sect, or party, from itself, and not from its
+opponents.</p>
+<p>Mr. Percival informs us, that the Irish Church Act of 1833,
+which abolished several of the Irish Bishoprics, was the immediate
+occasion of the publication of the Tracts for the Times; and that
+the objects of that publication were, to enforce the doctrine of
+the apostolical succession, and to preserve the Prayer Book from
+"the Socinian leaven, with which we had reason to fear it would be
+tainted by the parliamentary alteration of it, which at that time
+was openly talked of." But the second of these objects is not
+mentioned in the more formal statements which Mr. Percival gives of
+them; and in what he calls the "matured account" of the principles
+of the writers, it is only said, "Whereas there seems great danger
+at present of attempts at unauthorized and inconsiderate innovation
+as in other matters so especially in the service of our Church, we
+pledge ourselves to resist any attempt that may be made to alter
+the Liturgy on insufficient authority: i.e. without the exercise of
+the free and deliberate judgment of the Church on the alterations
+proposed." It would seem, therefore, that what was particularly
+deprecated was "the alteration of the Liturgy on insufficient
+authority," without reference to any suspected character of the
+alteration in itself. But at any rate, as all probability of any
+alteration in the Liturgy vanished very soon after the publication
+of the tracts began, the other object, the maintaining the doctrine
+of the apostolical succession, as it had been the principal one
+from the beginning, became in a very short time the only one.</p>
+<p>The great remedy, therefore, for the evils of the times, the
+"something deeper and truer than satisfied the last century," or,
+at least, the most effectual means of attaining to it, is declared
+to be the maintenance of the doctrine of apostolical succession.
+Now let us hear, for it is most important, the grounds on which
+this doctrine is to be enforced, and the reason why so much stress
+is laid on it. I quote again from Mr. Percival's letter.</p>
+<p>"Considering, 1. That the only way of salvation is the partaking
+of the body and blood of our sacrificed Redeemer;</p>
+<p>"2. That the mean expressly authorized by him for that purpose
+is the holy sacrament of his supper;</p>
+<p>"3. That the security by him no less expressly authorized, for
+the continuance and due application of that sacrament, is the
+apostolical commission of the bishops, and under them the
+presbyters of the church;</p>
+<p>"4. That under the present circumstances of the church in
+England, there is peculiar danger of these matters being slighted
+and practically disavowed, and of numbers of Christians being left,
+or tempted to precarious and unauthorized ways of communion, which
+must terminate often in vital apostasy:--</p>
+<p>"We desire to pledge ourselves one to another, reserving our
+canonical obedience, as follows:--</p>
+<p>"1. To be on the watch for all opportunities of inculcating, on
+all committed to our charge, a due sense of the inestimable
+privilege of communion with our Lord, through the successors of the
+apostles, and of leading them to the resolution to transmit it, by
+his blessing, unimpaired to their children."</p>
+<p>Then follow two other resolutions: one to provide and circulate
+books and tracts, to familiarize men's minds with this doctrine;
+and the other, "to do what lies in us towards reviving among
+churchmen, the practice of daily common prayer, and more frequent
+participation of the Lord's Supper."</p>
+<p>The fourth resolution, "to resist unauthorized alterations of
+the Liturgy," I have already quoted: the fifth and last engages
+generally to place within the reach of all men, accounts of such
+points in our discipline and worship as may appear most likely to
+be misunderstood or undervalued.</p>
+<p>These resolutions were drawn up more than seven years ago, and
+their practical results have not been contemptible. The Tracts for
+the Times amount to no fewer than ninety; while the sermons,
+articles in reviews, stories, essays, poems, and writings of all
+sorts which have enforced the same doctrines, have been also
+extremely numerous. Nor have all these labours been without fruit:
+for it is known that a large proportion of the clergy have adopted,
+either wholly or in great part, the opinions and spirit of the
+Tracts for the Times; and many of the laity have embraced them
+also.</p>
+<p>It seems also, that in the various publications of their school,
+the object originally marked out in the resolutions quoted above,
+has been followed with great steadiness. The system has been
+uniform, and its several parts have held well together. It has,
+perhaps, been carried on of late more boldly, which is the natural
+consequence of success. It has in all points been the direct
+opposite of what may be called the spirit of English protestantism
+of the nineteenth century: upholding whatever that spirit would
+depreciate; decrying whatever it would admire. A short statement of
+the principal views held by Mr. Newman and his friends, will show
+this sufficiently.</p>
+<p>"The sacraments, and not preaching, are the sources of divine
+grace." So it is said in the Advertisement prefixed to the first
+volume of the Tracts for the Times, in exact conformity with the
+preamble to the resolutions, which I have already quoted. But the
+only security for the efficacy of the sacraments, is the
+apostolical commission of the bishops, and under them, of the
+presbyters of the Church. So it is said in the preamble to the
+resolutions. These two doctrines are the foundation of the whole
+system. God's grace, and our salvation, come to us principally
+through the virtue of the sacraments; the virtue of the sacraments
+depends on the apostolical succession of those who administer them.
+The clergy, therefore, thus holding in their hands the most
+precious gifts of the Church, acquire naturally the title of the
+Church itself; the Church, as possessed of so mysterious a virtue
+as to communicate to the only means of salvation their saving
+efficacy, becomes at once an object of the deepest reverence. What
+wonder if to a body endowed with so transcendant a gift, there
+should be given also the spirit of wisdom to discern all truth; so
+that the solemn voice of the Church in its creeds, and in the
+decrees of its general councils, must be received as the voice of
+God himself. Nor can such a body be supposed to have commended any
+practices or states of life winch are not really excellent; and the
+duty either of all Christians, or of those at least who would
+follow the most excellent way. Fasting, therefore, and the state of
+celibacy, are the one a christian obligation, the other a christian
+perfection. Again, being members of a body so exalted, and
+receiving our very salvation in a way altogether above reason, we
+must be cautious how we either trust to our individual conscience
+rather than to the command of the Church, or how we venture to
+exercise our reason at all in judging of what the Church teaches;
+childlike faith and childlike obedience are the dispositions which
+God most loves. What, then, are they who are not of the Church, who
+do not receive the Sacraments from those who can alone give them
+their virtue? Surely they are aliens from God, they cannot claim
+his covenanted mercies; and the goodness which may be apparent in
+them, may not be real goodness; God may see that it is false,
+though to us it appears sincere; but it is certain that they do not
+possess the only appointed means of salvation; and therefore, we
+must consider their state as dangerous, although, we may not
+venture to condemn them.</p>
+<p>I have not consciously misrepresented the system of Mr. Newman
+and his friends in a single particular; I have not, to my
+knowledge, expressed any one of their tenets invidiously. An
+attentive reader may deduce, I think, all the Subordinate points in
+their teaching from some one or more of the principles which I have
+given; but I have not wilfully omitted any doctrine of importance.
+And, in every point, the opposition to what I may be allowed to
+call the protestantism of the nineteenth century is so manifest,
+that we cannot but feel that the peculiar character of the system
+is to be traced to what I have before noticed--the extreme
+antipathy of its founders to the spirit which they felt to be
+predominant in their own age and country.</p>
+<p>It is worth our while to observe this, because fear and passion
+are not the surest guides to truth, and the rule of contraries is
+not the rule of wisdom. Other men have been indignant against the
+peculiar evils of their own time, and from their strong impression
+of these have seemed to lose sight of its good points; but Mr.
+Newman and his friends appear to hate the nineteenth century for
+its own sake, and to proscribe all belonging to it, whether good or
+bad, simply because it does belong to it.--This diseased state of
+mind is well shown by the immediate occasion of the organization of
+their party. Mr. Perceval tells us that it was the Act for the
+dissolution of some of the Irish bishoprics, passed in 1833, winch
+first made the authors of the Tracts resolve to commence their
+publication. Mr. Perceval himself cannot even now speak of that Act
+temperately; he calls it "a wanton act of sacrilege," "a monstrous
+act," "an outrage upon the Church;" and his friends, it may be
+presumed, spoke of it at the time in language at least equally
+vehement. Now, I am not expressing any opinion upon the justice or
+expediency of that Act; it was opposed by many good men, and its
+merits or demerits were fairly open to discussion; but would any
+fair and sensible person speak of it with such extreme abhorrence
+as it excited in the minds of Mr. Perceval and his friends? The Act
+deprived the Church of no portion of its property; it simply
+ordered a different distribution of it, with the avowed object on
+the part of its framers of saving the Church from the odium and the
+danger of exacting Church Rates from the Roman Catholics. It did
+nothing more than what, according to the constitution of the
+Churches of England and Ireland, was beyond all question within its
+lawful authority to do. The King's supremacy and the sovereignty of
+Parliament may be good or bad, but they are undoubted facts in the
+constitution of the Church of England, and have been so for nearly
+three hundred years. I repeat that I am stating no opinion as to
+the merits of the Irish Church Act of 1833; I only contend, that no
+man of sound judgment would regard it as "a monstrous act," or as
+"a wanton sacrilege." It bore upon it no marks of flagrant tyranny:
+nor did it restrain the worship of the Church, nor corrupt its
+faith, nor command or encourage anything injurious to men's souls
+in practice. Luther was indignant at the sale of indulgences; and
+his horror at the selling Church pardons for money was, by God's
+blessing, the occasion of the Reformation. The occasion of the new
+counter-reformation was the abolition of a certain number of
+bishoprics, that their revenues might be applied solely to church
+purposes; and that the Church might so be saved from a scandal and
+a danger. The difference of the exciting cause of the two movements
+gives the measure of the difference between the Reformation of
+1517, and the views and objects of Mr. Newman and his friends.</p>
+<p>There are states of nervous excitement, when the noise of a
+light footstep is distracting. In such a condition were the authors
+of the Tracts in 1833, and all their subsequent proceedings have
+shown that the disorder was still upon them. Beset by their horror
+of the nineteenth century, they sought for something most opposite
+to it, and therefore they turned to what they called Christian
+antiquity. Had they judged of their own times fairly, had they
+appreciated the good of the nineteenth century as well as its evil,
+they would have looked for their remedy not to the second or third
+or fourth centuries, but the first; they would have tried to
+restore, not the Church of Cyprian, or Athanasius, or Augustine,
+but the Church of St. Paul and of St. John. Now, this it is most
+certain that they have not done. Their appeal has been not to
+Scripture, but to the opinions and practices of the dominant party
+in the ancient Church. They have endeavoured to set those opinions
+and practices, under the name of apostolical tradition, on a level
+with the authority of the Scriptures. But their unfortunate
+excitement has made them fail of doing even what they intended to
+do. It may be true that all their doctrines may be found in the
+writings of those whom they call the Fathers; but the effect of
+their teaching is different because its proportions are altered.
+Along with their doctrines, there are other points and another
+spirit prominent in the writings of the earlier Christians, which
+give to the whole a different complexion. The Tracts for the Times
+do not appear to me to represent faithfully the language of
+Christian antiquity; they are rather its caricature.</p>
+<p>Still more is this the case, when we compare the language of Mr.
+Newman and his friends with that of the great divines of the Church
+of England. Granting that many of these believed firmly in
+apostolical succession; that one or two may have held general
+councils to be infallible; that some, provoked by the extravagances
+of the puritans, have spoken over-strongly about the authority of
+tradition; yet the whole works even of those who agree with. Mr.
+Newman in these points, give a view of Christianity different from
+that of the Tracts, because these points, which in the Tracts stand
+forward without relief, are in our old divines tempered by the
+admixture of other doctrines, which, without contradicting them, do
+in fact alter their effect. This applies most strongly, perhaps, to
+Hooker and Taylor; but it holds good also of Bull and Pearson.
+Pearson's exposition of the article in the Creed relating to the
+Holy Catholic Church is very different from the language of Mr.
+Newman: it is such as, with perhaps one single exception, might be
+subscribed by a man who did not believe in apostolical
+succession<a name="FNanchor2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2">[2]</a>.
+Again, Pearson is so far from making the creeds an independent
+authority, co-ordinate with Scripture, that he declares, contrary,
+I suppose, to all probability, that the Apostles' Creed itself was
+but a deduction from our present Scriptures of the New
+Testament<a name="FNanchor3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3">[3]</a>.
+Undoubtedly the divines of the seventeenth century are more in
+agreement with the Tracts than the Reformers are; but it is by no
+means true that this agreement is universal. There is but one set
+of writers whose minds are exactly represented by Mr. Newman and
+his friends, and these are the nonjurors.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor2">[2]</a>
+The sixth and last mark which he gives of the unity of the Church
+is, "the unity of discipline and government." "All the Churches of
+God have the same pastoral guides appointed, authorized,
+sanctified, and set apart by the appointment of God, by the
+direction of the Spirit, to direct and lead the people of God in
+the same way of eternal salvation; as, therefore, there is no
+Church where there is no order, no ministry, so where the same
+order and ministry is, there is the same Church. And this is the
+unity of regiment and discipline." Pearson on the Creed, Art. IX.
+p. 341, seventh edit. fol. 1701. It would be easy to put a
+construction upon this paragraph which I could agree with; but I
+suppose that Pearson meant what I hold to be an error. Yet how
+gently and generally is it expressed; and this doubtful paragraph
+stands alone amidst seventeen folio pages on the article of the
+Holy Catholic Church. And in his conclusion, where he delivers what
+"every one ought to intend when they profess to believe the Holy
+Catholic Church," there is not a word about its government; nor is
+Pearson one of those interpreters who pervert the perfectly certain
+meaning of the word "Catholic" to favour their own notions about
+episcopacy. I could cordially subscribe to every word of this
+conclusion.</blockquote>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor3">[3]</a>
+"To believe, therefore, as the word stands in the front of the
+Creed, ... is to assent to the whole and every part of it as to a
+certain and infallible truth revealed by God, ... and delivered
+unto us in the writings of the blessed apostles and prophets
+immediately inspired, moved, and acted by God, out of whose
+writings this brief sum of necessary points of faith was first
+collected." (P. 12.) And in the paragraph immediately preceding,
+Pearson had said, "The household of God is built upon the
+foundation of the apostles and prophets, who are continued unto us
+only in their writings, and by them alone convoy unto us the truths
+which they received from God, upon whose testimony we believe." It
+appears, therefore, that Pearson not only subscribed the 6th
+Article of the Church of England, but also believed
+it.</blockquote>
+<p>Many reasons, therefore, concur to make it doubtful whether the
+authors of the Tracts have discovered the true remedy for the evils
+of their age; whether they have really inculcated "something better
+and deeper than satisfied the last century." The violent prejudice
+which previously possessed them, and the strong feelings of passion
+and fear which led immediately to their first systematic
+publications, must in the first instance awaken a suspicion as to
+their wisdom; and this suspicion becomes stronger when we find
+their writings different from the best of those which they profess
+to admire, and bearing a close resemblance only to those of the
+nonjurors. A third consideration is also of much weight--that their
+doctrines do not enforce any great points of moral or spiritual
+perfection which other Christians had neglected; nor do they, in
+any especial manner, "preach Christ." In this they offer a striking
+contrast to the religious movement, if I may so call it, which
+began some years since in the University at Cambridge. That
+movement, whatever human alloy might have mingled with it, bore on
+it most clear evidence that it was in the main God's work. It
+called upon men to turn from sin and be reconciled to God; it
+emphatically preached Christ crucified. But Mr. Newman and his
+friends have preached as their peculiar doctrine, not Christ but
+the Church; we must go even farther and say, not the Church, but
+themselves. What they teach has no moral or spiritual excellence in
+itself; but it tends greatly to their own exaltation. They exalt
+the sacraments highly, but all that they say of their virtue, all
+their admiration of them as so setting forth the excellence of
+faith, inasmuch as in them the whole work is of God, and man has
+only to receive and believe, would be quite as true, and quite as
+well-grounded, if they were to abandon altogether that doctrine
+which it is their avowed object especially to enforce--the doctrine
+of apostolical succession. Referring again to the preamble of their
+original resolutions, already quoted, we see that the two first
+articles alone relate to our Lord and to his Sacraments; the third,
+which is the great basis of their system, relates only to the
+Clergy. Doubtless, if apostolical succession be God's will, it is
+our duty to receive it and to teach it; but a number of clergymen,
+claiming themselves to have this succession, and insisting that,
+without it, neither Christ nor Christ's Sacraments will save us,
+do, beyond all contradiction, preach themselves, and magnify their
+own importance. They are quite right in doing so, if God has
+commanded it; but such preaching has no manifest warrant of God in
+it; if it be according to God, it stands alone amongst his
+dispensations; his prophets and his apostles had a different
+commission. "We preach," said St. Paul, "not ourselves, but Christ
+Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake." It is
+certain that the enforcing apostolical succession as the great
+object of our teaching is precisely to do that very thing which St.
+Paul was commissioned not to do.</p>
+<p>This, to my mind, affords a very great presumption that the
+peculiar doctrines of Mr. Newman and his friends, those which they
+make it their professed business to inculcate, are not of God. I am
+anxious not to be misunderstood in saying this. Mr. Newman and his
+friends preach many doctrines which are entirely of God; as
+Christians, as ministers of Christ's Church, they preach God's
+word; and thus, a very large portion of their teaching is of God,
+blessed both to their hearers and to themselves. Nay, even amongst
+the particular objects to which their own "Resolutions" pledge
+them, one is indeed most excellent--"the revival of daily common
+prayer, and more frequent participation of the Lord's Supper." This
+is their merit, not as Christians generally, but as a party, (I use
+the word in no offensive sense;) in this respect their efforts have
+done, and are doing great good. But they have themselves declared
+that they will especially set themselves to preach apostolical
+succession; and it is with reference to this, that I charge them
+with "preaching themselves;" it was of this I spoke, when I said
+that there was a very great presumption that their peculiar
+doctrines were not of God.</p>
+<p>Again, the system which they hold up as "better and deeper than
+satisfied the last century" is a remedy which has been tried once
+already: and its failure was so palpable, that all the evil of the
+eighteenth century was but the reaction from that enormous evil
+which this remedy, if it be one, had at any rate been powerless to
+cure. Apostolical succession, the dignity of the Clergy, the
+authority of the Church, were triumphantly maintained for several
+centuries; and their full development was coincident, to say the
+least, with the corruption alike of Christ's religion and Christ's
+Church. So far were they from tending to realize the promises of
+prophecy, to perfect Christ's body up to the measure of the stature
+of Christ's own fulness, that Christ's Church declined during their
+ascendancy more and more;--she fell alike from truth and from
+holiness; and these doctrines, if they did not cause the evil, were
+at least quite unable to restrain it. For, in whatever points the
+fifteenth century differed from the fourth, it cannot be said that
+it upheld the apostolical succession less peremptorily, or attached
+a less value to Church tradition, and Church authority. I am
+greatly understating the case, but I am content for the present to
+do so: I will not say that Mr. Newman's favourite doctrines were
+the very Antichrist which corrupted Christianity; I will only say
+that they did not prevent its corruption,--that when they were most
+exalted Christian truth and Christian goodness were most
+depressed.</p>
+<p>After all, however, what has failed once may doubtless be
+successful on a second trial: it is within possibility, perhaps,
+that a doctrine, although destitute of all internal evidence
+showing it to come from God, may be divine
+notwithstanding;--revealed for some purposes which we cannot
+fathom, or simply as an exercise of our obedience. All this may be
+so; and if it can be shown to be so, there remains no other course
+than to believe God's word, and obey his commandments; only the
+strength of the external evidence must be in proportion to the
+weakness of the internal. A good man would ask for no sign from
+heaven to assure him that God commands judgment, mercy, and truth;
+whatsoever things are pure, and lovely, and of good report, bear in
+themselves the seal of their origin; a seal which to doubt were
+blasphemy. But the cloud and the lightnings and thunders, and all
+the signs and wonders wrought in Egypt and in the Red Sea, were
+justly required to give divine authority to mere positive
+ordinances, in which, without such external warrant, none could
+have recognised the voice of God. We ask of Mr. Newman and his
+friends to bring some warrant of Scripture for that which they
+declare to be God's will. They speak very positively and say, that
+"the security by our Lord no less expressly authorized for the
+continuance and due application of the Sacrament of the Lord's
+Supper, is the apostolical commission of the bishops, and under
+them the presbyters of the Church." They say that our Lord has
+authorized this "no less expressly" than he has authorized the Holy
+Supper as the mean of partaking in his body and blood. What our
+Lord has said concerning the communion is not truly represented: he
+instituted it as one mean of grace among many; not as<i>the</i>
+mean; neither the sole mean, nor the principal. But allow, for an
+instant, that it was instituted as<i>the</i> mean; and give this
+sense to those well-known and ever-memorable words in which our
+Lord commanded his disciples to eat the bread and drink of the cup,
+in remembrance of him. His words commanding us to do this are
+express; "not less express," we are told, is his "sanction of the
+apostolical commission of the bishops, as the security for the
+continuance and due application of the Sacrament." Surely these
+writers allow themselves to pervert language so habitually, that
+they do not consider when, and with regard to whom, they are doing
+it. They say that our Lord has sanctioned the necessity of
+apostolical succession, in order to secure the continuance and
+efficacy of the sacrament, "no less expressly" than he instituted
+the sacrament itself. If they had merely asserted that he had
+sanctioned the necessity of apostolical succession, we might have
+supposed that, by some interpretation of their own, they implied
+his sanction of it, from words which, to other men, bore no such
+meaning. But in saying that he has "expressly sanctioned it," they
+have, most unconsciously, I trust, ascribed their own words to our
+Lord; they make Mm to say what he has not said, unless they can
+produce<a name="FNanchor4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4">[4]</a> some
+other credible record of his words besides the books of the four
+evangelists and the apostolical epistles.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor4">[4]</a>
+"Scripture alone contains what remains to us of our Lord's
+teaching. If there be a portion of revelation sacred beyond other
+portions, distinct and remote in its nature from the rest, it must
+be the words and works of the eternal Son Incarnate. He is the one
+Prophet of the Church, as he is our one Priest and King. His
+history is as far above any other possible revelation, as heaven is
+above earth: for in it we have literally the sight of Almighty God
+in his judgments, thoughts, attributes, and deeds, and his mode of
+dealing with us his creatures. Now, this special revelation is in
+Scripture, and in Scripture only: tradition has no part in
+it."--<i>Newman's Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the
+Church</i>. 1837. Pp. 347, 348.</blockquote>
+<p>That their statement was untrue, and being untrue, that it is a
+most grave matter to speak untruly of our Lord's commands, are
+points absolutely certain. But if they recall the assertion, as to
+the expressness of our Lord's sanction, and mean to say, that his
+sanction is implied, and may be reasonably deduced from what he has
+said, then I answer, that the deduction ought to be clear, because
+the doctrine in itself bears on it no marks of having had Christ
+for its author. Yet so far is it from true, that the necessity of
+apostolical succession, in order to give efficacy to the sacrament,
+may be clearly deduced from any recorded words of our Lord, that
+there are no words<a name="FNanchor5"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_5">[5]</a> of his from which it can be deduced, either
+probably or plausibly; none with which it has any, the faintest,
+connexion; none from which it could be even conjectured that such a
+tenet had ever been in existence. I am not speaking, it will be
+observed, of apostolical succession simply; but of the necessity of
+apostolical succession, as a security for the efficacy of the
+sacrament. That this doctrine comes from God, is a position
+altogether without evidence, probability, or presumption, either
+internal or external.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor5">[5]</a>
+Since this was written, I have found out, what certainly it was
+impossible to anticipate beforehand, that our Lord's words, "Do
+this in remembrance of me," are supposed to teach the doctrine of
+the priest's consecrating power. But the passage to which I refer
+is so remarkable that I must quote it in its author's own words.
+Mr. Newman, for the tract is apparently one of his, observes, that
+three out of the four Gospels make no mention of the raising of
+Lazarus. He then goes on, "As the raising of Lazarus is true,
+though not contained at all in the first three Gospels; so the gift
+of consecrating the Eucharist may have been committed by Christ to
+the priesthood, though only indirectly taught in any of the four.
+Will you say I am arguing against our own Church, which says the
+Scripture 'contains all things necessary to be believed to
+salvation?' Doubtless, Scripture <i>contains</i> all things
+necessary to be <i>believed</i>; but there may be things
+<i>contained</i> which are not <i>on the surface</i>, and things
+which belong to the <i>ritual</i>, and not to <i>belief</i>. Points
+of faith may lie <i>under</i> the surface: points of observance
+need not be in Scripture <i>at all</i>. The consecrating power is a
+point of ritual, yet it <i>is</i> indirectly taught in Scripture,
+though not brought out, when Christ said, 'Do this,' for he spake
+to the apostles, who were priests, not to his disciples
+generally."--<i>Tracts for the Times</i>. Tract 85, p. 46.<br>
+<br>
+This passage is indeed characteristic of the moral and intellectual
+faults which I have alluded to as marking the writings of the
+supporters of Mr. Newman's system. But what is become of the
+assertion, that this security of the apostolical commission was
+"expressly authorized" by our Lord, when it is admitted that it is
+only indirectly taught in Scripture? And what becomes of the
+notion, that what our Lord did or instituted may be learned from
+another source than Scripture, when Mr. Newman has most truly
+stated, in the passage quoted in the preceding note, that our
+Lord's history, the history of his words and works, "is in
+Scripture, and Scripture only: tradition has no part in it?" I pass
+over the surprising state of mind which could imagine a distinction
+between things necessary to be believed, and necessary to be done;
+and could conceive such a distinction to be according to the
+meaning of our article. It would appear that this shift has been
+since abandoned, and others, no way less extraordinary, have been
+attempted in its place; for an extraordinary process it must be
+which tries to reconcile Mr. Newman's opinions with the declaration
+of the sixth article. But now for Mr. Newman's scriptural proof,
+that our Lord "committed to the priesthood the gift of consecrating
+the Eucharist." "When Christ said, 'Do this,' he spake to the
+apostles, who were priests, not to his disciples generally." This
+would prove too much, for it would prove that none but the clergy
+were ordered to receive the communion at all: the words, "Do this,"
+referring, not to any consecration, of which there had been no word
+said, but to the eating the bread, and drinking of the cup. Again,
+when St. Paul says, "the cup which we bless,'--the bread which we
+break," it is certain that the word "we," does not refer to himself
+and Sosthenes, or to himself and Barnabas, but to himself and the
+whole Corinthian church; for he immediately goes on, "for we, the
+whole number of us," ([Greek: oi polloi] compare Romans xii. 5,)
+"are one body, for we all are partakers of the one bread." Thirdly,
+Tertullian expressly contrasts the original institution of our Lord
+with the church practice of his own day, in this very point.
+"Eucharisti&aelig; sacramentum et in tempore victus, et omnibus
+mandatum a Domino, etiam antelucanis coetibus nee de aliorum manu
+quam pr&aelig;ridentium sumimus." (<i>De Coron&aacute; Mililis</i>,
+3.) I know that Tertullian believes the alteration to have been
+founded upon an apostolical tradition; but he no less names it as a
+change from the original institution of our Lord; nor does he
+appear to consider it as more than a point of order. Lastly, what
+shadow of probability is there, and is it not begging the whole
+question, to assume that our Lord spoke to his apostles as priests,
+and not as representatives of the whole Christian church? His
+language makes no distinction between his disciples and those who
+were without; it repels it as dividing his disciples from each
+other. His twelve disciples were the apostles of the church, but
+they were not priests. In such matters our Lord's words apply
+exactly, "One is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are
+brethren."</blockquote>
+<p>On the whole, then, the movement in the church, excited by Mr.
+Newman and his friends, appears to be made in a false direction,
+and to be incapable of satisfying the feeling which prompted it. I
+have not noticed other presumptions against it, arising from the
+consequences to which the original doctrines of the party have
+since led, or from certain moral and intellectual faults which have
+marked the writings of its supporters. It is enough to say, that
+the movement originated in minds highly prejudiced beforehand, and
+under the immediate influence of passion and fear; that its
+doctrines, as a whole, resemble the teaching of no set of writers
+entitled to respect, either in the early church, or in our own;
+that they tend, not to Christ's glory, or to the advancement of
+holiness, but simply to the exaltation of the clergy; and that they
+are totally unsupported by the authority of Scripture. They are a
+plant, therefore, which our heavenly Father has not planted; a
+speaking in the name of the Lord what the Lord has not commanded;
+hay and stubble, built upon the foundation of Christ, which are
+good for nothing but to be burned.</p>
+<p>I have spoken quite confidently of the total absence of all
+support in Scripture for Mr. Newman's favourite doctrine of "the
+necessity of apostolical succession, in order to ensure the effect
+of the sacraments." This doctrine is very different from that of
+the Divine appointment of episcopacy as a form of government, or
+even from that of the exclusive lawfulness of that episcopacy which
+has come down by succession from the apostles. Much less is it to
+be confounded with any notions, however exalted, of the efficacy of
+the sacraments, even though carried to such a length as we read of
+in the early church, when living men had themselves baptized as
+proxies for the dead, and when a portion of the wine of the
+communion was placed by the side of a corpse in the grave. Such
+notions may be superstitious and unscriptural, as indeed they are,
+but they are quite distinct from a belief in the necessity of a
+human priest to give the sacraments their virtue. And, without
+going to such lengths as this, men may overestimate the efficacy of
+the sacraments, to the disparagement of prayer, and preaching, and
+reading the Scriptures, and yet may be perfectly clear from the
+opinion which makes this efficacy depend immediately on a human
+administrator. And so again, men may hold episcopacy to be divine,
+and the episcopacy of apostolical succession to be the only true
+episcopacy, but yet they may utterly reject the notion of its being
+essential to the efficacy of the sacraments. It is of this last
+doctrine only that I assert, in the strongest terms, that it is
+wholly without support in Scripture, direct or indirect, and that
+it does not minister to godliness.</p>
+<p>In truth, Mr. Newman and his friends are well aware that the
+Scripture will not support their doctrine, and therefore it is that
+they have proceeded to such, lengths in upholding the authority not
+of the creeds only, but of the opinions and practices of the
+ancient church generally; and that they try to explain away the
+clear language of our article, that nothing "which is neither read
+therein (i.e. in holy Scripture,) nor may be proved thereby, is to
+be required of any man that it should be believed as an article of
+faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation." It would
+be one of the most unaccountable phenomena of the human mind, were
+any man fairly to come to the conclusion that the Scriptures and
+the early church were of equal authority, and that the authority of
+both were truly divine. If any men resolve to maintain doctrines
+and practices as of divine authority, for which the Scripture
+offers no countenance, they of course are driven to maintain the
+authority of the church in their own defence; and where they have
+an interest in holding any particular opinion, its falsehood,
+however palpable, is unhappily no bar to its reception. Otherwise
+it would seem that the natural result of believing the early church
+to be of equal authority with the Scripture, would be to deny the
+inspiration of either. For two things so different in several
+points as the Christianity of the Scriptures and that of the early
+church, may conceivably be both false, but it is hard to think that
+they can both be perfectly true.</p>
+<p>I am here, however, allowing, what is by no means true, without
+many qualifications, that Mr. Newman's system is that of the early
+church. The historical inquiry as to the doctrines of the early
+church would lead me into far too wide a field; I may only notice,
+in passing, how many points require to be carefully defined in
+conducting such an inquiry; as, for instance, what we mean by the
+term "early church," as to time; for that may be fully true of the
+church in the fourth century, which is only partially true of it in
+the third, and only in a very slight degree true of it in the
+second or first. And again, what do we mean by the term "early
+church," as to persons; for a few eminent writers are not even the
+whole clergy; neither is it by any means to be taken on their
+authority that their views were really those of all the bishops and
+presbyters of the Christian world; but if they were, the clergy are
+not the church, nor can their judgments be morally considered as
+the voice of the church, even if we were to admit that they could
+at any time constitute its voice legally. But, for my present
+purpose, we may take for granted that Mr. Newman's system as to the
+pre-eminence of the sacraments, and the necessity of apostolical
+succession to give them their efficacy, was the doctrine of the
+early church; then I say that this system is so different from that
+of the New Testament, that to invest the two with equal authority
+is not to make the church system divine, but to make the scriptural
+system human; or, at the best, perishable and temporary, like the
+ceremonial law of Moses. Either the church system must be supposed
+to have superseded the scriptural system<a name=
+"FNanchor6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6">[6]</a>, and its unknown
+authors are the real apostles of our present faith, in which case,
+we do not see why it should not be superseded in its turn, and why
+the perfect manifestation of Christianity should not be found in
+the Koran, or in any still later system; or else neither of the two
+systems can be divine, but the one is merely the human production
+of the first century, the other that of the second and third. If
+this be so, it is clearly open to all succeeding centuries to adopt
+whichever of the two they choose, or neither.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor6">[6]</a>
+This, it is well known, has been most ably maintained by Rothe,
+(<i>Artf&atilde;nge der Christlichen Kirche und ihrer
+Verfassung</i>, Wittenberg, 1837,) with respect to the origin of
+episcopacy. He contends that it was instituted by the surviving
+apostles after the destruction of Jerusalem, as an intentional
+change from the earlier constitution of the church, in order to
+enable it to meet the peculiar difficulties and dangers of the
+times. To this belongs the question of the meaning of the
+expression, [Greek: oi tais deuterais ton Apostolon diataxesi
+parakolouthaekotes], in the famous Fragments of Iren&aelig;us,
+published by Pfaff, from a manuscript in the library of Turin, and
+to be found in the Venice edition of Iren&aelig;us, 1734, vol. ii.
+<i>Fragmentorum</i>, p. 10. But then Rothe would admit that if the
+apostles altered what they themselves had appointed, it would
+follow that neither their earlier nor their later institutions were
+intended to be for all times and all places, but were simply
+adapted to a particular state of circumstances, and were alterable
+when that state was altered: in short, whatever institutions the
+apostles changed were shown to be essentially changeable; otherwise
+their early institution was defective, which cannot be conceived.
+And thus it may well be that the early church may have altered, in
+some points, the first institutions of the apostles, and may have
+been guided by God's Spirit in doing so; but the error consists in
+believing that the now institutions were to be of necessity more
+permanent than those which they succeeded; in supposing that either
+the one or the other belong to the eternal truths and laws of
+Christ's religion, when they belong, in fact, to the essentially
+changeable regulations of his church.</blockquote>
+<p>To such consequences are those driven who maintain the divine
+authority of the system of Mr. Newman. Assuredly the thirst for
+"something deeper and truer than satisfied the last century," will
+not be allayed by a draught so scanty and so vapid; but after the
+mirage has beguiled and disappointed him for a season, the
+traveller presses on the more eagerly to the true and living
+well.</p>
+<p>In truth, the evils of the last century were but the inevitable
+fruits of the long ascendency of Mr. Newman's favourite principles.
+Christ's religion had been corrupted in the long period before the
+Reformation, but it had ever retained many of its main truths, and
+it was easy, when the appeal was once made to Scripture, to sweep
+away the corruptions, and restore it in its perfect form; but
+Christ's church had been destroyed so long and so completely, that
+its very idea was all but lost, and to revive it actually was
+impossible. What had been known under that name,--I am speaking of
+Christ's church, be it observed, as distinguished from Christ's
+religion,--was so great an evil, that, hopeless of drawing any good
+from it, men looked rather to Christ's religion as all in all; and
+content with having destroyed the false church, never thought that
+the scheme of Christianity could not be perfectly developed without
+the restoration of the true one. But the want was deeply felt, and
+its consequences were deplorable. At this moment men are truly
+craving something deeper than satisfied the last century; they
+crave to have the true church of Christ, which the last century was
+without. Mr. Newman perceives their want, and again offers them
+that false church which is worse than none at all.</p>
+<p>The truths of the Christian religion are to be sought for in the
+Scripture alone; they are the same at all times and in all
+countries. With the Christian church it is otherwise; the church is
+not a revelation concerning the unchangeable and eternal God, but
+an institution to enable changeable man to apprehend the
+unchangeable. Because man is changeable, the church is also
+changeable; changeable, not in its object, which is for ever one
+and the same, but in its means for effecting that object;
+changeable in its details, because the same treatment cannot suit
+various diseases, various climates, various constitutional
+peculiarities, various external influences.</p>
+<p>The Scripture, then, which is the sole and direct authority for
+all the truths of the Christian religion, is not in the same way,
+an authority for the constitution and rules of the Christian
+church; that is, it does not furnish direct authority, but guides
+us only by analogy: or it gives us merely certain main principles,
+which we must apply to our own various circumstances. This is shown
+by the remarkable fact, that neither our Lord nor his apostles have
+left any commands with respect to the constitution and
+administration of the church generally. Commands in abundance they
+have left us on moral matters; and one commandment of another kind
+has been added, the commandment, namely, to celebrate the Lord's
+Supper. "Do this in remembrance of me," are our Lord's words; and
+St. Paul tells us, if we could otherwise have doubted it, that this
+remembrance is to be kept up for ever. "As often as ye eat that
+bread or drink that cup ye do show the Lord's death <i>till he
+come</i>." This is the one perpetual ordinance of the Christian
+church, and this is commanded to be kept perpetually. But its other
+institutions are mentioned historically, as things done once, but
+not necessarily to be always repeated: nay, they are mentioned
+without any details, so that we do not always know what their exact
+form was in their original state, and cannot, therefore, if we
+would, adopt it as a perpetual model. Nor is it unimportant to
+observe that institutions are recorded as having been created on
+the spur of the occasion, if I may so speak, not as having formed a
+part of an original and universal plan. A great change in the
+character of the deacon, or subordinate minister's office, is
+introduced in consequence of the complaints of the Hellenist
+Christians: the number of the apostles is increased by the addition
+of Paul and Barnabas, not appointed, as Matthias had been, by the
+other apostles themselves, but by the prophets and teachers of the
+church of Antioch. Again, the churches founded by St. Paul were
+each, at first, placed by him under the government of several
+presbyters; but after his imprisonment at Rome, finding that they
+were become greatly corrupted, he sends out single persons, in two
+instances, with full powers to remodel these churches, and with
+authority to correct the presbyters themselves: yet it does not
+appear that these especial<a name="FNanchor7"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_7">[7]</a> visitors were to alter permanently the
+earlier constitution of the churches; nor that they were sent
+generally to all the churches which St. Paul had founded. Indeed,
+it appears evident from the epistle of Clement, that the original
+constitution of the church of Corinth still subsisted in his time;
+the government was still vested not in one man, but in many<a name=
+"FNanchor8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8">[8]</a>. Yet a few years
+later the government of a single man, as we see from Ignatius, was
+become very general; and Ignatius, as is well known, wishes to
+invest it with absolute power<a name="FNanchor9"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_9">[9]</a>. I believe that he acted quite wisely
+according to the circumstances of the church at that period; and
+that nothing less than a vigorous unity of government could have
+struggled with the difficulties and dangers of that crisis. But no
+man can doubt that the system which Ignatius so earnestly
+recommends was very different from that which St. Paul had
+instituted fifty or sixty years earlier.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor7">[7]</a>
+The command, "to appoint elders in every city," is given to Titus,
+according to Paul's practice when he first formed churches of the
+Gentiles (Acts xiv, 2.) Nor did Timothy, or Titus, remain
+permanently at Ephesus, or in Crete. Timothy, when St. Paul's
+second Epistle was written to him, was certainly not at Ephesus,
+but apparently in Pontus; and Titus, at the same period, was gone
+to Dalmatia: nor indeed was he to remain in Crete beyond the summer
+of the year in which St. Paul's Epistle was written; he was to meet
+Paul, in the winter, at Nicopolis.</blockquote>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor8">[8]</a>
+Only elders are spoken of as governing the church of Corinth. It is
+impossible to understand clearly the nature of the contest, and of
+the party against which Clement's Epistle is directed. Where he
+wishes the heads of that party to say, [Greek: ei di eme stasis kai
+eris kai schismata, ekchoro, apeimi, ou ean, boulaesthe, kai poio,
+ta, prostassomena upo tou plaethous], c. 54, it would seem as if
+they had been endeavouring to exercise a despotic authority over
+the church, in defiance of the general feeling, as well as of the
+existing government, like those earlier persons at Corinth, whom
+St. Paul describes, in his second Epistle, xi. 20; and like
+Diotrephes, mentioned by St. John, 3 Epist. 9, 10. But in a society
+where all power must have depended on the consent of those subject
+to it, how could any one exercise a tyranny against the will of the
+majority, as well as against the authority of the Apostles? And
+[Greek: ta prostassomena upo tou plaethous] must signify, I think,
+"the bidding of the society at large." Compare for this use of
+[Greek: plaethos], Ignatius, Smyrna. 8; Trallian. 1, 8. A
+conjecture might be offered as to the solution of this difficulty,
+but it would lead mo into too long a discussion.</blockquote>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor9">[9]</a>
+Insomuch that he wished all marriages to be solemnized with the
+consent and approbation of the bishop, [Greek: meta gnomaes tou
+episkopou], that they might be "according to God, and not according
+to passion;" [Greek: kapa Theon kai mae kat epithomian].--<i>Ad.
+Polycarp</i>. 5.</blockquote>
+<p>On two points, however,--points not of detail, but of
+principle,--the Scripture does seem to speak decisively. 1st. The
+whole body of the church was to take an active share in its
+concerns; the various faculties of its various members were to
+perform their several parts: it was to be a living society, not an
+inert mass of mere hearers and subjects, who were to be
+authoritatively taught and absolutely ruled by one small portion of
+its members. It is quite consistent with this, that, at particular
+times, the church should centre all its own power and activity in
+the persons of its rulers. In the field, the imperium of the Roman
+consul was unlimited; and even within the city walls, the senate's
+commission in times of imminent danger, released him from all
+restraints of law; the whole power of the state was, for the
+moment, his, and his only. Such temporary despotisms are sometimes
+not expedient merely, but necessary: without them society would
+perish. I do not, therefore, regard Ignatius's epistles as really
+contradictory to the idea of the church conveyed to us in the
+twelfth chapter of St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians: I
+believe that the dictatorship, so to speak, which Ignatius claims
+for the bishop in each church, was required by the circumstances of
+the case; but to change the temporary into the perpetual
+dictatorship, was to subvert the Roman constitution; and to make
+Ignatius's language the rule, instead of the exception, is no less
+to subvert the Christian church. Wherever the language of Ignatius
+is repeated with justice, there the church must either be in its
+infancy, or in its dotage, or in some extraordinary crisis of
+danger; wherever it is repeated, as of universal application, it
+destroys, as in fact it has destroyed, the very life of Christ's
+institution.</p>
+<p>But, 2d, the Christian church was absolutely and entirely, at
+all times, and in all places, to be without a human priesthood.
+Despotic government and priesthood are things perfectly distinct
+from one another. Despotic government might be required, from time
+to time, by this or that portion of the Christian church, as by
+other societies; for government is essentially changeable, and all
+forms, in the manifold varieties of the condition of society, are,
+in their turn, lawful and beneficial. But a priesthood belongs to a
+matter not so varying--the relations subsisting between God and
+man. These relations were fixed for the Christian church from its
+very foundation, being, in fact, no other than the main truths of
+the Christian religion; and they bar, for all time, the very notion
+of an earthly priesthood. They bar it, because they establish the
+everlasting priesthood of our Lord, which leaves no place for any
+other; they bar it, because priesthood is essentially mediation;
+and they establish one Mediator between God and man--the Man Christ
+Jesus. And, therefore, the notion of Mr. Newman and his friends,
+that the sacraments derive their efficacy from the apostolical
+succession of the minister, is so extremely unchristian, that it
+actually deserves to be called anti-christian; for there is no
+point of the priestly office, properly so called, in which the
+claim of the earthly priest is not absolutely precluded. Do we want
+him for sacrifice? Nay, there is no place for him at all; for our
+one atoning Sacrifice has been once offered; and by its virtue we
+are enabled to offer daily our spiritual sacrifices of ourselves,
+which no other man can by possibility offer for us. Do we want him
+for intercession? Nay, there is One who ever liveth to make
+intercession for us, through whom we have access to ([Greek:
+prosalogaen], admission to the presence of) the Father, and for
+whose sake, Paul, and Apollos, and Peter, and things present, and
+things to come, are all ours already. His claim can neither be
+advanced or received without high dishonour to our true Priest and
+to his blessed gospel. If circumcision could not be practised, as
+necessary, by a believer in Christ, without its involving a
+forfeiture of the benefits of Christ's salvation; how much more
+does St. Paul's language apply to the invention of an earthly
+priesthood--a priesthood neither after the order of Aaron, nor yet
+of Melchisedek; unlawful alike under the law and the gospel.</p>
+<p>It is the invention of the human priesthood, which falling in,
+unhappily, with the absolute power rightfully vested in the
+Christian church during the troubles of the second century, fixed
+the exception as the rule, and so in the end destroyed the church.
+It pretended that the clergy were not simply rulers and
+teachers,--offices which, necessarily vary according to the state
+of those who are ruled and taught,--but that they were essentially
+mediators between God and the church; and as this language would
+have sounded too profanely,--for the mediator between God and the
+church can be none but Christ,--so the clergy began to draw to
+themselves the attributes of the church, and to call the church by
+a different name, such as the faithful, or the laity; so that to
+speak of the church mediating for the people did not sound so
+shocking, and the doctrine so disguised found ready acceptance.
+Thus the evil work was consummated; the great majority of the
+members of the church, were virtually disfranchised; the minority
+retained the name, but the character of the institution was utterly
+corrupted.</p>
+<p>To revive Christ's church, therefore, is to expel the antichrist
+of priesthood, (which, as it was foretold of him, "as God, sitteth
+in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God,") and to
+restore its disfranchised members,--the laity,--to the discharge of
+their proper duties in it, and to the consciousness of their
+paramount importance. This is the point which I have dwelt upon in
+the XXXVIII<sup>th</sup> Lecture, and which is closely in
+connection with the point maintained in the XL<sup>th</sup>; and
+all who value the inestimable blessings of Christ's church should
+labour in arousing the laity to a sense of their great share in
+them. In particular, that discipline, which is one of the greatest
+of those blessings, never can, and, indeed, never ought to be
+restored, till the Church resumes its lawful authority, and puts an
+end to the usurpation of its powers by the clergy. There is a
+feeling now awakened amongst the lay members of our Church, which,
+if it can but be rightly directed, may, by God's blessing, really
+arrive at something truer and deeper than satisfied the last
+century, or than satisfied the last seventeen centuries. Otherwise,
+whatever else may be improved, the laity will take care that church
+discipline shall continue to slumber, and they will best serve the
+church by doing so. Much may be done to spread the knowledge of
+Christ's religion; new churches may be built; new ministers
+appointed to preach the word and administer the sacraments; those
+may hear who now cannot hear; many more sick persons may be
+visited; many more children may receive religious instruction: all
+this is good, and to be received with sincere thankfulness; but,
+with a knowledge revealed to us of a still more excellent power in
+Christ's church, and with the abundant promises of prophecy in our
+hands, can we rest satisfied with the lesser and imperfect good,
+which strikes thrice and stays? But, if the zeal of the lay members
+of our Church be directed by the principles of Mr. Newman, then the
+result will be, not merely a lesser good, but one fearfully mixed
+with evil--Christian religion profaned by anti-christian fables,
+Christian holiness marred by superstition and uncharitableness;
+Christian wisdom and Christian sincerity scoffed at, reviled, and
+persecuted out of sight. This is declared to us by the sure voice
+of experience; this was the fruit of the spirit of priestcraft,
+with its accompaniments of superstitious rites and lying
+traditions, in the last decline of the Jewish church; this was the
+fruit of the same spirit, with the same accompaniments, in the long
+decay of the Christian church; although, the indestructible virtue
+of Christ's gospel was manifest in the midst of the evil, and
+Christ, in every age and in every country, has been known with
+saving power by some of his people, and his church, in her worst
+corruptions, has taught many divinest truths, has inculcated many
+holiest virtues.</p>
+<p>When the tide is setting strongly against us, we can scarcely
+expect to make progress; it is enough if we do not drift along with
+it. Mr. Newman's system is now at the flood; it is daily making
+converts; it is daily swelled by many of those who neither love it
+nor understand it in itself, but who hope to make it serve their
+purposes, or who like to swim with the stream. A strong profession,
+therefore, of an opposite system must expect, at the present
+moment, to meet with little favour; nor, indeed, have I any hope of
+turning the tide, which will flow for its appointed season, and its
+ebb does not seem to be at hand. But whilst the hurricane rages,
+those exposed to it may well encourage one another to hold fast
+their own foundations against it; and many are exposed to it in
+whose welfare I naturally have the deepest interest, and in whom
+old impressions may be supposed to have still so much force that I
+may claim from them, at least, a patient hearing. I am anxious to
+show them that Mr. Newman's system is to be opposed not merely on
+negative grounds, as untrue, but as obstructing that perfect and
+positive truth, that perfection of Christ's church, which the last
+century, it may be, neglected, but which I value and desire as
+earnestly as it can be valued and desired by any man alive. My
+great objection to Mr. Newman's system is, that it destroys
+Christ's church, and sets up an evil in its stead. We do not desire
+merely to hinder the evil from occupying the ground, and to leave
+it empty; that has been, undoubtedly, the misfortune, and partly
+the fault of Protestantism; but we desire to build on the holy
+ground a no less holy temple, not out of our own devices, but
+according to the teaching of Christ himself, who has given us the
+outline, and told us what should be its purposes.</p>
+<p>The true church of Christ would offer to every faculty of our
+nature its proper exercise, and would entirely meet all our wants.
+No wise man doubts that the Reformation was imperfect, or that in
+the Romish system there were many good institutions, and practices,
+and feelings, which it would be most desirable to restore amongst
+ourselves. Daily church services, frequent communions, memorials of
+our Christian calling continually presented to our notice, in
+crosses and way-side oratories; commemorations of holy men, of all
+times and countries; the doctrine of the communion of saints
+practically taught; religious orders, especially of women, of
+different kinds, and under different rules, delivered only from the
+snare and sin of perpetual vows; all these, most of which are of
+some efficacy for good, even in a corrupt church, belong no less to
+the true church, and would there be purely beneficial. If Mr.
+Newman's system attracts good and thinking men, because it seems to
+promise them all these things, which in our actual Church are not
+to be found, let them remember, that these things belong to the
+perfect church no less than to that of the Romanists and of Mr.
+Newman, and would flourish in the perfect church far more
+healthily. Or, again, if any man admires Mr. Newman's system for
+its austerities, if he regards fasting as a positive duty, he
+should consider that these might be transferred also to the perfect
+church, and that they have no necessary connexion with the peculiar
+tenets of Mr. Newman. We know that the Puritans were taunted by
+their adversaries for their frequent fasts, and the severity of
+their lives; and they certainly were far enough from agreeing with
+Mr. Newman. Whatever there is of good, or self-denying, or
+ennobling, in his system, is altogether independent of his doctrine
+concerning the priesthood. It is that doctrine which is the
+peculiarity of his system and of Romanism; it is that doctrine
+which constitutes the evil of both, which over-weighs all the good
+accidentally united with it, and makes the systems, as such, false
+and anti-christian. Nor can any human being find in this doctrine
+anything of a beneficial tendency either to his intellectual, his
+moral, or his spiritual nature. If mere reverence be a virtue,
+without reference to its object, let us, by all means, do honour to
+the virtue of those who fell down to the stock of a tree; and let
+us lament the harsh censure which charged them with "having a lie
+in their right hand<a name="FNanchor10"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_10">[10]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_10"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor10">[10]</a> The language which Mr. Newman and his
+friends have allowed themselves to hold, in admiration of what they
+call reverential and submissive faith, might certainly be used in
+defence of the lowest idolatry; what they have dared to call
+rationalistic can plead such high and sacred authority in its
+favour, that if I were to quote some of the language of the "Tracts
+for the Times," and place by the side of it certain passages from
+the New Testament, Mr. Newman and his friends would appear to have
+been writing blasphemy. It seems scarcely possible that they could
+have remembered what is said in St. Matthew xv. 9-20, and who said
+it, when they have called it rationalism to deny a spiritual virtue
+in things that are applied to the body.</blockquote>
+<p>What does the true and perfect church want, that she should
+borrow from the broken cisterns of idolatry? Holding all those
+truths in which the clear voice of God's word is joined by the
+accordant confession of God's people in all ages; holding all the
+means of grace of which she was designed to be the steward--her
+common prayers, her pure preaching, her uncorrupted sacraments, her
+free and living society, her wise and searching discipline, her
+commemorations and memorials of God's mercy and grace, whether
+shown in her Lord himself, or in his and her members;--looking
+lovingly upon her elder sisters, the ancient churches, and
+delighting to be in communion with them, as she hopes that her
+younger sisters, the churches of later days, will delight to be in
+communion with her;--what has she not, that Christ's bride should
+have? what has she not, that Mr. Newman's system can give her? But
+because she loves her Lord, and stands fast in his faith, and has
+been enlightened by his truth, she will endure no other mediator
+than Christ, she will repose her trust only on his word, she will
+worship in the light, and will abhor the words, no less than the
+works, of darkness. Her sisters, the elder churches, she loves and
+respects as she would be herself loved and respected; but she will
+not, and may not, worship them, nor even, for their sakes, believe
+error to be truth, or foolishness to be wisdom. She dare not hope
+that she can be in all things a perfect guide and example to the
+churches that shall come after her; as neither have the churches
+before her been in all things a perfect guide and example to
+herself. She would not impose her yoke upon future generations, nor
+will she submit her own neck to the yoke of antiquity. She honours
+all men, but makes none her idol; and she would have her own
+individual members regard her with honour, but neither would she be
+an idol to them. She dreads especially that sin of which her Lord
+has so emphatically warned her--the sin against the Holy Ghost. She
+will neither lie against him by declaring that he is where his
+fruits are not manifested; nor blaspheme him, by saying that he is
+not where his fruits are. Rites and ordinances may be vain,
+prophets may be false, miracles may be miracles of Satan; but the
+signs of the Holy Spirit, truth and holiness, can never be
+ineffectual, can never deceive, can never be evil; where they are,
+and only where they are, there is God.</p>
+<p>There are states of falsehood and wickedness so monstrous, that,
+to use the language of Eastern mythology, the Destroyer God is
+greater than the Creator or the Preserver, and no good can be
+conceived so great as the destruction of the existing evil. But
+ordinarily in human affairs destruction and creation should go hand
+in hand; as the evergreen shrubs of our gardens do not cast their
+old leaves till the young ones are ready to supply their place.
+Great as is the falsehood of Mr. Newman's system, it would be but
+an unsatisfactory work to clear it away, if we had no positive
+truth to offer in its room. But the thousands of good men whom it
+has beguiled, because it professed to meet the earnest craving of
+their minds for a restoration of Christ's church with power, need
+not fear to open their eyes to its hollowness; like the false
+miracles of fraud or sorcery, it is but the counterfeit of a real
+truth. The restoration of the church, is, indeed, the best
+consummation of all our prayers, and all our labours; it is not a
+dream, not a prospect to be seen only in the remotest distance; it
+is possible, it lies very near us; with God's blessing it is in the
+power of this very generation to begin and make some progress in
+the work. If the many good, and wise, and influential laymen of our
+Church would but awake to their true position and duties, and would
+labour heartily to procure for the church a living organization and
+an effective government, in both, of which the laity should be
+essential members, then, indeed, the church would become a
+reality<a name="FNanchor11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11">[11]</a>.
+This is not Erastianism, or rather, it is not what is commonly
+cried down under that name; it is not the subjection of the church
+to the state, which, indeed, would be a most miserable and most
+unchristian condition; but it would be the deliverance of the
+church, and its exaltation to its own proper sovereignty. The
+members of one particular profession are most fit to administer a
+system in part, most unfit to legislate for it or to govern it: we
+could ill spare the ability and learning of our lawyers, but we
+surely should not wish to have none but lawyers concerned even, in
+the administration of justice, much less to have none but lawyers
+in the government or in parliament. What is true of lawyers with
+regard to the state, is no less true of the clergy with regard to
+the church; indispensable as ministers and advisers, they cannot,
+without great mischief, act as sole judges, sole legislators, sole
+governors. And this is a truth so palpable, that the clergy, by
+pressing such a claim, merely deprive the church of its judicial,
+legislative, and executive functions; whilst the common sense of
+the church will not allow them to exercise these powers, and,
+whilst they assert that no one else may exercise them, the result
+is, that they are not exercised at all, and the essence of the
+church is destroyed.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_11"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor11">[11]</a> The famous saying, "extra ecclesiam nulla
+salus," is, in its idea, a most divine truth; historically and in
+fact it may be, and often has been, a practical falsehood. If the
+truths of Christ's religion were necessarily accessible only to the
+members of some visible church, then it would be true always,
+inasmuch as to be out of the church would then be the same thing as
+to be without Christ; and, as a society, the church ought so to
+attract to itself all goodness, and by its internal organization,
+so to encourage all goodness, that nothing would be without its
+pale but extreme wickedness, or extreme ignorance; and he who were
+voluntarily to forfeit its spiritual advantages, would be guilty of
+moral suicide; so St. Paul calls the church the pillar and ground
+of truth; that is, it was so in its purpose and idea; and he
+therefore conjures Timothy to walk warily in it, and to take heed
+that what ought to be the pillar and ground of truth should not be
+profaned by fables, and so be changed into a pillar of falsehood.
+But to say universally, as an historical fact, that "extra
+ecclesiam nulla salus," may be often to utter one of the worst of
+falsehoods. A ferry is set up to transport men over an unfordable
+river, and it might be truly said that "extra navem nulla salus;"
+there is no other safe way, speaking generally, of getting over;
+but the ferryman has got the plague, and if you go in the boat with
+him, you will catch it and die. In despair, a man plunges into the
+water, and swims across; would not the ferryman be guilty of a
+double falsehood who should call out to this man, "extra navem
+nulla salus," insisting that he had not swum over, when he had, and
+saying that his boat would have carried him safely, whereas it
+would have killed him?</blockquote>
+<p>The first step towards the restoration of the church seems to be
+the revival of the order of deacons; which might be effected
+without any other change in our present system than a repeal of all
+laws, canons, or customs which prohibit a deacon from following a
+secular calling, which confer on him any civil exemptions, or
+subject him to any civil disqualifications. The Ordination Service,
+with the subscription to the Articles, would remain perfectly
+unaltered; and as no deacon can hold any benefice, it is manifest
+that the proposed measure would in no way interfere with the rights
+or duties of the order of presbyters, or priests, which would
+remain precisely what they are at present. But the benefit in large
+towns would be enormous, if, instead of the present system of
+district visiting by private individuals, excellent as that is
+where there is nothing better, we could have a large body of
+deacons, the ordained ministers of the church, visiting the sick,
+managing charitable subscriptions, and sharing with their presbyter
+in those strictly clerical duties, which now, in many cases, are
+too much for the health and powers of the strongest. Yet a still
+greater advantage would be found in the link thus formed between
+the clergy and laity by the revival of an order appertaining in a
+manner to both. Nor would it be a little thing that many who now
+become teachers in some dissenting congregation, not because they
+differ from our Articles, or dislike our Liturgy, but because they
+cannot afford to go to the universities, and have no prospect of
+being maintained by the church, if they were to give up their
+secular callings, would, in all human probability, be glad to join
+the church, as deacons, and would thus be subject to her
+authorities, and would be engaged in her service, instead of being
+aliens to her, if not enemies.</p>
+<p>When we look at the condition of our country: at the poverty and
+wretchedness of so large a portion of the working classes; at the
+intellectual and moral evils which certainly exist among the poor,
+but by no means amongst the poor only; and when we witness the many
+partial attempts to remedy these evils--attempts benevolent indeed
+and wise, so far as they go, but utterly unable to strike to the
+heart of the mischief; can any Christian doubt that here is the
+work for the church of Christ to do; that none else can do it; and
+that with the blessing of her Almighty Head she can? Looking upon
+the chaos around us, one power alone can reduce it into order, and
+fill it with light and life. And does he really apprehend the
+perfections and high calling of Christ's church; does he indeed
+fathom the depths of man's wants, or has he learnt to rise to the
+fulness of the stature of their divine remedy, who comes forward to
+preach to us the necessity of apostolical succession? Grant even
+that it was of divine appointment, still as it is demonstrably and
+palpably unconnected with holiness, as it would be a mere positive
+and ceremonial ordinance, it cannot be the point of most importance
+to insist on; even if it be a sin to neglect this, there are so
+many far weightier matters equally neglected, that it would be
+assuredly no Christian prophesying which were to strive to direct
+our chief attention to this. But the wholly unmoral character of
+this doctrine, which if it were indeed of God, would make it a
+single mysterious exception to all the other doctrines of the
+Gospel, is, God be thanked, not more certain than its total want of
+external evidence; the Scripture disclaims it, Christ himself
+condemns it.</p>
+<p>I have written at considerable length: yet so vast is the
+subject, that I may seem to some to have written superficially, and
+to have left my statements without adequate support. I can only say
+that no one paragraph has been written hastily, nor in fact is
+there one the substance of which has not been for several years in
+my mind; indeed, in many instances, not only the substance, but the
+proofs in detail have been actually written: but to have inserted
+them here would have been impracticable, as they would have been in
+themselves a volume. Neither have I knowingly remained in ignorance
+of any argument which may have been used in defence of Mr. Newman's
+system; I have always desired to know what he and his friends say,
+and on what grounds they say it; although, as I have not read the
+Tracts for the Times regularly, I may have omitted something which
+it would have been important to notice. Finally, in naming Mr.
+Newman as the chief author of the system which I have been
+considering, I have in no degree wished to make the question
+personal; but Mr. Percival's letter authorizes us to consider him
+as one of the authors of it; and as I have never had any personal
+acquaintance with him, I could mention his name with no shock to
+any private feelings either in him or in myself. But I have spoken
+of him simply as the maintainer of certain doctrines, not as
+maintaining them in any particular manner, far less as actuated by
+any particular motives. I believe him to be in most serious error;
+I believe his system to be so destructive of Christ's church, that
+I earnestly pray, and would labour to the utmost of my endeavours
+for its utter overthrow: but on the other hand, I will not be
+tempted to confound the authors of the system with the system
+itself; for I know that the most mischievous errors have been
+promulgated by men who yet have been neither foolish nor wicked;
+and I nothing doubt that there are many points in Mr. Newman, in
+which I might learn truth from his teaching, and should be glad if
+I could come near him in his practice.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>NOTE.</h2>
+<br>
+<p>In order to prevent the possibility of misunderstanding, it is
+proper to repeat what has been often said by others, that the
+English word "priest" has two significations,--the one according to
+its etymology, through the French <i>pr&ecirc;tre</i>, or
+<i>prestre</i>, and the Latin <i>presbyterus</i>, from the Greek
+[Greek: presbuteros]; in which sense it is used in our Liturgy and
+Rubrics, and signifies merely "one belonging to the order of
+Presbyters," as distinguished from the other two orders of bishops
+and deacons. But the other signification of the word "priest," and
+which we use, as I think, more commonly, is the same with the
+meaning of the Latin word <i>sacerdos</i>, and the Greek word
+[Greek: iepeus], and means, "one who stands as a mediator between
+God and the people, and brings them to God by the virtue of certain
+ceremonial acts which he performs for them, and which they could
+not perform for themselves without profanation, because they are at
+a distance from God, and cannot, in their own persons, venture to
+approach towards him." In this sense of the word "priest," the term
+is not applied to the ministers of the Christian church, either by
+the Scripture, or by the authorized formularies of the Church of
+England; although, in the other sense, as synonymous with
+Presbyters, it is used in our Prayer Book repeatedly. Of course,
+not one word of what I have written is meant to deny the lawfulness
+and importance of the order of Presbyters in the church; I have
+only spoken against a priesthood, in the other sense of the word,
+in which a "priest" means "a mediator between God and man;" in that
+sense, in short, in which the word is not a translation of [Greek:
+presbuteros], but [iereus].</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_I."></a>LECTURE I.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>GENESIS iii. 22.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>And the Lord God said, Behold,<br>
+the man is become as one of us,<br>
+to know good and evil</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>This is declared to be man's condition after the Fall. I will
+not attempt to penetrate into that which is not to be entered into,
+nor to pretend to discover all that may be concealed beneath the
+outward, and in many points clearly parabolical, form of the
+account of man's temptation and sin. But that condition to which
+his sin brought him is our condition; with that, undoubtedly, we
+are concerned; that must be the foundation of all sound views of
+human nature; the double fact employed in the word fall is of the
+last importance; the fact on the one hand of our present nature
+being evil, the fact on the other hand that this present nature is
+not our proper nature; that the whole business of our lives is to
+cast it off, and to return to that better and holy nature, which,
+in truth, although not in fact, is the proper nature of man.</p>
+<p>All individual experience, then, and all history begins in
+something which is evil; all our course, whether as individuals or
+as nations, is a progress, an advance, a leaving behind us
+something bad, and a going forwards towards something that is good.
+But individual experience, and history apart from Christianity,
+would make us regard this progress as fearfully uncertain. Clear it
+is that we are in an evil case; we have lost our way; we are like
+men who are bewildered in those endless forests of reeds which line
+some of the great American rivers; if we stay where we are, the
+venomous snakes may destroy us; or the deadly marsh air when night
+comes on will be surely fatal; it is death to remain, but yet if we
+move, we know not what way will lead us out, and it may be that,
+while seeming to advance, we shall but be going round and round,
+and shall at last find ourselves hard by the place from which we
+set out in the beginning. Nay, we may even feel a doubt,--a doubt,
+I say, though not a reasonable belief,--but a doubt which at times
+would press us sorely, whether the tangled thicket in which we are
+placed has any end at all; whether our fond notions of a clear and
+open space, a pure air, and a fruitful and habitable country, are
+not altogether merely imaginary; whether the whole world be not
+such a region of death as the spot in which we are actually
+prisoned; whether there remains any thing for us, but to curse our
+fate, and lie down and die. Under such circumstances, although we
+should admire the spirit which hoped against hope; which would make
+an effort for deliverance; which would, at any rate, flee from the
+actual evil, although, other evil might receive him after all his
+struggles; yet we could forgive those who yielded at once to their
+fate, and who sat down quietly to wait for their death, without the
+unavailing labour of a struggle to avoid it.</p>
+<p>But when the declaration has been made to us by God himself,
+that this dismal swamp in which we are prisoners is but an
+infinitely small portion of his universe, that there do exist all
+those goodly forms which we fancied; and more, when God declares
+too that we were in the first instance designed to enjoy them; that
+our error brought us into the thicket, having been once out of it;
+that we may escape from it again; nay, much more still, when He
+shows us the true path to escape, and tells us, that the obstacles
+in our way have been cleared, and that he will give us strength to
+accomplish, the task of escaping, and will guide us that we do not
+miss the track; then what shall we say to those who insist upon,
+remaining where they are, but that they are either infatuated, or
+indolent and cowardly even to insanity; that they are refusing
+certain salvation, and are, by their own act, giving themselves
+over to inevitable death.</p>
+<p>This, then, is the truth taught us by the doctrine of the Fall;
+not so much that it is our certain destruction to remain where we
+are, for that our own sense and reason declare to us, if we will
+but listen to them; but that our present position is not that for
+which God designed us, and that to rest satisfied with it is not a
+yielding to an unavoidable necessity, but the indolently or madly
+shrinking from the effort which would give us certain
+deliverance.</p>
+<p>Now it is a part of our present evil condition from which we
+must escape, that we know good and evil. We are in the world where
+evil exists within us, and about us; we cannot but know it. True it
+is, that it was our misfortune to become acquainted with it; this
+noisome wilderness of reeds, this reeking swamp; it would have been
+far happier for us, no doubt, had we never become aware of their
+existence. But that wish is now too late. We are in the midst of
+this dismal place, and the question now is, how to escape from it.
+We may shut our eyes, and say we will not see objects so unsightly;
+but what avails it, if the marsh poison finds its way by other
+senses, if we cannot but draw it in with our breath, and so we must
+die? And such is the case of those who now in this present world
+confound ignorance with innocence. This is a fatal mistaking of our
+present condition for our past; there was a time when to the human
+race ignorance was innocence; but now it is only folly and sin. For
+as I supposed that a man lost in one of those noxious swamps might
+shut his eyes, and so keep himself in some measure in ignorance,
+yet the poison would be taken in with his breath, and so he would
+die: even thus, whilst we would fain shut the eyes of our
+understanding, and would so hope to be in safety, our passions are
+all the time alive and active, and they catch the poison of the
+atmosphere around us, and we are not innocent, but foolishly
+wicked.</p>
+<p>We must needs consider this carefully; for, to say nothing of
+wider questions of national importance, who that sees before him,
+as we must see it, the gradual change from childhood to boyhood,
+who that sees added knowledge often accompanied with added sin, can
+help wishing that the earlier ignorance of evil might still be
+continued; and fancying that knowledge is at best but a doubtful
+blessing?</p>
+<p>But our path is not backwards, but onwards. Israel in the desert
+was hungry and thirsty, while in Egypt he had eaten bread to the
+full; Israel in the desert saw a wide waste of sand, or sandy rock,
+around him, while in Egypt he had dwelt in those green pastures and
+watered gardens to which the Nile had given freshness and life. But
+that wilderness is his appointed way to Canaan; its dreariness must
+be exchanged for the hills and valleys of Canaan, and must not
+drive him back again to the low plain of Egypt. There is a moral
+wilderness which lies in the early part of our Christian course;
+but we must not hope to escape from it but by penetrating through
+it to its furthest side.</p>
+<p>Undoubtedly this place, and other similar places, which receive
+us when we have quitted the state of childhood, and before our
+characters are formed in manhood, do partake somewhat of the
+character of the wilderness; and it is not unnatural that many
+should shrink back from them in fear. We see but too often the
+early beauty of the character sadly marred, its simplicity gone,
+its confidence chilled, its tenderness hardened; where there was
+gentleness, we see roughness and coarseness; where there was
+obedience, we find murmuring, and self-will, and pride; where there
+was a true and blameless conversation, we find now something of
+falsehood, something of profaneness, something of impurity. I can
+well conceive what it must be to a parent to see his child return
+from school, for the first time, with the marks of this grievous
+change upon him: I can well conceive how bitterly he must regret
+having ever sent him to a place of so much, danger; how fondly he
+must look back to the days of his early innocence. And if a parent
+feels thus, what must be our feelings, seeing that this evil has
+been wrought here? Are we not as those who, when pretending to give
+a wholesome draught, have mixed the cup with poison? How can we go
+on upholding a system, the effects of which appear to be so merely
+mischievous?</p>
+<p>Believe me, that such questions must and ought to present
+themselves to the mind of every thinking man who is concerned in
+the management of a school: and I do think that we could not answer
+them satisfactorily, that our work would absolutely be unendurable,
+if we did not bear in mind that our eyes should look forward, and
+not backward; if we did not remember that the victory of fallen man
+is to be sought for, not in innocence, but in tried virtue.
+Comparing only the state of a boy after his first half-year, or
+year, at school, with his earlier state as a child, and our
+reflections on the evil of our system would be bitter indeed; but
+when we compare a boy's state after his first half-year, or year,
+at school, with what it is afterwards; when we see the clouds again
+clearing off; when we find coarseness succeeded again by delicacy;
+hardness and selfishness again broken up, and giving place to
+affection and benevolence; murmuring and self-will exchanged for
+humility and self-denial; and the profane, or impure, or false
+tongue, uttering again only the words of truth and purity; and when
+we see that all these good things are now, by God's grace, rooted
+in the character; that they have been tried, and grown up amidst
+the trial; that the knowledge of evil has made them hate it the
+more, and be the more aware of it; then we can look upon our
+calling with patience, and even with thankfulness; we see that the
+wilderness has been gone through triumphantly, and that its dangers
+have hardened and strengthened the traveller for all his remaining
+pilgrimage.</p>
+<p>For the truth is, that to the knowledge of good and evil we are
+born; and it must come upon us sooner or later. In the common
+course of things, it comes about that age with which we are here
+most concerned. I do not mean that there are not faults in early
+childhood--we know that there are;--but we know also that with the
+strength and rapid growth of boyhood there is a far greater
+development of these faults, and particularly far less of that
+submissiveness which belonged naturally to the helplessness of mere
+childhood. I suppose that, by an extreme care, the period of
+childhood might be prolonged considerably; but still it must end;
+and the knowledge of good and evil, in its full force, must come. I
+believe that this must be; I believe that no care can prevent it,
+and that an extreme attempt at carefulness, whilst it could not
+keep off the disorder, would weaken the strength, of the
+constitution to bear it. But yet you should never forget, and I
+should never forget, that although the evils of schools in some
+respects must be, yet, in proportion as they exceed what must be,
+they do become at once mischievous and guilty. And such, or even
+worse, is the mischief when, with the evil which must be, there is
+not the good which ought to be; for, remember, our condition is to
+know good and evil. If we know only evil, it is the condition of
+hell; and therefore, if schools present an unmixed experience, if
+there is temptation in abundance, but no support against
+temptation, and no examples of overcoming it; if some are losing
+their child's innocence, but none, or very few, are gaining a man's
+virtue; are we in a wholesome state then? or can we shelter
+ourselves under the excuse that our evil is unavoidable, that we do
+but afford, in a mild form, the experience which must be learned
+sooner or later? It is here that we must be acquitted or condemned.
+I can bear to see the overclouding of childish simplicity, if there
+is a reasonable hope that the character so clouded for a time will
+brighten again into Christian holiness. But if we do not see this,
+if innocence is exchanged only for vice, then we have not done our
+part, then the evil is not unavoidable, but our sin: and we may be
+assured, that for the souls so lost, there will be an account
+demanded hereafter both of us and you.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_II."></a>LECTURE II.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>1 CORINTHIANS xiii. 11.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>When I was a child, I spake as a child,<br>
+I understood as a child, I thought as a child;<br>
+but when I became a man, I put away childish things</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>Taking the Apostle's words literally, it might appear that no
+words in the whole range of Scripture were less applicable to the
+circumstances of this particular congregation: for they speak of
+childhood and of manhood; and as all of us have passed the one, so
+a very large proportion of us have not yet arrived at the other.
+But when we consider the passage a little more carefully, we shall
+see that this would be a very narrow and absurd objection. Neither
+the Apostle, nor any one else, has ever stepped directly from
+childhood into manhood; it was his purpose here only to notice the
+two extreme points of the change which had taken place in him,
+passing over its intermediate stages; but he, like all other men,
+must have gone through those stages. There must have been a time in
+his life, as in all ours, when his words, his thoughts, and his
+understanding were neither all childish, nor all manly: there must
+have been a period, extending over some years, in which they were
+gradually becoming the one less and less, and the other more and
+more. And as it suited the purposes of his comparison to look at
+the change in himself only when it was completed, so it will suit
+our object here to regard it while in progress, to consider what it
+is, to ask the two great questions, how far it can be hastened, and
+how far it ought to be hastened.</p>
+<p>"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a
+child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away
+childish things." It will be seen at once, that when the Apostle
+speaks of thought and understanding, ([Greek: erronoun
+elogizomeaen],) he does not mean the mere intellect but all the
+notions, feelings, and desires of our minds, which partake of an
+intellectual and of a moral character together. He is comparing
+what we should call the whole nature and character of childhood
+with those of manhood. Let us see, for a moment, in what they most
+strikingly differ.</p>
+<p>Our Lord's well-known words suggest a difference in the first
+place, which is in favour of childhood. When he says, "Except ye be
+converted, and become as little children, ye can in no case enter
+into the kingdom of heaven," he must certainly ascribe some one
+quality to childhood, in which manhood is generally deficient. And
+the quality which he means is clearly humility; or to speak perhaps
+more correctly, teachableness. It is impossible that a child can
+have that confidence in himself, which disposes him to be his own
+guide. He must of necessity lean on others, he must follow others,
+and therefore he must believe others. There is in his mind,
+properly speaking, nothing which can be called prejudice; he will
+not as yet refuse to listen, as thinking that he knows better than
+his adviser. One feeling, therefore, essential to the perfection of
+every created and reasonable being, childhood has by the very law
+of its nature; a child cannot help believing that there are some
+who are greater, wiser, better than himself, and he is disposed to
+follow their guidance.</p>
+<p>This sense of comparative weakness is founded upon truth, for a
+child is of course unfit to guide himself. Without noticing mere
+bodily helplessness, a child knows scarcely what is good and what
+is evil; his desires for the highest good are not yet in existence;
+his moral sense altogether is exceedingly weak, and would yield
+readily to the first temptation. And, because those higher
+feelings, which are the great check to selfishness, have not yet
+arisen within him, the selfish instinct, connected apparently with
+all animal life, is exceedingly predominant in him. If a child then
+on the one hand be teachable, yet he is at the same time morally
+weak and ignorant, and therefore extremely selfish.</p>
+<p>It is also a part of the nature of childhood to be the slave of
+present impulses. A child is not apt to look backwards or forwards,
+to reflect or to calculate. In this also he differs entirely from
+the great quality which befits man as an eternal being, the being
+able to look before and after.</p>
+<p>Not to embarrass ourselves with too many points, we may be
+content with these four characteristics of childhood,
+teachableness, ignorance, selfishness, and living only for the
+present. In the last three of these, the perfect man should put
+away childish things; in the first point, or teachableness, while
+he retained it in principle, he should modify it in its
+application. For while modesty, humility, and a readiness to learn,
+are becoming to men no less than to children; yet it should be not
+a simple readiness to follow others, but only to follow the wise
+and good; not a sense of utter helplessness which catches at the
+first stay, whether sound or brittle; but such a consciousness of
+weakness and imperfection, as makes us long to be strengthened by
+Him who is almighty, to be purified by Him who is all pure.</p>
+<p>I said, and it is an obvious truth, that the change from
+childhood to manhood is gradual; there is a period in our lives, of
+several years, in which we are, or should be, slowly exchanging the
+qualities of one state for those of the other. During this
+intermediate state, then, we should expect to find persons become
+less teachable, less ignorant, less selfish, less thoughtless.
+"Less teachable," I would wish to mean, in the sense of being "less
+indiscriminately teachable;" but as the evil and the good are, in
+human things, ever mixed up together, we may be obliged to mean
+"less teachable" simply. And, to say the very truth, if I saw in a
+young man the changes from childhood in the three other points, if
+I found him becoming wiser, and less selfish, and more thoughtful,
+I should not be very much disturbed if I found him for a time less
+teachable also. For whilst he was really becoming wiser and better,
+I should not much wonder if the sense of improvement rather than of
+imperfection possessed him too strongly; if his confidence in
+himself was a little too over-weening. Let him go on a little
+farther in life, and if he really does go on improving in wisdom
+and goodness, this over-confidence will find its proper level. He
+will perceive not only how much he is doing, or can do, but how
+much there is which he does not do, and cannot. To a thoughtful
+mind added years can scarcely fail to teach, humility. And in this
+the highest wisdom of manhood may be resembling more and more the
+state of what would be perfect childhood, that is, not simply
+teachableness, but tractableness with respect to what was good and
+true, and to that only.</p>
+<p>But the danger of the intermediate state between childhood and
+manhood is too often this, that whilst in the one point of
+teachableness, the change runs on too fast, in the other three, of
+wisdom, of unselfishness, and of thoughtfulness, it proceeds much
+too slowly: that the faults of childhood thus remain in the
+character, whilst that quality by means of which these faults are
+meant to be corrected,--namely, teachableness,--is at the same time
+diminishing. Now, teachableness as an instinct, if I may call it
+so, diminishes naturally with the consciousness of growing
+strength. By strength, I mean strength of body, no less than
+strength of mind, so closely are our body and mind connected with,
+each other. The helplessness of childhood, which presses upon it
+every moment, the sense of inability to avoid or resist danger,
+which makes the child run continually to his nurse or to his mother
+for protection, cannot but diminish, by the mere growth of the
+bodily powers. The boy feels himself to be less helpless than the
+child, and in that very proportion he is apt to become less
+teachable. As this feeling of decreased helplessness changes into a
+sense of positive vigour and power, and as this vigour and power
+confer an importance on their possessor, which is the case
+especially at schools, so self-confidence must in one point at
+least, arise in the place of conscious weakness; and as this point
+is felt to be more important, so will the self-confidence be likely
+to extend itself more and more over the whole character.</p>
+<p>And yet, I am bound to say, that, in general, the teachableness
+of youth is, after all, much greater than we might at first sight
+fancy. Along with much self-confidence in many things, it is rare,
+I think, to find in a young man a deliberate pride that rejects
+advice and instruction, on the strength of having no need for them.
+And therefore, the faults of boyhood and youth are more owing, to
+my mind, to the want of change in the other points of the childish
+character, than to the too great change in this. The besetting
+faults of youth appear to me to arise mainly from its retaining too
+often the ignorance, selfishness, and thoughtlessness of a child,
+and having arrived at the same time at a degree of bodily vigour
+and power, equal, or only a very little inferior, to those of
+manhood.</p>
+<p>And in this state of things, the questions become of exceeding
+interest, whether the change from childhood to manhood can be
+hastened. That it ought to be hastened, appears to me to be clear;
+hastened, I mean, from what it is actually, because in this
+respect, we do not grow in general fast enough; and the danger of
+over-growth is, therefore, small. Besides, where change of one sort
+is going on very rapidly; where the limbs are growing and the bones
+knitting more firmly, where the strength of bodily endurance, as
+well as of bodily activity, is daily becoming greater; it is
+self-evident that, if the inward changes which ought to accompany
+these outward ones are making no progress, there cannot but be
+derangement and deformity in the system. And, therefore, when I
+look around, I cannot but wish generally that the change from
+childhood to manhood in the three great points of wisdom, of
+unselfishness, and of thoughtfulness, might be hastened from its
+actual rate of progress in most instances.</p>
+<p>But then comes the other great question, "Can it be hastened,
+and if it can, how is it to be done?" "Can it be hastened" means,
+of course, can it be hastened healthfully and beneficially,
+consistently with the due development of our nature in its after
+stages, from life temporal to life eternal? For as the child should
+grow up into the man, so also there is a term of years given in
+which, according to God's will, the natural man should grow up into
+the spiritual man; and we must not so press the first change as to
+make it interfere with the wholesome working of the second. The
+question then is, really, can the change from childhood to manhood
+be hastened in the case of boys and young men in general from its
+actual rate of progress in ordinary cases, without injury to the
+future excellence and full development of the man? that is, without
+exhausting prematurely the faculties either of body or mind.</p>
+<p>And this is a very grave question, one of the deepest interest
+for us and for you. For us, as, according to the answer to be given
+to it, should depend our whole conduct and feelings towards you in
+the matter of your education; for you, inasmuch as it is quite
+clear, that if the change from childhood to manhood can be hastened
+safely, it ought to be hastened; and that it is a sin in every one
+not to try to hasten it: because, to retain the imperfections of
+childhood when you can get rid of them, is in itself to forfeit the
+innocence of childhood; to exchange the condition of the innocent
+infant whom Christ blessed, for that of the unprofitable servant
+whom Christ condemned. For with the growth of our bodies evil will
+grow in us unavoidably; and then, if we are not positively good, we
+are, of necessity, positively sinners.</p>
+<p>We will consider, then, what can be done to hasten this change
+in us healthfully; whether we can grow in wisdom, in love, and in
+thoughtfulness, faster in youth, than we now commonly do grow: and
+whether any possible danger can be connected with such increased
+exertion. This shall be our subject for consideration next Sunday.
+Meantime, let it be understood, that however extravagant it might
+be to hope for any general change in any moral point, as the direct
+result of setting truth before the mind; yet, that it never can be
+extravagant to hope for a practical result in some one or two
+particular cases; and that, if one or two even be impressed
+practically with what they hear, the good achieved, or, rather, the
+good granted us by God, is really beyond our calculation. It is so
+strictly; for who can worthily calculate the value of a single
+human soul? but it is so in this sense also, that the amount of
+general good which may be done in the end by doing good first in
+particular cases is really more than we can estimate. It was thus
+that Christ's original eleven apostles became, in the end, the
+instruments of the salvation of millions: and it is on this
+consideration that we never need despair of the most extensive
+improvements in society, if we are content to wait God's appointed
+time and order, and look for the salvation of the many as the
+gradual fruit of the salvation of a few.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_III."></a>LECTURE III.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>1 CORINTHIANS xiii. 11.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>When I was a child, I spoke as a child,<br>
+I understood as a child, I thought as a child;<br>
+but when I became a man, I put away childish things</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>After having noticed last Sunday what were those particular
+points in childhood, which in manhood should be put away, and
+having observed that this change cannot take place all at once, but
+gradually, during a period of several years, I proposed to
+consider, as on this day, whether it were possible to hasten this
+change, that is, whether it could be hastened without injury to the
+future development of the character; for undoubtedly, there is
+such, a thing in minds, as well as in bodies, as precocious growth;
+and although it is not so frequent as precocious growth in the
+body, nor by any means so generally regarded as an evil, yet it is
+really a thing to be deprecated; and we ought not to adopt such
+measures as might be likely to occasion it.</p>
+<p>Now I believe the only reason which could make it supposed to be
+possible that there could be danger in hastening this change, is
+drawn from the observation of what takes place sometimes with
+regard to intellectual advancement. It is seen that some young men
+of great ambition, or remarkable love of knowledge, do really
+injure their health, and exhaust their minds, by an excess of early
+study. I always grieve over such cases exceedingly; not only for
+the individual's sake who is the sufferer, but also for the
+mischievous effect of his example. It affords a pretence to others
+to justify their own want of exertion; and those to whom it is in
+reality the least dangerous, are always the very persons who seem
+to dread it the most. But we should clearly understand, that this
+excess of intellectual exertion at an early age, is by no means the
+same thing with hastening the change from childishness to
+manliness. We are all enough aware, in common life, that a very
+clever and forward boy may be, in his conduct, exceeding childish;
+that those whose talents and book-knowledge are by no means
+remarkable, may be, in their conduct, exceedingly manly. Examples
+of both these truths instantly present themselves to my memory, and
+perhaps may do so to some of yours. I may say farther, that some
+whose change from childhood to manhood had been, in St. Paul's
+sense of the terms, the most remarkably advanced, were so far from
+being distinguished for their cleverness or proficiency in their
+school-work, that it would almost seem as if their only remaining
+childishness had been displayed there. What I mean, therefore, by
+the change from childhood to manhood, is altogether distinct from a
+premature advance in book-knowledge, and involves in it nothing of
+that over-study which is dreaded as so injurious.</p>
+<p>Yet it is true that I described the change from childhood to
+manhood, as a change from ignorance to wisdom. I did so, certainly;
+but yet, rare as knowledge is, wisdom is rarer; and knowledge,
+unhappily, can exist without wisdom, as wisdom can exist with a
+very inferior degree of knowledge. We shall see this, if we
+consider what we mean by knowledge; and, without going into a more
+general definition of it, let us see what we mean by it here. We
+mean by it, either a knowledge of points of scholarship, of
+grammar, and matters connected with grammar; or a knowledge of
+history and geography; or a knowledge of mathematics: or, it may
+be, of natural history; or, if we use the term, "knowledge of the
+world," then we mean, I think, a knowledge of points of manner and
+fashion; such a knowledge as may save us from exposing ourselves in
+trifling things, by awkwardness or inexperience. Now the knowledge
+of none of these things brings us of necessity any nearer to real
+thoughtfulness, such as alone gives wisdom, than the knowledge of a
+well-contrived game. Some of you, probably, well know that there
+are games from which chance is wholly excluded, and skill in which
+is only the result of much thought and calculation. There is no
+doubt that the game of chess may properly be called an intellectual
+study; but why does it not, and cannot, make any man wise? Because,
+in the first place, the calculations do but respect the movements
+of little pieces of wood or ivory, and not those of our own minds
+and hearts; and, again, they are calculations which have nothing to
+do whatever with our being better men, or worse, with our pleasing
+God or displeasing him. And what is true of this game, is true no
+less of the highest calculations of Astronomy, of the profoundest
+researches into language; nay, what may seem stranger still, it is
+often true no less of the deepest study even of the actions and
+principles of man's nature; and, strangest of all, it may be, and
+is often true, also, of the study of the very Scripture itself; and
+that, not only of the incidental points of Scripture, its
+antiquities, chronology, and history, but of its very most divine
+truths, of man's justification and of God's nature. Here, indeed,
+we are considering about things where wisdom, so to speak, sits
+enshrined. We are very near her, we see the place where she abides;
+but her very self we obtain not. And why?--but because, in the most
+solemn study, no less than in the lightest, our own moral state may
+be set apart from our consideration; we may be unconscious all the
+while of our great want; and forgetting our great business, to be
+reconciled to God, and to do his will: for wisdom, to speak
+properly, is to us nothing else than the true answer to the
+Philippian jailor's question, "What must I do to be saved?"</p>
+<p>Now then, as knowledge of all kinds may be gained without being
+received, or meant at all to be applied, as the answer to this
+question, so it may be quite distinct from wisdom. And when I use
+the term thoughtfulness, as opposed to a child's carelessness, I
+mean it to express an anxiety for the obtaining of this wisdom. And
+farther, I do not see how this wisdom, or this thoughtfulness, can
+be premature in any one; or how it can exhaust before their time
+any faculties, whether of body or mind. This requires no sitting up
+late at night, no giving up of healthful exercise; it brings no
+headaches, no feverishness, no strong excitement at first, to be
+followed by exhaustion afterwards. Hear how it is described by one
+who spoke of it from experience. "The wisdom that is from above is
+first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of
+mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy."
+There is surely nothing of premature exhaustion connected-with any
+one of these things.</p>
+<p>Or, if we turn to the third point of change from childhood to a
+Christian manhood, the change from selfishness to unselfishness,
+neither can we find any possible danger in hastening this. This
+cannot hurt our health or strain our faculties; it can but make
+life at every age more peaceful and more happy. Nor indeed do I
+suppose that any one could fancy that such a change was otherwise
+than wholesome at the earliest possible period.</p>
+<p>There may remain, however, a vague notion, that generally, if
+what we mean by an early change from childishness to manliness be
+that we should become religious, then, although it may not exhaust
+the powers, or injure the health, yet it would destroy the natural
+liveliness and gaiety of youth, and by bringing on a premature
+seriousness of manner and language, would be unbecoming and
+ridiculous. Now, in the first place, there is a great deal of
+confusion and a great deal of folly in the common notions of the
+gaiety of youth. If gaiety mean real happiness of mind, I do not
+believe that there is more of it in youth than in manhood; if for
+this reason only, that the temper in youth being commonly not yet
+brought into good order, irritation and passion are felt, probably,
+oftener than in after life, and these are sad drawbacks, as we all
+know, to a real cheerfulness of mind. And of the outward gaiety of
+youth, there is a part also which is like the gaiety of a drunken
+man; which is riotous, insolent, and annoying to others; which, in
+short, is a folly and a sin. There remains that which strictly
+belongs to youth, partly physically--the lighter step and the
+livelier movement of the growing and vigorous body; partly from
+circumstances, because a young person's parents or friends stand
+between him and many of the cares of life, and protect him from
+feeling them altogether; partly from the abundance of hope which
+belongs to the beginning of every thing, and which continually
+hinders the mind from dwelling on past pain. And I know not which
+of these causes of gaiety would be taken away or lessened by the
+earlier change from childhood to manhood. True it is, that the
+question, "What must I do to be saved?" is a grave one, and must be
+considered seriously; but I do not suppose that any one proposes
+that a young person should never be serious at all. True it is,
+again, that if we are living in folly and sin, this question may be
+a painful one; we might be gayer for a time without it. But, then,
+the matter is, what is to become of us if we do not think of being
+saved?--shall we be saved without thinking of it? And what is it to
+be not saved but lost? I cannot pretend to say that the thought of
+God would not very much disturb the peace and gaiety of an ungodly
+and sinful mind; that it would not interfere with the mirth of the
+bully, or the drunkard, or the reveller, or the glutton, or the
+idler, or the fool. It would, no doubt; just as the hand that was
+seen to write on the wall threw a gloom over the guests at
+Belshazzar's festival. I never meant or mean to say, that the
+thought of God, or that God himself, can be other than a plague to
+those who do not love Him. The thought of Him is their plague here;
+the sight of Him will be their judgment for ever. But I suppose the
+point is, whether the thought of Him would cloud the gaiety of
+those who were striving to please Him. It would cloud it as much,
+and be just as unwelcome and no more, as will be the very actual
+presence of our Lord to the righteous, when they shall see Him as
+He is. Can that which we know to be able to make old age, and
+sickness, and poverty, many times full of comfort,--can that make
+youth and health gloomy? When to natural cheerfulness and
+sanguineness, are added a consciousness of God's ever present care,
+and a knowledge of his rich promises, are we likely to be the more
+sad or the more unhappy?</p>
+<p>What reason, then, is there for any one's not anticipating the
+common progress of Christian manliness, and hastening; to exchange,
+as I said before, ignorance for wisdom, selfishness for
+unselfishness, carelessness for thoughtfulness? I see no reason why
+we should not; but is there no reason why we should? You are young,
+and for the most part strong and healthy; I grant that, humanly
+speaking, the chances of early death to any particular person among
+you are small. But still, considering what life is, even to the
+youngest and strongest, it does seem a fearful risk to be living
+unredeemed; to be living in that state, that if we should happen to
+die, (it may be very unlikely, but still it is clearly
+possible,)--that if we should happen to die, we should be most
+certainly lost for ever. Risks, however, we do not mind; the
+chances, we think, are in our favour, and we will run the hazard.
+It may be so; but he who delays to turn to God when the thought has
+been once put before him, is incurring something more than a risk.
+He may not die these fifty or sixty years; we cannot tell how that
+may be; but he is certainly at this very present time hardening his
+heart, and doing despite unto the Spirit of Grace. By the very
+wickedness of putting off turning to God till a future time, he
+lessens his power of turning to Him ever. This is certain; no one
+can reject God's call without becoming less likely to hear it when
+it is made to him again. And thus the lingering wilfully in the
+evil things of childhood, when we might be at work in putting them
+off, and when God calls us to do so, is an infinite risk, and a
+certain evil;--an infinite risk, for it is living in such a state
+that death at any moment would be certain condemnation;--and a
+certain evil, because, whether we live or not, we are actually
+raising up barriers between ourselves and our salvation; we not
+only do not draw nigh to God, but we are going farther from Him,
+and lessening our power of drawing nigh to Him hereafter.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_IV."></a>LECTURE IV.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>COLOSSIANS i. 9.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>We do not cease to pray for you, and to desire<br>
+that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his<br>
+will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>This is the first of three verses, all of them forming a part of
+the Epistle which was read this morning, and containing St. Paul's
+prayer for the Colossians in all the several points of Christian
+excellence. And the first thing which he desires for them, as we
+have heard, is, that they should be filled with the knowledge of
+God's will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; or, as he
+expresses the same thing to the Ephesians, that they should be not
+unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. He prays
+for the Colossians that they should not be spiritually foolish, but
+that they should be spiritually wise.</p>
+<p>The state of spiritual folly is, I suppose, one of the most
+universal evils in the world. For the number of those who are
+naturally foolish is exceedingly great; of those, I mean, who
+understand no worldly thing well; of those who are careless about
+everything, carried about by every breath of opinion, without
+knowledge, and without principle. But the term spiritual folly
+includes, unhappily, a great many more than these; it takes in not
+those only who are in the common sense of the term foolish, but a
+great many who are in the common sense of the term clever, and many
+who are even in the common sense of the terms, prudent, sensible,
+thoughtful, and wise. It is but too evident that some of the ablest
+men who have ever lived upon earth, have been in no less a degree
+spiritually fools. And thus, it is not without much truth that
+Christian writers have dwelt upon the insufficiency of worldly
+wisdom, and have warned their readers to beware, lest, while
+professing themselves to be wise, they should be accounted as fools
+in the sight of God.</p>
+<p>But the opposite to this notion, that those who are, as it were,
+fools in worldly matters are wise before God; although this also is
+true in a certain sense, and under certain peculiar circumstances,
+yet taken generally, it is the very reverse of truth; and the
+careless and incautious language which has been often used on this
+subject, has been extremely mischievous. On the contrary, he who is
+foolish in worldly matters is likely also to be, and most commonly
+is, no less foolish in the things of God. And the opposite belief
+has arisen mainly from that strange confusion between ignorance and
+innocence, with which many ignorant persons seem to solace
+themselves. Whereas, if you take away a man's knowledge, you do not
+bring him to the state of an infant, but to that of a brute; and of
+one of the most mischievous and malignant of the brute creation.
+For you do not lessen or weaken the man's body by lowering his
+mind; he still retains his strength and his passions, the passions
+leading to self-indulgence, the strength which enables him to feed
+them by continued gratification. He will not think it is true to
+any good purpose; it is very possible to destroy in him the power
+of reflection, whether as exercised upon outward things, or upon
+himself and his own nature, or upon God. But you cannot destroy the
+power of adapting means to ends, nor that of concealing his
+purposes by fraud or falsehood; you take only his wisdom, and leave
+that cunning which marks so notoriously both the savage and the
+madman. He, then, who is a fool as far as regards earthly things,
+is much more a fool with regard to heavenly things; he who cannot
+raise himself even to the lower height, how is he to attain to the
+higher? he who is without reason and conscience, how shall he be
+endowed with the spirit of God?</p>
+<p>It is my deep conviction and long experience of this truth,
+which makes me so grieve over a want of interest in your own
+improvement in human learning, whenever I observe it, over the
+prevalence of a thoughtless and childish spirit amongst you. I
+grant that as to the first point there are sometimes exceptions to
+be met with; that is to say, I have known persons certainly whose
+interest in their work here was not great, and their proficiency
+consequently was small; but who, I do not doubt, were wise unto
+God. But then these persons, whilst they were indifferent perhaps
+about their common school-work, were anything but indifferent as to
+the knowledge of the Bible: there was no carelessness there; but
+they read, and read frequently, books of practical improvement, or
+relating otherwise to religious matters, such as many, I believe,
+would find even less inviting than the books of their common
+business. So that although there was a neglect undoubtedly of many
+parts of the school-work, yet there was no spirit of
+thoughtlessness or childishness in them, nor of general idleness;
+and therefore, although I know that their minds did suffer and have
+suffered from their unwise neglect of a part of their duty, yet
+there was so much attention bestowed on other parts, and so
+manifest and earnest a care for the things of God, that it was
+impossible not to entertain for them the greatest respect and
+regard. These, however, are such rare cases, that it cannot be
+necessary to do more than thus notice them. But the idleness and
+want of interest which I grieve for, is one which extends itself
+but too impartially to knowledge of every kind: to divine
+knowledge, as might be expected, even more than to human. Those
+whom we commonly find careless about their general lessons, are
+quite as ignorant and as careless about their Bibles; those who
+have no interest in general literature, in poetry, or in history,
+or in philosophy, have certainly no greater interest, I do not say
+in works of theology, but in works of practical devotion, in the
+lives of holy men, in meditations, or in prayers. Alas, the
+interest of their minds is bestowed on things far lower than the
+very lowest of all which I have named; and therefore, to see them
+desiring something only a little higher than their present
+pursuits, could not but be encouraging; it would, at least, show
+that the mind was rising upwards. It may, indeed, stop at a point
+short of the highest, it may learn to love earthly excellence, and
+rest there contented, and seek for nothing more perfect; but that,
+at any rate, is a future and merely contingent evil. It is better
+to love earthly excellence than earthly folly; it is far better in
+itself, and it is, by many degrees, nearer to the kingdom of
+God.</p>
+<p>There is another case, however, which I cannot but think is more
+frequent now than formerly; and if it is so, it may be worth while
+to direct our attention to it. Common idleness and absolute
+ignorance are not what I wish to speak of now, but a character
+advanced above these; a character which does not neglect its
+school-lessons, but really attains to considerable proficiency in
+them; a character at once regular and amiable, abstaining from
+evil, and for evil in its low and grosser forms, having a real
+abhorrence. What, then, you will say, is wanting here? I will tell
+you what seems to be wanting--a spirit of manly, and much more of
+Christian, thoughtfulness. There is quickness and cleverness; much
+pleasure, perhaps, in distinction, but little in improvement; there
+is no desire of knowledge for its own sake, whether human or
+divine. There is, therefore, but little power of combining and
+digesting what is read; and, consequently, what is read passes
+away, and takes no root in the mind. This same character shows
+itself in matters of conduct; it will adopt, without scruple, the
+most foolish, commonplace notions of boys, about what is right and
+wrong; it will not, and cannot, from the lightness of its mind,
+concern itself seriously about what is evil in the conduct of
+others, because it takes no regular care of its own, with reference
+to pleasing God; it will not do anything low or wicked, but it will
+sometimes laugh at those who do; and it will by no means take pains
+to encourage, nay, it will sometimes thwart and oppose any thing
+that breathes a higher spirit, and asserts a more manly and
+Christian standard of duty.</p>
+<p>I have thought that this character, with its features more or
+less strongly marked, has shown itself sometimes amongst us,
+marring the good and amiable qualities of those in whom we can
+least bear to see such a defect, because there is in them really so
+much to interest in their favour. Now the number of persons of
+extraordinary abilities who may be here at any one time can depend
+on no calculable causes: nor, again, can we give any reason more
+than what we call accident, if there were to be amongst us at any
+one time a number of persons whose whole tendency was decidedly to
+evil. But if, in these respects, the usual average has continued,
+if there is no lack of ability, and nothing like a prevalence of
+vice, then we begin anxiously to inquire into the causes, which,
+while other things remain the same, have led to a different result.
+And one cause I do find, which, is certainly capable of producing
+such a result: a cause undoubtedly in existence now, and as
+certainly not in existence a few years back; nor can I trace any
+other besides this which appears likely to have produced the same
+effect. This cause consists in the number and character and
+cheapness, and peculiar mode of publication, of the works of
+amusement of the present day. In all these respects the change is
+great, and extremely recent. The works of amusement published only
+a very few years since were comparatively few in number; they were
+less exciting, and therefore less attractive; they were dearer, and
+therefore less accessible; and, not being published periodically,
+they did not occupy the mind for so long a time, nor keep alive so
+constant an expectation; nor, by thus dwelling upon the mind, and
+distilling themselves into it as it were drop by drop, did they
+possess it so largely, colouring even, in many instances, its very
+language, and affording frequent matter for conversation.</p>
+<p>The evil of all these circumstances is actually enormous. The
+mass of human minds, and much more of the minds of young persons,
+have no great appetite for intellectual exercise; but they have
+some, which by careful treatment may be strengthened and increased.
+But here to this weak and delicate appetite is presented an
+abundance of the most stimulating and least nourishing food
+possible. It snatches it greedily, and is not only satisfied, but
+actually conceives a distaste for anything simpler and more
+wholesome. That curiosity which is wisely given us to lead us on to
+knowledge, finds its full gratification in the details of an
+exciting and protracted story, and then lies down as it were
+gorged, and goes to sleep. Other faculties claim their turn, and
+have it. We know that in youth the healthy body and lively spirits
+require exercise, and in this they may and ought to be indulged:
+but the time and interest which remain over when the body has had
+its enjoyment, and the mind desires its share, this has been
+already wasted and exhausted upon things utterly unprofitable: so
+that the mind goes to its work hurriedly and languidly, and feels
+it to be no more than a burden. The mere lessons may be learnt from
+a sense of duty; but that freshness of power which, in young
+persons of ability would fasten eagerly upon some one portion or
+other, of the wide field of knowledge, and there expatiate,
+drinking in health and strength to the mind, as surely as the
+natural exercise of the body gives to it bodily vigour,--that is
+tired prematurely, perverted, and corrupted; and all the knowledge
+which else it might so covet, it now seems a wearying effort to
+attain.</p>
+<p>Great and grievous as is the evil, it is peculiarly hard to find
+the remedy for it. If the books to which I have been alluding were
+books of downright wickedness, we might destroy them wherever we
+found them; we might forbid their open circulation; we might
+conjure you to shun them as you would any other clear sin, whether
+of word or deed. But they are not wicked books for the most part;
+they are of that class which cannot be actually prohibited; nor can
+it be pretended that there is a sin in reading them. They are not
+the more wicked for being published so cheap, and at regular
+intervals; but yet these two circumstances make them so peculiarly
+injurious. All that can be done is to point out the evil; that it
+is real and serious I am very sure, and its effects are most
+deplorable on the minds of the fairest promise; but the remedy for
+it rests with yourselves, or rather with each of you individually,
+so far as he is himself concerned. That an unnatural and constant
+excitement of the mind is most injurious, there is no doubt; that
+excitement involves a consequent weakness, is a law of our nature
+than which none is surer; that the weakness of mind thus produced
+is and must be adverse to quiet study and thought, to that
+reflection which alone is wisdom, is also clear in itself, and
+proved too largely by experience. And that without reflection there
+can be no spiritual understanding, is at once evident; while
+without spiritual understanding, that is, without a knowledge and a
+study of God's will, there can be no spiritual life. And therefore
+childishness and unthoughtfulness cannot be light evils; and if I
+have rightly traced the prevalence of these defects to its cause,
+although that cause may seem to some to be trifling, yet surely it
+is well to call your attention to it, and to remind you that in
+reading works of amusement, as in every other lawful pleasure,
+there is and must be an abiding responsibility in the sight of God;
+that, like other lawful pleasures, we must beware of excess in it;
+and not only so, but that if we find it hurtful to us, either
+because we have used it too freely in times past, or because our
+nature is too weak to bear it, that then we are bound most solemnly
+to abstain from it; because, however lawful in itself, or to others
+who can practise it without injury, whatever is to us an hindrance
+in the way of our intellectual and moral and spiritual improvement,
+that is in our case a positive sin.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_V."></a>LECTURE V.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>COLOSSIANS i. 9.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>We do not cease to pray for you, and to desire<br>
+that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his<br>
+will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>These words, on which I spoke last Sunday, appeared to contain
+so much, which concerns us all so deeply, and to suit the peculiar
+ease of many of us here so entirely, that I thought they might well
+furnish us with matter for farther consideration to-day. And though
+I noticed one particular cause, which seemed to have acted
+mischievously, in the last few years, upon the growth and freshness
+of the mind in youth, yet it would be absurd to suppose that before
+this cause came into existence all was well; or that if it could be
+removed, our progress even in worldly knowledge would henceforth be
+unimpeded. There are many other causes no doubt which oppose our
+growth in worldly wisdom; and still more which oppose our growth in
+the wisdom of God.</p>
+<p>One of these causes meets us at the very beginning; it exists at
+this very moment; it makes it difficult even to gain your attention
+for what is to be said. This cause is to be found in the want of
+sympathy between persons of very different ages, between what must
+be, therefore, in the common course of nature, different degrees of
+thoughtfulness. It is the want of sympathy, properly speaking,
+which creates in these matters a difficulty of understanding; for
+the attention and memory are alike apt to be careless where the
+mind is not interested; and how can we understand that to which we
+scarcely listened, and which we imperfectly remember? Nature
+herself seems to lead the old and the young two different ways: and
+when the old call upon the young to be thoughtful, it seems as if
+they were but calling them to a state contrary to their nature; and
+the call is not regarded.</p>
+<p>Is it then that we have here an invincible obstacle, which
+renders all attempts to inspire thoughtfulness utterly vain? and if
+it be so, what use can there be in dwelling upon it? None,
+certainly, if it were actually and in all cases invincible; but if
+it be every thing short of invincible, there is much good in
+noticing it. There is much good surely in trying to impress the
+great truth, that nature must be overcome by a mightier power, or
+we perish. There is much good in meeting and allowing to its full
+extent what we are so apt in our folly to regard as an excuse, and
+which really is the earnest of our condemnation. It is very true,
+and to be allowed to the fullest extent, that it is against the
+nature of youth in all ordinary cases to be thoughtful; that it is
+very difficult for you even to give your attention to serious
+things when spoken of, more difficult still to remember them
+afterwards and always. It is for the very reason because it is so
+difficult, because it is a work so against nature, to raise the
+young and careless mind to the thought of God; because it is so
+certain that, in the common course of things, you will not think of
+Him, but will follow the bent of your own several fancies or
+desires, that therefore He, who wills in his love to bring us to
+himself, knowing that without the knowledge of Him we must perish
+for ever, was pleased to give his only-begotten Son, that through
+Him we might overcome nature, and might turn to God and live.</p>
+<p>I wish that I could increase, if it were possible, the sense
+which, you have of the difficulty of becoming thoughtful, so that
+you could but see that out of this very difficulty, and
+indissolubly connected with it, comes the grace of Christ's
+redemption. You have not strength of purpose enough to shake off
+folly and sin; surely you have not, or else, why should Christ have
+died? It is so hard to come to God; undoubtedly, so hard that no
+man can come unto God except God will draw him. Nature herself
+leads us to be careless, our very strength and spirits of
+themselves will not allow us to reflect. Most true; for that which
+is born of the flesh, is flesh; and we inherit a nature derived
+from him in whom we all die.</p>
+<p>I believe that it is not idle to dwell upon tins; for it is
+scarcely possible but that good and earnest resolutions should
+often enter the minds of many of you; or, if not resolutions, yet
+at least wishes, wishes chilled but too soon, I fear, by the
+thought or feeling, that however much to will may be present with
+you, yet how to perform it you find not. Now, if this true sense of
+weakness might but lead any one to seek for strength where it may
+be found, then indeed it would be a feeling no less blessed than
+true; for it would urge you to seek God's help and Christ's
+redemption, instead of desperately yielding to your weakness, and
+so remaining weak for ever.</p>
+<p>You may look at the prospect before you in all its reality: you
+may see how much must be given up, how much withstood, bow much,
+endured; how hard it is to alter old ways, not in itself only, but
+because the change attracts attention, and is received, it may be,
+with doubts as to its sincerity, with irony, and with sneers. There
+is all this before you: it cannot be denied; it must not be
+concealed. The way to life is not broad and easy; it is not that
+way which is most trodden. To pass from what we are to what we may
+be hereafter, from an earthly nature to an heavenly, cannot be an
+easy work, to be done at any time, with no effort, with no pain. It
+is the greatest work which is done in the whole world, it is the
+mightiest change; death and birth are, as it were, combined in it;
+but the Lord of birth and of death is at hand, to enable us to
+effect it. Think that this is so; and the more you feel how hard a
+task is set before you, the more you will be able to understand the
+language of joy and thankfulness with which the Scripture speaks of
+a human soul's redemption.</p>
+<p>This great work may be wrought for every soul here assembled;
+the want of sympathy in sacred and serious things may be changed to
+sympathy the most intense; the carelessness of fools may be changed
+into spiritual wisdom. It may be wrought for all; but it is more
+happy to think that it will be wrought for some;--for whom, no
+mortal eye or judgment can discern; but it will be wrought for
+some. If many should yield in despair to their enemy, yet some will
+resist him: if Christ be to many no more than foolishness, if his
+name convey nothing more than a vague sense of something solemn,
+which passes over the mind for an instant, and then vanishes, yet
+to some undoubtedly, he will be found to be the wisdom of God, and
+the power of God. There are some here, we may be quite sure, who
+will be witnesses for ever to all the world of men and angels, that
+what truly was impossible to nature, is possible to nature renewed
+and strengthened by grace.</p>
+<p>Without such a change, it is vain, I fear, to look for any thing
+like wisdom or spiritual understanding; for how can such a seed be
+expected to grow in a soil so shallow as common thoughtlessness?
+and how can merely human motives have force to overcome so strong a
+tendency of nature? nay, how can such motives be brought to act
+upon the mind? for it is absolutely impossible that the middle-aged
+and the young should be brought into entire sympathy with each
+other, unless Christ's love be their common bond. Human wisdom in
+advanced life may be, and is to persons of strong faculties of
+mind, naturally pleasant: but how can it be made so to persons of
+ordinary faculties in early youth? There are faults which society
+condemns strongly, while the temptation to them in after life is
+slight. Persons in middle age may resist these easily, and abhor
+them sincerely; but how can we make young persons do the same when
+the temptation to commit them is strong, and the condemnation of
+them by their society is either very slight, or does not exist at
+all? And, therefore, we find that, do what we will, the same
+faults' continue to be common in schools, the same faults both of
+omission and commission; there is the same inherent difficulty of
+bringing persons of different ages and positions to think and feel
+alike, unless Christ has become possessed of the thoughts and
+feelings of both, and so they become one with each other in
+him.</p>
+<p>But it was our Lord's charge to Peter, "Thou, when thou art
+converted, strengthen thy brethren." As sure as it is that some who
+hear me are turned, or turning, or will turn, to God, so sure is it
+that these, be they few or many, will do something towards the
+strengthening of their brethren. Whatever good is to be done
+amongst us on a large scale, it must be done only in this way, the
+many half despairing prayer may be, "Lord, I believe; help thou
+mine unbelief;" but if any one is moved by Christ's call, and feels
+within himself that he should like to follow Christ, and to be with
+him always, let him cherish that work of the Holy Spirit within
+him, which has given him if it be only so much of the will to be
+saved. It is a spark which may be quenched in a moment; in itself
+it can give no assurance; but if any one watches it carefully, and
+prays that it may live and be kindled into a stronger spark, till
+at last it break out into a flame, then for him it is full of
+assurance; God has heard his prayer; and he has received the gift
+of the Holy Spirit, an earnest of his eternal inheritance. Will he
+not then watch and pray the more anxiously, lest the fruit which,
+is now partly formed should never ripen? Will he not see and feel
+that there is some reality in the things of God, that strength, and
+peace, and victory, are not vainly promised? Will he not hold fast
+the things which he has now not heard only, but known, lest by any
+means he should let them slip? May God strengthen such, whoever
+they may be, with all the might of his Spirit; and may he be with
+them even to the end.</p>
+<p>But for those,--who they are, again, we know not, nor how many;
+but here, also, there will too surely be some,--for those who hear
+now, as they have often heard before, words which, they scarcely
+heed, which, have at times partially caught their attention, but
+have not produced in them the slightest real effect, for them the
+words are coming to an end; they will soon be released from the
+irksome bondage of hearing them; and another opportunity of grace
+will have been offered to them in vain. Tomorrow, and the day
+after, they will walk as they have walked before, the wretched
+slaves of folly and passion; half despairing prayer may be, "Lord,
+I believe; help thou mine unbelief;" but if any one is moved by
+Christ's call, and feels within himself that he should like to
+follow Christ, and to be with him always, let him cherish that work
+of the Holy Spirit within him, which has given him if it be only so
+much of the will to be saved. It is a spark which may be quenched
+in a moment; in itself it can give no assurance; but if any one
+watches it carefully, and prays that it may live and be kindled
+into a stronger spark, till at last it break out into a flame, then
+for him it is full of assurance; God has heard his prayer; and he
+has received the gift of the Holy Spirit, an earnest of his eternal
+inheritance. Will he not then watch and pray the more anxiously,
+lest the fruit which is now partly formed should never ripen? Will
+he not see and feel that there is some reality in the things of
+God, that strength, and peace, and victory, are not vainly
+promised? Will he not hold fast the things which he has now not
+heard only, but known, lest by any means he should let them slip?
+May God strengthen such, whoever they may be, with all the might of
+his Spirit; and may he be with them even to the end.</p>
+<p>But for those,--who they are, again, we know not, nor how many;
+but here, also, there will too surely be some,--for those who hear
+now, as they have often heard before, words which they scarcely
+heed, which have at times partially caught their attention, but
+have not produced in them the slightest real effect, for them the
+words are coming to an end; they will soon be released from the
+irksome bondage of hearing them; and another opportunity of grace
+will have been offered to them in vain. Tomorrow, and the day
+after, they will walk as they have walked before, the wretched
+slaves of folly and passion; leaving undone all Christ's work, and
+greedily doing his enemy's. Yet even these Christ yet spares, he
+still calls them, he has died for them. Still the word must be
+spoken to them, whether they will hear, or whether they will
+forbear. It may be, that they will some day turn; and if not,
+Christ has perfected his mercy towards them; and Christ's servants
+have delivered their own souls in warning them. May there be but
+few of us on whom this horrible portion will fall; yet, is it not
+an awful thing to think of, that it will, in all human probability,
+fall on some? and that whoever hardens his heart, and resists the
+word spoken to him this day, he is one who has done as much as in
+him lies to make himself among that number.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_VI."></a>LECTURE VI.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>COLOSSIANS iii. 3.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in
+God</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>When I have spoken, from time to time, of denying ourselves for
+the sake of relieving others, although self-denial and charity are,
+in their full growth, amongst the highest of Christian graces, yet
+I have felt much hope that, up to a certain degree, in their lowest
+and elementary forms at least, there might be many that would be
+disposed to practise them. For these are virtues which do
+undoubtedly commend themselves to our minds as things clearly good:
+so much so that I am inclined to think that the much-disputed moral
+sense, the nature of which is said to be so hard to ascertain,
+exists most clearly in the universal perception that it is good to
+deny ourselves and to benefit others. I do not say merely that
+there is a perception that it is good to deny ourselves in order to
+benefit others; but that there is in self-denial, simply, something
+which commands respect; an unconscious tribute, I suppose, to the
+truth, that the self which, is thus denied is one which, if
+indulged, would run to evil.</p>
+<p>But a point of far greater difficulty, of absolutely the
+greatest difficulty, is to impress upon our minds the excellence of
+another quality, which is known by the name of spiritual or
+heavenly-mindedness. In fact, this,--and this almost singly,--is
+the transcendent part of Christianity; that part of it which is not
+according to, but above, nature; which, conscience, I think,
+itself, in the natural man, does not acknowledge. When Christianity
+speaks of purity, of truth, of justice, of charity, of faith and
+love to God, it speaks a language which, however belied by our
+practice, is at once allowed by our consciences: the things so
+recommended are, beyond all doubt, good and lovely. But when it
+says, in St. Paul's words, "Set your affections on things above,
+not on things on the earth: for ye are dead, and your life is hid
+with Christ in God," the language sounds so strange that it is
+scarcely intelligible; and if we do get to understand it, yet it
+seems to give a wrench, as it were, to our whole being, to command
+a thing extravagant and impossible.</p>
+<p>I am persuaded that this would be so, more or less, everywhere;
+but in how extreme a degree must it hold good amongst us! Even in
+poverty, in sickness, and old age, where this life would seem to be
+nothing but a burden, and the command to "set the affections on
+things above" might appear superfluous, still the known so prevails
+over the unknown, the familiar over the incomprehensible, that hope
+and affection find continually their objects in this world, there
+is still a clinging to life, and an unwillingness to die. But in a
+state the very opposite to this, in plenty, in health, in youth;
+with much of enjoyment actually in our hands, and more in prospect;
+with just so much mystery over our coming life as to keep alive
+interest, yet with enough known and understood in its prospects to
+awaken sympathy; what deafest ear of the deaf adder could ever be
+so closed against the voice of the charmer, as our minds, so
+engrossed with the enjoyments and the hopes of earth, are closed
+against the voice which speaks of the things of heaven?</p>
+<p>Again, I have said, when speaking of other subjects, that I
+looked upon the older persons among you as a sort of link between
+me and the younger, who communicated, in some instances, by their
+language and example, something of an impression of the meaning of
+Christian teaching. But when we speak of a thing so high as
+spiritual-mindedness, it seems as if none of us can be a link
+between Christ's words and our brethren's minds: as if we all stand
+alike at an infinite distance from the high and unapproachable
+truth. The mountain of God becomes veiled, as it were, with the
+clouds which rested upon Sinai; we cannot approach near it, but
+stand far off, for a moment, perhaps, in awe; but soon in neglect
+and indifference.</p>
+<p>Let any one capable of thinking, but in the full vigour of
+health of body and mind, placed far above want, and with the
+prospect, according to all probability, of many years of happy life
+before him, let such an one go forth, at this season of the year
+above all, let him see the vast preparation for life in all nature,
+amongst all living creatures, in every tree, and in every plant of
+grass; let him feel the warmth of the sun, becoming every day
+stronger and stronger; let him be possessed, in every sense, with
+an impression of the vigour and beauty and glory around him; and
+let him feel no less a vigour in himself, too, of body and mind,
+and infinitely varied power of enjoyment in so many faculties of
+repose and of energy,--and then let him calmly consider what St.
+Paul could mean, when he says generally to Christians, "Set your
+affections on things above, not on things on the earth; for ye are
+dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God."</p>
+<p>Let a person capable of thinking, and such as I have supposed in
+all other respects, consider what St. Paul could mean by calling
+him "dead." With an almost thrilling consciousness of life, with an
+almost bounding sense of vigour in body and mind, he is told that
+he is "dead." And stranger still, he is told so by one whose
+recorded life, and existing writings declare that he too must have
+had in himself a consciousness of life no less lively; that there
+was in him an activity and energy which neither age nor sufferings
+could quell; that he wielded an influence over the minds of
+thousands, such as kings or conquerors might envy. If St. Paul
+could stand by our side, think we that he, any more than ourselves,
+would be insensible to the power within him, and to the beauty and
+the glory without? Yet his words are recorded; he bids us not set
+our affections on things on the earth; he declares of himself, and
+of us equally, if we are Christ's servants, that we are dead, and
+that our life is hid with Christ in God.</p>
+<p>I have put the difficulty in its strongest form, for it is one
+well worth considering. What St. Paul here urges is indeed the
+highest perfection of Christianity, and therefore of human nature;
+but it is not an impossible perfection, and St. Paul's own life and
+character are our warrant that it is nothing sickly, or foolish, or
+fanatical. But let us first hear the whole of St. Paul's language:
+"If ye, then, be risen with Christ, seek those things which are
+above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God. Set your
+affections on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are
+dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is
+our life, shall appear, then shall we also appear with him in
+glory. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth;
+fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence,
+and covetousness, which is idolatry." "Mortify," I need not say, is
+to make dead, to destroy. "Ye are dead;" therefore let your members
+on earth be dead; "fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection,"
+&amp;c. As if he had said, By becoming Christians ye engaged to be
+dead; and therefore see to it that ye are so. But what he requires
+us to make dead or to destroy, are our evil affections and desires;
+it is manifest, then, that it is to these that, by becoming
+Christians, we engage to become dead.</p>
+<p>This is true; and it is most certain that Christ requires us to
+be dead only to what is evil. But the essence of
+spiritual-mindedness consists in this, that it is assumed that with
+earth, and all things earthly, evil or imperfection are closely
+mixed; so that it is not possible to set our affections keenly
+upon, or to abandon ourselves to the enjoyment of, any earthly
+thing without the danger of those affections and that enjoyment
+becoming evil. In other words, there is that in the state of things
+within and around us, which, renders it needful to be ever
+watchful; and watchfulness is inconsistent with an intensity of
+delight and enjoyment.</p>
+<p>For, consider the case which I was just supposing; that lively
+sense of the beauty of all nature, that indescribable feeling of
+delight which arises out of the consciousness of health, and
+strength and power. Suppose that we abandon ourselves to such
+impressions without restraint, and is it not manifest that they are
+the extreme of godless pride and selfishness? For do we not know
+that in this world, and close to us wherever we are, there is,
+along with all the beauty and enjoyment which we witness, a large
+portion also of evil, and of suffering? And do we not know that He
+who gave to the earth its richness, and who set the sun to shine in
+the heavens, and who gave to us that wonderful frame of body and
+mind, whose healthful workings are So delightful to us, that He
+gave them that we might use both body and mind in His service; that
+the soldier has something else to do than to gaze like a child on
+the splendour of his uniform or the brightness of his sword; that
+those faculties which we feel as it were burning within us, have
+their work before them, a work far above their strength, though
+multiplied a thousand fold; that the call to them to be busy is
+never silent; that there is an infinite voice in the infinite sins
+and sufferings of millions which proclaims that the contest is
+raging around us; that every idle moment is treason; that now it is
+the time for unceasing efforts; and that not till the victory is
+gained may Christ's soldiers throw aside their arms, and resign
+themselves to enjoyment and to rest?</p>
+<p>Then when we turn to the words, "our life is hid with Christ in
+God," the exceeding greatness of Christ's promises rises upon us in
+something of the fulness of their reality. Some may know the story
+of that German nobleman<a name="FNanchor12"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_12">[12]</a>, whose life had been distinguished alike by
+genius and worldly distinctions, and by Christian holiness; and
+who, in the last morning of his life, when the dawn broke into his
+sick chamber, prayed that he might be supported to the window, and
+might look once again upon the rising sun. After looking steadily
+at it for some time, he cried out, "Oh! if the appearance of this
+earthly and created thing is so beautiful and so quickening, how
+much more shall I be enraptured at the sight of the unspeakable
+glory of the Creator Himself!" That was the feeling of a man whose
+sense of earthly beauty had all the keenness of a poet's
+enthusiasm; but who, withal, had in his greatest health and vigour
+preserved the consciousness that his life was hid with Christ in
+God; that the things seen, how beautiful soever, were as nothing to
+the things which are not seen. And so, if from the feeling of
+natural enjoyment we turn, at once thankfully and earnestly, to
+remember God's service, and to address ourselves to his work; and
+sadly remember, that, although we can enjoy, yet that many are
+suffering; and that, whilst they are so, enjoyment in us for more
+than a brief space of needful rest cannot but be sin; then there
+must come upon us, most strongly, the impression of that life where
+sin and suffering are not; where not God's works only, but God
+Himself is visible; where the vigour and faculties which we feel
+within us are not the passing strength of a decaying body, nor the
+brief prime of a mind which in a few years must sink into dotage;
+but the strength of a body incorruptible and eternal, the ripeness
+of a spirit which shall go on growing in wisdom and love for
+ever.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_12"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor12">[12]</a> The Baron Von Canitz.</blockquote>
+<p>Thus, then, if we consider again St. Paul's meaning, we shall
+find that, high and pure as it is, it is nothing unreasonable or
+impossible; that what he requires us to be dead to absolutely is
+that which is evil; that, because of the mixture of evil with
+ourselves and all around us, this life must not and cannot be a
+life of entire enjoyment without becoming godless and selfish;
+that, therefore, our affections cannot be set upon earthly things
+so as to enjoy them in and for themselves entirely, without
+becoming inordinate, and therefore evil. He does require us, old
+and young alike, to set our affection on things above: to remember
+that with God, and with Him alone, can be our rest, and the fulness
+of our joy; and amidst our pleasure in earthly things to retain in
+our minds, first, a grateful sense of their Giver; secondly, a
+remembrance of their passing nature; and thirdly, a consciousness
+of the evil that is in the world, which makes it a sin to resign
+ourselves to any enjoyment, except as a permitted refreshment to
+strengthen us for duty to come. Above all, let one feeling be truly
+cherished, and it will do more, perhaps, than any other to moderate
+our pleasure in earthly things, and to render it safe, and
+wholesome, and Christianlike. That feeling is the remembrance of
+our own faults. Let us bear these in mind as God does; let us
+consider how displeasing they are in His sight; how often they are
+repeated; how little they deserve the enjoyments which are given
+us. If this does not change our selfish pleasure into a zealous
+gratitude, then, indeed, sin must have a dominion over us; for the
+natural effect would be, that our hearts should burn within us for
+very shame, and should enkindle us to be thankful with all our
+strength for blessings so undeserved; to show something of our love
+to God who has so richly shown his love to us.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_VII."></a>LECTURE VII.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>CORINTHIANS iii. 21-23.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>All things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or
+Cephas,<br>
+or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to
+come;<br>
+all are yours; and ye are Christ's; and Christ is
+God's</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>It is very possible, that all may not distinctly understand the
+force of the several clauses of this passage, yet, all, I suppose,
+would derive a general impression from it, that it spoke of the
+condition of Christians in very exalted language, and made it to
+extend to things in this world, as well as to things in the world
+to come. But can it be good for us to dwell on our exaltation? And
+if we do, may we not dread lest such language might be used towards
+us as that which St. Paul uses in the very next chapter to the
+Corinthians, "Now ye are full, now ye are rich, ye have reigned as
+kings without us; and I would to God ye did reign, that we also
+might reign with you." It would seem, however, that it would be
+good for us to dwell on the greatness of our condition and
+privileges, because St. Paul, who thus upbraids the Corinthians
+with their pride, had yet himself immediately before laid the
+picture of their high privileges, in the words of the text, in full
+detail before them, as if he wished them carefully to consider it.
+And so indeed it is. It feeds pride to dwell upon our good
+qualities or advantages, as individuals, or as a class in society,
+or as a nation, or as a sect or party; but, to speak generally, our
+advantages and privileges, as Christians, have not a tendency to
+excite pride; for some reasons in the nature of the case; for this
+reason amongst ourselves particularly, because the very essence of
+pride consists in contrast; we are proud that we are, in some one
+or more points, superior to others who come immediately under our
+observation. Now, we have so little to do with any who are not
+Christians, that the contrast is in this case wanting; we have none
+over whom to be proud; none whom we can glory in surpassing; and,
+therefore, a consideration of our Christian advantages, in the
+absence of that one element which might feed pride, is likely with
+us to work in a better manner, and to lead rather to thankfulness
+and increased exertion.</p>
+<p>I say to increased exertion; for what would stop exertion is
+pride. It is the turning back, and pausing to look with
+satisfaction on what is below us, rather than the looking upward to
+the summit, and thinking how much our actual elevation has brought
+us on the way towards it. And, further, there is coupled with every
+consideration of Christian privileges, the thought of what it must
+be to leave such privileges unimproved. In this respect, how well
+does the language of the two lessons from Deuteronomy suit the
+lesson from the Epistle to the Corinthians. We heard the
+description of the beauty and richness of the land which God gave
+to his people,--there were their advantages and privileges,--we
+heard also, the declaration of their unworthiness, and the solemn
+threatening of vengeance if, after having received good, they did
+evil. And as the vengeance has fallen upon them to the utmost, so
+we are taught expressly to apply their example to ourselves. "If
+God spared not the natural branches," such was St. Paul's language
+to the church at Rome, "take heed lest he also spare not thee."</p>
+<p>Let us not fear, then, to consider more nearly the high
+privileges which, as Christians, we enjoy: let us endeavour to
+understand, not merely generally, but in detail, the exalted
+language of the text, where it is said, that all things are ours;
+Paul, Apollos, and Cephas, the world, and life, and death, the
+things of time, and the things of eternity. These are ours because
+we are Christ's, and Christ is God's; they are ours so long as we
+are Christ's, and so far as we are his truly. They are not ours so
+far as we are not his: they are ours in no degree whatever the
+moment that he shall declare that we are his no longer.</p>
+<p>"Paul, and Apollos, and Peter, are ours." This, perhaps, is the
+expression which we should understand least distinctly of any. It
+is an expression, however, of deep importance, though perhaps less
+so here than in congregations of a different sort. I need not,
+therefore, dwell on it long now. But the Corinthians, as many
+Christians have done since, were apt to think more of their being
+Christians of a certain sort, than of being Christians simply: some
+said, "We have Paul's view of Christianity, the true and sound view
+of it, free from superstition:" others said, "But we have Peter's
+view of Christianity, one of Christ's own apostles, who were with
+him on earth; ours is the true and earliest view of it, free from
+all innovations:" and others, again, said, "Nay, but we have been
+taught by Apollos, an eloquent man, and mighty in the Scriptures;
+one who best understands how to unite the law and the gospel; one
+who has given us the full perfection of Christianity." No doubt
+there were some differences of views even between Paul, and Peter,
+and Apollos; for while, on the one hand, they were all enlightened
+by the Spirit of God, yet, on the other hand, they retained still
+their human differences of character and disposition, which must on
+several occasions have been manifest. But St. Paul does not tell us
+what these were, nor how far they extended, nor to what degree they
+had been exaggerated by those who heard them. He does not insist
+upon the truth of his own view, nor wish the Corinthians to lay
+aside their divisions, after the manner so zealously enforced by
+some persons now, namely, that those who said they were of Peter,
+or of Apollos, should confess that they had been in error, and
+declare themselves to be now only of Paul. Such a condemnation of
+schism he would have held to be in itself in the highest degree
+schismatical. But St. Paul was earnest, that schism should be ended
+after another way than this, by all parties remembering, that
+whatever became of the truth or falsehood of their own particular
+views of Christianity, yet, that Christianity according to any of
+their views was the one great thing which was their glory and their
+salvation. "Paul, and Apollos, and Peter, are all yours: but you
+are Christ's." You should not glory in men; that you belong to a
+purer church than other Christians; but that you belong to the
+church of Christ; that church, which, in its most pure particular
+branches, has never been free from some mixture of human infirmity
+and error; nor yet, in its worst branches, has ever lost altogether
+the seal of Christ's Spirit, nor ceased to believe in Christ
+crucified.</p>
+<p>But the next words are of more particular concern to us here.
+"The world, and life, and death, and things present, and things to
+come, are all ours." They are all ours, so far as we are Christ's.
+The world is ours; its manifold riches and delights, its various
+wisdom, all are ours. They are ours, not as a thing stolen, and
+which will be taken from us with a heavy over-payment of penalty,
+because we stole it when it did not belong to us; but they are ours
+by God's free gift, to minister to our comfort, and to our good.
+And this is the great difference; the good things of this world are
+stolen by many; but they belong, by God's gift, to those only who
+are Christ's: and there is the sure sign, generally, to be seen of
+their being stolen,--an unwillingness that He to whom of right they
+belong should see them. What a man steals, he enjoys, as it were,
+in fear: if the owner of it finds him with it, then all his
+enjoyment is gone; he wishes that he had never touched it; it is no
+source of pleasure to him, but merely one of terror. And so it is
+often with our stolen pleasures,--stolen, I mean, not in respect of
+man, but of God,--stolen, because we do not feel them to be God's
+gift, nor receive them, as from him, with thankfulness. They may be
+very lawful pleasures, so far as other men are concerned; pleasures
+bought, it may be, with our own money, or given to us by our own
+friends, and enjoyed without any injury to any one. They may be the
+very simplest enjoyments of life, our health, the fresh air, our
+common food, our common amusements, our common society; things most
+permitted to us all, as far as man is concerned, but yet things
+which are constantly stolen by us, because we take them without
+God's leave, and enjoy them not as his gifts. They are all his, and
+he gives them freely to his children. If we are his children, he
+gives them to us; and delights in our enjoyment of them, as any
+human father loves to see the pleasure of his children in those
+things which it is good for them to enjoy. But then, is any child
+afraid of his father so seeing him? or is the thought of his father
+any interruption to his enjoyment? If it would be, we should be
+sure that there was something wrong; that the enjoyment, either in
+itself, or with respect to the particular case of that child, was a
+stolen one. And even as simple is the state of our dread of God, of
+our wish to keep his name and his thought away from us. It is the
+sure sign that our pleasures are stolen, either as being wrong in
+themselves, or much oftener, because we have taken them without
+being fit for them, have snatched them for ourselves, instead of
+receiving them at the hands of God. Two of us may be daily doing
+the very same thing in most respects,--enjoying actually the very
+same pleasures, whether of body or of mind; the same exercises, the
+same studies, the same indulgences, the same society,--and yet
+these very same things may belong rightfully to the one, and be
+stolen by the other. To the one they may come with a double
+blessing, as the assurance of God's greater love hereafter: to the
+other, they are but an addition to that sad account, when all good
+things enjoyed here, having been not our own rightly, but stolen,
+shall be paid for in over measure, by evil things to be suffered
+hereafter.</p>
+<p>And what I have said of the world, will apply also to life and
+to death. Oh, the infinite difference whether life is ours, or but
+stolen for an instant; whether death is ours, our subject,
+ministering only to our good; or our fearful enemy, our ever keen
+pursuer, from whose grasp we have escaped for a few short years,
+but who is following fast after us, and when he has once caught us
+will hold us fast for ever! Have we ever seen his near
+approach--has he ever forced himself upon our notice whether we
+would or no? But two days since he was amongst us,--we were, as it
+were, forced to look upon him. Did we think that he was ours, or
+that we were his? If we are his, then indeed he is fearful: fearful
+to the mere consciousness of nature; a consciousness which no
+arguments can overcome; fearful if it be merely the parting from
+life, if it be merely the resigning that wonderful thing which we
+call our being. It is fearful to go from light to darkness, from
+all that we have ever known and loved, to that of which we know and
+love nothing. But if death, even thus stingless, is yet full of
+horror, what is he with his worst sting beside, the sting of our
+sins? What is he when he is taking us, not to nothingness, but to
+judgment? He is indeed so fearful then, that no words can paint him
+half so truly as our foreboding dread of him, and no arguments
+which the wit of man can furnish can strip him of his terrors.</p>
+<p>But what if death too, as well as life, be ours?--which he is,
+if we are Christ's; for Christ has conquered him. If he be ours,
+our servant, our minister, sent but to bring us into the presence
+of our Lord, then, indeed, his terrors, his merely natural terrors,
+the outside roughness of his aspect, are things which the merest
+child need not shrink from. Then disease and decay, however painful
+to living friends to look upon, have but little pain for him who is
+undergoing them. For it is not only amidst the tortures of actual
+martyrdom that Christians have been more than conquerors,--in
+common life, on the quiet or lonely sick bed, under the grasp of
+fever or of consumption, the conquest has been witnessed as often
+and as completely. It is not a little thing when the faintest
+whisper of thought to which expiring nature can give utterance
+breathes of nothing but of peace and of forgiveness. It is not a
+little thing when the name of Christ possesses us wholly; not
+distinctly, it may be, for reason may be too weak for this; but
+with an indescribable power of support and comfort. Or even if
+there be a last conflict,--a season of terror and of pain, a valley
+of the shadow of death, dark and gloomy,--yet even there Christ is
+with his servants, and as their trial is so is his love. Thus it
+is, if death be ours; and death is ours, if we be Christ's. And are
+we not Christ's? We bear his name, we have his outward seal of
+belonging to his people,--can we refuse to be his in heart and true
+obedience? Would we rather steal our pleasures than enjoy them as
+our own; steal life for an instant, rather than have it our sure
+possession for ever? Would we rather be fugitives from death,
+fugitives whom he will surely recover and hold fast, than be able
+to say and to feel that death, as well as life is ours, things to
+come, as well as things present, because we are truly Christ's?</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_VIII."></a>LECTURE VIII.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>GALATIANS V. 16, 17.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of
+the flesh.<br>
+For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against
+the<br>
+flesh; and these are contrary the one to the other, so that ye
+cannot<br>
+do the things that ye would</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>"We cannot do the things that we would." These are words of
+familiar and common use; this is the language in which we are all
+apt to excuse, whether to ourselves or to others, the various
+faults of our conduct. We should be glad to do better, so we say
+and think, but the power to do so fails us. And so far it may seem
+that we are but echoing the apostle's language; for he says the
+very same thing, "Ye cannot do the things that ye would." Yet the
+words as we use them, and as the apostle used them, have the most
+opposite meaning in the world. We use them as a reason why we
+should be satisfied, the apostle as a reason why we should be
+alarmed; we intend them to be an excuse, the apostle meant them to
+be a certain sign of condemnation.</p>
+<p>The reasons of this difference may be understood very easily.
+We, in the common course of justice, should think it hard to punish
+a man for not doing what he cannot do. We think, therefore, that if
+we say that we cannot do well, we establish also our own claim to
+escape from punishment. But God declares that a state of sin is and
+must be a state of misery; and that if we cannot escape the sin, we
+cannot escape the misery. According to God's meaning, then, the
+words, "Ye cannot do the things which ye would," mean no other than
+this: "Ye cannot escape from hell; ye cannot be redeemed from the
+power of death and of Satan; the power is wanting in you, however
+much you may wish it: death has got you, and it will keep you for
+ever." So that, in this way, sickness or weakness of the soul is
+very like sickness or weakness of the body. We cannot help being
+ill or weak in many cases: is that any reason why, according to the
+laws of God's providence, we should not suffer the pain of illness?
+Or is it not, rather, clear that we suffer it just because we have
+not the power to get rid of it; if we had the power to be well, we
+should be well. A man's evils are not gone because he wishes them
+away; it is not he who would fain see his chains broken, that
+escapes from his bondage; but he who has the strength to rend them
+asunder.</p>
+<p>Thus, then, in St. Paul's language, "Ye cannot do the things
+that ye would," means exactly, "Ye are not redeemed, but in
+bondage; ye are not saved, but lost." But he goes on to the reason
+why we cannot do the things which we would, which is, "because the
+flesh and the Spirit are contrary to one another," and pull us, as
+it were, different ways. Just as we might say of a man in illness,
+that the reason why he is not well, as he wishes to be, is because
+his healthy nature and his disease are contrary to one another, and
+are striving within him for the mastery. His blood, according to
+its healthy nature, would flow calmly and steadily; his food,
+according to his healthy nature, would be received with appetite,
+and would give him nourishment and strength; but, behold, there is
+in him now another nature, contrary to his healthy nature: and this
+other nature makes his blood flow with feverish quickness, and
+makes food distasteful to him, and makes the food which he has
+eaten before to become, as it were, poison; it does not nourish him
+or strengthen, but is a burden, a weakness, and a pain. As long as
+these two natures thus struggle within him, the man is sick; as
+soon as the diseased nature prevails, the man sinks and dies. He
+does not wish to die,--not at all,--most earnestly, it may be, does
+he wish to live; but his diseased nature has overcome his healthy
+nature, and so he must die. If he would live, in any sense that
+deserves to be called life, the diseased nature must not overcome,
+must not struggle equally; it must be overcome, it must be kept
+down, it must be rendered powerless; and then, when the healthy
+nature has prevailed, its victory is health and strength.</p>
+<p>So far all is alike; but what follows afterwards? As "ye cannot
+do the things which ye would, because the flesh and the Spirit are
+contrary to one another,"--what then? "Therefore," says the
+apostle, "walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of
+the flesh." Surely there is some thing marvellous in this. For, let
+us speak the same language to the sick man: tell him, "Follow thy
+healthy nature, and them shalt not be sick," what would the words
+be but a bitter mockery? "How can you bid me," he would say, "to
+follow my healthy nature, when ye know that my diseased nature has
+bound me? Have ye no better comfort than this to offer me? Tell me
+rather how I may become able to follow my healthy nature; show me
+the strength which may help my weakness; or else your words are
+vain, and I never can recover." Most true would be this answer; and
+therefore disease and death do make havoc of us all, and the
+healthy nature is in the end borne down by the diseased nature, and
+sooner or later the great enemy triumphs over us, and, in spite of
+all our wishes and fond desires for life, we go down, death's
+conquered subjects, to the common grave of all living.</p>
+<p>This happens to the bodies of us all; to the souls of only too
+many. But why does it not happen also to the souls of all? How is
+it that some do fulfil the apostle's bidding? that they do walk in
+the Spirit, and therefore do not fulfil the lusts of the flesh; and
+therefore having conquered their diseased nature, they do walk
+according to their healthful nature, and are verily able to do, and
+do continually, the very things that they would? Surely this so
+striking difference, between the universal conquest of our diseased
+nature in the body, and the occasional victory of the healthy
+nature in the soul, shows us clearly that for the soul there has
+appeared a Redeemer already, while for the body the redemption is
+delayed till death shall be swallowed up in victory.</p>
+<p>For most true is it that in ourselves we could not deliver
+ourselves either soul or body. "Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall
+not fulfil the lusts of the flesh," might have been as cruel a
+mockery to us, as the similar words addressed to the man bodily
+sick,--"Walk according to thy healthy nature, and thou shalt not
+suffer from disease." They might have been a mockery, but blessed
+be God, they are not. They are not, because God has given us a
+Redeemer; they are not, because Christ has died, yea rather has
+risen again; and because the Spirit of Christ helpeth our
+infirmities, and gives us that power which by ourselves we had
+not.</p>
+<p>Not by wishing then to be redeemed, but by being redeemed, shall
+we escape the power of death. Not by saying, "Alas! we cannot do
+the things that we would!" but by becoming able to do them. Walk in
+the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh; but if
+ye do fulfil them, ye must die.</p>
+<p>The power to walk in the Spirit is given by the Spirit; but
+either all have not this power, or all do not use it. I think
+rather it is that all have it not, for if they had it, a power so
+mighty and so beneficent, they surely could not help using it. All
+have it not; but I do not say that they all might not have it; on
+the contrary, all might have it, but in point of fact they have it
+not. They have it not because they seek it not: for an idle wish is
+one thing; a steady persevering pursuit is another. They seek not
+the Spirit by the appointed means, the means of prayer and
+attending to God's holy word, and thinking of life and death and
+judgment.</p>
+<p>Do those seek the spirit of God who never pray to God? Clearly
+they do not. For they who never pray to God never think of Him;
+they who never think of Him, by the very force of the terms it
+follows that they cannot seek his help. And yet they say, "Oh, I
+wish to be good, but I cannot!" But this, in the language of the
+Scripture, is a lie. If they did wish to be good they would seek
+the help that could make them so. There is no boy so young as not
+to know that, when temptation is on him to evil, prayer to God will
+strengthen him for good. As sure as we live, if he wished really to
+overcome the temptation, he would seek the strength.</p>
+<p>Consider what prayer is, and see how it cannot but strengthen
+us. He who stands in a sheltered place, where the wind cannot reach
+him, and with no branches over his head to cause a damp shade, and
+then holds up his face or his hands to the sun, in his strength,
+can he help feeling the sun's warmth? Now, thus it is in prayer: we
+turn to God, we bring our souls, with all their thoughts and
+feelings, fully before Him; and by the very act of so doing, we
+shelter ourselves from every chill of worldly care, we clear away
+every intercepting screen of worldly thought and pleasure. It is an
+awful thing so to submit ourselves wholly to the influence of God.
+But do it; and as surely as the sun will warm us if we stand in the
+sun, so will the Giver of light and life to the soul pour his
+Spirit of life into us; even as we pray, we become changed into his
+image.</p>
+<p>This is not spoken extravagantly. I ask of any one who has ever
+prayed in earnest, whether for that time, and while he was so
+praying, he did not feel, as it were, another man; a man able to do
+the things which he would; a man redeemed and free. But most true
+is it that this feeling passes away but too soon, when the prayer
+is done. Still for the time, there is the effect; we know what it
+is to put ourselves, in a manner, beneath the rays of God's grace;
+but we do not abide there long, and then we feel the damp and the
+cold of earth again.</p>
+<p>Therefore says the Apostle, "Pray without ceasing." If we could
+literally pray always, it is clear that we should sin never: it may
+be thus that Christ's redeemed, at his coming, as they will be for
+ever with him and with the Father, can therefore sin no more. For
+where God is, there is no place left for sin. But we cannot pray
+always: we cannot pray the greatest portion of our time; nay, we
+can pray, in the common sense of the term, only a very small
+portion of it. Yet, at least, we can take heed that we do pray
+sometimes, and that our prayer be truly in earnest. We can pray
+then for God's help to abide with us when we are not praying: we
+can commit to his care, not only our hours of sleep, but our hours
+of worldly waking. "I have work to do, I have a busy world around
+me; eye, ear, and thought will be all needed for that work, done in
+and amidst that busy world; now, ere I enter upon it, I would
+commit eye, ear, thought and wish to Thee. Do thou bless them, and
+keep their work thine; that as, through thy natural laws, my heart
+beats and my blood flows without my thought for them, so my
+spiritual life may hold on its course, through, thy help, at those
+times when my mind cannot consciously turn to Thee to commit each
+particular thought to thy service."</p>
+<p>But I dare not say that by any the most urgent prayers, uttered
+only at night and morning, God's blessing can thus be gained for
+the whole intervening day. For, in truth, if we did nothing more,
+the prayers would soon cease to be urgent; they would become
+formal, that is, they would be no prayers at all. For prayer lives
+in the heart, and not in the mouth; it consists not of words, but
+wishes. And no man can set himself heartily to wish twice a day for
+things, of which he never thinks at other times in the day. So that
+prayer requires in a manner to be fed, and its food is to be found
+in reading and thinking; in reading God's word, and in thinking
+about him, and about the world as being his work.</p>
+<p>Young men and boys are generally, we know, not fond of reading
+for its own sake; and when they do read for their own pleasure,
+they naturally read something that interests them. Now, what are
+called serious books, including certainly the Bible, do not
+interest them, and therefore they are not commonly read. What shall
+we say, then? Are they not interested in becoming good, in learning
+to do the things which, they would? If they are not, if they care
+not for the bondage of sin and death, there is, of course, nothing
+to be said; then they are condemned already; they are not the
+children of God. But one says, "I wish I could find interest in a
+serious book, but I cannot." Observe again, "Ye cannot do the
+things that ye would," because the flesh and the Spirit are
+contrary to one another. However, to return to him who says this,
+the answer to him is this,--"The interest cannot come without the
+reading; it may and will come with it." For interest in a subject
+depends very much on our knowledge of it; and so it is with, the
+things of Christ. As long as the life and death of Christ are
+strange to us, how can we be interested about them? but read them,
+thinking of what they were, and what were their ends, and who can
+help being interested about them? Read them carefully, and read
+them often, and they will bring before our minds the very thoughts
+which we need, and which the world keeps continually from us, the
+thoughts which naturally feed our prayers; thoughts not of self,
+nor selfishness, nor pleasure, nor passion, nor folly, but of such
+things as are truly God's--love, and self-denial, and purity, and
+wisdom. These thoughts come by reading the Scriptures; and
+strangely do they mingle at first with the common evil thoughts of
+our evil nature. But they soon find a home within us, and more good
+thoughts gather round them, and there comes a time when daily life
+with its various business, which, once seemed to shut them out
+altogether, now ministers to their nourishment.</p>
+<p>Wherefore, in conclusion, walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not
+fulfil the lusts of the flesh; but do even the things which ye
+would. And ye can walk in the Spirit, if ye seek for the Spirit; if
+ye seek him by prayer, and by reading of Christ, and the things of
+Christ. If we will do neither, then most assuredly we are not
+seeking him; if we seek him not, we shall never find him. If we
+find him not, we shall never be able to do the things that we
+would; we shall never be redeemed, never made free, but our souls
+shall be overcome by their evil nature, as surely as our bodies by
+their diseased nature; till one death shall possess us wholly, a
+death of body and of soul, the death of eternal misery.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_IX."></a>LECTURE IX.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>LUKE xiv. 33.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he
+hath,<br>
+he cannot be my disciple</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>In order to show that these words were not spoken to the
+apostles alone, but to all Christians, we have only to turn to the
+25th and 26th verses, which run thus:--"And there went great
+multitudes with him, and he turned and said unto them, If any man
+come to me, and hate not his father and mother, and wife and
+children, and brethren and sisters, yea and his own life also, he
+cannot be my disciple." The words were not, then, spoken to the
+twelve apostles only, as if they contained merely some rule of
+extraordinary piety, which was not to be required of common
+Christians; they were spoken to a great multitude; they were spoken
+to warn all persons in that multitude that not one of them could
+become a Christian, unless he gave himself up to Christ body and
+soul. Thus declaring that there is but one rule for all; a rule
+which the highest Christian can never go beyond; and which the
+lowest, if he would be a Christian at all, must make the foundation
+of his whole life.</p>
+<p>Now take the words, either of the text or of the 26th verse, and
+is it possible to avoid seeing that, on the very lowest
+interpretation, they do insist upon a very high standard; that they
+do require a very entire and devoted obedience? Is it possible for
+any one who believes what Christ has said, to rest contented,
+either for himself or for others, with that very low and very
+unchristian standard which he sees and knows to prevail generally
+in the world? Is it possible for him not to wish, for himself and
+for all in whose welfare he is interested, that they may belong to
+the small minority in matters of principle and practice, rather
+than to the large majority?</p>
+<p>And because he so wishes, one who endeavours to follow Christ
+sincerely can never be satisfied with the excuse that he acts and
+thinks quite as well as the mass of persons about him; it can never
+give him comfort, with regard to any judgment or practice, to be
+told, in common language, "Everybody thinks so; everybody does so."
+If, indeed, this expression "everybody" might be taken literally;
+if it were quite true, without any exception, that "everybody
+thought or did so;" then I grant that it would have a very great
+authority; so great that it would be almost a mark of madness to
+run counter to it. For what all men, all without a single
+exception, were to agree in, must be some truth which the human
+mind could not reject without insanity,--like the axioms of
+science, or some action which if we did not we could not live, as
+sleeping and eating; or if there be any moral point so universally
+agreed upon, then it must be something exceedingly general: as, for
+instance, that truth is in itself to be preferred to falsehood;
+which to dispute would be monstrous. But, once admit a single
+exception, and the infallible virtue of the rule ceases. I can
+conceive one single good and wise man's judgment and practice,
+requiring, at any rate, to be carefully attended to, and his
+reasons examined, although millions upon millions stood against
+him. But go on with the number of exceptions, and bring the
+expression "everybody," to its real meaning, which is only "most
+persons," "the great majority of the world;" then the rule becomes
+of no virtue at all, but very often the contrary. If in matters of
+morals many are on one side and some on the other, it is impossible
+to pronounce at once which are most likely to be right: it depends
+on the sort of case on which the difference exists; for the
+victories of truth and of good are but partial. It is not all truth
+that triumphs in the world, nor all good; but only truth and good
+up to a certain point. Let them once pass this point, and their
+progress pauses. Their followers, in the mass, cannot keep up with
+them thus far: fewer and fewer are those who still press on in
+their company, till at last even these fail; and there is a
+perfection at which they are deserted by all men, and are in the
+presence of God and of Christ alone.</p>
+<p>Thus it is that, up to a certain point, in moral matters the
+majority are right; and thus Christ's gospel, in a great many
+respects, goes along with public opinion, and the voice of society
+is the voice of truth. But this, to use the expression of our
+Lord's parable, this is but half the height of that tower whose top
+should reach unto heaven. Christianity ascends a great deal higher;
+and therefore so many who begin to build are never able to finish.
+Christ's disciples and the world's disciples work for a certain way
+together; and thus far the world's disciples call themselves
+Christ's, and so Christ's followers seem to be a great majority.
+But Christ warns us expressly that we are not his disciples merely
+by going a certain way on the same road with them. They only are
+His, who follow Him to the end. They only are His, who follow him
+in spite of everything, who leave all rather than leave him. For
+the rest, He does not own them. What the world can give they may
+enjoy; but Christ's kingdom is shut against them.</p>
+<p>Speaking, then, according to Christ's judgment, and we must hold
+those to be of the world, and not of Him,--and therefore in God's
+judgment, to be the evil and not the good,--who do not make up
+their minds to live in His service, and to refer their actions,
+words, and thoughts to His will. Who these are it is very true that
+we many times cannot know: only we may always fear that they are
+the majority of society; and therefore we are rather anxious in any
+individual's case to get a proof that he is not one of them,
+because, as they are very many, there is always a sort of
+presumption that any given person is of this number, unless there
+is some evidence, or some presumption at any rate, for thinking the
+contrary.</p>
+<p>When we speak, then, of the good and of the evil side in human
+life, in any society, whether smaller or larger,--this is what we
+mean, or should mean. The evil side contains much that is, up to a
+certain point, good: the good side,--for does it not consist of
+human beings?--contains, unhappily, much in it that is evil. Not
+all in the one is to be avoided,--far from it; nor is all in the
+other by any means to be followed. But still those are called evil
+in God's judgment who live according to their own impulses, or
+according to the law of the society around them; and those are to
+be called good, who, in their principles, whatever may be the
+imperfections of their practice, endeavour in all things to live
+according to the will of Christ.</p>
+<p>And in this view the characters of Jacob and Esau are, as it
+seems to me, full of instruction; and above all to us here. For I
+have often observed that the early age of an individual bears a
+great resemblance to the early age of the human race, or of any
+particular nation; so that the characters of the Old Testament are
+often more suited, in a Christian country, for the instruction of
+the young than for those of more advanced years. To Christian men,
+looking at Jacob's life, with the faults recorded of it, it is
+sometimes strange that he should be spoken of as good. But it seems
+that in a rude state of society, where knowledge is very low, and
+passion very strong, the great virtue is to be freed from the
+dominion of the prevailing low principle, to see and resolve that
+we ought and will live according to knowledge, and not according to
+passion or impulse. The knowledge may be very imperfect, and
+probably is so: the practice may in many respects offend against
+knowledge, and probably will do so: yet is a great step taken; it
+is <i>the</i> virtue of man, in such a state of society, to follow,
+though imperfectly, principle, where others follow instinct, or the
+opinion of their fellows. It is the great distinguishing mark, in
+such a state of things, between the good and the evil; for this
+reason, amongst many others, that it is the virtue, under such,
+circumstances, of the hardest attainment.</p>
+<p>Now, the Scripture judgment of Jacob and Esau, should be in an
+especial manner the basis of our judgment with regard to the young.
+None can doubt, that amongst the young, when they form a society of
+their own, the great temptation is to live by impulse, or according
+to the opinion of those around them. It is like a light breaking in
+upon darkness, when a young person is led to follow a higher
+standard, and to live according to God's will. Esau, in his faults
+and amiable points alike, is the very image of the prevailing
+character amongst boys; sometimes violently revengeful, as when
+Esau looked forward with satisfaction to the prospect of his
+father's death, because then we should be able to slay his brother
+Jacob; sometimes full of generosity, as when Esau forgot all his
+grounds of complaint against his brother, and received him on his
+return from Mesopotamia with open arms;--but habitually careless,
+and setting the present before the future, the lower gratification
+before the higher, as when Esau sold his birth-right for a mess of
+pottage. And the point to be noted is, that, because of this
+carelessness, this profaneness or ungodliness, as it is truly
+called in the New Testament, Esau is distinguished from those who
+were God's people; the promises were not his, nor yet the blessing.
+This is remarkable, because Esau's faults, undoubtedly were just
+the faults of his age: he was no worse than the great majority of
+those around him; he lived as we should say, in our common
+language, that it was natural for him to live. He had, therefore,
+precisely all those excuses which are commonly urged for the
+prevailing faults of boys; yet it is quite certain that the
+Scripture holds him out as a representative of those who were not
+on the side of God,</p>
+<p>If the Scripture has so judged of Esau and Jacob, it must be the
+model for our judgments of those whose circumstances, on account of
+their belonging to a society consisting wholly of persons young in
+age, greatly resemble the circumstances of the early society of the
+world. I lay the stress on the belonging to a society wholly formed
+of young persons; for the case of young persons brought up at home,
+is extremely different; and their circumstances would be best
+suited by a different scriptural example. But here, with you, I am
+quite sure that the great distinguishing mark between good and
+evil, is the endeavouring, or not endeavouring, to rise above the
+carelessness of the society of which you are members; the
+determining, or not determining, to judge of things by another rule
+than that of school morality or honour; the trying, or not trying,
+to please God, instead of those around you: for the notions and
+maxims of a society of young persons are like the notions and
+maxims of men in a half-civilized age, a strange mixture of right
+and wrong; or rather wrong in their result, although with some
+right feeling in them, and therefore as a guide, false and
+mischievous. That it is natural to follow these maxims, is quite
+obvious: they are the besetting sin of your particular condition;
+and it is always according to our corrupt nature to follow our
+besetting sin. It is quite natural that you should be careless,
+profane, mistaking evil for good, and good for evil; but salvation
+is not for those who follow their nature, but for those in whom
+God's grace has overcome its evil; it is for those, in Christ's
+language, who take up their cross and follow him; that is, for
+those who struggle against their evil nature, that they may gain a
+better nature, and be born, not after the flesh, but after the
+Spirit of God.</p>
+<p>What is to be said to this? or what qualification, or
+compromise, is to be made in it? The words of the text will
+authorize us, at any rate, to make none: their language is not that
+of indulgent allowance; but it is a call, a loud and earnest, even
+a severe, call, it may be, in the judgment of our evil nature,--to
+shake off the weight that hangs about us; to deliver our hearts
+from the dominion of that which cannot profit, and to submit them
+to Christ alone. This is God's judgment, this is Christ's word; and
+we cannot and dare not qualify it. They are evil, for God and
+Christ declare it, who judge and live after the maxims of the
+society around them, and not after Christ; they are evil who are
+careless; they are evil who live according to their own blind and
+capricious feelings, now hot, now cold; they are evil who call evil
+good, and good evil, because they have not known the Father nor
+Christ. This, and nothing less, we say, lest we should be found
+false witnesses of God: but if this language, which is that of
+Scripture, seem harsh, to any one, oh! let him remember how soon he
+may change it into the language of the most abundant mercy, of the
+tenderest love; that if he calls upon God, God is ready to hear;
+that if he seeks to know and to do God's will, God will be found by
+him, and will strengthen him; that it is true kindness not to
+disguise from him his real danger, but earnestly to conjure him to
+flee from it, and to offer our humblest prayers to God, for him and
+ourselves, that our judgments and our practice may be formed only
+after his example.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_X"></a>LECTURE X.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>1 TIMOTHY i. 9.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>The law is not made for a righteous man, but for the
+lawless and<br>
+disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and
+profane</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>These words explain the meaning of a great many passages in St.
+Paul's Epistles, in which also he speaks of the law, and of not
+being under the law, and other such expressions. And it is clear
+also, that he is not speaking solely, or chiefly, or, in any
+considerable degree, of the ceremonial law; but much more of the
+law of moral good, the law which told men how they ought to live,
+and how they ought not. This law, he says, is not made for good
+men, but for evil: a thing so plain, that we may well wonder how
+any could ever have misunderstood it. It is so manifest, that
+strict rules are required, just exactly in proportion to our
+inability or want of will to rule ourselves; it is so very plain,
+that, with regard to those crimes which we are under no temptation
+to commit, we feel exactly as if there were no law. Which of us
+ever thinks, as a matter of personal concern, of the law which
+sentences to death murderers, or housebreakers, or those who
+maliciously set fire to their neighbours' property? Do we not feel
+that, as far as our own conduct is concerned, it would be exactly
+the same thing if no such law were in existence? We should no more
+murder, or rob, or set fire to houses and barns, if the law were
+wholly done away, than we do now that it is in force.</p>
+<p>There are, then, some points in which we feel practically that
+we are not under the law, but dead to it; that the law is not made
+for us: but do we think, therefore, that we may murder, and rob,
+and burn? or do we not rather feel that such a notion would be
+little short of madness? We are not under the law, because we do
+not need it; not because there is in reality no law to punish us if
+we do need it. And just of this kind is that general freedom from
+the law, of which St. Paul speaks, as the high privilege of true
+Christians.</p>
+<p>But yet St. Paul would not at all mean that any Christian is
+altogether without the law: that is, that there are no points at
+all in which his inclination is not to evil, and in which,
+therefore, he needs the fear of God to restrain him from it. When
+he says of himself, that he kept under his body lest that by any
+means he should become a castaway; just so far as this fear of
+being a castaway possessed him, that is, just so far as there were
+any evil tendencies in him, which required him to keep them under
+by an effort, just so far was he under the law. And this is so, as
+we full well know, with us all; for as there is none of us in whom
+sin is utterly dead, so neither can there be any of us who is
+altogether dead to the law.</p>
+<p>Yet, although this be so, there is no doubt that the gospel
+wishes to consider us as generally dead to the law, in order that
+we really may become so continually more and more. It supposes that
+the Spirit of God, presenting to our minds the sight of God's love
+in Christ, sets us free from the law of sin and death; that is,
+that a sense of thankfulness to God, and love of God and of Christ,
+will be so strong a motive, that we shall, generally speaking, need
+no other; that it will so work upon us, as to make us feel good,
+easy, and delightful, and thus to become dead to the law. And there
+is no doubt also, that that same freedom from the law, which we
+ourselves experience daily, in respect of some particular great
+crimes, (for, as I said, we do not feel that it is the fear of the
+law which keeps us from murder or from robbing,) that very same
+freedom is felt by good men in many other points, where it may be
+that we ourselves do not feel it. A common instance may be given
+with respect to prayer, and the outward worship of God. There are a
+great many who feel this as a duty; but there are many also to whom
+it is not so much a duty, as a privilege and a pleasure; and these
+are dead to the law which commands us to be instant in prayer, just
+as we, in general, are dead to the law which commands us to do no
+murder.</p>
+<p>This being understood, it will be perfectly plain, why St. Paul,
+along with all his language as to the law being passed away, and
+our being become dead to it, yet uses, very frequently, language of
+another kind, which shows that the law is not dead in itself, but
+lives, and ever will live. He says, "We must all stand before the
+judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive according to
+what he has done in the body." And he adds, "Knowing therefore the
+terror of the Lord, we persuade men." But the judgment, and the
+terror of the Lord, mean precisely what are meant by the law. And
+this language of St. Paul shows more clearly, that, unless we are
+first dead to the law, the law is not, and never will be dead to
+us.</p>
+<p>I should not have thought it useless, to have offered merely
+this explanation of a language, which is very common in the New
+Testament, which, forms one of its characteristic points, (for St.
+John's expression of "Perfect love casteth out fear," is exactly
+equivalent to St. Paul's, "That we are dead to the law,") and which
+has been often misunderstood, or misrepresented. But yet I am well
+aware, that mere explanations of Scripture cannot be expected to
+interest those to whom Scripture is not familiar. The answer to a
+riddle would be very soon forgotten, unless the riddle had first at
+once amused and puzzled us. Just so, explanations of Scripture, to
+be at all valued, must suppose a previous knowledge of, and desire
+to understand, the difficulty; and this we cannot expect to find in
+very young persons. Thus far, then, what I have said has been
+necessarily addressed, I do not say, or mean, to the oldest part of
+my hearers only, but yet to the older, and more considering part of
+them. But the subject is capable, I think, of being brought much
+more closely home to us; for what St. Paul says of the law, with
+reference to all mankind, is precisely that state of mind which one
+would wish to see here; and the mistakes of his meaning are just
+such as are often prevalent, and are likely to do great mischief,
+with regard to the motives to be appealed to in education.</p>
+<p>Now, what is the case in the Scripture? Men had been subject to
+a strict law of rewards and punishments, appealing directly to
+their hopes, and to their fears. The gospel offered itself to them,
+as a declaration of God's love to them; so wonderful, that it
+seemed as though it could not but excite them to love him in
+return. It also raised their whole nature; their understandings, no
+less than their affections; and thus led them to do God's will,
+from another and higher feeling than they had felt heretofore; to
+do it, not because they must, but because they loved it. And to
+such as answered to this heavenly call, God laid aside, if I may
+venture so to speak, all his terrors; he showed himself to them
+only as a loving father, between whom and his children there was
+nothing but mutual affection; who would be loved by them, and love
+them forever. But to those who answered not to it, and far more,
+who dared to abuse it; who thought that God's love was weakness;
+that the liberty to which they were called, was the liberty of
+devils, the liberty of doing evil as they would; to all such, God
+was still a consuming fire, and their most merciful Saviour himself
+was a judge to try their very hearts and reins; in short, the
+gospel was to them, not salvation, but condemnation; it awakened
+not the better, but the baser parts of their nature; it did not do
+away, but doubled their guilt, and therefore brought upon them, and
+will bring through all eternity, a double measure of
+punishment.</p>
+<p>Now all this applies exactly to that earlier and, as it were,
+preparatory life, which ends not in death, but in manhood. The
+state of boyhood begins under a law. It is a great mistake to
+address always the reason of a child, when you ought rather to
+require his obedience. Do this, do not do that; if you do this, I
+shall love you; if you do not, I shall punish you;--such is the
+state, most clearly a state of law, under which we are, and must
+be, placed at the beginning of education. But we should desire and
+endeavour to see this state of law succeeded by something better;
+we should desire so to unfold the love of Christ as to draw the
+affections towards him; we should desire so to raise the
+understanding as that it may fasten itself, by its own native
+tendrils, round the pillar of truth, without requiring to be bound
+to it by external bands. We should avoid all unnecessary harshness;
+we should speak and act with all possible kindness; because love,
+rather than fear, love both of God and man, is the motive which we
+particularly wish to awaken. Thus, keeping punishment in the
+background and, as it were, out of sight, and putting forward
+encouragement and kindness, we should attract, as it were, the good
+and noble feelings of those with, whom we are dealing, and invite
+them to open, and to answer to, a system of confidence and
+kindness, rather than risk the chilling and hardening them by a
+system of mistrust and severity.</p>
+<p>And for those who do answer to this call, how really true is it
+that they do soon become dead, in great measure, to the law of the
+place where they are living! How little do they generally feel its
+restraints, or its tasks, burdensome! How very little have they to
+do with its punishments! Led on by degrees continually higher and
+higher, their relations with us become more and more relations of
+entire confidence and kindness; and when at last their trial is
+over, and they pass from this first life, as I have ventured to
+call it, into their second life of manhood, how beautifully are
+they ripened for that state! how naturally do all the restraints of
+this first life fall away, like the mortal body of the perfected
+Christian; and they enter upon the full liberty of manhood, fitted
+at once to enjoy and to improve it!</p>
+<p>But observe, that St. Paul does not suppose even the best
+Christian to be without the law altogether: there will ever be some
+points in which he will need to remember it. And so it is
+unkindness, rather than kindness, and a very mischievous mistake,
+to forget that here, in this our preparatory life, the law cannot
+cease altogether with any one; that it is not possible to find a
+perfect sense and feeling of right existing in every action; nay,
+that it is even unreasonable to seem to expect it. Little faults,
+little irregularities, there always will be, with which the law is
+best fitted to deal; which should be met, I mean, by a system of
+rules and of punishments, not severe, certainly, nor one at all
+inconsistent with general respect, kindness, and confidence; but
+which check the particular faults alluded to better, I think, than
+could be done by seeming to expect of the individual that he
+should, in all such cases, be a law to himself. There is a
+possibility of our over-straining the highest principles, by
+continually appealing to them on very trifling occasions. It is far
+better, here, to apply the system of the law; to require obedience
+to rules, as a matter of discipline; to visit the breach of them by
+moderate punishment, not given in anger, not at all inconsistent
+with general confidence and regard, but gently reminding us of that
+truth which we may never dare wholly to forget,--that punishment
+will exist eternally so long as there is evil, and that the only
+way of remaining for ever entirely strangers to it, is by adhering
+for ever and entirely to good.</p>
+<p>This applies to every one amongst us; and is the reason why
+rules, discipline, and punishments, however much they may be, and
+are, kept in the background for such, as have become almost wholly
+dead to them, must yet continue in existence, because none are, or
+can be, dead to them altogether. But now, suppose that we have a
+nature to deal with, which, cannot answer to a system of kindness,
+but abuses it; which, when punishment is kept at a distance,
+rejoices, as thinking that it may follow evil safely; a nature not
+to be touched by the love of God or man, not to be guided by any
+perception of its own as to what is right and true. Is the law dead
+really to such as these? or should it be so? Is punishment a
+degradation to a nature which, is so self-degraded as to be
+incapable of being moved by anything better? For this is the real
+degradation which we should avoid; not the fear of punishment,
+which is not at all degrading, but the being insensible to the love
+of Christ and of goodness; and so being capable of receiving no
+other motive than the fear of punishment alone. With such natures,
+to withhold punishment, would be indeed to make Christ the minister
+of sin; to make mercy, that is, lead to evil, and not to good. For
+them, the law never is dead, and never will be. Here, of course, in
+this first life, as I have called it, punishment indeed goes but a
+little way: it is very easy for a hardened nature to defy all that
+could be laid upon it here in the way of actual compulsion. Our
+only course is to cut short the time of trial, when we find a
+nature in whom that trial cannot end in good. Still there may be
+those in whom this life here, like their greater life which shall
+last for ever, will have far more to do with punishment than with
+kindness; they will be living all their time under the law.
+Continue this to our second life, and the law then will be no less
+alive, and they will never be dead to it, nor will it be ever dead
+to them. And however a hardened nature may well despise the
+punishments of its first life,--punishments, whose whole object is
+correction, and not retribution,--yet, where is the nature so hard
+as to endure, in its relations with God, to feel more of his
+punishment than of his mercy; to know him for ever as a God of
+judgment, and not as a Father of love?</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XI."></a>LECTURE XI.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>ST. LUKE xxi. 36.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>Watch ye, therefore, and pray always, that ye may be<br>
+accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall<br>
+come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>This might be a text for a history of the Christian Church, from
+its foundation to this hour, or to the latest hour of the world's
+existence. We might observe how it Lad fulfilled its Lord's
+command; with what steadiness it had gone forward on its course,
+with the constant hope of meeting Him once again in glory. We might
+see how it had escaped all these things that were to come to pass:
+tracing its course amidst the manifold revolutions of the world,
+inward and outward. In the few words, "all these things that shall
+come to pass," are contained all the events of the last eighteen
+hundred years: indistinct and unknown to us, as long as they are
+thus folded up together; but capable of being unrolled before our
+eyes in a long order, in which should be displayed all the outward
+changes of nations, the spread of discovery, the vicissitudes of
+conquest; and yet more, the inward changes of men's minds, the
+various schools of philosophy, the successive forms of public
+opinion, the influences of various races, all the manifold elements
+by which the moral character of the Christian world has been
+affected. We might observe how the Church had escaped all these
+things, or to what degree it had received from any of them good or
+evil. And then, stopping at the point at which it has actually
+arrived, we might consider how far it deserves the character of
+that Church, "without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing," which
+should be presented before the Son of Man at his coming again.</p>
+<p>This would be a great subject; and one, if worthily executed,
+full of the deepest instruction to us all. But our Lord's words may
+also be made the text for a history or inquiry of another sort, far
+less comprehensive in time and space, far less grand, far less
+interesting to the understanding; yet, on the other hand, capable
+of being wrought out far more completely, and far more interesting
+to the spiritual and eternal welfare of each of us. They may be
+made the text for an inquiry into the course hitherto held, not by
+the Church as a body, but by each of us individual members of it;
+an inquiry how far we, each of us, have watched and prayed always,
+that we might be accounted worthy to escape all the things which
+should come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man. And, in
+this view of the words, the expression "all these things which
+shall come to pass" has reference no longer to great political
+revolutions, nor to schools of philosophy, nor to prominent points
+of national character; but to those humbler events, to those lesser
+changes, outward and inward, through which we each, pass between
+our cradle and our grave. How have we escaped these, or turned them
+to good account? Have earthly things so ministered to our eternal
+welfare, that if we were each one of us, by a stroke from heaven,
+cut off at that very point in our course to which we have severally
+attained this day, we should be accounted worthy to stand before
+the Son of Man?</p>
+<p>Here is, indeed, a very humble history for us each to study; yet
+what other history can concern us so nearly? And as, in the history
+of the world, experience in part supplies the place of prophecy,
+and the fate of one nation is in a manner a mirror to another, so
+in our individual history, the experience of the old is a lesson to
+the middle-aged, and that of the middle-aged a lesson to the young.
+If you wish to know what are the things which shall come to pass
+with respect to you, we can draw aside the veil from your coming
+life, because what you will be is no other than what we are. If we
+would go onwards, in like manner, and ask what are the things which
+shall come to pass with respect to us, our coming life may be seen
+in the past and present life of the old; for what we shall be is no
+other than what they have been, or than what they are.</p>
+<p>Let us take, then, the actual moment with, each of us, and
+suppose that our Lord speaks to each of us as he did to his first
+disciples: "Watch and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy
+to escape all these things which shall come to pass, and to stand
+before the Son of Man." We ask, naturally, "What are the things
+which shall come to pass?" and it is to this question that I am to
+try to suggest the answer.</p>
+<p>Those arrived at middle age may ask the question, "What are the
+things which shall come to pass to us?" Now, setting aside
+extraordinary accidents, on which we cannot reckon, and the answer
+would, I think, be something of this sort: There will not come to
+pass, it is likely, any great change in our condition or employment
+in life. In middle age our calling, with all the duties which it
+involves, must generally be fixed for each of us. Our particular
+kind of trial will not, it is probable, be much altered. We must
+not, as in youth, fancy that, although our actual occupation does
+not suit us, although its temptations are often too strong for us,
+yet a change may take place to another line of duty, and the
+temptations in that new line may be less formidable. In middle age
+it will not do to indulge such fond hopes as these. On the
+contrary, our hope must lie, not in escape, but in victory. If our
+temptations press us hard, we cannot expect to have them exchanged
+for others less powerful: they will remain with us, and we must
+overcome them, or perish. Have we tastes not fully reconciled to
+our calling,--faculties which seem not to have found their proper
+field? We must seek our remedy not from without, humanly speaking,
+but from within: we must discipline ourselves; we must teach our
+tastes to cling gracefully around that duty to which else they must
+be helplessly fastened. If any faculties appear not to have found
+their proper field, we must think that God has, for certain wise
+reasons, judged it best for us that they should not be exercised;
+and we must be content to render him the service of others. In this
+respect, then, the immediate prospect for middle age is not so much
+change as steadfastness. Fortune will not suit herself to our
+wishes: we must learn to suit our wishes to her.</p>
+<p>But go on a little farther, and what are the things which must
+come to pass then? A new and most solemn interest arising to us in
+the entrance of our children into active life. Hitherto they have
+lived under our care, and our duty to them was simple; but now
+there comes the choice of a profession, the watching and guiding
+them, as well as we can, at this critical moment of their course.
+What cares await us here; and yet what need of avoiding over care!
+What a trial for us, how we value our children's worldly interests
+when compared with their eternal--whether we prefer for them the
+path which may lead most readily to worldly wealth and honour, or
+that in, which they may best and safest follow Christ! This is a
+danger which will come to pass to us ere long: do we watch and pray
+that we may be delivered from it?</p>
+<p>The interest of life, which had, perhaps, something begun to
+fade for ourselves, will revive with vigour at this period in
+behalf of our children; but after this it will go on steadily
+ebbing. What life can offer we have tasted for ourselves; we have
+seen it tasted, or in the way to be tasted, by them. The harvest is
+gathered, and the symptoms of the fall appear. Is it that some
+faculty becomes a little impaired, some taste a little dulled; or
+is it that the friends and companions of our life are beginning to
+drop away from us? Long since, those whom we loved of the
+generation before us have been gathered to the grave; now those of
+our own generation are falling fast also--brothers, sisters,
+friends of our early youth, a wife, a husband. We are surrounded by
+a younger generation, to whom the half of our lives, with all their
+recollections and sympathies, are a thing unknown. Impatience,
+weariness, a clinging to the past, a vain wish to prolong it in an
+earthly future,--these are the things which shall befal us then:
+and they will befal us too surely, and too irresistibly, unless, by
+earlier watchfulness and prayer, we may have been enabled to avoid
+them. For vain will it be, with faculties at once weakened by the
+decay of nature and perverted by long habits of worldliness, to
+essay, for the first time, to force our way into the kingdom of
+heaven. Old age is not the season for contest and victory; nor
+shall we then be so able to escape unharmed from the temptations of
+life as to stand before the Son of Man.</p>
+<p>These are the things which will come to pass for us and for you.
+But for you there is much more to come, which to us is not future
+now, but past or present. With you, for a time, it will be all a
+course forwards and upwards. From the preparation for life, you
+will come to the reality; from a state of less importance, you will
+be passing on to one of greater. Your temptations, whatever they
+may be now, will not certainly become weaker. As outward restraint
+is more and more taken off from you, so your need of inward
+restraint will be greater. Will those who are extravagant now on a
+small scale, be less extravagant on a large scale? Will those who
+are selfish now, become less selfish amidst a wider field of
+enjoyment? Will those who know not or care not for Christ, while
+yet, as it were, standing quietly on the shore, be led to think of
+him more amidst the excitement of the first setting sail, amidst
+the interest of the first newly-seen country?</p>
+<p>You know not yet, nor can know, the immense importance of that
+period of life on which many of you are entering, or have just
+entered. You are coming, or come, to what may be called the second
+beginning of life: to which, in the common course of things, there
+will succeed no third. Ignorance, absence of temptation, the
+presence of all good impressions, constitute much of the innocence
+of mere childhood,--so beautiful while it lasts, so sure to be soon
+blighted! It is blighted in the first experience of life, most
+commonly when a boy first goes to school. Then his mere innocence,
+which indeed he may be said to have worn rather instinctively than
+by choice, becomes grievously polluted. Then come the hardness, the
+coarseness, the intense selfishness; sometimes, too, the falsehood,
+the cruelty, the folly of the boy: then comes that period, so
+trying to the faith of parents, when all their early care seems
+blasted; when the vineyard, which they had fenced so tenderly,
+seems all despoiled and trodden under foot. It is indeed a
+discouraging season, the exact image of the ungenial springs of our
+natural year. But after this there comes, as it were, a second
+beginning of life, when principle takes the place of innocence.
+There is a time,--many of you must have arrived at it,--when
+thought and inquiry awaken; when, out of the mere chaos of boyhood,
+the elements of the future character of the man begin to appear.
+Blessed are they for whom the confusion and disarray of their
+boyish life is quickened into a true life by the moving of the
+Spirit of God! Blessed are they for whom the beginnings of thought
+and inquiry are the beginnings also of faith and love; when the new
+character receives, as it is forming, the Christian seed, and the
+man is also the Christian. And, then, this second beginning of
+life, resting on faith and conscious principle, and not on mere
+passive innocence, stands sure for the middle and the end: those
+who so watch and pray as to escape out of this critical period, not
+merely unharmed, but, as it were, set clearly on their way to
+heaven, will, with God's grace, escape out of the things which
+shall befal them afterwards, till they shall stand before the Son
+of Man.</p>
+<p>But the word is, "Watch and pray always, that ye may be
+accounted worthy to escape." We see the time with many of you come,
+or immediately coming; out of your present state <i>a</i> character
+will certainly be formed; as surely as the innocence of childhood
+has perished, so surely will the carelessness of boyhood perish
+too. <i>A</i> character will be formed, whether you watch and pray,
+or whether you do neither; but the great point is what this
+character may be. If you do not watch the process, it will surely
+be the character of death eternal. Thought and inquiry will satisfy
+themselves very readily with an answer as far as regards spiritual
+things: their whole vigour will be devoted to the things of this
+world, to science or to business, or to public matters, all alike
+hardening rather than softening to the mind, if its thoughts do not
+go to something higher and deeper still. And as years pass on, we
+may think on these our favourite or professional subjects more and
+more earnestly; our views on them may be clearer and sounder, but
+there comes again nothing like the first free burst of thought in
+youth; the intellect in later life, if its tone was not rightly
+taken earlier, becomes narrowed in proportion to its greater
+vigour; one thing it sees clearly, but it is blind to all beside.
+It is in youth that the after tone of the mind is happily formed,
+when that natural burst of thought is sanctified and quickened by
+God's Spirit, and we set up within us to love and adore, all our
+days, the one image of the truth of God, our Saviour Jesus. Then,
+whatever else may befal us afterwards, it rarely happens that our
+faith will fail; his image, implanted in us, preserves us amid
+every change; we are counted worthy to escape all the things which
+may come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XII."></a>LECTURE XII.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>PROVERBS i. 28.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer;<br>
+they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>Christ's gospel gives out the forgiveness of sins; and as this
+is its very essence, so also in what we read connected with
+Christ's gospel, the tone of encouragement, of mercy, of
+loving-kindness to sinners, is ever predominant. What was needed at
+the beginning of the gospel is no less needed now; we cannot spare
+one jot or one tittle of this gracious language; now, as ever, the
+free grace, that most seems to be without the law, does most surely
+establish the law. But yet there is another language, which is to
+be found alike in the Old Testament and in the New; a language not
+indeed so common as the language of mercy, but yet repeated many
+times; a language which we also need as fully as it was ever
+needed, and of whose severity we can no more spare one tittle than
+we can spare anything of the comfort of the other. And yet this
+language has not, I think, been enforced so often as it should have
+been. Men have rather shrunk from it, and seemed afraid of it; they
+have connected it sometimes with certain foolish and presumptuous
+questions, which we, indeed, do well to turn from; but they have
+not seen, that with such it has no natural connexion, but belongs
+to a certain fact in the constitution of our nature, and is most
+highly moral and practical.</p>
+<p>The language to which. I allude is expressed, amongst other
+passages, by the words of the text. They speak of men's calling
+upon God, and of his refusing to hear them; of men's seeking God,
+and not finding him. Remember, at the same time, our Lord's words,
+"Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find." I purposely
+put together these opposite passages, because the full character of
+God's Revelation is thus seen more clearly. Do we doubt that our
+Lord's words are true, and do we not prize them as some of the most
+precious which he has left us? We do well to do so; but shall we
+doubt any more the truth of the words of the text; and shall we not
+consider them as a warning no less needful than the comfort in the
+other case? Indeed, as true as it is, that, if we seek God, we
+shall find him; so true is it that we may seek him, and yet not
+find him.</p>
+<p>Now, then, how to explain this seeming contradiction? We can see
+at once, that these things are not said of the same persons, or
+rather of the same characters at the same time. They are said of
+the same persons: that is, there is no one here assembled who is
+not concerned with both, and to whom both may not be applicable.
+Only they are not and cannot be both applicable to the same person
+at the very same time. If God will be found by us, at any given
+moment, on our seeking him, it is impossible that, at that same
+moment, he should also not be found. Thus far is plain to every
+one.</p>
+<p>And now, is it true of us, at this present time, that God will
+be found by us if we seek him, or that he will not be found? If we
+say that he will be found, then the words of the text are not
+applicable to us at present, although at some future time they may
+be; and then we have that well-known difficulty to encounter, to
+attempt to draw the mind's attention to a future and only
+contingent evil. If we say that he will not be found, then of what
+avail can it be to say any word more? Why sit we in this place, to
+preach, or to listen to preaching, if God, after all, will not be
+found? Or, again, should we say that there are some by whom he will
+not be found, then who are they that are thus horribly marked out
+from among their brethren? Can we dare to conceive of any one
+amongst us that he is such an one; that there are some, nay, that
+there is any one amongst us, to whom it is the same thing whether
+he will hear, or whether he will forbear; who may close his ears as
+safely as open them, because God has turned his face from him for
+ever? It were indeed horrible to suppose that any one of us were in
+such a state; and happily it is a thought of horror which the truth
+may allow us to repel.</p>
+<p>But what, if I were to say, that now, at this very moment, the
+words of the text are both applicable to us, and not applicable? Is
+this a contradiction, and therefore impossible? Or is it but a
+seeming contradiction only, and not only possible, but true? Let us
+see how the case appears to be.</p>
+<p>We should allow, I suppose, that the words of the text were at
+no time in any man's earthly life so true as they will be at the
+day of judgment. The hardest heart, the most obdurate in sin, the
+most closed against all repentance, is yet more within the reach of
+grace, we should imagine, whilst he is alive and in health, than he
+will be at the day of the resurrection. We can admit, then, that
+the words of the text may be true, in a greater or less degree;
+that they will be more entirely true at the last day, than at any
+earlier period, but yet that they may be substantially true, true
+almost beyond exception, in the life that now is. Now carry this
+same principle a little farther, and we come to our very own case.
+The words of the text will be more true at the day of judgment,
+than they ever are on earth; and yet on earth they are often true
+substantially and practically. And even so, they may be more true
+to each of us a few years hence, than they are at this moment; and
+yet, in a certain degree, they may be true at this moment; true,
+not absolutely and entirely, but partially; so true as to give a
+most solemn earnest, if we are not warned in time, of their more
+entire truth hereafter,--first, in this earthly life; then most
+perfectly of all, when we shall arise at the last day.</p>
+<p>It may be, then, that the words of the text, although not
+applicable to us in their full and most fatal sense, may yet be
+applicable to us in a certain degree: the evil which they speak of
+may be, not wholly future and contingent, and a thing to be feared,
+but present in part, actual, and a matter of experience. This is
+not contradiction: it is not impossible; it <i>may be</i> our case.
+Let us see whether it really is so, that is, whether it is in any
+degree true of us, that when we call upon God he will not answer;
+that when we seek him, we shall in any manner be unable to find
+him.</p>
+<p>It is manifest that, in proportion as Christ's words "Seek, and
+ye shall find," are true to any man, so are the words of the text
+less true to him; and in proportion as Christ's words are less true
+to any one, so are the words of the text more true to him. Now, is
+Christ's promise, "Seek, and ye shall find," equally true to all of
+us? Conceive of one--the thing is rare, but not impossible,--of one
+who had been so kept from evil, and so happily led forward in good,
+that when arrived at boyhood, his soul had scarcely more stain upon
+it than when it was first fully cleansed, and forgiven, in baptism!
+Conceive him speaking truth, without any effort, on all occasions;
+not greedy, not proud, not violent, not selfish, not feeling
+conscious that he was living a life of sin, and therefore glad to
+come to God, rather than shrinking away from him! Conceive how
+completely to such an one would Christ's words be fulfilled, "Seek,
+and ye shall find!" When would his prayers be unblessed or
+unfruitful? When would he turn his thoughts to God without feeling
+pleasure in doing so; without a lively consciousness of God's love
+to him; without an assured sense of the reality of things not seen,
+of redemption and grace and glory? Would not the communion with
+God, enjoyed by one so untainted, come up to the full measure of
+those high promises, "It shall come to pass, that before they call,
+I will answer, and while they are yet speaking, I will hear?" Would
+it not be plain, that God was as truly found, by such a person, as
+he was sought in sincerity and earnestness?</p>
+<p>But now, take the most of us: suppose us not to have been kept
+carefully from evil, nor led on steadily in good; suppose us to
+have reached boyhood with bad dispositions, ready for the first
+temptation, with habits of good uncultivated; suppose us to have no
+great horror of a lie, when it can serve our turn; with much love
+of pleasure, and little love of our duty; with much, selfishness,
+and little or no thought of God: suppose such an one, so sadly
+altered from a state of baptismal purity, to be saying his prayers
+as he had been taught to say them, and saying them sometimes with a
+thought of their meaning and a wish that God would hear them. But
+does God hear them? I ask of your own consciences, whether you have
+had any sense that he has heard you? whether death and judgment,
+Christ and Christ's service, have become more real to you after
+such prayers? If not, then is it not manifest, that you have sought
+God, and have not found him; that you have called upon him and he
+has not heard? You know by experience, that you are not as those
+true children who are ever with him, who listen to catch the
+lightest whisper of his Spirit, for whom, he, too, vouchsafes to
+bless the faintest breathing of their prayer.</p>
+<p>Or, again, in trying to turn from evil to good, have you ever
+found your resolutions give way, the ground which you had gained
+slide from under your feet, till you fell back again to what you
+were at the beginning? Has this ever happened to us? If it has,
+then in that case, also, we sought God, but failed to find him; the
+victory was not yours, but the enemy's; the Spirit of Christ did
+not help you so as to conquer.</p>
+<p>Take another case yet again. Has it ever happened to any of you,
+to have done a mischief to yourselves which you could not undo? It
+need not be one of the very highest kind; but has it ever happened,
+that, by neglect, you have lost ground in the society in which you
+are placed, which you cannot recover; that your contemporaries have
+gained an advance upon you, while you have not time left to
+overtake them? Does it ever happen that, from neglecting some
+particular element of learning in its proper season, and other
+things claiming your attention afterwards, you go on with a
+disadvantage, which you would fain remove, but cannot? Does it, in
+short, ever happen to any, that his complete success here is become
+impossible; that whatever prospects of another kind may be open to
+him elsewhere, yet that he cannot now be numbered amongst those who
+have turned the particular advantages here afforded them to that
+end which they might and ought to have done?</p>
+<p>To whomsoever this has happened, the truth of the words of the
+text is matter of experience, not in their full and most dreadful
+extent, but yet quite enough to prove that they are true; and that
+just as he now feels them in part, so, if he continues to be what
+he is, he will one day feel them wholly. He feels that it is
+possible to seek God, and not to find him; he has learnt by
+experience that neglected good, or committed evil, may be beyond
+the power of after-regret to undo. It is true, that as yet, to him,
+other prospects may be open: prospects which, probably, he may deem
+no less fair than those which he has forfeited. This may be so; but
+the point to observe is, that one prospect was lost so
+irretrievably by his own fault, that afterwards, when he wished to
+regain it, he could not. Now God gives him other prospects, which
+he may realize: but as he forfeited his first prospect beyond
+recovery, so he may do also with his last: and though ill-success
+at school may be made up by success in another sphere, yet what is
+to make up for ill-success in the great business of life, when
+that, too, has been forfeited as irrecoverably; when his last
+chance is gone as hopelessly as his first?</p>
+<p>Now, surely there is in all this an intelligible lesson. I am
+not at all exaggerating the importance of the particular prospect
+forfeited here: but I am pressing upon you, that this prospect may
+be, and often is, forfeited irrecoverably; that when you wish to
+regain it, it is too late, and you cannot. And I press this,
+because it is a true type of the whole of human life; because it is
+just as possible to forfeit salvation irrecoverably, as to forfeit
+that earthly good which is the prize of well-doing here, with this
+infinite difference, that the last forfeit is not only
+irretrievable, but fatal; it can no more be made up for, than it
+can be regained. Here, then, your present condition is a type of
+the complete truth of the text: but there are other points, to
+which I alluded before, in which it is more than a type; it is the
+very truth itself, although, happily, only in an imperfect measure.
+That unanswered prayer, of which I spoke, those broken
+resolutions,--are they not actually a calling on God, without his
+hearing us; a seeking him, without finding him? We remember who it
+was that could say with truth to his Father, "I know that thou
+nearest me always." We know what it is that hinders God from
+hearing us always; because we are not thoroughly one in his Son
+Christ Jesus. But this unanswered prayer is not properly the State
+of Christ's redeemed: it is an enemy that hath brought us to this;
+the same enemy who will, in time, make all our prayers to be
+unanswered, as some are now; who will cause God, not only to be
+slow to listen, but to refuse to listen for ever. Now we are not
+heard at once, we must repeat our prayers, with more and more
+earnestness, that God, at last, may hear, and may bless us. But if,
+instead of repeating them the more, we do the very contrary, and
+repeat them the less; if, because we have no comfort, and no
+seeming good from them, we give them up altogether; then the time
+will surely come when all prayer will be but the hopeless prayer of
+Esau, because it will be only the prayer of fear; because it will
+be only the dread of destruction that will, or can, move us:--the
+love of good will have gone beyond recall. Such prayer does but ask
+for pardon without repentance; and this never is, or can be,
+granted.</p>
+<p>So then, in conclusion, that very feeling of coldness, and
+unwillingness to pray, because we have often prayed in vain, is
+surely working in us that perfect death, which is the full truth of
+the words of the text. Of all of us, those who the least like to
+pray, who have prayed with the least benefit, have the most need to
+pray again. If they have sought God, without finding him, let them
+take heed that this be not their case for ever; that the truth, of
+which the seed is even now in them, may not be ripened to their
+everlasting destruction, when all their seeking, and all their
+prayer, will be as rejected by God, as, in part, it has been
+already.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XIII."></a>LECTURE XIII.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>MARK xii. 34.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>Thou art not far from the kingdom of God</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>Whoever has gone up any hill of more than common height, may
+remember the very different impression which the self-same point,
+whether bush, or stone, or cliff, has made upon him as he viewed it
+from below and from above. In going up it seemed so high, that we
+fancied, if we were once arrived at it, we should be at the summit
+of our ascent; while, when we had got beyond it, and looked down
+upon it, it seemed almost sunk to the level of the common plain;
+and we wondered that it could ever have appeared high to us.</p>
+<p>What happens with any natural object according to the different
+points from which we view it, happens also to any particular stage
+of advancement in our moral characters. There is a goodness which
+appears very exalted or very ordinary, according as it is much
+above or much below our own level. And this is the case with the
+expression of our Lord in the text, "Thou art not far from the
+kingdom of God." Does this seem a great thing or a little thing to
+be said to us? Does it give us a notion of a height which we should
+think it happiness to have readied; or of a state so little
+advanced, that it would be misery to be forced to go back to it?
+For, according as it seems to us the one or the other, so we may
+judge of the greater or less progress which we have made in
+ascending the holy mountain of our God.</p>
+<p>But while I say this, it is necessary to distinguish between two
+several senses, in which we may be said to be near to the kingdom
+of God, or actually in it. These two are in respect of knowledge,
+and in respect of feeling and practice. And our Lord's words seem
+to refer particularly to knowledge. The scribe to whom he used
+them, had expressed so just a sense of the true way of pleasing
+God, had so risen above the common false notions of his age and
+country, that his understanding seemed to be ripe for the truths of
+that kingdom of God, which was to make the worship of God to
+consist in spirit and in truth. Now as far as the knowledge of the
+kingdom of God is concerned, although, undoubtedly, there are many
+amongst us who are deficient in it, yet it is true also, that a
+great many of us are in possession of it; we are familiar enough
+with the truths of the kingdom of God, and our understandings fully
+approve them. But we may be near to or far from the kingdom of God,
+in respect also of feeling and practice; and this is the great
+matter that concerns us. It is here, then, that we should ask
+ourselves what we think of our Lord's words in the text; and
+whether he to whom they were spoken appears to us an object of envy
+or of compassion; one whom we envy for having advanced so far, or
+pity for not being advanced further.</p>
+<p>"Not far from the kingdom of God." Again, if we take the words
+Kingdom of God in their highest sense, then the expression contains
+all that we could desire to have said of us in this life; hope
+itself on this side of the grave can go no higher. For as, in this
+sense, the kingdom of God cannot be actually entered before our
+death; so the best thing that can be said of us here, is, that we
+are not far from it; but we are in the land of Beulah, so happily
+imagined in the Pilgrim's Progress; all of our pilgrimage
+completed, save the last act of crossing the river; with the city
+of God full in sight, and with hearts ready to enter into it. In
+this sense, even St. Paul himself, when he wrote his last epistle
+from Rome, could say no more, could hope for, could desire no more,
+than to be not far from the kingdom of God.</p>
+<p>Yet again, take the words "Kingdom of God" in their lowest
+sense, and then it is woe to us all, if the expression in the text
+is all that can be said of us; if, in this sense, we are only not
+far from the kingdom of God. For take the kingdom of God as God's
+visible Church, and then, if we are not Christians at all, but only
+not far from becoming so; if we have not received Christ, but are
+not far from receiving him; this is a state so imperfect, that he
+who is in it, has not yet reached to the beginning of his Christian
+course; and we need not say how far he must be from its end, if he
+have not yet come as far as its beginning.</p>
+<p>Thus, in one sense, the words express something so high that
+nothing can be higher; in another, something so low, that, to us,
+nothing can be lower. We have yet to seek that sense, in which they
+may afford us a useful criterion of our own several states, by
+appearing high, perhaps, to some of us, and to others low.</p>
+<p>The sense which we seek is given by our Lord, when he declares
+that the kingdom of God is within us; or by St. Paul, when he tells
+us, that it is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. And
+now it is no more a thing which we cannot yet have reached, or, on
+the other hand, which we all have reached: there is now a great
+difference in us, some are far from it, some are near it, and some
+are in it; and thus it is, that they who are near it, seem in it to
+those who are afar off, and far from it to those who are in it.</p>
+<p>Now, first, do they seem far from it? Then, indeed, ours is a
+happy state, as many of us as can truly feel that they live so
+constantly in holy and heavenly tempers, in such lively faith and
+love, so tasting all the blessings of God's kingdom, its peace, and
+its hope, and its joy, that they cannot bear to think of that time,
+when these blessings were not enjoyed except in prospect; when they
+rather desired to have faith and love, than could be said actually
+to have them; when their tempers were not holy and heavenly,
+although they were fully alive to the excellence of their being so,
+and had seen them already cleansed from the opposites of such a
+state, from ill-nature, and passion, and pride.</p>
+<p>If any such there be, in whom good resolutions have long since
+ripened into good actions, and the continued good actions have now
+led to confirmed good habits, how miserable will they think it to
+be only "not far from the kingdom of God!" How ill could they bear
+to go over again the struggle which used to accompany every action,
+when it was done in defiance of habits of evil; or to be called
+back to that condition when resolutions for good were formed over
+and over again, because they were so often broken, but had as yet
+rarely led to any solid fruit! How thankful will they be to have
+escaped from that season when they were seeking, but had not yet
+found; when they were asking of God, but had not yet received; when
+they were knocking, but the door had not yet been opened! They were
+then, indeed, not far from the kingdom of God, but they were still
+without its walls; they were still strangers, and not citizens. It
+had held out to them a refuge, and they had fled to it as
+suppliants to the sanctuary; but they had not yet had the word of
+peace spoken, to bid them no more kneel without, as suppliants, but
+to enter and go in and out freely; for that all things were theirs,
+because they were Christ's.</p>
+<p>I have dwelt purposely somewhat the longer upon this, because
+the more that we can feel the truth of this picture, the more that
+we can put ourselves into the position of those who are within the
+kingdom of God, and who, living in the light of it, look back with
+pity upon those who are only kneeling without its gates,--the more
+strongly we shall feel what must be our condition, if those who are
+without its gates appear to us to be objects of envy rather than
+pity, because they are so near to that place from which we feel
+ourselves to be so distant. Or, to speak without a figure, if we
+could but understand how persons advanced in goodness would shrink
+from the thought of being now only resolving to be good, then we
+shall perceive how very evil must be our condition, if this very
+resolving to be good seems to us to be an advance so desirable; if
+we are so far from being good actually, that the very setting
+ourselves in earnest to seek for good strikes us as a point of
+absolute proficiency in comparison of our present degradation.</p>
+<p>Yet is not this the case with many of us? Do we not consider it
+a great point gained, if we can be brought to think seriously, to
+pray in earnest, to read the Bible, to begin to look to our own
+ways and lives? We feel it for ourselves, and others also feel it
+for us: it is natural, it is unavoidable, that we feel great joy,
+that we think a great deal is done, if we see any of you, after
+leading a life of manifest carelessness, and therefore of manifest
+sin, beginning to take more pains with himself, and so becoming
+what is called somewhat more steady and more serious. I know that
+the impression is apt to be too strong upon us: we are but too apt
+to boast for him who putteth on his armour as for him who putteth
+it off; because he who putteth on his armour at least shows that he
+is preparing for the battle, which so many never do at all. We
+observe some of these signs of seriousness: we see perhaps, that a
+person begins to attend at the Communion; that he pays more
+attention to his ordinary duties; that he becomes more regular. We
+see this, and we are not only thankful for it,--this we ought to
+be,--but we satisfy ourselves too readily that all is done: we
+reckon a person, somewhat too hastily, to be already belonging to
+the kingdom of God, because we have seen him turning towards it.
+Then, if he afterwards does not appear to be entered into it; if we
+see that he is not what we expected, that he is no longer serious,
+no longer attentive to his common duties, we are overmuch
+disappointed; and, perhaps are tempted too completely to despair
+for him. Is it not that we confounded together the beginning and
+the end; the being good, and the trying to become so: the
+resolution with the act; the act with the habit? Did we not forget
+that he is not at once out of danger who begins to mend: that the
+first softening of the dry burning skin, the first abating of the
+hard quick pulse, is far removed from the coolness, and steadiness,
+and even vigour of health restored, or never interrupted?</p>
+<p>But what made us forget truths so obvious? What made us confound
+things so different that the most ignorant ought to be able to
+distinguish them? Cannot we tell why it is? Is it not because there
+are so many in whom we cannot see even as good signs as these,--of
+whom we cannot but feel that it would be a great advance for them,
+a matter of earnest thankfulness, if we could only see that they
+were not far from the kingdom of God,--nay, even that their steps
+were tending thither? Let us look ever so earnestly, let us watch
+ever so carefully, let us hope ever so charitably, we cannot see,
+we can scarcely fancy that we see, even the desire to turn to God.
+We do not see gross wickedness; it is well; we see much that is
+amiable; that is well also: but the desire to turn to God, the
+tending of the steps towards the kingdom of heaven,--that we cannot
+see. But this is a thing, it may be said, that man cannot see: it
+may exist, although we cannot perceive it. Oh, that it might and
+may be so! Yet, surely, as out of the abundance of the heart the
+mouth speaketh, so a principle so mighty as the desire of turning
+to God cannot leave itself without a witness: some symptoms must be
+shown to those who are eagerly watching for them; some ground for
+hope must be afforded where hope is so ready to kindle. If no sign
+of life appears, can the life indeed be stirring? And if the life
+be not stirring; if the disorder is going on in so many cases,
+raging, with no symptom of abatement; is it not natural, that when
+we do see such symptoms, we should rejoice even with over-measure,
+that we should forget how much is yet to be done, when we see that
+something has been done.</p>
+<p>To such persons, it would be an enviable state, to be not far
+from the kingdom of God. But what, then, must be their state
+actually? A hopeful one, according to many standards of judgment; a
+state that promises well, it may be, for a healthy and prosperous
+life, with many friends, perhaps with much distinction. We know
+that all this prospect may be blighted; still it exists at
+present;--the healthy constitution, the easy fortune, the cheerful
+and good-humoured temper, the quickness and power of understanding;
+all these, no doubt, are hopeful signs for a period of forty, or
+fifty, or perhaps sixty years to come. But what is to come then?
+what is the prospect for the next period, not of fifty, or sixty,
+not of a hundred, not of a thousand, years; not of any number that
+can be numbered, but of time everlasting? Is their actual state one
+of hopeful promise for this period, for this life which no death
+shall terminate? Nay, is it a state of any promise at all, of any
+chance at all? Suppose, for a moment, one with a crippled body,
+full of the seeds of hereditary disease, poor, friendless,
+irritable in temper, low in understanding; suppose such an one just
+entering upon youth, and ask yourselves, for what would you consent
+that his prospects should be yours? What should you think would be
+your chance of happiness in life, if you were beginning in such a
+condition? Yet, I tell you that poor, diseased, irritable,
+friendless cripple has a far better prospect of passing his fifty,
+or sixty, years, tolerably, than they who have not begun to turn
+towards God have of a tolerable eternity. Much more wretched is the
+promise of their life; much more justly should we be tempted,
+concerning them, to breathe that fearful thought, that it were good
+for them if they had never been born. And now if, as by miracle,
+that cripple's limbs were to be at once made sound, if the seeds of
+disease were to vanish, if some large fortune were left him, if his
+temper sweetened, and his mind became vigorous, should not we be
+excused, considering what he had been and what he now was, if we,
+for a moment, forgot the uncertainty of the future; if we thought
+that a promise so changed, was almost equivalent to performance?
+And may not this same excuse be urged for some over-fondness of
+confidence for their well-doing whom we see so near to the kingdom
+of God, when we consider how utter is the misery, how hopeless the
+condition of those who do not appear to have, as yet, stirred one
+single step towards it?</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XIV."></a>LECTURE XIV.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>MATTHEW xxii. 14.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>For many are called, but few are chosen</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>The truth here expressed is one of the most solemn in the world,
+and would be one of the most overwhelming to us, if habit had not,
+in a manner, blunted our painful perception of it. There is
+contained in it matter of thought more than we could exhaust, and
+deeper than we could ever fathom. But on this I will not attempt to
+enter. I will rather take that view of the text which concerns us
+here; I will see in how many senses it is true, and with what
+feeling we should regard it.</p>
+<p>"Many are called, but few are chosen." The direct application of
+this was to the parable of those invited to the supper; in which it
+had been related, how a great multitude had been invited, but how
+one among them--and the application as well as the fact in human
+life, require that this <i>one</i> should be taken only as a
+specimen of a great number--had been found unworthy to enjoy the
+feast prepared for them. They had not on the wedding garment; they
+had not done their part to fit themselves for the offered blessing:
+therefore they were called, but not chosen. God had willed to do
+them good, but they would not; and therefore, though he had called
+them at the beginning, he, in the end, cast them out.</p>
+<p>We have to do, then, not with an arbitrary call and an arbitrary
+choice, as if God called many in mockery, meaning to choose out of
+them only a few, and making his choice independently of any
+exertion of theirs. The picture is very different; it is a gracious
+call to us all, to come and receive the blessing; it is a reluctant
+casting out the greatest part of us, because we would not try to
+render ourselves fit for it.</p>
+<p>I said, that we would take the words of the text in reference to
+ourselves, for here, too, it is true, that many are called, but few
+are chosen. It is a large number of you, which I see before me; and
+if we add to it all those who, within my memory, have sat in the
+same places before you, we shall have a number very considerable
+indeed. All these have been called; they have been sent here to
+enjoy the same advantages with each other; and those advantages
+have been put within their reach. They have entered into a great
+society which, on the one hand, might raise them forward, or, on
+the other, depress them. There has been a sufficient field for
+emulation: there have been examples and instructions for good;
+there have been results of credit and of real improvement made
+attainable to them, which might have lasted all their lives long.
+To this, they have been all, in their turns, called; and out of
+those so called, have all, or nearly all, been chosen? I am not
+speaking of those, who, I trust, would be a very small number, to
+whom the trial has failed utterly, who could look back on their
+stay here with no feelings but those of shame. But would there not
+be a very large number, to whom their stay here has been a loss,
+compared with what it might have been; who have reaped but a very
+small part of those advantages to which they had been at first
+called? Are there not too many who must look back on a part, at
+least, of their time here as wasted; on the seeds of bad habits
+sown, which, if conquered by after-care, yet, for a long time, were
+injurious to them? Are there not too many who carry away from here,
+instead of good notions, to be ripened and improved, evil notions,
+to be weeded out and destroyed? Are there not, in short, a great
+number who, after having had a great advantage put within their
+reach, and purchased for them by their friends, at a great expense,
+have made such insufficient use of their opportunities, to say
+nothing stronger, as to make it a question afterwards, whether it
+might not have been better for them had they never come here at
+all?</p>
+<p>Thus far I have been speaking of what are called the advantages
+of this place in our common language. That argument, which Butler
+has so nobly handled, in one of the greatest works in our language,
+the resemblance, namely, between the course of things earthly and
+that of things spiritual, is one which we should never fail to
+notice. We can discern the type, as it were, of the highest truth
+of our Lord's sayings in the experience of our common life in
+worldly things. When he tells us, speaking of things spiritual,
+that "many are called, but few are chosen;" that "whoso hath, to
+him shall be given; but from him that hath not shall be taken away
+even that which he hath,"--although the highest truth contained in
+these words be yet, in part, matter of faith, for we have not yet
+seen the end of God's dealings with us: yet what we do see, the
+evident truth of the words, that is, in respect to God's dealings
+with us in the course of his earthly providence, may reasonably
+assure us of their truth no less in respect to those dealings of
+God which as yet are future. I began, therefore, with reminding you
+of the truth of the words of the text with regard to worldly
+advantages; that even here, on this small scale, the general law
+holds good; that more things are provided for us than we will
+consent to use; that, in short, "many are called, but few are
+chosen."</p>
+<p>But it were ill done to limit our view to this: we are called to
+much more than worldly advantages; and what if here, too, we add
+one more example to confirm our Lord's words, that "many are
+called, but few chosen?" Now here, as I said, it is very true that
+God's choice is as yet not a matter of sight or of certainty to us;
+we cannot yet say of ourselves, or of any other set of living men,
+that "few are chosen." But though the full truth is not yet
+revealed, still, as there is a type of it in our worldly
+experience, so there is also a higher type, an earnest, of it in
+our spiritual experience: there is a sense, and that a very true
+and a very important one, in which we can say already, say now,
+actually, in the life that now is; say, even in the early stage of
+it, that some are, and some are not, "chosen."</p>
+<p>We have all been called, in a Christian sense, inasmuch as we
+have been all introduced into Christ's church by Baptism; and a
+very large proportion of us have been called again, many of us not
+very long since, at our Confirmation. We have been thus called to
+enter into Christ's kingdom: we have been called to lead a life of
+holiness and happiness from this time forth even for ever. Nothing
+can be stronger than the language in which the Scripture speaks of
+the nature of our high calling: "All things," says St. Paul to the
+Corinthians, "all things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or
+Peter, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or
+things to come, all are yours; and ye are Christ's, and Christ is
+God's." Now, if this be the prize to which we are called, who are
+they who are also chosen to it? In the first and most complete
+sense, no doubt, those who have entered into their rest; who are in
+no more danger, however slight; with whom the struggle is
+altogether past, and the victory securely won. These are entered
+within the veil, whither we can as yet penetrate only in hope. But
+hope, in its highest degree, differs little from assurance; and
+even, as we descend lower and lower, still, where hope is clearly
+predominant, there is, if not assurance, yet a great encouragement;
+and the Scripture, which delights to carry encouragement to the
+highest pitch to those who are following God, allows of our saying
+of even these that they are God's chosen. It gives them, as it
+were, the title beforehand, to make them feel how doubly miserable
+it must be not only not to obtain it, but to forfeit it after it
+had been already ours. So then, there are senses in which we may
+say that some are chosen now; although, strictly speaking, the term
+can by us be applied, in its full sense, to those only who are
+passed beyond the reach of evil.</p>
+<p>Those, then, we may call chosen, who, having heard their call,
+have turned to obey it, and have gone on following it. Those we may
+call chosen,--I do not say chosen irrevocably, but chosen now;
+chosen so that we may be very thankful to God on their behalf, and
+they thankful for themselves,--who, since their Confirmation, or
+since a period more remote, have kept God before their face, and
+tried to do His will. Those are, in the same way, chosen, who
+having found in themselves the sin which did most easily beset
+them, have struggled with it, and wholly, or in a great measure,
+have overcome it. Thus, they are chosen, who, having lived either
+in the frequent practice of selfish, extravagance, or of falsehood,
+or of idleness, or of excess in eating and drinking, have turned
+away from these things, and, for Christ's sake, have renounced
+them. They are chosen, I think, in yet a higher sense, who, having
+found their besetting sin to be, not so much any one particular
+fault, as a general ungodly carelessness, a lightness which for
+ever hindered them from serving God, have struggled with this most
+fatal enemy; and, even in youth, and health, and happiness, have
+learnt what it is to be sober-minded, what it is to think. Now,
+such as these have, in a manner, entered into their inheritance;
+they are not merely called, but chosen. God and spiritual things
+are not mere names to them, they are a reality. Such persons have
+tasted of the promises; they have known the pleasure--and what
+pleasure is comparable to it?--of feeling the bonds of evil passion
+or evil habit unwound from about their spirit; they have learnt
+what is that glorious liberty of being able to abstain from the
+things which we condemn, to do the things which we approve. They
+have felt true sense of power succeed to that of weakness. It is a
+delightful thing, after a long illness, after long helplessness,
+when our legs have been unable to support our weight, when our arms
+could lift nothing, our hands grasp nothing, when it was an effort
+to raise our head from the pillow, and it tired us even to speak in
+a whisper,--it is a delightful thing to feel every member restored
+to its proper strength; to find that exercise of limb, of voice, of
+body, which had been so long a pain, become now a source of
+perpetual pleasure. This is delightful; it pays for many an hour of
+previous weakness. But it is infinitely more delightful to feel the
+change from weakness to strength in our souls; to feel the languor
+of selfishness changed for the vigour of benevolence; to feel
+thought, hope, faith, love, which before were lying, as it were, in
+helplessness, now bounding in vigorous activity; to find the soul,
+which had been so long stretched as upon the sick bed of this
+earth, now able to stand upright, and looking and moving steadily
+towards heaven.</p>
+<p>These are chosen; and they to whom this description does in no
+degree apply, they are not chosen. They are not chosen in any
+sense, they are called only. And, now, what is the proportion
+between the one and the other; are there as many chosen as there
+have been many called? Or do Christ's words apply in our case no
+less than in others; that though they who are called are many, yet
+they who are chosen are few?</p>
+<p>This I dare not answer; there is a good as well as an evil which
+is unseen to the world at large, unseen even by all but those who
+watch us most nearly and most narrowly. All we can say is, that
+there are too many, who we must fear are not chosen; there are too
+few, of whom we can feel sure that they are. Yet hope is a wiser
+feeling than its opposite; it were as wrong as it would be
+miserable to abandon it. How gladly would we hope the best things
+of all those whom we saw this morning at Christ's holy table! How
+gladly would we believe of all such, that they were more than
+called merely; that they had listened to the call: that they had
+obeyed it; that they had already gained some Christian victories;
+that they were, in some sense, not called only, but chosen. But
+this we may say; that hope which we so long to entertain, that hope
+too happy to be at once indulged in, you may authorize us to feel
+it; you may convert it into confidence. Do you ask how? By going on
+steadily in good, by advancing from good to better, by not letting
+impressions fade with time. Now, with many of you, your
+confirmation is little more than three months distant; when we next
+meet at Christ's table, it will have passed by nearly half-a-year.
+It may be, that, in that added interval, it will have lost much of
+its force; that, from various causes, evil may have abounded in you
+more than good; that then shame, or a willing surrender of
+yourselves to carelessness, will keep away from Christ's Communion,
+many who have this day joined in it. But, if this were not to be
+so; if those, whom we have seen with joy this day communicating
+with us in the pledges of Christian fellowship, should continue to
+do so steadily; if, in the meantime, traits shall appear in you in
+other things that our hope was well founded; if the hatred of evil
+and the love of good were to be clearly manifest in you; if by
+signs not to be mistaken by those who watch earnestly for them, we
+might be assured that your part was taken, that you were striving
+with us in that service of our common Master, in which we would
+fain live and die; if evil was clearly lessened among us--not
+laughed at, but discouraged and put down; if instead of those
+turning away, who have now been with us at Christ's table, others,
+who have now turned away, should then be added to the number; then
+we should say, not doubtingly, that you were chosen: that you had
+tasted of the good things of Christ; that the good work of God was
+clearly begun in you. We might not, indeed, be without care, either
+for you or for ourselves: God forbid, that, in that sense, any of
+us should deem that we were chosen, until the grave has put us
+beyond temptation. But how happy were it to think of you as
+Christ's chosen, in that sense which should be a constant
+encouragement to us all: to think of you as going on towards God;
+to think of you as living to him daily; to think of you as on his
+side against all his enemies; to think of you as led by his Spirit,
+as living members of his holy and glorious Church,--militant now,
+in heaven triumphant!</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XV."></a>LECTURE XV.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>LUKE xi. 25.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>When he cometh, he findeth it swept and
+garnished</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<center>JOHN v. 42.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>I know you, that ye have not the love of God in
+you</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>These passages, of which the first is taken from the gospel of
+this morning's service, the other from the second lesson, differ in
+words, but their meaning is very nearly the same. The house which
+was empty, swept and garnished, was especially one empty of the
+love of God. Whatever evil there may not have been in it; whatever
+good there may have been in those of whom Christ spoke in the
+second passage: yet it and they agreed in this; one thing they had
+not, which alone was worth, all the rest besides; they had not the
+love of God.</p>
+<p>And so it is still; many are the faults which we have not; many
+are the good qualities which we have; but the life is wanting. What
+is so rare as to find one who is not indifferent to God? What so
+rare, even rarer than the other, as to find one who actually loves
+him?</p>
+<p>Therefore it is that those who go in at the broad gate of
+destruction are many, and those who go in at the narrow gate of
+life are few. For destruction and life are but other terms for
+indifference to God on the one hand, and love to him on the other.
+All who are indifferent to him, die; a painless death of mere
+extinction, if, like the brute creation, they have never been made
+capable of loving him; or a living death of perpetual misery, if,
+like evil spirits and evil men, they might have loved him and would
+not. And so all who love him, live a life, from first to last,
+without sin and sorrow, if, like the holy angels, they have loved
+him always; a life partaking at first of death, but brightening
+more and more unto the perfect day, if, like Christians, they were
+born in sin, but had been redeemed and sanctified to
+righteousness.</p>
+<p>Whoever has watched human character, whether in the young or the
+old, must be well aware of the truth of this: he will know that the
+value of any character is in proportion to the existence or to the
+absence of this feeling, or rather, I should say, this principle.
+An exception may, perhaps, be made for a small, a very small number
+of fanatics; an apparent exception likewise exists in the case of
+many who seem to be religious, but who really are not so. The few
+exceptions of the former case are so very few, that we need not now
+stop to consider them, nor to inquire how far even these would be
+exceptions if we could read the heart as God reads it. The seeming
+exceptions being cases either of hypocrisy, or of very common
+self-deceit, we need not regard either; for they are, of course, no
+real objection to the truth of the general statement. It remains
+true, then, generally, that the value of any character is in
+proportion to the existence, or to the absence, in it of the love
+of God.</p>
+<p>But is there not another exception to be made for the case of
+children, and of very young persons? Are they capable of loving
+God? and are not their earthly relations, their parents especially,
+put to them, as it were, in the place of God, as objects of trust,
+of love, of honour, of obedience, till their minds can open to
+comprehend the love of their Father who is in heaven? And does not
+the Scripture itself, in the few places in which it seems directly
+to address children, content itself with directing them to obey and
+honour their parents? Some notions of this sort are allowed, I
+believe, to serve sometimes as an excuse, when young persons are
+blamed for being utterly wanting in a sense of duty to God.</p>
+<p>The passages which direct children to obey their parents, are of
+the same kind with those, directing slaves to obey their masters,
+and masters to be kind to their slaves; like those, also, which
+John the Baptist addressed to the soldiers and publicans: in none
+of all which there is any command to love God, but merely a command
+to fulfil that particular duty which most arose out of the
+particular relation, or calling of the persons addressed. In fact,
+when parents are addressed, they are directed only to do their
+duties to their children, just as children are directed to do
+theirs to their parents; in both cases alike, the common duty of
+parents and children to God is not dwelt upon, because that is a
+duty which does not belong to them as parents, or as children, but
+as human beings; and as such, it belongs to all alike. In fact, the
+very language of St. Paul's command to children implies this; for
+he says, "Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is
+right:" right, that is, in the sight of God: so that the very
+reason for which children are to discharge their earthly duties is,
+because that earthly duty is commanded by, or involved in, their
+heavenly duty; if they do not do it, they will not please God. But
+it is manifest that, in this respect, there is for all of us one
+only law, so soon as we are able to understand it. The moment that
+a child becomes capable of understanding anything about God and
+Christ,--and how early that is, every parent can testify,--that
+moment the duty to love God and Christ begins. It were absurd to
+say, that this duty has not begun at the age of boyhood. A boy is
+able to understand the force of religious motives, as well as he
+can that of earthly motives: he cannot understand either, perhaps,
+so well as he will hereafter; but he understands both enough, for
+the purposes of his salvation; enough, to condemn him before God,
+if he neglects them; enough to make him derive the greatest benefit
+from faithfully observing them.</p>
+<p>And what can have been the purpose with which the only
+particular of our Lord's early life has been handed down to us, if
+it were not to direct our attention to this special truth, that our
+youth, no less than our riper age, belongs to God? "Wist ye not
+that I must be about my Father's business?" were words spoken by
+our Lord when he was no more than twelve years old. At twelve years
+old, he thought of preparing himself for the duties of his
+after-life; and of preparing himself for them, because they were
+God's will. He was to be about his Father's business. This is
+Christ's example for the young; this, and scarcely anything more
+than this, is recorded of his early years. Those are not like
+Christ who, at that same age, or even older, never think at all of
+the business of their future lives, still less would think of it,
+not as the means of their own maintenance or advancement, but as
+the duty which they owe to God.</p>
+<p>Such as these are the very persons whose hearts are like the
+house in the parable, empty, swept, and garnished. The house so
+described in the parable is one out of which an evil spirit has
+just departed. In case of the young, the evil spirit in this sense,
+that is, as representing some one particular favourite sin, may
+perhaps have never entered it. That empty, swept, and garnished
+house, how like is it to what I have seen, to what I am seeing so
+continually, when a boy comes here with much still remaining of the
+innocence of childhood! Evil spirit, in the sense of any one
+particular vice, there is none to be found in that heart, nor has
+there been any ever. It is empty, swept, and garnished: there is
+the absence of evil; there are the various faculties, the
+furniture, as they may be called, of the house of our spirits,
+which the spirit uses either for evil or for good. There is
+innocence, then; there is, also, the promise of power. God hath
+richly endowed the earthly house of our tabernacle: various and
+wonderful is the furniture of body and mind with which it is
+supplied. How can we help admiring that open and cheerful brow
+which, as yet, no care or sin has furrowed; those light and active
+limbs, full of health and vigour; the eye so quick; the ear so
+undulled; the memory so ready; the young curiosity so eager to take
+in new knowledge; the young feelings, not yet spoiled by
+over-excitement, ready to admire, ready to love? There is the
+house, the house of God's building, the house which must abide for
+ever; but where is the spirit to inhabit it? Evil spirit there is
+none: is it, then, possessed by the Spirit of God? Has the fire
+from heaven as yet descended upon that house,--the living sign of
+God's presence, which alone can convert the house of perishable
+clay into the everlasting temple?</p>
+<p>Can that blessed Spirit of God be indeed there, and yet no sign
+of his presence be manifest? It may be so, or to speak more truly,
+it might have been supposed to be so, if God's word had not
+declared the contrary. What God's secret workings are; in how many
+ways, to us inscrutable, he may pervade all nature; in how many
+cases he may be near us, and we know it not; may, perhaps, be
+amongst those real mysteries, those truths revealed to none, nor to
+be revealed; those yet uncleared forests, so to speak, of the world
+of nature, into which the light of grace has not been permitted to
+penetrate. But all such mysteries are to us as if they did not
+exist at all: we have nothing to do with them. God has told us
+nothing of his unseen and undiscernible presence; when and where he
+is so present, he is to us as if he were not present at all. God
+was in the wilderness of Horeb before the bush was kindled; but he
+was not there for Moses. God, in some sense discernible, it may be,
+to other beings, may be in that house which, to us is empty; but
+God, our own God, the Holy Spirit, into whose service we were
+baptized, where he is, the house is not empty to us, but full of
+light. Invisible in himself, the signs of his presence are most
+visible: where no works, no fruits of the Holy Spirit are to be
+discerned, there, according to our Lord's express declaration,
+there the Holy Spirit is not.</p>
+<p>But the light which declares his presence may indeed be a little
+spark; just to be seen, and no more. It may show that he has not
+abandoned all his right to the house of our tabernacle as yet; that
+he would desire to possess us fully. Such a little spark, such an
+evidence of the Holy Spirit's presence, is to be found in the
+outward profession of Christianity. They who call Jesus Lord, do it
+by the Holy Ghost; and, therefore, it is quite true in this sense,
+that in every baptized Christian, who has not utterly apostatized,
+there is that faint sign of the Holy Spirit's still having a claim
+upon him; he is not yet utterly cast off. This is true; but it is
+not to our present purpose; such a feeble sign is a sign of God's
+yet unwearied mercy, but no sign of our salvation. The presence
+with which the parable is concerned, is a far more effectual
+presence than this; the house in which there is no more than such a
+faint sign of a divine inhabitant, is, in the language of the
+parable, empty. To no purpose of our salvation is the Spirit of God
+present in the house, when the light of his presence does not flash
+forth from every part of it, when it is not manifest, not only that
+he has not quite cast it off to go to ruin, but that he has been
+pleased to make it his temple.</p>
+<p>In this sense, therefore, in this practical, scriptural,
+Christian sense, those many young minds, which we have seen so
+often, may truly be called empty. But will they remain so long? How
+often have I seen the early innocence of boyhood overcast; the
+natural simplicity of boyhood, its open truth, its confident
+affection, its honest shame, perverted, blunted, hardened! How
+often have I seen the seven evil spirits enter in and dwell
+there,--I know not, and never may know, whether to be cast out
+again, or to abide for ever. But I have seen them enter, and,
+whilst the person was yet within my view, I have not seen them
+depart. And why have they entered; why have they marred that which
+was so beautiful? For one only reason,--because the house was
+empty, because the Spirit of God was not there: there was no love
+of God, no thought of God. Mere innocence taints and spoils as
+surely before the influence of the world, as true principle
+flourishes in spite of it, and strengthens. This, too, I have seen,
+not once only: I have seen the innocence of early boyhood
+sanctified by something better than innocence, which gave a promise
+of abiding. I have seen, in other words, that the house was not
+empty; that the Spirit of God was there. I have watched the effect
+of those influences, which you know so well: the second half-year
+came, a period when mere innocence is sure to be worn away, greatly
+tainted, if not utterly gone; but still, in the cases which I am
+now alluding to, the promise of good was not less, but greater,
+there was a more tried, and, therefore, a stronger goodness. I have
+watched this, too, till it passed on, out of my sight. I never saw
+the blessed Spirit of God depart from the house which he had
+chosen: I well believe that he abides in it still, and will abide
+in it even to the day of Jesus Christ.</p>
+<p>This I have seen, and this I shall continue to see; for still
+the great work of evil and of good is going on; still the house, at
+first empty, is possessed by the spirits of evil, or by the Spirit
+of God. And if we do not see the signs of the Spirit of God, we are
+but too sure that the evil spirit is there. We know him by the
+manifold signs of folly, coarseness, carelessness; even when we see
+not, as yet, his worse fruits of falsehood and profligacy. We know
+him by the sign of an increased, and increasing selfishness, the
+everlasting cry of the thousand passions of our nature, all for
+ever calling out, "Give, give;" all for ever impatient,
+complaining, when their gratification is withheld, when the call of
+duty is set before them. We know him by pride and self-importance,
+as if nothing was so great as self, as if our own opinions,
+judgment, feelings were to be consulted in all things. We know him
+by the deep ungodliness which he occasions--no thought of God, much
+less any love of him; living utterly without him in the world, or,
+at least, whilst health and prosperity continue. These are the
+fatal signs which show that the house is no longer empty; that the
+evil spirits have entered in, and dwell there, to make it theirs,
+as too often happens, for time and for eternity.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XVI."></a>LECTURE XVI.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>MATHEW xi. 10.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare
+thy way before thee</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>If it was part of God's dispensation, that there should be one
+to prepare the way before Christ's first coming, it may be expected
+much more, that there should be some to prepare the way before his
+second. And so it is expressed in the collect for the third Sunday
+in Advent: "O Lord Jesus Christ, who at thy first coming didst send
+thy messenger to prepare thy way before thee; grant that the
+ministers and stewards of thy mysteries may likewise so prepare and
+make ready thy way, by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the
+wisdom of the just, that at thy second coming to judge the world we
+may be found an acceptable people in thy sight, who livest and
+reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world
+without end. Amen." NOW, in what does this preparing for him
+consist; and what is its object? The Scripture will inform us as to
+both. The object is, "Lest he come and smite the earth with a
+curse;" lest, when he shall come, his coming, which should be our
+greatest joy and happiness, should be our everlasting destruction;
+for there can abide before him nothing that is evil. This is the
+object of preparing for Christ's coming. Next, in what does the
+preparation consist? It consists in teaching men to live above the
+common notions of their age and country; to raise their standard
+higher; to live after what is right in God's judgment, which often
+casts away, as faulty and bad, what men were accustomed to think
+good. And as the people of Israel, although they had God's
+revelation among them, had yet let their standard of good and evil
+become low, even so it has been in the Christian Israel. We have
+God's will in our hands, yet our judgments are not formed upon it;
+and, therefore, they who would prepare us for Christ's coming, must
+set before us a commandment which is new, although old: in one
+sense old, in every generation, inasmuch as it is the same which we
+had from the beginning; in another sense, in every generation more
+new, inasmuch, as the habits opposed to it have become the more
+confirmed; and the longer the night has lasted, the more strange to
+our eyes is the burst of the returning light.</p>
+<p>But when we thus speak of the common notions of our age and
+country being deficient, and thus, in effect, commend notions which
+would be singular, do we not hold a language inconsistent with our
+common language and practice? Do we not commonly regard singularity
+as a fault, and attach a considerable authority to the consent of
+men in general? Nay, do we not often appeal to this consent as to a
+proof which a sane mind must admit as decisive? Even in speaking of
+good and evil, have not the very words gained their present sense
+because the common consent of mankind has agreed to combine notions
+of self-satisfaction, of honour, and of love, with what we call
+good, and the contrary with what we call evil?</p>
+<p>A short time may, perhaps, not be misapplied in endeavouring to
+explain this matter; in showing where, and for what reasons, the
+common opinion of our society is to be followed, where it is to be
+suspected, and where it is absolutely to be shunned or trampled
+under foot, as clearly and certainly evil.</p>
+<p>I must begin with little things, in order to show the whole
+question plainly. Take those tastes in us which most resemble the
+instincts of a brute; and you will find that in these, as with
+instinct, common consent becomes a sure rule. When I speak of those
+tastes which most resemble instincts, I mean those in which nature,
+doing most for us at first, leaves least for us to learn for
+ourselves. This seems the character of instinct: it is far more
+complete than reason in its first stage, but it admits of no after
+improvement; the brute in the thousandth generation is no way
+advanced beyond the brute in the first. Of our tastes, even of
+those belonging to our bodily senses, that which belongs to what
+are called particularly our organs of taste is the one most
+resembling an instinct: we have less to do for its improvement than
+in any other instance. Men being here, then, upon an equality, with
+a faculty given to all by nature, and improved particularly by
+none, those who differ from the majority are likely to differ not
+from excellence but from defect: not because they have a more
+advanced reason, but because they have a less healthy instinct,
+than their neighbours. Thus, in those matters which relate to the
+sense of taste--I am obliged to take this almost trivial instance,
+because it so well illustrates the principle of the whole
+question--we hold the consent of men in general to be a good rule.
+If any one were to choose to feed upon what this common taste had
+pronounced to be disgusting, we should not hesitate to say that
+such an appetite was diseased and monstrous.</p>
+<p>Now, let us take our senses of sight and hearing, and we shall
+find that just in the proportion in which these less resemble
+instincts than the sense of taste, so is common consent a less
+certain rule. Up to a certain point they are instincts: there are
+certain sounds which, I suppose, are naturally disagreeable to the
+ear; while, on the other hand, bright and rich colours are,
+perhaps, naturally attractive to the eye. But, then, sight and
+hearing are so connected with our minds that they are susceptible
+of very great cultivation, and thus differ greatly from instincts.
+As the mind opens, outward sights and sounds become connected with
+a great number of associations, and thus we learn to think the one
+or the other beautiful, for reasons which really depend very much
+on the range of our own ideas. Consider, for a moment, the
+beautiful in architecture. If the model of the leaning tower of
+Pisa were generally adopted in our public buildings, all men's
+common sense would cry out against it as a deformity, because a
+leaning wall would convey to every mind the notion of insecurity,
+and every body would feel that it was unpleasant to see a building
+look exactly as if it were going to fall down. Now, what I have
+called common sense is, in a manner, the instinct of our reason: it
+is that uniform level of reason which all sane persons reach to,
+and the wisest in matters within its province do not surpass. But
+go beyond this, and architecture is no longer a matter of mere
+common sense, but of science, and of cultivated taste. Here the
+standard of beauty is not fixed by common consent; but, in the
+first instance, devised or discovered by the few: and, so far as it
+is received by the many, received by them on the authority of the
+few, and sanctioned, so to speak, not so much from real sympathy
+and understanding, as from a reasonable trust and deference to
+those who are believed the best judges.</p>
+<p>Here, then, we suppose that the common judgment is right; but we
+perceive a difference between this case and the one mentioned
+before, inasmuch as in the first instance the right judgment of the
+mass of mankind is their own; in the second instance, they have
+adopted it out of deference to others. Not only, then, will men's
+common judgment be right in matters of instinct and of common
+sense, but also in higher matters, where, although they could not
+have discovered what was right, yet they were perfectly willing to
+adopt it, when discovered by others. And this opens a very wide
+field. For in all matters which come under the dominion of fashion,
+where the avowed object is the convenience or gratification of
+society, men listen to those who profess to teach them with almost
+an excess of docility: they will adopt sometimes fashions which are
+not convenient. But yet, as men can tell well enough by experience
+whether they do find a thing convenient and agreeable or not, so it
+is most likely that fashions which continue long and generally
+prevalent are founded upon sound principles; because else men,
+being well capable of knowing what convenience is, and being also
+well disposed to follow it, would neither have been very long or
+very generally mistaken in this matter; nor would have acquiesced
+in their mistake contentedly.</p>
+<p>We do perfectly right, then, to regard the common opinion as a
+rule in all points of dress, in our houses and furniture, in those
+lighter usages of society which come under the denomination of
+manners, as distinguished from morals. In all these, if the mass of
+mankind could not find out what would best suit them, yet they are
+quite ready to adopt it when it is found out; and so they equally
+arrive at truth. But take away this readiness, and the whole case
+is altered. If there be any point in which men are not ready to
+adopt what is best for them; if they are either indifferent, or
+still more, if they are averse to it; if they thus have neither the
+power of discovering it for themselves, nor the will to avail
+themselves of it, when discovered for them; then it is clear that,
+in such a point, the common judgment will be of no value, nay,
+there will even be a presumption that it is wrong.</p>
+<p>Now as the common consent of mankind was most sure in matters
+where their sense most resembled instinct, that is, where nature
+had done most for them, and left them least to do for themselves;
+as here, therefore, they who are sound are the great majority, and
+the exceptions are no better than disease; so if there be any part
+of us which is the direct opposite to instinct, a part in which
+nature has done next to nothing for us, and all is to be done by
+ourselves; then, here the common consent of mankind will be of the
+least value; here the majority will be helpless and worthless; and
+they who are happy enough to be exceptions to this majority, will
+be no other than Christ's redeemed.</p>
+<p>Now, again, if this deficient part of our nature could be seen
+purely distinct from every other; if it alone dictated our
+language, and inspired our actions, then it would follow, that
+language which must ever be fixed by the majority, would be, in
+fact, the language of the world of infinite evil; and our actions
+those of mere devils. Then, whoever of us would be saved, must
+needs begin by forswearing, altogether, both the language and the
+actions of his fellow-men. But this is not so; in almost every
+instance this deficient part of our nature acts along with others
+that are not so corrupted; it mars their work, undoubtedly; it
+often confuses and perverts our language; it always taints our
+actions; but it does not wholly usurp either the one or the other;
+and thus, by God's blessing, man's language yet affords a high
+witness to divine truth, and even men's judgments and actions
+testify, though with infinite imperfection, to the existence and
+excellence of goodness.</p>
+<p>And this it is which forms one of the great perplexities of
+life; for as there is enough of what is right in men's judgments
+and conduct to forbid us from saying, that we must take the very
+rule of contraries, and think and do just the opposite to the
+opinions and practice of men in general; so, on the other hand,
+there is always so much wrong in them, that we may never dare to
+follow them as a standard, but shall find, that if trusted to as
+such, they will inevitably betray us. So that in points of greater
+moment than mere manners and fashion, it will ever be true, that if
+we would be prepared for Christ's coming, we must rise to a far
+higher standard than that of society in general; that in the
+greatest concerns of human life, the practice of the majority,
+though always containing something of good, is yet in its
+prevailing character, as regards God, so evil, that they who are
+content to follow it cannot be saved.</p>
+<p>This is the explanation of the apparent difficulty in the
+general, and thus, while acknowledging that there are points in
+which men, by common consent, make out what is best; and others in
+which, although they do not make it out, nor at first appreciate
+it, yet they are very willing to adopt it upon trust, and so come
+by experience to value it; while, therefore, there are a great many
+things in which singularity is either a disease or a foolishness;
+so again there are other points in which men in general have not
+the power to make out what is good, nor yet the docility to adopt
+it; and, therefore, in these points, which relate to the great
+matters of life, singularity is wisdom and salvation, and he who
+does as others do, perishes. That is what is called the corruption
+of human nature. I shall attempt, on another occasion, to go into
+some further details, and show, by common examples, how strangely
+our judgment and practice contain, with much that is right, just
+that one taint or defect which, as a whole, spoils them. And this
+one defect will be found to be, as the Scripture declares, a defect
+in our sense of our relation towards God.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XVII."></a>LECTURE XVII.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>1 CORINTHIANS ii. 12.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>We have received not the spirit of the world, but the
+Spirit which is of God</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>And, therefore, he goes on to say, our language is different
+from that of others, and not always understood by them; the natural
+man receiveth not the things of God, for they are foolishness unto
+him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually
+discerned. That is, they are discerned only by a faculty which he
+has not, namely, by the Spirit; and, therefore, as beings devoid of
+reason cannot understand the truths of science, or of man's wisdom,
+for they are without the faculty which can discern them; so beings
+devoid of God's Spirit cannot understand the truths of God.</p>
+<p>Now, in order to turn this passage to our profit, we need not
+consider those who are wholly without God's Spirit, or inquire
+whether, indeed, there be any such; it is not that there are two
+broadly marked divisions of all men, those who have not the Spirit
+of God at all, and those who have it abundantly: if it were so, the
+separation of the great day of judgment would be begun already, nor
+would it require, in order to effect it rightly, the wisdom of Him
+who trieth the very hearts and reins. No doubt there will be at
+last but two divisions of us all, the saved and the lost; but now
+the divisions are infinite; so much so that the great body of us
+offer much matter for hope as well as for fear. We cannot say, that
+they are without the Spirit of God; yet neither can we say that
+they are led by the Spirit, so as to be God's true servants. We
+cannot say, that the things of God's are absolutely to them as
+foolishness; yet certainly, we cannot say either, that they are to
+them as the divinest wisdom.</p>
+<p>And here we return to the subject on which I was speaking last
+Sunday. It is because we are not led by the Spirit of God, but have
+within us much of the spirit of the world, that our judgments of
+right and wrong are so faulty; and that this faultiness is
+particularly seen in our faint sense of our relations to God. These
+relations seem continually foolishness to us, because they are
+spiritually discerned, and we have so little of God's Spirit to
+enable us to discern them. And our blindness here affects our whole
+souls; we have, in consequence of it, a much fainter perception
+even of those truths which reason can discern by herself; or, at
+any rate, if we do not doubt them, they have over us much less
+influence.</p>
+<p>Now we will first see how much of natural reason, and even of
+the Spirit of God, does exist in our common judgments; for it is
+fair to see and to allow what there is of right in our language and
+sentiments, as well as to note what is wrong. Reason influences
+thus much, that we not only commend good generally, and blame evil;
+but even, in particular cases, we commend, I think, each separate
+virtue, and we blame each separate vice. I never heard of justice,
+truth, kindness, self-denial, &amp;c., being other than approved of
+in themselves; or injustice, falsehood, malice, and selfishness
+being other than condemned. And the Spirit of God influences at
+least thus much, that we shrink from direct blasphemy and
+profaneness; we cannot but respect those whom we believe to be
+living sincerely in the fear of God; and further, if we thought our
+death near, we should desire to hear of God, and to depart from
+this life under his favour. No doubt, all such feelings, so far as
+they go, are the work of God's Spirit: whatever is good and right
+in our minds towards God, that proceeds not from the spirit of the
+world, but from the Spirit of God.</p>
+<p>Where, then, is the great defect which yet continually makes our
+practical judgments quite wrong; which makes us, in fact, so often
+countenance and support evil, and discountenance and discourage
+good? First, it is owing to the spirit of carelessness. One of the
+most emphatic terms by which a good man is expressed in the
+language of the Greek philosophers, is that of [Greek: opdouiaos],
+"one who is in earnest." To be in earnest is, indeed, with, most of
+us, the same as to be good; it is not that we love evil, but that
+we are indifferent both to it and to good. Now, many of us are very
+seldom in earnest. By this I mean, that the highest part of our
+minds, and that which judges of the highest things, is generally
+slumbering or but half awake. We may go through, a very busy day,
+and yet not be, in this true sense, in earnest at all; our best
+faculties may, as it were, be all the while sleeping or playing. It
+is notorious how much this is so in the common intercourse of
+society in the world. Light anecdotes; playful remarks;
+discussions, it may be, about the affairs of the neighbourhood, or,
+in some companies, on questions of science or party politics; all
+these may be often heard; but we may talk on all these brilliantly
+and well, and yet our best nature may not once be called to exert
+itself. So again, in mere routine business, it is the same: the
+body may toil; the pen move swiftly; the thoughts act in the
+particular matter before them vigorously; and yet we our proper
+selves, beings understanding and choosing between good and evil,
+have never bestirred ourselves at all. It has been but a
+skirmishing at the outposts; not a sword had been drawn in the main
+battle. Take younger persons, and the same thing is the case even
+more palpably. Here there is less of business in the common sense
+of the term; the mind is almost always unbraced and resting. We
+pass through the good and evil of our daily life, and our proper
+self scarcely ever is aroused to notice either the one or the
+other.</p>
+<p>But the worst of it is, that this carelessness is not altogether
+accidental: it is a carelessness which we do not wish to break. So
+long as it lasts, we manage to get the activity and interest of
+life, without a sense of its responsibility. We like exceedingly to
+lay the reins, as it were, upon the neck of our inclinations, to go
+where they take us, and to ask no questions whether we are in the
+right road or no. Inclination is never slumbering: this gives us
+excitement enough to save us from weariness, without the effort of
+awakening our conscience too. Therefore society, expressing in its
+rules the feelings of its individual members, prescribes exactly
+such a style of conversation as may keep in exercise all other
+parts of our nature except that one which should be sovereign of
+all, and whose exercise is employed on things eternal.</p>
+<p>Not being, then, properly in earnest,--that is, our conscience
+and our choice of moral good and evil being in a state of
+repose,--our language is happily contrived so as that it shall
+contain nothing to startle our sleeping conscience, if her ears
+catch any of its sounds. We still commend good and dispraise evil,
+both in the general and in the particular. But as good and evil are
+mixed in every man, and in various proportions, he who commends,
+the little good of a bad man, saying nothing of his evil,--or he
+who condemns the little evil of a good man, saying nothing of his
+good,--leads us evidently to a false practical conclusion; he leads
+us to like the bad man and to dislike the good. Again, the lesser
+good becomes an evil if it keeps out a greater good; and, in the
+same way, the lesser evil becomes a good. If we have no thought of
+comparing good things together, if our sovereign nature be asleep,
+then we shall most estimate the good to which we are most inclined;
+and where we find this we shall praise it, not observing that it is
+taking up the place of a greater good which the case requires, and,
+therefore, that it is in fact an evil. So that our moral judgments
+may lead practically to great evil: we may join with bad men and
+despise good; we may approve of qualities which, are, in fact,
+ruining a man; and despise others which, in the particular case,
+are virtues; without ever in plain words condemning virtue or
+approving vice.</p>
+<p>But, farther, this habit of never being in earnest greatly
+lowers the strength of our feelings even towards the good which we
+praise and towards the evil which we condemn. It was an admirable
+definition of that which excites laughter, that it was that which
+is out of rule, that which is amiss, that which is unsightly,
+(these three ideas, and other similar ones, are alike contained in
+the single Greek word [Greek: aischron],) provided that it was
+unaccompanied by pain. This definition accounts for the otherwise
+extraordinary fact, that there is something in moral evil which, in
+some instances, affects the mind ludicrously. That is to say, if
+moral evil affects us with no pain; if we see in it nothing, so to
+speak, but its irregularity, its strange contrast with what is
+beautiful, its jarring with the harmony of the system around us;
+then it does acquire that character which is well defined as being
+ridiculous. Thus it is notorious that trifling follies, and even
+gross vices, are often so represented in works of fiction as to be
+exceedingly ludicrous. It is enough, as an instance of what I mean,
+to name the vice of drunkenness. Get rid for the moment of the
+notions of vice or sin which, accompany it, and which give moral
+pain; get rid also of those points in it which awaken physical
+disgust; retain merely the notion of the incoherent language, and
+the strange capricious gait of intoxication; and we have then an
+image merely ridiculous, as much, so as the rambling talk and
+absurd gestures of the old buffoons.</p>
+<p>Here, then, we have the secret of vice becoming laughable; and
+of things which are really wicked, disgusting, hateful, being
+expressed by names purely ludicrous. Where no great physical pain
+or distress is occasioned by what is evil, our sense of its
+ludicrousness will be exactly in proportion to the faintness of our
+sense of moral evil; or, in other words, to our want of being in
+earnest. The evil that does not seriously pain or inconvenience
+man, is very apt to be regarded with feelings approaching to
+laughter, if we have no sense of pain at the notion of its being an
+offence against God.</p>
+<p>Thus, then, we have seen how, from the want of being in earnest,
+from the habitual slumber of conscience, or that sovereign part of
+us which looks upon our whole state with reference to its highest
+interests, and passes judgment upon all our actions,--how, from the
+practical absence of these, we may get to follow evil persons, and
+be indifferent to the good; to admire qualities which, from
+usurping the place of better ones, are actually ruinous; and,
+finally, to regard all common evil not so much with deep
+abhorrence, as with a disposition to laugh at it. And thus the
+practical judgment and influence of the society around us may be
+fatally evil; while the society all the time shall contain, even in
+its very perversion, various elements of truth and of good.</p>
+<p>I have kept to general language, to general views, perhaps too
+much; but all the time my mind has been fixed on the particular
+application of this, which lies scarcely beneath the surface, but
+which I cannot well bear more fully to unveil. But whoever has
+attended to what I have been saying, will be able, I should trust,
+to make the application, for himself, to those points in our
+society which most need correction. He will be able to understand
+how it is that the influence of the place is not better, while it
+undoubtedly contains so much of good; how the public opinion of a
+Christian school may yet be, in many respects, very unchristian. If
+he has attended at all to what I have said about our so rarely
+being in earnest, he will see something of the mischief of some of
+those publications, of those books, of that tone of conversation,
+which, I suppose, are here, as elsewhere, in fashion. Utterly
+impossible is it to lay down a rule for others in such matters: to
+say this book is too light, or this is an excess of light reading,
+or this laugh was too unrestrained, or that tone of trifling too
+perpetual. But, in these things, we should all judge ourselves; and
+remember that you are so little under outward restraint, your
+choice of reading is so free, your intercourse with one another so
+wholly uncontrolled, that, enjoying thus the full liberty of more
+advanced years, you incur also their responsibility. There is,
+doubtless, an excess of light reading, both in kind and in
+quantity; there is such a thing as a tone of conversation and
+manner too entirely, and too frequently, trifling. And you must be
+quite aware that we are placed here for something else than to
+indulge such a temper as this. Cheerfulness and thoughtlessness
+have no necessary connexion; the lightest spirits, which are indeed
+one of the greatest of earthly blessings, often play around the
+most earnest thought and the tenderest affection, and with far more
+grace than when they are united with the shallowness and hardness
+of him who is, in the sight of God, a fool. It were a strange
+notion, that we could never be merry without intoxication, yet not
+stranger than to think that mirth is the companion only of folly or
+of sin. But, setting God in Christ before us, then the conscience
+is awake; then we are in earnest; then we measure things rightly;
+then we feel them strongly; then we love those that are good, and
+shun those that are evil; then we learn that sin is no matter of
+laughter, that it ill deserves to be clothed under a ludicrous
+name; for that thing which we laugh at, that which we so miscall,
+is indeed the cause of infinite evil; for that Christ died; for
+that there are some who die that death which lasts for ever.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XVIII."></a>LECTURE XVIII.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>GENESIS xxvii. 38.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>And Esau said unto his father, Hast thou but one
+blessing, my father? Bless me, even me also, O my
+father</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<center>MATTHEW xv. 27.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the
+crumbs which fall from their master's table</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>Of these two passages, the first, as we must all remember, is
+taken from the first lesson of this morning's service; the second
+is from the morning's gospel. Both speak the same language, and
+point out, I think, that particular view of the story of Jacob
+obtaining the blessing which is most capable of being turned to
+account; for, as to the conduct of Jacob and his mother, it is
+manifestly no more capable of affording us benefit, as a matter of
+example, than the conduct, in some respects similar, of the unjust
+steward in our Lord's parable. The example, indeed, is of the same
+kind as that. If the steward was so anxious about his future
+worldly welfare, and Jacob about the worldly welfare of his
+descendants, that they did not scruple to obtain their ends, the
+one by dishonesty, the other by falsehood, much more should we be
+anxious about the true welfare of ourselves and those belonging to
+us, which no such unworthy means can be required to gain. But the
+point of the story to which the text refers, and which is
+illustrated also by the words of the Syrophoenician woman, is one
+which very directly concerns us all, being no other than
+this,--what should be the effect upon our own minds of witnessing
+others possessed of greater advantages than ourselves, whether
+obtained by the immediate gift of God, through the course of his
+ordinary providence, or acquired directly by some unjust or
+unlawful act of those who are in possession of them?</p>
+<p>Now, it is evident that, as equality is not the rule either of
+nature or of human society, there must be many in every
+congregation who are so far in the condition of Esau and of the
+Syrophoenician woman, as to be inferior to others around them in
+some one or more advantages. The inferiority may consist in what
+are called worldly advantages, or in natural advantages, or in
+spiritual advantages, or in some or all of these united. And it is
+not to be doubted that the sense of this inferiority is a hard
+trial, both as respects our feelings towards God and towards men.
+It is a hard trial; but yet, no trial overtakes us but such as is
+common to man: and here, as in all other cases, God will, with the
+trial, also make a way for us to escape, that we may be able to
+bear it.</p>
+<p>Let us consider, then, some of the most common cases in which
+this inferiority exists amongst us. With regard to worldly
+advantages, the peculiar nature of this congregation makes it less
+necessary than it generally would be, to dwell upon inequality in
+these: in fact, speaking generally, we are a very unusual example
+of equality in these respects; the advantages of station and
+fortune are enjoyed not, literally, in an equal degree by all of
+us, but equally as compared with, the lot of the great mass of
+society; we all enjoy the necessaries, and most of the comforts of
+life. What differences there are would, probably, appear in
+instances seemingly trifling, if, indeed, any thing were really
+trifling by which the temper and feelings, and through them the
+principles, of any amongst us may be affected for good or for evil.
+It may possibly happen that, in the indulgences, or means of
+indulgence, given to you by your friends at home, there may be
+sometimes, such a difference as to excite discontent or jealousy.
+It may be, that some are apt to exult over others, by talking of
+the pleasures, or the liberty, which they enjoy; and which the
+friends of others, either from necessity or from a sense of duty,
+are obliged to withhold. If this be ever felt by any of you as a
+trial; if it gall your pride, as well as restrict your enjoyments;
+then remember, that here, even in this seemingly little thing, the
+inferiority of which you complain may be either increased ten-fold,
+or changed into a blessed superiority. Increased ten-fold, even as
+from him that hath not, shall be taken away even that which he
+hath, if by discontent, and evil passions towards God and man, you
+make yourselves a hundred times more inferior spiritually than you
+were in outward circumstances; but changed into a blessed
+superiority, if it be borne with meekness, and patience, and
+thankfulness, even as it was said of the Gentile centurion, that
+there had not been found faith equal to his, no, not in Israel.</p>
+<p>But turning from worldly advantages to those which are called
+natural, and the inequality here is at once as great as elsewhere.
+In all faculties of body and mind; in the vigour of the senses, of
+the limbs, of the general constitution; in the greater or less
+liability to disease generally, or to any particular form of it;
+or, again, in powers of mind, in quickness, in memory, in
+imagination, in judgment; the differences between different persons
+in this congregation must be exceedingly wide. But, with regard to
+bodily powers, the trial is little felt, till the inferiority is
+shown in actual suffering from pain or from disease. So long as we
+are in health, our enjoyments are so many, and we so easily
+accommodate our habits to our powers, that a mere inferiority of
+strength, whether it be of limb or of constitution, is not apt to
+make us dissatisfied. But if it comes to actual illness or to pain,
+if we are deprived of the common enjoyments and occupations of our
+age, then perhaps the trial begins to be severe; and when we look
+at others who have taken the same liberties with their health as we
+have done, and see them notwithstanding perfectly well and strong,
+while we are disabled or suffering, we may think that God has dealt
+hardly with us, and may be inclined to ask with Esau, "Hast thou
+but one blessing, my Father? bless me, even me also, O my Father!"
+Now this language, according to the sense in which we use it, is
+either blameable or innocent. If we mean to say, "Hast thou health
+to give to others only and not to me? give me this blessing also,
+as thou hast given it to my brethren:" then it has in it somewhat
+of discontent and murmuring; it implies a claim to which God never
+listens. But if we mean, "Hast thou only one kind of blessing, my
+father? If thou hast blest others in one way, I murmur not nor
+complain: but out of thine infinite store, give me also such a
+blessing as may be convenient for me;" then God hears the prayer,
+then he gives the blessing, and gives it so richly, and makes it
+bear so evidently the mark of his love, that they who were last are
+become first; if others have health, and we have sickness, yet the
+spirit of patience and cheerful submission which God gives with it
+is so great a blessing, and makes us so certainly happy, that the
+strongest and healthiest of our friends have often far more reason
+to wish to change places with us, than we with them.</p>
+<p>Let us now take inequality in powers of mind. And here,
+undoubtedly, the difference is apt to be a trial. Not that,
+probably, it excites discontent or murmuring against God; nor
+jealousy against those whose faculties are better than our own: the
+trial is of another kind; we are tempted to make our inferiority an
+excuse for neglect; because we cannot do so much nor so easily as
+others, we do far less than we might do. But the parable shows us
+plainly, that if one talent only has been given us, while others
+have ten, yet that the one, no less than the ten, must be made to
+yield its increase. Here is the feeling expressed so earnestly by
+the woman entreating Christ to heal her daughter. "The dogs eat of
+the crumbs which fall from their master's table." Small as may be
+the portion of power given us, when compared with the plenty
+vouchsafed to others, still it is capable of nourishing us if we
+make use of it; still it shows that we too have our blessing. And
+if using it with thankfulness, if doing our very best with it,
+knowing that "a man is accepted according to what he hath, and not
+according to what he hath not," we labour humbly and diligently;
+then, not only does the talent itself become increased, so that our
+Lord, when he comes to reckon with us, may receive his own with
+usury: but a blessing of another kind is added to our labours,
+again, as in the former case, making those who were last to become
+first. For if there be one thing on earth which is truly admirable,
+it is to see God's wisdom blessing an inferiority of natural
+powers, when they have been honestly, humbly, and zealously
+cultivated. From how many pains are they delivered, to which great
+natural talents are continually exposed; irritation, jealousy, a
+morbid and nervous activity, bearing fruits not of peace, but of
+gall! With what blessings are they crowned, to which, the most
+powerful natural understanding is a stranger! the love of truth
+gratified, without the fear that truth will demand the sacrifice of
+personal vanity; the line of duty clearly discerned, because those
+mists of passion and selfishness which obscure it so often from the
+view of the keenest natural perception, have been dispersed by the
+spirit of humility and love; imperfect knowledge patiently endured,
+because whatever knowledge is enjoyed is known to be God's gift,
+and what he gives, or what he withholds, is alike welcome. This is
+the blessing of those who having had inferior natural powers, have
+so laboured to improve them according to God's will, that on all
+there has been grafted, as it were, some better power of grace, to
+yield a fruit most precious both for earth and heaven.</p>
+<p>But I spoke of an equality of spiritual advantages also, and
+this is perhaps the hardest trial of all. Oh, how great is this
+inequality in truth, when it seems to be so little! All of you, the
+children of Christian parents; all members of the Christian Church;
+all partaking here of the same worship, the same prayers, the same
+word of God, the same sacrament; are you not all the Israel of God,
+and not, like Esau, or the Syrophoenician woman, strangers to the
+covenant of blessing? Yet your real condition is, notwithstanding,
+very unequal. How unlike are your friends at home; how, unlike,
+also, are your friends here! Are there not some to whom their
+homes, both by direct precept and by example, are a far greater
+help than to others? Are there not some, whose immediate companions
+here may encourage them in all good far more than may be the case
+with, others? So, then, there may be some to whom this great
+blessing has been denied, whilst others enjoy it. What then? Shall
+we say, that, because we have it not, we will refuse to go in to
+our Father's house; that we will not walk as our brother walks,
+unless we have his advantages? Then must we remain cast out;
+vessels fashioned to dishonour; rejected of God, and cursed. Nay
+rather let us put a Christian sense on Esau's prayer, and cry,
+"'Hast thou but one blessing, my Father? bless me, even me also, O
+my Father.' If thou hast given to others earthly helps, which thou
+hast denied to me, give me thyself and thy own Spirit the more! If
+father and mother forsake my most precious interest, do thou take
+me up. If my nearest friends will not walk with me in the house of
+God, be thou my friend, and abide with, me always, making my house
+as thine. Outward and earthly means thou givest or takest away at
+thy pleasure; but give me help according to my need, that I yet may
+not lose thee."</p>
+<p>How naturally are we interested at the thought of any one so
+circumstanced, and uttering such a prayer! How earnestly do we wish
+to help him, to show our respect and true love for a faith so tried
+and so enduring! And think we that God cares for it less than we
+do? or have we not already the record of his love towards it, when
+Christ answered the Syrophoenician woman, "O woman, great is thy
+faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt?" He may not, indeed, see
+fit to give the very same blessing which was in the first instance
+denied: we may still have fewer spiritual advantages than others,
+as far as human helps are concerned; fewer good and earnest
+friends; fewer examples of holiness around us; fewer to join with
+us in our prayers and in our struggles against evil. But though
+this particular blessing may be denied,--as Esau could not gain
+that blessing which had been given to Jacob,--yet there is a
+blessing for us also, which may prove, in the end, even better than
+our brother's. He who serves God steadily, amidst many
+disadvantages, enjoys the blessing of a more confirmed and hardier
+faith; he has gone through trials, and been found conqueror; and
+for him that overcometh is reserved a more abundant measure of
+glory.</p>
+<p>But on the other side, we who, like Jacob, or Jacob's posterity,
+have the blessing,--whether it be natural, worldly, or
+spiritual,--let us consider what became of it when it was not
+improved. What was the sin of Esau,--speaking not of the
+individual, but of the less favoured people of Edom,--compared with
+the sin of Jacob? Nay, not of Edom only; but it shall be more
+tolerable for Sodom, in the day of judgment, than for the
+unbelieving cities of Israel. So it is, not only with the literal,
+but with the Christian Israel; so it is, not only with the Church
+as a whole compared with heathens, but with all those individuals
+amongst us, who enjoy in any larger measure than others any of
+God's blessings. They are blessings; but they may be made fatal
+curses. This holds true with blessings of every kind: with station
+and wealth, with bodily health and vigour, with, great powers of
+mind, with large means of spiritual improvement. To whom much is
+given, of him shall be much, required. It is required of us to
+enjoy our blessings by using them: so will they be blessings
+indeed. So it is with money and influence, with health, with
+talents, with spiritual knowledge, and good friends and parents.
+There are first who shall be last; that is, those who began their
+course with advantages which set them before their brethren, if
+they do not exert themselves, will fall grievously behind them: for
+the blessing denied may be, in effect, a blessing given; and the
+blessing given, in like manner, becomes too often a blessing taken
+away.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XIX."></a>LECTURE XIX.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>MATTHEW xxii. 32.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>God is not the God of the dead, but of the
+living</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>We hear these words as a part of our Lord's answer to the
+Sadducees; and, as their question was put in evident profaneness,
+and the answer to it is one which to our minds is quite obvious and
+natural, so we are apt to think that in this particular story there
+is less than usual that particularly concerns us. But it so
+happens, that our Lord, in answering the Sadducees, has brought in
+one of the most universal and most solemn of all truths,--which is
+indeed implied in many parts of the Old Testament, but which the
+Gospel has revealed to us in all its fulness,--the truth contained
+in the words of the text, that "God is not the God of the dead, but
+of the living."</p>
+<p>I would wish to unfold a little what is contained in these
+words, which we often hear even, perhaps, without quite
+understanding them; and many times oftener without fully entering
+into them. And we may take them, first, in their first part, where
+they say that "God is not the God of the dead."</p>
+<p>The word "dead," we know, is constantly used in Scripture in a
+double sense, as meaning those who are dead spiritually, as well as
+those who are dead naturally. And, in either sense, the words are
+alike applicable: "God is not the God of the dead."</p>
+<p>God's not being the God of the dead signifies two things: that
+they who are without him are dead, as well as that they who are
+dead are also without him. So far as our knowledge goes respecting
+inferior animals, they appear to be examples of this truth. They
+appear to us to have no knowledge of God; and we are not told that
+they have any other life than the short one of which our senses
+inform us. I am well aware that our ignorance of their condition is
+so great that, we may not dare to say anything of them positively;
+there may be a hundred things true respecting them which we neither
+know nor imagine. I would only say that, according to that most
+imperfect light in which we see them, the two points of which I
+have been speaking appear to meet in them: we believe that they
+have no consciousness of God, and we believe that they will die.
+And so far, therefore, they afford an example of the agreement, if
+I may so speak, between these two points; and were intended,
+perhaps, to be to our view a continual image of it. But we had far
+better speak of ourselves. And here, too, it is the case that "God
+is not the God of the dead." If we are without him we are dead; and
+if we are dead we are without him: in other words, the two ideas of
+death and absence from God are in fact synonymous.</p>
+<p>Thus, in the account given of the fall of man, the sentence of
+death and of being cast out of Eden go together; and if any one
+compares the description of the second Eden in the Revelation, and
+recollects how especially it is there said, that God dwells in the
+midst of it, and is its light by day and night, he will see that
+the banishment from the first Eden means a banishment from the
+presence of God. And thus, in the day that Adam sinned, he died;
+for he was cast out of Eden immediately, however long he may have
+moved about afterwards upon the earth where God was not. And how
+very strong to the same point are the words of Hezekiah's prayer,
+"The grave cannot praise thee, Death cannot celebrate thee; they
+that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth;" words which
+express completely the feeling that God is not the God of the dead.
+This, too, appears to be the sense generally of the expression used
+in various parts of the Old Testament, "Thou shalt surely die." It
+is, no doubt, left purposely obscure; nor are we ever told, in so
+many words, all that is meant by death; but, surely, it always
+implies a separation from God, and the being--whatever the notion
+may extend to--the being dead to him. Thus, when David had
+committed his great sin, and had expressed his repentance for it,
+Nathan tells him, "The Lord also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt
+not die:" which means, most expressively, thou shalt not die to
+God. In one sense, David died, as all men die; nor was he, by any
+means, freed from the punishment of his sin: he was not, in that
+sense, forgiven; but he was allowed still to regard God as his God;
+and, therefore, his punishments were but fatherly chastisements
+from God's hand, designed for his profit, that he might be partaker
+of God's holiness. And thus although Saul was sentenced to lose his
+kingdom, and although he was killed with his sons on Mount Gilboa,
+yet I do not think that we find the sentence passed upon him, "Thou
+shalt surely die;" and, therefore, we have no right to say that God
+had ceased to be his God, although be visited him with severe
+chastisements, and would not allow him to hand down to his sons the
+crown of Israel. Observe, also, the language of the eighteenth
+chapter of Ezekiel, where the expressions occur so often, "He shall
+surely live," and "He shall surely die." We have no right to refer
+these to a mere extension, on the one hand, or a cutting short, on
+the other, of the term of earthly existence. The promise of living
+long in the land, or, as in Hezekiah's case, of adding to his days
+fifteen years, is very different from the full and unreserved
+blessing, "Thou shalt surely live." And we know, undoubtedly, that
+both the good and the bad to whom Ezekiel spoke, died alike the
+natural death of the body. But the peculiar force of the promise,
+and of the threat, was, in the one case, Thou shalt belong to God;
+in the other, Thou shalt cease to belong to him; although the veil
+was not yet drawn up which concealed the full import of those
+terms, "belonging to God," and "ceasing to belong to him:" nay, can
+we venture to affirm that it is fully drawn aside even now?</p>
+<p>I have dwelt on this at some length, because it really seems to
+place the common state of the minds of too many amongst us in a
+light which is exceedingly awful; for if it be true, as I think the
+Scripture implies, that to be dead, and to be without God, are
+precisely the same thing, then can it be denied, that the symptoms
+of death are strongly marked upon many of us? Are there not many
+who never think of God, or care about his service? Are there not
+many who live, to all appearance, as unconscious of his existence
+as we fancy the inferior animals to be? And is it not quite clear,
+that to such persons, God cannot be said to be their God? He may be
+the God of heaven and earth, the God of the universe, the God of
+Christ's church; but he is not their God, for they feel to have
+nothing at all to do with him; and, therefore, as he is not their
+God, they are, and must be, according to the Scripture, reckoned
+among the dead.</p>
+<p>But God is the God "of the living." That is, as before, all who
+are alive, live unto him; all who live unto him, are alive. "God
+said, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of
+Jacob;" and, therefore, says our Lord, "Abraham, and Isaac, and
+Jacob, are not and cannot be dead." They cannot be dead, because
+God owns them: he is not ashamed to be called their God; therefore,
+they are not cast out from him; therefore, by necessity, they live.
+Wonderful, indeed, is the truth here implied, in exact agreement,
+as we have seen, with the general language of Scripture; that, as
+she who but touched the hem of Christ's garment was, in a moment,
+relieved from her infirmity, so great was the virtue which went out
+from him; so they who are not cast out from God, but have any thing
+whatever to do with him, feel the virtue of his gracious presence
+penetrating their whole nature; because he lives, they must live
+also.</p>
+<p>Behold, then, life and death set before us; not remote, (if a
+few years be, indeed, to be called remote,) but even now present
+before us; even now suffered or enjoyed. Even now, we are alive
+unto God, or dead unto God; and, as we are either the one or the
+other, so we are, in the highest possible sense of the terms, alive
+or dead. In the highest possible sense of the terms; but who can
+tell what that highest possible sense of the terms is? So much has,
+indeed, been revealed to us, that we know now that death means a
+conscious and perpetual death, as life means a conscious and
+perpetual life. But greatly, indeed, do we deceive ourselves, if we
+fancy that, by having thus much told us, we have also risen to the
+infinite heights, or descended to the infinite depths, contained in
+those little words, life and death. They are far higher, and far
+deeper, than ever thought or fancy of man has reached to. But, even
+on the first edge of either, at the visible beginnings of that
+infinite ascent or descent, there is surely something which may
+give us a foretaste of what is beyond. Even to us in this moral
+state, even to you advanced but so short a way on your very earthly
+journey, life and death have a meaning: to be dead unto God, or to
+be alive to him, are things perceptibly different.</p>
+<p>For, let me ask of those who think least of God, who are most
+separate from him, and most without him, whether there is not now
+actually, perceptibly, in their state, something of the coldness,
+the loneliness, the fearfulness of death? I do not ask them whether
+they are made unhappy by the fear of God's anger; of course they
+are not: for they who fear God are not dead to him, nor he to them.
+The thought of him gives them no disquiet at all; this is the very
+point we start from. But I would ask them whether they know what it
+is to feel God's blessing. For instance: we all of us have our
+troubles of some sort or other, our disappointments, if not our
+sorrows. In these troubles, in these disappointments,--I care not
+how small they may be,--have they known what it is to feel that
+God's hand is over them; that these little annoyances are but his
+fatherly correction; that he is all the time loving us, and
+supporting us? In seasons of joy, such, as they taste very often,
+have they known what it is to feel that they are tasting the
+kindness of their heavenly Father, that their good things come from
+his hand, and are but an infinitely slight foretaste of his love?
+Sickness, danger,--I know that they come to many of us but rarely;
+but if we have known them, or at least sickness, even in its
+lighter form, if not in its graver,--have we felt what it is to
+know that we are in our Father's hands, that he is with us, and
+will be with us to the end; that nothing can hurt those whom he
+loves? Surely, then, if we have never tasted anything of this: if
+in trouble, or in joy, or in sickness, we are left wholly to
+ourselves, to bear as we can, and enjoy as we can; if there is no
+voice that ever speaks out of the heights and the depths around us,
+to give any answer to our own; if we are thus left to ourselves in
+this vast world,--there is in this a coldness and a loneliness; and
+whenever we come to be, of necessity, driven to be with our own
+hearts alone, the coldness and the loneliness must be felt. But
+consider that the things which, we see around us cannot remain with
+us, nor we with them. The coldness and loneliness of the world,
+without God, must be felt more and more as life wears on: in every
+change of our own state, in every separation from or loss of a
+friend, in every more sensible weakness of our own bodies, in every
+additional experience of the uncertainty of our own counsels,--the
+deathlike feeling will come upon us more and more strongly: we
+shall gain more of that fearful knowledge which tells us that "God
+is not the God of the dead."</p>
+<p>And so, also, the blessed knowledge that he is the God "of the
+living" grows upon those who are truly alive. Surely he "is not far
+from every one of us." No occasion of life fails to remind those
+who live unto him, that he is their God, and that they are his
+children. On light occasions or on grave ones, in sorrow and in
+joy, still the warmth of his love is spread, as it were, all
+through the atmosphere of their lives: they for ever feel his
+blessing. And if it fills them with joy unspeakable even now, when
+they so often feel how little they deserve it; if they delight
+still in being with God, and in living to him, let them be sure
+that they have in themselves the unerring witness of life eternal:
+God is the God of the living, and all who are with him must
+live.</p>
+<p>Hard it is, I well know, to bring this home, in any degree, to
+the minds of those who are dead: for it is of the very nature of
+the dead that they can hear no words of life. But it has happened
+that, even whilst writing what I have just been uttering to you,
+the news reached me that one, who two months ago was one of your
+number, who this very half-year has shared in all the business and
+amusements of this place, is passed already into that state where
+the meanings of the terms life and death are become fully revealed.
+He knows what it is to live unto God, and what it is to die to him.
+Those things which are to us unfathomable mysteries, are to him all
+plain: and yet but two months ago he might have thought himself as
+far from attaining this knowledge as any of us can do. Wherefore it
+is clear, that these things, life and death, may hurry their lesson
+upon us sooner than we deem of, sooner than we are prepared to
+receive it. And that were indeed awful, if, being dead to God, and
+yet little feeling it, because of the enjoyments of our worldly
+life, those enjoyments were on a sudden to be struck away from us,
+and we should find then that to be dead to God was death, indeed, a
+death from which there is no waking, and in which there is no
+sleeping for ever.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XX."></a>LECTURE XX.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>EZEKIEL xiii. 22.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>With lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad,
+whom I have not<br>
+made sad; and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he
+should<br>
+not return from his wicked way, by promising him life</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>The verses which immediately precede this, require explanation,
+but perhaps our knowledge is hardly sufficient to enable us to give
+it fully. There are allusions to customs,--to fashions
+rather,--common amongst the Israelites at the time, which we can
+now scarcely do more than guess at; but we may observe, that there
+was a general practice, which even God's own prophets were directed
+often to comply with, of enforcing what was said in word by some
+corresponding outward action, in which the speaker made himself, as
+it were, a living image of the idea which he meant to convey. Thus,
+when Zedekiah, the son of Chenaanah, was assuring Ahab, that he
+should drive the Syrians before him, he made himself horns of iron,
+and said, "With these shalt thou push the Syrians, until thou have
+consumed them." In the same way, it is imagined that the false
+prophetesses spoken of in the text were in the habit of wearing
+pillows, or cushions, fastened to their arms, and directed those
+who came to consult them to do the same, as a sign of rest and
+peace; that they who trusted to them had nothing to fear, but might
+lie down and enjoy themselves at their feasts, or in sleep, with
+entire security. Or, again, if we connect what is said of the
+pillows with what immediately follows about the kerchiefs put upon
+the head, we may suppose that both are but parts of a fantastic
+dress, such as was often worn by pretended prophets and
+fortune-tellers, and which they may have made those wear, also, who
+came before them. We know that the covering on the head was, for
+instance, a part of the ceremonial law of the Roman augurs, when
+they began their divinations. But, however this be, the exact
+understanding of these particular points is not necessary to our
+deriving the lesson of the passage in general. I know that there is
+something naturally painful to an active mind in being obliged to
+content itself with an indistinct notion, or still more, with no
+notion at all, of the meaning of any words presented to it. But,
+whilst we should highly value this sensitiveness, as, indeed, few
+qualities are more essential in the pursuit of truth, yet we must
+be careful not to let our disappointment carry us too far, so as to
+pass over a whole passage, or portion, of Scripture, as if in
+despair, because we cannot understand every part of it. Much of the
+supposed obscurity of the prophets arises from this cause--that we
+find in them particular expressions and allusions, which, whether
+from a, fault in the translation, or from our imperfect knowledge
+of the times of which the prophets speak, and of the language in
+which they wrote, are certainly quite unintelligible. But these are
+only a few expressions, occurring here and there; and it is a great
+evil to fancy that their writings, in general, are not to be
+understood, because of the difficulty of particular passages in
+them. Thus, with the very chapter of which we are now speaking, the
+expression to which I have alluded can only be uncertainly
+interpreted, yet the lesson of the chapter, as a whole, is
+perfectly clear, notwithstanding. The dress, or fashions, or
+particular rites, of the false prophets of Jerusalem and their
+votaries, may offer no distinct image to our minds; but the evil of
+their doings, how they deceived others, and were themselves
+deceived; the points, that is, which alone concern us practically,
+these are set before us plainly. "With their lies they made the
+heart of the righteous sad, whom God had not made sad; and they
+strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not return
+from his wicked way, by promising him life." Where the way of life
+was broad, they strove to make it narrow; and where it was narrow,
+they strove to make it broad: by their solemn and superstitious
+lies, they frightened and perplexed the good, while, by their lives
+of ungodliness, they emboldened and encouraged the wicked.</p>
+<p>It may not, at first sight, seem necessary that these two things
+should go together; there might be, it seems, either the fault of
+making the heart of the righteous sad, without that of
+strengthening the hands of the wicked: or there might be the
+strengthening of the hands of the wicked, without making sad the
+heart of the righteous. And so it sometimes has been: there has
+been a wickedness which has not tried to keep up superstition:
+there has been a superstition, the supporters of which have not
+wilfully encouraged wickedness. Yet, although this has been so,
+with respect to the intention of the parties concerned, yet in
+their own nature, the tendency of either evil to produce the other
+is sure and universal. We cannot exist without some influences of
+fear and restraint, on the one hand, and without some indulgence of
+freedom, on the other. God has provided for both these wants, so to
+speak, of our nature; he has told us whom we should fear, and where
+we should be restrained, and where, also, we may be safely in
+freedom: there is the fruit forbidden, and the fruit which we may
+eat freely. But if the restraint and the liberty be either of them
+put in the wrong place, the double evil is sure to follow.
+Restrained in his lawful liberty, debarred from the good and
+wholesome fruit of the garden, man breaks out into a liberty which
+is unlawful; he eats of the forbidden fruit, whose taste is death;
+or, surfeited with an unholy freedom, and let to run wild in a
+space far too vast for his strength to compass, he turns cravingly
+for that support to his weariness which a narrowed range would
+afford him; and he limits himself on that very quarter in which
+alone he might expatiate freely. Superstition, in fact, is the rest
+of wickedness, and wickedness is the breaking loose of
+superstition.</p>
+<p>But, however true this may be, are we concerned in it? First of
+all, when we find an evil dwelt upon often in the Prophets, and
+find it dwelt upon again by our Lord and his Apostles with no less
+earnestness, there is, at least, a strong presumption, that an evil
+of this sort is nothing local or passing, but that it is fixed in
+man's nature, and is apt to grow up in all times, and in all
+countries. Now, the double evil spoken of in the text, occurs again
+in the gospel; there we find men spoken of, who, in like manner,
+insisted upon what was trifling, and were careless of what was
+important; and in the epistles, we find, again, the same characters
+holding up as righteous others than those who worked righteousness:
+men, who spoke lies in hypocrisy, having their conscience seared
+with a hot iron. We may presume, therefore, that this evil is of an
+enduring character; but if we look back to the history of the
+Christian Church, or look around us, the presumption becomes the
+sad conviction of experience.</p>
+<p>Nor is the evil merely one which exists in the country at large;
+a thing which might be fully dwelt upon any where but here. On the
+contrary, I hardly know of an age more exposed to it than youth.
+There exist in youth, in a very high degree, those opposite
+feelings of our nature, which I have before spoken of; a tendency
+to respect, to follow, to be led, on the one hand; and on the
+other, a lively desire for independence and freedom. These feelings
+often exist in the greatest strength in the same individual; and
+when they are not each turned in their proper direction, ruin is
+the consequence. Nothing is more common than to see great
+narrowness of mind, great prejudices, and great disorderliness of
+conduct, united in the same person. Nothing is more common than to
+see the same mind utterly prostrated before some idol of its own,
+and supporting that idol with the most furious zeal, and at the
+same time utterly rebellious to Christ, and rejecting with scorn
+the enlightening, the purifying, and the loving influences of
+Christ's Spirit.</p>
+<p>The idols of various minds are infinitely various, some seducing
+the loftiest natures and some the vilest. But of this we may be
+sure, that every one of us has a tendency to some one idol or
+other, if not to many; and our business is especially each to
+watch, ourselves, lest we be enslaved to our peculiar idol. I will
+now, however, speak of those which, tempt the highest minds; which,
+by their show of sacredness and excellence, make us fancy, that
+while following them we are following Christ. And let none be
+surprised, if I rank among idols many things, which, in themselves
+and in their proper use and order, are indeed to be loved and
+reverenced. It was most right to respect the Apostle Peter, and
+listen to his word; but that great Apostle would have been ruin to
+Cornelius, and not salvation, if he had suffered him, without
+reproof, to fall down before him, and render to him the service due
+to Christ alone. How many good and pious feelings must have been
+awakened from age to age in many minds, at the sight of the brazen
+serpent on the pole, the memorial of their fathers' deliverance in
+the wilderness! But when this awakening, this solemn memorial was
+corrupted into an idol, when men bowed down before it in
+superstition, it was the part of true piety to do as Hezekiah did,
+to dash it, notwithstanding all its solemn associations, into a
+thousand pieces.</p>
+<p>Thus things good, things noble, things sacred, may all become
+idols. To some minds truth is an idol, to others justice, to others
+charity or benevolence; and others are beguiled by objects of a
+different sort of sacredness: some have made Christ's mother their
+idol; some, Christ's servants; some, again, Christ's sacraments,
+and Christ's own body, the Church. If these may all be idols, where
+can we find a name so holy, as that we may surrender up our whole
+souls to it; before which obedience, reverence, without measure,
+intense humility, most unreserved adoration, may all be duly
+rendered. One name there is, and one only; one alone in heaven and
+in earth; not truth, not justice, not benevolence, not Christ's
+mother, not his holiest servants, not his blessed sacraments, not
+his very mystical body, but Himself only, who died for us and rose
+again, Jesus Christ, both God and Man.</p>
+<p>He is truth, and he is righteousness, and he is love; he gives
+his grace to his sacraments, and his manifold gifts to his Church;
+whoever hath him hath all things; but if we do not take heed,
+whenever we turn our mind to any other object, we shall make it an
+idol and lose him. Take him in all his fulness, not as God merely,
+not as man merely; not in his life on earth only, not in his death
+only, not in his exaltation at God's right hand only; but in all
+his fulness, the Christ of God, God and Man, our Prophet, our
+Priest, our King and Lord, redeeming us by his blood, sanctifying
+us by his Spirit; and then worship him and love him with all the
+heart, and with, all the soul, and with all the strength; and we
+shall see how all evil will be barred, and all good will abound. No
+man who worships Christ alone, can be a fanatic, nor yet can be a
+more philosopher; he cannot be bigoted, nor yet can he be
+indifferent; he cannot be so the slave of what be calls amiable
+feelings as to cast truth and justice behind him; nor yet can he so
+pursue truth and justice as to lose sight of humbler and softer
+feelings, self-abasement, reverence, devotion. There is no evil
+tendency in the nature of any one of us, which has not its cure in
+the true worship of Christ our Saviour. Let us look into our
+hearts, and consider their besetting faults. Are we indolent, or
+are we active; are we enthusiastic, or are we cold; zealous or
+indifferent, devout or reasonable; whatever the inclination, or
+bias of our nature be, if we follow its kindred idol, it will be
+magnified and grow on to our ruin; if we worship Christ, it will be
+pruned and chastened, and made to grow up with opposite tendencies,
+all alike tempered, none destroyed; none overgrowing the garden,
+but all filling it with their several fruits; so that it shall be,
+indeed, the garden of the Lord, and the Spirit of the Lord shall
+dwell in the midst of it.</p>
+<p>And who shall dare to make sad the heart of him who is thus
+drinking daily of the well-spring of righteousness, by telling him
+that he is not yet saved, nor can be, unless he will come and bow
+down before his idol? And if, rather than do so, he break the idol
+in pieces, who shall dare to call him profane, or cold in love to
+his Lord, when it was in his very jealousy for his Lord, and in his
+full purpose to worship him alone, that he threw down all that
+exalted itself above its due proportion against him? And if a man
+be not so worshipping Christ only, who shall dare to encourage him
+in his evil way, by magnifying the sacredness of his idol, and
+ascribing to it that healing virtue which belongs to Christ
+alone?</p>
+<p>What has been here said might bear to be followed up at far
+greater length than the present occasion will admit of. But the
+main point is one, I think, of no small importance, that all
+fanaticism and superstition on the one hand, and all unbelief and
+coldness of heart on the other, arise from what is in fact
+idolatry,--the putting some other object, whether it be called a
+religious or moral one,--and an object often in itself very
+excellent,--in the place of Christ himself, as set forth to us
+fully in the Scriptures. And as no idol can stand in Christ's
+place, or in any way save us, so whoever worships Christ truly is
+preserved from all idols and has life eternal. And if any one
+demand of him further, that he should worship his idol, and tells
+him that he is not safe if he does not; his answer will be rather
+that he will perish if he does; that he is safe, fully safe, and
+only safe, so long as he clings to Christ alone; and that to make
+anything else necessary to his safety, is not only to minister to
+superstition, but to ungodliness also; not only to lay on us a yoke
+which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear; but, by the
+very act of laying this unchristian yoke upon us, to tear from us
+the easy yoke and light burden of Christ himself, our Lord and our
+life.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXI."></a>LECTURE XXI.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>ADVENT SUNDAY.</center>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>HEBREWS in. 16.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>For some, when they had heard, did provoke: howbeit not
+all that came out of Egypt by Moses</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>I take this verse as my text, rather than those which
+immediately go before or follow it, because it affords one of the
+most serious instances of mistranslation that are to be met with in
+the whole New Testament. For the true translation of the words is
+this: "For who were they who, when they had heard, did provoke?
+nay, were they not all who came out of Egypt through Moses?" And
+then it goes on--"And with whom was he grieved forty years? was it
+not with them that had sinned, whose carcases fell in the
+wilderness? And to whom sware he that they should not enter into
+his rest, but to them that believed not?" I call this a serious
+mistranslation, because it lessens the force of the writer's
+comparison. So far from meaning to say that "some, but not all did
+provoke," he lays a stress on the universality of the evil: it was
+not only a few, but the whole people who came out of Egypt, with
+only the two individual exceptions of Caleb and Joshua. All the
+rest who were grown up when they came out of Egypt did provoke God;
+and the carcases of that whole generation, fell in the
+wilderness.</p>
+<p>Had the lesson from the Hebrews been actually chosen for the
+service of this day, it could hardly have suited it better. For
+this day is the New-year's day of the Christian year; and it is
+probably for this reason that the service of the first day of the
+common year is confined entirely to the commemoration of our Lord's
+circumcision, and takes no notice of the beginning of a new year.
+It is manifest that it could not do so without confusion: for the
+first of January is not the beginning of the Christian year, but
+Advent Sunday; the last Sunday of the Christian year is not
+Christmas-day, as it would be this year if we reckoned by the
+common divisions of time; but it is the last Sunday after Trinity.
+Now, then, we are at the beginning of our year; and well it is
+that, as our trial is now become shorter by another year, as
+another division of our lives has passed away, we should fix our
+eyes on that which makes every year so valuable,--the Judgment, for
+which it ought to be a preparation. In fact, if we observe, we
+shall see that these Sundays in Advent are much more regarded by
+the Church as the beginning of a new year, than as a mere prelude
+to the celebration of the festival of Christmas. That is,
+Christmas-day is regarded, so to speak, in a two-fold light, as
+representing both the comings of our Lord, his first coming in the
+flesh, and his second coming to judgment. When the day actually
+arrives, it commemorates our Lord's first coming: and this is the
+beginning of the Christian year, historically regarded, that is, so
+far as it is a commemoration of the several events of our Lord's
+life on earth. But before it comes, it is regarded as commemorating
+our Lord's second coming: and wisely, for his first coming requires
+now no previous preparation for it; we cannot well put ourselves
+into the position of those who lived before Christ appeared. But
+our whole life is, or ought to be, a preparation for his second
+coming; and it is this state, of which the season of Advent in the
+Church services is intended to be the representation.</p>
+<p>There is something striking in the season of the natural year at
+which we thus celebrate the beginning of another Christian year. It
+is a true type of our condition, of the insensible manner in which
+all the changes of our lives steal upon us, that nature, at this
+moment, gives no outward signs of beginning: it is a period which
+does not manifest any striking change in the state of things around
+us. The Christian Spring begins ere we have reached the half of the
+natural winter. Nature is not bursting into life, but rather
+preparing itself for a long period of death. And this is a type of
+an universal truth, that the signs and warnings which we must look
+to, must come from within us, not from without: that neither sky
+nor earth, will arouse us from our deadly slumber, unless we are
+ourselves aroused already, and more disposed to make warnings for
+ourselves than to find them.</p>
+<p>If this be true of nature, it is true also of all the efforts of
+man. As nature will give no sign, so man cannot. Let the Church do
+all that she may; let her keep her solemn anniversaries, and choose
+out for her services all such passages of Scripture as may be most
+fitted to impress the lesson which she would teach; still we know
+that these are alike powerless and unheeded; that unless there be
+in our own minds something beforehand disposed to profit by them,
+they are but the words of unavailing affection, vainly spoken to
+the ears of the dead.</p>
+<p>Oh that we would remember this, all of us; that there is no
+voice in nature, no voice in man, that can really awaken the
+sleeping soul. That is the work of a far mightier power, to be
+sought for with most earnest prayers for ourselves and for each
+other: that the Holy Spirit of God would speak, and would dispose
+our hearts to hear; that so being awakened from death and our ears
+being truly opened, all things outward may now join in language
+which we can hear; and nature, and man, life and death, things
+present and things to come, may be but the manifold voices of the
+Spirit of God, all working for us together for good. Till this be
+so, we speak in vain; our words neither reach our own hearts, nor
+the hearts of our hearers; they are but recorded in God's book of
+judgment, to be brought forward hereafter for the condemnation of
+us both.</p>
+<p>Yet we must still speak; for the Spirit of God, who alone works
+in us effectually, works also secretly; we know not when, nor how,
+nor where. But we know, that as the Father worketh hitherto, and
+the Son worketh hitherto, so the Holy Spirit worketh hitherto, and
+is still working daily. We know that, every year, he creates in
+thousands of God's people that work which alone shall abide for
+ever. We know that in the year that is just past he has done this;
+that in the year which is just beginning he will do it. Have we not
+here, also, many in whom he has wrought this work? may we not hope,
+and surely believe, that there are many in whom he is even now
+preparing to work it?</p>
+<p>We know not who these are; still less do we know, what were the
+occasions which the Holy Spirit so blessed as to work in them his
+work of life. But this we know, that we are bound to minister all
+the occasions which we can; we must not spare our labour, although
+it is God alone who gives the increase. We must speak of life and
+of death, of Christ and of judgment, not forgetting that we speak
+often, and shall speak, utterly in vain; yet knowing that it is by
+these very thoughts, though long unheeded, that God's Spirit does
+in his own good time awaken the heart; he takes of the things of
+Christ and shows them to us; and then, what was before like a book
+in a strange language--we saw the figures, but they conveyed no
+meaning to our minds--becomes, on a sudden, instinct with the
+language of God, which we hear and understand as readily as if it
+were our own tongue wherein we were born.</p>
+<p>Therefore, we speak and say, that another year has now dawned
+upon us; and we would remind you, and remember, ourselves, in what
+words the various Scriptures of this day's service point out its
+inestimable value. "Now is our salvation nearer than when we
+believed." So says St. Paul in the epistle of this day; and how
+blessed are all those amongst us who can feel that this is truly
+said of them! Then, indeed, a new year's day is a day of rejoicing;
+we are so much nearer that period when all care, all anxiety, all
+painful labour will be for ever ended. But there is other language
+of a different sort, which, it may be, will suit us better. "I have
+nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against
+me." "Their land is full of idols; they worship the work of their
+own hands, that which their own fingers have made;" which means to
+us, the work of our own hearts, that which our own fancies and
+desires have made. "Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust,
+for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty." For in the
+very temple of God, his Church, all manner of profane thoughts and
+words and works are crowded together; the din of covetousness and
+worldliness is loud and constant, and will ill abide the day of his
+coming, who will, a second time, cast out of his temple all that is
+unclean. And is there not also in us that evil heart of unbelief
+and disobedience which departs from the living God? are there not
+here those who are becoming daily hardened through the
+deceitfulness of sin? How are they passing their time in the
+wilderness, and with what prospects when they come to the end of
+it? God said, "I sware in my wrath, that they shall not enter into
+my rest." By the way that they came, by the same shall they return;
+they shall go back to that bondage from which they were once
+redeemed, and from which they will be redeemed again no more for
+ever.</p>
+<p>These are some of the passages of this day's service which
+speaks to us at the beginning of this new Christian year. Let me
+add to all this language of warning, the language in which God, by
+his apostle Paul, answers every one of us, if we ask of him in
+sincerity of heart, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" He
+answers, "The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us walk
+honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in
+chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying: but put ye on
+the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to
+fulfil the works thereof." Now, I grant, that this day, of which
+the apostle speaks, has never yet shone so brightly, as he had
+hoped and imagined; clouds have, up to this hour, continually
+overshadowed it. I mean, that the lives of Christians have hindered
+them from being the light of the world. It has been a light pale
+and dim, and therefore the works of darkness have continued to
+abound. But admit this, and what follows? Is it, or can it be,
+anything else but a more earnest desire not to be ourselves
+children of darkness, lest what we see to have happened in part
+should happen altogether; namely, that the day should never shine
+on us at all? We see that God's promises have been in part
+forfeited; we see that Christ's kingdom has not been what it was
+prophesied it should be. Is not this a solemn warning, that for us,
+too, individually, God's promises may be forfeited? that all we
+read in Scripture of light, and life, and glory, and happiness,
+should really prove to us words only, and no reality? that whereas
+the promise of salvation has been made to us, we should be in the
+end, not saved, but lost? If, indeed, God's kingdom were shining
+around us, in its full beauty; if every evil thing were driven out
+of his temple; if we saw nothing but holy lives and happy, the
+fruits of his Spirit, truth, and love, and joy; then we might be
+less anxious for ourselves; our course would be far smoother; the
+very stream would carry us along to the end of our voyage without
+our labour: what evil thoughts would not be withered, and die long
+ere they could ripen into action, if the very air which we breathed
+were of such, keen and heavenly purity! It is because all this is
+not so, that we have need of so much watchfulness; it is because
+the faults of every one of us make our brethren's task harder;
+because there is not one bad or careless person amongst us who is
+not a hindrance in his brother's path, and does not oblige him to
+exert himself the more. Therefore, because the day is not bright,
+but overclouded; because it is but too like the night, and too many
+use it as the night for all works of darkness; let us take the more
+heed that we do not ourselves so mistake it; let us watch each of
+us the light within us, lest, indeed, we should wholly stumble; let
+us put on the Lord Jesus Christ. You know how often I have dwelt on
+this; how often I have tried to show that Christ is all in all to
+us; that to put on Christ, is a truer and fuller expression, by
+far, than if we had been told to put on truth, or holiness, or
+goodness. It includes all these, with something more, that nothing
+but itself can give--the sense of safety, and joy unspeakable, in
+feeling ourselves sheltered in our Saviour's arms, and taken even
+into himself. Assuredly, if we put on the Lord Jesus Christ, we
+shall not make provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof;
+such a warning would then be wholly unnecessary. Or, if we do not
+like language thus figurative, let us put it, if we will, into the
+plainest words that shall express the same meaning; let us call it
+praying to Christ, thinking of him, hoping in him, earnestly loving
+him; these, at least, are words without a figure, which all can
+surely understand. Let us be Christ's this year that is now
+beginning; be his servants, be his disciples, be his redeemed in
+deed; let us live to him, and for him; setting him before us every
+day to do his will, and to live in his blessing. Then, indeed, if
+it be his pleasure that we should serve him throughout this year,
+even to its end, we may repeat, with a deeper feeling of their
+truth, the words of St. Paul; we may say, when next Advent Sunday
+shall appear, that now is our salvation nearer than when we became
+believers.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXII."></a>LECTURE XXII.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>CHRISTMAS DAY.</center>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>JOHN i. 10.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and
+the world knew Him not</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>When we use ourselves, or hear others use, the term "mystery,"
+as applied to things belonging to the gospel, we should do well to
+consider what is meant by it. For our common notion of the word
+mystery is of something dark; whereas Christ and his gospel are
+continually spoken of as being, above all other things, light. Then
+come others, and say, "Light and darkness cannot go together: what
+you call the mysteries of Christianity are no part of it, but the
+fond inventions of man: Christianity is all simple and clear:" and
+thus they strike away some of the very greatest truths which God
+has revealed to us. Thus they deal in particular with the great
+truth declared in the text, that He who made the world visited it
+in the likeness of man. Now, if this truth were a mystery, in the
+common notion of that term; if it were a thing full of darkness,
+defying our minds to understand it, or to draw any good from it;
+then, indeed, it would be of little consequence whether we received
+it or no. It is because it is a mystery in a very different sense,
+in the sense in which the word is used commonly in the Scriptures;
+that is, a thing which was a secret, but which God has been pleased
+to reveal, and to reveal for our benefit, that therefore the loss
+of it would be the loss of a real blessing, a loss at once of light
+and comfort.</p>
+<p>But we must go a little further, and explain from what this sad
+confusion in the use of the term "mystery" has arisen. There are
+many things relating to ourselves and to things around us, which by
+nature we cannot understand; and of God we can scarcely understand
+anything. Now, while the gospel has revealed much that we did not
+know before, it yet has not revealed everything: of God, in
+particular, it has given us much most precious knowledge, yet it
+has not removed all the veil. It has furnished us with a glass,
+indeed, to use the apostle's comparison; but the glass, although, a
+great help, although reflecting a likeness of what, without it, we
+could not see at all, is yet a dark and imperfect manner of seeing,
+compared with, the seeing face to face. So, when the gospel tells
+us that He who made the world visited it in our nature, it does not
+indeed enable us yet fully to conceive what He is who made us, and
+then became as one of us; there is still left around the name of
+God that light inaccessible which is to our imperfections darkness;
+and so far as we cannot understand or conceive rightly of God, so
+far it is true that we cannot understand all that is conveyed in
+the expression that God was in the world dwelling among us. Yet it
+is still most true that by the revelation thus made to us we have
+gained immensely. God, as he is in himself, we cannot understand;
+but Jesus Christ we can. When we are told to love God, if we look
+to the life and death of Christ, we can understand and feel how
+truly he deserves our love; when we are told to be perfect as God
+is perfect, we have the image of this perfection so truly set
+before us in his Son Jesus, that it may be well said, "Whoso hath
+seen Him hath seen the Father;" and why, then, should we ask with
+Philip, that "He should show us the Father?"</p>
+<p>What, then, the festival of Christmas presents to us, as
+distinct from that of Easter, is generally the revelation of God in
+the flesh. True it is, that we may make it, if we will, the same as
+Easter: that is, we may celebrate it as the birth of our Saviour,
+of him who died and rose again for us; but then we only celebrate
+our Lord's birth with reference to his death and resurrection: that
+is, we make Christmas to be Easter under another name. And so
+everything relating to our Lord may be made to refer to his death
+and resurrection; for in them consists our redemption, and for that
+reason Easter has ever been considered as the great festival of the
+Christian year. But yet apart from this, Christmas has something
+peculiarly its own: namely, as I said before, the revelation of God
+in the flesh, not only to make atonement for our sins,--which is
+the peculiar subject of the celebration of the season of
+Easter,--but to give us notions of God at once distinct and lively;
+to enable us to have One in the invisible world, whom we could
+conceive of as distinctly as of a mere man, yet whom we might love
+with all our hearts, and trust with all our hearts, and yet be
+guilty of no idolatry.</p>
+<p>It is not, then, only as the beginning of an earthly life of
+little more than thirty years, that we may celebrate the day of our
+Lord's birth in the flesh. His own words express what this day has
+brought to us: "Henceforth shall ye see heaven opened, and the
+angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man." The
+words here, like so many of our Lord's, are expressed in a parable;
+but their meaning is not the less clear. They allude evidently to
+Jacob's vision, to the ladder reaching from earth to heaven, on
+which the angels were ascending and descending continually. But
+this vision is itself a parable; showing, under the figure of the
+ladder reaching from earth to heaven, and the angels going up and
+down on it, a free communication, as it were, between God and man,
+heaven brought nearer to earth, and heavenly things made more
+familiar. Now, this is done, in a manner, by every revelation from
+God; most of all, by the revelation of his Son. Nor is it only by
+his Spirit that Christ communicates with us even now; though, he is
+ascended again into heaven, yet the benefits of his having become
+man, over and above those of his dying and rising again for us,
+have not yet passed away. It is still the man Christ Jesus who
+brings heaven near to earth, and earth near to heaven.</p>
+<p>It has been well said by Augustine, that babes in Christ should
+so think of the Son of man as not to lose sight of the Son of God;
+that more advanced Christians should so think of the Son of God as
+not to lose sight of the Son of man. Augustine well understood how
+the thought of the Son of man is fitted to our weakness; and that
+the best and most advanced of us in this mortal life are never so
+strong as to be able to do without it. Have we ever tried this with
+our children? We tell them that God made them, and takes care of
+them, and loves them, and hears their prayers, and knows what is in
+their hearts, and cannot bear what is evil. These are such notions
+of God as a child requires, and can understand. But, if we join
+with them some of those other notions which belong to God as he is
+in himself; that he is a Spirit, not to be seen, not to be
+conceived of as in any one place, or in any one form; what do we
+but embarrass our child's mind, and lessen that sense of near and
+dear relation to God which, our earlier accounts of God had given
+him? Yet we must teach him something of this sort, if we would
+prevent him from forming unworthy notions of God, such as have been
+the beginning of all idolatry. Here, then, is the blessing of the
+revelation of God in Christ. All that he can understand of God, or
+love in him, or fear in him--that is to be found in Christ. Christ
+made him, takes care of him, can hear his prayers, can read his
+little heart, loves him tenderly; yet cannot bear what is evil, and
+will strictly judge him at the last day. But what we must teach
+when we speak of God, yet which has a tendency to lessen the
+liveliness of our impressions of him, this has no place when we
+speak of Christ. Christ has a body, incorruptible and glorified
+indeed, such as they who are Christ's shall also wear at his
+coming, yet still a body. Christ is not to be seen, indeed, for the
+clouds have received him out of our sight: yet he may be conceived
+of as in one place--at the right hand of God; as in one certain and
+well-known form--the form of the Son of man. Yet let us observe
+again, and be thankful for the perfect wisdom of God. Even while
+presenting to us God in Christ; that is to say, God with all those
+attributes which we can understand, and fear, and love; and without
+those which, throw us, as it were, to an infinite distance,
+overwhelming our minds, and baffling all our conceptions; even then
+the utmost care is taken to make us remember that God in himself is
+really that infinite and incomprehensible Being to whom we cannot,
+in our present state, approach; that even his manifestation of
+himself in Christ Jesus, is one less perfect than we shall be
+permitted to see hereafter; that Christ stands at the right hand of
+the Majesty on high; that he has received from the Father all his
+kingdom and his glory; finally, that the Father is greater than he,
+inasmuch as any other nature added to the pure and perfect essence
+of God, must, in a certain measure, if I may venture so to speak,
+be a coming down to a lower point, from the very and unmixed
+Divinity.</p>
+<p>I have purposely mentioned this last circumstance, although it
+is not the view that I wish particularly to take to-day, because
+such passages as that which I quoted, where Christ tells his
+disciples that his Father was greater than he, and many others of
+the same sort, throughout the New Testament, are sometimes apt to
+embarrass and perplex us, if we do not consider their peculiar
+object. It was very necessary, especially at a time when men were
+so accustomed to worship their highest gods under the form of men,
+that whilst the gospel was itself holding out the man Christ Jesus
+as the object of religious faith, and fear, and love, and teaching
+that all power was given to him, in heaven and in earth,--it
+should, also, guard us against supposing that it meant to represent
+God as, in himself, wearing a human form, or having a nature
+partaking of our infirmities; and, therefore, it always speaks of
+there being something in God higher, and more perfect, than could
+possibly be revealed to man; and for this eternal and infinite, and
+inconceivable Being, it claims the reserve of our highest thoughts,
+or, rather, it commands us to believe, that they who shall
+hereafter see God face to face, shall be allowed to see something
+still greater than is now revealed to us, even in him who is the
+express image of God, and the brightness of his glory.</p>
+<p>But, now, to return to what I was dwelling on before. It is not
+only for children, that the revelation of God in Christ is so
+valuable; it is fitted to the wants of us all, at all times, and
+under all circumstances. Say, that we are in joy; say, that we are
+enjoying some of the festivities of this season. It is quite plain,
+that, at whatever moment the thought of God is unwelcome to us,
+that moment is one of sin or unbelief: yet, how can we dare to mix
+up the notion of the most high God with any earthly merriment, or
+festivity? Then, if we think of him who was present at the marriage
+in Cana of Galilee, and who worked a miracle for no other object
+than to increase the enjoyment of that marriage supper, do we not
+feel how the highest thoughts may be joined with the most common
+occasions? how we may bring Christ home with, us to our social
+meetings, to bless us, and to sanctify them? Imagine him in our
+feasts as he was in Cana:--we may do it without profaneness; being
+sure, from that example, that he condemns not innocent mirth; that
+it is not merely because there is a feast, or because friends and
+neighbours are gathered together, that Christ cannot, therefore, be
+in the midst of us. This alone does not drive him away; but, oh
+consider, with what ears would he have listened to any words of
+unkindness, of profaneness, or of impurity! with what eyes would he
+have viewed any intemperance, or revelling; any such, immoderate
+yielding up of the night to pleasure, that a less portion of the
+next day can be given to duty and to God! Even as he would have
+heard or seen such things in Cana of Galilee, so does he hear and
+see them amongst us; the same gracious eye of love is on our
+moderate and permitted enjoyments; the same turning away from, the
+same firm and just displeasure at every word or deed which turns
+pleasure into sin.</p>
+<p>But if I seek for instances to show how God in Christ is brought
+very near to us, what can I choose more striking than that most
+solemn act of Christian communion to which we are called this day?
+For, what is there in our mortal life, what joy, what sorrow, what
+feeling elated or subdued, which is not in that communion brought
+near to Christ to receive his blessing? What is the first and
+outward thing of which it reminds us? Is it not that last supper in
+Jerusalem, in which men,--the twelve disciples, the first members
+of our Christian brotherhood,--were brought into such solemn
+nearness to God, as seems to have begun the privileges of heaven
+upon earth? They were brought near at once to Christ and to one
+another: united to one another in him, in that double bond which,
+is the perfection at once of our duty and of our happiness. And so
+in our communion we, too, draw near to Christ and to each other; we
+feel--who is there at that moment, at least, that does not
+feel?--what a tie there is to bind each of us to his brother, when
+we come to the table of our common Lord. So far, the Lord's Supper
+is but a type of what every Christian meeting should be: never
+should any of us be gathered together on any occasion of common
+life, in our families or with our neighbours; we should sit down to
+no meal, we should meet in no company, without having Christ also
+in the midst of us; without remembering what we all are to him, and
+what we each therefore are to our brethren. But when we further
+recollect what there is in the Lord's Supper beyond the mere
+meeting of Christ and his disciples; what it is which the bread and
+the wine commemorate; of what we partake when, as true Christians,
+we eat of that bread, and drink of that cup; then we shall
+understand that God indeed is brought very near to us; inasmuch, as
+he who is a Christian, and partakes sincerely of Christian
+communion, is a partaker also of Christ: and as belonging to his
+body, his living spiritual body, the universal Church, receives his
+share of all those blessings, of all that infinite love which the
+Father shows continually to the head of that body, his own
+well-beloved Son.</p>
+<p>Say not then in your hearts, Who can ascend up into heaven, that
+is, to bring Christ down? As on this day, when he took our nature
+upon him, he came down to abide with us for ever; to abide with,
+us, even when we should see him with our eyes no more: for whilst
+he was on earth he so took part in all the concerns of life, in all
+its duties, its sorrows, and its joys, that memory, when looking
+back on the past, can fancy him present still; and then let the
+liveliest fancy do its work to the utmost, it cannot go beyond the
+reality; he is present still, for that belongs to his almightiness;
+he is present with us, because he is God; and we can fancy him with
+us, because he is man. This is the way to lessen our distance from
+God and heaven, by bringing Christ continually to us on earth: the
+sky is closed, and shows no sign; all things continue as they were
+from the beginning of the world; evil abounds, and therefore the
+faith of many waxes cold; but Christ was and is amongst us; and we
+need no surer sign than that sign of the prophet Jonah--Christ
+crucified and Christ risen--to make us feel that we may live with
+God daily upon earth, and doing so, shall live with him for an
+eternal life, in a country that cannot pass away.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXIII."></a>LECTURE XXIII.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>SUNDAY NEXT BEFORE EASTER.</center>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>MATTHEW xxvi. 40, 41.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch and
+pray, that ye enter<br>
+not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is
+weak</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>These words, we cannot doubt, have an application to ourselves,
+and to all Christians, far beyond the particular occasion on which
+they were actually spoken. They are, in fact, the words which
+Christ addresses daily to all of us. Every day, when he sees how
+often we have gone astray from him, he repeats to us, Could ye not
+watch with me one hour? Every day he commands us to watch and pray,
+that we enter not into temptation; every day he reminds us, that
+however willing may be our spirits, yet our flesh is weak; and that
+through that weakness, sin prevails over it, and having triumphed
+over our flesh, proceeds to enslave our spirit also.</p>
+<p>And as the words are applicable to us every day, so also are
+they in a particular manner suitable now, when the season of Lent
+is so nearly over, and Easter is so fast approaching. Have we been
+unable to watch, with Christ one hour? Already are the good
+resolutions with which, we, perhaps, began Lent, broken in many
+instances; and the impressions, if any such were made in us, are
+already weakened. They have been a burden, which we have shaken
+off, because the weakness of our nature found it too heavy to bear.
+Sad it is to think how often this same process has been repeated in
+all time, how often it will be repeated to the end.</p>
+<p>Let us just review what the course of this process has probably
+been. Now, as the parable of the Sower describes three several
+sorts of persons, who never bring forth, fruit; so in the very same
+persons, there is at different times something of each of the three
+characters there described. We, the very same persons, are at one
+time hard, at another careless, and at another over-busy; although,
+if compared with, other persons, and in the general form of their
+characters, some are hard, and others are careless, and others
+over-busy; different persons having different faults predominantly.
+But even the hardness of the road side, although God forbid that it
+should be our prevailing temper, yet surely it does sometimes exist
+in too many of us. In common speech, we talk of a person showing a
+hard temper, meaning, generally, a hard temper towards other men.
+We have done wrong, but being angry when we are reproved for it, we
+will not acknowledge it at all, and cheat our consciences, by
+dwelling upon the supposed wrong that has been done to us in some
+over-severity of reproof or punishment, instead of confessing and
+repenting of the original wrong which we ourselves did. But is it
+not true, that a hard temper towards man is very often, even
+consciously, a hard temper towards God? Does it never happen, that
+if conscience presents to us the thought of God, whether as a God
+of judgment to terrify us, or as a God of love to melt us, we repel
+it with impatience, or with sullenness? Does not the heart
+sometimes almost speak aloud the language of blasphemy: Who is God,
+that I should mind him? I do not care what may happen, I will not
+be softened. Do not all sorts of unbelieving thoughts pass rapidly
+through the mind at such moments; first in their less daring form,
+whispering, as the serpent did to Eve, that we shall not surely
+die; that we shall have time to repent by and by; that God will not
+be so strict a judge as to condemn us for such a little; that by
+some means or other, we shall escape? But then they come, also, in
+their bolder form: What do I or any man know about another world,
+or God's judgments? may it not be all a fiction, so that I have, in
+reality, nothing to fear? In short, under one form or another, is
+it not true, that our hearts have sometimes displayed actually
+hardness towards God; that the thought of God has been actually
+presented to our minds, but that we have turned it aside, and have
+not suffered it to make any impression upon us? And thus, we have
+not only not watched with Christ according to his command, but have
+actually told him that we would not. But this has been in our worst
+temper, certainly; it may not have happened,--I trust that it has
+not happened often. More commonly, I dare say, the fault has been
+carelessness. We have gone out of this place; sacred names have
+ceased to sound in our ears; sights in any degree connected with,
+holy things have been all withdrawn from us. Other sounds and other
+sights have been before us, and our minds have yielded to them
+altogether. There are minds, indeed, which have no spring of
+thought in themselves; which are quiet, and in truth empty, till
+some outward objects come to engage them. Take them at a moment
+when they are alone, or when there is no very interesting object
+before them, and ask them of what they are thinking. If the answer
+were truly given, such a mind would say, "Of nothing." Certain
+images may be faintly presented to it; it may be that it is not
+altogether a blank; yet it could not name anything distinctly. No
+form had been vivid enough to produce any corresponding resolution
+in us; we were, as it were, in a state between sleeping and waking,
+with neither thoughts nor dreams definite enough to affect us. This
+state finds exactly all that it desires in the presence or the near
+hope of outward objects; the mind lives in its daily pursuits, and
+companions, and amusements. What impressions have been once
+produced are soon worn away; and in a soil so shallow nothing makes
+a durable impression: everything can, as it were, scratch upon its
+surface, while nothing can strike deeply down within.</p>
+<p>Or, again, take the rarer case of those who are over-busy. There
+are minds, undoubtedly, which are as incapable of rest as those of
+the generality of men are prone to it; there are minds which enter
+keenly into everything presented to them by their outward senses,
+and which, when their senses cease to supply them, have an
+inexhaustible source of thought within, which furnishes them with
+abundant matter of reflection or of speculation. To such a mind,
+doing is most delightful; whether it be outward doing, or the mere
+exercise of thought, either supplies alike the consciousness of
+power. Where, then, is there room for the less obtruding things of
+God? Into that restless water, another and another image is for
+ever stepping down, pushing aside and keeping at a distance the
+sobering reflections of God and of Christ. Alas! the thorns grow so
+vigorously in such a soil, that they altogether choke and kill the
+seed of God's word.</p>
+<p>So, then, we are either asleep, or, if we are awake, we are not
+waking with Christ. On one side, in that garden of Gethsemane were
+the disciples sleeping; below, and fast ascending the hill,--not
+sleeping, certainly, but with lanterns and torches and
+weapons,--were those whose waking was for evil. Where were they who
+watched with Christ one hour then,--or where are those who watch
+with him now?</p>
+<p>HOW gently, yet how earnestly, does he call upon us to "watch
+and pray, lest we enter into temptation." To watch and to pray: for
+of all those around him some were sleeping, and none were praying;
+so that they who watched were not watching with him, but against
+him. In our careless state of mind the call to us is to watch; in
+our over-busy state the call to us is to pray; in our hard state
+there is equal need for both. And even in our best moods, when we
+are not hard, nor careless, nor over-busy, when we are at once
+sober and earnest and gentle, then not least does Christ call upon
+us to watch and to pray, that we may retain that than which else no
+gleam of April sunshine was ever more fleeting; that we may perfect
+that which else is of the earth, earthly, and when we lie down in
+the dust will wither and come to dust also.</p>
+<p>Jesus Christ brought life and immortality, it is said, to light
+through the gospel. He brought life and immortality to light:--is
+this indeed true as far as we are concerned? What do we think would
+be the difference in this point between many of us--who will dare
+say how many?--and a school, I will not say of Jewish, but even of
+Greek or Roman or Egyptian boys, eighteen hundred, or twenty-four
+hundred, or three or four thousand years ago? Compare us at our
+worship with them, and then, I grant, the difference would appear
+enormous. We have no images, making the glory of the incorruptible
+God like to corruptible man; we have no vain stream of incense; no
+shedding of the blood of bulls and calves in sacrifice: the hymns
+which are sung here are not vain repetitions or impious fables,
+which gave no word of answer to those questions which it most
+concerns mankind to know. Here, indeed, Jesus Christ is truly set
+forth, crucified among us; here life and immortality are brought to
+light. But follow us out of this place,--to our respective pursuits
+and amusements, to our social meetings, or our times of solitary
+thought,--and wherein do we seem to see life and immortality more
+brightly revealed than to those heathen schools of old? Do we enjoy
+any worldly good less keenly, or less shrink from any worldly evil?
+Death, which to the heathen view was the end of all things, is to
+us (so our language goes) the gate of life. Do we think of it with
+more hope and less fear than the heathen did? Christ has risen, and
+has reconciled us to God. Is God more to us?--God now revealed to
+us as our reconciled Father--do we oftener think of him, do we love
+him better, than he was thought of and loved in those heathen
+schools, which had Homer's poetry for their only gospel? We talk of
+light, of revelation, of the knowledge of God, while verily and
+really we are walking, not in light, but in darkness: not in
+knowledge of God, but in blindness and hardness of heart.</p>
+<p>"The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." How great
+is the loving-kindness of these words,--how gently does Christ bear
+with the weakness of his disciples! But this thought may be the
+most blessed or the most dangerous thought in the world; the most
+blessed if it touches us with love, the most dangerous if it
+emboldens us in sin. He is full of loving-kindness, full of
+long-suffering; for days, and weeks, and months, and years he bears
+with us: we grieve him, and he entreats; we crucify him afresh, yet
+he will not come down from the cross in power and majesty; he
+endures and spares. So it is for days, and months, and years; for
+some years it may be to most of us,--for many years to some of the
+youngest. There may be some here who may go on grieving Christ, and
+crucifying him afresh, for as much as seventy years; and he will
+bear with them all that time, and his sun will daily shine upon
+them, and his creatures and his word will minister to their
+pleasure; and he himself will say nothing to them but to entreat
+them to turn and be saved. This may last, I say, to some amongst us
+for seventy years; to others it may last fifty; to many of us it
+may last for forty, or for thirty; none of us, perhaps, are so old
+but that it may last with us twenty, or at the least ten. Such is
+the prospect before us, if we like it: not to be depended upon with
+certainty, it is true, but yet to be regarded as probable. But as
+these ten, or twenty, or fifty, or seventy years pass on, Christ
+will still spare us, but his voice of entreaty will be less often
+heard; the distance between him and us will be consciously wider.
+From one place after another where we once used sometimes to see
+him, he will have departed; year after year some object which used
+once to catch the light from heaven, will have become overgrown,
+and will lie constantly in gloom; year after year the world will
+become to us more entirely devoid of God. If sorrow, or some
+softening joy ever turns our minds towards Christ, we shall be
+startled at perceiving there is something which keeps us from him,
+that we cannot earnestly believe in him; that if we speak of loving
+him, our hearts, which can still love earthly things, feel that the
+words are but mockery. Alas, alas! the increased weakness of our
+flesh, has destroyed all the power of our spirit, and almost all
+its willingness: it is bound with chains which it cannot break,
+and, indeed, scarcely desires to break. Redemption, Salvation,
+Victory,--what words are these when applied to that enslaved, that
+lost, that utterly overthrown and vanquished soul, which sin is
+leading in triumph now, and which will speedily be given over to
+walk for ever as a captive in the eternal triumph of death!</p>
+<p>Not one word of what I have said is raised beyond the simplest
+expression of truth; this is our portion if we will not watch with
+Christ. We know how often we have failed to do so, either sleeping
+in carelessness, or being busy and wakeful, but not with him or for
+him. Still he calls us to watch and pray, lest we enter into
+temptation; to mark our lives and actions; to mark them often; to
+see whether we have done well or ill in the month past, or in the
+week past, or in the day past; to consider whether we are better
+than we were, or worse; whether we think Christ loves us better, or
+worse; whether we are more or less cold towards him. I know not
+what else can be called watching with Christ than such a looking
+into ourselves as we are in his sight. It is very hard to be
+done;--yes, it is hard--harder than anything probably which we ever
+attempted before; and, therefore, we must pray withal for his help,
+whose strength is perfected in our weakness. And if it be so hard,
+and we have need so greatly to pray for God's help, should we not
+all also be anxious to help one another? And knowing, as we do from
+our own consciences, how difficult it is to watch with Christ, and
+how thankful we should be to any one who were to make it easier to
+us, should we not be sure that our neighbour is in like case with
+ourselves; that our help may be as useful to him as we feel that
+his would be to us? This is our bounden duty of love towards one
+another; what then should be said of us if we not only neglect this
+duty, but do the very contrary to it; if we actually help the evil
+in our brother's heart to destroy him more entirely; if we will not
+watch with Christ ourselves, and strive to prevent others from
+doing so?</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXIV."></a>LECTURE XXIV.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>GOOD FRIDAY.</center>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>ROMANS v. 8.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>God commendeth his love towards us, in that, while we
+were yet sinners, Christ died for us</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>We all remember the story in the Gospel, of the different
+treatment which our Lord met with in the same house, from the
+Pharisee, who had invited him into it, and from the woman who came
+in and knelt at his feet, and kissed them, and bathed them with her
+tears. Our Lord accounted for the difference in these words, "To
+whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little;" which means to
+speak of the sense or feeling in the person's own mind, "He who
+feels that little is or needs to be forgiven him, he also loves
+little." And this same difference which existed toward him when he
+was present on earth, exists no less now, whenever he is brought
+before our thoughts. The same sort of persons who saw him with
+indifference, think of him also with indifference; they who saw him
+with love, think of him also with love. There is no art, no power
+in the world, which can give an interest to words spoken concerning
+him, for those who feel that little is and that little needs to be
+forgiven them, or to those who never consider about their being
+forgiven at all. To such, this day, with its services, what they
+hear from the Scriptures, or what they hear from men, must be alike
+a matter of indifference: it is not possible that it should be
+otherwise. Yet, God forbid that we should design what we are saying
+this day only for a certain few of our congregation, as if the rest
+neither would nor could be interested in it. So long as any one is
+careless, he cannot, it is true, be interested about the things of
+Christ; but who can say at what moment, through God's grace, he may
+cease to be careless? Is it too much to say, that scarcely a
+service is performed in any congregation in the land, which does
+not awaken an interest in some one who before was indifferent? I do
+rot say a deep interest, nor a lasting one, but an interest; there
+is a thought, a heeding, an inclination of the mind to listen,
+created probably by the Church services in some one or other, every
+time that they are performed. As we never can know in whom this may
+be so created, as all have great need that it should be created, as
+all are deeply concerned whether they feel that they are so or no,
+so we speak to all alike; and if the language does pass over their
+ears like an unknown or indistinct sound, the fault and the loss
+are theirs; but the Church has borne her witness, and has so far
+done her duty.</p>
+<p>But again, for ears not careless, but most interested; for
+hearts to whom Christ is more than all in the world besides; for
+minds, before whom the wisdom of the gospel is ever growing, rising
+to a loftier height, and striking downwards to a depth more
+profound,--yet without end in its height or its depth; is there
+not, also, a difficulty in speaking to them of that great thing
+which the Church celebrates to-day? Is there no difficulty in
+awakening their interest, or rather how can we escape even from
+wearying or repelling them, when their own affections and deep
+thoughts must find all words of man, whether of themselves or
+others, infinitely unworthy to express either the one or the other?
+To such, then, the words of the preacher may be no more than music
+without any words at all; which does but serve to lead and
+accompany our own thoughts, without distinctly suggesting any
+thoughts of another to interrupt the workings of our own minds. We
+would speak of Christ's death; most good it is for us and for you
+to think upon it; so far as our words suit the current of your own
+thoughts, use them and listen to them; so far as they are a too
+unworthy expression of what we ought to think and feel, follow your
+own reflections, and let the words neither offend you nor distract
+you.</p>
+<p>I would endeavour just to touch, upon some of the purposes for
+which the Scripture tells us that Christ died, and for which his
+death was declared to be the great object of our faith. This done
+in the simplest and fewest words will best show the infinite
+greatness of the subject; and how truly it is, so to speak, the
+central point of Christianity.</p>
+<p>First of all, Christ died as a proper sacrifice for sin; as a
+sacrifice, the virtue of which, is altogether distinct from our
+knowledge of it, or from any effect which it has a tendency to
+produce on our own minds. We are forgiven for his sake; we are
+acquitted through his death, and through faith in his blood. What a
+view does this open, partially, indeed,--for what mortal eye can
+reach to the end of it?--of the evil of sin, and of God's love! of
+what God's justice required, and of what God's love fulfilled! This
+great sacrifice was made once, but it will not be made again; for
+those who despise this there remains no more offering for sin, but
+their sin abideth with them for ever.</p>
+<p>Secondly, Christ's death is revealed to us as a motive capable
+of overcoming all temptations to evil. "How much more shall the
+blood of Christ purge your conscience from dead works to serve the
+living God?" "He suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that
+he might bring us to God;" that is, that a consideration of what
+Christ's death declares to us should have power to melt the hardest
+heart, and to sober the lightest: that, when we think of Christ
+dying, dying for us, and so purchasing for us the forgiveness of
+sins, and everlasting life, such a love, and such a prospect of
+peace with God, and of glory, should in the highest degree soften
+and enkindle us; and from love for him, and confidence of hope
+through the prospect which he has given us, we should be able to
+overcome all temptations. "I am persuaded," says St. Paul, "that
+neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor
+powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor
+depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from
+the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."</p>
+<p>Thirdly, Christ suffered for as, leaving us an example that we
+should follow his steps. He left us an example of all meekness, and
+patience, and humility; he left us an example of perfect submission
+to God's will; he left us an infinite comfort by letting us feel
+when we are in any trouble, or pain, or affliction, that he was
+troubled too; that he knew pain, and endured affliction. Above all,
+in that hour which must come to all of us, he has left us the
+greatest of all supports;--for he endured to die; and we may enter
+with less fear into the darkness of the grave, for even there
+Christ has been for our sakes, and arose from out of it a
+conqueror.</p>
+<p>Fourthly, Christ died that he might gather together in one the
+children of God that were scattered abroad; he died to purchase to
+himself his universal Church. So it is said in the Scriptures: and
+on this particular purpose of his death, it may not be amiss to
+dwell, for none so needs to be held in remembrance. Many there are,
+and ever have been, who have rested their whole hope towards God on
+his sacrifice; many who have learnt from his cross to overcome sin;
+from his resurrection to overcome the world; many who, amidst all
+the troubles of life, and in the hour of death, have been supported
+by the thought of his example. But where is his universal Church?
+where the company of God's children gathered together into one?
+where is the city set upon the hill, that cannot be hid? where is
+the visible kingdom of God, where all its people are striving under
+one Divine Head, against sin, the world, and the devil? This is the
+sign which we look for and cannot find; this is the fulfilment of
+the prophecies for which we seem destined to wait in vain.</p>
+<p>And what if, on the contrary, that which is called the Church
+act rather the part of the world; if our worst foes be truly those
+of our own household: if they who should have been for our help, be
+rather an occasion of falling: if one of our greatest difficulties
+in following Christ steadily, arise from the total want of
+encouragement, yea, often from the direct opposition of those who
+are themselves pledged to follow him to the death; if that Church,
+which was to have been the clearest sign to the world of the truth
+of Christ's gospel, be now, in many respects, rather a
+stumbling-block to the adversary and unbeliever, so that the name
+of God is through us blasphemed among the heathen, rather than
+glorified; may we not humble ourselves before God in sorrow and in
+shame? and must we not confess, that through our sin, and the sin
+of our fathers, Christ, in respect of this one purpose of his
+death, has as yet died in vain?</p>
+<p>Israel after the flesh, lamenting their Jerusalem which is now
+not theirs, and mourning over their ruined temple, in all their
+synagogues repeat constantly the prayer, O Lord, build thou the
+walls of Jerusalem! O Lord, build! O Lord, build! O Lord, build! is
+the solemn chorus, marking by its repetition the earnestness of
+their desire. And should not this be the prayer of the Israel of
+God, scattered now as they are into their thousand divided and
+corrupted synagogues, and no token to be seen of the pure and
+universal Church, the living temple of the Spirit of God; should
+not we too, privately and publicly, join in the prayer of the
+earthly Israel, and pray that Christ would build for us the walls
+of our true Jerusalem? For only think what it would be, if Christ's
+Church existed more than in name; consider what it would be if
+baptism were a real bond; if we looked on one another as brethren,
+redeemed by one ransom, pledged to one service; if we bore with one
+another's weaknesses; if we helped one another's endeavours; if
+each saw and heard, in the words and life of his neighbour, an
+image of Christ, and a pledge of the truth of his promises.
+Consider what it would be, if, with no quarrels, with no
+jealousies, with no unkindness, we sought not every man his own,
+but every man also another's welfare; as true members one of
+another,--of one body, of which Christ is the head. Consider what
+it would be, if our judgments of men and things were like Christ's
+judgments; neither strengthening the heart of the careless and
+sinful by our laxity, nor making sad the heart of God's true
+servant by our uncharitableness; not putting little things in the
+place of great, nor great things in the place of little; not
+neglecting the unity of the Spirit; not stickling for a sameness in
+the form. Or, if we carry our views a little wider; if we look out
+upon the world at large, and hear of rumours of wars, and see the
+signs of internal disorders, and perhaps may think that the clouds
+are gathering which, herald one of the comings of the Son of man to
+judgment, whether the last of all or not it were vain to ask; how
+blessed would it be, if we could see such an ark of Christ's Church
+as should float visibly upon, the stormy waters; gathering within
+it, in peace and safety, men of various dispositions and
+conditions, and opinions; those who held much of truth, and those
+who had mixed with it much of error: those whom Christ would call
+clean, and those, too, whom some of their brethren call unclean,
+but whom Christ has redeemed, and will save no less than their
+despisers; all, in short, who fled from sin and from the world to
+Christ, and to the company of Christ's people! O if we could but
+see such an ark preparing while God's long-suffering yet withholds
+the flood! O that all God's scattered and divided children would
+join together in one earnest prayer, O Lord, build thou the walls
+of Jerusalem! O Lord, build! O Lord, build! O Lord, build!</p>
+<p>Yet, for this, among other purposes of mercy, did the Son of
+God, as on this day, suffer death upon the cross: he died that we
+might be one in him. Let us turn, then, from the thought of the
+general temple in ruins, and let us see whether we cannot, at any
+rate, within the walls of our own little particular congregation,
+fulfil also this object of Christ's death, and be one in him. Let
+us consider one another, to provoke unto love and to good works: we
+too often consider one another for the very contrary purpose, to
+provoke to contempt or ill-will. True it is, that if we look for it
+we can find much of evil in our brethren, and they can find much
+also in us; and we might become all haters of one another, all in
+some sort deserving to be hated. But where is he who is entitled to
+hate another's evil when he has evil in himself; and when Christ,
+who had none, did not hate the evil of us all, but rather died to
+save it? And is it not true also, that, if we look for it, we can
+also find in every one something to love? something, undoubtedly,
+even in him who has in himself least: but much, infinitely much in
+all, when we look upon them as Christ's redeemed. Not more
+beautifully than truly has it been said, that Christian souls--</p>
+"Though worn and soiled by sinful clay,<br>
+Are yet, to eyes that see them true,<br>
+All glistening with baptismal dew."<br>
+<p>They have the seal of belonging to Christ; they are his and our
+brethren. And, as his latest command, and his beloved Apostle's
+also, was that we should love one another; so, if we would bring
+all our solemn thoughts of Christ's death to one point, and
+endeavour to derive from it some one particular lesson for our
+daily lives, I know not that any would be more needed or better for
+us, than that we should especially apply the thought of Christ
+dying on the cross for us to soften our angry, and proud, and
+selfish feelings; to restrain us from angry or sneering words; from
+unkind, offensive, rude, or insulting actions; to excite us to
+gentleness, courtesy, kindness; remembering that he, be he who he
+may, whom we allow ourselves to despise, or to dislike, or to
+annoy, or to neglect, was one so precious in Christ's sight, that
+he laid down his life for his sake, and invites him to be for ever
+with, him and with his Father.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXV."></a>LECTURE XXV.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>EASTER DAY.</center>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>JOHN xx. 20.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>Then the disciples went away again unto their own
+home</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>With this verse ends the portion of the scripture chosen for the
+gospel in this morning's service. It finishes the account of the
+visit of Peter and John to the sepulchre; and, therefore, the close
+of the extract at this point is sufficiently natural. Yet the
+effect of the quiet tone of these words, just following the account
+of the greatest event which earth has ever witnessed, is, I think,
+singularly impressive; the more so when we remember that they were
+written by one of the very persons, whose visit had been just
+described; and that the writer, therefore, could tell full well, to
+how intense an interest there had succeeded that solemn calm. They
+went away from the very sight, if I may so speak, of Christ risen,
+to their own homes. And what thoughts do we suppose that they
+carried with them? Let us endeavour to recall them, for our
+benefit, also, who, like them, are going, as it were, to the
+ordinary tenure of our daily lives from this day's high
+solemnity.</p>
+<p>The disciples went away to their own homes; and there they
+waited, either in Jerusalem or in Galilee, pursuing, as we find
+from the last chapter of St. John, their common occupations, till,
+after their Lord's ascension, power was given them from on high,
+and the great work of their apostleship began. During this period,
+Christ appeared to them several times: he conversed with them, he
+ate and drank with them: but he did not live continually with them,
+as he had done before his crucifixion: he did not take them about
+with him as before, while he was performing the part of the great
+prophet of the house of Israel. They were now at their own homes
+waiting for his call to more active duties. They had seen him dead,
+and they had seen, him risen, and they were receiving into their
+souls all the lessons of his life and death and resurrection,
+brought before them, and impressed upon them by that Holy Spirit,
+who, according to Christ's promise, was to take of the things which
+are Christ's, and to show them to Christ's disciples.</p>
+<p>It is true that there came upon them, after this, an especial
+visitation of the Spirit of power, to fit them for their particular
+work of apostles or messengers to mankind. Having been converted
+themselves, they were to strengthen their brethren. And as this
+especial visitation of the Holy Spirit was given to them only, and
+to those on whom they themselves laid their hands, so none have
+ever since been called to that particular work to which they were
+called, in any thing of the same degree of fulness. What is
+peculiar to them as apostles is not applicable exactly to us; but
+we are all concerned in what belongs to them as Christians: in this
+respect, their case is ours; and they, when at their own homes, and
+engaged in their own callings, stand in the same situation as we
+all.</p>
+<p>We may, however, still make a two-fold division; we may regard
+the apostles going away to their own homes, as a temporary thing,
+as a mere term of preparation for the duties which they were
+afterwards called to; or we may look upon it as complete so far as
+earth is concerned, since, taking them as Christians only and not
+as apostles, they might have so lived on to the end of their lives,
+having received all those helps which were needed for their own
+personal salvation, and having only to use them daily for their
+soul's benefit. This same distinction we may apply to ourselves. We
+may consider ourselves as going to our own homes for a time only,
+awaiting our call to active life; or we may consider ourselves as
+withdrawing, after every celebration of Christ's resurrection, to
+that round of daily duties which on earth shall never alter; and to
+which all the helps derived from our communion with Christ are to
+be applied, with nothing future, so for as earth is concerned, for
+which we may need them. So then, of whatever age we may be, what is
+said of the apostles in the text may apply to us also: after having
+witnessed, as it were, Christ's resurrection, we go away to our own
+homes. Let us first take that part of the text which is common to
+us all, though not in the same degree--the having been witnesses of
+Christ's resurrection. John and Peter found him not in the
+sepulchre; they found the linen clothes and the napkin lying there,
+but he was gone. And upon this, as John assures us, both for
+himself and his companion, "they believed." They believed, we
+should observe, when as yet they had no more seen Jesus himself
+after his resurrection, than we Lave now. They only knew that he
+had been dead, and that he was not in the sepulchre. And this we
+know also; we have not seen him, indeed, since his resurrection:
+but we are sure he is not in the sepulchre. We are sure that the
+malice of his enemies did not do its work: we are sure, for we are
+ourselves witnesses of it, that that name, and that word, which
+they hoped would have been destroyed for ever, like the names of
+many, not only of false prophets and deceivers, but even of good
+men and of wise, have not perished, but have brought forth fruit
+more abundantly, from the very cause that was intended to put them
+out. Christ's gospel, assuredly, is a living thing, full of vigour
+and full of power; it has worked mightily for good, and is working;
+it is so full of blessing, it tends so largely towards the
+happiness that is enjoyed upon earth, that we are quite sure it is
+not lying still buried in Christ's sepulchre.</p>
+<p>They (the two disciples) then went away believing, because they
+found that he was not in the sepulchre. But Mary Magdalene came and
+told them, that she had seen him risen, and had heard his voice
+with her ears. What she told Peter and John, Peter and John are now
+telling to us. They tell us that they have heard him, have seen him
+with their eyes, have looked upon him, yea, that their hands have
+handled him. They tell us even more than Mary Magdalene told them;
+for she had not been allowed to touch him. We may well trust their
+testimony, as they trusted hers, being quite ready indeed to
+believe that he was alive, because they had found that he was not
+amongst the dead. And so we, finding that he is not amongst the
+dead, seeing and knowing the fruits of his gospel, the living and
+ever increasing fruits of it, may well believe that its author is
+risen, and that the pains of death were loosed from off him,
+because it was not possible that he should be holden by them.</p>
+<p>In this way, we, like the two disciples, may be all said to be
+witnesses of Christ's resurrection. May it not be said still more
+of those amongst us who assembled this morning round Christ's
+table, to keep alive the memory of his death; when we partook of
+that bread, and drank of that cup, of which so many thousands and
+millions, in every age and in every land, have eaten and drunken,
+all receiving them, with nearly the same words,--the body that was
+given for us, the blood that was shed for us,--all, making
+allowances for human weakness, finding in that communion the peace
+and the strength of God; all alike receiving it with penitent
+hearts, and with faith, and purposes of good for the time to come?
+Did we not then witness that Christ is not perished? that he has
+been ever, and still is, mighty to save? That command given to
+twelve persons, in an obscure chamber in Jerusalem, by one who, the
+next day, was to die as a malefactor, has been, and is obeyed from
+one end of the world to another; and wherever it has been obeyed,
+there, in proportion to the sincerity of the obedience, has been
+the fulness of the blessing.</p>
+<p>But this is now past, as with the two disciples, and we are
+going again to our own homes. There, neither the empty sepulchre
+nor the risen Saviour are present before us, but common scenes and
+familiar occupations, which, in themselves have nothing in them of
+Christ. So it must be; we cannot be always within these walls; we
+cannot always be engaged in public prayer; we cannot always be
+hearing Christ's word, nor partaking of his communion; we must be
+going about our several works, and must be busied in them; some of
+us in preparation for other work to come, others to go on till the
+end of their lives with this only. May we not hope that Christ, and
+Christ's Spirit, will visit us the while in these our daily
+callings, as he came to his disciples Peter and John, when
+following their business as fishers on the lake of Gennesareth?</p>
+<p>How can we get him to visit us? There is one answer--by prayer
+and by watchfulness. By prayer, whether we are in our preparatory
+state, or our fixed one; by prayer, and I think I may add, by
+praying in our own words. Of course, when we pray together, some of
+us must join in the words of others; and it makes little
+difference, whether those words be spoken or read. But when we pray
+alone, some, perhaps, may still use none but prayers made by
+others, especially the Lord's prayer. We should remember, however,
+that the Lord's prayer was given for this very purpose, to teach us
+how to pray for ourselves. But it does not do this, if we use it
+alone, and still more, if we use it without understanding it. If we
+do understand it, and study it, it will indeed teach us to pray; it
+will show us what we most need in prayer, and what are our greatest
+evils; but surely it may be said, that no man ever learnt this
+lesson well without wishing to practise it; no man ever used the
+Lord's prayer with understanding and with earnestness, without
+adding to it others of his own. And this is not a trifling matter.
+We know the difficulty of attending in prayer; and if we use the
+words of others only, which we must, therefore, repeat from memory,
+it is perfectly possible to say them over without really joining
+with them in our minds: we may say them over to ourselves, and be
+actually thinking of other things the while. And the same thing
+holds good, of course, even with prayers that we have made
+ourselves, if we accustom ourselves to repeat them without
+alteration; they then become, in fact, the work of another than our
+actual mind, and may be repeated by memory alone. Therefore, it
+seems to be of consequence to vary the words, and even the matter
+of our private prayers, that so we may not deceive ourselves, by
+repeating merely, when we fancy that we are praying. Ten words
+actually made by ourselves at the moment, and not remembered, are a
+real prayer; for it is not hypocrisy that is the most common
+danger; our temper, when we are on our knees, is apt indeed to be
+careless, but not, I hope and believe, deceitful. This, of course,
+must be well known to a very large proportion of us; but, perhaps,
+there are some to whom it may be useful; some to whom the advice
+may not yet have suggested itself, that they should make their own
+prayers, in part, at least, whenever they kneel down to their
+private devotions.</p>
+<p>And this sort of prayer, with God's blessing, is likely to make
+us watchful. We rise in the morning: we say some prayers of our
+own; we hear others read to us; and yet it is possible that we may
+not have really prayed ourselves in either case; we may not have
+brought ourselves truly into the presence of God. Hence our true
+condition, with all its dangers, has not been brought before our
+minds; the need of watchfulness has not been shown to us. But with
+real prayer of our own hearts' making it is different; God is then
+present to us, and sin and righteousness: our dream of carelessness
+is, for a moment at least, broken. No doubt it is but too easy to
+dream again; yet still an opportunity of exerting ourselves to keep
+awake is given us; we are roused to consciousness of our situation;
+and that, at any rate, renders exertion possible. There is no doubt
+that souls are most commonly lost by this continued dreaming, till
+at length, when seemingly awake (they are not so really), they are
+like men who answer to the call that would arouse them, but they
+answer, in fact, unconsciously. We cannot tell for ourselves or
+others any way by which our souls shall certainly be saved, in
+spite of carelessness; or any way by which, carelessness shall be
+overcome necessarily; all that can be done is, to point out how it
+may be overcome, by what means the soul may be helped in its
+endeavours; not how those endeavours and holy desires may be
+rendered needless.</p>
+<p>Thus, then, we may gain Christ to visit us at our own homes and
+in our common callings, when we are returned to them. And that
+difference which I spoke of as existing between us, that some of us
+are waiting for Christ's call to a higher field of action, while
+others are engaged in that sort of duty which will last their
+lives, I know not that this--though it be often important, and
+though I am often obliged to dwell on it--need enter into our
+considerations to-day. Rather, perhaps, may we overlook this
+difference, and feel that all of us here assembled--those in their
+state of earliest preparation for after duties; those to whom that
+earliest state is passed away, and who are entered into another
+state, in part preparatory, in part partaking of the character of
+actual life; and those also whose preparation, speaking of earth,
+only, is completed altogether, who must be doing, and whose time
+even of doing is far advanced--that all of us have in truth one
+great call yet before us: and that, with respect to that, we are
+all, as it were, preparing still. And for that great call, common
+to all of us, we need all the same common readiness; and that
+readiness will be effected in us only by the same means,--if now,
+before it come, Christ and Christ's Spirit shall, in our homes and
+daily callings, be persuaded to visit us.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXVI."></a>LECTURE XXVI.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>WHITSUNDAY.</center>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>ACTS xix. 2.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>Have you received the Holy Ghost since ye
+believed</i>?</center>
+<br>
+<p>It appears, by what follows these words, that the question here
+related especially to those gifts of the Holy Ghost which were
+given, in the first age of the church, as a sign of God's power,
+and a witness that the work of the gospel was from God. Yet
+although this be so, and therefore the words, in this particular
+sense, cannot to any good purpose be asked now; yet there is
+another sense, and that not a lower but a far higher one, in which
+we may ask them, and in which it concerns us in the highest degree,
+what sort of answer we can give to them, I say, "what sort of
+answer;" for I think it is true of all Christians that, in a
+certain measure, they have received the Holy Ghost. Not only does
+the doctrine of our own, and I believe every other, church,
+concerning baptism, show this: but it seems also necessarily to
+follow, from those words of St. Paul, that "No man can say that
+Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost." And yet the Scripture and
+common experience alike show us, that a man may call Jesus Lord,
+and yet not be really his, nor one who will be owned by Him at the
+last day. So that what is of real importance to us is, the degree
+of fulness and force with which we could give the answer to the
+words of the text; not simply saying that we have received the Holy
+Ghost, which would be true, but might be far from sufficient; but
+saying that we have received Him and are receiving Him more and
+more, so that our hearts and lives are showing the impression of
+his heavenly seal daily more and more clearly and completely.</p>
+<p>And this must really have always been the answer which it
+concerned every Christian to be able to make; although it has been
+in various instances, and by very opposite parties, tried to be
+evaded. It is evaded alike by those who set too highly the grace
+given in baptism, and by those who, setting this too low, direct
+our attention to another point in a man's life, which they call his
+justification or conversion. For both alike would give an
+exaggerated importance to one particular moment of our lives, and
+to the grace then given. Now, the importance of particular moments
+in men's lives differs exceedingly in different persons; but yet in
+all may be exaggerated. I suppose that if ever in any man's life a
+particular point was of immense importance, it was the point of his
+conversion in the case of St. Paul. There were here united all that
+grace which according to one view accompanies baptism especially,
+and all which according to the other view accompanies conversion
+and justification. Here was a point which separated St. Paul's
+later life from his earlier with a broader line of separation than
+can possibly be the ease in general. There can be no doubt that he,
+if ever man did, received at that particular time the Holy Ghost.
+But if, ten or twenty years afterwards, St. Paul had been asked
+concerning what the Holy Ghost had done for him, he would not
+certainly have confined himself in his answer to the grace once
+given him at his conversion and baptism, but would have spoken of
+that which he had been receiving since every hour and every day,
+carrying forward and completing that work of God which had been
+begun at the time of his journey to Damascus. And as he had
+received more and more grace, so was his confidence in his
+acceptance with God at the last day more and more assured. For he
+writes to the Corinthians, many years after his conversion and
+baptism, that he kept under his body, and was bringing it into
+subjection, lest that by any means, after having preached to
+others, he should be himself a castaway. And some years later
+still, though he does not use so strong an expression as that of
+becoming a castaway, yet he still says, even when writing to the
+Philippians from Rome, that he counted not himself to have
+apprehended, nor to have attained his object fully; but forgetting
+what was behind, even the grace of his conversion and baptism, he
+pressed on to the things which were before, even that continued and
+increasing grace which was required to bring him in safety to his
+heavenly crown. But if we go on some years yet farther, when his
+labours were ended, and the sure prospect of speedy death was
+before him; when the past grace was everything, and what he could
+expect yet to come was scarcely any other than that particular aid
+which we need in our struggle with the last enemy--death; then, his
+language is free from all uncertainty; then, in the full sense of
+the words, he could say that he had received the Holy Ghost, that
+his spirit had been fully born again for its eternal being, and
+that there only remained the raising up also of his mortal body, to
+complete that new creation of body and soul which Christ's Spirit
+works in Christ's redeemed. "I have fought the good fight, I have
+finished my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid
+up for me my crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous
+judge, will give me at that day."</p>
+<p>It seems, then, that the great question which we should be
+anxious to be able to answer in the affirmative, is this, "<i>Are
+we receiving</i> the Holy Ghost since we believed?" "Since we
+believed," whether we choose to carry back the date of our first
+belief to the very time of our baptism, when grace was given to
+us,--we know not to what degree nor how,--yet given to us, as being
+then received into Christ's flock; or whether we go back only to
+that time when we can ourselves remember ourselves to have
+believed, and so can remember that God's grace was given to us.
+Have we been ever since, and are we still, receiving the Holy
+Ghost? O blessed above all blessedness, if we can say that this is
+true of us! O blessed with a blessedness most complete, if we only
+do not too entirely abandon ourselves to enjoy it! Elect of God;
+holy and beloved; justified and sanctified; there is nothing in all
+the world that could impair or destroy such happiness, except we
+ourselves, in evil hour, believed it to be out of the reach of
+danger.</p>
+<p>But if the witness of memory and conscience be less favourable;
+if we can remember long seasons of our lives during which we were
+not receiving the Holy Ghost; long seasons of a cold and hard
+state, in which there was, as it were, neither rain nor dew, nor
+yet sun to ripen what had grown before; but all was so ungenial
+that no new thing grew; and what had grown was withering and almost
+dying; what shall be said, then, and how can the time be made up
+which was so wasted? But we remember, it may be, that this deadly
+season passed away: the rain fell once more, and the tender dew,
+and the quickening sun shone brightly: our spiritual growth began
+again, and is now going on healthily; we have not always been
+receiving the Holy Ghost since we believed, but we are receiving
+him now. How gracious, then, has God been to us, that he has again
+renewed us unto repentance; that he has shown that we have not, in
+the fullest sense, sinned against the Holy Ghost, seeing that the
+Holy Ghost still abides with us! we grieved him, and tried his
+long-suffering, but he has not abandoned us to our own evil hearts;
+we are receiving him who is the giver of life, and we still
+live.</p>
+<p>But must not we speak of others? is not another case to be
+supposed possible? may there not be some who cannot say with truth
+that they are receiving the holy Ghost now? They received him once;
+we doubt it not; perhaps they were receiving him for some length of
+time; their early childhood was watched by Christian care; their
+youth and early manhood, when it received freshly things of this
+world, received also, with lively thankfulness, the grace of God;
+they can remember a time when they were growing in goodness; when
+they were being renewed after the image of God. But they can
+remember, also, that this time passed away; the grace of early
+childhood was put out by the temptations of boyhood; the grace of
+youth and opening manhood died away amid the hardness of this
+life's maturity. It is so, I believe, often; that boyhood, which
+is, as it were, ripened childhood, destroys the grace of our
+earliest years; that again, when youth offers us a second beginning
+of life, we are again impressed with good; but that ripened youth,
+which is manhood, brings with it again the reason of hardness, and
+again our spiritual growth, is destroyed. We can remember, I am
+supposing, that this fatal change did take place; but can we date
+it to any particular act, or month, or day, or hour? We can do so
+most rarely: in this respect the seed of death can even less be
+traced to its beginning than the seed of life. And yet there
+<i>was</i> a beginning, only we do not remember it. And why do we
+not remember it? Because the real beginning was in some act which
+seemed of so little consequence that it made no impression; in the
+altering some habit which we judged to be a mere trifle; in the
+indulging some temper which even at the time we hardly noticed.
+Some such little thing,--little in our view of it,--made the fatal
+turn; we received the grace of God less and less: we heeded not the
+change for a season; and when it was so marked that we could not
+but heed it, then we had ceased to regard it; and so it was that
+the spring of our life was dried up: and it is of no more avail to
+our present and future state, that we once received grace, than the
+rain of last winter will be sufficient to ripen the summer's
+harvest, if from this time forward we have nothing but drought and
+cold.</p>
+<p>Some few, again, there may be, who, within their own
+recollection, could not say that they have received the Holy Ghost:
+persons who have lived among careless friends, to whom the way of
+life has never been steadily pointed out; while the way of death,
+with all its manifold paths, meeting at last in one, has been
+continually before them. Shall we say that these, because they have
+been baptized, are therefore guilty of having rejected grace given?
+that this sin is aggravated, because a mercy was offered them once
+of which they were unconscious? We would not say this; but we would
+say that it is impossible but that they must have received the Holy
+Ghost within their memory; it is impossible but that conscience
+must have sometimes spoken, and that they must have sometimes been
+enabled to obey it; it is impossible but that they must have had
+some notions of sin, and some desires to struggle against it; and
+so far as they ever felt that desire, it was the work of God's Holy
+Spirit. Man cannot dare to say how great the amount of their guilt
+may be; but guilt there certainly is; they have grieved the Holy
+Spirit; and, though we dare not say that they have utterly
+blasphemed him, yet they have a long hardness to overcome, and
+every hour of delayed turning to God increases it: it may be
+possible still to overcome it, but meanwhile it is not overcome;
+they are not receiving the Holy Spirit; they are not being renewed
+into the likeness of Christ, without which no man can see God.</p>
+<p>Here, then, are the four cases, one of which must belong to
+every one of us here assembled. Either we have been always and
+still are receiving the Holy Ghost; or we can remember when we were
+not, but yet are receiving him now; or we can remember when we
+were, but yet now are not; or we cannot remember to have received
+him ever, nor are we yet receiving him. I cannot say which of the
+last two states is the most dreadful, nor scarcely which of the
+first two states is the most blessed. But yet as even those happy
+states admit not of over-confidence, so neither do the last two
+most unhappy states oblige us to despair. Not to despair; but they
+do urge us to every degree of fear less than despair. There is far
+more danger of our not fearing enough than of our being driven to
+despair. There is far more danger of your looking on the season of
+youth, of our looking on to old age; you trusting to the second
+freshness and tenderness of the first,--we to the calmness and
+necessary reflection of the last. There is far more danger of our
+thus hardening ourselves beyond recall; there is not only the
+danger, but there is the sin, the greatest sin, I suppose, of which
+the human mind is capable, that of deliberately choosing evil for
+the present rather than good, calculating that, by and by, we shall
+choose good rather than evil. I believe, that it is impossible to
+conceive of any state of mind more sinful than one which should so
+feel and so choose; and this is the state which we incur, and which
+we persist in whenever we put off the thought of repentance. Now,
+then, it only remains, that we apply this each to ourselves; I say
+all of us apply it, the young and the old alike; for there is not
+one here so young as not to have cause to apply it; there is not
+one of us who would not, I am sure, be a different person from what
+he now is, if he were to ask himself steadily every day, Have I
+been and am I receiving the Holy Ghost since I believed?</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXVII."></a>LECTURE XXVII.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>TRINITY SUNDAY.</center>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>JOHN iii. 9.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>How can these things be</i>?</center>
+<br>
+<p>This is the second question put by Nicodemus to our Lord with
+regard to the truths which Jesus was declaring to him. The first
+was, "How can a man be born when he is old?" which was said upon
+our Lord's telling him that, "Except a man be born again, he cannot
+see the kingdom of God." Now, it will be observed, that these two
+questions are treated by our Lord in a different manner: to the
+first he, in fact, gives an answer; that is, he removes by his
+answer that difficulty in Nicodemus's mind which led to the
+question; but to the second he gives no answer, and leaves
+Nicodemus--and with Nicodemus, us all also--exactly in the same
+ignorance as he found him at the beginning.</p>
+<p>Now, is there any difference in the nature of these two
+questions, which led our Lord to treat them so differently? We
+might suppose beforehand that there would be; and when we come to
+examine them, so we shall find it. The difficulty in the first
+question rendered true faith impossible, and, therefore, our Lord
+removed it; the difficulty in the second question did not properly
+interfere with faith at all, but might, through man's fault, be a
+temptation to him to refuse to believe. And as this, like other
+temptations, must be overcome by us, and not taken away from our
+path before we encounter it, so our Lord did not think proper to
+remove it or to lessen it.</p>
+<p>We must now unfold this difference more clearly. When Christ
+said, "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of
+God," Nicodemus could not possibly believe what our Lord said,
+because he did not understand his meaning. He did not know what he
+meant by "a man's being born again," and, therefore, he could not
+believe, as he did not know what he was to believe. Words which we
+do not understand, are like words spoken in an unknown language; we
+can neither believe them nor disbelieve them, because we do not
+know what they say. For instance, I repeat these words, [Greek:
+tous pantas haemas phanerothaenai dei emprosaen tou baematos tou
+Christou.] Now, if I were to ask, Do you believe these words? is it
+not manifest that all of you who know Greek enough, to understand
+them may also believe them; but of those who do not know Greek, not
+a single person can yet believe them? They are as yet words spoken
+as to the air. But when I add, that these words mean, "We must all
+stand before the judgment-seat of Christ;" now we can all believe
+them because we can all understand them.</p>
+<p>It is, then, perfectly impossible for any man to believe a
+statement except in proportion as he understands its meaning. And,
+therefore, our Lord explained what he meant to Nicodemus, and told
+him that, by being born again, he did not mean the natural birth of
+the body; but a birth caused by the Spirit, and therefore itself a
+birth of a spirit: for, as that which is born from a body is itself
+also a body, so that which is born of a spirit is itself also a
+spirit. So that Christ's words now are seen to have this
+meaning,--No man can enter into the kingdom of God except God's
+Spirit creates in him a spirit or mind like unto himself, and like
+unto Christ, and like unto the Father. Nicodemus, then, could now
+understand what was meant, and might have believed it. But he asks
+rather another question, "How can these things be?" How can God's
+Spirit create within me a spirit like himself, while I continue a
+man as before? Many persons since have asked similar questions; but
+to none of them is an answer given. How God's Spirit works within
+us I cannot tell; but if we take the appointed means of procuring
+his aid, we shall surely find that he has worked and does work in
+us to life eternal.</p>
+<p>We must, then, in order to believe, understand what it is that
+is told us; but it is by no means necessary that we should
+understand how it is to happen. It is not necessary, and in a
+thousand instances we do not know. "If we take poison, we shall
+die:" there is a statement which we can understand, and therefore
+believe. But do we understand how it is that poison kills us? Does
+every one here know how poisons act upon the human frame, and what
+is the different operation of different poisons,--how laudanum
+kills, for instance, and how arsenic? Surely there are very few of
+us, at most, who do understand this: and yet would it not be
+exceedingly unreasonable to refuse to believe that poison will kill
+us, because we do not understand the manner <i>how</i>?</p>
+<p>Thus far, I think, the question is perfectly plain, so soon as
+it is once laid before us. But the real point of perplexity is to
+be found a step further. In almost all propositions there is
+something about the terms which we do understand, and something
+which we do not. For instance, let me say these few words:--"A
+frigate was lost amidst the breakers." These words would be
+understood in a certain degree, by all who hear me: and so far as
+all understand them, all can believe them. All would understand
+that a ship had sunk in the water, or been dashed to pieces; that
+it would be useful no more for the purposes for which it had been
+made. But what is meant by the words "frigate" and "breakers" all
+would not understand, and many would understand very differently:
+that is to say, those who had happened to have known most about the
+sea and sea affairs would understand most about them, while those
+who knew less would understand less; but probably none of us would
+understand their meaning so fully, or would have so distinct and
+lively an image of the things, as would be enjoyed by an actual
+seaman; and even amongst seamen themselves, there would again be
+different degrees of understanding, according to their different
+degrees of experience, or knowledge of ships, or powers of
+mind.</p>
+<p>I have taken the instance at random, and any other proposition
+might have served my purpose as well. But men do not speak to one
+another at random; when they say anything to their neighbour, they
+mean it to produce on his mind a certain effect. Suppose that we
+were living near the sea-coast, and any one were suddenly to come
+in, and to utter the words which I have taken as my example: should
+we not know that what the man meant by these words was, that there
+was a danger at hand for which our help was needed? It matters not
+that we have no distinct ideas of the terms "frigate" or
+"breakers;" we understand enough for our belief and practice, and
+we should hasten to the sea-shore accordingly. Or suppose that the
+same words were told us of a frigate in which we had some near
+relation: should we not see at once that what we were meant to
+understand and to believe in the words was, that we had lost a
+relation? That is the truth with which we are concerned; and this
+we can understand and feel, although we may be able to understand
+nothing more of the words in which that truth is conveyed to us.
+Now, in like manner, in whatever God says to us there is a purpose:
+it is intended to produce on our minds a certain impression, and so
+far it must be understood. But when God speaks to us of heavenly
+things, the terms employed can only be understood in part, and so
+far as God's purpose with regard to our minds reaches; but there
+must be a great deal in them which we can no more understand than
+one who had never seen a ship, or a picture of one, could
+understand the word "frigate." Our business is to consider what
+impression or what actions the words are intended to produce in us.
+Up to this point we can and must understand them: beyond this they
+may be wholly above the reach of our faculties, and we can form of
+them no ideas at all.</p>
+<p>It is clear that this will be the case most especially whenever
+God reveals to us anything concerning himself. Take these few
+words, for example, "God is a spirit;" take them as a mere abstract
+truth, and how little can we understand about them! Who will dare
+to say that he understands all that is contained in the words "God"
+and "spirit?" We might weary ourselves for ever in attempting so to
+search out either. But God said these words to us: and the point
+is, What impression did he mean them to have upon us? how far can
+we understand them? This he has not by any means left doubtful, for
+it follows immediately, "They who worship him should worship Him in
+spirit and in truth." For this end the words were spoken, and thus
+far they are clear to us. God lives not on Mount Gerizim or at
+Jerusalem: but in every place he hears the prayers of the sincere
+and contrite heart, in no place will he regard the offerings of the
+proud and evil.</p>
+<p>Or again, "God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten
+Son, to the end that all who believe in him should not perish, but
+have eternal life." Here are words in themselves, as abstract
+truths, perfectly overwhelming; "God," "God's only-begotten Son,"
+"Eternity." Who shall understand these things, when it is said,
+that "none knoweth the Son, save the Father; that none knoweth the
+Father, save the Son?" But did God tell us the words for nothing?
+can we understand nothing from them? believe nothing? feel nothing?
+Nay, they were spoken that we might both understand, and believe,
+and feel. How must He love us, who gives for us his only-begotten
+Son! how surely may we believe in Him who is an only-begotten Son
+to his Father,--so equal in nature, so entire in union!--What must
+that happiness be, which reaches beyond our powers of counting!
+Would we go further?--then the veil is drawn before us; other
+truths there are, no doubt, contained in the words; truths which
+the angels might desire to look into; truths which even they may be
+unable to understand. But these are the secret things which belong
+unto our God; the things which are revealed they are what belong to
+us and to our children, that we may understand, and believe, and do
+them.</p>
+<p>Again, "the Comforter, whom Christ will send unto us from the
+Father, even the Spirit of Truth, which proceedeth from the Father,
+he shall testify of Christ." What words are here! "The Spirit of
+Truth," "the Spirit proceeding from the Father;" the Spirit "whom
+Christ will send," and "send from the Father." Can any created
+being understand, to the full, such "heavenly things" as these? But
+would Christ have uttered to his disciples mere unintelligible
+words, which could tell them nothing, and excite in them no feeling
+but mere wonder? Not so; but the words told them that Christ was
+not to be lost to them after he had left them on earth; that every
+gift of God was his: that even that Spirit of God, in which is
+contained all the fulness of the Godhead, is the Spirit of Christ
+also; that that mighty power which should work in them so
+abundantly, was of no other or lower origin than God himself; as
+entirely God, as the spirit of man is man. But can we therefore
+understand the Spirit of God, or conceive of him? How should we,
+when we cannot understand our own? This, and this only, we
+understand and believe, that without him our spirits cannot be
+quickened; that unless we pray daily for his aid, and listen to his
+calls within us, our spirit will never be created after his image,
+and we cannot enter into the kingdom of God.</p>
+<p>It is thus, and thus only, that the revelations of God's word
+are beyond our understandings: that in them, beings and things are
+spoken of, which, taken generally, and in themselves, we should in
+vain endeavour to comprehend. But what God means us to know, or
+feel, or do, respecting them, that we can understand; and beyond
+this we have no concern. It is, in fact, a contradiction to speak
+of revealing what is unintelligible; for so far as it is a revealed
+truth it is intelligible; so far as it is unintelligible, it is not
+revealed. But though a thing revealed must be intelligible in
+itself, yet it by no means follows that we can understand
+<i>how</i> it happens. When we are told that the dead shall rise
+again, we can understand quite well what is meant; that we beings
+who feel happiness and misery, shall feel them again, either the
+one or the other, after we seemingly have done with them for ever
+in the grave. But "How are the dead raised up, and with what body
+do they come?" are questions to which, whether asked scoffingly or
+sincerely, we can give no answers; here our understanding fails,
+and here the truth is not revealed to us.</p>
+<p>How, then, has Christianity no mysteries? In one sense, blessed
+be God for it, it has many. Using mysteries in St. Paul's sense of
+great revelations of things which were and must be unknown to all,
+except God had revealed them: then, indeed, they are many; the
+pillar and ground of truth, great without controversy, and full of
+salvation. But take mysteries in our more common sense of the
+word,--as things which are revealed to none, and can be understood
+by none,--then it is true that Christianity leaves many such in
+existence; that many such she has done away; that none has she
+created. She leaves many mysteries with respect to God, and with
+respect to ourselves; God is still incomprehensible; life and death
+have many things in them beyond our questioning; we may still look
+around us, above us, and within us, and wonder, and be ignorant.
+But if she still leaves the veil drawn over much in heaven and in
+earth, yet from how much has she removed it! Life and death are
+still in many respects dark; but she has brought to light
+immortality. God is still in himself incomprehensible; but all his
+glory, and all his perfections, are revealed to us in his
+only-begotten Son Christ Jesus. God's Spirit who can search out in
+his own proper essence? yet Christianity has taught us how we may
+have him to dwell with us for ever, and taste the fulness of his
+blessings. Yea, thanks be to God for the great Christian mystery
+which we this day celebrate; that he has revealed himself to us as
+our Saviour and our Comforter; that he has revealed to us his
+infinite love, in that he has given us his only-begotten Son to die
+for us, and his own Eternal Spirit to make our hearts his
+temple.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXVIII."></a>LECTURE XXVIII.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>EXODUS iii. 6.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon
+God</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<center>LUKE xxiii. 30.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>Then shall they begin to say to the mountains.<br>
+Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>These two passages occur, the one in the first lesson of this
+morning's service, the other in the second. One or other of them
+must have been, or must be, the case of you, of me, of every soul
+of man that lives or has lived since the world began. There must be
+a time in the existence of every human being when he will fear God.
+But the great, the infinite difference is, whether we fear him at
+the beginning of our relations to him, or at the end.</p>
+<p>The fear of Moses was felt at the beginning of his knowledge of
+God. When God revealed himself to him at the bush, it was, so far
+as we are told, the first time that Moses learnt to know him. The
+fear of those who say to the mountains, "Fall on us," is felt at
+the very end of their knowledge of God; for to those who are
+punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the
+Lord, God is not. So that the two cases in the text are exact
+instances of the difference of which I spoke, in the most extreme
+degree. Moses, the greatest of the prophets, fears God at first;
+those who are cast into hell, fear him at last.</p>
+<p>The appearance of God, as described in this passage of
+Scripture, is an image also of his dealings with us at the
+beginning of our course, when we fear him with a saving fear. "The
+bush burned with fire, but the bush was not consumed." God shows
+his terrors, but he does not, as yet, destroy with them. It is the
+very opposite to this at last, for then he is expressly said to be
+a consuming fire.</p>
+<p>Moses turned aside to see this great sight, why the bush was not
+burnt. That sight is the very same which the world has been
+offering for so many hundreds of years: God's terrors are around
+it, but, as yet, it is not consumed, because he wills that we
+should fear him before it is too late.</p>
+<p>There is, indeed, this great difference;--that the signs of
+God's presence do not now force themselves upon our eyes; so that
+we may, if we choose, walk on our own way, without turning aside to
+see and observe them. And thus we do not see God, and do not,
+therefore, hide our faces for fear of him, but go on, and feel no
+fear, till the time when we cannot help seeing him. And it may be,
+that this time will never come till our life, and with it our space
+of trial, is gone for ever.</p>
+<p>Here, then, is our state, that God will manifest himself no more
+to us in such a way as that we cannot help seeing him. The burning
+bush will be no more given us as a sign; Christ will no more
+manifest himself unto the world. And yet, unless we do see him,
+unless we learn to fear him while he is yet an unconsuming fire,
+unless we know that he is near, and that the place whereon we stand
+is holy ground, we shall most certainly see him when he will be a
+consuming fire, and when we shall join in crying to the mountains,
+to fall on us, and to the hills, to cover us.</p>
+<p>Every person who thinks at all, must, I am sure, be satisfied,
+that our great want, the great need of our condition, is this one
+thing--to realize to ourselves the presence of God. It is a want
+not at all peculiar to the young. Thoughtfulness, in one sense, is
+indeed likely to come with advancing years: we are more apt to
+think at forty than at fifteen; but it by no means follows that we
+are more apt to think about God. In this matter we are nearly at a
+level at all times of our life: it is with all of us our one great
+want, to bring the idea of God, with a living and abiding power,
+home to our minds.</p>
+<p>This is illustrated by a wish ascribed to a great and good
+man--Johnson, and which has been noticed with a sneer by
+unbelievers, a wish that he might see a spirit from the other
+world, to testify to him of the truth of the resurrection. This has
+been sneered at, as if it were a confession of the unsatisfactory
+nature of the evidence which we actually possess: but, in truth, it
+is a confession only of the weakness which clings to us all, that
+things unseen, which our reason only assures us to be real, are
+continually overpowered by things affecting our senses; and,
+therefore, it was a natural wish that sight might, in a manner,
+come to the aid of reason; that the eye might see, and the ear
+might hear, a form and words which belonged to another world. And
+this wish might arise (I do not say wisely, or that his deliberate
+judgment would sanction it, but it might arise) in the breast of a
+good man, and one who would be willing to lay down his life in
+proof of his belief in Christ's promises. It might arise, not
+because he felt any doubt, when his mind turned calmly to the
+subject; not because he was hesitating what should be the main
+principle of his life; but because his experience had told him,
+that there are many times in the life of man when the mind does not
+fully exert itself; when habit and impressions rule us, in a
+manner, in its stead. And when so many of our impressions must be
+earthly, and as our impressions colour our habits, is it not
+natural (I do not say wise, but is it not natural) to desire some
+one forcible unearthly impression, which might, on the other side,
+colour our habits, and so influence us at those times when the
+mind, almost by the necessity of our condition, cannot directly
+interpose its own deliberate decision as our authority?</p>
+<p>No doubt the wish to which I have been alluding is not one which
+our reason would sanction; but it expresses in a very lively and
+striking manner a want which is most true and real, although it
+proposes an impossible remedy. But the question cannot but occur to
+us, Can it be that our heavenly Father, who knows whereof we are
+made, should have intended us to live wholly by faith in this
+world? That is, Can it have been his will that all visible signs of
+himself should be withdrawn from us; and that we should be left
+only with the record and the evidence of his mighty works done in
+our behalf in past times; and with that other evidence of his
+wisdom and power which is afforded by the wonders of his
+creation?</p>
+<p>We look into the Scriptures and we learn that such was not his
+will. We were to live by faith, indeed, with, respect to the unseen
+world, there the sign given was to be for ever only the sign of
+Christ's resurrection. But yet it was not designed that the
+evidence of Christ's having redeemed us should be sought for only
+in the records of the past; he purposed that there should be a
+living record, a record that might speak to our senses as well as
+to our reason; that should continually present us with impressions
+of the reality of Christ's salvation; and so might work upon the
+habits of our life, as insensibly as the air we breathe. This
+living witness, which should last till Christ came again, was to be
+no other than his own body instinct with his own Spirit--his
+people, the temple of the Holy Ghost, his holy universal
+Church.</p>
+<p>If we consider for a moment, this would entirely meet the want
+of which I have been speaking. It is possible, certainly, to look
+upon the face of nature without being reminded of God; yet it is
+surely true, that in the outward creation, in the order of the
+seasons, the laws of the heavenly bodies, the wonderful wisdom and
+goodness displayed in the constitution of every living thing in its
+order, there is a tendency at least to impress us with, the thought
+of God, if nothing else obstructed it. But there is a constant
+obstruction in the state of man. Looking at men, hearing them,
+considering them, it is not only possible not to be reminded of
+God; but their very tendency is to exclude him from our minds,
+because the moral workmanship which is so predominant in them has
+assuredly not had God for its author. We all in our dealings with
+one another, lead each other away from God. We present to each
+other's view what seems to be a complete world of our own, in which
+God is not. We see a beginning, a middle, and an end; we see
+faculties for acquiring knowledge, and for receiving enjoyment; and
+earth furnishes knowledge to the one and enjoyment to the other. We
+see desires, and we see the objects to which they are limited; we
+see that death removes men from all these objects, and consistently
+with this, we observe, that death is generally regarded as the
+greatest of all evils. Man's witness, then, as far as it goes, is
+against the reality of God and of eternity. His life, his language,
+his desires, his understanding appear, when we look over the world,
+to refer to no being higher than himself, to no other state of
+things than that of which sight testifies.</p>
+<p>Now, Christ's Church, the living temple of the Holy Ghost, puts
+in the place of this natural and corrupt man, whose witness is
+against God, another sort of man, redeemed and regenerate, whose
+whole being breathes a perpetual witness of God. Consider, again,
+what we should see in such a Church. We should see a beginning, a
+middle, but the end is not yet visible; we should see, besides the
+faculties for knowledge and enjoyment which were receiving their
+gratification daily, other faculties of both kinds, whose
+gratification was as yet withheld; we should see desires not
+limited to any object now visible or attainable. We should see
+death looked to as the gate by which these hitherto unobtained
+objects were to be sought for; and we should hear it spoken of, not
+as the greatest of evils, but as an event solemn, indeed, and
+painful to nature, but full of blessing and of happiness. We should
+see love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
+meekness, temperance; a constitution of nature as manifestly
+proclaiming its author to be the God of all holiness and
+loving-kindness, as the wonderful structure of our eyes or hands
+declares them to be the work of the God of all wisdom and power. We
+should thus see in all our fellow-men, not only as much, but far
+more than in the constitution of the lower animals, or of the
+plants, or of the heavenly bodies, a witness of God and of
+eternity. Their whole lives would be a witness; their whole
+conversation would be a witness; their outward and more peculiar
+acts of worship would then bear their part in harmony with all the
+rest. Every day would the voices of the Church be heard in its
+services of prayer and thanksgiving; every day would its members
+renew their pledges of faithfulness to Christ, and to one another,
+upon partaking together the memorials of his sacrifice.</p>
+<p>What could we desire more than such a living witness as this?
+What sign in the sky, what momentary appearance of a spirit from
+the unseen world, could so impress us with the reality of God, as
+this daily worshipping in his living temple; this daily sight, of
+more than the Shechinah of old, even of his most Holy Spirit,
+diffusing on every side light and blessing? And what is now become
+of this witness? can names, and forms, and ordinances, supply its
+place? can our unfrequent worship, our most seldom communion,
+impress on us an image of men living altogether in the presence of
+God, and in communion with Christ? But before we dwell on this, we
+may, while considering the design of the true Church of Christ,
+well understand how such excellent things should be spoken of it,
+and how it should have been introduced into the Creed itself,
+following immediately after the mention of the Holy Ghost. That
+holy universal Church was to be the abiding witness of Christ's
+love and of Christ's promises; not in its outward forms only, for
+they by themselves are not a living witness; they cannot meet our
+want--to have God and heavenly things made real to us; but in its
+whole spirit, by which renewed man was to bear as visibly the image
+of God, as corrupted man had lost it. This was the sure sign that
+Christ had appointed to abide until his coming again; this sign, as
+striking as the burning bush, would compel us to observe; would
+make us sure that the place whereon we stand is holy ground.</p>
+<p>Then follows the question: With this sign lost in its most
+essential points, how can we supply its place? and how can we best
+avail ourselves of those parts of it which still remain? and how
+can we each endeavour to build up a partial and most imperfect
+imitation of it, which may yet, in some sort, serve to supply our
+great want, and remind us daily of God? This opens a wide field for
+thought, to those who are willing to follow it; but much of it
+belongs to other occasions rather than this: the practical part of
+it,--the means of most imperfectly supplying the want of God's own
+appointed sign, a true and living universal Church, shall be the
+subject of my next Lecture.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXIX."></a>LECTURE XXIX.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>PSALM cxxxvii. 4.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange
+land</i>?</center>
+<br>
+<p>This was said by the exiles of Jerusalem, when they were in the
+land of their captivity in Babylon. There is no reason to suppose
+that their condition was one of bondage, as it had been in Egypt:
+the nations removed by conquest, under the Persian kings, from
+their own country to another land, were no otherwise ill-treated;
+they had new homes given them in which they lived unmolested; only
+they were torn away from their own land, and were as sojourners in
+a land of strangers. But the peculiar evil of this state was, that
+they were torn away from the proper seat of their worship. The Jew
+in Babylon might have his own home, and his own land to cultivate,
+as he had in Jud&aelig;a; but nothing could replace to him the loss
+of the temple at Jerusalem: there alone could the morning and
+evening sacrifices be offered; there alone could the sin-offering
+for the people be duly made. Banished from the temple, therefore,
+he was deprived also of the most solemn part of his religion; he
+was, as it were, exiled from God; and the worship of God, as it was
+now left to him,--that is, the offering up of prayers and
+praises,--was almost painful to him, as it reminded him so forcibly
+of his changed condition.</p>
+<p>Such also, in some respects, was to be the state of the
+Christian Church after our Lord's ascension. The only acceptable
+sacrifice was now that of their great High Priest interceding for
+them in the presence of the Father: heaven was their temple, and
+they were far removed from it upon earth: they, too, like the Jews
+in Babylon, were a little society by themselves living in the midst
+of strangers. "Our citizenship," says St. Paul to the Philippians,
+"is in heaven:" here they were not citizens, but sojourners. Why,
+then, should not the early Christians have joined altogether in the
+feeling of the Jews at Babylon? why should not they, too, have felt
+and said, "How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?"</p>
+<p>The answer is contained in what I said last Sunday; because
+Christ had not left them comfortless or forsaken, but was come
+again to them by his Holy Spirit; because God was dwelling in the
+midst of them; because they were not exiles from the temple of God,
+but were themselves become God's temple; because through the virtue
+of the one offering for sin once made, but for ever presented
+before God by their High Priest in heaven, they, in God's temple on
+earth, were presenting also their daily and acceptable sacrifice,
+the sacrifice of themselves; because also, though as yet they were
+a small society in a land of strangers, yet the stone formed
+without hands was to become a mighty mountain, and cover the whole
+earth: what was now the land of strangers was to become theirs; the
+whole earth should be full of the knowledge of the Lord; the
+kingdoms of the world were to become his kingdom; and thus earth,
+redeemed from the curse of sin, was again to be so blessed that
+God's servants living upon it should find it no place of exile.</p>
+<p>But if this, in its reality, does not now exist; if, although
+God's temple be on earth, the appointed sacrifice in it is not
+offered, the living sacrifice of ourselves; if the society has, by
+spreading, become weak, and the kingdoms of the earth are Christ's
+kingdoms in name alone; are we, then, come back once more to the
+condition of the Jews in Babylon? are we exiles from God, living
+amongst strangers? and must we, too, say, with the prophet, "How
+can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?"</p>
+<p>This was the question which I proposed to answer: What can we do
+to make our condition unlike that of exiles from God: to restore
+that true sign of his presence amongst us, the living fire of his
+Holy Spirit pervading every part of his temple? I mean, what can we
+do as individuals? for the question in any other sense is not to be
+asked or answered here. But we, each of us, must have felt, at some
+time or other, our distance from God. Put the idea in what form or
+what words we will, we must--every one of us who has ever thought
+seriously at all--we must regret that there is not a stronger and
+more abiding influence over us, to keep us from evil, and to turn
+us to good.</p>
+<p>Now, the vestiges of Christ's church left among us are chiefly
+these: our prayers together, whether in our families or in this
+place; our reading of the Scriptures together; our communion, rare
+as it is, in the memorials of the body and blood of Christ our
+Saviour. These are the vestiges of that which was designed to be
+with us always, and in every part of our lives, the holy temple of
+God, his living church; but which now presents itself to us only at
+particular times, and places, and actions; in our worship and in
+our joint reading of the Scriptures, and in our communion.</p>
+<p>It will be understood at once why I have not spoken here of
+prayer and reading the Scriptures by ourselves alone. Most
+necessary as these are to us, yet they do not belong to the helps
+ministered to us by the church; they belong to us each as
+individuals, and in these respects we must be in the same state
+everywhere: these were enjoyed by the Jews even in their exile in
+Babylon. But the church acts upon us through one another, and
+therefore the vestiges of the church can only be sought for in what
+we do, not alone, but together. I, therefore, noticed only that
+prayer, and that reading of the Scriptures, in which many of us
+took part in common.</p>
+<p>Such common prayer takes place amongst us every morning and
+evening, as well as on Sundays within these walls. Whenever we meet
+on those occasions, we meet as Christ's church. Now, conceive how
+the effect of such meeting depends on the conduct of each of us. It
+is not necessary to notice behaviour openly profane and disorderly:
+this does not occur amongst us. We see, however, that if it did
+occur in any meeting for the purposes of religious worship, such a
+meeting would do us harm rather than good: its witness to us would
+not be in favour of God, but against him. But take another case:
+when we are assembled for prayers, suppose our behaviour, without
+being disorderly, was yet so manifestly indifferent as to be really
+indecent; that is, suppose every countenance showed such manifest
+signs of weariness, and impatience, and want of interest in what
+was going forward, that it was evident there was no general
+sympathy with any feeling of devotion. Would not the effect here
+also be injurious? would not such a meeting also shock and check
+our approaches towards God? would it not rather convince us that
+God was really far distant from us, instead of showing that he was
+in the midst of us?</p>
+<p>Ascend one step higher. Our behaviour is neither disorderly, nor
+manifestly indifferent: it is decent, serious, respectful. What is
+the effect in this case? Not absolutely unfavourable certainly; but
+yet far from being much help towards good. We bear our witness that
+we are engaged in a matter that should be treated with reverence:
+this is very right; but do we more than this? Do we show that we
+are engaged in a matter that commands our interest also, as well as
+our respect? If not, our witness is not the witness of Christ's
+church: it does not go to declare that God is in us of a truth.</p>
+<p>Let us go on one step more. We meet together to pray: we are
+orderly, we are quiet, we are serious; but the countenance shows
+that we are something more than these. There is on it the
+expression, never to be mistaken, of real interest. Remember I am
+speaking of meetings for prayer, where the words are perfectly
+familiar to us, and where the interest therefore cannot be the mere
+interest of novelty. Say, then, that our countenances express
+interest: I do not mean strong and excited feeling; but interest,
+which may be very real yet very quiet also. We look as if we
+thought of what we were engaged in, of what we are ourselves, and
+of what God is to us. We are joined in one common feeling of
+thankfulness to him for mercies past, of wishing for his help and
+love for the time to come. Now, think what would be the effect of
+such a meeting. Would it not be, clearly, positively good! Would
+not every individual's earnestness be confirmed by the manifest
+earnestness of others? Would not his own sense of God's reality be
+rendered stronger, by seeing that others felt it just as he did?
+Then, here would be the church of God rendering her appointed
+witness: she would be giving her sure sign that God is not far from
+any one of us.</p>
+<p>Now, then, observe what we may lose or gain by our different
+behaviour, whenever we meet together in prayer; what we lose, nay,
+what positive mischief we do, by any visible impatience or
+indifference; what we should gain by really joining in our hearts
+in the meaning of what was uttered. It is a solemn thing for the
+consciences of us all; but surely it must be true, that, whenever
+we are careless or indifferent in our public prayers, we are
+actually injuring our neighbours, and are, so far as in us lies,
+destroying the witness which the church of Christ should render to
+the truth of God her Saviour.</p>
+<p>I do not know that there is anything more impressive than the
+sight of a congregation evidently in earnest in the service in
+which they are engaged. We then feel how different is our own
+lonely prayer from the united voice of many hearts; each cheering,
+strengthening, enkindling the other. We then consider one another
+to provoke unto love and good works. How different are the feelings
+with which we regard a number of persons met for any common
+purpose, and the same persons engaged together in serious prayer or
+praise! Then Christ seems to appear to us in each of them; we are
+all one in him. How little do all earthly unkindnesses, dislikes,
+prejudices, become in our eyes, when the real bond of our common
+faith is discerned clearly! There is indeed neither Greek nor Jew,
+circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor
+free, but Christ is all, and in all. And to look at our brethren,
+once or twice in every day, with these Christian eyes, would it not
+also, by degrees, impress us at other times, and begin to form
+something of our habitual temper and regard towards them?</p>
+<p>Thus much of our meetings for prayer. One word only on those in
+which we meet to read the Scriptures. Here I know, that difference
+of age, and our peculiar relations to each other, make us very apt
+to lose the religious character of our readings of the Scriptures,
+and to regard them merely as lessons. No doubt, the object here is
+instruction; it is not so much in itself a religious exercise, as a
+means to enable you to perform religious exercises with
+understanding and sincerity. Still there is a peculiar character
+attached even to lessons, when they are taken out of the
+Scriptures: and the duty of attention and interest in the work
+becomes even stronger than under other circumstances. But with
+those of a more advanced age, I think there is more than this; I
+think it must be our own fault, if, whilst engaged together in
+reading the Scriptures, which we only read because we are
+Christians, we do not feel that there also we are employed on a
+duty belonging to the Church of Christ.</p>
+<p>Lastly, there is our joint communion in the bread, and in the
+cup, of the Lord's Supper. Here there is seriousness; here there is
+always, I trust and believe, something of real interest; and,
+therefore, we never, I think, meet together at the Lord's table,
+without feeling a true effect of Christ's gifts to and in his
+Church; we are strengthened and brought nearer to one another, and
+to him. But this most precious pledge of Christ's Church we too
+often forfeit for ourselves. That we have lost so much of the help
+which the Church was designed to give, is not our fault
+individually; but it is our fault that we neglect this means of
+strength, so great in bearing witness to Christ, and in kindling
+love towards one another. What can be said of us, if, with so many
+helps lost, we throw away that which still remains? if, of the
+great treasure which the Church yet keeps, we are wilfully
+ignorant? How much good might we do, both to ourselves and to each
+other, by joining in that communion! How surely should we be
+strengthened in all that is good, and have a help from each other,
+through his Spirit working in us all, to struggle against our
+evil!</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXX"></a>LECTURE XXX.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>1 CORINTHIANS xi. 26.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye
+do show the Lord's death till he come</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>When I spoke last Sunday of the benefits yet to be derived from
+Christ's Church, I spoke of them, as being, for the most part,
+three in number--our communion in prayer, our communion in reading
+the Scriptures, and our communion in the Lord's Supper; and, after
+having spoken of the first two of these, I proposed to leave the
+third for our consideration to-day.</p>
+<p>The words of the text are enough to show how closely this
+subject is connected with that event which we celebrate
+to-day<a name="FNanchor13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13">[13]</a>: "As
+often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the
+Lord's death till he come." The communion, then, with one another
+in the Lord's Supper is doing that which this day was also designed
+to do; it is showing forth, or declaring the Lord's death; it is
+declaring, in the face of all the world, that we partake of the
+Lord's Supper because we believe that Christ our Passover was
+sacrificed for us.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_13"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor13">[13]</a> Good Friday.</blockquote>
+<p>God might, no doubt, if it had so pleased him, have made all
+spiritual blessing come to us immediately from himself. Without
+ascending any higher with the idea, it is plain that Christianity
+might have been made a thing wholly between each individual man and
+Christ; all our worship might have been the secret worship of our
+own hearts; and in eating the bread, and drinking the cup, to show
+forth the Lord's death, each one of us might have done this singly,
+holding communion with Christ alone. I mean, that it is quite
+conceivable that we should have had Christianity, and a great
+number of Christians spread all over the world, but yet no
+Christian Church. But, although this is conceivable, and, in fact,
+is practically the case in some particular instances where
+individual Christians happen to be quite cut off from all other
+Christians,--as has been known sometimes in foreign and remote
+countries; and although, through various evil causes, it has
+become, in many respects, too much the case with us all; for our
+religion is with all of us, I am inclined to think, too much a
+matter between God and ourselves alone; yet still it is not the
+design of Christ that it should be so: his people were not only to
+be good men, redeemed from sin and death and brought to know and
+love the truth, in which relation Christianity would appear like a
+divine philosophy only, working not only upon individuals, but
+through their individual minds, and as individuals; but they were
+to be the Christian Church, helping one another in things
+pertaining to God, and making their mutual brotherhood to one
+another an essential part of what are called peculiarly their acts
+of religion. So that the Church of England seems to have well borne
+in mind this character of Christianity, namely, that it presents us
+not each, but all together, before God; and therefore it is ordered
+that even in very small parishes, where "there are not more than
+twenty persons in the parish of discretion to receive the
+communion, yet there shall be no communion, except four, or three
+at the least, out of these twenty communicate together with the
+priest." Nay, even in the Communion of the Sick, under
+circumstances which seem to make religion particularly an
+individual matter between Christ and our own single selves; when
+the expected approach of death seems to separate, in the most
+marked manner, according to human judgment, him who is going hence
+from his brethren still in the world; even then it is ordered that
+two other persons, at the least, shall communicate along with the
+sick man and the minister. Nor is this ever relaxed except in times
+of pestilence; when it is provided, that if no other person can be
+persuaded to join from their fear of infection, then, and then only
+upon special request of the diseased, the minister may alone
+communicate with them. So faithfully does our Church adhere to this
+true Christian notion, that at the Lord's Supper we are not to
+communicate with Christ alone, but with him in and together with
+our brethren; so that I was justified in regarding the Holy
+Communion as one of those helps and blessings which we still derive
+from the Christian Church--from Christ's mystical body.</p>
+<p>It is the natural process of all false and corrupt religions, on
+the contrary, to destroy this notion of Christ's Church, and to
+lead away our thoughts from our brethren in matters of religion,
+and to fix them merely upon God as known to us through a priest.
+The great evil in this is, (if there is any one evil greater than
+another in a system so wholly made up of falsehood, and so leading
+to all wickedness; but, at any rate, one great evil of it is,) that
+whereas the greatest part of all our lives is engaged in our
+relations towards our brethren, that there lie most of our
+temptations to evil, as well as of our opportunities of good, if
+our brethren do not form an essential part of our religions views,
+it follows, and always has followed, that our behaviour and
+feelings towards them are guided by views and principles not
+religious; and that by this fatal separation of what God has joined
+together, our worship and religious services become superstitious,
+while our life and actions become worldly, in the bad sense of the
+term, low principled, and profane.</p>
+<p>If this is not so clear when put into a general form, it will be
+plain enough when I show it in that particular example which we are
+concerned with here. Nowhere, I believe, is the temptation stronger
+to lose sight of one another in our religious exercises, and
+especially in our Communion. Our serious thoughts in turning to
+God, turn away almost instinctively from our companions about us.
+Practically, as far as the heart is concerned, we are a great deal
+too apt to go to the Lord's table each alone. But consider how much
+we lose by this. We are necessarily in constant relations with one
+another; some of those relations are formal, others are trivial; we
+connect each other every day with a great many thoughts, I do not
+say of unkindness, but yet of that indifferent character which is
+no hindrance to any unkindness when the temptation to it happens to
+arise. This must always be the case in life; business,
+neighbourhood, pleasure,--the occasions of most of our intercourse
+with one another,--have in them nothing solemn or softening: they
+have in themselves but little tendency to lead us to the love of
+one another. Now, if this be so in the world, it is even more so
+here; your intercourse with one another is much closer and more
+constant than what can exist in after life with any but the members
+of your own family; and yet the various relations which this
+intercourse has to do with, are even less serious and less
+softening than those of ordinary life in manhood. The kindliness of
+feeling which is awakened in after years between two men, by the
+remembrance of having been at school together, even without any
+particular acquaintance with each other, is a very different thing
+from the feeling of being at school with each other now. I do not
+wonder, then, that any one of you, when he resolves to come to the
+Holy Communion, should rather try to turn away his thoughts from
+his companions, and to think of himself alone as being concerned in
+what he is going to do. I do not wonder at it; but, then, neither
+do I wonder that, when the Communion is over, and thoughts of his
+companions must return, they receive little or no colour from his
+religious act so lately performed; that they are as indifferent as
+they were before, as little furnishing a security against neglect,
+or positive unkindness, or encouragement of others to evil. Depend
+upon it, unless your common life is made a part of your religion,
+your religion will never sanctify your common life.</p>
+<p>Now consider, on the one hand, what might be the effect of going
+to the Holy Communion with a direct feeling that, in that
+Communion, we, though many, were all brought together in Christ
+Jesus. And first, I will speak of our thoughts of those who are
+partakers of the Communion with us, then of those who are not. When
+others are gone out, and we who are to communicate are left alone
+with each other, then, if we perceive that there are many of us,
+the first natural feeling is one of joy, that we are so many; that
+our party,--that only true and good party to which we may belong
+with all our hearts,--that our party,--that Christ's party, seems
+so considerable. Then there comes the thought, that we are all met
+together freely, willingly, not as a matter of form, to receive the
+pledges of Christ's love to us, to pledge ourselves to him in
+return. If we are serious, those around us may be supposed to be
+serious too; if we wish to have help from God to lead a holier
+life, they surely wish the same; if the thought of past sin is
+humbling us, the same shame is working in our brethren's bosoms; if
+we are secretly resolving, by God's grace, to serve him in earnest,
+the hearts around us are, no doubt, resolving the same. There is
+the consciousness, (when and where else can we enjoy it?) that we
+are in sympathy with all present; that, coloured merely by the
+lesser distinctions of individual character, one and the same
+current of feeling is working within us all. And, if feeling this
+of our sympathy with one another, how strongly is it heightened by
+the thought of what Christ has done for us all! We are all loving
+him, because he loved us all; we are going together to celebrate
+his death, because he died for us all; we are resolving all to
+serve him, because his Holy Spirit is given to us all, and we are
+all brought to drink of the same Spirit. Then let us boldly carry
+our thoughts a little forward to that time, only a short hour
+hence, when we shall again be meeting one another, in very
+different relations; even in those common indifferent relations of
+ordinary life which are connected so little with Christ. Is it
+impossible to think, that, although we shall meet without these
+walls in very different circumstances, yet that we have seen each
+other pledging ourselves to serve Christ together? if the
+recollection of this lives in us, why should it not live in our
+neighbour? If we are labouring to keep alive our good resolutions
+made at Christ's table, why should we think that others have
+forgotten them? We do not talk of them openly, yet still they exist
+within us. May not our neighbour's silence also conceal within his
+breast the same good purposes? At any rate, we may and ought to
+regard him as ranged on our side in the great struggle of life; and
+if outward circumstances do not so bring us together as to allow of
+our openly declaring our sympathy, yet we may presume that it still
+exists; and this consciousness may communicate to the ordinary
+relations of life that very softness which they need, in order to
+make them Christian.</p>
+<p>Again, with regard to those who go out, and do not approach to
+the Lord's table. With some it is owing to their youth; with others
+to a mistaken notion of their youth; with others to some less
+excusable reason, perhaps, but yet to such as cannot yet exclude
+kindness and hope. But having once felt what it is to be only with
+those who are met really as Christians, our sense of what it is to
+want this feeling is proportionably raised. Is it sad to us to
+think that our neighbour does not look upon us as fellow
+Christians? is it something cold to feel that he regards us only in
+those common worldly relations which leave men in heart so far
+asunder? Then let us take heed that we do not ourselves feel so
+towards him. We have learnt to judge more truly, to feel more
+justly, of our relations to every one who bears Christ's name: if
+we forget this, we have no excuse; for we have been at Christ's
+table, and have been taught what Christians are to one another. And
+let our neighbour be ever so careless, yet we know that Christ
+cares for him; that his Spirit has not yet forsaken him, but is
+still striving with him. And if God vouchsafes so much to him, how
+can we look upon him as though he were no way connected with us?
+how can we be as careless of his welfare, as apt either to annoy
+him, or to lead him into evil, or to take no pains to rescue him
+from it, as if he were no more to us than the accidental inhabitant
+of the same place, who was going on his way as we may be on ours,
+neither having any concern with the other?</p>
+<p>And, now, is it nothing to learn so to feel towards those around
+us; to have thus gained what will add kindness and interest to all
+our relations with others; and, in the case of many, will give an
+abiding sense of the truest sympathy, and consequently greater
+confidence and encouragement to ourselves? Be sure that this is not
+to profane the Lord's Supper, but to use it according to Christ's
+own ordinance. For though the thoughts of which I have been
+speaking, have, in one sense, man and not God for their object, yet
+as they do not begin in man but in Christ, and in his love to us
+all, so neither do they, properly speaking, rest in man as such,
+but convert him, as it were, into an image of Christ: so that their
+end, as well as their beginning, is with Him. I do earnestly desire
+that you would come to Christ's table, in order to learn a
+Christian's feelings towards one another. This is what you want
+every day; and the absence of which leads to more and worse faults
+than, perhaps, any other single cause. But, then, this Christian
+feeling towards one another, how is it to be gained but by a
+Christian feeling towards Christ? and where are we to learn
+brotherly love in all our common dealings, but from a grateful
+thought of that Divine love towards us all which is shown forth in
+the sacrament of the Lord's Supper; inasmuch as, so often as we eat
+that bread and drink that cup, we do show the Lord's death till He
+come.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXXI."></a>LECTURE XXXI.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>LUKE i. 3, 4.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>It seemed good to me also, having had perfect
+understanding of<br>
+all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order,
+most<br>
+excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of<br>
+those things wherein thou hast been instructed</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>These words, from the preface to St. Luke's Gospel, contain in
+them one or two points on which it may be of use to dwell; and not
+least so at the present time, when they are more frequently brought
+under our notice than was the case a few years ago. On a subject
+which we never, or very rarely hear mentioned, it may be difficult
+to excite attention; and, as a general rule, there is little use in
+making the attempt. But when names and notions are very frequently
+brought to our ears, and in a degree to our minds, then it becomes
+important that we should comprehend the matter to which they relate
+clearly and correctly; and a previous interest respecting it may be
+supposed to exist, which make further explanation acceptable.</p>
+<p>St. Luke tells Theophilus that it seemed good to him to write in
+order an account of our Lord's life and death, that Theophilus
+might know the certainty of those things in which he had been
+instructed; and this, as a general rule, might well describe one
+great use of the Scripture to each of us, as individual members of
+Christ's Church--it enables us to know the certainty of the things
+in which we have been instructed. We do not, in the first instance,
+get our knowledge of Christ from the Scriptures,--we, each of us, I
+mean as individuals,--but from the teaching of our parents first;
+then of our instructors, and from books fitted for the instruction
+of children; whether it be the Catechism of the Church, or books
+written by private persons, of which we know that there are many.
+But as our minds open, and our opportunities of judging for
+ourselves increase, then the Scripture presents itself to acquaint
+us with the certainty of what we had heard already; to show us the
+original and perfect truth, of which we have received impressions
+before, but such as were not original nor perfect; to confirm and
+enforce all that was good and true in our early teaching; and if it
+should so happen that it contained any thing of grave error mixed
+with truth, then to enable us to discover and reject it.</p>
+<p>It is apparent, then, that the Scripture, to do this, must have
+an authority distinct from, and higher than, that of our early
+teaching; but yet it is no less true that it comes to us
+individually recommended, in the first instance, by the authority
+of our early teaching, and received by us, not for its own sake,
+but for the sake of those who put it into our hands. What child
+can, by possibility, go into the evidence which makes it reasonable
+to believe the Bible, and to reject the authority of the Koran? Our
+children believe the Bible for our sakes; they look at it with
+respect, because we tell them that it ought to be respected; they
+read it, and learn it, because we desire them; they acquire a habit
+of veneration for it long before they could give any other reason
+for venerating it than their parents' authority. And blessed be God
+that they do; for, as it has been well said, if we their parents do
+not endeavour to give our children habits of love and respect for
+what is good and true, Satan will give them habits of love for what
+is evil: for the child must receive impressions from without; and
+it is God's wisdom that he should receive these impressions from
+his parents, who have the strongest interest in his welfare, and
+who have besides that instinctive parental love which, more surely,
+as well as more purely, than any possible sense of interest, makes
+them earnestly desire their child's good.</p>
+<p>But when our children are old enough to understand and to
+inquire, do we then content ourselves with saying that they must
+take our word for it; that the Bible is true because we tell them
+so? Where is the father who does not feel, first, that he himself
+is not fitted to be an infallible authority; and, secondly, that if
+he were, he should be thwarting the providence of God, who has
+willed not simply that we should believe with understanding. He
+gladly therefore observes the beginnings of a spirit of inquiry in
+his son's mind, knowing that it is not inconsistent with a belief
+in truth, but is a necessary step to that which alone in a man
+deserves the name of belief--a belief, namely, sanctioned by
+reason. With what pleasure does he point out to his son the grounds
+of his own faith! how gladly does he introduce him to the critical
+and historical evidence for the truth of the Scriptures, that he
+may complete the work which he had long since begun, and deliver
+over the faith which had been so long nursed under the shade of
+parental authority, to the care of his son's own conscience and
+reason!</p>
+<p>We see clearly that our individual faith, although grounded in
+the first instance on parental authority, yet rests afterwards on
+wholly different grounds; namely, on the direct evidence in
+confirmation of it which is presented to our own minds. But with
+regard to those who are called the Fathers of the Church, it is
+contended sometimes that we do receive the Scriptures, in the end,
+upon their authority: and it is argued, that if their authority is
+sufficient for so great a thing as this, it must be sufficient for
+every thing else; that if, in short, we believe the Scriptures for
+their sake, then we ought also to believe other things which they
+may tell us, for their sake, even though they are not to be found
+in Scripture.</p>
+<p>In the argument there is this great fault, that it misstates the
+question at the outset. The authority of the Fathers, as they are
+called, is never to any sound mind the only reason for believing in
+the Scriptures; I think it is by no means so much as the principle
+reason. It is one reason, amongst many; but not the strongest. And,
+in like manner, their authority in other points, if there were
+other and stronger reasons which confirmed it,--as in many cases
+there are,--is and ought to be respected. But, because we lay a
+certain stress upon it, it does not follow that we should do well
+to make it bear the whole weight of the building. Because we
+believe the Scriptures, partly on the authority of the Fathers, as
+they are called, but more for other reasons, does it follow that we
+should equally respect the authority of the Fathers when there are
+no other reasons in support of it, but many which make against
+it?</p>
+<p>In truth, however, the internal evidence in favour of the
+authenticity and genuineness of the Scriptures is that on which the
+mind can rest with far greater satisfaction than on any external
+testimonies, however valuable. On one point, which might seem most
+to require other evidence--the age, namely, and origin of the
+writings of the New Testament--it has been wonderfully ordered that
+the books, generally speaking, are their own witness. I mean that
+their peculiar language proves them to have been written by persons
+such as the apostles were, and such as the Christian writers
+immediately following them were not; persons, namely, whose
+original language and habits of thinking were those of Jews, and to
+whom the Greek in which they wrote was, in its language and
+associations, essentially foreign. I do not dwell on the many other
+points of internal evidence: it is sufficient to say that those who
+are most familar with such inquiries, and who best know how little
+any external testimony can avail in favour of a book where the
+internal evidence is against it, are most satisfied that the
+principal writings of the New Testament do contain abundantly in
+themselves, for competent judges, the evidence of their own
+genuineness and authenticity.</p>
+<p>That the testimony of the early Christian writers goes along
+with this evidence and confirms it, is matter indeed of sincere
+thankfulness; because more minds, perhaps, are able to believe on
+external evidence than on internal. But of this testimony of the
+Christian writers it is essential to observe, that two very
+important points are such as do indeed affect this particular
+question much, but yet do not confer any value on the judgment of
+the witness in other matters. When a very early Christian writer
+quotes a passage from the New Testament, such as we find it now in
+our Bibles, it is indeed an argument, which all can understand,
+that he had before him the same Bible which we have, and that
+though he lived so near to the beginning of the gospel, yet that
+some parts of the New Testament must have been written still nearer
+to it. This is an evidence to the age of the New Testament,
+valuable indeed to us, but implying in the writer who gives it no
+qualities which confer authority; it merely shows that the book
+which he read must have existed before he could quote it. A second
+point of evidence is, when a very early Christian writer quotes any
+part of the New Testament as being considered by those to whom he
+was writing as an authority. This, again, is a valuable piece of
+testimony; but neither does it imply any general wisdom or
+authority in the writer who gives it: its value is derived merely
+from the age at which he lived, and not from his personal
+character. And with regard to the general reception of the New
+Testament by the Christians of his time, which, in the case
+supposed, he states as a fact, no doubt that the general opinion of
+the early Christians, where, as in this case, we can be sure that
+it is reported correctly, is an authority, and a great authority,
+in favour of the Scriptures: combined, as it is, with the still
+stronger internal evidence of the books themselves, it is
+irresistible. But it were too much to argue that, therefore, it was
+alone sufficient, not only when destitute of other evidence, but if
+opposed to it; and especially if it should happen to be opposed to
+that very Scripture which we know they acknowledged to be above
+themselves, but which we do not know that they were enabled in all
+cases either rightly to interpret or faithfully to follow.</p>
+<p>When, therefore, we are told that, as we believe the Scriptures
+themselves upon tradition, so we should believe other things also,
+the answer is, that we do not believe the Scriptures either
+entirely or principally, upon what is called tradition; but for
+their own internal evidence; and that the opinions of the early
+Christians, like those of other men, may be very good in certain
+points, and to a certain degree, without being good in all points,
+and absolutely; that many a man's judgment would justly weigh with
+us, in addition to other strong reasons in the case itself, when we
+should by no means follow it where we were clear that there were
+strong reasons against it. This, indeed, is so obvious, that it
+seems almost foolish to be at the trouble of stating it; but what
+is so absurd in common life, that the contrary to it is a mere
+truism, is, unfortunately, when applied to a subject with which we
+are not familiar, often considered as an unanswerable argument, if
+it happen to suit our disposition or our prejudices.</p>
+<p>But, although the Scripture is to the Church, and to the
+individual, too, who is able to judge for himself, the only
+decisive authority in matters of faith, yet we must not forget that
+it comes to us as it did to Theophilus, to persuade us of the
+certainty of things in which we have been already instructed; not
+to instruct from the beginning, by itself alone, those to whom its
+subject is entirely strange: in other words, it is and ought to be
+the general rule, that the Church teaches, and the Scripture
+confirms that teaching: or, if it be in any part erroneous,
+reproves it. For some appear to think, that by calling the
+Scripture the sole authority in matters of faith, we mean to
+exclude the Church altogether; and to call upon every man,--nay,
+upon every child,--to make out his own religion for himself from
+the volume of the Scriptures. The explanation briefly given is
+this; that while the Scripture alone teaches the Church, the Church
+teaches individuals; and that the authority of her teaching, like
+that of all human teaching, whether of individuals or societies,
+varies justly according to circumstances; being received, as it
+ought to be, almost implicitly by some, as a parent's is by a
+child, and by others listened to with respect, as that which is in
+the main agreeable to the truth, but still not considered to be,
+nor really claiming to be received as, infallible. But this part of
+the subject will require to be considered by itself on another
+occasion.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXXII."></a>LECTURE XXXII.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>LUKE i. 3,4.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>It seemed good to me also, having had perfect
+understanding of<br>
+all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order,
+most<br>
+excellent Theophilus, that than mightest know the certainty of<br>
+those things in which thou hast been instructed</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>I said at the conclusion of my lecture, last Sunday, that when
+we of the Church of England assert that the Scripture is the sole
+authority in matters of faith, we by no means mean to exclude the
+office of the Church, nor to assert any thing so extravagant, as
+that it is the duty of every person to sit down with the volume of
+the Scriptures in his hand, and to make out from that alone,
+without listening to any human authority, what is the revelation
+made by God to man. But I know that many are led to adopt notions
+no less extravagant of the authority of the Church and of
+tradition,--even to the full extent maintained by the Church of
+Rome,--because they see no other refuge from what appears to them,
+and not unreasonably, so miserable and so extreme a folly; for an
+extreme and a most miserable folly doubtless it would be, in any
+one, to throw aside all human aid except his own; to disregard
+alike the wisdom of individuals, and the agreeing decisions of
+bodies of men; to act as if none but himself had ever loved truth,
+or had been able to discover it; and as if he himself did possess
+both the will and the power to do so.</p>
+<p>This is so foolish, that I doubt whether any one ever held such
+notions, and, much more, whether be acted upon them. But is it more
+wise to run from one form of error into its opposite, which,
+generally speaking, is no less foolish and extravagant? What should
+we say of a man who could see no middle course between never asking
+for advice, and always blindly following it; between never
+accepting instruction upon any subject, and believing his
+instructors infallible? And this last comparison, with our
+particular situation here, will enable us, I think, by referring to
+our own daily experience, to understand the present question
+sufficiently. The whole system of education supposes, undoubtedly,
+that the teacher, in those matters which he teaches, should be an
+authority to the taught: a learner in any matter must rely on the
+books, and on the living instructors, out of which and from whom he
+is to learn. There are difficulties, certainly, in all learning;
+but we do not commonly see them increased by a disposition on the
+part of the learner to question and dispute every thing that is
+told him. There is a feeling rather of receiving what he is told
+implicitly; and, by so doing, he learns: but does it ever enter
+into his head that his teacher is infallible? or does any teacher
+of sane mind wish him to think so? And observe, now, what is the
+actual process: the mind of the learner is generally docile,
+trustful, respectful towards his teacher; aware, also, of his own
+comparative ignorance. It is certainly most right that it should be
+so. But this really teachable and humble learner finds a false
+spelling in one of his books; or hears his teacher, from oversight,
+say one word in his explanation instead of another: does he cease
+to be teachable and humble,--is it really a want of childlike
+faith, and an indulgence of the pride of reason, if he decides that
+the false spelling was an error of the press; that the word which
+his teacher used was a mistake? Yet errors, mistakes, of how
+trifling a kind soever, are inconsistent with infallibility; and
+the perceiving that they are errors is an exercise of our
+individual judgment upon our instructors. To hear some men talk, we
+should think that no boy could do so without losing all humility
+and all teachableness; without forthwith supposing that he was able
+to be his own instructor.</p>
+<p>I have begun on purpose with an elementary case, in which a very
+young boy might perceive an error in his books, or in his
+instructors, without, in any degree, forfeiting his true humility.
+But we will now go somewhat farther: we will take a more advanced
+student, such as the oldest of those among you, who are still
+learners, and who know that they have much to learn, but who,
+having been learners for some time past, have also acquired some
+knowledge. In the books which they refer to, and from which they
+are constantly deriving assistance, do they never observe any
+errors in the printing? do they never find explanations given,
+which they perceive to be imperfect, nay, which they often feel to
+be actually wrong? And, passing from books to living instructors,
+should we blame a thoughtful, attentive, and well-informed pupil,
+because his mind did not at once acquiesce in our interpretation of
+some difficult passage; because he consulted other authorities on
+the subject, and was unsatisfied in his judgment; the reason of his
+hesitation being, that our interpretation appeared to him to give
+an unsatisfactory sense, or to be obtained by violating the rules
+of language? Is he proud, rebellious, puffed up, wanting in a
+teachable spirit, without faith, without humility, because he so
+ventures to judge for himself of what his teacher tells him? Does
+such a judging for himself interfere, in the slightest degree, with
+the relation between us and him? Does it make him really cease to
+respect us? or dispose him to believe that he is altogether beyond
+the reach of our instruction? Or are we so mad as to regard our
+authority as wholly set at nought, because it is not allowed to be
+infallible? Doubtless, it would be wholly set at nought, if we had
+presumed to be infallible. Then it would not be merely that, in
+some one particular point, our decision had been doubted, but that
+one point would involve our authority in all; because it would
+prove, that we had set up beforehand a false claim: and he who does
+so is either foolish, or a deceiver; there is apparent a flaw
+either in his understanding, or in his principles, which
+undoubtedly does repel respect.</p>
+<p>Let me go on a step farther still. It has been my happiness to
+retain, in after years, my intercourse with many of those who were
+formerly my pupils; to know them when their minds have been
+matured, and their education, in the ordinary sense of the term,
+completed. Is not the relation between us altered then still more?
+Is it incompatible with true respect and regard, that they should
+now judge still more freely, in those very points, I mean, in which
+heretofore they had received my instructions all but implicitly?
+that on points of scholarship and criticism, they should entirely
+think for themselves? Or does this thinking for themselve mean,
+that they will begin to question all they had ever learnt? or sit
+down to forget purposely all their school instructions, and make
+out a new knowledge of the ancient languages for themselves? Who
+does not know, that they whose minds are most eager to discern
+truth, are the very persons who prize their early instruction most,
+and confess how much they are indebted to it; and that the exercise
+of their judgments loads them to go on freely in the same path in
+which they have walked so long, here and there it may be departing
+from it where they find a better line, but going on towards the
+same object, and generally in the same direction?</p>
+<p>What has been the experience of my life,--the constantly
+observing the natural union between sense and modesty; the perfect
+compatibility of respect for instruction with freedom of judgment;
+the seeing how Nature herself teaches us to proportion the
+implicitness of our belief to our consciousness of ignorance: to
+rise gradually and gently from a state of passively leaning, as it
+were, on the arm of another, to resting more and more of our weight
+on our own limbs, and, at last, to standing alone, this has
+perpetually exemplified our relations, as individuals, to the
+Church. Taught by her, in our childhood and youth, under all
+circumstances; taught by her, in the great majority of instances,
+through our whole lives; never, in any case, becoming so
+independent of her as we do in riper years, of the individual
+instructor of our youth; she has an abiding claim on our respect,
+on our deference, on our regard: but if it should be, that her
+teaching contained any thing at variance with God's word, we should
+perceive it more or less clearly, according to our degrees of
+knowledge; we should trust or mistrust our judgment, according to
+our degree of knowledge; but in the last resort, as we suppose that
+even a young boy might be sure that his book was in error, in the
+case of a manifest false print, so there may be things so certainly
+inconsistent with Scripture, that a common Christian may be able to
+judge of them, and to say that they are like false prints in his
+lesson, they are manifest errors, not to be followed, but avoided.
+So far he may be said to judge of his teacher; but not the less
+will he respect and listen to her authority in general, unless she
+has herself made the slightest error ruinous to her authority by
+claiming to be in all points, great or small, alike infallible.</p>
+<p>Men crave a general rule for their guidance at all times, and
+under all circumstances; whereas life is a constant call upon us to
+consider how far one general rule, in the particular case before
+us, is modified by another, or where one rule should be applied,
+and where another. To separate humility from idolatry, conscience
+from presumption, is often an arduous task: to different persons
+there is a different besetting danger; so it is under different
+circumstances, and at different times. Every day does the seaman,
+on a voyage, take his observations, to know whereabouts he is; he
+compares his position with his charts; he considers the direction
+of the wind, and the set of the current, or tide; and from all
+these together, he judges on which side his danger lies, on what
+course he should steer, or how much sail he may venture to carry.
+This is an image of our own condition: we cannot have a general
+rule to tell us where we should follow others, and where we must
+differ from them; to say what is modesty, and what is indolence;
+what is a proper deference to others, and what is a trusting in man
+so far, that it becomes a want of trust in God. Only, we are sure
+that these are points which we must decide for ourselves; the human
+will must be free, so far as other men are concerned. If we say,
+that we will implicitly trust others, then there is our decision,
+which no one could have made for us, and which is our own choice as
+to the principle of our lives; for which choice, we each of us, and
+no one else in all the world, must answer at the judgment-seat of
+God. Only, in that word there is our comfort, that, for our conduct
+in so doubtful a voyage as that of life, amidst so many conflicting
+opinions, each courting our adherence to it,--amidst such a variety
+of circumstances without, and of feelings within, and on which,
+notwithstanding, our condition for all eternity must depend,--we
+shall be judged, not by erring man, not by our own fallible
+conscience, but by the all-wise, and all-righteous God. With him,
+after all, even in the very courts of his holy Church, we yet, in
+one sense, must each of us live alone. On his gracious aid, given
+to our own individual souls, and determining our own individual
+wills, depends the character of our life here and for ever.
+Trusting to him, praying to him, we shall then make use of all the
+means that his goodness has provided for us; we shall ask counsel
+of friends; we shall listen to teachers; we shall delight to be in
+the company of God's people, of one mind, and of one voice, with
+the good and wise of every generation; we shall be afraid of
+leaning too much to our own understanding, knowing how it is
+encompassed with error; but knowing that other men are encompassed
+with error also, and that we, and not they, must answer for our
+choice before Christ's judgment, we must, in the last resort, if
+our conscience and sense of truth cannot be persuaded that other
+men speak according to God's will,--we must follow our own inward
+convictions, though all the world were to follow the contrary.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXXIII."></a>LECTURE XXXIII.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>JOHN ix. 29.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>We know that God spake unto Moses; as for this fellow,
+we know not from whence he is</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>The questions involved in the conversations recorded in this
+chapter, are of great practical importance. Not perhaps of
+immediate practical importance to all in this present congregation;
+but yet sure to be of importance to all hereafter, and of
+importance to many at this actual moment. Nay, they are of
+importance to those who, from their youth, might be thought to have
+little to do with them, either where the mind is already anxious
+and inquiring beyond its years, or where it happens to be exposed
+to strong party influences, or that its passions are likely to be
+engaged on a particular side, however little the understanding may
+be interested in the matter. In fact, in religious knowledge, as in
+other things, the omissions of youth are hard to make up in
+manhood; they who grow up with a very small knowledge of the
+Scriptures, and with no understanding of any of the questions
+connected with them, can with difficulty make up for this defect in
+after years; they become, according to the influences to which,
+they may happen to be subjected, either unbelieving or
+fanatical.</p>
+<p>If we were to question the youngest boy about the language held
+in this chapter by the Pharisees, and by the man who had been born
+blind, we should, no doubt, be answered, that what the Pharisees
+said, was wrong; and what the man born blind said, was right. This
+would be the answer which it would be thought proper to give;
+because it would be perceived that the Pharisees' language
+expressed unbelief in Christ; and that the man born blind was
+expressing gratitude and faith towards him. Nor, indeed, should we
+expect a young boy to go much farther than this; for such general
+impressions are, at his age, as much many times as can be looked
+for. But it is strange to observe how much this want of
+understanding outlasts the age of boyhood; how apt men are to judge
+according to names, and to see no farther: to say, that the
+language of the Pharisees was wrong, because they find it employed
+against Christ; but yet to use the very same language themselves,
+whilst they think that they are all the while speaking for
+Christ.</p>
+<p>But in this conversation between the Pharisees and the blind
+man, there are, indeed, as I said, points involved of very great
+importance; it contains the question as to the degree of weight to
+be attached to miracles; and the question, no less grave, with what
+degree of tenacity we should reject what claims to be a new truth,
+because it seems to be at a variance with supposed old truths to
+which we have been long accustomed to cling with undoubting
+affection.</p>
+<p>The question as to the weight of miracles is contained in the
+sixteenth verse. Some of the Pharisees said, This man is not of
+God, because he keepeth not the Sabbath day. Others said, How can a
+man that is a sinner do such miracles? That is to say, the first
+party rejected the miracles because they seemed to be wrought in
+favour of a supposed false doctrine; the other accepted the
+doctrine, because it seemed warranted to their belief by the
+miracles.</p>
+<p>The second question is contained in the words of the text, "We
+know that God spake to Moses; as for this fellow, we know not from
+whence he is." We have been taught from our childhood, and have the
+belief associated with every good and pious thought in us, that God
+spake to Moses, and gave him the law as our rule of life; but as
+for this fellow, we know not from whence he is. His works may be
+wonderful, his words may be specious; but we never heard of him
+before, and we cannot tear up all the holiest feelings of our
+nature to receive a new doctrine. We will hold to the old way in
+which, we were taught by our fathers to walk, and in which they
+walked before us.</p>
+<p>This last question is one which, as we well know, is continually
+presented to our minds. No one says, that the Pharisees were right,
+any more than those very Pharisees thought that their fathers were
+right who had killed the prophets. But as our Lord told them, that
+they were in truth the children in spirit of those who had killed
+the prophets; because, although they had been taught to condemn the
+outward form of their fathers' action, they were repeating it
+themselves in its principles and spirit; so many of those who
+condemn the Pharisees are really their exact image, repeating now
+against the truths of their own days the very same arguments which
+the Pharisees used against the truths of theirs.</p>
+<p>For the arguments of these Pharisees, both as regards miracles,
+and as regards the suspicion with which we should look on a
+doctrine opposed to the settled opinions of our lives, have in
+fact, in both cases, a great mixture of justice in them; and it is
+this very mixture which we may hope beguiled them; and also
+beguiles those, who in our own days repeat their language.</p>
+<p>For most certain it is that the Scripture itself supposes the
+possibility of false miracles. The case is especially provided
+against in Deuteronomy. It there says, "If there arise among you a
+prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder,
+and the sign or the wonder come to pass whereof he spake unto thee,
+saying, Let us go after other gods which thou hast not known, and
+let us serve them: thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that
+prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the Lord your God proveth
+you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart
+and with all your soul." Observe how nearly this comes to the
+language of the Pharisees, "This man is not of God, because he
+keepeth not the Sabbath day." "Here," they might have said, "is the
+very case foreseen in the Scriptures: a prophet has wrought a sign
+and a wonder, which is at the same time a breach of God's
+commandments. God has told us that such signs are not to be heeded,
+that he does but prove us with them to see whether we love him
+truly: knowing that where there is a love of him, the heart will
+heed no sign or wonder, how great soever, which would tempt it to
+think lightly of his commandments." Shall we say that this is not a
+just interpretation of the passage in Deuteronomy? shall we say
+that this is the language of unbelief or of sin? or, rather, shall
+we not confess that it is in accordance with God's word, and holy,
+and faithful, and true? And yet this most just language led those
+who used it to reject one of Christ's greatest miracles, and to
+refuse the salvation of the Holy One of God. Can God's truth be
+contrary to itself? or can truth and goodness lead so directly to
+error and to evil?</p>
+<p>Now, then, where is the solution to be found? for some solution
+there must be, unless we will either condemn a most true principle,
+or defend a most false conclusion. The error lies in confounding
+God's moral law with his law of ordinances; precisely the same
+error which led the Jews to stone Stephen. The law had undoubtedly
+commanded that he who blasphemed God should be stoned; the Jews
+called Stephen's speaking against the holy place and against the
+law blasphemy against God, and they murdered God's faithful servant
+and Christ's blessed martyr. Even so the law had said, Let no
+miracle be so great as to tempt you to forsake God: the Jews
+considered the forsaking the law of the Sabbath to be a forsaking
+of God, and they said that Christ's miracle was a work of Satan.
+There is no blasphemy into which we may not fall, no crime from
+which we shall be safe, if we do not separate in our minds most
+clearly such laws as relate to moral and eternal duties, and such
+as relate to outward or positive ordinances, even when commanded or
+instituted by God himself. It is most false to say that the fact of
+their being commanded sets them on a level with each other. So long
+as they are commanded to us, it is no doubt our duty to obey them
+equally: but the difference between them is this, that whereas the
+first are commanded to us and to our children for ever, and no
+possible evidence can be so great as to persuade us that God has
+repealed them; (for the utmost conceivable amount of external
+testimony, such as that of miracles, could only lead to
+madness;--the human mind might, conceivably, be overwhelmed by the
+conflict, but should never and could never be tempted to renounce
+its very being, and lie against its Maker;) the others, that is,
+the commands to observe certain forms and ordinances, are in their
+nature essentially temporary and changeable: we have no right to
+assume that they will be continued, and therefore a miracle at any
+time might justly require us to forsake them; and not only an
+outward miracle, but the changed circumstances of the times may
+speak God's will no less clearly than a miracle, and may absolutely
+make it our duty to lay aside those ordinances, which to us
+hitherto, and to our fathers before us, were indeed the commands of
+God.</p>
+<p>Now let us take the other question,--which may indeed be called
+a question as to the allowableness of resting confidently in truth
+already gained, without consenting to examine the claims of
+something asserting itself to be a new truth, yet which seems to
+interfere with the old. Is nothing within us to be safe from
+possible doubt, or is everything? Or is it here, as in the former
+case, that there are truths so tried and so sacred that it were
+blasphemy to question them; while there are others, often closely
+intermixed with these, which are not so sacred, because they are
+not eternal; which may and ought to be examined when occasion
+requires; and which may be laid aside, or exchanged rather, for
+some higher truth, if it shall reasonably appear that their work is
+done, and that if we retain them longer they will change their
+character, and become no longer true but false. "David having
+served his own generation by the will of God, fell asleep, and was
+gathered unto his fathers, and saw corruption; but He whom God
+raised again saw no corruption." This is the difference between
+positive ordinances and moral: the first serve their appointed
+number of generations by the will of God, and then are gathered to
+their fathers, and perish; the latter are by the right hand of God
+exalted, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.</p>
+<p>"We know," said the Jews, "that God spake to Moses; but for this
+fellow, we know not from whence he is." There was a time when their
+fathers had held almost the very same language to Moses: "they
+refused him, saying Who made thee a ruler and a judge over us?" But
+now they knew that God had spoken to Moses, but were refusing Him
+who was sent unto them after Moses. God had spoken unto Moses, it
+was most true: he had spoken to him and given him commandments
+which were to last for ever; and which Christ, so far from undoing,
+was sent to confirm and to perfect; he had spoken to him other
+things, which were not to last for ever, but yet which were not to
+be cast away with dishonour; but having, in the fulness of time,
+done their work, were then, like David, to fall asleep. All that
+was required of the Jews, was not to reject as blasphemy a doctrine
+which should distinguish between these two sorts of truths: which
+in no way requires to believe that God had not spoken to
+Moses,--which, on the contrary, maintained that he had so
+spoken,--but only contended that he has also, in these last days,
+spoken unto us by his Son; and that his Son, bearing the full image
+of Divine authority, might well be believed if he spoke of some
+parts of Moses's law as having now fulfilled their work, seeing
+that they were such parts only as, by their very nature, were not
+eternal: they had not been from the beginning, and therefore they
+would not live on to the end.</p>
+<p>The practical conclusion is, that, whilst we hold fast, with an
+undoubting and unwavering faith, all truths which, by their very
+nature, are eternal, and to deny which is no other than to speak
+against the Holy Ghost, we should listen patiently to, and pass no
+harsh judgment on, those who question other truths not necessarily
+eternal, while they declare that they are, to the best of their
+consciences, seeking to obey God and Christ. When I say, that we
+should listen patiently, and not pass harsh judgments upon those
+who question such points, I say it without at all meaning that we
+should agree with them. It would be monstrous indeed, to suppose
+that old opinions are never combated wrongly; that old institutions
+are never pronounced to have lived out their appointed time, when,
+in fact, they are still in their full vigour. But the language of
+those who defend the doctrines and the ordinances of the Church
+may, and often does, partake of the sin of that of the Pharisees,
+even when those against whom they are contending, are not, like
+Christ, bringing in a new and higher truth, but an actual error. To
+point out that it is an error, to defend ourselves and the Church
+from it, is most right, and most highly our duty; but it is neither
+right, nor our duty, but the very sin of the Pharisees, to put it
+down merely by saying, "As for this fellow, we know not from whence
+he is;" to treat the whole question as an impiety, and to deny the
+virtues and the holiness of those who maintain it, because they
+are, as we call it, "speaking blasphemous things against the holy
+place and against the law." The mischief of this to ourselves is
+infinite; nay, in its extreme, it leads to language which is
+fearfully resembling the very blasphemy against the Holy Ghost;
+for, when we say, as has been said, that where men's lives are
+apparently good and holy, and their doctrines are against those of
+the Church, the holiness is an unreal holiness, and that we cannot
+see into their hearts, this is, in fact, denying the Holy Spirit's
+most infallible sign--the fruits of righteousness; and being
+positive rather of the truth of the Church, than of the truth of
+God. There is nothing so certain as that goodness is from God;
+nothing so certain as that sin is not from God; nothing so certain
+as that sin is not from him. To deny, or doubt this, is to dispute
+the greatest assurance of truth that God has ever been pleased to
+give to us. It does not, by any means, follow, that all good men
+are free from error, nor that error is less error because good men
+hold it; but to make the error which is less certain, a reason for
+disputing the goodness which is more certain, is the spirit, not of
+God, nor of the Church of God, but of those false zealots who put
+an idol in God's place; of such as rejected Christ and murdered
+Stephen.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXXIV."></a>LECTURE XXXIV.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>1 CORINTHIANS xiv, 20.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>Brethren, be not children in understanding: howbeit,<br>
+in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>It would be going a great deal too far to say, that they who
+fulfilled the latter part of this command, were sure also to fulfil
+the former; that they who were men in understanding, were,
+therefore, likely to be children in malice. But the converse holds
+good, with remarkable certainty, that they who are children in
+understanding, are proportionally apt to be men in malice: that is,
+in proportion as men neglect that which should be the guide of
+their lives, so are they left to the mastery of their passions; and
+as nature and outward circumstances do not allow these passions to
+remain as quiet and as little grown as they are in childhood,--for
+they are sure to ripen without any trouble of ours,--so men are
+left with nothing but the evils of both ages, the vices of the man,
+and the unripeness and ignorance of the child.</p>
+<p>It is indeed a strange and almost incredible thing, that any
+should ever have united in their minds the notions of innocence and
+ignorance as applied to any but literal children: nor is it less
+strange, that any should ever have been afraid of their
+understanding, and should have sought goodness through prejudice,
+and blindness, and folly. Compared with this, their conduct was
+infinitely reasonable who weakened and tormented their bodies in
+order to strengthen, as they thought, their spiritual nature. Such
+conduct was, by comparison, reasonable because there is a great
+deal of bodily weakness and discomfort, which really does not
+interfere with the strength and purity of our character in itself,
+although, by abridging our activity, it may lessen our means of
+usefulness. But what should we say of a man who directed his ill
+usage of his body to that part of our system which is most closely
+connected with the brain; who were purposely to impair his nervous
+system, and subject himself to those delusions and diseased views
+of things which are the well-known result of any disorder there?
+Yet this is precisely what they do who seek to mortify and lower
+their understanding. It is as impossible that they should become
+better men by such a process, as if they were literally to take
+medicines to affect their nerves or their brain, in the hope of
+becoming idiotic or delirious. It is, in fact, the worst kind of
+self-murder; for it is a presumptuous destroying of that which is
+our best life, because we dread to undergo those trials which God
+has appointed for the perfecting both of it and of us.</p>
+<p>But from the wilful blindness of these men, let us turn to the
+Christian wisdom of the Apostle: "In malice be ye children, but in
+understanding be men." Let us turn to what is recorded of our Lord
+in his early life, at that age when, as man, the cultivation of his
+understanding was his particular duty--that he was found in the
+temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and
+asking them questions: not asking questions only, as one too
+impatient or too vain to wait for an answer, or to consider it when
+he had received it; not hearing only, as one careless and passive,
+who thinks that the words of wisdom can improve his mind by being
+indolently admitted through the ears, with no more effort than his
+body uses when it is refreshed by a cooling air, or when it is laid
+down in running water; but both hearing and asking questions;
+docile and patient, yet active and intelligent; knowing that the
+wisdom was to be communicated from without, but that it belongs to
+the vigorous exercise of the power within, to apprehend it, and to
+convert it to nourishment.</p>
+<p>Now, what is recorded of our Lord for our example, as to the
+manner in which he received instruction when delivered by word of
+mouth, this same thing should we do with that instruction, which,
+as is the ease with most of ours, we derive from reading. Put the
+Scriptures in the place of those living teachers whom Christ was so
+eager to hear; the words of Christ, and of his Spirit, instead of
+those far inferior guides from whom, notwithstanding, he, for our
+sakes, once submitted to learn; and what can be more exact than the
+application of the example? Let us be found in God's true temple,
+in the communion of his faithful people,--his universal Church,
+sitting down as it were, surrounded by the voices of the oracles of
+God--prophets, apostles, and Jesus Christ himself: let us be found
+with the record of these oracles in our hands, both reading them
+and asking them questions.</p>
+<p>It is quite clear that what hinders a true understanding of
+anything is vagueness; and it is by this process of asking
+questions that vagueness is to be dispelled: for, in the first
+place, it removes one great vagueness, or indistinctness, which is
+very apt to beset the minds of many; namely, the not clearly seeing
+whether they understand a thing or no; and much more, the not
+seeing what it is that they do understand, and what it is which
+they do not. Take any one of our Lord's parables, and read it even
+to a young child: there will be something of an impression
+conveyed, and some feelings awakened; but all will be indistinct;
+the child will not know whether he understands or no, but will soon
+gain the habit of supposing that he does, as that is at once the
+least troublesome, and the least unpleasant to our vanity. And this
+same vague impression is often received by uneducated persons from
+reading or bearing either the Scriptures or sermons; it is by no
+means the same as if they had read or heard something in an unknown
+language; but yet they can give no distinct account of what they
+have heard or read; they do not know how far they understand it,
+and how far they do not. Here, then, is the use of "asking
+questions,"--asking questions of ourselves or of our book, I mean,
+for I am supposing the case of our reading, when it can rarely
+happen that we have any living person at hand to give us an answer.
+Now, taking the earliest and simplest state of knowledge, it is
+plain that the first question to put to ourselves will be, "Do I
+understand the meaning of all the words and expressions in what I
+have been reading?" I know that this is taking things at their very
+beginning, but it is my wish to do so. Now, so plain and forcible
+is the English of our Bible, generally speaking, that the words
+difficult to be understood will probably not be many: yet some such
+do occur, owing, in some instances, to a change of the language; as
+in the words "let," and "prevent," which now signify, the one, "to
+allow, or suffer to be done," and the other "to stop, or hinder,"
+but which signified, when our translation was made, the first, "to
+stop or hinder," and the second, "to be beforehand with us;" as in
+the prayer, "Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings, with thy most
+gracious favour;" the meaning is, "Let thy favour be with us
+beforehand, O Lord, in whatever we are going to do." In other
+instances the words are difficult because they are used in a
+particular sense, such as we do not learn from our common language;
+of which kind are the words "elect," "saints," "justification,"
+"righteousness," and many others. Now, if we ask ourselves "whether
+we understand these words or no," our common sense, when thus
+questioned, will readily tell us, whether we do or not; although if
+we had not directly asked the question, it might never have thought
+about it. Of course, our common sense cannot tell us what the true
+meaning is; that is a matter of information, and our means of
+gaining information may be more or less; but still, a great step is
+gained, the mist is partly cleared away; we can say to ourselves,
+"Here is something which I do understand, and here is something
+which I do not; I must keep the two distinct, for the first I may
+use, the second I cannot; I will mark it down as a thing about
+which I may get explanation at another time; but at present it is a
+blank in the picture, it is the same as if it were not there."
+This, then, is the first process of self-questioning, adapted, as I
+have already said, to those whose knowledge is most elementary.</p>
+<p>Suppose, however, that we are got beyond difficulties of this
+sort--that the words and particular expressions of the Scriptures
+are mostly clear to us. Now, take again one of our Lord's parables;
+say, for instance, that of the labourers in the vineyard: we read
+it, and find that he who went to work at the eleventh hour received
+as much as he who had been working all the day. This seems to say,
+that he who begins to serve God in his old age shall receive his
+crown of glory no less than he who has served him all his life. But
+now try the process of self-questioning: what do I think that
+Christ means me to learn from this? what is the lesson to me? what
+is it to make me feel, or think, or do? If it makes me think that I
+shall receive an equal crown of glory if I begin to serve God in my
+old age, and therefore if it leads me to live carelessly, this is
+clearly making Christ encourage wickedness; and such a thought is
+blasphemy. He cannot mean me to learn this from it: let me look at
+the parable again. Who is it who is reproved in those words which
+seem to contain its real object? It is one who complains of God for
+having rewarded others equally with himself. Now this I can see is
+not a good feeling: it is pride and jealousy. In order, then to
+learn what the parable means me to learn, let me put myself in the
+position of those reproved in it. If I complain that others are
+rewarded by God as much as I am, it is altogether a bad feeling,
+and one which I ought to check; for I have nothing to do with God's
+dealings to others, let me think of what concerns myself. Here I
+have the lesson of the parable complete: and here I find it is
+useful for me. But if I take it for a different object, and suppose
+that it means to encourage waiting till the eleventh hour--waiting
+till we are old before we repent--we find that we make it only
+actually to be mischievous to us. And thus we gain a great piece of
+knowledge: namely, that the parables of our Lord are mostly
+designed to teach, some one particular lesson, with respect to some
+one particular fault: and that if we take them generally, as if all
+in them was applicable to all persons, whether exposed to that
+particular fault or not, we shall absolutely be in danger of
+deriving mischief from them instead of good. It is true, that in
+this particular parable, the gross wickedness of such an
+interpretation as I have mentioned is guarded against even in the
+story itself; because those who worked only at the eleventh hour
+are expressly said to have stood idle so long only because no man
+had hired them; their delay, therefore, was no fault of their own.
+But even if this circumstance had been left out, it would have been
+just the same; because the general rule is, that we apply to a
+parable only for its particular lesson, and do not strain it to any
+thing else. Had this been well understood, no one would have ever
+found so much difficulty in understanding the parable of the unjust
+steward.</p>
+<p>This is another great step towards the dispelling vagueness, to
+apply the particular lesson of each part of Scripture to that state
+of knowledge, or feeling, or practice in ourselves, which it was
+intended to benefit; to apply it as a lesson to ourselves, not as a
+general truth for our neighbours. And the very desire to do this,
+makes us naturally look with care to the object of every
+passage--to see to whom it was addressed, and on what occasion; for
+this will often surely guide us to the point that we want. But in
+order to do this, we must strive to clothe the whole in our own
+common language; to get rid of those expressions which to us convey
+the meaning faintly; and to put it into such others as shall come
+most strongly home to us. This I have spoken of on other occasions;
+and I have so often witnessed the bad effects of not doing so, that
+I am sure it may well bear to be noticed again; I mean the putting
+such words as "persecution," "the cares and riches of the world,"
+"the kingdom of God," "confessing Christ," "denying Christ," and
+many others, into a language which to us has more lively reality,
+which makes us manifestly see that it is of us, and of our common
+life, and of our dangers, that the scripture is speaking, and not
+only of things in a remote time and country, and under
+circumstances quite unlike our own. Therefore I have a strong
+objection to the use of what is called peculiarly religious
+language, because I am sure that it hinders us from bringing the
+matter of that language thoroughly home to us; our minds do not
+entirely assimilate with, it; or if they fancy that they do, it is
+only by their becoming themselves affected, and losing their sense
+of the reality of things around them. For our language is fixed for
+us, and we cannot alter it; and into that common language in which
+we think and feel, all truth must be translated, if we would think
+and feel respecting it at once rightly, clearly, and vividly. Happy
+is he, who, by practising this early, has imbued his own natural
+language with the spirit of God's wisdom and holiness; and who can
+see, and understand, and feel them the better, because they are so
+put into a form with which he is perfectly familiar.</p>
+<p>More might be said, very much more, but here I will now pause.
+In this world, wherein heavenly things are, after all, hard to
+seize and fix upon, we have great need that no mists of imperfect
+understanding darken them, over and above those of the corrupt
+will. To see them clearly, to understand them distinctly and
+vividly, may, indeed, after all be vain: a thicker veil may yet
+remain behind, and we may see and understand, and yet perish. Only
+the clear sight of God in Christ can be no light blessing; and
+there may be a hope, that understanding and approving with all our
+minds his excellent wisdom, the light may warm us as well as assist
+our sight; that we may see, and not in our vague and empty sense,
+but in the force of the scriptural meaning of the word,--may see,
+and so believe.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXXV."></a>LECTURE XXXV.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>MATTHEW xxvi. 45, 46.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>Sleep on now and take your rest; behold, the hour is at
+hand,<br>
+and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise,<br>
+let us be. going; behold, he is at hand that doth betray
+me</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>I take these verses for my text, in the first place, because
+some have fancied a difficulty in them, and have even proposed to
+alter the translation, and read the first words as a question, "Do
+ye still sleep and take your rest?" and because they are really a
+very good illustration of our Lord's manner of speaking, a manner
+which it is of the highest importance to us fully to understand.
+And, secondly, I take them as a text for the general lesson which
+they convey to us; their mixture of condemnation and mercy; their
+view, at once looking backwards and forwards, not losing sight of
+irreparable evils of a neglected past, nor yet making those evils
+worse by so dwelling upon them as to forget the still available
+future; not concealing from us the solemn truth, that what is done
+cannot be undone, yet warning us also not to undo by a vain despair
+that future which may yet be done to our soul's health.</p>
+<p>First, a difficulty has been fancied to exist in the words, as
+if our Lord had bade his disciples to do two contradictory things:
+telling them, first, to sleep on and take their rust, and then
+saying, "Rise, let us be going." And because in St. Luke's account,
+when our Lord comes to his disciples the last time, his words are
+given thus, "Why sleep ye? rise and pray, that ye enter not into
+temptation:" therefore, as I have said, his words in the text have
+been translated, "Are ye sleeping and resting for the remainder of
+the time?" Now, I should not take up your time with things of this
+sort, where I believe our common translation to be most certainly
+right, were it not for the sake of one or two general remarks,
+which I think may not be out of place. It is a general rule, that
+in passages not obscure, but appearing to contain some moral
+difficulty, if I may so speak; that is, something which seems
+inconsistent with our notions of God's holiness, or wisdom, or
+justice; something, in short, of a stumbling-block, which we fear
+may occasion a triumph to unbelievers; it is a rule, I say, that in
+passages of this kind the difficulty is not to be met by departing
+from the common-received translation. And the reason of this is
+plain; that had not the commonly received translation in such cases
+been clearly the right one, it would never have come to be commonly
+received. Amongst the thousands of interpreters of Scripture, all,
+from the earliest time, anxious to remove grounds of cavil from the
+adversaries of their faith, a passage would never have been
+translated so as to afford such a ground, if the right translation
+of it could have been different. Such places are especially those
+in which the common translation needs not to be suspected: and it
+is merely leading us astray from the true explanation of the
+apparent difficulty, when we thus attempt to evade it by tampering
+with the translation. A notable instance of this was afforded some
+few years since in a new translation of some of the books of the
+Old Testament; in which it was pretended that most of those points
+which had been most attacked by unbelievers were, in fact, mere
+mistranslations, and that the real meaning of the original was
+something totally different; and, in order to show the necessity of
+his alterations, the writer entirely allowed the objections of
+unbelievers to the common reading; and said that no sufficient
+answer had been or could be made to them. This was an extreme case,
+and probably imposed only on a very few: but less instances of the
+same thing are common: St. Paul's words about being baptized for
+the dead, have been twisted to all sorts of senses, from their
+natural and only possible meaning, because men could not bear to
+believe that the superstition of being baptized as proxies for
+another could have existed at a period which they were resolved to
+consider so pure: and so in the text, a force has been put upon the
+words which they cannot bear, in order to remove a supposed
+contradiction: and all that would have been gained by the change
+would be, to have one instructive illustration the less of our
+Lord's peculiar manner of discourse, and one instance the less of
+the inimitable way in which his language, addressed directly to the
+circumstances before him, contains, at the same time, a general
+lesson, for the use of all his disciples in all ages.</p>
+<p>Our Lord's habitual language was parabolical; I use the word in
+a wide sense, to include all language which is not meant to be
+taken according to the letter. Observe his conversation with the
+Samaritan woman; it begins at once with parable, "If thou hadst
+known who it was that asked of thee, saying, Give me to drink, thou
+wouldst have asked of him, and he would have given thee living
+water." And again, "Whoso drinketh of the water that I shall give
+him shall never thirst, but it shall be in him a well of water,
+springing up unto life eternal." This seems to have been, if I may
+venture to say so, the favourite language in which he preferred to
+speak; but when he found that he was not understood, then,
+according to the nature of the case, he went on in two or three
+different manners. When he, to whom all hearts were open, saw that
+the misunderstanding was wilful, that it arose out of a disposition
+glad to find an excuse, in his pretended obscurity, for not
+listening to him and obeying him, then, instead of explaining his
+language, he made it more and more figurative; more likely to be
+misunderstood, or to offend those whom he knew to be disposed
+beforehand to misunderstand and to be offended. A famous example of
+this may be seen in the sixth chapter of St. John; there he first
+calls himself the Bread of Life, and says, that whosoever should
+eat of that bread should live for ever: but when he found that the
+Jews cavilled at this language, instead of explaining it, he only
+added expressions yet more strongly parabolical; "Except ye eat the
+flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in
+you:" and he dwells on this image so long, that we find that many
+of his disciples, bent on interpreting it literally, and, in this
+sense, finding it utterly shocking, went back and walked no more
+with him. Again, when he found not a disposition to cavil, but yet
+a profound ignorance of his meaning, arising from a state of mind
+wholly unused to think of spiritual good and evil, he neither used,
+as to those who wilfully misunderstood him, language that would
+offend them still more, nor yet did he offer a direct explanation;
+but he broke off the conversation, and adopted another method of
+instruction. Thus, when the Samaritan woman, thinking only of
+bodily wants, answered him by saying, "Sir, give me this water,
+that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw," he neither goes on
+to speak to her in the same language, nor yet does he explain it;
+but at once addresses her in a different manner, saying, "Go, call
+thy husband, and come hither." Thirdly, when he was speaking to his
+own disciples, to whom it was given to know the mysteries of the
+kingdom of God, he generally explained his meaning,--at least so
+far as to prevent practical error,--when he found that they had not
+understood him. Thus, when he had said to them, "Beware of the
+leaven of the Pharisees, and of the leaven of Herod," and they
+thought only of leaven and of bread in the literal sense, he
+upbraids them, indeed, for their slowness, saying, "Are ye also yet
+without understanding?" but he goes on to tell them in express
+terms that he did not mean to speak to them of the leaven of bread.
+And the words of the text are an exactly similar instance: his
+first address is parabolical; that is, it is not meant to be taken
+to the letter; "Sleep on now, and take your rest," meaning, "Ye can
+now do me no good by watching, for the time is past, and he who
+betrayed me is at hand; ye might as well sleep on now and take your
+rest, for I need not try you any longer." But, as the time was
+really pressing, and there was a possibility that they might have
+misunderstood his words, and have really continued to sleep, he
+immediately added in different language, "Rise, let us be going;
+behold, he is at hand that doth betray me." We must be prepared,
+then, to find that our Lord's language, not only to the Jews at
+large, but even to his own disciples, is commonly parabolical; the
+worst interpretation which we can give to it is commonly the
+literal one. His conversation with his disciples, just before he
+went out to the garden of Gethsemane, as recorded in the
+thirteenth, and following chapters of St. John, is a most striking
+proof of this. If any one looks through them, he will find how many
+are the comparisons, and figurative manners of speaking, which
+abound in them, and how often his disciples were at a loss to
+understand his meaning, And he himself declares this, for, at the
+end of the sixteenth chapter, he says expressly, "These things I
+have spoken unto you in proverbs;"--that is, language not to be
+taken according to the letter;--"the time is coming when I will no
+more speak unto you in proverbs, but will show you plainly of the
+Father." And then, when he goes on to declare, what he never, it
+seems, had before told them in such express and literal language,
+"I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again I
+leave the world, and go to my Father," his disciples seem to have
+welcomed with joy this departure from his usual manner of speaking,
+and said immediately, "Lo! now speakest thou plainly, and speakest
+no proverb: now we know that thou knowest all things, and needest
+not that any man should ask thee: by this we believe that thou
+earnest forth from God."</p>
+<p>But let us observe what it is that he said: "A time is coming
+when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but shall show you
+plainly of the Father." That time came immediately. He spoke to
+them after his resurrection, opening their understandings to
+understand the Scriptures: he spoke yet more fully, by his Spirit,
+after the day of Pentecost, leading them into all truth. And what
+they thus heard in the ear, they proclaimed, according to his
+bidding, upon the house-tops. When the Holy Spirit brought to their
+remembrance all that he had said to them, and gave their minds a
+spiritual judgment, to compare what they thus had brought before
+them, to see his words in their true light and their true bearings,
+comparing spiritual things with spiritual, they were no niggards of
+this heavenly treasure; nor did they, according to the vain heresy
+of the worst corrupters of Christ's gospel, imitate and surpass
+that sin which they had so heavily judged in Ananias. They kept
+back no part-of that which they professed and were commanded to lay
+wholly and entirely at the feet of God's church. They did not so
+lie to the Holy Ghost, as to erect a wicked system of priestcraft
+in the place of that holy gospel of which they were ministers. They
+had no reserve of a secret doctrine for themselves and a chosen
+few, keeping in their own hands the key of knowledge, and opening
+only half of the door; but as they had freely received, so they
+freely gave; all that they knew, they taught to all: and so,
+through their blessed teaching, we too can understand our Lord's
+words as they were taught to understand them: and what is
+parabolical, is no longer on that account obscure, but full of
+light and of beauty, fulfilling the end for which it was chosen,
+the most effective of all ways of teaching, because the
+liveliest.</p>
+<p>I have left myself but little space to touch upon the second
+part of the subject--the general lesson conveyed in our
+Lord's-words to his disciples: "Sleep on now, and take your
+rest.--Rise; let us be going." How truly do we deserve the reproof;
+how thankfully may we accept the call. We have forfeited many
+opportunities which we would in vain recover; we have been careless
+when we should have been watchful; and that for which we should
+have watched, is now lost by our neglect; and it is no good to
+watch for it any more. Let us remember this, while it is called
+to-day; for how often is it particularly applicable to us here,
+from the passing nature of your stay amongst us! To both you and us
+too often belongs our Lord's remonstrance, "What, could ye not
+watch with me one hour?" So short a time as you stay here, could we
+not be watching with Christ that little period: from which, if well
+improved, there might spring forth a fruit so lasting? But, alas!
+we too often sleep it away: we do not all that we might do, nor do
+you; evil grows instead of good, till the time is past, and you
+leave us; and we may as well sleep on, and take our rest, so far as
+all that particular good was concerned--the improvement, namely, of
+your time at this place, for which we are alike set to watch. But
+are we to take the words of reproach literally? May we really sleep
+on, and take our rest? Oh vain and wilful folly, so to
+misunderstand! But, lest we should misunderstand, let us hear our
+Lord's next words: "Rise; let us be going," and that instantly: the
+time and opportunity already lost for ever is far more than
+enough.--"Rise; let us be going:" so Christ calls us; for he has
+still other work for us to do, for him, and with him. The future is
+yet our own, though the past be lost. We have sinned greatly and
+irreparably; but let us not do so yet again: other opportunities
+are afforded us; the disciples would not watch with him in the
+garden, but he calls them to go with him to his trial and his
+judgment; and one, we know, watched by him even on his cross:--so
+he calls to us; so he calls now; but he will not so call for ever.
+There will be a time when we might strike out the words, "Rise; let
+us be going;" they will concern us then no more. It is only said,
+"Sleep on now, and take your rest: all your watching time has been
+wasted, and you can now watch no more;" there remains only to
+sleep--to sleep that last sleep, from which we shall then never
+wake to God and happiness, but in which we shall be awake for ever
+to sin and to misery.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXXVI."></a>LECTURE XXXVI.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>2 CORINTHIANS v. 17, 18.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>Old things are passed away; behold, all things are
+become new: and<br>
+all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus
+Christ</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>I have, from time to time, spoken of that foolish misuse of the
+Scriptures, by which any one opening the volume of the Bible at
+random, and taking the first words which he finds, straightway
+applies them either to himself or to his neighbour; and then boasts
+that he has the word of God on his side, and that whosoever differs
+from him, is disputing and despising the word of God. The most
+extreme instances of this way of proceeding are so absurd, that
+they could not be noticed in this place becomingly; and these, of
+course, stand palpable to all, except to those who have allowed
+themselves to fall into them. But far short of these manifest
+follies, great errors have been maintained on general points, and
+great mistakes, whether of over presumption or of over fear, have
+been committed as to men's particular state, by quoting Scripture
+unadvisedly; by taking hold of its words to the neglect or actual
+violation of its spirit and real meaning. This is a great and a
+very common mischief, but yet there is a truth at the bottom of the
+error; it is true, that the greatest questions relating to God and
+to ourselves, may find their answer in the Scriptures; it is true,
+that if we search for this answer wisely we may surely find it.</p>
+<p>Consider the words of the text, and see how easily they may be
+perverted, if with no more ado we take them, as said of ourselves,
+each individually, and as containing to each of us a statement
+positive of truth. "Old things are passed away; behold, all things
+are become new." If we believe that this is God's word respecting
+each of us, what violence must we do to our memory of the past, and
+our consciousness of the present, if we do try to persuade
+ourselves that so total a change has taken place in each of us,
+that what we once were, we are no longer; that what we are, we once
+were not; and this not in some few particular points, but in the
+main character of our minds. Again, "All things are of God, who
+hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ." If we apply these
+words to each of us, what exceeding presumption would they breed!
+If all things in us and about us are now of God, what room can
+there be for sin? If God hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus
+Christ, what room can there be for fear or for danger? And thus,
+while we say we are quoting and believing the word of God, we do in
+fact turn it into a lie; we make it assert a falsehood as to our
+past state, and a falsehood as to our future state; we make it say,
+that our old nature is passed away, when it is not; that we have
+got a new nature when we have not; that we are reconciled to God,
+and therefore in safety, when we are, in fact, in the extremest
+danger.</p>
+<p>But it is easy to see that we have no right to apply to
+ourselves words written by St. Paul eighteen hundred years ago, and
+applied by him to other persons. I go, then, farther; and I say,
+that if every member of the church of Corinth, to which they were
+written, had applied them to himself in the manner which I have
+shown above, the words would in many instances have been perverted
+no less, and would have been made to state what was false, and not
+what was true. And the same may be said of many other passages of
+St. Paul's Epistles, which, having been similarly misinterpreted,
+have furnished matter for endless controversies, and on which
+opposite theories of doctrine have been fondly raised, each of them
+alike unchristian and untrue.</p>
+<p>Thus our present position is this:--that oftentimes by taking
+the representations of Scripture as true in fact, whether of
+ourselves or of others, we come to conclusions at once false and
+mischievous; being, as the case may be, either presumptuous, or
+fearful, or uncharitable, and claiming for each of these faults the
+sanction of the word of God.</p>
+<p>A similar mistake in interpreting human compositions, has led to
+faults of another kind. Assuming as before, in interpreting St.
+Paul's words, that the language of our Liturgy is meant to
+describe, as a matter of fact, the actual feelings and condition of
+those who use it, or for whom it is used; and seeing manifestly
+that these feelings and condition do not agree with the words; we
+do not here, as with the Scripture, do violence to our common sense
+and conscience, by insisting upon it that we agree with the words,
+but we find fault with the words as being at variance with the
+matter of fact. Some say that the language of the General
+Confession is too strong a statement of sin; that the language of
+the Communion Service, of the Baptismal Service, and above all, of
+the Burial Service, is too full of encouragement and of assurance;
+that men are not all so bad as to require the one, 'nor so good as
+to deserve the other; that in both cases it should be lowered, to
+agree with the actual condition of those who use it.</p>
+<p>Now it is worthy of notice, at any rate, that the self-same rule
+of interpretation applied to the Scripture and the Liturgy is found
+to suit with neither. We adhere positively to our rule: and thus,
+as we hold the words of Scripture sacred, we force common sense and
+conscience to make the facts agree with them; but not having the
+same respect for the words of the Liturgy, we complain of them as
+faulty and requiring alteration, because they do not agree with the
+facts.</p>
+<p>I will not enter into the question whether the Liturgy has done
+wisely or not in thus imitating the Scripture; but I do contend
+that, in point of fact, there is this resemblance between them. St.
+Paul's Epistles, in particular, although it is true of other parts
+of the Scripture also, contain, as does the Liturgy of our Church,
+a great many passages which, if taken either universally or even
+generally as containing a matter of fact, will lead us into certain
+error. Is it, therefore, so very certain that we do wisely in so
+interpreting them?</p>
+<p>With regard to our Liturgy I need not follow up the question
+now; but with regard to St. Paul, it is certain that he, in many
+parts of his Epistles, chooses to represent that which ought to be
+as that which actually was: he chooses to regard those to whom he
+is writing as being in all respects true Christians, as being
+worthy of their privileges, as answering to what God had done to
+them, as forming a church really inhabited by the Holy Spirit, and
+therefore being a true and living body of due proportions to Christ
+its Divine head. Nor does he trust exclusively to the common sense
+and conscience of those to whom he was writing to interpret his
+language correctly. He might Lave thought indeed that if he wrote
+to them as redeemed, justified, sanctified, as having all things
+new, as being the children of God, and the heirs of God, and the
+temples of the Holy Ghost, any individual who felt that he was none
+of these things, that sin was still mighty within him, and that he
+was sin's slave, would neither deny his own conscience, nor yet
+call St. Paul a deceiver; but would read in the difference between
+St. Paul's description of him and the reality, the exact measure of
+his own sin, and need of repentance and watchfulness. But he does
+not rely on this only: he notices sins as actually existing; he
+mingles the language of reproof and of anxiety, so as to make it
+quite clear that he did not mean his descriptions of their holiness
+and blessedness to apply to them all necessarily; he knew full well
+that they did not: but yet he knew also that, considering what God
+had done for them, it was monstrous that they should not be truly
+applicable.</p>
+<p>But why then, you will say, did he use such language? why did he
+call men forgiven, redeemed, saved, justified, sanctified?--he uses
+all these terms often as applicable generally to those to whom he
+was writing;--why did he call them so, when in fact they were not
+so? He called them so for the same reason which, made prophecy
+foretell blessings upon Israel of old, and on the Christian church
+afterwards, which were fulfilled on neither:--in order to declare,
+and keep ever before us, what God has done and is willing to do for
+us: what he fain would do for us, if we would but suffer him; what
+divine powers are offered to us, and we will not use them; what
+divine happiness is designed for us, and we will not enter into it.
+Let us ponder all the magnificence of the scriptural language,--the
+words of the text for example, not as describing what we are when
+we are full of sin; nor yet as mere exaggerated language, which
+must be brought down to the level of our present reality. Let us
+consider it as containing the words of truth and soberness; not one
+jot or one tittle needs to be abated; it must not be lowered to us,
+but we rather raised to it. It is a truth, it is the word of God,
+it is the seal of our assurance: it is that which good men of old
+would have welcomed with the deepest joy; which, to good men now is
+a source of comfort unspeakable. For it tells us that God has done
+for us, is doing, will do, all that we need; it tells us that the
+price of our redemption has been paid, the kingdom of heaven has
+been set open, the power to walk as God's children has been given:
+that so far as God is concerned we are redeemed, we are saved, we
+are sanctified; it is but our own fault merely that we are not all
+of these actually and surely.</p>
+<p>This is not a little matter to be persuaded of; if it be true,
+as I fear it is, that too many of us do not love God, is it not
+quite as true that we cannot believe that God loves us? Have we any
+thing like a distinct sense of the words of St. John, "We love God
+because he first loved us?" We believe in the love of our earthly
+friends; those who have so lately left their homes have no manner
+of doubt that their parents are interested in their welfare, though
+absent; that they will often think of them; and that, as far as it
+is possible at a distance from them, they are watching over their
+good, and anxious to promote it. The very name home implies all
+this; it implies that it is a place where those live who love us;
+and I do not question that the consciousness of possessing this
+love does, amidst all your faults and forgetfulnesses, rise not
+unfrequently within your minds, and restrain you from making
+yourselves altogether unworthy of it. Now, I say, that the words of
+the text, and hundreds of similar passages, are our assurance, if
+we would but believe them, that we have another home and another
+parent, by whom we are loved constantly and earnestly, who has done
+far more for us than our earthly parents can do. I grant that it is
+hard to believe this really; so infinite is the distance between
+God and us, that we cannot fancy that he cares for us; he may make
+laws for a world, or for a system, but what can he think or feel
+for us? It is, indeed, a thought absolutely overpowering to the
+mind; it may well seem incredible to us, judging either from our
+own littleness or our own forgetfulness; so hard as we find it to
+think enough of those to whom we are most nearly bound, how can the
+Most High. God think of us? But if there be any one particle of
+truth in Christianity, we are warranted in saying that God does
+love us; strange as it may seem, He, whom neither word nor thought
+of created being can compass; He, who made us and ten thousand
+worlds, loves each one of us individually; "the very hairs of our
+heads are all numbered." He so loved us, that he gave his
+only-begotten Son to die for us; and St. Paul well asks, "He that
+spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, will he
+not also with him freely give us all things?"</p>
+<p>Believe me, you could have no better charm to keep you safe
+through, the temptations of the coming half year, than this most
+true persuasion that God loves you. The oldest and the youngest of
+us may alike repeat to himself the blessed words, "God loves me;"
+"God loves me; God has redeemed me: God would dwell in my heart,
+that I might dwell in him: God has placed me in his church, has
+made me a member of Christ his own Son, has made me an inheritor of
+the kingdom of heaven." I might multiply words, but that one little
+sentence is, perhaps, more than all, "God loves me." Oh that you
+would believe him when he assures you of it, for then surely you
+would not fail to love him. But whether you believe it or not,
+still it is so: God loves every one of us; he loves each one of us
+as belonging to Christ his Son. He does love each, of us; let us
+not cast his love away from us, and refuse to love him in return;
+he does love each of us now, but there may be a time to each of
+us,--there will be, assuredly, if we will not believe that he loves
+us, when he will love us no more for ever.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXXVII."></a>LECTURE XXXVII.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>EZEKIEL xx. 49.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>Then said I, Ah, Lord God I they say of me, Doth he not
+speak parables</i>?</center>
+<br>
+<p>Nothing is more disheartening, if we must believe it to be true,
+than the language in which some persons talk of the difficulty of
+the Scriptures, and the absolute certainty that different men will
+ever continue to understand them differently. It is not, we are
+told, with the knowledge of Scripture as with that of outward
+nature: in the knowledge of nature, discoveries are from time to
+time made which set error on the one side, and truth on the other,
+absolutely beyond dispute; there the ground when gained is clearly
+seen to be so; and as fresh sources of knowledge are continually
+opening to us, it is not beyond hope that we may in time arrive
+infinitely near to the enjoyment of truth,--truth certain in
+itself, and acknowledged by all unanimously. But with Scripture, it
+is said, the case is far otherwise; discoveries are not to be
+expected here, nor does a later generation derive from, its
+additional experience any greater insight into the things of God
+than was enjoyed by the generations before it. And when we see that
+actually the complete Scriptures have been in the world not much
+less than eighteen hundred years; that within that period no other
+book has been so much studied; and yet that differences of opinion
+as to the matters spoken of in it have ever existed, and exist now
+as much as ever, what reasonable prospect is there, it is asked, of
+future harmony or of clearer demonstrations of divine truth; and
+will not the good on these points ever continue to differ from the
+good, and the wise to differ from the wise?</p>
+<p>This language, so discouraging as it is, may be heard from two
+very opposite parties, so that their agreement may appear to give
+it the more weight: it is used by men who are indifferent to
+religious truth, as an excuse for their taking no pains to discover
+what the truth really is; it is echoed back quite as strongly by
+another set of persons who wish to magnify the uncertainties of the
+Scripture in order to recommend more plausibly the guidance of some
+supposed authoritative interpreter of it. But yet it ought to be at
+any rate a painful work to any serious mind to be obliged to dwell
+not only on the obscurities of God's word, but on its perpetual and
+invincible obscurities; and, though an interpreter may be necessary
+if we know not the language of those with whom we are conversing,
+yet how much better would it be that we should ourselves know it:
+nay, and if we are told that we cannot know it, that our best
+endeavours will be unable to master it, the suspicion inevitably
+arises in our minds, that our pretended interpreter may be ignorant
+of it also; that he is not in truth better acquainted with it than
+we, but only more presumptuous or more dishonest.</p>
+<p>Still a statement may be painful, but at the same time true.
+There is undoubtedly something in such language as I have been
+alluding to, which appears to be confirmed by experience. There is
+no denying the fact, that the Scriptures have been a long time in
+the world; that they have been very generally and carefully read;
+and yet that men do differ exceedingly as to religious truth, and
+these differences do not seem to be tending towards agreement. It
+seems to me, there fore, desirable that every student of the
+Scriptures should know, as well as may be, what the exact state of
+the question is; for if the subject of his studies is really so
+hopelessly uncertain, it is scarcely possible that his zeal in
+studying it should not be abated; nay, could we wisely encourage
+him to bestow his pains on a hopeless labour?</p>
+<p>Now, in the very outset, there is this consideration which many
+of us here are well able to appreciate. We read many books written
+in dead languages, most of them more ancient than any part of the
+New Testament, some of them older than several of the books of the
+Old. We know well enough that these ancient books are not without
+their difficulties; that time, and thought, and knowledge are
+required to master them; but still we do not doubt that, with the
+exception of particular-passages here and there, the true meaning
+of these books may be discovered with undoubted certainty. We know,
+too, that this certainty has increased; that interpretations,
+which, were maintained some years ago, have been set aside by our
+improved knowledge of the languages and condition of the ancient
+world, quite as certainly as old errors in physical science have
+been laid to rest by later discoveries. Farther, our improved
+knowledge has taught us to distinguish what may be known from what
+may be probably concluded, and what is probable from what can
+merely be guessed at. When we come to points of this last sort, to
+passages which cannot be interpreted or understood, we leave them
+at once as a blank; but we enjoy no less, and understand with no
+less certainty, the greatest portions of the book which, contain
+them. And this experience, with regard to the works of heathen
+antiquity, makes it a startling proposition at the very outset,
+when we are told that with the works of Christian antiquity the
+case is otherwise.</p>
+<p>We thus approach the statement as to the hopless difficulty of
+Scripture, confirmed, as we are told it is, by the actual fact of
+the great disagreements among Christians, with a well-grounded
+mistrust of its soundness; we feel sure that there is something in
+it which is confused or sophistical. And considering the fact which
+appears to confirm it, I mean the actual differences between
+Christians and Christians, it soon appears by no means to bear out
+its supposed conclusion. For the differences between Christians and
+Christians by no means arise generally from the difficulty of
+understanding the Scripture aright, but from disagreement as to
+some other point, quite independent of the interpretation of the
+Scriptures. For example, the great questions at issue between us
+and the Roman Catholics turn upon two points,--Whether there is not
+another authority, in matters of Christianity, distinct from and
+equal to the Scriptures,--and whether certain interpretations of
+Scripture are not to be received as true, for the sake of the
+authority of the interpreter. Now, suppose for a moment, that the
+works of Plato or Aristotle were to us in the place of the
+Scriptures; and that the question was, whether these works of
+theirs could be understood with certainty; it would prove nothing
+against our being able to understand them, if, whilst we look to
+them alone, another man were to say, that, to his judgment, the
+works of other philosophers were no less authoritative; or, if he
+were to insist upon it, that the interpretations given by the
+scholiasts were always sure to be correct, because the scholiasts
+were the authorized interpreters of the text. No doubt our
+philosophical opinions and our practice might differ widely from
+such a man's; but the difference would prove nothing as to the
+obscurity of Plato's or Aristotle's text, because another standard
+had been brought in, distinct from their works, and from the
+acknowledged principles of interpretation, and thus led unavoidably
+to a different result.</p>
+<p>The same also is the case as to the questions at issue between
+the Church of England and many of the Dissenters. In these disputes
+it is notorious that the practice and authority of the church are
+continually appealed to, or, it may be, considerations of another
+kind, as to the inherent reasonableness of a doctrine; all which
+are, again, a distinct matter from the interpretation of Scripture.
+One of the greatest men of our time has declared, that, in the
+early part of his life, he did not believe in the divinity of our
+Lord; but he has stated expressly, that he never for a moment
+persuaded himself that St. Paul or St. John did not believe it;
+their language he thought was clear enough, upon the point; but the
+notion appeared to him so unreasonable in itself, that he
+disbelieved it in spite of their authority. It is manifest, that,
+in this case, great as the difference was between this great man's
+early belief and his later, yet it in no way arose from the
+obscurity of the Scripture. The language of the Scripture was as
+clear to him at first as it was afterwards; but in his early life
+he disbelieved it, while, in his latter life, he embraced it with
+all his heart and soul.</p>
+<p>It must not be denied, however, that we are here arrived at one
+of the causes which are likely, for a long time, to keep alive a
+false interpretation of Scripture, and which do not affect our
+interpretation of heathen writings. For most men, in such a case as
+I have referred to, when they do not believe the language of the
+Scripture, but wish to alter it, whether by omission or addition,
+do not deal so fairly with it as that great man did to whom I have
+alluded. They have neither his knowledge nor his honesty; a false
+interpretation is more easily disguised from them, owing to their
+ignorance, and they let their wishes more readily warp their
+judgment. Thus, they will not say as he did, "The Scripture clearly
+says so and so, but I cannot believe it;" they rather say, "This is
+very unreasonable and shocking, the Scripture cannot mean to say
+this;" or, "This is very pious and very ancient, the Scripture
+cannot but sanction this." And certainly, if men will so deal with
+it, there remains no certainty of interpretation then. But this is
+not the way that we deal with other ancient writings; and its
+unfairness and foolishness, if ever attempted to be practised
+there, are so palpable as to be ridiculous. No doubt it is
+difficult to convince men against their will; nevertheless, there
+is a good hope, that, as sound principles of interpretation are
+more generally known, they will put to shame a flagrant departure
+from them; and that those who try to make the Scripture say more or
+less than it has said, will be gradually driven to confess that
+Scripture is not their real authority; that their own notions in
+the one case, and the authority of the Church in the other case,
+have been the real grounds of their belief, to which they strove to
+make the Scriptures conform.</p>
+<p>Nothing that I have said is, in any degree, meant to countenance
+the opinions of those who talk of the Bible,--or rather, our
+translation of it,--being its own interpreter; meaning, that if you
+give a Bible to any one who can read, he will be able to understand
+it rightly. Even in this extravagance, there is indeed something of
+a truth. If a man were so to read the Bible, much he would,
+unquestionably, be able to understand; enough, I well believe, if
+honestly and devoutly used, to give him, if living in a desert
+island by himself, the knowledge of salvation. But when we talk of
+understanding the Bible, so as to be guided by it amidst the
+infinite varieties of opinion and practice which beset us on every
+side, it is the wildest folly to talk of it as being, in this
+sense, its own interpreter. Our comfort is, not that it can be
+understood without study, but with it; that the same pains which,
+enable us to understand heathen writings, whose meaning is of
+infinitely less value to us, will enable us, with God's blessing,
+to understand the Scriptures also. Neither do I mean, that mere
+intellectual study would make them clear to the careless or the
+undevout; but, supposing us to seek honestly to know God's will,
+and to pray devoutly for his help to guide us to it, then our study
+is not vain nor uncertain; the mind of the Scriptures may be
+discovered; we may distinguish plainly between what is clear, and
+what is not clear; and what is not clear will be found far less in
+amount, and infinitely less in importance, than what is clear. I do
+not say, that a true understanding of the Scriptures will settle at
+once all religious differences;--manifestly, it cannot; for,
+although I may understand them well, yet if a man maintains an
+opinion, or a practice, upon some other authority than theirs, we
+cannot agree together. Nevertheless, we may be allowed to hope and
+believe, that in time, if men could be hindered from
+misinterpreting the Scripture in behalf of their own opinions,
+their opinions themselves would find fewer supporters; for, as
+Christianity must come, after all, from our blessed Lord and his
+apostles, men will shrink from saying that that is no truth of
+Christianity which Christ and his apostles have clearly taught, or
+that that is a truth of Christianity, however ancient, and by
+whatever long line of venerable names supported, which they have as
+clearly, in our sole authentic records of them, not taught. It is
+not, therefore, without great and reasonable hope, that we may
+devote ourselves to the study of the Scriptures; and those habits
+of study which are cultivated here, and in other places of the same
+kind, are the best ordinary means of arriving at the truth. We are
+constantly engaged in extracting the meaning of those who have
+written in times past, and in a dead language. We do this according
+to certain rules, acknowledged as universally as the laws of
+physical science: these rules are developed gradually,--from the
+simple grammar which forms our earliest lessons, to the rules of
+higher criticism, still no less acknowledged, which are understood
+by those of a more advanced age. And we do this for heathen
+writings; but the process is exactly the same--and we continually
+apply it, also, for that very purpose--with what is required to
+interpret the Word of God. After all is done, we shall still, no
+doubt, find that the Scripture has its parables, its passages which
+cannot now be understood; but we shall find, also, that by much the
+larger portion of it may be clearly and certainly known; enough to
+be, in all points which really concern our faith and practice, a
+lantern to our feet, and an enlightener to our souls.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXXVIII."></a>LECTURE XXXVIII.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>ISAIAH v.1.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>Now will I sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved
+touching his vineyard</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>Whatever difficulties we may find in understanding and applying
+many parts of the prophetical Scriptures, yet every thinking person
+could follow readily enough, I suppose, the chapter from which
+these words are taken, as it was read in the course of this
+morning's service; and he would feel, while understanding it as
+said, immediately and in the first instance, of the Jewish Church
+or nation, seven centuries and a half before the birth of our Lord,
+that it was no less applicable to this Christian church and nation
+at the present period. We cannot, indeed, expect to find a minute
+agreement in particular points between ourselves and the Jews of
+old; the difference of times and circumstances renders this
+impossible; both they and we stand, on the one hand, in so nearly
+the same relation to God, and we both so share, on the other hand,
+in the same sinful human nature, that the complaints, and
+remonstrances of the prophets of old may often, be repeated, even
+in the very same words, by the Christian preacher now.</p>
+<p>If this be so, then the language of various parts of the service
+of the Church in this season of Advent ought to excite in us no
+small apprehension; for whilst the lessons from the Old Testament
+describe the evil state of the Jewish people in the eighth century
+before Christ, and threaten it with destruction, so the gospels for
+this day, and for last Sunday, speak of the evil state of the same
+people when our Lord was upon earth; and the chapter from which the
+gospel of this day is taken, contains, as we know, a full prophecy
+of the destruction that was, for the second time, going to
+overwhelm the earthly Jerusalem. We cannot but fear, therefore,
+that if our state now be like that of God's people of old, eight
+centuries before our Lord's coming, and again like their state at
+his coming: and if, after the first period, their city and temple
+were burnt, and they were carried captive to Babylon,--and again,
+after the second period, the city and temple were burnt again, and
+the people were dispersed, even to this day,--that, as the
+punishment has twice surely followed the sin, so it will not fail
+to find it out in this third case also.</p>
+<p>And be it remembered that the people, or church of God, as such,
+can receive their punishment only in this world: for, taken as a
+body, it is an institution for this world only. We each of us, no
+doubt, shall have our own separate individual judgment after death;
+and, in the mean time, our fortunes and our character often bear no
+just correspondence with each other. But nations and churches have
+their judgments here: and although God's long-suffering so suspends
+it for many generations that it may seem as if it would never fall,
+yet does it come surely at the last; and almost always we can
+ourselves trace the connexion between the sin and the punishment,
+and can see that the one was clearly the consequence of the other.
+And thus our church and nation may feel their national judgments in
+this world quite independently of the several personal judgments
+which will be passed upon us each hereafter individually, when we
+stand before Christ's judgment seat.</p>
+<p>I have thus ventured to bring the condition of the church as a
+body before our minds, although well knowing how much more we are
+concerned with the state of our own souls individually. Yet still
+the more general view is not without great use; and indeed it bears
+directly upon our individual state: our actions and our feelings
+having often a close connexion with, general church matters; and
+these actions and feelings being necessarily good or bad, according
+to the soundness of our judgment on the matter which occasions
+them. Besides which, it seems to me that general views, rather than
+what relates to particular faults, may be with most propriety dwelt
+on by those who have no direct connexion with the congregation
+which they are addressing.</p>
+<p>In the first place, then, whenever we think of the state and
+prospects of Christ's church, whether for good or for evil, it is
+most desirable that we should rightly understand our own relations
+to it. "The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel;"
+or, in the language of the New Testament, "Christ is the vine, and
+we are the branches." Men continually seem to forget that they are
+members of the church; citizens, to use St. Paul's expression, of
+Christ's kingdom, as much as ever they are citizens of their
+earthly country. But they speak of the church as they might speak
+of any useful institution or society in their neighbourhood, whose
+object they approved of, and which they were glad to encourage, but
+without becoming members of it, or identifying themselves with its
+success or failure. For example, they speak of the church as they
+might speak of the universities, which indeed are institutions of
+great importance to the whole country, but yet they are manifestly
+distinct from the mass of the community: they have their own
+members, their own laws, and their own government, with which,
+people in general have nothing to do. And so many persons speak and
+feel of the church, regarding it evidently as consisting only of
+the clergy: our common language, no doubt, helping this confusion,
+because we often speak of a man's going into the church when he
+enters into holy orders, just as if ordination were the admission
+into the church, and not baptism. Now, if the clergy did indeed
+constitute the church, then it would very much resemble the
+condition of the universities: for it would then be indeed a
+society very important to the welfare of the whole country, but yet
+one that was completely distinct, and which had its members, laws,
+and government quite apart: for men in general do not belong to the
+clergy, nor are they concerned directly in such canons as relate to
+the peculiar business of the clergy, nor does the bishop's
+superintendence, as commonly exercised, extend at all to them. But
+God designed for his church far more than that it should contain
+one order of men only, or that it should comprise commonly but one
+single individual in a parish, preaching to and teaching the rest
+of the inhabitants, like a missionary amongst a population of
+heathens. Look at St. Paul's account of the church of Corinth, in
+the 12th chapter of his 1st epistle to the Corinthians, and see if
+any two things can be more different than his notion of a church,
+and that which many people seem to entertain amongst us. Compare
+the living body there described, made up of so many various
+members, each having its separate office, yet each useful to and
+needed by the others and by the body,--and our notion of a parish
+committed to the charge of a single individual: as if all the
+manifold gifts which the church requires could by possibility be
+comprised in the person of any one Christian; as if the whole
+burden were to rest upon his shoulders, and the other inhabitants
+might regard the welfare of the church as his concern only, and not
+theirs.</p>
+<p>But not only is the church too often confined in men's notions
+to the single class or profession of the clergy, but it has been
+narrowed still farther by the practical extinction of one of the
+orders of the clergy itself. Where the laity have come to regard
+their own share in the concerns of the church as next to nothing,
+the order of deacons, forming, as it were, a link between the
+clergy and the laity, becomes proportionably of still greater
+importance. The business of the deacons, as we well know, was in an
+especial manner to look after the relief of the poor; and by
+combining this charge with the power of baptizing, of reading the
+Scriptures, and of preaching also, when authorized by the bishop,
+they exhibited the peculiar character of Christianity, that of
+sanctifying the business of this world by doing everything in the
+name of the Lord Jesus. No church, so far as we know, certainly no
+church in any town, existed without its deacons: they were as
+essential to its completeness as its bishop and its presbyters.</p>
+<p>Take any one of our large towns now, and what do we find? A
+bishop, not of that single town only, but of fifty others besides:
+one presbyter in each, church, and no deacons! Practically, and
+according to its proper character, the order of deacons is extinct;
+and those who now bear the name are most commonly found exercising
+the functions of presbyters; that is, instead of acting as the
+assistants of a presbyter, they are often the sole ministers of
+their respective parishes; they alone baptize; alone offer up the
+prayers of the church, alone preach the word: nothing marks their
+original character, except their inability to administer the
+communion; and thus, by a strange anomaly, the church in such
+parishes is actually left without any power of celebrating its
+highest act, that of commemorating the death, of Christ in the
+Lord's supper; and if it were not for another great evil, the
+unfrequent celebration of the Communion, the system could not go
+on: because the deacon would be so often obliged to apply to other
+ministers to perform that duty for him, that the inconvenience, as
+well as the unfitness, of the actual practice, would be manifest to
+every one.</p>
+<p>Again, what has become of church discipline? That it has
+perished, we all well know: but its loss is the consequence of that
+fatal error which makes the clergy alone constitute the church. It
+is quite certain that men will not allow the members of a single
+profession to exercise the authority of society; to create and
+define offences; to determine their punishment, and to be the
+judges of each particular offender. As long as the clergy are
+supposed to constitute the whole church, church discipline would be
+nothing but priestly tyranny. And yet the absence of discipline is
+a most grievous evil; and there is no doubt that, although it must
+be vain when opposed to public opinion, yet, when it is the
+expression of that opinion, there is nothing which it cannot
+achieve. But public opinion cannot enforce church discipline now,
+because that discipline would not be now the expression of the
+voice of the church, but simply of a small part of the church, of
+the clergy only.</p>
+<p>So deeply has this fatal error of regarding the clergy as the
+church extended itself, that at this moment a man's having been
+baptized is no security for his being so much as a believer in the
+truth of Christianity: no matter that he was made in his baptism a
+member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom
+of heaven; no matter that at a more advanced period of his life he
+was confirmed, and entered into the church by his own act and deed;
+still the church belongs to the clergy; they may hold such and
+such, language, and teach such and such doctrine; it would be very
+improper in them to do otherwise; and he has a great respect for
+the church, and would strenuously resist all its enemies, but
+truly, as for his own belief and his own conduct, these he will
+guide according to other principles, as imperative upon him as the
+rules of the church upon churchmen. Well indeed, do such men bear
+witness that they are not of the church, indeed; that their portion
+is not with God's people; that Christ is not their Saviour, nor the
+Holy Spirit their Comforter and Guide: but what blasphemy is it to
+call themselves friends of the church! as if Christ's church could
+have any friends except God and his holy angels: the church has its
+living and redeemed members; it may have those who are craving to
+be admitted within its shelter, being convinced that God is in it
+of a truth; but beyond these he who is not with it is against it;
+he who is not Christ's servant, serves his enemy.</p>
+<p>Farther, it is this same deadly error which is the root and
+substance of popery. There is no one abuse of the Romish system
+which may not be traced to the original and very early error of
+drawing a wide distinction between the clergy and the laity; of
+investing the former in such a peculiar degree with the attributes
+of the church that at last they retained them almost exclusively.
+In other words, the great evil of popery is, that it has destroyed
+the Christian church, and has substituted a priesthood in its room.
+This is the fault of the Greek church, almost as much as of the
+Roman; and the peculiar tenet of the Romish church, that the
+supreme government is vested in one single member of this
+priesthood, the Bishop of Rome, is in some respects rather an
+improvement of the system, than an aggravation of it. For even an
+absolute monarchy is a less evil than an absolute aristocracy; and
+an infallible Pope is no greater corruption of Christ's truth, than
+an infallible general council. The real evils of the system are of
+a far older date than the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome, and
+exist in places where that supremacy is resolutely denied. And if
+we attend to them carefully, we shall see that these evils have
+especially affected the Christian church as distinguished from the
+Christian religion. It is worth our while to attend to this
+distinction; for the Christian religion and the Christian church
+together, and neither without the other, form the perfect idea of
+Christianity. NOW, by the Christian religion, I mean the revelation
+of what God has done or will do for us in Christ; the great
+doctrines of the Trinity, the incarnation, the atonement, the
+resurrection, the presence of the Holy Spirit amongst us, and our
+own resurrection hereafter, to an existence of eternal happiness or
+misery. And these truths, if revealed to any single person living
+in an uninhabited island, might be abundantly sufficient for his
+salvation; if God disposed his heart to receive them, and to
+believe them earnestly, they would be the means of his overcoming
+his corrupt nature, and of passing from death unto life. But
+because men do not generally live alone, but with one another; and
+because they cannot but greatly hinder, or help each other by their
+mutual influence, therefore the Christian church was instituted for
+the purpose of spreading and furthering the growth of the Christian
+religion in men's hearts; and its various ministeries, its
+sacraments, its services and festivals, and its discipline were all
+designed with that object. And it is all these which popery has
+perverted; popery, whether in the Roman church or in the Greek
+church, or even in the Protestant church, for it has existed more
+or less in all. But even in the Roman church, where the perversion
+has been most complete, it has comparatively affected but little
+the truths of the Christian religion; all the great doctrines,
+which I mentioned, are held as by ourselves; the three creeds, the
+Apostles' creed, the Nicene, and the Athanasian, are used by the
+Roman church no less than by our own. Thus it often happens that we
+can read with great edification the devotional works of Roman
+Catholic writers, because in such works the individual stands apart
+from the Christian church, and is concerned only with the Christian
+religion: they show how one single soul, having learnt the tidings
+of redemption with faith, and thankfulness, improves them to its
+own salvation. But the moment that he goes out of his closet, and
+begins to speak and act amongst other men, then the corruption of
+popery shows itself. The Christian church was designed to help each
+individual towards a more perfect knowledge and love of God, by the
+counsel and example of his brethren, and by the practices which, he
+was to observe in their society. But the corrupt church exercises
+its influence for evil; it omits all the benefits to be derived
+from a living society, and puts forward, in their place, the
+observance of rites and ceremonies; knowledge and love are no
+longer looked to as the perfections of a Christian, but ignorance
+and blind obedience; not the mortifying all our evil passions
+universally, but the keeping them chained up, as it were under
+priestly control, to be let loose at the priest's bidding, against
+those whom he calls the church's enemies; that glorious church
+which he has destroyed and converted it into an idol temple, in
+that he, as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that
+he is God.</p>
+<p>To resist this great and monstrous evil, we must not exclaim
+against it under one of its forms only, even although that form
+exhibit it, indeed, in its most complete deformity; but we must
+strive against it under all its forms, remembering that its essence
+consists in putting the clergy in the place of the church; and
+taking from the great mass of the church their proper share in its
+government, in its offices, and therefore in its benefits, and in
+the sense of its solemn responsibilities. We speak often of church
+extension, meaning by this term the building new places of public
+worship, and the appointing additional ministers to preach the word
+and administer the sacraments. And no doubt such church extension
+is a good and blessed work, for it brings the knowledge of the
+truths of Christ's religion, and the benefit of his ordinances, the
+sacraments, within the reach of many who might otherwise have been
+without them. But it were a yet truer and more blessed church
+extension which should add to the building and the single minister,
+the real living church itself, with all its manifold offices and
+ministries, with its pure discipline, with its holy and loving
+sense of brotherhood. Without this, Christ will still, indeed, as
+heretofore, lay his hands on some few sick folk and heal them; his
+grace will convey the truths of his gospel to individual souls, and
+they will believe and be saved. But the fulfilment of prophecy; the
+triumph of Christ's kingdom; the changing an evil world into a
+world redeemed; this can only be done by a revival of the Christian
+church in its power, the living temple of the Holy Ghost, which,
+visibly to all mankind, in the wisdom and holiness of its members,
+showed that God was in the midst of it. It may be that this is a
+fond hope, which we may not expect to see realized; but looking on
+the one hand to the strong and triumphant language of prophecy, I
+know not how any hope of the advancement of Christ's kingdom can be
+more bold than God's word will warrant: and on the other, tracing
+the past history of the church, its gradual corruption may be
+deduced distinctly from one early and deadly mischief, which has
+destroyed its efficacy; so that, if this mischief can be removed,
+and the church become such as Christ designed it to be, it does not
+seem presumptuous to hope that his appointed instrument, working
+according to his will, should be enabled to obtain the full
+blessings of his promise.</p>
+<p>And now, in conclusion, if we ask, what should follow from all
+that has been said? what it should lead us all, if it be true, to
+feel or to do?--the answer is, that considerations of this sort are
+not such as lead at once to some distinct change in our conduct; to
+the laying aside some favourite sin, or the practising some long
+neglected duty. And yet the thoughts which I have endeavoured to
+suggest to your minds may, if dwelt upon, lead, in the end, to a
+very considerable alteration, both in our feelings and in our
+practice. First of all, it is not a little matter to be convinced
+practically, that it is baptism, and not ordination, which makes us
+members of the church; that it is by sharing in the communion of
+Christ's body and blood, not by being admitted into the ministry,
+that the privileges and graces of Christ's church are conferred
+upon us. And most wisely, and most truly, does our Church separate
+ordination from the two Christian sacraments, as an institution far
+less solemn, and conferring graces far less important: for the
+difference between a Christian and a Christian minister is but one
+of office, not of moral or spiritual advancement, not of greater or
+less nearness to God. One is our master, even Christ; and all we
+are brethren. Words which certainly do not imply that all members
+of the church are to have the same office, or that all offices are
+of equal importance and dignity; but which do imply, most
+certainly, that any attempt to convert the ministry into a
+priesthoood, that is, to represent them as standing, in any matter,
+as mediators between Christ and his people, or as being essentially
+the channel through which his grace must pass to his church, is
+directly in opposition to him; and is no better than idolatry. It
+was by baptism that we have all been engrafted into Christ's body;
+it is by the communion of his body and blood that we continue to
+abide in him; it is in his whole body, in his church, and not in
+its ministers, as distinct from his church, that his Holy Spirit
+abides.</p>
+<p>Thus feeling that we each are members of the church, that it is
+our highest country, to which we are bound with a far deeper love
+than to our earthly country, is not its welfare our welfare; its
+triumph our triumph; its failures our shame? We shall see, then,
+that church questions are not such merely, or principally, as
+concern the payment of the clergy, or their discipline, but all
+questions in which God's glory and man's sins or duties are
+concerned; all questions in the decision of which, there is a moral
+good and evil; a grieving of Christ's Spirit, or a conformity to
+him. And in such questions as concern the church, in the more
+narrow and common sense of the word, seeing that we are all members
+of the church, we should not neglect them, as the concern of
+others, but take an interest in them, and act in them, so far as we
+have opportunity, as in a matter which most nearly concerns
+ourselves. We feel that we have an interest in our country's
+affairs, although we are not members of the government or of the
+legislature; we have our part to perform, without at all
+overstepping the modesty of private life: and it is the constant
+influence of public opinion, and the active interest taken by the
+country at large in its own concerns, which, in spite of occasional
+delusion or violence, is mainly instrumental in preserving to us
+the combined vigour and order of our political constitution. And
+so, if we took an equal interest in the affairs of our divine
+commonwealth, our Christian church, and endeavoured as eagerly to
+promote every thing which tended to its welfare, and to put down
+and prevent every thing which might work it mischief, then the
+efforts of the clergy to advance Christ's kingdom would be
+incalculably aided, while there would then be no danger of our
+investing them with the duties and responsibilities which belong
+properly to the whole church; they could not then have dominion
+over our faith, nor by possibility become lords over God's
+heritage, but would be truly ensamples to the flock, the helpers of
+our joy, the glory of Christ.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXXIX."></a>LECTURE XXXIX.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>COLOSSIANS iii. 17.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of
+the Lord<br>
+Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>This, like the other general rules of the gospel, is familiar
+enough to us all in its own words; but we are very apt to forbear
+making the application of it. In fact, he who were to apply it
+perfectly would be a perfect Christian: for a life of which every
+word and deed were said and done in the name of the Lord Jesus,
+would be a life indeed worthy of the children of God, and such as
+they lead in heaven; it would leave no room for sin to enter. The
+art of our enemy has been therefore to make us leave this command
+of the apostle's in its general sense, and avoid exploring, so to
+speak, all the wisdom contained within it. Certain actions of our
+lives, our religious services, the more solemn transactions in
+which we are engaged, we are willing to do in Christ's name; but
+that multitude of common words and ordinary actions by which more
+than sixty-nine out of our seventy years are filled, we take away
+from our Lord's dominion, under the foolish, and hypocritical
+pretence that they are too trifling and too familiar to be mixed up
+with the thought of things so solemn.</p>
+<p>This is one fault, and by far the most common. We make Christ's
+service the business only of a very small portion of our lives; we
+hallow only a very small part of our words and actions by doing
+them in his name. Unlike our Lord's own parable, where he compares
+Christianity to leaven hidden in the three measures of meal till
+the whole was leavened, the practice rather has been to keep the
+leaven confined to one little corner of the mass of meal; to take
+care that it should not spread so as to leaven the whole mass; to
+keep our hearts still in the state of the world when Christ visited
+it--"the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended
+it not;" that is, it did not take the light into itself so as to be
+wholly enlightened: the light shone, and there was a bright space
+immediately around it; but beyond there was a blackness of darkness
+into which it vainly strove to penetrate.</p>
+<p>On the other hand there has been, though, more rarely, a fault
+of the opposite sort. Men have said that they were in all their
+actions of ordinary life doing Christ's will, that they endeavoured
+always to be promoting some good object; and that the peculiar
+services of religion, as they are called, were useless, inasmuch as
+in spirit they are worshipping God always. This is a great error;
+because, as a matter of fact, it is false. We may safely say that
+no man ever did keep his heart right with God in his ordinary life,
+that no one ever became one with Christ, and Christ with him,
+without seeking Christ where he reveals himself, it may not be more
+really, but to our weakness far more sensibly, than in the common
+business of daily life. We may be happy if we can find Christ
+there, after we have long sought him and found him in the way of
+his own ordinances, in prayer, and in his holy communion. Even
+Christ himself, when on earth, though his whole day was undeniably
+spent in doing the will of his heavenly father,--although to him
+doubtless God was ever present in the commonest acts no less than
+in the most solemn,--yet even he, after a day spent in all good
+works, desired a yet more direct intercourse with God, and was
+accustomed to spend a large portion of the night in retirement and
+prayer.</p>
+<p>Without this, indeed, we shall most certainly not say and do all
+in the name of the Lord Jesus; much more shall we be in danger of
+forgetting him altogether. But supposing that we are not neglectful
+of our religious duties, in the common sense of the term, that we
+do pray and read the Scriptures, and partake of Christ's communion,
+yet it will often happen that we do not connect our prayers, nor
+our reading, nor our communion, with many of the common portions of
+our lives; that there are certain things in which we take great
+interest, which, notwithstanding, we leave, as it were, wholly
+without the range of the light of Christ's Spirit. There is a story
+told that, in times and countries where there prevailed the deepest
+ignorance, some who came to be baptized into the faith of Christ,
+converted from their heathen state, not in reality but only in
+name, were accustomed to leave their right arm unbaptized, with the
+notion that this arm, not being pledged to Christ's service, might
+wreak upon their enemies those works of hatred and revenge which in
+baptism they had promised to renounce. It is too much to say that
+something like this unbaptized right arm is still to be met with
+amongst us--that men too often leave some of their very most
+important concerns, what they call by way of eminence their
+business--their management of their own money affairs, and their
+conduct in public matters--wholly out of the control of Christ's
+law?</p>
+<p>Now at this very time public matters are engaging the thoughts
+of a great many persons all over the kingdom: and are not only
+engaging their thoughts, but are also become a practical matter, in
+which they are acting with great earnestness. Is it nothing that
+there should be so much, interest felt, so much pains taken, and
+yet that neither should be done in the name of the Lord Jesus, nor
+to the glory of God? It cannot be unsuited to the present season to
+dwell a little on this subject, which has nothing whatever to do
+with men's differences of opinion, but relates only to their
+acting, whatever be their political opinions, on Christian
+principles, and in a Christian spirit.</p>
+<p>First, consider what we pray for in the prayer which we have
+been using every week for the high court of parliament: we pray to
+God, that "all things may be so ordered and settled by the
+endeavours of parliament, upon the best and surest foundations,
+that peace and happiness, truth, and justice, religion and piety,
+may be established among us for all generations." These great
+blessings we beg of God to secure to us and to our children through
+the endeavours of parliament; if, therefore, we are any ways
+concerned in fixing who the persons are to be who are to compose
+this parliament, it is plain that there is put into our bands a
+high privilege, if you will; but along with it, as with all other
+privileges, a most solemn responsibility.</p>
+<p>But, if it be a solemn responsibility in the sight of God and of
+Christ, surely the act of voting, which many think so lightly of,
+and which many more consider a thing wholly political and worldly,
+becomes, indeed, a very important Christian duty, not to be
+discharged hastily or selfishly, in blind prejudice or passion,
+from self-interest, or in mere careless good nature and respect of
+persons; but deliberately, seriously, calmly, and, so far as we can
+judge our deceitful hearts, purely; not without prayer to Him who
+giveth wisdom liberally to those that ask it, that he will be
+pleased to guide them aright, to his own glory, and to the good of
+his people.</p>
+<p>Do I say that if we were to approach this duty in this spirit,
+and with such prayers, we should all agree in the same opinion, and
+all think the same of the same men? No, by no means; we might still
+greatly differ; but we should, at least, have reason to respect one
+another, and to be in charity with one another; and if we all
+earnestly desired and prayed to be directed to God's glory, and the
+public good, God, I doubt not, would give us all those ends which
+we so purely desired, although in our estimate of the earthly means
+and instruments by which they were to be gained, we had honestly
+differed from one another.</p>
+<p>Now, supposing that we had this conviction, that what we were
+going to do concerned the glory of God and the good of his people,
+and that we approached it therefore seriously as a Christian duty,
+yet it may be well that many men might feel themselves deficient in
+knowledge; they might not understand the great questions at issue;
+they might honestly doubt how they could best fulfil the trust
+committed to them. I know that the most ignorant man will feel no
+such hesitation if he is going to give his vote from fancy, or from
+prejudice, or from interest; these are motives which determine our
+conduct quickly and decisively. But if we regard our vote as a
+talent for which we must answer before God that we may well be
+embarrassed by a consciousness of ignorance; we may well be anxious
+to get some guidance from others, if we cannot find it in
+ourselves. Here, then, is the place for authority,--for relying,
+that is, on the judgment of others, when we feel that we cannot
+judge for ourselves. But is their no room for the exercise of much
+good sense and fairness in ourselves as to the choice of the person
+by whose judgment we mean to be guided? Are we so little accustomed
+to estimate our neighbours' characters rightly, as to be unable to
+determine whom we may consult with advantage? Surely if their be
+any one whom we have proved, in the affairs of common life, to be
+at once honest and sensible, to such an one we should apply when we
+are at a loss as to public matters. If there is such an one amongst
+our own relations or personal friends, we should go to him in
+preference: if not, we can surely find one such amongst our
+neighbours: and here the authority of such of our neighbours as
+have a direct connexion with us, if we have had reason to respect
+their judgment and their principles, may be properly preferred to
+that of indifferent persons; the authority of a master, or an
+employer, or of our minister, or of our landlord, may and ought,
+under such circumstances, to have a great and decisive influence
+over us.</p>
+<p>On the other hand, supposing again that we have this strong
+sense of the great responsibility in the sight of God of every man
+who has the privilege of a vote, we shall be exceedingly careful
+not to tempt him to sin by fulfilling this duty ill. Nothing can be
+more natural or more proper than that those who have strong
+impressions themselves as to the line to be followed in public
+matters, should be desirous of persuading others to think as they
+do; every man who loves truth and righteousness must wish that what
+he himself earnestly believes to be true and righteous, should be
+loved by others also; but the highest truth, if professed by one
+who believes it not in his heart, is to him a lie, and he sins
+greatly by professing it. Let us try as much as we will to convince
+our neighbours; but let us beware of influencing their conduct,
+when we fail in influencing their convictions: he who bribes or
+frightens his neighbour into doing an act which no good man would
+do for reward or from fear, is tempting his neighbour to sin; he is
+assisting to lower and to harden his conscience,--to make him act
+for the favour or from the fear of man, instead of for the favour
+or from the fear of God; and if this be a sin in him, it is a
+double sin in us to tempt him to it. Nor let us deceive ourselves
+by talking of the greatness of the stake at issue; that God's glory
+and the public good are involved in the result of the contest, and
+that therefore we must do all in our power to win it. Let us by all
+means do all that we can do without sin; but let us not dare to do
+evil that good may come, for that is the part of unbelief; it
+becomes those who will not trust God with the government of the
+world, but would fain guide its course themselves. Here, indeed,
+our Lord's command does apply to us, that we be not anxious; "Which
+of you by taking thought can add to his stature one cubit?" How
+little can we see of the course of Providence! how little can we be
+sure that what we judged for the best in public affairs may not
+lead to mischief! But these things are in God's hand; our business
+is to keep ourselves and our neighbours from sin, and not to do or
+encourage in others any thing that is evil, however great the
+advantages which we may fancy likely to flow from that evil to the
+cause even of the highest good.</p>
+<p>There is no immediate prospect, indeed, that we in this
+particular congregation shall be called upon to practise the duty
+of which I have been now speaking; and, indeed, it is for that very
+reason that I could dwell on the subject more freely. But what is
+going on all around us, what we hear of, read of, and talk of so
+much as we are many of us likely to do in the next week or two
+about political matters, <i>that</i> we should be accustomed to
+look upon as Christians: we should by that standard try our common
+views and language about it, and, if it may be, correct them: that
+so hereafter, if we be called upon to act, we may act, according to
+the Apostle's teaching, in the name of our Lord Jesus. And I am
+quite sure if we do so think and so act, although our differences
+of opinion might remain just the same, yet the change in ourselves,
+and I verily believe in the blessings which God would give us,
+would be more than we can well believe; and a general election,
+instead of calling forth, as it now does, a host of unchristian
+passions and practices, would be rather an exercise of Christian
+judgment, and forbearance, and faith, and charity; promoting,
+whatever was the mere political result, the glory of God, advancing
+Christ's kingdom, and the good of this, as it would be then truly
+called, Christian nation.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="NOTES."></a>NOTES.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>NOTE A. P. 5.</p>
+<p>"<i>But our path is not backwards but onwards</i>"--This thought
+is expressed very beautifully in lines as wise and true as they are
+poetical:</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i4">"Grieve not for these: nor dare lament</p>
+<p class="i5">That thus from childhood's thoughts we roam:</p>
+<p class="i4">Not backward are our glances bent,</p>
+<p class="i5">But forward to our Father's home.</p>
+<p class="i4">Eternal growth has no such fears,</p>
+<p class="i5">But freshening still with seasons past,</p>
+<p class="i4">The old man clogs its earlier years,</p>
+<p class="i5">And simple childhood comes the last."</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i5"><i>Burbridge's Poems</i>, p. 309.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>NOTE B. P. 102.</p>
+<p>"<i>Some may know the story of that German nobleman</i>,"
+&amp;c.--The Baron von Canitz. He lived in the latter half of the
+seventeenth century, and was engaged in the service of the electors
+of Brandenburg, both of the great elector and his successor. He was
+the author of several hymns, one of which is of remarkable beauty,
+as may be seen in the following translation, for the greatest part
+of which I am indebted to the kindness of a friend: but the
+language of the original, in several places, cannot be adequately
+translated in English.</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i4">Come, my soul, thou must be waking--</p>
+<p class="i4">Now is breaking</p>
+<p class="i5">O'er the earth another day.</p>
+<p class="i4">Come to Him who made this splendour</p>
+<p class="i4">See thou render</p>
+<p class="i5">All thy feeble powers can pay.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i4">From the stars thy course be learning:</p>
+<p class="i4">Dimly burning</p>
+<p class="i5">'Neath the sun their light grows pale:</p>
+<p class="i4">So let all that sense delighted</p>
+<p class="i4">While benighted</p>
+<p class="i5">From God's presence fade and fail.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i4">Lo! how all of breath partaking,</p>
+<p class="i4">Gladly waking,</p>
+<p class="i5">Hail the sun's enlivening light!</p>
+<p class="i4">Plants, whose life mere sap doth nourish,</p>
+<p class="i4">Rise and flourish,</p>
+<p class="i5">When he breaks the shades of night.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i4">Thou too hail the light returning,--</p>
+<p class="i4">Ready burning</p>
+<p class="i5">Be the incense of thy powers;--</p>
+<p class="i4">For the night is safely ended:</p>
+<p class="i4">God hath tended</p>
+<p class="i5">With His care thy helpless hours.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i4">Pray that He may prosper ever</p>
+<p class="i4">Each endeavour</p>
+<p class="i5">When thine aim is good and true;</p>
+<p class="i4">But that He may ever thwart thee,</p>
+<p class="i4">And convert thee,</p>
+<p class="i5">When thou evil wouldst pursue.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i4">Think that He thy ways beholdeth--</p>
+<p class="i4">He unfoldeth</p>
+<p class="i5">Every fault that lurks within;</p>
+<p class="i4">Every stain of shame gloss'd over</p>
+<p class="i4">Can discover,</p>
+<p class="i5">And discern each deed of sin.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i4">Fetter'd to the fleeting hours,</p>
+<p class="i4">All our powers,</p>
+<p class="i5">Vain and brief, are borne away;</p>
+<p class="i4">Time, my soul, thy ship is steering,</p>
+<p class="i4">Onward veering,</p>
+<p class="i5">To the gulph of death a prey.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i4">May'st thou then on life's last morrow,</p>
+<p class="i4">Free from sorrow,</p>
+<p class="i5">Pass away in slumber sweet;</p>
+<p class="i4">And released from death's dark sadness,</p>
+<p class="i4">Rise in gladness,</p>
+<p class="i5">That far brighter Sun to greet.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i4">Only God's free gifts abuse not,</p>
+<p class="i4">His light refuse not,</p>
+<p class="i5">But still His Spirit's voice obey;</p>
+<p class="i4">Soon shall joy thy brow be wreathing,</p>
+<p class="i4">Splendour breathing</p>
+<p class="i5">Fairer than the fairest day.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i4">If aught of care this morn oppress thee,</p>
+<p class="i4">To Him address thee,</p>
+<p class="i5">Who, like the sun, is good to all:</p>
+<p class="i4">He gilds the mountain tops, the while</p>
+<p class="i4">His gracious smile</p>
+<p class="i5">Will on the humblest valley fall.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i4">Round the gifts His bounty show'rs,</p>
+<p class="i4">Walls and tow'rs</p>
+<p class="i5">Girt with flames thy God shall rear:</p>
+<p class="i4">Angel legions to defend thee</p>
+<p class="i4">Shall attend thee,</p>
+<p class="i5">Hosts whom Satan's self shall fear.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>NOTE C. P. 122.</p>
+<p>"<i>But, once admit a single exception, and the infallible
+virtue of the rule ceases</i>."--Thus the famous Canon of
+Vincentius Lirinensis is like tradition itself, always either
+superfluous or insufficient. Taken literally, it is true and
+worthless;--because what <i>all</i> have asserted, <i>always</i>,
+and in <i>all places</i>, supposing of course that the means of
+judging were in their power, may be assumed to be some indisputable
+axiom, such as never will be disputed any more than it has been
+disputed hitherto. But take it with any allowance, and then it is
+of no use in settling a question: for what <i>most</i> men have
+asserted, <i>most commonly</i>, and in <i>most places</i>, has a
+certain <i>&agrave; priori</i> probability, it is true, but by no
+means such as may not be outweighed by probabilities on the other
+side; for the extreme improbability consists not in the prevalence
+of error amongst millions, or for centuries, or over whole
+continents,--but in its being absolutely universal, so universal,
+that truth could not find a single witness at any time or in any
+country. But the single witness is enough to "justify the ways of
+God," and reduces what otherwise would have been a monstrous
+triumph of evil to the character of a severe trial of our faith,
+severe indeed as the trials of an evil world will be, but no more
+than a trial such as, with God's grace, may be overcome.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>NOTE D. P. 189.</p>
+<p><i>"It was an admirable definition of that which excites
+laughter,"</i> &amp;c.--[Greek: To geloion apurtaepa ti chai
+aiochos auodnnoy chai on phthartichon oion enthus to geloion
+prosopon aischron ti chai dieotruppenon anen
+odunaes]--<i>Aristotle, Poetic,</i> ii.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>NOTE E. P. 245.</p>
+<p>"<i>I would endeavour just to touch upon some of the purposes
+for which the Scripture tells us that Christ died</i>."--The
+Collects for Easter Sunday and the Sundays just before it and after
+it, illustrate the enumeration here given. The Collect for the
+Sunday next before Easter speaks of Christ's death only as an
+"example of his great humility." The Collect for Easter-day speaks
+of the resurrection, and connects it with our spiritual
+resurrection, as does also the Collect for the first Sunday after
+Easter. But the collect for the Second Sunday after Easter speaks
+of Christ as being at once our sacrifice for sin and our example of
+godly life,--a sacrifice to be regarded with entire thankfulness,
+and an example to be daily followed.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>NOTE F. P. 282.</p>
+<p>"<i>Such also was to be the state of the Christian Church after
+our Lord's ascension</i>."--And therefore, as I think, St. Peter
+applies to the Christians of Asia Minor the very terms applied to
+the Jews living in Assyria or in Egypt; he addresses them as
+[Greek: parepidaemois diasporas], (1 Peter i. 1,) that is, as
+strangers and sojourners, scattered up and down in a country that
+was not properly their own, and living in a sort of banishment from
+their true home. That the words are not addressed to Jewish
+Christians, and therefore are not to be understood in their simple
+historical sense, seems evident from the second chapter of the
+Epistle, verses 9, 10, and iv. 2,3.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>NOTE G. P. 315.</p>
+<p>"<i>Not only an outward miracle, but the changed circumstances
+of the times may speak God's will no less clearly than a
+miracle</i>," &amp;c.--What I have here said does not at all go
+beyond what has been said on the same subject by Hooker: "Laws,
+though both ordained of God himself, and the end for which they
+were ordained continuing, may, notwithstanding, cease, if by
+alteration of persons or times they be found insufficient to attain
+unto that end. In which respect why may we not presume that God
+doth even call for such change or alteration as the very condition
+of things themselves doth make necessary?... In this case,
+therefore, men do not presume to change God's ordinance, but they
+yield thereunto, requiring itself to be
+changed."--<i>Ecclesiastical Polity</i>, b. iii. &sect; 10.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>NOTE H. P. 320.</p>
+<p><i>"Nor is it less strange that any should ever have been afraid
+of their understandings, and should have sought goodness through
+prejudice, and blindness, and folly</i>."--For some time past the
+words "Rationalism" and "Rationalistic" have been freely used as
+terms of reproach by writers on religious subjects; the 73d No. of
+the "Tracts for the Times" is entitled, "On the introduction of
+Rationalistic Principles into Religion," and a whole chapter in Mr.
+Gladstone's late work on Church Principles is headed "Rationalism."
+Yet we still want a clear definition of the thing signified by this
+name. The Tract for the Times says, "To rationalize, is to ask for
+<i>reasons</i> out of place; to ask improperly how we are to
+<i>account</i> for certain things; to be unwilling to believe them
+unless they can be accounted for, i.e. referred to something else
+as a cause, to some existing system, as harmonizing with them, or
+taking them up into itself.... It is characterised by two
+peculiarities;--its love of systematizing, and its basing its
+system upon personal experience, on the evidence of sense."--P. 2.
+Mr. Gladstone says more generally, "Rationalism is commonly, at
+least in this country, taken to be the reduction of Christian
+<i>doctrine</i> to the standard and measure of the human
+understanding."--P. 37. But neither of these definitions will
+include all the arguments and statements which have been called by
+various writers "rationalistic;" and while the terms used are thus
+vague, they are often applied very indiscriminately, and the
+tendency of this use of them is to depreciate the exercise of the
+intellectual faculties generally. The subject seems to deserve
+fuller consideration than it has yet received; there is a real evil
+which the term Rationalism is meant to denounce; but it has not
+been clearly apprehended, and what is good has sometimes been
+confounded with it, and denounced under the same name.</p>
+<p>I cannot pretend to discuss the subject fully in a mere note,
+even if I were otherwise competent to do it. But one or two points
+may be noticed, as likely to assist the inquiry, wherever it is
+worthily entered on.</p>
+<p>1st. It is important to bear in mind the distinction which
+Coleridge enforces so earnestly between the understanding and the
+reason. I do not know whether Mr. Gladstone, in the passage quoted
+above, uses the word "understanding" as synonymous with reason, or
+in that stricter sense in which Coleridge employs it. But the
+writer of the Tract seems to allude to the stricter sense, when he
+calls it a characteristic of rationalism "to base its system upon
+personal experience, on the evidence of sense." If this be the
+case, then it would seem that rationalism is the appealing to the
+decision of the understanding in points where the decision properly
+belongs not to the understanding, but to the reason. This is a
+great fault, and one to which all persons who belong to the
+sensualist school in philosophy, as opposed to the idealist school,
+would be more or less addicted. But then, this fault consists not
+in an over-estimating of man's intellectual nature generally, but
+in the exalting one part of it unduly, to the injury of another
+part; in deferring to the understanding, rather than to the
+reason.</p>
+<p>2d. Faith and reason are often invidiously contrasted with each
+other, as if they were commonly described in Scripture as
+antagonists; whereas faith is more properly opposed to sight, or to
+lust, being, in fact, a very high exercise of the pure reason;
+inasmuch as we believe truths which our senses do not teach us, and
+which our passions would have us, therefore, reject, because those
+truths are taught by Him in whom reason recognises its own author,
+and the infallible source of all truth.</p>
+<p>3d. It were better to oppose reason to passion than to faith;
+for it may be safely said, that he who neglects his reason, so far
+as he does neglect it, does not lead a life of faith afterwards,
+but a life of passion. He does not draw nearer to God, but to the
+brutes, or rather to the devils; for his passions cannot be the
+mere instinctive appetites of the brute, but derive from the wreck
+of his intellectual powers, which he cannot utterly destroy, just
+so much of a higher nature that they are sins, and not instincts,
+belonging to the malignity of diabolic nature, rather than to the
+mere negative evil of the nature of brutes.</p>
+<p>4th. Faith may be described as reason leaning upon God. Without
+God, reason is either overpowered by sense and understanding, and,
+in a manner, overgrown, so that it cannot comprehend its proper
+truths; or, being infinite, it cannot discover all the truths which
+concern it, and therefore needs a farther revelation to enlighten
+it. But with God's grace strengthening it to assert its supremacy
+over sense and understanding, and communicating to it what of
+itself it could not have discovered, it then having gained strength
+and light not its own, and doing and seeing consciously by God's
+help, becomes properly faith.</p>
+<p>5th. Faith without reason, is not properly faith, but mere power
+worship; and power worship may be devil worship; for it is reason
+which entertains the idea of God--an idea essentially made up of
+truth and goodness, no less than of power. A sign of power
+exhibited to the senses might, through them, dispose the whole man
+to acknowledge it as divine; yet power in itself is not divine, it
+may be devilish. But when reason recognises that, along with this
+power, there exist also wisdom and goodness, then it perceives that
+here is God; and the worship which, without reason, might have been
+idolatry, being now according to reason is faith.</p>
+<p>6th. If this were considered, men would be more careful of
+speaking disparagingly of reason, seeing that it is the necessary
+condition of the existence of faith. It is quite true, that when we
+have attained to faith, it supersedes reason; we walk by sunlight,
+rather than by moonlight; following the guidance of infinite
+reason, instead of finite. But how are we to attain to faith? in
+other words, how can we distinguish God's voice from the voice of
+evil? for we must distinguish it to be God's voice before we can
+have faith in it. We distinguish it, and can distinguish it no
+otherwise, by comparing it with that idea of God which reason
+intuitively enjoins, the gift of reason being God's original
+revelation of himself to man. Now, if the voice which comes to us
+from the unseen world agree not with this idea, we have no choice
+but to pronounce it not to be God's voice; for no signs of power,
+in confirmation of it, can alone prove it to be God. God is not
+power only, but power, and truth, and holiness; and the existence
+of even infinite power, does not necessarily involve in it truth
+and holiness also; else the notion of the world being governed by
+an evil being would be no more than a contradiction in terms; and
+the horrible strife of the two principles of Manicheism would be a
+mere matter of indifference; for if power alone constitutes God,
+whichever principle triumphed over the other, would become God by
+the very fact of its victory; and thus triumphant evil would be
+good.</p>
+<p>7th. Reason, then, is the mean whereby we attain to faith, and
+escape the devil worship of idolatry; but the understanding is not
+a necessary condition of faith, and very often impedes it; for the
+understanding having for its basis the reports of sense and
+experience, has no direct way of arriving at things invisible, and
+rather shrinks back from that world with which it is in no way
+familiar. It has a work to do in regard to revelation, and an
+important work; but divine things not being its proper matter, its
+work concerning them must be subordinate, and its tendency is
+always to fall back from the invisible to the visible,--from
+matters of faith to matters of experience. Its work, with respect
+to revelation, is this--that it should inquire into the truth of
+the outward signs of it; which outward signs being necessarily
+things visible and sensible, fall within its province of judgment.
+Thus understanding judges the external witnesses of a revelation:
+if miracles be alleged, it is the business of understanding to
+ascertain the fact of their occurrence; if a book claim to be the
+record of a revelation, it belongs to the understanding to make out
+the origin of this book, the time when it was written, who were its
+authors, and what is the first and grammatical meaning of its
+language. Or, again, if any men profess to be the depositaries of
+divine truth, by an extraordinary commission from God, the
+understanding, being familiar with man's nature and motives, can
+judge of their credibility--can see whether there are any marks of
+folly in them, or of dishonesty, or whether they are at once
+sensible and honest. And in all such matters, the prerogative of
+the understanding to judge is not to be questioned; for all such
+points are strictly within its dominion; and our Lord's words are
+of universal application, that we should render to C&aelig;sar the
+things which are C&aelig;sar's, no less than we should render to
+God the things that are God's.</p>
+<p>Faith may exist, as I said, without the action of the
+understanding, but never without that of the reason. It may exist
+independent of the understanding, because faith in God is the
+natural result of the idea of God: and that idea belongs to the
+reason, and the understanding is not concerned with it. But when a
+special revelation has been given us, through human instruments;
+when the understanding is called in to certify the particular fact,
+that in such and such particular persons, writings, or events, God
+has made himself manifest in an extraordinary manner; it is the
+human instrumentality which requires the judgment of the
+understanding; the bringing in of human characters, and sensible
+facts, which are matters of sense and experience; and, therefore,
+it is mere ignorance when Christians speak slightingly of the
+outward and historical evidences of Christianity, and indulge in
+very misplaced contempt for Paley and others who have worked out
+the historical proof of it. Such persons may observe, if they will,
+that where the historical evidence has not been listened to, there
+a belief in Christianity, properly so called, is wanting. Living
+examples might, I think, be named of men whose reason entirely
+acknowledges the internal proofs of a divine origin which are
+contained in the Christian doctrines, but whose understandings are
+not satisfied as to the facts of the Christian history, and
+particularly as to the fact of our Lord's resurrection. Such men
+are a remarkable contrast to those whose understandings are fully
+satisfied of the historical truth of our Lord's resurrection, but
+who are indifferent to, or actually deny, those doctrinal truths of
+which another power than the understanding must be the warrant. It
+is important to observe, therefore, that in a revelation involving,
+as an essential part of it, certain historical facts, there is
+necessarily a call for the judgment of the understanding, although
+in religious faith simply the understanding may have no place.</p>
+<p>8th. Now, then, the clearest notion which can be given of
+rationalism would, I think, be this: that it is the abuse of the
+understanding in subjects where the divine and the human, so to
+speak, are intermingled. Of human things the understanding can
+judge, of divine things it cannot;--and thus, where the two are
+mixed together, its inability to judge of the one part makes it
+derange the proportions of both, and the judgment of the whole is
+vitiated. For example, the understanding examines a miraculous
+history; it judges truly of what I may call the human part of the
+case; that is to say, of the rarity of miracles,--of the
+fallibility of human testimony,--of the proneness of most minds to
+exaggeration,--and of the critical arguments affecting the
+genuineness or the date of the narrative itself. But it forgets the
+divine part, namely, the power and providence of God, that He is
+really ever present amongst us, and that the spiritual world, which
+exists invisibly all around us, may conceivably, and by no means
+impossibly, exist, at some times and to some persons, even visibly.
+These considerations, which the understanding is ignorant of, would
+often modify our judgment as to the human parts of the case. Things
+not impossible in themselves are believed upon sufficient
+testimony; and with all the carelessness and exaggeration of
+historians, the mass of history is notwithstanding generally
+credible. Again, with regard to the history of the Old Testament,
+our judgment of the human part in it requires to be constantly
+modified by our consciousness of the divine part, or otherwise it
+cannot fail to be rationalistic; that is, it will be the judgment
+of the understanding only, unchecked by the reason. Gesenius'
+Commentary on Isaiah is rationalistic, for it regards Isaiah merely
+as a Jewish writer, zealously attached to the religion of his
+country, and lamenting the decay of his nation, and anxiously
+looking for its future restoration. No doubt Isaiah was all this,
+and therefore Gesenius' Commentary is critically and historically
+very valuable; the human part of Isaiah is nowhere better
+illustrated; but the divine part of the prophecy of Isaiah is no
+less real, and the consciousness of its existence should actually
+qualify our feelings and language even with reference to the human
+part.</p>
+<p>9th. The fault, then, of rationalism appears to me to consist
+not so much in what it has as in what it has not. The understanding
+has its proper work to do with respect to the Bible, because the
+Bible consists of human writings and contains a human history.
+Critical and historical inquiries respecting it are, therefore,
+perfectly legitimate; it contains matter which is within the
+province of the understanding, and the understanding has God's
+warrant for doing that work which he appointed it to do; only, let
+us remember, that the understanding cannot ascend to things divine;
+that for these another faculty is necessary,--reason or faith. If
+this faculty be living in us, then there can be no rationalism; and
+what is called so is then no other than the voice of Christian
+truth. Where a man's writings show that he is keenly alive to the
+divine part of Scripture, that he sees God ever in it, and regards
+it truly as his word, his judgments of the human part in it are not
+likely to be rationalistic; and if his understanding decides
+according to its own laws, upon points within its own province,
+while his faith duly tempers it, and restrains it from venturing
+upon another's dominion, the result will, in all probability, be
+such as commonly attends the use of God's manifold gifts in their
+just proportions,--it will image, after our imperfect measure, the
+holiness of God and the truth of God.</p>
+<p>It is very true, and should be acknowledged in the fullest
+manner, that for the study of the highest moral and spiritual
+questions another faculty than the understanding is wanting; and
+that without this faculty the understanding alone cannot arrive at
+truth. But it is no less true, that while there is, on the one
+side, a faculty higher than the understanding, which is entitled to
+pronounce upon its defects; "for he that is spiritual judgeth all
+things," ([Greek: auachriuei];) so there is a clamour often raised
+against it, not from above, but from below,--the clamour of mere
+shallowness and ignorance, and passion. Of this sort is some of the
+outcry which is raised against rationalism. Men do not leap, <i>per
+saltum mortalem</i>, from ordinary folly to divine wisdom: and the
+foolish have no right to think that they are angels, because they
+are not humanly wise. There is a deep and universal truth in St.
+Paul's words, where he says, that Christians wish "not to be
+unclothed but clothed upon, that mortality may be swallowed up of
+life." Wisdom is gained, not by renouncing or despising the
+understanding, but by adding to its perfect work the perfect work
+of reason, and of reason's perfection, faith.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>NOTE I. P. 331.</p>
+<p>"<i>A famous example of this may be seen in the sixth chapter of
+St. John,"</i> &amp;c.--The interpretation of this chapter, and
+particularly of the part alluded to in the text, is of no small
+importance; for it is remarkable, that the highest notions with
+respect to the presence of our Lord in the Holy Communion are often
+grounded upon this passage in St. John's Gospel, which yet, in the
+judgment of others, most decisively repels them.</p>
+<p>The whole question resolves itself into this--Are our Lord's
+words in this place co-ordinate with the Holy Communion, or
+subordinate to it? That is, do they and the communion alike point
+to some great truth superior to them both: or do our Lord's words,
+in St. John, point to the communion itself as their highest
+meaning?</p>
+<p>The communion itself expresses a truth above itself by a
+symbolical action; the words of our Lord, in St. John, are exactly
+the same with that symbolic action; it is natural, therefore, to
+understand them not as referring to it, but to the same<a name=
+"FNanchor14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14">[14]</a> higher truth to
+which it refers also: and the more so as the communion is not once
+mentioned by St. John either in his Gospel or in his Epistles; but
+the idea which the communion expresses appears to have been
+familiar to his mind; at least, if we suppose that his mention of
+the blood and water flowing from our Lord's side in his Gospel, and
+his allusion again to the same fact in his Epistle, have reference
+in any degree to it, which seems to me most probable.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_14"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor14">[14]</a> The common tendency to make the Christian
+sacraments an ultimate end rather than a mean, is exhibited in the
+heading of the tenth chapter of the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians,
+in our authorized version, where we find the first verses described
+as stating, that "the Jews' sacraments were types of ours."
+Whereas, so far is it from the apostle's argument to represent our
+sacraments as the reality of which the Jews' sacraments were the
+type, that he is describing theirs and ours as co-ordinate with
+each other, and both alike subordinate to the same truth; and he
+argues, that if the Jews, with their sacraments, did
+notwithstanding lose the reality which those sacraments typified,
+so we should take heed lest we, with our sacraments, should lose it
+also. The erroneous heading is not given in the Geneva Bible, where
+we have, on the contrary, the true observation; "the sacraments of
+the old fathers were all one with ours, for they respected Christ
+only." It is true that if no more were meant than that "the Jews'
+sacraments were like ours," there would be no reason to object to
+the expression; but apparently more is meant, as the word type
+seems to imply that what it is compared with is the reality, of
+which it is itself only the image; and one thing cannot properly be
+called the type of another, when both are but types of the same
+third thing. But the divines of James the First's reign and of his
+son's, were to the reformers exactly what the so-called fathers
+were to the apostles: the very same tendencies, growing up even in
+Elizabeth's reign, becoming strengthened under the Stuart kings,
+and fully developed in the nonjurors, which distinguish the divines
+of the seventeenth century from those of the sixteenth, distinguish
+also the church system from the gospel. There are many who readily
+acknowledge this difference in the English church, while they would
+deny it in the case of the ancient church. Indeed, it is not yet
+deemed prudent to avow openly that they prefer the so-called
+fathers to the apostles, and therefore they try to persuade
+themselves that both speak the same language. And doubtless, if the
+Scriptures are to be interpreted according to the rule of the
+writers of the third, and fourth, and fifth centuries, the thing
+can easily be effected; as, by a similar process, the Articles of
+the Church of England, if interpreted according to the rule of the
+nonjurors and their successors, might be made to speak the very
+sentiments which their authors designed to condemn.</blockquote>
+<p>Our Lord repels the notion of a literal acceptation of his
+words, where he says,--"It is the Spirit which profiteth, the flesh
+profiteth nothing; the words which I speak unto you, they are
+Spirit and they are life." It seems impossible, therefore, to refer
+these words, which he tells us expressly are Spirit and life, to
+any outward act of eating and drinking as their highest truth and
+object.</p>
+<p>But the words in the sixth chapter of St. John do highly
+illustrate the institution and purpose of the communion, and
+especially the remarkable words which our Lord used in instituting
+it. They show what infinite importance he attached to that truth
+which he expressed both in symbolical words and action under the
+same figure, of eating His body and drinking His blood. But to
+suppose that that truth can only be realized by one particular
+ritual action, so that the one great work of a Christian is to
+receive the Lord's supper,--which it must be, if our Lord's words
+in the sixth chapter of St. John refer to the communion,--is so
+contrary to the whole character of our Lord's teaching, and not
+least so in the very words so misinterpreted, that to maintain such
+a doctrine, leading, as it does, to such manifold superstitions, is
+actually to preach another Gospel than Christ's--to bring in a
+mystical religion instead of a spiritual one,--to do worse than to
+Judaize.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>NOTE K. P. 345.</p>
+<p><i>"A set of persons, who wish to magnify the uncertainties of
+the Scripture in order to recommend more plausibly the guidance of
+some supposed authoritative interpreter of it."</i>--"The high
+church party," we have been lately told, "take Holy Scripture for
+their guide, and, in the interpretation of it, defer to the
+authority of primitive antiquity: the low church party contend for
+the sufficiency of private judgment." It is become of the greatest
+importance to see clearly, not what one party, or another, may
+contend for, but what is the real truth, and what, accordingly, is
+the duty of every Christian man to do in this matter. The sermon to
+which this note refers, is an attempt to show that Scripture is not
+hopelessly obscure or ambiguous; but it may not be inexpedient here
+to consider a little, what are the objections to the principle of
+the high church party; to clear away certain difficulties which are
+supposed to beset the opposite principle; and to state, if
+possible, what the truth of the whole question is.</p>
+<p>I. The objections to the principle of the high church party are
+these: 1st. Its extreme vagueness. What is primitive antiquity? and
+where is its authority to be found? Does "primitive antiquity" mean
+the first three centuries? or the first two? or the first five? or
+the first seven? Does it include any of the general councils? or
+one of them? or four? or six? Are Iren&aelig;us and Tertullian the
+latest writers of "primitive antiquity?" or does it end with
+Augustine? or does it comprehend the venerable Bede? One writer has
+lately told us, that our Reformers wished the people to be taught,
+"that, for almost seven hundred years, the church was most pure."
+Are we, then, to hold that "primitive antiquity" embraces a period
+of nearly seven centuries? Seven centuries are considerably more
+than a third part of the whole duration of the church, from its
+foundation to this hour: can the third part of a nation's history
+be called its primitive antiquity? Is a tenet, or a practice taught
+when Christianity had been more than six hundred years in the
+world, to be called primitive? We know not, then, in the first
+place, what length of time is signified by "primitive
+antiquity."</p>
+<p>But let it signify any length of time we choose, I ask, next,
+where is its authority to be found? In the decisions of the general
+councils? But if we call the first four centuries "primitive
+antiquity," we find in this period only two general councils; if we
+include the fifth century, we get four; if we take in the sixth and
+seventh centuries, we have then, in all, six general councils. Will
+the decisions of any, or all, of these six councils furnish us with
+an authoritative interpretation of Scripture? They give us the
+Nicene and the Constantinopolitan creeds; they condemn various
+notions with respect to the person of our Lord, and to some other
+points of belief; and they contain a variety of regulations for the
+discipline and order of the church; but, with the exception of some
+particular passages, there is no authority in the creeds, or
+canons, or anathemas of those councils, for the interpretation of
+Scripture; they leave its difficulties just where they were before.
+It is but little then, which the first six general councils will do
+towards providing the student of Scripture with an infallible
+standard of interpretation.</p>
+<p>Where, however, except in the councils, can we find any thing
+claiming to be the voice of the church? Neither individual writers,
+nor yet all the writers of the first seven centuries together, can
+properly be called the church. They form, even altogether, but a
+limited number of individuals, who, in different countries, and at
+different periods, expressed, in writing, their own sentiments, but
+without any public authority. Origen, one of the ablest and most
+learned of them all, was anathematized by the second council of
+Constantinople; Tertullian was heretical during a part of his life;
+Lactantius was taxed with heterodoxy. How are we to know who were
+sound? And if sound generally, that is to say, if they stand
+charged with no heretical error, yet it does not follow that a man
+is infallible because he is not heretical; and none of these
+writers have been distinguished like the five great Roman lawyers
+whom the edict of Theodosius<a name="FNanchor15"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_15">[15]</a> selected from the mass, and gave to their
+decisions a legal authority. Or again, if it be said that the
+agreement of the great majority of them is to be regarded as
+decisive, we answer, that as no individual amongst them is in
+himself an authority legally, so neither can any number of them be
+so; and if a moral authority only be meant, such as we naturally
+ascribe to the concurring judgment of many eminent men, then this
+is a totally different question, and is open to inquiry in every
+separate case; for as, on the one hand, no one denies that such a
+concurring judgment is <i>an</i> authority, yet, on the other hand,
+it may be outweighed, either by the worth of the few who differ
+from the judgment, or by the reason of the case itself; and the
+concurring judgment of the majority may show no more than the force
+of a general prejudice, which only a very few individuals were
+sensible enough to resist.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_15"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor15">[15]</a> Cod. Theodos. lib. i. tit. iv. The edict is
+issued in the name of the emperors Theodosius (the younger) and
+Valentinian (the younger), in the year A.D. 426.</blockquote>
+<p>In fact, it would greatly help to clear this question if we
+understand what we mean by allowing, or denying, the authority of
+the so-called fathers. The term <i>authority</i> is ambiguous, and
+according to the sense in which I use it, I should either
+acknowledge it or deny it.--The writers of the first four, or of
+the first seven centuries, have <i>an</i> authority, just as the
+scholiasts and ancient commentators have: some of them, and in some
+points, are of weight singly; the agreement of many of thorn has
+much weight; the agreement of almost all of them would have great
+weight. In this sense, I acknowledge their authority; and it would
+be against all sound principles of criticism to deny it. But if, by
+authority, is meant a <i>decisive</i> authority, a judgment which
+may not be questioned, then the claim of authority in such a case,
+for any man, or set of men, is either a folly or a revelation. Such
+an authority is not human, but divine: if any man pretends to
+possess it, let him show God's clear warrant for his pretension, or
+he must be regarded as a deceiver or a madman.</p>
+<p>But it may be said, that an authority not to be questioned was
+conferred, by the Roman law, on the opinions of a certain number of
+great lawyers: if a judge believed that their interpretation of the
+law was erroneous, he yet was not at liberty to follow his own
+private judgment in departing from it. Why may not the same thing
+be allowed in the church? and why may not the interpretations of
+Cyprian, or Athanasius, or Augustine, or Chrysostom, be as
+decisive, with respect to the true sense of the Scripture, as those
+of Gaius, Paulus, Modestinus, Ulpian, and Papinian, were
+acknowledged to be with respect to the sense of the Roman law?</p>
+<p>The answer is, that the emperor's edict could absolve the judge
+from following his own convictions about the sense of the law,
+because it gave to the authorized interpretation the force of law.
+The text, as the judge interpreted it, was a law repealed; the
+comment of the great lawyers was now the law in its room. As a mere
+literary composition, he might interpret it rightly, and Gaius, or
+Papinian, might be wrong; but if his interpretation was ever so
+right grammatically or critically, yet, legally it was nothing to
+the purpose;--Gaius's interpretation had superseded it, and was not
+the law which he was bound to obey. But, in the church, the only
+point to be aimed at is the discovery of the true meaning of the
+text of the divine law: no human power can invest the comment with
+equal authority. The emperor said, and might say to his judges,
+"You need not consider what was the meaning of the decemvirs, when
+they wrote the twelve tables, or, of Aquillius, when he drew up the
+Aquillian law. The law for you is not what the decemvirs may have
+meant, but what their interpreters may have meant: the decemvirs'
+meaning, if it was their meaning, is no longer the law of Rome."
+But who can dare to say to a Christian, "You need not consider what
+was the meaning of our Lord and his apostles; the law for you now
+is the meaning of Cyprian, or Ambrose, or Chrysostom;--that meaning
+has superseded the meaning of Christ." A Christian must find out
+Christ's meaning, and believe that he has found it, or else he must
+still seek for it. It is a matter, not of outward submission, but
+of inward faith; and if in our inward mind we are persuaded that
+the interpreter has mistaken our Lord's meaning, how can we by
+possibility adopt that interpretation in faith?</p>
+<p>Here we come to a grave consideration--that this doctrine of an
+infallible rule of interpretation may suit ignorance or scepticism:
+it is death to a sincere and reasonable and earnest faith. It is
+not hard for a sceptical mind to deceive itself by saying, that it
+receives whatever the church declares to be true: it may receive
+any number of doctrines, but it will not really believe them. We
+may restrain our tongues from disputing them, we may watch every
+restless thought that would question them, and instantly, by main
+force, as it were, put it down; but all this time our minds do not
+assimilate to them; they do not take them up into their own nature,
+so as to make them a part of themselves, freshening and supplying
+the life-blood of their very being. Truth must be believed by the
+mind's own act; our souls must be drawn towards it with a
+reasonable love; some affinity there must be between it and them,
+or else they can never really comprehend it. The sceptic may
+desperately become a fanatic also, but he is not become, therefore,
+a believer.</p>
+<p>Authority cannot compel belief; the sceptic who knows not what
+it is to grasp anything with the firm grasp of faith, may mistake
+his acquiescence in a doctrine for belief in it; the ignorant and
+careless, who believe only what their senses tell them, may lay up
+the words of divine truth in their memory, may repeat them loudly,
+and be vehement against all who question them. But minds to which
+faith is a necessity, which cannot be contented to stand by the
+side of truth, but must become altogether one with it,--minds which
+know full well the difference between opinion and conviction,
+between not questioning and believing,--they, when their own action
+is superseded by an authority foreign to themselves, are in a
+condition which they find intolerable. Told to believe what they
+cannot believe; told that they ought not to believe what they feel
+most disposed to believe; they retire altogether from the region of
+divine truth, as from a spot tainted with moral death, and devote
+themselves to other subjects: to physical science, it may be, or to
+political; where the inherent craving of their nature may yet be
+gratified, where, however insignificant the truth may be, they may
+yet find some truth to believe. This has been the condition of too
+many great men in the church of Rome; and it accounts for that
+bitterness of feeling with which Machiavelli, and others like him,
+appear to have regarded the whole subject of Christianity.</p>
+<p>The system, then, of deferring to the authority of what is
+called the ancient church in the interpretation of Scripture, is
+impracticable, inasmuch as, with regard to the greatest part of the
+Scripture, the church, properly speaking, has said nothing at all;
+and if it were practicable, it would be untenable, because neither
+the old councils, nor individual writers, could give any sign that
+they had a divine gift of interpretation; and if such a gift had
+been given to them, it would have been equivalent to a new
+revelation, the sense of the comment being thus preferred to what
+we could not but believe to be the sense of the text. Above all,
+the system is destructive of faith, having a tendency to substitute
+passive acquiescence for real conviction; and therefore I should
+not say that the excess of it was popery, but that it had once and
+actually those characters of evil which we sometimes express by the
+term popery, but which may be better signified by the term
+idolatry; a reverence for that which ought not to be reverenced,
+leading to a want of faith in that which is really deserving of all
+adoration and love.</p>
+<p>II. But it is said that the system of relying on private
+judgment is beset by no less evils: that it is itself inconsistent,
+and leads to Socinianism and Rationalism, and, in the end, to utter
+unbelief; so that, the choice being only between two evils, men may
+choose the system of church authority as being the less evil of the
+two. If this were so, I see not how faith could be attained at all,
+or what place would be left for Christian truth. But the system of
+the Church of England<a name="FNanchor16"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_16">[16]</a> is, I am persuaded, fully consistent, and
+has no tendency either to Socinianism or Rationalism. Let us see
+first what that system is.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_16"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor16">[16]</a> Much has been lately written to show that
+the Church of England allows the authority of the ancient councils
+and writers, and does not allow the right of private judgment. But
+it is perfectly clear, from the 21st Article, that it does not
+allow the authority of councils; that is to say, it holds that a
+council's exposition of doctrine may be false, and that such an
+exposition is of no force "unless it may be declared that it be
+taken out of Holy Scripture." Who, then, is to declare this? for to
+suppose that the declaration of the council itself is meant is
+absurd: the answer, I imagine, would be, according to the mind of
+the Reformers, "Every particular or national church," and
+especially the King as the head of the church. They would not have
+allowed private judgment, because they conceived that a private
+person had nothing to do but to obey the government; and it was for
+the government to determine what the truth of Scripture was. The
+Church of England, then, expressly disclaims the authority of
+councils, and, in its official instruments, it neither allows nor
+condemns private judgment; but the opinions of the Reformers, and
+the constitution of the church in the 16th century, were certainly
+against private judgment: their authority for the interpretation of
+Scripture was undoubtedly the supreme government of the church,
+i.e. not the bishops, but the King and parliament. But then this
+had respect not to the power of discerning truth, but to the right
+of publishing it, which is an wholly different question. That an
+individual was not bound <i>in foro conscienti&aelig;</i> to admit
+the truth of any interpretation of Scripture which did not approve
+itself to his own mind, was no less the judgment of the Church of
+England than that if he publicly disputed the interpretation of the
+church, he might be punished as unruly and a despiser of
+government. But then it should ever be remembered that the church,
+with the Reformers, was not the clergy. And now that the right of
+publication is conceded by the church, it is quite just to say that
+the Church of England allows private judgment; and if that judgment
+differ from her own, she condemns not the act of judging at all,
+but the having come to a false conclusion.<br>
+<br>
+It is urged that the act of I Elizabeth, c. 1, allows that to be
+heresy which the first four councils determined to be so. This is
+true; but it also adjudges to be heresy whatever shall be hereafter
+declared to be so by "the high court of parliament, with the assent
+of the clergy in their convocation." The Church of England
+undoubtedly allowed the decisions of the first four councils, in
+matters of doctrine, to be valid, as it allowed the three creeds,
+because it decided that they were agreeable to Scripture; but the
+binding authority was that of the English Parliament, not of the
+councils of Nic&aelig;a or Constantinople.<br>
+<br>
+As to the canon of 1571, which allows preachers to teach nothing as
+religious truth but what is agreeable to the Scriptures,
+"<i>and</i> which the catholic fathers and ancient bishops have
+collected from that very doctrine of Scripture," it will be
+observed that it is merely negative, and does not sanction the
+teaching of the "catholic fathers and ancient bishops," generally,
+or say that men shall teach what they taught; but that they shall
+not teach as matter of religious faith, a new deduction from
+Scripture of their own making, but such truths as had been actually
+deduced from Scripture before, namely, the great articles of the
+Christian faith. Farther, the canons of 1571 are of no authority,
+not having received the royal assent.--<i>See Strype's Life of
+Parker</i>, p. 322, ed. 1711.</blockquote>
+<p>It is invidiously described as maintaining "the sufficiency of
+private judgment." Now we maintain the sufficiency of private
+judgment in interpreting the Scriptures in no other sense than that
+in which every sane man maintains its sufficiency, in interpreting
+Thucydides or Aristotle; we mean, that, instead of deferring always
+to some one interpreter, as an idle boy follows implicitly the
+Latin version of his Greek lesson, the true method is to consult
+all<a name="FNanchor17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17">[17]</a>
+accessible authorities, and to avail ourselves of the assistance of
+all. And we contend, that, by this process, as we discover, for the
+most part, the true meaning of Thucydides and Aristotle with
+undoubted certainty, so we may also discover, not, indeed, in every
+particular part or passage, but generally, the true meaning of the
+Holy Scriptures with no less certainty.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_17"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor17">[17]</a> Of course no reasonable man can doubt the
+importance of studying the early Christian writers, as illustrating
+not only the history of their own times, but the New Testament
+also. For the Old Testament, indeed, they do little or nothing, and
+for the New they are of much less assistance than might have been
+expected; but still there is no doubt that they are often
+useful.</blockquote>
+<p>But if another man maintains that a different meaning is the
+true one, how are we to silence him, and how are we justified in
+calling him a heretic? If by the term heretic we are to imply moral
+guilt, I am not justified in applying it to any Christian, unless
+his doctrines are positively sinful, or there is something wicked,
+either in the way of dishonesty or bitterness, in his manner of
+maintaining them. The guilt of any given religious error, in any
+particular case, belongs only to the judgment of Him who reads the
+heart. But if we mean by heresy "a grave error in matters of the
+Christian faith, overthrowing or corrupting some fundamental
+article of it," then we are as fully justified in calling a gross
+misinterpretation of Scripture "heresy," as we should be justified
+in calling a gross misinterpretation of a profane Greek or Latin
+author, ignorance, or want of scholarship. There is no infallible
+authority in points of grammar and criticism, yet men do speak
+confidently, notwithstanding, as to learning and ignorance; Porson
+and Herman are known to have understood their business, and a
+writer who were to set their decisions at defiance, and to indulge
+in mere extravagances of interpretation, would be set down as one
+who knew nothing about the matter. So we judge daily in all points
+of literature and science; nay, we in the same manner venture to
+call some persons mad, and on the strength of our conviction we
+deprive them of their property, and shut them up in a madhouse: yet
+if madmen wore to insist that they were sane, and that we were mad,
+I know not to what infallible authority we could appeal; and, after
+all, what are we to do with those who deny that authority to be
+infallible? we must then go to another infallible authority to
+guarantee the infallibility of the first, and this process will run
+on for ever.</p>
+<p>But, in truth, there is more in the matter than the being
+justified or not justified in calling our neighbour a heretic. The
+real point of anxiety, I imagine, with many good and thinking men
+is this: whether a reasonable belief can be fairly carried through;
+whether the notion of the all-sufficiency of Scripture is not
+liable to objections no less than the system of church-authority;
+whether, in short, our Christian faith can be consistently
+maintained without a mortal leap at some part or other of the
+process; nay, whether, in fact, if it were otherwise, our faith
+would not seem to stand rather on the wisdom of man than on the
+power of God.</p>
+<p>I use these words, because these and other such passages of the
+Scripture are often quoted as I have now quoted them, and produce a
+great effect on those who do not observe that they are quoted
+inapplicably; for the question is not between man's wisdom and
+God's power, but simply whether we have reason to believe that
+God's power has been here manifested; or, rather, to see whether we
+cannot give a reason for the faith which is in us, such faith
+resting upon God's power and wisdom as manifested in Christ Jesus;
+for if no reason can be rendered for our faith, then our minds, so
+far as they are concerned, are believing a lie; they are believing
+in spite of those laws by which God has determined their nature and
+condition.</p>
+<p>Yet, however we believe, blindly or reasonably, (for some men,
+by God's mercy, are accidentally, as it were, in possession of the
+truth, the falsehood of their own minds in holding it not being, it
+is to be hoped, imputed to them as a sin;) however we believe, I
+never mean to say that our faith is not God's gift, to be sought
+for and retained by constant prayer and watchfulness, and to be
+forfeited by carelessness or sin. That is no true faith in which
+reason does not accord; yet neither can reason alone and without
+God ever become perfected into faith. For although intellectually,
+the grounds of belief may be made out satisfactorily, yet we are
+not able to follow our pure reason by ourselves; and no work on the
+evidences of Christianity can by itself give us faith; and much
+less can amid the manifold conflicts of life maintain it. That
+faith is thus the gift of God, and not our own work, I would desire
+to feel as keenly and continually, as with the fullest conviction I
+acknowledge it.</p>
+<p>Now, to resume the consideration of that which, as I said, is
+the real point of anxiety with many. They doubt whether the course
+of a reasonable belief can be held to the end without
+interruptions: they say that the received notions of the
+inspiration, and consequently of the complete truth of the
+Scriptures cannot reasonably be maintained; that he who does
+maintain them does so by a happy inconsistency;--he is to be
+congratulated for not following up his own principles; but why
+should he then find fault with others who do that avowedly and
+consistently to which he is driven against his professions by the
+clear necessity of the case?</p>
+<p>This argument was pressed by Mr. Newman, some time since, in one
+of the Tracts for the Times; and it was conducted, as may be
+supposed, with great ingenuity, but with a recklessness of
+consequences, or an ignorance of mankind, truly astonishing; for he
+brought forward all the difficulties and differences which can be
+found in the Scripture narratives, displayed them in their most
+glaring form, and merely observed, that as those with whom he was
+arguing could not solve these difficulties, but yet believed the
+Scriptures no less in spite of them, so the apparent
+unreasonableness of his doctrine about the priesthood was no ground
+why it should be rejected--a method of argument most blameable in
+any Christian to adopt towards his brethren; for what if their
+faith, being thus vehemently strained, were to give way under the
+experiment? and if, being convinced that the Scriptures were not
+more reasonable than Mr. Newman's system, they were to end with
+believing, not both, but neither?</p>
+<p>Therefore the question is one of no small anxiety and interest;
+and it is not idly nor wantonly that we must speak the truth upon
+it, even if that truth may to some seem startling; for by God's
+blessing, if we do go boldly forward wherever truth shall lead us,
+our course needs not be interrupted, neither shall a single hair of
+our faith perish.</p>
+<p>The same laws of criticism which teach us to distinguish between
+various degrees of testimony, authorize us to assign the very
+highest rank to the evidences of the writings of St. John and St.
+Paul. If belief is to be given to any human compositions, it is due
+to these; yet if we believe these merely as human compositions, and
+without assuming anything as to their divine inspiration, our
+Christian faith, as it seems to me, is reasonable;--not merely the
+facts of our Lord's miracles and resurrection; but Christian faith,
+in all its fulness--the whole dispensation of the Spirit, the
+revelation of the redemption of man and of the Divine Persons who
+are its authors--of all that Christian faith, and hope, and love
+can need. And this is so true, that even without reckoning the
+Epistle to the Hebrews amongst St. Paul's writings,--nay, even if
+we choose to reject the three pastoral epistles<a name=
+"FNanchor18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18">[18]</a>--yet taking only
+what neither has been nor can be doubted--the epistles to the
+Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians,
+and Thessalonians, we have in these, together with St. John's
+Gospel and First Epistle,--giving up, if we choose, the other
+two,--a ground on which our faith may stand for ever, according to
+the strictest rules of the understanding, according to the clearest
+intuitions of reason.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_18"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor18">[18]</a> I say this, not as having the slightest
+doubt myself of the genuineness of any one of the three, but merely
+to show how much is left that has not been questioned at all, even
+unreasonably.</blockquote>
+<p>I take the works of St. John and St. Paul as our foundation,
+because, in the first place, we find in them the historical basis
+of Christianity; that is to say, we find the facts of our Lord's
+miracles, and especially of his resurrection, and the miraculous
+powers afterwards continued to the church, established by the
+highest possible evidence. However pure and truly divine the
+principles taught in the gospel may be, yet we crave to know not
+only that we were in need of redemption, but that a Redeemer has
+actually appeared; not only that a resurrection to eternal life is
+probable, but that such a resurrection has actually taken place.
+This basis of historical fact, which is one of the great
+peculiarities of Christianity, is strictly within the cognizance of
+the understanding; and in the writings of St. John and St. Paul we
+have that full and perfect evidence of it which the strictest laws
+of the understanding require.</p>
+<p>But the historical truth being once warranted by the
+understanding, other faculties of our nature now come in to enjoy
+it, and develop it; the highest reason and the moral and spiritual
+affections find respectively their proper field and objects, which,
+whenever presented to them in vision or in theory, they must
+instinctively cling to, but to which they now abandon themselves
+without fear of disappointment, because the understanding has
+assured them of their reality. We must suppose, on any system, the
+existence of reason and spiritual affections as indispensable to
+the understanding of the Scriptures; external authority can do
+nothing for us without these, any more than the mere faculties of
+the common understanding. But with these we apprehend the view
+which St. John and St. Paul afford to us: it opens before us one
+truth after another, one glory after another. St. John evidently
+supposes that his readers were familiar with another account of our
+Lord's life and teaching; and we find accordingly, another account
+existing in the writings of the three other evangelists. One and
+the same account is manifestly the substance of their three
+narratives, to which they thus bear a triple testimony, because
+none of the three has merely transcribed the others, and none of
+them apparently was the original author of it. Thus having now the
+full record of our Lord's teaching, we find that he everywhere
+refers to the Old Testament as to the word of God, and the record
+of God's earlier manifestations of himself to man. He has cleared
+up those especial points in it which might have most perplexed us,
+as I shall notice more fully hereafter, and he represents himself
+as the perpetual subject of its prophecies. We thus receive the Old
+Testament, as it were, from his hand, and learn while sitting at
+his feet to understand the lessons of the law and the prophets.</p>
+<p>Thus we make Christ the centre of both Testaments, and by so
+doing, we cannot be blind to the divinity pervading both. For the
+amazing fact that God should come into the world and be in the
+world cannot by possibility stand alone; it hallows, as it were,
+the whole period of the world's existence, from the beginning to
+the end, placing all time and every place in relation to God; it
+disposes us at once to receive the fact of the special call of the
+people of Israel;--it gives, I had almost said, an <i>&agrave;
+priori</i> reason why there must have been in earlier times some
+shadows, at least, or images, to represent dimly to former
+generations that great thing which they were not actually to
+witness; it leads us to believe that there must have been some
+prophetic voices to announce the future coming of the Lord, or else
+"The very stones must have cried out."</p>
+<p>But those writings of St. John and St. Paul which were our first
+lessons in Christianity, and those other accounts of our Lord's
+life and teaching to which they introduced us,--can we conceive it
+possible, that the real meaning of all these shall be hopelessly
+obscure and uncertain; that if we seek it ever so diligently, we
+shall not find it? With an humble mind ready to learn, with a heart
+fully impressed with the sense of God's presence, so as to be
+morally and spiritually in a condition to receive God's truth, can
+we believe, then, that the use of those intellectual means, which
+open to us certainly the sense of human writers, shall be applied
+in vain to those writers who were commissioned to be the very
+heralds of a divine message, whose especial business it was to make
+known what they had themselves heard? Surely if a sufficient
+certainty of interpretation be attainable in common literature, the
+revelation of God cannot be the solitary exception.</p>
+<p>But we may be mistaken: we may <i>believe</i> that we interpret
+truly, but we cannot be <i>infallibly sure</i> of it; we want an
+authority which shall give us this assurance. This is no doubt the
+natural craving of our weakness; but it is no wiser a craving than
+if we were to long for the heaven to be opened, and for a daily
+sight of our Lord standing at the right hand of God. To live by
+faith is our appointed condition, and faith excludes an infallible
+assurance. We must earnestly believe that we have the truth, and
+die for our belief, if necessary, but we cannot <i>know</i> it. No
+device which the human mind can practise, can exclude the
+possibility of doubt. If we would find an armour which should cover
+us at every point from this subtle enemy, it would be an armour
+that would close up the pores of the skin, and stop our breath; our
+fancied security would kill us. Is it really possible that, with
+our knowledge of man's nature, our belief in any human authority
+can really be more free from doubt than our belief in the
+conclusions of our own reason? There must ever be the liability to
+uncertainty; we can put no moral truth so surely as that our minds
+shall always feel it to be absolutely certain. Where is the
+infallible authority that can assure us even of the existence of
+God? And will the scepticism that can believe its own conclusions
+in nothing else rest satisfied with one conclusion only--that the
+writers of the first four centuries cannot err? Surely to regard
+this as the most certain proposition that can be submitted to the
+human mind, is no better than insanity.</p>
+<p>But we will consent to trust, it may be said, with God's help,
+to our own deliberate convictions that we have interpreted
+Scripture truly; but you tell us that the Scripture itself is not
+inspired in every part; you tell us that there are in it
+chronological and historical difficulties, if not errors; that
+there are possibly some interpolations; that even the apostles may
+have been in some things mistaken, as in their belief that the end
+of the world was at hand. Where shall we find a rest for our feet,
+if you first take away from us our infallible interpreter, and now
+tell us, that even if we can ourselves interpret it aright, yet
+that we cannot be sure that the very Scripture itself is infallibly
+true?</p>
+<p>It is very true that our position with respect to the Scriptures
+is not in all points the same as our fathers'. For sixteen hundred
+years nearly, while physical science, and history, and chronology,
+and criticism, were all in a state of torpor, the questions which
+now present themselves to our minds could not from the nature of
+the case arise. When they did arise, they came forward into notice
+gradually: first the discoveries in astronomy excited uneasiness:
+then as men began to read more critically, differences in the
+several Scripture narratives of the same thing awakened attention;
+more lately, the greater knowledge which has been gained of
+history, and of language, and in all respects the more careful
+inquiry to which all ancient records have been submitted, have
+brought other difficulties to light, and some sort of answer must
+be given to them. Mr. Newman, as we have seen, has made use of
+those difficulties much as the Romanists have used the doctrine of
+the Trinity when arguing with Trinitarians<a name=
+"FNanchor19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19">[19]</a> in defence of
+transubstantiation. The Romanists said,--"Here are all these
+inexplicable difficulties in the doctrine of the Trinity, and yet
+you believe it." So Mr. Newman argues with those who hold the
+plenary inspiration of Scripture, that if they believe that, in
+spite of all the difficulties which beset it, they may as well
+believe his doctrine of the priesthood; and many, if I mistake not,
+alarmed by this representation, have actually embraced his
+opinions.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_19"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor19">[19]</a> On this proceeding of the Romanists,
+Stillingfleet observes, "Methinks for the sake of our common
+Christianity you should no more venture upon such bold and
+unreasonable comparisons. Do you in earnest think it is all one
+whether men do believe a God, or providence, or heaven, or hell, or
+the Trinity, and incarnation of Christ, if they do not believe
+transubstantiation? We have heard much of late about old and new
+popery: but if this be the way of representing new popery, by
+exposing the common articles of faith, it will set the minds of all
+good Christians farther from it than ever. For upon the very same
+grounds we may expect another parallel between the belief of a God
+and transubstantiation, the effect of which will be the exposing of
+all religion. This is a very destructive and mischievous method of
+proceeding; but our comfort is that it is very unreasonable, as I
+hope hath fully appeared by this discourse."--<i>Doctrine of the
+Trinity and Transubstantiation compared</i>, at the
+end.</blockquote>
+<p>It has unfortunately happened that the difficulties of the
+Scripture have been generally treated as objections to the truth of
+Christianity; as such they have been pressed by adversaries, and as
+such Christian writers have replied to them. But then they become
+of such tremendous interest, that it is scarcely possible to
+examine them fairly. If my faith in God and my hope of eternal life
+is to depend on the accuracy of a date or of some minute historical
+particular, who can wonder that I should listen to any sophistry
+that may be used in defence of them, or that I should force my mind
+to do any sort of violence to itself, when life and death seem to
+hang on the issue of its decision?</p>
+<p>Yet what conceivable connexion is there between the date of
+Cyrenius's government, or the question whether our Lord healed a
+blind man as he was going into Jericho or as he was leaving it; or
+whether Judas bought himself the field of blood, or it was bought
+by the high priests: what connexion can there be between such
+questions, and the truth of God's love to man in the redemption,
+and of the resurrection of our Lord? Do we give to any narrative in
+the world, to any statement, verbal or written, no other
+alternative than that it must be either infallible or unworthy of
+belief? Is not such an alternative so extravagant as to be a
+complete reductio ad absurdum? And yet such is the alternative
+which men seem generally to have admitted in considering the
+Scripture narratives: if a single error can be discovered, it is
+supposed to be fatal to the credibility of the whole.</p>
+<p>This has arisen from an unwarranted interpretation of the word
+"inspiration," and by a still more unwarranted inference. An
+inspired work is supposed to mean a work to which God has
+communicated his own perfections; so that the slightest error or
+defect of any kind in it is inconceivable, and that which is other
+than perfect in all points cannot be inspired. This is the
+unwarranted interpretation of the word "inspiration." But then
+follows the still more unwarranted inference,--"If all the
+Scripture is not inspired, Christianity cannot be true," an
+inference which is absolutely entitled to no other consideration
+than what it may seem to derive from the number of those who have
+either openly or tacitly maintained it.</p>
+<p>Most truly do I believe the Scriptures to be inspired; the
+proofs of their inspiration rise continually with the study of
+them. The scriptural narratives are not only about divine things,
+but are themselves divinely framed and superintended. I cannot
+conceive my conviction of this truth being otherwise than sure. Yet
+I must acknowledge that the scriptural narratives do not claim this
+inspiration for themselves; so that if I should be obliged to
+resign my belief in it, which seems to me impossible, I yet should
+have no right to tax the Scriptures with having advanced a
+pretension proved to be unfounded; their whole credibility as a
+most authentic history of the most important facts would remain
+untouched; the gospel of St. John would still be a narrative as
+unimpeachable as that of Thucydides, which no sane man has ever
+disbelieved.</p>
+<p>So much for the unwarranted inference, that if the Scripture
+histories are not inspired, the great facts of the Christian
+revelation cannot be maintained. But it is no less an unwarranted
+interpretation of the term "inspiration," to suppose that it is
+equivalent to a communication of the Divine perfections. Surely,
+many of our words and many of our actions are spoken and done by
+the inspiration of God's Spirit, without whom we can do nothing
+acceptable to God. Yet does the Holy Spirit so inspire us as to
+communicate to us His own perfections? Are our best words or works
+utterly free from error or from sin? All inspiration does not then
+destroy the human and fallible part in the nature which it
+inspires; it does not change man into God.</p>
+<p>In one man, indeed, it was otherwise; but He was both God and
+man. To Him the Spirit was given without measure; and as his life
+was without sin, so his words were without error. But to all others
+the Spirit has been given by measure; in almost infinitely
+different measure it is true: the difference between the
+inspiration of the common and perhaps unworthy Christian who merely
+said that "Jesus was the Lord," and that of Moses, or St. Paul, and
+St. John, is almost to our eyes beyond measuring. Still the
+position remains, that the highest degree of inspiration given to
+man has still suffered to exist along with it a portion of human
+fallibility and corruption.</p>
+<p>Now, then, consider the epistles of the blessed Apostle St.
+Paul, who had the Spirit of God so abundantly, that never we may
+suppose did any merely human being enjoy a larger share of it.
+Endowed with the Spirit as a Christian, and daily receiving grace
+more largely, as he became more and more ripe for glory; endowed
+with the Spirit's extraordinary gifts most eminently; favoured also
+with an abundance of revelations, disclosing to him things
+ineffable and inconceivable,--are not his writings to be most truly
+called inspired? Can we doubt that, in what he has told us of
+things not seen, or not seen as yet,--of Him who pre-existed in the
+form of God before he was manifested in the form of man,--of that
+great day, when we shall arise incorruptible, and meet our Lord in
+the air, and be joined to him for ever,--can any reasonable mind
+doubt, that in speaking of these things he spoke what he had heard
+from God; that to refuse to believe his testimony is really to
+disbelieve God?</p>
+<p>Yet this great Apostle expected that the world would come to an
+end in the generation then existing. When he wrote to the
+Thessalonians some years before his first imprisonment at Rome, he
+warned them, no doubt, against expecting the end immediately: but
+he appears still to have supposed that it would come in the
+lifetime of men then living. At a later period, when writing to the
+Corinthians, his dissuasion of marriage seems to rest mainly upon
+this impression; it is good not to marry, "on account of the
+distress which is close at hand;" ([Greek: dia taen enestosan
+anankaen]; compare 2 Thess. ii. 2, [Greek: hos hoti enestaeken hae
+haemera tou Kyriou].) "The time is short," he adds; "the fashion of
+this world is passing away." And again, when speaking of the
+resurrection, he says emphatically, "the dead shall rise
+incorruptible, and <i>we</i> shall be changed;" where the pronoun
+being expressed in the original, [Greek: chai haemeis
+allagaesometha], shows that by the term "<i>we</i>," he does not
+mean the dead, but those who were to be alive at Christ's coming.
+So again, still later, when writing from Rome to the Philippians,
+he tells them "the Lord is at hand;" and later still, even in his
+first epistle to Timothy, he charges Timothy "to keep his
+commandment without spot, unrebukable, until the appearing of our
+Lord Jesus Christ." These and other passages cannot without
+violence be interpreted even singly in any other sense; but taking
+them together, their meaning seems absolutely certain. Shall we
+say, then, that St. Paul entertained and expressed a belief which
+the event did not verify? We may say so, safely and reverently, in
+this instance; for here he was most certainly speaking as a man,
+and not by revelation; as it has been providentially ordered that
+our Lord's express words on this point have been recorded--"Of that
+day and hour knoweth no man; no, not the angels in heaven." Or
+again, shall we say, that St. Paul advised the Corinthians not to
+marry, chiefly on this ground; and that this throws a suspicion
+over his directions in other points? But again it has been ordered,
+that in this very place, and no where else in all his writing, St.
+Paul has expressly said that he was only giving his judgment as a
+Christian, and not speaking with divine authority;--the concluding
+words of the chapter, [Greek: doko de kago pneuma theou echein] do
+not signify, as our Version renders them, "And I think also that I
+have the Spirit of God," as if he were confirming his own judgment
+by an assertion of his inspiration in a sense beyond that of common
+Christians; but the words say, "And I think that I too have the
+Spirit of God," "I too as well as others whom you might consult, so
+that my judgment is no less worthy of attention than theirs." But
+it is his Christian judgment only that he is giving, as he
+expressly declares, and not his apostolical command or revelation;
+a distinction which he never makes elsewhere, and which is in
+itself so striking, that we seem to recognise in it God's especial
+mercy to us, that our faith in St. Paul's general declarations of
+divine truth might not be shaken, because in one particular point
+he was permitted to speak as a man, giving express notice at the
+same time that he was doing so.</p>
+<p>Now it is at least remarkable, that in the only two instances in
+which the existence of any absence of divine authority is to be
+discerned in St. Paul's epistles, provision is actually made by
+God's fondness to prevent them from prejudicing our faith in St.
+Paul's divine authority generally. And so in whatever points any
+error may be discoverable in Scripture, we shall find either that
+the errors are of a kind wholly unconnected with the revelation of
+what God has done to us, and of what we are to do towards Him; and
+therefore are perfectly consistent with the inspiration of the
+writer, unless we take that unwarranted notion of inspiration which
+considers it as equivalent to a communication of God's attributes
+perfectly; (and of this kind are any errors that may exist either
+in points of physical science, or of chronology, or of history;) or
+if there be any thing else which appears inconsistent with
+inspiration, in the sense in which we really may and do apply it to
+the Scriptures, namely, that they are a perfect guide and rule in
+all matters concerning our relations with God, then we shall find
+that God has made some special provision for the case, to remove
+what it otherwise might have had of real difficulty.</p>
+<p>This merciful care is above all to be recognised with regard to
+one point, which otherwise would, I think, have been a difficulty
+actually insuperable: I mean the manifestly imperfect moral
+standard, which in some cases is displayed in the characters of
+good men in the Old Testament. Put the gospel by the side of the
+law and history of the Israelites; observe what the law permitted,
+and public opinion under the law did not condemn; observe the
+actions recorded of persons who are declared to have been eminently
+good, and to have received God's especial blessing; and it is
+manifest that had not our Lord himself vouchsafed his help, one of
+two things must have happened--either that we must have followed
+the old heresy of rejecting the Old Testament altogether, or else
+that our respect for the Old Testament must have impeded the growth
+of the more perfect law of Christ. The true solution I do not think
+that we could have discovered, or ventured to admit on less
+authority than our Lord's. But his express declaration, that some
+things in the law itself were permitted, because nothing higher
+could then have been borne, and his stating in detail that in
+several points what was accounted good or allowable in the former
+dispensation was not so really, while at the same time he
+constantly refers to the Old Testament as divine, and confirms its
+language of blessing with respect to its most eminent characters,
+has completely cleared to us the whole question, and enables us to
+recognize the divinity of the Old Testament and the holiness of its
+characters, without lying against our consciences and our more
+perfect revelation, by justifying the actions of those characters
+as right, essentially and abstractedly, although they were
+excusable, or in some cases actually virtuous, according to the
+standard of right and wrong which prevailed under the law.</p>
+<p>After observing God's gracious care for us in this instance, as
+well as in those which I have noticed before, I cannot but feel
+that we may safely trust Him for every other similar case, if any
+such there be, and that he will not permit our faith either in him
+or in his holy word to be shaken, because we do not attempt to
+close our eyes against truth, nor seek to support our faith by
+sophistry and falsehood. Feeling what the Scriptures are, I would
+not give unnecessary pain to any one by an enumeration of those
+points in which the literal historical statement of an inspired
+writer has been vainly defended. Some instances will probably occur
+to most readers; others are perhaps not known, and never will be
+known to many, nor is it at all needful or desirable that they
+should know them. But if ever they are brought before them, let
+them not try to put them aside unfairly, from a fear that they will
+injure our faith. Let us not do evil that evil may be escaped from;
+and it is an evil, and the fruitful parent of evils innumerable, to
+do violence to our understanding or to our reason in their own
+appointed fields; to maintain falsehood in their despite, and
+reject the truth which they sanction. If writers of Mr. Newman's
+school will persist in displaying the difficulties of the Scripture
+before the eyes of those who had not been before aware of them, let
+those who are so cruelly tempted be conjured not to be dismayed; to
+refuse utterly to surrender up their sense of truth,--to persist in
+rejecting the unchristian falsehoods which they are called upon to
+worship; sure that after all that can be said, that system will
+remain false to the end; and their Christian faith, if they do not
+faithlessly attempt to strengthen it by unlawful means, will stand
+no less unshaken.</p>
+<p>In conclusion, Christian faith rests upon Scripture; and as it
+is in itself agreeable to the highest reason, so the authenticity
+of the Scriptures on which it rests is assured to us by the
+deliberate conclusions of the understanding; nor is any "mortal
+leap" necessary at any part of the process: nor any rejection of
+one truth, in order to retain our hold on another. And if it should
+happen, as in all probability it will, that we shall be called upon
+to correct in some respects our notions as to the Scriptures, and
+so far to hold views different from those of our fathers, we should
+consider that our fathers did not, and could not stand in our
+circumstances; that the knowledge which may call upon us to
+relinquish some of their opinions, was a knowledge which they had
+not. Till this knowledge comes to us, let us hold our fathers'
+opinions as they held them; but when it does come, it will come by
+God's will, and to do his work: and that work will, assuredly, not
+be our separation from our father's faith; but if we follow God's
+guidance humbly and cheerfully, clinging to God the while in
+personal devotion and obedience, we may be made aware of what to
+them would have been an inexplicable difficulty, and which was,
+therefore, hidden from their knowledge; and yet, "through the grace
+of our Lord Jesus Christ, we believe that we shall be saved even as
+they."</p>
+<br>
+<p>THE END.</p>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13151 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #13151 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13151)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Christian Life, by Thomas Arnold
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Christian Life
+       Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps
+
+Author: Thomas Arnold
+
+Release Date: August 10, 2004 [EBook #13151]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHRISTIAN LIFE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charlie Kirschner and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE CHRISTIAN LIFE;
+
+ITS COURSE, ITS HINDRANCES,
+AND ITS HELPS.
+
+BY
+THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.,
+HEAD MASTER OF RUGBY SCHOOL,
+AND LATE FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD.
+
+From the Fifth London Edition.
+
+1856.
+
+
+
+     "As far as the principle on which Archbishop Laud and his
+     followers acted went to re-actuate the idea of the church, as
+     a co-ordinate and living power by right of Christ's
+     institution and express promise, I go along with them; but I
+     soon discover that by the church they meant the clergy, the
+     hierarchy exclusively, and then I fly off from them in
+     a tangent.
+
+     "For it is this very interpretation of the church, that,
+     according to my conviction, constituted the first and
+     fundamental apostasy; and I hold it for one of the greatest
+     mistakes of our polemical divines, in their controversies
+     with the Romanists, that they trace all the corruptions of
+     the gospel faith to the Papacy."--COLERIDGE,
+
+     _Literary Remains_, vol. iii. p. 386.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+LECTURE I.
+
+GEN. iii. 22.--And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one
+of us, to know good and evil.
+
+
+LECTURE II.
+
+1 COR. xiii. 11.--When I was a child I spake as a child, I understood as
+a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away
+childish things.
+
+
+LECTURE III.
+
+1 COR. xiii. 11.--When I was a child I spake as a child, I understood as
+a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away
+childish things.
+
+
+LECTURE IV.
+
+COL. i. 9.--We do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might
+be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual
+understanding.
+
+
+LECTURE V.
+
+COL. i. 9.--We do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might
+be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual
+understanding.
+
+
+LECTURE VI.
+
+COL. iii. 3.--Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.
+
+
+LECTURE VII.
+
+1 COR. iii. 21--23.--All things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or
+Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to
+come; all are yours, and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's.
+
+
+LECTURE VIII.
+
+GAL. v. 16, 17.--Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts
+of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit
+against the flesh; and these are contrary the one to the other, so that
+ye cannot do the things that ye would.
+
+
+LECTURE IX.
+
+LUKE xiv. 33.--Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he
+hath, he cannot be my disciple.
+
+
+LECTURE X.
+
+1 TIM. i. 9.--The law is not made for a righteous man, but for the
+lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy
+and profane.
+
+
+LECTURE XI.
+
+LUKE xxi. 36.--Watch ye, therefore, and pray always, that ye may be
+accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and
+to stand before the Son of Man.
+
+
+LECTURE XII.
+
+PROV. i. 28.--Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer: they
+shall seek me early, but they shall not find me.
+
+
+LECTURE XIII.
+
+MARK xii. 34.--Thou art not far from the kingdom of God.
+
+
+LECTURE XIV.
+
+MATT. xxii. 14.--For many are called, but few are chosen.
+
+
+LECTURE XV.
+
+LUKE xi. 25.--When he cometh he findeth it swept and garnished.
+
+JOHN v. 42.--I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you.
+
+
+LECTURE XVI.
+
+MATT. xi. 10.--I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare
+thy way before thee.
+
+
+LECTURE XVII.
+
+1 COR. ii. 12.--We have received not the Spirit of the world, but the
+Spirit which is of God.
+
+
+LECTURE XVIII.
+
+GEN. xxvii. 38.--And Esau said unto his father, Hast thou but one
+blessing, my father? Bless me, even me also, O my father.
+
+MATT. xv. 27.--And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs
+which fall from their master's table.
+
+
+LECTURE XIX.
+
+MATT. xxii. 32.--God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.
+
+
+LECTURE XX.
+
+EZEK. xiii. 22.--With lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad,
+whom I have not made sad; and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that
+he should not return from his wicked way, by promising him life.
+
+
+LECTURE XXI.
+
+ADVENT SUNDAY.
+
+HEB. iii. 16.--For some when they had heard did provoke; howbeit not all
+that came out of Egypt by Moses.
+
+
+LECTURE XXII.
+
+CHRISTMAS DAY.
+
+JOHN i. 10.--He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the
+world knew him not.
+
+
+LECTURE XXIII.
+
+SUNDAY NEXT BEFORE EASTER.
+
+MATT. xxvi. 40, 41.--What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch
+and pray, that ye enter not into temptation; the spirit indeed is
+willing, but the flesh is weak.
+
+
+LECTURE XXIV.
+
+GOOD FRIDAY.
+
+ROMANS v. 8.--God commendeth his love towards us, in that, while we were
+yet sinners, Christ died for us.
+
+
+LECTURE XXV.
+
+EASTER DAY.
+
+JOHN xx. 20.--Then the disciples went away again unto their own home.
+
+
+LECTURE XXVI.
+
+WHITSUNDAY.
+
+ACTS xix. 2.--Have you received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?
+
+
+LECTURE XXVII.
+
+TRINITY SUNDAY.
+
+JOHN iii. 9.--How can these things be?
+
+
+LECTURE XXVIII.
+
+EXOD. iii. 6.--And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon
+God.
+
+LUKE xxiii. 30.--Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on
+us; and to the hills, Cover us.
+
+
+LECTURE XXIX.
+
+PSALM cxxxvii. 4.--- How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange
+land?
+
+
+LECTURE XXX.
+
+1 COR. xi. 26.--For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup,
+ye do show the Lord's death till he come.
+
+
+LECTURE XXXI.
+
+LUKE i. 3, 4.--It seemed good to me, also, having had perfect
+understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in
+order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty
+of those things wherein thou hast been instructed.
+
+
+LECTURE XXXII.
+
+Luke i. 3, 4.--It seemed good to me, also, having had perfect
+understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in
+order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty
+of those things wherein thou hast been instructed.
+
+
+LECTURE XXXIII.
+
+JOHN ix. 29.--We know that God spake unto Moses; as for this fellow, we
+know not from whence he is.
+
+
+LECTURE XXXIV.
+
+1 COR. xiv. 20.--Brethren, be not children in understanding: howbeit, in
+malice be ye children, but in understanding be men.
+
+
+LECTURE XXXV.
+
+MATT. xxvi. 45, 46.--Sleep on now and take your rest; behold the hour is
+at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise,
+let us be going: behold he is at hand that doth betray me.
+
+
+LECTURE XXXVI.
+
+2 COR. v. 17, 18.--Old things are passed away; behold all things are
+become new, and all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself
+by Jesus Christ.
+
+
+LECTURE XXXVII.
+
+EZEK. xx. 49.--Then said I, Ah, Lord God! they say of me Doth he not
+speak parables?
+
+
+LECTURE XXXVIII.
+
+ISAIAH v. 1.--Now will I sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved
+touching his vineyard.
+
+
+LECTURE XXXIX.
+
+COL. iii. 17.--Whatsoever ye do in the word or deed, do all in the name
+of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him.
+
+
+NOTES.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+The contents of this volume will be found, I hope, to be in agreement
+with its title.
+
+Amongst the helps of Christian life, the highest place is due to the
+Christian church and its ordinances. I have been greatly misunderstood
+with respect to my estimate of the Christian church, as distinguished
+from the Christian religion. I agree so far with those, from whom I in
+other things most widely differ, that I hold the revival of the church
+of Christ in its full perfection, to be the one great end to which all
+our efforts should be directed. This is with me no new belief, but one
+which I have entertained for many years. It was impressed most strongly
+upon me, as it appears to have been upon others, by the remarkable state
+of affairs and of opinions which we witnessed in this country about nine
+or ten years ago; and everything since that time has confirmed it in my
+mind more and more.
+
+Others, according to their own statement, received the same impression
+from the phenomena of the same period. But the movement had begun
+earlier; nor should I object to call it, as they do, a movement towards
+"something deeper and truer than satisfied the last century[1]." It
+began, I suppose, in the last ten years of the last century, and has
+ever since been working onwards, though for a long time slowly and
+secretly, and with no distinctly marked direction. But still, in
+philosophy and general literature, there have been sufficient proofs
+that the pendulum, which for nearly two hundred years had been swinging
+one way, was now beginning to swing back again; and as its last
+oscillation brought it far from the true centre, so it may be, that its
+present impulse may be no less in excess, and thus may bring on again,
+in after ages, another corresponding reaction.
+
+[Footnote 1: See Mr. Newman's Letter to Dr. Jelf, p. 27.]
+
+Now if it be asked what, setting aside the metaphor, are the two points
+between which mankind has been thus moving to and fro; and what are the
+tendencies in us which, thus alternately predominating, give so
+different a character to different periods of the human history; the
+answer is not easy to be given summarily, for the generalisation which
+it requires is almost beyond the compass of the human mind. Several
+phenomena appear in each period, and it would be easy to give any one of
+these as marking its tendency: as, for instance, we might describe one
+period as having a tendency to despotism, and another to licentiousness:
+but the true answer lies deeper, and can be only given by discovering
+that common element in human nature which, in religion, in politics, in
+philosophy, and in literature, being modified by the subject-matter of
+each, assumes in each a different form, so that its own proper nature is
+no longer to be recognized. Again, it would be an error to suppose that
+either of the two tendencies which so affect the course of human affairs
+were to be called simply bad or good. Each has its good and evil nicely
+intermingled; and taking the highest good of each, it would be difficult
+to say which was the more excellent;--taking the last corruption of
+each, we could not determine which, was the more hateful. For so far as
+we can trace back the manifold streams, flowing some from the eastern
+mountains, and some from the western, to the highest springs from which
+they rise, we find on the one side the ideas of truth and justice, on
+the other those of beauty and love;--things so exalted, and so
+inseparably united in the divine perfections, that to set either two
+above the other were presumptuous and profane. Yet these most divine
+things separated from each other, and defiled in their passage through
+this lower world, do each assume a form in human nature of very great
+evil: the exclusive and corrupted love of truth and justice becomes in
+man selfish atheism; the exclusive and corrupted worship of beauty and
+love becomes in man a bloody and a lying idolatry.
+
+Such would be the general theory of the two great currents in which
+human affairs may be said to have been successively drifting. But real
+history, even the history of all mankind, and much more that of any
+particular age or country, presents a picture far more complicated.
+First, as to time: as the vessels in a harbour, and in the open sea
+without it, may be seen swinging with the tide at the same moment in
+opposite directions; the ebb has begun in the roadstead, while it is not
+yet high water in the harbour; so one or more nations may be in advance
+of or behind the general tendency of their age, and from either cause
+may be moving in the opposite direction. Again, the tendency or movement
+in itself is liable to frequent interruptions, and short
+counter-movements: even when the tide is coming in upon the shore, every
+wave retires after its advance; and he who follows incautiously the
+retreating waters, may be caught by some stronger billow, overwhelming
+again for an instant the spot which had just been left dry. A child
+standing by the sea-shore for a few minutes, and watching this, as it
+seems, irregular advance and retreat of the water, could not tell
+whether it was ebb or flood; and we, standing for a few years on the
+shore of time, can scarcely tell whether the particular movement which
+we witness is according to or against the general tendency of the whole
+period. Farther yet, as these great tendencies are often interrupted, so
+are they continually mixed: that is, not only are their own good and bad
+elements successively predominant, but they never have the world wholly
+to themselves: the opposite tendency exists, in an under-current it may
+be, and not lightly perceptible; but here and there it struggles to the
+surface, and mingles its own good and evil with the predominant good and
+evil of its antagonist. Wherefore he who would learn wisdom from the
+complex experience of history, must question closely all its phenomena,
+must notice that which is less obvious as well as that which is most
+palpable; must judge not peremptorily or sweepingly, but with reserves
+and exceptions; not as lightly overrunning a wide region of the truth,
+but thankful if after much pains he has advanced his landmarks only a
+little; if he has gained, as it were, but one or two frontier
+fortresses, in which he can establish himself for ever.
+
+Now, then, when Mr. Newman describes the movement of the present moment
+as being directed towards "something better and deeper than satisfied
+the last century," this description, although in some sense true, is yet
+in practice delusive; and the delusion which lurks in it is at the root
+of the errors of Mr. Newman and of his friends. They regard the
+tendencies of the last century as wholly evil; and they appear to extend
+this feeling to the whole period of which the last century was the
+close, and which began nearly with the sixteenth century. Viewing in
+this light the last three hundred years, they regard naturally with
+excessive favour the preceding period, with which they are so strongly
+contrasted; and not the less because this period has been an object of
+scorn to the times which have followed it. They are drawn towards the
+enemy of their enemy, and they fancy that it must be in all points their
+enemy's opposite. And if the faults of its last decline are too palpable
+to be denied, they ascend to its middle and its earlier course, and
+finding that its evils are there less flagrant, they abandon themselves
+wholly to the contemplation of its good points, and end with making it
+an idol. There are few stranger and sadder sights than to see men
+judging of whole periods of the history of mankind with the blindness of
+party-spirit, never naming one century without expressions of contempt
+or abhorrence, never mentioning another but with extravagant and
+undistinguishing admiration.
+
+But the worst was yet to come. The period which Mr. Newman and his
+friends so disliked, had, in its religious character, been distinguished
+by its professions of extreme veneration for the Scriptures; in its
+quarrel with the system of the preceding period, it had rested all its
+cause on the authority of the Scripture,--it had condemned the older
+system because Scripture could give no warrant for it. On the other
+hand, the partizans of the older system protested against the exclusive
+appeal to Scripture; there was, as they maintained, another authority in
+religious matters; if their system was not supported in all its points
+by Scripture, it had at least the warrant of Christian antiquity. Thus
+Mr. Newman and his friends found that the times which they disliked had
+professed to rely on Scripture alone; the times which they loved had
+invested the Church with equal authority. It was natural then to connect
+the evils of the iron age, for so they regarded it, with this notion of
+the sole supremacy of Scripture; and it was no less natural to associate
+the blessings of their imagined golden age with its avowed reverence for
+the Church. If they appealed only to Scripture, they echoed the language
+of men whom they abhorred; if they exalted the Church and Christian
+antiquity, they sympathised with a period which they were resolved to
+love. Their theological writings from the very beginning have too
+plainly shown in this respect the force both of their sympathies and
+their antipathies.
+
+Thus previously disposed, and in their sense or apprehension of the evil
+of their own times already flying as it were for refuge to the system of
+times past, they were overtaken by the political storm of 1831, and the
+two following years. That storm rattled loudly, and alarmed many who had
+viewed the gathering of the clouds with hope and pleasure; no wonder,
+then, if it produced a stormy effect upon those who viewed it as a mere
+calamity, an evil monster bred out of an evil time, and fraught with
+nothing but mischief. Farther, the government of the country was now,
+for the first time for many years, in the hands of men who admired the
+spirit of the age, nearly as much as Mr. Newman and his friends abhorred
+it. Thus all things seemed combined against them: the spirit of the
+period which they so hated was riding as it were upon the whirlwind;
+they knew not where its violence might burst; and the government of the
+country was, as they thought, driving wildly before it, without
+attempting to moderate its fury. Already they were inclined to recognise
+the signs of a national apostasy.
+
+But from this point they have themselves written their own history.--Mr.
+Percival's letter to the editor of the Irish Ecclesiastical Journal,
+which was reprinted in the Oxford Herald of January 80, 1841, is really
+a document of the highest value. It acquaints us, from the very best
+authority, with the immediate occasion of the publication of the Tracts
+for the Times, and with the objects of their writers. It tells us
+whither their eyes were turned for deliverance; with what charm they
+hoped to allay the troubled waters. Ecclesiastical history would be far
+more valuable than it is, if we could thus learn the real character and
+views of every church, or sect, or party, from itself, and not from its
+opponents.
+
+Mr. Percival informs us, that the Irish Church Act of 1833, which
+abolished several of the Irish Bishoprics, was the immediate occasion of
+the publication of the Tracts for the Times; and that the objects of
+that publication were, to enforce the doctrine of the apostolical
+succession, and to preserve the Prayer Book from "the Socinian leaven,
+with which we had reason to fear it would be tainted by the
+parliamentary alteration of it, which at that time was openly talked
+of." But the second of these objects is not mentioned in the more formal
+statements which Mr. Percival gives of them; and in what he calls the
+"matured account" of the principles of the writers, it is only said,
+"Whereas there seems great danger at present of attempts at unauthorized
+and inconsiderate innovation as in other matters so especially in the
+service of our Church, we pledge ourselves to resist any attempt that
+may be made to alter the Liturgy on insufficient authority: i.e. without
+the exercise of the free and deliberate judgment of the Church on the
+alterations proposed." It would seem, therefore, that what was
+particularly deprecated was "the alteration of the Liturgy on
+insufficient authority," without reference to any suspected character of
+the alteration in itself. But at any rate, as all probability of any
+alteration in the Liturgy vanished very soon after the publication of
+the tracts began, the other object, the maintaining the doctrine of the
+apostolical succession, as it had been the principal one from the
+beginning, became in a very short time the only one.
+
+The great remedy, therefore, for the evils of the times, the "something
+deeper and truer than satisfied the last century," or, at least, the
+most effectual means of attaining to it, is declared to be the
+maintenance of the doctrine of apostolical succession. Now let us hear,
+for it is most important, the grounds on which this doctrine is to be
+enforced, and the reason why so much stress is laid on it. I quote again
+from Mr. Percival's letter.
+
+"Considering, 1. That the only way of salvation is the partaking of the
+body and blood of our sacrificed Redeemer;
+
+"2. That the mean expressly authorized by him for that purpose is the
+holy sacrament of his supper;
+
+"3. That the security by him no less expressly authorized, for the
+continuance and due application of that sacrament, is the apostolical
+commission of the bishops, and under them the presbyters of the church;
+
+"4. That under the present circumstances of the church in England, there
+is peculiar danger of these matters being slighted and practically
+disavowed, and of numbers of Christians being left, or tempted to
+precarious and unauthorized ways of communion, which must terminate
+often in vital apostasy:--
+
+"We desire to pledge ourselves one to another, reserving our canonical
+obedience, as follows:--
+
+"1. To be on the watch for all opportunities of inculcating, on all
+committed to our charge, a due sense of the inestimable privilege of
+communion with our Lord, through the successors of the apostles, and of
+leading them to the resolution to transmit it, by his blessing,
+unimpaired to their children."
+
+Then follow two other resolutions: one to provide and circulate books
+and tracts, to familiarize men's minds with this doctrine; and the
+other, "to do what lies in us towards reviving among churchmen, the
+practice of daily common prayer, and more frequent participation of the
+Lord's Supper."
+
+The fourth resolution, "to resist unauthorized alterations of the
+Liturgy," I have already quoted: the fifth and last engages generally to
+place within the reach of all men, accounts of such points in our
+discipline and worship as may appear most likely to be misunderstood or
+undervalued.
+
+These resolutions were drawn up more than seven years ago, and their
+practical results have not been contemptible. The Tracts for the Times
+amount to no fewer than ninety; while the sermons, articles in reviews,
+stories, essays, poems, and writings of all sorts which have enforced
+the same doctrines, have been also extremely numerous. Nor have all
+these labours been without fruit: for it is known that a large
+proportion of the clergy have adopted, either wholly or in great part,
+the opinions and spirit of the Tracts for the Times; and many of the
+laity have embraced them also.
+
+It seems also, that in the various publications of their school, the
+object originally marked out in the resolutions quoted above, has been
+followed with great steadiness. The system has been uniform, and its
+several parts have held well together. It has, perhaps, been carried on
+of late more boldly, which is the natural consequence of success. It has
+in all points been the direct opposite of what may be called the spirit
+of English protestantism of the nineteenth century: upholding whatever
+that spirit would depreciate; decrying whatever it would admire. A
+short statement of the principal views held by Mr. Newman and his
+friends, will show this sufficiently.
+
+"The sacraments, and not preaching, are the sources of divine grace." So
+it is said in the Advertisement prefixed to the first volume of the
+Tracts for the Times, in exact conformity with the preamble to the
+resolutions, which I have already quoted. But the only security for the
+efficacy of the sacraments, is the apostolical commission of the
+bishops, and under them, of the presbyters of the Church. So it is said
+in the preamble to the resolutions. These two doctrines are the
+foundation of the whole system. God's grace, and our salvation, come to
+us principally through the virtue of the sacraments; the virtue of the
+sacraments depends on the apostolical succession of those who administer
+them. The clergy, therefore, thus holding in their hands the most
+precious gifts of the Church, acquire naturally the title of the Church
+itself; the Church, as possessed of so mysterious a virtue as to
+communicate to the only means of salvation their saving efficacy,
+becomes at once an object of the deepest reverence. What wonder if to a
+body endowed with so transcendant a gift, there should be given also the
+spirit of wisdom to discern all truth; so that the solemn voice of the
+Church in its creeds, and in the decrees of its general councils, must
+be received as the voice of God himself. Nor can such a body be supposed
+to have commended any practices or states of life winch are not really
+excellent; and the duty either of all Christians, or of those at least
+who would follow the most excellent way. Fasting, therefore, and the
+state of celibacy, are the one a christian obligation, the other a
+christian perfection. Again, being members of a body so exalted, and
+receiving our very salvation in a way altogether above reason, we must
+be cautious how we either trust to our individual conscience rather
+than to the command of the Church, or how we venture to exercise our
+reason at all in judging of what the Church teaches; childlike faith and
+childlike obedience are the dispositions which God most loves. What,
+then, are they who are not of the Church, who do not receive the
+Sacraments from those who can alone give them their virtue? Surely they
+are aliens from God, they cannot claim his covenanted mercies; and the
+goodness which may be apparent in them, may not be real goodness; God
+may see that it is false, though to us it appears sincere; but it is
+certain that they do not possess the only appointed means of salvation;
+and therefore, we must consider their state as dangerous, although, we
+may not venture to condemn them.
+
+I have not consciously misrepresented the system of Mr. Newman and his
+friends in a single particular; I have not, to my knowledge, expressed
+any one of their tenets invidiously. An attentive reader may deduce, I
+think, all the Subordinate points in their teaching from some one or
+more of the principles which I have given; but I have not wilfully
+omitted any doctrine of importance. And, in every point, the opposition
+to what I may be allowed to call the protestantism of the nineteenth
+century is so manifest, that we cannot but feel that the peculiar
+character of the system is to be traced to what I have before
+noticed--the extreme antipathy of its founders to the spirit which they
+felt to be predominant in their own age and country.
+
+It is worth our while to observe this, because fear and passion are not
+the surest guides to truth, and the rule of contraries is not the rule
+of wisdom. Other men have been indignant against the peculiar evils of
+their own time, and from their strong impression of these have seemed to
+lose sight of its good points; but Mr. Newman and his friends appear to
+hate the nineteenth century for its own sake, and to proscribe all
+belonging to it, whether good or bad, simply because it does belong to
+it.--This diseased state of mind is well shown by the immediate occasion
+of the organization of their party. Mr. Perceval tells us that it was
+the Act for the dissolution of some of the Irish bishoprics, passed in
+1833, winch first made the authors of the Tracts resolve to commence
+their publication. Mr. Perceval himself cannot even now speak of that
+Act temperately; he calls it "a wanton act of sacrilege," "a monstrous
+act," "an outrage upon the Church;" and his friends, it may be presumed,
+spoke of it at the time in language at least equally vehement. Now, I am
+not expressing any opinion upon the justice or expediency of that Act;
+it was opposed by many good men, and its merits or demerits were fairly
+open to discussion; but would any fair and sensible person speak of it
+with such extreme abhorrence as it excited in the minds of Mr. Perceval
+and his friends? The Act deprived the Church of no portion of its
+property; it simply ordered a different distribution of it, with the
+avowed object on the part of its framers of saving the Church from the
+odium and the danger of exacting Church Rates from the Roman Catholics.
+It did nothing more than what, according to the constitution of the
+Churches of England and Ireland, was beyond all question within its
+lawful authority to do. The King's supremacy and the sovereignty of
+Parliament may be good or bad, but they are undoubted facts in the
+constitution of the Church of England, and have been so for nearly three
+hundred years. I repeat that I am stating no opinion as to the merits of
+the Irish Church Act of 1833; I only contend, that no man of sound
+judgment would regard it as "a monstrous act," or as "a wanton
+sacrilege." It bore upon it no marks of flagrant tyranny: nor did it
+restrain the worship of the Church, nor corrupt its faith, nor command
+or encourage anything injurious to men's souls in practice. Luther was
+indignant at the sale of indulgences; and his horror at the selling
+Church pardons for money was, by God's blessing, the occasion of the
+Reformation. The occasion of the new counter-reformation was the
+abolition of a certain number of bishoprics, that their revenues might
+be applied solely to church purposes; and that the Church might so be
+saved from a scandal and a danger. The difference of the exciting cause
+of the two movements gives the measure of the difference between the
+Reformation of 1517, and the views and objects of Mr. Newman and
+his friends.
+
+There are states of nervous excitement, when the noise of a light
+footstep is distracting. In such a condition were the authors of the
+Tracts in 1833, and all their subsequent proceedings have shown that the
+disorder was still upon them. Beset by their horror of the nineteenth
+century, they sought for something most opposite to it, and therefore
+they turned to what they called Christian antiquity. Had they judged of
+their own times fairly, had they appreciated the good of the nineteenth
+century as well as its evil, they would have looked for their remedy not
+to the second or third or fourth centuries, but the first; they would
+have tried to restore, not the Church of Cyprian, or Athanasius, or
+Augustine, but the Church of St. Paul and of St. John. Now, this it is
+most certain that they have not done. Their appeal has been not to
+Scripture, but to the opinions and practices of the dominant party in
+the ancient Church. They have endeavoured to set those opinions and
+practices, under the name of apostolical tradition, on a level with the
+authority of the Scriptures. But their unfortunate excitement has made
+them fail of doing even what they intended to do. It may be true that
+all their doctrines may be found in the writings of those whom they call
+the Fathers; but the effect of their teaching is different because its
+proportions are altered. Along with their doctrines, there are other
+points and another spirit prominent in the writings of the earlier
+Christians, which give to the whole a different complexion. The Tracts
+for the Times do not appear to me to represent faithfully the language
+of Christian antiquity; they are rather its caricature.
+
+Still more is this the case, when we compare the language of Mr. Newman
+and his friends with that of the great divines of the Church of England.
+Granting that many of these believed firmly in apostolical succession;
+that one or two may have held general councils to be infallible; that
+some, provoked by the extravagances of the puritans, have spoken
+over-strongly about the authority of tradition; yet the whole works even
+of those who agree with. Mr. Newman in these points, give a view of
+Christianity different from that of the Tracts, because these points,
+which in the Tracts stand forward without relief, are in our old divines
+tempered by the admixture of other doctrines, which, without
+contradicting them, do in fact alter their effect. This applies most
+strongly, perhaps, to Hooker and Taylor; but it holds good also of Bull
+and Pearson. Pearson's exposition of the article in the Creed relating
+to the Holy Catholic Church is very different from the language of Mr.
+Newman: it is such as, with perhaps one single exception, might be
+subscribed by a man who did not believe in apostolical succession[2].
+Again, Pearson is so far from making the creeds an independent
+authority, co-ordinate with Scripture, that he declares, contrary, I
+suppose, to all probability, that the Apostles' Creed itself was but a
+deduction from our present Scriptures of the New Testament[3].
+Undoubtedly the divines of the seventeenth century are more in agreement
+with the Tracts than the Reformers are; but it is by no means true that
+this agreement is universal. There is but one set of writers whose minds
+are exactly represented by Mr. Newman and his friends, and these are the
+nonjurors.
+
+[Footnote 2: The sixth and last mark which he gives of the unity of the
+Church is, "the unity of discipline and government." "All the Churches
+of God have the same pastoral guides appointed, authorized, sanctified,
+and set apart by the appointment of God, by the direction of the Spirit,
+to direct and lead the people of God in the same way of eternal
+salvation; as, therefore, there is no Church where there is no order, no
+ministry, so where the same order and ministry is, there is the same
+Church. And this is the unity of regiment and discipline." Pearson on
+the Creed, Art. IX. p. 341, seventh edit. fol. 1701. It would be easy to
+put a construction upon this paragraph which I could agree with; but I
+suppose that Pearson meant what I hold to be an error. Yet how gently
+and generally is it expressed; and this doubtful paragraph stands alone
+amidst seventeen folio pages on the article of the Holy Catholic Church.
+And in his conclusion, where he delivers what "every one ought to intend
+when they profess to believe the Holy Catholic Church," there is not a
+word about its government; nor is Pearson one of those interpreters who
+pervert the perfectly certain meaning of the word "Catholic" to favour
+their own notions about episcopacy. I could cordially subscribe to every
+word of this conclusion.]
+
+[Footnote 3: "To believe, therefore, as the word stands in the front of
+the Creed, ... is to assent to the whole and every part of it as to a
+certain and infallible truth revealed by God, ... and delivered unto us
+in the writings of the blessed apostles and prophets immediately
+inspired, moved, and acted by God, out of whose writings this brief sum
+of necessary points of faith was first collected." (P. 12.) And in the
+paragraph immediately preceding, Pearson had said, "The household of God
+is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, who are
+continued unto us only in their writings, and by them alone convoy unto
+us the truths which they received from God, upon whose testimony we
+believe." It appears, therefore, that Pearson not only subscribed the
+6th Article of the Church of England, but also believed it.]
+
+Many reasons, therefore, concur to make it doubtful whether the authors
+of the Tracts have discovered the true remedy for the evils of their
+age; whether they have really inculcated "something better and deeper
+than satisfied the last century." The violent prejudice which previously
+possessed them, and the strong feelings of passion and fear which led
+immediately to their first systematic publications, must in the first
+instance awaken a suspicion as to their wisdom; and this suspicion
+becomes stronger when we find their writings different from the best of
+those which they profess to admire, and bearing a close resemblance only
+to those of the nonjurors. A third consideration is also of much
+weight--that their doctrines do not enforce any great points of moral or
+spiritual perfection which other Christians had neglected; nor do they,
+in any especial manner, "preach Christ." In this they offer a striking
+contrast to the religious movement, if I may so call it, which began
+some years since in the University at Cambridge. That movement, whatever
+human alloy might have mingled with it, bore on it most clear evidence
+that it was in the main God's work. It called upon men to turn from sin
+and be reconciled to God; it emphatically preached Christ crucified. But
+Mr. Newman and his friends have preached as their peculiar doctrine, not
+Christ but the Church; we must go even farther and say, not the Church,
+but themselves. What they teach has no moral or spiritual excellence in
+itself; but it tends greatly to their own exaltation. They exalt the
+sacraments highly, but all that they say of their virtue, all their
+admiration of them as so setting forth the excellence of faith, inasmuch
+as in them the whole work is of God, and man has only to receive and
+believe, would be quite as true, and quite as well-grounded, if they
+were to abandon altogether that doctrine which it is their avowed object
+especially to enforce--the doctrine of apostolical succession.
+Referring again to the preamble of their original resolutions, already
+quoted, we see that the two first articles alone relate to our Lord and
+to his Sacraments; the third, which is the great basis of their system,
+relates only to the Clergy. Doubtless, if apostolical succession be
+God's will, it is our duty to receive it and to teach it; but a number
+of clergymen, claiming themselves to have this succession, and insisting
+that, without it, neither Christ nor Christ's Sacraments will save us,
+do, beyond all contradiction, preach themselves, and magnify their own
+importance. They are quite right in doing so, if God has commanded it;
+but such preaching has no manifest warrant of God in it; if it be
+according to God, it stands alone amongst his dispensations; his
+prophets and his apostles had a different commission. "We preach," said
+St. Paul, "not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your
+servants for Jesus' sake." It is certain that the enforcing apostolical
+succession as the great object of our teaching is precisely to do that
+very thing which St. Paul was commissioned not to do.
+
+This, to my mind, affords a very great presumption that the peculiar
+doctrines of Mr. Newman and his friends, those which they make it their
+professed business to inculcate, are not of God. I am anxious not to be
+misunderstood in saying this. Mr. Newman and his friends preach many
+doctrines which are entirely of God; as Christians, as ministers of
+Christ's Church, they preach God's word; and thus, a very large portion
+of their teaching is of God, blessed both to their hearers and to
+themselves. Nay, even amongst the particular objects to which their own
+"Resolutions" pledge them, one is indeed most excellent--"the revival of
+daily common prayer, and more frequent participation of the Lord's
+Supper." This is their merit, not as Christians generally, but as a
+party, (I use the word in no offensive sense;) in this respect their
+efforts have done, and are doing great good. But they have themselves
+declared that they will especially set themselves to preach apostolical
+succession; and it is with reference to this, that I charge them with
+"preaching themselves;" it was of this I spoke, when I said that there
+was a very great presumption that their peculiar doctrines were not
+of God.
+
+Again, the system which they hold up as "better and deeper than
+satisfied the last century" is a remedy which has been tried once
+already: and its failure was so palpable, that all the evil of the
+eighteenth century was but the reaction from that enormous evil which
+this remedy, if it be one, had at any rate been powerless to cure.
+Apostolical succession, the dignity of the Clergy, the authority of the
+Church, were triumphantly maintained for several centuries; and their
+full development was coincident, to say the least, with the corruption
+alike of Christ's religion and Christ's Church. So far were they from
+tending to realize the promises of prophecy, to perfect Christ's body up
+to the measure of the stature of Christ's own fulness, that Christ's
+Church declined during their ascendancy more and more;--she fell alike
+from truth and from holiness; and these doctrines, if they did not cause
+the evil, were at least quite unable to restrain it. For, in whatever
+points the fifteenth century differed from the fourth, it cannot be said
+that it upheld the apostolical succession less peremptorily, or attached
+a less value to Church tradition, and Church authority. I am greatly
+understating the case, but I am content for the present to do so: I will
+not say that Mr. Newman's favourite doctrines were the very Antichrist
+which corrupted Christianity; I will only say that they did not prevent
+its corruption,--that when they were most exalted Christian truth and
+Christian goodness were most depressed.
+
+After all, however, what has failed once may doubtless be successful on
+a second trial: it is within possibility, perhaps, that a doctrine,
+although destitute of all internal evidence showing it to come from God,
+may be divine notwithstanding;--revealed for some purposes which we
+cannot fathom, or simply as an exercise of our obedience. All this may
+be so; and if it can be shown to be so, there remains no other course
+than to believe God's word, and obey his commandments; only the strength
+of the external evidence must be in proportion to the weakness of the
+internal. A good man would ask for no sign from heaven to assure him
+that God commands judgment, mercy, and truth; whatsoever things are
+pure, and lovely, and of good report, bear in themselves the seal of
+their origin; a seal which to doubt were blasphemy. But the cloud and
+the lightnings and thunders, and all the signs and wonders wrought in
+Egypt and in the Red Sea, were justly required to give divine authority
+to mere positive ordinances, in which, without such external warrant,
+none could have recognised the voice of God. We ask of Mr. Newman and
+his friends to bring some warrant of Scripture for that which they
+declare to be God's will. They speak very positively and say, that "the
+security by our Lord no less expressly authorized for the continuance
+and due application of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, is the
+apostolical commission of the bishops, and under them the presbyters of
+the Church." They say that our Lord has authorized this "no less
+expressly" than he has authorized the Holy Supper as the mean of
+partaking in his body and blood. What our Lord has said concerning the
+communion is not truly represented: he instituted it as one mean of
+grace among many; not as_the_ mean; neither the sole mean, nor the
+principal. But allow, for an instant, that it was instituted as_the_
+mean; and give this sense to those well-known and ever-memorable words
+in which our Lord commanded his disciples to eat the bread and drink of
+the cup, in remembrance of him. His words commanding us to do this are
+express; "not less express," we are told, is his "sanction of the
+apostolical commission of the bishops, as the security for the
+continuance and due application of the Sacrament." Surely these writers
+allow themselves to pervert language so habitually, that they do not
+consider when, and with regard to whom, they are doing it. They say that
+our Lord has sanctioned the necessity of apostolical succession, in
+order to secure the continuance and efficacy of the sacrament, "no less
+expressly" than he instituted the sacrament itself. If they had merely
+asserted that he had sanctioned the necessity of apostolical succession,
+we might have supposed that, by some interpretation of their own, they
+implied his sanction of it, from words which, to other men, bore no such
+meaning. But in saying that he has "expressly sanctioned it," they have,
+most unconsciously, I trust, ascribed their own words to our Lord; they
+make Mm to say what he has not said, unless they can produce[4] some
+other credible record of his words besides the books of the four
+evangelists and the apostolical epistles.
+
+[Footnote 4: "Scripture alone contains what remains to us of our Lord's
+teaching. If there be a portion of revelation sacred beyond other
+portions, distinct and remote in its nature from the rest, it must be
+the words and works of the eternal Son Incarnate. He is the one Prophet
+of the Church, as he is our one Priest and King. His history is as far
+above any other possible revelation, as heaven is above earth: for in it
+we have literally the sight of Almighty God in his judgments, thoughts,
+attributes, and deeds, and his mode of dealing with us his creatures.
+Now, this special revelation is in Scripture, and in Scripture only:
+tradition has no part in it."--_Newman's Lectures on the Prophetical
+Office of the Church_. 1837. Pp. 347, 348.]
+
+That their statement was untrue, and being untrue, that it is a most
+grave matter to speak untruly of our Lord's commands, are points
+absolutely certain. But if they recall the assertion, as to the
+expressness of our Lord's sanction, and mean to say, that his sanction
+is implied, and may be reasonably deduced from what he has said, then I
+answer, that the deduction ought to be clear, because the doctrine in
+itself bears on it no marks of having had Christ for its author. Yet so
+far is it from true, that the necessity of apostolical succession, in
+order to give efficacy to the sacrament, may be clearly deduced from any
+recorded words of our Lord, that there are no words[5] of his from which
+it can be deduced, either probably or plausibly; none with which it has
+any, the faintest, connexion; none from which it could be even
+conjectured that such a tenet had ever been in existence. I am not
+speaking, it will be observed, of apostolical succession simply; but of
+the necessity of apostolical succession, as a security for the efficacy
+of the sacrament. That this doctrine comes from God, is a position
+altogether without evidence, probability, or presumption, either
+internal or external.
+
+[Footnote 5: Since this was written, I have found out, what certainly it
+was impossible to anticipate beforehand, that our Lord's words, "Do this
+in remembrance of me," are supposed to teach the doctrine of the
+priest's consecrating power. But the passage to which I refer is so
+remarkable that I must quote it in its author's own words. Mr. Newman,
+for the tract is apparently one of his, observes, that three out of the
+four Gospels make no mention of the raising of Lazarus. He then goes on,
+"As the raising of Lazarus is true, though not contained at all in the
+first three Gospels; so the gift of consecrating the Eucharist may have
+been committed by Christ to the priesthood, though only indirectly
+taught in any of the four. Will you say I am arguing against our own
+Church, which says the Scripture 'contains all things necessary to be
+believed to salvation?' Doubtless, Scripture _contains_ all things
+necessary to be _believed_; but there may be things _contained_ which
+are not _on the surface_, and things which belong to the _ritual_, and
+not to _belief_. Points of faith may lie _under_ the surface: points of
+observance need not be in Scripture _at all_. The consecrating power is
+a point of ritual, yet it _is_ indirectly taught in Scripture, though
+not brought out, when Christ said, 'Do this,' for he spake to the
+apostles, who were priests, not to his disciples generally."--_Tracts
+for the Times_. Tract 85, p. 46.
+
+This passage is indeed characteristic of the moral and intellectual
+faults which I have alluded to as marking the writings of the supporters
+of Mr. Newman's system. But what is become of the assertion, that this
+security of the apostolical commission was "expressly authorized" by our
+Lord, when it is admitted that it is only indirectly taught in
+Scripture? And what becomes of the notion, that what our Lord did or
+instituted may be learned from another source than Scripture, when Mr.
+Newman has most truly stated, in the passage quoted in the preceding
+note, that our Lord's history, the history of his words and works, "is
+in Scripture, and Scripture only: tradition has no part in it?" I pass
+over the surprising state of mind which could imagine a distinction
+between things necessary to be believed, and necessary to be done; and
+could conceive such a distinction to be according to the meaning of our
+article. It would appear that this shift has been since abandoned, and
+others, no way less extraordinary, have been attempted in its place; for
+an extraordinary process it must be which tries to reconcile Mr.
+Newman's opinions with the declaration of the sixth article. But now for
+Mr. Newman's scriptural proof, that our Lord "committed to the
+priesthood the gift of consecrating the Eucharist." "When Christ said,
+'Do this,' he spake to the apostles, who were priests, not to his
+disciples generally." This would prove too much, for it would prove that
+none but the clergy were ordered to receive the communion at all: the
+words, "Do this," referring, not to any consecration, of which there had
+been no word said, but to the eating the bread, and drinking of the cup.
+Again, when St. Paul says, "the cup which we bless,'--the bread which we
+break," it is certain that the word "we," does not refer to himself and
+Sosthenes, or to himself and Barnabas, but to himself and the whole
+Corinthian church; for he immediately goes on, "for we, the whole number
+of us," ([Greek: oi polloi] compare Romans xii. 5,) "are one body, for
+we all are partakers of the one bread." Thirdly, Tertullian expressly
+contrasts the original institution of our Lord with the church practice
+of his own day, in this very point. "Eucharistiæ sacramentum et in
+tempore victus, et omnibus mandatum a Domino, etiam antelucanis coetibus
+nee de aliorum manu quam præridentium sumimus." (_De Coroná Mililis_,
+3.) I know that Tertullian believes the alteration to have been founded
+upon an apostolical tradition; but he no less names it as a change from
+the original institution of our Lord; nor does he appear to consider it
+as more than a point of order. Lastly, what shadow of probability is
+there, and is it not begging the whole question, to assume that our Lord
+spoke to his apostles as priests, and not as representatives of the
+whole Christian church? His language makes no distinction between his
+disciples and those who were without; it repels it as dividing his
+disciples from each other. His twelve disciples were the apostles of the
+church, but they were not priests. In such matters our Lord's words
+apply exactly, "One is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are
+brethren."]
+
+On the whole, then, the movement in the church, excited by Mr. Newman
+and his friends, appears to be made in a false direction, and to be
+incapable of satisfying the feeling which prompted it. I have not
+noticed other presumptions against it, arising from the consequences to
+which the original doctrines of the party have since led, or from
+certain moral and intellectual faults which have marked the writings of
+its supporters. It is enough to say, that the movement originated in
+minds highly prejudiced beforehand, and under the immediate influence of
+passion and fear; that its doctrines, as a whole, resemble the teaching
+of no set of writers entitled to respect, either in the early church, or
+in our own; that they tend, not to Christ's glory, or to the advancement
+of holiness, but simply to the exaltation of the clergy; and that they
+are totally unsupported by the authority of Scripture. They are a plant,
+therefore, which our heavenly Father has not planted; a speaking in the
+name of the Lord what the Lord has not commanded; hay and stubble,
+built upon the foundation of Christ, which are good for nothing but to
+be burned.
+
+I have spoken quite confidently of the total absence of all support in
+Scripture for Mr. Newman's favourite doctrine of "the necessity of
+apostolical succession, in order to ensure the effect of the
+sacraments." This doctrine is very different from that of the Divine
+appointment of episcopacy as a form of government, or even from that of
+the exclusive lawfulness of that episcopacy which has come down by
+succession from the apostles. Much less is it to be confounded with any
+notions, however exalted, of the efficacy of the sacraments, even though
+carried to such a length as we read of in the early church, when living
+men had themselves baptized as proxies for the dead, and when a portion
+of the wine of the communion was placed by the side of a corpse in the
+grave. Such notions may be superstitious and unscriptural, as indeed
+they are, but they are quite distinct from a belief in the necessity of
+a human priest to give the sacraments their virtue. And, without going
+to such lengths as this, men may overestimate the efficacy of the
+sacraments, to the disparagement of prayer, and preaching, and reading
+the Scriptures, and yet may be perfectly clear from the opinion which
+makes this efficacy depend immediately on a human administrator. And so
+again, men may hold episcopacy to be divine, and the episcopacy of
+apostolical succession to be the only true episcopacy, but yet they may
+utterly reject the notion of its being essential to the efficacy of the
+sacraments. It is of this last doctrine only that I assert, in the
+strongest terms, that it is wholly without support in Scripture, direct
+or indirect, and that it does not minister to godliness.
+
+In truth, Mr. Newman and his friends are well aware that the Scripture
+will not support their doctrine, and therefore it is that they have
+proceeded to such, lengths in upholding the authority not of the creeds
+only, but of the opinions and practices of the ancient church generally;
+and that they try to explain away the clear language of our article,
+that nothing "which is neither read therein (i.e. in holy Scripture,)
+nor may be proved thereby, is to be required of any man that it should
+be believed as an article of faith, or be thought requisite or necessary
+to salvation." It would be one of the most unaccountable phenomena of
+the human mind, were any man fairly to come to the conclusion that the
+Scriptures and the early church were of equal authority, and that the
+authority of both were truly divine. If any men resolve to maintain
+doctrines and practices as of divine authority, for which the Scripture
+offers no countenance, they of course are driven to maintain the
+authority of the church in their own defence; and where they have an
+interest in holding any particular opinion, its falsehood, however
+palpable, is unhappily no bar to its reception. Otherwise it would seem
+that the natural result of believing the early church to be of equal
+authority with the Scripture, would be to deny the inspiration of
+either. For two things so different in several points as the
+Christianity of the Scriptures and that of the early church, may
+conceivably be both false, but it is hard to think that they can both be
+perfectly true.
+
+I am here, however, allowing, what is by no means true, without many
+qualifications, that Mr. Newman's system is that of the early church.
+The historical inquiry as to the doctrines of the early church would
+lead me into far too wide a field; I may only notice, in passing, how
+many points require to be carefully defined in conducting such an
+inquiry; as, for instance, what we mean by the term "early church," as
+to time; for that may be fully true of the church in the fourth
+century, which is only partially true of it in the third, and only in a
+very slight degree true of it in the second or first. And again, what do
+we mean by the term "early church," as to persons; for a few eminent
+writers are not even the whole clergy; neither is it by any means to be
+taken on their authority that their views were really those of all the
+bishops and presbyters of the Christian world; but if they were, the
+clergy are not the church, nor can their judgments be morally considered
+as the voice of the church, even if we were to admit that they could at
+any time constitute its voice legally. But, for my present purpose, we
+may take for granted that Mr. Newman's system as to the pre-eminence of
+the sacraments, and the necessity of apostolical succession to give them
+their efficacy, was the doctrine of the early church; then I say that
+this system is so different from that of the New Testament, that to
+invest the two with equal authority is not to make the church system
+divine, but to make the scriptural system human; or, at the best,
+perishable and temporary, like the ceremonial law of Moses. Either the
+church system must be supposed to have superseded the scriptural
+system[6], and its unknown authors are the real apostles of our present
+faith, in which case, we do not see why it should not be superseded in
+its turn, and why the perfect manifestation of Christianity should not
+be found in the Koran, or in any still later system; or else neither of
+the two systems can be divine, but the one is merely the human
+production of the first century, the other that of the second and third.
+If this be so, it is clearly open to all succeeding centuries to adopt
+whichever of the two they choose, or neither.
+
+[Footnote 6: This, it is well known, has been most ably maintained by
+Rothe, (_Artfãnge der Christlichen Kirche und ihrer Verfassung_,
+Wittenberg, 1837,) with respect to the origin of episcopacy. He contends
+that it was instituted by the surviving apostles after the destruction
+of Jerusalem, as an intentional change from the earlier constitution of
+the church, in order to enable it to meet the peculiar difficulties and
+dangers of the times. To this belongs the question of the meaning of the
+expression, [Greek: oi tais deuterais ton Apostolon diataxesi
+parakolouthaekotes], in the famous Fragments of Irenæus, published by
+Pfaff, from a manuscript in the library of Turin, and to be found in the
+Venice edition of Irenæus, 1734, vol. ii. _Fragmentorum_, p. 10. But
+then Rothe would admit that if the apostles altered what they themselves
+had appointed, it would follow that neither their earlier nor their
+later institutions were intended to be for all times and all places, but
+were simply adapted to a particular state of circumstances, and were
+alterable when that state was altered: in short, whatever institutions
+the apostles changed were shown to be essentially changeable; otherwise
+their early institution was defective, which cannot be conceived. And
+thus it may well be that the early church may have altered, in some
+points, the first institutions of the apostles, and may have been guided
+by God's Spirit in doing so; but the error consists in believing that
+the now institutions were to be of necessity more permanent than those
+which they succeeded; in supposing that either the one or the other
+belong to the eternal truths and laws of Christ's religion, when they
+belong, in fact, to the essentially changeable regulations of
+his church.]
+
+To such consequences are those driven who maintain the divine authority
+of the system of Mr. Newman. Assuredly the thirst for "something deeper
+and truer than satisfied the last century," will not be allayed by a
+draught so scanty and so vapid; but after the mirage has beguiled and
+disappointed him for a season, the traveller presses on the more eagerly
+to the true and living well.
+
+In truth, the evils of the last century were but the inevitable fruits
+of the long ascendency of Mr. Newman's favourite principles. Christ's
+religion had been corrupted in the long period before the Reformation,
+but it had ever retained many of its main truths, and it was easy, when
+the appeal was once made to Scripture, to sweep away the corruptions,
+and restore it in its perfect form; but Christ's church had been
+destroyed so long and so completely, that its very idea was all but
+lost, and to revive it actually was impossible. What had been known
+under that name,--I am speaking of Christ's church, be it observed, as
+distinguished from Christ's religion,--was so great an evil, that,
+hopeless of drawing any good from it, men looked rather to Christ's
+religion as all in all; and content with having destroyed the false
+church, never thought that the scheme of Christianity could not be
+perfectly developed without the restoration of the true one. But the
+want was deeply felt, and its consequences were deplorable. At this
+moment men are truly craving something deeper than satisfied the last
+century; they crave to have the true church of Christ, which the last
+century was without. Mr. Newman perceives their want, and again offers
+them that false church which is worse than none at all.
+
+The truths of the Christian religion are to be sought for in the
+Scripture alone; they are the same at all times and in all countries.
+With the Christian church it is otherwise; the church is not a
+revelation concerning the unchangeable and eternal God, but an
+institution to enable changeable man to apprehend the unchangeable.
+Because man is changeable, the church is also changeable; changeable,
+not in its object, which is for ever one and the same, but in its means
+for effecting that object; changeable in its details, because the same
+treatment cannot suit various diseases, various climates, various
+constitutional peculiarities, various external influences.
+
+The Scripture, then, which is the sole and direct authority for all the
+truths of the Christian religion, is not in the same way, an authority
+for the constitution and rules of the Christian church; that is, it does
+not furnish direct authority, but guides us only by analogy: or it
+gives us merely certain main principles, which we must apply to our own
+various circumstances. This is shown by the remarkable fact, that
+neither our Lord nor his apostles have left any commands with respect to
+the constitution and administration of the church generally. Commands in
+abundance they have left us on moral matters; and one commandment of
+another kind has been added, the commandment, namely, to celebrate the
+Lord's Supper. "Do this in remembrance of me," are our Lord's words; and
+St. Paul tells us, if we could otherwise have doubted it, that this
+remembrance is to be kept up for ever. "As often as ye eat that bread or
+drink that cup ye do show the Lord's death _till he come_." This is the
+one perpetual ordinance of the Christian church, and this is commanded
+to be kept perpetually. But its other institutions are mentioned
+historically, as things done once, but not necessarily to be always
+repeated: nay, they are mentioned without any details, so that we do not
+always know what their exact form was in their original state, and
+cannot, therefore, if we would, adopt it as a perpetual model. Nor is it
+unimportant to observe that institutions are recorded as having been
+created on the spur of the occasion, if I may so speak, not as having
+formed a part of an original and universal plan. A great change in the
+character of the deacon, or subordinate minister's office, is introduced
+in consequence of the complaints of the Hellenist Christians: the number
+of the apostles is increased by the addition of Paul and Barnabas, not
+appointed, as Matthias had been, by the other apostles themselves, but
+by the prophets and teachers of the church of Antioch. Again, the
+churches founded by St. Paul were each, at first, placed by him under
+the government of several presbyters; but after his imprisonment at
+Rome, finding that they were become greatly corrupted, he sends out
+single persons, in two instances, with full powers to remodel these
+churches, and with authority to correct the presbyters themselves: yet
+it does not appear that these especial[7] visitors were to alter
+permanently the earlier constitution of the churches; nor that they were
+sent generally to all the churches which St. Paul had founded. Indeed,
+it appears evident from the epistle of Clement, that the original
+constitution of the church of Corinth still subsisted in his time; the
+government was still vested not in one man, but in many[8]. Yet a few
+years later the government of a single man, as we see from Ignatius, was
+become very general; and Ignatius, as is well known, wishes to invest it
+with absolute power[9]. I believe that he acted quite wisely according
+to the circumstances of the church at that period; and that nothing less
+than a vigorous unity of government could have struggled with the
+difficulties and dangers of that crisis. But no man can doubt that the
+system which Ignatius so earnestly recommends was very different from
+that which St. Paul had instituted fifty or sixty years earlier.
+
+[Footnote 7: The command, "to appoint elders in every city," is given to
+Titus, according to Paul's practice when he first formed churches of the
+Gentiles (Acts xiv, 2.) Nor did Timothy, or Titus, remain permanently at
+Ephesus, or in Crete. Timothy, when St. Paul's second Epistle was
+written to him, was certainly not at Ephesus, but apparently in Pontus;
+and Titus, at the same period, was gone to Dalmatia: nor indeed was he
+to remain in Crete beyond the summer of the year in which St. Paul's
+Epistle was written; he was to meet Paul, in the winter, at Nicopolis.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Only elders are spoken of as governing the church of
+Corinth. It is impossible to understand clearly the nature of the
+contest, and of the party against which Clement's Epistle is directed.
+Where he wishes the heads of that party to say, [Greek: ei di eme stasis
+kai eris kai schismata, ekchoro, apeimi, ou ean, boulaesthe, kai poio,
+ta, prostassomena upo tou plaethous], c. 54, it would seem as if they
+had been endeavouring to exercise a despotic authority over the church,
+in defiance of the general feeling, as well as of the existing
+government, like those earlier persons at Corinth, whom St. Paul
+describes, in his second Epistle, xi. 20; and like Diotrephes, mentioned
+by St. John, 3 Epist. 9, 10. But in a society where all power must have
+depended on the consent of those subject to it, how could any one
+exercise a tyranny against the will of the majority, as well as against
+the authority of the Apostles? And [Greek: ta prostassomena upo tou
+plaethous] must signify, I think, "the bidding of the society at large."
+Compare for this use of [Greek: plaethos], Ignatius, Smyrna. 8;
+Trallian. 1, 8. A conjecture might be offered as to the solution of this
+difficulty, but it would lead mo into too long a discussion.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Insomuch that he wished all marriages to be solemnized with
+the consent and approbation of the bishop, [Greek: meta gnomaes tou
+episkopou], that they might be "according to God, and not according to
+passion;" [Greek: kapa Theon kai mae kat epithomian].--_Ad.
+Polycarp_. 5.]
+
+On two points, however,--points not of detail, but of principle,--the
+Scripture does seem to speak decisively. 1st. The whole body of the
+church was to take an active share in its concerns; the various
+faculties of its various members were to perform their several parts: it
+was to be a living society, not an inert mass of mere hearers and
+subjects, who were to be authoritatively taught and absolutely ruled by
+one small portion of its members. It is quite consistent with this,
+that, at particular times, the church should centre all its own power
+and activity in the persons of its rulers. In the field, the imperium of
+the Roman consul was unlimited; and even within the city walls, the
+senate's commission in times of imminent danger, released him from all
+restraints of law; the whole power of the state was, for the moment,
+his, and his only. Such temporary despotisms are sometimes not expedient
+merely, but necessary: without them society would perish. I do not,
+therefore, regard Ignatius's epistles as really contradictory to the
+idea of the church conveyed to us in the twelfth chapter of St. Paul's
+First Epistle to the Corinthians: I believe that the dictatorship, so to
+speak, which Ignatius claims for the bishop in each church, was required
+by the circumstances of the case; but to change the temporary into the
+perpetual dictatorship, was to subvert the Roman constitution; and to
+make Ignatius's language the rule, instead of the exception, is no less
+to subvert the Christian church. Wherever the language of Ignatius is
+repeated with justice, there the church must either be in its infancy,
+or in its dotage, or in some extraordinary crisis of danger; wherever it
+is repeated, as of universal application, it destroys, as in fact it has
+destroyed, the very life of Christ's institution.
+
+But, 2d, the Christian church was absolutely and entirely, at all times,
+and in all places, to be without a human priesthood. Despotic government
+and priesthood are things perfectly distinct from one another. Despotic
+government might be required, from time to time, by this or that portion
+of the Christian church, as by other societies; for government is
+essentially changeable, and all forms, in the manifold varieties of the
+condition of society, are, in their turn, lawful and beneficial. But a
+priesthood belongs to a matter not so varying--the relations subsisting
+between God and man. These relations were fixed for the Christian church
+from its very foundation, being, in fact, no other than the main truths
+of the Christian religion; and they bar, for all time, the very notion
+of an earthly priesthood. They bar it, because they establish the
+everlasting priesthood of our Lord, which leaves no place for any other;
+they bar it, because priesthood is essentially mediation; and they
+establish one Mediator between God and man--the Man Christ Jesus. And,
+therefore, the notion of Mr. Newman and his friends, that the sacraments
+derive their efficacy from the apostolical succession of the minister,
+is so extremely unchristian, that it actually deserves to be called
+anti-christian; for there is no point of the priestly office, properly
+so called, in which the claim of the earthly priest is not absolutely
+precluded. Do we want him for sacrifice? Nay, there is no place for him
+at all; for our one atoning Sacrifice has been once offered; and by its
+virtue we are enabled to offer daily our spiritual sacrifices of
+ourselves, which no other man can by possibility offer for us. Do we
+want him for intercession? Nay, there is One who ever liveth to make
+intercession for us, through whom we have access to ([Greek:
+prosalogaen], admission to the presence of) the Father, and for whose
+sake, Paul, and Apollos, and Peter, and things present, and things to
+come, are all ours already. His claim can neither be advanced or
+received without high dishonour to our true Priest and to his blessed
+gospel. If circumcision could not be practised, as necessary, by a
+believer in Christ, without its involving a forfeiture of the benefits
+of Christ's salvation; how much more does St. Paul's language apply to
+the invention of an earthly priesthood--a priesthood neither after the
+order of Aaron, nor yet of Melchisedek; unlawful alike under the law and
+the gospel.
+
+It is the invention of the human priesthood, which falling in,
+unhappily, with the absolute power rightfully vested in the Christian
+church during the troubles of the second century, fixed the exception as
+the rule, and so in the end destroyed the church. It pretended that the
+clergy were not simply rulers and teachers,--offices which, necessarily
+vary according to the state of those who are ruled and taught,--but that
+they were essentially mediators between God and the church; and as this
+language would have sounded too profanely,--for the mediator between
+God and the church can be none but Christ,--so the clergy began to draw
+to themselves the attributes of the church, and to call the church by a
+different name, such as the faithful, or the laity; so that to speak of
+the church mediating for the people did not sound so shocking, and the
+doctrine so disguised found ready acceptance. Thus the evil work was
+consummated; the great majority of the members of the church, were
+virtually disfranchised; the minority retained the name, but the
+character of the institution was utterly corrupted.
+
+To revive Christ's church, therefore, is to expel the antichrist of
+priesthood, (which, as it was foretold of him, "as God, sitteth in the
+temple of God, showing himself that he is God,") and to restore its
+disfranchised members,--the laity,--to the discharge of their proper
+duties in it, and to the consciousness of their paramount importance.
+This is the point which I have dwelt upon in the XXXVIII^{th} Lecture,
+and which is closely in connection with the point maintained in the
+XL^{th}; and all who value the inestimable blessings of Christ's church
+should labour in arousing the laity to a sense of their great share in
+them. In particular, that discipline, which is one of the greatest of
+those blessings, never can, and, indeed, never ought to be restored,
+till the Church resumes its lawful authority, and puts an end to the
+usurpation of its powers by the clergy. There is a feeling now awakened
+amongst the lay members of our Church, which, if it can but be rightly
+directed, may, by God's blessing, really arrive at something truer and
+deeper than satisfied the last century, or than satisfied the last
+seventeen centuries. Otherwise, whatever else may be improved, the laity
+will take care that church discipline shall continue to slumber, and
+they will best serve the church by doing so. Much may be done to spread
+the knowledge of Christ's religion; new churches may be built; new
+ministers appointed to preach the word and administer the sacraments;
+those may hear who now cannot hear; many more sick persons may be
+visited; many more children may receive religious instruction: all this
+is good, and to be received with sincere thankfulness; but, with a
+knowledge revealed to us of a still more excellent power in Christ's
+church, and with the abundant promises of prophecy in our hands, can we
+rest satisfied with the lesser and imperfect good, which strikes thrice
+and stays? But, if the zeal of the lay members of our Church be directed
+by the principles of Mr. Newman, then the result will be, not merely a
+lesser good, but one fearfully mixed with evil--Christian religion
+profaned by anti-christian fables, Christian holiness marred by
+superstition and uncharitableness; Christian wisdom and Christian
+sincerity scoffed at, reviled, and persecuted out of sight. This is
+declared to us by the sure voice of experience; this was the fruit of
+the spirit of priestcraft, with its accompaniments of superstitious
+rites and lying traditions, in the last decline of the Jewish church;
+this was the fruit of the same spirit, with the same accompaniments, in
+the long decay of the Christian church; although, the indestructible
+virtue of Christ's gospel was manifest in the midst of the evil, and
+Christ, in every age and in every country, has been known with saving
+power by some of his people, and his church, in her worst corruptions,
+has taught many divinest truths, has inculcated many holiest virtues.
+
+When the tide is setting strongly against us, we can scarcely expect to
+make progress; it is enough if we do not drift along with it. Mr.
+Newman's system is now at the flood; it is daily making converts; it is
+daily swelled by many of those who neither love it nor understand it in
+itself, but who hope to make it serve their purposes, or who like to
+swim with the stream. A strong profession, therefore, of an opposite
+system must expect, at the present moment, to meet with little favour;
+nor, indeed, have I any hope of turning the tide, which will flow for
+its appointed season, and its ebb does not seem to be at hand. But
+whilst the hurricane rages, those exposed to it may well encourage one
+another to hold fast their own foundations against it; and many are
+exposed to it in whose welfare I naturally have the deepest interest,
+and in whom old impressions may be supposed to have still so much force
+that I may claim from them, at least, a patient hearing. I am anxious to
+show them that Mr. Newman's system is to be opposed not merely on
+negative grounds, as untrue, but as obstructing that perfect and
+positive truth, that perfection of Christ's church, which the last
+century, it may be, neglected, but which I value and desire as earnestly
+as it can be valued and desired by any man alive. My great objection to
+Mr. Newman's system is, that it destroys Christ's church, and sets up an
+evil in its stead. We do not desire merely to hinder the evil from
+occupying the ground, and to leave it empty; that has been, undoubtedly,
+the misfortune, and partly the fault of Protestantism; but we desire to
+build on the holy ground a no less holy temple, not out of our own
+devices, but according to the teaching of Christ himself, who has given
+us the outline, and told us what should be its purposes.
+
+The true church of Christ would offer to every faculty of our nature its
+proper exercise, and would entirely meet all our wants. No wise man
+doubts that the Reformation was imperfect, or that in the Romish system
+there were many good institutions, and practices, and feelings, which it
+would be most desirable to restore amongst ourselves. Daily church
+services, frequent communions, memorials of our Christian calling
+continually presented to our notice, in crosses and way-side oratories;
+commemorations of holy men, of all times and countries; the doctrine of
+the communion of saints practically taught; religious orders, especially
+of women, of different kinds, and under different rules, delivered only
+from the snare and sin of perpetual vows; all these, most of which are
+of some efficacy for good, even in a corrupt church, belong no less to
+the true church, and would there be purely beneficial. If Mr. Newman's
+system attracts good and thinking men, because it seems to promise them
+all these things, which in our actual Church are not to be found, let
+them remember, that these things belong to the perfect church no less
+than to that of the Romanists and of Mr. Newman, and would flourish in
+the perfect church far more healthily. Or, again, if any man admires Mr.
+Newman's system for its austerities, if he regards fasting as a positive
+duty, he should consider that these might be transferred also to the
+perfect church, and that they have no necessary connexion with the
+peculiar tenets of Mr. Newman. We know that the Puritans were taunted by
+their adversaries for their frequent fasts, and the severity of their
+lives; and they certainly were far enough from agreeing with Mr. Newman.
+Whatever there is of good, or self-denying, or ennobling, in his system,
+is altogether independent of his doctrine concerning the priesthood. It
+is that doctrine which is the peculiarity of his system and of Romanism;
+it is that doctrine which constitutes the evil of both, which
+over-weighs all the good accidentally united with it, and makes the
+systems, as such, false and anti-christian. Nor can any human being find
+in this doctrine anything of a beneficial tendency either to his
+intellectual, his moral, or his spiritual nature. If mere reverence be a
+virtue, without reference to its object, let us, by all means, do
+honour to the virtue of those who fell down to the stock of a tree; and
+let us lament the harsh censure which charged them with "having a lie in
+their right hand[10]."
+
+[Footnote 10: The language which Mr. Newman and his friends have allowed
+themselves to hold, in admiration of what they call reverential and
+submissive faith, might certainly be used in defence of the lowest
+idolatry; what they have dared to call rationalistic can plead such high
+and sacred authority in its favour, that if I were to quote some of the
+language of the "Tracts for the Times," and place by the side of it
+certain passages from the New Testament, Mr. Newman and his friends
+would appear to have been writing blasphemy. It seems scarcely possible
+that they could have remembered what is said in St. Matthew xv. 9-20,
+and who said it, when they have called it rationalism to deny a
+spiritual virtue in things that are applied to the body.]
+
+What does the true and perfect church want, that she should borrow from
+the broken cisterns of idolatry? Holding all those truths in which the
+clear voice of God's word is joined by the accordant confession of God's
+people in all ages; holding all the means of grace of which she was
+designed to be the steward--her common prayers, her pure preaching, her
+uncorrupted sacraments, her free and living society, her wise and
+searching discipline, her commemorations and memorials of God's mercy
+and grace, whether shown in her Lord himself, or in his and her
+members;--looking lovingly upon her elder sisters, the ancient churches,
+and delighting to be in communion with them, as she hopes that her
+younger sisters, the churches of later days, will delight to be in
+communion with her;--what has she not, that Christ's bride should have?
+what has she not, that Mr. Newman's system can give her? But because she
+loves her Lord, and stands fast in his faith, and has been enlightened
+by his truth, she will endure no other mediator than Christ, she will
+repose her trust only on his word, she will worship in the light, and
+will abhor the words, no less than the works, of darkness. Her sisters,
+the elder churches, she loves and respects as she would be herself loved
+and respected; but she will not, and may not, worship them, nor even,
+for their sakes, believe error to be truth, or foolishness to be wisdom.
+She dare not hope that she can be in all things a perfect guide and
+example to the churches that shall come after her; as neither have the
+churches before her been in all things a perfect guide and example to
+herself. She would not impose her yoke upon future generations, nor will
+she submit her own neck to the yoke of antiquity. She honours all men,
+but makes none her idol; and she would have her own individual members
+regard her with honour, but neither would she be an idol to them. She
+dreads especially that sin of which her Lord has so emphatically warned
+her--the sin against the Holy Ghost. She will neither lie against him by
+declaring that he is where his fruits are not manifested; nor blaspheme
+him, by saying that he is not where his fruits are. Rites and ordinances
+may be vain, prophets may be false, miracles may be miracles of Satan;
+but the signs of the Holy Spirit, truth and holiness, can never be
+ineffectual, can never deceive, can never be evil; where they are, and
+only where they are, there is God.
+
+There are states of falsehood and wickedness so monstrous, that, to use
+the language of Eastern mythology, the Destroyer God is greater than the
+Creator or the Preserver, and no good can be conceived so great as the
+destruction of the existing evil. But ordinarily in human affairs
+destruction and creation should go hand in hand; as the evergreen shrubs
+of our gardens do not cast their old leaves till the young ones are
+ready to supply their place. Great as is the falsehood of Mr. Newman's
+system, it would be but an unsatisfactory work to clear it away, if we
+had no positive truth to offer in its room. But the thousands of good
+men whom it has beguiled, because it professed to meet the earnest
+craving of their minds for a restoration of Christ's church with power,
+need not fear to open their eyes to its hollowness; like the false
+miracles of fraud or sorcery, it is but the counterfeit of a real truth.
+The restoration of the church, is, indeed, the best consummation of all
+our prayers, and all our labours; it is not a dream, not a prospect to
+be seen only in the remotest distance; it is possible, it lies very near
+us; with God's blessing it is in the power of this very generation to
+begin and make some progress in the work. If the many good, and wise,
+and influential laymen of our Church would but awake to their true
+position and duties, and would labour heartily to procure for the church
+a living organization and an effective government, in both, of which the
+laity should be essential members, then, indeed, the church would become
+a reality[11]. This is not Erastianism, or rather, it is not what is
+commonly cried down under that name; it is not the subjection of the
+church to the state, which, indeed, would be a most miserable and most
+unchristian condition; but it would be the deliverance of the church,
+and its exaltation to its own proper sovereignty. The members of one
+particular profession are most fit to administer a system in part, most
+unfit to legislate for it or to govern it: we could ill spare the
+ability and learning of our lawyers, but we surely should not wish to
+have none but lawyers concerned even, in the administration of justice,
+much less to have none but lawyers in the government or in parliament.
+What is true of lawyers with regard to the state, is no less true of the
+clergy with regard to the church; indispensable as ministers and
+advisers, they cannot, without great mischief, act as sole judges, sole
+legislators, sole governors. And this is a truth so palpable, that the
+clergy, by pressing such a claim, merely deprive the church of its
+judicial, legislative, and executive functions; whilst the common sense
+of the church will not allow them to exercise these powers, and, whilst
+they assert that no one else may exercise them, the result is, that they
+are not exercised at all, and the essence of the church is destroyed.
+
+[Footnote 11: The famous saying, "extra ecclesiam nulla salus," is, in
+its idea, a most divine truth; historically and in fact it may be, and
+often has been, a practical falsehood. If the truths of Christ's
+religion were necessarily accessible only to the members of some visible
+church, then it would be true always, inasmuch as to be out of the
+church would then be the same thing as to be without Christ; and, as a
+society, the church ought so to attract to itself all goodness, and by
+its internal organization, so to encourage all goodness, that nothing
+would be without its pale but extreme wickedness, or extreme ignorance;
+and he who were voluntarily to forfeit its spiritual advantages, would
+be guilty of moral suicide; so St. Paul calls the church the pillar and
+ground of truth; that is, it was so in its purpose and idea; and he
+therefore conjures Timothy to walk warily in it, and to take heed that
+what ought to be the pillar and ground of truth should not be profaned
+by fables, and so be changed into a pillar of falsehood. But to say
+universally, as an historical fact, that "extra ecclesiam nulla salus,"
+may be often to utter one of the worst of falsehoods. A ferry is set up
+to transport men over an unfordable river, and it might be truly said
+that "extra navem nulla salus;" there is no other safe way, speaking
+generally, of getting over; but the ferryman has got the plague, and if
+you go in the boat with him, you will catch it and die. In despair, a
+man plunges into the water, and swims across; would not the ferryman be
+guilty of a double falsehood who should call out to this man, "extra
+navem nulla salus," insisting that he had not swum over, when he had,
+and saying that his boat would have carried him safely, whereas it would
+have killed him?]
+
+The first step towards the restoration of the church seems to be the
+revival of the order of deacons; which might be effected without any
+other change in our present system than a repeal of all laws, canons, or
+customs which prohibit a deacon from following a secular calling, which
+confer on him any civil exemptions, or subject him to any civil
+disqualifications. The Ordination Service, with the subscription to the
+Articles, would remain perfectly unaltered; and as no deacon can hold
+any benefice, it is manifest that the proposed measure would in no way
+interfere with the rights or duties of the order of presbyters, or
+priests, which would remain precisely what they are at present. But the
+benefit in large towns would be enormous, if, instead of the present
+system of district visiting by private individuals, excellent as that is
+where there is nothing better, we could have a large body of deacons,
+the ordained ministers of the church, visiting the sick, managing
+charitable subscriptions, and sharing with their presbyter in those
+strictly clerical duties, which now, in many cases, are too much for the
+health and powers of the strongest. Yet a still greater advantage would
+be found in the link thus formed between the clergy and laity by the
+revival of an order appertaining in a manner to both. Nor would it be a
+little thing that many who now become teachers in some dissenting
+congregation, not because they differ from our Articles, or dislike our
+Liturgy, but because they cannot afford to go to the universities, and
+have no prospect of being maintained by the church, if they were to give
+up their secular callings, would, in all human probability, be glad to
+join the church, as deacons, and would thus be subject to her
+authorities, and would be engaged in her service, instead of being
+aliens to her, if not enemies.
+
+When we look at the condition of our country: at the poverty and
+wretchedness of so large a portion of the working classes; at the
+intellectual and moral evils which certainly exist among the poor, but
+by no means amongst the poor only; and when we witness the many partial
+attempts to remedy these evils--attempts benevolent indeed and wise, so
+far as they go, but utterly unable to strike to the heart of the
+mischief; can any Christian doubt that here is the work for the church
+of Christ to do; that none else can do it; and that with the blessing of
+her Almighty Head she can? Looking upon the chaos around us, one power
+alone can reduce it into order, and fill it with light and life. And
+does he really apprehend the perfections and high calling of Christ's
+church; does he indeed fathom the depths of man's wants, or has he
+learnt to rise to the fulness of the stature of their divine remedy, who
+comes forward to preach to us the necessity of apostolical succession?
+Grant even that it was of divine appointment, still as it is
+demonstrably and palpably unconnected with holiness, as it would be a
+mere positive and ceremonial ordinance, it cannot be the point of most
+importance to insist on; even if it be a sin to neglect this, there are
+so many far weightier matters equally neglected, that it would be
+assuredly no Christian prophesying which were to strive to direct our
+chief attention to this. But the wholly unmoral character of this
+doctrine, which if it were indeed of God, would make it a single
+mysterious exception to all the other doctrines of the Gospel, is, God
+be thanked, not more certain than its total want of external evidence;
+the Scripture disclaims it, Christ himself condemns it.
+
+I have written at considerable length: yet so vast is the subject, that
+I may seem to some to have written superficially, and to have left my
+statements without adequate support. I can only say that no one
+paragraph has been written hastily, nor in fact is there one the
+substance of which has not been for several years in my mind; indeed, in
+many instances, not only the substance, but the proofs in detail have
+been actually written: but to have inserted them here would have been
+impracticable, as they would have been in themselves a volume. Neither
+have I knowingly remained in ignorance of any argument which may have
+been used in defence of Mr. Newman's system; I have always desired to
+know what he and his friends say, and on what grounds they say it;
+although, as I have not read the Tracts for the Times regularly, I may
+have omitted something which it would have been important to notice.
+Finally, in naming Mr. Newman as the chief author of the system which I
+have been considering, I have in no degree wished to make the question
+personal; but Mr. Percival's letter authorizes us to consider him as one
+of the authors of it; and as I have never had any personal acquaintance
+with him, I could mention his name with no shock to any private feelings
+either in him or in myself. But I have spoken of him simply as the
+maintainer of certain doctrines, not as maintaining them in any
+particular manner, far less as actuated by any particular motives. I
+believe him to be in most serious error; I believe his system to be so
+destructive of Christ's church, that I earnestly pray, and would labour
+to the utmost of my endeavours for its utter overthrow: but on the other
+hand, I will not be tempted to confound the authors of the system with
+the system itself; for I know that the most mischievous errors have been
+promulgated by men who yet have been neither foolish nor wicked; and I
+nothing doubt that there are many points in Mr. Newman, in which I might
+learn truth from his teaching, and should be glad if I could come near
+him in his practice.
+
+
+
+NOTE.
+
+In order to prevent the possibility of misunderstanding, it is proper to
+repeat what has been often said by others, that the English word
+"priest" has two significations,--the one according to its etymology,
+through the French _prêtre_, or _prestre_, and the Latin _presbyterus_,
+from the Greek [Greek: presbuteros]; in which sense it is used in our
+Liturgy and Rubrics, and signifies merely "one belonging to the order of
+Presbyters," as distinguished from the other two orders of bishops and
+deacons. But the other signification of the word "priest," and which we
+use, as I think, more commonly, is the same with the meaning of the
+Latin word _sacerdos_, and the Greek word [Greek: iepeus], and means,
+"one who stands as a mediator between God and the people, and brings
+them to God by the virtue of certain ceremonial acts which he performs
+for them, and which they could not perform for themselves without
+profanation, because they are at a distance from God, and cannot, in
+their own persons, venture to approach towards him." In this sense of
+the word "priest," the term is not applied to the ministers of the
+Christian church, either by the Scripture, or by the authorized
+formularies of the Church of England; although, in the other sense, as
+synonymous with Presbyters, it is used in our Prayer Book repeatedly. Of
+course, not one word of what I have written is meant to deny the
+lawfulness and importance of the order of Presbyters in the church; I
+have only spoken against a priesthood, in the other sense of the word,
+in which a "priest" means "a mediator between God and man;" in that
+sense, in short, in which the word is not a translation of [Greek:
+presbuteros], but [iereus].
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE I.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+GENESIS iii. 22.
+
+_And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know
+good and evil_.
+
+
+This is declared to be man's condition after the Fall. I will not
+attempt to penetrate into that which is not to be entered into, nor to
+pretend to discover all that may be concealed beneath the outward, and
+in many points clearly parabolical, form of the account of man's
+temptation and sin. But that condition to which his sin brought him is
+our condition; with that, undoubtedly, we are concerned; that must be
+the foundation of all sound views of human nature; the double fact
+employed in the word fall is of the last importance; the fact on the one
+hand of our present nature being evil, the fact on the other hand that
+this present nature is not our proper nature; that the whole business of
+our lives is to cast it off, and to return to that better and holy
+nature, which, in truth, although not in fact, is the proper nature
+of man.
+
+All individual experience, then, and all history begins in something
+which is evil; all our course, whether as individuals or as nations, is
+a progress, an advance, a leaving behind us something bad, and a going
+forwards towards something that is good. But individual experience, and
+history apart from Christianity, would make us regard this progress as
+fearfully uncertain. Clear it is that we are in an evil case; we have
+lost our way; we are like men who are bewildered in those endless
+forests of reeds which line some of the great American rivers; if we
+stay where we are, the venomous snakes may destroy us; or the deadly
+marsh air when night comes on will be surely fatal; it is death to
+remain, but yet if we move, we know not what way will lead us out, and
+it may be that, while seeming to advance, we shall but be going round
+and round, and shall at last find ourselves hard by the place from which
+we set out in the beginning. Nay, we may even feel a doubt,--a doubt, I
+say, though not a reasonable belief,--but a doubt which at times would
+press us sorely, whether the tangled thicket in which we are placed has
+any end at all; whether our fond notions of a clear and open space, a
+pure air, and a fruitful and habitable country, are not altogether
+merely imaginary; whether the whole world be not such a region of death
+as the spot in which we are actually prisoned; whether there remains any
+thing for us, but to curse our fate, and lie down and die. Under such
+circumstances, although we should admire the spirit which hoped against
+hope; which would make an effort for deliverance; which would, at any
+rate, flee from the actual evil, although, other evil might receive him
+after all his struggles; yet we could forgive those who yielded at once
+to their fate, and who sat down quietly to wait for their death, without
+the unavailing labour of a struggle to avoid it.
+
+But when the declaration has been made to us by God himself, that this
+dismal swamp in which we are prisoners is but an infinitely small
+portion of his universe, that there do exist all those goodly forms
+which we fancied; and more, when God declares too that we were in the
+first instance designed to enjoy them; that our error brought us into
+the thicket, having been once out of it; that we may escape from it
+again; nay, much more still, when He shows us the true path to escape,
+and tells us, that the obstacles in our way have been cleared, and that
+he will give us strength to accomplish, the task of escaping, and will
+guide us that we do not miss the track; then what shall we say to those
+who insist upon, remaining where they are, but that they are either
+infatuated, or indolent and cowardly even to insanity; that they are
+refusing certain salvation, and are, by their own act, giving themselves
+over to inevitable death.
+
+This, then, is the truth taught us by the doctrine of the Fall; not so
+much that it is our certain destruction to remain where we are, for that
+our own sense and reason declare to us, if we will but listen to them;
+but that our present position is not that for which God designed us, and
+that to rest satisfied with it is not a yielding to an unavoidable
+necessity, but the indolently or madly shrinking from the effort which
+would give us certain deliverance.
+
+Now it is a part of our present evil condition from which we must
+escape, that we know good and evil. We are in the world where evil
+exists within us, and about us; we cannot but know it. True it is, that
+it was our misfortune to become acquainted with it; this noisome
+wilderness of reeds, this reeking swamp; it would have been far happier
+for us, no doubt, had we never become aware of their existence. But that
+wish is now too late. We are in the midst of this dismal place, and the
+question now is, how to escape from it. We may shut our eyes, and say we
+will not see objects so unsightly; but what avails it, if the marsh
+poison finds its way by other senses, if we cannot but draw it in with
+our breath, and so we must die? And such is the case of those who now
+in this present world confound ignorance with innocence. This is a fatal
+mistaking of our present condition for our past; there was a time when
+to the human race ignorance was innocence; but now it is only folly and
+sin. For as I supposed that a man lost in one of those noxious swamps
+might shut his eyes, and so keep himself in some measure in ignorance,
+yet the poison would be taken in with his breath, and so he would die:
+even thus, whilst we would fain shut the eyes of our understanding, and
+would so hope to be in safety, our passions are all the time alive and
+active, and they catch the poison of the atmosphere around us, and we
+are not innocent, but foolishly wicked.
+
+We must needs consider this carefully; for, to say nothing of wider
+questions of national importance, who that sees before him, as we must
+see it, the gradual change from childhood to boyhood, who that sees
+added knowledge often accompanied with added sin, can help wishing that
+the earlier ignorance of evil might still be continued; and fancying
+that knowledge is at best but a doubtful blessing?
+
+But our path is not backwards, but onwards. Israel in the desert was
+hungry and thirsty, while in Egypt he had eaten bread to the full;
+Israel in the desert saw a wide waste of sand, or sandy rock, around
+him, while in Egypt he had dwelt in those green pastures and watered
+gardens to which the Nile had given freshness and life. But that
+wilderness is his appointed way to Canaan; its dreariness must be
+exchanged for the hills and valleys of Canaan, and must not drive him
+back again to the low plain of Egypt. There is a moral wilderness which
+lies in the early part of our Christian course; but we must not hope to
+escape from it but by penetrating through it to its furthest side.
+
+Undoubtedly this place, and other similar places, which receive us when
+we have quitted the state of childhood, and before our characters are
+formed in manhood, do partake somewhat of the character of the
+wilderness; and it is not unnatural that many should shrink back from
+them in fear. We see but too often the early beauty of the character
+sadly marred, its simplicity gone, its confidence chilled, its
+tenderness hardened; where there was gentleness, we see roughness and
+coarseness; where there was obedience, we find murmuring, and self-will,
+and pride; where there was a true and blameless conversation, we find
+now something of falsehood, something of profaneness, something of
+impurity. I can well conceive what it must be to a parent to see his
+child return from school, for the first time, with the marks of this
+grievous change upon him: I can well conceive how bitterly he must
+regret having ever sent him to a place of so much, danger; how fondly he
+must look back to the days of his early innocence. And if a parent feels
+thus, what must be our feelings, seeing that this evil has been wrought
+here? Are we not as those who, when pretending to give a wholesome
+draught, have mixed the cup with poison? How can we go on upholding a
+system, the effects of which appear to be so merely mischievous?
+
+Believe me, that such questions must and ought to present themselves to
+the mind of every thinking man who is concerned in the management of a
+school: and I do think that we could not answer them satisfactorily,
+that our work would absolutely be unendurable, if we did not bear in
+mind that our eyes should look forward, and not backward; if we did not
+remember that the victory of fallen man is to be sought for, not in
+innocence, but in tried virtue. Comparing only the state of a boy after
+his first half-year, or year, at school, with his earlier state as a
+child, and our reflections on the evil of our system would be bitter
+indeed; but when we compare a boy's state after his first half-year, or
+year, at school, with what it is afterwards; when we see the clouds
+again clearing off; when we find coarseness succeeded again by delicacy;
+hardness and selfishness again broken up, and giving place to affection
+and benevolence; murmuring and self-will exchanged for humility and
+self-denial; and the profane, or impure, or false tongue, uttering again
+only the words of truth and purity; and when we see that all these good
+things are now, by God's grace, rooted in the character; that they have
+been tried, and grown up amidst the trial; that the knowledge of evil
+has made them hate it the more, and be the more aware of it; then we can
+look upon our calling with patience, and even with thankfulness; we see
+that the wilderness has been gone through triumphantly, and that its
+dangers have hardened and strengthened the traveller for all his
+remaining pilgrimage.
+
+For the truth is, that to the knowledge of good and evil we are born;
+and it must come upon us sooner or later. In the common course of
+things, it comes about that age with which we are here most concerned. I
+do not mean that there are not faults in early childhood--we know that
+there are;--but we know also that with the strength and rapid growth of
+boyhood there is a far greater development of these faults, and
+particularly far less of that submissiveness which belonged naturally to
+the helplessness of mere childhood. I suppose that, by an extreme care,
+the period of childhood might be prolonged considerably; but still it
+must end; and the knowledge of good and evil, in its full force, must
+come. I believe that this must be; I believe that no care can prevent
+it, and that an extreme attempt at carefulness, whilst it could not
+keep off the disorder, would weaken the strength, of the constitution to
+bear it. But yet you should never forget, and I should never forget,
+that although the evils of schools in some respects must be, yet, in
+proportion as they exceed what must be, they do become at once
+mischievous and guilty. And such, or even worse, is the mischief when,
+with the evil which must be, there is not the good which ought to be;
+for, remember, our condition is to know good and evil. If we know only
+evil, it is the condition of hell; and therefore, if schools present an
+unmixed experience, if there is temptation in abundance, but no support
+against temptation, and no examples of overcoming it; if some are losing
+their child's innocence, but none, or very few, are gaining a man's
+virtue; are we in a wholesome state then? or can we shelter ourselves
+under the excuse that our evil is unavoidable, that we do but afford, in
+a mild form, the experience which must be learned sooner or later? It is
+here that we must be acquitted or condemned. I can bear to see the
+overclouding of childish simplicity, if there is a reasonable hope that
+the character so clouded for a time will brighten again into Christian
+holiness. But if we do not see this, if innocence is exchanged only for
+vice, then we have not done our part, then the evil is not unavoidable,
+but our sin: and we may be assured, that for the souls so lost, there
+will be an account demanded hereafter both of us and you.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE II.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+1 CORINTHIANS xiii. 11.
+
+_When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I
+thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away
+childish things_.
+
+
+Taking the Apostle's words literally, it might appear that no words in
+the whole range of Scripture were less applicable to the circumstances
+of this particular congregation: for they speak of childhood and of
+manhood; and as all of us have passed the one, so a very large
+proportion of us have not yet arrived at the other. But when we consider
+the passage a little more carefully, we shall see that this would be a
+very narrow and absurd objection. Neither the Apostle, nor any one else,
+has ever stepped directly from childhood into manhood; it was his
+purpose here only to notice the two extreme points of the change which
+had taken place in him, passing over its intermediate stages; but he,
+like all other men, must have gone through those stages. There must have
+been a time in his life, as in all ours, when his words, his thoughts,
+and his understanding were neither all childish, nor all manly: there
+must have been a period, extending over some years, in which they were
+gradually becoming the one less and less, and the other more and more.
+And as it suited the purposes of his comparison to look at the change in
+himself only when it was completed, so it will suit our object here to
+regard it while in progress, to consider what it is, to ask the two
+great questions, how far it can be hastened, and how far it ought to
+be hastened.
+
+"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I
+thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish
+things." It will be seen at once, that when the Apostle speaks of
+thought and understanding, ([Greek: erronoun elogizomeaen],) he does not
+mean the mere intellect but all the notions, feelings, and desires of
+our minds, which partake of an intellectual and of a moral character
+together. He is comparing what we should call the whole nature and
+character of childhood with those of manhood. Let us see, for a moment,
+in what they most strikingly differ.
+
+Our Lord's well-known words suggest a difference in the first place,
+which is in favour of childhood. When he says, "Except ye be converted,
+and become as little children, ye can in no case enter into the kingdom
+of heaven," he must certainly ascribe some one quality to childhood, in
+which manhood is generally deficient. And the quality which he means is
+clearly humility; or to speak perhaps more correctly, teachableness. It
+is impossible that a child can have that confidence in himself, which
+disposes him to be his own guide. He must of necessity lean on others,
+he must follow others, and therefore he must believe others. There is in
+his mind, properly speaking, nothing which can be called prejudice; he
+will not as yet refuse to listen, as thinking that he knows better than
+his adviser. One feeling, therefore, essential to the perfection of
+every created and reasonable being, childhood has by the very law of its
+nature; a child cannot help believing that there are some who are
+greater, wiser, better than himself, and he is disposed to follow
+their guidance.
+
+This sense of comparative weakness is founded upon truth, for a child
+is of course unfit to guide himself. Without noticing mere bodily
+helplessness, a child knows scarcely what is good and what is evil; his
+desires for the highest good are not yet in existence; his moral sense
+altogether is exceedingly weak, and would yield readily to the first
+temptation. And, because those higher feelings, which are the great
+check to selfishness, have not yet arisen within him, the selfish
+instinct, connected apparently with all animal life, is exceedingly
+predominant in him. If a child then on the one hand be teachable, yet he
+is at the same time morally weak and ignorant, and therefore
+extremely selfish.
+
+It is also a part of the nature of childhood to be the slave of present
+impulses. A child is not apt to look backwards or forwards, to reflect
+or to calculate. In this also he differs entirely from the great quality
+which befits man as an eternal being, the being able to look before
+and after.
+
+Not to embarrass ourselves with too many points, we may be content with
+these four characteristics of childhood, teachableness, ignorance,
+selfishness, and living only for the present. In the last three of
+these, the perfect man should put away childish things; in the first
+point, or teachableness, while he retained it in principle, he should
+modify it in its application. For while modesty, humility, and a
+readiness to learn, are becoming to men no less than to children; yet it
+should be not a simple readiness to follow others, but only to follow
+the wise and good; not a sense of utter helplessness which catches at
+the first stay, whether sound or brittle; but such a consciousness of
+weakness and imperfection, as makes us long to be strengthened by Him
+who is almighty, to be purified by Him who is all pure.
+
+I said, and it is an obvious truth, that the change from childhood to
+manhood is gradual; there is a period in our lives, of several years,
+in which we are, or should be, slowly exchanging the qualities of one
+state for those of the other. During this intermediate state, then, we
+should expect to find persons become less teachable, less ignorant, less
+selfish, less thoughtless. "Less teachable," I would wish to mean, in
+the sense of being "less indiscriminately teachable;" but as the evil
+and the good are, in human things, ever mixed up together, we may be
+obliged to mean "less teachable" simply. And, to say the very truth, if
+I saw in a young man the changes from childhood in the three other
+points, if I found him becoming wiser, and less selfish, and more
+thoughtful, I should not be very much disturbed if I found him for a
+time less teachable also. For whilst he was really becoming wiser and
+better, I should not much wonder if the sense of improvement rather than
+of imperfection possessed him too strongly; if his confidence in himself
+was a little too over-weening. Let him go on a little farther in life,
+and if he really does go on improving in wisdom and goodness, this
+over-confidence will find its proper level. He will perceive not only
+how much he is doing, or can do, but how much there is which he does not
+do, and cannot. To a thoughtful mind added years can scarcely fail to
+teach, humility. And in this the highest wisdom of manhood may be
+resembling more and more the state of what would be perfect childhood,
+that is, not simply teachableness, but tractableness with respect to
+what was good and true, and to that only.
+
+But the danger of the intermediate state between childhood and manhood
+is too often this, that whilst in the one point of teachableness, the
+change runs on too fast, in the other three, of wisdom, of
+unselfishness, and of thoughtfulness, it proceeds much too slowly: that
+the faults of childhood thus remain in the character, whilst
+that quality by means of which these faults are meant to be
+corrected,--namely, teachableness,--is at the same time diminishing.
+Now, teachableness as an instinct, if I may call it so, diminishes
+naturally with the consciousness of growing strength. By strength, I
+mean strength of body, no less than strength of mind, so closely are our
+body and mind connected with, each other. The helplessness of childhood,
+which presses upon it every moment, the sense of inability to avoid or
+resist danger, which makes the child run continually to his nurse or to
+his mother for protection, cannot but diminish, by the mere growth of
+the bodily powers. The boy feels himself to be less helpless than the
+child, and in that very proportion he is apt to become less teachable.
+As this feeling of decreased helplessness changes into a sense of
+positive vigour and power, and as this vigour and power confer an
+importance on their possessor, which is the case especially at schools,
+so self-confidence must in one point at least, arise in the place of
+conscious weakness; and as this point is felt to be more important, so
+will the self-confidence be likely to extend itself more and more over
+the whole character.
+
+And yet, I am bound to say, that, in general, the teachableness of youth
+is, after all, much greater than we might at first sight fancy. Along
+with much self-confidence in many things, it is rare, I think, to find
+in a young man a deliberate pride that rejects advice and instruction,
+on the strength of having no need for them. And therefore, the faults of
+boyhood and youth are more owing, to my mind, to the want of change in
+the other points of the childish character, than to the too great change
+in this. The besetting faults of youth appear to me to arise mainly from
+its retaining too often the ignorance, selfishness, and thoughtlessness
+of a child, and having arrived at the same time at a degree of bodily
+vigour and power, equal, or only a very little inferior, to those
+of manhood.
+
+And in this state of things, the questions become of exceeding interest,
+whether the change from childhood to manhood can be hastened. That it
+ought to be hastened, appears to me to be clear; hastened, I mean, from
+what it is actually, because in this respect, we do not grow in general
+fast enough; and the danger of over-growth is, therefore, small.
+Besides, where change of one sort is going on very rapidly; where the
+limbs are growing and the bones knitting more firmly, where the strength
+of bodily endurance, as well as of bodily activity, is daily becoming
+greater; it is self-evident that, if the inward changes which ought to
+accompany these outward ones are making no progress, there cannot but be
+derangement and deformity in the system. And, therefore, when I look
+around, I cannot but wish generally that the change from childhood to
+manhood in the three great points of wisdom, of unselfishness, and of
+thoughtfulness, might be hastened from its actual rate of progress in
+most instances.
+
+But then comes the other great question, "Can it be hastened, and if it
+can, how is it to be done?" "Can it be hastened" means, of course, can
+it be hastened healthfully and beneficially, consistently with the due
+development of our nature in its after stages, from life temporal to
+life eternal? For as the child should grow up into the man, so also
+there is a term of years given in which, according to God's will, the
+natural man should grow up into the spiritual man; and we must not so
+press the first change as to make it interfere with the wholesome
+working of the second. The question then is, really, can the change
+from childhood to manhood be hastened in the case of boys and young men
+in general from its actual rate of progress in ordinary cases, without
+injury to the future excellence and full development of the man? that
+is, without exhausting prematurely the faculties either of body or mind.
+
+And this is a very grave question, one of the deepest interest for us
+and for you. For us, as, according to the answer to be given to it,
+should depend our whole conduct and feelings towards you in the matter
+of your education; for you, inasmuch as it is quite clear, that if the
+change from childhood to manhood can be hastened safely, it ought to be
+hastened; and that it is a sin in every one not to try to hasten it:
+because, to retain the imperfections of childhood when you can get rid
+of them, is in itself to forfeit the innocence of childhood; to exchange
+the condition of the innocent infant whom Christ blessed, for that of
+the unprofitable servant whom Christ condemned. For with the growth of
+our bodies evil will grow in us unavoidably; and then, if we are not
+positively good, we are, of necessity, positively sinners.
+
+We will consider, then, what can be done to hasten this change in us
+healthfully; whether we can grow in wisdom, in love, and in
+thoughtfulness, faster in youth, than we now commonly do grow: and
+whether any possible danger can be connected with such increased
+exertion. This shall be our subject for consideration next Sunday.
+Meantime, let it be understood, that however extravagant it might be to
+hope for any general change in any moral point, as the direct result of
+setting truth before the mind; yet, that it never can be extravagant to
+hope for a practical result in some one or two particular cases; and
+that, if one or two even be impressed practically with what they hear,
+the good achieved, or, rather, the good granted us by God, is really
+beyond our calculation. It is so strictly; for who can worthily
+calculate the value of a single human soul? but it is so in this sense
+also, that the amount of general good which may be done in the end by
+doing good first in particular cases is really more than we can
+estimate. It was thus that Christ's original eleven apostles became, in
+the end, the instruments of the salvation of millions: and it is on this
+consideration that we never need despair of the most extensive
+improvements in society, if we are content to wait God's appointed time
+and order, and look for the salvation of the many as the gradual fruit
+of the salvation of a few.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE III.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+1 CORINTHIANS xiii. 11.
+
+_When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I
+thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away
+childish things_.
+
+
+After having noticed last Sunday what were those particular points in
+childhood, which in manhood should be put away, and having observed that
+this change cannot take place all at once, but gradually, during a
+period of several years, I proposed to consider, as on this day, whether
+it were possible to hasten this change, that is, whether it could be
+hastened without injury to the future development of the character; for
+undoubtedly, there is such, a thing in minds, as well as in bodies, as
+precocious growth; and although it is not so frequent as precocious
+growth in the body, nor by any means so generally regarded as an evil,
+yet it is really a thing to be deprecated; and we ought not to adopt
+such measures as might be likely to occasion it.
+
+Now I believe the only reason which could make it supposed to be
+possible that there could be danger in hastening this change, is drawn
+from the observation of what takes place sometimes with regard to
+intellectual advancement. It is seen that some young men of great
+ambition, or remarkable love of knowledge, do really injure their
+health, and exhaust their minds, by an excess of early study. I always
+grieve over such cases exceedingly; not only for the individual's sake
+who is the sufferer, but also for the mischievous effect of his example.
+It affords a pretence to others to justify their own want of exertion;
+and those to whom it is in reality the least dangerous, are always the
+very persons who seem to dread it the most. But we should clearly
+understand, that this excess of intellectual exertion at an early age,
+is by no means the same thing with hastening the change from
+childishness to manliness. We are all enough aware, in common life, that
+a very clever and forward boy may be, in his conduct, exceeding
+childish; that those whose talents and book-knowledge are by no means
+remarkable, may be, in their conduct, exceedingly manly. Examples of
+both these truths instantly present themselves to my memory, and perhaps
+may do so to some of yours. I may say farther, that some whose change
+from childhood to manhood had been, in St. Paul's sense of the terms,
+the most remarkably advanced, were so far from being distinguished for
+their cleverness or proficiency in their school-work, that it would
+almost seem as if their only remaining childishness had been displayed
+there. What I mean, therefore, by the change from childhood to manhood,
+is altogether distinct from a premature advance in book-knowledge, and
+involves in it nothing of that over-study which is dreaded as so
+injurious.
+
+Yet it is true that I described the change from childhood to manhood, as
+a change from ignorance to wisdom. I did so, certainly; but yet, rare as
+knowledge is, wisdom is rarer; and knowledge, unhappily, can exist
+without wisdom, as wisdom can exist with a very inferior degree of
+knowledge. We shall see this, if we consider what we mean by knowledge;
+and, without going into a more general definition of it, let us see what
+we mean by it here. We mean by it, either a knowledge of points of
+scholarship, of grammar, and matters connected with grammar; or a
+knowledge of history and geography; or a knowledge of mathematics: or,
+it may be, of natural history; or, if we use the term, "knowledge of the
+world," then we mean, I think, a knowledge of points of manner and
+fashion; such a knowledge as may save us from exposing ourselves in
+trifling things, by awkwardness or inexperience. Now the knowledge of
+none of these things brings us of necessity any nearer to real
+thoughtfulness, such as alone gives wisdom, than the knowledge of a
+well-contrived game. Some of you, probably, well know that there are
+games from which chance is wholly excluded, and skill in which is only
+the result of much thought and calculation. There is no doubt that the
+game of chess may properly be called an intellectual study; but why does
+it not, and cannot, make any man wise? Because, in the first place, the
+calculations do but respect the movements of little pieces of wood or
+ivory, and not those of our own minds and hearts; and, again, they are
+calculations which have nothing to do whatever with our being better
+men, or worse, with our pleasing God or displeasing him. And what is
+true of this game, is true no less of the highest calculations of
+Astronomy, of the profoundest researches into language; nay, what may
+seem stranger still, it is often true no less of the deepest study even
+of the actions and principles of man's nature; and, strangest of all, it
+may be, and is often true, also, of the study of the very Scripture
+itself; and that, not only of the incidental points of Scripture, its
+antiquities, chronology, and history, but of its very most divine
+truths, of man's justification and of God's nature. Here, indeed, we are
+considering about things where wisdom, so to speak, sits enshrined. We
+are very near her, we see the place where she abides; but her very self
+we obtain not. And why?--but because, in the most solemn study, no less
+than in the lightest, our own moral state may be set apart from our
+consideration; we may be unconscious all the while of our great want;
+and forgetting our great business, to be reconciled to God, and to do
+his will: for wisdom, to speak properly, is to us nothing else than the
+true answer to the Philippian jailor's question, "What must I do to
+be saved?"
+
+Now then, as knowledge of all kinds may be gained without being
+received, or meant at all to be applied, as the answer to this question,
+so it may be quite distinct from wisdom. And when I use the term
+thoughtfulness, as opposed to a child's carelessness, I mean it to
+express an anxiety for the obtaining of this wisdom. And farther, I do
+not see how this wisdom, or this thoughtfulness, can be premature in any
+one; or how it can exhaust before their time any faculties, whether of
+body or mind. This requires no sitting up late at night, no giving up of
+healthful exercise; it brings no headaches, no feverishness, no strong
+excitement at first, to be followed by exhaustion afterwards. Hear how
+it is described by one who spoke of it from experience. "The wisdom that
+is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy to be
+entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without
+hypocrisy." There is surely nothing of premature exhaustion
+connected-with any one of these things.
+
+Or, if we turn to the third point of change from childhood to a
+Christian manhood, the change from selfishness to unselfishness, neither
+can we find any possible danger in hastening this. This cannot hurt our
+health or strain our faculties; it can but make life at every age more
+peaceful and more happy. Nor indeed do I suppose that any one could
+fancy that such a change was otherwise than wholesome at the earliest
+possible period.
+
+There may remain, however, a vague notion, that generally, if what we
+mean by an early change from childishness to manliness be that we should
+become religious, then, although it may not exhaust the powers, or
+injure the health, yet it would destroy the natural liveliness and
+gaiety of youth, and by bringing on a premature seriousness of manner
+and language, would be unbecoming and ridiculous. Now, in the first
+place, there is a great deal of confusion and a great deal of folly in
+the common notions of the gaiety of youth. If gaiety mean real happiness
+of mind, I do not believe that there is more of it in youth than in
+manhood; if for this reason only, that the temper in youth being
+commonly not yet brought into good order, irritation and passion are
+felt, probably, oftener than in after life, and these are sad drawbacks,
+as we all know, to a real cheerfulness of mind. And of the outward
+gaiety of youth, there is a part also which is like the gaiety of a
+drunken man; which is riotous, insolent, and annoying to others; which,
+in short, is a folly and a sin. There remains that which strictly
+belongs to youth, partly physically--the lighter step and the livelier
+movement of the growing and vigorous body; partly from circumstances,
+because a young person's parents or friends stand between him and many
+of the cares of life, and protect him from feeling them altogether;
+partly from the abundance of hope which belongs to the beginning of
+every thing, and which continually hinders the mind from dwelling on
+past pain. And I know not which of these causes of gaiety would be taken
+away or lessened by the earlier change from childhood to manhood. True
+it is, that the question, "What must I do to be saved?" is a grave one,
+and must be considered seriously; but I do not suppose that any one
+proposes that a young person should never be serious at all. True it is,
+again, that if we are living in folly and sin, this question may be a
+painful one; we might be gayer for a time without it. But, then, the
+matter is, what is to become of us if we do not think of being
+saved?--shall we be saved without thinking of it? And what is it to be
+not saved but lost? I cannot pretend to say that the thought of God
+would not very much disturb the peace and gaiety of an ungodly and
+sinful mind; that it would not interfere with the mirth of the bully, or
+the drunkard, or the reveller, or the glutton, or the idler, or the
+fool. It would, no doubt; just as the hand that was seen to write on the
+wall threw a gloom over the guests at Belshazzar's festival. I never
+meant or mean to say, that the thought of God, or that God himself, can
+be other than a plague to those who do not love Him. The thought of Him
+is their plague here; the sight of Him will be their judgment for ever.
+But I suppose the point is, whether the thought of Him would cloud the
+gaiety of those who were striving to please Him. It would cloud it as
+much, and be just as unwelcome and no more, as will be the very actual
+presence of our Lord to the righteous, when they shall see Him as He is.
+Can that which we know to be able to make old age, and sickness, and
+poverty, many times full of comfort,--can that make youth and health
+gloomy? When to natural cheerfulness and sanguineness, are added a
+consciousness of God's ever present care, and a knowledge of his rich
+promises, are we likely to be the more sad or the more unhappy?
+
+What reason, then, is there for any one's not anticipating the common
+progress of Christian manliness, and hastening; to exchange, as I said
+before, ignorance for wisdom, selfishness for unselfishness,
+carelessness for thoughtfulness? I see no reason why we should not; but
+is there no reason why we should? You are young, and for the most part
+strong and healthy; I grant that, humanly speaking, the chances of early
+death to any particular person among you are small. But still,
+considering what life is, even to the youngest and strongest, it does
+seem a fearful risk to be living unredeemed; to be living in that state,
+that if we should happen to die, (it may be very unlikely, but still it
+is clearly possible,)--that if we should happen to die, we should be
+most certainly lost for ever. Risks, however, we do not mind; the
+chances, we think, are in our favour, and we will run the hazard. It may
+be so; but he who delays to turn to God when the thought has been once
+put before him, is incurring something more than a risk. He may not die
+these fifty or sixty years; we cannot tell how that may be; but he is
+certainly at this very present time hardening his heart, and doing
+despite unto the Spirit of Grace. By the very wickedness of putting off
+turning to God till a future time, he lessens his power of turning to
+Him ever. This is certain; no one can reject God's call without becoming
+less likely to hear it when it is made to him again. And thus the
+lingering wilfully in the evil things of childhood, when we might be at
+work in putting them off, and when God calls us to do so, is an infinite
+risk, and a certain evil;--an infinite risk, for it is living in such a
+state that death at any moment would be certain condemnation;--and a
+certain evil, because, whether we live or not, we are actually raising
+up barriers between ourselves and our salvation; we not only do not draw
+nigh to God, but we are going farther from Him, and lessening our power
+of drawing nigh to Him hereafter.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE IV.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+COLOSSIANS i. 9.
+
+_We do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled
+with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual
+understanding_.
+
+
+This is the first of three verses, all of them forming a part of the
+Epistle which was read this morning, and containing St. Paul's prayer
+for the Colossians in all the several points of Christian excellence.
+And the first thing which he desires for them, as we have heard, is,
+that they should be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all
+wisdom and spiritual understanding; or, as he expresses the same thing
+to the Ephesians, that they should be not unwise, but understanding what
+the will of the Lord is. He prays for the Colossians that they should
+not be spiritually foolish, but that they should be spiritually wise.
+
+The state of spiritual folly is, I suppose, one of the most universal
+evils in the world. For the number of those who are naturally foolish is
+exceedingly great; of those, I mean, who understand no worldly thing
+well; of those who are careless about everything, carried about by every
+breath of opinion, without knowledge, and without principle. But the
+term spiritual folly includes, unhappily, a great many more than these;
+it takes in not those only who are in the common sense of the term
+foolish, but a great many who are in the common sense of the term
+clever, and many who are even in the common sense of the terms, prudent,
+sensible, thoughtful, and wise. It is but too evident that some of the
+ablest men who have ever lived upon earth, have been in no less a degree
+spiritually fools. And thus, it is not without much truth that Christian
+writers have dwelt upon the insufficiency of worldly wisdom, and have
+warned their readers to beware, lest, while professing themselves to be
+wise, they should be accounted as fools in the sight of God.
+
+But the opposite to this notion, that those who are, as it were, fools
+in worldly matters are wise before God; although this also is true in a
+certain sense, and under certain peculiar circumstances, yet taken
+generally, it is the very reverse of truth; and the careless and
+incautious language which has been often used on this subject, has been
+extremely mischievous. On the contrary, he who is foolish in worldly
+matters is likely also to be, and most commonly is, no less foolish in
+the things of God. And the opposite belief has arisen mainly from that
+strange confusion between ignorance and innocence, with which many
+ignorant persons seem to solace themselves. Whereas, if you take away a
+man's knowledge, you do not bring him to the state of an infant, but to
+that of a brute; and of one of the most mischievous and malignant of the
+brute creation. For you do not lessen or weaken the man's body by
+lowering his mind; he still retains his strength and his passions, the
+passions leading to self-indulgence, the strength which enables him to
+feed them by continued gratification. He will not think it is true to
+any good purpose; it is very possible to destroy in him the power of
+reflection, whether as exercised upon outward things, or upon himself
+and his own nature, or upon God. But you cannot destroy the power of
+adapting means to ends, nor that of concealing his purposes by fraud or
+falsehood; you take only his wisdom, and leave that cunning which marks
+so notoriously both the savage and the madman. He, then, who is a fool
+as far as regards earthly things, is much more a fool with regard to
+heavenly things; he who cannot raise himself even to the lower height,
+how is he to attain to the higher? he who is without reason and
+conscience, how shall he be endowed with the spirit of God?
+
+It is my deep conviction and long experience of this truth, which makes
+me so grieve over a want of interest in your own improvement in human
+learning, whenever I observe it, over the prevalence of a thoughtless
+and childish spirit amongst you. I grant that as to the first point
+there are sometimes exceptions to be met with; that is to say, I have
+known persons certainly whose interest in their work here was not great,
+and their proficiency consequently was small; but who, I do not doubt,
+were wise unto God. But then these persons, whilst they were indifferent
+perhaps about their common school-work, were anything but indifferent as
+to the knowledge of the Bible: there was no carelessness there; but they
+read, and read frequently, books of practical improvement, or relating
+otherwise to religious matters, such as many, I believe, would find even
+less inviting than the books of their common business. So that although
+there was a neglect undoubtedly of many parts of the school-work, yet
+there was no spirit of thoughtlessness or childishness in them, nor of
+general idleness; and therefore, although I know that their minds did
+suffer and have suffered from their unwise neglect of a part of their
+duty, yet there was so much attention bestowed on other parts, and so
+manifest and earnest a care for the things of God, that it was
+impossible not to entertain for them the greatest respect and regard.
+These, however, are such rare cases, that it cannot be necessary to do
+more than thus notice them. But the idleness and want of interest which
+I grieve for, is one which extends itself but too impartially to
+knowledge of every kind: to divine knowledge, as might be expected, even
+more than to human. Those whom we commonly find careless about their
+general lessons, are quite as ignorant and as careless about their
+Bibles; those who have no interest in general literature, in poetry, or
+in history, or in philosophy, have certainly no greater interest, I do
+not say in works of theology, but in works of practical devotion, in the
+lives of holy men, in meditations, or in prayers. Alas, the interest of
+their minds is bestowed on things far lower than the very lowest of all
+which I have named; and therefore, to see them desiring something only a
+little higher than their present pursuits, could not but be encouraging;
+it would, at least, show that the mind was rising upwards. It may,
+indeed, stop at a point short of the highest, it may learn to love
+earthly excellence, and rest there contented, and seek for nothing more
+perfect; but that, at any rate, is a future and merely contingent evil.
+It is better to love earthly excellence than earthly folly; it is far
+better in itself, and it is, by many degrees, nearer to the kingdom
+of God.
+
+There is another case, however, which I cannot but think is more
+frequent now than formerly; and if it is so, it may be worth while to
+direct our attention to it. Common idleness and absolute ignorance are
+not what I wish to speak of now, but a character advanced above these; a
+character which does not neglect its school-lessons, but really attains
+to considerable proficiency in them; a character at once regular and
+amiable, abstaining from evil, and for evil in its low and grosser
+forms, having a real abhorrence. What, then, you will say, is wanting
+here? I will tell you what seems to be wanting--a spirit of manly, and
+much more of Christian, thoughtfulness. There is quickness and
+cleverness; much pleasure, perhaps, in distinction, but little in
+improvement; there is no desire of knowledge for its own sake, whether
+human or divine. There is, therefore, but little power of combining and
+digesting what is read; and, consequently, what is read passes away, and
+takes no root in the mind. This same character shows itself in matters
+of conduct; it will adopt, without scruple, the most foolish,
+commonplace notions of boys, about what is right and wrong; it will not,
+and cannot, from the lightness of its mind, concern itself seriously
+about what is evil in the conduct of others, because it takes no regular
+care of its own, with reference to pleasing God; it will not do anything
+low or wicked, but it will sometimes laugh at those who do; and it will
+by no means take pains to encourage, nay, it will sometimes thwart and
+oppose any thing that breathes a higher spirit, and asserts a more manly
+and Christian standard of duty.
+
+I have thought that this character, with its features more or less
+strongly marked, has shown itself sometimes amongst us, marring the good
+and amiable qualities of those in whom we can least bear to see such a
+defect, because there is in them really so much to interest in their
+favour. Now the number of persons of extraordinary abilities who may be
+here at any one time can depend on no calculable causes: nor, again, can
+we give any reason more than what we call accident, if there were to be
+amongst us at any one time a number of persons whose whole tendency was
+decidedly to evil. But if, in these respects, the usual average has
+continued, if there is no lack of ability, and nothing like a prevalence
+of vice, then we begin anxiously to inquire into the causes, which,
+while other things remain the same, have led to a different result. And
+one cause I do find, which, is certainly capable of producing such a
+result: a cause undoubtedly in existence now, and as certainly not in
+existence a few years back; nor can I trace any other besides this which
+appears likely to have produced the same effect. This cause consists in
+the number and character and cheapness, and peculiar mode of
+publication, of the works of amusement of the present day. In all these
+respects the change is great, and extremely recent. The works of
+amusement published only a very few years since were comparatively few
+in number; they were less exciting, and therefore less attractive; they
+were dearer, and therefore less accessible; and, not being published
+periodically, they did not occupy the mind for so long a time, nor keep
+alive so constant an expectation; nor, by thus dwelling upon the mind,
+and distilling themselves into it as it were drop by drop, did they
+possess it so largely, colouring even, in many instances, its very
+language, and affording frequent matter for conversation.
+
+The evil of all these circumstances is actually enormous. The mass of
+human minds, and much more of the minds of young persons, have no great
+appetite for intellectual exercise; but they have some, which by careful
+treatment may be strengthened and increased. But here to this weak and
+delicate appetite is presented an abundance of the most stimulating and
+least nourishing food possible. It snatches it greedily, and is not only
+satisfied, but actually conceives a distaste for anything simpler and
+more wholesome. That curiosity which is wisely given us to lead us on to
+knowledge, finds its full gratification in the details of an exciting
+and protracted story, and then lies down as it were gorged, and goes to
+sleep. Other faculties claim their turn, and have it. We know that in
+youth the healthy body and lively spirits require exercise, and in this
+they may and ought to be indulged: but the time and interest which
+remain over when the body has had its enjoyment, and the mind desires
+its share, this has been already wasted and exhausted upon things
+utterly unprofitable: so that the mind goes to its work hurriedly and
+languidly, and feels it to be no more than a burden. The mere lessons
+may be learnt from a sense of duty; but that freshness of power which,
+in young persons of ability would fasten eagerly upon some one portion
+or other, of the wide field of knowledge, and there expatiate, drinking
+in health and strength to the mind, as surely as the natural exercise of
+the body gives to it bodily vigour,--that is tired prematurely,
+perverted, and corrupted; and all the knowledge which else it might so
+covet, it now seems a wearying effort to attain.
+
+Great and grievous as is the evil, it is peculiarly hard to find the
+remedy for it. If the books to which I have been alluding were books of
+downright wickedness, we might destroy them wherever we found them; we
+might forbid their open circulation; we might conjure you to shun them
+as you would any other clear sin, whether of word or deed. But they are
+not wicked books for the most part; they are of that class which cannot
+be actually prohibited; nor can it be pretended that there is a sin in
+reading them. They are not the more wicked for being published so cheap,
+and at regular intervals; but yet these two circumstances make them so
+peculiarly injurious. All that can be done is to point out the evil;
+that it is real and serious I am very sure, and its effects are most
+deplorable on the minds of the fairest promise; but the remedy for it
+rests with yourselves, or rather with each of you individually, so far
+as he is himself concerned. That an unnatural and constant excitement of
+the mind is most injurious, there is no doubt; that excitement involves
+a consequent weakness, is a law of our nature than which none is surer;
+that the weakness of mind thus produced is and must be adverse to quiet
+study and thought, to that reflection which alone is wisdom, is also
+clear in itself, and proved too largely by experience. And that without
+reflection there can be no spiritual understanding, is at once evident;
+while without spiritual understanding, that is, without a knowledge and
+a study of God's will, there can be no spiritual life. And therefore
+childishness and unthoughtfulness cannot be light evils; and if I have
+rightly traced the prevalence of these defects to its cause, although
+that cause may seem to some to be trifling, yet surely it is well to
+call your attention to it, and to remind you that in reading works of
+amusement, as in every other lawful pleasure, there is and must be an
+abiding responsibility in the sight of God; that, like other lawful
+pleasures, we must beware of excess in it; and not only so, but that if
+we find it hurtful to us, either because we have used it too freely in
+times past, or because our nature is too weak to bear it, that then we
+are bound most solemnly to abstain from it; because, however lawful in
+itself, or to others who can practise it without injury, whatever is to
+us an hindrance in the way of our intellectual and moral and spiritual
+improvement, that is in our case a positive sin.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE V.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+COLOSSIANS i. 9.
+
+_We do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled
+with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual
+understanding_.
+
+
+These words, on which I spoke last Sunday, appeared to contain so much,
+which concerns us all so deeply, and to suit the peculiar ease of many
+of us here so entirely, that I thought they might well furnish us with
+matter for farther consideration to-day. And though I noticed one
+particular cause, which seemed to have acted mischievously, in the last
+few years, upon the growth and freshness of the mind in youth, yet it
+would be absurd to suppose that before this cause came into existence
+all was well; or that if it could be removed, our progress even in
+worldly knowledge would henceforth be unimpeded. There are many other
+causes no doubt which oppose our growth in worldly wisdom; and still
+more which oppose our growth in the wisdom of God.
+
+One of these causes meets us at the very beginning; it exists at this
+very moment; it makes it difficult even to gain your attention for what
+is to be said. This cause is to be found in the want of sympathy between
+persons of very different ages, between what must be, therefore, in the
+common course of nature, different degrees of thoughtfulness. It is the
+want of sympathy, properly speaking, which creates in these matters a
+difficulty of understanding; for the attention and memory are alike apt
+to be careless where the mind is not interested; and how can we
+understand that to which we scarcely listened, and which we imperfectly
+remember? Nature herself seems to lead the old and the young two
+different ways: and when the old call upon the young to be thoughtful,
+it seems as if they were but calling them to a state contrary to their
+nature; and the call is not regarded.
+
+Is it then that we have here an invincible obstacle, which renders all
+attempts to inspire thoughtfulness utterly vain? and if it be so, what
+use can there be in dwelling upon it? None, certainly, if it were
+actually and in all cases invincible; but if it be every thing short of
+invincible, there is much good in noticing it. There is much good surely
+in trying to impress the great truth, that nature must be overcome by a
+mightier power, or we perish. There is much good in meeting and allowing
+to its full extent what we are so apt in our folly to regard as an
+excuse, and which really is the earnest of our condemnation. It is very
+true, and to be allowed to the fullest extent, that it is against the
+nature of youth in all ordinary cases to be thoughtful; that it is very
+difficult for you even to give your attention to serious things when
+spoken of, more difficult still to remember them afterwards and always.
+It is for the very reason because it is so difficult, because it is a
+work so against nature, to raise the young and careless mind to the
+thought of God; because it is so certain that, in the common course of
+things, you will not think of Him, but will follow the bent of your own
+several fancies or desires, that therefore He, who wills in his love to
+bring us to himself, knowing that without the knowledge of Him we must
+perish for ever, was pleased to give his only-begotten Son, that
+through Him we might overcome nature, and might turn to God and live.
+
+I wish that I could increase, if it were possible, the sense which, you
+have of the difficulty of becoming thoughtful, so that you could but see
+that out of this very difficulty, and indissolubly connected with it,
+comes the grace of Christ's redemption. You have not strength of purpose
+enough to shake off folly and sin; surely you have not, or else, why
+should Christ have died? It is so hard to come to God; undoubtedly, so
+hard that no man can come unto God except God will draw him. Nature
+herself leads us to be careless, our very strength and spirits of
+themselves will not allow us to reflect. Most true; for that which is
+born of the flesh, is flesh; and we inherit a nature derived from him in
+whom we all die.
+
+I believe that it is not idle to dwell upon tins; for it is scarcely
+possible but that good and earnest resolutions should often enter the
+minds of many of you; or, if not resolutions, yet at least wishes,
+wishes chilled but too soon, I fear, by the thought or feeling, that
+however much to will may be present with you, yet how to perform it you
+find not. Now, if this true sense of weakness might but lead any one to
+seek for strength where it may be found, then indeed it would be a
+feeling no less blessed than true; for it would urge you to seek God's
+help and Christ's redemption, instead of desperately yielding to your
+weakness, and so remaining weak for ever.
+
+You may look at the prospect before you in all its reality: you may see
+how much must be given up, how much withstood, bow much, endured; how
+hard it is to alter old ways, not in itself only, but because the change
+attracts attention, and is received, it may be, with doubts as to its
+sincerity, with irony, and with sneers. There is all this before you: it
+cannot be denied; it must not be concealed. The way to life is not broad
+and easy; it is not that way which is most trodden. To pass from what we
+are to what we may be hereafter, from an earthly nature to an heavenly,
+cannot be an easy work, to be done at any time, with no effort, with no
+pain. It is the greatest work which is done in the whole world, it is
+the mightiest change; death and birth are, as it were, combined in it;
+but the Lord of birth and of death is at hand, to enable us to effect
+it. Think that this is so; and the more you feel how hard a task is set
+before you, the more you will be able to understand the language of joy
+and thankfulness with which the Scripture speaks of a human soul's
+redemption.
+
+This great work may be wrought for every soul here assembled; the want
+of sympathy in sacred and serious things may be changed to sympathy the
+most intense; the carelessness of fools may be changed into spiritual
+wisdom. It may be wrought for all; but it is more happy to think that it
+will be wrought for some;--for whom, no mortal eye or judgment can
+discern; but it will be wrought for some. If many should yield in
+despair to their enemy, yet some will resist him: if Christ be to many
+no more than foolishness, if his name convey nothing more than a vague
+sense of something solemn, which passes over the mind for an instant,
+and then vanishes, yet to some undoubtedly, he will be found to be the
+wisdom of God, and the power of God. There are some here, we may be
+quite sure, who will be witnesses for ever to all the world of men and
+angels, that what truly was impossible to nature, is possible to nature
+renewed and strengthened by grace.
+
+Without such a change, it is vain, I fear, to look for any thing like
+wisdom or spiritual understanding; for how can such a seed be expected
+to grow in a soil so shallow as common thoughtlessness? and how can
+merely human motives have force to overcome so strong a tendency of
+nature? nay, how can such motives be brought to act upon the mind? for
+it is absolutely impossible that the middle-aged and the young should be
+brought into entire sympathy with each other, unless Christ's love be
+their common bond. Human wisdom in advanced life may be, and is to
+persons of strong faculties of mind, naturally pleasant: but how can it
+be made so to persons of ordinary faculties in early youth? There are
+faults which society condemns strongly, while the temptation to them in
+after life is slight. Persons in middle age may resist these easily, and
+abhor them sincerely; but how can we make young persons do the same when
+the temptation to commit them is strong, and the condemnation of them by
+their society is either very slight, or does not exist at all? And,
+therefore, we find that, do what we will, the same faults' continue to
+be common in schools, the same faults both of omission and commission;
+there is the same inherent difficulty of bringing persons of different
+ages and positions to think and feel alike, unless Christ has become
+possessed of the thoughts and feelings of both, and so they become one
+with each other in him.
+
+But it was our Lord's charge to Peter, "Thou, when thou art converted,
+strengthen thy brethren." As sure as it is that some who hear me are
+turned, or turning, or will turn, to God, so sure is it that these, be
+they few or many, will do something towards the strengthening of their
+brethren. Whatever good is to be done amongst us on a large scale, it
+must be done only in this way, the many half despairing prayer may be,
+"Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief;" but if any one is moved by
+Christ's call, and feels within himself that he should like to follow
+Christ, and to be with him always, let him cherish that work of the Holy
+Spirit within him, which has given him if it be only so much of the will
+to be saved. It is a spark which may be quenched in a moment; in itself
+it can give no assurance; but if any one watches it carefully, and prays
+that it may live and be kindled into a stronger spark, till at last it
+break out into a flame, then for him it is full of assurance; God has
+heard his prayer; and he has received the gift of the Holy Spirit, an
+earnest of his eternal inheritance. Will he not then watch and pray the
+more anxiously, lest the fruit which, is now partly formed should never
+ripen? Will he not see and feel that there is some reality in the things
+of God, that strength, and peace, and victory, are not vainly promised?
+Will he not hold fast the things which he has now not heard only, but
+known, lest by any means he should let them slip? May God strengthen
+such, whoever they may be, with all the might of his Spirit; and may he
+be with them even to the end.
+
+But for those,--who they are, again, we know not, nor how many; but
+here, also, there will too surely be some,--for those who hear now, as
+they have often heard before, words which, they scarcely heed, which,
+have at times partially caught their attention, but have not produced in
+them the slightest real effect, for them the words are coming to an end;
+they will soon be released from the irksome bondage of hearing them; and
+another opportunity of grace will have been offered to them in vain.
+Tomorrow, and the day after, they will walk as they have walked before,
+the wretched slaves of folly and passion; half despairing prayer may
+be, "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief;" but if any one is moved
+by Christ's call, and feels within himself that he should like to follow
+Christ, and to be with him always, let him cherish that work of the Holy
+Spirit within him, which has given him if it be only so much of the will
+to be saved. It is a spark which may be quenched in a moment; in itself
+it can give no assurance; but if any one watches it carefully, and prays
+that it may live and be kindled into a stronger spark, till at last it
+break out into a flame, then for him it is full of assurance; God has
+heard his prayer; and he has received the gift of the Holy Spirit, an
+earnest of his eternal inheritance. Will he not then watch and pray the
+more anxiously, lest the fruit which is now partly formed should never
+ripen? Will he not see and feel that there is some reality in the things
+of God, that strength, and peace, and victory, are not vainly promised?
+Will he not hold fast the things which he has now not heard only, but
+known, lest by any means he should let them slip? May God strengthen
+such, whoever they may be, with all the might of his Spirit; and may he
+be with them even to the end.
+
+But for those,--who they are, again, we know not, nor how many; but
+here, also, there will too surely be some,--for those who hear now, as
+they have often heard before, words which they scarcely heed, which have
+at times partially caught their attention, but have not produced in them
+the slightest real effect, for them the words are coming to an end; they
+will soon be released from the irksome bondage of hearing them; and
+another opportunity of grace will have been offered to them in vain.
+Tomorrow, and the day after, they will walk as they have walked before,
+the wretched slaves of folly and passion; leaving undone all Christ's
+work, and greedily doing his enemy's. Yet even these Christ yet spares,
+he still calls them, he has died for them. Still the word must be spoken
+to them, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear. It may
+be, that they will some day turn; and if not, Christ has perfected his
+mercy towards them; and Christ's servants have delivered their own souls
+in warning them. May there be but few of us on whom this horrible
+portion will fall; yet, is it not an awful thing to think of, that it
+will, in all human probability, fall on some? and that whoever hardens
+his heart, and resists the word spoken to him this day, he is one who
+has done as much as in him lies to make himself among that number.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VI.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+COLOSSIANS iii. 3.
+
+_Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God_.
+
+
+When I have spoken, from time to time, of denying ourselves for the sake
+of relieving others, although self-denial and charity are, in their full
+growth, amongst the highest of Christian graces, yet I have felt much
+hope that, up to a certain degree, in their lowest and elementary forms
+at least, there might be many that would be disposed to practise them.
+For these are virtues which do undoubtedly commend themselves to our
+minds as things clearly good: so much so that I am inclined to think
+that the much-disputed moral sense, the nature of which is said to be so
+hard to ascertain, exists most clearly in the universal perception that
+it is good to deny ourselves and to benefit others. I do not say merely
+that there is a perception that it is good to deny ourselves in order to
+benefit others; but that there is in self-denial, simply, something
+which commands respect; an unconscious tribute, I suppose, to the truth,
+that the self which, is thus denied is one which, if indulged, would
+run to evil.
+
+But a point of far greater difficulty, of absolutely the greatest
+difficulty, is to impress upon our minds the excellence of
+another quality, which is known by the name of spiritual or
+heavenly-mindedness. In fact, this,--and this almost singly,--is the
+transcendent part of Christianity; that part of it which is not
+according to, but above, nature; which, conscience, I think, itself, in
+the natural man, does not acknowledge. When Christianity speaks of
+purity, of truth, of justice, of charity, of faith and love to God, it
+speaks a language which, however belied by our practice, is at once
+allowed by our consciences: the things so recommended are, beyond all
+doubt, good and lovely. But when it says, in St. Paul's words, "Set your
+affections on things above, not on things on the earth: for ye are dead,
+and your life is hid with Christ in God," the language sounds so strange
+that it is scarcely intelligible; and if we do get to understand it, yet
+it seems to give a wrench, as it were, to our whole being, to command a
+thing extravagant and impossible.
+
+I am persuaded that this would be so, more or less, everywhere; but in
+how extreme a degree must it hold good amongst us! Even in poverty, in
+sickness, and old age, where this life would seem to be nothing but a
+burden, and the command to "set the affections on things above" might
+appear superfluous, still the known so prevails over the unknown, the
+familiar over the incomprehensible, that hope and affection find
+continually their objects in this world, there is still a clinging to
+life, and an unwillingness to die. But in a state the very opposite to
+this, in plenty, in health, in youth; with much of enjoyment actually in
+our hands, and more in prospect; with just so much mystery over our
+coming life as to keep alive interest, yet with enough known and
+understood in its prospects to awaken sympathy; what deafest ear of the
+deaf adder could ever be so closed against the voice of the charmer, as
+our minds, so engrossed with the enjoyments and the hopes of earth, are
+closed against the voice which speaks of the things of heaven?
+
+Again, I have said, when speaking of other subjects, that I looked upon
+the older persons among you as a sort of link between me and the
+younger, who communicated, in some instances, by their language and
+example, something of an impression of the meaning of Christian
+teaching. But when we speak of a thing so high as spiritual-mindedness,
+it seems as if none of us can be a link between Christ's words and our
+brethren's minds: as if we all stand alike at an infinite distance from
+the high and unapproachable truth. The mountain of God becomes veiled,
+as it were, with the clouds which rested upon Sinai; we cannot approach
+near it, but stand far off, for a moment, perhaps, in awe; but soon in
+neglect and indifference.
+
+Let any one capable of thinking, but in the full vigour of health of
+body and mind, placed far above want, and with the prospect, according
+to all probability, of many years of happy life before him, let such an
+one go forth, at this season of the year above all, let him see the vast
+preparation for life in all nature, amongst all living creatures, in
+every tree, and in every plant of grass; let him feel the warmth of the
+sun, becoming every day stronger and stronger; let him be possessed, in
+every sense, with an impression of the vigour and beauty and glory
+around him; and let him feel no less a vigour in himself, too, of body
+and mind, and infinitely varied power of enjoyment in so many faculties
+of repose and of energy,--and then let him calmly consider what St. Paul
+could mean, when he says generally to Christians, "Set your affections
+on things above, not on things on the earth; for ye are dead, and your
+life is hid with Christ in God."
+
+Let a person capable of thinking, and such as I have supposed in all
+other respects, consider what St. Paul could mean by calling him "dead."
+With an almost thrilling consciousness of life, with an almost bounding
+sense of vigour in body and mind, he is told that he is "dead." And
+stranger still, he is told so by one whose recorded life, and existing
+writings declare that he too must have had in himself a consciousness of
+life no less lively; that there was in him an activity and energy which
+neither age nor sufferings could quell; that he wielded an influence
+over the minds of thousands, such as kings or conquerors might envy. If
+St. Paul could stand by our side, think we that he, any more than
+ourselves, would be insensible to the power within him, and to the
+beauty and the glory without? Yet his words are recorded; he bids us not
+set our affections on things on the earth; he declares of himself, and
+of us equally, if we are Christ's servants, that we are dead, and that
+our life is hid with Christ in God.
+
+I have put the difficulty in its strongest form, for it is one well
+worth considering. What St. Paul here urges is indeed the highest
+perfection of Christianity, and therefore of human nature; but it is not
+an impossible perfection, and St. Paul's own life and character are our
+warrant that it is nothing sickly, or foolish, or fanatical. But let us
+first hear the whole of St. Paul's language: "If ye, then, be risen with
+Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the
+right hand of God. Set your affections on things above, not on things on
+the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.
+When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall we also appear
+with him in glory. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the
+earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil
+concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry." "Mortify," I need
+not say, is to make dead, to destroy. "Ye are dead;" therefore let your
+members on earth be dead; "fornication, uncleanness, inordinate
+affection," &c. As if he had said, By becoming Christians ye engaged to
+be dead; and therefore see to it that ye are so. But what he requires us
+to make dead or to destroy, are our evil affections and desires; it is
+manifest, then, that it is to these that, by becoming Christians, we
+engage to become dead.
+
+This is true; and it is most certain that Christ requires us to be dead
+only to what is evil. But the essence of spiritual-mindedness consists
+in this, that it is assumed that with earth, and all things earthly,
+evil or imperfection are closely mixed; so that it is not possible to
+set our affections keenly upon, or to abandon ourselves to the enjoyment
+of, any earthly thing without the danger of those affections and that
+enjoyment becoming evil. In other words, there is that in the state of
+things within and around us, which, renders it needful to be ever
+watchful; and watchfulness is inconsistent with an intensity of delight
+and enjoyment.
+
+For, consider the case which I was just supposing; that lively sense of
+the beauty of all nature, that indescribable feeling of delight which
+arises out of the consciousness of health, and strength and power.
+Suppose that we abandon ourselves to such impressions without restraint,
+and is it not manifest that they are the extreme of godless pride and
+selfishness? For do we not know that in this world, and close to us
+wherever we are, there is, along with all the beauty and enjoyment which
+we witness, a large portion also of evil, and of suffering? And do we
+not know that He who gave to the earth its richness, and who set the sun
+to shine in the heavens, and who gave to us that wonderful frame of body
+and mind, whose healthful workings are So delightful to us, that He gave
+them that we might use both body and mind in His service; that the
+soldier has something else to do than to gaze like a child on the
+splendour of his uniform or the brightness of his sword; that those
+faculties which we feel as it were burning within us, have their work
+before them, a work far above their strength, though multiplied a
+thousand fold; that the call to them to be busy is never silent; that
+there is an infinite voice in the infinite sins and sufferings of
+millions which proclaims that the contest is raging around us; that
+every idle moment is treason; that now it is the time for unceasing
+efforts; and that not till the victory is gained may Christ's soldiers
+throw aside their arms, and resign themselves to enjoyment and to rest?
+
+Then when we turn to the words, "our life is hid with Christ in God,"
+the exceeding greatness of Christ's promises rises upon us in something
+of the fulness of their reality. Some may know the story of that German
+nobleman[12], whose life had been distinguished alike by genius and
+worldly distinctions, and by Christian holiness; and who, in the last
+morning of his life, when the dawn broke into his sick chamber, prayed
+that he might be supported to the window, and might look once again upon
+the rising sun. After looking steadily at it for some time, he cried
+out, "Oh! if the appearance of this earthly and created thing is so
+beautiful and so quickening, how much more shall I be enraptured at the
+sight of the unspeakable glory of the Creator Himself!" That was the
+feeling of a man whose sense of earthly beauty had all the keenness of a
+poet's enthusiasm; but who, withal, had in his greatest health and
+vigour preserved the consciousness that his life was hid with Christ in
+God; that the things seen, how beautiful soever, were as nothing to the
+things which are not seen. And so, if from the feeling of natural
+enjoyment we turn, at once thankfully and earnestly, to remember God's
+service, and to address ourselves to his work; and sadly remember, that,
+although we can enjoy, yet that many are suffering; and that, whilst
+they are so, enjoyment in us for more than a brief space of needful rest
+cannot but be sin; then there must come upon us, most strongly, the
+impression of that life where sin and suffering are not; where not God's
+works only, but God Himself is visible; where the vigour and faculties
+which we feel within us are not the passing strength of a decaying body,
+nor the brief prime of a mind which in a few years must sink into
+dotage; but the strength of a body incorruptible and eternal, the
+ripeness of a spirit which shall go on growing in wisdom and love
+for ever.
+
+[Footnote 12: The Baron Von Canitz.]
+
+Thus, then, if we consider again St. Paul's meaning, we shall find that,
+high and pure as it is, it is nothing unreasonable or impossible; that
+what he requires us to be dead to absolutely is that which is evil;
+that, because of the mixture of evil with ourselves and all around us,
+this life must not and cannot be a life of entire enjoyment without
+becoming godless and selfish; that, therefore, our affections cannot be
+set upon earthly things so as to enjoy them in and for themselves
+entirely, without becoming inordinate, and therefore evil. He does
+require us, old and young alike, to set our affection on things above:
+to remember that with God, and with Him alone, can be our rest, and the
+fulness of our joy; and amidst our pleasure in earthly things to retain
+in our minds, first, a grateful sense of their Giver; secondly, a
+remembrance of their passing nature; and thirdly, a consciousness of the
+evil that is in the world, which makes it a sin to resign ourselves to
+any enjoyment, except as a permitted refreshment to strengthen us for
+duty to come. Above all, let one feeling be truly cherished, and it
+will do more, perhaps, than any other to moderate our pleasure in
+earthly things, and to render it safe, and wholesome, and Christianlike.
+That feeling is the remembrance of our own faults. Let us bear these in
+mind as God does; let us consider how displeasing they are in His sight;
+how often they are repeated; how little they deserve the enjoyments
+which are given us. If this does not change our selfish pleasure into a
+zealous gratitude, then, indeed, sin must have a dominion over us; for
+the natural effect would be, that our hearts should burn within us for
+very shame, and should enkindle us to be thankful with all our strength
+for blessings so undeserved; to show something of our love to God who
+has so richly shown his love to us.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CORINTHIANS iii. 21-23.
+
+_All things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the
+world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are
+yours; and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's_.
+
+
+It is very possible, that all may not distinctly understand the force of
+the several clauses of this passage, yet, all, I suppose, would derive a
+general impression from it, that it spoke of the condition of Christians
+in very exalted language, and made it to extend to things in this world,
+as well as to things in the world to come. But can it be good for us to
+dwell on our exaltation? And if we do, may we not dread lest such
+language might be used towards us as that which St. Paul uses in the
+very next chapter to the Corinthians, "Now ye are full, now ye are rich,
+ye have reigned as kings without us; and I would to God ye did reign,
+that we also might reign with you." It would seem, however, that it
+would be good for us to dwell on the greatness of our condition and
+privileges, because St. Paul, who thus upbraids the Corinthians with
+their pride, had yet himself immediately before laid the picture of
+their high privileges, in the words of the text, in full detail before
+them, as if he wished them carefully to consider it. And so indeed it
+is. It feeds pride to dwell upon our good qualities or advantages, as
+individuals, or as a class in society, or as a nation, or as a sect or
+party; but, to speak generally, our advantages and privileges, as
+Christians, have not a tendency to excite pride; for some reasons in the
+nature of the case; for this reason amongst ourselves particularly,
+because the very essence of pride consists in contrast; we are proud
+that we are, in some one or more points, superior to others who come
+immediately under our observation. Now, we have so little to do with any
+who are not Christians, that the contrast is in this case wanting; we
+have none over whom to be proud; none whom we can glory in surpassing;
+and, therefore, a consideration of our Christian advantages, in the
+absence of that one element which might feed pride, is likely with us to
+work in a better manner, and to lead rather to thankfulness and
+increased exertion.
+
+I say to increased exertion; for what would stop exertion is pride. It
+is the turning back, and pausing to look with satisfaction on what is
+below us, rather than the looking upward to the summit, and thinking how
+much our actual elevation has brought us on the way towards it. And,
+further, there is coupled with every consideration of Christian
+privileges, the thought of what it must be to leave such privileges
+unimproved. In this respect, how well does the language of the two
+lessons from Deuteronomy suit the lesson from the Epistle to the
+Corinthians. We heard the description of the beauty and richness of the
+land which God gave to his people,--there were their advantages and
+privileges,--we heard also, the declaration of their unworthiness, and
+the solemn threatening of vengeance if, after having received good, they
+did evil. And as the vengeance has fallen upon them to the utmost, so we
+are taught expressly to apply their example to ourselves. "If God spared
+not the natural branches," such was St. Paul's language to the church at
+Rome, "take heed lest he also spare not thee."
+
+Let us not fear, then, to consider more nearly the high privileges
+which, as Christians, we enjoy: let us endeavour to understand, not
+merely generally, but in detail, the exalted language of the text, where
+it is said, that all things are ours; Paul, Apollos, and Cephas, the
+world, and life, and death, the things of time, and the things of
+eternity. These are ours because we are Christ's, and Christ is God's;
+they are ours so long as we are Christ's, and so far as we are his
+truly. They are not ours so far as we are not his: they are ours in no
+degree whatever the moment that he shall declare that we are his
+no longer.
+
+"Paul, and Apollos, and Peter, are ours." This, perhaps, is the
+expression which we should understand least distinctly of any. It is an
+expression, however, of deep importance, though perhaps less so here
+than in congregations of a different sort. I need not, therefore, dwell
+on it long now. But the Corinthians, as many Christians have done since,
+were apt to think more of their being Christians of a certain sort, than
+of being Christians simply: some said, "We have Paul's view of
+Christianity, the true and sound view of it, free from superstition:"
+others said, "But we have Peter's view of Christianity, one of Christ's
+own apostles, who were with him on earth; ours is the true and earliest
+view of it, free from all innovations:" and others, again, said, "Nay,
+but we have been taught by Apollos, an eloquent man, and mighty in the
+Scriptures; one who best understands how to unite the law and the
+gospel; one who has given us the full perfection of Christianity." No
+doubt there were some differences of views even between Paul, and Peter,
+and Apollos; for while, on the one hand, they were all enlightened by
+the Spirit of God, yet, on the other hand, they retained still their
+human differences of character and disposition, which must on several
+occasions have been manifest. But St. Paul does not tell us what these
+were, nor how far they extended, nor to what degree they had been
+exaggerated by those who heard them. He does not insist upon the truth
+of his own view, nor wish the Corinthians to lay aside their divisions,
+after the manner so zealously enforced by some persons now, namely, that
+those who said they were of Peter, or of Apollos, should confess that
+they had been in error, and declare themselves to be now only of Paul.
+Such a condemnation of schism he would have held to be in itself in the
+highest degree schismatical. But St. Paul was earnest, that schism
+should be ended after another way than this, by all parties remembering,
+that whatever became of the truth or falsehood of their own particular
+views of Christianity, yet, that Christianity according to any of their
+views was the one great thing which was their glory and their salvation.
+"Paul, and Apollos, and Peter, are all yours: but you are Christ's." You
+should not glory in men; that you belong to a purer church than other
+Christians; but that you belong to the church of Christ; that church,
+which, in its most pure particular branches, has never been free from
+some mixture of human infirmity and error; nor yet, in its worst
+branches, has ever lost altogether the seal of Christ's Spirit, nor
+ceased to believe in Christ crucified.
+
+But the next words are of more particular concern to us here. "The
+world, and life, and death, and things present, and things to come, are
+all ours." They are all ours, so far as we are Christ's. The world is
+ours; its manifold riches and delights, its various wisdom, all are
+ours. They are ours, not as a thing stolen, and which will be taken from
+us with a heavy over-payment of penalty, because we stole it when it did
+not belong to us; but they are ours by God's free gift, to minister to
+our comfort, and to our good. And this is the great difference; the good
+things of this world are stolen by many; but they belong, by God's gift,
+to those only who are Christ's: and there is the sure sign, generally,
+to be seen of their being stolen,--an unwillingness that He to whom of
+right they belong should see them. What a man steals, he enjoys, as it
+were, in fear: if the owner of it finds him with it, then all his
+enjoyment is gone; he wishes that he had never touched it; it is no
+source of pleasure to him, but merely one of terror. And so it is often
+with our stolen pleasures,--stolen, I mean, not in respect of man, but
+of God,--stolen, because we do not feel them to be God's gift, nor
+receive them, as from him, with thankfulness. They may be very lawful
+pleasures, so far as other men are concerned; pleasures bought, it may
+be, with our own money, or given to us by our own friends, and enjoyed
+without any injury to any one. They may be the very simplest enjoyments
+of life, our health, the fresh air, our common food, our common
+amusements, our common society; things most permitted to us all, as far
+as man is concerned, but yet things which are constantly stolen by us,
+because we take them without God's leave, and enjoy them not as his
+gifts. They are all his, and he gives them freely to his children. If we
+are his children, he gives them to us; and delights in our enjoyment of
+them, as any human father loves to see the pleasure of his children in
+those things which it is good for them to enjoy. But then, is any child
+afraid of his father so seeing him? or is the thought of his father any
+interruption to his enjoyment? If it would be, we should be sure that
+there was something wrong; that the enjoyment, either in itself, or with
+respect to the particular case of that child, was a stolen one. And even
+as simple is the state of our dread of God, of our wish to keep his
+name and his thought away from us. It is the sure sign that our
+pleasures are stolen, either as being wrong in themselves, or much
+oftener, because we have taken them without being fit for them, have
+snatched them for ourselves, instead of receiving them at the hands of
+God. Two of us may be daily doing the very same thing in most
+respects,--enjoying actually the very same pleasures, whether of body or
+of mind; the same exercises, the same studies, the same indulgences, the
+same society,--and yet these very same things may belong rightfully to
+the one, and be stolen by the other. To the one they may come with a
+double blessing, as the assurance of God's greater love hereafter: to
+the other, they are but an addition to that sad account, when all good
+things enjoyed here, having been not our own rightly, but stolen, shall
+be paid for in over measure, by evil things to be suffered hereafter.
+
+And what I have said of the world, will apply also to life and to death.
+Oh, the infinite difference whether life is ours, or but stolen for an
+instant; whether death is ours, our subject, ministering only to our
+good; or our fearful enemy, our ever keen pursuer, from whose grasp we
+have escaped for a few short years, but who is following fast after us,
+and when he has once caught us will hold us fast for ever! Have we ever
+seen his near approach--has he ever forced himself upon our notice
+whether we would or no? But two days since he was amongst us,--we were,
+as it were, forced to look upon him. Did we think that he was ours, or
+that we were his? If we are his, then indeed he is fearful: fearful to
+the mere consciousness of nature; a consciousness which no arguments can
+overcome; fearful if it be merely the parting from life, if it be
+merely the resigning that wonderful thing which we call our being. It is
+fearful to go from light to darkness, from all that we have ever known
+and loved, to that of which we know and love nothing. But if death, even
+thus stingless, is yet full of horror, what is he with his worst sting
+beside, the sting of our sins? What is he when he is taking us, not to
+nothingness, but to judgment? He is indeed so fearful then, that no
+words can paint him half so truly as our foreboding dread of him, and no
+arguments which the wit of man can furnish can strip him of his terrors.
+
+But what if death too, as well as life, be ours?--which he is, if we are
+Christ's; for Christ has conquered him. If he be ours, our servant, our
+minister, sent but to bring us into the presence of our Lord, then,
+indeed, his terrors, his merely natural terrors, the outside roughness
+of his aspect, are things which the merest child need not shrink from.
+Then disease and decay, however painful to living friends to look upon,
+have but little pain for him who is undergoing them. For it is not only
+amidst the tortures of actual martyrdom that Christians have been more
+than conquerors,--in common life, on the quiet or lonely sick bed, under
+the grasp of fever or of consumption, the conquest has been witnessed as
+often and as completely. It is not a little thing when the faintest
+whisper of thought to which expiring nature can give utterance breathes
+of nothing but of peace and of forgiveness. It is not a little thing
+when the name of Christ possesses us wholly; not distinctly, it may be,
+for reason may be too weak for this; but with an indescribable power of
+support and comfort. Or even if there be a last conflict,--a season of
+terror and of pain, a valley of the shadow of death, dark and
+gloomy,--yet even there Christ is with his servants, and as their trial
+is so is his love. Thus it is, if death be ours; and death is ours, if
+we be Christ's. And are we not Christ's? We bear his name, we have his
+outward seal of belonging to his people,--can we refuse to be his in
+heart and true obedience? Would we rather steal our pleasures than enjoy
+them as our own; steal life for an instant, rather than have it our sure
+possession for ever? Would we rather be fugitives from death, fugitives
+whom he will surely recover and hold fast, than be able to say and to
+feel that death, as well as life is ours, things to come, as well as
+things present, because we are truly Christ's?
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VIII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+GALATIANS V. 16, 17.
+
+_Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh. For
+the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh;
+and these are contrary the one to the other, so that ye cannot do the
+things that ye would_.
+
+
+"We cannot do the things that we would." These are words of familiar and
+common use; this is the language in which we are all apt to excuse,
+whether to ourselves or to others, the various faults of our conduct. We
+should be glad to do better, so we say and think, but the power to do so
+fails us. And so far it may seem that we are but echoing the apostle's
+language; for he says the very same thing, "Ye cannot do the things that
+ye would." Yet the words as we use them, and as the apostle used them,
+have the most opposite meaning in the world. We use them as a reason why
+we should be satisfied, the apostle as a reason why we should be
+alarmed; we intend them to be an excuse, the apostle meant them to be a
+certain sign of condemnation.
+
+The reasons of this difference may be understood very easily. We, in the
+common course of justice, should think it hard to punish a man for not
+doing what he cannot do. We think, therefore, that if we say that we
+cannot do well, we establish also our own claim to escape from
+punishment. But God declares that a state of sin is and must be a state
+of misery; and that if we cannot escape the sin, we cannot escape the
+misery. According to God's meaning, then, the words, "Ye cannot do the
+things which ye would," mean no other than this: "Ye cannot escape from
+hell; ye cannot be redeemed from the power of death and of Satan; the
+power is wanting in you, however much you may wish it: death has got
+you, and it will keep you for ever." So that, in this way, sickness or
+weakness of the soul is very like sickness or weakness of the body. We
+cannot help being ill or weak in many cases: is that any reason why,
+according to the laws of God's providence, we should not suffer the pain
+of illness? Or is it not, rather, clear that we suffer it just because
+we have not the power to get rid of it; if we had the power to be well,
+we should be well. A man's evils are not gone because he wishes them
+away; it is not he who would fain see his chains broken, that escapes
+from his bondage; but he who has the strength to rend them asunder.
+
+Thus, then, in St. Paul's language, "Ye cannot do the things that ye
+would," means exactly, "Ye are not redeemed, but in bondage; ye are not
+saved, but lost." But he goes on to the reason why we cannot do the
+things which we would, which is, "because the flesh and the Spirit are
+contrary to one another," and pull us, as it were, different ways. Just
+as we might say of a man in illness, that the reason why he is not well,
+as he wishes to be, is because his healthy nature and his disease are
+contrary to one another, and are striving within him for the mastery.
+His blood, according to its healthy nature, would flow calmly and
+steadily; his food, according to his healthy nature, would be received
+with appetite, and would give him nourishment and strength; but, behold,
+there is in him now another nature, contrary to his healthy nature: and
+this other nature makes his blood flow with feverish quickness, and
+makes food distasteful to him, and makes the food which he has eaten
+before to become, as it were, poison; it does not nourish him or
+strengthen, but is a burden, a weakness, and a pain. As long as these
+two natures thus struggle within him, the man is sick; as soon as the
+diseased nature prevails, the man sinks and dies. He does not wish to
+die,--not at all,--most earnestly, it may be, does he wish to live; but
+his diseased nature has overcome his healthy nature, and so he must die.
+If he would live, in any sense that deserves to be called life, the
+diseased nature must not overcome, must not struggle equally; it must be
+overcome, it must be kept down, it must be rendered powerless; and then,
+when the healthy nature has prevailed, its victory is health
+and strength.
+
+So far all is alike; but what follows afterwards? As "ye cannot do the
+things which ye would, because the flesh and the Spirit are contrary to
+one another,"--what then? "Therefore," says the apostle, "walk in the
+Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh." Surely there is
+some thing marvellous in this. For, let us speak the same language to
+the sick man: tell him, "Follow thy healthy nature, and them shalt not
+be sick," what would the words be but a bitter mockery? "How can you bid
+me," he would say, "to follow my healthy nature, when ye know that my
+diseased nature has bound me? Have ye no better comfort than this to
+offer me? Tell me rather how I may become able to follow my healthy
+nature; show me the strength which may help my weakness; or else your
+words are vain, and I never can recover." Most true would be this
+answer; and therefore disease and death do make havoc of us all, and the
+healthy nature is in the end borne down by the diseased nature, and
+sooner or later the great enemy triumphs over us, and, in spite of all
+our wishes and fond desires for life, we go down, death's conquered
+subjects, to the common grave of all living.
+
+This happens to the bodies of us all; to the souls of only too many. But
+why does it not happen also to the souls of all? How is it that some do
+fulfil the apostle's bidding? that they do walk in the Spirit, and
+therefore do not fulfil the lusts of the flesh; and therefore having
+conquered their diseased nature, they do walk according to their
+healthful nature, and are verily able to do, and do continually, the
+very things that they would? Surely this so striking difference, between
+the universal conquest of our diseased nature in the body, and the
+occasional victory of the healthy nature in the soul, shows us clearly
+that for the soul there has appeared a Redeemer already, while for the
+body the redemption is delayed till death shall be swallowed up
+in victory.
+
+For most true is it that in ourselves we could not deliver ourselves
+either soul or body. "Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the
+lusts of the flesh," might have been as cruel a mockery to us, as the
+similar words addressed to the man bodily sick,--"Walk according to thy
+healthy nature, and thou shalt not suffer from disease." They might have
+been a mockery, but blessed be God, they are not. They are not, because
+God has given us a Redeemer; they are not, because Christ has died, yea
+rather has risen again; and because the Spirit of Christ helpeth our
+infirmities, and gives us that power which by ourselves we had not.
+
+Not by wishing then to be redeemed, but by being redeemed, shall we
+escape the power of death. Not by saying, "Alas! we cannot do the things
+that we would!" but by becoming able to do them. Walk in the Spirit, and
+ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh; but if ye do fulfil them,
+ye must die.
+
+The power to walk in the Spirit is given by the Spirit; but either all
+have not this power, or all do not use it. I think rather it is that all
+have it not, for if they had it, a power so mighty and so beneficent,
+they surely could not help using it. All have it not; but I do not say
+that they all might not have it; on the contrary, all might have it, but
+in point of fact they have it not. They have it not because they seek it
+not: for an idle wish is one thing; a steady persevering pursuit is
+another. They seek not the Spirit by the appointed means, the means of
+prayer and attending to God's holy word, and thinking of life and death
+and judgment.
+
+Do those seek the spirit of God who never pray to God? Clearly they do
+not. For they who never pray to God never think of Him; they who never
+think of Him, by the very force of the terms it follows that they cannot
+seek his help. And yet they say, "Oh, I wish to be good, but I cannot!"
+But this, in the language of the Scripture, is a lie. If they did wish
+to be good they would seek the help that could make them so. There is no
+boy so young as not to know that, when temptation is on him to evil,
+prayer to God will strengthen him for good. As sure as we live, if he
+wished really to overcome the temptation, he would seek the strength.
+
+Consider what prayer is, and see how it cannot but strengthen us. He who
+stands in a sheltered place, where the wind cannot reach him, and with
+no branches over his head to cause a damp shade, and then holds up his
+face or his hands to the sun, in his strength, can he help feeling the
+sun's warmth? Now, thus it is in prayer: we turn to God, we bring our
+souls, with all their thoughts and feelings, fully before Him; and by
+the very act of so doing, we shelter ourselves from every chill of
+worldly care, we clear away every intercepting screen of worldly thought
+and pleasure. It is an awful thing so to submit ourselves wholly to the
+influence of God. But do it; and as surely as the sun will warm us if we
+stand in the sun, so will the Giver of light and life to the soul pour
+his Spirit of life into us; even as we pray, we become changed into
+his image.
+
+This is not spoken extravagantly. I ask of any one who has ever prayed
+in earnest, whether for that time, and while he was so praying, he did
+not feel, as it were, another man; a man able to do the things which he
+would; a man redeemed and free. But most true is it that this feeling
+passes away but too soon, when the prayer is done. Still for the time,
+there is the effect; we know what it is to put ourselves, in a manner,
+beneath the rays of God's grace; but we do not abide there long, and
+then we feel the damp and the cold of earth again.
+
+Therefore says the Apostle, "Pray without ceasing." If we could
+literally pray always, it is clear that we should sin never: it may be
+thus that Christ's redeemed, at his coming, as they will be for ever
+with him and with the Father, can therefore sin no more. For where God
+is, there is no place left for sin. But we cannot pray always: we cannot
+pray the greatest portion of our time; nay, we can pray, in the common
+sense of the term, only a very small portion of it. Yet, at least, we
+can take heed that we do pray sometimes, and that our prayer be truly in
+earnest. We can pray then for God's help to abide with us when we are
+not praying: we can commit to his care, not only our hours of sleep, but
+our hours of worldly waking. "I have work to do, I have a busy world
+around me; eye, ear, and thought will be all needed for that work, done
+in and amidst that busy world; now, ere I enter upon it, I would commit
+eye, ear, thought and wish to Thee. Do thou bless them, and keep their
+work thine; that as, through thy natural laws, my heart beats and my
+blood flows without my thought for them, so my spiritual life may hold
+on its course, through, thy help, at those times when my mind cannot
+consciously turn to Thee to commit each particular thought to
+thy service."
+
+But I dare not say that by any the most urgent prayers, uttered only at
+night and morning, God's blessing can thus be gained for the whole
+intervening day. For, in truth, if we did nothing more, the prayers
+would soon cease to be urgent; they would become formal, that is, they
+would be no prayers at all. For prayer lives in the heart, and not in
+the mouth; it consists not of words, but wishes. And no man can set
+himself heartily to wish twice a day for things, of which he never
+thinks at other times in the day. So that prayer requires in a manner to
+be fed, and its food is to be found in reading and thinking; in reading
+God's word, and in thinking about him, and about the world as being
+his work.
+
+Young men and boys are generally, we know, not fond of reading for its
+own sake; and when they do read for their own pleasure, they naturally
+read something that interests them. Now, what are called serious books,
+including certainly the Bible, do not interest them, and therefore they
+are not commonly read. What shall we say, then? Are they not interested
+in becoming good, in learning to do the things which, they would? If
+they are not, if they care not for the bondage of sin and death, there
+is, of course, nothing to be said; then they are condemned already; they
+are not the children of God. But one says, "I wish I could find interest
+in a serious book, but I cannot." Observe again, "Ye cannot do the
+things that ye would," because the flesh and the Spirit are contrary to
+one another. However, to return to him who says this, the answer to him
+is this,--"The interest cannot come without the reading; it may and
+will come with it." For interest in a subject depends very much on our
+knowledge of it; and so it is with, the things of Christ. As long as the
+life and death of Christ are strange to us, how can we be interested
+about them? but read them, thinking of what they were, and what were
+their ends, and who can help being interested about them? Read them
+carefully, and read them often, and they will bring before our minds the
+very thoughts which we need, and which the world keeps continually from
+us, the thoughts which naturally feed our prayers; thoughts not of self,
+nor selfishness, nor pleasure, nor passion, nor folly, but of such
+things as are truly God's--love, and self-denial, and purity, and
+wisdom. These thoughts come by reading the Scriptures; and strangely do
+they mingle at first with the common evil thoughts of our evil nature.
+But they soon find a home within us, and more good thoughts gather round
+them, and there comes a time when daily life with its various business,
+which, once seemed to shut them out altogether, now ministers to their
+nourishment.
+
+Wherefore, in conclusion, walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil
+the lusts of the flesh; but do even the things which ye would. And ye
+can walk in the Spirit, if ye seek for the Spirit; if ye seek him by
+prayer, and by reading of Christ, and the things of Christ. If we will
+do neither, then most assuredly we are not seeking him; if we seek him
+not, we shall never find him. If we find him not, we shall never be able
+to do the things that we would; we shall never be redeemed, never made
+free, but our souls shall be overcome by their evil nature, as surely as
+our bodies by their diseased nature; till one death shall possess us
+wholly, a death of body and of soul, the death of eternal misery.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE IX.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LUKE xiv. 33.
+
+_Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot
+be my disciple_.
+
+
+In order to show that these words were not spoken to the apostles alone,
+but to all Christians, we have only to turn to the 25th and 26th verses,
+which run thus:--"And there went great multitudes with him, and he
+turned and said unto them, If any man come to me, and hate not his
+father and mother, and wife and children, and brethren and sisters, yea
+and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." The words were not,
+then, spoken to the twelve apostles only, as if they contained merely
+some rule of extraordinary piety, which was not to be required of common
+Christians; they were spoken to a great multitude; they were spoken to
+warn all persons in that multitude that not one of them could become a
+Christian, unless he gave himself up to Christ body and soul. Thus
+declaring that there is but one rule for all; a rule which the highest
+Christian can never go beyond; and which the lowest, if he would be a
+Christian at all, must make the foundation of his whole life.
+
+Now take the words, either of the text or of the 26th verse, and is it
+possible to avoid seeing that, on the very lowest interpretation, they
+do insist upon a very high standard; that they do require a very entire
+and devoted obedience? Is it possible for any one who believes what
+Christ has said, to rest contented, either for himself or for others,
+with that very low and very unchristian standard which he sees and knows
+to prevail generally in the world? Is it possible for him not to wish,
+for himself and for all in whose welfare he is interested, that they may
+belong to the small minority in matters of principle and practice,
+rather than to the large majority?
+
+And because he so wishes, one who endeavours to follow Christ sincerely
+can never be satisfied with the excuse that he acts and thinks quite as
+well as the mass of persons about him; it can never give him comfort,
+with regard to any judgment or practice, to be told, in common language,
+"Everybody thinks so; everybody does so." If, indeed, this expression
+"everybody" might be taken literally; if it were quite true, without any
+exception, that "everybody thought or did so;" then I grant that it
+would have a very great authority; so great that it would be almost a
+mark of madness to run counter to it. For what all men, all without a
+single exception, were to agree in, must be some truth which the human
+mind could not reject without insanity,--like the axioms of science, or
+some action which if we did not we could not live, as sleeping and
+eating; or if there be any moral point so universally agreed upon, then
+it must be something exceedingly general: as, for instance, that truth
+is in itself to be preferred to falsehood; which to dispute would be
+monstrous. But, once admit a single exception, and the infallible virtue
+of the rule ceases. I can conceive one single good and wise man's
+judgment and practice, requiring, at any rate, to be carefully attended
+to, and his reasons examined, although millions upon millions stood
+against him. But go on with the number of exceptions, and bring the
+expression "everybody," to its real meaning, which is only "most
+persons," "the great majority of the world;" then the rule becomes of
+no virtue at all, but very often the contrary. If in matters of morals
+many are on one side and some on the other, it is impossible to
+pronounce at once which are most likely to be right: it depends on the
+sort of case on which the difference exists; for the victories of truth
+and of good are but partial. It is not all truth that triumphs in the
+world, nor all good; but only truth and good up to a certain point. Let
+them once pass this point, and their progress pauses. Their followers,
+in the mass, cannot keep up with them thus far: fewer and fewer are
+those who still press on in their company, till at last even these fail;
+and there is a perfection at which they are deserted by all men, and are
+in the presence of God and of Christ alone.
+
+Thus it is that, up to a certain point, in moral matters the majority
+are right; and thus Christ's gospel, in a great many respects, goes
+along with public opinion, and the voice of society is the voice of
+truth. But this, to use the expression of our Lord's parable, this is
+but half the height of that tower whose top should reach unto heaven.
+Christianity ascends a great deal higher; and therefore so many who
+begin to build are never able to finish. Christ's disciples and the
+world's disciples work for a certain way together; and thus far the
+world's disciples call themselves Christ's, and so Christ's followers
+seem to be a great majority. But Christ warns us expressly that we are
+not his disciples merely by going a certain way on the same road with
+them. They only are His, who follow Him to the end. They only are His,
+who follow him in spite of everything, who leave all rather than leave
+him. For the rest, He does not own them. What the world can give they
+may enjoy; but Christ's kingdom is shut against them.
+
+Speaking, then, according to Christ's judgment, and we must hold those
+to be of the world, and not of Him,--and therefore in God's judgment, to
+be the evil and not the good,--who do not make up their minds to live in
+His service, and to refer their actions, words, and thoughts to His
+will. Who these are it is very true that we many times cannot know: only
+we may always fear that they are the majority of society; and therefore
+we are rather anxious in any individual's case to get a proof that he is
+not one of them, because, as they are very many, there is always a sort
+of presumption that any given person is of this number, unless there is
+some evidence, or some presumption at any rate, for thinking
+the contrary.
+
+When we speak, then, of the good and of the evil side in human life, in
+any society, whether smaller or larger,--this is what we mean, or should
+mean. The evil side contains much that is, up to a certain point, good:
+the good side,--for does it not consist of human beings?--contains,
+unhappily, much in it that is evil. Not all in the one is to be
+avoided,--far from it; nor is all in the other by any means to be
+followed. But still those are called evil in God's judgment who live
+according to their own impulses, or according to the law of the society
+around them; and those are to be called good, who, in their principles,
+whatever may be the imperfections of their practice, endeavour in all
+things to live according to the will of Christ.
+
+And in this view the characters of Jacob and Esau are, as it seems to
+me, full of instruction; and above all to us here. For I have often
+observed that the early age of an individual bears a great resemblance
+to the early age of the human race, or of any particular nation; so that
+the characters of the Old Testament are often more suited, in a
+Christian country, for the instruction of the young than for those of
+more advanced years. To Christian men, looking at Jacob's life, with the
+faults recorded of it, it is sometimes strange that he should be spoken
+of as good. But it seems that in a rude state of society, where
+knowledge is very low, and passion very strong, the great virtue is to
+be freed from the dominion of the prevailing low principle, to see and
+resolve that we ought and will live according to knowledge, and not
+according to passion or impulse. The knowledge may be very imperfect,
+and probably is so: the practice may in many respects offend against
+knowledge, and probably will do so: yet is a great step taken; it is
+_the_ virtue of man, in such a state of society, to follow, though
+imperfectly, principle, where others follow instinct, or the opinion of
+their fellows. It is the great distinguishing mark, in such a state of
+things, between the good and the evil; for this reason, amongst many
+others, that it is the virtue, under such, circumstances, of the hardest
+attainment.
+
+Now, the Scripture judgment of Jacob and Esau, should be in an especial
+manner the basis of our judgment with regard to the young. None can
+doubt, that amongst the young, when they form a society of their own,
+the great temptation is to live by impulse, or according to the opinion
+of those around them. It is like a light breaking in upon darkness, when
+a young person is led to follow a higher standard, and to live according
+to God's will. Esau, in his faults and amiable points alike, is the very
+image of the prevailing character amongst boys; sometimes violently
+revengeful, as when Esau looked forward with satisfaction to the
+prospect of his father's death, because then we should be able to slay
+his brother Jacob; sometimes full of generosity, as when Esau forgot all
+his grounds of complaint against his brother, and received him on his
+return from Mesopotamia with open arms;--but habitually careless, and
+setting the present before the future, the lower gratification before
+the higher, as when Esau sold his birth-right for a mess of pottage. And
+the point to be noted is, that, because of this carelessness, this
+profaneness or ungodliness, as it is truly called in the New Testament,
+Esau is distinguished from those who were God's people; the promises
+were not his, nor yet the blessing. This is remarkable, because Esau's
+faults, undoubtedly were just the faults of his age: he was no worse
+than the great majority of those around him; he lived as we should say,
+in our common language, that it was natural for him to live. He had,
+therefore, precisely all those excuses which are commonly urged for the
+prevailing faults of boys; yet it is quite certain that the Scripture
+holds him out as a representative of those who were not on the side
+of God,
+
+If the Scripture has so judged of Esau and Jacob, it must be the model
+for our judgments of those whose circumstances, on account of their
+belonging to a society consisting wholly of persons young in age,
+greatly resemble the circumstances of the early society of the world. I
+lay the stress on the belonging to a society wholly formed of young
+persons; for the case of young persons brought up at home, is extremely
+different; and their circumstances would be best suited by a different
+scriptural example. But here, with you, I am quite sure that the great
+distinguishing mark between good and evil, is the endeavouring, or not
+endeavouring, to rise above the carelessness of the society of which you
+are members; the determining, or not determining, to judge of things by
+another rule than that of school morality or honour; the trying, or not
+trying, to please God, instead of those around you: for the notions and
+maxims of a society of young persons are like the notions and maxims of
+men in a half-civilized age, a strange mixture of right and wrong; or
+rather wrong in their result, although with some right feeling in them,
+and therefore as a guide, false and mischievous. That it is natural to
+follow these maxims, is quite obvious: they are the besetting sin of
+your particular condition; and it is always according to our corrupt
+nature to follow our besetting sin. It is quite natural that you should
+be careless, profane, mistaking evil for good, and good for evil; but
+salvation is not for those who follow their nature, but for those in
+whom God's grace has overcome its evil; it is for those, in Christ's
+language, who take up their cross and follow him; that is, for those who
+struggle against their evil nature, that they may gain a better nature,
+and be born, not after the flesh, but after the Spirit of God.
+
+What is to be said to this? or what qualification, or compromise, is to
+be made in it? The words of the text will authorize us, at any rate, to
+make none: their language is not that of indulgent allowance; but it is
+a call, a loud and earnest, even a severe, call, it may be, in the
+judgment of our evil nature,--to shake off the weight that hangs about
+us; to deliver our hearts from the dominion of that which cannot profit,
+and to submit them to Christ alone. This is God's judgment, this is
+Christ's word; and we cannot and dare not qualify it. They are evil, for
+God and Christ declare it, who judge and live after the maxims of the
+society around them, and not after Christ; they are evil who are
+careless; they are evil who live according to their own blind and
+capricious feelings, now hot, now cold; they are evil who call evil
+good, and good evil, because they have not known the Father nor Christ.
+This, and nothing less, we say, lest we should be found false witnesses
+of God: but if this language, which is that of Scripture, seem harsh, to
+any one, oh! let him remember how soon he may change it into the
+language of the most abundant mercy, of the tenderest love; that if he
+calls upon God, God is ready to hear; that if he seeks to know and to do
+God's will, God will be found by him, and will strengthen him; that it
+is true kindness not to disguise from him his real danger, but earnestly
+to conjure him to flee from it, and to offer our humblest prayers to
+God, for him and ourselves, that our judgments and our practice may be
+formed only after his example.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE X.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+1 TIMOTHY i. 9.
+
+_The law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and
+disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy
+and profane_.
+
+
+These words explain the meaning of a great many passages in St. Paul's
+Epistles, in which also he speaks of the law, and of not being under the
+law, and other such expressions. And it is clear also, that he is not
+speaking solely, or chiefly, or, in any considerable degree, of the
+ceremonial law; but much more of the law of moral good, the law which
+told men how they ought to live, and how they ought not. This law, he
+says, is not made for good men, but for evil: a thing so plain, that we
+may well wonder how any could ever have misunderstood it. It is so
+manifest, that strict rules are required, just exactly in proportion to
+our inability or want of will to rule ourselves; it is so very plain,
+that, with regard to those crimes which we are under no temptation to
+commit, we feel exactly as if there were no law. Which of us ever
+thinks, as a matter of personal concern, of the law which sentences to
+death murderers, or housebreakers, or those who maliciously set fire to
+their neighbours' property? Do we not feel that, as far as our own
+conduct is concerned, it would be exactly the same thing if no such law
+were in existence? We should no more murder, or rob, or set fire to
+houses and barns, if the law were wholly done away, than we do now that
+it is in force.
+
+There are, then, some points in which we feel practically that we are
+not under the law, but dead to it; that the law is not made for us: but
+do we think, therefore, that we may murder, and rob, and burn? or do we
+not rather feel that such a notion would be little short of madness? We
+are not under the law, because we do not need it; not because there is
+in reality no law to punish us if we do need it. And just of this kind
+is that general freedom from the law, of which St. Paul speaks, as the
+high privilege of true Christians.
+
+But yet St. Paul would not at all mean that any Christian is altogether
+without the law: that is, that there are no points at all in which his
+inclination is not to evil, and in which, therefore, he needs the fear
+of God to restrain him from it. When he says of himself, that he kept
+under his body lest that by any means he should become a castaway; just
+so far as this fear of being a castaway possessed him, that is, just so
+far as there were any evil tendencies in him, which required him to keep
+them under by an effort, just so far was he under the law. And this is
+so, as we full well know, with us all; for as there is none of us in
+whom sin is utterly dead, so neither can there be any of us who is
+altogether dead to the law.
+
+Yet, although this be so, there is no doubt that the gospel wishes to
+consider us as generally dead to the law, in order that we really may
+become so continually more and more. It supposes that the Spirit of God,
+presenting to our minds the sight of God's love in Christ, sets us free
+from the law of sin and death; that is, that a sense of thankfulness to
+God, and love of God and of Christ, will be so strong a motive, that we
+shall, generally speaking, need no other; that it will so work upon us,
+as to make us feel good, easy, and delightful, and thus to become dead
+to the law. And there is no doubt also, that that same freedom from the
+law, which we ourselves experience daily, in respect of some particular
+great crimes, (for, as I said, we do not feel that it is the fear of the
+law which keeps us from murder or from robbing,) that very same freedom
+is felt by good men in many other points, where it may be that we
+ourselves do not feel it. A common instance may be given with respect to
+prayer, and the outward worship of God. There are a great many who feel
+this as a duty; but there are many also to whom it is not so much a
+duty, as a privilege and a pleasure; and these are dead to the law which
+commands us to be instant in prayer, just as we, in general, are dead to
+the law which commands us to do no murder.
+
+This being understood, it will be perfectly plain, why St. Paul, along
+with all his language as to the law being passed away, and our being
+become dead to it, yet uses, very frequently, language of another kind,
+which shows that the law is not dead in itself, but lives, and ever will
+live. He says, "We must all stand before the judgment seat of Christ,
+that every one may receive according to what he has done in the body."
+And he adds, "Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade
+men." But the judgment, and the terror of the Lord, mean precisely what
+are meant by the law. And this language of St. Paul shows more clearly,
+that, unless we are first dead to the law, the law is not, and never
+will be dead to us.
+
+I should not have thought it useless, to have offered merely this
+explanation of a language, which is very common in the New Testament,
+which, forms one of its characteristic points, (for St. John's
+expression of "Perfect love casteth out fear," is exactly equivalent to
+St. Paul's, "That we are dead to the law,") and which has been often
+misunderstood, or misrepresented. But yet I am well aware, that mere
+explanations of Scripture cannot be expected to interest those to whom
+Scripture is not familiar. The answer to a riddle would be very soon
+forgotten, unless the riddle had first at once amused and puzzled us.
+Just so, explanations of Scripture, to be at all valued, must suppose a
+previous knowledge of, and desire to understand, the difficulty; and
+this we cannot expect to find in very young persons. Thus far, then,
+what I have said has been necessarily addressed, I do not say, or mean,
+to the oldest part of my hearers only, but yet to the older, and more
+considering part of them. But the subject is capable, I think, of being
+brought much more closely home to us; for what St. Paul says of the law,
+with reference to all mankind, is precisely that state of mind which one
+would wish to see here; and the mistakes of his meaning are just such as
+are often prevalent, and are likely to do great mischief, with regard to
+the motives to be appealed to in education.
+
+Now, what is the case in the Scripture? Men had been subject to a strict
+law of rewards and punishments, appealing directly to their hopes, and
+to their fears. The gospel offered itself to them, as a declaration of
+God's love to them; so wonderful, that it seemed as though it could not
+but excite them to love him in return. It also raised their whole
+nature; their understandings, no less than their affections; and thus
+led them to do God's will, from another and higher feeling than they had
+felt heretofore; to do it, not because they must, but because they loved
+it. And to such as answered to this heavenly call, God laid aside, if I
+may venture so to speak, all his terrors; he showed himself to them only
+as a loving father, between whom and his children there was nothing but
+mutual affection; who would be loved by them, and love them forever. But
+to those who answered not to it, and far more, who dared to abuse it;
+who thought that God's love was weakness; that the liberty to which they
+were called, was the liberty of devils, the liberty of doing evil as
+they would; to all such, God was still a consuming fire, and their most
+merciful Saviour himself was a judge to try their very hearts and reins;
+in short, the gospel was to them, not salvation, but condemnation; it
+awakened not the better, but the baser parts of their nature; it did not
+do away, but doubled their guilt, and therefore brought upon them, and
+will bring through all eternity, a double measure of punishment.
+
+Now all this applies exactly to that earlier and, as it were,
+preparatory life, which ends not in death, but in manhood. The state of
+boyhood begins under a law. It is a great mistake to address always the
+reason of a child, when you ought rather to require his obedience. Do
+this, do not do that; if you do this, I shall love you; if you do not, I
+shall punish you;--such is the state, most clearly a state of law, under
+which we are, and must be, placed at the beginning of education. But we
+should desire and endeavour to see this state of law succeeded by
+something better; we should desire so to unfold the love of Christ as to
+draw the affections towards him; we should desire so to raise the
+understanding as that it may fasten itself, by its own native tendrils,
+round the pillar of truth, without requiring to be bound to it by
+external bands. We should avoid all unnecessary harshness; we should
+speak and act with all possible kindness; because love, rather than
+fear, love both of God and man, is the motive which we particularly wish
+to awaken. Thus, keeping punishment in the background and, as it were,
+out of sight, and putting forward encouragement and kindness, we should
+attract, as it were, the good and noble feelings of those with, whom we
+are dealing, and invite them to open, and to answer to, a system of
+confidence and kindness, rather than risk the chilling and hardening
+them by a system of mistrust and severity.
+
+And for those who do answer to this call, how really true is it that
+they do soon become dead, in great measure, to the law of the place
+where they are living! How little do they generally feel its restraints,
+or its tasks, burdensome! How very little have they to do with its
+punishments! Led on by degrees continually higher and higher, their
+relations with us become more and more relations of entire confidence
+and kindness; and when at last their trial is over, and they pass from
+this first life, as I have ventured to call it, into their second life
+of manhood, how beautifully are they ripened for that state! how
+naturally do all the restraints of this first life fall away, like the
+mortal body of the perfected Christian; and they enter upon the full
+liberty of manhood, fitted at once to enjoy and to improve it!
+
+But observe, that St. Paul does not suppose even the best Christian to
+be without the law altogether: there will ever be some points in which
+he will need to remember it. And so it is unkindness, rather than
+kindness, and a very mischievous mistake, to forget that here, in this
+our preparatory life, the law cannot cease altogether with any one; that
+it is not possible to find a perfect sense and feeling of right existing
+in every action; nay, that it is even unreasonable to seem to expect it.
+Little faults, little irregularities, there always will be, with which
+the law is best fitted to deal; which should be met, I mean, by a system
+of rules and of punishments, not severe, certainly, nor one at all
+inconsistent with general respect, kindness, and confidence; but which
+check the particular faults alluded to better, I think, than could be
+done by seeming to expect of the individual that he should, in all such
+cases, be a law to himself. There is a possibility of our over-straining
+the highest principles, by continually appealing to them on very
+trifling occasions. It is far better, here, to apply the system of the
+law; to require obedience to rules, as a matter of discipline; to visit
+the breach of them by moderate punishment, not given in anger, not at
+all inconsistent with general confidence and regard, but gently
+reminding us of that truth which we may never dare wholly to
+forget,--that punishment will exist eternally so long as there is evil,
+and that the only way of remaining for ever entirely strangers to it, is
+by adhering for ever and entirely to good.
+
+This applies to every one amongst us; and is the reason why rules,
+discipline, and punishments, however much they may be, and are, kept in
+the background for such, as have become almost wholly dead to them, must
+yet continue in existence, because none are, or can be, dead to them
+altogether. But now, suppose that we have a nature to deal with, which,
+cannot answer to a system of kindness, but abuses it; which, when
+punishment is kept at a distance, rejoices, as thinking that it may
+follow evil safely; a nature not to be touched by the love of God or
+man, not to be guided by any perception of its own as to what is right
+and true. Is the law dead really to such as these? or should it be so?
+Is punishment a degradation to a nature which, is so self-degraded as to
+be incapable of being moved by anything better? For this is the real
+degradation which we should avoid; not the fear of punishment, which is
+not at all degrading, but the being insensible to the love of Christ and
+of goodness; and so being capable of receiving no other motive than the
+fear of punishment alone. With such natures, to withhold punishment,
+would be indeed to make Christ the minister of sin; to make mercy, that
+is, lead to evil, and not to good. For them, the law never is dead, and
+never will be. Here, of course, in this first life, as I have called it,
+punishment indeed goes but a little way: it is very easy for a hardened
+nature to defy all that could be laid upon it here in the way of actual
+compulsion. Our only course is to cut short the time of trial, when we
+find a nature in whom that trial cannot end in good. Still there may be
+those in whom this life here, like their greater life which shall last
+for ever, will have far more to do with punishment than with kindness;
+they will be living all their time under the law. Continue this to our
+second life, and the law then will be no less alive, and they will never
+be dead to it, nor will it be ever dead to them. And however a hardened
+nature may well despise the punishments of its first life,--punishments,
+whose whole object is correction, and not retribution,--yet, where is
+the nature so hard as to endure, in its relations with God, to feel more
+of his punishment than of his mercy; to know him for ever as a God of
+judgment, and not as a Father of love?
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XI.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+ST. LUKE xxi. 36.
+
+_Watch ye, therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy
+to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before
+the Son of Man_.
+
+
+This might be a text for a history of the Christian Church, from its
+foundation to this hour, or to the latest hour of the world's existence.
+We might observe how it Lad fulfilled its Lord's command; with what
+steadiness it had gone forward on its course, with the constant hope of
+meeting Him once again in glory. We might see how it had escaped all
+these things that were to come to pass: tracing its course amidst the
+manifold revolutions of the world, inward and outward. In the few words,
+"all these things that shall come to pass," are contained all the events
+of the last eighteen hundred years: indistinct and unknown to us, as
+long as they are thus folded up together; but capable of being unrolled
+before our eyes in a long order, in which should be displayed all the
+outward changes of nations, the spread of discovery, the vicissitudes of
+conquest; and yet more, the inward changes of men's minds, the various
+schools of philosophy, the successive forms of public opinion, the
+influences of various races, all the manifold elements by which the
+moral character of the Christian world has been affected. We might
+observe how the Church had escaped all these things, or to what degree
+it had received from any of them good or evil. And then, stopping at
+the point at which it has actually arrived, we might consider how far it
+deserves the character of that Church, "without spot, or wrinkle, or any
+such thing," which should be presented before the Son of Man at his
+coming again.
+
+This would be a great subject; and one, if worthily executed, full of
+the deepest instruction to us all. But our Lord's words may also be made
+the text for a history or inquiry of another sort, far less
+comprehensive in time and space, far less grand, far less interesting to
+the understanding; yet, on the other hand, capable of being wrought out
+far more completely, and far more interesting to the spiritual and
+eternal welfare of each of us. They may be made the text for an inquiry
+into the course hitherto held, not by the Church as a body, but by each
+of us individual members of it; an inquiry how far we, each of us, have
+watched and prayed always, that we might be accounted worthy to escape
+all the things which should come to pass, and to stand before the Son of
+Man. And, in this view of the words, the expression "all these things
+which shall come to pass" has reference no longer to great political
+revolutions, nor to schools of philosophy, nor to prominent points of
+national character; but to those humbler events, to those lesser
+changes, outward and inward, through which we each, pass between our
+cradle and our grave. How have we escaped these, or turned them to good
+account? Have earthly things so ministered to our eternal welfare, that
+if we were each one of us, by a stroke from heaven, cut off at that very
+point in our course to which we have severally attained this day, we
+should be accounted worthy to stand before the Son of Man?
+
+Here is, indeed, a very humble history for us each to study; yet what
+other history can concern us so nearly? And as, in the history of the
+world, experience in part supplies the place of prophecy, and the fate
+of one nation is in a manner a mirror to another, so in our individual
+history, the experience of the old is a lesson to the middle-aged, and
+that of the middle-aged a lesson to the young. If you wish to know what
+are the things which shall come to pass with respect to you, we can draw
+aside the veil from your coming life, because what you will be is no
+other than what we are. If we would go onwards, in like manner, and ask
+what are the things which shall come to pass with respect to us, our
+coming life may be seen in the past and present life of the old; for
+what we shall be is no other than what they have been, or than what
+they are.
+
+Let us take, then, the actual moment with, each of us, and suppose that
+our Lord speaks to each of us as he did to his first disciples: "Watch
+and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these
+things which shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man." We
+ask, naturally, "What are the things which shall come to pass?" and it
+is to this question that I am to try to suggest the answer.
+
+Those arrived at middle age may ask the question, "What are the things
+which shall come to pass to us?" Now, setting aside extraordinary
+accidents, on which we cannot reckon, and the answer would, I think, be
+something of this sort: There will not come to pass, it is likely, any
+great change in our condition or employment in life. In middle age our
+calling, with all the duties which it involves, must generally be fixed
+for each of us. Our particular kind of trial will not, it is probable,
+be much altered. We must not, as in youth, fancy that, although our
+actual occupation does not suit us, although its temptations are often
+too strong for us, yet a change may take place to another line of duty,
+and the temptations in that new line may be less formidable. In middle
+age it will not do to indulge such fond hopes as these. On the contrary,
+our hope must lie, not in escape, but in victory. If our temptations
+press us hard, we cannot expect to have them exchanged for others less
+powerful: they will remain with us, and we must overcome them, or
+perish. Have we tastes not fully reconciled to our calling,--faculties
+which seem not to have found their proper field? We must seek our remedy
+not from without, humanly speaking, but from within: we must discipline
+ourselves; we must teach our tastes to cling gracefully around that duty
+to which else they must be helplessly fastened. If any faculties appear
+not to have found their proper field, we must think that God has, for
+certain wise reasons, judged it best for us that they should not be
+exercised; and we must be content to render him the service of others.
+In this respect, then, the immediate prospect for middle age is not so
+much change as steadfastness. Fortune will not suit herself to our
+wishes: we must learn to suit our wishes to her.
+
+But go on a little farther, and what are the things which must come to
+pass then? A new and most solemn interest arising to us in the entrance
+of our children into active life. Hitherto they have lived under our
+care, and our duty to them was simple; but now there comes the choice of
+a profession, the watching and guiding them, as well as we can, at this
+critical moment of their course. What cares await us here; and yet what
+need of avoiding over care! What a trial for us, how we value our
+children's worldly interests when compared with their eternal--whether
+we prefer for them the path which may lead most readily to worldly
+wealth and honour, or that in, which they may best and safest follow
+Christ! This is a danger which will come to pass to us ere long: do we
+watch and pray that we may be delivered from it?
+
+The interest of life, which had, perhaps, something begun to fade for
+ourselves, will revive with vigour at this period in behalf of our
+children; but after this it will go on steadily ebbing. What life can
+offer we have tasted for ourselves; we have seen it tasted, or in the
+way to be tasted, by them. The harvest is gathered, and the symptoms of
+the fall appear. Is it that some faculty becomes a little impaired, some
+taste a little dulled; or is it that the friends and companions of our
+life are beginning to drop away from us? Long since, those whom we loved
+of the generation before us have been gathered to the grave; now those
+of our own generation are falling fast also--brothers, sisters, friends
+of our early youth, a wife, a husband. We are surrounded by a younger
+generation, to whom the half of our lives, with all their recollections
+and sympathies, are a thing unknown. Impatience, weariness, a clinging
+to the past, a vain wish to prolong it in an earthly future,--these are
+the things which shall befal us then: and they will befal us too surely,
+and too irresistibly, unless, by earlier watchfulness and prayer, we may
+have been enabled to avoid them. For vain will it be, with faculties at
+once weakened by the decay of nature and perverted by long habits of
+worldliness, to essay, for the first time, to force our way into the
+kingdom of heaven. Old age is not the season for contest and victory;
+nor shall we then be so able to escape unharmed from the temptations of
+life as to stand before the Son of Man.
+
+These are the things which will come to pass for us and for you. But for
+you there is much more to come, which to us is not future now, but past
+or present. With you, for a time, it will be all a course forwards and
+upwards. From the preparation for life, you will come to the reality;
+from a state of less importance, you will be passing on to one of
+greater. Your temptations, whatever they may be now, will not certainly
+become weaker. As outward restraint is more and more taken off from you,
+so your need of inward restraint will be greater. Will those who are
+extravagant now on a small scale, be less extravagant on a large scale?
+Will those who are selfish now, become less selfish amidst a wider field
+of enjoyment? Will those who know not or care not for Christ, while yet,
+as it were, standing quietly on the shore, be led to think of him more
+amidst the excitement of the first setting sail, amidst the interest of
+the first newly-seen country?
+
+You know not yet, nor can know, the immense importance of that period of
+life on which many of you are entering, or have just entered. You are
+coming, or come, to what may be called the second beginning of life: to
+which, in the common course of things, there will succeed no third.
+Ignorance, absence of temptation, the presence of all good impressions,
+constitute much of the innocence of mere childhood,--so beautiful while
+it lasts, so sure to be soon blighted! It is blighted in the first
+experience of life, most commonly when a boy first goes to school. Then
+his mere innocence, which indeed he may be said to have worn rather
+instinctively than by choice, becomes grievously polluted. Then come the
+hardness, the coarseness, the intense selfishness; sometimes, too, the
+falsehood, the cruelty, the folly of the boy: then comes that period, so
+trying to the faith of parents, when all their early care seems blasted;
+when the vineyard, which they had fenced so tenderly, seems all
+despoiled and trodden under foot. It is indeed a discouraging season,
+the exact image of the ungenial springs of our natural year. But after
+this there comes, as it were, a second beginning of life, when principle
+takes the place of innocence. There is a time,--many of you must have
+arrived at it,--when thought and inquiry awaken; when, out of the mere
+chaos of boyhood, the elements of the future character of the man begin
+to appear. Blessed are they for whom the confusion and disarray of their
+boyish life is quickened into a true life by the moving of the Spirit of
+God! Blessed are they for whom the beginnings of thought and inquiry are
+the beginnings also of faith and love; when the new character receives,
+as it is forming, the Christian seed, and the man is also the Christian.
+And, then, this second beginning of life, resting on faith and conscious
+principle, and not on mere passive innocence, stands sure for the middle
+and the end: those who so watch and pray as to escape out of this
+critical period, not merely unharmed, but, as it were, set clearly on
+their way to heaven, will, with God's grace, escape out of the things
+which shall befal them afterwards, till they shall stand before the
+Son of Man.
+
+But the word is, "Watch and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy
+to escape." We see the time with many of you come, or immediately
+coming; out of your present state _a_ character will certainly be
+formed; as surely as the innocence of childhood has perished, so surely
+will the carelessness of boyhood perish too. _A_ character will be
+formed, whether you watch and pray, or whether you do neither; but the
+great point is what this character may be. If you do not watch the
+process, it will surely be the character of death eternal. Thought and
+inquiry will satisfy themselves very readily with an answer as far as
+regards spiritual things: their whole vigour will be devoted to the
+things of this world, to science or to business, or to public matters,
+all alike hardening rather than softening to the mind, if its thoughts
+do not go to something higher and deeper still. And as years pass on, we
+may think on these our favourite or professional subjects more and more
+earnestly; our views on them may be clearer and sounder, but there comes
+again nothing like the first free burst of thought in youth; the
+intellect in later life, if its tone was not rightly taken earlier,
+becomes narrowed in proportion to its greater vigour; one thing it sees
+clearly, but it is blind to all beside. It is in youth that the after
+tone of the mind is happily formed, when that natural burst of thought
+is sanctified and quickened by God's Spirit, and we set up within us to
+love and adore, all our days, the one image of the truth of God, our
+Saviour Jesus. Then, whatever else may befal us afterwards, it rarely
+happens that our faith will fail; his image, implanted in us, preserves
+us amid every change; we are counted worthy to escape all the things
+which may come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XII
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PROVERBS i. 28.
+
+_Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me
+early, but they shall not find me_.
+
+
+Christ's gospel gives out the forgiveness of sins; and as this is its
+very essence, so also in what we read connected with Christ's gospel,
+the tone of encouragement, of mercy, of loving-kindness to sinners, is
+ever predominant. What was needed at the beginning of the gospel is no
+less needed now; we cannot spare one jot or one tittle of this gracious
+language; now, as ever, the free grace, that most seems to be without
+the law, does most surely establish the law. But yet there is another
+language, which is to be found alike in the Old Testament and in the
+New; a language not indeed so common as the language of mercy, but yet
+repeated many times; a language which we also need as fully as it was
+ever needed, and of whose severity we can no more spare one tittle than
+we can spare anything of the comfort of the other. And yet this language
+has not, I think, been enforced so often as it should have been. Men
+have rather shrunk from it, and seemed afraid of it; they have connected
+it sometimes with certain foolish and presumptuous questions, which we,
+indeed, do well to turn from; but they have not seen, that with such it
+has no natural connexion, but belongs to a certain fact in the
+constitution of our nature, and is most highly moral and practical.
+
+The language to which. I allude is expressed, amongst other passages,
+by the words of the text. They speak of men's calling upon God, and of
+his refusing to hear them; of men's seeking God, and not finding him.
+Remember, at the same time, our Lord's words, "Ask, and ye shall
+receive; seek, and ye shall find." I purposely put together these
+opposite passages, because the full character of God's Revelation is
+thus seen more clearly. Do we doubt that our Lord's words are true, and
+do we not prize them as some of the most precious which he has left us?
+We do well to do so; but shall we doubt any more the truth of the words
+of the text; and shall we not consider them as a warning no less needful
+than the comfort in the other case? Indeed, as true as it is, that, if
+we seek God, we shall find him; so true is it that we may seek him, and
+yet not find him.
+
+Now, then, how to explain this seeming contradiction? We can see at
+once, that these things are not said of the same persons, or rather of
+the same characters at the same time. They are said of the same persons:
+that is, there is no one here assembled who is not concerned with both,
+and to whom both may not be applicable. Only they are not and cannot be
+both applicable to the same person at the very same time. If God will be
+found by us, at any given moment, on our seeking him, it is impossible
+that, at that same moment, he should also not be found. Thus far is
+plain to every one.
+
+And now, is it true of us, at this present time, that God will be found
+by us if we seek him, or that he will not be found? If we say that he
+will be found, then the words of the text are not applicable to us at
+present, although at some future time they may be; and then we have that
+well-known difficulty to encounter, to attempt to draw the mind's
+attention to a future and only contingent evil. If we say that he will
+not be found, then of what avail can it be to say any word more? Why sit
+we in this place, to preach, or to listen to preaching, if God, after
+all, will not be found? Or, again, should we say that there are some by
+whom he will not be found, then who are they that are thus horribly
+marked out from among their brethren? Can we dare to conceive of any one
+amongst us that he is such an one; that there are some, nay, that there
+is any one amongst us, to whom it is the same thing whether he will
+hear, or whether he will forbear; who may close his ears as safely as
+open them, because God has turned his face from him for ever? It were
+indeed horrible to suppose that any one of us were in such a state; and
+happily it is a thought of horror which the truth may allow us to repel.
+
+But what, if I were to say, that now, at this very moment, the words of
+the text are both applicable to us, and not applicable? Is this a
+contradiction, and therefore impossible? Or is it but a seeming
+contradiction only, and not only possible, but true? Let us see how the
+case appears to be.
+
+We should allow, I suppose, that the words of the text were at no time
+in any man's earthly life so true as they will be at the day of
+judgment. The hardest heart, the most obdurate in sin, the most closed
+against all repentance, is yet more within the reach of grace, we should
+imagine, whilst he is alive and in health, than he will be at the day of
+the resurrection. We can admit, then, that the words of the text may be
+true, in a greater or less degree; that they will be more entirely true
+at the last day, than at any earlier period, but yet that they may be
+substantially true, true almost beyond exception, in the life that now
+is. Now carry this same principle a little farther, and we come to our
+very own case. The words of the text will be more true at the day of
+judgment, than they ever are on earth; and yet on earth they are often
+true substantially and practically. And even so, they may be more true
+to each of us a few years hence, than they are at this moment; and yet,
+in a certain degree, they may be true at this moment; true, not
+absolutely and entirely, but partially; so true as to give a most solemn
+earnest, if we are not warned in time, of their more entire truth
+hereafter,--first, in this earthly life; then most perfectly of all,
+when we shall arise at the last day.
+
+It may be, then, that the words of the text, although not applicable to
+us in their full and most fatal sense, may yet be applicable to us in a
+certain degree: the evil which they speak of may be, not wholly future
+and contingent, and a thing to be feared, but present in part, actual,
+and a matter of experience. This is not contradiction: it is not
+impossible; it _may be_ our case. Let us see whether it really is so,
+that is, whether it is in any degree true of us, that when we call upon
+God he will not answer; that when we seek him, we shall in any manner be
+unable to find him.
+
+It is manifest that, in proportion as Christ's words "Seek, and ye shall
+find," are true to any man, so are the words of the text less true to
+him; and in proportion as Christ's words are less true to any one, so
+are the words of the text more true to him. Now, is Christ's promise,
+"Seek, and ye shall find," equally true to all of us? Conceive of
+one--the thing is rare, but not impossible,--of one who had been so kept
+from evil, and so happily led forward in good, that when arrived at
+boyhood, his soul had scarcely more stain upon it than when it was first
+fully cleansed, and forgiven, in baptism! Conceive him speaking truth,
+without any effort, on all occasions; not greedy, not proud, not
+violent, not selfish, not feeling conscious that he was living a life
+of sin, and therefore glad to come to God, rather than shrinking away
+from him! Conceive how completely to such an one would Christ's words be
+fulfilled, "Seek, and ye shall find!" When would his prayers be
+unblessed or unfruitful? When would he turn his thoughts to God without
+feeling pleasure in doing so; without a lively consciousness of God's
+love to him; without an assured sense of the reality of things not seen,
+of redemption and grace and glory? Would not the communion with God,
+enjoyed by one so untainted, come up to the full measure of those high
+promises, "It shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer,
+and while they are yet speaking, I will hear?" Would it not be plain,
+that God was as truly found, by such a person, as he was sought in
+sincerity and earnestness?
+
+But now, take the most of us: suppose us not to have been kept carefully
+from evil, nor led on steadily in good; suppose us to have reached
+boyhood with bad dispositions, ready for the first temptation, with
+habits of good uncultivated; suppose us to have no great horror of a
+lie, when it can serve our turn; with much love of pleasure, and little
+love of our duty; with much, selfishness, and little or no thought of
+God: suppose such an one, so sadly altered from a state of baptismal
+purity, to be saying his prayers as he had been taught to say them, and
+saying them sometimes with a thought of their meaning and a wish that
+God would hear them. But does God hear them? I ask of your own
+consciences, whether you have had any sense that he has heard you?
+whether death and judgment, Christ and Christ's service, have become
+more real to you after such prayers? If not, then is it not manifest,
+that you have sought God, and have not found him; that you have called
+upon him and he has not heard? You know by experience, that you are not
+as those true children who are ever with him, who listen to catch the
+lightest whisper of his Spirit, for whom, he, too, vouchsafes to bless
+the faintest breathing of their prayer.
+
+Or, again, in trying to turn from evil to good, have you ever found your
+resolutions give way, the ground which you had gained slide from under
+your feet, till you fell back again to what you were at the beginning?
+Has this ever happened to us? If it has, then in that case, also, we
+sought God, but failed to find him; the victory was not yours, but the
+enemy's; the Spirit of Christ did not help you so as to conquer.
+
+Take another case yet again. Has it ever happened to any of you, to have
+done a mischief to yourselves which you could not undo? It need not be
+one of the very highest kind; but has it ever happened, that, by
+neglect, you have lost ground in the society in which you are placed,
+which you cannot recover; that your contemporaries have gained an
+advance upon you, while you have not time left to overtake them? Does it
+ever happen that, from neglecting some particular element of learning in
+its proper season, and other things claiming your attention afterwards,
+you go on with a disadvantage, which you would fain remove, but cannot?
+Does it, in short, ever happen to any, that his complete success here is
+become impossible; that whatever prospects of another kind may be open
+to him elsewhere, yet that he cannot now be numbered amongst those who
+have turned the particular advantages here afforded them to that end
+which they might and ought to have done?
+
+To whomsoever this has happened, the truth of the words of the text is
+matter of experience, not in their full and most dreadful extent, but
+yet quite enough to prove that they are true; and that just as he now
+feels them in part, so, if he continues to be what he is, he will one
+day feel them wholly. He feels that it is possible to seek God, and not
+to find him; he has learnt by experience that neglected good, or
+committed evil, may be beyond the power of after-regret to undo. It is
+true, that as yet, to him, other prospects may be open: prospects which,
+probably, he may deem no less fair than those which he has forfeited.
+This may be so; but the point to observe is, that one prospect was lost
+so irretrievably by his own fault, that afterwards, when he wished to
+regain it, he could not. Now God gives him other prospects, which he may
+realize: but as he forfeited his first prospect beyond recovery, so he
+may do also with his last: and though ill-success at school may be made
+up by success in another sphere, yet what is to make up for ill-success
+in the great business of life, when that, too, has been forfeited as
+irrecoverably; when his last chance is gone as hopelessly as his first?
+
+Now, surely there is in all this an intelligible lesson. I am not at all
+exaggerating the importance of the particular prospect forfeited here:
+but I am pressing upon you, that this prospect may be, and often is,
+forfeited irrecoverably; that when you wish to regain it, it is too
+late, and you cannot. And I press this, because it is a true type of the
+whole of human life; because it is just as possible to forfeit salvation
+irrecoverably, as to forfeit that earthly good which is the prize of
+well-doing here, with this infinite difference, that the last forfeit is
+not only irretrievable, but fatal; it can no more be made up for, than
+it can be regained. Here, then, your present condition is a type of the
+complete truth of the text: but there are other points, to which I
+alluded before, in which it is more than a type; it is the very truth
+itself, although, happily, only in an imperfect measure. That unanswered
+prayer, of which I spoke, those broken resolutions,--are they not
+actually a calling on God, without his hearing us; a seeking him,
+without finding him? We remember who it was that could say with truth to
+his Father, "I know that thou nearest me always." We know what it is
+that hinders God from hearing us always; because we are not thoroughly
+one in his Son Christ Jesus. But this unanswered prayer is not properly
+the State of Christ's redeemed: it is an enemy that hath brought us to
+this; the same enemy who will, in time, make all our prayers to be
+unanswered, as some are now; who will cause God, not only to be slow to
+listen, but to refuse to listen for ever. Now we are not heard at once,
+we must repeat our prayers, with more and more earnestness, that God, at
+last, may hear, and may bless us. But if, instead of repeating them the
+more, we do the very contrary, and repeat them the less; if, because we
+have no comfort, and no seeming good from them, we give them up
+altogether; then the time will surely come when all prayer will be but
+the hopeless prayer of Esau, because it will be only the prayer of fear;
+because it will be only the dread of destruction that will, or can, move
+us:--the love of good will have gone beyond recall. Such prayer does but
+ask for pardon without repentance; and this never is, or can
+be, granted.
+
+So then, in conclusion, that very feeling of coldness, and unwillingness
+to pray, because we have often prayed in vain, is surely working in us
+that perfect death, which is the full truth of the words of the text. Of
+all of us, those who the least like to pray, who have prayed with the
+least benefit, have the most need to pray again. If they have sought
+God, without finding him, let them take heed that this be not their case
+for ever; that the truth, of which the seed is even now in them, may not
+be ripened to their everlasting destruction, when all their seeking, and
+all their prayer, will be as rejected by God, as, in part, it has
+been already.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XIII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MARK xii. 34.
+
+_Thou art not far from the kingdom of God_.
+
+
+Whoever has gone up any hill of more than common height, may remember
+the very different impression which the self-same point, whether bush,
+or stone, or cliff, has made upon him as he viewed it from below and
+from above. In going up it seemed so high, that we fancied, if we were
+once arrived at it, we should be at the summit of our ascent; while,
+when we had got beyond it, and looked down upon it, it seemed almost
+sunk to the level of the common plain; and we wondered that it could
+ever have appeared high to us.
+
+What happens with any natural object according to the different points
+from which we view it, happens also to any particular stage of
+advancement in our moral characters. There is a goodness which appears
+very exalted or very ordinary, according as it is much above or much
+below our own level. And this is the case with the expression of our
+Lord in the text, "Thou art not far from the kingdom of God." Does this
+seem a great thing or a little thing to be said to us? Does it give us a
+notion of a height which we should think it happiness to have readied;
+or of a state so little advanced, that it would be misery to be forced
+to go back to it? For, according as it seems to us the one or the other,
+so we may judge of the greater or less progress which we have made in
+ascending the holy mountain of our God.
+
+But while I say this, it is necessary to distinguish between two several
+senses, in which we may be said to be near to the kingdom of God, or
+actually in it. These two are in respect of knowledge, and in respect of
+feeling and practice. And our Lord's words seem to refer particularly to
+knowledge. The scribe to whom he used them, had expressed so just a
+sense of the true way of pleasing God, had so risen above the common
+false notions of his age and country, that his understanding seemed to
+be ripe for the truths of that kingdom of God, which was to make the
+worship of God to consist in spirit and in truth. Now as far as the
+knowledge of the kingdom of God is concerned, although, undoubtedly,
+there are many amongst us who are deficient in it, yet it is true also,
+that a great many of us are in possession of it; we are familiar enough
+with the truths of the kingdom of God, and our understandings fully
+approve them. But we may be near to or far from the kingdom of God, in
+respect also of feeling and practice; and this is the great matter that
+concerns us. It is here, then, that we should ask ourselves what we
+think of our Lord's words in the text; and whether he to whom they were
+spoken appears to us an object of envy or of compassion; one whom we
+envy for having advanced so far, or pity for not being advanced further.
+
+"Not far from the kingdom of God." Again, if we take the words Kingdom
+of God in their highest sense, then the expression contains all that we
+could desire to have said of us in this life; hope itself on this side
+of the grave can go no higher. For as, in this sense, the kingdom of God
+cannot be actually entered before our death; so the best thing that can
+be said of us here, is, that we are not far from it; but we are in the
+land of Beulah, so happily imagined in the Pilgrim's Progress; all of
+our pilgrimage completed, save the last act of crossing the river; with
+the city of God full in sight, and with hearts ready to enter into it.
+In this sense, even St. Paul himself, when he wrote his last epistle
+from Rome, could say no more, could hope for, could desire no more, than
+to be not far from the kingdom of God.
+
+Yet again, take the words "Kingdom of God" in their lowest sense, and
+then it is woe to us all, if the expression in the text is all that can
+be said of us; if, in this sense, we are only not far from the kingdom
+of God. For take the kingdom of God as God's visible Church, and then,
+if we are not Christians at all, but only not far from becoming so; if
+we have not received Christ, but are not far from receiving him; this is
+a state so imperfect, that he who is in it, has not yet reached to the
+beginning of his Christian course; and we need not say how far he must
+be from its end, if he have not yet come as far as its beginning.
+
+Thus, in one sense, the words express something so high that nothing can
+be higher; in another, something so low, that, to us, nothing can be
+lower. We have yet to seek that sense, in which they may afford us a
+useful criterion of our own several states, by appearing high, perhaps,
+to some of us, and to others low.
+
+The sense which we seek is given by our Lord, when he declares that the
+kingdom of God is within us; or by St. Paul, when he tells us, that it
+is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. And now it is no
+more a thing which we cannot yet have reached, or, on the other hand,
+which we all have reached: there is now a great difference in us, some
+are far from it, some are near it, and some are in it; and thus it is,
+that they who are near it, seem in it to those who are afar off, and
+far from it to those who are in it.
+
+Now, first, do they seem far from it? Then, indeed, ours is a happy
+state, as many of us as can truly feel that they live so constantly in
+holy and heavenly tempers, in such lively faith and love, so tasting all
+the blessings of God's kingdom, its peace, and its hope, and its joy,
+that they cannot bear to think of that time, when these blessings were
+not enjoyed except in prospect; when they rather desired to have faith
+and love, than could be said actually to have them; when their tempers
+were not holy and heavenly, although they were fully alive to the
+excellence of their being so, and had seen them already cleansed from
+the opposites of such a state, from ill-nature, and passion, and pride.
+
+If any such there be, in whom good resolutions have long since ripened
+into good actions, and the continued good actions have now led to
+confirmed good habits, how miserable will they think it to be only "not
+far from the kingdom of God!" How ill could they bear to go over again
+the struggle which used to accompany every action, when it was done in
+defiance of habits of evil; or to be called back to that condition when
+resolutions for good were formed over and over again, because they were
+so often broken, but had as yet rarely led to any solid fruit! How
+thankful will they be to have escaped from that season when they were
+seeking, but had not yet found; when they were asking of God, but had
+not yet received; when they were knocking, but the door had not yet been
+opened! They were then, indeed, not far from the kingdom of God, but
+they were still without its walls; they were still strangers, and not
+citizens. It had held out to them a refuge, and they had fled to it as
+suppliants to the sanctuary; but they had not yet had the word of peace
+spoken, to bid them no more kneel without, as suppliants, but to enter
+and go in and out freely; for that all things were theirs, because they
+were Christ's.
+
+I have dwelt purposely somewhat the longer upon this, because the more
+that we can feel the truth of this picture, the more that we can put
+ourselves into the position of those who are within the kingdom of God,
+and who, living in the light of it, look back with pity upon those who
+are only kneeling without its gates,--the more strongly we shall feel
+what must be our condition, if those who are without its gates appear to
+us to be objects of envy rather than pity, because they are so near to
+that place from which we feel ourselves to be so distant. Or, to speak
+without a figure, if we could but understand how persons advanced in
+goodness would shrink from the thought of being now only resolving to be
+good, then we shall perceive how very evil must be our condition, if
+this very resolving to be good seems to us to be an advance so
+desirable; if we are so far from being good actually, that the very
+setting ourselves in earnest to seek for good strikes us as a point of
+absolute proficiency in comparison of our present degradation.
+
+Yet is not this the case with many of us? Do we not consider it a great
+point gained, if we can be brought to think seriously, to pray in
+earnest, to read the Bible, to begin to look to our own ways and lives?
+We feel it for ourselves, and others also feel it for us: it is natural,
+it is unavoidable, that we feel great joy, that we think a great deal is
+done, if we see any of you, after leading a life of manifest
+carelessness, and therefore of manifest sin, beginning to take more
+pains with himself, and so becoming what is called somewhat more steady
+and more serious. I know that the impression is apt to be too strong
+upon us: we are but too apt to boast for him who putteth on his armour
+as for him who putteth it off; because he who putteth on his armour at
+least shows that he is preparing for the battle, which so many never do
+at all. We observe some of these signs of seriousness: we see perhaps,
+that a person begins to attend at the Communion; that he pays more
+attention to his ordinary duties; that he becomes more regular. We see
+this, and we are not only thankful for it,--this we ought to be,--but we
+satisfy ourselves too readily that all is done: we reckon a person,
+somewhat too hastily, to be already belonging to the kingdom of God,
+because we have seen him turning towards it. Then, if he afterwards does
+not appear to be entered into it; if we see that he is not what we
+expected, that he is no longer serious, no longer attentive to his
+common duties, we are overmuch disappointed; and, perhaps are tempted
+too completely to despair for him. Is it not that we confounded together
+the beginning and the end; the being good, and the trying to become so:
+the resolution with the act; the act with the habit? Did we not forget
+that he is not at once out of danger who begins to mend: that the first
+softening of the dry burning skin, the first abating of the hard quick
+pulse, is far removed from the coolness, and steadiness, and even vigour
+of health restored, or never interrupted?
+
+But what made us forget truths so obvious? What made us confound things
+so different that the most ignorant ought to be able to distinguish
+them? Cannot we tell why it is? Is it not because there are so many in
+whom we cannot see even as good signs as these,--of whom we cannot but
+feel that it would be a great advance for them, a matter of earnest
+thankfulness, if we could only see that they were not far from the
+kingdom of God,--nay, even that their steps were tending thither? Let us
+look ever so earnestly, let us watch ever so carefully, let us hope
+ever so charitably, we cannot see, we can scarcely fancy that we see,
+even the desire to turn to God. We do not see gross wickedness; it is
+well; we see much that is amiable; that is well also: but the desire to
+turn to God, the tending of the steps towards the kingdom of
+heaven,--that we cannot see. But this is a thing, it may be said, that
+man cannot see: it may exist, although we cannot perceive it. Oh, that
+it might and may be so! Yet, surely, as out of the abundance of the
+heart the mouth speaketh, so a principle so mighty as the desire of
+turning to God cannot leave itself without a witness: some symptoms must
+be shown to those who are eagerly watching for them; some ground for
+hope must be afforded where hope is so ready to kindle. If no sign of
+life appears, can the life indeed be stirring? And if the life be not
+stirring; if the disorder is going on in so many cases, raging, with no
+symptom of abatement; is it not natural, that when we do see such
+symptoms, we should rejoice even with over-measure, that we should
+forget how much is yet to be done, when we see that something has
+been done.
+
+To such persons, it would be an enviable state, to be not far from the
+kingdom of God. But what, then, must be their state actually? A hopeful
+one, according to many standards of judgment; a state that promises
+well, it may be, for a healthy and prosperous life, with many friends,
+perhaps with much distinction. We know that all this prospect may be
+blighted; still it exists at present;--the healthy constitution, the
+easy fortune, the cheerful and good-humoured temper, the quickness and
+power of understanding; all these, no doubt, are hopeful signs for a
+period of forty, or fifty, or perhaps sixty years to come. But what is
+to come then? what is the prospect for the next period, not of fifty, or
+sixty, not of a hundred, not of a thousand, years; not of any number
+that can be numbered, but of time everlasting? Is their actual state one
+of hopeful promise for this period, for this life which no death shall
+terminate? Nay, is it a state of any promise at all, of any chance at
+all? Suppose, for a moment, one with a crippled body, full of the seeds
+of hereditary disease, poor, friendless, irritable in temper, low in
+understanding; suppose such an one just entering upon youth, and ask
+yourselves, for what would you consent that his prospects should be
+yours? What should you think would be your chance of happiness in life,
+if you were beginning in such a condition? Yet, I tell you that poor,
+diseased, irritable, friendless cripple has a far better prospect of
+passing his fifty, or sixty, years, tolerably, than they who have not
+begun to turn towards God have of a tolerable eternity. Much more
+wretched is the promise of their life; much more justly should we be
+tempted, concerning them, to breathe that fearful thought, that it were
+good for them if they had never been born. And now if, as by miracle,
+that cripple's limbs were to be at once made sound, if the seeds of
+disease were to vanish, if some large fortune were left him, if his
+temper sweetened, and his mind became vigorous, should not we be
+excused, considering what he had been and what he now was, if we, for a
+moment, forgot the uncertainty of the future; if we thought that a
+promise so changed, was almost equivalent to performance? And may not
+this same excuse be urged for some over-fondness of confidence for their
+well-doing whom we see so near to the kingdom of God, when we consider
+how utter is the misery, how hopeless the condition of those who do not
+appear to have, as yet, stirred one single step towards it?
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XIV.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MATTHEW xxii. 14.
+
+_For many are called, but few are chosen_.
+
+
+The truth here expressed is one of the most solemn in the world, and
+would be one of the most overwhelming to us, if habit had not, in a
+manner, blunted our painful perception of it. There is contained in it
+matter of thought more than we could exhaust, and deeper than we could
+ever fathom. But on this I will not attempt to enter. I will rather take
+that view of the text which concerns us here; I will see in how many
+senses it is true, and with what feeling we should regard it.
+
+"Many are called, but few are chosen." The direct application of this
+was to the parable of those invited to the supper; in which it had been
+related, how a great multitude had been invited, but how one among
+them--and the application as well as the fact in human life, require
+that this _one_ should be taken only as a specimen of a great
+number--had been found unworthy to enjoy the feast prepared for them.
+They had not on the wedding garment; they had not done their part to fit
+themselves for the offered blessing: therefore they were called, but not
+chosen. God had willed to do them good, but they would not; and
+therefore, though he had called them at the beginning, he, in the end,
+cast them out.
+
+We have to do, then, not with an arbitrary call and an arbitrary choice,
+as if God called many in mockery, meaning to choose out of them only a
+few, and making his choice independently of any exertion of theirs. The
+picture is very different; it is a gracious call to us all, to come and
+receive the blessing; it is a reluctant casting out the greatest part of
+us, because we would not try to render ourselves fit for it.
+
+I said, that we would take the words of the text in reference to
+ourselves, for here, too, it is true, that many are called, but few are
+chosen. It is a large number of you, which I see before me; and if we
+add to it all those who, within my memory, have sat in the same places
+before you, we shall have a number very considerable indeed. All these
+have been called; they have been sent here to enjoy the same advantages
+with each other; and those advantages have been put within their reach.
+They have entered into a great society which, on the one hand, might
+raise them forward, or, on the other, depress them. There has been a
+sufficient field for emulation: there have been examples and
+instructions for good; there have been results of credit and of real
+improvement made attainable to them, which might have lasted all their
+lives long. To this, they have been all, in their turns, called; and out
+of those so called, have all, or nearly all, been chosen? I am not
+speaking of those, who, I trust, would be a very small number, to whom
+the trial has failed utterly, who could look back on their stay here
+with no feelings but those of shame. But would there not be a very large
+number, to whom their stay here has been a loss, compared with what it
+might have been; who have reaped but a very small part of those
+advantages to which they had been at first called? Are there not too
+many who must look back on a part, at least, of their time here as
+wasted; on the seeds of bad habits sown, which, if conquered by
+after-care, yet, for a long time, were injurious to them? Are there not
+too many who carry away from here, instead of good notions, to be
+ripened and improved, evil notions, to be weeded out and destroyed? Are
+there not, in short, a great number who, after having had a great
+advantage put within their reach, and purchased for them by their
+friends, at a great expense, have made such insufficient use of their
+opportunities, to say nothing stronger, as to make it a question
+afterwards, whether it might not have been better for them had they
+never come here at all?
+
+Thus far I have been speaking of what are called the advantages of this
+place in our common language. That argument, which Butler has so nobly
+handled, in one of the greatest works in our language, the resemblance,
+namely, between the course of things earthly and that of things
+spiritual, is one which we should never fail to notice. We can discern
+the type, as it were, of the highest truth of our Lord's sayings in the
+experience of our common life in worldly things. When he tells us,
+speaking of things spiritual, that "many are called, but few are
+chosen;" that "whoso hath, to him shall be given; but from him that hath
+not shall be taken away even that which he hath,"--although the highest
+truth contained in these words be yet, in part, matter of faith, for we
+have not yet seen the end of God's dealings with us: yet what we do see,
+the evident truth of the words, that is, in respect to God's dealings
+with us in the course of his earthly providence, may reasonably assure
+us of their truth no less in respect to those dealings of God which as
+yet are future. I began, therefore, with reminding you of the truth of
+the words of the text with regard to worldly advantages; that even here,
+on this small scale, the general law holds good; that more things are
+provided for us than we will consent to use; that, in short, "many are
+called, but few are chosen."
+
+But it were ill done to limit our view to this: we are called to much
+more than worldly advantages; and what if here, too, we add one more
+example to confirm our Lord's words, that "many are called, but few
+chosen?" Now here, as I said, it is very true that God's choice is as
+yet not a matter of sight or of certainty to us; we cannot yet say of
+ourselves, or of any other set of living men, that "few are chosen." But
+though the full truth is not yet revealed, still, as there is a type of
+it in our worldly experience, so there is also a higher type, an
+earnest, of it in our spiritual experience: there is a sense, and that a
+very true and a very important one, in which we can say already, say
+now, actually, in the life that now is; say, even in the early stage of
+it, that some are, and some are not, "chosen."
+
+We have all been called, in a Christian sense, inasmuch as we have been
+all introduced into Christ's church by Baptism; and a very large
+proportion of us have been called again, many of us not very long since,
+at our Confirmation. We have been thus called to enter into Christ's
+kingdom: we have been called to lead a life of holiness and happiness
+from this time forth even for ever. Nothing can be stronger than the
+language in which the Scripture speaks of the nature of our high
+calling: "All things," says St. Paul to the Corinthians, "all things are
+yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Peter, or the world, or life, or
+death, or things present, or things to come, all are yours; and ye are
+Christ's, and Christ is God's." Now, if this be the prize to which we
+are called, who are they who are also chosen to it? In the first and
+most complete sense, no doubt, those who have entered into their rest;
+who are in no more danger, however slight; with whom the struggle is
+altogether past, and the victory securely won. These are entered within
+the veil, whither we can as yet penetrate only in hope. But hope, in
+its highest degree, differs little from assurance; and even, as we
+descend lower and lower, still, where hope is clearly predominant, there
+is, if not assurance, yet a great encouragement; and the Scripture,
+which delights to carry encouragement to the highest pitch to those who
+are following God, allows of our saying of even these that they are
+God's chosen. It gives them, as it were, the title beforehand, to make
+them feel how doubly miserable it must be not only not to obtain it, but
+to forfeit it after it had been already ours. So then, there are senses
+in which we may say that some are chosen now; although, strictly
+speaking, the term can by us be applied, in its full sense, to those
+only who are passed beyond the reach of evil.
+
+Those, then, we may call chosen, who, having heard their call, have
+turned to obey it, and have gone on following it. Those we may call
+chosen,--I do not say chosen irrevocably, but chosen now; chosen so that
+we may be very thankful to God on their behalf, and they thankful for
+themselves,--who, since their Confirmation, or since a period more
+remote, have kept God before their face, and tried to do His will. Those
+are, in the same way, chosen, who having found in themselves the sin
+which did most easily beset them, have struggled with it, and wholly, or
+in a great measure, have overcome it. Thus, they are chosen, who, having
+lived either in the frequent practice of selfish, extravagance, or of
+falsehood, or of idleness, or of excess in eating and drinking, have
+turned away from these things, and, for Christ's sake, have renounced
+them. They are chosen, I think, in yet a higher sense, who, having found
+their besetting sin to be, not so much any one particular fault, as a
+general ungodly carelessness, a lightness which for ever hindered them
+from serving God, have struggled with this most fatal enemy; and, even
+in youth, and health, and happiness, have learnt what it is to be
+sober-minded, what it is to think. Now, such as these have, in a manner,
+entered into their inheritance; they are not merely called, but chosen.
+God and spiritual things are not mere names to them, they are a reality.
+Such persons have tasted of the promises; they have known the
+pleasure--and what pleasure is comparable to it?--of feeling the bonds
+of evil passion or evil habit unwound from about their spirit; they have
+learnt what is that glorious liberty of being able to abstain from the
+things which we condemn, to do the things which we approve. They have
+felt true sense of power succeed to that of weakness. It is a delightful
+thing, after a long illness, after long helplessness, when our legs have
+been unable to support our weight, when our arms could lift nothing, our
+hands grasp nothing, when it was an effort to raise our head from the
+pillow, and it tired us even to speak in a whisper,--it is a delightful
+thing to feel every member restored to its proper strength; to find that
+exercise of limb, of voice, of body, which had been so long a pain,
+become now a source of perpetual pleasure. This is delightful; it pays
+for many an hour of previous weakness. But it is infinitely more
+delightful to feel the change from weakness to strength in our souls; to
+feel the languor of selfishness changed for the vigour of benevolence;
+to feel thought, hope, faith, love, which before were lying, as it were,
+in helplessness, now bounding in vigorous activity; to find the soul,
+which had been so long stretched as upon the sick bed of this earth, now
+able to stand upright, and looking and moving steadily towards heaven.
+
+These are chosen; and they to whom this description does in no degree
+apply, they are not chosen. They are not chosen in any sense, they are
+called only. And, now, what is the proportion between the one and the
+other; are there as many chosen as there have been many called? Or do
+Christ's words apply in our case no less than in others; that though
+they who are called are many, yet they who are chosen are few?
+
+This I dare not answer; there is a good as well as an evil which is
+unseen to the world at large, unseen even by all but those who watch us
+most nearly and most narrowly. All we can say is, that there are too
+many, who we must fear are not chosen; there are too few, of whom we can
+feel sure that they are. Yet hope is a wiser feeling than its opposite;
+it were as wrong as it would be miserable to abandon it. How gladly
+would we hope the best things of all those whom we saw this morning at
+Christ's holy table! How gladly would we believe of all such, that they
+were more than called merely; that they had listened to the call: that
+they had obeyed it; that they had already gained some Christian
+victories; that they were, in some sense, not called only, but chosen.
+But this we may say; that hope which we so long to entertain, that hope
+too happy to be at once indulged in, you may authorize us to feel it;
+you may convert it into confidence. Do you ask how? By going on steadily
+in good, by advancing from good to better, by not letting impressions
+fade with time. Now, with many of you, your confirmation is little more
+than three months distant; when we next meet at Christ's table, it will
+have passed by nearly half-a-year. It may be, that, in that added
+interval, it will have lost much of its force; that, from various
+causes, evil may have abounded in you more than good; that then shame,
+or a willing surrender of yourselves to carelessness, will keep away
+from Christ's Communion, many who have this day joined in it. But, if
+this were not to be so; if those, whom we have seen with joy this day
+communicating with us in the pledges of Christian fellowship, should
+continue to do so steadily; if, in the meantime, traits shall appear in
+you in other things that our hope was well founded; if the hatred of
+evil and the love of good were to be clearly manifest in you; if by
+signs not to be mistaken by those who watch earnestly for them, we might
+be assured that your part was taken, that you were striving with us in
+that service of our common Master, in which we would fain live and die;
+if evil was clearly lessened among us--not laughed at, but discouraged
+and put down; if instead of those turning away, who have now been with
+us at Christ's table, others, who have now turned away, should then be
+added to the number; then we should say, not doubtingly, that you were
+chosen: that you had tasted of the good things of Christ; that the good
+work of God was clearly begun in you. We might not, indeed, be without
+care, either for you or for ourselves: God forbid, that, in that sense,
+any of us should deem that we were chosen, until the grave has put us
+beyond temptation. But how happy were it to think of you as Christ's
+chosen, in that sense which should be a constant encouragement to us
+all: to think of you as going on towards God; to think of you as living
+to him daily; to think of you as on his side against all his enemies; to
+think of you as led by his Spirit, as living members of his holy and
+glorious Church,--militant now, in heaven triumphant!
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XV.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LUKE xi. 25.
+
+_When he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished_.
+
+
+JOHN v. 42.
+
+_I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you_.
+
+
+These passages, of which the first is taken from the gospel of this
+morning's service, the other from the second lesson, differ in words,
+but their meaning is very nearly the same. The house which was empty,
+swept and garnished, was especially one empty of the love of God.
+Whatever evil there may not have been in it; whatever good there may
+have been in those of whom Christ spoke in the second passage: yet it
+and they agreed in this; one thing they had not, which alone was worth,
+all the rest besides; they had not the love of God.
+
+And so it is still; many are the faults which we have not; many are the
+good qualities which we have; but the life is wanting. What is so rare
+as to find one who is not indifferent to God? What so rare, even rarer
+than the other, as to find one who actually loves him?
+
+Therefore it is that those who go in at the broad gate of destruction
+are many, and those who go in at the narrow gate of life are few. For
+destruction and life are but other terms for indifference to God on the
+one hand, and love to him on the other. All who are indifferent to him,
+die; a painless death of mere extinction, if, like the brute creation,
+they have never been made capable of loving him; or a living death of
+perpetual misery, if, like evil spirits and evil men, they might have
+loved him and would not. And so all who love him, live a life, from
+first to last, without sin and sorrow, if, like the holy angels, they
+have loved him always; a life partaking at first of death, but
+brightening more and more unto the perfect day, if, like Christians,
+they were born in sin, but had been redeemed and sanctified to
+righteousness.
+
+Whoever has watched human character, whether in the young or the old,
+must be well aware of the truth of this: he will know that the value of
+any character is in proportion to the existence or to the absence of
+this feeling, or rather, I should say, this principle. An exception may,
+perhaps, be made for a small, a very small number of fanatics; an
+apparent exception likewise exists in the case of many who seem to be
+religious, but who really are not so. The few exceptions of the former
+case are so very few, that we need not now stop to consider them, nor to
+inquire how far even these would be exceptions if we could read the
+heart as God reads it. The seeming exceptions being cases either of
+hypocrisy, or of very common self-deceit, we need not regard either; for
+they are, of course, no real objection to the truth of the general
+statement. It remains true, then, generally, that the value of any
+character is in proportion to the existence, or to the absence, in it of
+the love of God.
+
+But is there not another exception to be made for the case of children,
+and of very young persons? Are they capable of loving God? and are not
+their earthly relations, their parents especially, put to them, as it
+were, in the place of God, as objects of trust, of love, of honour, of
+obedience, till their minds can open to comprehend the love of their
+Father who is in heaven? And does not the Scripture itself, in the few
+places in which it seems directly to address children, content itself
+with directing them to obey and honour their parents? Some notions of
+this sort are allowed, I believe, to serve sometimes as an excuse, when
+young persons are blamed for being utterly wanting in a sense of duty
+to God.
+
+The passages which direct children to obey their parents, are of the
+same kind with those, directing slaves to obey their masters, and
+masters to be kind to their slaves; like those, also, which John the
+Baptist addressed to the soldiers and publicans: in none of all which
+there is any command to love God, but merely a command to fulfil that
+particular duty which most arose out of the particular relation, or
+calling of the persons addressed. In fact, when parents are addressed,
+they are directed only to do their duties to their children, just as
+children are directed to do theirs to their parents; in both cases
+alike, the common duty of parents and children to God is not dwelt upon,
+because that is a duty which does not belong to them as parents, or as
+children, but as human beings; and as such, it belongs to all alike. In
+fact, the very language of St. Paul's command to children implies this;
+for he says, "Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is
+right:" right, that is, in the sight of God: so that the very reason for
+which children are to discharge their earthly duties is, because that
+earthly duty is commanded by, or involved in, their heavenly duty; if
+they do not do it, they will not please God. But it is manifest that, in
+this respect, there is for all of us one only law, so soon as we are
+able to understand it. The moment that a child becomes capable of
+understanding anything about God and Christ,--and how early that is,
+every parent can testify,--that moment the duty to love God and Christ
+begins. It were absurd to say, that this duty has not begun at the age
+of boyhood. A boy is able to understand the force of religious motives,
+as well as he can that of earthly motives: he cannot understand either,
+perhaps, so well as he will hereafter; but he understands both enough,
+for the purposes of his salvation; enough, to condemn him before God, if
+he neglects them; enough to make him derive the greatest benefit from
+faithfully observing them.
+
+And what can have been the purpose with which the only particular of our
+Lord's early life has been handed down to us, if it were not to direct
+our attention to this special truth, that our youth, no less than our
+riper age, belongs to God? "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's
+business?" were words spoken by our Lord when he was no more than twelve
+years old. At twelve years old, he thought of preparing himself for the
+duties of his after-life; and of preparing himself for them, because
+they were God's will. He was to be about his Father's business. This is
+Christ's example for the young; this, and scarcely anything more than
+this, is recorded of his early years. Those are not like Christ who, at
+that same age, or even older, never think at all of the business of
+their future lives, still less would think of it, not as the means of
+their own maintenance or advancement, but as the duty which they owe
+to God.
+
+Such as these are the very persons whose hearts are like the house in
+the parable, empty, swept, and garnished. The house so described in the
+parable is one out of which an evil spirit has just departed. In case of
+the young, the evil spirit in this sense, that is, as representing some
+one particular favourite sin, may perhaps have never entered it. That
+empty, swept, and garnished house, how like is it to what I have seen,
+to what I am seeing so continually, when a boy comes here with much
+still remaining of the innocence of childhood! Evil spirit, in the sense
+of any one particular vice, there is none to be found in that heart, nor
+has there been any ever. It is empty, swept, and garnished: there is the
+absence of evil; there are the various faculties, the furniture, as they
+may be called, of the house of our spirits, which the spirit uses either
+for evil or for good. There is innocence, then; there is, also, the
+promise of power. God hath richly endowed the earthly house of our
+tabernacle: various and wonderful is the furniture of body and mind with
+which it is supplied. How can we help admiring that open and cheerful
+brow which, as yet, no care or sin has furrowed; those light and active
+limbs, full of health and vigour; the eye so quick; the ear so undulled;
+the memory so ready; the young curiosity so eager to take in new
+knowledge; the young feelings, not yet spoiled by over-excitement, ready
+to admire, ready to love? There is the house, the house of God's
+building, the house which must abide for ever; but where is the spirit
+to inhabit it? Evil spirit there is none: is it, then, possessed by the
+Spirit of God? Has the fire from heaven as yet descended upon that
+house,--the living sign of God's presence, which alone can convert the
+house of perishable clay into the everlasting temple?
+
+Can that blessed Spirit of God be indeed there, and yet no sign of his
+presence be manifest? It may be so, or to speak more truly, it might
+have been supposed to be so, if God's word had not declared the
+contrary. What God's secret workings are; in how many ways, to us
+inscrutable, he may pervade all nature; in how many cases he may be near
+us, and we know it not; may, perhaps, be amongst those real mysteries,
+those truths revealed to none, nor to be revealed; those yet uncleared
+forests, so to speak, of the world of nature, into which the light of
+grace has not been permitted to penetrate. But all such mysteries are to
+us as if they did not exist at all: we have nothing to do with them. God
+has told us nothing of his unseen and undiscernible presence; when and
+where he is so present, he is to us as if he were not present at all.
+God was in the wilderness of Horeb before the bush was kindled; but he
+was not there for Moses. God, in some sense discernible, it may be, to
+other beings, may be in that house which, to us is empty; but God, our
+own God, the Holy Spirit, into whose service we were baptized, where he
+is, the house is not empty to us, but full of light. Invisible in
+himself, the signs of his presence are most visible: where no works, no
+fruits of the Holy Spirit are to be discerned, there, according to our
+Lord's express declaration, there the Holy Spirit is not.
+
+But the light which declares his presence may indeed be a little spark;
+just to be seen, and no more. It may show that he has not abandoned all
+his right to the house of our tabernacle as yet; that he would desire to
+possess us fully. Such a little spark, such an evidence of the Holy
+Spirit's presence, is to be found in the outward profession of
+Christianity. They who call Jesus Lord, do it by the Holy Ghost; and,
+therefore, it is quite true in this sense, that in every baptized
+Christian, who has not utterly apostatized, there is that faint sign of
+the Holy Spirit's still having a claim upon him; he is not yet utterly
+cast off. This is true; but it is not to our present purpose; such a
+feeble sign is a sign of God's yet unwearied mercy, but no sign of our
+salvation. The presence with which the parable is concerned, is a far
+more effectual presence than this; the house in which there is no more
+than such a faint sign of a divine inhabitant, is, in the language of
+the parable, empty. To no purpose of our salvation is the Spirit of God
+present in the house, when the light of his presence does not flash
+forth from every part of it, when it is not manifest, not only that he
+has not quite cast it off to go to ruin, but that he has been pleased to
+make it his temple.
+
+In this sense, therefore, in this practical, scriptural, Christian
+sense, those many young minds, which we have seen so often, may truly be
+called empty. But will they remain so long? How often have I seen the
+early innocence of boyhood overcast; the natural simplicity of boyhood,
+its open truth, its confident affection, its honest shame, perverted,
+blunted, hardened! How often have I seen the seven evil spirits enter in
+and dwell there,--I know not, and never may know, whether to be cast out
+again, or to abide for ever. But I have seen them enter, and, whilst the
+person was yet within my view, I have not seen them depart. And why have
+they entered; why have they marred that which was so beautiful? For one
+only reason,--because the house was empty, because the Spirit of God was
+not there: there was no love of God, no thought of God. Mere innocence
+taints and spoils as surely before the influence of the world, as true
+principle flourishes in spite of it, and strengthens. This, too, I have
+seen, not once only: I have seen the innocence of early boyhood
+sanctified by something better than innocence, which gave a promise of
+abiding. I have seen, in other words, that the house was not empty; that
+the Spirit of God was there. I have watched the effect of those
+influences, which you know so well: the second half-year came, a period
+when mere innocence is sure to be worn away, greatly tainted, if not
+utterly gone; but still, in the cases which I am now alluding to, the
+promise of good was not less, but greater, there was a more tried, and,
+therefore, a stronger goodness. I have watched this, too, till it passed
+on, out of my sight. I never saw the blessed Spirit of God depart from
+the house which he had chosen: I well believe that he abides in it
+still, and will abide in it even to the day of Jesus Christ.
+
+This I have seen, and this I shall continue to see; for still the great
+work of evil and of good is going on; still the house, at first empty,
+is possessed by the spirits of evil, or by the Spirit of God. And if we
+do not see the signs of the Spirit of God, we are but too sure that the
+evil spirit is there. We know him by the manifold signs of folly,
+coarseness, carelessness; even when we see not, as yet, his worse fruits
+of falsehood and profligacy. We know him by the sign of an increased,
+and increasing selfishness, the everlasting cry of the thousand passions
+of our nature, all for ever calling out, "Give, give;" all for ever
+impatient, complaining, when their gratification is withheld, when the
+call of duty is set before them. We know him by pride and
+self-importance, as if nothing was so great as self, as if our own
+opinions, judgment, feelings were to be consulted in all things. We know
+him by the deep ungodliness which he occasions--no thought of God, much
+less any love of him; living utterly without him in the world, or, at
+least, whilst health and prosperity continue. These are the fatal signs
+which show that the house is no longer empty; that the evil spirits have
+entered in, and dwell there, to make it theirs, as too often happens,
+for time and for eternity.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XVI.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MATHEW xi. 10.
+
+_I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way before
+thee_.
+
+
+If it was part of God's dispensation, that there should be one to
+prepare the way before Christ's first coming, it may be expected much
+more, that there should be some to prepare the way before his second.
+And so it is expressed in the collect for the third Sunday in Advent: "O
+Lord Jesus Christ, who at thy first coming didst send thy messenger to
+prepare thy way before thee; grant that the ministers and stewards of
+thy mysteries may likewise so prepare and make ready thy way, by turning
+the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, that at thy
+second coming to judge the world we may be found an acceptable people in
+thy sight, who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit,
+ever one God, world without end. Amen." NOW, in what does this preparing
+for him consist; and what is its object? The Scripture will inform us as
+to both. The object is, "Lest he come and smite the earth with a curse;"
+lest, when he shall come, his coming, which should be our greatest joy
+and happiness, should be our everlasting destruction; for there can
+abide before him nothing that is evil. This is the object of preparing
+for Christ's coming. Next, in what does the preparation consist? It
+consists in teaching men to live above the common notions of their age
+and country; to raise their standard higher; to live after what is right
+in God's judgment, which often casts away, as faulty and bad, what men
+were accustomed to think good. And as the people of Israel, although
+they had God's revelation among them, had yet let their standard of good
+and evil become low, even so it has been in the Christian Israel. We
+have God's will in our hands, yet our judgments are not formed upon it;
+and, therefore, they who would prepare us for Christ's coming, must set
+before us a commandment which is new, although old: in one sense old, in
+every generation, inasmuch as it is the same which we had from the
+beginning; in another sense, in every generation more new, inasmuch, as
+the habits opposed to it have become the more confirmed; and the longer
+the night has lasted, the more strange to our eyes is the burst of the
+returning light.
+
+But when we thus speak of the common notions of our age and country
+being deficient, and thus, in effect, commend notions which would be
+singular, do we not hold a language inconsistent with our common
+language and practice? Do we not commonly regard singularity as a fault,
+and attach a considerable authority to the consent of men in general?
+Nay, do we not often appeal to this consent as to a proof which a sane
+mind must admit as decisive? Even in speaking of good and evil, have not
+the very words gained their present sense because the common consent of
+mankind has agreed to combine notions of self-satisfaction, of honour,
+and of love, with what we call good, and the contrary with what we
+call evil?
+
+A short time may, perhaps, not be misapplied in endeavouring to explain
+this matter; in showing where, and for what reasons, the common opinion
+of our society is to be followed, where it is to be suspected, and
+where it is absolutely to be shunned or trampled under foot, as clearly
+and certainly evil.
+
+I must begin with little things, in order to show the whole question
+plainly. Take those tastes in us which most resemble the instincts of a
+brute; and you will find that in these, as with instinct, common consent
+becomes a sure rule. When I speak of those tastes which most resemble
+instincts, I mean those in which nature, doing most for us at first,
+leaves least for us to learn for ourselves. This seems the character of
+instinct: it is far more complete than reason in its first stage, but it
+admits of no after improvement; the brute in the thousandth generation
+is no way advanced beyond the brute in the first. Of our tastes, even of
+those belonging to our bodily senses, that which belongs to what are
+called particularly our organs of taste is the one most resembling an
+instinct: we have less to do for its improvement than in any other
+instance. Men being here, then, upon an equality, with a faculty given
+to all by nature, and improved particularly by none, those who differ
+from the majority are likely to differ not from excellence but from
+defect: not because they have a more advanced reason, but because they
+have a less healthy instinct, than their neighbours. Thus, in those
+matters which relate to the sense of taste--I am obliged to take this
+almost trivial instance, because it so well illustrates the principle of
+the whole question--we hold the consent of men in general to be a good
+rule. If any one were to choose to feed upon what this common taste had
+pronounced to be disgusting, we should not hesitate to say that such an
+appetite was diseased and monstrous.
+
+Now, let us take our senses of sight and hearing, and we shall find that
+just in the proportion in which these less resemble instincts than the
+sense of taste, so is common consent a less certain rule. Up to a
+certain point they are instincts: there are certain sounds which, I
+suppose, are naturally disagreeable to the ear; while, on the other
+hand, bright and rich colours are, perhaps, naturally attractive to the
+eye. But, then, sight and hearing are so connected with our minds that
+they are susceptible of very great cultivation, and thus differ greatly
+from instincts. As the mind opens, outward sights and sounds become
+connected with a great number of associations, and thus we learn to
+think the one or the other beautiful, for reasons which really depend
+very much on the range of our own ideas. Consider, for a moment, the
+beautiful in architecture. If the model of the leaning tower of Pisa
+were generally adopted in our public buildings, all men's common sense
+would cry out against it as a deformity, because a leaning wall would
+convey to every mind the notion of insecurity, and every body would feel
+that it was unpleasant to see a building look exactly as if it were
+going to fall down. Now, what I have called common sense is, in a
+manner, the instinct of our reason: it is that uniform level of reason
+which all sane persons reach to, and the wisest in matters within its
+province do not surpass. But go beyond this, and architecture is no
+longer a matter of mere common sense, but of science, and of cultivated
+taste. Here the standard of beauty is not fixed by common consent; but,
+in the first instance, devised or discovered by the few: and, so far as
+it is received by the many, received by them on the authority of the
+few, and sanctioned, so to speak, not so much from real sympathy and
+understanding, as from a reasonable trust and deference to those who are
+believed the best judges.
+
+Here, then, we suppose that the common judgment is right; but we
+perceive a difference between this case and the one mentioned before,
+inasmuch as in the first instance the right judgment of the mass of
+mankind is their own; in the second instance, they have adopted it out
+of deference to others. Not only, then, will men's common judgment be
+right in matters of instinct and of common sense, but also in higher
+matters, where, although they could not have discovered what was right,
+yet they were perfectly willing to adopt it, when discovered by others.
+And this opens a very wide field. For in all matters which come under
+the dominion of fashion, where the avowed object is the convenience or
+gratification of society, men listen to those who profess to teach them
+with almost an excess of docility: they will adopt sometimes fashions
+which are not convenient. But yet, as men can tell well enough by
+experience whether they do find a thing convenient and agreeable or not,
+so it is most likely that fashions which continue long and generally
+prevalent are founded upon sound principles; because else men, being
+well capable of knowing what convenience is, and being also well
+disposed to follow it, would neither have been very long or very
+generally mistaken in this matter; nor would have acquiesced in their
+mistake contentedly.
+
+We do perfectly right, then, to regard the common opinion as a rule in
+all points of dress, in our houses and furniture, in those lighter
+usages of society which come under the denomination of manners, as
+distinguished from morals. In all these, if the mass of mankind could
+not find out what would best suit them, yet they are quite ready to
+adopt it when it is found out; and so they equally arrive at truth. But
+take away this readiness, and the whole case is altered. If there be any
+point in which men are not ready to adopt what is best for them; if they
+are either indifferent, or still more, if they are averse to it; if
+they thus have neither the power of discovering it for themselves, nor
+the will to avail themselves of it, when discovered for them; then it is
+clear that, in such a point, the common judgment will be of no value,
+nay, there will even be a presumption that it is wrong.
+
+Now as the common consent of mankind was most sure in matters where
+their sense most resembled instinct, that is, where nature had done most
+for them, and left them least to do for themselves; as here, therefore,
+they who are sound are the great majority, and the exceptions are no
+better than disease; so if there be any part of us which is the direct
+opposite to instinct, a part in which nature has done next to nothing
+for us, and all is to be done by ourselves; then, here the common
+consent of mankind will be of the least value; here the majority will be
+helpless and worthless; and they who are happy enough to be exceptions
+to this majority, will be no other than Christ's redeemed.
+
+Now, again, if this deficient part of our nature could be seen purely
+distinct from every other; if it alone dictated our language, and
+inspired our actions, then it would follow, that language which must
+ever be fixed by the majority, would be, in fact, the language of the
+world of infinite evil; and our actions those of mere devils. Then,
+whoever of us would be saved, must needs begin by forswearing,
+altogether, both the language and the actions of his fellow-men. But
+this is not so; in almost every instance this deficient part of our
+nature acts along with others that are not so corrupted; it mars their
+work, undoubtedly; it often confuses and perverts our language; it
+always taints our actions; but it does not wholly usurp either the one
+or the other; and thus, by God's blessing, man's language yet affords a
+high witness to divine truth, and even men's judgments and actions
+testify, though with infinite imperfection, to the existence and
+excellence of goodness.
+
+And this it is which forms one of the great perplexities of life; for as
+there is enough of what is right in men's judgments and conduct to
+forbid us from saying, that we must take the very rule of contraries,
+and think and do just the opposite to the opinions and practice of men
+in general; so, on the other hand, there is always so much wrong in
+them, that we may never dare to follow them as a standard, but shall
+find, that if trusted to as such, they will inevitably betray us. So
+that in points of greater moment than mere manners and fashion, it will
+ever be true, that if we would be prepared for Christ's coming, we must
+rise to a far higher standard than that of society in general; that in
+the greatest concerns of human life, the practice of the majority,
+though always containing something of good, is yet in its prevailing
+character, as regards God, so evil, that they who are content to follow
+it cannot be saved.
+
+This is the explanation of the apparent difficulty in the general, and
+thus, while acknowledging that there are points in which men, by common
+consent, make out what is best; and others in which, although they do
+not make it out, nor at first appreciate it, yet they are very willing
+to adopt it upon trust, and so come by experience to value it; while,
+therefore, there are a great many things in which singularity is either
+a disease or a foolishness; so again there are other points in which men
+in general have not the power to make out what is good, nor yet the
+docility to adopt it; and, therefore, in these points, which relate to
+the great matters of life, singularity is wisdom and salvation, and he
+who does as others do, perishes. That is what is called the corruption
+of human nature. I shall attempt, on another occasion, to go into some
+further details, and show, by common examples, how strangely our
+judgment and practice contain, with much that is right, just that one
+taint or defect which, as a whole, spoils them. And this one defect will
+be found to be, as the Scripture declares, a defect in our sense of our
+relation towards God.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XVII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+1 CORINTHIANS ii. 12.
+
+_We have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is
+of God_.
+
+
+And, therefore, he goes on to say, our language is different from that
+of others, and not always understood by them; the natural man receiveth
+not the things of God, for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he
+know them, because they are spiritually discerned. That is, they are
+discerned only by a faculty which he has not, namely, by the Spirit;
+and, therefore, as beings devoid of reason cannot understand the truths
+of science, or of man's wisdom, for they are without the faculty which
+can discern them; so beings devoid of God's Spirit cannot understand the
+truths of God.
+
+Now, in order to turn this passage to our profit, we need not consider
+those who are wholly without God's Spirit, or inquire whether, indeed,
+there be any such; it is not that there are two broadly marked divisions
+of all men, those who have not the Spirit of God at all, and those who
+have it abundantly: if it were so, the separation of the great day of
+judgment would be begun already, nor would it require, in order to
+effect it rightly, the wisdom of Him who trieth the very hearts and
+reins. No doubt there will be at last but two divisions of us all, the
+saved and the lost; but now the divisions are infinite; so much so that
+the great body of us offer much matter for hope as well as for fear. We
+cannot say, that they are without the Spirit of God; yet neither can we
+say that they are led by the Spirit, so as to be God's true servants. We
+cannot say, that the things of God's are absolutely to them as
+foolishness; yet certainly, we cannot say either, that they are to them
+as the divinest wisdom.
+
+And here we return to the subject on which I was speaking last Sunday.
+It is because we are not led by the Spirit of God, but have within us
+much of the spirit of the world, that our judgments of right and wrong
+are so faulty; and that this faultiness is particularly seen in our
+faint sense of our relations to God. These relations seem continually
+foolishness to us, because they are spiritually discerned, and we have
+so little of God's Spirit to enable us to discern them. And our
+blindness here affects our whole souls; we have, in consequence of it, a
+much fainter perception even of those truths which reason can discern by
+herself; or, at any rate, if we do not doubt them, they have over us
+much less influence.
+
+Now we will first see how much of natural reason, and even of the Spirit
+of God, does exist in our common judgments; for it is fair to see and to
+allow what there is of right in our language and sentiments, as well as
+to note what is wrong. Reason influences thus much, that we not only
+commend good generally, and blame evil; but even, in particular cases,
+we commend, I think, each separate virtue, and we blame each separate
+vice. I never heard of justice, truth, kindness, self-denial, &c., being
+other than approved of in themselves; or injustice, falsehood, malice,
+and selfishness being other than condemned. And the Spirit of God
+influences at least thus much, that we shrink from direct blasphemy and
+profaneness; we cannot but respect those whom we believe to be living
+sincerely in the fear of God; and further, if we thought our death
+near, we should desire to hear of God, and to depart from this life
+under his favour. No doubt, all such feelings, so far as they go, are
+the work of God's Spirit: whatever is good and right in our minds
+towards God, that proceeds not from the spirit of the world, but from
+the Spirit of God.
+
+Where, then, is the great defect which yet continually makes our
+practical judgments quite wrong; which makes us, in fact, so often
+countenance and support evil, and discountenance and discourage good?
+First, it is owing to the spirit of carelessness. One of the most
+emphatic terms by which a good man is expressed in the language of the
+Greek philosophers, is that of [Greek: opdouiaos], "one who is in
+earnest." To be in earnest is, indeed, with, most of us, the same as to
+be good; it is not that we love evil, but that we are indifferent both
+to it and to good. Now, many of us are very seldom in earnest. By this I
+mean, that the highest part of our minds, and that which judges of the
+highest things, is generally slumbering or but half awake. We may go
+through, a very busy day, and yet not be, in this true sense, in earnest
+at all; our best faculties may, as it were, be all the while sleeping or
+playing. It is notorious how much this is so in the common intercourse
+of society in the world. Light anecdotes; playful remarks; discussions,
+it may be, about the affairs of the neighbourhood, or, in some
+companies, on questions of science or party politics; all these may be
+often heard; but we may talk on all these brilliantly and well, and yet
+our best nature may not once be called to exert itself. So again, in
+mere routine business, it is the same: the body may toil; the pen move
+swiftly; the thoughts act in the particular matter before them
+vigorously; and yet we our proper selves, beings understanding and
+choosing between good and evil, have never bestirred ourselves at all.
+It has been but a skirmishing at the outposts; not a sword had been
+drawn in the main battle. Take younger persons, and the same thing is
+the case even more palpably. Here there is less of business in the
+common sense of the term; the mind is almost always unbraced and
+resting. We pass through the good and evil of our daily life, and our
+proper self scarcely ever is aroused to notice either the one or
+the other.
+
+But the worst of it is, that this carelessness is not altogether
+accidental: it is a carelessness which we do not wish to break. So long
+as it lasts, we manage to get the activity and interest of life, without
+a sense of its responsibility. We like exceedingly to lay the reins, as
+it were, upon the neck of our inclinations, to go where they take us,
+and to ask no questions whether we are in the right road or no.
+Inclination is never slumbering: this gives us excitement enough to save
+us from weariness, without the effort of awakening our conscience too.
+Therefore society, expressing in its rules the feelings of its
+individual members, prescribes exactly such a style of conversation as
+may keep in exercise all other parts of our nature except that one which
+should be sovereign of all, and whose exercise is employed on
+things eternal.
+
+Not being, then, properly in earnest,--that is, our conscience and our
+choice of moral good and evil being in a state of repose,--our language
+is happily contrived so as that it shall contain nothing to startle our
+sleeping conscience, if her ears catch any of its sounds. We still
+commend good and dispraise evil, both in the general and in the
+particular. But as good and evil are mixed in every man, and in various
+proportions, he who commends, the little good of a bad man, saying
+nothing of his evil,--or he who condemns the little evil of a good man,
+saying nothing of his good,--leads us evidently to a false practical
+conclusion; he leads us to like the bad man and to dislike the good.
+Again, the lesser good becomes an evil if it keeps out a greater good;
+and, in the same way, the lesser evil becomes a good. If we have no
+thought of comparing good things together, if our sovereign nature be
+asleep, then we shall most estimate the good to which we are most
+inclined; and where we find this we shall praise it, not observing that
+it is taking up the place of a greater good which the case requires,
+and, therefore, that it is in fact an evil. So that our moral judgments
+may lead practically to great evil: we may join with bad men and despise
+good; we may approve of qualities which, are, in fact, ruining a man;
+and despise others which, in the particular case, are virtues; without
+ever in plain words condemning virtue or approving vice.
+
+But, farther, this habit of never being in earnest greatly lowers the
+strength of our feelings even towards the good which we praise and
+towards the evil which we condemn. It was an admirable definition of
+that which excites laughter, that it was that which is out of rule, that
+which is amiss, that which is unsightly, (these three ideas, and other
+similar ones, are alike contained in the single Greek word [Greek:
+aischron],) provided that it was unaccompanied by pain. This definition
+accounts for the otherwise extraordinary fact, that there is something
+in moral evil which, in some instances, affects the mind ludicrously.
+That is to say, if moral evil affects us with no pain; if we see in it
+nothing, so to speak, but its irregularity, its strange contrast with
+what is beautiful, its jarring with the harmony of the system around us;
+then it does acquire that character which is well defined as being
+ridiculous. Thus it is notorious that trifling follies, and even gross
+vices, are often so represented in works of fiction as to be
+exceedingly ludicrous. It is enough, as an instance of what I mean, to
+name the vice of drunkenness. Get rid for the moment of the notions of
+vice or sin which, accompany it, and which give moral pain; get rid also
+of those points in it which awaken physical disgust; retain merely the
+notion of the incoherent language, and the strange capricious gait of
+intoxication; and we have then an image merely ridiculous, as much, so
+as the rambling talk and absurd gestures of the old buffoons.
+
+Here, then, we have the secret of vice becoming laughable; and of things
+which are really wicked, disgusting, hateful, being expressed by names
+purely ludicrous. Where no great physical pain or distress is occasioned
+by what is evil, our sense of its ludicrousness will be exactly in
+proportion to the faintness of our sense of moral evil; or, in other
+words, to our want of being in earnest. The evil that does not seriously
+pain or inconvenience man, is very apt to be regarded with feelings
+approaching to laughter, if we have no sense of pain at the notion of
+its being an offence against God.
+
+Thus, then, we have seen how, from the want of being in earnest, from
+the habitual slumber of conscience, or that sovereign part of us which
+looks upon our whole state with reference to its highest interests, and
+passes judgment upon all our actions,--how, from the practical absence
+of these, we may get to follow evil persons, and be indifferent to the
+good; to admire qualities which, from usurping the place of better ones,
+are actually ruinous; and, finally, to regard all common evil not so
+much with deep abhorrence, as with a disposition to laugh at it. And
+thus the practical judgment and influence of the society around us may
+be fatally evil; while the society all the time shall contain, even in
+its very perversion, various elements of truth and of good.
+
+I have kept to general language, to general views, perhaps too much; but
+all the time my mind has been fixed on the particular application of
+this, which lies scarcely beneath the surface, but which I cannot well
+bear more fully to unveil. But whoever has attended to what I have been
+saying, will be able, I should trust, to make the application, for
+himself, to those points in our society which most need correction. He
+will be able to understand how it is that the influence of the place is
+not better, while it undoubtedly contains so much of good; how the
+public opinion of a Christian school may yet be, in many respects, very
+unchristian. If he has attended at all to what I have said about our so
+rarely being in earnest, he will see something of the mischief of some
+of those publications, of those books, of that tone of conversation,
+which, I suppose, are here, as elsewhere, in fashion. Utterly impossible
+is it to lay down a rule for others in such matters: to say this book is
+too light, or this is an excess of light reading, or this laugh was too
+unrestrained, or that tone of trifling too perpetual. But, in these
+things, we should all judge ourselves; and remember that you are so
+little under outward restraint, your choice of reading is so free, your
+intercourse with one another so wholly uncontrolled, that, enjoying thus
+the full liberty of more advanced years, you incur also their
+responsibility. There is, doubtless, an excess of light reading, both in
+kind and in quantity; there is such a thing as a tone of conversation
+and manner too entirely, and too frequently, trifling. And you must be
+quite aware that we are placed here for something else than to indulge
+such a temper as this. Cheerfulness and thoughtlessness have no
+necessary connexion; the lightest spirits, which are indeed one of the
+greatest of earthly blessings, often play around the most earnest
+thought and the tenderest affection, and with far more grace than when
+they are united with the shallowness and hardness of him who is, in the
+sight of God, a fool. It were a strange notion, that we could never be
+merry without intoxication, yet not stranger than to think that mirth is
+the companion only of folly or of sin. But, setting God in Christ before
+us, then the conscience is awake; then we are in earnest; then we
+measure things rightly; then we feel them strongly; then we love those
+that are good, and shun those that are evil; then we learn that sin is
+no matter of laughter, that it ill deserves to be clothed under a
+ludicrous name; for that thing which we laugh at, that which we so
+miscall, is indeed the cause of infinite evil; for that Christ died; for
+that there are some who die that death which lasts for ever.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XVIII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+GENESIS xxvii. 38.
+
+_And Esau said unto his father, Hast thou but one blessing, my father?
+Bless me, even me also, O my father_.
+
+
+MATTHEW xv. 27.
+
+_And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall
+from their master's table_.
+
+
+Of these two passages, the first, as we must all remember, is taken from
+the first lesson of this morning's service; the second is from the
+morning's gospel. Both speak the same language, and point out, I think,
+that particular view of the story of Jacob obtaining the blessing which
+is most capable of being turned to account; for, as to the conduct of
+Jacob and his mother, it is manifestly no more capable of affording us
+benefit, as a matter of example, than the conduct, in some respects
+similar, of the unjust steward in our Lord's parable. The example,
+indeed, is of the same kind as that. If the steward was so anxious about
+his future worldly welfare, and Jacob about the worldly welfare of his
+descendants, that they did not scruple to obtain their ends, the one by
+dishonesty, the other by falsehood, much more should we be anxious about
+the true welfare of ourselves and those belonging to us, which no such
+unworthy means can be required to gain. But the point of the story to
+which the text refers, and which is illustrated also by the words of
+the Syrophoenician woman, is one which very directly concerns us all,
+being no other than this,--what should be the effect upon our own minds
+of witnessing others possessed of greater advantages than ourselves,
+whether obtained by the immediate gift of God, through the course of his
+ordinary providence, or acquired directly by some unjust or unlawful act
+of those who are in possession of them?
+
+Now, it is evident that, as equality is not the rule either of nature or
+of human society, there must be many in every congregation who are so
+far in the condition of Esau and of the Syrophoenician woman, as to be
+inferior to others around them in some one or more advantages. The
+inferiority may consist in what are called worldly advantages, or in
+natural advantages, or in spiritual advantages, or in some or all of
+these united. And it is not to be doubted that the sense of this
+inferiority is a hard trial, both as respects our feelings towards God
+and towards men. It is a hard trial; but yet, no trial overtakes us but
+such as is common to man: and here, as in all other cases, God will,
+with the trial, also make a way for us to escape, that we may be able
+to bear it.
+
+Let us consider, then, some of the most common cases in which this
+inferiority exists amongst us. With regard to worldly advantages, the
+peculiar nature of this congregation makes it less necessary than it
+generally would be, to dwell upon inequality in these: in fact, speaking
+generally, we are a very unusual example of equality in these respects;
+the advantages of station and fortune are enjoyed not, literally, in an
+equal degree by all of us, but equally as compared with, the lot of the
+great mass of society; we all enjoy the necessaries, and most of the
+comforts of life. What differences there are would, probably, appear in
+instances seemingly trifling, if, indeed, any thing were really
+trifling by which the temper and feelings, and through them the
+principles, of any amongst us may be affected for good or for evil. It
+may possibly happen that, in the indulgences, or means of indulgence,
+given to you by your friends at home, there may be sometimes, such a
+difference as to excite discontent or jealousy. It may be, that some are
+apt to exult over others, by talking of the pleasures, or the liberty,
+which they enjoy; and which the friends of others, either from necessity
+or from a sense of duty, are obliged to withhold. If this be ever felt
+by any of you as a trial; if it gall your pride, as well as restrict
+your enjoyments; then remember, that here, even in this seemingly little
+thing, the inferiority of which you complain may be either increased
+ten-fold, or changed into a blessed superiority. Increased ten-fold,
+even as from him that hath not, shall be taken away even that which he
+hath, if by discontent, and evil passions towards God and man, you make
+yourselves a hundred times more inferior spiritually than you were in
+outward circumstances; but changed into a blessed superiority, if it be
+borne with meekness, and patience, and thankfulness, even as it was said
+of the Gentile centurion, that there had not been found faith equal to
+his, no, not in Israel.
+
+But turning from worldly advantages to those which are called natural,
+and the inequality here is at once as great as elsewhere. In all
+faculties of body and mind; in the vigour of the senses, of the limbs,
+of the general constitution; in the greater or less liability to disease
+generally, or to any particular form of it; or, again, in powers of
+mind, in quickness, in memory, in imagination, in judgment; the
+differences between different persons in this congregation must be
+exceedingly wide. But, with regard to bodily powers, the trial is little
+felt, till the inferiority is shown in actual suffering from pain or
+from disease. So long as we are in health, our enjoyments are so many,
+and we so easily accommodate our habits to our powers, that a mere
+inferiority of strength, whether it be of limb or of constitution, is
+not apt to make us dissatisfied. But if it comes to actual illness or to
+pain, if we are deprived of the common enjoyments and occupations of our
+age, then perhaps the trial begins to be severe; and when we look at
+others who have taken the same liberties with their health as we have
+done, and see them notwithstanding perfectly well and strong, while we
+are disabled or suffering, we may think that God has dealt hardly with
+us, and may be inclined to ask with Esau, "Hast thou but one blessing,
+my Father? bless me, even me also, O my Father!" Now this language,
+according to the sense in which we use it, is either blameable or
+innocent. If we mean to say, "Hast thou health to give to others only
+and not to me? give me this blessing also, as thou hast given it to my
+brethren:" then it has in it somewhat of discontent and murmuring; it
+implies a claim to which God never listens. But if we mean, "Hast thou
+only one kind of blessing, my father? If thou hast blest others in one
+way, I murmur not nor complain: but out of thine infinite store, give me
+also such a blessing as may be convenient for me;" then God hears the
+prayer, then he gives the blessing, and gives it so richly, and makes it
+bear so evidently the mark of his love, that they who were last are
+become first; if others have health, and we have sickness, yet the
+spirit of patience and cheerful submission which God gives with it is so
+great a blessing, and makes us so certainly happy, that the strongest
+and healthiest of our friends have often far more reason to wish to
+change places with us, than we with them.
+
+Let us now take inequality in powers of mind. And here, undoubtedly, the
+difference is apt to be a trial. Not that, probably, it excites
+discontent or murmuring against God; nor jealousy against those whose
+faculties are better than our own: the trial is of another kind; we are
+tempted to make our inferiority an excuse for neglect; because we cannot
+do so much nor so easily as others, we do far less than we might do. But
+the parable shows us plainly, that if one talent only has been given us,
+while others have ten, yet that the one, no less than the ten, must be
+made to yield its increase. Here is the feeling expressed so earnestly
+by the woman entreating Christ to heal her daughter. "The dogs eat of
+the crumbs which fall from their master's table." Small as may be the
+portion of power given us, when compared with the plenty vouchsafed to
+others, still it is capable of nourishing us if we make use of it; still
+it shows that we too have our blessing. And if using it with
+thankfulness, if doing our very best with it, knowing that "a man is
+accepted according to what he hath, and not according to what he hath
+not," we labour humbly and diligently; then, not only does the talent
+itself become increased, so that our Lord, when he comes to reckon with
+us, may receive his own with usury: but a blessing of another kind is
+added to our labours, again, as in the former case, making those who
+were last to become first. For if there be one thing on earth which is
+truly admirable, it is to see God's wisdom blessing an inferiority of
+natural powers, when they have been honestly, humbly, and zealously
+cultivated. From how many pains are they delivered, to which great
+natural talents are continually exposed; irritation, jealousy, a morbid
+and nervous activity, bearing fruits not of peace, but of gall! With
+what blessings are they crowned, to which, the most powerful natural
+understanding is a stranger! the love of truth gratified, without the
+fear that truth will demand the sacrifice of personal vanity; the line
+of duty clearly discerned, because those mists of passion and
+selfishness which obscure it so often from the view of the keenest
+natural perception, have been dispersed by the spirit of humility and
+love; imperfect knowledge patiently endured, because whatever knowledge
+is enjoyed is known to be God's gift, and what he gives, or what he
+withholds, is alike welcome. This is the blessing of those who having
+had inferior natural powers, have so laboured to improve them according
+to God's will, that on all there has been grafted, as it were, some
+better power of grace, to yield a fruit most precious both for earth
+and heaven.
+
+But I spoke of an equality of spiritual advantages also, and this is
+perhaps the hardest trial of all. Oh, how great is this inequality in
+truth, when it seems to be so little! All of you, the children of
+Christian parents; all members of the Christian Church; all partaking
+here of the same worship, the same prayers, the same word of God, the
+same sacrament; are you not all the Israel of God, and not, like Esau,
+or the Syrophoenician woman, strangers to the covenant of blessing? Yet
+your real condition is, notwithstanding, very unequal. How unlike are
+your friends at home; how, unlike, also, are your friends here! Are
+there not some to whom their homes, both by direct precept and by
+example, are a far greater help than to others? Are there not some,
+whose immediate companions here may encourage them in all good far more
+than may be the case with, others? So, then, there may be some to whom
+this great blessing has been denied, whilst others enjoy it. What then?
+Shall we say, that, because we have it not, we will refuse to go in to
+our Father's house; that we will not walk as our brother walks, unless
+we have his advantages? Then must we remain cast out; vessels fashioned
+to dishonour; rejected of God, and cursed. Nay rather let us put a
+Christian sense on Esau's prayer, and cry, "'Hast thou but one blessing,
+my Father? bless me, even me also, O my Father.' If thou hast given to
+others earthly helps, which thou hast denied to me, give me thyself and
+thy own Spirit the more! If father and mother forsake my most precious
+interest, do thou take me up. If my nearest friends will not walk with
+me in the house of God, be thou my friend, and abide with, me always,
+making my house as thine. Outward and earthly means thou givest or
+takest away at thy pleasure; but give me help according to my need, that
+I yet may not lose thee."
+
+How naturally are we interested at the thought of any one so
+circumstanced, and uttering such a prayer! How earnestly do we wish to
+help him, to show our respect and true love for a faith so tried and so
+enduring! And think we that God cares for it less than we do? or have we
+not already the record of his love towards it, when Christ answered the
+Syrophoenician woman, "O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even
+as thou wilt?" He may not, indeed, see fit to give the very same
+blessing which was in the first instance denied: we may still have fewer
+spiritual advantages than others, as far as human helps are concerned;
+fewer good and earnest friends; fewer examples of holiness around us;
+fewer to join with us in our prayers and in our struggles against evil.
+But though this particular blessing may be denied,--as Esau could not
+gain that blessing which had been given to Jacob,--yet there is a
+blessing for us also, which may prove, in the end, even better than our
+brother's. He who serves God steadily, amidst many disadvantages, enjoys
+the blessing of a more confirmed and hardier faith; he has gone through
+trials, and been found conqueror; and for him that overcometh is
+reserved a more abundant measure of glory.
+
+But on the other side, we who, like Jacob, or Jacob's posterity, have
+the blessing,--whether it be natural, worldly, or spiritual,--let us
+consider what became of it when it was not improved. What was the sin
+of Esau,--speaking not of the individual, but of the less favoured
+people of Edom,--compared with the sin of Jacob? Nay, not of Edom only;
+but it shall be more tolerable for Sodom, in the day of judgment, than
+for the unbelieving cities of Israel. So it is, not only with the
+literal, but with the Christian Israel; so it is, not only with the
+Church as a whole compared with heathens, but with all those individuals
+amongst us, who enjoy in any larger measure than others any of God's
+blessings. They are blessings; but they may be made fatal curses. This
+holds true with blessings of every kind: with station and wealth, with
+bodily health and vigour, with, great powers of mind, with large means
+of spiritual improvement. To whom much is given, of him shall be much,
+required. It is required of us to enjoy our blessings by using them: so
+will they be blessings indeed. So it is with money and influence, with
+health, with talents, with spiritual knowledge, and good friends and
+parents. There are first who shall be last; that is, those who began
+their course with advantages which set them before their brethren, if
+they do not exert themselves, will fall grievously behind them: for the
+blessing denied may be, in effect, a blessing given; and the blessing
+given, in like manner, becomes too often a blessing taken away.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XIX.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MATTHEW xxii. 32.
+
+_God is not the God of the dead, but of the living_.
+
+
+We hear these words as a part of our Lord's answer to the Sadducees;
+and, as their question was put in evident profaneness, and the answer to
+it is one which to our minds is quite obvious and natural, so we are apt
+to think that in this particular story there is less than usual that
+particularly concerns us. But it so happens, that our Lord, in answering
+the Sadducees, has brought in one of the most universal and most solemn
+of all truths,--which is indeed implied in many parts of the Old
+Testament, but which the Gospel has revealed to us in all its
+fulness,--the truth contained in the words of the text, that "God is not
+the God of the dead, but of the living."
+
+I would wish to unfold a little what is contained in these words, which
+we often hear even, perhaps, without quite understanding them; and many
+times oftener without fully entering into them. And we may take them,
+first, in their first part, where they say that "God is not the God of
+the dead."
+
+The word "dead," we know, is constantly used in Scripture in a double
+sense, as meaning those who are dead spiritually, as well as those who
+are dead naturally. And, in either sense, the words are alike
+applicable: "God is not the God of the dead."
+
+God's not being the God of the dead signifies two things: that they who
+are without him are dead, as well as that they who are dead are also
+without him. So far as our knowledge goes respecting inferior animals,
+they appear to be examples of this truth. They appear to us to have no
+knowledge of God; and we are not told that they have any other life than
+the short one of which our senses inform us. I am well aware that our
+ignorance of their condition is so great that, we may not dare to say
+anything of them positively; there may be a hundred things true
+respecting them which we neither know nor imagine. I would only say
+that, according to that most imperfect light in which we see them, the
+two points of which I have been speaking appear to meet in them: we
+believe that they have no consciousness of God, and we believe that they
+will die. And so far, therefore, they afford an example of the
+agreement, if I may so speak, between these two points; and were
+intended, perhaps, to be to our view a continual image of it. But we had
+far better speak of ourselves. And here, too, it is the case that "God
+is not the God of the dead." If we are without him we are dead; and if
+we are dead we are without him: in other words, the two ideas of death
+and absence from God are in fact synonymous.
+
+Thus, in the account given of the fall of man, the sentence of death and
+of being cast out of Eden go together; and if any one compares the
+description of the second Eden in the Revelation, and recollects how
+especially it is there said, that God dwells in the midst of it, and is
+its light by day and night, he will see that the banishment from the
+first Eden means a banishment from the presence of God. And thus, in the
+day that Adam sinned, he died; for he was cast out of Eden immediately,
+however long he may have moved about afterwards upon the earth where
+God was not. And how very strong to the same point are the words of
+Hezekiah's prayer, "The grave cannot praise thee, Death cannot celebrate
+thee; they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth;" words
+which express completely the feeling that God is not the God of the
+dead. This, too, appears to be the sense generally of the expression
+used in various parts of the Old Testament, "Thou shalt surely die." It
+is, no doubt, left purposely obscure; nor are we ever told, in so many
+words, all that is meant by death; but, surely, it always implies a
+separation from God, and the being--whatever the notion may extend
+to--the being dead to him. Thus, when David had committed his great sin,
+and had expressed his repentance for it, Nathan tells him, "The Lord
+also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die:" which means, most
+expressively, thou shalt not die to God. In one sense, David died, as
+all men die; nor was he, by any means, freed from the punishment of his
+sin: he was not, in that sense, forgiven; but he was allowed still to
+regard God as his God; and, therefore, his punishments were but fatherly
+chastisements from God's hand, designed for his profit, that he might be
+partaker of God's holiness. And thus although Saul was sentenced to lose
+his kingdom, and although he was killed with his sons on Mount Gilboa,
+yet I do not think that we find the sentence passed upon him, "Thou
+shalt surely die;" and, therefore, we have no right to say that God had
+ceased to be his God, although be visited him with severe chastisements,
+and would not allow him to hand down to his sons the crown of Israel.
+Observe, also, the language of the eighteenth chapter of Ezekiel, where
+the expressions occur so often, "He shall surely live," and "He shall
+surely die." We have no right to refer these to a mere extension, on the
+one hand, or a cutting short, on the other, of the term of earthly
+existence. The promise of living long in the land, or, as in Hezekiah's
+case, of adding to his days fifteen years, is very different from the
+full and unreserved blessing, "Thou shalt surely live." And we know,
+undoubtedly, that both the good and the bad to whom Ezekiel spoke, died
+alike the natural death of the body. But the peculiar force of the
+promise, and of the threat, was, in the one case, Thou shalt belong to
+God; in the other, Thou shalt cease to belong to him; although the veil
+was not yet drawn up which concealed the full import of those terms,
+"belonging to God," and "ceasing to belong to him:" nay, can we venture
+to affirm that it is fully drawn aside even now?
+
+I have dwelt on this at some length, because it really seems to place
+the common state of the minds of too many amongst us in a light which is
+exceedingly awful; for if it be true, as I think the Scripture implies,
+that to be dead, and to be without God, are precisely the same thing,
+then can it be denied, that the symptoms of death are strongly marked
+upon many of us? Are there not many who never think of God, or care
+about his service? Are there not many who live, to all appearance, as
+unconscious of his existence as we fancy the inferior animals to be? And
+is it not quite clear, that to such persons, God cannot be said to be
+their God? He may be the God of heaven and earth, the God of the
+universe, the God of Christ's church; but he is not their God, for they
+feel to have nothing at all to do with him; and, therefore, as he is not
+their God, they are, and must be, according to the Scripture, reckoned
+among the dead.
+
+But God is the God "of the living." That is, as before, all who are
+alive, live unto him; all who live unto him, are alive. "God said, I am
+the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob;" and,
+therefore, says our Lord, "Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, are not and
+cannot be dead." They cannot be dead, because God owns them: he is not
+ashamed to be called their God; therefore, they are not cast out from
+him; therefore, by necessity, they live. Wonderful, indeed, is the truth
+here implied, in exact agreement, as we have seen, with the general
+language of Scripture; that, as she who but touched the hem of Christ's
+garment was, in a moment, relieved from her infirmity, so great was the
+virtue which went out from him; so they who are not cast out from God,
+but have any thing whatever to do with him, feel the virtue of his
+gracious presence penetrating their whole nature; because he lives, they
+must live also.
+
+Behold, then, life and death set before us; not remote, (if a few years
+be, indeed, to be called remote,) but even now present before us; even
+now suffered or enjoyed. Even now, we are alive unto God, or dead unto
+God; and, as we are either the one or the other, so we are, in the
+highest possible sense of the terms, alive or dead. In the highest
+possible sense of the terms; but who can tell what that highest possible
+sense of the terms is? So much has, indeed, been revealed to us, that we
+know now that death means a conscious and perpetual death, as life means
+a conscious and perpetual life. But greatly, indeed, do we deceive
+ourselves, if we fancy that, by having thus much told us, we have also
+risen to the infinite heights, or descended to the infinite depths,
+contained in those little words, life and death. They are far higher,
+and far deeper, than ever thought or fancy of man has reached to. But,
+even on the first edge of either, at the visible beginnings of that
+infinite ascent or descent, there is surely something which may give us
+a foretaste of what is beyond. Even to us in this moral state, even to
+you advanced but so short a way on your very earthly journey, life and
+death have a meaning: to be dead unto God, or to be alive to him, are
+things perceptibly different.
+
+For, let me ask of those who think least of God, who are most separate
+from him, and most without him, whether there is not now actually,
+perceptibly, in their state, something of the coldness, the loneliness,
+the fearfulness of death? I do not ask them whether they are made
+unhappy by the fear of God's anger; of course they are not: for they who
+fear God are not dead to him, nor he to them. The thought of him gives
+them no disquiet at all; this is the very point we start from. But I
+would ask them whether they know what it is to feel God's blessing. For
+instance: we all of us have our troubles of some sort or other, our
+disappointments, if not our sorrows. In these troubles, in these
+disappointments,--I care not how small they may be,--have they known
+what it is to feel that God's hand is over them; that these little
+annoyances are but his fatherly correction; that he is all the time
+loving us, and supporting us? In seasons of joy, such, as they taste
+very often, have they known what it is to feel that they are tasting the
+kindness of their heavenly Father, that their good things come from his
+hand, and are but an infinitely slight foretaste of his love? Sickness,
+danger,--I know that they come to many of us but rarely; but if we have
+known them, or at least sickness, even in its lighter form, if not in
+its graver,--have we felt what it is to know that we are in our Father's
+hands, that he is with us, and will be with us to the end; that nothing
+can hurt those whom he loves? Surely, then, if we have never tasted
+anything of this: if in trouble, or in joy, or in sickness, we are left
+wholly to ourselves, to bear as we can, and enjoy as we can; if there is
+no voice that ever speaks out of the heights and the depths around us,
+to give any answer to our own; if we are thus left to ourselves in this
+vast world,--there is in this a coldness and a loneliness; and whenever
+we come to be, of necessity, driven to be with our own hearts alone, the
+coldness and the loneliness must be felt. But consider that the things
+which, we see around us cannot remain with us, nor we with them. The
+coldness and loneliness of the world, without God, must be felt more and
+more as life wears on: in every change of our own state, in every
+separation from or loss of a friend, in every more sensible weakness of
+our own bodies, in every additional experience of the uncertainty of our
+own counsels,--the deathlike feeling will come upon us more and more
+strongly: we shall gain more of that fearful knowledge which tells us
+that "God is not the God of the dead."
+
+And so, also, the blessed knowledge that he is the God "of the living"
+grows upon those who are truly alive. Surely he "is not far from every
+one of us." No occasion of life fails to remind those who live unto him,
+that he is their God, and that they are his children. On light occasions
+or on grave ones, in sorrow and in joy, still the warmth of his love is
+spread, as it were, all through the atmosphere of their lives: they for
+ever feel his blessing. And if it fills them with joy unspeakable even
+now, when they so often feel how little they deserve it; if they delight
+still in being with God, and in living to him, let them be sure that
+they have in themselves the unerring witness of life eternal: God is the
+God of the living, and all who are with him must live.
+
+Hard it is, I well know, to bring this home, in any degree, to the minds
+of those who are dead: for it is of the very nature of the dead that
+they can hear no words of life. But it has happened that, even whilst
+writing what I have just been uttering to you, the news reached me that
+one, who two months ago was one of your number, who this very half-year
+has shared in all the business and amusements of this place, is passed
+already into that state where the meanings of the terms life and death
+are become fully revealed. He knows what it is to live unto God, and
+what it is to die to him. Those things which are to us unfathomable
+mysteries, are to him all plain: and yet but two months ago he might
+have thought himself as far from attaining this knowledge as any of us
+can do. Wherefore it is clear, that these things, life and death, may
+hurry their lesson upon us sooner than we deem of, sooner than we are
+prepared to receive it. And that were indeed awful, if, being dead to
+God, and yet little feeling it, because of the enjoyments of our worldly
+life, those enjoyments were on a sudden to be struck away from us, and
+we should find then that to be dead to God was death, indeed, a death
+from which there is no waking, and in which there is no sleeping
+for ever.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XX.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+EZEKIEL xiii. 22.
+
+_With lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad, whom I have not
+made sad; and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not
+return from his wicked way, by promising him life_.
+
+
+The verses which immediately precede this, require explanation, but
+perhaps our knowledge is hardly sufficient to enable us to give it
+fully. There are allusions to customs,--to fashions rather,--common
+amongst the Israelites at the time, which we can now scarcely do more
+than guess at; but we may observe, that there was a general practice,
+which even God's own prophets were directed often to comply with, of
+enforcing what was said in word by some corresponding outward action, in
+which the speaker made himself, as it were, a living image of the idea
+which he meant to convey. Thus, when Zedekiah, the son of Chenaanah, was
+assuring Ahab, that he should drive the Syrians before him, he made
+himself horns of iron, and said, "With these shalt thou push the
+Syrians, until thou have consumed them." In the same way, it is imagined
+that the false prophetesses spoken of in the text were in the habit of
+wearing pillows, or cushions, fastened to their arms, and directed those
+who came to consult them to do the same, as a sign of rest and peace;
+that they who trusted to them had nothing to fear, but might lie down
+and enjoy themselves at their feasts, or in sleep, with entire security.
+Or, again, if we connect what is said of the pillows with what
+immediately follows about the kerchiefs put upon the head, we may
+suppose that both are but parts of a fantastic dress, such as was often
+worn by pretended prophets and fortune-tellers, and which they may have
+made those wear, also, who came before them. We know that the covering
+on the head was, for instance, a part of the ceremonial law of the Roman
+augurs, when they began their divinations. But, however this be, the
+exact understanding of these particular points is not necessary to our
+deriving the lesson of the passage in general. I know that there is
+something naturally painful to an active mind in being obliged to
+content itself with an indistinct notion, or still more, with no notion
+at all, of the meaning of any words presented to it. But, whilst we
+should highly value this sensitiveness, as, indeed, few qualities are
+more essential in the pursuit of truth, yet we must be careful not to
+let our disappointment carry us too far, so as to pass over a whole
+passage, or portion, of Scripture, as if in despair, because we cannot
+understand every part of it. Much of the supposed obscurity of the
+prophets arises from this cause--that we find in them particular
+expressions and allusions, which, whether from a, fault in the
+translation, or from our imperfect knowledge of the times of which the
+prophets speak, and of the language in which they wrote, are certainly
+quite unintelligible. But these are only a few expressions, occurring
+here and there; and it is a great evil to fancy that their writings, in
+general, are not to be understood, because of the difficulty of
+particular passages in them. Thus, with the very chapter of which we are
+now speaking, the expression to which I have alluded can only be
+uncertainly interpreted, yet the lesson of the chapter, as a whole, is
+perfectly clear, notwithstanding. The dress, or fashions, or particular
+rites, of the false prophets of Jerusalem and their votaries, may offer
+no distinct image to our minds; but the evil of their doings, how they
+deceived others, and were themselves deceived; the points, that is,
+which alone concern us practically, these are set before us plainly.
+"With their lies they made the heart of the righteous sad, whom God had
+not made sad; and they strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he
+should not return from his wicked way, by promising him life." Where the
+way of life was broad, they strove to make it narrow; and where it was
+narrow, they strove to make it broad: by their solemn and superstitious
+lies, they frightened and perplexed the good, while, by their lives of
+ungodliness, they emboldened and encouraged the wicked.
+
+It may not, at first sight, seem necessary that these two things should
+go together; there might be, it seems, either the fault of making the
+heart of the righteous sad, without that of strengthening the hands of
+the wicked: or there might be the strengthening of the hands of the
+wicked, without making sad the heart of the righteous. And so it
+sometimes has been: there has been a wickedness which has not tried to
+keep up superstition: there has been a superstition, the supporters of
+which have not wilfully encouraged wickedness. Yet, although this has
+been so, with respect to the intention of the parties concerned, yet in
+their own nature, the tendency of either evil to produce the other is
+sure and universal. We cannot exist without some influences of fear and
+restraint, on the one hand, and without some indulgence of freedom, on
+the other. God has provided for both these wants, so to speak, of our
+nature; he has told us whom we should fear, and where we should be
+restrained, and where, also, we may be safely in freedom: there is the
+fruit forbidden, and the fruit which we may eat freely. But if the
+restraint and the liberty be either of them put in the wrong place, the
+double evil is sure to follow. Restrained in his lawful liberty,
+debarred from the good and wholesome fruit of the garden, man breaks out
+into a liberty which is unlawful; he eats of the forbidden fruit, whose
+taste is death; or, surfeited with an unholy freedom, and let to run
+wild in a space far too vast for his strength to compass, he turns
+cravingly for that support to his weariness which a narrowed range would
+afford him; and he limits himself on that very quarter in which alone he
+might expatiate freely. Superstition, in fact, is the rest of
+wickedness, and wickedness is the breaking loose of superstition.
+
+But, however true this may be, are we concerned in it? First of all,
+when we find an evil dwelt upon often in the Prophets, and find it dwelt
+upon again by our Lord and his Apostles with no less earnestness, there
+is, at least, a strong presumption, that an evil of this sort is nothing
+local or passing, but that it is fixed in man's nature, and is apt to
+grow up in all times, and in all countries. Now, the double evil spoken
+of in the text, occurs again in the gospel; there we find men spoken of,
+who, in like manner, insisted upon what was trifling, and were careless
+of what was important; and in the epistles, we find, again, the same
+characters holding up as righteous others than those who worked
+righteousness: men, who spoke lies in hypocrisy, having their conscience
+seared with a hot iron. We may presume, therefore, that this evil is of
+an enduring character; but if we look back to the history of the
+Christian Church, or look around us, the presumption becomes the sad
+conviction of experience.
+
+Nor is the evil merely one which exists in the country at large; a thing
+which might be fully dwelt upon any where but here. On the contrary, I
+hardly know of an age more exposed to it than youth. There exist in
+youth, in a very high degree, those opposite feelings of our nature,
+which I have before spoken of; a tendency to respect, to follow, to be
+led, on the one hand; and on the other, a lively desire for independence
+and freedom. These feelings often exist in the greatest strength in the
+same individual; and when they are not each turned in their proper
+direction, ruin is the consequence. Nothing is more common than to see
+great narrowness of mind, great prejudices, and great disorderliness of
+conduct, united in the same person. Nothing is more common than to see
+the same mind utterly prostrated before some idol of its own, and
+supporting that idol with the most furious zeal, and at the same time
+utterly rebellious to Christ, and rejecting with scorn the enlightening,
+the purifying, and the loving influences of Christ's Spirit.
+
+The idols of various minds are infinitely various, some seducing the
+loftiest natures and some the vilest. But of this we may be sure, that
+every one of us has a tendency to some one idol or other, if not to
+many; and our business is especially each to watch, ourselves, lest we
+be enslaved to our peculiar idol. I will now, however, speak of those
+which, tempt the highest minds; which, by their show of sacredness and
+excellence, make us fancy, that while following them we are following
+Christ. And let none be surprised, if I rank among idols many things,
+which, in themselves and in their proper use and order, are indeed to be
+loved and reverenced. It was most right to respect the Apostle Peter,
+and listen to his word; but that great Apostle would have been ruin to
+Cornelius, and not salvation, if he had suffered him, without reproof,
+to fall down before him, and render to him the service due to Christ
+alone. How many good and pious feelings must have been awakened from age
+to age in many minds, at the sight of the brazen serpent on the pole,
+the memorial of their fathers' deliverance in the wilderness! But when
+this awakening, this solemn memorial was corrupted into an idol, when
+men bowed down before it in superstition, it was the part of true piety
+to do as Hezekiah did, to dash it, notwithstanding all its solemn
+associations, into a thousand pieces.
+
+Thus things good, things noble, things sacred, may all become idols. To
+some minds truth is an idol, to others justice, to others charity or
+benevolence; and others are beguiled by objects of a different sort of
+sacredness: some have made Christ's mother their idol; some, Christ's
+servants; some, again, Christ's sacraments, and Christ's own body, the
+Church. If these may all be idols, where can we find a name so holy, as
+that we may surrender up our whole souls to it; before which obedience,
+reverence, without measure, intense humility, most unreserved adoration,
+may all be duly rendered. One name there is, and one only; one alone in
+heaven and in earth; not truth, not justice, not benevolence, not
+Christ's mother, not his holiest servants, not his blessed sacraments,
+not his very mystical body, but Himself only, who died for us and rose
+again, Jesus Christ, both God and Man.
+
+He is truth, and he is righteousness, and he is love; he gives his grace
+to his sacraments, and his manifold gifts to his Church; whoever hath
+him hath all things; but if we do not take heed, whenever we turn our
+mind to any other object, we shall make it an idol and lose him. Take
+him in all his fulness, not as God merely, not as man merely; not in his
+life on earth only, not in his death only, not in his exaltation at
+God's right hand only; but in all his fulness, the Christ of God, God
+and Man, our Prophet, our Priest, our King and Lord, redeeming us by his
+blood, sanctifying us by his Spirit; and then worship him and love him
+with all the heart, and with, all the soul, and with all the strength;
+and we shall see how all evil will be barred, and all good will abound.
+No man who worships Christ alone, can be a fanatic, nor yet can be a
+more philosopher; he cannot be bigoted, nor yet can he be indifferent;
+he cannot be so the slave of what be calls amiable feelings as to cast
+truth and justice behind him; nor yet can he so pursue truth and justice
+as to lose sight of humbler and softer feelings, self-abasement,
+reverence, devotion. There is no evil tendency in the nature of any one
+of us, which has not its cure in the true worship of Christ our Saviour.
+Let us look into our hearts, and consider their besetting faults. Are we
+indolent, or are we active; are we enthusiastic, or are we cold; zealous
+or indifferent, devout or reasonable; whatever the inclination, or bias
+of our nature be, if we follow its kindred idol, it will be magnified
+and grow on to our ruin; if we worship Christ, it will be pruned and
+chastened, and made to grow up with opposite tendencies, all alike
+tempered, none destroyed; none overgrowing the garden, but all filling
+it with their several fruits; so that it shall be, indeed, the garden of
+the Lord, and the Spirit of the Lord shall dwell in the midst of it.
+
+And who shall dare to make sad the heart of him who is thus drinking
+daily of the well-spring of righteousness, by telling him that he is not
+yet saved, nor can be, unless he will come and bow down before his idol?
+And if, rather than do so, he break the idol in pieces, who shall dare
+to call him profane, or cold in love to his Lord, when it was in his
+very jealousy for his Lord, and in his full purpose to worship him
+alone, that he threw down all that exalted itself above its due
+proportion against him? And if a man be not so worshipping Christ only,
+who shall dare to encourage him in his evil way, by magnifying the
+sacredness of his idol, and ascribing to it that healing virtue which
+belongs to Christ alone?
+
+What has been here said might bear to be followed up at far greater
+length than the present occasion will admit of. But the main point is
+one, I think, of no small importance, that all fanaticism and
+superstition on the one hand, and all unbelief and coldness of heart on
+the other, arise from what is in fact idolatry,--the putting some other
+object, whether it be called a religious or moral one,--and an object
+often in itself very excellent,--in the place of Christ himself, as set
+forth to us fully in the Scriptures. And as no idol can stand in
+Christ's place, or in any way save us, so whoever worships Christ truly
+is preserved from all idols and has life eternal. And if any one demand
+of him further, that he should worship his idol, and tells him that he
+is not safe if he does not; his answer will be rather that he will
+perish if he does; that he is safe, fully safe, and only safe, so long
+as he clings to Christ alone; and that to make anything else necessary
+to his safety, is not only to minister to superstition, but to
+ungodliness also; not only to lay on us a yoke which neither our fathers
+nor we were able to bear; but, by the very act of laying this
+unchristian yoke upon us, to tear from us the easy yoke and light burden
+of Christ himself, our Lord and our life.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXI.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+ADVENT SUNDAY.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+HEBREWS in. 16.
+
+_For some, when they had heard, did provoke: howbeit not all that came
+out of Egypt by Moses_.
+
+
+I take this verse as my text, rather than those which immediately go
+before or follow it, because it affords one of the most serious
+instances of mistranslation that are to be met with in the whole New
+Testament. For the true translation of the words is this: "For who were
+they who, when they had heard, did provoke? nay, were they not all who
+came out of Egypt through Moses?" And then it goes on--"And with whom
+was he grieved forty years? was it not with them that had sinned, whose
+carcases fell in the wilderness? And to whom sware he that they should
+not enter into his rest, but to them that believed not?" I call this a
+serious mistranslation, because it lessens the force of the writer's
+comparison. So far from meaning to say that "some, but not all did
+provoke," he lays a stress on the universality of the evil: it was not
+only a few, but the whole people who came out of Egypt, with only the
+two individual exceptions of Caleb and Joshua. All the rest who were
+grown up when they came out of Egypt did provoke God; and the carcases
+of that whole generation, fell in the wilderness.
+
+Had the lesson from the Hebrews been actually chosen for the service of
+this day, it could hardly have suited it better. For this day is the
+New-year's day of the Christian year; and it is probably for this reason
+that the service of the first day of the common year is confined
+entirely to the commemoration of our Lord's circumcision, and takes no
+notice of the beginning of a new year. It is manifest that it could not
+do so without confusion: for the first of January is not the beginning
+of the Christian year, but Advent Sunday; the last Sunday of the
+Christian year is not Christmas-day, as it would be this year if we
+reckoned by the common divisions of time; but it is the last Sunday
+after Trinity. Now, then, we are at the beginning of our year; and well
+it is that, as our trial is now become shorter by another year, as
+another division of our lives has passed away, we should fix our eyes on
+that which makes every year so valuable,--the Judgment, for which it
+ought to be a preparation. In fact, if we observe, we shall see that
+these Sundays in Advent are much more regarded by the Church as the
+beginning of a new year, than as a mere prelude to the celebration of
+the festival of Christmas. That is, Christmas-day is regarded, so to
+speak, in a two-fold light, as representing both the comings of our
+Lord, his first coming in the flesh, and his second coming to judgment.
+When the day actually arrives, it commemorates our Lord's first coming:
+and this is the beginning of the Christian year, historically regarded,
+that is, so far as it is a commemoration of the several events of our
+Lord's life on earth. But before it comes, it is regarded as
+commemorating our Lord's second coming: and wisely, for his first coming
+requires now no previous preparation for it; we cannot well put
+ourselves into the position of those who lived before Christ appeared.
+But our whole life is, or ought to be, a preparation for his second
+coming; and it is this state, of which the season of Advent in the
+Church services is intended to be the representation.
+
+There is something striking in the season of the natural year at which
+we thus celebrate the beginning of another Christian year. It is a true
+type of our condition, of the insensible manner in which all the changes
+of our lives steal upon us, that nature, at this moment, gives no
+outward signs of beginning: it is a period which does not manifest any
+striking change in the state of things around us. The Christian Spring
+begins ere we have reached the half of the natural winter. Nature is not
+bursting into life, but rather preparing itself for a long period of
+death. And this is a type of an universal truth, that the signs and
+warnings which we must look to, must come from within us, not from
+without: that neither sky nor earth, will arouse us from our deadly
+slumber, unless we are ourselves aroused already, and more disposed to
+make warnings for ourselves than to find them.
+
+If this be true of nature, it is true also of all the efforts of man. As
+nature will give no sign, so man cannot. Let the Church do all that she
+may; let her keep her solemn anniversaries, and choose out for her
+services all such passages of Scripture as may be most fitted to impress
+the lesson which she would teach; still we know that these are alike
+powerless and unheeded; that unless there be in our own minds something
+beforehand disposed to profit by them, they are but the words of
+unavailing affection, vainly spoken to the ears of the dead.
+
+Oh that we would remember this, all of us; that there is no voice in
+nature, no voice in man, that can really awaken the sleeping soul. That
+is the work of a far mightier power, to be sought for with most earnest
+prayers for ourselves and for each other: that the Holy Spirit of God
+would speak, and would dispose our hearts to hear; that so being
+awakened from death and our ears being truly opened, all things outward
+may now join in language which we can hear; and nature, and man, life
+and death, things present and things to come, may be but the manifold
+voices of the Spirit of God, all working for us together for good. Till
+this be so, we speak in vain; our words neither reach our own hearts,
+nor the hearts of our hearers; they are but recorded in God's book of
+judgment, to be brought forward hereafter for the condemnation of
+us both.
+
+Yet we must still speak; for the Spirit of God, who alone works in us
+effectually, works also secretly; we know not when, nor how, nor where.
+But we know, that as the Father worketh hitherto, and the Son worketh
+hitherto, so the Holy Spirit worketh hitherto, and is still working
+daily. We know that, every year, he creates in thousands of God's people
+that work which alone shall abide for ever. We know that in the year
+that is just past he has done this; that in the year which is just
+beginning he will do it. Have we not here, also, many in whom he has
+wrought this work? may we not hope, and surely believe, that there are
+many in whom he is even now preparing to work it?
+
+We know not who these are; still less do we know, what were the
+occasions which the Holy Spirit so blessed as to work in them his work
+of life. But this we know, that we are bound to minister all the
+occasions which we can; we must not spare our labour, although it is God
+alone who gives the increase. We must speak of life and of death, of
+Christ and of judgment, not forgetting that we speak often, and shall
+speak, utterly in vain; yet knowing that it is by these very thoughts,
+though long unheeded, that God's Spirit does in his own good time awaken
+the heart; he takes of the things of Christ and shows them to us; and
+then, what was before like a book in a strange language--we saw the
+figures, but they conveyed no meaning to our minds--becomes, on a
+sudden, instinct with the language of God, which we hear and understand
+as readily as if it were our own tongue wherein we were born.
+
+Therefore, we speak and say, that another year has now dawned upon us;
+and we would remind you, and remember, ourselves, in what words the
+various Scriptures of this day's service point out its inestimable
+value. "Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed." So says St.
+Paul in the epistle of this day; and how blessed are all those amongst
+us who can feel that this is truly said of them! Then, indeed, a new
+year's day is a day of rejoicing; we are so much nearer that period when
+all care, all anxiety, all painful labour will be for ever ended. But
+there is other language of a different sort, which, it may be, will suit
+us better. "I have nourished and brought up children, and they have
+rebelled against me." "Their land is full of idols; they worship the
+work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made;" which
+means to us, the work of our own hearts, that which our own fancies and
+desires have made. "Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, for
+fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty." For in the very
+temple of God, his Church, all manner of profane thoughts and words and
+works are crowded together; the din of covetousness and worldliness is
+loud and constant, and will ill abide the day of his coming, who will, a
+second time, cast out of his temple all that is unclean. And is there
+not also in us that evil heart of unbelief and disobedience which
+departs from the living God? are there not here those who are becoming
+daily hardened through the deceitfulness of sin? How are they passing
+their time in the wilderness, and with what prospects when they come to
+the end of it? God said, "I sware in my wrath, that they shall not enter
+into my rest." By the way that they came, by the same shall they return;
+they shall go back to that bondage from which they were once redeemed,
+and from which they will be redeemed again no more for ever.
+
+These are some of the passages of this day's service which speaks to us
+at the beginning of this new Christian year. Let me add to all this
+language of warning, the language in which God, by his apostle Paul,
+answers every one of us, if we ask of him in sincerity of heart, "Lord,
+what wilt thou have me to do?" He answers, "The night is far spent, the
+day is at hand: let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and
+drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and
+envying: but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for
+the flesh, to fulfil the works thereof." Now, I grant, that this day, of
+which the apostle speaks, has never yet shone so brightly, as he had
+hoped and imagined; clouds have, up to this hour, continually
+overshadowed it. I mean, that the lives of Christians have hindered them
+from being the light of the world. It has been a light pale and dim, and
+therefore the works of darkness have continued to abound. But admit
+this, and what follows? Is it, or can it be, anything else but a more
+earnest desire not to be ourselves children of darkness, lest what we
+see to have happened in part should happen altogether; namely, that the
+day should never shine on us at all? We see that God's promises have
+been in part forfeited; we see that Christ's kingdom has not been what
+it was prophesied it should be. Is not this a solemn warning, that for
+us, too, individually, God's promises may be forfeited? that all we read
+in Scripture of light, and life, and glory, and happiness, should really
+prove to us words only, and no reality? that whereas the promise of
+salvation has been made to us, we should be in the end, not saved, but
+lost? If, indeed, God's kingdom were shining around us, in its full
+beauty; if every evil thing were driven out of his temple; if we saw
+nothing but holy lives and happy, the fruits of his Spirit, truth, and
+love, and joy; then we might be less anxious for ourselves; our course
+would be far smoother; the very stream would carry us along to the end
+of our voyage without our labour: what evil thoughts would not be
+withered, and die long ere they could ripen into action, if the very air
+which we breathed were of such, keen and heavenly purity! It is because
+all this is not so, that we have need of so much watchfulness; it is
+because the faults of every one of us make our brethren's task harder;
+because there is not one bad or careless person amongst us who is not a
+hindrance in his brother's path, and does not oblige him to exert
+himself the more. Therefore, because the day is not bright, but
+overclouded; because it is but too like the night, and too many use it
+as the night for all works of darkness; let us take the more heed that
+we do not ourselves so mistake it; let us watch each of us the light
+within us, lest, indeed, we should wholly stumble; let us put on the
+Lord Jesus Christ. You know how often I have dwelt on this; how often I
+have tried to show that Christ is all in all to us; that to put on
+Christ, is a truer and fuller expression, by far, than if we had been
+told to put on truth, or holiness, or goodness. It includes all these,
+with something more, that nothing but itself can give--the sense of
+safety, and joy unspeakable, in feeling ourselves sheltered in our
+Saviour's arms, and taken even into himself. Assuredly, if we put on the
+Lord Jesus Christ, we shall not make provision for the flesh to fulfil
+the lusts thereof; such a warning would then be wholly unnecessary. Or,
+if we do not like language thus figurative, let us put it, if we will,
+into the plainest words that shall express the same meaning; let us call
+it praying to Christ, thinking of him, hoping in him, earnestly loving
+him; these, at least, are words without a figure, which all can surely
+understand. Let us be Christ's this year that is now beginning; be his
+servants, be his disciples, be his redeemed in deed; let us live to him,
+and for him; setting him before us every day to do his will, and to live
+in his blessing. Then, indeed, if it be his pleasure that we should
+serve him throughout this year, even to its end, we may repeat, with a
+deeper feeling of their truth, the words of St. Paul; we may say, when
+next Advent Sunday shall appear, that now is our salvation nearer than
+when we became believers.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CHRISTMAS DAY.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JOHN i. 10.
+
+_He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew
+Him not_.
+
+
+When we use ourselves, or hear others use, the term "mystery," as
+applied to things belonging to the gospel, we should do well to consider
+what is meant by it. For our common notion of the word mystery is of
+something dark; whereas Christ and his gospel are continually spoken of
+as being, above all other things, light. Then come others, and say,
+"Light and darkness cannot go together: what you call the mysteries of
+Christianity are no part of it, but the fond inventions of man:
+Christianity is all simple and clear:" and thus they strike away some of
+the very greatest truths which God has revealed to us. Thus they deal in
+particular with the great truth declared in the text, that He who made
+the world visited it in the likeness of man. Now, if this truth were a
+mystery, in the common notion of that term; if it were a thing full of
+darkness, defying our minds to understand it, or to draw any good from
+it; then, indeed, it would be of little consequence whether we received
+it or no. It is because it is a mystery in a very different sense, in
+the sense in which the word is used commonly in the Scriptures; that
+is, a thing which was a secret, but which God has been pleased to
+reveal, and to reveal for our benefit, that therefore the loss of it
+would be the loss of a real blessing, a loss at once of light
+and comfort.
+
+But we must go a little further, and explain from what this sad
+confusion in the use of the term "mystery" has arisen. There are many
+things relating to ourselves and to things around us, which by nature we
+cannot understand; and of God we can scarcely understand anything. Now,
+while the gospel has revealed much that we did not know before, it yet
+has not revealed everything: of God, in particular, it has given us much
+most precious knowledge, yet it has not removed all the veil. It has
+furnished us with a glass, indeed, to use the apostle's comparison; but
+the glass, although, a great help, although reflecting a likeness of
+what, without it, we could not see at all, is yet a dark and imperfect
+manner of seeing, compared with, the seeing face to face. So, when the
+gospel tells us that He who made the world visited it in our nature, it
+does not indeed enable us yet fully to conceive what He is who made us,
+and then became as one of us; there is still left around the name of God
+that light inaccessible which is to our imperfections darkness; and so
+far as we cannot understand or conceive rightly of God, so far it is
+true that we cannot understand all that is conveyed in the expression
+that God was in the world dwelling among us. Yet it is still most true
+that by the revelation thus made to us we have gained immensely. God, as
+he is in himself, we cannot understand; but Jesus Christ we can. When we
+are told to love God, if we look to the life and death of Christ, we can
+understand and feel how truly he deserves our love; when we are told to
+be perfect as God is perfect, we have the image of this perfection so
+truly set before us in his Son Jesus, that it may be well said, "Whoso
+hath seen Him hath seen the Father;" and why, then, should we ask with
+Philip, that "He should show us the Father?"
+
+What, then, the festival of Christmas presents to us, as distinct from
+that of Easter, is generally the revelation of God in the flesh. True it
+is, that we may make it, if we will, the same as Easter: that is, we may
+celebrate it as the birth of our Saviour, of him who died and rose again
+for us; but then we only celebrate our Lord's birth with reference to
+his death and resurrection: that is, we make Christmas to be Easter
+under another name. And so everything relating to our Lord may be made
+to refer to his death and resurrection; for in them consists our
+redemption, and for that reason Easter has ever been considered as the
+great festival of the Christian year. But yet apart from this, Christmas
+has something peculiarly its own: namely, as I said before, the
+revelation of God in the flesh, not only to make atonement for our
+sins,--which is the peculiar subject of the celebration of the season of
+Easter,--but to give us notions of God at once distinct and lively; to
+enable us to have One in the invisible world, whom we could conceive of
+as distinctly as of a mere man, yet whom we might love with all our
+hearts, and trust with all our hearts, and yet be guilty of no idolatry.
+
+It is not, then, only as the beginning of an earthly life of little more
+than thirty years, that we may celebrate the day of our Lord's birth in
+the flesh. His own words express what this day has brought to us:
+"Henceforth shall ye see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending
+and descending upon the Son of man." The words here, like so many of our
+Lord's, are expressed in a parable; but their meaning is not the less
+clear. They allude evidently to Jacob's vision, to the ladder reaching
+from earth to heaven, on which the angels were ascending and descending
+continually. But this vision is itself a parable; showing, under the
+figure of the ladder reaching from earth to heaven, and the angels going
+up and down on it, a free communication, as it were, between God and
+man, heaven brought nearer to earth, and heavenly things made more
+familiar. Now, this is done, in a manner, by every revelation from God;
+most of all, by the revelation of his Son. Nor is it only by his Spirit
+that Christ communicates with us even now; though, he is ascended again
+into heaven, yet the benefits of his having become man, over and above
+those of his dying and rising again for us, have not yet passed away. It
+is still the man Christ Jesus who brings heaven near to earth, and earth
+near to heaven.
+
+It has been well said by Augustine, that babes in Christ should so think
+of the Son of man as not to lose sight of the Son of God; that more
+advanced Christians should so think of the Son of God as not to lose
+sight of the Son of man. Augustine well understood how the thought of
+the Son of man is fitted to our weakness; and that the best and most
+advanced of us in this mortal life are never so strong as to be able to
+do without it. Have we ever tried this with our children? We tell them
+that God made them, and takes care of them, and loves them, and hears
+their prayers, and knows what is in their hearts, and cannot bear what
+is evil. These are such notions of God as a child requires, and can
+understand. But, if we join with them some of those other notions which
+belong to God as he is in himself; that he is a Spirit, not to be seen,
+not to be conceived of as in any one place, or in any one form; what do
+we but embarrass our child's mind, and lessen that sense of near and
+dear relation to God which, our earlier accounts of God had given him?
+Yet we must teach him something of this sort, if we would prevent him
+from forming unworthy notions of God, such as have been the beginning
+of all idolatry. Here, then, is the blessing of the revelation of God in
+Christ. All that he can understand of God, or love in him, or fear in
+him--that is to be found in Christ. Christ made him, takes care of him,
+can hear his prayers, can read his little heart, loves him tenderly; yet
+cannot bear what is evil, and will strictly judge him at the last day.
+But what we must teach when we speak of God, yet which has a tendency to
+lessen the liveliness of our impressions of him, this has no place when
+we speak of Christ. Christ has a body, incorruptible and glorified
+indeed, such as they who are Christ's shall also wear at his coming, yet
+still a body. Christ is not to be seen, indeed, for the clouds have
+received him out of our sight: yet he may be conceived of as in one
+place--at the right hand of God; as in one certain and well-known
+form--the form of the Son of man. Yet let us observe again, and be
+thankful for the perfect wisdom of God. Even while presenting to us God
+in Christ; that is to say, God with all those attributes which we can
+understand, and fear, and love; and without those which, throw us, as it
+were, to an infinite distance, overwhelming our minds, and baffling all
+our conceptions; even then the utmost care is taken to make us remember
+that God in himself is really that infinite and incomprehensible Being
+to whom we cannot, in our present state, approach; that even his
+manifestation of himself in Christ Jesus, is one less perfect than we
+shall be permitted to see hereafter; that Christ stands at the right
+hand of the Majesty on high; that he has received from the Father all
+his kingdom and his glory; finally, that the Father is greater than he,
+inasmuch as any other nature added to the pure and perfect essence of
+God, must, in a certain measure, if I may venture so to speak, be a
+coming down to a lower point, from the very and unmixed Divinity.
+
+I have purposely mentioned this last circumstance, although it is not
+the view that I wish particularly to take to-day, because such passages
+as that which I quoted, where Christ tells his disciples that his Father
+was greater than he, and many others of the same sort, throughout the
+New Testament, are sometimes apt to embarrass and perplex us, if we do
+not consider their peculiar object. It was very necessary, especially at
+a time when men were so accustomed to worship their highest gods under
+the form of men, that whilst the gospel was itself holding out the man
+Christ Jesus as the object of religious faith, and fear, and love, and
+teaching that all power was given to him, in heaven and in earth,--it
+should, also, guard us against supposing that it meant to represent God
+as, in himself, wearing a human form, or having a nature partaking of
+our infirmities; and, therefore, it always speaks of there being
+something in God higher, and more perfect, than could possibly be
+revealed to man; and for this eternal and infinite, and inconceivable
+Being, it claims the reserve of our highest thoughts, or, rather, it
+commands us to believe, that they who shall hereafter see God face to
+face, shall be allowed to see something still greater than is now
+revealed to us, even in him who is the express image of God, and the
+brightness of his glory.
+
+But, now, to return to what I was dwelling on before. It is not only for
+children, that the revelation of God in Christ is so valuable; it is
+fitted to the wants of us all, at all times, and under all
+circumstances. Say, that we are in joy; say, that we are enjoying some
+of the festivities of this season. It is quite plain, that, at whatever
+moment the thought of God is unwelcome to us, that moment is one of sin
+or unbelief: yet, how can we dare to mix up the notion of the most high
+God with any earthly merriment, or festivity? Then, if we think of him
+who was present at the marriage in Cana of Galilee, and who worked a
+miracle for no other object than to increase the enjoyment of that
+marriage supper, do we not feel how the highest thoughts may be joined
+with the most common occasions? how we may bring Christ home with, us to
+our social meetings, to bless us, and to sanctify them? Imagine him in
+our feasts as he was in Cana:--we may do it without profaneness; being
+sure, from that example, that he condemns not innocent mirth; that it is
+not merely because there is a feast, or because friends and neighbours
+are gathered together, that Christ cannot, therefore, be in the midst of
+us. This alone does not drive him away; but, oh consider, with what ears
+would he have listened to any words of unkindness, of profaneness, or of
+impurity! with what eyes would he have viewed any intemperance, or
+revelling; any such, immoderate yielding up of the night to pleasure,
+that a less portion of the next day can be given to duty and to God!
+Even as he would have heard or seen such things in Cana of Galilee, so
+does he hear and see them amongst us; the same gracious eye of love is
+on our moderate and permitted enjoyments; the same turning away from,
+the same firm and just displeasure at every word or deed which turns
+pleasure into sin.
+
+But if I seek for instances to show how God in Christ is brought very
+near to us, what can I choose more striking than that most solemn act of
+Christian communion to which we are called this day? For, what is there
+in our mortal life, what joy, what sorrow, what feeling elated or
+subdued, which is not in that communion brought near to Christ to
+receive his blessing? What is the first and outward thing of which it
+reminds us? Is it not that last supper in Jerusalem, in which men,--the
+twelve disciples, the first members of our Christian brotherhood,--were
+brought into such solemn nearness to God, as seems to have begun the
+privileges of heaven upon earth? They were brought near at once to
+Christ and to one another: united to one another in him, in that double
+bond which, is the perfection at once of our duty and of our happiness.
+And so in our communion we, too, draw near to Christ and to each other;
+we feel--who is there at that moment, at least, that does not
+feel?--what a tie there is to bind each of us to his brother, when we
+come to the table of our common Lord. So far, the Lord's Supper is but a
+type of what every Christian meeting should be: never should any of us
+be gathered together on any occasion of common life, in our families or
+with our neighbours; we should sit down to no meal, we should meet in no
+company, without having Christ also in the midst of us; without
+remembering what we all are to him, and what we each therefore are to
+our brethren. But when we further recollect what there is in the Lord's
+Supper beyond the mere meeting of Christ and his disciples; what it is
+which the bread and the wine commemorate; of what we partake when, as
+true Christians, we eat of that bread, and drink of that cup; then we
+shall understand that God indeed is brought very near to us; inasmuch,
+as he who is a Christian, and partakes sincerely of Christian communion,
+is a partaker also of Christ: and as belonging to his body, his living
+spiritual body, the universal Church, receives his share of all those
+blessings, of all that infinite love which the Father shows continually
+to the head of that body, his own well-beloved Son.
+
+Say not then in your hearts, Who can ascend up into heaven, that is, to
+bring Christ down? As on this day, when he took our nature upon him, he
+came down to abide with us for ever; to abide with, us, even when we
+should see him with our eyes no more: for whilst he was on earth he so
+took part in all the concerns of life, in all its duties, its sorrows,
+and its joys, that memory, when looking back on the past, can fancy him
+present still; and then let the liveliest fancy do its work to the
+utmost, it cannot go beyond the reality; he is present still, for that
+belongs to his almightiness; he is present with us, because he is God;
+and we can fancy him with us, because he is man. This is the way to
+lessen our distance from God and heaven, by bringing Christ continually
+to us on earth: the sky is closed, and shows no sign; all things
+continue as they were from the beginning of the world; evil abounds, and
+therefore the faith of many waxes cold; but Christ was and is amongst
+us; and we need no surer sign than that sign of the prophet
+Jonah--Christ crucified and Christ risen--to make us feel that we may
+live with God daily upon earth, and doing so, shall live with him for an
+eternal life, in a country that cannot pass away.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXIII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+SUNDAY NEXT BEFORE EASTER.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MATTHEW xxvi. 40, 41.
+
+_What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, that ye
+enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the
+flesh is weak_.
+
+
+These words, we cannot doubt, have an application to ourselves, and to
+all Christians, far beyond the particular occasion on which they were
+actually spoken. They are, in fact, the words which Christ addresses
+daily to all of us. Every day, when he sees how often we have gone
+astray from him, he repeats to us, Could ye not watch with me one hour?
+Every day he commands us to watch and pray, that we enter not into
+temptation; every day he reminds us, that however willing may be our
+spirits, yet our flesh is weak; and that through that weakness, sin
+prevails over it, and having triumphed over our flesh, proceeds to
+enslave our spirit also.
+
+And as the words are applicable to us every day, so also are they in a
+particular manner suitable now, when the season of Lent is so nearly
+over, and Easter is so fast approaching. Have we been unable to watch,
+with Christ one hour? Already are the good resolutions with which, we,
+perhaps, began Lent, broken in many instances; and the impressions, if
+any such were made in us, are already weakened. They have been a
+burden, which we have shaken off, because the weakness of our nature
+found it too heavy to bear. Sad it is to think how often this same
+process has been repeated in all time, how often it will be repeated
+to the end.
+
+Let us just review what the course of this process has probably been.
+Now, as the parable of the Sower describes three several sorts of
+persons, who never bring forth, fruit; so in the very same persons,
+there is at different times something of each of the three characters
+there described. We, the very same persons, are at one time hard, at
+another careless, and at another over-busy; although, if compared with,
+other persons, and in the general form of their characters, some are
+hard, and others are careless, and others over-busy; different persons
+having different faults predominantly. But even the hardness of the road
+side, although God forbid that it should be our prevailing temper, yet
+surely it does sometimes exist in too many of us. In common speech, we
+talk of a person showing a hard temper, meaning, generally, a hard
+temper towards other men. We have done wrong, but being angry when we
+are reproved for it, we will not acknowledge it at all, and cheat our
+consciences, by dwelling upon the supposed wrong that has been done to
+us in some over-severity of reproof or punishment, instead of confessing
+and repenting of the original wrong which we ourselves did. But is it
+not true, that a hard temper towards man is very often, even
+consciously, a hard temper towards God? Does it never happen, that if
+conscience presents to us the thought of God, whether as a God of
+judgment to terrify us, or as a God of love to melt us, we repel it with
+impatience, or with sullenness? Does not the heart sometimes almost
+speak aloud the language of blasphemy: Who is God, that I should mind
+him? I do not care what may happen, I will not be softened. Do not all
+sorts of unbelieving thoughts pass rapidly through the mind at such
+moments; first in their less daring form, whispering, as the serpent did
+to Eve, that we shall not surely die; that we shall have time to repent
+by and by; that God will not be so strict a judge as to condemn us for
+such a little; that by some means or other, we shall escape? But then
+they come, also, in their bolder form: What do I or any man know about
+another world, or God's judgments? may it not be all a fiction, so that
+I have, in reality, nothing to fear? In short, under one form or
+another, is it not true, that our hearts have sometimes displayed
+actually hardness towards God; that the thought of God has been actually
+presented to our minds, but that we have turned it aside, and have not
+suffered it to make any impression upon us? And thus, we have not only
+not watched with Christ according to his command, but have actually told
+him that we would not. But this has been in our worst temper, certainly;
+it may not have happened,--I trust that it has not happened often. More
+commonly, I dare say, the fault has been carelessness. We have gone out
+of this place; sacred names have ceased to sound in our ears; sights in
+any degree connected with, holy things have been all withdrawn from us.
+Other sounds and other sights have been before us, and our minds have
+yielded to them altogether. There are minds, indeed, which have no
+spring of thought in themselves; which are quiet, and in truth empty,
+till some outward objects come to engage them. Take them at a moment
+when they are alone, or when there is no very interesting object before
+them, and ask them of what they are thinking. If the answer were truly
+given, such a mind would say, "Of nothing." Certain images may be
+faintly presented to it; it may be that it is not altogether a blank;
+yet it could not name anything distinctly. No form had been vivid enough
+to produce any corresponding resolution in us; we were, as it were, in a
+state between sleeping and waking, with neither thoughts nor dreams
+definite enough to affect us. This state finds exactly all that it
+desires in the presence or the near hope of outward objects; the mind
+lives in its daily pursuits, and companions, and amusements. What
+impressions have been once produced are soon worn away; and in a soil so
+shallow nothing makes a durable impression: everything can, as it were,
+scratch upon its surface, while nothing can strike deeply down within.
+
+Or, again, take the rarer case of those who are over-busy. There are
+minds, undoubtedly, which are as incapable of rest as those of the
+generality of men are prone to it; there are minds which enter keenly
+into everything presented to them by their outward senses, and which,
+when their senses cease to supply them, have an inexhaustible source of
+thought within, which furnishes them with abundant matter of reflection
+or of speculation. To such a mind, doing is most delightful; whether it
+be outward doing, or the mere exercise of thought, either supplies alike
+the consciousness of power. Where, then, is there room for the less
+obtruding things of God? Into that restless water, another and another
+image is for ever stepping down, pushing aside and keeping at a distance
+the sobering reflections of God and of Christ. Alas! the thorns grow so
+vigorously in such a soil, that they altogether choke and kill the seed
+of God's word.
+
+So, then, we are either asleep, or, if we are awake, we are not waking
+with Christ. On one side, in that garden of Gethsemane were the
+disciples sleeping; below, and fast ascending the hill,--not sleeping,
+certainly, but with lanterns and torches and weapons,--were those whose
+waking was for evil. Where were they who watched with Christ one hour
+then,--or where are those who watch with him now?
+
+HOW gently, yet how earnestly, does he call upon us to "watch and pray,
+lest we enter into temptation." To watch and to pray: for of all those
+around him some were sleeping, and none were praying; so that they who
+watched were not watching with him, but against him. In our careless
+state of mind the call to us is to watch; in our over-busy state the
+call to us is to pray; in our hard state there is equal need for both.
+And even in our best moods, when we are not hard, nor careless, nor
+over-busy, when we are at once sober and earnest and gentle, then not
+least does Christ call upon us to watch and to pray, that we may retain
+that than which else no gleam of April sunshine was ever more fleeting;
+that we may perfect that which else is of the earth, earthly, and when
+we lie down in the dust will wither and come to dust also.
+
+Jesus Christ brought life and immortality, it is said, to light through
+the gospel. He brought life and immortality to light:--is this indeed
+true as far as we are concerned? What do we think would be the
+difference in this point between many of us--who will dare say how
+many?--and a school, I will not say of Jewish, but even of Greek or
+Roman or Egyptian boys, eighteen hundred, or twenty-four hundred, or
+three or four thousand years ago? Compare us at our worship with them,
+and then, I grant, the difference would appear enormous. We have no
+images, making the glory of the incorruptible God like to corruptible
+man; we have no vain stream of incense; no shedding of the blood of
+bulls and calves in sacrifice: the hymns which are sung here are not
+vain repetitions or impious fables, which gave no word of answer to
+those questions which it most concerns mankind to know. Here, indeed,
+Jesus Christ is truly set forth, crucified among us; here life and
+immortality are brought to light. But follow us out of this place,--to
+our respective pursuits and amusements, to our social meetings, or our
+times of solitary thought,--and wherein do we seem to see life and
+immortality more brightly revealed than to those heathen schools of old?
+Do we enjoy any worldly good less keenly, or less shrink from any
+worldly evil? Death, which to the heathen view was the end of all
+things, is to us (so our language goes) the gate of life. Do we think of
+it with more hope and less fear than the heathen did? Christ has risen,
+and has reconciled us to God. Is God more to us?--God now revealed to us
+as our reconciled Father--do we oftener think of him, do we love him
+better, than he was thought of and loved in those heathen schools, which
+had Homer's poetry for their only gospel? We talk of light, of
+revelation, of the knowledge of God, while verily and really we are
+walking, not in light, but in darkness: not in knowledge of God, but in
+blindness and hardness of heart.
+
+"The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." How great is the
+loving-kindness of these words,--how gently does Christ bear with the
+weakness of his disciples! But this thought may be the most blessed or
+the most dangerous thought in the world; the most blessed if it touches
+us with love, the most dangerous if it emboldens us in sin. He is full
+of loving-kindness, full of long-suffering; for days, and weeks, and
+months, and years he bears with us: we grieve him, and he entreats; we
+crucify him afresh, yet he will not come down from the cross in power
+and majesty; he endures and spares. So it is for days, and months, and
+years; for some years it may be to most of us,--for many years to some
+of the youngest. There may be some here who may go on grieving Christ,
+and crucifying him afresh, for as much as seventy years; and he will
+bear with them all that time, and his sun will daily shine upon them,
+and his creatures and his word will minister to their pleasure; and he
+himself will say nothing to them but to entreat them to turn and be
+saved. This may last, I say, to some amongst us for seventy years; to
+others it may last fifty; to many of us it may last for forty, or for
+thirty; none of us, perhaps, are so old but that it may last with us
+twenty, or at the least ten. Such is the prospect before us, if we like
+it: not to be depended upon with certainty, it is true, but yet to be
+regarded as probable. But as these ten, or twenty, or fifty, or seventy
+years pass on, Christ will still spare us, but his voice of entreaty
+will be less often heard; the distance between him and us will be
+consciously wider. From one place after another where we once used
+sometimes to see him, he will have departed; year after year some object
+which used once to catch the light from heaven, will have become
+overgrown, and will lie constantly in gloom; year after year the world
+will become to us more entirely devoid of God. If sorrow, or some
+softening joy ever turns our minds towards Christ, we shall be startled
+at perceiving there is something which keeps us from him, that we cannot
+earnestly believe in him; that if we speak of loving him, our hearts,
+which can still love earthly things, feel that the words are but
+mockery. Alas, alas! the increased weakness of our flesh, has destroyed
+all the power of our spirit, and almost all its willingness: it is bound
+with chains which it cannot break, and, indeed, scarcely desires to
+break. Redemption, Salvation, Victory,--what words are these when
+applied to that enslaved, that lost, that utterly overthrown and
+vanquished soul, which sin is leading in triumph now, and which will
+speedily be given over to walk for ever as a captive in the eternal
+triumph of death!
+
+Not one word of what I have said is raised beyond the simplest
+expression of truth; this is our portion if we will not watch with
+Christ. We know how often we have failed to do so, either sleeping in
+carelessness, or being busy and wakeful, but not with him or for him.
+Still he calls us to watch and pray, lest we enter into temptation; to
+mark our lives and actions; to mark them often; to see whether we have
+done well or ill in the month past, or in the week past, or in the day
+past; to consider whether we are better than we were, or worse; whether
+we think Christ loves us better, or worse; whether we are more or less
+cold towards him. I know not what else can be called watching with
+Christ than such a looking into ourselves as we are in his sight. It is
+very hard to be done;--yes, it is hard--harder than anything probably
+which we ever attempted before; and, therefore, we must pray withal for
+his help, whose strength is perfected in our weakness. And if it be so
+hard, and we have need so greatly to pray for God's help, should we not
+all also be anxious to help one another? And knowing, as we do from our
+own consciences, how difficult it is to watch with Christ, and how
+thankful we should be to any one who were to make it easier to us,
+should we not be sure that our neighbour is in like case with ourselves;
+that our help may be as useful to him as we feel that his would be to
+us? This is our bounden duty of love towards one another; what then
+should be said of us if we not only neglect this duty, but do the very
+contrary to it; if we actually help the evil in our brother's heart to
+destroy him more entirely; if we will not watch with Christ ourselves,
+and strive to prevent others from doing so?
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXIV.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+GOOD FRIDAY.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+ROMANS v. 8.
+
+_God commendeth his love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners,
+Christ died for us_.
+
+
+We all remember the story in the Gospel, of the different treatment
+which our Lord met with in the same house, from the Pharisee, who had
+invited him into it, and from the woman who came in and knelt at his
+feet, and kissed them, and bathed them with her tears. Our Lord
+accounted for the difference in these words, "To whom little is
+forgiven, the same loveth little;" which means to speak of the sense or
+feeling in the person's own mind, "He who feels that little is or needs
+to be forgiven him, he also loves little." And this same difference
+which existed toward him when he was present on earth, exists no less
+now, whenever he is brought before our thoughts. The same sort of
+persons who saw him with indifference, think of him also with
+indifference; they who saw him with love, think of him also with love.
+There is no art, no power in the world, which can give an interest to
+words spoken concerning him, for those who feel that little is and that
+little needs to be forgiven them, or to those who never consider about
+their being forgiven at all. To such, this day, with its services, what
+they hear from the Scriptures, or what they hear from men, must be
+alike a matter of indifference: it is not possible that it should be
+otherwise. Yet, God forbid that we should design what we are saying this
+day only for a certain few of our congregation, as if the rest neither
+would nor could be interested in it. So long as any one is careless, he
+cannot, it is true, be interested about the things of Christ; but who
+can say at what moment, through God's grace, he may cease to be
+careless? Is it too much to say, that scarcely a service is performed in
+any congregation in the land, which does not awaken an interest in some
+one who before was indifferent? I do rot say a deep interest, nor a
+lasting one, but an interest; there is a thought, a heeding, an
+inclination of the mind to listen, created probably by the Church
+services in some one or other, every time that they are performed. As we
+never can know in whom this may be so created, as all have great need
+that it should be created, as all are deeply concerned whether they feel
+that they are so or no, so we speak to all alike; and if the language
+does pass over their ears like an unknown or indistinct sound, the fault
+and the loss are theirs; but the Church has borne her witness, and has
+so far done her duty.
+
+But again, for ears not careless, but most interested; for hearts to
+whom Christ is more than all in the world besides; for minds, before
+whom the wisdom of the gospel is ever growing, rising to a loftier
+height, and striking downwards to a depth more profound,--yet without
+end in its height or its depth; is there not, also, a difficulty in
+speaking to them of that great thing which the Church celebrates to-day?
+Is there no difficulty in awakening their interest, or rather how can we
+escape even from wearying or repelling them, when their own affections
+and deep thoughts must find all words of man, whether of themselves or
+others, infinitely unworthy to express either the one or the other? To
+such, then, the words of the preacher may be no more than music without
+any words at all; which does but serve to lead and accompany our own
+thoughts, without distinctly suggesting any thoughts of another to
+interrupt the workings of our own minds. We would speak of Christ's
+death; most good it is for us and for you to think upon it; so far as
+our words suit the current of your own thoughts, use them and listen to
+them; so far as they are a too unworthy expression of what we ought to
+think and feel, follow your own reflections, and let the words neither
+offend you nor distract you.
+
+I would endeavour just to touch, upon some of the purposes for which the
+Scripture tells us that Christ died, and for which his death was
+declared to be the great object of our faith. This done in the simplest
+and fewest words will best show the infinite greatness of the subject;
+and how truly it is, so to speak, the central point of Christianity.
+
+First of all, Christ died as a proper sacrifice for sin; as a sacrifice,
+the virtue of which, is altogether distinct from our knowledge of it, or
+from any effect which it has a tendency to produce on our own minds. We
+are forgiven for his sake; we are acquitted through his death, and
+through faith in his blood. What a view does this open, partially,
+indeed,--for what mortal eye can reach to the end of it?--of the evil of
+sin, and of God's love! of what God's justice required, and of what
+God's love fulfilled! This great sacrifice was made once, but it will
+not be made again; for those who despise this there remains no more
+offering for sin, but their sin abideth with them for ever.
+
+Secondly, Christ's death is revealed to us as a motive capable of
+overcoming all temptations to evil. "How much more shall the blood of
+Christ purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?"
+"He suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us
+to God;" that is, that a consideration of what Christ's death declares
+to us should have power to melt the hardest heart, and to sober the
+lightest: that, when we think of Christ dying, dying for us, and so
+purchasing for us the forgiveness of sins, and everlasting life, such a
+love, and such a prospect of peace with God, and of glory, should in the
+highest degree soften and enkindle us; and from love for him, and
+confidence of hope through the prospect which he has given us, we should
+be able to overcome all temptations. "I am persuaded," says St. Paul,
+"that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor
+powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth,
+nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of
+God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
+
+Thirdly, Christ suffered for as, leaving us an example that we should
+follow his steps. He left us an example of all meekness, and patience,
+and humility; he left us an example of perfect submission to God's will;
+he left us an infinite comfort by letting us feel when we are in any
+trouble, or pain, or affliction, that he was troubled too; that he knew
+pain, and endured affliction. Above all, in that hour which must come to
+all of us, he has left us the greatest of all supports;--for he endured
+to die; and we may enter with less fear into the darkness of the grave,
+for even there Christ has been for our sakes, and arose from out of it a
+conqueror.
+
+Fourthly, Christ died that he might gather together in one the children
+of God that were scattered abroad; he died to purchase to himself his
+universal Church. So it is said in the Scriptures: and on this
+particular purpose of his death, it may not be amiss to dwell, for none
+so needs to be held in remembrance. Many there are, and ever have been,
+who have rested their whole hope towards God on his sacrifice; many who
+have learnt from his cross to overcome sin; from his resurrection to
+overcome the world; many who, amidst all the troubles of life, and in
+the hour of death, have been supported by the thought of his example.
+But where is his universal Church? where the company of God's children
+gathered together into one? where is the city set upon the hill, that
+cannot be hid? where is the visible kingdom of God, where all its people
+are striving under one Divine Head, against sin, the world, and the
+devil? This is the sign which we look for and cannot find; this is the
+fulfilment of the prophecies for which we seem destined to wait in vain.
+
+And what if, on the contrary, that which is called the Church act rather
+the part of the world; if our worst foes be truly those of our own
+household: if they who should have been for our help, be rather an
+occasion of falling: if one of our greatest difficulties in following
+Christ steadily, arise from the total want of encouragement, yea, often
+from the direct opposition of those who are themselves pledged to follow
+him to the death; if that Church, which was to have been the clearest
+sign to the world of the truth of Christ's gospel, be now, in many
+respects, rather a stumbling-block to the adversary and unbeliever, so
+that the name of God is through us blasphemed among the heathen, rather
+than glorified; may we not humble ourselves before God in sorrow and in
+shame? and must we not confess, that through our sin, and the sin of our
+fathers, Christ, in respect of this one purpose of his death, has as yet
+died in vain?
+
+Israel after the flesh, lamenting their Jerusalem which is now not
+theirs, and mourning over their ruined temple, in all their synagogues
+repeat constantly the prayer, O Lord, build thou the walls of Jerusalem!
+O Lord, build! O Lord, build! O Lord, build! is the solemn chorus,
+marking by its repetition the earnestness of their desire. And should
+not this be the prayer of the Israel of God, scattered now as they are
+into their thousand divided and corrupted synagogues, and no token to be
+seen of the pure and universal Church, the living temple of the Spirit
+of God; should not we too, privately and publicly, join in the prayer of
+the earthly Israel, and pray that Christ would build for us the walls of
+our true Jerusalem? For only think what it would be, if Christ's Church
+existed more than in name; consider what it would be if baptism were a
+real bond; if we looked on one another as brethren, redeemed by one
+ransom, pledged to one service; if we bore with one another's
+weaknesses; if we helped one another's endeavours; if each saw and
+heard, in the words and life of his neighbour, an image of Christ, and a
+pledge of the truth of his promises. Consider what it would be, if, with
+no quarrels, with no jealousies, with no unkindness, we sought not every
+man his own, but every man also another's welfare; as true members one
+of another,--of one body, of which Christ is the head. Consider what it
+would be, if our judgments of men and things were like Christ's
+judgments; neither strengthening the heart of the careless and sinful by
+our laxity, nor making sad the heart of God's true servant by our
+uncharitableness; not putting little things in the place of great, nor
+great things in the place of little; not neglecting the unity of the
+Spirit; not stickling for a sameness in the form. Or, if we carry our
+views a little wider; if we look out upon the world at large, and hear
+of rumours of wars, and see the signs of internal disorders, and
+perhaps may think that the clouds are gathering which, herald one of the
+comings of the Son of man to judgment, whether the last of all or not it
+were vain to ask; how blessed would it be, if we could see such an ark
+of Christ's Church as should float visibly upon, the stormy waters;
+gathering within it, in peace and safety, men of various dispositions
+and conditions, and opinions; those who held much of truth, and those
+who had mixed with it much of error: those whom Christ would call clean,
+and those, too, whom some of their brethren call unclean, but whom
+Christ has redeemed, and will save no less than their despisers; all, in
+short, who fled from sin and from the world to Christ, and to the
+company of Christ's people! O if we could but see such an ark preparing
+while God's long-suffering yet withholds the flood! O that all God's
+scattered and divided children would join together in one earnest
+prayer, O Lord, build thou the walls of Jerusalem! O Lord, build! O
+Lord, build! O Lord, build!
+
+Yet, for this, among other purposes of mercy, did the Son of God, as on
+this day, suffer death upon the cross: he died that we might be one in
+him. Let us turn, then, from the thought of the general temple in ruins,
+and let us see whether we cannot, at any rate, within the walls of our
+own little particular congregation, fulfil also this object of Christ's
+death, and be one in him. Let us consider one another, to provoke unto
+love and to good works: we too often consider one another for the very
+contrary purpose, to provoke to contempt or ill-will. True it is, that
+if we look for it we can find much of evil in our brethren, and they can
+find much also in us; and we might become all haters of one another, all
+in some sort deserving to be hated. But where is he who is entitled to
+hate another's evil when he has evil in himself; and when Christ, who
+had none, did not hate the evil of us all, but rather died to save it?
+And is it not true also, that, if we look for it, we can also find in
+every one something to love? something, undoubtedly, even in him who has
+in himself least: but much, infinitely much in all, when we look upon
+them as Christ's redeemed. Not more beautifully than truly has it been
+said, that Christian souls--
+
+     "Though worn and soiled by sinful clay,
+     Are yet, to eyes that see them true,
+     All glistening with baptismal dew."
+
+They have the seal of belonging to Christ; they are his and our
+brethren. And, as his latest command, and his beloved Apostle's also,
+was that we should love one another; so, if we would bring all our
+solemn thoughts of Christ's death to one point, and endeavour to derive
+from it some one particular lesson for our daily lives, I know not that
+any would be more needed or better for us, than that we should
+especially apply the thought of Christ dying on the cross for us to
+soften our angry, and proud, and selfish feelings; to restrain us from
+angry or sneering words; from unkind, offensive, rude, or insulting
+actions; to excite us to gentleness, courtesy, kindness; remembering
+that he, be he who he may, whom we allow ourselves to despise, or to
+dislike, or to annoy, or to neglect, was one so precious in Christ's
+sight, that he laid down his life for his sake, and invites him to be
+for ever with, him and with his Father.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXV.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+EASTER DAY.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JOHN xx. 20.
+
+_Then the disciples went away again unto their own home_.
+
+
+With this verse ends the portion of the scripture chosen for the gospel
+in this morning's service. It finishes the account of the visit of Peter
+and John to the sepulchre; and, therefore, the close of the extract at
+this point is sufficiently natural. Yet the effect of the quiet tone of
+these words, just following the account of the greatest event which
+earth has ever witnessed, is, I think, singularly impressive; the more
+so when we remember that they were written by one of the very persons,
+whose visit had been just described; and that the writer, therefore,
+could tell full well, to how intense an interest there had succeeded
+that solemn calm. They went away from the very sight, if I may so speak,
+of Christ risen, to their own homes. And what thoughts do we suppose
+that they carried with them? Let us endeavour to recall them, for our
+benefit, also, who, like them, are going, as it were, to the ordinary
+tenure of our daily lives from this day's high solemnity.
+
+The disciples went away to their own homes; and there they waited,
+either in Jerusalem or in Galilee, pursuing, as we find from the last
+chapter of St. John, their common occupations, till, after their Lord's
+ascension, power was given them from on high, and the great work of
+their apostleship began. During this period, Christ appeared to them
+several times: he conversed with them, he ate and drank with them: but
+he did not live continually with them, as he had done before his
+crucifixion: he did not take them about with him as before, while he was
+performing the part of the great prophet of the house of Israel. They
+were now at their own homes waiting for his call to more active duties.
+They had seen him dead, and they had seen, him risen, and they were
+receiving into their souls all the lessons of his life and death and
+resurrection, brought before them, and impressed upon them by that Holy
+Spirit, who, according to Christ's promise, was to take of the things
+which are Christ's, and to show them to Christ's disciples.
+
+It is true that there came upon them, after this, an especial visitation
+of the Spirit of power, to fit them for their particular work of
+apostles or messengers to mankind. Having been converted themselves,
+they were to strengthen their brethren. And as this especial visitation
+of the Holy Spirit was given to them only, and to those on whom they
+themselves laid their hands, so none have ever since been called to that
+particular work to which they were called, in any thing of the same
+degree of fulness. What is peculiar to them as apostles is not
+applicable exactly to us; but we are all concerned in what belongs to
+them as Christians: in this respect, their case is ours; and they, when
+at their own homes, and engaged in their own callings, stand in the same
+situation as we all.
+
+We may, however, still make a two-fold division; we may regard the
+apostles going away to their own homes, as a temporary thing, as a mere
+term of preparation for the duties which they were afterwards called to;
+or we may look upon it as complete so far as earth is concerned, since,
+taking them as Christians only and not as apostles, they might have so
+lived on to the end of their lives, having received all those helps
+which were needed for their own personal salvation, and having only to
+use them daily for their soul's benefit. This same distinction we may
+apply to ourselves. We may consider ourselves as going to our own homes
+for a time only, awaiting our call to active life; or we may consider
+ourselves as withdrawing, after every celebration of Christ's
+resurrection, to that round of daily duties which on earth shall never
+alter; and to which all the helps derived from our communion with Christ
+are to be applied, with nothing future, so for as earth is concerned,
+for which we may need them. So then, of whatever age we may be, what is
+said of the apostles in the text may apply to us also: after having
+witnessed, as it were, Christ's resurrection, we go away to our own
+homes. Let us first take that part of the text which is common to us
+all, though not in the same degree--the having been witnesses of
+Christ's resurrection. John and Peter found him not in the sepulchre;
+they found the linen clothes and the napkin lying there, but he was
+gone. And upon this, as John assures us, both for himself and his
+companion, "they believed." They believed, we should observe, when as
+yet they had no more seen Jesus himself after his resurrection, than we
+Lave now. They only knew that he had been dead, and that he was not in
+the sepulchre. And this we know also; we have not seen him, indeed,
+since his resurrection: but we are sure he is not in the sepulchre. We
+are sure that the malice of his enemies did not do its work: we are
+sure, for we are ourselves witnesses of it, that that name, and that
+word, which they hoped would have been destroyed for ever, like the
+names of many, not only of false prophets and deceivers, but even of
+good men and of wise, have not perished, but have brought forth fruit
+more abundantly, from the very cause that was intended to put them out.
+Christ's gospel, assuredly, is a living thing, full of vigour and full
+of power; it has worked mightily for good, and is working; it is so full
+of blessing, it tends so largely towards the happiness that is enjoyed
+upon earth, that we are quite sure it is not lying still buried in
+Christ's sepulchre.
+
+They (the two disciples) then went away believing, because they found
+that he was not in the sepulchre. But Mary Magdalene came and told them,
+that she had seen him risen, and had heard his voice with her ears. What
+she told Peter and John, Peter and John are now telling to us. They tell
+us that they have heard him, have seen him with their eyes, have looked
+upon him, yea, that their hands have handled him. They tell us even more
+than Mary Magdalene told them; for she had not been allowed to touch
+him. We may well trust their testimony, as they trusted hers, being
+quite ready indeed to believe that he was alive, because they had found
+that he was not amongst the dead. And so we, finding that he is not
+amongst the dead, seeing and knowing the fruits of his gospel, the
+living and ever increasing fruits of it, may well believe that its
+author is risen, and that the pains of death were loosed from off him,
+because it was not possible that he should be holden by them.
+
+In this way, we, like the two disciples, may be all said to be witnesses
+of Christ's resurrection. May it not be said still more of those amongst
+us who assembled this morning round Christ's table, to keep alive the
+memory of his death; when we partook of that bread, and drank of that
+cup, of which so many thousands and millions, in every age and in every
+land, have eaten and drunken, all receiving them, with nearly the same
+words,--the body that was given for us, the blood that was shed for
+us,--all, making allowances for human weakness, finding in that
+communion the peace and the strength of God; all alike receiving it with
+penitent hearts, and with faith, and purposes of good for the time to
+come? Did we not then witness that Christ is not perished? that he has
+been ever, and still is, mighty to save? That command given to twelve
+persons, in an obscure chamber in Jerusalem, by one who, the next day,
+was to die as a malefactor, has been, and is obeyed from one end of the
+world to another; and wherever it has been obeyed, there, in proportion
+to the sincerity of the obedience, has been the fulness of the blessing.
+
+But this is now past, as with the two disciples, and we are going again
+to our own homes. There, neither the empty sepulchre nor the risen
+Saviour are present before us, but common scenes and familiar
+occupations, which, in themselves have nothing in them of Christ. So it
+must be; we cannot be always within these walls; we cannot always be
+engaged in public prayer; we cannot always be hearing Christ's word, nor
+partaking of his communion; we must be going about our several works,
+and must be busied in them; some of us in preparation for other work to
+come, others to go on till the end of their lives with this only. May we
+not hope that Christ, and Christ's Spirit, will visit us the while in
+these our daily callings, as he came to his disciples Peter and John,
+when following their business as fishers on the lake of Gennesareth?
+
+How can we get him to visit us? There is one answer--by prayer and by
+watchfulness. By prayer, whether we are in our preparatory state, or our
+fixed one; by prayer, and I think I may add, by praying in our own
+words. Of course, when we pray together, some of us must join in the
+words of others; and it makes little difference, whether those words be
+spoken or read. But when we pray alone, some, perhaps, may still use
+none but prayers made by others, especially the Lord's prayer. We should
+remember, however, that the Lord's prayer was given for this very
+purpose, to teach us how to pray for ourselves. But it does not do this,
+if we use it alone, and still more, if we use it without understanding
+it. If we do understand it, and study it, it will indeed teach us to
+pray; it will show us what we most need in prayer, and what are our
+greatest evils; but surely it may be said, that no man ever learnt this
+lesson well without wishing to practise it; no man ever used the Lord's
+prayer with understanding and with earnestness, without adding to it
+others of his own. And this is not a trifling matter. We know the
+difficulty of attending in prayer; and if we use the words of others
+only, which we must, therefore, repeat from memory, it is perfectly
+possible to say them over without really joining with them in our minds:
+we may say them over to ourselves, and be actually thinking of other
+things the while. And the same thing holds good, of course, even with
+prayers that we have made ourselves, if we accustom ourselves to repeat
+them without alteration; they then become, in fact, the work of another
+than our actual mind, and may be repeated by memory alone. Therefore, it
+seems to be of consequence to vary the words, and even the matter of our
+private prayers, that so we may not deceive ourselves, by repeating
+merely, when we fancy that we are praying. Ten words actually made by
+ourselves at the moment, and not remembered, are a real prayer; for it
+is not hypocrisy that is the most common danger; our temper, when we are
+on our knees, is apt indeed to be careless, but not, I hope and believe,
+deceitful. This, of course, must be well known to a very large
+proportion of us; but, perhaps, there are some to whom it may be
+useful; some to whom the advice may not yet have suggested itself, that
+they should make their own prayers, in part, at least, whenever they
+kneel down to their private devotions.
+
+And this sort of prayer, with God's blessing, is likely to make us
+watchful. We rise in the morning: we say some prayers of our own; we
+hear others read to us; and yet it is possible that we may not have
+really prayed ourselves in either case; we may not have brought
+ourselves truly into the presence of God. Hence our true condition, with
+all its dangers, has not been brought before our minds; the need of
+watchfulness has not been shown to us. But with real prayer of our own
+hearts' making it is different; God is then present to us, and sin and
+righteousness: our dream of carelessness is, for a moment at least,
+broken. No doubt it is but too easy to dream again; yet still an
+opportunity of exerting ourselves to keep awake is given us; we are
+roused to consciousness of our situation; and that, at any rate, renders
+exertion possible. There is no doubt that souls are most commonly lost
+by this continued dreaming, till at length, when seemingly awake (they
+are not so really), they are like men who answer to the call that would
+arouse them, but they answer, in fact, unconsciously. We cannot tell for
+ourselves or others any way by which our souls shall certainly be saved,
+in spite of carelessness; or any way by which, carelessness shall be
+overcome necessarily; all that can be done is, to point out how it may
+be overcome, by what means the soul may be helped in its endeavours; not
+how those endeavours and holy desires may be rendered needless.
+
+Thus, then, we may gain Christ to visit us at our own homes and in our
+common callings, when we are returned to them. And that difference which
+I spoke of as existing between us, that some of us are waiting for
+Christ's call to a higher field of action, while others are engaged in
+that sort of duty which will last their lives, I know not that
+this--though it be often important, and though I am often obliged to
+dwell on it--need enter into our considerations to-day. Rather, perhaps,
+may we overlook this difference, and feel that all of us here
+assembled--those in their state of earliest preparation for after
+duties; those to whom that earliest state is passed away, and who are
+entered into another state, in part preparatory, in part partaking of
+the character of actual life; and those also whose preparation, speaking
+of earth, only, is completed altogether, who must be doing, and whose
+time even of doing is far advanced--that all of us have in truth one
+great call yet before us: and that, with respect to that, we are all, as
+it were, preparing still. And for that great call, common to all of us,
+we need all the same common readiness; and that readiness will be
+effected in us only by the same means,--if now, before it come, Christ
+and Christ's Spirit shall, in our homes and daily callings, be persuaded
+to visit us.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXVI.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+WHITSUNDAY.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+ACTS xix. 2.
+
+_Have you received the Holy Ghost since ye believed_?
+
+
+It appears, by what follows these words, that the question here related
+especially to those gifts of the Holy Ghost which were given, in the
+first age of the church, as a sign of God's power, and a witness that
+the work of the gospel was from God. Yet although this be so, and
+therefore the words, in this particular sense, cannot to any good
+purpose be asked now; yet there is another sense, and that not a lower
+but a far higher one, in which we may ask them, and in which it concerns
+us in the highest degree, what sort of answer we can give to them, I
+say, "what sort of answer;" for I think it is true of all Christians
+that, in a certain measure, they have received the Holy Ghost. Not only
+does the doctrine of our own, and I believe every other, church,
+concerning baptism, show this: but it seems also necessarily to follow,
+from those words of St. Paul, that "No man can say that Jesus is the
+Lord but by the Holy Ghost." And yet the Scripture and common experience
+alike show us, that a man may call Jesus Lord, and yet not be really
+his, nor one who will be owned by Him at the last day. So that what is
+of real importance to us is, the degree of fulness and force with which
+we could give the answer to the words of the text; not simply saying
+that we have received the Holy Ghost, which would be true, but might be
+far from sufficient; but saying that we have received Him and are
+receiving Him more and more, so that our hearts and lives are showing
+the impression of his heavenly seal daily more and more clearly and
+completely.
+
+And this must really have always been the answer which it concerned
+every Christian to be able to make; although it has been in various
+instances, and by very opposite parties, tried to be evaded. It is
+evaded alike by those who set too highly the grace given in baptism, and
+by those who, setting this too low, direct our attention to another
+point in a man's life, which they call his justification or conversion.
+For both alike would give an exaggerated importance to one particular
+moment of our lives, and to the grace then given. Now, the importance of
+particular moments in men's lives differs exceedingly in different
+persons; but yet in all may be exaggerated. I suppose that if ever in
+any man's life a particular point was of immense importance, it was the
+point of his conversion in the case of St. Paul. There were here united
+all that grace which according to one view accompanies baptism
+especially, and all which according to the other view accompanies
+conversion and justification. Here was a point which separated St.
+Paul's later life from his earlier with a broader line of separation
+than can possibly be the ease in general. There can be no doubt that he,
+if ever man did, received at that particular time the Holy Ghost. But
+if, ten or twenty years afterwards, St. Paul had been asked concerning
+what the Holy Ghost had done for him, he would not certainly have
+confined himself in his answer to the grace once given him at his
+conversion and baptism, but would have spoken of that which he had been
+receiving since every hour and every day, carrying forward and
+completing that work of God which had been begun at the time of his
+journey to Damascus. And as he had received more and more grace, so was
+his confidence in his acceptance with God at the last day more and more
+assured. For he writes to the Corinthians, many years after his
+conversion and baptism, that he kept under his body, and was bringing it
+into subjection, lest that by any means, after having preached to
+others, he should be himself a castaway. And some years later still,
+though he does not use so strong an expression as that of becoming a
+castaway, yet he still says, even when writing to the Philippians from
+Rome, that he counted not himself to have apprehended, nor to have
+attained his object fully; but forgetting what was behind, even the
+grace of his conversion and baptism, he pressed on to the things which
+were before, even that continued and increasing grace which was required
+to bring him in safety to his heavenly crown. But if we go on some years
+yet farther, when his labours were ended, and the sure prospect of
+speedy death was before him; when the past grace was everything, and
+what he could expect yet to come was scarcely any other than that
+particular aid which we need in our struggle with the last enemy--death;
+then, his language is free from all uncertainty; then, in the full sense
+of the words, he could say that he had received the Holy Ghost, that his
+spirit had been fully born again for its eternal being, and that there
+only remained the raising up also of his mortal body, to complete that
+new creation of body and soul which Christ's Spirit works in Christ's
+redeemed. "I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I
+have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me my crown of
+righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me at
+that day."
+
+It seems, then, that the great question which we should be anxious to
+be able to answer in the affirmative, is this, "_Are we receiving_ the
+Holy Ghost since we believed?" "Since we believed," whether we choose to
+carry back the date of our first belief to the very time of our baptism,
+when grace was given to us,--we know not to what degree nor how,--yet
+given to us, as being then received into Christ's flock; or whether we
+go back only to that time when we can ourselves remember ourselves to
+have believed, and so can remember that God's grace was given to us.
+Have we been ever since, and are we still, receiving the Holy Ghost? O
+blessed above all blessedness, if we can say that this is true of us! O
+blessed with a blessedness most complete, if we only do not too entirely
+abandon ourselves to enjoy it! Elect of God; holy and beloved; justified
+and sanctified; there is nothing in all the world that could impair or
+destroy such happiness, except we ourselves, in evil hour, believed it
+to be out of the reach of danger.
+
+But if the witness of memory and conscience be less favourable; if we
+can remember long seasons of our lives during which we were not
+receiving the Holy Ghost; long seasons of a cold and hard state, in
+which there was, as it were, neither rain nor dew, nor yet sun to ripen
+what had grown before; but all was so ungenial that no new thing grew;
+and what had grown was withering and almost dying; what shall be said,
+then, and how can the time be made up which was so wasted? But we
+remember, it may be, that this deadly season passed away: the rain fell
+once more, and the tender dew, and the quickening sun shone brightly:
+our spiritual growth began again, and is now going on healthily; we have
+not always been receiving the Holy Ghost since we believed, but we are
+receiving him now. How gracious, then, has God been to us, that he has
+again renewed us unto repentance; that he has shown that we have not, in
+the fullest sense, sinned against the Holy Ghost, seeing that the Holy
+Ghost still abides with us! we grieved him, and tried his
+long-suffering, but he has not abandoned us to our own evil hearts; we
+are receiving him who is the giver of life, and we still live.
+
+But must not we speak of others? is not another case to be supposed
+possible? may there not be some who cannot say with truth that they are
+receiving the holy Ghost now? They received him once; we doubt it not;
+perhaps they were receiving him for some length of time; their early
+childhood was watched by Christian care; their youth and early manhood,
+when it received freshly things of this world, received also, with
+lively thankfulness, the grace of God; they can remember a time when
+they were growing in goodness; when they were being renewed after the
+image of God. But they can remember, also, that this time passed away;
+the grace of early childhood was put out by the temptations of boyhood;
+the grace of youth and opening manhood died away amid the hardness of
+this life's maturity. It is so, I believe, often; that boyhood, which
+is, as it were, ripened childhood, destroys the grace of our earliest
+years; that again, when youth offers us a second beginning of life, we
+are again impressed with good; but that ripened youth, which is manhood,
+brings with it again the reason of hardness, and again our spiritual
+growth, is destroyed. We can remember, I am supposing, that this fatal
+change did take place; but can we date it to any particular act, or
+month, or day, or hour? We can do so most rarely: in this respect the
+seed of death can even less be traced to its beginning than the seed of
+life. And yet there _was_ a beginning, only we do not remember it. And
+why do we not remember it? Because the real beginning was in some act
+which seemed of so little consequence that it made no impression; in the
+altering some habit which we judged to be a mere trifle; in the
+indulging some temper which even at the time we hardly noticed. Some
+such little thing,--little in our view of it,--made the fatal turn; we
+received the grace of God less and less: we heeded not the change for a
+season; and when it was so marked that we could not but heed it, then we
+had ceased to regard it; and so it was that the spring of our life was
+dried up: and it is of no more avail to our present and future state,
+that we once received grace, than the rain of last winter will be
+sufficient to ripen the summer's harvest, if from this time forward we
+have nothing but drought and cold.
+
+Some few, again, there may be, who, within their own recollection, could
+not say that they have received the Holy Ghost: persons who have lived
+among careless friends, to whom the way of life has never been steadily
+pointed out; while the way of death, with all its manifold paths,
+meeting at last in one, has been continually before them. Shall we say
+that these, because they have been baptized, are therefore guilty of
+having rejected grace given? that this sin is aggravated, because a
+mercy was offered them once of which they were unconscious? We would not
+say this; but we would say that it is impossible but that they must have
+received the Holy Ghost within their memory; it is impossible but that
+conscience must have sometimes spoken, and that they must have sometimes
+been enabled to obey it; it is impossible but that they must have had
+some notions of sin, and some desires to struggle against it; and so far
+as they ever felt that desire, it was the work of God's Holy Spirit.
+Man cannot dare to say how great the amount of their guilt may be; but
+guilt there certainly is; they have grieved the Holy Spirit; and, though
+we dare not say that they have utterly blasphemed him, yet they have a
+long hardness to overcome, and every hour of delayed turning to God
+increases it: it may be possible still to overcome it, but meanwhile it
+is not overcome; they are not receiving the Holy Spirit; they are not
+being renewed into the likeness of Christ, without which no man can
+see God.
+
+Here, then, are the four cases, one of which must belong to every one of
+us here assembled. Either we have been always and still are receiving
+the Holy Ghost; or we can remember when we were not, but yet are
+receiving him now; or we can remember when we were, but yet now are not;
+or we cannot remember to have received him ever, nor are we yet
+receiving him. I cannot say which of the last two states is the most
+dreadful, nor scarcely which of the first two states is the most
+blessed. But yet as even those happy states admit not of
+over-confidence, so neither do the last two most unhappy states oblige
+us to despair. Not to despair; but they do urge us to every degree of
+fear less than despair. There is far more danger of our not fearing
+enough than of our being driven to despair. There is far more danger of
+your looking on the season of youth, of our looking on to old age; you
+trusting to the second freshness and tenderness of the first,--we to the
+calmness and necessary reflection of the last. There is far more danger
+of our thus hardening ourselves beyond recall; there is not only the
+danger, but there is the sin, the greatest sin, I suppose, of which the
+human mind is capable, that of deliberately choosing evil for the
+present rather than good, calculating that, by and by, we shall choose
+good rather than evil. I believe, that it is impossible to conceive of
+any state of mind more sinful than one which should so feel and so
+choose; and this is the state which we incur, and which we persist in
+whenever we put off the thought of repentance. Now, then, it only
+remains, that we apply this each to ourselves; I say all of us apply it,
+the young and the old alike; for there is not one here so young as not
+to have cause to apply it; there is not one of us who would not, I am
+sure, be a different person from what he now is, if he were to ask
+himself steadily every day, Have I been and am I receiving the Holy
+Ghost since I believed?
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXVII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+TRINITY SUNDAY.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JOHN iii. 9.
+
+_How can these things be_?
+
+
+This is the second question put by Nicodemus to our Lord with regard to
+the truths which Jesus was declaring to him. The first was, "How can a
+man be born when he is old?" which was said upon our Lord's telling him
+that, "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."
+Now, it will be observed, that these two questions are treated by our
+Lord in a different manner: to the first he, in fact, gives an answer;
+that is, he removes by his answer that difficulty in Nicodemus's mind
+which led to the question; but to the second he gives no answer, and
+leaves Nicodemus--and with Nicodemus, us all also--exactly in the same
+ignorance as he found him at the beginning.
+
+Now, is there any difference in the nature of these two questions, which
+led our Lord to treat them so differently? We might suppose beforehand
+that there would be; and when we come to examine them, so we shall find
+it. The difficulty in the first question rendered true faith impossible,
+and, therefore, our Lord removed it; the difficulty in the second
+question did not properly interfere with faith at all, but might,
+through man's fault, be a temptation to him to refuse to believe. And
+as this, like other temptations, must be overcome by us, and not taken
+away from our path before we encounter it, so our Lord did not think
+proper to remove it or to lessen it.
+
+We must now unfold this difference more clearly. When Christ said,
+"Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God,"
+Nicodemus could not possibly believe what our Lord said, because he did
+not understand his meaning. He did not know what he meant by "a man's
+being born again," and, therefore, he could not believe, as he did not
+know what he was to believe. Words which we do not understand, are like
+words spoken in an unknown language; we can neither believe them nor
+disbelieve them, because we do not know what they say. For instance, I
+repeat these words, [Greek: tous pantas haemas phanerothaenai dei
+emprosaen tou baematos tou Christou.] Now, if I were to ask, Do you
+believe these words? is it not manifest that all of you who know Greek
+enough, to understand them may also believe them; but of those who do
+not know Greek, not a single person can yet believe them? They are as
+yet words spoken as to the air. But when I add, that these words mean,
+"We must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ;" now we can all
+believe them because we can all understand them.
+
+It is, then, perfectly impossible for any man to believe a statement
+except in proportion as he understands its meaning. And, therefore, our
+Lord explained what he meant to Nicodemus, and told him that, by being
+born again, he did not mean the natural birth of the body; but a birth
+caused by the Spirit, and therefore itself a birth of a spirit: for, as
+that which is born from a body is itself also a body, so that which is
+born of a spirit is itself also a spirit. So that Christ's words now are
+seen to have this meaning,--No man can enter into the kingdom of God
+except God's Spirit creates in him a spirit or mind like unto himself,
+and like unto Christ, and like unto the Father. Nicodemus, then, could
+now understand what was meant, and might have believed it. But he asks
+rather another question, "How can these things be?" How can God's Spirit
+create within me a spirit like himself, while I continue a man as
+before? Many persons since have asked similar questions; but to none of
+them is an answer given. How God's Spirit works within us I cannot tell;
+but if we take the appointed means of procuring his aid, we shall surely
+find that he has worked and does work in us to life eternal.
+
+We must, then, in order to believe, understand what it is that is told
+us; but it is by no means necessary that we should understand how it is
+to happen. It is not necessary, and in a thousand instances we do not
+know. "If we take poison, we shall die:" there is a statement which we
+can understand, and therefore believe. But do we understand how it is
+that poison kills us? Does every one here know how poisons act upon the
+human frame, and what is the different operation of different
+poisons,--how laudanum kills, for instance, and how arsenic? Surely
+there are very few of us, at most, who do understand this: and yet would
+it not be exceedingly unreasonable to refuse to believe that poison will
+kill us, because we do not understand the manner _how_?
+
+Thus far, I think, the question is perfectly plain, so soon as it is
+once laid before us. But the real point of perplexity is to be found a
+step further. In almost all propositions there is something about the
+terms which we do understand, and something which we do not. For
+instance, let me say these few words:--"A frigate was lost amidst the
+breakers." These words would be understood in a certain degree, by all
+who hear me: and so far as all understand them, all can believe them.
+All would understand that a ship had sunk in the water, or been dashed
+to pieces; that it would be useful no more for the purposes for which it
+had been made. But what is meant by the words "frigate" and "breakers"
+all would not understand, and many would understand very differently:
+that is to say, those who had happened to have known most about the sea
+and sea affairs would understand most about them, while those who knew
+less would understand less; but probably none of us would understand
+their meaning so fully, or would have so distinct and lively an image of
+the things, as would be enjoyed by an actual seaman; and even amongst
+seamen themselves, there would again be different degrees of
+understanding, according to their different degrees of experience, or
+knowledge of ships, or powers of mind.
+
+I have taken the instance at random, and any other proposition might
+have served my purpose as well. But men do not speak to one another at
+random; when they say anything to their neighbour, they mean it to
+produce on his mind a certain effect. Suppose that we were living near
+the sea-coast, and any one were suddenly to come in, and to utter the
+words which I have taken as my example: should we not know that what the
+man meant by these words was, that there was a danger at hand for which
+our help was needed? It matters not that we have no distinct ideas of
+the terms "frigate" or "breakers;" we understand enough for our belief
+and practice, and we should hasten to the sea-shore accordingly. Or
+suppose that the same words were told us of a frigate in which we had
+some near relation: should we not see at once that what we were meant to
+understand and to believe in the words was, that we had lost a relation?
+That is the truth with which we are concerned; and this we can
+understand and feel, although we may be able to understand nothing more
+of the words in which that truth is conveyed to us. Now, in like manner,
+in whatever God says to us there is a purpose: it is intended to produce
+on our minds a certain impression, and so far it must be understood. But
+when God speaks to us of heavenly things, the terms employed can only be
+understood in part, and so far as God's purpose with regard to our minds
+reaches; but there must be a great deal in them which we can no more
+understand than one who had never seen a ship, or a picture of one,
+could understand the word "frigate." Our business is to consider what
+impression or what actions the words are intended to produce in us. Up
+to this point we can and must understand them: beyond this they may be
+wholly above the reach of our faculties, and we can form of them no
+ideas at all.
+
+It is clear that this will be the case most especially whenever God
+reveals to us anything concerning himself. Take these few words, for
+example, "God is a spirit;" take them as a mere abstract truth, and how
+little can we understand about them! Who will dare to say that he
+understands all that is contained in the words "God" and "spirit?" We
+might weary ourselves for ever in attempting so to search out either.
+But God said these words to us: and the point is, What impression did he
+mean them to have upon us? how far can we understand them? This he has
+not by any means left doubtful, for it follows immediately, "They who
+worship him should worship Him in spirit and in truth." For this end the
+words were spoken, and thus far they are clear to us. God lives not on
+Mount Gerizim or at Jerusalem: but in every place he hears the prayers
+of the sincere and contrite heart, in no place will he regard the
+offerings of the proud and evil.
+
+Or again, "God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son,
+to the end that all who believe in him should not perish, but have
+eternal life." Here are words in themselves, as abstract truths,
+perfectly overwhelming; "God," "God's only-begotten Son," "Eternity."
+Who shall understand these things, when it is said, that "none knoweth
+the Son, save the Father; that none knoweth the Father, save the Son?"
+But did God tell us the words for nothing? can we understand nothing
+from them? believe nothing? feel nothing? Nay, they were spoken that we
+might both understand, and believe, and feel. How must He love us, who
+gives for us his only-begotten Son! how surely may we believe in Him who
+is an only-begotten Son to his Father,--so equal in nature, so entire in
+union!--What must that happiness be, which reaches beyond our powers of
+counting! Would we go further?--then the veil is drawn before us; other
+truths there are, no doubt, contained in the words; truths which the
+angels might desire to look into; truths which even they may be unable
+to understand. But these are the secret things which belong unto our
+God; the things which are revealed they are what belong to us and to our
+children, that we may understand, and believe, and do them.
+
+Again, "the Comforter, whom Christ will send unto us from the Father,
+even the Spirit of Truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall
+testify of Christ." What words are here! "The Spirit of Truth," "the
+Spirit proceeding from the Father;" the Spirit "whom Christ will send,"
+and "send from the Father." Can any created being understand, to the
+full, such "heavenly things" as these? But would Christ have uttered to
+his disciples mere unintelligible words, which could tell them nothing,
+and excite in them no feeling but mere wonder? Not so; but the words
+told them that Christ was not to be lost to them after he had left them
+on earth; that every gift of God was his: that even that Spirit of God,
+in which is contained all the fulness of the Godhead, is the Spirit of
+Christ also; that that mighty power which should work in them so
+abundantly, was of no other or lower origin than God himself; as
+entirely God, as the spirit of man is man. But can we therefore
+understand the Spirit of God, or conceive of him? How should we, when we
+cannot understand our own? This, and this only, we understand and
+believe, that without him our spirits cannot be quickened; that unless
+we pray daily for his aid, and listen to his calls within us, our spirit
+will never be created after his image, and we cannot enter into the
+kingdom of God.
+
+It is thus, and thus only, that the revelations of God's word are beyond
+our understandings: that in them, beings and things are spoken of,
+which, taken generally, and in themselves, we should in vain endeavour
+to comprehend. But what God means us to know, or feel, or do, respecting
+them, that we can understand; and beyond this we have no concern. It is,
+in fact, a contradiction to speak of revealing what is unintelligible;
+for so far as it is a revealed truth it is intelligible; so far as it is
+unintelligible, it is not revealed. But though a thing revealed must be
+intelligible in itself, yet it by no means follows that we can
+understand _how_ it happens. When we are told that the dead shall rise
+again, we can understand quite well what is meant; that we beings who
+feel happiness and misery, shall feel them again, either the one or the
+other, after we seemingly have done with them for ever in the grave. But
+"How are the dead raised up, and with what body do they come?" are
+questions to which, whether asked scoffingly or sincerely, we can give
+no answers; here our understanding fails, and here the truth is not
+revealed to us.
+
+How, then, has Christianity no mysteries? In one sense, blessed be God
+for it, it has many. Using mysteries in St. Paul's sense of great
+revelations of things which were and must be unknown to all, except God
+had revealed them: then, indeed, they are many; the pillar and ground of
+truth, great without controversy, and full of salvation. But take
+mysteries in our more common sense of the word,--as things which are
+revealed to none, and can be understood by none,--then it is true that
+Christianity leaves many such in existence; that many such she has done
+away; that none has she created. She leaves many mysteries with respect
+to God, and with respect to ourselves; God is still incomprehensible;
+life and death have many things in them beyond our questioning; we may
+still look around us, above us, and within us, and wonder, and be
+ignorant. But if she still leaves the veil drawn over much in heaven and
+in earth, yet from how much has she removed it! Life and death are still
+in many respects dark; but she has brought to light immortality. God is
+still in himself incomprehensible; but all his glory, and all his
+perfections, are revealed to us in his only-begotten Son Christ Jesus.
+God's Spirit who can search out in his own proper essence? yet
+Christianity has taught us how we may have him to dwell with us for
+ever, and taste the fulness of his blessings. Yea, thanks be to God for
+the great Christian mystery which we this day celebrate; that he has
+revealed himself to us as our Saviour and our Comforter; that he has
+revealed to us his infinite love, in that he has given us his
+only-begotten Son to die for us, and his own Eternal Spirit to make our
+hearts his temple.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXVIII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+EXODUS iii. 6.
+
+_And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God_.
+
+
+LUKE xxiii. 30.
+
+_Then shall they begin to say to the mountains. Fall on us; and to the
+hills, Cover us_.
+
+
+These two passages occur, the one in the first lesson of this morning's
+service, the other in the second. One or other of them must have been,
+or must be, the case of you, of me, of every soul of man that lives or
+has lived since the world began. There must be a time in the existence
+of every human being when he will fear God. But the great, the infinite
+difference is, whether we fear him at the beginning of our relations to
+him, or at the end.
+
+The fear of Moses was felt at the beginning of his knowledge of God.
+When God revealed himself to him at the bush, it was, so far as we are
+told, the first time that Moses learnt to know him. The fear of those
+who say to the mountains, "Fall on us," is felt at the very end of their
+knowledge of God; for to those who are punished with everlasting
+destruction from the presence of the Lord, God is not. So that the two
+cases in the text are exact instances of the difference of which I
+spoke, in the most extreme degree. Moses, the greatest of the prophets,
+fears God at first; those who are cast into hell, fear him at last.
+
+The appearance of God, as described in this passage of Scripture, is an
+image also of his dealings with us at the beginning of our course, when
+we fear him with a saving fear. "The bush burned with fire, but the bush
+was not consumed." God shows his terrors, but he does not, as yet,
+destroy with them. It is the very opposite to this at last, for then he
+is expressly said to be a consuming fire.
+
+Moses turned aside to see this great sight, why the bush was not burnt.
+That sight is the very same which the world has been offering for so
+many hundreds of years: God's terrors are around it, but, as yet, it is
+not consumed, because he wills that we should fear him before it is
+too late.
+
+There is, indeed, this great difference;--that the signs of God's
+presence do not now force themselves upon our eyes; so that we may, if
+we choose, walk on our own way, without turning aside to see and observe
+them. And thus we do not see God, and do not, therefore, hide our faces
+for fear of him, but go on, and feel no fear, till the time when we
+cannot help seeing him. And it may be, that this time will never come
+till our life, and with it our space of trial, is gone for ever.
+
+Here, then, is our state, that God will manifest himself no more to us
+in such a way as that we cannot help seeing him. The burning bush will
+be no more given us as a sign; Christ will no more manifest himself unto
+the world. And yet, unless we do see him, unless we learn to fear him
+while he is yet an unconsuming fire, unless we know that he is near, and
+that the place whereon we stand is holy ground, we shall most certainly
+see him when he will be a consuming fire, and when we shall join in
+crying to the mountains, to fall on us, and to the hills, to cover us.
+
+Every person who thinks at all, must, I am sure, be satisfied, that our
+great want, the great need of our condition, is this one thing--to
+realize to ourselves the presence of God. It is a want not at all
+peculiar to the young. Thoughtfulness, in one sense, is indeed likely to
+come with advancing years: we are more apt to think at forty than at
+fifteen; but it by no means follows that we are more apt to think about
+God. In this matter we are nearly at a level at all times of our life:
+it is with all of us our one great want, to bring the idea of God, with
+a living and abiding power, home to our minds.
+
+This is illustrated by a wish ascribed to a great and good man--Johnson,
+and which has been noticed with a sneer by unbelievers, a wish that he
+might see a spirit from the other world, to testify to him of the truth
+of the resurrection. This has been sneered at, as if it were a
+confession of the unsatisfactory nature of the evidence which we
+actually possess: but, in truth, it is a confession only of the weakness
+which clings to us all, that things unseen, which our reason only
+assures us to be real, are continually overpowered by things affecting
+our senses; and, therefore, it was a natural wish that sight might, in a
+manner, come to the aid of reason; that the eye might see, and the ear
+might hear, a form and words which belonged to another world. And this
+wish might arise (I do not say wisely, or that his deliberate judgment
+would sanction it, but it might arise) in the breast of a good man, and
+one who would be willing to lay down his life in proof of his belief in
+Christ's promises. It might arise, not because he felt any doubt, when
+his mind turned calmly to the subject; not because he was hesitating
+what should be the main principle of his life; but because his
+experience had told him, that there are many times in the life of man
+when the mind does not fully exert itself; when habit and impressions
+rule us, in a manner, in its stead. And when so many of our impressions
+must be earthly, and as our impressions colour our habits, is it not
+natural (I do not say wise, but is it not natural) to desire some one
+forcible unearthly impression, which might, on the other side, colour
+our habits, and so influence us at those times when the mind, almost by
+the necessity of our condition, cannot directly interpose its own
+deliberate decision as our authority?
+
+No doubt the wish to which I have been alluding is not one which our
+reason would sanction; but it expresses in a very lively and striking
+manner a want which is most true and real, although it proposes an
+impossible remedy. But the question cannot but occur to us, Can it be
+that our heavenly Father, who knows whereof we are made, should have
+intended us to live wholly by faith in this world? That is, Can it have
+been his will that all visible signs of himself should be withdrawn from
+us; and that we should be left only with the record and the evidence of
+his mighty works done in our behalf in past times; and with that other
+evidence of his wisdom and power which is afforded by the wonders of
+his creation?
+
+We look into the Scriptures and we learn that such was not his will. We
+were to live by faith, indeed, with, respect to the unseen world, there
+the sign given was to be for ever only the sign of Christ's
+resurrection. But yet it was not designed that the evidence of Christ's
+having redeemed us should be sought for only in the records of the past;
+he purposed that there should be a living record, a record that might
+speak to our senses as well as to our reason; that should continually
+present us with impressions of the reality of Christ's salvation; and so
+might work upon the habits of our life, as insensibly as the air we
+breathe. This living witness, which should last till Christ came again,
+was to be no other than his own body instinct with his own Spirit--his
+people, the temple of the Holy Ghost, his holy universal Church.
+
+If we consider for a moment, this would entirely meet the want of which
+I have been speaking. It is possible, certainly, to look upon the face
+of nature without being reminded of God; yet it is surely true, that in
+the outward creation, in the order of the seasons, the laws of the
+heavenly bodies, the wonderful wisdom and goodness displayed in the
+constitution of every living thing in its order, there is a tendency at
+least to impress us with, the thought of God, if nothing else obstructed
+it. But there is a constant obstruction in the state of man. Looking at
+men, hearing them, considering them, it is not only possible not to be
+reminded of God; but their very tendency is to exclude him from our
+minds, because the moral workmanship which is so predominant in them has
+assuredly not had God for its author. We all in our dealings with one
+another, lead each other away from God. We present to each other's view
+what seems to be a complete world of our own, in which God is not. We
+see a beginning, a middle, and an end; we see faculties for acquiring
+knowledge, and for receiving enjoyment; and earth furnishes knowledge to
+the one and enjoyment to the other. We see desires, and we see the
+objects to which they are limited; we see that death removes men from
+all these objects, and consistently with this, we observe, that death is
+generally regarded as the greatest of all evils. Man's witness, then, as
+far as it goes, is against the reality of God and of eternity. His life,
+his language, his desires, his understanding appear, when we look over
+the world, to refer to no being higher than himself, to no other state
+of things than that of which sight testifies.
+
+Now, Christ's Church, the living temple of the Holy Ghost, puts in the
+place of this natural and corrupt man, whose witness is against God,
+another sort of man, redeemed and regenerate, whose whole being breathes
+a perpetual witness of God. Consider, again, what we should see in such
+a Church. We should see a beginning, a middle, but the end is not yet
+visible; we should see, besides the faculties for knowledge and
+enjoyment which were receiving their gratification daily, other
+faculties of both kinds, whose gratification was as yet withheld; we
+should see desires not limited to any object now visible or attainable.
+We should see death looked to as the gate by which these hitherto
+unobtained objects were to be sought for; and we should hear it spoken
+of, not as the greatest of evils, but as an event solemn, indeed, and
+painful to nature, but full of blessing and of happiness. We should see
+love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness,
+temperance; a constitution of nature as manifestly proclaiming its
+author to be the God of all holiness and loving-kindness, as the
+wonderful structure of our eyes or hands declares them to be the work of
+the God of all wisdom and power. We should thus see in all our
+fellow-men, not only as much, but far more than in the constitution of
+the lower animals, or of the plants, or of the heavenly bodies, a
+witness of God and of eternity. Their whole lives would be a witness;
+their whole conversation would be a witness; their outward and more
+peculiar acts of worship would then bear their part in harmony with all
+the rest. Every day would the voices of the Church be heard in its
+services of prayer and thanksgiving; every day would its members renew
+their pledges of faithfulness to Christ, and to one another, upon
+partaking together the memorials of his sacrifice.
+
+What could we desire more than such a living witness as this? What sign
+in the sky, what momentary appearance of a spirit from the unseen world,
+could so impress us with the reality of God, as this daily worshipping
+in his living temple; this daily sight, of more than the Shechinah of
+old, even of his most Holy Spirit, diffusing on every side light and
+blessing? And what is now become of this witness? can names, and forms,
+and ordinances, supply its place? can our unfrequent worship, our most
+seldom communion, impress on us an image of men living altogether in the
+presence of God, and in communion with Christ? But before we dwell on
+this, we may, while considering the design of the true Church of Christ,
+well understand how such excellent things should be spoken of it, and
+how it should have been introduced into the Creed itself, following
+immediately after the mention of the Holy Ghost. That holy universal
+Church was to be the abiding witness of Christ's love and of Christ's
+promises; not in its outward forms only, for they by themselves are not
+a living witness; they cannot meet our want--to have God and heavenly
+things made real to us; but in its whole spirit, by which renewed man
+was to bear as visibly the image of God, as corrupted man had lost it.
+This was the sure sign that Christ had appointed to abide until his
+coming again; this sign, as striking as the burning bush, would compel
+us to observe; would make us sure that the place whereon we stand is
+holy ground.
+
+Then follows the question: With this sign lost in its most essential
+points, how can we supply its place? and how can we best avail ourselves
+of those parts of it which still remain? and how can we each endeavour
+to build up a partial and most imperfect imitation of it, which may
+yet, in some sort, serve to supply our great want, and remind us daily
+of God? This opens a wide field for thought, to those who are willing to
+follow it; but much of it belongs to other occasions rather than this:
+the practical part of it,--the means of most imperfectly supplying the
+want of God's own appointed sign, a true and living universal Church,
+shall be the subject of my next Lecture.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXIX.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PSALM cxxxvii. 4.
+
+_How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land_?
+
+
+This was said by the exiles of Jerusalem, when they were in the land of
+their captivity in Babylon. There is no reason to suppose that their
+condition was one of bondage, as it had been in Egypt: the nations
+removed by conquest, under the Persian kings, from their own country to
+another land, were no otherwise ill-treated; they had new homes given
+them in which they lived unmolested; only they were torn away from their
+own land, and were as sojourners in a land of strangers. But the
+peculiar evil of this state was, that they were torn away from the
+proper seat of their worship. The Jew in Babylon might have his own
+home, and his own land to cultivate, as he had in Judæa; but nothing
+could replace to him the loss of the temple at Jerusalem: there alone
+could the morning and evening sacrifices be offered; there alone could
+the sin-offering for the people be duly made. Banished from the temple,
+therefore, he was deprived also of the most solemn part of his religion;
+he was, as it were, exiled from God; and the worship of God, as it was
+now left to him,--that is, the offering up of prayers and praises,--was
+almost painful to him, as it reminded him so forcibly of his changed
+condition.
+
+Such also, in some respects, was to be the state of the Christian
+Church after our Lord's ascension. The only acceptable sacrifice was now
+that of their great High Priest interceding for them in the presence of
+the Father: heaven was their temple, and they were far removed from it
+upon earth: they, too, like the Jews in Babylon, were a little society
+by themselves living in the midst of strangers. "Our citizenship," says
+St. Paul to the Philippians, "is in heaven:" here they were not
+citizens, but sojourners. Why, then, should not the early Christians
+have joined altogether in the feeling of the Jews at Babylon? why should
+not they, too, have felt and said, "How can we sing the Lord's song in a
+strange land?"
+
+The answer is contained in what I said last Sunday; because Christ had
+not left them comfortless or forsaken, but was come again to them by his
+Holy Spirit; because God was dwelling in the midst of them; because they
+were not exiles from the temple of God, but were themselves become God's
+temple; because through the virtue of the one offering for sin once
+made, but for ever presented before God by their High Priest in heaven,
+they, in God's temple on earth, were presenting also their daily and
+acceptable sacrifice, the sacrifice of themselves; because also, though
+as yet they were a small society in a land of strangers, yet the stone
+formed without hands was to become a mighty mountain, and cover the
+whole earth: what was now the land of strangers was to become theirs;
+the whole earth should be full of the knowledge of the Lord; the
+kingdoms of the world were to become his kingdom; and thus earth,
+redeemed from the curse of sin, was again to be so blessed that God's
+servants living upon it should find it no place of exile.
+
+But if this, in its reality, does not now exist; if, although God's
+temple be on earth, the appointed sacrifice in it is not offered, the
+living sacrifice of ourselves; if the society has, by spreading, become
+weak, and the kingdoms of the earth are Christ's kingdoms in name alone;
+are we, then, come back once more to the condition of the Jews in
+Babylon? are we exiles from God, living amongst strangers? and must we,
+too, say, with the prophet, "How can we sing the Lord's song in a
+strange land?"
+
+This was the question which I proposed to answer: What can we do to make
+our condition unlike that of exiles from God: to restore that true sign
+of his presence amongst us, the living fire of his Holy Spirit pervading
+every part of his temple? I mean, what can we do as individuals? for the
+question in any other sense is not to be asked or answered here. But we,
+each of us, must have felt, at some time or other, our distance from
+God. Put the idea in what form or what words we will, we must--every one
+of us who has ever thought seriously at all--we must regret that there
+is not a stronger and more abiding influence over us, to keep us from
+evil, and to turn us to good.
+
+Now, the vestiges of Christ's church left among us are chiefly these:
+our prayers together, whether in our families or in this place; our
+reading of the Scriptures together; our communion, rare as it is, in the
+memorials of the body and blood of Christ our Saviour. These are the
+vestiges of that which was designed to be with us always, and in every
+part of our lives, the holy temple of God, his living church; but which
+now presents itself to us only at particular times, and places, and
+actions; in our worship and in our joint reading of the Scriptures, and
+in our communion.
+
+It will be understood at once why I have not spoken here of prayer and
+reading the Scriptures by ourselves alone. Most necessary as these are
+to us, yet they do not belong to the helps ministered to us by the
+church; they belong to us each as individuals, and in these respects we
+must be in the same state everywhere: these were enjoyed by the Jews
+even in their exile in Babylon. But the church acts upon us through one
+another, and therefore the vestiges of the church can only be sought for
+in what we do, not alone, but together. I, therefore, noticed only that
+prayer, and that reading of the Scriptures, in which many of us took
+part in common.
+
+Such common prayer takes place amongst us every morning and evening, as
+well as on Sundays within these walls. Whenever we meet on those
+occasions, we meet as Christ's church. Now, conceive how the effect of
+such meeting depends on the conduct of each of us. It is not necessary
+to notice behaviour openly profane and disorderly: this does not occur
+amongst us. We see, however, that if it did occur in any meeting for the
+purposes of religious worship, such a meeting would do us harm rather
+than good: its witness to us would not be in favour of God, but against
+him. But take another case: when we are assembled for prayers, suppose
+our behaviour, without being disorderly, was yet so manifestly
+indifferent as to be really indecent; that is, suppose every countenance
+showed such manifest signs of weariness, and impatience, and want of
+interest in what was going forward, that it was evident there was no
+general sympathy with any feeling of devotion. Would not the effect here
+also be injurious? would not such a meeting also shock and check our
+approaches towards God? would it not rather convince us that God was
+really far distant from us, instead of showing that he was in the
+midst of us?
+
+Ascend one step higher. Our behaviour is neither disorderly, nor
+manifestly indifferent: it is decent, serious, respectful. What is the
+effect in this case? Not absolutely unfavourable certainly; but yet far
+from being much help towards good. We bear our witness that we are
+engaged in a matter that should be treated with reverence: this is very
+right; but do we more than this? Do we show that we are engaged in a
+matter that commands our interest also, as well as our respect? If not,
+our witness is not the witness of Christ's church: it does not go to
+declare that God is in us of a truth.
+
+Let us go on one step more. We meet together to pray: we are orderly, we
+are quiet, we are serious; but the countenance shows that we are
+something more than these. There is on it the expression, never to be
+mistaken, of real interest. Remember I am speaking of meetings for
+prayer, where the words are perfectly familiar to us, and where the
+interest therefore cannot be the mere interest of novelty. Say, then,
+that our countenances express interest: I do not mean strong and excited
+feeling; but interest, which may be very real yet very quiet also. We
+look as if we thought of what we were engaged in, of what we are
+ourselves, and of what God is to us. We are joined in one common feeling
+of thankfulness to him for mercies past, of wishing for his help and
+love for the time to come. Now, think what would be the effect of such a
+meeting. Would it not be, clearly, positively good! Would not every
+individual's earnestness be confirmed by the manifest earnestness of
+others? Would not his own sense of God's reality be rendered stronger,
+by seeing that others felt it just as he did? Then, here would be the
+church of God rendering her appointed witness: she would be giving her
+sure sign that God is not far from any one of us.
+
+Now, then, observe what we may lose or gain by our different behaviour,
+whenever we meet together in prayer; what we lose, nay, what positive
+mischief we do, by any visible impatience or indifference; what we
+should gain by really joining in our hearts in the meaning of what was
+uttered. It is a solemn thing for the consciences of us all; but surely
+it must be true, that, whenever we are careless or indifferent in our
+public prayers, we are actually injuring our neighbours, and are, so far
+as in us lies, destroying the witness which the church of Christ should
+render to the truth of God her Saviour.
+
+I do not know that there is anything more impressive than the sight of a
+congregation evidently in earnest in the service in which they are
+engaged. We then feel how different is our own lonely prayer from the
+united voice of many hearts; each cheering, strengthening, enkindling
+the other. We then consider one another to provoke unto love and good
+works. How different are the feelings with which we regard a number of
+persons met for any common purpose, and the same persons engaged
+together in serious prayer or praise! Then Christ seems to appear to us
+in each of them; we are all one in him. How little do all earthly
+unkindnesses, dislikes, prejudices, become in our eyes, when the real
+bond of our common faith is discerned clearly! There is indeed neither
+Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian,
+bond nor free, but Christ is all, and in all. And to look at our
+brethren, once or twice in every day, with these Christian eyes, would
+it not also, by degrees, impress us at other times, and begin to form
+something of our habitual temper and regard towards them?
+
+Thus much of our meetings for prayer. One word only on those in which we
+meet to read the Scriptures. Here I know, that difference of age, and
+our peculiar relations to each other, make us very apt to lose the
+religious character of our readings of the Scriptures, and to regard
+them merely as lessons. No doubt, the object here is instruction; it is
+not so much in itself a religious exercise, as a means to enable you to
+perform religious exercises with understanding and sincerity. Still
+there is a peculiar character attached even to lessons, when they are
+taken out of the Scriptures: and the duty of attention and interest in
+the work becomes even stronger than under other circumstances. But with
+those of a more advanced age, I think there is more than this; I think
+it must be our own fault, if, whilst engaged together in reading the
+Scriptures, which we only read because we are Christians, we do not feel
+that there also we are employed on a duty belonging to the Church
+of Christ.
+
+Lastly, there is our joint communion in the bread, and in the cup, of
+the Lord's Supper. Here there is seriousness; here there is always, I
+trust and believe, something of real interest; and, therefore, we never,
+I think, meet together at the Lord's table, without feeling a true
+effect of Christ's gifts to and in his Church; we are strengthened and
+brought nearer to one another, and to him. But this most precious pledge
+of Christ's Church we too often forfeit for ourselves. That we have lost
+so much of the help which the Church was designed to give, is not our
+fault individually; but it is our fault that we neglect this means of
+strength, so great in bearing witness to Christ, and in kindling love
+towards one another. What can be said of us, if, with so many helps
+lost, we throw away that which still remains? if, of the great treasure
+which the Church yet keeps, we are wilfully ignorant? How much good
+might we do, both to ourselves and to each other, by joining in that
+communion! How surely should we be strengthened in all that is good, and
+have a help from each other, through his Spirit working in us all, to
+struggle against our evil!
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXX.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+1 CORINTHIANS xi. 26.
+
+_For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the
+Lord's death till he come_.
+
+
+When I spoke last Sunday of the benefits yet to be derived from Christ's
+Church, I spoke of them, as being, for the most part, three in
+number--our communion in prayer, our communion in reading the
+Scriptures, and our communion in the Lord's Supper; and, after having
+spoken of the first two of these, I proposed to leave the third for our
+consideration to-day.
+
+The words of the text are enough to show how closely this subject is
+connected with that event which we celebrate to-day[13]: "As often as ye
+eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he
+come." The communion, then, with one another in the Lord's Supper is
+doing that which this day was also designed to do; it is showing forth,
+or declaring the Lord's death; it is declaring, in the face of all the
+world, that we partake of the Lord's Supper because we believe that
+Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us.
+
+[Footnote 13: Good Friday.]
+
+God might, no doubt, if it had so pleased him, have made all spiritual
+blessing come to us immediately from himself. Without ascending any
+higher with the idea, it is plain that Christianity might have been made
+a thing wholly between each individual man and Christ; all our worship
+might have been the secret worship of our own hearts; and in eating the
+bread, and drinking the cup, to show forth the Lord's death, each one of
+us might have done this singly, holding communion with Christ alone. I
+mean, that it is quite conceivable that we should have had Christianity,
+and a great number of Christians spread all over the world, but yet no
+Christian Church. But, although this is conceivable, and, in fact, is
+practically the case in some particular instances where individual
+Christians happen to be quite cut off from all other Christians,--as has
+been known sometimes in foreign and remote countries; and although,
+through various evil causes, it has become, in many respects, too much
+the case with us all; for our religion is with all of us, I am inclined
+to think, too much a matter between God and ourselves alone; yet still
+it is not the design of Christ that it should be so: his people were not
+only to be good men, redeemed from sin and death and brought to know and
+love the truth, in which relation Christianity would appear like a
+divine philosophy only, working not only upon individuals, but through
+their individual minds, and as individuals; but they were to be the
+Christian Church, helping one another in things pertaining to God, and
+making their mutual brotherhood to one another an essential part of what
+are called peculiarly their acts of religion. So that the Church of
+England seems to have well borne in mind this character of Christianity,
+namely, that it presents us not each, but all together, before God; and
+therefore it is ordered that even in very small parishes, where "there
+are not more than twenty persons in the parish of discretion to receive
+the communion, yet there shall be no communion, except four, or three at
+the least, out of these twenty communicate together with the priest."
+Nay, even in the Communion of the Sick, under circumstances which seem
+to make religion particularly an individual matter between Christ and
+our own single selves; when the expected approach of death seems to
+separate, in the most marked manner, according to human judgment, him
+who is going hence from his brethren still in the world; even then it is
+ordered that two other persons, at the least, shall communicate along
+with the sick man and the minister. Nor is this ever relaxed except in
+times of pestilence; when it is provided, that if no other person can be
+persuaded to join from their fear of infection, then, and then only upon
+special request of the diseased, the minister may alone communicate with
+them. So faithfully does our Church adhere to this true Christian
+notion, that at the Lord's Supper we are not to communicate with Christ
+alone, but with him in and together with our brethren; so that I was
+justified in regarding the Holy Communion as one of those helps and
+blessings which we still derive from the Christian Church--from Christ's
+mystical body.
+
+It is the natural process of all false and corrupt religions, on the
+contrary, to destroy this notion of Christ's Church, and to lead away
+our thoughts from our brethren in matters of religion, and to fix them
+merely upon God as known to us through a priest. The great evil in this
+is, (if there is any one evil greater than another in a system so wholly
+made up of falsehood, and so leading to all wickedness; but, at any
+rate, one great evil of it is,) that whereas the greatest part of all
+our lives is engaged in our relations towards our brethren, that there
+lie most of our temptations to evil, as well as of our opportunities of
+good, if our brethren do not form an essential part of our religions
+views, it follows, and always has followed, that our behaviour and
+feelings towards them are guided by views and principles not religious;
+and that by this fatal separation of what God has joined together, our
+worship and religious services become superstitious, while our life and
+actions become worldly, in the bad sense of the term, low principled,
+and profane.
+
+If this is not so clear when put into a general form, it will be plain
+enough when I show it in that particular example which we are concerned
+with here. Nowhere, I believe, is the temptation stronger to lose sight
+of one another in our religious exercises, and especially in our
+Communion. Our serious thoughts in turning to God, turn away almost
+instinctively from our companions about us. Practically, as far as the
+heart is concerned, we are a great deal too apt to go to the Lord's
+table each alone. But consider how much we lose by this. We are
+necessarily in constant relations with one another; some of those
+relations are formal, others are trivial; we connect each other every
+day with a great many thoughts, I do not say of unkindness, but yet of
+that indifferent character which is no hindrance to any unkindness when
+the temptation to it happens to arise. This must always be the case in
+life; business, neighbourhood, pleasure,--the occasions of most of our
+intercourse with one another,--have in them nothing solemn or softening:
+they have in themselves but little tendency to lead us to the love of
+one another. Now, if this be so in the world, it is even more so here;
+your intercourse with one another is much closer and more constant than
+what can exist in after life with any but the members of your own
+family; and yet the various relations which this intercourse has to do
+with, are even less serious and less softening than those of ordinary
+life in manhood. The kindliness of feeling which is awakened in after
+years between two men, by the remembrance of having been at school
+together, even without any particular acquaintance with each other, is a
+very different thing from the feeling of being at school with each
+other now. I do not wonder, then, that any one of you, when he resolves
+to come to the Holy Communion, should rather try to turn away his
+thoughts from his companions, and to think of himself alone as being
+concerned in what he is going to do. I do not wonder at it; but, then,
+neither do I wonder that, when the Communion is over, and thoughts of
+his companions must return, they receive little or no colour from his
+religious act so lately performed; that they are as indifferent as they
+were before, as little furnishing a security against neglect, or
+positive unkindness, or encouragement of others to evil. Depend upon it,
+unless your common life is made a part of your religion, your religion
+will never sanctify your common life.
+
+Now consider, on the one hand, what might be the effect of going to the
+Holy Communion with a direct feeling that, in that Communion, we, though
+many, were all brought together in Christ Jesus. And first, I will speak
+of our thoughts of those who are partakers of the Communion with us,
+then of those who are not. When others are gone out, and we who are to
+communicate are left alone with each other, then, if we perceive that
+there are many of us, the first natural feeling is one of joy, that we
+are so many; that our party,--that only true and good party to which we
+may belong with all our hearts,--that our party,--that Christ's party,
+seems so considerable. Then there comes the thought, that we are all met
+together freely, willingly, not as a matter of form, to receive the
+pledges of Christ's love to us, to pledge ourselves to him in return. If
+we are serious, those around us may be supposed to be serious too; if we
+wish to have help from God to lead a holier life, they surely wish the
+same; if the thought of past sin is humbling us, the same shame is
+working in our brethren's bosoms; if we are secretly resolving, by
+God's grace, to serve him in earnest, the hearts around us are, no
+doubt, resolving the same. There is the consciousness, (when and where
+else can we enjoy it?) that we are in sympathy with all present; that,
+coloured merely by the lesser distinctions of individual character, one
+and the same current of feeling is working within us all. And, if
+feeling this of our sympathy with one another, how strongly is it
+heightened by the thought of what Christ has done for us all! We are all
+loving him, because he loved us all; we are going together to celebrate
+his death, because he died for us all; we are resolving all to serve
+him, because his Holy Spirit is given to us all, and we are all brought
+to drink of the same Spirit. Then let us boldly carry our thoughts a
+little forward to that time, only a short hour hence, when we shall
+again be meeting one another, in very different relations; even in those
+common indifferent relations of ordinary life which are connected so
+little with Christ. Is it impossible to think, that, although we shall
+meet without these walls in very different circumstances, yet that we
+have seen each other pledging ourselves to serve Christ together? if the
+recollection of this lives in us, why should it not live in our
+neighbour? If we are labouring to keep alive our good resolutions made
+at Christ's table, why should we think that others have forgotten them?
+We do not talk of them openly, yet still they exist within us. May not
+our neighbour's silence also conceal within his breast the same good
+purposes? At any rate, we may and ought to regard him as ranged on our
+side in the great struggle of life; and if outward circumstances do not
+so bring us together as to allow of our openly declaring our sympathy,
+yet we may presume that it still exists; and this consciousness may
+communicate to the ordinary relations of life that very softness which
+they need, in order to make them Christian.
+
+Again, with regard to those who go out, and do not approach to the
+Lord's table. With some it is owing to their youth; with others to a
+mistaken notion of their youth; with others to some less excusable
+reason, perhaps, but yet to such as cannot yet exclude kindness and
+hope. But having once felt what it is to be only with those who are met
+really as Christians, our sense of what it is to want this feeling is
+proportionably raised. Is it sad to us to think that our neighbour does
+not look upon us as fellow Christians? is it something cold to feel that
+he regards us only in those common worldly relations which leave men in
+heart so far asunder? Then let us take heed that we do not ourselves
+feel so towards him. We have learnt to judge more truly, to feel more
+justly, of our relations to every one who bears Christ's name: if we
+forget this, we have no excuse; for we have been at Christ's table, and
+have been taught what Christians are to one another. And let our
+neighbour be ever so careless, yet we know that Christ cares for him;
+that his Spirit has not yet forsaken him, but is still striving with
+him. And if God vouchsafes so much to him, how can we look upon him as
+though he were no way connected with us? how can we be as careless of
+his welfare, as apt either to annoy him, or to lead him into evil, or to
+take no pains to rescue him from it, as if he were no more to us than
+the accidental inhabitant of the same place, who was going on his way as
+we may be on ours, neither having any concern with the other?
+
+And, now, is it nothing to learn so to feel towards those around us; to
+have thus gained what will add kindness and interest to all our
+relations with others; and, in the case of many, will give an abiding
+sense of the truest sympathy, and consequently greater confidence and
+encouragement to ourselves? Be sure that this is not to profane the
+Lord's Supper, but to use it according to Christ's own ordinance. For
+though the thoughts of which I have been speaking, have, in one sense,
+man and not God for their object, yet as they do not begin in man but in
+Christ, and in his love to us all, so neither do they, properly
+speaking, rest in man as such, but convert him, as it were, into an
+image of Christ: so that their end, as well as their beginning, is with
+Him. I do earnestly desire that you would come to Christ's table, in
+order to learn a Christian's feelings towards one another. This is what
+you want every day; and the absence of which leads to more and worse
+faults than, perhaps, any other single cause. But, then, this Christian
+feeling towards one another, how is it to be gained but by a Christian
+feeling towards Christ? and where are we to learn brotherly love in all
+our common dealings, but from a grateful thought of that Divine love
+towards us all which is shown forth in the sacrament of the Lord's
+Supper; inasmuch as, so often as we eat that bread and drink that cup,
+we do show the Lord's death till He come.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXXI.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LUKE i. 3, 4.
+
+_It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all
+things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent
+Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of those things
+wherein thou hast been instructed_.
+
+
+These words, from the preface to St. Luke's Gospel, contain in them one
+or two points on which it may be of use to dwell; and not least so at
+the present time, when they are more frequently brought under our notice
+than was the case a few years ago. On a subject which we never, or very
+rarely hear mentioned, it may be difficult to excite attention; and, as
+a general rule, there is little use in making the attempt. But when
+names and notions are very frequently brought to our ears, and in a
+degree to our minds, then it becomes important that we should comprehend
+the matter to which they relate clearly and correctly; and a previous
+interest respecting it may be supposed to exist, which make further
+explanation acceptable.
+
+St. Luke tells Theophilus that it seemed good to him to write in order
+an account of our Lord's life and death, that Theophilus might know the
+certainty of those things in which he had been instructed; and this, as
+a general rule, might well describe one great use of the Scripture to
+each of us, as individual members of Christ's Church--it enables us to
+know the certainty of the things in which we have been instructed. We do
+not, in the first instance, get our knowledge of Christ from the
+Scriptures,--we, each of us, I mean as individuals,--but from the
+teaching of our parents first; then of our instructors, and from books
+fitted for the instruction of children; whether it be the Catechism of
+the Church, or books written by private persons, of which we know that
+there are many. But as our minds open, and our opportunities of judging
+for ourselves increase, then the Scripture presents itself to acquaint
+us with the certainty of what we had heard already; to show us the
+original and perfect truth, of which we have received impressions
+before, but such as were not original nor perfect; to confirm and
+enforce all that was good and true in our early teaching; and if it
+should so happen that it contained any thing of grave error mixed with
+truth, then to enable us to discover and reject it.
+
+It is apparent, then, that the Scripture, to do this, must have an
+authority distinct from, and higher than, that of our early teaching;
+but yet it is no less true that it comes to us individually recommended,
+in the first instance, by the authority of our early teaching, and
+received by us, not for its own sake, but for the sake of those who put
+it into our hands. What child can, by possibility, go into the evidence
+which makes it reasonable to believe the Bible, and to reject the
+authority of the Koran? Our children believe the Bible for our sakes;
+they look at it with respect, because we tell them that it ought to be
+respected; they read it, and learn it, because we desire them; they
+acquire a habit of veneration for it long before they could give any
+other reason for venerating it than their parents' authority. And
+blessed be God that they do; for, as it has been well said, if we their
+parents do not endeavour to give our children habits of love and respect
+for what is good and true, Satan will give them habits of love for what
+is evil: for the child must receive impressions from without; and it is
+God's wisdom that he should receive these impressions from his parents,
+who have the strongest interest in his welfare, and who have besides
+that instinctive parental love which, more surely, as well as more
+purely, than any possible sense of interest, makes them earnestly desire
+their child's good.
+
+But when our children are old enough to understand and to inquire, do we
+then content ourselves with saying that they must take our word for it;
+that the Bible is true because we tell them so? Where is the father who
+does not feel, first, that he himself is not fitted to be an infallible
+authority; and, secondly, that if he were, he should be thwarting the
+providence of God, who has willed not simply that we should believe with
+understanding. He gladly therefore observes the beginnings of a spirit
+of inquiry in his son's mind, knowing that it is not inconsistent with a
+belief in truth, but is a necessary step to that which alone in a man
+deserves the name of belief--a belief, namely, sanctioned by reason.
+With what pleasure does he point out to his son the grounds of his own
+faith! how gladly does he introduce him to the critical and historical
+evidence for the truth of the Scriptures, that he may complete the work
+which he had long since begun, and deliver over the faith which had been
+so long nursed under the shade of parental authority, to the care of his
+son's own conscience and reason!
+
+We see clearly that our individual faith, although grounded in the first
+instance on parental authority, yet rests afterwards on wholly different
+grounds; namely, on the direct evidence in confirmation of it which is
+presented to our own minds. But with regard to those who are called the
+Fathers of the Church, it is contended sometimes that we do receive the
+Scriptures, in the end, upon their authority: and it is argued, that if
+their authority is sufficient for so great a thing as this, it must be
+sufficient for every thing else; that if, in short, we believe the
+Scriptures for their sake, then we ought also to believe other things
+which they may tell us, for their sake, even though they are not to be
+found in Scripture.
+
+In the argument there is this great fault, that it misstates the
+question at the outset. The authority of the Fathers, as they are
+called, is never to any sound mind the only reason for believing in the
+Scriptures; I think it is by no means so much as the principle reason.
+It is one reason, amongst many; but not the strongest. And, in like
+manner, their authority in other points, if there were other and
+stronger reasons which confirmed it,--as in many cases there are,--is
+and ought to be respected. But, because we lay a certain stress upon it,
+it does not follow that we should do well to make it bear the whole
+weight of the building. Because we believe the Scriptures, partly on the
+authority of the Fathers, as they are called, but more for other
+reasons, does it follow that we should equally respect the authority of
+the Fathers when there are no other reasons in support of it, but many
+which make against it?
+
+In truth, however, the internal evidence in favour of the authenticity
+and genuineness of the Scriptures is that on which the mind can rest
+with far greater satisfaction than on any external testimonies, however
+valuable. On one point, which might seem most to require other
+evidence--the age, namely, and origin of the writings of the New
+Testament--it has been wonderfully ordered that the books, generally
+speaking, are their own witness. I mean that their peculiar language
+proves them to have been written by persons such as the apostles were,
+and such as the Christian writers immediately following them were not;
+persons, namely, whose original language and habits of thinking were
+those of Jews, and to whom the Greek in which they wrote was, in its
+language and associations, essentially foreign. I do not dwell on the
+many other points of internal evidence: it is sufficient to say that
+those who are most familar with such inquiries, and who best know how
+little any external testimony can avail in favour of a book where the
+internal evidence is against it, are most satisfied that the principal
+writings of the New Testament do contain abundantly in themselves, for
+competent judges, the evidence of their own genuineness and
+authenticity.
+
+That the testimony of the early Christian writers goes along with this
+evidence and confirms it, is matter indeed of sincere thankfulness;
+because more minds, perhaps, are able to believe on external evidence
+than on internal. But of this testimony of the Christian writers it is
+essential to observe, that two very important points are such as do
+indeed affect this particular question much, but yet do not confer any
+value on the judgment of the witness in other matters. When a very early
+Christian writer quotes a passage from the New Testament, such as we
+find it now in our Bibles, it is indeed an argument, which all can
+understand, that he had before him the same Bible which we have, and
+that though he lived so near to the beginning of the gospel, yet that
+some parts of the New Testament must have been written still nearer to
+it. This is an evidence to the age of the New Testament, valuable indeed
+to us, but implying in the writer who gives it no qualities which confer
+authority; it merely shows that the book which he read must have existed
+before he could quote it. A second point of evidence is, when a very
+early Christian writer quotes any part of the New Testament as being
+considered by those to whom he was writing as an authority. This, again,
+is a valuable piece of testimony; but neither does it imply any general
+wisdom or authority in the writer who gives it: its value is derived
+merely from the age at which he lived, and not from his personal
+character. And with regard to the general reception of the New Testament
+by the Christians of his time, which, in the case supposed, he states as
+a fact, no doubt that the general opinion of the early Christians,
+where, as in this case, we can be sure that it is reported correctly, is
+an authority, and a great authority, in favour of the Scriptures:
+combined, as it is, with the still stronger internal evidence of the
+books themselves, it is irresistible. But it were too much to argue
+that, therefore, it was alone sufficient, not only when destitute of
+other evidence, but if opposed to it; and especially if it should happen
+to be opposed to that very Scripture which we know they acknowledged to
+be above themselves, but which we do not know that they were enabled in
+all cases either rightly to interpret or faithfully to follow.
+
+When, therefore, we are told that, as we believe the Scriptures
+themselves upon tradition, so we should believe other things also, the
+answer is, that we do not believe the Scriptures either entirely or
+principally, upon what is called tradition; but for their own internal
+evidence; and that the opinions of the early Christians, like those of
+other men, may be very good in certain points, and to a certain degree,
+without being good in all points, and absolutely; that many a man's
+judgment would justly weigh with us, in addition to other strong reasons
+in the case itself, when we should by no means follow it where we were
+clear that there were strong reasons against it. This, indeed, is so
+obvious, that it seems almost foolish to be at the trouble of stating
+it; but what is so absurd in common life, that the contrary to it is a
+mere truism, is, unfortunately, when applied to a subject with which we
+are not familiar, often considered as an unanswerable argument, if it
+happen to suit our disposition or our prejudices.
+
+But, although the Scripture is to the Church, and to the individual,
+too, who is able to judge for himself, the only decisive authority in
+matters of faith, yet we must not forget that it comes to us as it did
+to Theophilus, to persuade us of the certainty of things in which we
+have been already instructed; not to instruct from the beginning, by
+itself alone, those to whom its subject is entirely strange: in other
+words, it is and ought to be the general rule, that the Church teaches,
+and the Scripture confirms that teaching: or, if it be in any part
+erroneous, reproves it. For some appear to think, that by calling the
+Scripture the sole authority in matters of faith, we mean to exclude the
+Church altogether; and to call upon every man,--nay, upon every
+child,--to make out his own religion for himself from the volume of the
+Scriptures. The explanation briefly given is this; that while the
+Scripture alone teaches the Church, the Church teaches individuals; and
+that the authority of her teaching, like that of all human teaching,
+whether of individuals or societies, varies justly according to
+circumstances; being received, as it ought to be, almost implicitly by
+some, as a parent's is by a child, and by others listened to with
+respect, as that which is in the main agreeable to the truth, but still
+not considered to be, nor really claiming to be received as, infallible.
+But this part of the subject will require to be considered by itself on
+another occasion.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXXII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LUKE i. 3,4.
+
+_It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all
+things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent
+Theophilus, that than mightest know the certainty of those things in
+which thou hast been instructed_.
+
+
+I said at the conclusion of my lecture, last Sunday, that when we of the
+Church of England assert that the Scripture is the sole authority in
+matters of faith, we by no means mean to exclude the office of the
+Church, nor to assert any thing so extravagant, as that it is the duty
+of every person to sit down with the volume of the Scriptures in his
+hand, and to make out from that alone, without listening to any human
+authority, what is the revelation made by God to man. But I know that
+many are led to adopt notions no less extravagant of the authority of
+the Church and of tradition,--even to the full extent maintained by the
+Church of Rome,--because they see no other refuge from what appears to
+them, and not unreasonably, so miserable and so extreme a folly; for an
+extreme and a most miserable folly doubtless it would be, in any one, to
+throw aside all human aid except his own; to disregard alike the wisdom
+of individuals, and the agreeing decisions of bodies of men; to act as
+if none but himself had ever loved truth, or had been able to discover
+it; and as if he himself did possess both the will and the power to
+do so.
+
+This is so foolish, that I doubt whether any one ever held such
+notions, and, much more, whether be acted upon them. But is it more wise
+to run from one form of error into its opposite, which, generally
+speaking, is no less foolish and extravagant? What should we say of a
+man who could see no middle course between never asking for advice, and
+always blindly following it; between never accepting instruction upon
+any subject, and believing his instructors infallible? And this last
+comparison, with our particular situation here, will enable us, I think,
+by referring to our own daily experience, to understand the present
+question sufficiently. The whole system of education supposes,
+undoubtedly, that the teacher, in those matters which he teaches, should
+be an authority to the taught: a learner in any matter must rely on the
+books, and on the living instructors, out of which and from whom he is
+to learn. There are difficulties, certainly, in all learning; but we do
+not commonly see them increased by a disposition on the part of the
+learner to question and dispute every thing that is told him. There is a
+feeling rather of receiving what he is told implicitly; and, by so
+doing, he learns: but does it ever enter into his head that his teacher
+is infallible? or does any teacher of sane mind wish him to think so?
+And observe, now, what is the actual process: the mind of the learner is
+generally docile, trustful, respectful towards his teacher; aware, also,
+of his own comparative ignorance. It is certainly most right that it
+should be so. But this really teachable and humble learner finds a false
+spelling in one of his books; or hears his teacher, from oversight, say
+one word in his explanation instead of another: does he cease to be
+teachable and humble,--is it really a want of childlike faith, and an
+indulgence of the pride of reason, if he decides that the false spelling
+was an error of the press; that the word which his teacher used was a
+mistake? Yet errors, mistakes, of how trifling a kind soever, are
+inconsistent with infallibility; and the perceiving that they are errors
+is an exercise of our individual judgment upon our instructors. To hear
+some men talk, we should think that no boy could do so without losing
+all humility and all teachableness; without forthwith supposing that he
+was able to be his own instructor.
+
+I have begun on purpose with an elementary case, in which a very young
+boy might perceive an error in his books, or in his instructors,
+without, in any degree, forfeiting his true humility. But we will now go
+somewhat farther: we will take a more advanced student, such as the
+oldest of those among you, who are still learners, and who know that
+they have much to learn, but who, having been learners for some time
+past, have also acquired some knowledge. In the books which they refer
+to, and from which they are constantly deriving assistance, do they
+never observe any errors in the printing? do they never find
+explanations given, which they perceive to be imperfect, nay, which they
+often feel to be actually wrong? And, passing from books to living
+instructors, should we blame a thoughtful, attentive, and well-informed
+pupil, because his mind did not at once acquiesce in our interpretation
+of some difficult passage; because he consulted other authorities on the
+subject, and was unsatisfied in his judgment; the reason of his
+hesitation being, that our interpretation appeared to him to give an
+unsatisfactory sense, or to be obtained by violating the rules of
+language? Is he proud, rebellious, puffed up, wanting in a teachable
+spirit, without faith, without humility, because he so ventures to judge
+for himself of what his teacher tells him? Does such a judging for
+himself interfere, in the slightest degree, with the relation between us
+and him? Does it make him really cease to respect us? or dispose him to
+believe that he is altogether beyond the reach of our instruction? Or
+are we so mad as to regard our authority as wholly set at nought,
+because it is not allowed to be infallible? Doubtless, it would be
+wholly set at nought, if we had presumed to be infallible. Then it would
+not be merely that, in some one particular point, our decision had been
+doubted, but that one point would involve our authority in all; because
+it would prove, that we had set up beforehand a false claim: and he who
+does so is either foolish, or a deceiver; there is apparent a flaw
+either in his understanding, or in his principles, which undoubtedly
+does repel respect.
+
+Let me go on a step farther still. It has been my happiness to retain,
+in after years, my intercourse with many of those who were formerly my
+pupils; to know them when their minds have been matured, and their
+education, in the ordinary sense of the term, completed. Is not the
+relation between us altered then still more? Is it incompatible with
+true respect and regard, that they should now judge still more freely,
+in those very points, I mean, in which heretofore they had received my
+instructions all but implicitly? that on points of scholarship and
+criticism, they should entirely think for themselves? Or does this
+thinking for themselve mean, that they will begin to question all they
+had ever learnt? or sit down to forget purposely all their school
+instructions, and make out a new knowledge of the ancient languages for
+themselves? Who does not know, that they whose minds are most eager to
+discern truth, are the very persons who prize their early instruction
+most, and confess how much they are indebted to it; and that the
+exercise of their judgments loads them to go on freely in the same path
+in which they have walked so long, here and there it may be departing
+from it where they find a better line, but going on towards the same
+object, and generally in the same direction?
+
+What has been the experience of my life,--the constantly observing the
+natural union between sense and modesty; the perfect compatibility of
+respect for instruction with freedom of judgment; the seeing how Nature
+herself teaches us to proportion the implicitness of our belief to our
+consciousness of ignorance: to rise gradually and gently from a state of
+passively leaning, as it were, on the arm of another, to resting more
+and more of our weight on our own limbs, and, at last, to standing
+alone, this has perpetually exemplified our relations, as individuals,
+to the Church. Taught by her, in our childhood and youth, under all
+circumstances; taught by her, in the great majority of instances,
+through our whole lives; never, in any case, becoming so independent of
+her as we do in riper years, of the individual instructor of our youth;
+she has an abiding claim on our respect, on our deference, on our
+regard: but if it should be, that her teaching contained any thing at
+variance with God's word, we should perceive it more or less clearly,
+according to our degrees of knowledge; we should trust or mistrust our
+judgment, according to our degree of knowledge; but in the last resort,
+as we suppose that even a young boy might be sure that his book was in
+error, in the case of a manifest false print, so there may be things so
+certainly inconsistent with Scripture, that a common Christian may be
+able to judge of them, and to say that they are like false prints in his
+lesson, they are manifest errors, not to be followed, but avoided. So
+far he may be said to judge of his teacher; but not the less will he
+respect and listen to her authority in general, unless she has herself
+made the slightest error ruinous to her authority by claiming to be in
+all points, great or small, alike infallible.
+
+Men crave a general rule for their guidance at all times, and under all
+circumstances; whereas life is a constant call upon us to consider how
+far one general rule, in the particular case before us, is modified by
+another, or where one rule should be applied, and where another. To
+separate humility from idolatry, conscience from presumption, is often
+an arduous task: to different persons there is a different besetting
+danger; so it is under different circumstances, and at different times.
+Every day does the seaman, on a voyage, take his observations, to know
+whereabouts he is; he compares his position with his charts; he
+considers the direction of the wind, and the set of the current, or
+tide; and from all these together, he judges on which side his danger
+lies, on what course he should steer, or how much sail he may venture to
+carry. This is an image of our own condition: we cannot have a general
+rule to tell us where we should follow others, and where we must differ
+from them; to say what is modesty, and what is indolence; what is a
+proper deference to others, and what is a trusting in man so far, that
+it becomes a want of trust in God. Only, we are sure that these are
+points which we must decide for ourselves; the human will must be free,
+so far as other men are concerned. If we say, that we will implicitly
+trust others, then there is our decision, which no one could have made
+for us, and which is our own choice as to the principle of our lives;
+for which choice, we each of us, and no one else in all the world, must
+answer at the judgment-seat of God. Only, in that word there is our
+comfort, that, for our conduct in so doubtful a voyage as that of life,
+amidst so many conflicting opinions, each courting our adherence to
+it,--amidst such a variety of circumstances without, and of feelings
+within, and on which, notwithstanding, our condition for all eternity
+must depend,--we shall be judged, not by erring man, not by our own
+fallible conscience, but by the all-wise, and all-righteous God. With
+him, after all, even in the very courts of his holy Church, we yet, in
+one sense, must each of us live alone. On his gracious aid, given to our
+own individual souls, and determining our own individual wills, depends
+the character of our life here and for ever. Trusting to him, praying to
+him, we shall then make use of all the means that his goodness has
+provided for us; we shall ask counsel of friends; we shall listen to
+teachers; we shall delight to be in the company of God's people, of one
+mind, and of one voice, with the good and wise of every generation; we
+shall be afraid of leaning too much to our own understanding, knowing
+how it is encompassed with error; but knowing that other men are
+encompassed with error also, and that we, and not they, must answer for
+our choice before Christ's judgment, we must, in the last resort, if our
+conscience and sense of truth cannot be persuaded that other men speak
+according to God's will,--we must follow our own inward convictions,
+though all the world were to follow the contrary.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXXIII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JOHN ix. 29.
+
+_We know that God spake unto Moses; as for this fellow, we know not from
+whence he is_.
+
+
+The questions involved in the conversations recorded in this chapter,
+are of great practical importance. Not perhaps of immediate practical
+importance to all in this present congregation; but yet sure to be of
+importance to all hereafter, and of importance to many at this actual
+moment. Nay, they are of importance to those who, from their youth,
+might be thought to have little to do with them, either where the mind
+is already anxious and inquiring beyond its years, or where it happens
+to be exposed to strong party influences, or that its passions are
+likely to be engaged on a particular side, however little the
+understanding may be interested in the matter. In fact, in religious
+knowledge, as in other things, the omissions of youth are hard to make
+up in manhood; they who grow up with a very small knowledge of the
+Scriptures, and with no understanding of any of the questions connected
+with them, can with difficulty make up for this defect in after years;
+they become, according to the influences to which, they may happen to be
+subjected, either unbelieving or fanatical.
+
+If we were to question the youngest boy about the language held in this
+chapter by the Pharisees, and by the man who had been born blind, we
+should, no doubt, be answered, that what the Pharisees said, was wrong;
+and what the man born blind said, was right. This would be the answer
+which it would be thought proper to give; because it would be perceived
+that the Pharisees' language expressed unbelief in Christ; and that the
+man born blind was expressing gratitude and faith towards him. Nor,
+indeed, should we expect a young boy to go much farther than this; for
+such general impressions are, at his age, as much many times as can be
+looked for. But it is strange to observe how much this want of
+understanding outlasts the age of boyhood; how apt men are to judge
+according to names, and to see no farther: to say, that the language of
+the Pharisees was wrong, because they find it employed against Christ;
+but yet to use the very same language themselves, whilst they think that
+they are all the while speaking for Christ.
+
+But in this conversation between the Pharisees and the blind man, there
+are, indeed, as I said, points involved of very great importance; it
+contains the question as to the degree of weight to be attached to
+miracles; and the question, no less grave, with what degree of tenacity
+we should reject what claims to be a new truth, because it seems to be
+at a variance with supposed old truths to which we have been long
+accustomed to cling with undoubting affection.
+
+The question as to the weight of miracles is contained in the sixteenth
+verse. Some of the Pharisees said, This man is not of God, because he
+keepeth not the Sabbath day. Others said, How can a man that is a sinner
+do such miracles? That is to say, the first party rejected the miracles
+because they seemed to be wrought in favour of a supposed false
+doctrine; the other accepted the doctrine, because it seemed warranted
+to their belief by the miracles.
+
+The second question is contained in the words of the text, "We know
+that God spake to Moses; as for this fellow, we know not from whence he
+is." We have been taught from our childhood, and have the belief
+associated with every good and pious thought in us, that God spake to
+Moses, and gave him the law as our rule of life; but as for this fellow,
+we know not from whence he is. His works may be wonderful, his words may
+be specious; but we never heard of him before, and we cannot tear up all
+the holiest feelings of our nature to receive a new doctrine. We will
+hold to the old way in which, we were taught by our fathers to walk, and
+in which they walked before us.
+
+This last question is one which, as we well know, is continually
+presented to our minds. No one says, that the Pharisees were right, any
+more than those very Pharisees thought that their fathers were right who
+had killed the prophets. But as our Lord told them, that they were in
+truth the children in spirit of those who had killed the prophets;
+because, although they had been taught to condemn the outward form of
+their fathers' action, they were repeating it themselves in its
+principles and spirit; so many of those who condemn the Pharisees are
+really their exact image, repeating now against the truths of their own
+days the very same arguments which the Pharisees used against the truths
+of theirs.
+
+For the arguments of these Pharisees, both as regards miracles, and as
+regards the suspicion with which we should look on a doctrine opposed to
+the settled opinions of our lives, have in fact, in both cases, a great
+mixture of justice in them; and it is this very mixture which we may
+hope beguiled them; and also beguiles those, who in our own days repeat
+their language.
+
+For most certain it is that the Scripture itself supposes the
+possibility of false miracles. The case is especially provided against
+in Deuteronomy. It there says, "If there arise among you a prophet or a
+dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or
+the wonder come to pass whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go
+after other gods which thou hast not known, and let us serve them: thou
+shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet or that dreamer of
+dreams, for the Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the
+Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul." Observe how
+nearly this comes to the language of the Pharisees, "This man is not of
+God, because he keepeth not the Sabbath day." "Here," they might have
+said, "is the very case foreseen in the Scriptures: a prophet has
+wrought a sign and a wonder, which is at the same time a breach of God's
+commandments. God has told us that such signs are not to be heeded, that
+he does but prove us with them to see whether we love him truly: knowing
+that where there is a love of him, the heart will heed no sign or
+wonder, how great soever, which would tempt it to think lightly of his
+commandments." Shall we say that this is not a just interpretation of
+the passage in Deuteronomy? shall we say that this is the language of
+unbelief or of sin? or, rather, shall we not confess that it is in
+accordance with God's word, and holy, and faithful, and true? And yet
+this most just language led those who used it to reject one of Christ's
+greatest miracles, and to refuse the salvation of the Holy One of God.
+Can God's truth be contrary to itself? or can truth and goodness lead so
+directly to error and to evil?
+
+Now, then, where is the solution to be found? for some solution there
+must be, unless we will either condemn a most true principle, or defend
+a most false conclusion. The error lies in confounding God's moral law
+with his law of ordinances; precisely the same error which led the Jews
+to stone Stephen. The law had undoubtedly commanded that he who
+blasphemed God should be stoned; the Jews called Stephen's speaking
+against the holy place and against the law blasphemy against God, and
+they murdered God's faithful servant and Christ's blessed martyr. Even
+so the law had said, Let no miracle be so great as to tempt you to
+forsake God: the Jews considered the forsaking the law of the Sabbath to
+be a forsaking of God, and they said that Christ's miracle was a work of
+Satan. There is no blasphemy into which we may not fall, no crime from
+which we shall be safe, if we do not separate in our minds most clearly
+such laws as relate to moral and eternal duties, and such as relate to
+outward or positive ordinances, even when commanded or instituted by God
+himself. It is most false to say that the fact of their being commanded
+sets them on a level with each other. So long as they are commanded to
+us, it is no doubt our duty to obey them equally: but the difference
+between them is this, that whereas the first are commanded to us and to
+our children for ever, and no possible evidence can be so great as to
+persuade us that God has repealed them; (for the utmost conceivable
+amount of external testimony, such as that of miracles, could only lead
+to madness;--the human mind might, conceivably, be overwhelmed by the
+conflict, but should never and could never be tempted to renounce its
+very being, and lie against its Maker;) the others, that is, the
+commands to observe certain forms and ordinances, are in their nature
+essentially temporary and changeable: we have no right to assume that
+they will be continued, and therefore a miracle at any time might justly
+require us to forsake them; and not only an outward miracle, but the
+changed circumstances of the times may speak God's will no less clearly
+than a miracle, and may absolutely make it our duty to lay aside those
+ordinances, which to us hitherto, and to our fathers before us, were
+indeed the commands of God.
+
+Now let us take the other question,--which may indeed be called a
+question as to the allowableness of resting confidently in truth already
+gained, without consenting to examine the claims of something asserting
+itself to be a new truth, yet which seems to interfere with the old. Is
+nothing within us to be safe from possible doubt, or is everything? Or
+is it here, as in the former case, that there are truths so tried and so
+sacred that it were blasphemy to question them; while there are others,
+often closely intermixed with these, which are not so sacred, because
+they are not eternal; which may and ought to be examined when occasion
+requires; and which may be laid aside, or exchanged rather, for some
+higher truth, if it shall reasonably appear that their work is done, and
+that if we retain them longer they will change their character, and
+become no longer true but false. "David having served his own generation
+by the will of God, fell asleep, and was gathered unto his fathers, and
+saw corruption; but He whom God raised again saw no corruption." This is
+the difference between positive ordinances and moral: the first serve
+their appointed number of generations by the will of God, and then are
+gathered to their fathers, and perish; the latter are by the right hand
+of God exalted, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.
+
+"We know," said the Jews, "that God spake to Moses; but for this fellow,
+we know not from whence he is." There was a time when their fathers had
+held almost the very same language to Moses: "they refused him, saying
+Who made thee a ruler and a judge over us?" But now they knew that God
+had spoken to Moses, but were refusing Him who was sent unto them after
+Moses. God had spoken unto Moses, it was most true: he had spoken to him
+and given him commandments which were to last for ever; and which
+Christ, so far from undoing, was sent to confirm and to perfect; he had
+spoken to him other things, which were not to last for ever, but yet
+which were not to be cast away with dishonour; but having, in the
+fulness of time, done their work, were then, like David, to fall asleep.
+All that was required of the Jews, was not to reject as blasphemy a
+doctrine which should distinguish between these two sorts of truths:
+which in no way requires to believe that God had not spoken to
+Moses,--which, on the contrary, maintained that he had so spoken,--but
+only contended that he has also, in these last days, spoken unto us by
+his Son; and that his Son, bearing the full image of Divine authority,
+might well be believed if he spoke of some parts of Moses's law as
+having now fulfilled their work, seeing that they were such parts only
+as, by their very nature, were not eternal: they had not been from the
+beginning, and therefore they would not live on to the end.
+
+The practical conclusion is, that, whilst we hold fast, with an
+undoubting and unwavering faith, all truths which, by their very nature,
+are eternal, and to deny which is no other than to speak against the
+Holy Ghost, we should listen patiently to, and pass no harsh judgment
+on, those who question other truths not necessarily eternal, while they
+declare that they are, to the best of their consciences, seeking to obey
+God and Christ. When I say, that we should listen patiently, and not
+pass harsh judgments upon those who question such points, I say it
+without at all meaning that we should agree with them. It would be
+monstrous indeed, to suppose that old opinions are never combated
+wrongly; that old institutions are never pronounced to have lived out
+their appointed time, when, in fact, they are still in their full
+vigour. But the language of those who defend the doctrines and the
+ordinances of the Church may, and often does, partake of the sin of that
+of the Pharisees, even when those against whom they are contending, are
+not, like Christ, bringing in a new and higher truth, but an actual
+error. To point out that it is an error, to defend ourselves and the
+Church from it, is most right, and most highly our duty; but it is
+neither right, nor our duty, but the very sin of the Pharisees, to put
+it down merely by saying, "As for this fellow, we know not from whence
+he is;" to treat the whole question as an impiety, and to deny the
+virtues and the holiness of those who maintain it, because they are, as
+we call it, "speaking blasphemous things against the holy place and
+against the law." The mischief of this to ourselves is infinite; nay, in
+its extreme, it leads to language which is fearfully resembling the very
+blasphemy against the Holy Ghost; for, when we say, as has been said,
+that where men's lives are apparently good and holy, and their doctrines
+are against those of the Church, the holiness is an unreal holiness, and
+that we cannot see into their hearts, this is, in fact, denying the Holy
+Spirit's most infallible sign--the fruits of righteousness; and being
+positive rather of the truth of the Church, than of the truth of God.
+There is nothing so certain as that goodness is from God; nothing so
+certain as that sin is not from God; nothing so certain as that sin is
+not from him. To deny, or doubt this, is to dispute the greatest
+assurance of truth that God has ever been pleased to give to us. It does
+not, by any means, follow, that all good men are free from error, nor
+that error is less error because good men hold it; but to make the error
+which is less certain, a reason for disputing the goodness which is more
+certain, is the spirit, not of God, nor of the Church of God, but of
+those false zealots who put an idol in God's place; of such as rejected
+Christ and murdered Stephen.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXXIV.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+1 CORINTHIANS xiv, 20.
+
+_Brethren, be not children in understanding: howbeit, in malice be ye
+children, but in understanding be men_.
+
+
+It would be going a great deal too far to say, that they who fulfilled
+the latter part of this command, were sure also to fulfil the former;
+that they who were men in understanding, were, therefore, likely to be
+children in malice. But the converse holds good, with remarkable
+certainty, that they who are children in understanding, are
+proportionally apt to be men in malice: that is, in proportion as men
+neglect that which should be the guide of their lives, so are they left
+to the mastery of their passions; and as nature and outward
+circumstances do not allow these passions to remain as quiet and as
+little grown as they are in childhood,--for they are sure to ripen
+without any trouble of ours,--so men are left with nothing but the evils
+of both ages, the vices of the man, and the unripeness and ignorance of
+the child.
+
+It is indeed a strange and almost incredible thing, that any should ever
+have united in their minds the notions of innocence and ignorance as
+applied to any but literal children: nor is it less strange, that any
+should ever have been afraid of their understanding, and should have
+sought goodness through prejudice, and blindness, and folly. Compared
+with this, their conduct was infinitely reasonable who weakened and
+tormented their bodies in order to strengthen, as they thought, their
+spiritual nature. Such conduct was, by comparison, reasonable because
+there is a great deal of bodily weakness and discomfort, which really
+does not interfere with the strength and purity of our character in
+itself, although, by abridging our activity, it may lessen our means of
+usefulness. But what should we say of a man who directed his ill usage
+of his body to that part of our system which is most closely connected
+with the brain; who were purposely to impair his nervous system, and
+subject himself to those delusions and diseased views of things which
+are the well-known result of any disorder there? Yet this is precisely
+what they do who seek to mortify and lower their understanding. It is as
+impossible that they should become better men by such a process, as if
+they were literally to take medicines to affect their nerves or their
+brain, in the hope of becoming idiotic or delirious. It is, in fact, the
+worst kind of self-murder; for it is a presumptuous destroying of that
+which is our best life, because we dread to undergo those trials which
+God has appointed for the perfecting both of it and of us.
+
+But from the wilful blindness of these men, let us turn to the Christian
+wisdom of the Apostle: "In malice be ye children, but in understanding
+be men." Let us turn to what is recorded of our Lord in his early life,
+at that age when, as man, the cultivation of his understanding was his
+particular duty--that he was found in the temple, sitting in the midst
+of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions: not asking
+questions only, as one too impatient or too vain to wait for an answer,
+or to consider it when he had received it; not hearing only, as one
+careless and passive, who thinks that the words of wisdom can improve
+his mind by being indolently admitted through the ears, with no more
+effort than his body uses when it is refreshed by a cooling air, or when
+it is laid down in running water; but both hearing and asking questions;
+docile and patient, yet active and intelligent; knowing that the wisdom
+was to be communicated from without, but that it belongs to the vigorous
+exercise of the power within, to apprehend it, and to convert it to
+nourishment.
+
+Now, what is recorded of our Lord for our example, as to the manner in
+which he received instruction when delivered by word of mouth, this same
+thing should we do with that instruction, which, as is the ease with
+most of ours, we derive from reading. Put the Scriptures in the place of
+those living teachers whom Christ was so eager to hear; the words of
+Christ, and of his Spirit, instead of those far inferior guides from
+whom, notwithstanding, he, for our sakes, once submitted to learn; and
+what can be more exact than the application of the example? Let us be
+found in God's true temple, in the communion of his faithful
+people,--his universal Church, sitting down as it were, surrounded by
+the voices of the oracles of God--prophets, apostles, and Jesus Christ
+himself: let us be found with the record of these oracles in our hands,
+both reading them and asking them questions.
+
+It is quite clear that what hinders a true understanding of anything is
+vagueness; and it is by this process of asking questions that vagueness
+is to be dispelled: for, in the first place, it removes one great
+vagueness, or indistinctness, which is very apt to beset the minds of
+many; namely, the not clearly seeing whether they understand a thing or
+no; and much more, the not seeing what it is that they do understand,
+and what it is which they do not. Take any one of our Lord's parables,
+and read it even to a young child: there will be something of an
+impression conveyed, and some feelings awakened; but all will be
+indistinct; the child will not know whether he understands or no, but
+will soon gain the habit of supposing that he does, as that is at once
+the least troublesome, and the least unpleasant to our vanity. And this
+same vague impression is often received by uneducated persons from
+reading or bearing either the Scriptures or sermons; it is by no means
+the same as if they had read or heard something in an unknown language;
+but yet they can give no distinct account of what they have heard or
+read; they do not know how far they understand it, and how far they do
+not. Here, then, is the use of "asking questions,"--asking questions of
+ourselves or of our book, I mean, for I am supposing the case of our
+reading, when it can rarely happen that we have any living person at
+hand to give us an answer. Now, taking the earliest and simplest state
+of knowledge, it is plain that the first question to put to ourselves
+will be, "Do I understand the meaning of all the words and expressions
+in what I have been reading?" I know that this is taking things at their
+very beginning, but it is my wish to do so. Now, so plain and forcible
+is the English of our Bible, generally speaking, that the words
+difficult to be understood will probably not be many: yet some such do
+occur, owing, in some instances, to a change of the language; as in the
+words "let," and "prevent," which now signify, the one, "to allow, or
+suffer to be done," and the other "to stop, or hinder," but which
+signified, when our translation was made, the first, "to stop or
+hinder," and the second, "to be beforehand with us;" as in the prayer,
+"Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings, with thy most gracious favour;"
+the meaning is, "Let thy favour be with us beforehand, O Lord, in
+whatever we are going to do." In other instances the words are difficult
+because they are used in a particular sense, such as we do not learn
+from our common language; of which kind are the words "elect," "saints,"
+"justification," "righteousness," and many others. Now, if we ask
+ourselves "whether we understand these words or no," our common sense,
+when thus questioned, will readily tell us, whether we do or not;
+although if we had not directly asked the question, it might never have
+thought about it. Of course, our common sense cannot tell us what the
+true meaning is; that is a matter of information, and our means of
+gaining information may be more or less; but still, a great step is
+gained, the mist is partly cleared away; we can say to ourselves, "Here
+is something which I do understand, and here is something which I do
+not; I must keep the two distinct, for the first I may use, the second I
+cannot; I will mark it down as a thing about which I may get explanation
+at another time; but at present it is a blank in the picture, it is the
+same as if it were not there." This, then, is the first process of
+self-questioning, adapted, as I have already said, to those whose
+knowledge is most elementary.
+
+Suppose, however, that we are got beyond difficulties of this sort--that
+the words and particular expressions of the Scriptures are mostly clear
+to us. Now, take again one of our Lord's parables; say, for instance,
+that of the labourers in the vineyard: we read it, and find that he who
+went to work at the eleventh hour received as much as he who had been
+working all the day. This seems to say, that he who begins to serve God
+in his old age shall receive his crown of glory no less than he who has
+served him all his life. But now try the process of self-questioning:
+what do I think that Christ means me to learn from this? what is the
+lesson to me? what is it to make me feel, or think, or do? If it makes
+me think that I shall receive an equal crown of glory if I begin to
+serve God in my old age, and therefore if it leads me to live
+carelessly, this is clearly making Christ encourage wickedness; and such
+a thought is blasphemy. He cannot mean me to learn this from it: let me
+look at the parable again. Who is it who is reproved in those words
+which seem to contain its real object? It is one who complains of God
+for having rewarded others equally with himself. Now this I can see is
+not a good feeling: it is pride and jealousy. In order, then to learn
+what the parable means me to learn, let me put myself in the position of
+those reproved in it. If I complain that others are rewarded by God as
+much as I am, it is altogether a bad feeling, and one which I ought to
+check; for I have nothing to do with God's dealings to others, let me
+think of what concerns myself. Here I have the lesson of the parable
+complete: and here I find it is useful for me. But if I take it for a
+different object, and suppose that it means to encourage waiting till
+the eleventh hour--waiting till we are old before we repent--we find
+that we make it only actually to be mischievous to us. And thus we gain
+a great piece of knowledge: namely, that the parables of our Lord are
+mostly designed to teach, some one particular lesson, with respect to
+some one particular fault: and that if we take them generally, as if all
+in them was applicable to all persons, whether exposed to that
+particular fault or not, we shall absolutely be in danger of deriving
+mischief from them instead of good. It is true, that in this particular
+parable, the gross wickedness of such an interpretation as I have
+mentioned is guarded against even in the story itself; because those who
+worked only at the eleventh hour are expressly said to have stood idle
+so long only because no man had hired them; their delay, therefore, was
+no fault of their own. But even if this circumstance had been left out,
+it would have been just the same; because the general rule is, that we
+apply to a parable only for its particular lesson, and do not strain it
+to any thing else. Had this been well understood, no one would have ever
+found so much difficulty in understanding the parable of the
+unjust steward.
+
+This is another great step towards the dispelling vagueness, to apply
+the particular lesson of each part of Scripture to that state of
+knowledge, or feeling, or practice in ourselves, which it was intended
+to benefit; to apply it as a lesson to ourselves, not as a general truth
+for our neighbours. And the very desire to do this, makes us naturally
+look with care to the object of every passage--to see to whom it was
+addressed, and on what occasion; for this will often surely guide us to
+the point that we want. But in order to do this, we must strive to
+clothe the whole in our own common language; to get rid of those
+expressions which to us convey the meaning faintly; and to put it into
+such others as shall come most strongly home to us. This I have spoken
+of on other occasions; and I have so often witnessed the bad effects of
+not doing so, that I am sure it may well bear to be noticed again; I
+mean the putting such words as "persecution," "the cares and riches of
+the world," "the kingdom of God," "confessing Christ," "denying Christ,"
+and many others, into a language which to us has more lively reality,
+which makes us manifestly see that it is of us, and of our common life,
+and of our dangers, that the scripture is speaking, and not only of
+things in a remote time and country, and under circumstances quite
+unlike our own. Therefore I have a strong objection to the use of what
+is called peculiarly religious language, because I am sure that it
+hinders us from bringing the matter of that language thoroughly home to
+us; our minds do not entirely assimilate with, it; or if they fancy that
+they do, it is only by their becoming themselves affected, and losing
+their sense of the reality of things around them. For our language is
+fixed for us, and we cannot alter it; and into that common language in
+which we think and feel, all truth must be translated, if we would think
+and feel respecting it at once rightly, clearly, and vividly. Happy is
+he, who, by practising this early, has imbued his own natural language
+with the spirit of God's wisdom and holiness; and who can see, and
+understand, and feel them the better, because they are so put into a
+form with which he is perfectly familiar.
+
+More might be said, very much more, but here I will now pause. In this
+world, wherein heavenly things are, after all, hard to seize and fix
+upon, we have great need that no mists of imperfect understanding darken
+them, over and above those of the corrupt will. To see them clearly, to
+understand them distinctly and vividly, may, indeed, after all be vain:
+a thicker veil may yet remain behind, and we may see and understand, and
+yet perish. Only the clear sight of God in Christ can be no light
+blessing; and there may be a hope, that understanding and approving with
+all our minds his excellent wisdom, the light may warm us as well as
+assist our sight; that we may see, and not in our vague and empty sense,
+but in the force of the scriptural meaning of the word,--may see, and
+so believe.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXXV.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MATTHEW xxvi. 45, 46.
+
+_Sleep on now and take your rest; behold, the hour is at hand, and the
+Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be.
+going; behold, he is at hand that doth betray me_.
+
+
+I take these verses for my text, in the first place, because some have
+fancied a difficulty in them, and have even proposed to alter the
+translation, and read the first words as a question, "Do ye still sleep
+and take your rest?" and because they are really a very good
+illustration of our Lord's manner of speaking, a manner which it is of
+the highest importance to us fully to understand. And, secondly, I take
+them as a text for the general lesson which they convey to us; their
+mixture of condemnation and mercy; their view, at once looking backwards
+and forwards, not losing sight of irreparable evils of a neglected past,
+nor yet making those evils worse by so dwelling upon them as to forget
+the still available future; not concealing from us the solemn truth,
+that what is done cannot be undone, yet warning us also not to undo by a
+vain despair that future which may yet be done to our soul's health.
+
+First, a difficulty has been fancied to exist in the words, as if our
+Lord had bade his disciples to do two contradictory things: telling
+them, first, to sleep on and take their rust, and then saying, "Rise,
+let us be going." And because in St. Luke's account, when our Lord
+comes to his disciples the last time, his words are given thus, "Why
+sleep ye? rise and pray, that ye enter not into temptation:" therefore,
+as I have said, his words in the text have been translated, "Are ye
+sleeping and resting for the remainder of the time?" Now, I should not
+take up your time with things of this sort, where I believe our common
+translation to be most certainly right, were it not for the sake of one
+or two general remarks, which I think may not be out of place. It is a
+general rule, that in passages not obscure, but appearing to contain
+some moral difficulty, if I may so speak; that is, something which seems
+inconsistent with our notions of God's holiness, or wisdom, or justice;
+something, in short, of a stumbling-block, which we fear may occasion a
+triumph to unbelievers; it is a rule, I say, that in passages of this
+kind the difficulty is not to be met by departing from the
+common-received translation. And the reason of this is plain; that had
+not the commonly received translation in such cases been clearly the
+right one, it would never have come to be commonly received. Amongst the
+thousands of interpreters of Scripture, all, from the earliest time,
+anxious to remove grounds of cavil from the adversaries of their faith,
+a passage would never have been translated so as to afford such a
+ground, if the right translation of it could have been different. Such
+places are especially those in which the common translation needs not to
+be suspected: and it is merely leading us astray from the true
+explanation of the apparent difficulty, when we thus attempt to evade it
+by tampering with the translation. A notable instance of this was
+afforded some few years since in a new translation of some of the books
+of the Old Testament; in which it was pretended that most of those
+points which had been most attacked by unbelievers were, in fact, mere
+mistranslations, and that the real meaning of the original was
+something totally different; and, in order to show the necessity of his
+alterations, the writer entirely allowed the objections of unbelievers
+to the common reading; and said that no sufficient answer had been or
+could be made to them. This was an extreme case, and probably imposed
+only on a very few: but less instances of the same thing are common: St.
+Paul's words about being baptized for the dead, have been twisted to all
+sorts of senses, from their natural and only possible meaning, because
+men could not bear to believe that the superstition of being baptized as
+proxies for another could have existed at a period which they were
+resolved to consider so pure: and so in the text, a force has been put
+upon the words which they cannot bear, in order to remove a supposed
+contradiction: and all that would have been gained by the change would
+be, to have one instructive illustration the less of our Lord's peculiar
+manner of discourse, and one instance the less of the inimitable way in
+which his language, addressed directly to the circumstances before him,
+contains, at the same time, a general lesson, for the use of all his
+disciples in all ages.
+
+Our Lord's habitual language was parabolical; I use the word in a wide
+sense, to include all language which is not meant to be taken according
+to the letter. Observe his conversation with the Samaritan woman; it
+begins at once with parable, "If thou hadst known who it was that asked
+of thee, saying, Give me to drink, thou wouldst have asked of him, and
+he would have given thee living water." And again, "Whoso drinketh of
+the water that I shall give him shall never thirst, but it shall be in
+him a well of water, springing up unto life eternal." This seems to have
+been, if I may venture to say so, the favourite language in which he
+preferred to speak; but when he found that he was not understood, then,
+according to the nature of the case, he went on in two or three
+different manners. When he, to whom all hearts were open, saw that the
+misunderstanding was wilful, that it arose out of a disposition glad to
+find an excuse, in his pretended obscurity, for not listening to him and
+obeying him, then, instead of explaining his language, he made it more
+and more figurative; more likely to be misunderstood, or to offend those
+whom he knew to be disposed beforehand to misunderstand and to be
+offended. A famous example of this may be seen in the sixth chapter of
+St. John; there he first calls himself the Bread of Life, and says, that
+whosoever should eat of that bread should live for ever: but when he
+found that the Jews cavilled at this language, instead of explaining it,
+he only added expressions yet more strongly parabolical; "Except ye eat
+the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in
+you:" and he dwells on this image so long, that we find that many of his
+disciples, bent on interpreting it literally, and, in this sense,
+finding it utterly shocking, went back and walked no more with him.
+Again, when he found not a disposition to cavil, but yet a profound
+ignorance of his meaning, arising from a state of mind wholly unused to
+think of spiritual good and evil, he neither used, as to those who
+wilfully misunderstood him, language that would offend them still more,
+nor yet did he offer a direct explanation; but he broke off the
+conversation, and adopted another method of instruction. Thus, when the
+Samaritan woman, thinking only of bodily wants, answered him by saying,
+"Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to
+draw," he neither goes on to speak to her in the same language, nor yet
+does he explain it; but at once addresses her in a different manner,
+saying, "Go, call thy husband, and come hither." Thirdly, when he was
+speaking to his own disciples, to whom it was given to know the
+mysteries of the kingdom of God, he generally explained his meaning,--at
+least so far as to prevent practical error,--when he found that they had
+not understood him. Thus, when he had said to them, "Beware of the
+leaven of the Pharisees, and of the leaven of Herod," and they thought
+only of leaven and of bread in the literal sense, he upbraids them,
+indeed, for their slowness, saying, "Are ye also yet without
+understanding?" but he goes on to tell them in express terms that he did
+not mean to speak to them of the leaven of bread. And the words of the
+text are an exactly similar instance: his first address is parabolical;
+that is, it is not meant to be taken to the letter; "Sleep on now, and
+take your rest," meaning, "Ye can now do me no good by watching, for the
+time is past, and he who betrayed me is at hand; ye might as well sleep
+on now and take your rest, for I need not try you any longer." But, as
+the time was really pressing, and there was a possibility that they
+might have misunderstood his words, and have really continued to sleep,
+he immediately added in different language, "Rise, let us be going;
+behold, he is at hand that doth betray me." We must be prepared, then,
+to find that our Lord's language, not only to the Jews at large, but
+even to his own disciples, is commonly parabolical; the worst
+interpretation which we can give to it is commonly the literal one. His
+conversation with his disciples, just before he went out to the garden
+of Gethsemane, as recorded in the thirteenth, and following chapters of
+St. John, is a most striking proof of this. If any one looks through
+them, he will find how many are the comparisons, and figurative manners
+of speaking, which abound in them, and how often his disciples were at a
+loss to understand his meaning, And he himself declares this, for, at
+the end of the sixteenth chapter, he says expressly, "These things I
+have spoken unto you in proverbs;"--that is, language not to be taken
+according to the letter;--"the time is coming when I will no more speak
+unto you in proverbs, but will show you plainly of the Father." And
+then, when he goes on to declare, what he never, it seems, had before
+told them in such express and literal language, "I came forth from the
+Father, and am come into the world: again I leave the world, and go to
+my Father," his disciples seem to have welcomed with joy this departure
+from his usual manner of speaking, and said immediately, "Lo! now
+speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb: now we know that thou
+knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask thee: by
+this we believe that thou earnest forth from God."
+
+But let us observe what it is that he said: "A time is coming when I
+shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but shall show you plainly of
+the Father." That time came immediately. He spoke to them after his
+resurrection, opening their understandings to understand the Scriptures:
+he spoke yet more fully, by his Spirit, after the day of Pentecost,
+leading them into all truth. And what they thus heard in the ear, they
+proclaimed, according to his bidding, upon the house-tops. When the Holy
+Spirit brought to their remembrance all that he had said to them, and
+gave their minds a spiritual judgment, to compare what they thus had
+brought before them, to see his words in their true light and their true
+bearings, comparing spiritual things with spiritual, they were no
+niggards of this heavenly treasure; nor did they, according to the vain
+heresy of the worst corrupters of Christ's gospel, imitate and surpass
+that sin which they had so heavily judged in Ananias. They kept back no
+part-of that which they professed and were commanded to lay wholly and
+entirely at the feet of God's church. They did not so lie to the Holy
+Ghost, as to erect a wicked system of priestcraft in the place of that
+holy gospel of which they were ministers. They had no reserve of a
+secret doctrine for themselves and a chosen few, keeping in their own
+hands the key of knowledge, and opening only half of the door; but as
+they had freely received, so they freely gave; all that they knew, they
+taught to all: and so, through their blessed teaching, we too can
+understand our Lord's words as they were taught to understand them: and
+what is parabolical, is no longer on that account obscure, but full of
+light and of beauty, fulfilling the end for which it was chosen, the
+most effective of all ways of teaching, because the liveliest.
+
+I have left myself but little space to touch upon the second part of the
+subject--the general lesson conveyed in our Lord's-words to his
+disciples: "Sleep on now, and take your rest.--Rise; let us be going."
+How truly do we deserve the reproof; how thankfully may we accept the
+call. We have forfeited many opportunities which we would in vain
+recover; we have been careless when we should have been watchful; and
+that for which we should have watched, is now lost by our neglect; and
+it is no good to watch for it any more. Let us remember this, while it
+is called to-day; for how often is it particularly applicable to us
+here, from the passing nature of your stay amongst us! To both you and
+us too often belongs our Lord's remonstrance, "What, could ye not watch
+with me one hour?" So short a time as you stay here, could we not be
+watching with Christ that little period: from which, if well improved,
+there might spring forth a fruit so lasting? But, alas! we too often
+sleep it away: we do not all that we might do, nor do you; evil grows
+instead of good, till the time is past, and you leave us; and we may as
+well sleep on, and take our rest, so far as all that particular good
+was concerned--the improvement, namely, of your time at this place, for
+which we are alike set to watch. But are we to take the words of
+reproach literally? May we really sleep on, and take our rest? Oh vain
+and wilful folly, so to misunderstand! But, lest we should
+misunderstand, let us hear our Lord's next words: "Rise; let us be
+going," and that instantly: the time and opportunity already lost for
+ever is far more than enough.--"Rise; let us be going:" so Christ calls
+us; for he has still other work for us to do, for him, and with him. The
+future is yet our own, though the past be lost. We have sinned greatly
+and irreparably; but let us not do so yet again: other opportunities are
+afforded us; the disciples would not watch with him in the garden, but
+he calls them to go with him to his trial and his judgment; and one, we
+know, watched by him even on his cross:--so he calls to us; so he calls
+now; but he will not so call for ever. There will be a time when we
+might strike out the words, "Rise; let us be going;" they will concern
+us then no more. It is only said, "Sleep on now, and take your rest: all
+your watching time has been wasted, and you can now watch no more;"
+there remains only to sleep--to sleep that last sleep, from which we
+shall then never wake to God and happiness, but in which we shall be
+awake for ever to sin and to misery.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXXVI.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+2 CORINTHIANS v. 17, 18.
+
+_Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new: and all
+things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ_.
+
+
+I have, from time to time, spoken of that foolish misuse of the
+Scriptures, by which any one opening the volume of the Bible at random,
+and taking the first words which he finds, straightway applies them
+either to himself or to his neighbour; and then boasts that he has the
+word of God on his side, and that whosoever differs from him, is
+disputing and despising the word of God. The most extreme instances of
+this way of proceeding are so absurd, that they could not be noticed in
+this place becomingly; and these, of course, stand palpable to all,
+except to those who have allowed themselves to fall into them. But far
+short of these manifest follies, great errors have been maintained on
+general points, and great mistakes, whether of over presumption or of
+over fear, have been committed as to men's particular state, by quoting
+Scripture unadvisedly; by taking hold of its words to the neglect or
+actual violation of its spirit and real meaning. This is a great and a
+very common mischief, but yet there is a truth at the bottom of the
+error; it is true, that the greatest questions relating to God and to
+ourselves, may find their answer in the Scriptures; it is true, that if
+we search for this answer wisely we may surely find it.
+
+Consider the words of the text, and see how easily they may be
+perverted, if with no more ado we take them, as said of ourselves, each
+individually, and as containing to each of us a statement positive of
+truth. "Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."
+If we believe that this is God's word respecting each of us, what
+violence must we do to our memory of the past, and our consciousness of
+the present, if we do try to persuade ourselves that so total a change
+has taken place in each of us, that what we once were, we are no longer;
+that what we are, we once were not; and this not in some few particular
+points, but in the main character of our minds. Again, "All things are
+of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ." If we apply
+these words to each of us, what exceeding presumption would they breed!
+If all things in us and about us are now of God, what room can there be
+for sin? If God hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, what room
+can there be for fear or for danger? And thus, while we say we are
+quoting and believing the word of God, we do in fact turn it into a lie;
+we make it assert a falsehood as to our past state, and a falsehood as
+to our future state; we make it say, that our old nature is passed away,
+when it is not; that we have got a new nature when we have not; that we
+are reconciled to God, and therefore in safety, when we are, in fact, in
+the extremest danger.
+
+But it is easy to see that we have no right to apply to ourselves words
+written by St. Paul eighteen hundred years ago, and applied by him to
+other persons. I go, then, farther; and I say, that if every member of
+the church of Corinth, to which they were written, had applied them to
+himself in the manner which I have shown above, the words would in many
+instances have been perverted no less, and would have been made to state
+what was false, and not what was true. And the same may be said of many
+other passages of St. Paul's Epistles, which, having been similarly
+misinterpreted, have furnished matter for endless controversies, and on
+which opposite theories of doctrine have been fondly raised, each of
+them alike unchristian and untrue.
+
+Thus our present position is this:--that oftentimes by taking the
+representations of Scripture as true in fact, whether of ourselves or of
+others, we come to conclusions at once false and mischievous; being, as
+the case may be, either presumptuous, or fearful, or uncharitable, and
+claiming for each of these faults the sanction of the word of God.
+
+A similar mistake in interpreting human compositions, has led to faults
+of another kind. Assuming as before, in interpreting St. Paul's words,
+that the language of our Liturgy is meant to describe, as a matter of
+fact, the actual feelings and condition of those who use it, or for whom
+it is used; and seeing manifestly that these feelings and condition do
+not agree with the words; we do not here, as with the Scripture, do
+violence to our common sense and conscience, by insisting upon it that
+we agree with the words, but we find fault with the words as being at
+variance with the matter of fact. Some say that the language of the
+General Confession is too strong a statement of sin; that the language
+of the Communion Service, of the Baptismal Service, and above all, of
+the Burial Service, is too full of encouragement and of assurance; that
+men are not all so bad as to require the one, 'nor so good as to deserve
+the other; that in both cases it should be lowered, to agree with the
+actual condition of those who use it.
+
+Now it is worthy of notice, at any rate, that the self-same rule of
+interpretation applied to the Scripture and the Liturgy is found to suit
+with neither. We adhere positively to our rule: and thus, as we hold the
+words of Scripture sacred, we force common sense and conscience to make
+the facts agree with them; but not having the same respect for the words
+of the Liturgy, we complain of them as faulty and requiring alteration,
+because they do not agree with the facts.
+
+I will not enter into the question whether the Liturgy has done wisely
+or not in thus imitating the Scripture; but I do contend that, in point
+of fact, there is this resemblance between them. St. Paul's Epistles, in
+particular, although it is true of other parts of the Scripture also,
+contain, as does the Liturgy of our Church, a great many passages which,
+if taken either universally or even generally as containing a matter of
+fact, will lead us into certain error. Is it, therefore, so very certain
+that we do wisely in so interpreting them?
+
+With regard to our Liturgy I need not follow up the question now; but
+with regard to St. Paul, it is certain that he, in many parts of his
+Epistles, chooses to represent that which ought to be as that which
+actually was: he chooses to regard those to whom he is writing as being
+in all respects true Christians, as being worthy of their privileges, as
+answering to what God had done to them, as forming a church really
+inhabited by the Holy Spirit, and therefore being a true and living body
+of due proportions to Christ its Divine head. Nor does he trust
+exclusively to the common sense and conscience of those to whom he was
+writing to interpret his language correctly. He might Lave thought
+indeed that if he wrote to them as redeemed, justified, sanctified, as
+having all things new, as being the children of God, and the heirs of
+God, and the temples of the Holy Ghost, any individual who felt that he
+was none of these things, that sin was still mighty within him, and that
+he was sin's slave, would neither deny his own conscience, nor yet call
+St. Paul a deceiver; but would read in the difference between St. Paul's
+description of him and the reality, the exact measure of his own sin,
+and need of repentance and watchfulness. But he does not rely on this
+only: he notices sins as actually existing; he mingles the language of
+reproof and of anxiety, so as to make it quite clear that he did not
+mean his descriptions of their holiness and blessedness to apply to them
+all necessarily; he knew full well that they did not: but yet he knew
+also that, considering what God had done for them, it was monstrous that
+they should not be truly applicable.
+
+But why then, you will say, did he use such language? why did he call
+men forgiven, redeemed, saved, justified, sanctified?--he uses all these
+terms often as applicable generally to those to whom he was
+writing;--why did he call them so, when in fact they were not so? He
+called them so for the same reason which, made prophecy foretell
+blessings upon Israel of old, and on the Christian church afterwards,
+which were fulfilled on neither:--in order to declare, and keep ever
+before us, what God has done and is willing to do for us: what he fain
+would do for us, if we would but suffer him; what divine powers are
+offered to us, and we will not use them; what divine happiness is
+designed for us, and we will not enter into it. Let us ponder all the
+magnificence of the scriptural language,--the words of the text for
+example, not as describing what we are when we are full of sin; nor yet
+as mere exaggerated language, which must be brought down to the level of
+our present reality. Let us consider it as containing the words of
+truth and soberness; not one jot or one tittle needs to be abated; it
+must not be lowered to us, but we rather raised to it. It is a truth, it
+is the word of God, it is the seal of our assurance: it is that which
+good men of old would have welcomed with the deepest joy; which, to good
+men now is a source of comfort unspeakable. For it tells us that God has
+done for us, is doing, will do, all that we need; it tells us that the
+price of our redemption has been paid, the kingdom of heaven has been
+set open, the power to walk as God's children has been given: that so
+far as God is concerned we are redeemed, we are saved, we are
+sanctified; it is but our own fault merely that we are not all of these
+actually and surely.
+
+This is not a little matter to be persuaded of; if it be true, as I fear
+it is, that too many of us do not love God, is it not quite as true that
+we cannot believe that God loves us? Have we any thing like a distinct
+sense of the words of St. John, "We love God because he first loved us?"
+We believe in the love of our earthly friends; those who have so lately
+left their homes have no manner of doubt that their parents are
+interested in their welfare, though absent; that they will often think
+of them; and that, as far as it is possible at a distance from them,
+they are watching over their good, and anxious to promote it. The very
+name home implies all this; it implies that it is a place where those
+live who love us; and I do not question that the consciousness of
+possessing this love does, amidst all your faults and forgetfulnesses,
+rise not unfrequently within your minds, and restrain you from making
+yourselves altogether unworthy of it. Now, I say, that the words of the
+text, and hundreds of similar passages, are our assurance, if we would
+but believe them, that we have another home and another parent, by whom
+we are loved constantly and earnestly, who has done far more for us
+than our earthly parents can do. I grant that it is hard to believe this
+really; so infinite is the distance between God and us, that we cannot
+fancy that he cares for us; he may make laws for a world, or for a
+system, but what can he think or feel for us? It is, indeed, a thought
+absolutely overpowering to the mind; it may well seem incredible to us,
+judging either from our own littleness or our own forgetfulness; so hard
+as we find it to think enough of those to whom we are most nearly bound,
+how can the Most High. God think of us? But if there be any one particle
+of truth in Christianity, we are warranted in saying that God does love
+us; strange as it may seem, He, whom neither word nor thought of created
+being can compass; He, who made us and ten thousand worlds, loves each
+one of us individually; "the very hairs of our heads are all numbered."
+He so loved us, that he gave his only-begotten Son to die for us; and
+St. Paul well asks, "He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him
+up for us all, will he not also with him freely give us all things?"
+
+Believe me, you could have no better charm to keep you safe through, the
+temptations of the coming half year, than this most true persuasion that
+God loves you. The oldest and the youngest of us may alike repeat to
+himself the blessed words, "God loves me;" "God loves me; God has
+redeemed me: God would dwell in my heart, that I might dwell in him: God
+has placed me in his church, has made me a member of Christ his own Son,
+has made me an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven." I might multiply
+words, but that one little sentence is, perhaps, more than all, "God
+loves me." Oh that you would believe him when he assures you of it, for
+then surely you would not fail to love him. But whether you believe it
+or not, still it is so: God loves every one of us; he loves each one of
+us as belonging to Christ his Son. He does love each, of us; let us not
+cast his love away from us, and refuse to love him in return; he does
+love each of us now, but there may be a time to each of us,--there will
+be, assuredly, if we will not believe that he loves us, when he will
+love us no more for ever.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXXVII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+EZEKIEL xx. 49.
+
+_Then said I, Ah, Lord God I they say of me, Doth he not speak
+parables_?
+
+
+Nothing is more disheartening, if we must believe it to be true, than
+the language in which some persons talk of the difficulty of the
+Scriptures, and the absolute certainty that different men will ever
+continue to understand them differently. It is not, we are told, with
+the knowledge of Scripture as with that of outward nature: in the
+knowledge of nature, discoveries are from time to time made which set
+error on the one side, and truth on the other, absolutely beyond
+dispute; there the ground when gained is clearly seen to be so; and as
+fresh sources of knowledge are continually opening to us, it is not
+beyond hope that we may in time arrive infinitely near to the enjoyment
+of truth,--truth certain in itself, and acknowledged by all unanimously.
+But with Scripture, it is said, the case is far otherwise; discoveries
+are not to be expected here, nor does a later generation derive from,
+its additional experience any greater insight into the things of God
+than was enjoyed by the generations before it. And when we see that
+actually the complete Scriptures have been in the world not much less
+than eighteen hundred years; that within that period no other book has
+been so much studied; and yet that differences of opinion as to the
+matters spoken of in it have ever existed, and exist now as much as
+ever, what reasonable prospect is there, it is asked, of future harmony
+or of clearer demonstrations of divine truth; and will not the good on
+these points ever continue to differ from the good, and the wise to
+differ from the wise?
+
+This language, so discouraging as it is, may be heard from two very
+opposite parties, so that their agreement may appear to give it the more
+weight: it is used by men who are indifferent to religious truth, as an
+excuse for their taking no pains to discover what the truth really is;
+it is echoed back quite as strongly by another set of persons who wish
+to magnify the uncertainties of the Scripture in order to recommend more
+plausibly the guidance of some supposed authoritative interpreter of it.
+But yet it ought to be at any rate a painful work to any serious mind to
+be obliged to dwell not only on the obscurities of God's word, but on
+its perpetual and invincible obscurities; and, though an interpreter may
+be necessary if we know not the language of those with whom we are
+conversing, yet how much better would it be that we should ourselves
+know it: nay, and if we are told that we cannot know it, that our best
+endeavours will be unable to master it, the suspicion inevitably arises
+in our minds, that our pretended interpreter may be ignorant of it also;
+that he is not in truth better acquainted with it than we, but only more
+presumptuous or more dishonest.
+
+Still a statement may be painful, but at the same time true. There is
+undoubtedly something in such language as I have been alluding to, which
+appears to be confirmed by experience. There is no denying the fact,
+that the Scriptures have been a long time in the world; that they have
+been very generally and carefully read; and yet that men do differ
+exceedingly as to religious truth, and these differences do not seem to
+be tending towards agreement. It seems to me, there fore, desirable
+that every student of the Scriptures should know, as well as may be,
+what the exact state of the question is; for if the subject of his
+studies is really so hopelessly uncertain, it is scarcely possible that
+his zeal in studying it should not be abated; nay, could we wisely
+encourage him to bestow his pains on a hopeless labour?
+
+Now, in the very outset, there is this consideration which many of us
+here are well able to appreciate. We read many books written in dead
+languages, most of them more ancient than any part of the New Testament,
+some of them older than several of the books of the Old. We know well
+enough that these ancient books are not without their difficulties; that
+time, and thought, and knowledge are required to master them; but still
+we do not doubt that, with the exception of particular-passages here and
+there, the true meaning of these books may be discovered with undoubted
+certainty. We know, too, that this certainty has increased; that
+interpretations, which, were maintained some years ago, have been set
+aside by our improved knowledge of the languages and condition of the
+ancient world, quite as certainly as old errors in physical science have
+been laid to rest by later discoveries. Farther, our improved knowledge
+has taught us to distinguish what may be known from what may be probably
+concluded, and what is probable from what can merely be guessed at. When
+we come to points of this last sort, to passages which cannot be
+interpreted or understood, we leave them at once as a blank; but we
+enjoy no less, and understand with no less certainty, the greatest
+portions of the book which, contain them. And this experience, with
+regard to the works of heathen antiquity, makes it a startling
+proposition at the very outset, when we are told that with the works of
+Christian antiquity the case is otherwise.
+
+We thus approach the statement as to the hopless difficulty of
+Scripture, confirmed, as we are told it is, by the actual fact of the
+great disagreements among Christians, with a well-grounded mistrust of
+its soundness; we feel sure that there is something in it which is
+confused or sophistical. And considering the fact which appears to
+confirm it, I mean the actual differences between Christians and
+Christians, it soon appears by no means to bear out its supposed
+conclusion. For the differences between Christians and Christians by no
+means arise generally from the difficulty of understanding the Scripture
+aright, but from disagreement as to some other point, quite independent
+of the interpretation of the Scriptures. For example, the great
+questions at issue between us and the Roman Catholics turn upon two
+points,--Whether there is not another authority, in matters of
+Christianity, distinct from and equal to the Scriptures,--and whether
+certain interpretations of Scripture are not to be received as true, for
+the sake of the authority of the interpreter. Now, suppose for a moment,
+that the works of Plato or Aristotle were to us in the place of the
+Scriptures; and that the question was, whether these works of theirs
+could be understood with certainty; it would prove nothing against our
+being able to understand them, if, whilst we look to them alone, another
+man were to say, that, to his judgment, the works of other philosophers
+were no less authoritative; or, if he were to insist upon it, that the
+interpretations given by the scholiasts were always sure to be correct,
+because the scholiasts were the authorized interpreters of the text. No
+doubt our philosophical opinions and our practice might differ widely
+from such a man's; but the difference would prove nothing as to the
+obscurity of Plato's or Aristotle's text, because another standard had
+been brought in, distinct from their works, and from the acknowledged
+principles of interpretation, and thus led unavoidably to a
+different result.
+
+The same also is the case as to the questions at issue between the
+Church of England and many of the Dissenters. In these disputes it is
+notorious that the practice and authority of the church are continually
+appealed to, or, it may be, considerations of another kind, as to the
+inherent reasonableness of a doctrine; all which are, again, a distinct
+matter from the interpretation of Scripture. One of the greatest men of
+our time has declared, that, in the early part of his life, he did not
+believe in the divinity of our Lord; but he has stated expressly, that
+he never for a moment persuaded himself that St. Paul or St. John did
+not believe it; their language he thought was clear enough, upon the
+point; but the notion appeared to him so unreasonable in itself, that he
+disbelieved it in spite of their authority. It is manifest, that, in
+this case, great as the difference was between this great man's early
+belief and his later, yet it in no way arose from the obscurity of the
+Scripture. The language of the Scripture was as clear to him at first as
+it was afterwards; but in his early life he disbelieved it, while, in
+his latter life, he embraced it with all his heart and soul.
+
+It must not be denied, however, that we are here arrived at one of the
+causes which are likely, for a long time, to keep alive a false
+interpretation of Scripture, and which do not affect our interpretation
+of heathen writings. For most men, in such a case as I have referred to,
+when they do not believe the language of the Scripture, but wish to
+alter it, whether by omission or addition, do not deal so fairly with it
+as that great man did to whom I have alluded. They have neither his
+knowledge nor his honesty; a false interpretation is more easily
+disguised from them, owing to their ignorance, and they let their wishes
+more readily warp their judgment. Thus, they will not say as he did,
+"The Scripture clearly says so and so, but I cannot believe it;" they
+rather say, "This is very unreasonable and shocking, the Scripture
+cannot mean to say this;" or, "This is very pious and very ancient, the
+Scripture cannot but sanction this." And certainly, if men will so deal
+with it, there remains no certainty of interpretation then. But this is
+not the way that we deal with other ancient writings; and its unfairness
+and foolishness, if ever attempted to be practised there, are so
+palpable as to be ridiculous. No doubt it is difficult to convince men
+against their will; nevertheless, there is a good hope, that, as sound
+principles of interpretation are more generally known, they will put to
+shame a flagrant departure from them; and that those who try to make the
+Scripture say more or less than it has said, will be gradually driven to
+confess that Scripture is not their real authority; that their own
+notions in the one case, and the authority of the Church in the other
+case, have been the real grounds of their belief, to which they strove
+to make the Scriptures conform.
+
+Nothing that I have said is, in any degree, meant to countenance the
+opinions of those who talk of the Bible,--or rather, our translation of
+it,--being its own interpreter; meaning, that if you give a Bible to any
+one who can read, he will be able to understand it rightly. Even in this
+extravagance, there is indeed something of a truth. If a man were so to
+read the Bible, much he would, unquestionably, be able to understand;
+enough, I well believe, if honestly and devoutly used, to give him, if
+living in a desert island by himself, the knowledge of salvation. But
+when we talk of understanding the Bible, so as to be guided by it
+amidst the infinite varieties of opinion and practice which beset us on
+every side, it is the wildest folly to talk of it as being, in this
+sense, its own interpreter. Our comfort is, not that it can be
+understood without study, but with it; that the same pains which, enable
+us to understand heathen writings, whose meaning is of infinitely less
+value to us, will enable us, with God's blessing, to understand the
+Scriptures also. Neither do I mean, that mere intellectual study would
+make them clear to the careless or the undevout; but, supposing us to
+seek honestly to know God's will, and to pray devoutly for his help to
+guide us to it, then our study is not vain nor uncertain; the mind of
+the Scriptures may be discovered; we may distinguish plainly between
+what is clear, and what is not clear; and what is not clear will be
+found far less in amount, and infinitely less in importance, than what
+is clear. I do not say, that a true understanding of the Scriptures will
+settle at once all religious differences;--manifestly, it cannot; for,
+although I may understand them well, yet if a man maintains an opinion,
+or a practice, upon some other authority than theirs, we cannot agree
+together. Nevertheless, we may be allowed to hope and believe, that in
+time, if men could be hindered from misinterpreting the Scripture in
+behalf of their own opinions, their opinions themselves would find fewer
+supporters; for, as Christianity must come, after all, from our blessed
+Lord and his apostles, men will shrink from saying that that is no truth
+of Christianity which Christ and his apostles have clearly taught, or
+that that is a truth of Christianity, however ancient, and by whatever
+long line of venerable names supported, which they have as clearly, in
+our sole authentic records of them, not taught. It is not, therefore,
+without great and reasonable hope, that we may devote ourselves to the
+study of the Scriptures; and those habits of study which are cultivated
+here, and in other places of the same kind, are the best ordinary means
+of arriving at the truth. We are constantly engaged in extracting the
+meaning of those who have written in times past, and in a dead language.
+We do this according to certain rules, acknowledged as universally as
+the laws of physical science: these rules are developed gradually,--from
+the simple grammar which forms our earliest lessons, to the rules of
+higher criticism, still no less acknowledged, which are understood by
+those of a more advanced age. And we do this for heathen writings; but
+the process is exactly the same--and we continually apply it, also, for
+that very purpose--with what is required to interpret the Word of God.
+After all is done, we shall still, no doubt, find that the Scripture has
+its parables, its passages which cannot now be understood; but we shall
+find, also, that by much the larger portion of it may be clearly and
+certainly known; enough to be, in all points which really concern our
+faith and practice, a lantern to our feet, and an enlightener to
+our souls.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXXVIII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+ISAIAH v.1.
+
+_Now will I sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved touching his
+vineyard_.
+
+
+Whatever difficulties we may find in understanding and applying many
+parts of the prophetical Scriptures, yet every thinking person could
+follow readily enough, I suppose, the chapter from which these words are
+taken, as it was read in the course of this morning's service; and he
+would feel, while understanding it as said, immediately and in the first
+instance, of the Jewish Church or nation, seven centuries and a half
+before the birth of our Lord, that it was no less applicable to this
+Christian church and nation at the present period. We cannot, indeed,
+expect to find a minute agreement in particular points between ourselves
+and the Jews of old; the difference of times and circumstances renders
+this impossible; both they and we stand, on the one hand, in so nearly
+the same relation to God, and we both so share, on the other hand, in
+the same sinful human nature, that the complaints, and remonstrances of
+the prophets of old may often, be repeated, even in the very same words,
+by the Christian preacher now.
+
+If this be so, then the language of various parts of the service of the
+Church in this season of Advent ought to excite in us no small
+apprehension; for whilst the lessons from the Old Testament describe
+the evil state of the Jewish people in the eighth century before Christ,
+and threaten it with destruction, so the gospels for this day, and for
+last Sunday, speak of the evil state of the same people when our Lord
+was upon earth; and the chapter from which the gospel of this day is
+taken, contains, as we know, a full prophecy of the destruction that
+was, for the second time, going to overwhelm the earthly Jerusalem. We
+cannot but fear, therefore, that if our state now be like that of God's
+people of old, eight centuries before our Lord's coming, and again like
+their state at his coming: and if, after the first period, their city
+and temple were burnt, and they were carried captive to Babylon,--and
+again, after the second period, the city and temple were burnt again,
+and the people were dispersed, even to this day,--that, as the
+punishment has twice surely followed the sin, so it will not fail to
+find it out in this third case also.
+
+And be it remembered that the people, or church of God, as such, can
+receive their punishment only in this world: for, taken as a body, it is
+an institution for this world only. We each of us, no doubt, shall have
+our own separate individual judgment after death; and, in the mean time,
+our fortunes and our character often bear no just correspondence with
+each other. But nations and churches have their judgments here: and
+although God's long-suffering so suspends it for many generations that
+it may seem as if it would never fall, yet does it come surely at the
+last; and almost always we can ourselves trace the connexion between the
+sin and the punishment, and can see that the one was clearly the
+consequence of the other. And thus our church and nation may feel their
+national judgments in this world quite independently of the several
+personal judgments which will be passed upon us each hereafter
+individually, when we stand before Christ's judgment seat.
+
+I have thus ventured to bring the condition of the church as a body
+before our minds, although well knowing how much more we are concerned
+with the state of our own souls individually. Yet still the more general
+view is not without great use; and indeed it bears directly upon our
+individual state: our actions and our feelings having often a close
+connexion with, general church matters; and these actions and feelings
+being necessarily good or bad, according to the soundness of our
+judgment on the matter which occasions them. Besides which, it seems to
+me that general views, rather than what relates to particular faults,
+may be with most propriety dwelt on by those who have no direct
+connexion with the congregation which they are addressing.
+
+In the first place, then, whenever we think of the state and prospects
+of Christ's church, whether for good or for evil, it is most desirable
+that we should rightly understand our own relations to it. "The vineyard
+of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel;" or, in the language of the
+New Testament, "Christ is the vine, and we are the branches." Men
+continually seem to forget that they are members of the church;
+citizens, to use St. Paul's expression, of Christ's kingdom, as much as
+ever they are citizens of their earthly country. But they speak of the
+church as they might speak of any useful institution or society in their
+neighbourhood, whose object they approved of, and which they were glad
+to encourage, but without becoming members of it, or identifying
+themselves with its success or failure. For example, they speak of the
+church as they might speak of the universities, which indeed are
+institutions of great importance to the whole country, but yet they are
+manifestly distinct from the mass of the community: they have their own
+members, their own laws, and their own government, with which, people in
+general have nothing to do. And so many persons speak and feel of the
+church, regarding it evidently as consisting only of the clergy: our
+common language, no doubt, helping this confusion, because we often
+speak of a man's going into the church when he enters into holy orders,
+just as if ordination were the admission into the church, and not
+baptism. Now, if the clergy did indeed constitute the church, then it
+would very much resemble the condition of the universities: for it would
+then be indeed a society very important to the welfare of the whole
+country, but yet one that was completely distinct, and which had its
+members, laws, and government quite apart: for men in general do not
+belong to the clergy, nor are they concerned directly in such canons as
+relate to the peculiar business of the clergy, nor does the bishop's
+superintendence, as commonly exercised, extend at all to them. But God
+designed for his church far more than that it should contain one order
+of men only, or that it should comprise commonly but one single
+individual in a parish, preaching to and teaching the rest of the
+inhabitants, like a missionary amongst a population of heathens. Look at
+St. Paul's account of the church of Corinth, in the 12th chapter of his
+1st epistle to the Corinthians, and see if any two things can be more
+different than his notion of a church, and that which many people seem
+to entertain amongst us. Compare the living body there described, made
+up of so many various members, each having its separate office, yet each
+useful to and needed by the others and by the body,--and our notion of a
+parish committed to the charge of a single individual: as if all the
+manifold gifts which the church requires could by possibility be
+comprised in the person of any one Christian; as if the whole burden
+were to rest upon his shoulders, and the other inhabitants might regard
+the welfare of the church as his concern only, and not theirs.
+
+But not only is the church too often confined in men's notions to the
+single class or profession of the clergy, but it has been narrowed still
+farther by the practical extinction of one of the orders of the clergy
+itself. Where the laity have come to regard their own share in the
+concerns of the church as next to nothing, the order of deacons,
+forming, as it were, a link between the clergy and the laity, becomes
+proportionably of still greater importance. The business of the deacons,
+as we well know, was in an especial manner to look after the relief of
+the poor; and by combining this charge with the power of baptizing, of
+reading the Scriptures, and of preaching also, when authorized by the
+bishop, they exhibited the peculiar character of Christianity, that of
+sanctifying the business of this world by doing everything in the name
+of the Lord Jesus. No church, so far as we know, certainly no church in
+any town, existed without its deacons: they were as essential to its
+completeness as its bishop and its presbyters.
+
+Take any one of our large towns now, and what do we find? A bishop, not
+of that single town only, but of fifty others besides: one presbyter in
+each, church, and no deacons! Practically, and according to its proper
+character, the order of deacons is extinct; and those who now bear the
+name are most commonly found exercising the functions of presbyters;
+that is, instead of acting as the assistants of a presbyter, they are
+often the sole ministers of their respective parishes; they alone
+baptize; alone offer up the prayers of the church, alone preach the
+word: nothing marks their original character, except their inability to
+administer the communion; and thus, by a strange anomaly, the church in
+such parishes is actually left without any power of celebrating its
+highest act, that of commemorating the death, of Christ in the Lord's
+supper; and if it were not for another great evil, the unfrequent
+celebration of the Communion, the system could not go on: because the
+deacon would be so often obliged to apply to other ministers to perform
+that duty for him, that the inconvenience, as well as the unfitness, of
+the actual practice, would be manifest to every one.
+
+Again, what has become of church discipline? That it has perished, we
+all well know: but its loss is the consequence of that fatal error which
+makes the clergy alone constitute the church. It is quite certain that
+men will not allow the members of a single profession to exercise the
+authority of society; to create and define offences; to determine their
+punishment, and to be the judges of each particular offender. As long as
+the clergy are supposed to constitute the whole church, church
+discipline would be nothing but priestly tyranny. And yet the absence of
+discipline is a most grievous evil; and there is no doubt that, although
+it must be vain when opposed to public opinion, yet, when it is the
+expression of that opinion, there is nothing which it cannot achieve.
+But public opinion cannot enforce church discipline now, because that
+discipline would not be now the expression of the voice of the church,
+but simply of a small part of the church, of the clergy only.
+
+So deeply has this fatal error of regarding the clergy as the church
+extended itself, that at this moment a man's having been baptized is no
+security for his being so much as a believer in the truth of
+Christianity: no matter that he was made in his baptism a member of
+Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven; no
+matter that at a more advanced period of his life he was confirmed, and
+entered into the church by his own act and deed; still the church
+belongs to the clergy; they may hold such and such, language, and teach
+such and such doctrine; it would be very improper in them to do
+otherwise; and he has a great respect for the church, and would
+strenuously resist all its enemies, but truly, as for his own belief and
+his own conduct, these he will guide according to other principles, as
+imperative upon him as the rules of the church upon churchmen. Well
+indeed, do such men bear witness that they are not of the church,
+indeed; that their portion is not with God's people; that Christ is not
+their Saviour, nor the Holy Spirit their Comforter and Guide: but what
+blasphemy is it to call themselves friends of the church! as if Christ's
+church could have any friends except God and his holy angels: the church
+has its living and redeemed members; it may have those who are craving
+to be admitted within its shelter, being convinced that God is in it of
+a truth; but beyond these he who is not with it is against it; he who is
+not Christ's servant, serves his enemy.
+
+Farther, it is this same deadly error which is the root and substance of
+popery. There is no one abuse of the Romish system which may not be
+traced to the original and very early error of drawing a wide
+distinction between the clergy and the laity; of investing the former in
+such a peculiar degree with the attributes of the church that at last
+they retained them almost exclusively. In other words, the great evil of
+popery is, that it has destroyed the Christian church, and has
+substituted a priesthood in its room. This is the fault of the Greek
+church, almost as much as of the Roman; and the peculiar tenet of the
+Romish church, that the supreme government is vested in one single
+member of this priesthood, the Bishop of Rome, is in some respects
+rather an improvement of the system, than an aggravation of it. For
+even an absolute monarchy is a less evil than an absolute aristocracy;
+and an infallible Pope is no greater corruption of Christ's truth, than
+an infallible general council. The real evils of the system are of a far
+older date than the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome, and exist in places
+where that supremacy is resolutely denied. And if we attend to them
+carefully, we shall see that these evils have especially affected the
+Christian church as distinguished from the Christian religion. It is
+worth our while to attend to this distinction; for the Christian
+religion and the Christian church together, and neither without the
+other, form the perfect idea of Christianity. NOW, by the Christian
+religion, I mean the revelation of what God has done or will do for us
+in Christ; the great doctrines of the Trinity, the incarnation, the
+atonement, the resurrection, the presence of the Holy Spirit amongst us,
+and our own resurrection hereafter, to an existence of eternal happiness
+or misery. And these truths, if revealed to any single person living in
+an uninhabited island, might be abundantly sufficient for his salvation;
+if God disposed his heart to receive them, and to believe them
+earnestly, they would be the means of his overcoming his corrupt nature,
+and of passing from death unto life. But because men do not generally
+live alone, but with one another; and because they cannot but greatly
+hinder, or help each other by their mutual influence, therefore the
+Christian church was instituted for the purpose of spreading and
+furthering the growth of the Christian religion in men's hearts; and its
+various ministeries, its sacraments, its services and festivals, and its
+discipline were all designed with that object. And it is all these which
+popery has perverted; popery, whether in the Roman church or in the
+Greek church, or even in the Protestant church, for it has existed more
+or less in all. But even in the Roman church, where the perversion has
+been most complete, it has comparatively affected but little the truths
+of the Christian religion; all the great doctrines, which I mentioned,
+are held as by ourselves; the three creeds, the Apostles' creed, the
+Nicene, and the Athanasian, are used by the Roman church no less than by
+our own. Thus it often happens that we can read with great edification
+the devotional works of Roman Catholic writers, because in such works
+the individual stands apart from the Christian church, and is concerned
+only with the Christian religion: they show how one single soul, having
+learnt the tidings of redemption with faith, and thankfulness, improves
+them to its own salvation. But the moment that he goes out of his
+closet, and begins to speak and act amongst other men, then the
+corruption of popery shows itself. The Christian church was designed to
+help each individual towards a more perfect knowledge and love of God,
+by the counsel and example of his brethren, and by the practices which,
+he was to observe in their society. But the corrupt church exercises its
+influence for evil; it omits all the benefits to be derived from a
+living society, and puts forward, in their place, the observance of
+rites and ceremonies; knowledge and love are no longer looked to as the
+perfections of a Christian, but ignorance and blind obedience; not the
+mortifying all our evil passions universally, but the keeping them
+chained up, as it were under priestly control, to be let loose at the
+priest's bidding, against those whom he calls the church's enemies; that
+glorious church which he has destroyed and converted it into an idol
+temple, in that he, as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself
+that he is God.
+
+To resist this great and monstrous evil, we must not exclaim against it
+under one of its forms only, even although that form exhibit it,
+indeed, in its most complete deformity; but we must strive against it
+under all its forms, remembering that its essence consists in putting
+the clergy in the place of the church; and taking from the great mass of
+the church their proper share in its government, in its offices, and
+therefore in its benefits, and in the sense of its solemn
+responsibilities. We speak often of church extension, meaning by this
+term the building new places of public worship, and the appointing
+additional ministers to preach the word and administer the sacraments.
+And no doubt such church extension is a good and blessed work, for it
+brings the knowledge of the truths of Christ's religion, and the benefit
+of his ordinances, the sacraments, within the reach of many who might
+otherwise have been without them. But it were a yet truer and more
+blessed church extension which should add to the building and the single
+minister, the real living church itself, with all its manifold offices
+and ministries, with its pure discipline, with its holy and loving sense
+of brotherhood. Without this, Christ will still, indeed, as heretofore,
+lay his hands on some few sick folk and heal them; his grace will convey
+the truths of his gospel to individual souls, and they will believe and
+be saved. But the fulfilment of prophecy; the triumph of Christ's
+kingdom; the changing an evil world into a world redeemed; this can only
+be done by a revival of the Christian church in its power, the living
+temple of the Holy Ghost, which, visibly to all mankind, in the wisdom
+and holiness of its members, showed that God was in the midst of it. It
+may be that this is a fond hope, which we may not expect to see
+realized; but looking on the one hand to the strong and triumphant
+language of prophecy, I know not how any hope of the advancement of
+Christ's kingdom can be more bold than God's word will warrant: and on
+the other, tracing the past history of the church, its gradual
+corruption may be deduced distinctly from one early and deadly mischief,
+which has destroyed its efficacy; so that, if this mischief can be
+removed, and the church become such as Christ designed it to be, it does
+not seem presumptuous to hope that his appointed instrument, working
+according to his will, should be enabled to obtain the full blessings of
+his promise.
+
+And now, in conclusion, if we ask, what should follow from all that has
+been said? what it should lead us all, if it be true, to feel or to
+do?--the answer is, that considerations of this sort are not such as
+lead at once to some distinct change in our conduct; to the laying aside
+some favourite sin, or the practising some long neglected duty. And yet
+the thoughts which I have endeavoured to suggest to your minds may, if
+dwelt upon, lead, in the end, to a very considerable alteration, both in
+our feelings and in our practice. First of all, it is not a little
+matter to be convinced practically, that it is baptism, and not
+ordination, which makes us members of the church; that it is by sharing
+in the communion of Christ's body and blood, not by being admitted into
+the ministry, that the privileges and graces of Christ's church are
+conferred upon us. And most wisely, and most truly, does our Church
+separate ordination from the two Christian sacraments, as an institution
+far less solemn, and conferring graces far less important: for the
+difference between a Christian and a Christian minister is but one of
+office, not of moral or spiritual advancement, not of greater or less
+nearness to God. One is our master, even Christ; and all we are
+brethren. Words which certainly do not imply that all members of the
+church are to have the same office, or that all offices are of equal
+importance and dignity; but which do imply, most certainly, that any
+attempt to convert the ministry into a priesthoood, that is, to
+represent them as standing, in any matter, as mediators between Christ
+and his people, or as being essentially the channel through which his
+grace must pass to his church, is directly in opposition to him; and is
+no better than idolatry. It was by baptism that we have all been
+engrafted into Christ's body; it is by the communion of his body and
+blood that we continue to abide in him; it is in his whole body, in his
+church, and not in its ministers, as distinct from his church, that his
+Holy Spirit abides.
+
+Thus feeling that we each are members of the church, that it is our
+highest country, to which we are bound with a far deeper love than to
+our earthly country, is not its welfare our welfare; its triumph our
+triumph; its failures our shame? We shall see, then, that church
+questions are not such merely, or principally, as concern the payment of
+the clergy, or their discipline, but all questions in which God's glory
+and man's sins or duties are concerned; all questions in the decision of
+which, there is a moral good and evil; a grieving of Christ's Spirit, or
+a conformity to him. And in such questions as concern the church, in the
+more narrow and common sense of the word, seeing that we are all members
+of the church, we should not neglect them, as the concern of others, but
+take an interest in them, and act in them, so far as we have
+opportunity, as in a matter which most nearly concerns ourselves. We
+feel that we have an interest in our country's affairs, although we are
+not members of the government or of the legislature; we have our part to
+perform, without at all overstepping the modesty of private life: and it
+is the constant influence of public opinion, and the active interest
+taken by the country at large in its own concerns, which, in spite of
+occasional delusion or violence, is mainly instrumental in preserving to
+us the combined vigour and order of our political constitution. And so,
+if we took an equal interest in the affairs of our divine commonwealth,
+our Christian church, and endeavoured as eagerly to promote every thing
+which tended to its welfare, and to put down and prevent every thing
+which might work it mischief, then the efforts of the clergy to advance
+Christ's kingdom would be incalculably aided, while there would then be
+no danger of our investing them with the duties and responsibilities
+which belong properly to the whole church; they could not then have
+dominion over our faith, nor by possibility become lords over God's
+heritage, but would be truly ensamples to the flock, the helpers of our
+joy, the glory of Christ.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXXIX.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+COLOSSIANS iii. 17.
+
+_Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus,
+giving thanks to God and the Father by Him_.
+
+
+This, like the other general rules of the gospel, is familiar enough to
+us all in its own words; but we are very apt to forbear making the
+application of it. In fact, he who were to apply it perfectly would be a
+perfect Christian: for a life of which every word and deed were said and
+done in the name of the Lord Jesus, would be a life indeed worthy of the
+children of God, and such as they lead in heaven; it would leave no room
+for sin to enter. The art of our enemy has been therefore to make us
+leave this command of the apostle's in its general sense, and avoid
+exploring, so to speak, all the wisdom contained within it. Certain
+actions of our lives, our religious services, the more solemn
+transactions in which we are engaged, we are willing to do in Christ's
+name; but that multitude of common words and ordinary actions by which
+more than sixty-nine out of our seventy years are filled, we take away
+from our Lord's dominion, under the foolish, and hypocritical pretence
+that they are too trifling and too familiar to be mixed up with the
+thought of things so solemn.
+
+This is one fault, and by far the most common. We make Christ's service
+the business only of a very small portion of our lives; we hallow only
+a very small part of our words and actions by doing them in his name.
+Unlike our Lord's own parable, where he compares Christianity to leaven
+hidden in the three measures of meal till the whole was leavened, the
+practice rather has been to keep the leaven confined to one little
+corner of the mass of meal; to take care that it should not spread so as
+to leaven the whole mass; to keep our hearts still in the state of the
+world when Christ visited it--"the light shineth in darkness, and the
+darkness comprehended it not;" that is, it did not take the light into
+itself so as to be wholly enlightened: the light shone, and there was a
+bright space immediately around it; but beyond there was a blackness of
+darkness into which it vainly strove to penetrate.
+
+On the other hand there has been, though, more rarely, a fault of the
+opposite sort. Men have said that they were in all their actions of
+ordinary life doing Christ's will, that they endeavoured always to be
+promoting some good object; and that the peculiar services of religion,
+as they are called, were useless, inasmuch as in spirit they are
+worshipping God always. This is a great error; because, as a matter of
+fact, it is false. We may safely say that no man ever did keep his heart
+right with God in his ordinary life, that no one ever became one with
+Christ, and Christ with him, without seeking Christ where he reveals
+himself, it may not be more really, but to our weakness far more
+sensibly, than in the common business of daily life. We may be happy if
+we can find Christ there, after we have long sought him and found him in
+the way of his own ordinances, in prayer, and in his holy communion.
+Even Christ himself, when on earth, though his whole day was undeniably
+spent in doing the will of his heavenly father,--although to him
+doubtless God was ever present in the commonest acts no less than in the
+most solemn,--yet even he, after a day spent in all good works, desired
+a yet more direct intercourse with God, and was accustomed to spend a
+large portion of the night in retirement and prayer.
+
+Without this, indeed, we shall most certainly not say and do all in the
+name of the Lord Jesus; much more shall we be in danger of forgetting
+him altogether. But supposing that we are not neglectful of our
+religious duties, in the common sense of the term, that we do pray and
+read the Scriptures, and partake of Christ's communion, yet it will
+often happen that we do not connect our prayers, nor our reading, nor
+our communion, with many of the common portions of our lives; that there
+are certain things in which we take great interest, which,
+notwithstanding, we leave, as it were, wholly without the range of the
+light of Christ's Spirit. There is a story told that, in times and
+countries where there prevailed the deepest ignorance, some who came to
+be baptized into the faith of Christ, converted from their heathen
+state, not in reality but only in name, were accustomed to leave their
+right arm unbaptized, with the notion that this arm, not being pledged
+to Christ's service, might wreak upon their enemies those works of
+hatred and revenge which in baptism they had promised to renounce. It is
+too much to say that something like this unbaptized right arm is still
+to be met with amongst us--that men too often leave some of their very
+most important concerns, what they call by way of eminence their
+business--their management of their own money affairs, and their conduct
+in public matters--wholly out of the control of Christ's law?
+
+Now at this very time public matters are engaging the thoughts of a
+great many persons all over the kingdom: and are not only engaging their
+thoughts, but are also become a practical matter, in which they are
+acting with great earnestness. Is it nothing that there should be so
+much, interest felt, so much pains taken, and yet that neither should be
+done in the name of the Lord Jesus, nor to the glory of God? It cannot
+be unsuited to the present season to dwell a little on this subject,
+which has nothing whatever to do with men's differences of opinion, but
+relates only to their acting, whatever be their political opinions, on
+Christian principles, and in a Christian spirit.
+
+First, consider what we pray for in the prayer which we have been using
+every week for the high court of parliament: we pray to God, that "all
+things may be so ordered and settled by the endeavours of parliament,
+upon the best and surest foundations, that peace and happiness, truth,
+and justice, religion and piety, may be established among us for all
+generations." These great blessings we beg of God to secure to us and to
+our children through the endeavours of parliament; if, therefore, we are
+any ways concerned in fixing who the persons are to be who are to
+compose this parliament, it is plain that there is put into our bands a
+high privilege, if you will; but along with it, as with all other
+privileges, a most solemn responsibility.
+
+But, if it be a solemn responsibility in the sight of God and of Christ,
+surely the act of voting, which many think so lightly of, and which many
+more consider a thing wholly political and worldly, becomes, indeed, a
+very important Christian duty, not to be discharged hastily or
+selfishly, in blind prejudice or passion, from self-interest, or in mere
+careless good nature and respect of persons; but deliberately,
+seriously, calmly, and, so far as we can judge our deceitful hearts,
+purely; not without prayer to Him who giveth wisdom liberally to those
+that ask it, that he will be pleased to guide them aright, to his own
+glory, and to the good of his people.
+
+Do I say that if we were to approach this duty in this spirit, and with
+such prayers, we should all agree in the same opinion, and all think the
+same of the same men? No, by no means; we might still greatly differ;
+but we should, at least, have reason to respect one another, and to be
+in charity with one another; and if we all earnestly desired and prayed
+to be directed to God's glory, and the public good, God, I doubt not,
+would give us all those ends which we so purely desired, although in our
+estimate of the earthly means and instruments by which they were to be
+gained, we had honestly differed from one another.
+
+Now, supposing that we had this conviction, that what we were going to
+do concerned the glory of God and the good of his people, and that we
+approached it therefore seriously as a Christian duty, yet it may be
+well that many men might feel themselves deficient in knowledge; they
+might not understand the great questions at issue; they might honestly
+doubt how they could best fulfil the trust committed to them. I know
+that the most ignorant man will feel no such hesitation if he is going
+to give his vote from fancy, or from prejudice, or from interest; these
+are motives which determine our conduct quickly and decisively. But if
+we regard our vote as a talent for which we must answer before God that
+we may well be embarrassed by a consciousness of ignorance; we may well
+be anxious to get some guidance from others, if we cannot find it in
+ourselves. Here, then, is the place for authority,--for relying, that
+is, on the judgment of others, when we feel that we cannot judge for
+ourselves. But is their no room for the exercise of much good sense and
+fairness in ourselves as to the choice of the person by whose judgment
+we mean to be guided? Are we so little accustomed to estimate our
+neighbours' characters rightly, as to be unable to determine whom we may
+consult with advantage? Surely if their be any one whom we have proved,
+in the affairs of common life, to be at once honest and sensible, to
+such an one we should apply when we are at a loss as to public matters.
+If there is such an one amongst our own relations or personal friends,
+we should go to him in preference: if not, we can surely find one such
+amongst our neighbours: and here the authority of such of our neighbours
+as have a direct connexion with us, if we have had reason to respect
+their judgment and their principles, may be properly preferred to that
+of indifferent persons; the authority of a master, or an employer, or of
+our minister, or of our landlord, may and ought, under such
+circumstances, to have a great and decisive influence over us.
+
+On the other hand, supposing again that we have this strong sense of the
+great responsibility in the sight of God of every man who has the
+privilege of a vote, we shall be exceedingly careful not to tempt him to
+sin by fulfilling this duty ill. Nothing can be more natural or more
+proper than that those who have strong impressions themselves as to the
+line to be followed in public matters, should be desirous of persuading
+others to think as they do; every man who loves truth and righteousness
+must wish that what he himself earnestly believes to be true and
+righteous, should be loved by others also; but the highest truth, if
+professed by one who believes it not in his heart, is to him a lie, and
+he sins greatly by professing it. Let us try as much as we will to
+convince our neighbours; but let us beware of influencing their conduct,
+when we fail in influencing their convictions: he who bribes or
+frightens his neighbour into doing an act which no good man would do for
+reward or from fear, is tempting his neighbour to sin; he is assisting
+to lower and to harden his conscience,--to make him act for the favour
+or from the fear of man, instead of for the favour or from the fear of
+God; and if this be a sin in him, it is a double sin in us to tempt him
+to it. Nor let us deceive ourselves by talking of the greatness of the
+stake at issue; that God's glory and the public good are involved in the
+result of the contest, and that therefore we must do all in our power to
+win it. Let us by all means do all that we can do without sin; but let
+us not dare to do evil that good may come, for that is the part of
+unbelief; it becomes those who will not trust God with the government of
+the world, but would fain guide its course themselves. Here, indeed, our
+Lord's command does apply to us, that we be not anxious; "Which of you
+by taking thought can add to his stature one cubit?" How little can we
+see of the course of Providence! how little can we be sure that what we
+judged for the best in public affairs may not lead to mischief! But
+these things are in God's hand; our business is to keep ourselves and
+our neighbours from sin, and not to do or encourage in others any thing
+that is evil, however great the advantages which we may fancy likely to
+flow from that evil to the cause even of the highest good.
+
+There is no immediate prospect, indeed, that we in this particular
+congregation shall be called upon to practise the duty of which I have
+been now speaking; and, indeed, it is for that very reason that I could
+dwell on the subject more freely. But what is going on all around us,
+what we hear of, read of, and talk of so much as we are many of us
+likely to do in the next week or two about political matters, _that_ we
+should be accustomed to look upon as Christians: we should by that
+standard try our common views and language about it, and, if it may be,
+correct them: that so hereafter, if we be called upon to act, we may
+act, according to the Apostle's teaching, in the name of our Lord Jesus.
+And I am quite sure if we do so think and so act, although our
+differences of opinion might remain just the same, yet the change in
+ourselves, and I verily believe in the blessings which God would give
+us, would be more than we can well believe; and a general election,
+instead of calling forth, as it now does, a host of unchristian passions
+and practices, would be rather an exercise of Christian judgment, and
+forbearance, and faith, and charity; promoting, whatever was the mere
+political result, the glory of God, advancing Christ's kingdom, and the
+good of this, as it would be then truly called, Christian nation.
+
+
+
+NOTES.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE A. P. 5.
+
+"_But our path is not backwards but onwards_"--This thought is expressed
+very beautifully in lines as wise and true as they are poetical:
+
+     "Grieve not for these: nor dare lament
+       That thus from childhood's thoughts we roam:
+     Not backward are our glances bent,
+       But forward to our Father's home.
+     Eternal growth has no such fears,
+       But freshening still with seasons past,
+     The old man clogs its earlier years,
+       And simple childhood comes the last."
+
+_Burbridge's Poems_, p. 309.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE B. P. 102.
+
+"_Some may know the story of that German nobleman_," &c.--The Baron von
+Canitz. He lived in the latter half of the seventeenth century, and was
+engaged in the service of the electors of Brandenburg, both of the great
+elector and his successor. He was the author of several hymns, one of
+which is of remarkable beauty, as may be seen in the following
+translation, for the greatest part of which I am indebted to the
+kindness of a friend: but the language of the original, in several
+places, cannot be adequately translated in English.
+
+     Come, my soul, thou must be waking--
+     Now is breaking
+       O'er the earth another day.
+     Come to Him who made this splendour
+     See thou render
+       All thy feeble powers can pay.
+
+     From the stars thy course be learning:
+     Dimly burning
+       'Neath the sun their light grows pale:
+     So let all that sense delighted
+     While benighted
+       From God's presence fade and fail.
+
+     Lo! how all of breath partaking,
+     Gladly waking,
+       Hail the sun's enlivening light!
+     Plants, whose life mere sap doth nourish,
+     Rise and flourish,
+       When he breaks the shades of night.
+
+     Thou too hail the light returning,--
+     Ready burning
+       Be the incense of thy powers;--
+     For the night is safely ended:
+     God hath tended
+       With His care thy helpless hours.
+
+     Pray that He may prosper ever
+     Each endeavour
+       When thine aim is good and true;
+     But that He may ever thwart thee,
+     And convert thee,
+       When thou evil wouldst pursue.
+
+     Think that He thy ways beholdeth--
+     He unfoldeth
+       Every fault that lurks within;
+     Every stain of shame gloss'd over
+     Can discover,
+       And discern each deed of sin.
+
+     Fetter'd to the fleeting hours,
+     All our powers,
+       Vain and brief, are borne away;
+     Time, my soul, thy ship is steering,
+     Onward veering,
+       To the gulph of death a prey.
+
+     May'st thou then on life's last morrow,
+     Free from sorrow,
+       Pass away in slumber sweet;
+     And released from death's dark sadness,
+     Rise in gladness,
+       That far brighter Sun to greet.
+
+     Only God's free gifts abuse not,
+     His light refuse not,
+       But still His Spirit's voice obey;
+     Soon shall joy thy brow be wreathing,
+     Splendour breathing
+       Fairer than the fairest day.
+
+     If aught of care this morn oppress thee,
+     To Him address thee,
+       Who, like the sun, is good to all:
+     He gilds the mountain tops, the while
+     His gracious smile
+       Will on the humblest valley fall.
+
+     Round the gifts His bounty show'rs,
+     Walls and tow'rs
+       Girt with flames thy God shall rear:
+     Angel legions to defend thee
+     Shall attend thee,
+       Hosts whom Satan's self shall fear.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE C. P. 122.
+
+"_But, once admit a single exception, and the infallible virtue of the
+rule ceases_."--Thus the famous Canon of Vincentius Lirinensis is like
+tradition itself, always either superfluous or insufficient. Taken
+literally, it is true and worthless;--because what _all_ have asserted,
+_always_, and in _all places_, supposing of course that the means of
+judging were in their power, may be assumed to be some indisputable
+axiom, such as never will be disputed any more than it has been disputed
+hitherto. But take it with any allowance, and then it is of no use in
+settling a question: for what _most_ men have asserted, _most commonly_,
+and in _most places_, has a certain _à priori_ probability, it is true,
+but by no means such as may not be outweighed by probabilities on the
+other side; for the extreme improbability consists not in the prevalence
+of error amongst millions, or for centuries, or over whole
+continents,--but in its being absolutely universal, so universal, that
+truth could not find a single witness at any time or in any country. But
+the single witness is enough to "justify the ways of God," and reduces
+what otherwise would have been a monstrous triumph of evil to the
+character of a severe trial of our faith, severe indeed as the trials of
+an evil world will be, but no more than a trial such as, with God's
+grace, may be overcome.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE D. P. 189.
+
+_"It was an admirable definition of that which excites laughter,"_
+&c.--[Greek: To geloion apurtaepa ti chai aiochos auodnnoy chai on
+phthartichon oion enthus to geloion prosopon aischron ti chai
+dieotruppenon anen odunaes]--_Aristotle, Poetic,_ ii.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE E. P. 245.
+
+"_I would endeavour just to touch upon some of the purposes for which
+the Scripture tells us that Christ died_."--The Collects for Easter
+Sunday and the Sundays just before it and after it, illustrate the
+enumeration here given. The Collect for the Sunday next before Easter
+speaks of Christ's death only as an "example of his great humility." The
+Collect for Easter-day speaks of the resurrection, and connects it with
+our spiritual resurrection, as does also the Collect for the first
+Sunday after Easter. But the collect for the Second Sunday after Easter
+speaks of Christ as being at once our sacrifice for sin and our example
+of godly life,--a sacrifice to be regarded with entire thankfulness, and
+an example to be daily followed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE F. P. 282.
+
+"_Such also was to be the state of the Christian Church after our Lord's
+ascension_."--And therefore, as I think, St. Peter applies to the
+Christians of Asia Minor the very terms applied to the Jews living in
+Assyria or in Egypt; he addresses them as [Greek: parepidaemois
+diasporas], (1 Peter i. 1,) that is, as strangers and sojourners,
+scattered up and down in a country that was not properly their own, and
+living in a sort of banishment from their true home. That the words are
+not addressed to Jewish Christians, and therefore are not to be
+understood in their simple historical sense, seems evident from the
+second chapter of the Epistle, verses 9, 10, and iv. 2,3.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE G. P. 315.
+
+"_Not only an outward miracle, but the changed circumstances of the
+times may speak God's will no less clearly than a miracle_," &c.--What I
+have here said does not at all go beyond what has been said on the same
+subject by Hooker: "Laws, though both ordained of God himself, and the
+end for which they were ordained continuing, may, notwithstanding,
+cease, if by alteration of persons or times they be found insufficient
+to attain unto that end. In which respect why may we not presume that
+God doth even call for such change or alteration as the very condition
+of things themselves doth make necessary?... In this case, therefore,
+men do not presume to change God's ordinance, but they yield thereunto,
+requiring itself to be changed."--_Ecclesiastical Polity_, b. iii. § 10.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE H. P. 320.
+
+_"Nor is it less strange that any should ever have been afraid of their
+understandings, and should have sought goodness through prejudice, and
+blindness, and folly_."--For some time past the words "Rationalism" and
+"Rationalistic" have been freely used as terms of reproach by writers on
+religious subjects; the 73d No. of the "Tracts for the Times" is
+entitled, "On the introduction of Rationalistic Principles into
+Religion," and a whole chapter in Mr. Gladstone's late work on Church
+Principles is headed "Rationalism." Yet we still want a clear definition
+of the thing signified by this name. The Tract for the Times says, "To
+rationalize, is to ask for _reasons_ out of place; to ask improperly how
+we are to _account_ for certain things; to be unwilling to believe them
+unless they can be accounted for, i.e. referred to something else as a
+cause, to some existing system, as harmonizing with them, or taking them
+up into itself.... It is characterised by two peculiarities;--its love
+of systematizing, and its basing its system upon personal experience, on
+the evidence of sense."--P. 2. Mr. Gladstone says more generally,
+"Rationalism is commonly, at least in this country, taken to be the
+reduction of Christian _doctrine_ to the standard and measure of the
+human understanding."--P. 37. But neither of these definitions will
+include all the arguments and statements which have been called by
+various writers "rationalistic;" and while the terms used are thus
+vague, they are often applied very indiscriminately, and the tendency of
+this use of them is to depreciate the exercise of the intellectual
+faculties generally. The subject seems to deserve fuller consideration
+than it has yet received; there is a real evil which the term
+Rationalism is meant to denounce; but it has not been clearly
+apprehended, and what is good has sometimes been confounded with it, and
+denounced under the same name.
+
+I cannot pretend to discuss the subject fully in a mere note, even if I
+were otherwise competent to do it. But one or two points may be noticed,
+as likely to assist the inquiry, wherever it is worthily entered on.
+
+1st. It is important to bear in mind the distinction which Coleridge
+enforces so earnestly between the understanding and the reason. I do not
+know whether Mr. Gladstone, in the passage quoted above, uses the word
+"understanding" as synonymous with reason, or in that stricter sense in
+which Coleridge employs it. But the writer of the Tract seems to allude
+to the stricter sense, when he calls it a characteristic of rationalism
+"to base its system upon personal experience, on the evidence of sense."
+If this be the case, then it would seem that rationalism is the
+appealing to the decision of the understanding in points where the
+decision properly belongs not to the understanding, but to the reason.
+This is a great fault, and one to which all persons who belong to the
+sensualist school in philosophy, as opposed to the idealist school,
+would be more or less addicted. But then, this fault consists not in an
+over-estimating of man's intellectual nature generally, but in the
+exalting one part of it unduly, to the injury of another part; in
+deferring to the understanding, rather than to the reason.
+
+2d. Faith and reason are often invidiously contrasted with each other,
+as if they were commonly described in Scripture as antagonists; whereas
+faith is more properly opposed to sight, or to lust, being, in fact, a
+very high exercise of the pure reason; inasmuch as we believe truths
+which our senses do not teach us, and which our passions would have us,
+therefore, reject, because those truths are taught by Him in whom reason
+recognises its own author, and the infallible source of all truth.
+
+3d. It were better to oppose reason to passion than to faith; for it may
+be safely said, that he who neglects his reason, so far as he does
+neglect it, does not lead a life of faith afterwards, but a life of
+passion. He does not draw nearer to God, but to the brutes, or rather to
+the devils; for his passions cannot be the mere instinctive appetites of
+the brute, but derive from the wreck of his intellectual powers, which
+he cannot utterly destroy, just so much of a higher nature that they are
+sins, and not instincts, belonging to the malignity of diabolic nature,
+rather than to the mere negative evil of the nature of brutes.
+
+4th. Faith may be described as reason leaning upon God. Without God,
+reason is either overpowered by sense and understanding, and, in a
+manner, overgrown, so that it cannot comprehend its proper truths; or,
+being infinite, it cannot discover all the truths which concern it, and
+therefore needs a farther revelation to enlighten it. But with God's
+grace strengthening it to assert its supremacy over sense and
+understanding, and communicating to it what of itself it could not have
+discovered, it then having gained strength and light not its own, and
+doing and seeing consciously by God's help, becomes properly faith.
+
+5th. Faith without reason, is not properly faith, but mere power
+worship; and power worship may be devil worship; for it is reason which
+entertains the idea of God--an idea essentially made up of truth and
+goodness, no less than of power. A sign of power exhibited to the senses
+might, through them, dispose the whole man to acknowledge it as divine;
+yet power in itself is not divine, it may be devilish. But when reason
+recognises that, along with this power, there exist also wisdom and
+goodness, then it perceives that here is God; and the worship which,
+without reason, might have been idolatry, being now according to
+reason is faith.
+
+6th. If this were considered, men would be more careful of speaking
+disparagingly of reason, seeing that it is the necessary condition of
+the existence of faith. It is quite true, that when we have attained to
+faith, it supersedes reason; we walk by sunlight, rather than by
+moonlight; following the guidance of infinite reason, instead of finite.
+But how are we to attain to faith? in other words, how can we
+distinguish God's voice from the voice of evil? for we must distinguish
+it to be God's voice before we can have faith in it. We distinguish it,
+and can distinguish it no otherwise, by comparing it with that idea of
+God which reason intuitively enjoins, the gift of reason being God's
+original revelation of himself to man. Now, if the voice which comes to
+us from the unseen world agree not with this idea, we have no choice but
+to pronounce it not to be God's voice; for no signs of power, in
+confirmation of it, can alone prove it to be God. God is not power only,
+but power, and truth, and holiness; and the existence of even infinite
+power, does not necessarily involve in it truth and holiness also; else
+the notion of the world being governed by an evil being would be no more
+than a contradiction in terms; and the horrible strife of the two
+principles of Manicheism would be a mere matter of indifference; for if
+power alone constitutes God, whichever principle triumphed over the
+other, would become God by the very fact of its victory; and thus
+triumphant evil would be good.
+
+7th. Reason, then, is the mean whereby we attain to faith, and escape
+the devil worship of idolatry; but the understanding is not a necessary
+condition of faith, and very often impedes it; for the understanding
+having for its basis the reports of sense and experience, has no direct
+way of arriving at things invisible, and rather shrinks back from that
+world with which it is in no way familiar. It has a work to do in regard
+to revelation, and an important work; but divine things not being its
+proper matter, its work concerning them must be subordinate, and its
+tendency is always to fall back from the invisible to the visible,--from
+matters of faith to matters of experience. Its work, with respect to
+revelation, is this--that it should inquire into the truth of the
+outward signs of it; which outward signs being necessarily things
+visible and sensible, fall within its province of judgment. Thus
+understanding judges the external witnesses of a revelation: if miracles
+be alleged, it is the business of understanding to ascertain the fact of
+their occurrence; if a book claim to be the record of a revelation, it
+belongs to the understanding to make out the origin of this book, the
+time when it was written, who were its authors, and what is the first
+and grammatical meaning of its language. Or, again, if any men profess
+to be the depositaries of divine truth, by an extraordinary commission
+from God, the understanding, being familiar with man's nature and
+motives, can judge of their credibility--can see whether there are any
+marks of folly in them, or of dishonesty, or whether they are at once
+sensible and honest. And in all such matters, the prerogative of the
+understanding to judge is not to be questioned; for all such points are
+strictly within its dominion; and our Lord's words are of universal
+application, that we should render to Cæsar the things which are
+Cæsar's, no less than we should render to God the things that are God's.
+
+Faith may exist, as I said, without the action of the understanding, but
+never without that of the reason. It may exist independent of the
+understanding, because faith in God is the natural result of the idea of
+God: and that idea belongs to the reason, and the understanding is not
+concerned with it. But when a special revelation has been given us,
+through human instruments; when the understanding is called in to
+certify the particular fact, that in such and such particular persons,
+writings, or events, God has made himself manifest in an extraordinary
+manner; it is the human instrumentality which requires the judgment of
+the understanding; the bringing in of human characters, and sensible
+facts, which are matters of sense and experience; and, therefore, it is
+mere ignorance when Christians speak slightingly of the outward and
+historical evidences of Christianity, and indulge in very misplaced
+contempt for Paley and others who have worked out the historical proof
+of it. Such persons may observe, if they will, that where the historical
+evidence has not been listened to, there a belief in Christianity,
+properly so called, is wanting. Living examples might, I think, be named
+of men whose reason entirely acknowledges the internal proofs of a
+divine origin which are contained in the Christian doctrines, but whose
+understandings are not satisfied as to the facts of the Christian
+history, and particularly as to the fact of our Lord's resurrection.
+Such men are a remarkable contrast to those whose understandings are
+fully satisfied of the historical truth of our Lord's resurrection, but
+who are indifferent to, or actually deny, those doctrinal truths of
+which another power than the understanding must be the warrant. It is
+important to observe, therefore, that in a revelation involving, as an
+essential part of it, certain historical facts, there is necessarily a
+call for the judgment of the understanding, although in religious faith
+simply the understanding may have no place.
+
+8th. Now, then, the clearest notion which can be given of rationalism
+would, I think, be this: that it is the abuse of the understanding in
+subjects where the divine and the human, so to speak, are intermingled.
+Of human things the understanding can judge, of divine things it
+cannot;--and thus, where the two are mixed together, its inability to
+judge of the one part makes it derange the proportions of both, and the
+judgment of the whole is vitiated. For example, the understanding
+examines a miraculous history; it judges truly of what I may call the
+human part of the case; that is to say, of the rarity of miracles,--of
+the fallibility of human testimony,--of the proneness of most minds to
+exaggeration,--and of the critical arguments affecting the genuineness
+or the date of the narrative itself. But it forgets the divine part,
+namely, the power and providence of God, that He is really ever present
+amongst us, and that the spiritual world, which exists invisibly all
+around us, may conceivably, and by no means impossibly, exist, at some
+times and to some persons, even visibly. These considerations, which the
+understanding is ignorant of, would often modify our judgment as to the
+human parts of the case. Things not impossible in themselves are
+believed upon sufficient testimony; and with all the carelessness and
+exaggeration of historians, the mass of history is notwithstanding
+generally credible. Again, with regard to the history of the Old
+Testament, our judgment of the human part in it requires to be
+constantly modified by our consciousness of the divine part, or
+otherwise it cannot fail to be rationalistic; that is, it will be the
+judgment of the understanding only, unchecked by the reason. Gesenius'
+Commentary on Isaiah is rationalistic, for it regards Isaiah merely as a
+Jewish writer, zealously attached to the religion of his country, and
+lamenting the decay of his nation, and anxiously looking for its future
+restoration. No doubt Isaiah was all this, and therefore Gesenius'
+Commentary is critically and historically very valuable; the human part
+of Isaiah is nowhere better illustrated; but the divine part of the
+prophecy of Isaiah is no less real, and the consciousness of its
+existence should actually qualify our feelings and language even with
+reference to the human part.
+
+9th. The fault, then, of rationalism appears to me to consist not so
+much in what it has as in what it has not. The understanding has its
+proper work to do with respect to the Bible, because the Bible consists
+of human writings and contains a human history. Critical and historical
+inquiries respecting it are, therefore, perfectly legitimate; it
+contains matter which is within the province of the understanding, and
+the understanding has God's warrant for doing that work which he
+appointed it to do; only, let us remember, that the understanding cannot
+ascend to things divine; that for these another faculty is
+necessary,--reason or faith. If this faculty be living in us, then there
+can be no rationalism; and what is called so is then no other than the
+voice of Christian truth. Where a man's writings show that he is keenly
+alive to the divine part of Scripture, that he sees God ever in it, and
+regards it truly as his word, his judgments of the human part in it are
+not likely to be rationalistic; and if his understanding decides
+according to its own laws, upon points within its own province, while
+his faith duly tempers it, and restrains it from venturing upon
+another's dominion, the result will, in all probability, be such as
+commonly attends the use of God's manifold gifts in their just
+proportions,--it will image, after our imperfect measure, the holiness
+of God and the truth of God.
+
+It is very true, and should be acknowledged in the fullest manner, that
+for the study of the highest moral and spiritual questions another
+faculty than the understanding is wanting; and that without this faculty
+the understanding alone cannot arrive at truth. But it is no less true,
+that while there is, on the one side, a faculty higher than the
+understanding, which is entitled to pronounce upon its defects; "for he
+that is spiritual judgeth all things," ([Greek: auachriuei];) so there
+is a clamour often raised against it, not from above, but from
+below,--the clamour of mere shallowness and ignorance, and passion. Of
+this sort is some of the outcry which is raised against rationalism. Men
+do not leap, _per saltum mortalem_, from ordinary folly to divine
+wisdom: and the foolish have no right to think that they are angels,
+because they are not humanly wise. There is a deep and universal truth
+in St. Paul's words, where he says, that Christians wish "not to be
+unclothed but clothed upon, that mortality may be swallowed up of life."
+Wisdom is gained, not by renouncing or despising the understanding, but
+by adding to its perfect work the perfect work of reason, and of
+reason's perfection, faith.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE I. P. 331.
+
+"_A famous example of this may be seen in the sixth chapter of St.
+John,"_ &c.--The interpretation of this chapter, and particularly of the
+part alluded to in the text, is of no small importance; for it is
+remarkable, that the highest notions with respect to the presence of
+our Lord in the Holy Communion are often grounded upon this passage in
+St. John's Gospel, which yet, in the judgment of others, most decisively
+repels them.
+
+The whole question resolves itself into this--Are our Lord's words in
+this place co-ordinate with the Holy Communion, or subordinate to it?
+That is, do they and the communion alike point to some great truth
+superior to them both: or do our Lord's words, in St. John, point to the
+communion itself as their highest meaning?
+
+The communion itself expresses a truth above itself by a symbolical
+action; the words of our Lord, in St. John, are exactly the same with
+that symbolic action; it is natural, therefore, to understand them not
+as referring to it, but to the same[14] higher truth to which it refers
+also: and the more so as the communion is not once mentioned by St. John
+either in his Gospel or in his Epistles; but the idea which the
+communion expresses appears to have been familiar to his mind; at least,
+if we suppose that his mention of the blood and water flowing from our
+Lord's side in his Gospel, and his allusion again to the same fact in
+his Epistle, have reference in any degree to it, which seems to me
+most probable.
+
+[Footnote 14: The common tendency to make the Christian sacraments an
+ultimate end rather than a mean, is exhibited in the heading of the
+tenth chapter of the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians, in our authorized
+version, where we find the first verses described as stating, that "the
+Jews' sacraments were types of ours." Whereas, so far is it from the
+apostle's argument to represent our sacraments as the reality of which
+the Jews' sacraments were the type, that he is describing theirs and
+ours as co-ordinate with each other, and both alike subordinate to the
+same truth; and he argues, that if the Jews, with their sacraments, did
+notwithstanding lose the reality which those sacraments typified, so we
+should take heed lest we, with our sacraments, should lose it also. The
+erroneous heading is not given in the Geneva Bible, where we have, on
+the contrary, the true observation; "the sacraments of the old fathers
+were all one with ours, for they respected Christ only." It is true that
+if no more were meant than that "the Jews' sacraments were like ours,"
+there would be no reason to object to the expression; but apparently
+more is meant, as the word type seems to imply that what it is compared
+with is the reality, of which it is itself only the image; and one thing
+cannot properly be called the type of another, when both are but types
+of the same third thing. But the divines of James the First's reign and
+of his son's, were to the reformers exactly what the so-called fathers
+were to the apostles: the very same tendencies, growing up even in
+Elizabeth's reign, becoming strengthened under the Stuart kings, and
+fully developed in the nonjurors, which distinguish the divines of the
+seventeenth century from those of the sixteenth, distinguish also the
+church system from the gospel. There are many who readily acknowledge
+this difference in the English church, while they would deny it in the
+case of the ancient church. Indeed, it is not yet deemed prudent to avow
+openly that they prefer the so-called fathers to the apostles, and
+therefore they try to persuade themselves that both speak the same
+language. And doubtless, if the Scriptures are to be interpreted
+according to the rule of the writers of the third, and fourth, and fifth
+centuries, the thing can easily be effected; as, by a similar process,
+the Articles of the Church of England, if interpreted according to the
+rule of the nonjurors and their successors, might be made to speak the
+very sentiments which their authors designed to condemn.]
+
+Our Lord repels the notion of a literal acceptation of his words, where
+he says,--"It is the Spirit which profiteth, the flesh profiteth
+nothing; the words which I speak unto you, they are Spirit and they are
+life." It seems impossible, therefore, to refer these words, which he
+tells us expressly are Spirit and life, to any outward act of eating and
+drinking as their highest truth and object.
+
+But the words in the sixth chapter of St. John do highly illustrate the
+institution and purpose of the communion, and especially the remarkable
+words which our Lord used in instituting it. They show what infinite
+importance he attached to that truth which he expressed both in
+symbolical words and action under the same figure, of eating His body
+and drinking His blood. But to suppose that that truth can only be
+realized by one particular ritual action, so that the one great work of
+a Christian is to receive the Lord's supper,--which it must be, if our
+Lord's words in the sixth chapter of St. John refer to the
+communion,--is so contrary to the whole character of our Lord's
+teaching, and not least so in the very words so misinterpreted, that to
+maintain such a doctrine, leading, as it does, to such manifold
+superstitions, is actually to preach another Gospel than Christ's--to
+bring in a mystical religion instead of a spiritual one,--to do worse
+than to Judaize.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE K. P. 345.
+
+_"A set of persons, who wish to magnify the uncertainties of the
+Scripture in order to recommend more plausibly the guidance of some
+supposed authoritative interpreter of it."_--"The high church party," we
+have been lately told, "take Holy Scripture for their guide, and, in the
+interpretation of it, defer to the authority of primitive antiquity: the
+low church party contend for the sufficiency of private judgment." It is
+become of the greatest importance to see clearly, not what one party, or
+another, may contend for, but what is the real truth, and what,
+accordingly, is the duty of every Christian man to do in this matter.
+The sermon to which this note refers, is an attempt to show that
+Scripture is not hopelessly obscure or ambiguous; but it may not be
+inexpedient here to consider a little, what are the objections to the
+principle of the high church party; to clear away certain difficulties
+which are supposed to beset the opposite principle; and to state, if
+possible, what the truth of the whole question is.
+
+I. The objections to the principle of the high church party are these:
+1st. Its extreme vagueness. What is primitive antiquity? and where is
+its authority to be found? Does "primitive antiquity" mean the first
+three centuries? or the first two? or the first five? or the first
+seven? Does it include any of the general councils? or one of them? or
+four? or six? Are Irenæus and Tertullian the latest writers of
+"primitive antiquity?" or does it end with Augustine? or does it
+comprehend the venerable Bede? One writer has lately told us, that our
+Reformers wished the people to be taught, "that, for almost seven
+hundred years, the church was most pure." Are we, then, to hold that
+"primitive antiquity" embraces a period of nearly seven centuries? Seven
+centuries are considerably more than a third part of the whole duration
+of the church, from its foundation to this hour: can the third part of a
+nation's history be called its primitive antiquity? Is a tenet, or a
+practice taught when Christianity had been more than six hundred years
+in the world, to be called primitive? We know not, then, in the first
+place, what length of time is signified by "primitive antiquity."
+
+But let it signify any length of time we choose, I ask, next, where is
+its authority to be found? In the decisions of the general councils? But
+if we call the first four centuries "primitive antiquity," we find in
+this period only two general councils; if we include the fifth century,
+we get four; if we take in the sixth and seventh centuries, we have
+then, in all, six general councils. Will the decisions of any, or all,
+of these six councils furnish us with an authoritative interpretation of
+Scripture? They give us the Nicene and the Constantinopolitan creeds;
+they condemn various notions with respect to the person of our Lord, and
+to some other points of belief; and they contain a variety of
+regulations for the discipline and order of the church; but, with the
+exception of some particular passages, there is no authority in the
+creeds, or canons, or anathemas of those councils, for the
+interpretation of Scripture; they leave its difficulties just where they
+were before. It is but little then, which the first six general
+councils will do towards providing the student of Scripture with an
+infallible standard of interpretation.
+
+Where, however, except in the councils, can we find any thing claiming
+to be the voice of the church? Neither individual writers, nor yet all
+the writers of the first seven centuries together, can properly be
+called the church. They form, even altogether, but a limited number of
+individuals, who, in different countries, and at different periods,
+expressed, in writing, their own sentiments, but without any public
+authority. Origen, one of the ablest and most learned of them all, was
+anathematized by the second council of Constantinople; Tertullian was
+heretical during a part of his life; Lactantius was taxed with
+heterodoxy. How are we to know who were sound? And if sound generally,
+that is to say, if they stand charged with no heretical error, yet it
+does not follow that a man is infallible because he is not heretical;
+and none of these writers have been distinguished like the five great
+Roman lawyers whom the edict of Theodosius[15] selected from the mass,
+and gave to their decisions a legal authority. Or again, if it be said
+that the agreement of the great majority of them is to be regarded as
+decisive, we answer, that as no individual amongst them is in himself an
+authority legally, so neither can any number of them be so; and if a
+moral authority only be meant, such as we naturally ascribe to the
+concurring judgment of many eminent men, then this is a totally
+different question, and is open to inquiry in every separate case; for
+as, on the one hand, no one denies that such a concurring judgment is
+_an_ authority, yet, on the other hand, it may be outweighed, either by
+the worth of the few who differ from the judgment, or by the reason of
+the case itself; and the concurring judgment of the majority may show no
+more than the force of a general prejudice, which only a very few
+individuals were sensible enough to resist.
+
+[Footnote 15: Cod. Theodos. lib. i. tit. iv. The edict is issued in the
+name of the emperors Theodosius (the younger) and Valentinian (the
+younger), in the year A.D. 426.]
+
+In fact, it would greatly help to clear this question if we understand
+what we mean by allowing, or denying, the authority of the so-called
+fathers. The term _authority_ is ambiguous, and according to the sense
+in which I use it, I should either acknowledge it or deny it.--The
+writers of the first four, or of the first seven centuries, have _an_
+authority, just as the scholiasts and ancient commentators have: some of
+them, and in some points, are of weight singly; the agreement of many
+of thorn has much weight; the agreement of almost all of them would have
+great weight. In this sense, I acknowledge their authority; and it would
+be against all sound principles of criticism to deny it. But if, by
+authority, is meant a _decisive_ authority, a judgment which may not be
+questioned, then the claim of authority in such a case, for any man, or
+set of men, is either a folly or a revelation. Such an authority is not
+human, but divine: if any man pretends to possess it, let him show God's
+clear warrant for his pretension, or he must be regarded as a deceiver
+or a madman.
+
+But it may be said, that an authority not to be questioned was
+conferred, by the Roman law, on the opinions of a certain number of
+great lawyers: if a judge believed that their interpretation of the law
+was erroneous, he yet was not at liberty to follow his own private
+judgment in departing from it. Why may not the same thing be allowed in
+the church? and why may not the interpretations of Cyprian, or
+Athanasius, or Augustine, or Chrysostom, be as decisive, with respect to
+the true sense of the Scripture, as those of Gaius, Paulus, Modestinus,
+Ulpian, and Papinian, were acknowledged to be with respect to the sense
+of the Roman law?
+
+The answer is, that the emperor's edict could absolve the judge from
+following his own convictions about the sense of the law, because it
+gave to the authorized interpretation the force of law. The text, as the
+judge interpreted it, was a law repealed; the comment of the great
+lawyers was now the law in its room. As a mere literary composition, he
+might interpret it rightly, and Gaius, or Papinian, might be wrong; but
+if his interpretation was ever so right grammatically or critically,
+yet, legally it was nothing to the purpose;--Gaius's interpretation had
+superseded it, and was not the law which he was bound to obey. But, in
+the church, the only point to be aimed at is the discovery of the true
+meaning of the text of the divine law: no human power can invest the
+comment with equal authority. The emperor said, and might say to his
+judges, "You need not consider what was the meaning of the decemvirs,
+when they wrote the twelve tables, or, of Aquillius, when he drew up the
+Aquillian law. The law for you is not what the decemvirs may have meant,
+but what their interpreters may have meant: the decemvirs' meaning, if
+it was their meaning, is no longer the law of Rome." But who can dare to
+say to a Christian, "You need not consider what was the meaning of our
+Lord and his apostles; the law for you now is the meaning of Cyprian, or
+Ambrose, or Chrysostom;--that meaning has superseded the meaning of
+Christ." A Christian must find out Christ's meaning, and believe that he
+has found it, or else he must still seek for it. It is a matter, not of
+outward submission, but of inward faith; and if in our inward mind we
+are persuaded that the interpreter has mistaken our Lord's meaning, how
+can we by possibility adopt that interpretation in faith?
+
+Here we come to a grave consideration--that this doctrine of an
+infallible rule of interpretation may suit ignorance or scepticism: it
+is death to a sincere and reasonable and earnest faith. It is not hard
+for a sceptical mind to deceive itself by saying, that it receives
+whatever the church declares to be true: it may receive any number of
+doctrines, but it will not really believe them. We may restrain our
+tongues from disputing them, we may watch every restless thought that
+would question them, and instantly, by main force, as it were, put it
+down; but all this time our minds do not assimilate to them; they do not
+take them up into their own nature, so as to make them a part of
+themselves, freshening and supplying the life-blood of their very being.
+Truth must be believed by the mind's own act; our souls must be drawn
+towards it with a reasonable love; some affinity there must be between
+it and them, or else they can never really comprehend it. The sceptic
+may desperately become a fanatic also, but he is not become, therefore,
+a believer.
+
+Authority cannot compel belief; the sceptic who knows not what it is to
+grasp anything with the firm grasp of faith, may mistake his
+acquiescence in a doctrine for belief in it; the ignorant and careless,
+who believe only what their senses tell them, may lay up the words of
+divine truth in their memory, may repeat them loudly, and be vehement
+against all who question them. But minds to which faith is a necessity,
+which cannot be contented to stand by the side of truth, but must become
+altogether one with it,--minds which know full well the difference
+between opinion and conviction, between not questioning and
+believing,--they, when their own action is superseded by an authority
+foreign to themselves, are in a condition which they find intolerable.
+Told to believe what they cannot believe; told that they ought not to
+believe what they feel most disposed to believe; they retire altogether
+from the region of divine truth, as from a spot tainted with moral
+death, and devote themselves to other subjects: to physical science, it
+may be, or to political; where the inherent craving of their nature may
+yet be gratified, where, however insignificant the truth may be, they
+may yet find some truth to believe. This has been the condition of too
+many great men in the church of Rome; and it accounts for that
+bitterness of feeling with which Machiavelli, and others like him,
+appear to have regarded the whole subject of Christianity.
+
+The system, then, of deferring to the authority of what is called the
+ancient church in the interpretation of Scripture, is impracticable,
+inasmuch as, with regard to the greatest part of the Scripture, the
+church, properly speaking, has said nothing at all; and if it were
+practicable, it would be untenable, because neither the old councils,
+nor individual writers, could give any sign that they had a divine gift
+of interpretation; and if such a gift had been given to them, it would
+have been equivalent to a new revelation, the sense of the comment being
+thus preferred to what we could not but believe to be the sense of the
+text. Above all, the system is destructive of faith, having a tendency
+to substitute passive acquiescence for real conviction; and therefore I
+should not say that the excess of it was popery, but that it had once
+and actually those characters of evil which we sometimes express by the
+term popery, but which may be better signified by the term idolatry; a
+reverence for that which ought not to be reverenced, leading to a want
+of faith in that which is really deserving of all adoration and love.
+
+II. But it is said that the system of relying on private judgment is
+beset by no less evils: that it is itself inconsistent, and leads to
+Socinianism and Rationalism, and, in the end, to utter unbelief; so
+that, the choice being only between two evils, men may choose the system
+of church authority as being the less evil of the two. If this were so,
+I see not how faith could be attained at all, or what place would be
+left for Christian truth. But the system of the Church of England[16]
+is, I am persuaded, fully consistent, and has no tendency either to
+Socinianism or Rationalism. Let us see first what that system is.
+
+[Footnote 16: Much has been lately written to show that the Church of
+England allows the authority of the ancient councils and writers, and
+does not allow the right of private judgment. But it is perfectly clear,
+from the 21st Article, that it does not allow the authority of councils;
+that is to say, it holds that a council's exposition of doctrine may be
+false, and that such an exposition is of no force "unless it may be
+declared that it be taken out of Holy Scripture." Who, then, is to
+declare this? for to suppose that the declaration of the council itself
+is meant is absurd: the answer, I imagine, would be, according to the
+mind of the Reformers, "Every particular or national church," and
+especially the King as the head of the church. They would not have
+allowed private judgment, because they conceived that a private person
+had nothing to do but to obey the government; and it was for the
+government to determine what the truth of Scripture was. The Church of
+England, then, expressly disclaims the authority of councils, and, in
+its official instruments, it neither allows nor condemns private
+judgment; but the opinions of the Reformers, and the constitution of the
+church in the 16th century, were certainly against private judgment:
+their authority for the interpretation of Scripture was undoubtedly the
+supreme government of the church, i.e. not the bishops, but the King and
+parliament. But then this had respect not to the power of discerning
+truth, but to the right of publishing it, which is an wholly different
+question. That an individual was not bound _in foro conscientiæ_ to
+admit the truth of any interpretation of Scripture which did not approve
+itself to his own mind, was no less the judgment of the Church of
+England than that if he publicly disputed the interpretation of the
+church, he might be punished as unruly and a despiser of government. But
+then it should ever be remembered that the church, with the Reformers,
+was not the clergy. And now that the right of publication is conceded by
+the church, it is quite just to say that the Church of England allows
+private judgment; and if that judgment differ from her own, she condemns
+not the act of judging at all, but the having come to a false
+conclusion.
+
+It is urged that the act of I Elizabeth, c. 1, allows that to be heresy
+which the first four councils determined to be so. This is true; but it
+also adjudges to be heresy whatever shall be hereafter declared to be so
+by "the high court of parliament, with the assent of the clergy in their
+convocation." The Church of England undoubtedly allowed the decisions of
+the first four councils, in matters of doctrine, to be valid, as it
+allowed the three creeds, because it decided that they were agreeable to
+Scripture; but the binding authority was that of the English Parliament,
+not of the councils of Nicæa or Constantinople.
+
+As to the canon of 1571, which allows preachers to teach nothing as
+religious truth but what is agreeable to the Scriptures, "_and_ which
+the catholic fathers and ancient bishops have collected from that very
+doctrine of Scripture," it will be observed that it is merely negative,
+and does not sanction the teaching of the "catholic fathers and ancient
+bishops," generally, or say that men shall teach what they taught; but
+that they shall not teach as matter of religious faith, a new deduction
+from Scripture of their own making, but such truths as had been actually
+deduced from Scripture before, namely, the great articles of the
+Christian faith. Farther, the canons of 1571 are of no authority, not
+having received the royal assent.--_See Strype's Life of Parker_, p.
+322, ed. 1711.]
+
+It is invidiously described as maintaining "the sufficiency of private
+judgment." Now we maintain the sufficiency of private judgment in
+interpreting the Scriptures in no other sense than that in which every
+sane man maintains its sufficiency, in interpreting Thucydides or
+Aristotle; we mean, that, instead of deferring always to some one
+interpreter, as an idle boy follows implicitly the Latin version of his
+Greek lesson, the true method is to consult all[17] accessible
+authorities, and to avail ourselves of the assistance of all. And we
+contend, that, by this process, as we discover, for the most part, the
+true meaning of Thucydides and Aristotle with undoubted certainty, so we
+may also discover, not, indeed, in every particular part or passage, but
+generally, the true meaning of the Holy Scriptures with no less
+certainty.
+
+[Footnote 17: Of course no reasonable man can doubt the importance of
+studying the early Christian writers, as illustrating not only the
+history of their own times, but the New Testament also. For the Old
+Testament, indeed, they do little or nothing, and for the New they are
+of much less assistance than might have been expected; but still there
+is no doubt that they are often useful.]
+
+But if another man maintains that a different meaning is the true one,
+how are we to silence him, and how are we justified in calling him a
+heretic? If by the term heretic we are to imply moral guilt, I am not
+justified in applying it to any Christian, unless his doctrines are
+positively sinful, or there is something wicked, either in the way of
+dishonesty or bitterness, in his manner of maintaining them. The guilt
+of any given religious error, in any particular case, belongs only to
+the judgment of Him who reads the heart. But if we mean by heresy "a
+grave error in matters of the Christian faith, overthrowing or
+corrupting some fundamental article of it," then we are as fully
+justified in calling a gross misinterpretation of Scripture "heresy," as
+we should be justified in calling a gross misinterpretation of a profane
+Greek or Latin author, ignorance, or want of scholarship. There is no
+infallible authority in points of grammar and criticism, yet men do
+speak confidently, notwithstanding, as to learning and ignorance; Porson
+and Herman are known to have understood their business, and a writer who
+were to set their decisions at defiance, and to indulge in mere
+extravagances of interpretation, would be set down as one who knew
+nothing about the matter. So we judge daily in all points of literature
+and science; nay, we in the same manner venture to call some persons
+mad, and on the strength of our conviction we deprive them of their
+property, and shut them up in a madhouse: yet if madmen wore to insist
+that they were sane, and that we were mad, I know not to what infallible
+authority we could appeal; and, after all, what are we to do with those
+who deny that authority to be infallible? we must then go to another
+infallible authority to guarantee the infallibility of the first, and
+this process will run on for ever.
+
+But, in truth, there is more in the matter than the being justified or
+not justified in calling our neighbour a heretic. The real point of
+anxiety, I imagine, with many good and thinking men is this: whether a
+reasonable belief can be fairly carried through; whether the notion of
+the all-sufficiency of Scripture is not liable to objections no less
+than the system of church-authority; whether, in short, our Christian
+faith can be consistently maintained without a mortal leap at some part
+or other of the process; nay, whether, in fact, if it were otherwise,
+our faith would not seem to stand rather on the wisdom of man than on
+the power of God.
+
+I use these words, because these and other such passages of the
+Scripture are often quoted as I have now quoted them, and produce a
+great effect on those who do not observe that they are quoted
+inapplicably; for the question is not between man's wisdom and God's
+power, but simply whether we have reason to believe that God's power has
+been here manifested; or, rather, to see whether we cannot give a reason
+for the faith which is in us, such faith resting upon God's power and
+wisdom as manifested in Christ Jesus; for if no reason can be rendered
+for our faith, then our minds, so far as they are concerned, are
+believing a lie; they are believing in spite of those laws by which God
+has determined their nature and condition.
+
+Yet, however we believe, blindly or reasonably, (for some men, by God's
+mercy, are accidentally, as it were, in possession of the truth, the
+falsehood of their own minds in holding it not being, it is to be hoped,
+imputed to them as a sin;) however we believe, I never mean to say that
+our faith is not God's gift, to be sought for and retained by constant
+prayer and watchfulness, and to be forfeited by carelessness or sin.
+That is no true faith in which reason does not accord; yet neither can
+reason alone and without God ever become perfected into faith. For
+although intellectually, the grounds of belief may be made out
+satisfactorily, yet we are not able to follow our pure reason by
+ourselves; and no work on the evidences of Christianity can by itself
+give us faith; and much less can amid the manifold conflicts of life
+maintain it. That faith is thus the gift of God, and not our own work, I
+would desire to feel as keenly and continually, as with the fullest
+conviction I acknowledge it.
+
+Now, to resume the consideration of that which, as I said, is the real
+point of anxiety with many. They doubt whether the course of a
+reasonable belief can be held to the end without interruptions: they say
+that the received notions of the inspiration, and consequently of the
+complete truth of the Scriptures cannot reasonably be maintained; that
+he who does maintain them does so by a happy inconsistency;--he is to
+be congratulated for not following up his own principles; but why should
+he then find fault with others who do that avowedly and consistently to
+which he is driven against his professions by the clear necessity of
+the case?
+
+This argument was pressed by Mr. Newman, some time since, in one of the
+Tracts for the Times; and it was conducted, as may be supposed, with
+great ingenuity, but with a recklessness of consequences, or an
+ignorance of mankind, truly astonishing; for he brought forward all the
+difficulties and differences which can be found in the Scripture
+narratives, displayed them in their most glaring form, and merely
+observed, that as those with whom he was arguing could not solve these
+difficulties, but yet believed the Scriptures no less in spite of them,
+so the apparent unreasonableness of his doctrine about the priesthood
+was no ground why it should be rejected--a method of argument most
+blameable in any Christian to adopt towards his brethren; for what if
+their faith, being thus vehemently strained, were to give way under the
+experiment? and if, being convinced that the Scriptures were not more
+reasonable than Mr. Newman's system, they were to end with believing,
+not both, but neither?
+
+Therefore the question is one of no small anxiety and interest; and it
+is not idly nor wantonly that we must speak the truth upon it, even if
+that truth may to some seem startling; for by God's blessing, if we do
+go boldly forward wherever truth shall lead us, our course needs not be
+interrupted, neither shall a single hair of our faith perish.
+
+The same laws of criticism which teach us to distinguish between various
+degrees of testimony, authorize us to assign the very highest rank to
+the evidences of the writings of St. John and St. Paul. If belief is to
+be given to any human compositions, it is due to these; yet if we
+believe these merely as human compositions, and without assuming
+anything as to their divine inspiration, our Christian faith, as it
+seems to me, is reasonable;--not merely the facts of our Lord's miracles
+and resurrection; but Christian faith, in all its fulness--the whole
+dispensation of the Spirit, the revelation of the redemption of man and
+of the Divine Persons who are its authors--of all that Christian faith,
+and hope, and love can need. And this is so true, that even without
+reckoning the Epistle to the Hebrews amongst St. Paul's writings,--nay,
+even if we choose to reject the three pastoral epistles[18]--yet taking
+only what neither has been nor can be doubted--the epistles to the
+Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and
+Thessalonians, we have in these, together with St. John's Gospel and
+First Epistle,--giving up, if we choose, the other two,--a ground on
+which our faith may stand for ever, according to the strictest rules of
+the understanding, according to the clearest intuitions of reason.
+
+[Footnote 18: I say this, not as having the slightest doubt myself of
+the genuineness of any one of the three, but merely to show how much is
+left that has not been questioned at all, even unreasonably.]
+
+I take the works of St. John and St. Paul as our foundation, because, in
+the first place, we find in them the historical basis of Christianity;
+that is to say, we find the facts of our Lord's miracles, and especially
+of his resurrection, and the miraculous powers afterwards continued to
+the church, established by the highest possible evidence. However pure
+and truly divine the principles taught in the gospel may be, yet we
+crave to know not only that we were in need of redemption, but that a
+Redeemer has actually appeared; not only that a resurrection to eternal
+life is probable, but that such a resurrection has actually taken place.
+This basis of historical fact, which is one of the great peculiarities
+of Christianity, is strictly within the cognizance of the understanding;
+and in the writings of St. John and St. Paul we have that full and
+perfect evidence of it which the strictest laws of the understanding
+require.
+
+But the historical truth being once warranted by the understanding,
+other faculties of our nature now come in to enjoy it, and develop it;
+the highest reason and the moral and spiritual affections find
+respectively their proper field and objects, which, whenever presented
+to them in vision or in theory, they must instinctively cling to, but to
+which they now abandon themselves without fear of disappointment,
+because the understanding has assured them of their reality. We must
+suppose, on any system, the existence of reason and spiritual affections
+as indispensable to the understanding of the Scriptures; external
+authority can do nothing for us without these, any more than the mere
+faculties of the common understanding. But with these we apprehend the
+view which St. John and St. Paul afford to us: it opens before us one
+truth after another, one glory after another. St. John evidently
+supposes that his readers were familiar with another account of our
+Lord's life and teaching; and we find accordingly, another account
+existing in the writings of the three other evangelists. One and the
+same account is manifestly the substance of their three narratives, to
+which they thus bear a triple testimony, because none of the three has
+merely transcribed the others, and none of them apparently was the
+original author of it. Thus having now the full record of our Lord's
+teaching, we find that he everywhere refers to the Old Testament as to
+the word of God, and the record of God's earlier manifestations of
+himself to man. He has cleared up those especial points in it which
+might have most perplexed us, as I shall notice more fully hereafter,
+and he represents himself as the perpetual subject of its prophecies. We
+thus receive the Old Testament, as it were, from his hand, and learn
+while sitting at his feet to understand the lessons of the law and
+the prophets.
+
+Thus we make Christ the centre of both Testaments, and by so doing, we
+cannot be blind to the divinity pervading both. For the amazing fact
+that God should come into the world and be in the world cannot by
+possibility stand alone; it hallows, as it were, the whole period of the
+world's existence, from the beginning to the end, placing all time and
+every place in relation to God; it disposes us at once to receive the
+fact of the special call of the people of Israel;--it gives, I had
+almost said, an _à priori_ reason why there must have been in earlier
+times some shadows, at least, or images, to represent dimly to former
+generations that great thing which they were not actually to witness; it
+leads us to believe that there must have been some prophetic voices to
+announce the future coming of the Lord, or else "The very stones must
+have cried out."
+
+But those writings of St. John and St. Paul which were our first lessons
+in Christianity, and those other accounts of our Lord's life and
+teaching to which they introduced us,--can we conceive it possible, that
+the real meaning of all these shall be hopelessly obscure and uncertain;
+that if we seek it ever so diligently, we shall not find it? With an
+humble mind ready to learn, with a heart fully impressed with the sense
+of God's presence, so as to be morally and spiritually in a condition to
+receive God's truth, can we believe, then, that the use of those
+intellectual means, which open to us certainly the sense of human
+writers, shall be applied in vain to those writers who were commissioned
+to be the very heralds of a divine message, whose especial business it
+was to make known what they had themselves heard? Surely if a sufficient
+certainty of interpretation be attainable in common literature, the
+revelation of God cannot be the solitary exception.
+
+But we may be mistaken: we may _believe_ that we interpret truly, but
+we cannot be _infallibly sure_ of it; we want an authority which shall
+give us this assurance. This is no doubt the natural craving of our
+weakness; but it is no wiser a craving than if we were to long for the
+heaven to be opened, and for a daily sight of our Lord standing at the
+right hand of God. To live by faith is our appointed condition, and
+faith excludes an infallible assurance. We must earnestly believe that
+we have the truth, and die for our belief, if necessary, but we cannot
+_know_ it. No device which the human mind can practise, can exclude the
+possibility of doubt. If we would find an armour which should cover us
+at every point from this subtle enemy, it would be an armour that would
+close up the pores of the skin, and stop our breath; our fancied
+security would kill us. Is it really possible that, with our knowledge
+of man's nature, our belief in any human authority can really be more
+free from doubt than our belief in the conclusions of our own reason?
+There must ever be the liability to uncertainty; we can put no moral
+truth so surely as that our minds shall always feel it to be absolutely
+certain. Where is the infallible authority that can assure us even of
+the existence of God? And will the scepticism that can believe its own
+conclusions in nothing else rest satisfied with one conclusion
+only--that the writers of the first four centuries cannot err? Surely to
+regard this as the most certain proposition that can be submitted to the
+human mind, is no better than insanity.
+
+But we will consent to trust, it may be said, with God's help, to our
+own deliberate convictions that we have interpreted Scripture truly; but
+you tell us that the Scripture itself is not inspired in every part; you
+tell us that there are in it chronological and historical difficulties,
+if not errors; that there are possibly some interpolations; that even
+the apostles may have been in some things mistaken, as in their belief
+that the end of the world was at hand. Where shall we find a rest for
+our feet, if you first take away from us our infallible interpreter, and
+now tell us, that even if we can ourselves interpret it aright, yet that
+we cannot be sure that the very Scripture itself is infallibly true?
+
+It is very true that our position with respect to the Scriptures is not
+in all points the same as our fathers'. For sixteen hundred years
+nearly, while physical science, and history, and chronology, and
+criticism, were all in a state of torpor, the questions which now
+present themselves to our minds could not from the nature of the case
+arise. When they did arise, they came forward into notice gradually:
+first the discoveries in astronomy excited uneasiness: then as men
+began to read more critically, differences in the several Scripture
+narratives of the same thing awakened attention; more lately, the
+greater knowledge which has been gained of history, and of language, and
+in all respects the more careful inquiry to which all ancient records
+have been submitted, have brought other difficulties to light, and some
+sort of answer must be given to them. Mr. Newman, as we have seen, has
+made use of those difficulties much as the Romanists have used the
+doctrine of the Trinity when arguing with Trinitarians[19] in defence of
+transubstantiation. The Romanists said,--"Here are all these
+inexplicable difficulties in the doctrine of the Trinity, and yet you
+believe it." So Mr. Newman argues with those who hold the plenary
+inspiration of Scripture, that if they believe that, in spite of all the
+difficulties which beset it, they may as well believe his doctrine of
+the priesthood; and many, if I mistake not, alarmed by this
+representation, have actually embraced his opinions.
+
+[Footnote 19: On this proceeding of the Romanists, Stillingfleet
+observes, "Methinks for the sake of our common Christianity you should
+no more venture upon such bold and unreasonable comparisons. Do you in
+earnest think it is all one whether men do believe a God, or providence,
+or heaven, or hell, or the Trinity, and incarnation of Christ, if they
+do not believe transubstantiation? We have heard much of late about old
+and new popery: but if this be the way of representing new popery, by
+exposing the common articles of faith, it will set the minds of all good
+Christians farther from it than ever. For upon the very same grounds we
+may expect another parallel between the belief of a God and
+transubstantiation, the effect of which will be the exposing of all
+religion. This is a very destructive and mischievous method of
+proceeding; but our comfort is that it is very unreasonable, as I hope
+hath fully appeared by this discourse."--_Doctrine of the Trinity and
+Transubstantiation compared_, at the end.]
+
+It has unfortunately happened that the difficulties of the Scripture
+have been generally treated as objections to the truth of Christianity;
+as such they have been pressed by adversaries, and as such Christian
+writers have replied to them. But then they become of such tremendous
+interest, that it is scarcely possible to examine them fairly. If my
+faith in God and my hope of eternal life is to depend on the accuracy of
+a date or of some minute historical particular, who can wonder that I
+should listen to any sophistry that may be used in defence of them, or
+that I should force my mind to do any sort of violence to itself, when
+life and death seem to hang on the issue of its decision?
+
+Yet what conceivable connexion is there between the date of Cyrenius's
+government, or the question whether our Lord healed a blind man as he
+was going into Jericho or as he was leaving it; or whether Judas bought
+himself the field of blood, or it was bought by the high priests: what
+connexion can there be between such questions, and the truth of God's
+love to man in the redemption, and of the resurrection of our Lord? Do
+we give to any narrative in the world, to any statement, verbal or
+written, no other alternative than that it must be either infallible or
+unworthy of belief? Is not such an alternative so extravagant as to be a
+complete reductio ad absurdum? And yet such is the alternative which men
+seem generally to have admitted in considering the Scripture narratives:
+if a single error can be discovered, it is supposed to be fatal to the
+credibility of the whole.
+
+This has arisen from an unwarranted interpretation of the word
+"inspiration," and by a still more unwarranted inference. An inspired
+work is supposed to mean a work to which God has communicated his own
+perfections; so that the slightest error or defect of any kind in it is
+inconceivable, and that which is other than perfect in all points cannot
+be inspired. This is the unwarranted interpretation of the word
+"inspiration." But then follows the still more unwarranted
+inference,--"If all the Scripture is not inspired, Christianity cannot
+be true," an inference which is absolutely entitled to no other
+consideration than what it may seem to derive from the number of those
+who have either openly or tacitly maintained it.
+
+Most truly do I believe the Scriptures to be inspired; the proofs of
+their inspiration rise continually with the study of them. The
+scriptural narratives are not only about divine things, but are
+themselves divinely framed and superintended. I cannot conceive my
+conviction of this truth being otherwise than sure. Yet I must
+acknowledge that the scriptural narratives do not claim this inspiration
+for themselves; so that if I should be obliged to resign my belief in
+it, which seems to me impossible, I yet should have no right to tax the
+Scriptures with having advanced a pretension proved to be unfounded;
+their whole credibility as a most authentic history of the most
+important facts would remain untouched; the gospel of St. John would
+still be a narrative as unimpeachable as that of Thucydides, which no
+sane man has ever disbelieved.
+
+So much for the unwarranted inference, that if the Scripture histories
+are not inspired, the great facts of the Christian revelation cannot be
+maintained. But it is no less an unwarranted interpretation of the term
+"inspiration," to suppose that it is equivalent to a communication of
+the Divine perfections. Surely, many of our words and many of our
+actions are spoken and done by the inspiration of God's Spirit, without
+whom we can do nothing acceptable to God. Yet does the Holy Spirit so
+inspire us as to communicate to us His own perfections? Are our best
+words or works utterly free from error or from sin? All inspiration does
+not then destroy the human and fallible part in the nature which it
+inspires; it does not change man into God.
+
+In one man, indeed, it was otherwise; but He was both God and man. To
+Him the Spirit was given without measure; and as his life was without
+sin, so his words were without error. But to all others the Spirit has
+been given by measure; in almost infinitely different measure it is
+true: the difference between the inspiration of the common and perhaps
+unworthy Christian who merely said that "Jesus was the Lord," and that
+of Moses, or St. Paul, and St. John, is almost to our eyes beyond
+measuring. Still the position remains, that the highest degree of
+inspiration given to man has still suffered to exist along with it a
+portion of human fallibility and corruption.
+
+Now, then, consider the epistles of the blessed Apostle St. Paul, who
+had the Spirit of God so abundantly, that never we may suppose did any
+merely human being enjoy a larger share of it. Endowed with the Spirit
+as a Christian, and daily receiving grace more largely, as he became
+more and more ripe for glory; endowed with the Spirit's extraordinary
+gifts most eminently; favoured also with an abundance of revelations,
+disclosing to him things ineffable and inconceivable,--are not his
+writings to be most truly called inspired? Can we doubt that, in what he
+has told us of things not seen, or not seen as yet,--of Him who
+pre-existed in the form of God before he was manifested in the form of
+man,--of that great day, when we shall arise incorruptible, and meet our
+Lord in the air, and be joined to him for ever,--can any reasonable mind
+doubt, that in speaking of these things he spoke what he had heard from
+God; that to refuse to believe his testimony is really to
+disbelieve God?
+
+Yet this great Apostle expected that the world would come to an end in
+the generation then existing. When he wrote to the Thessalonians some
+years before his first imprisonment at Rome, he warned them, no doubt,
+against expecting the end immediately: but he appears still to have
+supposed that it would come in the lifetime of men then living. At a
+later period, when writing to the Corinthians, his dissuasion of
+marriage seems to rest mainly upon this impression; it is good not to
+marry, "on account of the distress which is close at hand;" ([Greek:
+dia taen enestosan anankaen]; compare 2 Thess. ii. 2, [Greek: hos hoti
+enestaeken hae haemera tou Kyriou].) "The time is short," he adds; "the
+fashion of this world is passing away." And again, when speaking of the
+resurrection, he says emphatically, "the dead shall rise incorruptible,
+and _we_ shall be changed;" where the pronoun being expressed in the
+original, [Greek: chai haemeis allagaesometha], shows that by the term
+"_we_," he does not mean the dead, but those who were to be alive at
+Christ's coming. So again, still later, when writing from Rome to the
+Philippians, he tells them "the Lord is at hand;" and later still, even
+in his first epistle to Timothy, he charges Timothy "to keep his
+commandment without spot, unrebukable, until the appearing of our Lord
+Jesus Christ." These and other passages cannot without violence be
+interpreted even singly in any other sense; but taking them together,
+their meaning seems absolutely certain. Shall we say, then, that St.
+Paul entertained and expressed a belief which the event did not verify?
+We may say so, safely and reverently, in this instance; for here he was
+most certainly speaking as a man, and not by revelation; as it has been
+providentially ordered that our Lord's express words on this point have
+been recorded--"Of that day and hour knoweth no man; no, not the angels
+in heaven." Or again, shall we say, that St. Paul advised the
+Corinthians not to marry, chiefly on this ground; and that this throws a
+suspicion over his directions in other points? But again it has been
+ordered, that in this very place, and no where else in all his writing,
+St. Paul has expressly said that he was only giving his judgment as a
+Christian, and not speaking with divine authority;--the concluding words
+of the chapter, [Greek: doko de kago pneuma theou echein] do not
+signify, as our Version renders them, "And I think also that I have the
+Spirit of God," as if he were confirming his own judgment by an
+assertion of his inspiration in a sense beyond that of common
+Christians; but the words say, "And I think that I too have the Spirit
+of God," "I too as well as others whom you might consult, so that my
+judgment is no less worthy of attention than theirs." But it is his
+Christian judgment only that he is giving, as he expressly declares, and
+not his apostolical command or revelation; a distinction which he never
+makes elsewhere, and which is in itself so striking, that we seem to
+recognise in it God's especial mercy to us, that our faith in St. Paul's
+general declarations of divine truth might not be shaken, because in one
+particular point he was permitted to speak as a man, giving express
+notice at the same time that he was doing so.
+
+Now it is at least remarkable, that in the only two instances in which
+the existence of any absence of divine authority is to be discerned in
+St. Paul's epistles, provision is actually made by God's fondness to
+prevent them from prejudicing our faith in St. Paul's divine authority
+generally. And so in whatever points any error may be discoverable in
+Scripture, we shall find either that the errors are of a kind wholly
+unconnected with the revelation of what God has done to us, and of what
+we are to do towards Him; and therefore are perfectly consistent with
+the inspiration of the writer, unless we take that unwarranted notion of
+inspiration which considers it as equivalent to a communication of God's
+attributes perfectly; (and of this kind are any errors that may exist
+either in points of physical science, or of chronology, or of history;)
+or if there be any thing else which appears inconsistent with
+inspiration, in the sense in which we really may and do apply it to the
+Scriptures, namely, that they are a perfect guide and rule in all
+matters concerning our relations with God, then we shall find that God
+has made some special provision for the case, to remove what it
+otherwise might have had of real difficulty.
+
+This merciful care is above all to be recognised with regard to one
+point, which otherwise would, I think, have been a difficulty actually
+insuperable: I mean the manifestly imperfect moral standard, which in
+some cases is displayed in the characters of good men in the Old
+Testament. Put the gospel by the side of the law and history of the
+Israelites; observe what the law permitted, and public opinion under the
+law did not condemn; observe the actions recorded of persons who are
+declared to have been eminently good, and to have received God's
+especial blessing; and it is manifest that had not our Lord himself
+vouchsafed his help, one of two things must have happened--either that
+we must have followed the old heresy of rejecting the Old Testament
+altogether, or else that our respect for the Old Testament must have
+impeded the growth of the more perfect law of Christ. The true solution
+I do not think that we could have discovered, or ventured to admit on
+less authority than our Lord's. But his express declaration, that some
+things in the law itself were permitted, because nothing higher could
+then have been borne, and his stating in detail that in several points
+what was accounted good or allowable in the former dispensation was not
+so really, while at the same time he constantly refers to the Old
+Testament as divine, and confirms its language of blessing with respect
+to its most eminent characters, has completely cleared to us the whole
+question, and enables us to recognize the divinity of the Old Testament
+and the holiness of its characters, without lying against our
+consciences and our more perfect revelation, by justifying the actions
+of those characters as right, essentially and abstractedly, although
+they were excusable, or in some cases actually virtuous, according to
+the standard of right and wrong which prevailed under the law.
+
+After observing God's gracious care for us in this instance, as well as
+in those which I have noticed before, I cannot but feel that we may
+safely trust Him for every other similar case, if any such there be, and
+that he will not permit our faith either in him or in his holy word to
+be shaken, because we do not attempt to close our eyes against truth,
+nor seek to support our faith by sophistry and falsehood. Feeling what
+the Scriptures are, I would not give unnecessary pain to any one by an
+enumeration of those points in which the literal historical statement of
+an inspired writer has been vainly defended. Some instances will
+probably occur to most readers; others are perhaps not known, and never
+will be known to many, nor is it at all needful or desirable that they
+should know them. But if ever they are brought before them, let them not
+try to put them aside unfairly, from a fear that they will injure our
+faith. Let us not do evil that evil may be escaped from; and it is an
+evil, and the fruitful parent of evils innumerable, to do violence to
+our understanding or to our reason in their own appointed fields; to
+maintain falsehood in their despite, and reject the truth which they
+sanction. If writers of Mr. Newman's school will persist in displaying
+the difficulties of the Scripture before the eyes of those who had not
+been before aware of them, let those who are so cruelly tempted be
+conjured not to be dismayed; to refuse utterly to surrender up their
+sense of truth,--to persist in rejecting the unchristian falsehoods
+which they are called upon to worship; sure that after all that can be
+said, that system will remain false to the end; and their Christian
+faith, if they do not faithlessly attempt to strengthen it by unlawful
+means, will stand no less unshaken.
+
+In conclusion, Christian faith rests upon Scripture; and as it is in
+itself agreeable to the highest reason, so the authenticity of the
+Scriptures on which it rests is assured to us by the deliberate
+conclusions of the understanding; nor is any "mortal leap" necessary at
+any part of the process: nor any rejection of one truth, in order to
+retain our hold on another. And if it should happen, as in all
+probability it will, that we shall be called upon to correct in some
+respects our notions as to the Scriptures, and so far to hold views
+different from those of our fathers, we should consider that our
+fathers did not, and could not stand in our circumstances; that the
+knowledge which may call upon us to relinquish some of their opinions,
+was a knowledge which they had not. Till this knowledge comes to us, let
+us hold our fathers' opinions as they held them; but when it does come,
+it will come by God's will, and to do his work: and that work will,
+assuredly, not be our separation from our father's faith; but if we
+follow God's guidance humbly and cheerfully, clinging to God the while
+in personal devotion and obedience, we may be made aware of what to them
+would have been an inexplicable difficulty, and which was, therefore,
+hidden from their knowledge; and yet, "through the grace of our Lord
+Jesus Christ, we believe that we shall be saved even as they."
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Christian Life, by Thomas Arnold
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Christian Life, by Thomas Arnold
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+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Christian Life
+       Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps
+
+Author: Thomas Arnold
+
+Release Date: August 10, 2004 [EBook #13151]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHRISTIAN LIFE ***
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+Produced by Charlie Kirschner and the Online Distributed Proofreading
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+</pre>
+
+<h2>THE</h2>
+<h1>CHRISTIAN LIFE;</h1>
+<h2>ITS COURSE, ITS HINDRANCES,<br>
+AND ITS HELPS.</h2>
+<h4>BY</h4>
+<h3>THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.,</h3>
+<h5>HEAD MASTER OF RUGBY SCHOOL,</h5>
+<h6>AND LATE FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD.</h6>
+<h5>From the Fifth London Edition.</h5>
+<h4>1856.</h4>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>"As far as the principle on which Archbishop Laud and
+his followers acted went to re-actuate the idea of the church, as a
+co-ordinate and living power by right of Christ's institution and
+express promise, I go along with them; but I soon discover that by
+the church they meant the clergy, the hierarchy exclusively, and
+then I fly off from them in a tangent.<br>
+<br>
+"For it is this very interpretation of the church, that, according
+to my conviction, constituted the first and fundamental apostasy;
+and I hold it for one of the greatest mistakes of our polemical
+divines, in their controversies with the Romanists, that they trace
+all the corruptions of the gospel faith to the
+Papacy."--COLERIDGE,<br>
+<br>
+<i>Literary Remains</i>, vol. iii. p. 386.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#INTRODUCTION.">INTRODUCTION.</a></p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_I.">LECTURE I.</a>.</p>
+<p>GEN. iii. 22.--And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become
+as one of us, to know good and evil.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_II.">LECTURE II.</a></p>
+<p>1 COR. xiii. 11.--When I was a child I spake as a child, I
+understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a
+man, I put away childish things.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_III.">LECTURE III.</a></p>
+<p>1 COR. xiii. 11.--When I was a child I spake as a child, I
+understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a
+man, I put away childish things.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_IV.">LECTURE IV.</a></p>
+<p>COL. i. 9.--We do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that
+ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and
+spiritual understanding.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_V.">LECTURE V.</a></p>
+<p>COL. i. 9.--We do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that
+ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and
+spiritual understanding.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_VI.">LECTURE VI.</a></p>
+<p>COL. iii. 3.--Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in
+God.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_VII.">LECTURE VII.</a></p>
+<p>1 COR. iii. 21--23.--All things are yours; whether Paul, or
+Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things
+present, or things to come; all are yours, and ye are Christ's; and
+Christ is God's.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_VIII.">LECTURE VIII.</a></p>
+<p>GAL. v. 16, 17.--Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the
+lusts of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and
+the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary the one to the
+other, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_IX.">LECTURE IX.</a></p>
+<p>LUKE xiv. 33.--Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all
+that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_X">LECTURE X.</a></p>
+<p>1 TIM. i. 9.--The law is not made for a righteous man, but for
+the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for
+the unholy and profane.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XI.">LECTURE XI.</a></p>
+<p>LUKE xxi. 36.--Watch ye, therefore, and pray always, that ye may
+be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to
+pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XII.">LECTURE XII.</a></p>
+<p>PROV. i. 28.--Then shall they call upon me, but I will not
+answer: they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XIII.">LECTURE XIII.</a></p>
+<p>MARK xii. 34.--Thou art not far from the kingdom of God.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XIV.">LECTURE XIV.</a></p>
+<p>MATT. xxii. 14.--For many are called, but few are chosen.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XV.">LECTURE XV.</a></p>
+<p>LUKE xi. 25.--When he cometh he findeth it swept and
+garnished.</p>
+<p>JOHN v. 42.--I know you, that ye have not the love of God in
+you.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XVI.">LECTURE XVI.</a></p>
+<p>MATT. xi. 10.--I send my messenger before thy face, who shall
+prepare thy way before thee.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XVII.">LECTURE XVII.</a></p>
+<p>1 COR. ii. 12.--We have received not the Spirit of the world,
+but the Spirit which is of God.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XVIII.">LECTURE XVIII.</a></p>
+<p>GEN. xxvii. 38.--And Esau said unto his father, Hast thou but
+one blessing, my father? Bless me, even me also, O my father.</p>
+<p>MATT. xv. 27.--And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of
+the crumbs which fall from their master's table.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XIX.">LECTURE XIX.</a></p>
+<p>MATT. xxii. 32.--God is not the God of the dead, but of the
+living.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XX.">LECTURE XX.</a></p>
+<p>EZEK. xiii. 22.--With lies ye have made the heart of the
+righteous sad, whom I have not made sad; and strengthened the hands
+of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way, by
+promising him life.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXI.">LECTURE XXI.</a></p>
+<p>ADVENT SUNDAY.</p>
+<p>HEB. iii. 16.--For some when they had heard did provoke; howbeit
+not all that came out of Egypt by Moses.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXII.">LECTURE XXII.</a></p>
+<p>CHRISTMAS DAY.</p>
+<p>JOHN i. 10.--He was in the world, and the world was made by him,
+and the world knew him not.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXIII.">LECTURE XXIII.</a></p>
+<p>SUNDAY NEXT BEFORE EASTER.</p>
+<p>MATT. xxvi. 40, 41.--What, could ye not watch with me one hour?
+Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation; the spirit
+indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXIV.">LECTURE XXIV.</a></p>
+<p>GOOD FRIDAY.</p>
+<p>ROMANS v. 8.--God commendeth his love towards us, in that, while
+we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXV.">LECTURE XXV.</a></p>
+<p>EASTER DAY.</p>
+<p>JOHN xx. 20.--Then the disciples went away again unto their own
+home.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXVI.">LECTURE XXVI.</a></p>
+<p>WHITSUNDAY.</p>
+<p>ACTS xix. 2.--Have you received the Holy Ghost since ye
+believed?</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXVII.">LECTURE XXVII.</a></p>
+<p>TRINITY SUNDAY.</p>
+<p>JOHN iii. 9.--How can these things be?</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXVIII.">LECTURE XXVIII.</a></p>
+<p>EXOD. iii. 6.--And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look
+upon God.</p>
+<p>LUKE xxiii. 30.--Then shall they begin to say to the mountains,
+Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXIX.">LECTURE XXIX.</a></p>
+<p>PSALM cxxxvii. 4.--- How shall we sing the Lord's song in a
+strange land?</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXX">LECTURE XXX.</a></p>
+<p>1 COR. xi. 26.--For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink
+this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he come.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXXI.">LECTURE XXXI.</a></p>
+<p>LUKE i. 3, 4.--It seemed good to me, also, having had perfect
+understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee
+in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the
+certainty of those things wherein thou hast been instructed.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXXII.">LECTURE XXXII.</a></p>
+<p>Luke i. 3, 4.--It seemed good to me, also, having had perfect
+understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee
+in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the
+certainty of those things wherein thou hast been instructed.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXXIII.">LECTURE XXXIII.</a></p>
+<p>JOHN ix. 29.--We know that God spake unto Moses; as for this
+fellow, we know not from whence he is.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXXIV.">LECTURE XXXIV.</a></p>
+<p>1 COR. xiv. 20.--Brethren, be not children in understanding:
+howbeit, in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXXV.">LECTURE XXXV.</a></p>
+<p>MATT. xxvi. 45, 46.--Sleep on now and take your rest; behold the
+hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of
+sinners. Rise, let us be going: behold he is at hand that doth
+betray me.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXXVI.">LECTURE XXXVI.</a></p>
+<p>2 COR. v. 17, 18.--Old things are passed away; behold all things
+are become new, and all things are of God, who hath reconciled us
+to himself by Jesus Christ.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXXVII.">LECTURE XXXVII.</a></p>
+<p>EZEK. xx. 49.--Then said I, Ah, Lord God! they say of me Doth he
+not speak parables?</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXXVIII.">LECTURE XXXVIII.</a></p>
+<p>ISAIAH v. 1.--Now will I sing to my well-beloved a song of my
+beloved touching his vineyard.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#LECTURE_XXXIX.">LECTURE XXXIX.</a></p>
+<p>COL. iii. 17.--Whatsoever ye do in the word or deed, do all in
+the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by
+Him.</p>
+<br>
+<p><a href="#NOTES.">NOTES.</a></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="INTRODUCTION."></a>INTRODUCTION.</h2>
+<br>
+<p>The contents of this volume will be found, I hope, to be in
+agreement with its title.</p>
+<p>Amongst the helps of Christian life, the highest place is due to
+the Christian church and its ordinances. I have been greatly
+misunderstood with respect to my estimate of the Christian church,
+as distinguished from the Christian religion. I agree so far with
+those, from whom I in other things most widely differ, that I hold
+the revival of the church of Christ in its full perfection, to be
+the one great end to which all our efforts should be directed. This
+is with me no new belief, but one which I have entertained for many
+years. It was impressed most strongly upon me, as it appears to
+have been upon others, by the remarkable state of affairs and of
+opinions which we witnessed in this country about nine or ten years
+ago; and everything since that time has confirmed it in my mind
+more and more.</p>
+<p>Others, according to their own statement, received the same
+impression from the phenomena of the same period. But the movement
+had begun earlier; nor should I object to call it, as they do, a
+movement towards "something deeper and truer than satisfied the
+last century<a name="FNanchor1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1">[1]</a>."
+It began, I suppose, in the last ten years of the last century, and
+has ever since been working onwards, though for a long time slowly
+and secretly, and with no distinctly marked direction. But still,
+in philosophy and general literature, there have been sufficient
+proofs that the pendulum, which for nearly two hundred years had
+been swinging one way, was now beginning to swing back again; and
+as its last oscillation brought it far from the true centre, so it
+may be, that its present impulse may be no less in excess, and thus
+may bring on again, in after ages, another corresponding
+reaction.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor1">[1]</a>
+See Mr. Newman's Letter to Dr. Jelf, p. 27.</blockquote>
+<p>Now if it be asked what, setting aside the metaphor, are the two
+points between which mankind has been thus moving to and fro; and
+what are the tendencies in us which, thus alternately
+predominating, give so different a character to different periods
+of the human history; the answer is not easy to be given summarily,
+for the generalisation which it requires is almost beyond the
+compass of the human mind. Several phenomena appear in each period,
+and it would be easy to give any one of these as marking its
+tendency: as, for instance, we might describe one period as having
+a tendency to despotism, and another to licentiousness: but the
+true answer lies deeper, and can be only given by discovering that
+common element in human nature which, in religion, in politics, in
+philosophy, and in literature, being modified by the subject-matter
+of each, assumes in each a different form, so that its own proper
+nature is no longer to be recognized. Again, it would be an error
+to suppose that either of the two tendencies which so affect the
+course of human affairs were to be called simply bad or good. Each
+has its good and evil nicely intermingled; and taking the highest
+good of each, it would be difficult to say which was the more
+excellent;--taking the last corruption of each, we could not
+determine which, was the more hateful. For so far as we can trace
+back the manifold streams, flowing some from the eastern mountains,
+and some from the western, to the highest springs from which they
+rise, we find on the one side the ideas of truth and justice, on
+the other those of beauty and love;--things so exalted, and so
+inseparably united in the divine perfections, that to set either
+two above the other were presumptuous and profane. Yet these most
+divine things separated from each other, and defiled in their
+passage through this lower world, do each assume a form in human
+nature of very great evil: the exclusive and corrupted love of
+truth and justice becomes in man selfish atheism; the exclusive and
+corrupted worship of beauty and love becomes in man a bloody and a
+lying idolatry.</p>
+<p>Such would be the general theory of the two great currents in
+which human affairs may be said to have been successively drifting.
+But real history, even the history of all mankind, and much more
+that of any particular age or country, presents a picture far more
+complicated. First, as to time: as the vessels in a harbour, and in
+the open sea without it, may be seen swinging with the tide at the
+same moment in opposite directions; the ebb has begun in the
+roadstead, while it is not yet high water in the harbour; so one or
+more nations may be in advance of or behind the general tendency of
+their age, and from either cause may be moving in the opposite
+direction. Again, the tendency or movement in itself is liable to
+frequent interruptions, and short counter-movements: even when the
+tide is coming in upon the shore, every wave retires after its
+advance; and he who follows incautiously the retreating waters, may
+be caught by some stronger billow, overwhelming again for an
+instant the spot which had just been left dry. A child standing by
+the sea-shore for a few minutes, and watching this, as it seems,
+irregular advance and retreat of the water, could not tell whether
+it was ebb or flood; and we, standing for a few years on the shore
+of time, can scarcely tell whether the particular movement which we
+witness is according to or against the general tendency of the
+whole period. Farther yet, as these great tendencies are often
+interrupted, so are they continually mixed: that is, not only are
+their own good and bad elements successively predominant, but they
+never have the world wholly to themselves: the opposite tendency
+exists, in an under-current it may be, and not lightly perceptible;
+but here and there it struggles to the surface, and mingles its own
+good and evil with the predominant good and evil of its antagonist.
+Wherefore he who would learn wisdom from the complex experience of
+history, must question closely all its phenomena, must notice that
+which is less obvious as well as that which is most palpable; must
+judge not peremptorily or sweepingly, but with reserves and
+exceptions; not as lightly overrunning a wide region of the truth,
+but thankful if after much pains he has advanced his landmarks only
+a little; if he has gained, as it were, but one or two frontier
+fortresses, in which he can establish himself for ever.</p>
+<p>Now, then, when Mr. Newman describes the movement of the present
+moment as being directed towards "something better and deeper than
+satisfied the last century," this description, although in some
+sense true, is yet in practice delusive; and the delusion which
+lurks in it is at the root of the errors of Mr. Newman and of his
+friends. They regard the tendencies of the last century as wholly
+evil; and they appear to extend this feeling to the whole period of
+which the last century was the close, and which began nearly with
+the sixteenth century. Viewing in this light the last three hundred
+years, they regard naturally with excessive favour the preceding
+period, with which they are so strongly contrasted; and not the
+less because this period has been an object of scorn to the times
+which have followed it. They are drawn towards the enemy of their
+enemy, and they fancy that it must be in all points their enemy's
+opposite. And if the faults of its last decline are too palpable to
+be denied, they ascend to its middle and its earlier course, and
+finding that its evils are there less flagrant, they abandon
+themselves wholly to the contemplation of its good points, and end
+with making it an idol. There are few stranger and sadder sights
+than to see men judging of whole periods of the history of mankind
+with the blindness of party-spirit, never naming one century
+without expressions of contempt or abhorrence, never mentioning
+another but with extravagant and undistinguishing admiration.</p>
+<p>But the worst was yet to come. The period which Mr. Newman and
+his friends so disliked, had, in its religious character, been
+distinguished by its professions of extreme veneration for the
+Scriptures; in its quarrel with the system of the preceding period,
+it had rested all its cause on the authority of the Scripture,--it
+had condemned the older system because Scripture could give no
+warrant for it. On the other hand, the partizans of the older
+system protested against the exclusive appeal to Scripture; there
+was, as they maintained, another authority in religious matters; if
+their system was not supported in all its points by Scripture, it
+had at least the warrant of Christian antiquity. Thus Mr. Newman
+and his friends found that the times which they disliked had
+professed to rely on Scripture alone; the times which they loved
+had invested the Church with equal authority. It was natural then
+to connect the evils of the iron age, for so they regarded it, with
+this notion of the sole supremacy of Scripture; and it was no less
+natural to associate the blessings of their imagined golden age
+with its avowed reverence for the Church. If they appealed only to
+Scripture, they echoed the language of men whom they abhorred; if
+they exalted the Church and Christian antiquity, they sympathised
+with a period which they were resolved to love. Their theological
+writings from the very beginning have too plainly shown in this
+respect the force both of their sympathies and their
+antipathies.</p>
+<p>Thus previously disposed, and in their sense or apprehension of
+the evil of their own times already flying as it were for refuge to
+the system of times past, they were overtaken by the political
+storm of 1831, and the two following years. That storm rattled
+loudly, and alarmed many who had viewed the gathering of the clouds
+with hope and pleasure; no wonder, then, if it produced a stormy
+effect upon those who viewed it as a mere calamity, an evil monster
+bred out of an evil time, and fraught with nothing but mischief.
+Farther, the government of the country was now, for the first time
+for many years, in the hands of men who admired the spirit of the
+age, nearly as much as Mr. Newman and his friends abhorred it. Thus
+all things seemed combined against them: the spirit of the period
+which they so hated was riding as it were upon the whirlwind; they
+knew not where its violence might burst; and the government of the
+country was, as they thought, driving wildly before it, without
+attempting to moderate its fury. Already they were inclined to
+recognise the signs of a national apostasy.</p>
+<p>But from this point they have themselves written their own
+history.--Mr. Percival's letter to the editor of the Irish
+Ecclesiastical Journal, which was reprinted in the Oxford Herald of
+January 80, 1841, is really a document of the highest value. It
+acquaints us, from the very best authority, with the immediate
+occasion of the publication of the Tracts for the Times, and with
+the objects of their writers. It tells us whither their eyes were
+turned for deliverance; with what charm they hoped to allay the
+troubled waters. Ecclesiastical history would be far more valuable
+than it is, if we could thus learn the real character and views of
+every church, or sect, or party, from itself, and not from its
+opponents.</p>
+<p>Mr. Percival informs us, that the Irish Church Act of 1833,
+which abolished several of the Irish Bishoprics, was the immediate
+occasion of the publication of the Tracts for the Times; and that
+the objects of that publication were, to enforce the doctrine of
+the apostolical succession, and to preserve the Prayer Book from
+"the Socinian leaven, with which we had reason to fear it would be
+tainted by the parliamentary alteration of it, which at that time
+was openly talked of." But the second of these objects is not
+mentioned in the more formal statements which Mr. Percival gives of
+them; and in what he calls the "matured account" of the principles
+of the writers, it is only said, "Whereas there seems great danger
+at present of attempts at unauthorized and inconsiderate innovation
+as in other matters so especially in the service of our Church, we
+pledge ourselves to resist any attempt that may be made to alter
+the Liturgy on insufficient authority: i.e. without the exercise of
+the free and deliberate judgment of the Church on the alterations
+proposed." It would seem, therefore, that what was particularly
+deprecated was "the alteration of the Liturgy on insufficient
+authority," without reference to any suspected character of the
+alteration in itself. But at any rate, as all probability of any
+alteration in the Liturgy vanished very soon after the publication
+of the tracts began, the other object, the maintaining the doctrine
+of the apostolical succession, as it had been the principal one
+from the beginning, became in a very short time the only one.</p>
+<p>The great remedy, therefore, for the evils of the times, the
+"something deeper and truer than satisfied the last century," or,
+at least, the most effectual means of attaining to it, is declared
+to be the maintenance of the doctrine of apostolical succession.
+Now let us hear, for it is most important, the grounds on which
+this doctrine is to be enforced, and the reason why so much stress
+is laid on it. I quote again from Mr. Percival's letter.</p>
+<p>"Considering, 1. That the only way of salvation is the partaking
+of the body and blood of our sacrificed Redeemer;</p>
+<p>"2. That the mean expressly authorized by him for that purpose
+is the holy sacrament of his supper;</p>
+<p>"3. That the security by him no less expressly authorized, for
+the continuance and due application of that sacrament, is the
+apostolical commission of the bishops, and under them the
+presbyters of the church;</p>
+<p>"4. That under the present circumstances of the church in
+England, there is peculiar danger of these matters being slighted
+and practically disavowed, and of numbers of Christians being left,
+or tempted to precarious and unauthorized ways of communion, which
+must terminate often in vital apostasy:--</p>
+<p>"We desire to pledge ourselves one to another, reserving our
+canonical obedience, as follows:--</p>
+<p>"1. To be on the watch for all opportunities of inculcating, on
+all committed to our charge, a due sense of the inestimable
+privilege of communion with our Lord, through the successors of the
+apostles, and of leading them to the resolution to transmit it, by
+his blessing, unimpaired to their children."</p>
+<p>Then follow two other resolutions: one to provide and circulate
+books and tracts, to familiarize men's minds with this doctrine;
+and the other, "to do what lies in us towards reviving among
+churchmen, the practice of daily common prayer, and more frequent
+participation of the Lord's Supper."</p>
+<p>The fourth resolution, "to resist unauthorized alterations of
+the Liturgy," I have already quoted: the fifth and last engages
+generally to place within the reach of all men, accounts of such
+points in our discipline and worship as may appear most likely to
+be misunderstood or undervalued.</p>
+<p>These resolutions were drawn up more than seven years ago, and
+their practical results have not been contemptible. The Tracts for
+the Times amount to no fewer than ninety; while the sermons,
+articles in reviews, stories, essays, poems, and writings of all
+sorts which have enforced the same doctrines, have been also
+extremely numerous. Nor have all these labours been without fruit:
+for it is known that a large proportion of the clergy have adopted,
+either wholly or in great part, the opinions and spirit of the
+Tracts for the Times; and many of the laity have embraced them
+also.</p>
+<p>It seems also, that in the various publications of their school,
+the object originally marked out in the resolutions quoted above,
+has been followed with great steadiness. The system has been
+uniform, and its several parts have held well together. It has,
+perhaps, been carried on of late more boldly, which is the natural
+consequence of success. It has in all points been the direct
+opposite of what may be called the spirit of English protestantism
+of the nineteenth century: upholding whatever that spirit would
+depreciate; decrying whatever it would admire. A short statement of
+the principal views held by Mr. Newman and his friends, will show
+this sufficiently.</p>
+<p>"The sacraments, and not preaching, are the sources of divine
+grace." So it is said in the Advertisement prefixed to the first
+volume of the Tracts for the Times, in exact conformity with the
+preamble to the resolutions, which I have already quoted. But the
+only security for the efficacy of the sacraments, is the
+apostolical commission of the bishops, and under them, of the
+presbyters of the Church. So it is said in the preamble to the
+resolutions. These two doctrines are the foundation of the whole
+system. God's grace, and our salvation, come to us principally
+through the virtue of the sacraments; the virtue of the sacraments
+depends on the apostolical succession of those who administer them.
+The clergy, therefore, thus holding in their hands the most
+precious gifts of the Church, acquire naturally the title of the
+Church itself; the Church, as possessed of so mysterious a virtue
+as to communicate to the only means of salvation their saving
+efficacy, becomes at once an object of the deepest reverence. What
+wonder if to a body endowed with so transcendant a gift, there
+should be given also the spirit of wisdom to discern all truth; so
+that the solemn voice of the Church in its creeds, and in the
+decrees of its general councils, must be received as the voice of
+God himself. Nor can such a body be supposed to have commended any
+practices or states of life winch are not really excellent; and the
+duty either of all Christians, or of those at least who would
+follow the most excellent way. Fasting, therefore, and the state of
+celibacy, are the one a christian obligation, the other a christian
+perfection. Again, being members of a body so exalted, and
+receiving our very salvation in a way altogether above reason, we
+must be cautious how we either trust to our individual conscience
+rather than to the command of the Church, or how we venture to
+exercise our reason at all in judging of what the Church teaches;
+childlike faith and childlike obedience are the dispositions which
+God most loves. What, then, are they who are not of the Church, who
+do not receive the Sacraments from those who can alone give them
+their virtue? Surely they are aliens from God, they cannot claim
+his covenanted mercies; and the goodness which may be apparent in
+them, may not be real goodness; God may see that it is false,
+though to us it appears sincere; but it is certain that they do not
+possess the only appointed means of salvation; and therefore, we
+must consider their state as dangerous, although, we may not
+venture to condemn them.</p>
+<p>I have not consciously misrepresented the system of Mr. Newman
+and his friends in a single particular; I have not, to my
+knowledge, expressed any one of their tenets invidiously. An
+attentive reader may deduce, I think, all the Subordinate points in
+their teaching from some one or more of the principles which I have
+given; but I have not wilfully omitted any doctrine of importance.
+And, in every point, the opposition to what I may be allowed to
+call the protestantism of the nineteenth century is so manifest,
+that we cannot but feel that the peculiar character of the system
+is to be traced to what I have before noticed--the extreme
+antipathy of its founders to the spirit which they felt to be
+predominant in their own age and country.</p>
+<p>It is worth our while to observe this, because fear and passion
+are not the surest guides to truth, and the rule of contraries is
+not the rule of wisdom. Other men have been indignant against the
+peculiar evils of their own time, and from their strong impression
+of these have seemed to lose sight of its good points; but Mr.
+Newman and his friends appear to hate the nineteenth century for
+its own sake, and to proscribe all belonging to it, whether good or
+bad, simply because it does belong to it.--This diseased state of
+mind is well shown by the immediate occasion of the organization of
+their party. Mr. Perceval tells us that it was the Act for the
+dissolution of some of the Irish bishoprics, passed in 1833, winch
+first made the authors of the Tracts resolve to commence their
+publication. Mr. Perceval himself cannot even now speak of that Act
+temperately; he calls it "a wanton act of sacrilege," "a monstrous
+act," "an outrage upon the Church;" and his friends, it may be
+presumed, spoke of it at the time in language at least equally
+vehement. Now, I am not expressing any opinion upon the justice or
+expediency of that Act; it was opposed by many good men, and its
+merits or demerits were fairly open to discussion; but would any
+fair and sensible person speak of it with such extreme abhorrence
+as it excited in the minds of Mr. Perceval and his friends? The Act
+deprived the Church of no portion of its property; it simply
+ordered a different distribution of it, with the avowed object on
+the part of its framers of saving the Church from the odium and the
+danger of exacting Church Rates from the Roman Catholics. It did
+nothing more than what, according to the constitution of the
+Churches of England and Ireland, was beyond all question within its
+lawful authority to do. The King's supremacy and the sovereignty of
+Parliament may be good or bad, but they are undoubted facts in the
+constitution of the Church of England, and have been so for nearly
+three hundred years. I repeat that I am stating no opinion as to
+the merits of the Irish Church Act of 1833; I only contend, that no
+man of sound judgment would regard it as "a monstrous act," or as
+"a wanton sacrilege." It bore upon it no marks of flagrant tyranny:
+nor did it restrain the worship of the Church, nor corrupt its
+faith, nor command or encourage anything injurious to men's souls
+in practice. Luther was indignant at the sale of indulgences; and
+his horror at the selling Church pardons for money was, by God's
+blessing, the occasion of the Reformation. The occasion of the new
+counter-reformation was the abolition of a certain number of
+bishoprics, that their revenues might be applied solely to church
+purposes; and that the Church might so be saved from a scandal and
+a danger. The difference of the exciting cause of the two movements
+gives the measure of the difference between the Reformation of
+1517, and the views and objects of Mr. Newman and his friends.</p>
+<p>There are states of nervous excitement, when the noise of a
+light footstep is distracting. In such a condition were the authors
+of the Tracts in 1833, and all their subsequent proceedings have
+shown that the disorder was still upon them. Beset by their horror
+of the nineteenth century, they sought for something most opposite
+to it, and therefore they turned to what they called Christian
+antiquity. Had they judged of their own times fairly, had they
+appreciated the good of the nineteenth century as well as its evil,
+they would have looked for their remedy not to the second or third
+or fourth centuries, but the first; they would have tried to
+restore, not the Church of Cyprian, or Athanasius, or Augustine,
+but the Church of St. Paul and of St. John. Now, this it is most
+certain that they have not done. Their appeal has been not to
+Scripture, but to the opinions and practices of the dominant party
+in the ancient Church. They have endeavoured to set those opinions
+and practices, under the name of apostolical tradition, on a level
+with the authority of the Scriptures. But their unfortunate
+excitement has made them fail of doing even what they intended to
+do. It may be true that all their doctrines may be found in the
+writings of those whom they call the Fathers; but the effect of
+their teaching is different because its proportions are altered.
+Along with their doctrines, there are other points and another
+spirit prominent in the writings of the earlier Christians, which
+give to the whole a different complexion. The Tracts for the Times
+do not appear to me to represent faithfully the language of
+Christian antiquity; they are rather its caricature.</p>
+<p>Still more is this the case, when we compare the language of Mr.
+Newman and his friends with that of the great divines of the Church
+of England. Granting that many of these believed firmly in
+apostolical succession; that one or two may have held general
+councils to be infallible; that some, provoked by the extravagances
+of the puritans, have spoken over-strongly about the authority of
+tradition; yet the whole works even of those who agree with. Mr.
+Newman in these points, give a view of Christianity different from
+that of the Tracts, because these points, which in the Tracts stand
+forward without relief, are in our old divines tempered by the
+admixture of other doctrines, which, without contradicting them, do
+in fact alter their effect. This applies most strongly, perhaps, to
+Hooker and Taylor; but it holds good also of Bull and Pearson.
+Pearson's exposition of the article in the Creed relating to the
+Holy Catholic Church is very different from the language of Mr.
+Newman: it is such as, with perhaps one single exception, might be
+subscribed by a man who did not believe in apostolical
+succession<a name="FNanchor2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2">[2]</a>.
+Again, Pearson is so far from making the creeds an independent
+authority, co-ordinate with Scripture, that he declares, contrary,
+I suppose, to all probability, that the Apostles' Creed itself was
+but a deduction from our present Scriptures of the New
+Testament<a name="FNanchor3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3">[3]</a>.
+Undoubtedly the divines of the seventeenth century are more in
+agreement with the Tracts than the Reformers are; but it is by no
+means true that this agreement is universal. There is but one set
+of writers whose minds are exactly represented by Mr. Newman and
+his friends, and these are the nonjurors.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor2">[2]</a>
+The sixth and last mark which he gives of the unity of the Church
+is, "the unity of discipline and government." "All the Churches of
+God have the same pastoral guides appointed, authorized,
+sanctified, and set apart by the appointment of God, by the
+direction of the Spirit, to direct and lead the people of God in
+the same way of eternal salvation; as, therefore, there is no
+Church where there is no order, no ministry, so where the same
+order and ministry is, there is the same Church. And this is the
+unity of regiment and discipline." Pearson on the Creed, Art. IX.
+p. 341, seventh edit. fol. 1701. It would be easy to put a
+construction upon this paragraph which I could agree with; but I
+suppose that Pearson meant what I hold to be an error. Yet how
+gently and generally is it expressed; and this doubtful paragraph
+stands alone amidst seventeen folio pages on the article of the
+Holy Catholic Church. And in his conclusion, where he delivers what
+"every one ought to intend when they profess to believe the Holy
+Catholic Church," there is not a word about its government; nor is
+Pearson one of those interpreters who pervert the perfectly certain
+meaning of the word "Catholic" to favour their own notions about
+episcopacy. I could cordially subscribe to every word of this
+conclusion.</blockquote>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor3">[3]</a>
+"To believe, therefore, as the word stands in the front of the
+Creed, ... is to assent to the whole and every part of it as to a
+certain and infallible truth revealed by God, ... and delivered
+unto us in the writings of the blessed apostles and prophets
+immediately inspired, moved, and acted by God, out of whose
+writings this brief sum of necessary points of faith was first
+collected." (P. 12.) And in the paragraph immediately preceding,
+Pearson had said, "The household of God is built upon the
+foundation of the apostles and prophets, who are continued unto us
+only in their writings, and by them alone convoy unto us the truths
+which they received from God, upon whose testimony we believe." It
+appears, therefore, that Pearson not only subscribed the 6th
+Article of the Church of England, but also believed
+it.</blockquote>
+<p>Many reasons, therefore, concur to make it doubtful whether the
+authors of the Tracts have discovered the true remedy for the evils
+of their age; whether they have really inculcated "something better
+and deeper than satisfied the last century." The violent prejudice
+which previously possessed them, and the strong feelings of passion
+and fear which led immediately to their first systematic
+publications, must in the first instance awaken a suspicion as to
+their wisdom; and this suspicion becomes stronger when we find
+their writings different from the best of those which they profess
+to admire, and bearing a close resemblance only to those of the
+nonjurors. A third consideration is also of much weight--that their
+doctrines do not enforce any great points of moral or spiritual
+perfection which other Christians had neglected; nor do they, in
+any especial manner, "preach Christ." In this they offer a striking
+contrast to the religious movement, if I may so call it, which
+began some years since in the University at Cambridge. That
+movement, whatever human alloy might have mingled with it, bore on
+it most clear evidence that it was in the main God's work. It
+called upon men to turn from sin and be reconciled to God; it
+emphatically preached Christ crucified. But Mr. Newman and his
+friends have preached as their peculiar doctrine, not Christ but
+the Church; we must go even farther and say, not the Church, but
+themselves. What they teach has no moral or spiritual excellence in
+itself; but it tends greatly to their own exaltation. They exalt
+the sacraments highly, but all that they say of their virtue, all
+their admiration of them as so setting forth the excellence of
+faith, inasmuch as in them the whole work is of God, and man has
+only to receive and believe, would be quite as true, and quite as
+well-grounded, if they were to abandon altogether that doctrine
+which it is their avowed object especially to enforce--the doctrine
+of apostolical succession. Referring again to the preamble of their
+original resolutions, already quoted, we see that the two first
+articles alone relate to our Lord and to his Sacraments; the third,
+which is the great basis of their system, relates only to the
+Clergy. Doubtless, if apostolical succession be God's will, it is
+our duty to receive it and to teach it; but a number of clergymen,
+claiming themselves to have this succession, and insisting that,
+without it, neither Christ nor Christ's Sacraments will save us,
+do, beyond all contradiction, preach themselves, and magnify their
+own importance. They are quite right in doing so, if God has
+commanded it; but such preaching has no manifest warrant of God in
+it; if it be according to God, it stands alone amongst his
+dispensations; his prophets and his apostles had a different
+commission. "We preach," said St. Paul, "not ourselves, but Christ
+Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake." It is
+certain that the enforcing apostolical succession as the great
+object of our teaching is precisely to do that very thing which St.
+Paul was commissioned not to do.</p>
+<p>This, to my mind, affords a very great presumption that the
+peculiar doctrines of Mr. Newman and his friends, those which they
+make it their professed business to inculcate, are not of God. I am
+anxious not to be misunderstood in saying this. Mr. Newman and his
+friends preach many doctrines which are entirely of God; as
+Christians, as ministers of Christ's Church, they preach God's
+word; and thus, a very large portion of their teaching is of God,
+blessed both to their hearers and to themselves. Nay, even amongst
+the particular objects to which their own "Resolutions" pledge
+them, one is indeed most excellent--"the revival of daily common
+prayer, and more frequent participation of the Lord's Supper." This
+is their merit, not as Christians generally, but as a party, (I use
+the word in no offensive sense;) in this respect their efforts have
+done, and are doing great good. But they have themselves declared
+that they will especially set themselves to preach apostolical
+succession; and it is with reference to this, that I charge them
+with "preaching themselves;" it was of this I spoke, when I said
+that there was a very great presumption that their peculiar
+doctrines were not of God.</p>
+<p>Again, the system which they hold up as "better and deeper than
+satisfied the last century" is a remedy which has been tried once
+already: and its failure was so palpable, that all the evil of the
+eighteenth century was but the reaction from that enormous evil
+which this remedy, if it be one, had at any rate been powerless to
+cure. Apostolical succession, the dignity of the Clergy, the
+authority of the Church, were triumphantly maintained for several
+centuries; and their full development was coincident, to say the
+least, with the corruption alike of Christ's religion and Christ's
+Church. So far were they from tending to realize the promises of
+prophecy, to perfect Christ's body up to the measure of the stature
+of Christ's own fulness, that Christ's Church declined during their
+ascendancy more and more;--she fell alike from truth and from
+holiness; and these doctrines, if they did not cause the evil, were
+at least quite unable to restrain it. For, in whatever points the
+fifteenth century differed from the fourth, it cannot be said that
+it upheld the apostolical succession less peremptorily, or attached
+a less value to Church tradition, and Church authority. I am
+greatly understating the case, but I am content for the present to
+do so: I will not say that Mr. Newman's favourite doctrines were
+the very Antichrist which corrupted Christianity; I will only say
+that they did not prevent its corruption,--that when they were most
+exalted Christian truth and Christian goodness were most
+depressed.</p>
+<p>After all, however, what has failed once may doubtless be
+successful on a second trial: it is within possibility, perhaps,
+that a doctrine, although destitute of all internal evidence
+showing it to come from God, may be divine
+notwithstanding;--revealed for some purposes which we cannot
+fathom, or simply as an exercise of our obedience. All this may be
+so; and if it can be shown to be so, there remains no other course
+than to believe God's word, and obey his commandments; only the
+strength of the external evidence must be in proportion to the
+weakness of the internal. A good man would ask for no sign from
+heaven to assure him that God commands judgment, mercy, and truth;
+whatsoever things are pure, and lovely, and of good report, bear in
+themselves the seal of their origin; a seal which to doubt were
+blasphemy. But the cloud and the lightnings and thunders, and all
+the signs and wonders wrought in Egypt and in the Red Sea, were
+justly required to give divine authority to mere positive
+ordinances, in which, without such external warrant, none could
+have recognised the voice of God. We ask of Mr. Newman and his
+friends to bring some warrant of Scripture for that which they
+declare to be God's will. They speak very positively and say, that
+"the security by our Lord no less expressly authorized for the
+continuance and due application of the Sacrament of the Lord's
+Supper, is the apostolical commission of the bishops, and under
+them the presbyters of the Church." They say that our Lord has
+authorized this "no less expressly" than he has authorized the Holy
+Supper as the mean of partaking in his body and blood. What our
+Lord has said concerning the communion is not truly represented: he
+instituted it as one mean of grace among many; not as<i>the</i>
+mean; neither the sole mean, nor the principal. But allow, for an
+instant, that it was instituted as<i>the</i> mean; and give this
+sense to those well-known and ever-memorable words in which our
+Lord commanded his disciples to eat the bread and drink of the cup,
+in remembrance of him. His words commanding us to do this are
+express; "not less express," we are told, is his "sanction of the
+apostolical commission of the bishops, as the security for the
+continuance and due application of the Sacrament." Surely these
+writers allow themselves to pervert language so habitually, that
+they do not consider when, and with regard to whom, they are doing
+it. They say that our Lord has sanctioned the necessity of
+apostolical succession, in order to secure the continuance and
+efficacy of the sacrament, "no less expressly" than he instituted
+the sacrament itself. If they had merely asserted that he had
+sanctioned the necessity of apostolical succession, we might have
+supposed that, by some interpretation of their own, they implied
+his sanction of it, from words which, to other men, bore no such
+meaning. But in saying that he has "expressly sanctioned it," they
+have, most unconsciously, I trust, ascribed their own words to our
+Lord; they make Mm to say what he has not said, unless they can
+produce<a name="FNanchor4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4">[4]</a> some
+other credible record of his words besides the books of the four
+evangelists and the apostolical epistles.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor4">[4]</a>
+"Scripture alone contains what remains to us of our Lord's
+teaching. If there be a portion of revelation sacred beyond other
+portions, distinct and remote in its nature from the rest, it must
+be the words and works of the eternal Son Incarnate. He is the one
+Prophet of the Church, as he is our one Priest and King. His
+history is as far above any other possible revelation, as heaven is
+above earth: for in it we have literally the sight of Almighty God
+in his judgments, thoughts, attributes, and deeds, and his mode of
+dealing with us his creatures. Now, this special revelation is in
+Scripture, and in Scripture only: tradition has no part in
+it."--<i>Newman's Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the
+Church</i>. 1837. Pp. 347, 348.</blockquote>
+<p>That their statement was untrue, and being untrue, that it is a
+most grave matter to speak untruly of our Lord's commands, are
+points absolutely certain. But if they recall the assertion, as to
+the expressness of our Lord's sanction, and mean to say, that his
+sanction is implied, and may be reasonably deduced from what he has
+said, then I answer, that the deduction ought to be clear, because
+the doctrine in itself bears on it no marks of having had Christ
+for its author. Yet so far is it from true, that the necessity of
+apostolical succession, in order to give efficacy to the sacrament,
+may be clearly deduced from any recorded words of our Lord, that
+there are no words<a name="FNanchor5"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_5">[5]</a> of his from which it can be deduced, either
+probably or plausibly; none with which it has any, the faintest,
+connexion; none from which it could be even conjectured that such a
+tenet had ever been in existence. I am not speaking, it will be
+observed, of apostolical succession simply; but of the necessity of
+apostolical succession, as a security for the efficacy of the
+sacrament. That this doctrine comes from God, is a position
+altogether without evidence, probability, or presumption, either
+internal or external.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor5">[5]</a>
+Since this was written, I have found out, what certainly it was
+impossible to anticipate beforehand, that our Lord's words, "Do
+this in remembrance of me," are supposed to teach the doctrine of
+the priest's consecrating power. But the passage to which I refer
+is so remarkable that I must quote it in its author's own words.
+Mr. Newman, for the tract is apparently one of his, observes, that
+three out of the four Gospels make no mention of the raising of
+Lazarus. He then goes on, "As the raising of Lazarus is true,
+though not contained at all in the first three Gospels; so the gift
+of consecrating the Eucharist may have been committed by Christ to
+the priesthood, though only indirectly taught in any of the four.
+Will you say I am arguing against our own Church, which says the
+Scripture 'contains all things necessary to be believed to
+salvation?' Doubtless, Scripture <i>contains</i> all things
+necessary to be <i>believed</i>; but there may be things
+<i>contained</i> which are not <i>on the surface</i>, and things
+which belong to the <i>ritual</i>, and not to <i>belief</i>. Points
+of faith may lie <i>under</i> the surface: points of observance
+need not be in Scripture <i>at all</i>. The consecrating power is a
+point of ritual, yet it <i>is</i> indirectly taught in Scripture,
+though not brought out, when Christ said, 'Do this,' for he spake
+to the apostles, who were priests, not to his disciples
+generally."--<i>Tracts for the Times</i>. Tract 85, p. 46.<br>
+<br>
+This passage is indeed characteristic of the moral and intellectual
+faults which I have alluded to as marking the writings of the
+supporters of Mr. Newman's system. But what is become of the
+assertion, that this security of the apostolical commission was
+"expressly authorized" by our Lord, when it is admitted that it is
+only indirectly taught in Scripture? And what becomes of the
+notion, that what our Lord did or instituted may be learned from
+another source than Scripture, when Mr. Newman has most truly
+stated, in the passage quoted in the preceding note, that our
+Lord's history, the history of his words and works, "is in
+Scripture, and Scripture only: tradition has no part in it?" I pass
+over the surprising state of mind which could imagine a distinction
+between things necessary to be believed, and necessary to be done;
+and could conceive such a distinction to be according to the
+meaning of our article. It would appear that this shift has been
+since abandoned, and others, no way less extraordinary, have been
+attempted in its place; for an extraordinary process it must be
+which tries to reconcile Mr. Newman's opinions with the declaration
+of the sixth article. But now for Mr. Newman's scriptural proof,
+that our Lord "committed to the priesthood the gift of consecrating
+the Eucharist." "When Christ said, 'Do this,' he spake to the
+apostles, who were priests, not to his disciples generally." This
+would prove too much, for it would prove that none but the clergy
+were ordered to receive the communion at all: the words, "Do this,"
+referring, not to any consecration, of which there had been no word
+said, but to the eating the bread, and drinking of the cup. Again,
+when St. Paul says, "the cup which we bless,'--the bread which we
+break," it is certain that the word "we," does not refer to himself
+and Sosthenes, or to himself and Barnabas, but to himself and the
+whole Corinthian church; for he immediately goes on, "for we, the
+whole number of us," ([Greek: oi polloi] compare Romans xii. 5,)
+"are one body, for we all are partakers of the one bread." Thirdly,
+Tertullian expressly contrasts the original institution of our Lord
+with the church practice of his own day, in this very point.
+"Eucharisti&aelig; sacramentum et in tempore victus, et omnibus
+mandatum a Domino, etiam antelucanis coetibus nee de aliorum manu
+quam pr&aelig;ridentium sumimus." (<i>De Coron&aacute; Mililis</i>,
+3.) I know that Tertullian believes the alteration to have been
+founded upon an apostolical tradition; but he no less names it as a
+change from the original institution of our Lord; nor does he
+appear to consider it as more than a point of order. Lastly, what
+shadow of probability is there, and is it not begging the whole
+question, to assume that our Lord spoke to his apostles as priests,
+and not as representatives of the whole Christian church? His
+language makes no distinction between his disciples and those who
+were without; it repels it as dividing his disciples from each
+other. His twelve disciples were the apostles of the church, but
+they were not priests. In such matters our Lord's words apply
+exactly, "One is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are
+brethren."</blockquote>
+<p>On the whole, then, the movement in the church, excited by Mr.
+Newman and his friends, appears to be made in a false direction,
+and to be incapable of satisfying the feeling which prompted it. I
+have not noticed other presumptions against it, arising from the
+consequences to which the original doctrines of the party have
+since led, or from certain moral and intellectual faults which have
+marked the writings of its supporters. It is enough to say, that
+the movement originated in minds highly prejudiced beforehand, and
+under the immediate influence of passion and fear; that its
+doctrines, as a whole, resemble the teaching of no set of writers
+entitled to respect, either in the early church, or in our own;
+that they tend, not to Christ's glory, or to the advancement of
+holiness, but simply to the exaltation of the clergy; and that they
+are totally unsupported by the authority of Scripture. They are a
+plant, therefore, which our heavenly Father has not planted; a
+speaking in the name of the Lord what the Lord has not commanded;
+hay and stubble, built upon the foundation of Christ, which are
+good for nothing but to be burned.</p>
+<p>I have spoken quite confidently of the total absence of all
+support in Scripture for Mr. Newman's favourite doctrine of "the
+necessity of apostolical succession, in order to ensure the effect
+of the sacraments." This doctrine is very different from that of
+the Divine appointment of episcopacy as a form of government, or
+even from that of the exclusive lawfulness of that episcopacy which
+has come down by succession from the apostles. Much less is it to
+be confounded with any notions, however exalted, of the efficacy of
+the sacraments, even though carried to such a length as we read of
+in the early church, when living men had themselves baptized as
+proxies for the dead, and when a portion of the wine of the
+communion was placed by the side of a corpse in the grave. Such
+notions may be superstitious and unscriptural, as indeed they are,
+but they are quite distinct from a belief in the necessity of a
+human priest to give the sacraments their virtue. And, without
+going to such lengths as this, men may overestimate the efficacy of
+the sacraments, to the disparagement of prayer, and preaching, and
+reading the Scriptures, and yet may be perfectly clear from the
+opinion which makes this efficacy depend immediately on a human
+administrator. And so again, men may hold episcopacy to be divine,
+and the episcopacy of apostolical succession to be the only true
+episcopacy, but yet they may utterly reject the notion of its being
+essential to the efficacy of the sacraments. It is of this last
+doctrine only that I assert, in the strongest terms, that it is
+wholly without support in Scripture, direct or indirect, and that
+it does not minister to godliness.</p>
+<p>In truth, Mr. Newman and his friends are well aware that the
+Scripture will not support their doctrine, and therefore it is that
+they have proceeded to such, lengths in upholding the authority not
+of the creeds only, but of the opinions and practices of the
+ancient church generally; and that they try to explain away the
+clear language of our article, that nothing "which is neither read
+therein (i.e. in holy Scripture,) nor may be proved thereby, is to
+be required of any man that it should be believed as an article of
+faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation." It would
+be one of the most unaccountable phenomena of the human mind, were
+any man fairly to come to the conclusion that the Scriptures and
+the early church were of equal authority, and that the authority of
+both were truly divine. If any men resolve to maintain doctrines
+and practices as of divine authority, for which the Scripture
+offers no countenance, they of course are driven to maintain the
+authority of the church in their own defence; and where they have
+an interest in holding any particular opinion, its falsehood,
+however palpable, is unhappily no bar to its reception. Otherwise
+it would seem that the natural result of believing the early church
+to be of equal authority with the Scripture, would be to deny the
+inspiration of either. For two things so different in several
+points as the Christianity of the Scriptures and that of the early
+church, may conceivably be both false, but it is hard to think that
+they can both be perfectly true.</p>
+<p>I am here, however, allowing, what is by no means true, without
+many qualifications, that Mr. Newman's system is that of the early
+church. The historical inquiry as to the doctrines of the early
+church would lead me into far too wide a field; I may only notice,
+in passing, how many points require to be carefully defined in
+conducting such an inquiry; as, for instance, what we mean by the
+term "early church," as to time; for that may be fully true of the
+church in the fourth century, which is only partially true of it in
+the third, and only in a very slight degree true of it in the
+second or first. And again, what do we mean by the term "early
+church," as to persons; for a few eminent writers are not even the
+whole clergy; neither is it by any means to be taken on their
+authority that their views were really those of all the bishops and
+presbyters of the Christian world; but if they were, the clergy are
+not the church, nor can their judgments be morally considered as
+the voice of the church, even if we were to admit that they could
+at any time constitute its voice legally. But, for my present
+purpose, we may take for granted that Mr. Newman's system as to the
+pre-eminence of the sacraments, and the necessity of apostolical
+succession to give them their efficacy, was the doctrine of the
+early church; then I say that this system is so different from that
+of the New Testament, that to invest the two with equal authority
+is not to make the church system divine, but to make the scriptural
+system human; or, at the best, perishable and temporary, like the
+ceremonial law of Moses. Either the church system must be supposed
+to have superseded the scriptural system<a name=
+"FNanchor6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6">[6]</a>, and its unknown
+authors are the real apostles of our present faith, in which case,
+we do not see why it should not be superseded in its turn, and why
+the perfect manifestation of Christianity should not be found in
+the Koran, or in any still later system; or else neither of the two
+systems can be divine, but the one is merely the human production
+of the first century, the other that of the second and third. If
+this be so, it is clearly open to all succeeding centuries to adopt
+whichever of the two they choose, or neither.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor6">[6]</a>
+This, it is well known, has been most ably maintained by Rothe,
+(<i>Artf&atilde;nge der Christlichen Kirche und ihrer
+Verfassung</i>, Wittenberg, 1837,) with respect to the origin of
+episcopacy. He contends that it was instituted by the surviving
+apostles after the destruction of Jerusalem, as an intentional
+change from the earlier constitution of the church, in order to
+enable it to meet the peculiar difficulties and dangers of the
+times. To this belongs the question of the meaning of the
+expression, [Greek: oi tais deuterais ton Apostolon diataxesi
+parakolouthaekotes], in the famous Fragments of Iren&aelig;us,
+published by Pfaff, from a manuscript in the library of Turin, and
+to be found in the Venice edition of Iren&aelig;us, 1734, vol. ii.
+<i>Fragmentorum</i>, p. 10. But then Rothe would admit that if the
+apostles altered what they themselves had appointed, it would
+follow that neither their earlier nor their later institutions were
+intended to be for all times and all places, but were simply
+adapted to a particular state of circumstances, and were alterable
+when that state was altered: in short, whatever institutions the
+apostles changed were shown to be essentially changeable; otherwise
+their early institution was defective, which cannot be conceived.
+And thus it may well be that the early church may have altered, in
+some points, the first institutions of the apostles, and may have
+been guided by God's Spirit in doing so; but the error consists in
+believing that the now institutions were to be of necessity more
+permanent than those which they succeeded; in supposing that either
+the one or the other belong to the eternal truths and laws of
+Christ's religion, when they belong, in fact, to the essentially
+changeable regulations of his church.</blockquote>
+<p>To such consequences are those driven who maintain the divine
+authority of the system of Mr. Newman. Assuredly the thirst for
+"something deeper and truer than satisfied the last century," will
+not be allayed by a draught so scanty and so vapid; but after the
+mirage has beguiled and disappointed him for a season, the
+traveller presses on the more eagerly to the true and living
+well.</p>
+<p>In truth, the evils of the last century were but the inevitable
+fruits of the long ascendency of Mr. Newman's favourite principles.
+Christ's religion had been corrupted in the long period before the
+Reformation, but it had ever retained many of its main truths, and
+it was easy, when the appeal was once made to Scripture, to sweep
+away the corruptions, and restore it in its perfect form; but
+Christ's church had been destroyed so long and so completely, that
+its very idea was all but lost, and to revive it actually was
+impossible. What had been known under that name,--I am speaking of
+Christ's church, be it observed, as distinguished from Christ's
+religion,--was so great an evil, that, hopeless of drawing any good
+from it, men looked rather to Christ's religion as all in all; and
+content with having destroyed the false church, never thought that
+the scheme of Christianity could not be perfectly developed without
+the restoration of the true one. But the want was deeply felt, and
+its consequences were deplorable. At this moment men are truly
+craving something deeper than satisfied the last century; they
+crave to have the true church of Christ, which the last century was
+without. Mr. Newman perceives their want, and again offers them
+that false church which is worse than none at all.</p>
+<p>The truths of the Christian religion are to be sought for in the
+Scripture alone; they are the same at all times and in all
+countries. With the Christian church it is otherwise; the church is
+not a revelation concerning the unchangeable and eternal God, but
+an institution to enable changeable man to apprehend the
+unchangeable. Because man is changeable, the church is also
+changeable; changeable, not in its object, which is for ever one
+and the same, but in its means for effecting that object;
+changeable in its details, because the same treatment cannot suit
+various diseases, various climates, various constitutional
+peculiarities, various external influences.</p>
+<p>The Scripture, then, which is the sole and direct authority for
+all the truths of the Christian religion, is not in the same way,
+an authority for the constitution and rules of the Christian
+church; that is, it does not furnish direct authority, but guides
+us only by analogy: or it gives us merely certain main principles,
+which we must apply to our own various circumstances. This is shown
+by the remarkable fact, that neither our Lord nor his apostles have
+left any commands with respect to the constitution and
+administration of the church generally. Commands in abundance they
+have left us on moral matters; and one commandment of another kind
+has been added, the commandment, namely, to celebrate the Lord's
+Supper. "Do this in remembrance of me," are our Lord's words; and
+St. Paul tells us, if we could otherwise have doubted it, that this
+remembrance is to be kept up for ever. "As often as ye eat that
+bread or drink that cup ye do show the Lord's death <i>till he
+come</i>." This is the one perpetual ordinance of the Christian
+church, and this is commanded to be kept perpetually. But its other
+institutions are mentioned historically, as things done once, but
+not necessarily to be always repeated: nay, they are mentioned
+without any details, so that we do not always know what their exact
+form was in their original state, and cannot, therefore, if we
+would, adopt it as a perpetual model. Nor is it unimportant to
+observe that institutions are recorded as having been created on
+the spur of the occasion, if I may so speak, not as having formed a
+part of an original and universal plan. A great change in the
+character of the deacon, or subordinate minister's office, is
+introduced in consequence of the complaints of the Hellenist
+Christians: the number of the apostles is increased by the addition
+of Paul and Barnabas, not appointed, as Matthias had been, by the
+other apostles themselves, but by the prophets and teachers of the
+church of Antioch. Again, the churches founded by St. Paul were
+each, at first, placed by him under the government of several
+presbyters; but after his imprisonment at Rome, finding that they
+were become greatly corrupted, he sends out single persons, in two
+instances, with full powers to remodel these churches, and with
+authority to correct the presbyters themselves: yet it does not
+appear that these especial<a name="FNanchor7"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_7">[7]</a> visitors were to alter permanently the
+earlier constitution of the churches; nor that they were sent
+generally to all the churches which St. Paul had founded. Indeed,
+it appears evident from the epistle of Clement, that the original
+constitution of the church of Corinth still subsisted in his time;
+the government was still vested not in one man, but in many<a name=
+"FNanchor8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8">[8]</a>. Yet a few years
+later the government of a single man, as we see from Ignatius, was
+become very general; and Ignatius, as is well known, wishes to
+invest it with absolute power<a name="FNanchor9"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_9">[9]</a>. I believe that he acted quite wisely
+according to the circumstances of the church at that period; and
+that nothing less than a vigorous unity of government could have
+struggled with the difficulties and dangers of that crisis. But no
+man can doubt that the system which Ignatius so earnestly
+recommends was very different from that which St. Paul had
+instituted fifty or sixty years earlier.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor7">[7]</a>
+The command, "to appoint elders in every city," is given to Titus,
+according to Paul's practice when he first formed churches of the
+Gentiles (Acts xiv, 2.) Nor did Timothy, or Titus, remain
+permanently at Ephesus, or in Crete. Timothy, when St. Paul's
+second Epistle was written to him, was certainly not at Ephesus,
+but apparently in Pontus; and Titus, at the same period, was gone
+to Dalmatia: nor indeed was he to remain in Crete beyond the summer
+of the year in which St. Paul's Epistle was written; he was to meet
+Paul, in the winter, at Nicopolis.</blockquote>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor8">[8]</a>
+Only elders are spoken of as governing the church of Corinth. It is
+impossible to understand clearly the nature of the contest, and of
+the party against which Clement's Epistle is directed. Where he
+wishes the heads of that party to say, [Greek: ei di eme stasis kai
+eris kai schismata, ekchoro, apeimi, ou ean, boulaesthe, kai poio,
+ta, prostassomena upo tou plaethous], c. 54, it would seem as if
+they had been endeavouring to exercise a despotic authority over
+the church, in defiance of the general feeling, as well as of the
+existing government, like those earlier persons at Corinth, whom
+St. Paul describes, in his second Epistle, xi. 20; and like
+Diotrephes, mentioned by St. John, 3 Epist. 9, 10. But in a society
+where all power must have depended on the consent of those subject
+to it, how could any one exercise a tyranny against the will of the
+majority, as well as against the authority of the Apostles? And
+[Greek: ta prostassomena upo tou plaethous] must signify, I think,
+"the bidding of the society at large." Compare for this use of
+[Greek: plaethos], Ignatius, Smyrna. 8; Trallian. 1, 8. A
+conjecture might be offered as to the solution of this difficulty,
+but it would lead mo into too long a discussion.</blockquote>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor9">[9]</a>
+Insomuch that he wished all marriages to be solemnized with the
+consent and approbation of the bishop, [Greek: meta gnomaes tou
+episkopou], that they might be "according to God, and not according
+to passion;" [Greek: kapa Theon kai mae kat epithomian].--<i>Ad.
+Polycarp</i>. 5.</blockquote>
+<p>On two points, however,--points not of detail, but of
+principle,--the Scripture does seem to speak decisively. 1st. The
+whole body of the church was to take an active share in its
+concerns; the various faculties of its various members were to
+perform their several parts: it was to be a living society, not an
+inert mass of mere hearers and subjects, who were to be
+authoritatively taught and absolutely ruled by one small portion of
+its members. It is quite consistent with this, that, at particular
+times, the church should centre all its own power and activity in
+the persons of its rulers. In the field, the imperium of the Roman
+consul was unlimited; and even within the city walls, the senate's
+commission in times of imminent danger, released him from all
+restraints of law; the whole power of the state was, for the
+moment, his, and his only. Such temporary despotisms are sometimes
+not expedient merely, but necessary: without them society would
+perish. I do not, therefore, regard Ignatius's epistles as really
+contradictory to the idea of the church conveyed to us in the
+twelfth chapter of St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians: I
+believe that the dictatorship, so to speak, which Ignatius claims
+for the bishop in each church, was required by the circumstances of
+the case; but to change the temporary into the perpetual
+dictatorship, was to subvert the Roman constitution; and to make
+Ignatius's language the rule, instead of the exception, is no less
+to subvert the Christian church. Wherever the language of Ignatius
+is repeated with justice, there the church must either be in its
+infancy, or in its dotage, or in some extraordinary crisis of
+danger; wherever it is repeated, as of universal application, it
+destroys, as in fact it has destroyed, the very life of Christ's
+institution.</p>
+<p>But, 2d, the Christian church was absolutely and entirely, at
+all times, and in all places, to be without a human priesthood.
+Despotic government and priesthood are things perfectly distinct
+from one another. Despotic government might be required, from time
+to time, by this or that portion of the Christian church, as by
+other societies; for government is essentially changeable, and all
+forms, in the manifold varieties of the condition of society, are,
+in their turn, lawful and beneficial. But a priesthood belongs to a
+matter not so varying--the relations subsisting between God and
+man. These relations were fixed for the Christian church from its
+very foundation, being, in fact, no other than the main truths of
+the Christian religion; and they bar, for all time, the very notion
+of an earthly priesthood. They bar it, because they establish the
+everlasting priesthood of our Lord, which leaves no place for any
+other; they bar it, because priesthood is essentially mediation;
+and they establish one Mediator between God and man--the Man Christ
+Jesus. And, therefore, the notion of Mr. Newman and his friends,
+that the sacraments derive their efficacy from the apostolical
+succession of the minister, is so extremely unchristian, that it
+actually deserves to be called anti-christian; for there is no
+point of the priestly office, properly so called, in which the
+claim of the earthly priest is not absolutely precluded. Do we want
+him for sacrifice? Nay, there is no place for him at all; for our
+one atoning Sacrifice has been once offered; and by its virtue we
+are enabled to offer daily our spiritual sacrifices of ourselves,
+which no other man can by possibility offer for us. Do we want him
+for intercession? Nay, there is One who ever liveth to make
+intercession for us, through whom we have access to ([Greek:
+prosalogaen], admission to the presence of) the Father, and for
+whose sake, Paul, and Apollos, and Peter, and things present, and
+things to come, are all ours already. His claim can neither be
+advanced or received without high dishonour to our true Priest and
+to his blessed gospel. If circumcision could not be practised, as
+necessary, by a believer in Christ, without its involving a
+forfeiture of the benefits of Christ's salvation; how much more
+does St. Paul's language apply to the invention of an earthly
+priesthood--a priesthood neither after the order of Aaron, nor yet
+of Melchisedek; unlawful alike under the law and the gospel.</p>
+<p>It is the invention of the human priesthood, which falling in,
+unhappily, with the absolute power rightfully vested in the
+Christian church during the troubles of the second century, fixed
+the exception as the rule, and so in the end destroyed the church.
+It pretended that the clergy were not simply rulers and
+teachers,--offices which, necessarily vary according to the state
+of those who are ruled and taught,--but that they were essentially
+mediators between God and the church; and as this language would
+have sounded too profanely,--for the mediator between God and the
+church can be none but Christ,--so the clergy began to draw to
+themselves the attributes of the church, and to call the church by
+a different name, such as the faithful, or the laity; so that to
+speak of the church mediating for the people did not sound so
+shocking, and the doctrine so disguised found ready acceptance.
+Thus the evil work was consummated; the great majority of the
+members of the church, were virtually disfranchised; the minority
+retained the name, but the character of the institution was utterly
+corrupted.</p>
+<p>To revive Christ's church, therefore, is to expel the antichrist
+of priesthood, (which, as it was foretold of him, "as God, sitteth
+in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God,") and to
+restore its disfranchised members,--the laity,--to the discharge of
+their proper duties in it, and to the consciousness of their
+paramount importance. This is the point which I have dwelt upon in
+the XXXVIII<sup>th</sup> Lecture, and which is closely in
+connection with the point maintained in the XL<sup>th</sup>; and
+all who value the inestimable blessings of Christ's church should
+labour in arousing the laity to a sense of their great share in
+them. In particular, that discipline, which is one of the greatest
+of those blessings, never can, and, indeed, never ought to be
+restored, till the Church resumes its lawful authority, and puts an
+end to the usurpation of its powers by the clergy. There is a
+feeling now awakened amongst the lay members of our Church, which,
+if it can but be rightly directed, may, by God's blessing, really
+arrive at something truer and deeper than satisfied the last
+century, or than satisfied the last seventeen centuries. Otherwise,
+whatever else may be improved, the laity will take care that church
+discipline shall continue to slumber, and they will best serve the
+church by doing so. Much may be done to spread the knowledge of
+Christ's religion; new churches may be built; new ministers
+appointed to preach the word and administer the sacraments; those
+may hear who now cannot hear; many more sick persons may be
+visited; many more children may receive religious instruction: all
+this is good, and to be received with sincere thankfulness; but,
+with a knowledge revealed to us of a still more excellent power in
+Christ's church, and with the abundant promises of prophecy in our
+hands, can we rest satisfied with the lesser and imperfect good,
+which strikes thrice and stays? But, if the zeal of the lay members
+of our Church be directed by the principles of Mr. Newman, then the
+result will be, not merely a lesser good, but one fearfully mixed
+with evil--Christian religion profaned by anti-christian fables,
+Christian holiness marred by superstition and uncharitableness;
+Christian wisdom and Christian sincerity scoffed at, reviled, and
+persecuted out of sight. This is declared to us by the sure voice
+of experience; this was the fruit of the spirit of priestcraft,
+with its accompaniments of superstitious rites and lying
+traditions, in the last decline of the Jewish church; this was the
+fruit of the same spirit, with the same accompaniments, in the long
+decay of the Christian church; although, the indestructible virtue
+of Christ's gospel was manifest in the midst of the evil, and
+Christ, in every age and in every country, has been known with
+saving power by some of his people, and his church, in her worst
+corruptions, has taught many divinest truths, has inculcated many
+holiest virtues.</p>
+<p>When the tide is setting strongly against us, we can scarcely
+expect to make progress; it is enough if we do not drift along with
+it. Mr. Newman's system is now at the flood; it is daily making
+converts; it is daily swelled by many of those who neither love it
+nor understand it in itself, but who hope to make it serve their
+purposes, or who like to swim with the stream. A strong profession,
+therefore, of an opposite system must expect, at the present
+moment, to meet with little favour; nor, indeed, have I any hope of
+turning the tide, which will flow for its appointed season, and its
+ebb does not seem to be at hand. But whilst the hurricane rages,
+those exposed to it may well encourage one another to hold fast
+their own foundations against it; and many are exposed to it in
+whose welfare I naturally have the deepest interest, and in whom
+old impressions may be supposed to have still so much force that I
+may claim from them, at least, a patient hearing. I am anxious to
+show them that Mr. Newman's system is to be opposed not merely on
+negative grounds, as untrue, but as obstructing that perfect and
+positive truth, that perfection of Christ's church, which the last
+century, it may be, neglected, but which I value and desire as
+earnestly as it can be valued and desired by any man alive. My
+great objection to Mr. Newman's system is, that it destroys
+Christ's church, and sets up an evil in its stead. We do not desire
+merely to hinder the evil from occupying the ground, and to leave
+it empty; that has been, undoubtedly, the misfortune, and partly
+the fault of Protestantism; but we desire to build on the holy
+ground a no less holy temple, not out of our own devices, but
+according to the teaching of Christ himself, who has given us the
+outline, and told us what should be its purposes.</p>
+<p>The true church of Christ would offer to every faculty of our
+nature its proper exercise, and would entirely meet all our wants.
+No wise man doubts that the Reformation was imperfect, or that in
+the Romish system there were many good institutions, and practices,
+and feelings, which it would be most desirable to restore amongst
+ourselves. Daily church services, frequent communions, memorials of
+our Christian calling continually presented to our notice, in
+crosses and way-side oratories; commemorations of holy men, of all
+times and countries; the doctrine of the communion of saints
+practically taught; religious orders, especially of women, of
+different kinds, and under different rules, delivered only from the
+snare and sin of perpetual vows; all these, most of which are of
+some efficacy for good, even in a corrupt church, belong no less to
+the true church, and would there be purely beneficial. If Mr.
+Newman's system attracts good and thinking men, because it seems to
+promise them all these things, which in our actual Church are not
+to be found, let them remember, that these things belong to the
+perfect church no less than to that of the Romanists and of Mr.
+Newman, and would flourish in the perfect church far more
+healthily. Or, again, if any man admires Mr. Newman's system for
+its austerities, if he regards fasting as a positive duty, he
+should consider that these might be transferred also to the perfect
+church, and that they have no necessary connexion with the peculiar
+tenets of Mr. Newman. We know that the Puritans were taunted by
+their adversaries for their frequent fasts, and the severity of
+their lives; and they certainly were far enough from agreeing with
+Mr. Newman. Whatever there is of good, or self-denying, or
+ennobling, in his system, is altogether independent of his doctrine
+concerning the priesthood. It is that doctrine which is the
+peculiarity of his system and of Romanism; it is that doctrine
+which constitutes the evil of both, which over-weighs all the good
+accidentally united with it, and makes the systems, as such, false
+and anti-christian. Nor can any human being find in this doctrine
+anything of a beneficial tendency either to his intellectual, his
+moral, or his spiritual nature. If mere reverence be a virtue,
+without reference to its object, let us, by all means, do honour to
+the virtue of those who fell down to the stock of a tree; and let
+us lament the harsh censure which charged them with "having a lie
+in their right hand<a name="FNanchor10"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_10">[10]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_10"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor10">[10]</a> The language which Mr. Newman and his
+friends have allowed themselves to hold, in admiration of what they
+call reverential and submissive faith, might certainly be used in
+defence of the lowest idolatry; what they have dared to call
+rationalistic can plead such high and sacred authority in its
+favour, that if I were to quote some of the language of the "Tracts
+for the Times," and place by the side of it certain passages from
+the New Testament, Mr. Newman and his friends would appear to have
+been writing blasphemy. It seems scarcely possible that they could
+have remembered what is said in St. Matthew xv. 9-20, and who said
+it, when they have called it rationalism to deny a spiritual virtue
+in things that are applied to the body.</blockquote>
+<p>What does the true and perfect church want, that she should
+borrow from the broken cisterns of idolatry? Holding all those
+truths in which the clear voice of God's word is joined by the
+accordant confession of God's people in all ages; holding all the
+means of grace of which she was designed to be the steward--her
+common prayers, her pure preaching, her uncorrupted sacraments, her
+free and living society, her wise and searching discipline, her
+commemorations and memorials of God's mercy and grace, whether
+shown in her Lord himself, or in his and her members;--looking
+lovingly upon her elder sisters, the ancient churches, and
+delighting to be in communion with them, as she hopes that her
+younger sisters, the churches of later days, will delight to be in
+communion with her;--what has she not, that Christ's bride should
+have? what has she not, that Mr. Newman's system can give her? But
+because she loves her Lord, and stands fast in his faith, and has
+been enlightened by his truth, she will endure no other mediator
+than Christ, she will repose her trust only on his word, she will
+worship in the light, and will abhor the words, no less than the
+works, of darkness. Her sisters, the elder churches, she loves and
+respects as she would be herself loved and respected; but she will
+not, and may not, worship them, nor even, for their sakes, believe
+error to be truth, or foolishness to be wisdom. She dare not hope
+that she can be in all things a perfect guide and example to the
+churches that shall come after her; as neither have the churches
+before her been in all things a perfect guide and example to
+herself. She would not impose her yoke upon future generations, nor
+will she submit her own neck to the yoke of antiquity. She honours
+all men, but makes none her idol; and she would have her own
+individual members regard her with honour, but neither would she be
+an idol to them. She dreads especially that sin of which her Lord
+has so emphatically warned her--the sin against the Holy Ghost. She
+will neither lie against him by declaring that he is where his
+fruits are not manifested; nor blaspheme him, by saying that he is
+not where his fruits are. Rites and ordinances may be vain,
+prophets may be false, miracles may be miracles of Satan; but the
+signs of the Holy Spirit, truth and holiness, can never be
+ineffectual, can never deceive, can never be evil; where they are,
+and only where they are, there is God.</p>
+<p>There are states of falsehood and wickedness so monstrous, that,
+to use the language of Eastern mythology, the Destroyer God is
+greater than the Creator or the Preserver, and no good can be
+conceived so great as the destruction of the existing evil. But
+ordinarily in human affairs destruction and creation should go hand
+in hand; as the evergreen shrubs of our gardens do not cast their
+old leaves till the young ones are ready to supply their place.
+Great as is the falsehood of Mr. Newman's system, it would be but
+an unsatisfactory work to clear it away, if we had no positive
+truth to offer in its room. But the thousands of good men whom it
+has beguiled, because it professed to meet the earnest craving of
+their minds for a restoration of Christ's church with power, need
+not fear to open their eyes to its hollowness; like the false
+miracles of fraud or sorcery, it is but the counterfeit of a real
+truth. The restoration of the church, is, indeed, the best
+consummation of all our prayers, and all our labours; it is not a
+dream, not a prospect to be seen only in the remotest distance; it
+is possible, it lies very near us; with God's blessing it is in the
+power of this very generation to begin and make some progress in
+the work. If the many good, and wise, and influential laymen of our
+Church would but awake to their true position and duties, and would
+labour heartily to procure for the church a living organization and
+an effective government, in both, of which the laity should be
+essential members, then, indeed, the church would become a
+reality<a name="FNanchor11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11">[11]</a>.
+This is not Erastianism, or rather, it is not what is commonly
+cried down under that name; it is not the subjection of the church
+to the state, which, indeed, would be a most miserable and most
+unchristian condition; but it would be the deliverance of the
+church, and its exaltation to its own proper sovereignty. The
+members of one particular profession are most fit to administer a
+system in part, most unfit to legislate for it or to govern it: we
+could ill spare the ability and learning of our lawyers, but we
+surely should not wish to have none but lawyers concerned even, in
+the administration of justice, much less to have none but lawyers
+in the government or in parliament. What is true of lawyers with
+regard to the state, is no less true of the clergy with regard to
+the church; indispensable as ministers and advisers, they cannot,
+without great mischief, act as sole judges, sole legislators, sole
+governors. And this is a truth so palpable, that the clergy, by
+pressing such a claim, merely deprive the church of its judicial,
+legislative, and executive functions; whilst the common sense of
+the church will not allow them to exercise these powers, and,
+whilst they assert that no one else may exercise them, the result
+is, that they are not exercised at all, and the essence of the
+church is destroyed.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_11"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor11">[11]</a> The famous saying, "extra ecclesiam nulla
+salus," is, in its idea, a most divine truth; historically and in
+fact it may be, and often has been, a practical falsehood. If the
+truths of Christ's religion were necessarily accessible only to the
+members of some visible church, then it would be true always,
+inasmuch as to be out of the church would then be the same thing as
+to be without Christ; and, as a society, the church ought so to
+attract to itself all goodness, and by its internal organization,
+so to encourage all goodness, that nothing would be without its
+pale but extreme wickedness, or extreme ignorance; and he who were
+voluntarily to forfeit its spiritual advantages, would be guilty of
+moral suicide; so St. Paul calls the church the pillar and ground
+of truth; that is, it was so in its purpose and idea; and he
+therefore conjures Timothy to walk warily in it, and to take heed
+that what ought to be the pillar and ground of truth should not be
+profaned by fables, and so be changed into a pillar of falsehood.
+But to say universally, as an historical fact, that "extra
+ecclesiam nulla salus," may be often to utter one of the worst of
+falsehoods. A ferry is set up to transport men over an unfordable
+river, and it might be truly said that "extra navem nulla salus;"
+there is no other safe way, speaking generally, of getting over;
+but the ferryman has got the plague, and if you go in the boat with
+him, you will catch it and die. In despair, a man plunges into the
+water, and swims across; would not the ferryman be guilty of a
+double falsehood who should call out to this man, "extra navem
+nulla salus," insisting that he had not swum over, when he had, and
+saying that his boat would have carried him safely, whereas it
+would have killed him?</blockquote>
+<p>The first step towards the restoration of the church seems to be
+the revival of the order of deacons; which might be effected
+without any other change in our present system than a repeal of all
+laws, canons, or customs which prohibit a deacon from following a
+secular calling, which confer on him any civil exemptions, or
+subject him to any civil disqualifications. The Ordination Service,
+with the subscription to the Articles, would remain perfectly
+unaltered; and as no deacon can hold any benefice, it is manifest
+that the proposed measure would in no way interfere with the rights
+or duties of the order of presbyters, or priests, which would
+remain precisely what they are at present. But the benefit in large
+towns would be enormous, if, instead of the present system of
+district visiting by private individuals, excellent as that is
+where there is nothing better, we could have a large body of
+deacons, the ordained ministers of the church, visiting the sick,
+managing charitable subscriptions, and sharing with their presbyter
+in those strictly clerical duties, which now, in many cases, are
+too much for the health and powers of the strongest. Yet a still
+greater advantage would be found in the link thus formed between
+the clergy and laity by the revival of an order appertaining in a
+manner to both. Nor would it be a little thing that many who now
+become teachers in some dissenting congregation, not because they
+differ from our Articles, or dislike our Liturgy, but because they
+cannot afford to go to the universities, and have no prospect of
+being maintained by the church, if they were to give up their
+secular callings, would, in all human probability, be glad to join
+the church, as deacons, and would thus be subject to her
+authorities, and would be engaged in her service, instead of being
+aliens to her, if not enemies.</p>
+<p>When we look at the condition of our country: at the poverty and
+wretchedness of so large a portion of the working classes; at the
+intellectual and moral evils which certainly exist among the poor,
+but by no means amongst the poor only; and when we witness the many
+partial attempts to remedy these evils--attempts benevolent indeed
+and wise, so far as they go, but utterly unable to strike to the
+heart of the mischief; can any Christian doubt that here is the
+work for the church of Christ to do; that none else can do it; and
+that with the blessing of her Almighty Head she can? Looking upon
+the chaos around us, one power alone can reduce it into order, and
+fill it with light and life. And does he really apprehend the
+perfections and high calling of Christ's church; does he indeed
+fathom the depths of man's wants, or has he learnt to rise to the
+fulness of the stature of their divine remedy, who comes forward to
+preach to us the necessity of apostolical succession? Grant even
+that it was of divine appointment, still as it is demonstrably and
+palpably unconnected with holiness, as it would be a mere positive
+and ceremonial ordinance, it cannot be the point of most importance
+to insist on; even if it be a sin to neglect this, there are so
+many far weightier matters equally neglected, that it would be
+assuredly no Christian prophesying which were to strive to direct
+our chief attention to this. But the wholly unmoral character of
+this doctrine, which if it were indeed of God, would make it a
+single mysterious exception to all the other doctrines of the
+Gospel, is, God be thanked, not more certain than its total want of
+external evidence; the Scripture disclaims it, Christ himself
+condemns it.</p>
+<p>I have written at considerable length: yet so vast is the
+subject, that I may seem to some to have written superficially, and
+to have left my statements without adequate support. I can only say
+that no one paragraph has been written hastily, nor in fact is
+there one the substance of which has not been for several years in
+my mind; indeed, in many instances, not only the substance, but the
+proofs in detail have been actually written: but to have inserted
+them here would have been impracticable, as they would have been in
+themselves a volume. Neither have I knowingly remained in ignorance
+of any argument which may have been used in defence of Mr. Newman's
+system; I have always desired to know what he and his friends say,
+and on what grounds they say it; although, as I have not read the
+Tracts for the Times regularly, I may have omitted something which
+it would have been important to notice. Finally, in naming Mr.
+Newman as the chief author of the system which I have been
+considering, I have in no degree wished to make the question
+personal; but Mr. Percival's letter authorizes us to consider him
+as one of the authors of it; and as I have never had any personal
+acquaintance with him, I could mention his name with no shock to
+any private feelings either in him or in myself. But I have spoken
+of him simply as the maintainer of certain doctrines, not as
+maintaining them in any particular manner, far less as actuated by
+any particular motives. I believe him to be in most serious error;
+I believe his system to be so destructive of Christ's church, that
+I earnestly pray, and would labour to the utmost of my endeavours
+for its utter overthrow: but on the other hand, I will not be
+tempted to confound the authors of the system with the system
+itself; for I know that the most mischievous errors have been
+promulgated by men who yet have been neither foolish nor wicked;
+and I nothing doubt that there are many points in Mr. Newman, in
+which I might learn truth from his teaching, and should be glad if
+I could come near him in his practice.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>NOTE.</h2>
+<br>
+<p>In order to prevent the possibility of misunderstanding, it is
+proper to repeat what has been often said by others, that the
+English word "priest" has two significations,--the one according to
+its etymology, through the French <i>pr&ecirc;tre</i>, or
+<i>prestre</i>, and the Latin <i>presbyterus</i>, from the Greek
+[Greek: presbuteros]; in which sense it is used in our Liturgy and
+Rubrics, and signifies merely "one belonging to the order of
+Presbyters," as distinguished from the other two orders of bishops
+and deacons. But the other signification of the word "priest," and
+which we use, as I think, more commonly, is the same with the
+meaning of the Latin word <i>sacerdos</i>, and the Greek word
+[Greek: iepeus], and means, "one who stands as a mediator between
+God and the people, and brings them to God by the virtue of certain
+ceremonial acts which he performs for them, and which they could
+not perform for themselves without profanation, because they are at
+a distance from God, and cannot, in their own persons, venture to
+approach towards him." In this sense of the word "priest," the term
+is not applied to the ministers of the Christian church, either by
+the Scripture, or by the authorized formularies of the Church of
+England; although, in the other sense, as synonymous with
+Presbyters, it is used in our Prayer Book repeatedly. Of course,
+not one word of what I have written is meant to deny the lawfulness
+and importance of the order of Presbyters in the church; I have
+only spoken against a priesthood, in the other sense of the word,
+in which a "priest" means "a mediator between God and man;" in that
+sense, in short, in which the word is not a translation of [Greek:
+presbuteros], but [iereus].</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_I."></a>LECTURE I.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>GENESIS iii. 22.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>And the Lord God said, Behold,<br>
+the man is become as one of us,<br>
+to know good and evil</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>This is declared to be man's condition after the Fall. I will
+not attempt to penetrate into that which is not to be entered into,
+nor to pretend to discover all that may be concealed beneath the
+outward, and in many points clearly parabolical, form of the
+account of man's temptation and sin. But that condition to which
+his sin brought him is our condition; with that, undoubtedly, we
+are concerned; that must be the foundation of all sound views of
+human nature; the double fact employed in the word fall is of the
+last importance; the fact on the one hand of our present nature
+being evil, the fact on the other hand that this present nature is
+not our proper nature; that the whole business of our lives is to
+cast it off, and to return to that better and holy nature, which,
+in truth, although not in fact, is the proper nature of man.</p>
+<p>All individual experience, then, and all history begins in
+something which is evil; all our course, whether as individuals or
+as nations, is a progress, an advance, a leaving behind us
+something bad, and a going forwards towards something that is good.
+But individual experience, and history apart from Christianity,
+would make us regard this progress as fearfully uncertain. Clear it
+is that we are in an evil case; we have lost our way; we are like
+men who are bewildered in those endless forests of reeds which line
+some of the great American rivers; if we stay where we are, the
+venomous snakes may destroy us; or the deadly marsh air when night
+comes on will be surely fatal; it is death to remain, but yet if we
+move, we know not what way will lead us out, and it may be that,
+while seeming to advance, we shall but be going round and round,
+and shall at last find ourselves hard by the place from which we
+set out in the beginning. Nay, we may even feel a doubt,--a doubt,
+I say, though not a reasonable belief,--but a doubt which at times
+would press us sorely, whether the tangled thicket in which we are
+placed has any end at all; whether our fond notions of a clear and
+open space, a pure air, and a fruitful and habitable country, are
+not altogether merely imaginary; whether the whole world be not
+such a region of death as the spot in which we are actually
+prisoned; whether there remains any thing for us, but to curse our
+fate, and lie down and die. Under such circumstances, although we
+should admire the spirit which hoped against hope; which would make
+an effort for deliverance; which would, at any rate, flee from the
+actual evil, although, other evil might receive him after all his
+struggles; yet we could forgive those who yielded at once to their
+fate, and who sat down quietly to wait for their death, without the
+unavailing labour of a struggle to avoid it.</p>
+<p>But when the declaration has been made to us by God himself,
+that this dismal swamp in which we are prisoners is but an
+infinitely small portion of his universe, that there do exist all
+those goodly forms which we fancied; and more, when God declares
+too that we were in the first instance designed to enjoy them; that
+our error brought us into the thicket, having been once out of it;
+that we may escape from it again; nay, much more still, when He
+shows us the true path to escape, and tells us, that the obstacles
+in our way have been cleared, and that he will give us strength to
+accomplish, the task of escaping, and will guide us that we do not
+miss the track; then what shall we say to those who insist upon,
+remaining where they are, but that they are either infatuated, or
+indolent and cowardly even to insanity; that they are refusing
+certain salvation, and are, by their own act, giving themselves
+over to inevitable death.</p>
+<p>This, then, is the truth taught us by the doctrine of the Fall;
+not so much that it is our certain destruction to remain where we
+are, for that our own sense and reason declare to us, if we will
+but listen to them; but that our present position is not that for
+which God designed us, and that to rest satisfied with it is not a
+yielding to an unavoidable necessity, but the indolently or madly
+shrinking from the effort which would give us certain
+deliverance.</p>
+<p>Now it is a part of our present evil condition from which we
+must escape, that we know good and evil. We are in the world where
+evil exists within us, and about us; we cannot but know it. True it
+is, that it was our misfortune to become acquainted with it; this
+noisome wilderness of reeds, this reeking swamp; it would have been
+far happier for us, no doubt, had we never become aware of their
+existence. But that wish is now too late. We are in the midst of
+this dismal place, and the question now is, how to escape from it.
+We may shut our eyes, and say we will not see objects so unsightly;
+but what avails it, if the marsh poison finds its way by other
+senses, if we cannot but draw it in with our breath, and so we must
+die? And such is the case of those who now in this present world
+confound ignorance with innocence. This is a fatal mistaking of our
+present condition for our past; there was a time when to the human
+race ignorance was innocence; but now it is only folly and sin. For
+as I supposed that a man lost in one of those noxious swamps might
+shut his eyes, and so keep himself in some measure in ignorance,
+yet the poison would be taken in with his breath, and so he would
+die: even thus, whilst we would fain shut the eyes of our
+understanding, and would so hope to be in safety, our passions are
+all the time alive and active, and they catch the poison of the
+atmosphere around us, and we are not innocent, but foolishly
+wicked.</p>
+<p>We must needs consider this carefully; for, to say nothing of
+wider questions of national importance, who that sees before him,
+as we must see it, the gradual change from childhood to boyhood,
+who that sees added knowledge often accompanied with added sin, can
+help wishing that the earlier ignorance of evil might still be
+continued; and fancying that knowledge is at best but a doubtful
+blessing?</p>
+<p>But our path is not backwards, but onwards. Israel in the desert
+was hungry and thirsty, while in Egypt he had eaten bread to the
+full; Israel in the desert saw a wide waste of sand, or sandy rock,
+around him, while in Egypt he had dwelt in those green pastures and
+watered gardens to which the Nile had given freshness and life. But
+that wilderness is his appointed way to Canaan; its dreariness must
+be exchanged for the hills and valleys of Canaan, and must not
+drive him back again to the low plain of Egypt. There is a moral
+wilderness which lies in the early part of our Christian course;
+but we must not hope to escape from it but by penetrating through
+it to its furthest side.</p>
+<p>Undoubtedly this place, and other similar places, which receive
+us when we have quitted the state of childhood, and before our
+characters are formed in manhood, do partake somewhat of the
+character of the wilderness; and it is not unnatural that many
+should shrink back from them in fear. We see but too often the
+early beauty of the character sadly marred, its simplicity gone,
+its confidence chilled, its tenderness hardened; where there was
+gentleness, we see roughness and coarseness; where there was
+obedience, we find murmuring, and self-will, and pride; where there
+was a true and blameless conversation, we find now something of
+falsehood, something of profaneness, something of impurity. I can
+well conceive what it must be to a parent to see his child return
+from school, for the first time, with the marks of this grievous
+change upon him: I can well conceive how bitterly he must regret
+having ever sent him to a place of so much, danger; how fondly he
+must look back to the days of his early innocence. And if a parent
+feels thus, what must be our feelings, seeing that this evil has
+been wrought here? Are we not as those who, when pretending to give
+a wholesome draught, have mixed the cup with poison? How can we go
+on upholding a system, the effects of which appear to be so merely
+mischievous?</p>
+<p>Believe me, that such questions must and ought to present
+themselves to the mind of every thinking man who is concerned in
+the management of a school: and I do think that we could not answer
+them satisfactorily, that our work would absolutely be unendurable,
+if we did not bear in mind that our eyes should look forward, and
+not backward; if we did not remember that the victory of fallen man
+is to be sought for, not in innocence, but in tried virtue.
+Comparing only the state of a boy after his first half-year, or
+year, at school, with his earlier state as a child, and our
+reflections on the evil of our system would be bitter indeed; but
+when we compare a boy's state after his first half-year, or year,
+at school, with what it is afterwards; when we see the clouds again
+clearing off; when we find coarseness succeeded again by delicacy;
+hardness and selfishness again broken up, and giving place to
+affection and benevolence; murmuring and self-will exchanged for
+humility and self-denial; and the profane, or impure, or false
+tongue, uttering again only the words of truth and purity; and when
+we see that all these good things are now, by God's grace, rooted
+in the character; that they have been tried, and grown up amidst
+the trial; that the knowledge of evil has made them hate it the
+more, and be the more aware of it; then we can look upon our
+calling with patience, and even with thankfulness; we see that the
+wilderness has been gone through triumphantly, and that its dangers
+have hardened and strengthened the traveller for all his remaining
+pilgrimage.</p>
+<p>For the truth is, that to the knowledge of good and evil we are
+born; and it must come upon us sooner or later. In the common
+course of things, it comes about that age with which we are here
+most concerned. I do not mean that there are not faults in early
+childhood--we know that there are;--but we know also that with the
+strength and rapid growth of boyhood there is a far greater
+development of these faults, and particularly far less of that
+submissiveness which belonged naturally to the helplessness of mere
+childhood. I suppose that, by an extreme care, the period of
+childhood might be prolonged considerably; but still it must end;
+and the knowledge of good and evil, in its full force, must come. I
+believe that this must be; I believe that no care can prevent it,
+and that an extreme attempt at carefulness, whilst it could not
+keep off the disorder, would weaken the strength, of the
+constitution to bear it. But yet you should never forget, and I
+should never forget, that although the evils of schools in some
+respects must be, yet, in proportion as they exceed what must be,
+they do become at once mischievous and guilty. And such, or even
+worse, is the mischief when, with the evil which must be, there is
+not the good which ought to be; for, remember, our condition is to
+know good and evil. If we know only evil, it is the condition of
+hell; and therefore, if schools present an unmixed experience, if
+there is temptation in abundance, but no support against
+temptation, and no examples of overcoming it; if some are losing
+their child's innocence, but none, or very few, are gaining a man's
+virtue; are we in a wholesome state then? or can we shelter
+ourselves under the excuse that our evil is unavoidable, that we do
+but afford, in a mild form, the experience which must be learned
+sooner or later? It is here that we must be acquitted or condemned.
+I can bear to see the overclouding of childish simplicity, if there
+is a reasonable hope that the character so clouded for a time will
+brighten again into Christian holiness. But if we do not see this,
+if innocence is exchanged only for vice, then we have not done our
+part, then the evil is not unavoidable, but our sin: and we may be
+assured, that for the souls so lost, there will be an account
+demanded hereafter both of us and you.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_II."></a>LECTURE II.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>1 CORINTHIANS xiii. 11.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>When I was a child, I spake as a child,<br>
+I understood as a child, I thought as a child;<br>
+but when I became a man, I put away childish things</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>Taking the Apostle's words literally, it might appear that no
+words in the whole range of Scripture were less applicable to the
+circumstances of this particular congregation: for they speak of
+childhood and of manhood; and as all of us have passed the one, so
+a very large proportion of us have not yet arrived at the other.
+But when we consider the passage a little more carefully, we shall
+see that this would be a very narrow and absurd objection. Neither
+the Apostle, nor any one else, has ever stepped directly from
+childhood into manhood; it was his purpose here only to notice the
+two extreme points of the change which had taken place in him,
+passing over its intermediate stages; but he, like all other men,
+must have gone through those stages. There must have been a time in
+his life, as in all ours, when his words, his thoughts, and his
+understanding were neither all childish, nor all manly: there must
+have been a period, extending over some years, in which they were
+gradually becoming the one less and less, and the other more and
+more. And as it suited the purposes of his comparison to look at
+the change in himself only when it was completed, so it will suit
+our object here to regard it while in progress, to consider what it
+is, to ask the two great questions, how far it can be hastened, and
+how far it ought to be hastened.</p>
+<p>"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a
+child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away
+childish things." It will be seen at once, that when the Apostle
+speaks of thought and understanding, ([Greek: erronoun
+elogizomeaen],) he does not mean the mere intellect but all the
+notions, feelings, and desires of our minds, which partake of an
+intellectual and of a moral character together. He is comparing
+what we should call the whole nature and character of childhood
+with those of manhood. Let us see, for a moment, in what they most
+strikingly differ.</p>
+<p>Our Lord's well-known words suggest a difference in the first
+place, which is in favour of childhood. When he says, "Except ye be
+converted, and become as little children, ye can in no case enter
+into the kingdom of heaven," he must certainly ascribe some one
+quality to childhood, in which manhood is generally deficient. And
+the quality which he means is clearly humility; or to speak perhaps
+more correctly, teachableness. It is impossible that a child can
+have that confidence in himself, which disposes him to be his own
+guide. He must of necessity lean on others, he must follow others,
+and therefore he must believe others. There is in his mind,
+properly speaking, nothing which can be called prejudice; he will
+not as yet refuse to listen, as thinking that he knows better than
+his adviser. One feeling, therefore, essential to the perfection of
+every created and reasonable being, childhood has by the very law
+of its nature; a child cannot help believing that there are some
+who are greater, wiser, better than himself, and he is disposed to
+follow their guidance.</p>
+<p>This sense of comparative weakness is founded upon truth, for a
+child is of course unfit to guide himself. Without noticing mere
+bodily helplessness, a child knows scarcely what is good and what
+is evil; his desires for the highest good are not yet in existence;
+his moral sense altogether is exceedingly weak, and would yield
+readily to the first temptation. And, because those higher
+feelings, which are the great check to selfishness, have not yet
+arisen within him, the selfish instinct, connected apparently with
+all animal life, is exceedingly predominant in him. If a child then
+on the one hand be teachable, yet he is at the same time morally
+weak and ignorant, and therefore extremely selfish.</p>
+<p>It is also a part of the nature of childhood to be the slave of
+present impulses. A child is not apt to look backwards or forwards,
+to reflect or to calculate. In this also he differs entirely from
+the great quality which befits man as an eternal being, the being
+able to look before and after.</p>
+<p>Not to embarrass ourselves with too many points, we may be
+content with these four characteristics of childhood,
+teachableness, ignorance, selfishness, and living only for the
+present. In the last three of these, the perfect man should put
+away childish things; in the first point, or teachableness, while
+he retained it in principle, he should modify it in its
+application. For while modesty, humility, and a readiness to learn,
+are becoming to men no less than to children; yet it should be not
+a simple readiness to follow others, but only to follow the wise
+and good; not a sense of utter helplessness which catches at the
+first stay, whether sound or brittle; but such a consciousness of
+weakness and imperfection, as makes us long to be strengthened by
+Him who is almighty, to be purified by Him who is all pure.</p>
+<p>I said, and it is an obvious truth, that the change from
+childhood to manhood is gradual; there is a period in our lives, of
+several years, in which we are, or should be, slowly exchanging the
+qualities of one state for those of the other. During this
+intermediate state, then, we should expect to find persons become
+less teachable, less ignorant, less selfish, less thoughtless.
+"Less teachable," I would wish to mean, in the sense of being "less
+indiscriminately teachable;" but as the evil and the good are, in
+human things, ever mixed up together, we may be obliged to mean
+"less teachable" simply. And, to say the very truth, if I saw in a
+young man the changes from childhood in the three other points, if
+I found him becoming wiser, and less selfish, and more thoughtful,
+I should not be very much disturbed if I found him for a time less
+teachable also. For whilst he was really becoming wiser and better,
+I should not much wonder if the sense of improvement rather than of
+imperfection possessed him too strongly; if his confidence in
+himself was a little too over-weening. Let him go on a little
+farther in life, and if he really does go on improving in wisdom
+and goodness, this over-confidence will find its proper level. He
+will perceive not only how much he is doing, or can do, but how
+much there is which he does not do, and cannot. To a thoughtful
+mind added years can scarcely fail to teach, humility. And in this
+the highest wisdom of manhood may be resembling more and more the
+state of what would be perfect childhood, that is, not simply
+teachableness, but tractableness with respect to what was good and
+true, and to that only.</p>
+<p>But the danger of the intermediate state between childhood and
+manhood is too often this, that whilst in the one point of
+teachableness, the change runs on too fast, in the other three, of
+wisdom, of unselfishness, and of thoughtfulness, it proceeds much
+too slowly: that the faults of childhood thus remain in the
+character, whilst that quality by means of which these faults are
+meant to be corrected,--namely, teachableness,--is at the same time
+diminishing. Now, teachableness as an instinct, if I may call it
+so, diminishes naturally with the consciousness of growing
+strength. By strength, I mean strength of body, no less than
+strength of mind, so closely are our body and mind connected with,
+each other. The helplessness of childhood, which presses upon it
+every moment, the sense of inability to avoid or resist danger,
+which makes the child run continually to his nurse or to his mother
+for protection, cannot but diminish, by the mere growth of the
+bodily powers. The boy feels himself to be less helpless than the
+child, and in that very proportion he is apt to become less
+teachable. As this feeling of decreased helplessness changes into a
+sense of positive vigour and power, and as this vigour and power
+confer an importance on their possessor, which is the case
+especially at schools, so self-confidence must in one point at
+least, arise in the place of conscious weakness; and as this point
+is felt to be more important, so will the self-confidence be likely
+to extend itself more and more over the whole character.</p>
+<p>And yet, I am bound to say, that, in general, the teachableness
+of youth is, after all, much greater than we might at first sight
+fancy. Along with much self-confidence in many things, it is rare,
+I think, to find in a young man a deliberate pride that rejects
+advice and instruction, on the strength of having no need for them.
+And therefore, the faults of boyhood and youth are more owing, to
+my mind, to the want of change in the other points of the childish
+character, than to the too great change in this. The besetting
+faults of youth appear to me to arise mainly from its retaining too
+often the ignorance, selfishness, and thoughtlessness of a child,
+and having arrived at the same time at a degree of bodily vigour
+and power, equal, or only a very little inferior, to those of
+manhood.</p>
+<p>And in this state of things, the questions become of exceeding
+interest, whether the change from childhood to manhood can be
+hastened. That it ought to be hastened, appears to me to be clear;
+hastened, I mean, from what it is actually, because in this
+respect, we do not grow in general fast enough; and the danger of
+over-growth is, therefore, small. Besides, where change of one sort
+is going on very rapidly; where the limbs are growing and the bones
+knitting more firmly, where the strength of bodily endurance, as
+well as of bodily activity, is daily becoming greater; it is
+self-evident that, if the inward changes which ought to accompany
+these outward ones are making no progress, there cannot but be
+derangement and deformity in the system. And, therefore, when I
+look around, I cannot but wish generally that the change from
+childhood to manhood in the three great points of wisdom, of
+unselfishness, and of thoughtfulness, might be hastened from its
+actual rate of progress in most instances.</p>
+<p>But then comes the other great question, "Can it be hastened,
+and if it can, how is it to be done?" "Can it be hastened" means,
+of course, can it be hastened healthfully and beneficially,
+consistently with the due development of our nature in its after
+stages, from life temporal to life eternal? For as the child should
+grow up into the man, so also there is a term of years given in
+which, according to God's will, the natural man should grow up into
+the spiritual man; and we must not so press the first change as to
+make it interfere with the wholesome working of the second. The
+question then is, really, can the change from childhood to manhood
+be hastened in the case of boys and young men in general from its
+actual rate of progress in ordinary cases, without injury to the
+future excellence and full development of the man? that is, without
+exhausting prematurely the faculties either of body or mind.</p>
+<p>And this is a very grave question, one of the deepest interest
+for us and for you. For us, as, according to the answer to be given
+to it, should depend our whole conduct and feelings towards you in
+the matter of your education; for you, inasmuch as it is quite
+clear, that if the change from childhood to manhood can be hastened
+safely, it ought to be hastened; and that it is a sin in every one
+not to try to hasten it: because, to retain the imperfections of
+childhood when you can get rid of them, is in itself to forfeit the
+innocence of childhood; to exchange the condition of the innocent
+infant whom Christ blessed, for that of the unprofitable servant
+whom Christ condemned. For with the growth of our bodies evil will
+grow in us unavoidably; and then, if we are not positively good, we
+are, of necessity, positively sinners.</p>
+<p>We will consider, then, what can be done to hasten this change
+in us healthfully; whether we can grow in wisdom, in love, and in
+thoughtfulness, faster in youth, than we now commonly do grow: and
+whether any possible danger can be connected with such increased
+exertion. This shall be our subject for consideration next Sunday.
+Meantime, let it be understood, that however extravagant it might
+be to hope for any general change in any moral point, as the direct
+result of setting truth before the mind; yet, that it never can be
+extravagant to hope for a practical result in some one or two
+particular cases; and that, if one or two even be impressed
+practically with what they hear, the good achieved, or, rather, the
+good granted us by God, is really beyond our calculation. It is so
+strictly; for who can worthily calculate the value of a single
+human soul? but it is so in this sense also, that the amount of
+general good which may be done in the end by doing good first in
+particular cases is really more than we can estimate. It was thus
+that Christ's original eleven apostles became, in the end, the
+instruments of the salvation of millions: and it is on this
+consideration that we never need despair of the most extensive
+improvements in society, if we are content to wait God's appointed
+time and order, and look for the salvation of the many as the
+gradual fruit of the salvation of a few.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_III."></a>LECTURE III.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>1 CORINTHIANS xiii. 11.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>When I was a child, I spoke as a child,<br>
+I understood as a child, I thought as a child;<br>
+but when I became a man, I put away childish things</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>After having noticed last Sunday what were those particular
+points in childhood, which in manhood should be put away, and
+having observed that this change cannot take place all at once, but
+gradually, during a period of several years, I proposed to
+consider, as on this day, whether it were possible to hasten this
+change, that is, whether it could be hastened without injury to the
+future development of the character; for undoubtedly, there is
+such, a thing in minds, as well as in bodies, as precocious growth;
+and although it is not so frequent as precocious growth in the
+body, nor by any means so generally regarded as an evil, yet it is
+really a thing to be deprecated; and we ought not to adopt such
+measures as might be likely to occasion it.</p>
+<p>Now I believe the only reason which could make it supposed to be
+possible that there could be danger in hastening this change, is
+drawn from the observation of what takes place sometimes with
+regard to intellectual advancement. It is seen that some young men
+of great ambition, or remarkable love of knowledge, do really
+injure their health, and exhaust their minds, by an excess of early
+study. I always grieve over such cases exceedingly; not only for
+the individual's sake who is the sufferer, but also for the
+mischievous effect of his example. It affords a pretence to others
+to justify their own want of exertion; and those to whom it is in
+reality the least dangerous, are always the very persons who seem
+to dread it the most. But we should clearly understand, that this
+excess of intellectual exertion at an early age, is by no means the
+same thing with hastening the change from childishness to
+manliness. We are all enough aware, in common life, that a very
+clever and forward boy may be, in his conduct, exceeding childish;
+that those whose talents and book-knowledge are by no means
+remarkable, may be, in their conduct, exceedingly manly. Examples
+of both these truths instantly present themselves to my memory, and
+perhaps may do so to some of yours. I may say farther, that some
+whose change from childhood to manhood had been, in St. Paul's
+sense of the terms, the most remarkably advanced, were so far from
+being distinguished for their cleverness or proficiency in their
+school-work, that it would almost seem as if their only remaining
+childishness had been displayed there. What I mean, therefore, by
+the change from childhood to manhood, is altogether distinct from a
+premature advance in book-knowledge, and involves in it nothing of
+that over-study which is dreaded as so injurious.</p>
+<p>Yet it is true that I described the change from childhood to
+manhood, as a change from ignorance to wisdom. I did so, certainly;
+but yet, rare as knowledge is, wisdom is rarer; and knowledge,
+unhappily, can exist without wisdom, as wisdom can exist with a
+very inferior degree of knowledge. We shall see this, if we
+consider what we mean by knowledge; and, without going into a more
+general definition of it, let us see what we mean by it here. We
+mean by it, either a knowledge of points of scholarship, of
+grammar, and matters connected with grammar; or a knowledge of
+history and geography; or a knowledge of mathematics: or, it may
+be, of natural history; or, if we use the term, "knowledge of the
+world," then we mean, I think, a knowledge of points of manner and
+fashion; such a knowledge as may save us from exposing ourselves in
+trifling things, by awkwardness or inexperience. Now the knowledge
+of none of these things brings us of necessity any nearer to real
+thoughtfulness, such as alone gives wisdom, than the knowledge of a
+well-contrived game. Some of you, probably, well know that there
+are games from which chance is wholly excluded, and skill in which
+is only the result of much thought and calculation. There is no
+doubt that the game of chess may properly be called an intellectual
+study; but why does it not, and cannot, make any man wise? Because,
+in the first place, the calculations do but respect the movements
+of little pieces of wood or ivory, and not those of our own minds
+and hearts; and, again, they are calculations which have nothing to
+do whatever with our being better men, or worse, with our pleasing
+God or displeasing him. And what is true of this game, is true no
+less of the highest calculations of Astronomy, of the profoundest
+researches into language; nay, what may seem stranger still, it is
+often true no less of the deepest study even of the actions and
+principles of man's nature; and, strangest of all, it may be, and
+is often true, also, of the study of the very Scripture itself; and
+that, not only of the incidental points of Scripture, its
+antiquities, chronology, and history, but of its very most divine
+truths, of man's justification and of God's nature. Here, indeed,
+we are considering about things where wisdom, so to speak, sits
+enshrined. We are very near her, we see the place where she abides;
+but her very self we obtain not. And why?--but because, in the most
+solemn study, no less than in the lightest, our own moral state may
+be set apart from our consideration; we may be unconscious all the
+while of our great want; and forgetting our great business, to be
+reconciled to God, and to do his will: for wisdom, to speak
+properly, is to us nothing else than the true answer to the
+Philippian jailor's question, "What must I do to be saved?"</p>
+<p>Now then, as knowledge of all kinds may be gained without being
+received, or meant at all to be applied, as the answer to this
+question, so it may be quite distinct from wisdom. And when I use
+the term thoughtfulness, as opposed to a child's carelessness, I
+mean it to express an anxiety for the obtaining of this wisdom. And
+farther, I do not see how this wisdom, or this thoughtfulness, can
+be premature in any one; or how it can exhaust before their time
+any faculties, whether of body or mind. This requires no sitting up
+late at night, no giving up of healthful exercise; it brings no
+headaches, no feverishness, no strong excitement at first, to be
+followed by exhaustion afterwards. Hear how it is described by one
+who spoke of it from experience. "The wisdom that is from above is
+first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of
+mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy."
+There is surely nothing of premature exhaustion connected-with any
+one of these things.</p>
+<p>Or, if we turn to the third point of change from childhood to a
+Christian manhood, the change from selfishness to unselfishness,
+neither can we find any possible danger in hastening this. This
+cannot hurt our health or strain our faculties; it can but make
+life at every age more peaceful and more happy. Nor indeed do I
+suppose that any one could fancy that such a change was otherwise
+than wholesome at the earliest possible period.</p>
+<p>There may remain, however, a vague notion, that generally, if
+what we mean by an early change from childishness to manliness be
+that we should become religious, then, although it may not exhaust
+the powers, or injure the health, yet it would destroy the natural
+liveliness and gaiety of youth, and by bringing on a premature
+seriousness of manner and language, would be unbecoming and
+ridiculous. Now, in the first place, there is a great deal of
+confusion and a great deal of folly in the common notions of the
+gaiety of youth. If gaiety mean real happiness of mind, I do not
+believe that there is more of it in youth than in manhood; if for
+this reason only, that the temper in youth being commonly not yet
+brought into good order, irritation and passion are felt, probably,
+oftener than in after life, and these are sad drawbacks, as we all
+know, to a real cheerfulness of mind. And of the outward gaiety of
+youth, there is a part also which is like the gaiety of a drunken
+man; which is riotous, insolent, and annoying to others; which, in
+short, is a folly and a sin. There remains that which strictly
+belongs to youth, partly physically--the lighter step and the
+livelier movement of the growing and vigorous body; partly from
+circumstances, because a young person's parents or friends stand
+between him and many of the cares of life, and protect him from
+feeling them altogether; partly from the abundance of hope which
+belongs to the beginning of every thing, and which continually
+hinders the mind from dwelling on past pain. And I know not which
+of these causes of gaiety would be taken away or lessened by the
+earlier change from childhood to manhood. True it is, that the
+question, "What must I do to be saved?" is a grave one, and must be
+considered seriously; but I do not suppose that any one proposes
+that a young person should never be serious at all. True it is,
+again, that if we are living in folly and sin, this question may be
+a painful one; we might be gayer for a time without it. But, then,
+the matter is, what is to become of us if we do not think of being
+saved?--shall we be saved without thinking of it? And what is it to
+be not saved but lost? I cannot pretend to say that the thought of
+God would not very much disturb the peace and gaiety of an ungodly
+and sinful mind; that it would not interfere with the mirth of the
+bully, or the drunkard, or the reveller, or the glutton, or the
+idler, or the fool. It would, no doubt; just as the hand that was
+seen to write on the wall threw a gloom over the guests at
+Belshazzar's festival. I never meant or mean to say, that the
+thought of God, or that God himself, can be other than a plague to
+those who do not love Him. The thought of Him is their plague here;
+the sight of Him will be their judgment for ever. But I suppose the
+point is, whether the thought of Him would cloud the gaiety of
+those who were striving to please Him. It would cloud it as much,
+and be just as unwelcome and no more, as will be the very actual
+presence of our Lord to the righteous, when they shall see Him as
+He is. Can that which we know to be able to make old age, and
+sickness, and poverty, many times full of comfort,--can that make
+youth and health gloomy? When to natural cheerfulness and
+sanguineness, are added a consciousness of God's ever present care,
+and a knowledge of his rich promises, are we likely to be the more
+sad or the more unhappy?</p>
+<p>What reason, then, is there for any one's not anticipating the
+common progress of Christian manliness, and hastening; to exchange,
+as I said before, ignorance for wisdom, selfishness for
+unselfishness, carelessness for thoughtfulness? I see no reason why
+we should not; but is there no reason why we should? You are young,
+and for the most part strong and healthy; I grant that, humanly
+speaking, the chances of early death to any particular person among
+you are small. But still, considering what life is, even to the
+youngest and strongest, it does seem a fearful risk to be living
+unredeemed; to be living in that state, that if we should happen to
+die, (it may be very unlikely, but still it is clearly
+possible,)--that if we should happen to die, we should be most
+certainly lost for ever. Risks, however, we do not mind; the
+chances, we think, are in our favour, and we will run the hazard.
+It may be so; but he who delays to turn to God when the thought has
+been once put before him, is incurring something more than a risk.
+He may not die these fifty or sixty years; we cannot tell how that
+may be; but he is certainly at this very present time hardening his
+heart, and doing despite unto the Spirit of Grace. By the very
+wickedness of putting off turning to God till a future time, he
+lessens his power of turning to Him ever. This is certain; no one
+can reject God's call without becoming less likely to hear it when
+it is made to him again. And thus the lingering wilfully in the
+evil things of childhood, when we might be at work in putting them
+off, and when God calls us to do so, is an infinite risk, and a
+certain evil;--an infinite risk, for it is living in such a state
+that death at any moment would be certain condemnation;--and a
+certain evil, because, whether we live or not, we are actually
+raising up barriers between ourselves and our salvation; we not
+only do not draw nigh to God, but we are going farther from Him,
+and lessening our power of drawing nigh to Him hereafter.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_IV."></a>LECTURE IV.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>COLOSSIANS i. 9.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>We do not cease to pray for you, and to desire<br>
+that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his<br>
+will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>This is the first of three verses, all of them forming a part of
+the Epistle which was read this morning, and containing St. Paul's
+prayer for the Colossians in all the several points of Christian
+excellence. And the first thing which he desires for them, as we
+have heard, is, that they should be filled with the knowledge of
+God's will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; or, as he
+expresses the same thing to the Ephesians, that they should be not
+unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. He prays
+for the Colossians that they should not be spiritually foolish, but
+that they should be spiritually wise.</p>
+<p>The state of spiritual folly is, I suppose, one of the most
+universal evils in the world. For the number of those who are
+naturally foolish is exceedingly great; of those, I mean, who
+understand no worldly thing well; of those who are careless about
+everything, carried about by every breath of opinion, without
+knowledge, and without principle. But the term spiritual folly
+includes, unhappily, a great many more than these; it takes in not
+those only who are in the common sense of the term foolish, but a
+great many who are in the common sense of the term clever, and many
+who are even in the common sense of the terms, prudent, sensible,
+thoughtful, and wise. It is but too evident that some of the ablest
+men who have ever lived upon earth, have been in no less a degree
+spiritually fools. And thus, it is not without much truth that
+Christian writers have dwelt upon the insufficiency of worldly
+wisdom, and have warned their readers to beware, lest, while
+professing themselves to be wise, they should be accounted as fools
+in the sight of God.</p>
+<p>But the opposite to this notion, that those who are, as it were,
+fools in worldly matters are wise before God; although this also is
+true in a certain sense, and under certain peculiar circumstances,
+yet taken generally, it is the very reverse of truth; and the
+careless and incautious language which has been often used on this
+subject, has been extremely mischievous. On the contrary, he who is
+foolish in worldly matters is likely also to be, and most commonly
+is, no less foolish in the things of God. And the opposite belief
+has arisen mainly from that strange confusion between ignorance and
+innocence, with which many ignorant persons seem to solace
+themselves. Whereas, if you take away a man's knowledge, you do not
+bring him to the state of an infant, but to that of a brute; and of
+one of the most mischievous and malignant of the brute creation.
+For you do not lessen or weaken the man's body by lowering his
+mind; he still retains his strength and his passions, the passions
+leading to self-indulgence, the strength which enables him to feed
+them by continued gratification. He will not think it is true to
+any good purpose; it is very possible to destroy in him the power
+of reflection, whether as exercised upon outward things, or upon
+himself and his own nature, or upon God. But you cannot destroy the
+power of adapting means to ends, nor that of concealing his
+purposes by fraud or falsehood; you take only his wisdom, and leave
+that cunning which marks so notoriously both the savage and the
+madman. He, then, who is a fool as far as regards earthly things,
+is much more a fool with regard to heavenly things; he who cannot
+raise himself even to the lower height, how is he to attain to the
+higher? he who is without reason and conscience, how shall he be
+endowed with the spirit of God?</p>
+<p>It is my deep conviction and long experience of this truth,
+which makes me so grieve over a want of interest in your own
+improvement in human learning, whenever I observe it, over the
+prevalence of a thoughtless and childish spirit amongst you. I
+grant that as to the first point there are sometimes exceptions to
+be met with; that is to say, I have known persons certainly whose
+interest in their work here was not great, and their proficiency
+consequently was small; but who, I do not doubt, were wise unto
+God. But then these persons, whilst they were indifferent perhaps
+about their common school-work, were anything but indifferent as to
+the knowledge of the Bible: there was no carelessness there; but
+they read, and read frequently, books of practical improvement, or
+relating otherwise to religious matters, such as many, I believe,
+would find even less inviting than the books of their common
+business. So that although there was a neglect undoubtedly of many
+parts of the school-work, yet there was no spirit of
+thoughtlessness or childishness in them, nor of general idleness;
+and therefore, although I know that their minds did suffer and have
+suffered from their unwise neglect of a part of their duty, yet
+there was so much attention bestowed on other parts, and so
+manifest and earnest a care for the things of God, that it was
+impossible not to entertain for them the greatest respect and
+regard. These, however, are such rare cases, that it cannot be
+necessary to do more than thus notice them. But the idleness and
+want of interest which I grieve for, is one which extends itself
+but too impartially to knowledge of every kind: to divine
+knowledge, as might be expected, even more than to human. Those
+whom we commonly find careless about their general lessons, are
+quite as ignorant and as careless about their Bibles; those who
+have no interest in general literature, in poetry, or in history,
+or in philosophy, have certainly no greater interest, I do not say
+in works of theology, but in works of practical devotion, in the
+lives of holy men, in meditations, or in prayers. Alas, the
+interest of their minds is bestowed on things far lower than the
+very lowest of all which I have named; and therefore, to see them
+desiring something only a little higher than their present
+pursuits, could not but be encouraging; it would, at least, show
+that the mind was rising upwards. It may, indeed, stop at a point
+short of the highest, it may learn to love earthly excellence, and
+rest there contented, and seek for nothing more perfect; but that,
+at any rate, is a future and merely contingent evil. It is better
+to love earthly excellence than earthly folly; it is far better in
+itself, and it is, by many degrees, nearer to the kingdom of
+God.</p>
+<p>There is another case, however, which I cannot but think is more
+frequent now than formerly; and if it is so, it may be worth while
+to direct our attention to it. Common idleness and absolute
+ignorance are not what I wish to speak of now, but a character
+advanced above these; a character which does not neglect its
+school-lessons, but really attains to considerable proficiency in
+them; a character at once regular and amiable, abstaining from
+evil, and for evil in its low and grosser forms, having a real
+abhorrence. What, then, you will say, is wanting here? I will tell
+you what seems to be wanting--a spirit of manly, and much more of
+Christian, thoughtfulness. There is quickness and cleverness; much
+pleasure, perhaps, in distinction, but little in improvement; there
+is no desire of knowledge for its own sake, whether human or
+divine. There is, therefore, but little power of combining and
+digesting what is read; and, consequently, what is read passes
+away, and takes no root in the mind. This same character shows
+itself in matters of conduct; it will adopt, without scruple, the
+most foolish, commonplace notions of boys, about what is right and
+wrong; it will not, and cannot, from the lightness of its mind,
+concern itself seriously about what is evil in the conduct of
+others, because it takes no regular care of its own, with reference
+to pleasing God; it will not do anything low or wicked, but it will
+sometimes laugh at those who do; and it will by no means take pains
+to encourage, nay, it will sometimes thwart and oppose any thing
+that breathes a higher spirit, and asserts a more manly and
+Christian standard of duty.</p>
+<p>I have thought that this character, with its features more or
+less strongly marked, has shown itself sometimes amongst us,
+marring the good and amiable qualities of those in whom we can
+least bear to see such a defect, because there is in them really so
+much to interest in their favour. Now the number of persons of
+extraordinary abilities who may be here at any one time can depend
+on no calculable causes: nor, again, can we give any reason more
+than what we call accident, if there were to be amongst us at any
+one time a number of persons whose whole tendency was decidedly to
+evil. But if, in these respects, the usual average has continued,
+if there is no lack of ability, and nothing like a prevalence of
+vice, then we begin anxiously to inquire into the causes, which,
+while other things remain the same, have led to a different result.
+And one cause I do find, which, is certainly capable of producing
+such a result: a cause undoubtedly in existence now, and as
+certainly not in existence a few years back; nor can I trace any
+other besides this which appears likely to have produced the same
+effect. This cause consists in the number and character and
+cheapness, and peculiar mode of publication, of the works of
+amusement of the present day. In all these respects the change is
+great, and extremely recent. The works of amusement published only
+a very few years since were comparatively few in number; they were
+less exciting, and therefore less attractive; they were dearer, and
+therefore less accessible; and, not being published periodically,
+they did not occupy the mind for so long a time, nor keep alive so
+constant an expectation; nor, by thus dwelling upon the mind, and
+distilling themselves into it as it were drop by drop, did they
+possess it so largely, colouring even, in many instances, its very
+language, and affording frequent matter for conversation.</p>
+<p>The evil of all these circumstances is actually enormous. The
+mass of human minds, and much more of the minds of young persons,
+have no great appetite for intellectual exercise; but they have
+some, which by careful treatment may be strengthened and increased.
+But here to this weak and delicate appetite is presented an
+abundance of the most stimulating and least nourishing food
+possible. It snatches it greedily, and is not only satisfied, but
+actually conceives a distaste for anything simpler and more
+wholesome. That curiosity which is wisely given us to lead us on to
+knowledge, finds its full gratification in the details of an
+exciting and protracted story, and then lies down as it were
+gorged, and goes to sleep. Other faculties claim their turn, and
+have it. We know that in youth the healthy body and lively spirits
+require exercise, and in this they may and ought to be indulged:
+but the time and interest which remain over when the body has had
+its enjoyment, and the mind desires its share, this has been
+already wasted and exhausted upon things utterly unprofitable: so
+that the mind goes to its work hurriedly and languidly, and feels
+it to be no more than a burden. The mere lessons may be learnt from
+a sense of duty; but that freshness of power which, in young
+persons of ability would fasten eagerly upon some one portion or
+other, of the wide field of knowledge, and there expatiate,
+drinking in health and strength to the mind, as surely as the
+natural exercise of the body gives to it bodily vigour,--that is
+tired prematurely, perverted, and corrupted; and all the knowledge
+which else it might so covet, it now seems a wearying effort to
+attain.</p>
+<p>Great and grievous as is the evil, it is peculiarly hard to find
+the remedy for it. If the books to which I have been alluding were
+books of downright wickedness, we might destroy them wherever we
+found them; we might forbid their open circulation; we might
+conjure you to shun them as you would any other clear sin, whether
+of word or deed. But they are not wicked books for the most part;
+they are of that class which cannot be actually prohibited; nor can
+it be pretended that there is a sin in reading them. They are not
+the more wicked for being published so cheap, and at regular
+intervals; but yet these two circumstances make them so peculiarly
+injurious. All that can be done is to point out the evil; that it
+is real and serious I am very sure, and its effects are most
+deplorable on the minds of the fairest promise; but the remedy for
+it rests with yourselves, or rather with each of you individually,
+so far as he is himself concerned. That an unnatural and constant
+excitement of the mind is most injurious, there is no doubt; that
+excitement involves a consequent weakness, is a law of our nature
+than which none is surer; that the weakness of mind thus produced
+is and must be adverse to quiet study and thought, to that
+reflection which alone is wisdom, is also clear in itself, and
+proved too largely by experience. And that without reflection there
+can be no spiritual understanding, is at once evident; while
+without spiritual understanding, that is, without a knowledge and a
+study of God's will, there can be no spiritual life. And therefore
+childishness and unthoughtfulness cannot be light evils; and if I
+have rightly traced the prevalence of these defects to its cause,
+although that cause may seem to some to be trifling, yet surely it
+is well to call your attention to it, and to remind you that in
+reading works of amusement, as in every other lawful pleasure,
+there is and must be an abiding responsibility in the sight of God;
+that, like other lawful pleasures, we must beware of excess in it;
+and not only so, but that if we find it hurtful to us, either
+because we have used it too freely in times past, or because our
+nature is too weak to bear it, that then we are bound most solemnly
+to abstain from it; because, however lawful in itself, or to others
+who can practise it without injury, whatever is to us an hindrance
+in the way of our intellectual and moral and spiritual improvement,
+that is in our case a positive sin.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_V."></a>LECTURE V.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>COLOSSIANS i. 9.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>We do not cease to pray for you, and to desire<br>
+that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his<br>
+will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>These words, on which I spoke last Sunday, appeared to contain
+so much, which concerns us all so deeply, and to suit the peculiar
+ease of many of us here so entirely, that I thought they might well
+furnish us with matter for farther consideration to-day. And though
+I noticed one particular cause, which seemed to have acted
+mischievously, in the last few years, upon the growth and freshness
+of the mind in youth, yet it would be absurd to suppose that before
+this cause came into existence all was well; or that if it could be
+removed, our progress even in worldly knowledge would henceforth be
+unimpeded. There are many other causes no doubt which oppose our
+growth in worldly wisdom; and still more which oppose our growth in
+the wisdom of God.</p>
+<p>One of these causes meets us at the very beginning; it exists at
+this very moment; it makes it difficult even to gain your attention
+for what is to be said. This cause is to be found in the want of
+sympathy between persons of very different ages, between what must
+be, therefore, in the common course of nature, different degrees of
+thoughtfulness. It is the want of sympathy, properly speaking,
+which creates in these matters a difficulty of understanding; for
+the attention and memory are alike apt to be careless where the
+mind is not interested; and how can we understand that to which we
+scarcely listened, and which we imperfectly remember? Nature
+herself seems to lead the old and the young two different ways: and
+when the old call upon the young to be thoughtful, it seems as if
+they were but calling them to a state contrary to their nature; and
+the call is not regarded.</p>
+<p>Is it then that we have here an invincible obstacle, which
+renders all attempts to inspire thoughtfulness utterly vain? and if
+it be so, what use can there be in dwelling upon it? None,
+certainly, if it were actually and in all cases invincible; but if
+it be every thing short of invincible, there is much good in
+noticing it. There is much good surely in trying to impress the
+great truth, that nature must be overcome by a mightier power, or
+we perish. There is much good in meeting and allowing to its full
+extent what we are so apt in our folly to regard as an excuse, and
+which really is the earnest of our condemnation. It is very true,
+and to be allowed to the fullest extent, that it is against the
+nature of youth in all ordinary cases to be thoughtful; that it is
+very difficult for you even to give your attention to serious
+things when spoken of, more difficult still to remember them
+afterwards and always. It is for the very reason because it is so
+difficult, because it is a work so against nature, to raise the
+young and careless mind to the thought of God; because it is so
+certain that, in the common course of things, you will not think of
+Him, but will follow the bent of your own several fancies or
+desires, that therefore He, who wills in his love to bring us to
+himself, knowing that without the knowledge of Him we must perish
+for ever, was pleased to give his only-begotten Son, that through
+Him we might overcome nature, and might turn to God and live.</p>
+<p>I wish that I could increase, if it were possible, the sense
+which, you have of the difficulty of becoming thoughtful, so that
+you could but see that out of this very difficulty, and
+indissolubly connected with it, comes the grace of Christ's
+redemption. You have not strength of purpose enough to shake off
+folly and sin; surely you have not, or else, why should Christ have
+died? It is so hard to come to God; undoubtedly, so hard that no
+man can come unto God except God will draw him. Nature herself
+leads us to be careless, our very strength and spirits of
+themselves will not allow us to reflect. Most true; for that which
+is born of the flesh, is flesh; and we inherit a nature derived
+from him in whom we all die.</p>
+<p>I believe that it is not idle to dwell upon tins; for it is
+scarcely possible but that good and earnest resolutions should
+often enter the minds of many of you; or, if not resolutions, yet
+at least wishes, wishes chilled but too soon, I fear, by the
+thought or feeling, that however much to will may be present with
+you, yet how to perform it you find not. Now, if this true sense of
+weakness might but lead any one to seek for strength where it may
+be found, then indeed it would be a feeling no less blessed than
+true; for it would urge you to seek God's help and Christ's
+redemption, instead of desperately yielding to your weakness, and
+so remaining weak for ever.</p>
+<p>You may look at the prospect before you in all its reality: you
+may see how much must be given up, how much withstood, bow much,
+endured; how hard it is to alter old ways, not in itself only, but
+because the change attracts attention, and is received, it may be,
+with doubts as to its sincerity, with irony, and with sneers. There
+is all this before you: it cannot be denied; it must not be
+concealed. The way to life is not broad and easy; it is not that
+way which is most trodden. To pass from what we are to what we may
+be hereafter, from an earthly nature to an heavenly, cannot be an
+easy work, to be done at any time, with no effort, with no pain. It
+is the greatest work which is done in the whole world, it is the
+mightiest change; death and birth are, as it were, combined in it;
+but the Lord of birth and of death is at hand, to enable us to
+effect it. Think that this is so; and the more you feel how hard a
+task is set before you, the more you will be able to understand the
+language of joy and thankfulness with which the Scripture speaks of
+a human soul's redemption.</p>
+<p>This great work may be wrought for every soul here assembled;
+the want of sympathy in sacred and serious things may be changed to
+sympathy the most intense; the carelessness of fools may be changed
+into spiritual wisdom. It may be wrought for all; but it is more
+happy to think that it will be wrought for some;--for whom, no
+mortal eye or judgment can discern; but it will be wrought for
+some. If many should yield in despair to their enemy, yet some will
+resist him: if Christ be to many no more than foolishness, if his
+name convey nothing more than a vague sense of something solemn,
+which passes over the mind for an instant, and then vanishes, yet
+to some undoubtedly, he will be found to be the wisdom of God, and
+the power of God. There are some here, we may be quite sure, who
+will be witnesses for ever to all the world of men and angels, that
+what truly was impossible to nature, is possible to nature renewed
+and strengthened by grace.</p>
+<p>Without such a change, it is vain, I fear, to look for any thing
+like wisdom or spiritual understanding; for how can such a seed be
+expected to grow in a soil so shallow as common thoughtlessness?
+and how can merely human motives have force to overcome so strong a
+tendency of nature? nay, how can such motives be brought to act
+upon the mind? for it is absolutely impossible that the middle-aged
+and the young should be brought into entire sympathy with each
+other, unless Christ's love be their common bond. Human wisdom in
+advanced life may be, and is to persons of strong faculties of
+mind, naturally pleasant: but how can it be made so to persons of
+ordinary faculties in early youth? There are faults which society
+condemns strongly, while the temptation to them in after life is
+slight. Persons in middle age may resist these easily, and abhor
+them sincerely; but how can we make young persons do the same when
+the temptation to commit them is strong, and the condemnation of
+them by their society is either very slight, or does not exist at
+all? And, therefore, we find that, do what we will, the same
+faults' continue to be common in schools, the same faults both of
+omission and commission; there is the same inherent difficulty of
+bringing persons of different ages and positions to think and feel
+alike, unless Christ has become possessed of the thoughts and
+feelings of both, and so they become one with each other in
+him.</p>
+<p>But it was our Lord's charge to Peter, "Thou, when thou art
+converted, strengthen thy brethren." As sure as it is that some who
+hear me are turned, or turning, or will turn, to God, so sure is it
+that these, be they few or many, will do something towards the
+strengthening of their brethren. Whatever good is to be done
+amongst us on a large scale, it must be done only in this way, the
+many half despairing prayer may be, "Lord, I believe; help thou
+mine unbelief;" but if any one is moved by Christ's call, and feels
+within himself that he should like to follow Christ, and to be with
+him always, let him cherish that work of the Holy Spirit within
+him, which has given him if it be only so much of the will to be
+saved. It is a spark which may be quenched in a moment; in itself
+it can give no assurance; but if any one watches it carefully, and
+prays that it may live and be kindled into a stronger spark, till
+at last it break out into a flame, then for him it is full of
+assurance; God has heard his prayer; and he has received the gift
+of the Holy Spirit, an earnest of his eternal inheritance. Will he
+not then watch and pray the more anxiously, lest the fruit which,
+is now partly formed should never ripen? Will he not see and feel
+that there is some reality in the things of God, that strength, and
+peace, and victory, are not vainly promised? Will he not hold fast
+the things which he has now not heard only, but known, lest by any
+means he should let them slip? May God strengthen such, whoever
+they may be, with all the might of his Spirit; and may he be with
+them even to the end.</p>
+<p>But for those,--who they are, again, we know not, nor how many;
+but here, also, there will too surely be some,--for those who hear
+now, as they have often heard before, words which, they scarcely
+heed, which, have at times partially caught their attention, but
+have not produced in them the slightest real effect, for them the
+words are coming to an end; they will soon be released from the
+irksome bondage of hearing them; and another opportunity of grace
+will have been offered to them in vain. Tomorrow, and the day
+after, they will walk as they have walked before, the wretched
+slaves of folly and passion; half despairing prayer may be, "Lord,
+I believe; help thou mine unbelief;" but if any one is moved by
+Christ's call, and feels within himself that he should like to
+follow Christ, and to be with him always, let him cherish that work
+of the Holy Spirit within him, which has given him if it be only so
+much of the will to be saved. It is a spark which may be quenched
+in a moment; in itself it can give no assurance; but if any one
+watches it carefully, and prays that it may live and be kindled
+into a stronger spark, till at last it break out into a flame, then
+for him it is full of assurance; God has heard his prayer; and he
+has received the gift of the Holy Spirit, an earnest of his eternal
+inheritance. Will he not then watch and pray the more anxiously,
+lest the fruit which is now partly formed should never ripen? Will
+he not see and feel that there is some reality in the things of
+God, that strength, and peace, and victory, are not vainly
+promised? Will he not hold fast the things which he has now not
+heard only, but known, lest by any means he should let them slip?
+May God strengthen such, whoever they may be, with all the might of
+his Spirit; and may he be with them even to the end.</p>
+<p>But for those,--who they are, again, we know not, nor how many;
+but here, also, there will too surely be some,--for those who hear
+now, as they have often heard before, words which they scarcely
+heed, which have at times partially caught their attention, but
+have not produced in them the slightest real effect, for them the
+words are coming to an end; they will soon be released from the
+irksome bondage of hearing them; and another opportunity of grace
+will have been offered to them in vain. Tomorrow, and the day
+after, they will walk as they have walked before, the wretched
+slaves of folly and passion; leaving undone all Christ's work, and
+greedily doing his enemy's. Yet even these Christ yet spares, he
+still calls them, he has died for them. Still the word must be
+spoken to them, whether they will hear, or whether they will
+forbear. It may be, that they will some day turn; and if not,
+Christ has perfected his mercy towards them; and Christ's servants
+have delivered their own souls in warning them. May there be but
+few of us on whom this horrible portion will fall; yet, is it not
+an awful thing to think of, that it will, in all human probability,
+fall on some? and that whoever hardens his heart, and resists the
+word spoken to him this day, he is one who has done as much as in
+him lies to make himself among that number.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_VI."></a>LECTURE VI.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>COLOSSIANS iii. 3.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in
+God</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>When I have spoken, from time to time, of denying ourselves for
+the sake of relieving others, although self-denial and charity are,
+in their full growth, amongst the highest of Christian graces, yet
+I have felt much hope that, up to a certain degree, in their lowest
+and elementary forms at least, there might be many that would be
+disposed to practise them. For these are virtues which do
+undoubtedly commend themselves to our minds as things clearly good:
+so much so that I am inclined to think that the much-disputed moral
+sense, the nature of which is said to be so hard to ascertain,
+exists most clearly in the universal perception that it is good to
+deny ourselves and to benefit others. I do not say merely that
+there is a perception that it is good to deny ourselves in order to
+benefit others; but that there is in self-denial, simply, something
+which commands respect; an unconscious tribute, I suppose, to the
+truth, that the self which, is thus denied is one which, if
+indulged, would run to evil.</p>
+<p>But a point of far greater difficulty, of absolutely the
+greatest difficulty, is to impress upon our minds the excellence of
+another quality, which is known by the name of spiritual or
+heavenly-mindedness. In fact, this,--and this almost singly,--is
+the transcendent part of Christianity; that part of it which is not
+according to, but above, nature; which, conscience, I think,
+itself, in the natural man, does not acknowledge. When Christianity
+speaks of purity, of truth, of justice, of charity, of faith and
+love to God, it speaks a language which, however belied by our
+practice, is at once allowed by our consciences: the things so
+recommended are, beyond all doubt, good and lovely. But when it
+says, in St. Paul's words, "Set your affections on things above,
+not on things on the earth: for ye are dead, and your life is hid
+with Christ in God," the language sounds so strange that it is
+scarcely intelligible; and if we do get to understand it, yet it
+seems to give a wrench, as it were, to our whole being, to command
+a thing extravagant and impossible.</p>
+<p>I am persuaded that this would be so, more or less, everywhere;
+but in how extreme a degree must it hold good amongst us! Even in
+poverty, in sickness, and old age, where this life would seem to be
+nothing but a burden, and the command to "set the affections on
+things above" might appear superfluous, still the known so prevails
+over the unknown, the familiar over the incomprehensible, that hope
+and affection find continually their objects in this world, there
+is still a clinging to life, and an unwillingness to die. But in a
+state the very opposite to this, in plenty, in health, in youth;
+with much of enjoyment actually in our hands, and more in prospect;
+with just so much mystery over our coming life as to keep alive
+interest, yet with enough known and understood in its prospects to
+awaken sympathy; what deafest ear of the deaf adder could ever be
+so closed against the voice of the charmer, as our minds, so
+engrossed with the enjoyments and the hopes of earth, are closed
+against the voice which speaks of the things of heaven?</p>
+<p>Again, I have said, when speaking of other subjects, that I
+looked upon the older persons among you as a sort of link between
+me and the younger, who communicated, in some instances, by their
+language and example, something of an impression of the meaning of
+Christian teaching. But when we speak of a thing so high as
+spiritual-mindedness, it seems as if none of us can be a link
+between Christ's words and our brethren's minds: as if we all stand
+alike at an infinite distance from the high and unapproachable
+truth. The mountain of God becomes veiled, as it were, with the
+clouds which rested upon Sinai; we cannot approach near it, but
+stand far off, for a moment, perhaps, in awe; but soon in neglect
+and indifference.</p>
+<p>Let any one capable of thinking, but in the full vigour of
+health of body and mind, placed far above want, and with the
+prospect, according to all probability, of many years of happy life
+before him, let such an one go forth, at this season of the year
+above all, let him see the vast preparation for life in all nature,
+amongst all living creatures, in every tree, and in every plant of
+grass; let him feel the warmth of the sun, becoming every day
+stronger and stronger; let him be possessed, in every sense, with
+an impression of the vigour and beauty and glory around him; and
+let him feel no less a vigour in himself, too, of body and mind,
+and infinitely varied power of enjoyment in so many faculties of
+repose and of energy,--and then let him calmly consider what St.
+Paul could mean, when he says generally to Christians, "Set your
+affections on things above, not on things on the earth; for ye are
+dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God."</p>
+<p>Let a person capable of thinking, and such as I have supposed in
+all other respects, consider what St. Paul could mean by calling
+him "dead." With an almost thrilling consciousness of life, with an
+almost bounding sense of vigour in body and mind, he is told that
+he is "dead." And stranger still, he is told so by one whose
+recorded life, and existing writings declare that he too must have
+had in himself a consciousness of life no less lively; that there
+was in him an activity and energy which neither age nor sufferings
+could quell; that he wielded an influence over the minds of
+thousands, such as kings or conquerors might envy. If St. Paul
+could stand by our side, think we that he, any more than ourselves,
+would be insensible to the power within him, and to the beauty and
+the glory without? Yet his words are recorded; he bids us not set
+our affections on things on the earth; he declares of himself, and
+of us equally, if we are Christ's servants, that we are dead, and
+that our life is hid with Christ in God.</p>
+<p>I have put the difficulty in its strongest form, for it is one
+well worth considering. What St. Paul here urges is indeed the
+highest perfection of Christianity, and therefore of human nature;
+but it is not an impossible perfection, and St. Paul's own life and
+character are our warrant that it is nothing sickly, or foolish, or
+fanatical. But let us first hear the whole of St. Paul's language:
+"If ye, then, be risen with Christ, seek those things which are
+above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God. Set your
+affections on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are
+dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is
+our life, shall appear, then shall we also appear with him in
+glory. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth;
+fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence,
+and covetousness, which is idolatry." "Mortify," I need not say, is
+to make dead, to destroy. "Ye are dead;" therefore let your members
+on earth be dead; "fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection,"
+&amp;c. As if he had said, By becoming Christians ye engaged to be
+dead; and therefore see to it that ye are so. But what he requires
+us to make dead or to destroy, are our evil affections and desires;
+it is manifest, then, that it is to these that, by becoming
+Christians, we engage to become dead.</p>
+<p>This is true; and it is most certain that Christ requires us to
+be dead only to what is evil. But the essence of
+spiritual-mindedness consists in this, that it is assumed that with
+earth, and all things earthly, evil or imperfection are closely
+mixed; so that it is not possible to set our affections keenly
+upon, or to abandon ourselves to the enjoyment of, any earthly
+thing without the danger of those affections and that enjoyment
+becoming evil. In other words, there is that in the state of things
+within and around us, which, renders it needful to be ever
+watchful; and watchfulness is inconsistent with an intensity of
+delight and enjoyment.</p>
+<p>For, consider the case which I was just supposing; that lively
+sense of the beauty of all nature, that indescribable feeling of
+delight which arises out of the consciousness of health, and
+strength and power. Suppose that we abandon ourselves to such
+impressions without restraint, and is it not manifest that they are
+the extreme of godless pride and selfishness? For do we not know
+that in this world, and close to us wherever we are, there is,
+along with all the beauty and enjoyment which we witness, a large
+portion also of evil, and of suffering? And do we not know that He
+who gave to the earth its richness, and who set the sun to shine in
+the heavens, and who gave to us that wonderful frame of body and
+mind, whose healthful workings are So delightful to us, that He
+gave them that we might use both body and mind in His service; that
+the soldier has something else to do than to gaze like a child on
+the splendour of his uniform or the brightness of his sword; that
+those faculties which we feel as it were burning within us, have
+their work before them, a work far above their strength, though
+multiplied a thousand fold; that the call to them to be busy is
+never silent; that there is an infinite voice in the infinite sins
+and sufferings of millions which proclaims that the contest is
+raging around us; that every idle moment is treason; that now it is
+the time for unceasing efforts; and that not till the victory is
+gained may Christ's soldiers throw aside their arms, and resign
+themselves to enjoyment and to rest?</p>
+<p>Then when we turn to the words, "our life is hid with Christ in
+God," the exceeding greatness of Christ's promises rises upon us in
+something of the fulness of their reality. Some may know the story
+of that German nobleman<a name="FNanchor12"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_12">[12]</a>, whose life had been distinguished alike by
+genius and worldly distinctions, and by Christian holiness; and
+who, in the last morning of his life, when the dawn broke into his
+sick chamber, prayed that he might be supported to the window, and
+might look once again upon the rising sun. After looking steadily
+at it for some time, he cried out, "Oh! if the appearance of this
+earthly and created thing is so beautiful and so quickening, how
+much more shall I be enraptured at the sight of the unspeakable
+glory of the Creator Himself!" That was the feeling of a man whose
+sense of earthly beauty had all the keenness of a poet's
+enthusiasm; but who, withal, had in his greatest health and vigour
+preserved the consciousness that his life was hid with Christ in
+God; that the things seen, how beautiful soever, were as nothing to
+the things which are not seen. And so, if from the feeling of
+natural enjoyment we turn, at once thankfully and earnestly, to
+remember God's service, and to address ourselves to his work; and
+sadly remember, that, although we can enjoy, yet that many are
+suffering; and that, whilst they are so, enjoyment in us for more
+than a brief space of needful rest cannot but be sin; then there
+must come upon us, most strongly, the impression of that life where
+sin and suffering are not; where not God's works only, but God
+Himself is visible; where the vigour and faculties which we feel
+within us are not the passing strength of a decaying body, nor the
+brief prime of a mind which in a few years must sink into dotage;
+but the strength of a body incorruptible and eternal, the ripeness
+of a spirit which shall go on growing in wisdom and love for
+ever.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_12"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor12">[12]</a> The Baron Von Canitz.</blockquote>
+<p>Thus, then, if we consider again St. Paul's meaning, we shall
+find that, high and pure as it is, it is nothing unreasonable or
+impossible; that what he requires us to be dead to absolutely is
+that which is evil; that, because of the mixture of evil with
+ourselves and all around us, this life must not and cannot be a
+life of entire enjoyment without becoming godless and selfish;
+that, therefore, our affections cannot be set upon earthly things
+so as to enjoy them in and for themselves entirely, without
+becoming inordinate, and therefore evil. He does require us, old
+and young alike, to set our affection on things above: to remember
+that with God, and with Him alone, can be our rest, and the fulness
+of our joy; and amidst our pleasure in earthly things to retain in
+our minds, first, a grateful sense of their Giver; secondly, a
+remembrance of their passing nature; and thirdly, a consciousness
+of the evil that is in the world, which makes it a sin to resign
+ourselves to any enjoyment, except as a permitted refreshment to
+strengthen us for duty to come. Above all, let one feeling be truly
+cherished, and it will do more, perhaps, than any other to moderate
+our pleasure in earthly things, and to render it safe, and
+wholesome, and Christianlike. That feeling is the remembrance of
+our own faults. Let us bear these in mind as God does; let us
+consider how displeasing they are in His sight; how often they are
+repeated; how little they deserve the enjoyments which are given
+us. If this does not change our selfish pleasure into a zealous
+gratitude, then, indeed, sin must have a dominion over us; for the
+natural effect would be, that our hearts should burn within us for
+very shame, and should enkindle us to be thankful with all our
+strength for blessings so undeserved; to show something of our love
+to God who has so richly shown his love to us.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_VII."></a>LECTURE VII.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>CORINTHIANS iii. 21-23.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>All things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or
+Cephas,<br>
+or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to
+come;<br>
+all are yours; and ye are Christ's; and Christ is
+God's</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>It is very possible, that all may not distinctly understand the
+force of the several clauses of this passage, yet, all, I suppose,
+would derive a general impression from it, that it spoke of the
+condition of Christians in very exalted language, and made it to
+extend to things in this world, as well as to things in the world
+to come. But can it be good for us to dwell on our exaltation? And
+if we do, may we not dread lest such language might be used towards
+us as that which St. Paul uses in the very next chapter to the
+Corinthians, "Now ye are full, now ye are rich, ye have reigned as
+kings without us; and I would to God ye did reign, that we also
+might reign with you." It would seem, however, that it would be
+good for us to dwell on the greatness of our condition and
+privileges, because St. Paul, who thus upbraids the Corinthians
+with their pride, had yet himself immediately before laid the
+picture of their high privileges, in the words of the text, in full
+detail before them, as if he wished them carefully to consider it.
+And so indeed it is. It feeds pride to dwell upon our good
+qualities or advantages, as individuals, or as a class in society,
+or as a nation, or as a sect or party; but, to speak generally, our
+advantages and privileges, as Christians, have not a tendency to
+excite pride; for some reasons in the nature of the case; for this
+reason amongst ourselves particularly, because the very essence of
+pride consists in contrast; we are proud that we are, in some one
+or more points, superior to others who come immediately under our
+observation. Now, we have so little to do with any who are not
+Christians, that the contrast is in this case wanting; we have none
+over whom to be proud; none whom we can glory in surpassing; and,
+therefore, a consideration of our Christian advantages, in the
+absence of that one element which might feed pride, is likely with
+us to work in a better manner, and to lead rather to thankfulness
+and increased exertion.</p>
+<p>I say to increased exertion; for what would stop exertion is
+pride. It is the turning back, and pausing to look with
+satisfaction on what is below us, rather than the looking upward to
+the summit, and thinking how much our actual elevation has brought
+us on the way towards it. And, further, there is coupled with every
+consideration of Christian privileges, the thought of what it must
+be to leave such privileges unimproved. In this respect, how well
+does the language of the two lessons from Deuteronomy suit the
+lesson from the Epistle to the Corinthians. We heard the
+description of the beauty and richness of the land which God gave
+to his people,--there were their advantages and privileges,--we
+heard also, the declaration of their unworthiness, and the solemn
+threatening of vengeance if, after having received good, they did
+evil. And as the vengeance has fallen upon them to the utmost, so
+we are taught expressly to apply their example to ourselves. "If
+God spared not the natural branches," such was St. Paul's language
+to the church at Rome, "take heed lest he also spare not thee."</p>
+<p>Let us not fear, then, to consider more nearly the high
+privileges which, as Christians, we enjoy: let us endeavour to
+understand, not merely generally, but in detail, the exalted
+language of the text, where it is said, that all things are ours;
+Paul, Apollos, and Cephas, the world, and life, and death, the
+things of time, and the things of eternity. These are ours because
+we are Christ's, and Christ is God's; they are ours so long as we
+are Christ's, and so far as we are his truly. They are not ours so
+far as we are not his: they are ours in no degree whatever the
+moment that he shall declare that we are his no longer.</p>
+<p>"Paul, and Apollos, and Peter, are ours." This, perhaps, is the
+expression which we should understand least distinctly of any. It
+is an expression, however, of deep importance, though perhaps less
+so here than in congregations of a different sort. I need not,
+therefore, dwell on it long now. But the Corinthians, as many
+Christians have done since, were apt to think more of their being
+Christians of a certain sort, than of being Christians simply: some
+said, "We have Paul's view of Christianity, the true and sound view
+of it, free from superstition:" others said, "But we have Peter's
+view of Christianity, one of Christ's own apostles, who were with
+him on earth; ours is the true and earliest view of it, free from
+all innovations:" and others, again, said, "Nay, but we have been
+taught by Apollos, an eloquent man, and mighty in the Scriptures;
+one who best understands how to unite the law and the gospel; one
+who has given us the full perfection of Christianity." No doubt
+there were some differences of views even between Paul, and Peter,
+and Apollos; for while, on the one hand, they were all enlightened
+by the Spirit of God, yet, on the other hand, they retained still
+their human differences of character and disposition, which must on
+several occasions have been manifest. But St. Paul does not tell us
+what these were, nor how far they extended, nor to what degree they
+had been exaggerated by those who heard them. He does not insist
+upon the truth of his own view, nor wish the Corinthians to lay
+aside their divisions, after the manner so zealously enforced by
+some persons now, namely, that those who said they were of Peter,
+or of Apollos, should confess that they had been in error, and
+declare themselves to be now only of Paul. Such a condemnation of
+schism he would have held to be in itself in the highest degree
+schismatical. But St. Paul was earnest, that schism should be ended
+after another way than this, by all parties remembering, that
+whatever became of the truth or falsehood of their own particular
+views of Christianity, yet, that Christianity according to any of
+their views was the one great thing which was their glory and their
+salvation. "Paul, and Apollos, and Peter, are all yours: but you
+are Christ's." You should not glory in men; that you belong to a
+purer church than other Christians; but that you belong to the
+church of Christ; that church, which, in its most pure particular
+branches, has never been free from some mixture of human infirmity
+and error; nor yet, in its worst branches, has ever lost altogether
+the seal of Christ's Spirit, nor ceased to believe in Christ
+crucified.</p>
+<p>But the next words are of more particular concern to us here.
+"The world, and life, and death, and things present, and things to
+come, are all ours." They are all ours, so far as we are Christ's.
+The world is ours; its manifold riches and delights, its various
+wisdom, all are ours. They are ours, not as a thing stolen, and
+which will be taken from us with a heavy over-payment of penalty,
+because we stole it when it did not belong to us; but they are ours
+by God's free gift, to minister to our comfort, and to our good.
+And this is the great difference; the good things of this world are
+stolen by many; but they belong, by God's gift, to those only who
+are Christ's: and there is the sure sign, generally, to be seen of
+their being stolen,--an unwillingness that He to whom of right they
+belong should see them. What a man steals, he enjoys, as it were,
+in fear: if the owner of it finds him with it, then all his
+enjoyment is gone; he wishes that he had never touched it; it is no
+source of pleasure to him, but merely one of terror. And so it is
+often with our stolen pleasures,--stolen, I mean, not in respect of
+man, but of God,--stolen, because we do not feel them to be God's
+gift, nor receive them, as from him, with thankfulness. They may be
+very lawful pleasures, so far as other men are concerned; pleasures
+bought, it may be, with our own money, or given to us by our own
+friends, and enjoyed without any injury to any one. They may be the
+very simplest enjoyments of life, our health, the fresh air, our
+common food, our common amusements, our common society; things most
+permitted to us all, as far as man is concerned, but yet things
+which are constantly stolen by us, because we take them without
+God's leave, and enjoy them not as his gifts. They are all his, and
+he gives them freely to his children. If we are his children, he
+gives them to us; and delights in our enjoyment of them, as any
+human father loves to see the pleasure of his children in those
+things which it is good for them to enjoy. But then, is any child
+afraid of his father so seeing him? or is the thought of his father
+any interruption to his enjoyment? If it would be, we should be
+sure that there was something wrong; that the enjoyment, either in
+itself, or with respect to the particular case of that child, was a
+stolen one. And even as simple is the state of our dread of God, of
+our wish to keep his name and his thought away from us. It is the
+sure sign that our pleasures are stolen, either as being wrong in
+themselves, or much oftener, because we have taken them without
+being fit for them, have snatched them for ourselves, instead of
+receiving them at the hands of God. Two of us may be daily doing
+the very same thing in most respects,--enjoying actually the very
+same pleasures, whether of body or of mind; the same exercises, the
+same studies, the same indulgences, the same society,--and yet
+these very same things may belong rightfully to the one, and be
+stolen by the other. To the one they may come with a double
+blessing, as the assurance of God's greater love hereafter: to the
+other, they are but an addition to that sad account, when all good
+things enjoyed here, having been not our own rightly, but stolen,
+shall be paid for in over measure, by evil things to be suffered
+hereafter.</p>
+<p>And what I have said of the world, will apply also to life and
+to death. Oh, the infinite difference whether life is ours, or but
+stolen for an instant; whether death is ours, our subject,
+ministering only to our good; or our fearful enemy, our ever keen
+pursuer, from whose grasp we have escaped for a few short years,
+but who is following fast after us, and when he has once caught us
+will hold us fast for ever! Have we ever seen his near
+approach--has he ever forced himself upon our notice whether we
+would or no? But two days since he was amongst us,--we were, as it
+were, forced to look upon him. Did we think that he was ours, or
+that we were his? If we are his, then indeed he is fearful: fearful
+to the mere consciousness of nature; a consciousness which no
+arguments can overcome; fearful if it be merely the parting from
+life, if it be merely the resigning that wonderful thing which we
+call our being. It is fearful to go from light to darkness, from
+all that we have ever known and loved, to that of which we know and
+love nothing. But if death, even thus stingless, is yet full of
+horror, what is he with his worst sting beside, the sting of our
+sins? What is he when he is taking us, not to nothingness, but to
+judgment? He is indeed so fearful then, that no words can paint him
+half so truly as our foreboding dread of him, and no arguments
+which the wit of man can furnish can strip him of his terrors.</p>
+<p>But what if death too, as well as life, be ours?--which he is,
+if we are Christ's; for Christ has conquered him. If he be ours,
+our servant, our minister, sent but to bring us into the presence
+of our Lord, then, indeed, his terrors, his merely natural terrors,
+the outside roughness of his aspect, are things which the merest
+child need not shrink from. Then disease and decay, however painful
+to living friends to look upon, have but little pain for him who is
+undergoing them. For it is not only amidst the tortures of actual
+martyrdom that Christians have been more than conquerors,--in
+common life, on the quiet or lonely sick bed, under the grasp of
+fever or of consumption, the conquest has been witnessed as often
+and as completely. It is not a little thing when the faintest
+whisper of thought to which expiring nature can give utterance
+breathes of nothing but of peace and of forgiveness. It is not a
+little thing when the name of Christ possesses us wholly; not
+distinctly, it may be, for reason may be too weak for this; but
+with an indescribable power of support and comfort. Or even if
+there be a last conflict,--a season of terror and of pain, a valley
+of the shadow of death, dark and gloomy,--yet even there Christ is
+with his servants, and as their trial is so is his love. Thus it
+is, if death be ours; and death is ours, if we be Christ's. And are
+we not Christ's? We bear his name, we have his outward seal of
+belonging to his people,--can we refuse to be his in heart and true
+obedience? Would we rather steal our pleasures than enjoy them as
+our own; steal life for an instant, rather than have it our sure
+possession for ever? Would we rather be fugitives from death,
+fugitives whom he will surely recover and hold fast, than be able
+to say and to feel that death, as well as life is ours, things to
+come, as well as things present, because we are truly Christ's?</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_VIII."></a>LECTURE VIII.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>GALATIANS V. 16, 17.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of
+the flesh.<br>
+For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against
+the<br>
+flesh; and these are contrary the one to the other, so that ye
+cannot<br>
+do the things that ye would</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>"We cannot do the things that we would." These are words of
+familiar and common use; this is the language in which we are all
+apt to excuse, whether to ourselves or to others, the various
+faults of our conduct. We should be glad to do better, so we say
+and think, but the power to do so fails us. And so far it may seem
+that we are but echoing the apostle's language; for he says the
+very same thing, "Ye cannot do the things that ye would." Yet the
+words as we use them, and as the apostle used them, have the most
+opposite meaning in the world. We use them as a reason why we
+should be satisfied, the apostle as a reason why we should be
+alarmed; we intend them to be an excuse, the apostle meant them to
+be a certain sign of condemnation.</p>
+<p>The reasons of this difference may be understood very easily.
+We, in the common course of justice, should think it hard to punish
+a man for not doing what he cannot do. We think, therefore, that if
+we say that we cannot do well, we establish also our own claim to
+escape from punishment. But God declares that a state of sin is and
+must be a state of misery; and that if we cannot escape the sin, we
+cannot escape the misery. According to God's meaning, then, the
+words, "Ye cannot do the things which ye would," mean no other than
+this: "Ye cannot escape from hell; ye cannot be redeemed from the
+power of death and of Satan; the power is wanting in you, however
+much you may wish it: death has got you, and it will keep you for
+ever." So that, in this way, sickness or weakness of the soul is
+very like sickness or weakness of the body. We cannot help being
+ill or weak in many cases: is that any reason why, according to the
+laws of God's providence, we should not suffer the pain of illness?
+Or is it not, rather, clear that we suffer it just because we have
+not the power to get rid of it; if we had the power to be well, we
+should be well. A man's evils are not gone because he wishes them
+away; it is not he who would fain see his chains broken, that
+escapes from his bondage; but he who has the strength to rend them
+asunder.</p>
+<p>Thus, then, in St. Paul's language, "Ye cannot do the things
+that ye would," means exactly, "Ye are not redeemed, but in
+bondage; ye are not saved, but lost." But he goes on to the reason
+why we cannot do the things which we would, which is, "because the
+flesh and the Spirit are contrary to one another," and pull us, as
+it were, different ways. Just as we might say of a man in illness,
+that the reason why he is not well, as he wishes to be, is because
+his healthy nature and his disease are contrary to one another, and
+are striving within him for the mastery. His blood, according to
+its healthy nature, would flow calmly and steadily; his food,
+according to his healthy nature, would be received with appetite,
+and would give him nourishment and strength; but, behold, there is
+in him now another nature, contrary to his healthy nature: and this
+other nature makes his blood flow with feverish quickness, and
+makes food distasteful to him, and makes the food which he has
+eaten before to become, as it were, poison; it does not nourish him
+or strengthen, but is a burden, a weakness, and a pain. As long as
+these two natures thus struggle within him, the man is sick; as
+soon as the diseased nature prevails, the man sinks and dies. He
+does not wish to die,--not at all,--most earnestly, it may be, does
+he wish to live; but his diseased nature has overcome his healthy
+nature, and so he must die. If he would live, in any sense that
+deserves to be called life, the diseased nature must not overcome,
+must not struggle equally; it must be overcome, it must be kept
+down, it must be rendered powerless; and then, when the healthy
+nature has prevailed, its victory is health and strength.</p>
+<p>So far all is alike; but what follows afterwards? As "ye cannot
+do the things which ye would, because the flesh and the Spirit are
+contrary to one another,"--what then? "Therefore," says the
+apostle, "walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of
+the flesh." Surely there is some thing marvellous in this. For, let
+us speak the same language to the sick man: tell him, "Follow thy
+healthy nature, and them shalt not be sick," what would the words
+be but a bitter mockery? "How can you bid me," he would say, "to
+follow my healthy nature, when ye know that my diseased nature has
+bound me? Have ye no better comfort than this to offer me? Tell me
+rather how I may become able to follow my healthy nature; show me
+the strength which may help my weakness; or else your words are
+vain, and I never can recover." Most true would be this answer; and
+therefore disease and death do make havoc of us all, and the
+healthy nature is in the end borne down by the diseased nature, and
+sooner or later the great enemy triumphs over us, and, in spite of
+all our wishes and fond desires for life, we go down, death's
+conquered subjects, to the common grave of all living.</p>
+<p>This happens to the bodies of us all; to the souls of only too
+many. But why does it not happen also to the souls of all? How is
+it that some do fulfil the apostle's bidding? that they do walk in
+the Spirit, and therefore do not fulfil the lusts of the flesh; and
+therefore having conquered their diseased nature, they do walk
+according to their healthful nature, and are verily able to do, and
+do continually, the very things that they would? Surely this so
+striking difference, between the universal conquest of our diseased
+nature in the body, and the occasional victory of the healthy
+nature in the soul, shows us clearly that for the soul there has
+appeared a Redeemer already, while for the body the redemption is
+delayed till death shall be swallowed up in victory.</p>
+<p>For most true is it that in ourselves we could not deliver
+ourselves either soul or body. "Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall
+not fulfil the lusts of the flesh," might have been as cruel a
+mockery to us, as the similar words addressed to the man bodily
+sick,--"Walk according to thy healthy nature, and thou shalt not
+suffer from disease." They might have been a mockery, but blessed
+be God, they are not. They are not, because God has given us a
+Redeemer; they are not, because Christ has died, yea rather has
+risen again; and because the Spirit of Christ helpeth our
+infirmities, and gives us that power which by ourselves we had
+not.</p>
+<p>Not by wishing then to be redeemed, but by being redeemed, shall
+we escape the power of death. Not by saying, "Alas! we cannot do
+the things that we would!" but by becoming able to do them. Walk in
+the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh; but if
+ye do fulfil them, ye must die.</p>
+<p>The power to walk in the Spirit is given by the Spirit; but
+either all have not this power, or all do not use it. I think
+rather it is that all have it not, for if they had it, a power so
+mighty and so beneficent, they surely could not help using it. All
+have it not; but I do not say that they all might not have it; on
+the contrary, all might have it, but in point of fact they have it
+not. They have it not because they seek it not: for an idle wish is
+one thing; a steady persevering pursuit is another. They seek not
+the Spirit by the appointed means, the means of prayer and
+attending to God's holy word, and thinking of life and death and
+judgment.</p>
+<p>Do those seek the spirit of God who never pray to God? Clearly
+they do not. For they who never pray to God never think of Him;
+they who never think of Him, by the very force of the terms it
+follows that they cannot seek his help. And yet they say, "Oh, I
+wish to be good, but I cannot!" But this, in the language of the
+Scripture, is a lie. If they did wish to be good they would seek
+the help that could make them so. There is no boy so young as not
+to know that, when temptation is on him to evil, prayer to God will
+strengthen him for good. As sure as we live, if he wished really to
+overcome the temptation, he would seek the strength.</p>
+<p>Consider what prayer is, and see how it cannot but strengthen
+us. He who stands in a sheltered place, where the wind cannot reach
+him, and with no branches over his head to cause a damp shade, and
+then holds up his face or his hands to the sun, in his strength,
+can he help feeling the sun's warmth? Now, thus it is in prayer: we
+turn to God, we bring our souls, with all their thoughts and
+feelings, fully before Him; and by the very act of so doing, we
+shelter ourselves from every chill of worldly care, we clear away
+every intercepting screen of worldly thought and pleasure. It is an
+awful thing so to submit ourselves wholly to the influence of God.
+But do it; and as surely as the sun will warm us if we stand in the
+sun, so will the Giver of light and life to the soul pour his
+Spirit of life into us; even as we pray, we become changed into his
+image.</p>
+<p>This is not spoken extravagantly. I ask of any one who has ever
+prayed in earnest, whether for that time, and while he was so
+praying, he did not feel, as it were, another man; a man able to do
+the things which he would; a man redeemed and free. But most true
+is it that this feeling passes away but too soon, when the prayer
+is done. Still for the time, there is the effect; we know what it
+is to put ourselves, in a manner, beneath the rays of God's grace;
+but we do not abide there long, and then we feel the damp and the
+cold of earth again.</p>
+<p>Therefore says the Apostle, "Pray without ceasing." If we could
+literally pray always, it is clear that we should sin never: it may
+be thus that Christ's redeemed, at his coming, as they will be for
+ever with him and with the Father, can therefore sin no more. For
+where God is, there is no place left for sin. But we cannot pray
+always: we cannot pray the greatest portion of our time; nay, we
+can pray, in the common sense of the term, only a very small
+portion of it. Yet, at least, we can take heed that we do pray
+sometimes, and that our prayer be truly in earnest. We can pray
+then for God's help to abide with us when we are not praying: we
+can commit to his care, not only our hours of sleep, but our hours
+of worldly waking. "I have work to do, I have a busy world around
+me; eye, ear, and thought will be all needed for that work, done in
+and amidst that busy world; now, ere I enter upon it, I would
+commit eye, ear, thought and wish to Thee. Do thou bless them, and
+keep their work thine; that as, through thy natural laws, my heart
+beats and my blood flows without my thought for them, so my
+spiritual life may hold on its course, through, thy help, at those
+times when my mind cannot consciously turn to Thee to commit each
+particular thought to thy service."</p>
+<p>But I dare not say that by any the most urgent prayers, uttered
+only at night and morning, God's blessing can thus be gained for
+the whole intervening day. For, in truth, if we did nothing more,
+the prayers would soon cease to be urgent; they would become
+formal, that is, they would be no prayers at all. For prayer lives
+in the heart, and not in the mouth; it consists not of words, but
+wishes. And no man can set himself heartily to wish twice a day for
+things, of which he never thinks at other times in the day. So that
+prayer requires in a manner to be fed, and its food is to be found
+in reading and thinking; in reading God's word, and in thinking
+about him, and about the world as being his work.</p>
+<p>Young men and boys are generally, we know, not fond of reading
+for its own sake; and when they do read for their own pleasure,
+they naturally read something that interests them. Now, what are
+called serious books, including certainly the Bible, do not
+interest them, and therefore they are not commonly read. What shall
+we say, then? Are they not interested in becoming good, in learning
+to do the things which, they would? If they are not, if they care
+not for the bondage of sin and death, there is, of course, nothing
+to be said; then they are condemned already; they are not the
+children of God. But one says, "I wish I could find interest in a
+serious book, but I cannot." Observe again, "Ye cannot do the
+things that ye would," because the flesh and the Spirit are
+contrary to one another. However, to return to him who says this,
+the answer to him is this,--"The interest cannot come without the
+reading; it may and will come with it." For interest in a subject
+depends very much on our knowledge of it; and so it is with, the
+things of Christ. As long as the life and death of Christ are
+strange to us, how can we be interested about them? but read them,
+thinking of what they were, and what were their ends, and who can
+help being interested about them? Read them carefully, and read
+them often, and they will bring before our minds the very thoughts
+which we need, and which the world keeps continually from us, the
+thoughts which naturally feed our prayers; thoughts not of self,
+nor selfishness, nor pleasure, nor passion, nor folly, but of such
+things as are truly God's--love, and self-denial, and purity, and
+wisdom. These thoughts come by reading the Scriptures; and
+strangely do they mingle at first with the common evil thoughts of
+our evil nature. But they soon find a home within us, and more good
+thoughts gather round them, and there comes a time when daily life
+with its various business, which, once seemed to shut them out
+altogether, now ministers to their nourishment.</p>
+<p>Wherefore, in conclusion, walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not
+fulfil the lusts of the flesh; but do even the things which ye
+would. And ye can walk in the Spirit, if ye seek for the Spirit; if
+ye seek him by prayer, and by reading of Christ, and the things of
+Christ. If we will do neither, then most assuredly we are not
+seeking him; if we seek him not, we shall never find him. If we
+find him not, we shall never be able to do the things that we
+would; we shall never be redeemed, never made free, but our souls
+shall be overcome by their evil nature, as surely as our bodies by
+their diseased nature; till one death shall possess us wholly, a
+death of body and of soul, the death of eternal misery.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_IX."></a>LECTURE IX.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>LUKE xiv. 33.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he
+hath,<br>
+he cannot be my disciple</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>In order to show that these words were not spoken to the
+apostles alone, but to all Christians, we have only to turn to the
+25th and 26th verses, which run thus:--"And there went great
+multitudes with him, and he turned and said unto them, If any man
+come to me, and hate not his father and mother, and wife and
+children, and brethren and sisters, yea and his own life also, he
+cannot be my disciple." The words were not, then, spoken to the
+twelve apostles only, as if they contained merely some rule of
+extraordinary piety, which was not to be required of common
+Christians; they were spoken to a great multitude; they were spoken
+to warn all persons in that multitude that not one of them could
+become a Christian, unless he gave himself up to Christ body and
+soul. Thus declaring that there is but one rule for all; a rule
+which the highest Christian can never go beyond; and which the
+lowest, if he would be a Christian at all, must make the foundation
+of his whole life.</p>
+<p>Now take the words, either of the text or of the 26th verse, and
+is it possible to avoid seeing that, on the very lowest
+interpretation, they do insist upon a very high standard; that they
+do require a very entire and devoted obedience? Is it possible for
+any one who believes what Christ has said, to rest contented,
+either for himself or for others, with that very low and very
+unchristian standard which he sees and knows to prevail generally
+in the world? Is it possible for him not to wish, for himself and
+for all in whose welfare he is interested, that they may belong to
+the small minority in matters of principle and practice, rather
+than to the large majority?</p>
+<p>And because he so wishes, one who endeavours to follow Christ
+sincerely can never be satisfied with the excuse that he acts and
+thinks quite as well as the mass of persons about him; it can never
+give him comfort, with regard to any judgment or practice, to be
+told, in common language, "Everybody thinks so; everybody does so."
+If, indeed, this expression "everybody" might be taken literally;
+if it were quite true, without any exception, that "everybody
+thought or did so;" then I grant that it would have a very great
+authority; so great that it would be almost a mark of madness to
+run counter to it. For what all men, all without a single
+exception, were to agree in, must be some truth which the human
+mind could not reject without insanity,--like the axioms of
+science, or some action which if we did not we could not live, as
+sleeping and eating; or if there be any moral point so universally
+agreed upon, then it must be something exceedingly general: as, for
+instance, that truth is in itself to be preferred to falsehood;
+which to dispute would be monstrous. But, once admit a single
+exception, and the infallible virtue of the rule ceases. I can
+conceive one single good and wise man's judgment and practice,
+requiring, at any rate, to be carefully attended to, and his
+reasons examined, although millions upon millions stood against
+him. But go on with the number of exceptions, and bring the
+expression "everybody," to its real meaning, which is only "most
+persons," "the great majority of the world;" then the rule becomes
+of no virtue at all, but very often the contrary. If in matters of
+morals many are on one side and some on the other, it is impossible
+to pronounce at once which are most likely to be right: it depends
+on the sort of case on which the difference exists; for the
+victories of truth and of good are but partial. It is not all truth
+that triumphs in the world, nor all good; but only truth and good
+up to a certain point. Let them once pass this point, and their
+progress pauses. Their followers, in the mass, cannot keep up with
+them thus far: fewer and fewer are those who still press on in
+their company, till at last even these fail; and there is a
+perfection at which they are deserted by all men, and are in the
+presence of God and of Christ alone.</p>
+<p>Thus it is that, up to a certain point, in moral matters the
+majority are right; and thus Christ's gospel, in a great many
+respects, goes along with public opinion, and the voice of society
+is the voice of truth. But this, to use the expression of our
+Lord's parable, this is but half the height of that tower whose top
+should reach unto heaven. Christianity ascends a great deal higher;
+and therefore so many who begin to build are never able to finish.
+Christ's disciples and the world's disciples work for a certain way
+together; and thus far the world's disciples call themselves
+Christ's, and so Christ's followers seem to be a great majority.
+But Christ warns us expressly that we are not his disciples merely
+by going a certain way on the same road with them. They only are
+His, who follow Him to the end. They only are His, who follow him
+in spite of everything, who leave all rather than leave him. For
+the rest, He does not own them. What the world can give they may
+enjoy; but Christ's kingdom is shut against them.</p>
+<p>Speaking, then, according to Christ's judgment, and we must hold
+those to be of the world, and not of Him,--and therefore in God's
+judgment, to be the evil and not the good,--who do not make up
+their minds to live in His service, and to refer their actions,
+words, and thoughts to His will. Who these are it is very true that
+we many times cannot know: only we may always fear that they are
+the majority of society; and therefore we are rather anxious in any
+individual's case to get a proof that he is not one of them,
+because, as they are very many, there is always a sort of
+presumption that any given person is of this number, unless there
+is some evidence, or some presumption at any rate, for thinking the
+contrary.</p>
+<p>When we speak, then, of the good and of the evil side in human
+life, in any society, whether smaller or larger,--this is what we
+mean, or should mean. The evil side contains much that is, up to a
+certain point, good: the good side,--for does it not consist of
+human beings?--contains, unhappily, much in it that is evil. Not
+all in the one is to be avoided,--far from it; nor is all in the
+other by any means to be followed. But still those are called evil
+in God's judgment who live according to their own impulses, or
+according to the law of the society around them; and those are to
+be called good, who, in their principles, whatever may be the
+imperfections of their practice, endeavour in all things to live
+according to the will of Christ.</p>
+<p>And in this view the characters of Jacob and Esau are, as it
+seems to me, full of instruction; and above all to us here. For I
+have often observed that the early age of an individual bears a
+great resemblance to the early age of the human race, or of any
+particular nation; so that the characters of the Old Testament are
+often more suited, in a Christian country, for the instruction of
+the young than for those of more advanced years. To Christian men,
+looking at Jacob's life, with the faults recorded of it, it is
+sometimes strange that he should be spoken of as good. But it seems
+that in a rude state of society, where knowledge is very low, and
+passion very strong, the great virtue is to be freed from the
+dominion of the prevailing low principle, to see and resolve that
+we ought and will live according to knowledge, and not according to
+passion or impulse. The knowledge may be very imperfect, and
+probably is so: the practice may in many respects offend against
+knowledge, and probably will do so: yet is a great step taken; it
+is <i>the</i> virtue of man, in such a state of society, to follow,
+though imperfectly, principle, where others follow instinct, or the
+opinion of their fellows. It is the great distinguishing mark, in
+such a state of things, between the good and the evil; for this
+reason, amongst many others, that it is the virtue, under such,
+circumstances, of the hardest attainment.</p>
+<p>Now, the Scripture judgment of Jacob and Esau, should be in an
+especial manner the basis of our judgment with regard to the young.
+None can doubt, that amongst the young, when they form a society of
+their own, the great temptation is to live by impulse, or according
+to the opinion of those around them. It is like a light breaking in
+upon darkness, when a young person is led to follow a higher
+standard, and to live according to God's will. Esau, in his faults
+and amiable points alike, is the very image of the prevailing
+character amongst boys; sometimes violently revengeful, as when
+Esau looked forward with satisfaction to the prospect of his
+father's death, because then we should be able to slay his brother
+Jacob; sometimes full of generosity, as when Esau forgot all his
+grounds of complaint against his brother, and received him on his
+return from Mesopotamia with open arms;--but habitually careless,
+and setting the present before the future, the lower gratification
+before the higher, as when Esau sold his birth-right for a mess of
+pottage. And the point to be noted is, that, because of this
+carelessness, this profaneness or ungodliness, as it is truly
+called in the New Testament, Esau is distinguished from those who
+were God's people; the promises were not his, nor yet the blessing.
+This is remarkable, because Esau's faults, undoubtedly were just
+the faults of his age: he was no worse than the great majority of
+those around him; he lived as we should say, in our common
+language, that it was natural for him to live. He had, therefore,
+precisely all those excuses which are commonly urged for the
+prevailing faults of boys; yet it is quite certain that the
+Scripture holds him out as a representative of those who were not
+on the side of God,</p>
+<p>If the Scripture has so judged of Esau and Jacob, it must be the
+model for our judgments of those whose circumstances, on account of
+their belonging to a society consisting wholly of persons young in
+age, greatly resemble the circumstances of the early society of the
+world. I lay the stress on the belonging to a society wholly formed
+of young persons; for the case of young persons brought up at home,
+is extremely different; and their circumstances would be best
+suited by a different scriptural example. But here, with you, I am
+quite sure that the great distinguishing mark between good and
+evil, is the endeavouring, or not endeavouring, to rise above the
+carelessness of the society of which you are members; the
+determining, or not determining, to judge of things by another rule
+than that of school morality or honour; the trying, or not trying,
+to please God, instead of those around you: for the notions and
+maxims of a society of young persons are like the notions and
+maxims of men in a half-civilized age, a strange mixture of right
+and wrong; or rather wrong in their result, although with some
+right feeling in them, and therefore as a guide, false and
+mischievous. That it is natural to follow these maxims, is quite
+obvious: they are the besetting sin of your particular condition;
+and it is always according to our corrupt nature to follow our
+besetting sin. It is quite natural that you should be careless,
+profane, mistaking evil for good, and good for evil; but salvation
+is not for those who follow their nature, but for those in whom
+God's grace has overcome its evil; it is for those, in Christ's
+language, who take up their cross and follow him; that is, for
+those who struggle against their evil nature, that they may gain a
+better nature, and be born, not after the flesh, but after the
+Spirit of God.</p>
+<p>What is to be said to this? or what qualification, or
+compromise, is to be made in it? The words of the text will
+authorize us, at any rate, to make none: their language is not that
+of indulgent allowance; but it is a call, a loud and earnest, even
+a severe, call, it may be, in the judgment of our evil nature,--to
+shake off the weight that hangs about us; to deliver our hearts
+from the dominion of that which cannot profit, and to submit them
+to Christ alone. This is God's judgment, this is Christ's word; and
+we cannot and dare not qualify it. They are evil, for God and
+Christ declare it, who judge and live after the maxims of the
+society around them, and not after Christ; they are evil who are
+careless; they are evil who live according to their own blind and
+capricious feelings, now hot, now cold; they are evil who call evil
+good, and good evil, because they have not known the Father nor
+Christ. This, and nothing less, we say, lest we should be found
+false witnesses of God: but if this language, which is that of
+Scripture, seem harsh, to any one, oh! let him remember how soon he
+may change it into the language of the most abundant mercy, of the
+tenderest love; that if he calls upon God, God is ready to hear;
+that if he seeks to know and to do God's will, God will be found by
+him, and will strengthen him; that it is true kindness not to
+disguise from him his real danger, but earnestly to conjure him to
+flee from it, and to offer our humblest prayers to God, for him and
+ourselves, that our judgments and our practice may be formed only
+after his example.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_X"></a>LECTURE X.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>1 TIMOTHY i. 9.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>The law is not made for a righteous man, but for the
+lawless and<br>
+disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and
+profane</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>These words explain the meaning of a great many passages in St.
+Paul's Epistles, in which also he speaks of the law, and of not
+being under the law, and other such expressions. And it is clear
+also, that he is not speaking solely, or chiefly, or, in any
+considerable degree, of the ceremonial law; but much more of the
+law of moral good, the law which told men how they ought to live,
+and how they ought not. This law, he says, is not made for good
+men, but for evil: a thing so plain, that we may well wonder how
+any could ever have misunderstood it. It is so manifest, that
+strict rules are required, just exactly in proportion to our
+inability or want of will to rule ourselves; it is so very plain,
+that, with regard to those crimes which we are under no temptation
+to commit, we feel exactly as if there were no law. Which of us
+ever thinks, as a matter of personal concern, of the law which
+sentences to death murderers, or housebreakers, or those who
+maliciously set fire to their neighbours' property? Do we not feel
+that, as far as our own conduct is concerned, it would be exactly
+the same thing if no such law were in existence? We should no more
+murder, or rob, or set fire to houses and barns, if the law were
+wholly done away, than we do now that it is in force.</p>
+<p>There are, then, some points in which we feel practically that
+we are not under the law, but dead to it; that the law is not made
+for us: but do we think, therefore, that we may murder, and rob,
+and burn? or do we not rather feel that such a notion would be
+little short of madness? We are not under the law, because we do
+not need it; not because there is in reality no law to punish us if
+we do need it. And just of this kind is that general freedom from
+the law, of which St. Paul speaks, as the high privilege of true
+Christians.</p>
+<p>But yet St. Paul would not at all mean that any Christian is
+altogether without the law: that is, that there are no points at
+all in which his inclination is not to evil, and in which,
+therefore, he needs the fear of God to restrain him from it. When
+he says of himself, that he kept under his body lest that by any
+means he should become a castaway; just so far as this fear of
+being a castaway possessed him, that is, just so far as there were
+any evil tendencies in him, which required him to keep them under
+by an effort, just so far was he under the law. And this is so, as
+we full well know, with us all; for as there is none of us in whom
+sin is utterly dead, so neither can there be any of us who is
+altogether dead to the law.</p>
+<p>Yet, although this be so, there is no doubt that the gospel
+wishes to consider us as generally dead to the law, in order that
+we really may become so continually more and more. It supposes that
+the Spirit of God, presenting to our minds the sight of God's love
+in Christ, sets us free from the law of sin and death; that is,
+that a sense of thankfulness to God, and love of God and of Christ,
+will be so strong a motive, that we shall, generally speaking, need
+no other; that it will so work upon us, as to make us feel good,
+easy, and delightful, and thus to become dead to the law. And there
+is no doubt also, that that same freedom from the law, which we
+ourselves experience daily, in respect of some particular great
+crimes, (for, as I said, we do not feel that it is the fear of the
+law which keeps us from murder or from robbing,) that very same
+freedom is felt by good men in many other points, where it may be
+that we ourselves do not feel it. A common instance may be given
+with respect to prayer, and the outward worship of God. There are a
+great many who feel this as a duty; but there are many also to whom
+it is not so much a duty, as a privilege and a pleasure; and these
+are dead to the law which commands us to be instant in prayer, just
+as we, in general, are dead to the law which commands us to do no
+murder.</p>
+<p>This being understood, it will be perfectly plain, why St. Paul,
+along with all his language as to the law being passed away, and
+our being become dead to it, yet uses, very frequently, language of
+another kind, which shows that the law is not dead in itself, but
+lives, and ever will live. He says, "We must all stand before the
+judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive according to
+what he has done in the body." And he adds, "Knowing therefore the
+terror of the Lord, we persuade men." But the judgment, and the
+terror of the Lord, mean precisely what are meant by the law. And
+this language of St. Paul shows more clearly, that, unless we are
+first dead to the law, the law is not, and never will be dead to
+us.</p>
+<p>I should not have thought it useless, to have offered merely
+this explanation of a language, which is very common in the New
+Testament, which, forms one of its characteristic points, (for St.
+John's expression of "Perfect love casteth out fear," is exactly
+equivalent to St. Paul's, "That we are dead to the law,") and which
+has been often misunderstood, or misrepresented. But yet I am well
+aware, that mere explanations of Scripture cannot be expected to
+interest those to whom Scripture is not familiar. The answer to a
+riddle would be very soon forgotten, unless the riddle had first at
+once amused and puzzled us. Just so, explanations of Scripture, to
+be at all valued, must suppose a previous knowledge of, and desire
+to understand, the difficulty; and this we cannot expect to find in
+very young persons. Thus far, then, what I have said has been
+necessarily addressed, I do not say, or mean, to the oldest part of
+my hearers only, but yet to the older, and more considering part of
+them. But the subject is capable, I think, of being brought much
+more closely home to us; for what St. Paul says of the law, with
+reference to all mankind, is precisely that state of mind which one
+would wish to see here; and the mistakes of his meaning are just
+such as are often prevalent, and are likely to do great mischief,
+with regard to the motives to be appealed to in education.</p>
+<p>Now, what is the case in the Scripture? Men had been subject to
+a strict law of rewards and punishments, appealing directly to
+their hopes, and to their fears. The gospel offered itself to them,
+as a declaration of God's love to them; so wonderful, that it
+seemed as though it could not but excite them to love him in
+return. It also raised their whole nature; their understandings, no
+less than their affections; and thus led them to do God's will,
+from another and higher feeling than they had felt heretofore; to
+do it, not because they must, but because they loved it. And to
+such as answered to this heavenly call, God laid aside, if I may
+venture so to speak, all his terrors; he showed himself to them
+only as a loving father, between whom and his children there was
+nothing but mutual affection; who would be loved by them, and love
+them forever. But to those who answered not to it, and far more,
+who dared to abuse it; who thought that God's love was weakness;
+that the liberty to which they were called, was the liberty of
+devils, the liberty of doing evil as they would; to all such, God
+was still a consuming fire, and their most merciful Saviour himself
+was a judge to try their very hearts and reins; in short, the
+gospel was to them, not salvation, but condemnation; it awakened
+not the better, but the baser parts of their nature; it did not do
+away, but doubled their guilt, and therefore brought upon them, and
+will bring through all eternity, a double measure of
+punishment.</p>
+<p>Now all this applies exactly to that earlier and, as it were,
+preparatory life, which ends not in death, but in manhood. The
+state of boyhood begins under a law. It is a great mistake to
+address always the reason of a child, when you ought rather to
+require his obedience. Do this, do not do that; if you do this, I
+shall love you; if you do not, I shall punish you;--such is the
+state, most clearly a state of law, under which we are, and must
+be, placed at the beginning of education. But we should desire and
+endeavour to see this state of law succeeded by something better;
+we should desire so to unfold the love of Christ as to draw the
+affections towards him; we should desire so to raise the
+understanding as that it may fasten itself, by its own native
+tendrils, round the pillar of truth, without requiring to be bound
+to it by external bands. We should avoid all unnecessary harshness;
+we should speak and act with all possible kindness; because love,
+rather than fear, love both of God and man, is the motive which we
+particularly wish to awaken. Thus, keeping punishment in the
+background and, as it were, out of sight, and putting forward
+encouragement and kindness, we should attract, as it were, the good
+and noble feelings of those with, whom we are dealing, and invite
+them to open, and to answer to, a system of confidence and
+kindness, rather than risk the chilling and hardening them by a
+system of mistrust and severity.</p>
+<p>And for those who do answer to this call, how really true is it
+that they do soon become dead, in great measure, to the law of the
+place where they are living! How little do they generally feel its
+restraints, or its tasks, burdensome! How very little have they to
+do with its punishments! Led on by degrees continually higher and
+higher, their relations with us become more and more relations of
+entire confidence and kindness; and when at last their trial is
+over, and they pass from this first life, as I have ventured to
+call it, into their second life of manhood, how beautifully are
+they ripened for that state! how naturally do all the restraints of
+this first life fall away, like the mortal body of the perfected
+Christian; and they enter upon the full liberty of manhood, fitted
+at once to enjoy and to improve it!</p>
+<p>But observe, that St. Paul does not suppose even the best
+Christian to be without the law altogether: there will ever be some
+points in which he will need to remember it. And so it is
+unkindness, rather than kindness, and a very mischievous mistake,
+to forget that here, in this our preparatory life, the law cannot
+cease altogether with any one; that it is not possible to find a
+perfect sense and feeling of right existing in every action; nay,
+that it is even unreasonable to seem to expect it. Little faults,
+little irregularities, there always will be, with which the law is
+best fitted to deal; which should be met, I mean, by a system of
+rules and of punishments, not severe, certainly, nor one at all
+inconsistent with general respect, kindness, and confidence; but
+which check the particular faults alluded to better, I think, than
+could be done by seeming to expect of the individual that he
+should, in all such cases, be a law to himself. There is a
+possibility of our over-straining the highest principles, by
+continually appealing to them on very trifling occasions. It is far
+better, here, to apply the system of the law; to require obedience
+to rules, as a matter of discipline; to visit the breach of them by
+moderate punishment, not given in anger, not at all inconsistent
+with general confidence and regard, but gently reminding us of that
+truth which we may never dare wholly to forget,--that punishment
+will exist eternally so long as there is evil, and that the only
+way of remaining for ever entirely strangers to it, is by adhering
+for ever and entirely to good.</p>
+<p>This applies to every one amongst us; and is the reason why
+rules, discipline, and punishments, however much they may be, and
+are, kept in the background for such, as have become almost wholly
+dead to them, must yet continue in existence, because none are, or
+can be, dead to them altogether. But now, suppose that we have a
+nature to deal with, which, cannot answer to a system of kindness,
+but abuses it; which, when punishment is kept at a distance,
+rejoices, as thinking that it may follow evil safely; a nature not
+to be touched by the love of God or man, not to be guided by any
+perception of its own as to what is right and true. Is the law dead
+really to such as these? or should it be so? Is punishment a
+degradation to a nature which, is so self-degraded as to be
+incapable of being moved by anything better? For this is the real
+degradation which we should avoid; not the fear of punishment,
+which is not at all degrading, but the being insensible to the love
+of Christ and of goodness; and so being capable of receiving no
+other motive than the fear of punishment alone. With such natures,
+to withhold punishment, would be indeed to make Christ the minister
+of sin; to make mercy, that is, lead to evil, and not to good. For
+them, the law never is dead, and never will be. Here, of course, in
+this first life, as I have called it, punishment indeed goes but a
+little way: it is very easy for a hardened nature to defy all that
+could be laid upon it here in the way of actual compulsion. Our
+only course is to cut short the time of trial, when we find a
+nature in whom that trial cannot end in good. Still there may be
+those in whom this life here, like their greater life which shall
+last for ever, will have far more to do with punishment than with
+kindness; they will be living all their time under the law.
+Continue this to our second life, and the law then will be no less
+alive, and they will never be dead to it, nor will it be ever dead
+to them. And however a hardened nature may well despise the
+punishments of its first life,--punishments, whose whole object is
+correction, and not retribution,--yet, where is the nature so hard
+as to endure, in its relations with God, to feel more of his
+punishment than of his mercy; to know him for ever as a God of
+judgment, and not as a Father of love?</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XI."></a>LECTURE XI.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>ST. LUKE xxi. 36.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>Watch ye, therefore, and pray always, that ye may be<br>
+accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall<br>
+come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>This might be a text for a history of the Christian Church, from
+its foundation to this hour, or to the latest hour of the world's
+existence. We might observe how it Lad fulfilled its Lord's
+command; with what steadiness it had gone forward on its course,
+with the constant hope of meeting Him once again in glory. We might
+see how it had escaped all these things that were to come to pass:
+tracing its course amidst the manifold revolutions of the world,
+inward and outward. In the few words, "all these things that shall
+come to pass," are contained all the events of the last eighteen
+hundred years: indistinct and unknown to us, as long as they are
+thus folded up together; but capable of being unrolled before our
+eyes in a long order, in which should be displayed all the outward
+changes of nations, the spread of discovery, the vicissitudes of
+conquest; and yet more, the inward changes of men's minds, the
+various schools of philosophy, the successive forms of public
+opinion, the influences of various races, all the manifold elements
+by which the moral character of the Christian world has been
+affected. We might observe how the Church had escaped all these
+things, or to what degree it had received from any of them good or
+evil. And then, stopping at the point at which it has actually
+arrived, we might consider how far it deserves the character of
+that Church, "without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing," which
+should be presented before the Son of Man at his coming again.</p>
+<p>This would be a great subject; and one, if worthily executed,
+full of the deepest instruction to us all. But our Lord's words may
+also be made the text for a history or inquiry of another sort, far
+less comprehensive in time and space, far less grand, far less
+interesting to the understanding; yet, on the other hand, capable
+of being wrought out far more completely, and far more interesting
+to the spiritual and eternal welfare of each of us. They may be
+made the text for an inquiry into the course hitherto held, not by
+the Church as a body, but by each of us individual members of it;
+an inquiry how far we, each of us, have watched and prayed always,
+that we might be accounted worthy to escape all the things which
+should come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man. And, in
+this view of the words, the expression "all these things which
+shall come to pass" has reference no longer to great political
+revolutions, nor to schools of philosophy, nor to prominent points
+of national character; but to those humbler events, to those lesser
+changes, outward and inward, through which we each, pass between
+our cradle and our grave. How have we escaped these, or turned them
+to good account? Have earthly things so ministered to our eternal
+welfare, that if we were each one of us, by a stroke from heaven,
+cut off at that very point in our course to which we have severally
+attained this day, we should be accounted worthy to stand before
+the Son of Man?</p>
+<p>Here is, indeed, a very humble history for us each to study; yet
+what other history can concern us so nearly? And as, in the history
+of the world, experience in part supplies the place of prophecy,
+and the fate of one nation is in a manner a mirror to another, so
+in our individual history, the experience of the old is a lesson to
+the middle-aged, and that of the middle-aged a lesson to the young.
+If you wish to know what are the things which shall come to pass
+with respect to you, we can draw aside the veil from your coming
+life, because what you will be is no other than what we are. If we
+would go onwards, in like manner, and ask what are the things which
+shall come to pass with respect to us, our coming life may be seen
+in the past and present life of the old; for what we shall be is no
+other than what they have been, or than what they are.</p>
+<p>Let us take, then, the actual moment with, each of us, and
+suppose that our Lord speaks to each of us as he did to his first
+disciples: "Watch and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy
+to escape all these things which shall come to pass, and to stand
+before the Son of Man." We ask, naturally, "What are the things
+which shall come to pass?" and it is to this question that I am to
+try to suggest the answer.</p>
+<p>Those arrived at middle age may ask the question, "What are the
+things which shall come to pass to us?" Now, setting aside
+extraordinary accidents, on which we cannot reckon, and the answer
+would, I think, be something of this sort: There will not come to
+pass, it is likely, any great change in our condition or employment
+in life. In middle age our calling, with all the duties which it
+involves, must generally be fixed for each of us. Our particular
+kind of trial will not, it is probable, be much altered. We must
+not, as in youth, fancy that, although our actual occupation does
+not suit us, although its temptations are often too strong for us,
+yet a change may take place to another line of duty, and the
+temptations in that new line may be less formidable. In middle age
+it will not do to indulge such fond hopes as these. On the
+contrary, our hope must lie, not in escape, but in victory. If our
+temptations press us hard, we cannot expect to have them exchanged
+for others less powerful: they will remain with us, and we must
+overcome them, or perish. Have we tastes not fully reconciled to
+our calling,--faculties which seem not to have found their proper
+field? We must seek our remedy not from without, humanly speaking,
+but from within: we must discipline ourselves; we must teach our
+tastes to cling gracefully around that duty to which else they must
+be helplessly fastened. If any faculties appear not to have found
+their proper field, we must think that God has, for certain wise
+reasons, judged it best for us that they should not be exercised;
+and we must be content to render him the service of others. In this
+respect, then, the immediate prospect for middle age is not so much
+change as steadfastness. Fortune will not suit herself to our
+wishes: we must learn to suit our wishes to her.</p>
+<p>But go on a little farther, and what are the things which must
+come to pass then? A new and most solemn interest arising to us in
+the entrance of our children into active life. Hitherto they have
+lived under our care, and our duty to them was simple; but now
+there comes the choice of a profession, the watching and guiding
+them, as well as we can, at this critical moment of their course.
+What cares await us here; and yet what need of avoiding over care!
+What a trial for us, how we value our children's worldly interests
+when compared with their eternal--whether we prefer for them the
+path which may lead most readily to worldly wealth and honour, or
+that in, which they may best and safest follow Christ! This is a
+danger which will come to pass to us ere long: do we watch and pray
+that we may be delivered from it?</p>
+<p>The interest of life, which had, perhaps, something begun to
+fade for ourselves, will revive with vigour at this period in
+behalf of our children; but after this it will go on steadily
+ebbing. What life can offer we have tasted for ourselves; we have
+seen it tasted, or in the way to be tasted, by them. The harvest is
+gathered, and the symptoms of the fall appear. Is it that some
+faculty becomes a little impaired, some taste a little dulled; or
+is it that the friends and companions of our life are beginning to
+drop away from us? Long since, those whom we loved of the
+generation before us have been gathered to the grave; now those of
+our own generation are falling fast also--brothers, sisters,
+friends of our early youth, a wife, a husband. We are surrounded by
+a younger generation, to whom the half of our lives, with all their
+recollections and sympathies, are a thing unknown. Impatience,
+weariness, a clinging to the past, a vain wish to prolong it in an
+earthly future,--these are the things which shall befal us then:
+and they will befal us too surely, and too irresistibly, unless, by
+earlier watchfulness and prayer, we may have been enabled to avoid
+them. For vain will it be, with faculties at once weakened by the
+decay of nature and perverted by long habits of worldliness, to
+essay, for the first time, to force our way into the kingdom of
+heaven. Old age is not the season for contest and victory; nor
+shall we then be so able to escape unharmed from the temptations of
+life as to stand before the Son of Man.</p>
+<p>These are the things which will come to pass for us and for you.
+But for you there is much more to come, which to us is not future
+now, but past or present. With you, for a time, it will be all a
+course forwards and upwards. From the preparation for life, you
+will come to the reality; from a state of less importance, you will
+be passing on to one of greater. Your temptations, whatever they
+may be now, will not certainly become weaker. As outward restraint
+is more and more taken off from you, so your need of inward
+restraint will be greater. Will those who are extravagant now on a
+small scale, be less extravagant on a large scale? Will those who
+are selfish now, become less selfish amidst a wider field of
+enjoyment? Will those who know not or care not for Christ, while
+yet, as it were, standing quietly on the shore, be led to think of
+him more amidst the excitement of the first setting sail, amidst
+the interest of the first newly-seen country?</p>
+<p>You know not yet, nor can know, the immense importance of that
+period of life on which many of you are entering, or have just
+entered. You are coming, or come, to what may be called the second
+beginning of life: to which, in the common course of things, there
+will succeed no third. Ignorance, absence of temptation, the
+presence of all good impressions, constitute much of the innocence
+of mere childhood,--so beautiful while it lasts, so sure to be soon
+blighted! It is blighted in the first experience of life, most
+commonly when a boy first goes to school. Then his mere innocence,
+which indeed he may be said to have worn rather instinctively than
+by choice, becomes grievously polluted. Then come the hardness, the
+coarseness, the intense selfishness; sometimes, too, the falsehood,
+the cruelty, the folly of the boy: then comes that period, so
+trying to the faith of parents, when all their early care seems
+blasted; when the vineyard, which they had fenced so tenderly,
+seems all despoiled and trodden under foot. It is indeed a
+discouraging season, the exact image of the ungenial springs of our
+natural year. But after this there comes, as it were, a second
+beginning of life, when principle takes the place of innocence.
+There is a time,--many of you must have arrived at it,--when
+thought and inquiry awaken; when, out of the mere chaos of boyhood,
+the elements of the future character of the man begin to appear.
+Blessed are they for whom the confusion and disarray of their
+boyish life is quickened into a true life by the moving of the
+Spirit of God! Blessed are they for whom the beginnings of thought
+and inquiry are the beginnings also of faith and love; when the new
+character receives, as it is forming, the Christian seed, and the
+man is also the Christian. And, then, this second beginning of
+life, resting on faith and conscious principle, and not on mere
+passive innocence, stands sure for the middle and the end: those
+who so watch and pray as to escape out of this critical period, not
+merely unharmed, but, as it were, set clearly on their way to
+heaven, will, with God's grace, escape out of the things which
+shall befal them afterwards, till they shall stand before the Son
+of Man.</p>
+<p>But the word is, "Watch and pray always, that ye may be
+accounted worthy to escape." We see the time with many of you come,
+or immediately coming; out of your present state <i>a</i> character
+will certainly be formed; as surely as the innocence of childhood
+has perished, so surely will the carelessness of boyhood perish
+too. <i>A</i> character will be formed, whether you watch and pray,
+or whether you do neither; but the great point is what this
+character may be. If you do not watch the process, it will surely
+be the character of death eternal. Thought and inquiry will satisfy
+themselves very readily with an answer as far as regards spiritual
+things: their whole vigour will be devoted to the things of this
+world, to science or to business, or to public matters, all alike
+hardening rather than softening to the mind, if its thoughts do not
+go to something higher and deeper still. And as years pass on, we
+may think on these our favourite or professional subjects more and
+more earnestly; our views on them may be clearer and sounder, but
+there comes again nothing like the first free burst of thought in
+youth; the intellect in later life, if its tone was not rightly
+taken earlier, becomes narrowed in proportion to its greater
+vigour; one thing it sees clearly, but it is blind to all beside.
+It is in youth that the after tone of the mind is happily formed,
+when that natural burst of thought is sanctified and quickened by
+God's Spirit, and we set up within us to love and adore, all our
+days, the one image of the truth of God, our Saviour Jesus. Then,
+whatever else may befal us afterwards, it rarely happens that our
+faith will fail; his image, implanted in us, preserves us amid
+every change; we are counted worthy to escape all the things which
+may come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XII."></a>LECTURE XII.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>PROVERBS i. 28.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer;<br>
+they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>Christ's gospel gives out the forgiveness of sins; and as this
+is its very essence, so also in what we read connected with
+Christ's gospel, the tone of encouragement, of mercy, of
+loving-kindness to sinners, is ever predominant. What was needed at
+the beginning of the gospel is no less needed now; we cannot spare
+one jot or one tittle of this gracious language; now, as ever, the
+free grace, that most seems to be without the law, does most surely
+establish the law. But yet there is another language, which is to
+be found alike in the Old Testament and in the New; a language not
+indeed so common as the language of mercy, but yet repeated many
+times; a language which we also need as fully as it was ever
+needed, and of whose severity we can no more spare one tittle than
+we can spare anything of the comfort of the other. And yet this
+language has not, I think, been enforced so often as it should have
+been. Men have rather shrunk from it, and seemed afraid of it; they
+have connected it sometimes with certain foolish and presumptuous
+questions, which we, indeed, do well to turn from; but they have
+not seen, that with such it has no natural connexion, but belongs
+to a certain fact in the constitution of our nature, and is most
+highly moral and practical.</p>
+<p>The language to which. I allude is expressed, amongst other
+passages, by the words of the text. They speak of men's calling
+upon God, and of his refusing to hear them; of men's seeking God,
+and not finding him. Remember, at the same time, our Lord's words,
+"Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find." I purposely
+put together these opposite passages, because the full character of
+God's Revelation is thus seen more clearly. Do we doubt that our
+Lord's words are true, and do we not prize them as some of the most
+precious which he has left us? We do well to do so; but shall we
+doubt any more the truth of the words of the text; and shall we not
+consider them as a warning no less needful than the comfort in the
+other case? Indeed, as true as it is, that, if we seek God, we
+shall find him; so true is it that we may seek him, and yet not
+find him.</p>
+<p>Now, then, how to explain this seeming contradiction? We can see
+at once, that these things are not said of the same persons, or
+rather of the same characters at the same time. They are said of
+the same persons: that is, there is no one here assembled who is
+not concerned with both, and to whom both may not be applicable.
+Only they are not and cannot be both applicable to the same person
+at the very same time. If God will be found by us, at any given
+moment, on our seeking him, it is impossible that, at that same
+moment, he should also not be found. Thus far is plain to every
+one.</p>
+<p>And now, is it true of us, at this present time, that God will
+be found by us if we seek him, or that he will not be found? If we
+say that he will be found, then the words of the text are not
+applicable to us at present, although at some future time they may
+be; and then we have that well-known difficulty to encounter, to
+attempt to draw the mind's attention to a future and only
+contingent evil. If we say that he will not be found, then of what
+avail can it be to say any word more? Why sit we in this place, to
+preach, or to listen to preaching, if God, after all, will not be
+found? Or, again, should we say that there are some by whom he will
+not be found, then who are they that are thus horribly marked out
+from among their brethren? Can we dare to conceive of any one
+amongst us that he is such an one; that there are some, nay, that
+there is any one amongst us, to whom it is the same thing whether
+he will hear, or whether he will forbear; who may close his ears as
+safely as open them, because God has turned his face from him for
+ever? It were indeed horrible to suppose that any one of us were in
+such a state; and happily it is a thought of horror which the truth
+may allow us to repel.</p>
+<p>But what, if I were to say, that now, at this very moment, the
+words of the text are both applicable to us, and not applicable? Is
+this a contradiction, and therefore impossible? Or is it but a
+seeming contradiction only, and not only possible, but true? Let us
+see how the case appears to be.</p>
+<p>We should allow, I suppose, that the words of the text were at
+no time in any man's earthly life so true as they will be at the
+day of judgment. The hardest heart, the most obdurate in sin, the
+most closed against all repentance, is yet more within the reach of
+grace, we should imagine, whilst he is alive and in health, than he
+will be at the day of the resurrection. We can admit, then, that
+the words of the text may be true, in a greater or less degree;
+that they will be more entirely true at the last day, than at any
+earlier period, but yet that they may be substantially true, true
+almost beyond exception, in the life that now is. Now carry this
+same principle a little farther, and we come to our very own case.
+The words of the text will be more true at the day of judgment,
+than they ever are on earth; and yet on earth they are often true
+substantially and practically. And even so, they may be more true
+to each of us a few years hence, than they are at this moment; and
+yet, in a certain degree, they may be true at this moment; true,
+not absolutely and entirely, but partially; so true as to give a
+most solemn earnest, if we are not warned in time, of their more
+entire truth hereafter,--first, in this earthly life; then most
+perfectly of all, when we shall arise at the last day.</p>
+<p>It may be, then, that the words of the text, although not
+applicable to us in their full and most fatal sense, may yet be
+applicable to us in a certain degree: the evil which they speak of
+may be, not wholly future and contingent, and a thing to be feared,
+but present in part, actual, and a matter of experience. This is
+not contradiction: it is not impossible; it <i>may be</i> our case.
+Let us see whether it really is so, that is, whether it is in any
+degree true of us, that when we call upon God he will not answer;
+that when we seek him, we shall in any manner be unable to find
+him.</p>
+<p>It is manifest that, in proportion as Christ's words "Seek, and
+ye shall find," are true to any man, so are the words of the text
+less true to him; and in proportion as Christ's words are less true
+to any one, so are the words of the text more true to him. Now, is
+Christ's promise, "Seek, and ye shall find," equally true to all of
+us? Conceive of one--the thing is rare, but not impossible,--of one
+who had been so kept from evil, and so happily led forward in good,
+that when arrived at boyhood, his soul had scarcely more stain upon
+it than when it was first fully cleansed, and forgiven, in baptism!
+Conceive him speaking truth, without any effort, on all occasions;
+not greedy, not proud, not violent, not selfish, not feeling
+conscious that he was living a life of sin, and therefore glad to
+come to God, rather than shrinking away from him! Conceive how
+completely to such an one would Christ's words be fulfilled, "Seek,
+and ye shall find!" When would his prayers be unblessed or
+unfruitful? When would he turn his thoughts to God without feeling
+pleasure in doing so; without a lively consciousness of God's love
+to him; without an assured sense of the reality of things not seen,
+of redemption and grace and glory? Would not the communion with
+God, enjoyed by one so untainted, come up to the full measure of
+those high promises, "It shall come to pass, that before they call,
+I will answer, and while they are yet speaking, I will hear?" Would
+it not be plain, that God was as truly found, by such a person, as
+he was sought in sincerity and earnestness?</p>
+<p>But now, take the most of us: suppose us not to have been kept
+carefully from evil, nor led on steadily in good; suppose us to
+have reached boyhood with bad dispositions, ready for the first
+temptation, with habits of good uncultivated; suppose us to have no
+great horror of a lie, when it can serve our turn; with much love
+of pleasure, and little love of our duty; with much, selfishness,
+and little or no thought of God: suppose such an one, so sadly
+altered from a state of baptismal purity, to be saying his prayers
+as he had been taught to say them, and saying them sometimes with a
+thought of their meaning and a wish that God would hear them. But
+does God hear them? I ask of your own consciences, whether you have
+had any sense that he has heard you? whether death and judgment,
+Christ and Christ's service, have become more real to you after
+such prayers? If not, then is it not manifest, that you have sought
+God, and have not found him; that you have called upon him and he
+has not heard? You know by experience, that you are not as those
+true children who are ever with him, who listen to catch the
+lightest whisper of his Spirit, for whom, he, too, vouchsafes to
+bless the faintest breathing of their prayer.</p>
+<p>Or, again, in trying to turn from evil to good, have you ever
+found your resolutions give way, the ground which you had gained
+slide from under your feet, till you fell back again to what you
+were at the beginning? Has this ever happened to us? If it has,
+then in that case, also, we sought God, but failed to find him; the
+victory was not yours, but the enemy's; the Spirit of Christ did
+not help you so as to conquer.</p>
+<p>Take another case yet again. Has it ever happened to any of you,
+to have done a mischief to yourselves which you could not undo? It
+need not be one of the very highest kind; but has it ever happened,
+that, by neglect, you have lost ground in the society in which you
+are placed, which you cannot recover; that your contemporaries have
+gained an advance upon you, while you have not time left to
+overtake them? Does it ever happen that, from neglecting some
+particular element of learning in its proper season, and other
+things claiming your attention afterwards, you go on with a
+disadvantage, which you would fain remove, but cannot? Does it, in
+short, ever happen to any, that his complete success here is become
+impossible; that whatever prospects of another kind may be open to
+him elsewhere, yet that he cannot now be numbered amongst those who
+have turned the particular advantages here afforded them to that
+end which they might and ought to have done?</p>
+<p>To whomsoever this has happened, the truth of the words of the
+text is matter of experience, not in their full and most dreadful
+extent, but yet quite enough to prove that they are true; and that
+just as he now feels them in part, so, if he continues to be what
+he is, he will one day feel them wholly. He feels that it is
+possible to seek God, and not to find him; he has learnt by
+experience that neglected good, or committed evil, may be beyond
+the power of after-regret to undo. It is true, that as yet, to him,
+other prospects may be open: prospects which, probably, he may deem
+no less fair than those which he has forfeited. This may be so; but
+the point to observe is, that one prospect was lost so
+irretrievably by his own fault, that afterwards, when he wished to
+regain it, he could not. Now God gives him other prospects, which
+he may realize: but as he forfeited his first prospect beyond
+recovery, so he may do also with his last: and though ill-success
+at school may be made up by success in another sphere, yet what is
+to make up for ill-success in the great business of life, when
+that, too, has been forfeited as irrecoverably; when his last
+chance is gone as hopelessly as his first?</p>
+<p>Now, surely there is in all this an intelligible lesson. I am
+not at all exaggerating the importance of the particular prospect
+forfeited here: but I am pressing upon you, that this prospect may
+be, and often is, forfeited irrecoverably; that when you wish to
+regain it, it is too late, and you cannot. And I press this,
+because it is a true type of the whole of human life; because it is
+just as possible to forfeit salvation irrecoverably, as to forfeit
+that earthly good which is the prize of well-doing here, with this
+infinite difference, that the last forfeit is not only
+irretrievable, but fatal; it can no more be made up for, than it
+can be regained. Here, then, your present condition is a type of
+the complete truth of the text: but there are other points, to
+which I alluded before, in which it is more than a type; it is the
+very truth itself, although, happily, only in an imperfect measure.
+That unanswered prayer, of which I spoke, those broken
+resolutions,--are they not actually a calling on God, without his
+hearing us; a seeking him, without finding him? We remember who it
+was that could say with truth to his Father, "I know that thou
+nearest me always." We know what it is that hinders God from
+hearing us always; because we are not thoroughly one in his Son
+Christ Jesus. But this unanswered prayer is not properly the State
+of Christ's redeemed: it is an enemy that hath brought us to this;
+the same enemy who will, in time, make all our prayers to be
+unanswered, as some are now; who will cause God, not only to be
+slow to listen, but to refuse to listen for ever. Now we are not
+heard at once, we must repeat our prayers, with more and more
+earnestness, that God, at last, may hear, and may bless us. But if,
+instead of repeating them the more, we do the very contrary, and
+repeat them the less; if, because we have no comfort, and no
+seeming good from them, we give them up altogether; then the time
+will surely come when all prayer will be but the hopeless prayer of
+Esau, because it will be only the prayer of fear; because it will
+be only the dread of destruction that will, or can, move us:--the
+love of good will have gone beyond recall. Such prayer does but ask
+for pardon without repentance; and this never is, or can be,
+granted.</p>
+<p>So then, in conclusion, that very feeling of coldness, and
+unwillingness to pray, because we have often prayed in vain, is
+surely working in us that perfect death, which is the full truth of
+the words of the text. Of all of us, those who the least like to
+pray, who have prayed with the least benefit, have the most need to
+pray again. If they have sought God, without finding him, let them
+take heed that this be not their case for ever; that the truth, of
+which the seed is even now in them, may not be ripened to their
+everlasting destruction, when all their seeking, and all their
+prayer, will be as rejected by God, as, in part, it has been
+already.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XIII."></a>LECTURE XIII.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>MARK xii. 34.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>Thou art not far from the kingdom of God</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>Whoever has gone up any hill of more than common height, may
+remember the very different impression which the self-same point,
+whether bush, or stone, or cliff, has made upon him as he viewed it
+from below and from above. In going up it seemed so high, that we
+fancied, if we were once arrived at it, we should be at the summit
+of our ascent; while, when we had got beyond it, and looked down
+upon it, it seemed almost sunk to the level of the common plain;
+and we wondered that it could ever have appeared high to us.</p>
+<p>What happens with any natural object according to the different
+points from which we view it, happens also to any particular stage
+of advancement in our moral characters. There is a goodness which
+appears very exalted or very ordinary, according as it is much
+above or much below our own level. And this is the case with the
+expression of our Lord in the text, "Thou art not far from the
+kingdom of God." Does this seem a great thing or a little thing to
+be said to us? Does it give us a notion of a height which we should
+think it happiness to have readied; or of a state so little
+advanced, that it would be misery to be forced to go back to it?
+For, according as it seems to us the one or the other, so we may
+judge of the greater or less progress which we have made in
+ascending the holy mountain of our God.</p>
+<p>But while I say this, it is necessary to distinguish between two
+several senses, in which we may be said to be near to the kingdom
+of God, or actually in it. These two are in respect of knowledge,
+and in respect of feeling and practice. And our Lord's words seem
+to refer particularly to knowledge. The scribe to whom he used
+them, had expressed so just a sense of the true way of pleasing
+God, had so risen above the common false notions of his age and
+country, that his understanding seemed to be ripe for the truths of
+that kingdom of God, which was to make the worship of God to
+consist in spirit and in truth. Now as far as the knowledge of the
+kingdom of God is concerned, although, undoubtedly, there are many
+amongst us who are deficient in it, yet it is true also, that a
+great many of us are in possession of it; we are familiar enough
+with the truths of the kingdom of God, and our understandings fully
+approve them. But we may be near to or far from the kingdom of God,
+in respect also of feeling and practice; and this is the great
+matter that concerns us. It is here, then, that we should ask
+ourselves what we think of our Lord's words in the text; and
+whether he to whom they were spoken appears to us an object of envy
+or of compassion; one whom we envy for having advanced so far, or
+pity for not being advanced further.</p>
+<p>"Not far from the kingdom of God." Again, if we take the words
+Kingdom of God in their highest sense, then the expression contains
+all that we could desire to have said of us in this life; hope
+itself on this side of the grave can go no higher. For as, in this
+sense, the kingdom of God cannot be actually entered before our
+death; so the best thing that can be said of us here, is, that we
+are not far from it; but we are in the land of Beulah, so happily
+imagined in the Pilgrim's Progress; all of our pilgrimage
+completed, save the last act of crossing the river; with the city
+of God full in sight, and with hearts ready to enter into it. In
+this sense, even St. Paul himself, when he wrote his last epistle
+from Rome, could say no more, could hope for, could desire no more,
+than to be not far from the kingdom of God.</p>
+<p>Yet again, take the words "Kingdom of God" in their lowest
+sense, and then it is woe to us all, if the expression in the text
+is all that can be said of us; if, in this sense, we are only not
+far from the kingdom of God. For take the kingdom of God as God's
+visible Church, and then, if we are not Christians at all, but only
+not far from becoming so; if we have not received Christ, but are
+not far from receiving him; this is a state so imperfect, that he
+who is in it, has not yet reached to the beginning of his Christian
+course; and we need not say how far he must be from its end, if he
+have not yet come as far as its beginning.</p>
+<p>Thus, in one sense, the words express something so high that
+nothing can be higher; in another, something so low, that, to us,
+nothing can be lower. We have yet to seek that sense, in which they
+may afford us a useful criterion of our own several states, by
+appearing high, perhaps, to some of us, and to others low.</p>
+<p>The sense which we seek is given by our Lord, when he declares
+that the kingdom of God is within us; or by St. Paul, when he tells
+us, that it is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. And
+now it is no more a thing which we cannot yet have reached, or, on
+the other hand, which we all have reached: there is now a great
+difference in us, some are far from it, some are near it, and some
+are in it; and thus it is, that they who are near it, seem in it to
+those who are afar off, and far from it to those who are in it.</p>
+<p>Now, first, do they seem far from it? Then, indeed, ours is a
+happy state, as many of us as can truly feel that they live so
+constantly in holy and heavenly tempers, in such lively faith and
+love, so tasting all the blessings of God's kingdom, its peace, and
+its hope, and its joy, that they cannot bear to think of that time,
+when these blessings were not enjoyed except in prospect; when they
+rather desired to have faith and love, than could be said actually
+to have them; when their tempers were not holy and heavenly,
+although they were fully alive to the excellence of their being so,
+and had seen them already cleansed from the opposites of such a
+state, from ill-nature, and passion, and pride.</p>
+<p>If any such there be, in whom good resolutions have long since
+ripened into good actions, and the continued good actions have now
+led to confirmed good habits, how miserable will they think it to
+be only "not far from the kingdom of God!" How ill could they bear
+to go over again the struggle which used to accompany every action,
+when it was done in defiance of habits of evil; or to be called
+back to that condition when resolutions for good were formed over
+and over again, because they were so often broken, but had as yet
+rarely led to any solid fruit! How thankful will they be to have
+escaped from that season when they were seeking, but had not yet
+found; when they were asking of God, but had not yet received; when
+they were knocking, but the door had not yet been opened! They were
+then, indeed, not far from the kingdom of God, but they were still
+without its walls; they were still strangers, and not citizens. It
+had held out to them a refuge, and they had fled to it as
+suppliants to the sanctuary; but they had not yet had the word of
+peace spoken, to bid them no more kneel without, as suppliants, but
+to enter and go in and out freely; for that all things were theirs,
+because they were Christ's.</p>
+<p>I have dwelt purposely somewhat the longer upon this, because
+the more that we can feel the truth of this picture, the more that
+we can put ourselves into the position of those who are within the
+kingdom of God, and who, living in the light of it, look back with
+pity upon those who are only kneeling without its gates,--the more
+strongly we shall feel what must be our condition, if those who are
+without its gates appear to us to be objects of envy rather than
+pity, because they are so near to that place from which we feel
+ourselves to be so distant. Or, to speak without a figure, if we
+could but understand how persons advanced in goodness would shrink
+from the thought of being now only resolving to be good, then we
+shall perceive how very evil must be our condition, if this very
+resolving to be good seems to us to be an advance so desirable; if
+we are so far from being good actually, that the very setting
+ourselves in earnest to seek for good strikes us as a point of
+absolute proficiency in comparison of our present degradation.</p>
+<p>Yet is not this the case with many of us? Do we not consider it
+a great point gained, if we can be brought to think seriously, to
+pray in earnest, to read the Bible, to begin to look to our own
+ways and lives? We feel it for ourselves, and others also feel it
+for us: it is natural, it is unavoidable, that we feel great joy,
+that we think a great deal is done, if we see any of you, after
+leading a life of manifest carelessness, and therefore of manifest
+sin, beginning to take more pains with himself, and so becoming
+what is called somewhat more steady and more serious. I know that
+the impression is apt to be too strong upon us: we are but too apt
+to boast for him who putteth on his armour as for him who putteth
+it off; because he who putteth on his armour at least shows that he
+is preparing for the battle, which so many never do at all. We
+observe some of these signs of seriousness: we see perhaps, that a
+person begins to attend at the Communion; that he pays more
+attention to his ordinary duties; that he becomes more regular. We
+see this, and we are not only thankful for it,--this we ought to
+be,--but we satisfy ourselves too readily that all is done: we
+reckon a person, somewhat too hastily, to be already belonging to
+the kingdom of God, because we have seen him turning towards it.
+Then, if he afterwards does not appear to be entered into it; if we
+see that he is not what we expected, that he is no longer serious,
+no longer attentive to his common duties, we are overmuch
+disappointed; and, perhaps are tempted too completely to despair
+for him. Is it not that we confounded together the beginning and
+the end; the being good, and the trying to become so: the
+resolution with the act; the act with the habit? Did we not forget
+that he is not at once out of danger who begins to mend: that the
+first softening of the dry burning skin, the first abating of the
+hard quick pulse, is far removed from the coolness, and steadiness,
+and even vigour of health restored, or never interrupted?</p>
+<p>But what made us forget truths so obvious? What made us confound
+things so different that the most ignorant ought to be able to
+distinguish them? Cannot we tell why it is? Is it not because there
+are so many in whom we cannot see even as good signs as these,--of
+whom we cannot but feel that it would be a great advance for them,
+a matter of earnest thankfulness, if we could only see that they
+were not far from the kingdom of God,--nay, even that their steps
+were tending thither? Let us look ever so earnestly, let us watch
+ever so carefully, let us hope ever so charitably, we cannot see,
+we can scarcely fancy that we see, even the desire to turn to God.
+We do not see gross wickedness; it is well; we see much that is
+amiable; that is well also: but the desire to turn to God, the
+tending of the steps towards the kingdom of heaven,--that we cannot
+see. But this is a thing, it may be said, that man cannot see: it
+may exist, although we cannot perceive it. Oh, that it might and
+may be so! Yet, surely, as out of the abundance of the heart the
+mouth speaketh, so a principle so mighty as the desire of turning
+to God cannot leave itself without a witness: some symptoms must be
+shown to those who are eagerly watching for them; some ground for
+hope must be afforded where hope is so ready to kindle. If no sign
+of life appears, can the life indeed be stirring? And if the life
+be not stirring; if the disorder is going on in so many cases,
+raging, with no symptom of abatement; is it not natural, that when
+we do see such symptoms, we should rejoice even with over-measure,
+that we should forget how much is yet to be done, when we see that
+something has been done.</p>
+<p>To such persons, it would be an enviable state, to be not far
+from the kingdom of God. But what, then, must be their state
+actually? A hopeful one, according to many standards of judgment; a
+state that promises well, it may be, for a healthy and prosperous
+life, with many friends, perhaps with much distinction. We know
+that all this prospect may be blighted; still it exists at
+present;--the healthy constitution, the easy fortune, the cheerful
+and good-humoured temper, the quickness and power of understanding;
+all these, no doubt, are hopeful signs for a period of forty, or
+fifty, or perhaps sixty years to come. But what is to come then?
+what is the prospect for the next period, not of fifty, or sixty,
+not of a hundred, not of a thousand, years; not of any number that
+can be numbered, but of time everlasting? Is their actual state one
+of hopeful promise for this period, for this life which no death
+shall terminate? Nay, is it a state of any promise at all, of any
+chance at all? Suppose, for a moment, one with a crippled body,
+full of the seeds of hereditary disease, poor, friendless,
+irritable in temper, low in understanding; suppose such an one just
+entering upon youth, and ask yourselves, for what would you consent
+that his prospects should be yours? What should you think would be
+your chance of happiness in life, if you were beginning in such a
+condition? Yet, I tell you that poor, diseased, irritable,
+friendless cripple has a far better prospect of passing his fifty,
+or sixty, years, tolerably, than they who have not begun to turn
+towards God have of a tolerable eternity. Much more wretched is the
+promise of their life; much more justly should we be tempted,
+concerning them, to breathe that fearful thought, that it were good
+for them if they had never been born. And now if, as by miracle,
+that cripple's limbs were to be at once made sound, if the seeds of
+disease were to vanish, if some large fortune were left him, if his
+temper sweetened, and his mind became vigorous, should not we be
+excused, considering what he had been and what he now was, if we,
+for a moment, forgot the uncertainty of the future; if we thought
+that a promise so changed, was almost equivalent to performance?
+And may not this same excuse be urged for some over-fondness of
+confidence for their well-doing whom we see so near to the kingdom
+of God, when we consider how utter is the misery, how hopeless the
+condition of those who do not appear to have, as yet, stirred one
+single step towards it?</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XIV."></a>LECTURE XIV.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>MATTHEW xxii. 14.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>For many are called, but few are chosen</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>The truth here expressed is one of the most solemn in the world,
+and would be one of the most overwhelming to us, if habit had not,
+in a manner, blunted our painful perception of it. There is
+contained in it matter of thought more than we could exhaust, and
+deeper than we could ever fathom. But on this I will not attempt to
+enter. I will rather take that view of the text which concerns us
+here; I will see in how many senses it is true, and with what
+feeling we should regard it.</p>
+<p>"Many are called, but few are chosen." The direct application of
+this was to the parable of those invited to the supper; in which it
+had been related, how a great multitude had been invited, but how
+one among them--and the application as well as the fact in human
+life, require that this <i>one</i> should be taken only as a
+specimen of a great number--had been found unworthy to enjoy the
+feast prepared for them. They had not on the wedding garment; they
+had not done their part to fit themselves for the offered blessing:
+therefore they were called, but not chosen. God had willed to do
+them good, but they would not; and therefore, though he had called
+them at the beginning, he, in the end, cast them out.</p>
+<p>We have to do, then, not with an arbitrary call and an arbitrary
+choice, as if God called many in mockery, meaning to choose out of
+them only a few, and making his choice independently of any
+exertion of theirs. The picture is very different; it is a gracious
+call to us all, to come and receive the blessing; it is a reluctant
+casting out the greatest part of us, because we would not try to
+render ourselves fit for it.</p>
+<p>I said, that we would take the words of the text in reference to
+ourselves, for here, too, it is true, that many are called, but few
+are chosen. It is a large number of you, which I see before me; and
+if we add to it all those who, within my memory, have sat in the
+same places before you, we shall have a number very considerable
+indeed. All these have been called; they have been sent here to
+enjoy the same advantages with each other; and those advantages
+have been put within their reach. They have entered into a great
+society which, on the one hand, might raise them forward, or, on
+the other, depress them. There has been a sufficient field for
+emulation: there have been examples and instructions for good;
+there have been results of credit and of real improvement made
+attainable to them, which might have lasted all their lives long.
+To this, they have been all, in their turns, called; and out of
+those so called, have all, or nearly all, been chosen? I am not
+speaking of those, who, I trust, would be a very small number, to
+whom the trial has failed utterly, who could look back on their
+stay here with no feelings but those of shame. But would there not
+be a very large number, to whom their stay here has been a loss,
+compared with what it might have been; who have reaped but a very
+small part of those advantages to which they had been at first
+called? Are there not too many who must look back on a part, at
+least, of their time here as wasted; on the seeds of bad habits
+sown, which, if conquered by after-care, yet, for a long time, were
+injurious to them? Are there not too many who carry away from here,
+instead of good notions, to be ripened and improved, evil notions,
+to be weeded out and destroyed? Are there not, in short, a great
+number who, after having had a great advantage put within their
+reach, and purchased for them by their friends, at a great expense,
+have made such insufficient use of their opportunities, to say
+nothing stronger, as to make it a question afterwards, whether it
+might not have been better for them had they never come here at
+all?</p>
+<p>Thus far I have been speaking of what are called the advantages
+of this place in our common language. That argument, which Butler
+has so nobly handled, in one of the greatest works in our language,
+the resemblance, namely, between the course of things earthly and
+that of things spiritual, is one which we should never fail to
+notice. We can discern the type, as it were, of the highest truth
+of our Lord's sayings in the experience of our common life in
+worldly things. When he tells us, speaking of things spiritual,
+that "many are called, but few are chosen;" that "whoso hath, to
+him shall be given; but from him that hath not shall be taken away
+even that which he hath,"--although the highest truth contained in
+these words be yet, in part, matter of faith, for we have not yet
+seen the end of God's dealings with us: yet what we do see, the
+evident truth of the words, that is, in respect to God's dealings
+with us in the course of his earthly providence, may reasonably
+assure us of their truth no less in respect to those dealings of
+God which as yet are future. I began, therefore, with reminding you
+of the truth of the words of the text with regard to worldly
+advantages; that even here, on this small scale, the general law
+holds good; that more things are provided for us than we will
+consent to use; that, in short, "many are called, but few are
+chosen."</p>
+<p>But it were ill done to limit our view to this: we are called to
+much more than worldly advantages; and what if here, too, we add
+one more example to confirm our Lord's words, that "many are
+called, but few chosen?" Now here, as I said, it is very true that
+God's choice is as yet not a matter of sight or of certainty to us;
+we cannot yet say of ourselves, or of any other set of living men,
+that "few are chosen." But though the full truth is not yet
+revealed, still, as there is a type of it in our worldly
+experience, so there is also a higher type, an earnest, of it in
+our spiritual experience: there is a sense, and that a very true
+and a very important one, in which we can say already, say now,
+actually, in the life that now is; say, even in the early stage of
+it, that some are, and some are not, "chosen."</p>
+<p>We have all been called, in a Christian sense, inasmuch as we
+have been all introduced into Christ's church by Baptism; and a
+very large proportion of us have been called again, many of us not
+very long since, at our Confirmation. We have been thus called to
+enter into Christ's kingdom: we have been called to lead a life of
+holiness and happiness from this time forth even for ever. Nothing
+can be stronger than the language in which the Scripture speaks of
+the nature of our high calling: "All things," says St. Paul to the
+Corinthians, "all things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or
+Peter, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or
+things to come, all are yours; and ye are Christ's, and Christ is
+God's." Now, if this be the prize to which we are called, who are
+they who are also chosen to it? In the first and most complete
+sense, no doubt, those who have entered into their rest; who are in
+no more danger, however slight; with whom the struggle is
+altogether past, and the victory securely won. These are entered
+within the veil, whither we can as yet penetrate only in hope. But
+hope, in its highest degree, differs little from assurance; and
+even, as we descend lower and lower, still, where hope is clearly
+predominant, there is, if not assurance, yet a great encouragement;
+and the Scripture, which delights to carry encouragement to the
+highest pitch to those who are following God, allows of our saying
+of even these that they are God's chosen. It gives them, as it
+were, the title beforehand, to make them feel how doubly miserable
+it must be not only not to obtain it, but to forfeit it after it
+had been already ours. So then, there are senses in which we may
+say that some are chosen now; although, strictly speaking, the term
+can by us be applied, in its full sense, to those only who are
+passed beyond the reach of evil.</p>
+<p>Those, then, we may call chosen, who, having heard their call,
+have turned to obey it, and have gone on following it. Those we may
+call chosen,--I do not say chosen irrevocably, but chosen now;
+chosen so that we may be very thankful to God on their behalf, and
+they thankful for themselves,--who, since their Confirmation, or
+since a period more remote, have kept God before their face, and
+tried to do His will. Those are, in the same way, chosen, who
+having found in themselves the sin which did most easily beset
+them, have struggled with it, and wholly, or in a great measure,
+have overcome it. Thus, they are chosen, who, having lived either
+in the frequent practice of selfish, extravagance, or of falsehood,
+or of idleness, or of excess in eating and drinking, have turned
+away from these things, and, for Christ's sake, have renounced
+them. They are chosen, I think, in yet a higher sense, who, having
+found their besetting sin to be, not so much any one particular
+fault, as a general ungodly carelessness, a lightness which for
+ever hindered them from serving God, have struggled with this most
+fatal enemy; and, even in youth, and health, and happiness, have
+learnt what it is to be sober-minded, what it is to think. Now,
+such as these have, in a manner, entered into their inheritance;
+they are not merely called, but chosen. God and spiritual things
+are not mere names to them, they are a reality. Such persons have
+tasted of the promises; they have known the pleasure--and what
+pleasure is comparable to it?--of feeling the bonds of evil passion
+or evil habit unwound from about their spirit; they have learnt
+what is that glorious liberty of being able to abstain from the
+things which we condemn, to do the things which we approve. They
+have felt true sense of power succeed to that of weakness. It is a
+delightful thing, after a long illness, after long helplessness,
+when our legs have been unable to support our weight, when our arms
+could lift nothing, our hands grasp nothing, when it was an effort
+to raise our head from the pillow, and it tired us even to speak in
+a whisper,--it is a delightful thing to feel every member restored
+to its proper strength; to find that exercise of limb, of voice, of
+body, which had been so long a pain, become now a source of
+perpetual pleasure. This is delightful; it pays for many an hour of
+previous weakness. But it is infinitely more delightful to feel the
+change from weakness to strength in our souls; to feel the languor
+of selfishness changed for the vigour of benevolence; to feel
+thought, hope, faith, love, which before were lying, as it were, in
+helplessness, now bounding in vigorous activity; to find the soul,
+which had been so long stretched as upon the sick bed of this
+earth, now able to stand upright, and looking and moving steadily
+towards heaven.</p>
+<p>These are chosen; and they to whom this description does in no
+degree apply, they are not chosen. They are not chosen in any
+sense, they are called only. And, now, what is the proportion
+between the one and the other; are there as many chosen as there
+have been many called? Or do Christ's words apply in our case no
+less than in others; that though they who are called are many, yet
+they who are chosen are few?</p>
+<p>This I dare not answer; there is a good as well as an evil which
+is unseen to the world at large, unseen even by all but those who
+watch us most nearly and most narrowly. All we can say is, that
+there are too many, who we must fear are not chosen; there are too
+few, of whom we can feel sure that they are. Yet hope is a wiser
+feeling than its opposite; it were as wrong as it would be
+miserable to abandon it. How gladly would we hope the best things
+of all those whom we saw this morning at Christ's holy table! How
+gladly would we believe of all such, that they were more than
+called merely; that they had listened to the call: that they had
+obeyed it; that they had already gained some Christian victories;
+that they were, in some sense, not called only, but chosen. But
+this we may say; that hope which we so long to entertain, that hope
+too happy to be at once indulged in, you may authorize us to feel
+it; you may convert it into confidence. Do you ask how? By going on
+steadily in good, by advancing from good to better, by not letting
+impressions fade with time. Now, with many of you, your
+confirmation is little more than three months distant; when we next
+meet at Christ's table, it will have passed by nearly half-a-year.
+It may be, that, in that added interval, it will have lost much of
+its force; that, from various causes, evil may have abounded in you
+more than good; that then shame, or a willing surrender of
+yourselves to carelessness, will keep away from Christ's Communion,
+many who have this day joined in it. But, if this were not to be
+so; if those, whom we have seen with joy this day communicating
+with us in the pledges of Christian fellowship, should continue to
+do so steadily; if, in the meantime, traits shall appear in you in
+other things that our hope was well founded; if the hatred of evil
+and the love of good were to be clearly manifest in you; if by
+signs not to be mistaken by those who watch earnestly for them, we
+might be assured that your part was taken, that you were striving
+with us in that service of our common Master, in which we would
+fain live and die; if evil was clearly lessened among us--not
+laughed at, but discouraged and put down; if instead of those
+turning away, who have now been with us at Christ's table, others,
+who have now turned away, should then be added to the number; then
+we should say, not doubtingly, that you were chosen: that you had
+tasted of the good things of Christ; that the good work of God was
+clearly begun in you. We might not, indeed, be without care, either
+for you or for ourselves: God forbid, that, in that sense, any of
+us should deem that we were chosen, until the grave has put us
+beyond temptation. But how happy were it to think of you as
+Christ's chosen, in that sense which should be a constant
+encouragement to us all: to think of you as going on towards God;
+to think of you as living to him daily; to think of you as on his
+side against all his enemies; to think of you as led by his Spirit,
+as living members of his holy and glorious Church,--militant now,
+in heaven triumphant!</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XV."></a>LECTURE XV.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>LUKE xi. 25.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>When he cometh, he findeth it swept and
+garnished</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<center>JOHN v. 42.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>I know you, that ye have not the love of God in
+you</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>These passages, of which the first is taken from the gospel of
+this morning's service, the other from the second lesson, differ in
+words, but their meaning is very nearly the same. The house which
+was empty, swept and garnished, was especially one empty of the
+love of God. Whatever evil there may not have been in it; whatever
+good there may have been in those of whom Christ spoke in the
+second passage: yet it and they agreed in this; one thing they had
+not, which alone was worth, all the rest besides; they had not the
+love of God.</p>
+<p>And so it is still; many are the faults which we have not; many
+are the good qualities which we have; but the life is wanting. What
+is so rare as to find one who is not indifferent to God? What so
+rare, even rarer than the other, as to find one who actually loves
+him?</p>
+<p>Therefore it is that those who go in at the broad gate of
+destruction are many, and those who go in at the narrow gate of
+life are few. For destruction and life are but other terms for
+indifference to God on the one hand, and love to him on the other.
+All who are indifferent to him, die; a painless death of mere
+extinction, if, like the brute creation, they have never been made
+capable of loving him; or a living death of perpetual misery, if,
+like evil spirits and evil men, they might have loved him and would
+not. And so all who love him, live a life, from first to last,
+without sin and sorrow, if, like the holy angels, they have loved
+him always; a life partaking at first of death, but brightening
+more and more unto the perfect day, if, like Christians, they were
+born in sin, but had been redeemed and sanctified to
+righteousness.</p>
+<p>Whoever has watched human character, whether in the young or the
+old, must be well aware of the truth of this: he will know that the
+value of any character is in proportion to the existence or to the
+absence of this feeling, or rather, I should say, this principle.
+An exception may, perhaps, be made for a small, a very small number
+of fanatics; an apparent exception likewise exists in the case of
+many who seem to be religious, but who really are not so. The few
+exceptions of the former case are so very few, that we need not now
+stop to consider them, nor to inquire how far even these would be
+exceptions if we could read the heart as God reads it. The seeming
+exceptions being cases either of hypocrisy, or of very common
+self-deceit, we need not regard either; for they are, of course, no
+real objection to the truth of the general statement. It remains
+true, then, generally, that the value of any character is in
+proportion to the existence, or to the absence, in it of the love
+of God.</p>
+<p>But is there not another exception to be made for the case of
+children, and of very young persons? Are they capable of loving
+God? and are not their earthly relations, their parents especially,
+put to them, as it were, in the place of God, as objects of trust,
+of love, of honour, of obedience, till their minds can open to
+comprehend the love of their Father who is in heaven? And does not
+the Scripture itself, in the few places in which it seems directly
+to address children, content itself with directing them to obey and
+honour their parents? Some notions of this sort are allowed, I
+believe, to serve sometimes as an excuse, when young persons are
+blamed for being utterly wanting in a sense of duty to God.</p>
+<p>The passages which direct children to obey their parents, are of
+the same kind with those, directing slaves to obey their masters,
+and masters to be kind to their slaves; like those, also, which
+John the Baptist addressed to the soldiers and publicans: in none
+of all which there is any command to love God, but merely a command
+to fulfil that particular duty which most arose out of the
+particular relation, or calling of the persons addressed. In fact,
+when parents are addressed, they are directed only to do their
+duties to their children, just as children are directed to do
+theirs to their parents; in both cases alike, the common duty of
+parents and children to God is not dwelt upon, because that is a
+duty which does not belong to them as parents, or as children, but
+as human beings; and as such, it belongs to all alike. In fact, the
+very language of St. Paul's command to children implies this; for
+he says, "Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is
+right:" right, that is, in the sight of God: so that the very
+reason for which children are to discharge their earthly duties is,
+because that earthly duty is commanded by, or involved in, their
+heavenly duty; if they do not do it, they will not please God. But
+it is manifest that, in this respect, there is for all of us one
+only law, so soon as we are able to understand it. The moment that
+a child becomes capable of understanding anything about God and
+Christ,--and how early that is, every parent can testify,--that
+moment the duty to love God and Christ begins. It were absurd to
+say, that this duty has not begun at the age of boyhood. A boy is
+able to understand the force of religious motives, as well as he
+can that of earthly motives: he cannot understand either, perhaps,
+so well as he will hereafter; but he understands both enough, for
+the purposes of his salvation; enough, to condemn him before God,
+if he neglects them; enough to make him derive the greatest benefit
+from faithfully observing them.</p>
+<p>And what can have been the purpose with which the only
+particular of our Lord's early life has been handed down to us, if
+it were not to direct our attention to this special truth, that our
+youth, no less than our riper age, belongs to God? "Wist ye not
+that I must be about my Father's business?" were words spoken by
+our Lord when he was no more than twelve years old. At twelve years
+old, he thought of preparing himself for the duties of his
+after-life; and of preparing himself for them, because they were
+God's will. He was to be about his Father's business. This is
+Christ's example for the young; this, and scarcely anything more
+than this, is recorded of his early years. Those are not like
+Christ who, at that same age, or even older, never think at all of
+the business of their future lives, still less would think of it,
+not as the means of their own maintenance or advancement, but as
+the duty which they owe to God.</p>
+<p>Such as these are the very persons whose hearts are like the
+house in the parable, empty, swept, and garnished. The house so
+described in the parable is one out of which an evil spirit has
+just departed. In case of the young, the evil spirit in this sense,
+that is, as representing some one particular favourite sin, may
+perhaps have never entered it. That empty, swept, and garnished
+house, how like is it to what I have seen, to what I am seeing so
+continually, when a boy comes here with much still remaining of the
+innocence of childhood! Evil spirit, in the sense of any one
+particular vice, there is none to be found in that heart, nor has
+there been any ever. It is empty, swept, and garnished: there is
+the absence of evil; there are the various faculties, the
+furniture, as they may be called, of the house of our spirits,
+which the spirit uses either for evil or for good. There is
+innocence, then; there is, also, the promise of power. God hath
+richly endowed the earthly house of our tabernacle: various and
+wonderful is the furniture of body and mind with which it is
+supplied. How can we help admiring that open and cheerful brow
+which, as yet, no care or sin has furrowed; those light and active
+limbs, full of health and vigour; the eye so quick; the ear so
+undulled; the memory so ready; the young curiosity so eager to take
+in new knowledge; the young feelings, not yet spoiled by
+over-excitement, ready to admire, ready to love? There is the
+house, the house of God's building, the house which must abide for
+ever; but where is the spirit to inhabit it? Evil spirit there is
+none: is it, then, possessed by the Spirit of God? Has the fire
+from heaven as yet descended upon that house,--the living sign of
+God's presence, which alone can convert the house of perishable
+clay into the everlasting temple?</p>
+<p>Can that blessed Spirit of God be indeed there, and yet no sign
+of his presence be manifest? It may be so, or to speak more truly,
+it might have been supposed to be so, if God's word had not
+declared the contrary. What God's secret workings are; in how many
+ways, to us inscrutable, he may pervade all nature; in how many
+cases he may be near us, and we know it not; may, perhaps, be
+amongst those real mysteries, those truths revealed to none, nor to
+be revealed; those yet uncleared forests, so to speak, of the world
+of nature, into which the light of grace has not been permitted to
+penetrate. But all such mysteries are to us as if they did not
+exist at all: we have nothing to do with them. God has told us
+nothing of his unseen and undiscernible presence; when and where he
+is so present, he is to us as if he were not present at all. God
+was in the wilderness of Horeb before the bush was kindled; but he
+was not there for Moses. God, in some sense discernible, it may be,
+to other beings, may be in that house which, to us is empty; but
+God, our own God, the Holy Spirit, into whose service we were
+baptized, where he is, the house is not empty to us, but full of
+light. Invisible in himself, the signs of his presence are most
+visible: where no works, no fruits of the Holy Spirit are to be
+discerned, there, according to our Lord's express declaration,
+there the Holy Spirit is not.</p>
+<p>But the light which declares his presence may indeed be a little
+spark; just to be seen, and no more. It may show that he has not
+abandoned all his right to the house of our tabernacle as yet; that
+he would desire to possess us fully. Such a little spark, such an
+evidence of the Holy Spirit's presence, is to be found in the
+outward profession of Christianity. They who call Jesus Lord, do it
+by the Holy Ghost; and, therefore, it is quite true in this sense,
+that in every baptized Christian, who has not utterly apostatized,
+there is that faint sign of the Holy Spirit's still having a claim
+upon him; he is not yet utterly cast off. This is true; but it is
+not to our present purpose; such a feeble sign is a sign of God's
+yet unwearied mercy, but no sign of our salvation. The presence
+with which the parable is concerned, is a far more effectual
+presence than this; the house in which there is no more than such a
+faint sign of a divine inhabitant, is, in the language of the
+parable, empty. To no purpose of our salvation is the Spirit of God
+present in the house, when the light of his presence does not flash
+forth from every part of it, when it is not manifest, not only that
+he has not quite cast it off to go to ruin, but that he has been
+pleased to make it his temple.</p>
+<p>In this sense, therefore, in this practical, scriptural,
+Christian sense, those many young minds, which we have seen so
+often, may truly be called empty. But will they remain so long? How
+often have I seen the early innocence of boyhood overcast; the
+natural simplicity of boyhood, its open truth, its confident
+affection, its honest shame, perverted, blunted, hardened! How
+often have I seen the seven evil spirits enter in and dwell
+there,--I know not, and never may know, whether to be cast out
+again, or to abide for ever. But I have seen them enter, and,
+whilst the person was yet within my view, I have not seen them
+depart. And why have they entered; why have they marred that which
+was so beautiful? For one only reason,--because the house was
+empty, because the Spirit of God was not there: there was no love
+of God, no thought of God. Mere innocence taints and spoils as
+surely before the influence of the world, as true principle
+flourishes in spite of it, and strengthens. This, too, I have seen,
+not once only: I have seen the innocence of early boyhood
+sanctified by something better than innocence, which gave a promise
+of abiding. I have seen, in other words, that the house was not
+empty; that the Spirit of God was there. I have watched the effect
+of those influences, which you know so well: the second half-year
+came, a period when mere innocence is sure to be worn away, greatly
+tainted, if not utterly gone; but still, in the cases which I am
+now alluding to, the promise of good was not less, but greater,
+there was a more tried, and, therefore, a stronger goodness. I have
+watched this, too, till it passed on, out of my sight. I never saw
+the blessed Spirit of God depart from the house which he had
+chosen: I well believe that he abides in it still, and will abide
+in it even to the day of Jesus Christ.</p>
+<p>This I have seen, and this I shall continue to see; for still
+the great work of evil and of good is going on; still the house, at
+first empty, is possessed by the spirits of evil, or by the Spirit
+of God. And if we do not see the signs of the Spirit of God, we are
+but too sure that the evil spirit is there. We know him by the
+manifold signs of folly, coarseness, carelessness; even when we see
+not, as yet, his worse fruits of falsehood and profligacy. We know
+him by the sign of an increased, and increasing selfishness, the
+everlasting cry of the thousand passions of our nature, all for
+ever calling out, "Give, give;" all for ever impatient,
+complaining, when their gratification is withheld, when the call of
+duty is set before them. We know him by pride and self-importance,
+as if nothing was so great as self, as if our own opinions,
+judgment, feelings were to be consulted in all things. We know him
+by the deep ungodliness which he occasions--no thought of God, much
+less any love of him; living utterly without him in the world, or,
+at least, whilst health and prosperity continue. These are the
+fatal signs which show that the house is no longer empty; that the
+evil spirits have entered in, and dwell there, to make it theirs,
+as too often happens, for time and for eternity.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XVI."></a>LECTURE XVI.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>MATHEW xi. 10.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare
+thy way before thee</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>If it was part of God's dispensation, that there should be one
+to prepare the way before Christ's first coming, it may be expected
+much more, that there should be some to prepare the way before his
+second. And so it is expressed in the collect for the third Sunday
+in Advent: "O Lord Jesus Christ, who at thy first coming didst send
+thy messenger to prepare thy way before thee; grant that the
+ministers and stewards of thy mysteries may likewise so prepare and
+make ready thy way, by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the
+wisdom of the just, that at thy second coming to judge the world we
+may be found an acceptable people in thy sight, who livest and
+reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world
+without end. Amen." NOW, in what does this preparing for him
+consist; and what is its object? The Scripture will inform us as to
+both. The object is, "Lest he come and smite the earth with a
+curse;" lest, when he shall come, his coming, which should be our
+greatest joy and happiness, should be our everlasting destruction;
+for there can abide before him nothing that is evil. This is the
+object of preparing for Christ's coming. Next, in what does the
+preparation consist? It consists in teaching men to live above the
+common notions of their age and country; to raise their standard
+higher; to live after what is right in God's judgment, which often
+casts away, as faulty and bad, what men were accustomed to think
+good. And as the people of Israel, although they had God's
+revelation among them, had yet let their standard of good and evil
+become low, even so it has been in the Christian Israel. We have
+God's will in our hands, yet our judgments are not formed upon it;
+and, therefore, they who would prepare us for Christ's coming, must
+set before us a commandment which is new, although old: in one
+sense old, in every generation, inasmuch as it is the same which we
+had from the beginning; in another sense, in every generation more
+new, inasmuch, as the habits opposed to it have become the more
+confirmed; and the longer the night has lasted, the more strange to
+our eyes is the burst of the returning light.</p>
+<p>But when we thus speak of the common notions of our age and
+country being deficient, and thus, in effect, commend notions which
+would be singular, do we not hold a language inconsistent with our
+common language and practice? Do we not commonly regard singularity
+as a fault, and attach a considerable authority to the consent of
+men in general? Nay, do we not often appeal to this consent as to a
+proof which a sane mind must admit as decisive? Even in speaking of
+good and evil, have not the very words gained their present sense
+because the common consent of mankind has agreed to combine notions
+of self-satisfaction, of honour, and of love, with what we call
+good, and the contrary with what we call evil?</p>
+<p>A short time may, perhaps, not be misapplied in endeavouring to
+explain this matter; in showing where, and for what reasons, the
+common opinion of our society is to be followed, where it is to be
+suspected, and where it is absolutely to be shunned or trampled
+under foot, as clearly and certainly evil.</p>
+<p>I must begin with little things, in order to show the whole
+question plainly. Take those tastes in us which most resemble the
+instincts of a brute; and you will find that in these, as with
+instinct, common consent becomes a sure rule. When I speak of those
+tastes which most resemble instincts, I mean those in which nature,
+doing most for us at first, leaves least for us to learn for
+ourselves. This seems the character of instinct: it is far more
+complete than reason in its first stage, but it admits of no after
+improvement; the brute in the thousandth generation is no way
+advanced beyond the brute in the first. Of our tastes, even of
+those belonging to our bodily senses, that which belongs to what
+are called particularly our organs of taste is the one most
+resembling an instinct: we have less to do for its improvement than
+in any other instance. Men being here, then, upon an equality, with
+a faculty given to all by nature, and improved particularly by
+none, those who differ from the majority are likely to differ not
+from excellence but from defect: not because they have a more
+advanced reason, but because they have a less healthy instinct,
+than their neighbours. Thus, in those matters which relate to the
+sense of taste--I am obliged to take this almost trivial instance,
+because it so well illustrates the principle of the whole
+question--we hold the consent of men in general to be a good rule.
+If any one were to choose to feed upon what this common taste had
+pronounced to be disgusting, we should not hesitate to say that
+such an appetite was diseased and monstrous.</p>
+<p>Now, let us take our senses of sight and hearing, and we shall
+find that just in the proportion in which these less resemble
+instincts than the sense of taste, so is common consent a less
+certain rule. Up to a certain point they are instincts: there are
+certain sounds which, I suppose, are naturally disagreeable to the
+ear; while, on the other hand, bright and rich colours are,
+perhaps, naturally attractive to the eye. But, then, sight and
+hearing are so connected with our minds that they are susceptible
+of very great cultivation, and thus differ greatly from instincts.
+As the mind opens, outward sights and sounds become connected with
+a great number of associations, and thus we learn to think the one
+or the other beautiful, for reasons which really depend very much
+on the range of our own ideas. Consider, for a moment, the
+beautiful in architecture. If the model of the leaning tower of
+Pisa were generally adopted in our public buildings, all men's
+common sense would cry out against it as a deformity, because a
+leaning wall would convey to every mind the notion of insecurity,
+and every body would feel that it was unpleasant to see a building
+look exactly as if it were going to fall down. Now, what I have
+called common sense is, in a manner, the instinct of our reason: it
+is that uniform level of reason which all sane persons reach to,
+and the wisest in matters within its province do not surpass. But
+go beyond this, and architecture is no longer a matter of mere
+common sense, but of science, and of cultivated taste. Here the
+standard of beauty is not fixed by common consent; but, in the
+first instance, devised or discovered by the few: and, so far as it
+is received by the many, received by them on the authority of the
+few, and sanctioned, so to speak, not so much from real sympathy
+and understanding, as from a reasonable trust and deference to
+those who are believed the best judges.</p>
+<p>Here, then, we suppose that the common judgment is right; but we
+perceive a difference between this case and the one mentioned
+before, inasmuch as in the first instance the right judgment of the
+mass of mankind is their own; in the second instance, they have
+adopted it out of deference to others. Not only, then, will men's
+common judgment be right in matters of instinct and of common
+sense, but also in higher matters, where, although they could not
+have discovered what was right, yet they were perfectly willing to
+adopt it, when discovered by others. And this opens a very wide
+field. For in all matters which come under the dominion of fashion,
+where the avowed object is the convenience or gratification of
+society, men listen to those who profess to teach them with almost
+an excess of docility: they will adopt sometimes fashions which are
+not convenient. But yet, as men can tell well enough by experience
+whether they do find a thing convenient and agreeable or not, so it
+is most likely that fashions which continue long and generally
+prevalent are founded upon sound principles; because else men,
+being well capable of knowing what convenience is, and being also
+well disposed to follow it, would neither have been very long or
+very generally mistaken in this matter; nor would have acquiesced
+in their mistake contentedly.</p>
+<p>We do perfectly right, then, to regard the common opinion as a
+rule in all points of dress, in our houses and furniture, in those
+lighter usages of society which come under the denomination of
+manners, as distinguished from morals. In all these, if the mass of
+mankind could not find out what would best suit them, yet they are
+quite ready to adopt it when it is found out; and so they equally
+arrive at truth. But take away this readiness, and the whole case
+is altered. If there be any point in which men are not ready to
+adopt what is best for them; if they are either indifferent, or
+still more, if they are averse to it; if they thus have neither the
+power of discovering it for themselves, nor the will to avail
+themselves of it, when discovered for them; then it is clear that,
+in such a point, the common judgment will be of no value, nay,
+there will even be a presumption that it is wrong.</p>
+<p>Now as the common consent of mankind was most sure in matters
+where their sense most resembled instinct, that is, where nature
+had done most for them, and left them least to do for themselves;
+as here, therefore, they who are sound are the great majority, and
+the exceptions are no better than disease; so if there be any part
+of us which is the direct opposite to instinct, a part in which
+nature has done next to nothing for us, and all is to be done by
+ourselves; then, here the common consent of mankind will be of the
+least value; here the majority will be helpless and worthless; and
+they who are happy enough to be exceptions to this majority, will
+be no other than Christ's redeemed.</p>
+<p>Now, again, if this deficient part of our nature could be seen
+purely distinct from every other; if it alone dictated our
+language, and inspired our actions, then it would follow, that
+language which must ever be fixed by the majority, would be, in
+fact, the language of the world of infinite evil; and our actions
+those of mere devils. Then, whoever of us would be saved, must
+needs begin by forswearing, altogether, both the language and the
+actions of his fellow-men. But this is not so; in almost every
+instance this deficient part of our nature acts along with others
+that are not so corrupted; it mars their work, undoubtedly; it
+often confuses and perverts our language; it always taints our
+actions; but it does not wholly usurp either the one or the other;
+and thus, by God's blessing, man's language yet affords a high
+witness to divine truth, and even men's judgments and actions
+testify, though with infinite imperfection, to the existence and
+excellence of goodness.</p>
+<p>And this it is which forms one of the great perplexities of
+life; for as there is enough of what is right in men's judgments
+and conduct to forbid us from saying, that we must take the very
+rule of contraries, and think and do just the opposite to the
+opinions and practice of men in general; so, on the other hand,
+there is always so much wrong in them, that we may never dare to
+follow them as a standard, but shall find, that if trusted to as
+such, they will inevitably betray us. So that in points of greater
+moment than mere manners and fashion, it will ever be true, that if
+we would be prepared for Christ's coming, we must rise to a far
+higher standard than that of society in general; that in the
+greatest concerns of human life, the practice of the majority,
+though always containing something of good, is yet in its
+prevailing character, as regards God, so evil, that they who are
+content to follow it cannot be saved.</p>
+<p>This is the explanation of the apparent difficulty in the
+general, and thus, while acknowledging that there are points in
+which men, by common consent, make out what is best; and others in
+which, although they do not make it out, nor at first appreciate
+it, yet they are very willing to adopt it upon trust, and so come
+by experience to value it; while, therefore, there are a great many
+things in which singularity is either a disease or a foolishness;
+so again there are other points in which men in general have not
+the power to make out what is good, nor yet the docility to adopt
+it; and, therefore, in these points, which relate to the great
+matters of life, singularity is wisdom and salvation, and he who
+does as others do, perishes. That is what is called the corruption
+of human nature. I shall attempt, on another occasion, to go into
+some further details, and show, by common examples, how strangely
+our judgment and practice contain, with much that is right, just
+that one taint or defect which, as a whole, spoils them. And this
+one defect will be found to be, as the Scripture declares, a defect
+in our sense of our relation towards God.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XVII."></a>LECTURE XVII.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>1 CORINTHIANS ii. 12.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>We have received not the spirit of the world, but the
+Spirit which is of God</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>And, therefore, he goes on to say, our language is different
+from that of others, and not always understood by them; the natural
+man receiveth not the things of God, for they are foolishness unto
+him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually
+discerned. That is, they are discerned only by a faculty which he
+has not, namely, by the Spirit; and, therefore, as beings devoid of
+reason cannot understand the truths of science, or of man's wisdom,
+for they are without the faculty which can discern them; so beings
+devoid of God's Spirit cannot understand the truths of God.</p>
+<p>Now, in order to turn this passage to our profit, we need not
+consider those who are wholly without God's Spirit, or inquire
+whether, indeed, there be any such; it is not that there are two
+broadly marked divisions of all men, those who have not the Spirit
+of God at all, and those who have it abundantly: if it were so, the
+separation of the great day of judgment would be begun already, nor
+would it require, in order to effect it rightly, the wisdom of Him
+who trieth the very hearts and reins. No doubt there will be at
+last but two divisions of us all, the saved and the lost; but now
+the divisions are infinite; so much so that the great body of us
+offer much matter for hope as well as for fear. We cannot say, that
+they are without the Spirit of God; yet neither can we say that
+they are led by the Spirit, so as to be God's true servants. We
+cannot say, that the things of God's are absolutely to them as
+foolishness; yet certainly, we cannot say either, that they are to
+them as the divinest wisdom.</p>
+<p>And here we return to the subject on which I was speaking last
+Sunday. It is because we are not led by the Spirit of God, but have
+within us much of the spirit of the world, that our judgments of
+right and wrong are so faulty; and that this faultiness is
+particularly seen in our faint sense of our relations to God. These
+relations seem continually foolishness to us, because they are
+spiritually discerned, and we have so little of God's Spirit to
+enable us to discern them. And our blindness here affects our whole
+souls; we have, in consequence of it, a much fainter perception
+even of those truths which reason can discern by herself; or, at
+any rate, if we do not doubt them, they have over us much less
+influence.</p>
+<p>Now we will first see how much of natural reason, and even of
+the Spirit of God, does exist in our common judgments; for it is
+fair to see and to allow what there is of right in our language and
+sentiments, as well as to note what is wrong. Reason influences
+thus much, that we not only commend good generally, and blame evil;
+but even, in particular cases, we commend, I think, each separate
+virtue, and we blame each separate vice. I never heard of justice,
+truth, kindness, self-denial, &amp;c., being other than approved of
+in themselves; or injustice, falsehood, malice, and selfishness
+being other than condemned. And the Spirit of God influences at
+least thus much, that we shrink from direct blasphemy and
+profaneness; we cannot but respect those whom we believe to be
+living sincerely in the fear of God; and further, if we thought our
+death near, we should desire to hear of God, and to depart from
+this life under his favour. No doubt, all such feelings, so far as
+they go, are the work of God's Spirit: whatever is good and right
+in our minds towards God, that proceeds not from the spirit of the
+world, but from the Spirit of God.</p>
+<p>Where, then, is the great defect which yet continually makes our
+practical judgments quite wrong; which makes us, in fact, so often
+countenance and support evil, and discountenance and discourage
+good? First, it is owing to the spirit of carelessness. One of the
+most emphatic terms by which a good man is expressed in the
+language of the Greek philosophers, is that of [Greek: opdouiaos],
+"one who is in earnest." To be in earnest is, indeed, with, most of
+us, the same as to be good; it is not that we love evil, but that
+we are indifferent both to it and to good. Now, many of us are very
+seldom in earnest. By this I mean, that the highest part of our
+minds, and that which judges of the highest things, is generally
+slumbering or but half awake. We may go through, a very busy day,
+and yet not be, in this true sense, in earnest at all; our best
+faculties may, as it were, be all the while sleeping or playing. It
+is notorious how much this is so in the common intercourse of
+society in the world. Light anecdotes; playful remarks;
+discussions, it may be, about the affairs of the neighbourhood, or,
+in some companies, on questions of science or party politics; all
+these may be often heard; but we may talk on all these brilliantly
+and well, and yet our best nature may not once be called to exert
+itself. So again, in mere routine business, it is the same: the
+body may toil; the pen move swiftly; the thoughts act in the
+particular matter before them vigorously; and yet we our proper
+selves, beings understanding and choosing between good and evil,
+have never bestirred ourselves at all. It has been but a
+skirmishing at the outposts; not a sword had been drawn in the main
+battle. Take younger persons, and the same thing is the case even
+more palpably. Here there is less of business in the common sense
+of the term; the mind is almost always unbraced and resting. We
+pass through the good and evil of our daily life, and our proper
+self scarcely ever is aroused to notice either the one or the
+other.</p>
+<p>But the worst of it is, that this carelessness is not altogether
+accidental: it is a carelessness which we do not wish to break. So
+long as it lasts, we manage to get the activity and interest of
+life, without a sense of its responsibility. We like exceedingly to
+lay the reins, as it were, upon the neck of our inclinations, to go
+where they take us, and to ask no questions whether we are in the
+right road or no. Inclination is never slumbering: this gives us
+excitement enough to save us from weariness, without the effort of
+awakening our conscience too. Therefore society, expressing in its
+rules the feelings of its individual members, prescribes exactly
+such a style of conversation as may keep in exercise all other
+parts of our nature except that one which should be sovereign of
+all, and whose exercise is employed on things eternal.</p>
+<p>Not being, then, properly in earnest,--that is, our conscience
+and our choice of moral good and evil being in a state of
+repose,--our language is happily contrived so as that it shall
+contain nothing to startle our sleeping conscience, if her ears
+catch any of its sounds. We still commend good and dispraise evil,
+both in the general and in the particular. But as good and evil are
+mixed in every man, and in various proportions, he who commends,
+the little good of a bad man, saying nothing of his evil,--or he
+who condemns the little evil of a good man, saying nothing of his
+good,--leads us evidently to a false practical conclusion; he leads
+us to like the bad man and to dislike the good. Again, the lesser
+good becomes an evil if it keeps out a greater good; and, in the
+same way, the lesser evil becomes a good. If we have no thought of
+comparing good things together, if our sovereign nature be asleep,
+then we shall most estimate the good to which we are most inclined;
+and where we find this we shall praise it, not observing that it is
+taking up the place of a greater good which the case requires, and,
+therefore, that it is in fact an evil. So that our moral judgments
+may lead practically to great evil: we may join with bad men and
+despise good; we may approve of qualities which, are, in fact,
+ruining a man; and despise others which, in the particular case,
+are virtues; without ever in plain words condemning virtue or
+approving vice.</p>
+<p>But, farther, this habit of never being in earnest greatly
+lowers the strength of our feelings even towards the good which we
+praise and towards the evil which we condemn. It was an admirable
+definition of that which excites laughter, that it was that which
+is out of rule, that which is amiss, that which is unsightly,
+(these three ideas, and other similar ones, are alike contained in
+the single Greek word [Greek: aischron],) provided that it was
+unaccompanied by pain. This definition accounts for the otherwise
+extraordinary fact, that there is something in moral evil which, in
+some instances, affects the mind ludicrously. That is to say, if
+moral evil affects us with no pain; if we see in it nothing, so to
+speak, but its irregularity, its strange contrast with what is
+beautiful, its jarring with the harmony of the system around us;
+then it does acquire that character which is well defined as being
+ridiculous. Thus it is notorious that trifling follies, and even
+gross vices, are often so represented in works of fiction as to be
+exceedingly ludicrous. It is enough, as an instance of what I mean,
+to name the vice of drunkenness. Get rid for the moment of the
+notions of vice or sin which, accompany it, and which give moral
+pain; get rid also of those points in it which awaken physical
+disgust; retain merely the notion of the incoherent language, and
+the strange capricious gait of intoxication; and we have then an
+image merely ridiculous, as much, so as the rambling talk and
+absurd gestures of the old buffoons.</p>
+<p>Here, then, we have the secret of vice becoming laughable; and
+of things which are really wicked, disgusting, hateful, being
+expressed by names purely ludicrous. Where no great physical pain
+or distress is occasioned by what is evil, our sense of its
+ludicrousness will be exactly in proportion to the faintness of our
+sense of moral evil; or, in other words, to our want of being in
+earnest. The evil that does not seriously pain or inconvenience
+man, is very apt to be regarded with feelings approaching to
+laughter, if we have no sense of pain at the notion of its being an
+offence against God.</p>
+<p>Thus, then, we have seen how, from the want of being in earnest,
+from the habitual slumber of conscience, or that sovereign part of
+us which looks upon our whole state with reference to its highest
+interests, and passes judgment upon all our actions,--how, from the
+practical absence of these, we may get to follow evil persons, and
+be indifferent to the good; to admire qualities which, from
+usurping the place of better ones, are actually ruinous; and,
+finally, to regard all common evil not so much with deep
+abhorrence, as with a disposition to laugh at it. And thus the
+practical judgment and influence of the society around us may be
+fatally evil; while the society all the time shall contain, even in
+its very perversion, various elements of truth and of good.</p>
+<p>I have kept to general language, to general views, perhaps too
+much; but all the time my mind has been fixed on the particular
+application of this, which lies scarcely beneath the surface, but
+which I cannot well bear more fully to unveil. But whoever has
+attended to what I have been saying, will be able, I should trust,
+to make the application, for himself, to those points in our
+society which most need correction. He will be able to understand
+how it is that the influence of the place is not better, while it
+undoubtedly contains so much of good; how the public opinion of a
+Christian school may yet be, in many respects, very unchristian. If
+he has attended at all to what I have said about our so rarely
+being in earnest, he will see something of the mischief of some of
+those publications, of those books, of that tone of conversation,
+which, I suppose, are here, as elsewhere, in fashion. Utterly
+impossible is it to lay down a rule for others in such matters: to
+say this book is too light, or this is an excess of light reading,
+or this laugh was too unrestrained, or that tone of trifling too
+perpetual. But, in these things, we should all judge ourselves; and
+remember that you are so little under outward restraint, your
+choice of reading is so free, your intercourse with one another so
+wholly uncontrolled, that, enjoying thus the full liberty of more
+advanced years, you incur also their responsibility. There is,
+doubtless, an excess of light reading, both in kind and in
+quantity; there is such a thing as a tone of conversation and
+manner too entirely, and too frequently, trifling. And you must be
+quite aware that we are placed here for something else than to
+indulge such a temper as this. Cheerfulness and thoughtlessness
+have no necessary connexion; the lightest spirits, which are indeed
+one of the greatest of earthly blessings, often play around the
+most earnest thought and the tenderest affection, and with far more
+grace than when they are united with the shallowness and hardness
+of him who is, in the sight of God, a fool. It were a strange
+notion, that we could never be merry without intoxication, yet not
+stranger than to think that mirth is the companion only of folly or
+of sin. But, setting God in Christ before us, then the conscience
+is awake; then we are in earnest; then we measure things rightly;
+then we feel them strongly; then we love those that are good, and
+shun those that are evil; then we learn that sin is no matter of
+laughter, that it ill deserves to be clothed under a ludicrous
+name; for that thing which we laugh at, that which we so miscall,
+is indeed the cause of infinite evil; for that Christ died; for
+that there are some who die that death which lasts for ever.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XVIII."></a>LECTURE XVIII.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>GENESIS xxvii. 38.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>And Esau said unto his father, Hast thou but one
+blessing, my father? Bless me, even me also, O my
+father</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<center>MATTHEW xv. 27.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the
+crumbs which fall from their master's table</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>Of these two passages, the first, as we must all remember, is
+taken from the first lesson of this morning's service; the second
+is from the morning's gospel. Both speak the same language, and
+point out, I think, that particular view of the story of Jacob
+obtaining the blessing which is most capable of being turned to
+account; for, as to the conduct of Jacob and his mother, it is
+manifestly no more capable of affording us benefit, as a matter of
+example, than the conduct, in some respects similar, of the unjust
+steward in our Lord's parable. The example, indeed, is of the same
+kind as that. If the steward was so anxious about his future
+worldly welfare, and Jacob about the worldly welfare of his
+descendants, that they did not scruple to obtain their ends, the
+one by dishonesty, the other by falsehood, much more should we be
+anxious about the true welfare of ourselves and those belonging to
+us, which no such unworthy means can be required to gain. But the
+point of the story to which the text refers, and which is
+illustrated also by the words of the Syrophoenician woman, is one
+which very directly concerns us all, being no other than
+this,--what should be the effect upon our own minds of witnessing
+others possessed of greater advantages than ourselves, whether
+obtained by the immediate gift of God, through the course of his
+ordinary providence, or acquired directly by some unjust or
+unlawful act of those who are in possession of them?</p>
+<p>Now, it is evident that, as equality is not the rule either of
+nature or of human society, there must be many in every
+congregation who are so far in the condition of Esau and of the
+Syrophoenician woman, as to be inferior to others around them in
+some one or more advantages. The inferiority may consist in what
+are called worldly advantages, or in natural advantages, or in
+spiritual advantages, or in some or all of these united. And it is
+not to be doubted that the sense of this inferiority is a hard
+trial, both as respects our feelings towards God and towards men.
+It is a hard trial; but yet, no trial overtakes us but such as is
+common to man: and here, as in all other cases, God will, with the
+trial, also make a way for us to escape, that we may be able to
+bear it.</p>
+<p>Let us consider, then, some of the most common cases in which
+this inferiority exists amongst us. With regard to worldly
+advantages, the peculiar nature of this congregation makes it less
+necessary than it generally would be, to dwell upon inequality in
+these: in fact, speaking generally, we are a very unusual example
+of equality in these respects; the advantages of station and
+fortune are enjoyed not, literally, in an equal degree by all of
+us, but equally as compared with, the lot of the great mass of
+society; we all enjoy the necessaries, and most of the comforts of
+life. What differences there are would, probably, appear in
+instances seemingly trifling, if, indeed, any thing were really
+trifling by which the temper and feelings, and through them the
+principles, of any amongst us may be affected for good or for evil.
+It may possibly happen that, in the indulgences, or means of
+indulgence, given to you by your friends at home, there may be
+sometimes, such a difference as to excite discontent or jealousy.
+It may be, that some are apt to exult over others, by talking of
+the pleasures, or the liberty, which they enjoy; and which the
+friends of others, either from necessity or from a sense of duty,
+are obliged to withhold. If this be ever felt by any of you as a
+trial; if it gall your pride, as well as restrict your enjoyments;
+then remember, that here, even in this seemingly little thing, the
+inferiority of which you complain may be either increased ten-fold,
+or changed into a blessed superiority. Increased ten-fold, even as
+from him that hath not, shall be taken away even that which he
+hath, if by discontent, and evil passions towards God and man, you
+make yourselves a hundred times more inferior spiritually than you
+were in outward circumstances; but changed into a blessed
+superiority, if it be borne with meekness, and patience, and
+thankfulness, even as it was said of the Gentile centurion, that
+there had not been found faith equal to his, no, not in Israel.</p>
+<p>But turning from worldly advantages to those which are called
+natural, and the inequality here is at once as great as elsewhere.
+In all faculties of body and mind; in the vigour of the senses, of
+the limbs, of the general constitution; in the greater or less
+liability to disease generally, or to any particular form of it;
+or, again, in powers of mind, in quickness, in memory, in
+imagination, in judgment; the differences between different persons
+in this congregation must be exceedingly wide. But, with regard to
+bodily powers, the trial is little felt, till the inferiority is
+shown in actual suffering from pain or from disease. So long as we
+are in health, our enjoyments are so many, and we so easily
+accommodate our habits to our powers, that a mere inferiority of
+strength, whether it be of limb or of constitution, is not apt to
+make us dissatisfied. But if it comes to actual illness or to pain,
+if we are deprived of the common enjoyments and occupations of our
+age, then perhaps the trial begins to be severe; and when we look
+at others who have taken the same liberties with their health as we
+have done, and see them notwithstanding perfectly well and strong,
+while we are disabled or suffering, we may think that God has dealt
+hardly with us, and may be inclined to ask with Esau, "Hast thou
+but one blessing, my Father? bless me, even me also, O my Father!"
+Now this language, according to the sense in which we use it, is
+either blameable or innocent. If we mean to say, "Hast thou health
+to give to others only and not to me? give me this blessing also,
+as thou hast given it to my brethren:" then it has in it somewhat
+of discontent and murmuring; it implies a claim to which God never
+listens. But if we mean, "Hast thou only one kind of blessing, my
+father? If thou hast blest others in one way, I murmur not nor
+complain: but out of thine infinite store, give me also such a
+blessing as may be convenient for me;" then God hears the prayer,
+then he gives the blessing, and gives it so richly, and makes it
+bear so evidently the mark of his love, that they who were last are
+become first; if others have health, and we have sickness, yet the
+spirit of patience and cheerful submission which God gives with it
+is so great a blessing, and makes us so certainly happy, that the
+strongest and healthiest of our friends have often far more reason
+to wish to change places with us, than we with them.</p>
+<p>Let us now take inequality in powers of mind. And here,
+undoubtedly, the difference is apt to be a trial. Not that,
+probably, it excites discontent or murmuring against God; nor
+jealousy against those whose faculties are better than our own: the
+trial is of another kind; we are tempted to make our inferiority an
+excuse for neglect; because we cannot do so much nor so easily as
+others, we do far less than we might do. But the parable shows us
+plainly, that if one talent only has been given us, while others
+have ten, yet that the one, no less than the ten, must be made to
+yield its increase. Here is the feeling expressed so earnestly by
+the woman entreating Christ to heal her daughter. "The dogs eat of
+the crumbs which fall from their master's table." Small as may be
+the portion of power given us, when compared with the plenty
+vouchsafed to others, still it is capable of nourishing us if we
+make use of it; still it shows that we too have our blessing. And
+if using it with thankfulness, if doing our very best with it,
+knowing that "a man is accepted according to what he hath, and not
+according to what he hath not," we labour humbly and diligently;
+then, not only does the talent itself become increased, so that our
+Lord, when he comes to reckon with us, may receive his own with
+usury: but a blessing of another kind is added to our labours,
+again, as in the former case, making those who were last to become
+first. For if there be one thing on earth which is truly admirable,
+it is to see God's wisdom blessing an inferiority of natural
+powers, when they have been honestly, humbly, and zealously
+cultivated. From how many pains are they delivered, to which great
+natural talents are continually exposed; irritation, jealousy, a
+morbid and nervous activity, bearing fruits not of peace, but of
+gall! With what blessings are they crowned, to which, the most
+powerful natural understanding is a stranger! the love of truth
+gratified, without the fear that truth will demand the sacrifice of
+personal vanity; the line of duty clearly discerned, because those
+mists of passion and selfishness which obscure it so often from the
+view of the keenest natural perception, have been dispersed by the
+spirit of humility and love; imperfect knowledge patiently endured,
+because whatever knowledge is enjoyed is known to be God's gift,
+and what he gives, or what he withholds, is alike welcome. This is
+the blessing of those who having had inferior natural powers, have
+so laboured to improve them according to God's will, that on all
+there has been grafted, as it were, some better power of grace, to
+yield a fruit most precious both for earth and heaven.</p>
+<p>But I spoke of an equality of spiritual advantages also, and
+this is perhaps the hardest trial of all. Oh, how great is this
+inequality in truth, when it seems to be so little! All of you, the
+children of Christian parents; all members of the Christian Church;
+all partaking here of the same worship, the same prayers, the same
+word of God, the same sacrament; are you not all the Israel of God,
+and not, like Esau, or the Syrophoenician woman, strangers to the
+covenant of blessing? Yet your real condition is, notwithstanding,
+very unequal. How unlike are your friends at home; how, unlike,
+also, are your friends here! Are there not some to whom their
+homes, both by direct precept and by example, are a far greater
+help than to others? Are there not some, whose immediate companions
+here may encourage them in all good far more than may be the case
+with, others? So, then, there may be some to whom this great
+blessing has been denied, whilst others enjoy it. What then? Shall
+we say, that, because we have it not, we will refuse to go in to
+our Father's house; that we will not walk as our brother walks,
+unless we have his advantages? Then must we remain cast out;
+vessels fashioned to dishonour; rejected of God, and cursed. Nay
+rather let us put a Christian sense on Esau's prayer, and cry,
+"'Hast thou but one blessing, my Father? bless me, even me also, O
+my Father.' If thou hast given to others earthly helps, which thou
+hast denied to me, give me thyself and thy own Spirit the more! If
+father and mother forsake my most precious interest, do thou take
+me up. If my nearest friends will not walk with me in the house of
+God, be thou my friend, and abide with, me always, making my house
+as thine. Outward and earthly means thou givest or takest away at
+thy pleasure; but give me help according to my need, that I yet may
+not lose thee."</p>
+<p>How naturally are we interested at the thought of any one so
+circumstanced, and uttering such a prayer! How earnestly do we wish
+to help him, to show our respect and true love for a faith so tried
+and so enduring! And think we that God cares for it less than we
+do? or have we not already the record of his love towards it, when
+Christ answered the Syrophoenician woman, "O woman, great is thy
+faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt?" He may not, indeed, see
+fit to give the very same blessing which was in the first instance
+denied: we may still have fewer spiritual advantages than others,
+as far as human helps are concerned; fewer good and earnest
+friends; fewer examples of holiness around us; fewer to join with
+us in our prayers and in our struggles against evil. But though
+this particular blessing may be denied,--as Esau could not gain
+that blessing which had been given to Jacob,--yet there is a
+blessing for us also, which may prove, in the end, even better than
+our brother's. He who serves God steadily, amidst many
+disadvantages, enjoys the blessing of a more confirmed and hardier
+faith; he has gone through trials, and been found conqueror; and
+for him that overcometh is reserved a more abundant measure of
+glory.</p>
+<p>But on the other side, we who, like Jacob, or Jacob's posterity,
+have the blessing,--whether it be natural, worldly, or
+spiritual,--let us consider what became of it when it was not
+improved. What was the sin of Esau,--speaking not of the
+individual, but of the less favoured people of Edom,--compared with
+the sin of Jacob? Nay, not of Edom only; but it shall be more
+tolerable for Sodom, in the day of judgment, than for the
+unbelieving cities of Israel. So it is, not only with the literal,
+but with the Christian Israel; so it is, not only with the Church
+as a whole compared with heathens, but with all those individuals
+amongst us, who enjoy in any larger measure than others any of
+God's blessings. They are blessings; but they may be made fatal
+curses. This holds true with blessings of every kind: with station
+and wealth, with bodily health and vigour, with, great powers of
+mind, with large means of spiritual improvement. To whom much is
+given, of him shall be much, required. It is required of us to
+enjoy our blessings by using them: so will they be blessings
+indeed. So it is with money and influence, with health, with
+talents, with spiritual knowledge, and good friends and parents.
+There are first who shall be last; that is, those who began their
+course with advantages which set them before their brethren, if
+they do not exert themselves, will fall grievously behind them: for
+the blessing denied may be, in effect, a blessing given; and the
+blessing given, in like manner, becomes too often a blessing taken
+away.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XIX."></a>LECTURE XIX.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>MATTHEW xxii. 32.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>God is not the God of the dead, but of the
+living</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>We hear these words as a part of our Lord's answer to the
+Sadducees; and, as their question was put in evident profaneness,
+and the answer to it is one which to our minds is quite obvious and
+natural, so we are apt to think that in this particular story there
+is less than usual that particularly concerns us. But it so
+happens, that our Lord, in answering the Sadducees, has brought in
+one of the most universal and most solemn of all truths,--which is
+indeed implied in many parts of the Old Testament, but which the
+Gospel has revealed to us in all its fulness,--the truth contained
+in the words of the text, that "God is not the God of the dead, but
+of the living."</p>
+<p>I would wish to unfold a little what is contained in these
+words, which we often hear even, perhaps, without quite
+understanding them; and many times oftener without fully entering
+into them. And we may take them, first, in their first part, where
+they say that "God is not the God of the dead."</p>
+<p>The word "dead," we know, is constantly used in Scripture in a
+double sense, as meaning those who are dead spiritually, as well as
+those who are dead naturally. And, in either sense, the words are
+alike applicable: "God is not the God of the dead."</p>
+<p>God's not being the God of the dead signifies two things: that
+they who are without him are dead, as well as that they who are
+dead are also without him. So far as our knowledge goes respecting
+inferior animals, they appear to be examples of this truth. They
+appear to us to have no knowledge of God; and we are not told that
+they have any other life than the short one of which our senses
+inform us. I am well aware that our ignorance of their condition is
+so great that, we may not dare to say anything of them positively;
+there may be a hundred things true respecting them which we neither
+know nor imagine. I would only say that, according to that most
+imperfect light in which we see them, the two points of which I
+have been speaking appear to meet in them: we believe that they
+have no consciousness of God, and we believe that they will die.
+And so far, therefore, they afford an example of the agreement, if
+I may so speak, between these two points; and were intended,
+perhaps, to be to our view a continual image of it. But we had far
+better speak of ourselves. And here, too, it is the case that "God
+is not the God of the dead." If we are without him we are dead; and
+if we are dead we are without him: in other words, the two ideas of
+death and absence from God are in fact synonymous.</p>
+<p>Thus, in the account given of the fall of man, the sentence of
+death and of being cast out of Eden go together; and if any one
+compares the description of the second Eden in the Revelation, and
+recollects how especially it is there said, that God dwells in the
+midst of it, and is its light by day and night, he will see that
+the banishment from the first Eden means a banishment from the
+presence of God. And thus, in the day that Adam sinned, he died;
+for he was cast out of Eden immediately, however long he may have
+moved about afterwards upon the earth where God was not. And how
+very strong to the same point are the words of Hezekiah's prayer,
+"The grave cannot praise thee, Death cannot celebrate thee; they
+that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth;" words which
+express completely the feeling that God is not the God of the dead.
+This, too, appears to be the sense generally of the expression used
+in various parts of the Old Testament, "Thou shalt surely die." It
+is, no doubt, left purposely obscure; nor are we ever told, in so
+many words, all that is meant by death; but, surely, it always
+implies a separation from God, and the being--whatever the notion
+may extend to--the being dead to him. Thus, when David had
+committed his great sin, and had expressed his repentance for it,
+Nathan tells him, "The Lord also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt
+not die:" which means, most expressively, thou shalt not die to
+God. In one sense, David died, as all men die; nor was he, by any
+means, freed from the punishment of his sin: he was not, in that
+sense, forgiven; but he was allowed still to regard God as his God;
+and, therefore, his punishments were but fatherly chastisements
+from God's hand, designed for his profit, that he might be partaker
+of God's holiness. And thus although Saul was sentenced to lose his
+kingdom, and although he was killed with his sons on Mount Gilboa,
+yet I do not think that we find the sentence passed upon him, "Thou
+shalt surely die;" and, therefore, we have no right to say that God
+had ceased to be his God, although be visited him with severe
+chastisements, and would not allow him to hand down to his sons the
+crown of Israel. Observe, also, the language of the eighteenth
+chapter of Ezekiel, where the expressions occur so often, "He shall
+surely live," and "He shall surely die." We have no right to refer
+these to a mere extension, on the one hand, or a cutting short, on
+the other, of the term of earthly existence. The promise of living
+long in the land, or, as in Hezekiah's case, of adding to his days
+fifteen years, is very different from the full and unreserved
+blessing, "Thou shalt surely live." And we know, undoubtedly, that
+both the good and the bad to whom Ezekiel spoke, died alike the
+natural death of the body. But the peculiar force of the promise,
+and of the threat, was, in the one case, Thou shalt belong to God;
+in the other, Thou shalt cease to belong to him; although the veil
+was not yet drawn up which concealed the full import of those
+terms, "belonging to God," and "ceasing to belong to him:" nay, can
+we venture to affirm that it is fully drawn aside even now?</p>
+<p>I have dwelt on this at some length, because it really seems to
+place the common state of the minds of too many amongst us in a
+light which is exceedingly awful; for if it be true, as I think the
+Scripture implies, that to be dead, and to be without God, are
+precisely the same thing, then can it be denied, that the symptoms
+of death are strongly marked upon many of us? Are there not many
+who never think of God, or care about his service? Are there not
+many who live, to all appearance, as unconscious of his existence
+as we fancy the inferior animals to be? And is it not quite clear,
+that to such persons, God cannot be said to be their God? He may be
+the God of heaven and earth, the God of the universe, the God of
+Christ's church; but he is not their God, for they feel to have
+nothing at all to do with him; and, therefore, as he is not their
+God, they are, and must be, according to the Scripture, reckoned
+among the dead.</p>
+<p>But God is the God "of the living." That is, as before, all who
+are alive, live unto him; all who live unto him, are alive. "God
+said, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of
+Jacob;" and, therefore, says our Lord, "Abraham, and Isaac, and
+Jacob, are not and cannot be dead." They cannot be dead, because
+God owns them: he is not ashamed to be called their God; therefore,
+they are not cast out from him; therefore, by necessity, they live.
+Wonderful, indeed, is the truth here implied, in exact agreement,
+as we have seen, with the general language of Scripture; that, as
+she who but touched the hem of Christ's garment was, in a moment,
+relieved from her infirmity, so great was the virtue which went out
+from him; so they who are not cast out from God, but have any thing
+whatever to do with him, feel the virtue of his gracious presence
+penetrating their whole nature; because he lives, they must live
+also.</p>
+<p>Behold, then, life and death set before us; not remote, (if a
+few years be, indeed, to be called remote,) but even now present
+before us; even now suffered or enjoyed. Even now, we are alive
+unto God, or dead unto God; and, as we are either the one or the
+other, so we are, in the highest possible sense of the terms, alive
+or dead. In the highest possible sense of the terms; but who can
+tell what that highest possible sense of the terms is? So much has,
+indeed, been revealed to us, that we know now that death means a
+conscious and perpetual death, as life means a conscious and
+perpetual life. But greatly, indeed, do we deceive ourselves, if we
+fancy that, by having thus much told us, we have also risen to the
+infinite heights, or descended to the infinite depths, contained in
+those little words, life and death. They are far higher, and far
+deeper, than ever thought or fancy of man has reached to. But, even
+on the first edge of either, at the visible beginnings of that
+infinite ascent or descent, there is surely something which may
+give us a foretaste of what is beyond. Even to us in this moral
+state, even to you advanced but so short a way on your very earthly
+journey, life and death have a meaning: to be dead unto God, or to
+be alive to him, are things perceptibly different.</p>
+<p>For, let me ask of those who think least of God, who are most
+separate from him, and most without him, whether there is not now
+actually, perceptibly, in their state, something of the coldness,
+the loneliness, the fearfulness of death? I do not ask them whether
+they are made unhappy by the fear of God's anger; of course they
+are not: for they who fear God are not dead to him, nor he to them.
+The thought of him gives them no disquiet at all; this is the very
+point we start from. But I would ask them whether they know what it
+is to feel God's blessing. For instance: we all of us have our
+troubles of some sort or other, our disappointments, if not our
+sorrows. In these troubles, in these disappointments,--I care not
+how small they may be,--have they known what it is to feel that
+God's hand is over them; that these little annoyances are but his
+fatherly correction; that he is all the time loving us, and
+supporting us? In seasons of joy, such, as they taste very often,
+have they known what it is to feel that they are tasting the
+kindness of their heavenly Father, that their good things come from
+his hand, and are but an infinitely slight foretaste of his love?
+Sickness, danger,--I know that they come to many of us but rarely;
+but if we have known them, or at least sickness, even in its
+lighter form, if not in its graver,--have we felt what it is to
+know that we are in our Father's hands, that he is with us, and
+will be with us to the end; that nothing can hurt those whom he
+loves? Surely, then, if we have never tasted anything of this: if
+in trouble, or in joy, or in sickness, we are left wholly to
+ourselves, to bear as we can, and enjoy as we can; if there is no
+voice that ever speaks out of the heights and the depths around us,
+to give any answer to our own; if we are thus left to ourselves in
+this vast world,--there is in this a coldness and a loneliness; and
+whenever we come to be, of necessity, driven to be with our own
+hearts alone, the coldness and the loneliness must be felt. But
+consider that the things which, we see around us cannot remain with
+us, nor we with them. The coldness and loneliness of the world,
+without God, must be felt more and more as life wears on: in every
+change of our own state, in every separation from or loss of a
+friend, in every more sensible weakness of our own bodies, in every
+additional experience of the uncertainty of our own counsels,--the
+deathlike feeling will come upon us more and more strongly: we
+shall gain more of that fearful knowledge which tells us that "God
+is not the God of the dead."</p>
+<p>And so, also, the blessed knowledge that he is the God "of the
+living" grows upon those who are truly alive. Surely he "is not far
+from every one of us." No occasion of life fails to remind those
+who live unto him, that he is their God, and that they are his
+children. On light occasions or on grave ones, in sorrow and in
+joy, still the warmth of his love is spread, as it were, all
+through the atmosphere of their lives: they for ever feel his
+blessing. And if it fills them with joy unspeakable even now, when
+they so often feel how little they deserve it; if they delight
+still in being with God, and in living to him, let them be sure
+that they have in themselves the unerring witness of life eternal:
+God is the God of the living, and all who are with him must
+live.</p>
+<p>Hard it is, I well know, to bring this home, in any degree, to
+the minds of those who are dead: for it is of the very nature of
+the dead that they can hear no words of life. But it has happened
+that, even whilst writing what I have just been uttering to you,
+the news reached me that one, who two months ago was one of your
+number, who this very half-year has shared in all the business and
+amusements of this place, is passed already into that state where
+the meanings of the terms life and death are become fully revealed.
+He knows what it is to live unto God, and what it is to die to him.
+Those things which are to us unfathomable mysteries, are to him all
+plain: and yet but two months ago he might have thought himself as
+far from attaining this knowledge as any of us can do. Wherefore it
+is clear, that these things, life and death, may hurry their lesson
+upon us sooner than we deem of, sooner than we are prepared to
+receive it. And that were indeed awful, if, being dead to God, and
+yet little feeling it, because of the enjoyments of our worldly
+life, those enjoyments were on a sudden to be struck away from us,
+and we should find then that to be dead to God was death, indeed, a
+death from which there is no waking, and in which there is no
+sleeping for ever.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XX."></a>LECTURE XX.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>EZEKIEL xiii. 22.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>With lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad,
+whom I have not<br>
+made sad; and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he
+should<br>
+not return from his wicked way, by promising him life</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>The verses which immediately precede this, require explanation,
+but perhaps our knowledge is hardly sufficient to enable us to give
+it fully. There are allusions to customs,--to fashions
+rather,--common amongst the Israelites at the time, which we can
+now scarcely do more than guess at; but we may observe, that there
+was a general practice, which even God's own prophets were directed
+often to comply with, of enforcing what was said in word by some
+corresponding outward action, in which the speaker made himself, as
+it were, a living image of the idea which he meant to convey. Thus,
+when Zedekiah, the son of Chenaanah, was assuring Ahab, that he
+should drive the Syrians before him, he made himself horns of iron,
+and said, "With these shalt thou push the Syrians, until thou have
+consumed them." In the same way, it is imagined that the false
+prophetesses spoken of in the text were in the habit of wearing
+pillows, or cushions, fastened to their arms, and directed those
+who came to consult them to do the same, as a sign of rest and
+peace; that they who trusted to them had nothing to fear, but might
+lie down and enjoy themselves at their feasts, or in sleep, with
+entire security. Or, again, if we connect what is said of the
+pillows with what immediately follows about the kerchiefs put upon
+the head, we may suppose that both are but parts of a fantastic
+dress, such as was often worn by pretended prophets and
+fortune-tellers, and which they may have made those wear, also, who
+came before them. We know that the covering on the head was, for
+instance, a part of the ceremonial law of the Roman augurs, when
+they began their divinations. But, however this be, the exact
+understanding of these particular points is not necessary to our
+deriving the lesson of the passage in general. I know that there is
+something naturally painful to an active mind in being obliged to
+content itself with an indistinct notion, or still more, with no
+notion at all, of the meaning of any words presented to it. But,
+whilst we should highly value this sensitiveness, as, indeed, few
+qualities are more essential in the pursuit of truth, yet we must
+be careful not to let our disappointment carry us too far, so as to
+pass over a whole passage, or portion, of Scripture, as if in
+despair, because we cannot understand every part of it. Much of the
+supposed obscurity of the prophets arises from this cause--that we
+find in them particular expressions and allusions, which, whether
+from a, fault in the translation, or from our imperfect knowledge
+of the times of which the prophets speak, and of the language in
+which they wrote, are certainly quite unintelligible. But these are
+only a few expressions, occurring here and there; and it is a great
+evil to fancy that their writings, in general, are not to be
+understood, because of the difficulty of particular passages in
+them. Thus, with the very chapter of which we are now speaking, the
+expression to which I have alluded can only be uncertainly
+interpreted, yet the lesson of the chapter, as a whole, is
+perfectly clear, notwithstanding. The dress, or fashions, or
+particular rites, of the false prophets of Jerusalem and their
+votaries, may offer no distinct image to our minds; but the evil of
+their doings, how they deceived others, and were themselves
+deceived; the points, that is, which alone concern us practically,
+these are set before us plainly. "With their lies they made the
+heart of the righteous sad, whom God had not made sad; and they
+strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not return
+from his wicked way, by promising him life." Where the way of life
+was broad, they strove to make it narrow; and where it was narrow,
+they strove to make it broad: by their solemn and superstitious
+lies, they frightened and perplexed the good, while, by their lives
+of ungodliness, they emboldened and encouraged the wicked.</p>
+<p>It may not, at first sight, seem necessary that these two things
+should go together; there might be, it seems, either the fault of
+making the heart of the righteous sad, without that of
+strengthening the hands of the wicked: or there might be the
+strengthening of the hands of the wicked, without making sad the
+heart of the righteous. And so it sometimes has been: there has
+been a wickedness which has not tried to keep up superstition:
+there has been a superstition, the supporters of which have not
+wilfully encouraged wickedness. Yet, although this has been so,
+with respect to the intention of the parties concerned, yet in
+their own nature, the tendency of either evil to produce the other
+is sure and universal. We cannot exist without some influences of
+fear and restraint, on the one hand, and without some indulgence of
+freedom, on the other. God has provided for both these wants, so to
+speak, of our nature; he has told us whom we should fear, and where
+we should be restrained, and where, also, we may be safely in
+freedom: there is the fruit forbidden, and the fruit which we may
+eat freely. But if the restraint and the liberty be either of them
+put in the wrong place, the double evil is sure to follow.
+Restrained in his lawful liberty, debarred from the good and
+wholesome fruit of the garden, man breaks out into a liberty which
+is unlawful; he eats of the forbidden fruit, whose taste is death;
+or, surfeited with an unholy freedom, and let to run wild in a
+space far too vast for his strength to compass, he turns cravingly
+for that support to his weariness which a narrowed range would
+afford him; and he limits himself on that very quarter in which
+alone he might expatiate freely. Superstition, in fact, is the rest
+of wickedness, and wickedness is the breaking loose of
+superstition.</p>
+<p>But, however true this may be, are we concerned in it? First of
+all, when we find an evil dwelt upon often in the Prophets, and
+find it dwelt upon again by our Lord and his Apostles with no less
+earnestness, there is, at least, a strong presumption, that an evil
+of this sort is nothing local or passing, but that it is fixed in
+man's nature, and is apt to grow up in all times, and in all
+countries. Now, the double evil spoken of in the text, occurs again
+in the gospel; there we find men spoken of, who, in like manner,
+insisted upon what was trifling, and were careless of what was
+important; and in the epistles, we find, again, the same characters
+holding up as righteous others than those who worked righteousness:
+men, who spoke lies in hypocrisy, having their conscience seared
+with a hot iron. We may presume, therefore, that this evil is of an
+enduring character; but if we look back to the history of the
+Christian Church, or look around us, the presumption becomes the
+sad conviction of experience.</p>
+<p>Nor is the evil merely one which exists in the country at large;
+a thing which might be fully dwelt upon any where but here. On the
+contrary, I hardly know of an age more exposed to it than youth.
+There exist in youth, in a very high degree, those opposite
+feelings of our nature, which I have before spoken of; a tendency
+to respect, to follow, to be led, on the one hand; and on the
+other, a lively desire for independence and freedom. These feelings
+often exist in the greatest strength in the same individual; and
+when they are not each turned in their proper direction, ruin is
+the consequence. Nothing is more common than to see great
+narrowness of mind, great prejudices, and great disorderliness of
+conduct, united in the same person. Nothing is more common than to
+see the same mind utterly prostrated before some idol of its own,
+and supporting that idol with the most furious zeal, and at the
+same time utterly rebellious to Christ, and rejecting with scorn
+the enlightening, the purifying, and the loving influences of
+Christ's Spirit.</p>
+<p>The idols of various minds are infinitely various, some seducing
+the loftiest natures and some the vilest. But of this we may be
+sure, that every one of us has a tendency to some one idol or
+other, if not to many; and our business is especially each to
+watch, ourselves, lest we be enslaved to our peculiar idol. I will
+now, however, speak of those which, tempt the highest minds; which,
+by their show of sacredness and excellence, make us fancy, that
+while following them we are following Christ. And let none be
+surprised, if I rank among idols many things, which, in themselves
+and in their proper use and order, are indeed to be loved and
+reverenced. It was most right to respect the Apostle Peter, and
+listen to his word; but that great Apostle would have been ruin to
+Cornelius, and not salvation, if he had suffered him, without
+reproof, to fall down before him, and render to him the service due
+to Christ alone. How many good and pious feelings must have been
+awakened from age to age in many minds, at the sight of the brazen
+serpent on the pole, the memorial of their fathers' deliverance in
+the wilderness! But when this awakening, this solemn memorial was
+corrupted into an idol, when men bowed down before it in
+superstition, it was the part of true piety to do as Hezekiah did,
+to dash it, notwithstanding all its solemn associations, into a
+thousand pieces.</p>
+<p>Thus things good, things noble, things sacred, may all become
+idols. To some minds truth is an idol, to others justice, to others
+charity or benevolence; and others are beguiled by objects of a
+different sort of sacredness: some have made Christ's mother their
+idol; some, Christ's servants; some, again, Christ's sacraments,
+and Christ's own body, the Church. If these may all be idols, where
+can we find a name so holy, as that we may surrender up our whole
+souls to it; before which obedience, reverence, without measure,
+intense humility, most unreserved adoration, may all be duly
+rendered. One name there is, and one only; one alone in heaven and
+in earth; not truth, not justice, not benevolence, not Christ's
+mother, not his holiest servants, not his blessed sacraments, not
+his very mystical body, but Himself only, who died for us and rose
+again, Jesus Christ, both God and Man.</p>
+<p>He is truth, and he is righteousness, and he is love; he gives
+his grace to his sacraments, and his manifold gifts to his Church;
+whoever hath him hath all things; but if we do not take heed,
+whenever we turn our mind to any other object, we shall make it an
+idol and lose him. Take him in all his fulness, not as God merely,
+not as man merely; not in his life on earth only, not in his death
+only, not in his exaltation at God's right hand only; but in all
+his fulness, the Christ of God, God and Man, our Prophet, our
+Priest, our King and Lord, redeeming us by his blood, sanctifying
+us by his Spirit; and then worship him and love him with all the
+heart, and with, all the soul, and with all the strength; and we
+shall see how all evil will be barred, and all good will abound. No
+man who worships Christ alone, can be a fanatic, nor yet can be a
+more philosopher; he cannot be bigoted, nor yet can he be
+indifferent; he cannot be so the slave of what be calls amiable
+feelings as to cast truth and justice behind him; nor yet can he so
+pursue truth and justice as to lose sight of humbler and softer
+feelings, self-abasement, reverence, devotion. There is no evil
+tendency in the nature of any one of us, which has not its cure in
+the true worship of Christ our Saviour. Let us look into our
+hearts, and consider their besetting faults. Are we indolent, or
+are we active; are we enthusiastic, or are we cold; zealous or
+indifferent, devout or reasonable; whatever the inclination, or
+bias of our nature be, if we follow its kindred idol, it will be
+magnified and grow on to our ruin; if we worship Christ, it will be
+pruned and chastened, and made to grow up with opposite tendencies,
+all alike tempered, none destroyed; none overgrowing the garden,
+but all filling it with their several fruits; so that it shall be,
+indeed, the garden of the Lord, and the Spirit of the Lord shall
+dwell in the midst of it.</p>
+<p>And who shall dare to make sad the heart of him who is thus
+drinking daily of the well-spring of righteousness, by telling him
+that he is not yet saved, nor can be, unless he will come and bow
+down before his idol? And if, rather than do so, he break the idol
+in pieces, who shall dare to call him profane, or cold in love to
+his Lord, when it was in his very jealousy for his Lord, and in his
+full purpose to worship him alone, that he threw down all that
+exalted itself above its due proportion against him? And if a man
+be not so worshipping Christ only, who shall dare to encourage him
+in his evil way, by magnifying the sacredness of his idol, and
+ascribing to it that healing virtue which belongs to Christ
+alone?</p>
+<p>What has been here said might bear to be followed up at far
+greater length than the present occasion will admit of. But the
+main point is one, I think, of no small importance, that all
+fanaticism and superstition on the one hand, and all unbelief and
+coldness of heart on the other, arise from what is in fact
+idolatry,--the putting some other object, whether it be called a
+religious or moral one,--and an object often in itself very
+excellent,--in the place of Christ himself, as set forth to us
+fully in the Scriptures. And as no idol can stand in Christ's
+place, or in any way save us, so whoever worships Christ truly is
+preserved from all idols and has life eternal. And if any one
+demand of him further, that he should worship his idol, and tells
+him that he is not safe if he does not; his answer will be rather
+that he will perish if he does; that he is safe, fully safe, and
+only safe, so long as he clings to Christ alone; and that to make
+anything else necessary to his safety, is not only to minister to
+superstition, but to ungodliness also; not only to lay on us a yoke
+which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear; but, by the
+very act of laying this unchristian yoke upon us, to tear from us
+the easy yoke and light burden of Christ himself, our Lord and our
+life.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXI."></a>LECTURE XXI.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>ADVENT SUNDAY.</center>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>HEBREWS in. 16.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>For some, when they had heard, did provoke: howbeit not
+all that came out of Egypt by Moses</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>I take this verse as my text, rather than those which
+immediately go before or follow it, because it affords one of the
+most serious instances of mistranslation that are to be met with in
+the whole New Testament. For the true translation of the words is
+this: "For who were they who, when they had heard, did provoke?
+nay, were they not all who came out of Egypt through Moses?" And
+then it goes on--"And with whom was he grieved forty years? was it
+not with them that had sinned, whose carcases fell in the
+wilderness? And to whom sware he that they should not enter into
+his rest, but to them that believed not?" I call this a serious
+mistranslation, because it lessens the force of the writer's
+comparison. So far from meaning to say that "some, but not all did
+provoke," he lays a stress on the universality of the evil: it was
+not only a few, but the whole people who came out of Egypt, with
+only the two individual exceptions of Caleb and Joshua. All the
+rest who were grown up when they came out of Egypt did provoke God;
+and the carcases of that whole generation, fell in the
+wilderness.</p>
+<p>Had the lesson from the Hebrews been actually chosen for the
+service of this day, it could hardly have suited it better. For
+this day is the New-year's day of the Christian year; and it is
+probably for this reason that the service of the first day of the
+common year is confined entirely to the commemoration of our Lord's
+circumcision, and takes no notice of the beginning of a new year.
+It is manifest that it could not do so without confusion: for the
+first of January is not the beginning of the Christian year, but
+Advent Sunday; the last Sunday of the Christian year is not
+Christmas-day, as it would be this year if we reckoned by the
+common divisions of time; but it is the last Sunday after Trinity.
+Now, then, we are at the beginning of our year; and well it is
+that, as our trial is now become shorter by another year, as
+another division of our lives has passed away, we should fix our
+eyes on that which makes every year so valuable,--the Judgment, for
+which it ought to be a preparation. In fact, if we observe, we
+shall see that these Sundays in Advent are much more regarded by
+the Church as the beginning of a new year, than as a mere prelude
+to the celebration of the festival of Christmas. That is,
+Christmas-day is regarded, so to speak, in a two-fold light, as
+representing both the comings of our Lord, his first coming in the
+flesh, and his second coming to judgment. When the day actually
+arrives, it commemorates our Lord's first coming: and this is the
+beginning of the Christian year, historically regarded, that is, so
+far as it is a commemoration of the several events of our Lord's
+life on earth. But before it comes, it is regarded as commemorating
+our Lord's second coming: and wisely, for his first coming requires
+now no previous preparation for it; we cannot well put ourselves
+into the position of those who lived before Christ appeared. But
+our whole life is, or ought to be, a preparation for his second
+coming; and it is this state, of which the season of Advent in the
+Church services is intended to be the representation.</p>
+<p>There is something striking in the season of the natural year at
+which we thus celebrate the beginning of another Christian year. It
+is a true type of our condition, of the insensible manner in which
+all the changes of our lives steal upon us, that nature, at this
+moment, gives no outward signs of beginning: it is a period which
+does not manifest any striking change in the state of things around
+us. The Christian Spring begins ere we have reached the half of the
+natural winter. Nature is not bursting into life, but rather
+preparing itself for a long period of death. And this is a type of
+an universal truth, that the signs and warnings which we must look
+to, must come from within us, not from without: that neither sky
+nor earth, will arouse us from our deadly slumber, unless we are
+ourselves aroused already, and more disposed to make warnings for
+ourselves than to find them.</p>
+<p>If this be true of nature, it is true also of all the efforts of
+man. As nature will give no sign, so man cannot. Let the Church do
+all that she may; let her keep her solemn anniversaries, and choose
+out for her services all such passages of Scripture as may be most
+fitted to impress the lesson which she would teach; still we know
+that these are alike powerless and unheeded; that unless there be
+in our own minds something beforehand disposed to profit by them,
+they are but the words of unavailing affection, vainly spoken to
+the ears of the dead.</p>
+<p>Oh that we would remember this, all of us; that there is no
+voice in nature, no voice in man, that can really awaken the
+sleeping soul. That is the work of a far mightier power, to be
+sought for with most earnest prayers for ourselves and for each
+other: that the Holy Spirit of God would speak, and would dispose
+our hearts to hear; that so being awakened from death and our ears
+being truly opened, all things outward may now join in language
+which we can hear; and nature, and man, life and death, things
+present and things to come, may be but the manifold voices of the
+Spirit of God, all working for us together for good. Till this be
+so, we speak in vain; our words neither reach our own hearts, nor
+the hearts of our hearers; they are but recorded in God's book of
+judgment, to be brought forward hereafter for the condemnation of
+us both.</p>
+<p>Yet we must still speak; for the Spirit of God, who alone works
+in us effectually, works also secretly; we know not when, nor how,
+nor where. But we know, that as the Father worketh hitherto, and
+the Son worketh hitherto, so the Holy Spirit worketh hitherto, and
+is still working daily. We know that, every year, he creates in
+thousands of God's people that work which alone shall abide for
+ever. We know that in the year that is just past he has done this;
+that in the year which is just beginning he will do it. Have we not
+here, also, many in whom he has wrought this work? may we not hope,
+and surely believe, that there are many in whom he is even now
+preparing to work it?</p>
+<p>We know not who these are; still less do we know, what were the
+occasions which the Holy Spirit so blessed as to work in them his
+work of life. But this we know, that we are bound to minister all
+the occasions which we can; we must not spare our labour, although
+it is God alone who gives the increase. We must speak of life and
+of death, of Christ and of judgment, not forgetting that we speak
+often, and shall speak, utterly in vain; yet knowing that it is by
+these very thoughts, though long unheeded, that God's Spirit does
+in his own good time awaken the heart; he takes of the things of
+Christ and shows them to us; and then, what was before like a book
+in a strange language--we saw the figures, but they conveyed no
+meaning to our minds--becomes, on a sudden, instinct with the
+language of God, which we hear and understand as readily as if it
+were our own tongue wherein we were born.</p>
+<p>Therefore, we speak and say, that another year has now dawned
+upon us; and we would remind you, and remember, ourselves, in what
+words the various Scriptures of this day's service point out its
+inestimable value. "Now is our salvation nearer than when we
+believed." So says St. Paul in the epistle of this day; and how
+blessed are all those amongst us who can feel that this is truly
+said of them! Then, indeed, a new year's day is a day of rejoicing;
+we are so much nearer that period when all care, all anxiety, all
+painful labour will be for ever ended. But there is other language
+of a different sort, which, it may be, will suit us better. "I have
+nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against
+me." "Their land is full of idols; they worship the work of their
+own hands, that which their own fingers have made;" which means to
+us, the work of our own hearts, that which our own fancies and
+desires have made. "Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust,
+for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty." For in the
+very temple of God, his Church, all manner of profane thoughts and
+words and works are crowded together; the din of covetousness and
+worldliness is loud and constant, and will ill abide the day of his
+coming, who will, a second time, cast out of his temple all that is
+unclean. And is there not also in us that evil heart of unbelief
+and disobedience which departs from the living God? are there not
+here those who are becoming daily hardened through the
+deceitfulness of sin? How are they passing their time in the
+wilderness, and with what prospects when they come to the end of
+it? God said, "I sware in my wrath, that they shall not enter into
+my rest." By the way that they came, by the same shall they return;
+they shall go back to that bondage from which they were once
+redeemed, and from which they will be redeemed again no more for
+ever.</p>
+<p>These are some of the passages of this day's service which
+speaks to us at the beginning of this new Christian year. Let me
+add to all this language of warning, the language in which God, by
+his apostle Paul, answers every one of us, if we ask of him in
+sincerity of heart, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" He
+answers, "The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us walk
+honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in
+chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying: but put ye on
+the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to
+fulfil the works thereof." Now, I grant, that this day, of which
+the apostle speaks, has never yet shone so brightly, as he had
+hoped and imagined; clouds have, up to this hour, continually
+overshadowed it. I mean, that the lives of Christians have hindered
+them from being the light of the world. It has been a light pale
+and dim, and therefore the works of darkness have continued to
+abound. But admit this, and what follows? Is it, or can it be,
+anything else but a more earnest desire not to be ourselves
+children of darkness, lest what we see to have happened in part
+should happen altogether; namely, that the day should never shine
+on us at all? We see that God's promises have been in part
+forfeited; we see that Christ's kingdom has not been what it was
+prophesied it should be. Is not this a solemn warning, that for us,
+too, individually, God's promises may be forfeited? that all we
+read in Scripture of light, and life, and glory, and happiness,
+should really prove to us words only, and no reality? that whereas
+the promise of salvation has been made to us, we should be in the
+end, not saved, but lost? If, indeed, God's kingdom were shining
+around us, in its full beauty; if every evil thing were driven out
+of his temple; if we saw nothing but holy lives and happy, the
+fruits of his Spirit, truth, and love, and joy; then we might be
+less anxious for ourselves; our course would be far smoother; the
+very stream would carry us along to the end of our voyage without
+our labour: what evil thoughts would not be withered, and die long
+ere they could ripen into action, if the very air which we breathed
+were of such, keen and heavenly purity! It is because all this is
+not so, that we have need of so much watchfulness; it is because
+the faults of every one of us make our brethren's task harder;
+because there is not one bad or careless person amongst us who is
+not a hindrance in his brother's path, and does not oblige him to
+exert himself the more. Therefore, because the day is not bright,
+but overclouded; because it is but too like the night, and too many
+use it as the night for all works of darkness; let us take the more
+heed that we do not ourselves so mistake it; let us watch each of
+us the light within us, lest, indeed, we should wholly stumble; let
+us put on the Lord Jesus Christ. You know how often I have dwelt on
+this; how often I have tried to show that Christ is all in all to
+us; that to put on Christ, is a truer and fuller expression, by
+far, than if we had been told to put on truth, or holiness, or
+goodness. It includes all these, with something more, that nothing
+but itself can give--the sense of safety, and joy unspeakable, in
+feeling ourselves sheltered in our Saviour's arms, and taken even
+into himself. Assuredly, if we put on the Lord Jesus Christ, we
+shall not make provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof;
+such a warning would then be wholly unnecessary. Or, if we do not
+like language thus figurative, let us put it, if we will, into the
+plainest words that shall express the same meaning; let us call it
+praying to Christ, thinking of him, hoping in him, earnestly loving
+him; these, at least, are words without a figure, which all can
+surely understand. Let us be Christ's this year that is now
+beginning; be his servants, be his disciples, be his redeemed in
+deed; let us live to him, and for him; setting him before us every
+day to do his will, and to live in his blessing. Then, indeed, if
+it be his pleasure that we should serve him throughout this year,
+even to its end, we may repeat, with a deeper feeling of their
+truth, the words of St. Paul; we may say, when next Advent Sunday
+shall appear, that now is our salvation nearer than when we became
+believers.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXII."></a>LECTURE XXII.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>CHRISTMAS DAY.</center>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>JOHN i. 10.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and
+the world knew Him not</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>When we use ourselves, or hear others use, the term "mystery,"
+as applied to things belonging to the gospel, we should do well to
+consider what is meant by it. For our common notion of the word
+mystery is of something dark; whereas Christ and his gospel are
+continually spoken of as being, above all other things, light. Then
+come others, and say, "Light and darkness cannot go together: what
+you call the mysteries of Christianity are no part of it, but the
+fond inventions of man: Christianity is all simple and clear:" and
+thus they strike away some of the very greatest truths which God
+has revealed to us. Thus they deal in particular with the great
+truth declared in the text, that He who made the world visited it
+in the likeness of man. Now, if this truth were a mystery, in the
+common notion of that term; if it were a thing full of darkness,
+defying our minds to understand it, or to draw any good from it;
+then, indeed, it would be of little consequence whether we received
+it or no. It is because it is a mystery in a very different sense,
+in the sense in which the word is used commonly in the Scriptures;
+that is, a thing which was a secret, but which God has been pleased
+to reveal, and to reveal for our benefit, that therefore the loss
+of it would be the loss of a real blessing, a loss at once of light
+and comfort.</p>
+<p>But we must go a little further, and explain from what this sad
+confusion in the use of the term "mystery" has arisen. There are
+many things relating to ourselves and to things around us, which by
+nature we cannot understand; and of God we can scarcely understand
+anything. Now, while the gospel has revealed much that we did not
+know before, it yet has not revealed everything: of God, in
+particular, it has given us much most precious knowledge, yet it
+has not removed all the veil. It has furnished us with a glass,
+indeed, to use the apostle's comparison; but the glass, although, a
+great help, although reflecting a likeness of what, without it, we
+could not see at all, is yet a dark and imperfect manner of seeing,
+compared with, the seeing face to face. So, when the gospel tells
+us that He who made the world visited it in our nature, it does not
+indeed enable us yet fully to conceive what He is who made us, and
+then became as one of us; there is still left around the name of
+God that light inaccessible which is to our imperfections darkness;
+and so far as we cannot understand or conceive rightly of God, so
+far it is true that we cannot understand all that is conveyed in
+the expression that God was in the world dwelling among us. Yet it
+is still most true that by the revelation thus made to us we have
+gained immensely. God, as he is in himself, we cannot understand;
+but Jesus Christ we can. When we are told to love God, if we look
+to the life and death of Christ, we can understand and feel how
+truly he deserves our love; when we are told to be perfect as God
+is perfect, we have the image of this perfection so truly set
+before us in his Son Jesus, that it may be well said, "Whoso hath
+seen Him hath seen the Father;" and why, then, should we ask with
+Philip, that "He should show us the Father?"</p>
+<p>What, then, the festival of Christmas presents to us, as
+distinct from that of Easter, is generally the revelation of God in
+the flesh. True it is, that we may make it, if we will, the same as
+Easter: that is, we may celebrate it as the birth of our Saviour,
+of him who died and rose again for us; but then we only celebrate
+our Lord's birth with reference to his death and resurrection: that
+is, we make Christmas to be Easter under another name. And so
+everything relating to our Lord may be made to refer to his death
+and resurrection; for in them consists our redemption, and for that
+reason Easter has ever been considered as the great festival of the
+Christian year. But yet apart from this, Christmas has something
+peculiarly its own: namely, as I said before, the revelation of God
+in the flesh, not only to make atonement for our sins,--which is
+the peculiar subject of the celebration of the season of
+Easter,--but to give us notions of God at once distinct and lively;
+to enable us to have One in the invisible world, whom we could
+conceive of as distinctly as of a mere man, yet whom we might love
+with all our hearts, and trust with all our hearts, and yet be
+guilty of no idolatry.</p>
+<p>It is not, then, only as the beginning of an earthly life of
+little more than thirty years, that we may celebrate the day of our
+Lord's birth in the flesh. His own words express what this day has
+brought to us: "Henceforth shall ye see heaven opened, and the
+angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man." The
+words here, like so many of our Lord's, are expressed in a parable;
+but their meaning is not the less clear. They allude evidently to
+Jacob's vision, to the ladder reaching from earth to heaven, on
+which the angels were ascending and descending continually. But
+this vision is itself a parable; showing, under the figure of the
+ladder reaching from earth to heaven, and the angels going up and
+down on it, a free communication, as it were, between God and man,
+heaven brought nearer to earth, and heavenly things made more
+familiar. Now, this is done, in a manner, by every revelation from
+God; most of all, by the revelation of his Son. Nor is it only by
+his Spirit that Christ communicates with us even now; though, he is
+ascended again into heaven, yet the benefits of his having become
+man, over and above those of his dying and rising again for us,
+have not yet passed away. It is still the man Christ Jesus who
+brings heaven near to earth, and earth near to heaven.</p>
+<p>It has been well said by Augustine, that babes in Christ should
+so think of the Son of man as not to lose sight of the Son of God;
+that more advanced Christians should so think of the Son of God as
+not to lose sight of the Son of man. Augustine well understood how
+the thought of the Son of man is fitted to our weakness; and that
+the best and most advanced of us in this mortal life are never so
+strong as to be able to do without it. Have we ever tried this with
+our children? We tell them that God made them, and takes care of
+them, and loves them, and hears their prayers, and knows what is in
+their hearts, and cannot bear what is evil. These are such notions
+of God as a child requires, and can understand. But, if we join
+with them some of those other notions which belong to God as he is
+in himself; that he is a Spirit, not to be seen, not to be
+conceived of as in any one place, or in any one form; what do we
+but embarrass our child's mind, and lessen that sense of near and
+dear relation to God which, our earlier accounts of God had given
+him? Yet we must teach him something of this sort, if we would
+prevent him from forming unworthy notions of God, such as have been
+the beginning of all idolatry. Here, then, is the blessing of the
+revelation of God in Christ. All that he can understand of God, or
+love in him, or fear in him--that is to be found in Christ. Christ
+made him, takes care of him, can hear his prayers, can read his
+little heart, loves him tenderly; yet cannot bear what is evil, and
+will strictly judge him at the last day. But what we must teach
+when we speak of God, yet which has a tendency to lessen the
+liveliness of our impressions of him, this has no place when we
+speak of Christ. Christ has a body, incorruptible and glorified
+indeed, such as they who are Christ's shall also wear at his
+coming, yet still a body. Christ is not to be seen, indeed, for the
+clouds have received him out of our sight: yet he may be conceived
+of as in one place--at the right hand of God; as in one certain and
+well-known form--the form of the Son of man. Yet let us observe
+again, and be thankful for the perfect wisdom of God. Even while
+presenting to us God in Christ; that is to say, God with all those
+attributes which we can understand, and fear, and love; and without
+those which, throw us, as it were, to an infinite distance,
+overwhelming our minds, and baffling all our conceptions; even then
+the utmost care is taken to make us remember that God in himself is
+really that infinite and incomprehensible Being to whom we cannot,
+in our present state, approach; that even his manifestation of
+himself in Christ Jesus, is one less perfect than we shall be
+permitted to see hereafter; that Christ stands at the right hand of
+the Majesty on high; that he has received from the Father all his
+kingdom and his glory; finally, that the Father is greater than he,
+inasmuch as any other nature added to the pure and perfect essence
+of God, must, in a certain measure, if I may venture so to speak,
+be a coming down to a lower point, from the very and unmixed
+Divinity.</p>
+<p>I have purposely mentioned this last circumstance, although it
+is not the view that I wish particularly to take to-day, because
+such passages as that which I quoted, where Christ tells his
+disciples that his Father was greater than he, and many others of
+the same sort, throughout the New Testament, are sometimes apt to
+embarrass and perplex us, if we do not consider their peculiar
+object. It was very necessary, especially at a time when men were
+so accustomed to worship their highest gods under the form of men,
+that whilst the gospel was itself holding out the man Christ Jesus
+as the object of religious faith, and fear, and love, and teaching
+that all power was given to him, in heaven and in earth,--it
+should, also, guard us against supposing that it meant to represent
+God as, in himself, wearing a human form, or having a nature
+partaking of our infirmities; and, therefore, it always speaks of
+there being something in God higher, and more perfect, than could
+possibly be revealed to man; and for this eternal and infinite, and
+inconceivable Being, it claims the reserve of our highest thoughts,
+or, rather, it commands us to believe, that they who shall
+hereafter see God face to face, shall be allowed to see something
+still greater than is now revealed to us, even in him who is the
+express image of God, and the brightness of his glory.</p>
+<p>But, now, to return to what I was dwelling on before. It is not
+only for children, that the revelation of God in Christ is so
+valuable; it is fitted to the wants of us all, at all times, and
+under all circumstances. Say, that we are in joy; say, that we are
+enjoying some of the festivities of this season. It is quite plain,
+that, at whatever moment the thought of God is unwelcome to us,
+that moment is one of sin or unbelief: yet, how can we dare to mix
+up the notion of the most high God with any earthly merriment, or
+festivity? Then, if we think of him who was present at the marriage
+in Cana of Galilee, and who worked a miracle for no other object
+than to increase the enjoyment of that marriage supper, do we not
+feel how the highest thoughts may be joined with the most common
+occasions? how we may bring Christ home with, us to our social
+meetings, to bless us, and to sanctify them? Imagine him in our
+feasts as he was in Cana:--we may do it without profaneness; being
+sure, from that example, that he condemns not innocent mirth; that
+it is not merely because there is a feast, or because friends and
+neighbours are gathered together, that Christ cannot, therefore, be
+in the midst of us. This alone does not drive him away; but, oh
+consider, with what ears would he have listened to any words of
+unkindness, of profaneness, or of impurity! with what eyes would he
+have viewed any intemperance, or revelling; any such, immoderate
+yielding up of the night to pleasure, that a less portion of the
+next day can be given to duty and to God! Even as he would have
+heard or seen such things in Cana of Galilee, so does he hear and
+see them amongst us; the same gracious eye of love is on our
+moderate and permitted enjoyments; the same turning away from, the
+same firm and just displeasure at every word or deed which turns
+pleasure into sin.</p>
+<p>But if I seek for instances to show how God in Christ is brought
+very near to us, what can I choose more striking than that most
+solemn act of Christian communion to which we are called this day?
+For, what is there in our mortal life, what joy, what sorrow, what
+feeling elated or subdued, which is not in that communion brought
+near to Christ to receive his blessing? What is the first and
+outward thing of which it reminds us? Is it not that last supper in
+Jerusalem, in which men,--the twelve disciples, the first members
+of our Christian brotherhood,--were brought into such solemn
+nearness to God, as seems to have begun the privileges of heaven
+upon earth? They were brought near at once to Christ and to one
+another: united to one another in him, in that double bond which,
+is the perfection at once of our duty and of our happiness. And so
+in our communion we, too, draw near to Christ and to each other; we
+feel--who is there at that moment, at least, that does not
+feel?--what a tie there is to bind each of us to his brother, when
+we come to the table of our common Lord. So far, the Lord's Supper
+is but a type of what every Christian meeting should be: never
+should any of us be gathered together on any occasion of common
+life, in our families or with our neighbours; we should sit down to
+no meal, we should meet in no company, without having Christ also
+in the midst of us; without remembering what we all are to him, and
+what we each therefore are to our brethren. But when we further
+recollect what there is in the Lord's Supper beyond the mere
+meeting of Christ and his disciples; what it is which the bread and
+the wine commemorate; of what we partake when, as true Christians,
+we eat of that bread, and drink of that cup; then we shall
+understand that God indeed is brought very near to us; inasmuch, as
+he who is a Christian, and partakes sincerely of Christian
+communion, is a partaker also of Christ: and as belonging to his
+body, his living spiritual body, the universal Church, receives his
+share of all those blessings, of all that infinite love which the
+Father shows continually to the head of that body, his own
+well-beloved Son.</p>
+<p>Say not then in your hearts, Who can ascend up into heaven, that
+is, to bring Christ down? As on this day, when he took our nature
+upon him, he came down to abide with us for ever; to abide with,
+us, even when we should see him with our eyes no more: for whilst
+he was on earth he so took part in all the concerns of life, in all
+its duties, its sorrows, and its joys, that memory, when looking
+back on the past, can fancy him present still; and then let the
+liveliest fancy do its work to the utmost, it cannot go beyond the
+reality; he is present still, for that belongs to his almightiness;
+he is present with us, because he is God; and we can fancy him with
+us, because he is man. This is the way to lessen our distance from
+God and heaven, by bringing Christ continually to us on earth: the
+sky is closed, and shows no sign; all things continue as they were
+from the beginning of the world; evil abounds, and therefore the
+faith of many waxes cold; but Christ was and is amongst us; and we
+need no surer sign than that sign of the prophet Jonah--Christ
+crucified and Christ risen--to make us feel that we may live with
+God daily upon earth, and doing so, shall live with him for an
+eternal life, in a country that cannot pass away.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXIII."></a>LECTURE XXIII.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>SUNDAY NEXT BEFORE EASTER.</center>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>MATTHEW xxvi. 40, 41.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch and
+pray, that ye enter<br>
+not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is
+weak</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>These words, we cannot doubt, have an application to ourselves,
+and to all Christians, far beyond the particular occasion on which
+they were actually spoken. They are, in fact, the words which
+Christ addresses daily to all of us. Every day, when he sees how
+often we have gone astray from him, he repeats to us, Could ye not
+watch with me one hour? Every day he commands us to watch and pray,
+that we enter not into temptation; every day he reminds us, that
+however willing may be our spirits, yet our flesh is weak; and that
+through that weakness, sin prevails over it, and having triumphed
+over our flesh, proceeds to enslave our spirit also.</p>
+<p>And as the words are applicable to us every day, so also are
+they in a particular manner suitable now, when the season of Lent
+is so nearly over, and Easter is so fast approaching. Have we been
+unable to watch, with Christ one hour? Already are the good
+resolutions with which, we, perhaps, began Lent, broken in many
+instances; and the impressions, if any such were made in us, are
+already weakened. They have been a burden, which we have shaken
+off, because the weakness of our nature found it too heavy to bear.
+Sad it is to think how often this same process has been repeated in
+all time, how often it will be repeated to the end.</p>
+<p>Let us just review what the course of this process has probably
+been. Now, as the parable of the Sower describes three several
+sorts of persons, who never bring forth, fruit; so in the very same
+persons, there is at different times something of each of the three
+characters there described. We, the very same persons, are at one
+time hard, at another careless, and at another over-busy; although,
+if compared with, other persons, and in the general form of their
+characters, some are hard, and others are careless, and others
+over-busy; different persons having different faults predominantly.
+But even the hardness of the road side, although God forbid that it
+should be our prevailing temper, yet surely it does sometimes exist
+in too many of us. In common speech, we talk of a person showing a
+hard temper, meaning, generally, a hard temper towards other men.
+We have done wrong, but being angry when we are reproved for it, we
+will not acknowledge it at all, and cheat our consciences, by
+dwelling upon the supposed wrong that has been done to us in some
+over-severity of reproof or punishment, instead of confessing and
+repenting of the original wrong which we ourselves did. But is it
+not true, that a hard temper towards man is very often, even
+consciously, a hard temper towards God? Does it never happen, that
+if conscience presents to us the thought of God, whether as a God
+of judgment to terrify us, or as a God of love to melt us, we repel
+it with impatience, or with sullenness? Does not the heart
+sometimes almost speak aloud the language of blasphemy: Who is God,
+that I should mind him? I do not care what may happen, I will not
+be softened. Do not all sorts of unbelieving thoughts pass rapidly
+through the mind at such moments; first in their less daring form,
+whispering, as the serpent did to Eve, that we shall not surely
+die; that we shall have time to repent by and by; that God will not
+be so strict a judge as to condemn us for such a little; that by
+some means or other, we shall escape? But then they come, also, in
+their bolder form: What do I or any man know about another world,
+or God's judgments? may it not be all a fiction, so that I have, in
+reality, nothing to fear? In short, under one form or another, is
+it not true, that our hearts have sometimes displayed actually
+hardness towards God; that the thought of God has been actually
+presented to our minds, but that we have turned it aside, and have
+not suffered it to make any impression upon us? And thus, we have
+not only not watched with Christ according to his command, but have
+actually told him that we would not. But this has been in our worst
+temper, certainly; it may not have happened,--I trust that it has
+not happened often. More commonly, I dare say, the fault has been
+carelessness. We have gone out of this place; sacred names have
+ceased to sound in our ears; sights in any degree connected with,
+holy things have been all withdrawn from us. Other sounds and other
+sights have been before us, and our minds have yielded to them
+altogether. There are minds, indeed, which have no spring of
+thought in themselves; which are quiet, and in truth empty, till
+some outward objects come to engage them. Take them at a moment
+when they are alone, or when there is no very interesting object
+before them, and ask them of what they are thinking. If the answer
+were truly given, such a mind would say, "Of nothing." Certain
+images may be faintly presented to it; it may be that it is not
+altogether a blank; yet it could not name anything distinctly. No
+form had been vivid enough to produce any corresponding resolution
+in us; we were, as it were, in a state between sleeping and waking,
+with neither thoughts nor dreams definite enough to affect us. This
+state finds exactly all that it desires in the presence or the near
+hope of outward objects; the mind lives in its daily pursuits, and
+companions, and amusements. What impressions have been once
+produced are soon worn away; and in a soil so shallow nothing makes
+a durable impression: everything can, as it were, scratch upon its
+surface, while nothing can strike deeply down within.</p>
+<p>Or, again, take the rarer case of those who are over-busy. There
+are minds, undoubtedly, which are as incapable of rest as those of
+the generality of men are prone to it; there are minds which enter
+keenly into everything presented to them by their outward senses,
+and which, when their senses cease to supply them, have an
+inexhaustible source of thought within, which furnishes them with
+abundant matter of reflection or of speculation. To such a mind,
+doing is most delightful; whether it be outward doing, or the mere
+exercise of thought, either supplies alike the consciousness of
+power. Where, then, is there room for the less obtruding things of
+God? Into that restless water, another and another image is for
+ever stepping down, pushing aside and keeping at a distance the
+sobering reflections of God and of Christ. Alas! the thorns grow so
+vigorously in such a soil, that they altogether choke and kill the
+seed of God's word.</p>
+<p>So, then, we are either asleep, or, if we are awake, we are not
+waking with Christ. On one side, in that garden of Gethsemane were
+the disciples sleeping; below, and fast ascending the hill,--not
+sleeping, certainly, but with lanterns and torches and
+weapons,--were those whose waking was for evil. Where were they who
+watched with Christ one hour then,--or where are those who watch
+with him now?</p>
+<p>HOW gently, yet how earnestly, does he call upon us to "watch
+and pray, lest we enter into temptation." To watch and to pray: for
+of all those around him some were sleeping, and none were praying;
+so that they who watched were not watching with him, but against
+him. In our careless state of mind the call to us is to watch; in
+our over-busy state the call to us is to pray; in our hard state
+there is equal need for both. And even in our best moods, when we
+are not hard, nor careless, nor over-busy, when we are at once
+sober and earnest and gentle, then not least does Christ call upon
+us to watch and to pray, that we may retain that than which else no
+gleam of April sunshine was ever more fleeting; that we may perfect
+that which else is of the earth, earthly, and when we lie down in
+the dust will wither and come to dust also.</p>
+<p>Jesus Christ brought life and immortality, it is said, to light
+through the gospel. He brought life and immortality to light:--is
+this indeed true as far as we are concerned? What do we think would
+be the difference in this point between many of us--who will dare
+say how many?--and a school, I will not say of Jewish, but even of
+Greek or Roman or Egyptian boys, eighteen hundred, or twenty-four
+hundred, or three or four thousand years ago? Compare us at our
+worship with them, and then, I grant, the difference would appear
+enormous. We have no images, making the glory of the incorruptible
+God like to corruptible man; we have no vain stream of incense; no
+shedding of the blood of bulls and calves in sacrifice: the hymns
+which are sung here are not vain repetitions or impious fables,
+which gave no word of answer to those questions which it most
+concerns mankind to know. Here, indeed, Jesus Christ is truly set
+forth, crucified among us; here life and immortality are brought to
+light. But follow us out of this place,--to our respective pursuits
+and amusements, to our social meetings, or our times of solitary
+thought,--and wherein do we seem to see life and immortality more
+brightly revealed than to those heathen schools of old? Do we enjoy
+any worldly good less keenly, or less shrink from any worldly evil?
+Death, which to the heathen view was the end of all things, is to
+us (so our language goes) the gate of life. Do we think of it with
+more hope and less fear than the heathen did? Christ has risen, and
+has reconciled us to God. Is God more to us?--God now revealed to
+us as our reconciled Father--do we oftener think of him, do we love
+him better, than he was thought of and loved in those heathen
+schools, which had Homer's poetry for their only gospel? We talk of
+light, of revelation, of the knowledge of God, while verily and
+really we are walking, not in light, but in darkness: not in
+knowledge of God, but in blindness and hardness of heart.</p>
+<p>"The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." How great
+is the loving-kindness of these words,--how gently does Christ bear
+with the weakness of his disciples! But this thought may be the
+most blessed or the most dangerous thought in the world; the most
+blessed if it touches us with love, the most dangerous if it
+emboldens us in sin. He is full of loving-kindness, full of
+long-suffering; for days, and weeks, and months, and years he bears
+with us: we grieve him, and he entreats; we crucify him afresh, yet
+he will not come down from the cross in power and majesty; he
+endures and spares. So it is for days, and months, and years; for
+some years it may be to most of us,--for many years to some of the
+youngest. There may be some here who may go on grieving Christ, and
+crucifying him afresh, for as much as seventy years; and he will
+bear with them all that time, and his sun will daily shine upon
+them, and his creatures and his word will minister to their
+pleasure; and he himself will say nothing to them but to entreat
+them to turn and be saved. This may last, I say, to some amongst us
+for seventy years; to others it may last fifty; to many of us it
+may last for forty, or for thirty; none of us, perhaps, are so old
+but that it may last with us twenty, or at the least ten. Such is
+the prospect before us, if we like it: not to be depended upon with
+certainty, it is true, but yet to be regarded as probable. But as
+these ten, or twenty, or fifty, or seventy years pass on, Christ
+will still spare us, but his voice of entreaty will be less often
+heard; the distance between him and us will be consciously wider.
+From one place after another where we once used sometimes to see
+him, he will have departed; year after year some object which used
+once to catch the light from heaven, will have become overgrown,
+and will lie constantly in gloom; year after year the world will
+become to us more entirely devoid of God. If sorrow, or some
+softening joy ever turns our minds towards Christ, we shall be
+startled at perceiving there is something which keeps us from him,
+that we cannot earnestly believe in him; that if we speak of loving
+him, our hearts, which can still love earthly things, feel that the
+words are but mockery. Alas, alas! the increased weakness of our
+flesh, has destroyed all the power of our spirit, and almost all
+its willingness: it is bound with chains which it cannot break,
+and, indeed, scarcely desires to break. Redemption, Salvation,
+Victory,--what words are these when applied to that enslaved, that
+lost, that utterly overthrown and vanquished soul, which sin is
+leading in triumph now, and which will speedily be given over to
+walk for ever as a captive in the eternal triumph of death!</p>
+<p>Not one word of what I have said is raised beyond the simplest
+expression of truth; this is our portion if we will not watch with
+Christ. We know how often we have failed to do so, either sleeping
+in carelessness, or being busy and wakeful, but not with him or for
+him. Still he calls us to watch and pray, lest we enter into
+temptation; to mark our lives and actions; to mark them often; to
+see whether we have done well or ill in the month past, or in the
+week past, or in the day past; to consider whether we are better
+than we were, or worse; whether we think Christ loves us better, or
+worse; whether we are more or less cold towards him. I know not
+what else can be called watching with Christ than such a looking
+into ourselves as we are in his sight. It is very hard to be
+done;--yes, it is hard--harder than anything probably which we ever
+attempted before; and, therefore, we must pray withal for his help,
+whose strength is perfected in our weakness. And if it be so hard,
+and we have need so greatly to pray for God's help, should we not
+all also be anxious to help one another? And knowing, as we do from
+our own consciences, how difficult it is to watch with Christ, and
+how thankful we should be to any one who were to make it easier to
+us, should we not be sure that our neighbour is in like case with
+ourselves; that our help may be as useful to him as we feel that
+his would be to us? This is our bounden duty of love towards one
+another; what then should be said of us if we not only neglect this
+duty, but do the very contrary to it; if we actually help the evil
+in our brother's heart to destroy him more entirely; if we will not
+watch with Christ ourselves, and strive to prevent others from
+doing so?</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXIV."></a>LECTURE XXIV.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>GOOD FRIDAY.</center>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>ROMANS v. 8.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>God commendeth his love towards us, in that, while we
+were yet sinners, Christ died for us</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>We all remember the story in the Gospel, of the different
+treatment which our Lord met with in the same house, from the
+Pharisee, who had invited him into it, and from the woman who came
+in and knelt at his feet, and kissed them, and bathed them with her
+tears. Our Lord accounted for the difference in these words, "To
+whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little;" which means to
+speak of the sense or feeling in the person's own mind, "He who
+feels that little is or needs to be forgiven him, he also loves
+little." And this same difference which existed toward him when he
+was present on earth, exists no less now, whenever he is brought
+before our thoughts. The same sort of persons who saw him with
+indifference, think of him also with indifference; they who saw him
+with love, think of him also with love. There is no art, no power
+in the world, which can give an interest to words spoken concerning
+him, for those who feel that little is and that little needs to be
+forgiven them, or to those who never consider about their being
+forgiven at all. To such, this day, with its services, what they
+hear from the Scriptures, or what they hear from men, must be alike
+a matter of indifference: it is not possible that it should be
+otherwise. Yet, God forbid that we should design what we are saying
+this day only for a certain few of our congregation, as if the rest
+neither would nor could be interested in it. So long as any one is
+careless, he cannot, it is true, be interested about the things of
+Christ; but who can say at what moment, through God's grace, he may
+cease to be careless? Is it too much to say, that scarcely a
+service is performed in any congregation in the land, which does
+not awaken an interest in some one who before was indifferent? I do
+rot say a deep interest, nor a lasting one, but an interest; there
+is a thought, a heeding, an inclination of the mind to listen,
+created probably by the Church services in some one or other, every
+time that they are performed. As we never can know in whom this may
+be so created, as all have great need that it should be created, as
+all are deeply concerned whether they feel that they are so or no,
+so we speak to all alike; and if the language does pass over their
+ears like an unknown or indistinct sound, the fault and the loss
+are theirs; but the Church has borne her witness, and has so far
+done her duty.</p>
+<p>But again, for ears not careless, but most interested; for
+hearts to whom Christ is more than all in the world besides; for
+minds, before whom the wisdom of the gospel is ever growing, rising
+to a loftier height, and striking downwards to a depth more
+profound,--yet without end in its height or its depth; is there
+not, also, a difficulty in speaking to them of that great thing
+which the Church celebrates to-day? Is there no difficulty in
+awakening their interest, or rather how can we escape even from
+wearying or repelling them, when their own affections and deep
+thoughts must find all words of man, whether of themselves or
+others, infinitely unworthy to express either the one or the other?
+To such, then, the words of the preacher may be no more than music
+without any words at all; which does but serve to lead and
+accompany our own thoughts, without distinctly suggesting any
+thoughts of another to interrupt the workings of our own minds. We
+would speak of Christ's death; most good it is for us and for you
+to think upon it; so far as our words suit the current of your own
+thoughts, use them and listen to them; so far as they are a too
+unworthy expression of what we ought to think and feel, follow your
+own reflections, and let the words neither offend you nor distract
+you.</p>
+<p>I would endeavour just to touch, upon some of the purposes for
+which the Scripture tells us that Christ died, and for which his
+death was declared to be the great object of our faith. This done
+in the simplest and fewest words will best show the infinite
+greatness of the subject; and how truly it is, so to speak, the
+central point of Christianity.</p>
+<p>First of all, Christ died as a proper sacrifice for sin; as a
+sacrifice, the virtue of which, is altogether distinct from our
+knowledge of it, or from any effect which it has a tendency to
+produce on our own minds. We are forgiven for his sake; we are
+acquitted through his death, and through faith in his blood. What a
+view does this open, partially, indeed,--for what mortal eye can
+reach to the end of it?--of the evil of sin, and of God's love! of
+what God's justice required, and of what God's love fulfilled! This
+great sacrifice was made once, but it will not be made again; for
+those who despise this there remains no more offering for sin, but
+their sin abideth with them for ever.</p>
+<p>Secondly, Christ's death is revealed to us as a motive capable
+of overcoming all temptations to evil. "How much more shall the
+blood of Christ purge your conscience from dead works to serve the
+living God?" "He suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that
+he might bring us to God;" that is, that a consideration of what
+Christ's death declares to us should have power to melt the hardest
+heart, and to sober the lightest: that, when we think of Christ
+dying, dying for us, and so purchasing for us the forgiveness of
+sins, and everlasting life, such a love, and such a prospect of
+peace with God, and of glory, should in the highest degree soften
+and enkindle us; and from love for him, and confidence of hope
+through the prospect which he has given us, we should be able to
+overcome all temptations. "I am persuaded," says St. Paul, "that
+neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor
+powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor
+depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from
+the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."</p>
+<p>Thirdly, Christ suffered for as, leaving us an example that we
+should follow his steps. He left us an example of all meekness, and
+patience, and humility; he left us an example of perfect submission
+to God's will; he left us an infinite comfort by letting us feel
+when we are in any trouble, or pain, or affliction, that he was
+troubled too; that he knew pain, and endured affliction. Above all,
+in that hour which must come to all of us, he has left us the
+greatest of all supports;--for he endured to die; and we may enter
+with less fear into the darkness of the grave, for even there
+Christ has been for our sakes, and arose from out of it a
+conqueror.</p>
+<p>Fourthly, Christ died that he might gather together in one the
+children of God that were scattered abroad; he died to purchase to
+himself his universal Church. So it is said in the Scriptures: and
+on this particular purpose of his death, it may not be amiss to
+dwell, for none so needs to be held in remembrance. Many there are,
+and ever have been, who have rested their whole hope towards God on
+his sacrifice; many who have learnt from his cross to overcome sin;
+from his resurrection to overcome the world; many who, amidst all
+the troubles of life, and in the hour of death, have been supported
+by the thought of his example. But where is his universal Church?
+where the company of God's children gathered together into one?
+where is the city set upon the hill, that cannot be hid? where is
+the visible kingdom of God, where all its people are striving under
+one Divine Head, against sin, the world, and the devil? This is the
+sign which we look for and cannot find; this is the fulfilment of
+the prophecies for which we seem destined to wait in vain.</p>
+<p>And what if, on the contrary, that which is called the Church
+act rather the part of the world; if our worst foes be truly those
+of our own household: if they who should have been for our help, be
+rather an occasion of falling: if one of our greatest difficulties
+in following Christ steadily, arise from the total want of
+encouragement, yea, often from the direct opposition of those who
+are themselves pledged to follow him to the death; if that Church,
+which was to have been the clearest sign to the world of the truth
+of Christ's gospel, be now, in many respects, rather a
+stumbling-block to the adversary and unbeliever, so that the name
+of God is through us blasphemed among the heathen, rather than
+glorified; may we not humble ourselves before God in sorrow and in
+shame? and must we not confess, that through our sin, and the sin
+of our fathers, Christ, in respect of this one purpose of his
+death, has as yet died in vain?</p>
+<p>Israel after the flesh, lamenting their Jerusalem which is now
+not theirs, and mourning over their ruined temple, in all their
+synagogues repeat constantly the prayer, O Lord, build thou the
+walls of Jerusalem! O Lord, build! O Lord, build! O Lord, build! is
+the solemn chorus, marking by its repetition the earnestness of
+their desire. And should not this be the prayer of the Israel of
+God, scattered now as they are into their thousand divided and
+corrupted synagogues, and no token to be seen of the pure and
+universal Church, the living temple of the Spirit of God; should
+not we too, privately and publicly, join in the prayer of the
+earthly Israel, and pray that Christ would build for us the walls
+of our true Jerusalem? For only think what it would be, if Christ's
+Church existed more than in name; consider what it would be if
+baptism were a real bond; if we looked on one another as brethren,
+redeemed by one ransom, pledged to one service; if we bore with one
+another's weaknesses; if we helped one another's endeavours; if
+each saw and heard, in the words and life of his neighbour, an
+image of Christ, and a pledge of the truth of his promises.
+Consider what it would be, if, with no quarrels, with no
+jealousies, with no unkindness, we sought not every man his own,
+but every man also another's welfare; as true members one of
+another,--of one body, of which Christ is the head. Consider what
+it would be, if our judgments of men and things were like Christ's
+judgments; neither strengthening the heart of the careless and
+sinful by our laxity, nor making sad the heart of God's true
+servant by our uncharitableness; not putting little things in the
+place of great, nor great things in the place of little; not
+neglecting the unity of the Spirit; not stickling for a sameness in
+the form. Or, if we carry our views a little wider; if we look out
+upon the world at large, and hear of rumours of wars, and see the
+signs of internal disorders, and perhaps may think that the clouds
+are gathering which, herald one of the comings of the Son of man to
+judgment, whether the last of all or not it were vain to ask; how
+blessed would it be, if we could see such an ark of Christ's Church
+as should float visibly upon, the stormy waters; gathering within
+it, in peace and safety, men of various dispositions and
+conditions, and opinions; those who held much of truth, and those
+who had mixed with it much of error: those whom Christ would call
+clean, and those, too, whom some of their brethren call unclean,
+but whom Christ has redeemed, and will save no less than their
+despisers; all, in short, who fled from sin and from the world to
+Christ, and to the company of Christ's people! O if we could but
+see such an ark preparing while God's long-suffering yet withholds
+the flood! O that all God's scattered and divided children would
+join together in one earnest prayer, O Lord, build thou the walls
+of Jerusalem! O Lord, build! O Lord, build! O Lord, build!</p>
+<p>Yet, for this, among other purposes of mercy, did the Son of
+God, as on this day, suffer death upon the cross: he died that we
+might be one in him. Let us turn, then, from the thought of the
+general temple in ruins, and let us see whether we cannot, at any
+rate, within the walls of our own little particular congregation,
+fulfil also this object of Christ's death, and be one in him. Let
+us consider one another, to provoke unto love and to good works: we
+too often consider one another for the very contrary purpose, to
+provoke to contempt or ill-will. True it is, that if we look for it
+we can find much of evil in our brethren, and they can find much
+also in us; and we might become all haters of one another, all in
+some sort deserving to be hated. But where is he who is entitled to
+hate another's evil when he has evil in himself; and when Christ,
+who had none, did not hate the evil of us all, but rather died to
+save it? And is it not true also, that, if we look for it, we can
+also find in every one something to love? something, undoubtedly,
+even in him who has in himself least: but much, infinitely much in
+all, when we look upon them as Christ's redeemed. Not more
+beautifully than truly has it been said, that Christian souls--</p>
+"Though worn and soiled by sinful clay,<br>
+Are yet, to eyes that see them true,<br>
+All glistening with baptismal dew."<br>
+<p>They have the seal of belonging to Christ; they are his and our
+brethren. And, as his latest command, and his beloved Apostle's
+also, was that we should love one another; so, if we would bring
+all our solemn thoughts of Christ's death to one point, and
+endeavour to derive from it some one particular lesson for our
+daily lives, I know not that any would be more needed or better for
+us, than that we should especially apply the thought of Christ
+dying on the cross for us to soften our angry, and proud, and
+selfish feelings; to restrain us from angry or sneering words; from
+unkind, offensive, rude, or insulting actions; to excite us to
+gentleness, courtesy, kindness; remembering that he, be he who he
+may, whom we allow ourselves to despise, or to dislike, or to
+annoy, or to neglect, was one so precious in Christ's sight, that
+he laid down his life for his sake, and invites him to be for ever
+with, him and with his Father.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXV."></a>LECTURE XXV.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>EASTER DAY.</center>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>JOHN xx. 20.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>Then the disciples went away again unto their own
+home</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>With this verse ends the portion of the scripture chosen for the
+gospel in this morning's service. It finishes the account of the
+visit of Peter and John to the sepulchre; and, therefore, the close
+of the extract at this point is sufficiently natural. Yet the
+effect of the quiet tone of these words, just following the account
+of the greatest event which earth has ever witnessed, is, I think,
+singularly impressive; the more so when we remember that they were
+written by one of the very persons, whose visit had been just
+described; and that the writer, therefore, could tell full well, to
+how intense an interest there had succeeded that solemn calm. They
+went away from the very sight, if I may so speak, of Christ risen,
+to their own homes. And what thoughts do we suppose that they
+carried with them? Let us endeavour to recall them, for our
+benefit, also, who, like them, are going, as it were, to the
+ordinary tenure of our daily lives from this day's high
+solemnity.</p>
+<p>The disciples went away to their own homes; and there they
+waited, either in Jerusalem or in Galilee, pursuing, as we find
+from the last chapter of St. John, their common occupations, till,
+after their Lord's ascension, power was given them from on high,
+and the great work of their apostleship began. During this period,
+Christ appeared to them several times: he conversed with them, he
+ate and drank with them: but he did not live continually with them,
+as he had done before his crucifixion: he did not take them about
+with him as before, while he was performing the part of the great
+prophet of the house of Israel. They were now at their own homes
+waiting for his call to more active duties. They had seen him dead,
+and they had seen, him risen, and they were receiving into their
+souls all the lessons of his life and death and resurrection,
+brought before them, and impressed upon them by that Holy Spirit,
+who, according to Christ's promise, was to take of the things which
+are Christ's, and to show them to Christ's disciples.</p>
+<p>It is true that there came upon them, after this, an especial
+visitation of the Spirit of power, to fit them for their particular
+work of apostles or messengers to mankind. Having been converted
+themselves, they were to strengthen their brethren. And as this
+especial visitation of the Holy Spirit was given to them only, and
+to those on whom they themselves laid their hands, so none have
+ever since been called to that particular work to which they were
+called, in any thing of the same degree of fulness. What is
+peculiar to them as apostles is not applicable exactly to us; but
+we are all concerned in what belongs to them as Christians: in this
+respect, their case is ours; and they, when at their own homes, and
+engaged in their own callings, stand in the same situation as we
+all.</p>
+<p>We may, however, still make a two-fold division; we may regard
+the apostles going away to their own homes, as a temporary thing,
+as a mere term of preparation for the duties which they were
+afterwards called to; or we may look upon it as complete so far as
+earth is concerned, since, taking them as Christians only and not
+as apostles, they might have so lived on to the end of their lives,
+having received all those helps which were needed for their own
+personal salvation, and having only to use them daily for their
+soul's benefit. This same distinction we may apply to ourselves. We
+may consider ourselves as going to our own homes for a time only,
+awaiting our call to active life; or we may consider ourselves as
+withdrawing, after every celebration of Christ's resurrection, to
+that round of daily duties which on earth shall never alter; and to
+which all the helps derived from our communion with Christ are to
+be applied, with nothing future, so for as earth is concerned, for
+which we may need them. So then, of whatever age we may be, what is
+said of the apostles in the text may apply to us also: after having
+witnessed, as it were, Christ's resurrection, we go away to our own
+homes. Let us first take that part of the text which is common to
+us all, though not in the same degree--the having been witnesses of
+Christ's resurrection. John and Peter found him not in the
+sepulchre; they found the linen clothes and the napkin lying there,
+but he was gone. And upon this, as John assures us, both for
+himself and his companion, "they believed." They believed, we
+should observe, when as yet they had no more seen Jesus himself
+after his resurrection, than we Lave now. They only knew that he
+had been dead, and that he was not in the sepulchre. And this we
+know also; we have not seen him, indeed, since his resurrection:
+but we are sure he is not in the sepulchre. We are sure that the
+malice of his enemies did not do its work: we are sure, for we are
+ourselves witnesses of it, that that name, and that word, which
+they hoped would have been destroyed for ever, like the names of
+many, not only of false prophets and deceivers, but even of good
+men and of wise, have not perished, but have brought forth fruit
+more abundantly, from the very cause that was intended to put them
+out. Christ's gospel, assuredly, is a living thing, full of vigour
+and full of power; it has worked mightily for good, and is working;
+it is so full of blessing, it tends so largely towards the
+happiness that is enjoyed upon earth, that we are quite sure it is
+not lying still buried in Christ's sepulchre.</p>
+<p>They (the two disciples) then went away believing, because they
+found that he was not in the sepulchre. But Mary Magdalene came and
+told them, that she had seen him risen, and had heard his voice
+with her ears. What she told Peter and John, Peter and John are now
+telling to us. They tell us that they have heard him, have seen him
+with their eyes, have looked upon him, yea, that their hands have
+handled him. They tell us even more than Mary Magdalene told them;
+for she had not been allowed to touch him. We may well trust their
+testimony, as they trusted hers, being quite ready indeed to
+believe that he was alive, because they had found that he was not
+amongst the dead. And so we, finding that he is not amongst the
+dead, seeing and knowing the fruits of his gospel, the living and
+ever increasing fruits of it, may well believe that its author is
+risen, and that the pains of death were loosed from off him,
+because it was not possible that he should be holden by them.</p>
+<p>In this way, we, like the two disciples, may be all said to be
+witnesses of Christ's resurrection. May it not be said still more
+of those amongst us who assembled this morning round Christ's
+table, to keep alive the memory of his death; when we partook of
+that bread, and drank of that cup, of which so many thousands and
+millions, in every age and in every land, have eaten and drunken,
+all receiving them, with nearly the same words,--the body that was
+given for us, the blood that was shed for us,--all, making
+allowances for human weakness, finding in that communion the peace
+and the strength of God; all alike receiving it with penitent
+hearts, and with faith, and purposes of good for the time to come?
+Did we not then witness that Christ is not perished? that he has
+been ever, and still is, mighty to save? That command given to
+twelve persons, in an obscure chamber in Jerusalem, by one who, the
+next day, was to die as a malefactor, has been, and is obeyed from
+one end of the world to another; and wherever it has been obeyed,
+there, in proportion to the sincerity of the obedience, has been
+the fulness of the blessing.</p>
+<p>But this is now past, as with the two disciples, and we are
+going again to our own homes. There, neither the empty sepulchre
+nor the risen Saviour are present before us, but common scenes and
+familiar occupations, which, in themselves have nothing in them of
+Christ. So it must be; we cannot be always within these walls; we
+cannot always be engaged in public prayer; we cannot always be
+hearing Christ's word, nor partaking of his communion; we must be
+going about our several works, and must be busied in them; some of
+us in preparation for other work to come, others to go on till the
+end of their lives with this only. May we not hope that Christ, and
+Christ's Spirit, will visit us the while in these our daily
+callings, as he came to his disciples Peter and John, when
+following their business as fishers on the lake of Gennesareth?</p>
+<p>How can we get him to visit us? There is one answer--by prayer
+and by watchfulness. By prayer, whether we are in our preparatory
+state, or our fixed one; by prayer, and I think I may add, by
+praying in our own words. Of course, when we pray together, some of
+us must join in the words of others; and it makes little
+difference, whether those words be spoken or read. But when we pray
+alone, some, perhaps, may still use none but prayers made by
+others, especially the Lord's prayer. We should remember, however,
+that the Lord's prayer was given for this very purpose, to teach us
+how to pray for ourselves. But it does not do this, if we use it
+alone, and still more, if we use it without understanding it. If we
+do understand it, and study it, it will indeed teach us to pray; it
+will show us what we most need in prayer, and what are our greatest
+evils; but surely it may be said, that no man ever learnt this
+lesson well without wishing to practise it; no man ever used the
+Lord's prayer with understanding and with earnestness, without
+adding to it others of his own. And this is not a trifling matter.
+We know the difficulty of attending in prayer; and if we use the
+words of others only, which we must, therefore, repeat from memory,
+it is perfectly possible to say them over without really joining
+with them in our minds: we may say them over to ourselves, and be
+actually thinking of other things the while. And the same thing
+holds good, of course, even with prayers that we have made
+ourselves, if we accustom ourselves to repeat them without
+alteration; they then become, in fact, the work of another than our
+actual mind, and may be repeated by memory alone. Therefore, it
+seems to be of consequence to vary the words, and even the matter
+of our private prayers, that so we may not deceive ourselves, by
+repeating merely, when we fancy that we are praying. Ten words
+actually made by ourselves at the moment, and not remembered, are a
+real prayer; for it is not hypocrisy that is the most common
+danger; our temper, when we are on our knees, is apt indeed to be
+careless, but not, I hope and believe, deceitful. This, of course,
+must be well known to a very large proportion of us; but, perhaps,
+there are some to whom it may be useful; some to whom the advice
+may not yet have suggested itself, that they should make their own
+prayers, in part, at least, whenever they kneel down to their
+private devotions.</p>
+<p>And this sort of prayer, with God's blessing, is likely to make
+us watchful. We rise in the morning: we say some prayers of our
+own; we hear others read to us; and yet it is possible that we may
+not have really prayed ourselves in either case; we may not have
+brought ourselves truly into the presence of God. Hence our true
+condition, with all its dangers, has not been brought before our
+minds; the need of watchfulness has not been shown to us. But with
+real prayer of our own hearts' making it is different; God is then
+present to us, and sin and righteousness: our dream of carelessness
+is, for a moment at least, broken. No doubt it is but too easy to
+dream again; yet still an opportunity of exerting ourselves to keep
+awake is given us; we are roused to consciousness of our situation;
+and that, at any rate, renders exertion possible. There is no doubt
+that souls are most commonly lost by this continued dreaming, till
+at length, when seemingly awake (they are not so really), they are
+like men who answer to the call that would arouse them, but they
+answer, in fact, unconsciously. We cannot tell for ourselves or
+others any way by which our souls shall certainly be saved, in
+spite of carelessness; or any way by which, carelessness shall be
+overcome necessarily; all that can be done is, to point out how it
+may be overcome, by what means the soul may be helped in its
+endeavours; not how those endeavours and holy desires may be
+rendered needless.</p>
+<p>Thus, then, we may gain Christ to visit us at our own homes and
+in our common callings, when we are returned to them. And that
+difference which I spoke of as existing between us, that some of us
+are waiting for Christ's call to a higher field of action, while
+others are engaged in that sort of duty which will last their
+lives, I know not that this--though it be often important, and
+though I am often obliged to dwell on it--need enter into our
+considerations to-day. Rather, perhaps, may we overlook this
+difference, and feel that all of us here assembled--those in their
+state of earliest preparation for after duties; those to whom that
+earliest state is passed away, and who are entered into another
+state, in part preparatory, in part partaking of the character of
+actual life; and those also whose preparation, speaking of earth,
+only, is completed altogether, who must be doing, and whose time
+even of doing is far advanced--that all of us have in truth one
+great call yet before us: and that, with respect to that, we are
+all, as it were, preparing still. And for that great call, common
+to all of us, we need all the same common readiness; and that
+readiness will be effected in us only by the same means,--if now,
+before it come, Christ and Christ's Spirit shall, in our homes and
+daily callings, be persuaded to visit us.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXVI."></a>LECTURE XXVI.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>WHITSUNDAY.</center>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>ACTS xix. 2.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>Have you received the Holy Ghost since ye
+believed</i>?</center>
+<br>
+<p>It appears, by what follows these words, that the question here
+related especially to those gifts of the Holy Ghost which were
+given, in the first age of the church, as a sign of God's power,
+and a witness that the work of the gospel was from God. Yet
+although this be so, and therefore the words, in this particular
+sense, cannot to any good purpose be asked now; yet there is
+another sense, and that not a lower but a far higher one, in which
+we may ask them, and in which it concerns us in the highest degree,
+what sort of answer we can give to them, I say, "what sort of
+answer;" for I think it is true of all Christians that, in a
+certain measure, they have received the Holy Ghost. Not only does
+the doctrine of our own, and I believe every other, church,
+concerning baptism, show this: but it seems also necessarily to
+follow, from those words of St. Paul, that "No man can say that
+Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost." And yet the Scripture and
+common experience alike show us, that a man may call Jesus Lord,
+and yet not be really his, nor one who will be owned by Him at the
+last day. So that what is of real importance to us is, the degree
+of fulness and force with which we could give the answer to the
+words of the text; not simply saying that we have received the Holy
+Ghost, which would be true, but might be far from sufficient; but
+saying that we have received Him and are receiving Him more and
+more, so that our hearts and lives are showing the impression of
+his heavenly seal daily more and more clearly and completely.</p>
+<p>And this must really have always been the answer which it
+concerned every Christian to be able to make; although it has been
+in various instances, and by very opposite parties, tried to be
+evaded. It is evaded alike by those who set too highly the grace
+given in baptism, and by those who, setting this too low, direct
+our attention to another point in a man's life, which they call his
+justification or conversion. For both alike would give an
+exaggerated importance to one particular moment of our lives, and
+to the grace then given. Now, the importance of particular moments
+in men's lives differs exceedingly in different persons; but yet in
+all may be exaggerated. I suppose that if ever in any man's life a
+particular point was of immense importance, it was the point of his
+conversion in the case of St. Paul. There were here united all that
+grace which according to one view accompanies baptism especially,
+and all which according to the other view accompanies conversion
+and justification. Here was a point which separated St. Paul's
+later life from his earlier with a broader line of separation than
+can possibly be the ease in general. There can be no doubt that he,
+if ever man did, received at that particular time the Holy Ghost.
+But if, ten or twenty years afterwards, St. Paul had been asked
+concerning what the Holy Ghost had done for him, he would not
+certainly have confined himself in his answer to the grace once
+given him at his conversion and baptism, but would have spoken of
+that which he had been receiving since every hour and every day,
+carrying forward and completing that work of God which had been
+begun at the time of his journey to Damascus. And as he had
+received more and more grace, so was his confidence in his
+acceptance with God at the last day more and more assured. For he
+writes to the Corinthians, many years after his conversion and
+baptism, that he kept under his body, and was bringing it into
+subjection, lest that by any means, after having preached to
+others, he should be himself a castaway. And some years later
+still, though he does not use so strong an expression as that of
+becoming a castaway, yet he still says, even when writing to the
+Philippians from Rome, that he counted not himself to have
+apprehended, nor to have attained his object fully; but forgetting
+what was behind, even the grace of his conversion and baptism, he
+pressed on to the things which were before, even that continued and
+increasing grace which was required to bring him in safety to his
+heavenly crown. But if we go on some years yet farther, when his
+labours were ended, and the sure prospect of speedy death was
+before him; when the past grace was everything, and what he could
+expect yet to come was scarcely any other than that particular aid
+which we need in our struggle with the last enemy--death; then, his
+language is free from all uncertainty; then, in the full sense of
+the words, he could say that he had received the Holy Ghost, that
+his spirit had been fully born again for its eternal being, and
+that there only remained the raising up also of his mortal body, to
+complete that new creation of body and soul which Christ's Spirit
+works in Christ's redeemed. "I have fought the good fight, I have
+finished my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid
+up for me my crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous
+judge, will give me at that day."</p>
+<p>It seems, then, that the great question which we should be
+anxious to be able to answer in the affirmative, is this, "<i>Are
+we receiving</i> the Holy Ghost since we believed?" "Since we
+believed," whether we choose to carry back the date of our first
+belief to the very time of our baptism, when grace was given to
+us,--we know not to what degree nor how,--yet given to us, as being
+then received into Christ's flock; or whether we go back only to
+that time when we can ourselves remember ourselves to have
+believed, and so can remember that God's grace was given to us.
+Have we been ever since, and are we still, receiving the Holy
+Ghost? O blessed above all blessedness, if we can say that this is
+true of us! O blessed with a blessedness most complete, if we only
+do not too entirely abandon ourselves to enjoy it! Elect of God;
+holy and beloved; justified and sanctified; there is nothing in all
+the world that could impair or destroy such happiness, except we
+ourselves, in evil hour, believed it to be out of the reach of
+danger.</p>
+<p>But if the witness of memory and conscience be less favourable;
+if we can remember long seasons of our lives during which we were
+not receiving the Holy Ghost; long seasons of a cold and hard
+state, in which there was, as it were, neither rain nor dew, nor
+yet sun to ripen what had grown before; but all was so ungenial
+that no new thing grew; and what had grown was withering and almost
+dying; what shall be said, then, and how can the time be made up
+which was so wasted? But we remember, it may be, that this deadly
+season passed away: the rain fell once more, and the tender dew,
+and the quickening sun shone brightly: our spiritual growth began
+again, and is now going on healthily; we have not always been
+receiving the Holy Ghost since we believed, but we are receiving
+him now. How gracious, then, has God been to us, that he has again
+renewed us unto repentance; that he has shown that we have not, in
+the fullest sense, sinned against the Holy Ghost, seeing that the
+Holy Ghost still abides with us! we grieved him, and tried his
+long-suffering, but he has not abandoned us to our own evil hearts;
+we are receiving him who is the giver of life, and we still
+live.</p>
+<p>But must not we speak of others? is not another case to be
+supposed possible? may there not be some who cannot say with truth
+that they are receiving the holy Ghost now? They received him once;
+we doubt it not; perhaps they were receiving him for some length of
+time; their early childhood was watched by Christian care; their
+youth and early manhood, when it received freshly things of this
+world, received also, with lively thankfulness, the grace of God;
+they can remember a time when they were growing in goodness; when
+they were being renewed after the image of God. But they can
+remember, also, that this time passed away; the grace of early
+childhood was put out by the temptations of boyhood; the grace of
+youth and opening manhood died away amid the hardness of this
+life's maturity. It is so, I believe, often; that boyhood, which
+is, as it were, ripened childhood, destroys the grace of our
+earliest years; that again, when youth offers us a second beginning
+of life, we are again impressed with good; but that ripened youth,
+which is manhood, brings with it again the reason of hardness, and
+again our spiritual growth, is destroyed. We can remember, I am
+supposing, that this fatal change did take place; but can we date
+it to any particular act, or month, or day, or hour? We can do so
+most rarely: in this respect the seed of death can even less be
+traced to its beginning than the seed of life. And yet there
+<i>was</i> a beginning, only we do not remember it. And why do we
+not remember it? Because the real beginning was in some act which
+seemed of so little consequence that it made no impression; in the
+altering some habit which we judged to be a mere trifle; in the
+indulging some temper which even at the time we hardly noticed.
+Some such little thing,--little in our view of it,--made the fatal
+turn; we received the grace of God less and less: we heeded not the
+change for a season; and when it was so marked that we could not
+but heed it, then we had ceased to regard it; and so it was that
+the spring of our life was dried up: and it is of no more avail to
+our present and future state, that we once received grace, than the
+rain of last winter will be sufficient to ripen the summer's
+harvest, if from this time forward we have nothing but drought and
+cold.</p>
+<p>Some few, again, there may be, who, within their own
+recollection, could not say that they have received the Holy Ghost:
+persons who have lived among careless friends, to whom the way of
+life has never been steadily pointed out; while the way of death,
+with all its manifold paths, meeting at last in one, has been
+continually before them. Shall we say that these, because they have
+been baptized, are therefore guilty of having rejected grace given?
+that this sin is aggravated, because a mercy was offered them once
+of which they were unconscious? We would not say this; but we would
+say that it is impossible but that they must have received the Holy
+Ghost within their memory; it is impossible but that conscience
+must have sometimes spoken, and that they must have sometimes been
+enabled to obey it; it is impossible but that they must have had
+some notions of sin, and some desires to struggle against it; and
+so far as they ever felt that desire, it was the work of God's Holy
+Spirit. Man cannot dare to say how great the amount of their guilt
+may be; but guilt there certainly is; they have grieved the Holy
+Spirit; and, though we dare not say that they have utterly
+blasphemed him, yet they have a long hardness to overcome, and
+every hour of delayed turning to God increases it: it may be
+possible still to overcome it, but meanwhile it is not overcome;
+they are not receiving the Holy Spirit; they are not being renewed
+into the likeness of Christ, without which no man can see God.</p>
+<p>Here, then, are the four cases, one of which must belong to
+every one of us here assembled. Either we have been always and
+still are receiving the Holy Ghost; or we can remember when we were
+not, but yet are receiving him now; or we can remember when we
+were, but yet now are not; or we cannot remember to have received
+him ever, nor are we yet receiving him. I cannot say which of the
+last two states is the most dreadful, nor scarcely which of the
+first two states is the most blessed. But yet as even those happy
+states admit not of over-confidence, so neither do the last two
+most unhappy states oblige us to despair. Not to despair; but they
+do urge us to every degree of fear less than despair. There is far
+more danger of our not fearing enough than of our being driven to
+despair. There is far more danger of your looking on the season of
+youth, of our looking on to old age; you trusting to the second
+freshness and tenderness of the first,--we to the calmness and
+necessary reflection of the last. There is far more danger of our
+thus hardening ourselves beyond recall; there is not only the
+danger, but there is the sin, the greatest sin, I suppose, of which
+the human mind is capable, that of deliberately choosing evil for
+the present rather than good, calculating that, by and by, we shall
+choose good rather than evil. I believe, that it is impossible to
+conceive of any state of mind more sinful than one which should so
+feel and so choose; and this is the state which we incur, and which
+we persist in whenever we put off the thought of repentance. Now,
+then, it only remains, that we apply this each to ourselves; I say
+all of us apply it, the young and the old alike; for there is not
+one here so young as not to have cause to apply it; there is not
+one of us who would not, I am sure, be a different person from what
+he now is, if he were to ask himself steadily every day, Have I
+been and am I receiving the Holy Ghost since I believed?</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXVII."></a>LECTURE XXVII.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>TRINITY SUNDAY.</center>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>JOHN iii. 9.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>How can these things be</i>?</center>
+<br>
+<p>This is the second question put by Nicodemus to our Lord with
+regard to the truths which Jesus was declaring to him. The first
+was, "How can a man be born when he is old?" which was said upon
+our Lord's telling him that, "Except a man be born again, he cannot
+see the kingdom of God." Now, it will be observed, that these two
+questions are treated by our Lord in a different manner: to the
+first he, in fact, gives an answer; that is, he removes by his
+answer that difficulty in Nicodemus's mind which led to the
+question; but to the second he gives no answer, and leaves
+Nicodemus--and with Nicodemus, us all also--exactly in the same
+ignorance as he found him at the beginning.</p>
+<p>Now, is there any difference in the nature of these two
+questions, which led our Lord to treat them so differently? We
+might suppose beforehand that there would be; and when we come to
+examine them, so we shall find it. The difficulty in the first
+question rendered true faith impossible, and, therefore, our Lord
+removed it; the difficulty in the second question did not properly
+interfere with faith at all, but might, through man's fault, be a
+temptation to him to refuse to believe. And as this, like other
+temptations, must be overcome by us, and not taken away from our
+path before we encounter it, so our Lord did not think proper to
+remove it or to lessen it.</p>
+<p>We must now unfold this difference more clearly. When Christ
+said, "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of
+God," Nicodemus could not possibly believe what our Lord said,
+because he did not understand his meaning. He did not know what he
+meant by "a man's being born again," and, therefore, he could not
+believe, as he did not know what he was to believe. Words which we
+do not understand, are like words spoken in an unknown language; we
+can neither believe them nor disbelieve them, because we do not
+know what they say. For instance, I repeat these words, [Greek:
+tous pantas haemas phanerothaenai dei emprosaen tou baematos tou
+Christou.] Now, if I were to ask, Do you believe these words? is it
+not manifest that all of you who know Greek enough, to understand
+them may also believe them; but of those who do not know Greek, not
+a single person can yet believe them? They are as yet words spoken
+as to the air. But when I add, that these words mean, "We must all
+stand before the judgment-seat of Christ;" now we can all believe
+them because we can all understand them.</p>
+<p>It is, then, perfectly impossible for any man to believe a
+statement except in proportion as he understands its meaning. And,
+therefore, our Lord explained what he meant to Nicodemus, and told
+him that, by being born again, he did not mean the natural birth of
+the body; but a birth caused by the Spirit, and therefore itself a
+birth of a spirit: for, as that which is born from a body is itself
+also a body, so that which is born of a spirit is itself also a
+spirit. So that Christ's words now are seen to have this
+meaning,--No man can enter into the kingdom of God except God's
+Spirit creates in him a spirit or mind like unto himself, and like
+unto Christ, and like unto the Father. Nicodemus, then, could now
+understand what was meant, and might have believed it. But he asks
+rather another question, "How can these things be?" How can God's
+Spirit create within me a spirit like himself, while I continue a
+man as before? Many persons since have asked similar questions; but
+to none of them is an answer given. How God's Spirit works within
+us I cannot tell; but if we take the appointed means of procuring
+his aid, we shall surely find that he has worked and does work in
+us to life eternal.</p>
+<p>We must, then, in order to believe, understand what it is that
+is told us; but it is by no means necessary that we should
+understand how it is to happen. It is not necessary, and in a
+thousand instances we do not know. "If we take poison, we shall
+die:" there is a statement which we can understand, and therefore
+believe. But do we understand how it is that poison kills us? Does
+every one here know how poisons act upon the human frame, and what
+is the different operation of different poisons,--how laudanum
+kills, for instance, and how arsenic? Surely there are very few of
+us, at most, who do understand this: and yet would it not be
+exceedingly unreasonable to refuse to believe that poison will kill
+us, because we do not understand the manner <i>how</i>?</p>
+<p>Thus far, I think, the question is perfectly plain, so soon as
+it is once laid before us. But the real point of perplexity is to
+be found a step further. In almost all propositions there is
+something about the terms which we do understand, and something
+which we do not. For instance, let me say these few words:--"A
+frigate was lost amidst the breakers." These words would be
+understood in a certain degree, by all who hear me: and so far as
+all understand them, all can believe them. All would understand
+that a ship had sunk in the water, or been dashed to pieces; that
+it would be useful no more for the purposes for which it had been
+made. But what is meant by the words "frigate" and "breakers" all
+would not understand, and many would understand very differently:
+that is to say, those who had happened to have known most about the
+sea and sea affairs would understand most about them, while those
+who knew less would understand less; but probably none of us would
+understand their meaning so fully, or would have so distinct and
+lively an image of the things, as would be enjoyed by an actual
+seaman; and even amongst seamen themselves, there would again be
+different degrees of understanding, according to their different
+degrees of experience, or knowledge of ships, or powers of
+mind.</p>
+<p>I have taken the instance at random, and any other proposition
+might have served my purpose as well. But men do not speak to one
+another at random; when they say anything to their neighbour, they
+mean it to produce on his mind a certain effect. Suppose that we
+were living near the sea-coast, and any one were suddenly to come
+in, and to utter the words which I have taken as my example: should
+we not know that what the man meant by these words was, that there
+was a danger at hand for which our help was needed? It matters not
+that we have no distinct ideas of the terms "frigate" or
+"breakers;" we understand enough for our belief and practice, and
+we should hasten to the sea-shore accordingly. Or suppose that the
+same words were told us of a frigate in which we had some near
+relation: should we not see at once that what we were meant to
+understand and to believe in the words was, that we had lost a
+relation? That is the truth with which we are concerned; and this
+we can understand and feel, although we may be able to understand
+nothing more of the words in which that truth is conveyed to us.
+Now, in like manner, in whatever God says to us there is a purpose:
+it is intended to produce on our minds a certain impression, and so
+far it must be understood. But when God speaks to us of heavenly
+things, the terms employed can only be understood in part, and so
+far as God's purpose with regard to our minds reaches; but there
+must be a great deal in them which we can no more understand than
+one who had never seen a ship, or a picture of one, could
+understand the word "frigate." Our business is to consider what
+impression or what actions the words are intended to produce in us.
+Up to this point we can and must understand them: beyond this they
+may be wholly above the reach of our faculties, and we can form of
+them no ideas at all.</p>
+<p>It is clear that this will be the case most especially whenever
+God reveals to us anything concerning himself. Take these few
+words, for example, "God is a spirit;" take them as a mere abstract
+truth, and how little can we understand about them! Who will dare
+to say that he understands all that is contained in the words "God"
+and "spirit?" We might weary ourselves for ever in attempting so to
+search out either. But God said these words to us: and the point
+is, What impression did he mean them to have upon us? how far can
+we understand them? This he has not by any means left doubtful, for
+it follows immediately, "They who worship him should worship Him in
+spirit and in truth." For this end the words were spoken, and thus
+far they are clear to us. God lives not on Mount Gerizim or at
+Jerusalem: but in every place he hears the prayers of the sincere
+and contrite heart, in no place will he regard the offerings of the
+proud and evil.</p>
+<p>Or again, "God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten
+Son, to the end that all who believe in him should not perish, but
+have eternal life." Here are words in themselves, as abstract
+truths, perfectly overwhelming; "God," "God's only-begotten Son,"
+"Eternity." Who shall understand these things, when it is said,
+that "none knoweth the Son, save the Father; that none knoweth the
+Father, save the Son?" But did God tell us the words for nothing?
+can we understand nothing from them? believe nothing? feel nothing?
+Nay, they were spoken that we might both understand, and believe,
+and feel. How must He love us, who gives for us his only-begotten
+Son! how surely may we believe in Him who is an only-begotten Son
+to his Father,--so equal in nature, so entire in union!--What must
+that happiness be, which reaches beyond our powers of counting!
+Would we go further?--then the veil is drawn before us; other
+truths there are, no doubt, contained in the words; truths which
+the angels might desire to look into; truths which even they may be
+unable to understand. But these are the secret things which belong
+unto our God; the things which are revealed they are what belong to
+us and to our children, that we may understand, and believe, and do
+them.</p>
+<p>Again, "the Comforter, whom Christ will send unto us from the
+Father, even the Spirit of Truth, which proceedeth from the Father,
+he shall testify of Christ." What words are here! "The Spirit of
+Truth," "the Spirit proceeding from the Father;" the Spirit "whom
+Christ will send," and "send from the Father." Can any created
+being understand, to the full, such "heavenly things" as these? But
+would Christ have uttered to his disciples mere unintelligible
+words, which could tell them nothing, and excite in them no feeling
+but mere wonder? Not so; but the words told them that Christ was
+not to be lost to them after he had left them on earth; that every
+gift of God was his: that even that Spirit of God, in which is
+contained all the fulness of the Godhead, is the Spirit of Christ
+also; that that mighty power which should work in them so
+abundantly, was of no other or lower origin than God himself; as
+entirely God, as the spirit of man is man. But can we therefore
+understand the Spirit of God, or conceive of him? How should we,
+when we cannot understand our own? This, and this only, we
+understand and believe, that without him our spirits cannot be
+quickened; that unless we pray daily for his aid, and listen to his
+calls within us, our spirit will never be created after his image,
+and we cannot enter into the kingdom of God.</p>
+<p>It is thus, and thus only, that the revelations of God's word
+are beyond our understandings: that in them, beings and things are
+spoken of, which, taken generally, and in themselves, we should in
+vain endeavour to comprehend. But what God means us to know, or
+feel, or do, respecting them, that we can understand; and beyond
+this we have no concern. It is, in fact, a contradiction to speak
+of revealing what is unintelligible; for so far as it is a revealed
+truth it is intelligible; so far as it is unintelligible, it is not
+revealed. But though a thing revealed must be intelligible in
+itself, yet it by no means follows that we can understand
+<i>how</i> it happens. When we are told that the dead shall rise
+again, we can understand quite well what is meant; that we beings
+who feel happiness and misery, shall feel them again, either the
+one or the other, after we seemingly have done with them for ever
+in the grave. But "How are the dead raised up, and with what body
+do they come?" are questions to which, whether asked scoffingly or
+sincerely, we can give no answers; here our understanding fails,
+and here the truth is not revealed to us.</p>
+<p>How, then, has Christianity no mysteries? In one sense, blessed
+be God for it, it has many. Using mysteries in St. Paul's sense of
+great revelations of things which were and must be unknown to all,
+except God had revealed them: then, indeed, they are many; the
+pillar and ground of truth, great without controversy, and full of
+salvation. But take mysteries in our more common sense of the
+word,--as things which are revealed to none, and can be understood
+by none,--then it is true that Christianity leaves many such in
+existence; that many such she has done away; that none has she
+created. She leaves many mysteries with respect to God, and with
+respect to ourselves; God is still incomprehensible; life and death
+have many things in them beyond our questioning; we may still look
+around us, above us, and within us, and wonder, and be ignorant.
+But if she still leaves the veil drawn over much in heaven and in
+earth, yet from how much has she removed it! Life and death are
+still in many respects dark; but she has brought to light
+immortality. God is still in himself incomprehensible; but all his
+glory, and all his perfections, are revealed to us in his
+only-begotten Son Christ Jesus. God's Spirit who can search out in
+his own proper essence? yet Christianity has taught us how we may
+have him to dwell with us for ever, and taste the fulness of his
+blessings. Yea, thanks be to God for the great Christian mystery
+which we this day celebrate; that he has revealed himself to us as
+our Saviour and our Comforter; that he has revealed to us his
+infinite love, in that he has given us his only-begotten Son to die
+for us, and his own Eternal Spirit to make our hearts his
+temple.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXVIII."></a>LECTURE XXVIII.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>EXODUS iii. 6.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon
+God</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<center>LUKE xxiii. 30.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>Then shall they begin to say to the mountains.<br>
+Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>These two passages occur, the one in the first lesson of this
+morning's service, the other in the second. One or other of them
+must have been, or must be, the case of you, of me, of every soul
+of man that lives or has lived since the world began. There must be
+a time in the existence of every human being when he will fear God.
+But the great, the infinite difference is, whether we fear him at
+the beginning of our relations to him, or at the end.</p>
+<p>The fear of Moses was felt at the beginning of his knowledge of
+God. When God revealed himself to him at the bush, it was, so far
+as we are told, the first time that Moses learnt to know him. The
+fear of those who say to the mountains, "Fall on us," is felt at
+the very end of their knowledge of God; for to those who are
+punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the
+Lord, God is not. So that the two cases in the text are exact
+instances of the difference of which I spoke, in the most extreme
+degree. Moses, the greatest of the prophets, fears God at first;
+those who are cast into hell, fear him at last.</p>
+<p>The appearance of God, as described in this passage of
+Scripture, is an image also of his dealings with us at the
+beginning of our course, when we fear him with a saving fear. "The
+bush burned with fire, but the bush was not consumed." God shows
+his terrors, but he does not, as yet, destroy with them. It is the
+very opposite to this at last, for then he is expressly said to be
+a consuming fire.</p>
+<p>Moses turned aside to see this great sight, why the bush was not
+burnt. That sight is the very same which the world has been
+offering for so many hundreds of years: God's terrors are around
+it, but, as yet, it is not consumed, because he wills that we
+should fear him before it is too late.</p>
+<p>There is, indeed, this great difference;--that the signs of
+God's presence do not now force themselves upon our eyes; so that
+we may, if we choose, walk on our own way, without turning aside to
+see and observe them. And thus we do not see God, and do not,
+therefore, hide our faces for fear of him, but go on, and feel no
+fear, till the time when we cannot help seeing him. And it may be,
+that this time will never come till our life, and with it our space
+of trial, is gone for ever.</p>
+<p>Here, then, is our state, that God will manifest himself no more
+to us in such a way as that we cannot help seeing him. The burning
+bush will be no more given us as a sign; Christ will no more
+manifest himself unto the world. And yet, unless we do see him,
+unless we learn to fear him while he is yet an unconsuming fire,
+unless we know that he is near, and that the place whereon we stand
+is holy ground, we shall most certainly see him when he will be a
+consuming fire, and when we shall join in crying to the mountains,
+to fall on us, and to the hills, to cover us.</p>
+<p>Every person who thinks at all, must, I am sure, be satisfied,
+that our great want, the great need of our condition, is this one
+thing--to realize to ourselves the presence of God. It is a want
+not at all peculiar to the young. Thoughtfulness, in one sense, is
+indeed likely to come with advancing years: we are more apt to
+think at forty than at fifteen; but it by no means follows that we
+are more apt to think about God. In this matter we are nearly at a
+level at all times of our life: it is with all of us our one great
+want, to bring the idea of God, with a living and abiding power,
+home to our minds.</p>
+<p>This is illustrated by a wish ascribed to a great and good
+man--Johnson, and which has been noticed with a sneer by
+unbelievers, a wish that he might see a spirit from the other
+world, to testify to him of the truth of the resurrection. This has
+been sneered at, as if it were a confession of the unsatisfactory
+nature of the evidence which we actually possess: but, in truth, it
+is a confession only of the weakness which clings to us all, that
+things unseen, which our reason only assures us to be real, are
+continually overpowered by things affecting our senses; and,
+therefore, it was a natural wish that sight might, in a manner,
+come to the aid of reason; that the eye might see, and the ear
+might hear, a form and words which belonged to another world. And
+this wish might arise (I do not say wisely, or that his deliberate
+judgment would sanction it, but it might arise) in the breast of a
+good man, and one who would be willing to lay down his life in
+proof of his belief in Christ's promises. It might arise, not
+because he felt any doubt, when his mind turned calmly to the
+subject; not because he was hesitating what should be the main
+principle of his life; but because his experience had told him,
+that there are many times in the life of man when the mind does not
+fully exert itself; when habit and impressions rule us, in a
+manner, in its stead. And when so many of our impressions must be
+earthly, and as our impressions colour our habits, is it not
+natural (I do not say wise, but is it not natural) to desire some
+one forcible unearthly impression, which might, on the other side,
+colour our habits, and so influence us at those times when the
+mind, almost by the necessity of our condition, cannot directly
+interpose its own deliberate decision as our authority?</p>
+<p>No doubt the wish to which I have been alluding is not one which
+our reason would sanction; but it expresses in a very lively and
+striking manner a want which is most true and real, although it
+proposes an impossible remedy. But the question cannot but occur to
+us, Can it be that our heavenly Father, who knows whereof we are
+made, should have intended us to live wholly by faith in this
+world? That is, Can it have been his will that all visible signs of
+himself should be withdrawn from us; and that we should be left
+only with the record and the evidence of his mighty works done in
+our behalf in past times; and with that other evidence of his
+wisdom and power which is afforded by the wonders of his
+creation?</p>
+<p>We look into the Scriptures and we learn that such was not his
+will. We were to live by faith, indeed, with, respect to the unseen
+world, there the sign given was to be for ever only the sign of
+Christ's resurrection. But yet it was not designed that the
+evidence of Christ's having redeemed us should be sought for only
+in the records of the past; he purposed that there should be a
+living record, a record that might speak to our senses as well as
+to our reason; that should continually present us with impressions
+of the reality of Christ's salvation; and so might work upon the
+habits of our life, as insensibly as the air we breathe. This
+living witness, which should last till Christ came again, was to be
+no other than his own body instinct with his own Spirit--his
+people, the temple of the Holy Ghost, his holy universal
+Church.</p>
+<p>If we consider for a moment, this would entirely meet the want
+of which I have been speaking. It is possible, certainly, to look
+upon the face of nature without being reminded of God; yet it is
+surely true, that in the outward creation, in the order of the
+seasons, the laws of the heavenly bodies, the wonderful wisdom and
+goodness displayed in the constitution of every living thing in its
+order, there is a tendency at least to impress us with, the thought
+of God, if nothing else obstructed it. But there is a constant
+obstruction in the state of man. Looking at men, hearing them,
+considering them, it is not only possible not to be reminded of
+God; but their very tendency is to exclude him from our minds,
+because the moral workmanship which is so predominant in them has
+assuredly not had God for its author. We all in our dealings with
+one another, lead each other away from God. We present to each
+other's view what seems to be a complete world of our own, in which
+God is not. We see a beginning, a middle, and an end; we see
+faculties for acquiring knowledge, and for receiving enjoyment; and
+earth furnishes knowledge to the one and enjoyment to the other. We
+see desires, and we see the objects to which they are limited; we
+see that death removes men from all these objects, and consistently
+with this, we observe, that death is generally regarded as the
+greatest of all evils. Man's witness, then, as far as it goes, is
+against the reality of God and of eternity. His life, his language,
+his desires, his understanding appear, when we look over the world,
+to refer to no being higher than himself, to no other state of
+things than that of which sight testifies.</p>
+<p>Now, Christ's Church, the living temple of the Holy Ghost, puts
+in the place of this natural and corrupt man, whose witness is
+against God, another sort of man, redeemed and regenerate, whose
+whole being breathes a perpetual witness of God. Consider, again,
+what we should see in such a Church. We should see a beginning, a
+middle, but the end is not yet visible; we should see, besides the
+faculties for knowledge and enjoyment which were receiving their
+gratification daily, other faculties of both kinds, whose
+gratification was as yet withheld; we should see desires not
+limited to any object now visible or attainable. We should see
+death looked to as the gate by which these hitherto unobtained
+objects were to be sought for; and we should hear it spoken of, not
+as the greatest of evils, but as an event solemn, indeed, and
+painful to nature, but full of blessing and of happiness. We should
+see love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
+meekness, temperance; a constitution of nature as manifestly
+proclaiming its author to be the God of all holiness and
+loving-kindness, as the wonderful structure of our eyes or hands
+declares them to be the work of the God of all wisdom and power. We
+should thus see in all our fellow-men, not only as much, but far
+more than in the constitution of the lower animals, or of the
+plants, or of the heavenly bodies, a witness of God and of
+eternity. Their whole lives would be a witness; their whole
+conversation would be a witness; their outward and more peculiar
+acts of worship would then bear their part in harmony with all the
+rest. Every day would the voices of the Church be heard in its
+services of prayer and thanksgiving; every day would its members
+renew their pledges of faithfulness to Christ, and to one another,
+upon partaking together the memorials of his sacrifice.</p>
+<p>What could we desire more than such a living witness as this?
+What sign in the sky, what momentary appearance of a spirit from
+the unseen world, could so impress us with the reality of God, as
+this daily worshipping in his living temple; this daily sight, of
+more than the Shechinah of old, even of his most Holy Spirit,
+diffusing on every side light and blessing? And what is now become
+of this witness? can names, and forms, and ordinances, supply its
+place? can our unfrequent worship, our most seldom communion,
+impress on us an image of men living altogether in the presence of
+God, and in communion with Christ? But before we dwell on this, we
+may, while considering the design of the true Church of Christ,
+well understand how such excellent things should be spoken of it,
+and how it should have been introduced into the Creed itself,
+following immediately after the mention of the Holy Ghost. That
+holy universal Church was to be the abiding witness of Christ's
+love and of Christ's promises; not in its outward forms only, for
+they by themselves are not a living witness; they cannot meet our
+want--to have God and heavenly things made real to us; but in its
+whole spirit, by which renewed man was to bear as visibly the image
+of God, as corrupted man had lost it. This was the sure sign that
+Christ had appointed to abide until his coming again; this sign, as
+striking as the burning bush, would compel us to observe; would
+make us sure that the place whereon we stand is holy ground.</p>
+<p>Then follows the question: With this sign lost in its most
+essential points, how can we supply its place? and how can we best
+avail ourselves of those parts of it which still remain? and how
+can we each endeavour to build up a partial and most imperfect
+imitation of it, which may yet, in some sort, serve to supply our
+great want, and remind us daily of God? This opens a wide field for
+thought, to those who are willing to follow it; but much of it
+belongs to other occasions rather than this: the practical part of
+it,--the means of most imperfectly supplying the want of God's own
+appointed sign, a true and living universal Church, shall be the
+subject of my next Lecture.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXIX."></a>LECTURE XXIX.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>PSALM cxxxvii. 4.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange
+land</i>?</center>
+<br>
+<p>This was said by the exiles of Jerusalem, when they were in the
+land of their captivity in Babylon. There is no reason to suppose
+that their condition was one of bondage, as it had been in Egypt:
+the nations removed by conquest, under the Persian kings, from
+their own country to another land, were no otherwise ill-treated;
+they had new homes given them in which they lived unmolested; only
+they were torn away from their own land, and were as sojourners in
+a land of strangers. But the peculiar evil of this state was, that
+they were torn away from the proper seat of their worship. The Jew
+in Babylon might have his own home, and his own land to cultivate,
+as he had in Jud&aelig;a; but nothing could replace to him the loss
+of the temple at Jerusalem: there alone could the morning and
+evening sacrifices be offered; there alone could the sin-offering
+for the people be duly made. Banished from the temple, therefore,
+he was deprived also of the most solemn part of his religion; he
+was, as it were, exiled from God; and the worship of God, as it was
+now left to him,--that is, the offering up of prayers and
+praises,--was almost painful to him, as it reminded him so forcibly
+of his changed condition.</p>
+<p>Such also, in some respects, was to be the state of the
+Christian Church after our Lord's ascension. The only acceptable
+sacrifice was now that of their great High Priest interceding for
+them in the presence of the Father: heaven was their temple, and
+they were far removed from it upon earth: they, too, like the Jews
+in Babylon, were a little society by themselves living in the midst
+of strangers. "Our citizenship," says St. Paul to the Philippians,
+"is in heaven:" here they were not citizens, but sojourners. Why,
+then, should not the early Christians have joined altogether in the
+feeling of the Jews at Babylon? why should not they, too, have felt
+and said, "How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?"</p>
+<p>The answer is contained in what I said last Sunday; because
+Christ had not left them comfortless or forsaken, but was come
+again to them by his Holy Spirit; because God was dwelling in the
+midst of them; because they were not exiles from the temple of God,
+but were themselves become God's temple; because through the virtue
+of the one offering for sin once made, but for ever presented
+before God by their High Priest in heaven, they, in God's temple on
+earth, were presenting also their daily and acceptable sacrifice,
+the sacrifice of themselves; because also, though as yet they were
+a small society in a land of strangers, yet the stone formed
+without hands was to become a mighty mountain, and cover the whole
+earth: what was now the land of strangers was to become theirs; the
+whole earth should be full of the knowledge of the Lord; the
+kingdoms of the world were to become his kingdom; and thus earth,
+redeemed from the curse of sin, was again to be so blessed that
+God's servants living upon it should find it no place of exile.</p>
+<p>But if this, in its reality, does not now exist; if, although
+God's temple be on earth, the appointed sacrifice in it is not
+offered, the living sacrifice of ourselves; if the society has, by
+spreading, become weak, and the kingdoms of the earth are Christ's
+kingdoms in name alone; are we, then, come back once more to the
+condition of the Jews in Babylon? are we exiles from God, living
+amongst strangers? and must we, too, say, with the prophet, "How
+can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?"</p>
+<p>This was the question which I proposed to answer: What can we do
+to make our condition unlike that of exiles from God: to restore
+that true sign of his presence amongst us, the living fire of his
+Holy Spirit pervading every part of his temple? I mean, what can we
+do as individuals? for the question in any other sense is not to be
+asked or answered here. But we, each of us, must have felt, at some
+time or other, our distance from God. Put the idea in what form or
+what words we will, we must--every one of us who has ever thought
+seriously at all--we must regret that there is not a stronger and
+more abiding influence over us, to keep us from evil, and to turn
+us to good.</p>
+<p>Now, the vestiges of Christ's church left among us are chiefly
+these: our prayers together, whether in our families or in this
+place; our reading of the Scriptures together; our communion, rare
+as it is, in the memorials of the body and blood of Christ our
+Saviour. These are the vestiges of that which was designed to be
+with us always, and in every part of our lives, the holy temple of
+God, his living church; but which now presents itself to us only at
+particular times, and places, and actions; in our worship and in
+our joint reading of the Scriptures, and in our communion.</p>
+<p>It will be understood at once why I have not spoken here of
+prayer and reading the Scriptures by ourselves alone. Most
+necessary as these are to us, yet they do not belong to the helps
+ministered to us by the church; they belong to us each as
+individuals, and in these respects we must be in the same state
+everywhere: these were enjoyed by the Jews even in their exile in
+Babylon. But the church acts upon us through one another, and
+therefore the vestiges of the church can only be sought for in what
+we do, not alone, but together. I, therefore, noticed only that
+prayer, and that reading of the Scriptures, in which many of us
+took part in common.</p>
+<p>Such common prayer takes place amongst us every morning and
+evening, as well as on Sundays within these walls. Whenever we meet
+on those occasions, we meet as Christ's church. Now, conceive how
+the effect of such meeting depends on the conduct of each of us. It
+is not necessary to notice behaviour openly profane and disorderly:
+this does not occur amongst us. We see, however, that if it did
+occur in any meeting for the purposes of religious worship, such a
+meeting would do us harm rather than good: its witness to us would
+not be in favour of God, but against him. But take another case:
+when we are assembled for prayers, suppose our behaviour, without
+being disorderly, was yet so manifestly indifferent as to be really
+indecent; that is, suppose every countenance showed such manifest
+signs of weariness, and impatience, and want of interest in what
+was going forward, that it was evident there was no general
+sympathy with any feeling of devotion. Would not the effect here
+also be injurious? would not such a meeting also shock and check
+our approaches towards God? would it not rather convince us that
+God was really far distant from us, instead of showing that he was
+in the midst of us?</p>
+<p>Ascend one step higher. Our behaviour is neither disorderly, nor
+manifestly indifferent: it is decent, serious, respectful. What is
+the effect in this case? Not absolutely unfavourable certainly; but
+yet far from being much help towards good. We bear our witness that
+we are engaged in a matter that should be treated with reverence:
+this is very right; but do we more than this? Do we show that we
+are engaged in a matter that commands our interest also, as well as
+our respect? If not, our witness is not the witness of Christ's
+church: it does not go to declare that God is in us of a truth.</p>
+<p>Let us go on one step more. We meet together to pray: we are
+orderly, we are quiet, we are serious; but the countenance shows
+that we are something more than these. There is on it the
+expression, never to be mistaken, of real interest. Remember I am
+speaking of meetings for prayer, where the words are perfectly
+familiar to us, and where the interest therefore cannot be the mere
+interest of novelty. Say, then, that our countenances express
+interest: I do not mean strong and excited feeling; but interest,
+which may be very real yet very quiet also. We look as if we
+thought of what we were engaged in, of what we are ourselves, and
+of what God is to us. We are joined in one common feeling of
+thankfulness to him for mercies past, of wishing for his help and
+love for the time to come. Now, think what would be the effect of
+such a meeting. Would it not be, clearly, positively good! Would
+not every individual's earnestness be confirmed by the manifest
+earnestness of others? Would not his own sense of God's reality be
+rendered stronger, by seeing that others felt it just as he did?
+Then, here would be the church of God rendering her appointed
+witness: she would be giving her sure sign that God is not far from
+any one of us.</p>
+<p>Now, then, observe what we may lose or gain by our different
+behaviour, whenever we meet together in prayer; what we lose, nay,
+what positive mischief we do, by any visible impatience or
+indifference; what we should gain by really joining in our hearts
+in the meaning of what was uttered. It is a solemn thing for the
+consciences of us all; but surely it must be true, that, whenever
+we are careless or indifferent in our public prayers, we are
+actually injuring our neighbours, and are, so far as in us lies,
+destroying the witness which the church of Christ should render to
+the truth of God her Saviour.</p>
+<p>I do not know that there is anything more impressive than the
+sight of a congregation evidently in earnest in the service in
+which they are engaged. We then feel how different is our own
+lonely prayer from the united voice of many hearts; each cheering,
+strengthening, enkindling the other. We then consider one another
+to provoke unto love and good works. How different are the feelings
+with which we regard a number of persons met for any common
+purpose, and the same persons engaged together in serious prayer or
+praise! Then Christ seems to appear to us in each of them; we are
+all one in him. How little do all earthly unkindnesses, dislikes,
+prejudices, become in our eyes, when the real bond of our common
+faith is discerned clearly! There is indeed neither Greek nor Jew,
+circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor
+free, but Christ is all, and in all. And to look at our brethren,
+once or twice in every day, with these Christian eyes, would it not
+also, by degrees, impress us at other times, and begin to form
+something of our habitual temper and regard towards them?</p>
+<p>Thus much of our meetings for prayer. One word only on those in
+which we meet to read the Scriptures. Here I know, that difference
+of age, and our peculiar relations to each other, make us very apt
+to lose the religious character of our readings of the Scriptures,
+and to regard them merely as lessons. No doubt, the object here is
+instruction; it is not so much in itself a religious exercise, as a
+means to enable you to perform religious exercises with
+understanding and sincerity. Still there is a peculiar character
+attached even to lessons, when they are taken out of the
+Scriptures: and the duty of attention and interest in the work
+becomes even stronger than under other circumstances. But with
+those of a more advanced age, I think there is more than this; I
+think it must be our own fault, if, whilst engaged together in
+reading the Scriptures, which we only read because we are
+Christians, we do not feel that there also we are employed on a
+duty belonging to the Church of Christ.</p>
+<p>Lastly, there is our joint communion in the bread, and in the
+cup, of the Lord's Supper. Here there is seriousness; here there is
+always, I trust and believe, something of real interest; and,
+therefore, we never, I think, meet together at the Lord's table,
+without feeling a true effect of Christ's gifts to and in his
+Church; we are strengthened and brought nearer to one another, and
+to him. But this most precious pledge of Christ's Church we too
+often forfeit for ourselves. That we have lost so much of the help
+which the Church was designed to give, is not our fault
+individually; but it is our fault that we neglect this means of
+strength, so great in bearing witness to Christ, and in kindling
+love towards one another. What can be said of us, if, with so many
+helps lost, we throw away that which still remains? if, of the
+great treasure which the Church yet keeps, we are wilfully
+ignorant? How much good might we do, both to ourselves and to each
+other, by joining in that communion! How surely should we be
+strengthened in all that is good, and have a help from each other,
+through his Spirit working in us all, to struggle against our
+evil!</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXX"></a>LECTURE XXX.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>1 CORINTHIANS xi. 26.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye
+do show the Lord's death till he come</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>When I spoke last Sunday of the benefits yet to be derived from
+Christ's Church, I spoke of them, as being, for the most part,
+three in number--our communion in prayer, our communion in reading
+the Scriptures, and our communion in the Lord's Supper; and, after
+having spoken of the first two of these, I proposed to leave the
+third for our consideration to-day.</p>
+<p>The words of the text are enough to show how closely this
+subject is connected with that event which we celebrate
+to-day<a name="FNanchor13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13">[13]</a>: "As
+often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the
+Lord's death till he come." The communion, then, with one another
+in the Lord's Supper is doing that which this day was also designed
+to do; it is showing forth, or declaring the Lord's death; it is
+declaring, in the face of all the world, that we partake of the
+Lord's Supper because we believe that Christ our Passover was
+sacrificed for us.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_13"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor13">[13]</a> Good Friday.</blockquote>
+<p>God might, no doubt, if it had so pleased him, have made all
+spiritual blessing come to us immediately from himself. Without
+ascending any higher with the idea, it is plain that Christianity
+might have been made a thing wholly between each individual man and
+Christ; all our worship might have been the secret worship of our
+own hearts; and in eating the bread, and drinking the cup, to show
+forth the Lord's death, each one of us might have done this singly,
+holding communion with Christ alone. I mean, that it is quite
+conceivable that we should have had Christianity, and a great
+number of Christians spread all over the world, but yet no
+Christian Church. But, although this is conceivable, and, in fact,
+is practically the case in some particular instances where
+individual Christians happen to be quite cut off from all other
+Christians,--as has been known sometimes in foreign and remote
+countries; and although, through various evil causes, it has
+become, in many respects, too much the case with us all; for our
+religion is with all of us, I am inclined to think, too much a
+matter between God and ourselves alone; yet still it is not the
+design of Christ that it should be so: his people were not only to
+be good men, redeemed from sin and death and brought to know and
+love the truth, in which relation Christianity would appear like a
+divine philosophy only, working not only upon individuals, but
+through their individual minds, and as individuals; but they were
+to be the Christian Church, helping one another in things
+pertaining to God, and making their mutual brotherhood to one
+another an essential part of what are called peculiarly their acts
+of religion. So that the Church of England seems to have well borne
+in mind this character of Christianity, namely, that it presents us
+not each, but all together, before God; and therefore it is ordered
+that even in very small parishes, where "there are not more than
+twenty persons in the parish of discretion to receive the
+communion, yet there shall be no communion, except four, or three
+at the least, out of these twenty communicate together with the
+priest." Nay, even in the Communion of the Sick, under
+circumstances which seem to make religion particularly an
+individual matter between Christ and our own single selves; when
+the expected approach of death seems to separate, in the most
+marked manner, according to human judgment, him who is going hence
+from his brethren still in the world; even then it is ordered that
+two other persons, at the least, shall communicate along with the
+sick man and the minister. Nor is this ever relaxed except in times
+of pestilence; when it is provided, that if no other person can be
+persuaded to join from their fear of infection, then, and then only
+upon special request of the diseased, the minister may alone
+communicate with them. So faithfully does our Church adhere to this
+true Christian notion, that at the Lord's Supper we are not to
+communicate with Christ alone, but with him in and together with
+our brethren; so that I was justified in regarding the Holy
+Communion as one of those helps and blessings which we still derive
+from the Christian Church--from Christ's mystical body.</p>
+<p>It is the natural process of all false and corrupt religions, on
+the contrary, to destroy this notion of Christ's Church, and to
+lead away our thoughts from our brethren in matters of religion,
+and to fix them merely upon God as known to us through a priest.
+The great evil in this is, (if there is any one evil greater than
+another in a system so wholly made up of falsehood, and so leading
+to all wickedness; but, at any rate, one great evil of it is,) that
+whereas the greatest part of all our lives is engaged in our
+relations towards our brethren, that there lie most of our
+temptations to evil, as well as of our opportunities of good, if
+our brethren do not form an essential part of our religions views,
+it follows, and always has followed, that our behaviour and
+feelings towards them are guided by views and principles not
+religious; and that by this fatal separation of what God has joined
+together, our worship and religious services become superstitious,
+while our life and actions become worldly, in the bad sense of the
+term, low principled, and profane.</p>
+<p>If this is not so clear when put into a general form, it will be
+plain enough when I show it in that particular example which we are
+concerned with here. Nowhere, I believe, is the temptation stronger
+to lose sight of one another in our religious exercises, and
+especially in our Communion. Our serious thoughts in turning to
+God, turn away almost instinctively from our companions about us.
+Practically, as far as the heart is concerned, we are a great deal
+too apt to go to the Lord's table each alone. But consider how much
+we lose by this. We are necessarily in constant relations with one
+another; some of those relations are formal, others are trivial; we
+connect each other every day with a great many thoughts, I do not
+say of unkindness, but yet of that indifferent character which is
+no hindrance to any unkindness when the temptation to it happens to
+arise. This must always be the case in life; business,
+neighbourhood, pleasure,--the occasions of most of our intercourse
+with one another,--have in them nothing solemn or softening: they
+have in themselves but little tendency to lead us to the love of
+one another. Now, if this be so in the world, it is even more so
+here; your intercourse with one another is much closer and more
+constant than what can exist in after life with any but the members
+of your own family; and yet the various relations which this
+intercourse has to do with, are even less serious and less
+softening than those of ordinary life in manhood. The kindliness of
+feeling which is awakened in after years between two men, by the
+remembrance of having been at school together, even without any
+particular acquaintance with each other, is a very different thing
+from the feeling of being at school with each other now. I do not
+wonder, then, that any one of you, when he resolves to come to the
+Holy Communion, should rather try to turn away his thoughts from
+his companions, and to think of himself alone as being concerned in
+what he is going to do. I do not wonder at it; but, then, neither
+do I wonder that, when the Communion is over, and thoughts of his
+companions must return, they receive little or no colour from his
+religious act so lately performed; that they are as indifferent as
+they were before, as little furnishing a security against neglect,
+or positive unkindness, or encouragement of others to evil. Depend
+upon it, unless your common life is made a part of your religion,
+your religion will never sanctify your common life.</p>
+<p>Now consider, on the one hand, what might be the effect of going
+to the Holy Communion with a direct feeling that, in that
+Communion, we, though many, were all brought together in Christ
+Jesus. And first, I will speak of our thoughts of those who are
+partakers of the Communion with us, then of those who are not. When
+others are gone out, and we who are to communicate are left alone
+with each other, then, if we perceive that there are many of us,
+the first natural feeling is one of joy, that we are so many; that
+our party,--that only true and good party to which we may belong
+with all our hearts,--that our party,--that Christ's party, seems
+so considerable. Then there comes the thought, that we are all met
+together freely, willingly, not as a matter of form, to receive the
+pledges of Christ's love to us, to pledge ourselves to him in
+return. If we are serious, those around us may be supposed to be
+serious too; if we wish to have help from God to lead a holier
+life, they surely wish the same; if the thought of past sin is
+humbling us, the same shame is working in our brethren's bosoms; if
+we are secretly resolving, by God's grace, to serve him in earnest,
+the hearts around us are, no doubt, resolving the same. There is
+the consciousness, (when and where else can we enjoy it?) that we
+are in sympathy with all present; that, coloured merely by the
+lesser distinctions of individual character, one and the same
+current of feeling is working within us all. And, if feeling this
+of our sympathy with one another, how strongly is it heightened by
+the thought of what Christ has done for us all! We are all loving
+him, because he loved us all; we are going together to celebrate
+his death, because he died for us all; we are resolving all to
+serve him, because his Holy Spirit is given to us all, and we are
+all brought to drink of the same Spirit. Then let us boldly carry
+our thoughts a little forward to that time, only a short hour
+hence, when we shall again be meeting one another, in very
+different relations; even in those common indifferent relations of
+ordinary life which are connected so little with Christ. Is it
+impossible to think, that, although we shall meet without these
+walls in very different circumstances, yet that we have seen each
+other pledging ourselves to serve Christ together? if the
+recollection of this lives in us, why should it not live in our
+neighbour? If we are labouring to keep alive our good resolutions
+made at Christ's table, why should we think that others have
+forgotten them? We do not talk of them openly, yet still they exist
+within us. May not our neighbour's silence also conceal within his
+breast the same good purposes? At any rate, we may and ought to
+regard him as ranged on our side in the great struggle of life; and
+if outward circumstances do not so bring us together as to allow of
+our openly declaring our sympathy, yet we may presume that it still
+exists; and this consciousness may communicate to the ordinary
+relations of life that very softness which they need, in order to
+make them Christian.</p>
+<p>Again, with regard to those who go out, and do not approach to
+the Lord's table. With some it is owing to their youth; with others
+to a mistaken notion of their youth; with others to some less
+excusable reason, perhaps, but yet to such as cannot yet exclude
+kindness and hope. But having once felt what it is to be only with
+those who are met really as Christians, our sense of what it is to
+want this feeling is proportionably raised. Is it sad to us to
+think that our neighbour does not look upon us as fellow
+Christians? is it something cold to feel that he regards us only in
+those common worldly relations which leave men in heart so far
+asunder? Then let us take heed that we do not ourselves feel so
+towards him. We have learnt to judge more truly, to feel more
+justly, of our relations to every one who bears Christ's name: if
+we forget this, we have no excuse; for we have been at Christ's
+table, and have been taught what Christians are to one another. And
+let our neighbour be ever so careless, yet we know that Christ
+cares for him; that his Spirit has not yet forsaken him, but is
+still striving with him. And if God vouchsafes so much to him, how
+can we look upon him as though he were no way connected with us?
+how can we be as careless of his welfare, as apt either to annoy
+him, or to lead him into evil, or to take no pains to rescue him
+from it, as if he were no more to us than the accidental inhabitant
+of the same place, who was going on his way as we may be on ours,
+neither having any concern with the other?</p>
+<p>And, now, is it nothing to learn so to feel towards those around
+us; to have thus gained what will add kindness and interest to all
+our relations with others; and, in the case of many, will give an
+abiding sense of the truest sympathy, and consequently greater
+confidence and encouragement to ourselves? Be sure that this is not
+to profane the Lord's Supper, but to use it according to Christ's
+own ordinance. For though the thoughts of which I have been
+speaking, have, in one sense, man and not God for their object, yet
+as they do not begin in man but in Christ, and in his love to us
+all, so neither do they, properly speaking, rest in man as such,
+but convert him, as it were, into an image of Christ: so that their
+end, as well as their beginning, is with Him. I do earnestly desire
+that you would come to Christ's table, in order to learn a
+Christian's feelings towards one another. This is what you want
+every day; and the absence of which leads to more and worse faults
+than, perhaps, any other single cause. But, then, this Christian
+feeling towards one another, how is it to be gained but by a
+Christian feeling towards Christ? and where are we to learn
+brotherly love in all our common dealings, but from a grateful
+thought of that Divine love towards us all which is shown forth in
+the sacrament of the Lord's Supper; inasmuch as, so often as we eat
+that bread and drink that cup, we do show the Lord's death till He
+come.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXXI."></a>LECTURE XXXI.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>LUKE i. 3, 4.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>It seemed good to me also, having had perfect
+understanding of<br>
+all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order,
+most<br>
+excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of<br>
+those things wherein thou hast been instructed</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>These words, from the preface to St. Luke's Gospel, contain in
+them one or two points on which it may be of use to dwell; and not
+least so at the present time, when they are more frequently brought
+under our notice than was the case a few years ago. On a subject
+which we never, or very rarely hear mentioned, it may be difficult
+to excite attention; and, as a general rule, there is little use in
+making the attempt. But when names and notions are very frequently
+brought to our ears, and in a degree to our minds, then it becomes
+important that we should comprehend the matter to which they relate
+clearly and correctly; and a previous interest respecting it may be
+supposed to exist, which make further explanation acceptable.</p>
+<p>St. Luke tells Theophilus that it seemed good to him to write in
+order an account of our Lord's life and death, that Theophilus
+might know the certainty of those things in which he had been
+instructed; and this, as a general rule, might well describe one
+great use of the Scripture to each of us, as individual members of
+Christ's Church--it enables us to know the certainty of the things
+in which we have been instructed. We do not, in the first instance,
+get our knowledge of Christ from the Scriptures,--we, each of us, I
+mean as individuals,--but from the teaching of our parents first;
+then of our instructors, and from books fitted for the instruction
+of children; whether it be the Catechism of the Church, or books
+written by private persons, of which we know that there are many.
+But as our minds open, and our opportunities of judging for
+ourselves increase, then the Scripture presents itself to acquaint
+us with the certainty of what we had heard already; to show us the
+original and perfect truth, of which we have received impressions
+before, but such as were not original nor perfect; to confirm and
+enforce all that was good and true in our early teaching; and if it
+should so happen that it contained any thing of grave error mixed
+with truth, then to enable us to discover and reject it.</p>
+<p>It is apparent, then, that the Scripture, to do this, must have
+an authority distinct from, and higher than, that of our early
+teaching; but yet it is no less true that it comes to us
+individually recommended, in the first instance, by the authority
+of our early teaching, and received by us, not for its own sake,
+but for the sake of those who put it into our hands. What child
+can, by possibility, go into the evidence which makes it reasonable
+to believe the Bible, and to reject the authority of the Koran? Our
+children believe the Bible for our sakes; they look at it with
+respect, because we tell them that it ought to be respected; they
+read it, and learn it, because we desire them; they acquire a habit
+of veneration for it long before they could give any other reason
+for venerating it than their parents' authority. And blessed be God
+that they do; for, as it has been well said, if we their parents do
+not endeavour to give our children habits of love and respect for
+what is good and true, Satan will give them habits of love for what
+is evil: for the child must receive impressions from without; and
+it is God's wisdom that he should receive these impressions from
+his parents, who have the strongest interest in his welfare, and
+who have besides that instinctive parental love which, more surely,
+as well as more purely, than any possible sense of interest, makes
+them earnestly desire their child's good.</p>
+<p>But when our children are old enough to understand and to
+inquire, do we then content ourselves with saying that they must
+take our word for it; that the Bible is true because we tell them
+so? Where is the father who does not feel, first, that he himself
+is not fitted to be an infallible authority; and, secondly, that if
+he were, he should be thwarting the providence of God, who has
+willed not simply that we should believe with understanding. He
+gladly therefore observes the beginnings of a spirit of inquiry in
+his son's mind, knowing that it is not inconsistent with a belief
+in truth, but is a necessary step to that which alone in a man
+deserves the name of belief--a belief, namely, sanctioned by
+reason. With what pleasure does he point out to his son the grounds
+of his own faith! how gladly does he introduce him to the critical
+and historical evidence for the truth of the Scriptures, that he
+may complete the work which he had long since begun, and deliver
+over the faith which had been so long nursed under the shade of
+parental authority, to the care of his son's own conscience and
+reason!</p>
+<p>We see clearly that our individual faith, although grounded in
+the first instance on parental authority, yet rests afterwards on
+wholly different grounds; namely, on the direct evidence in
+confirmation of it which is presented to our own minds. But with
+regard to those who are called the Fathers of the Church, it is
+contended sometimes that we do receive the Scriptures, in the end,
+upon their authority: and it is argued, that if their authority is
+sufficient for so great a thing as this, it must be sufficient for
+every thing else; that if, in short, we believe the Scriptures for
+their sake, then we ought also to believe other things which they
+may tell us, for their sake, even though they are not to be found
+in Scripture.</p>
+<p>In the argument there is this great fault, that it misstates the
+question at the outset. The authority of the Fathers, as they are
+called, is never to any sound mind the only reason for believing in
+the Scriptures; I think it is by no means so much as the principle
+reason. It is one reason, amongst many; but not the strongest. And,
+in like manner, their authority in other points, if there were
+other and stronger reasons which confirmed it,--as in many cases
+there are,--is and ought to be respected. But, because we lay a
+certain stress upon it, it does not follow that we should do well
+to make it bear the whole weight of the building. Because we
+believe the Scriptures, partly on the authority of the Fathers, as
+they are called, but more for other reasons, does it follow that we
+should equally respect the authority of the Fathers when there are
+no other reasons in support of it, but many which make against
+it?</p>
+<p>In truth, however, the internal evidence in favour of the
+authenticity and genuineness of the Scriptures is that on which the
+mind can rest with far greater satisfaction than on any external
+testimonies, however valuable. On one point, which might seem most
+to require other evidence--the age, namely, and origin of the
+writings of the New Testament--it has been wonderfully ordered that
+the books, generally speaking, are their own witness. I mean that
+their peculiar language proves them to have been written by persons
+such as the apostles were, and such as the Christian writers
+immediately following them were not; persons, namely, whose
+original language and habits of thinking were those of Jews, and to
+whom the Greek in which they wrote was, in its language and
+associations, essentially foreign. I do not dwell on the many other
+points of internal evidence: it is sufficient to say that those who
+are most familar with such inquiries, and who best know how little
+any external testimony can avail in favour of a book where the
+internal evidence is against it, are most satisfied that the
+principal writings of the New Testament do contain abundantly in
+themselves, for competent judges, the evidence of their own
+genuineness and authenticity.</p>
+<p>That the testimony of the early Christian writers goes along
+with this evidence and confirms it, is matter indeed of sincere
+thankfulness; because more minds, perhaps, are able to believe on
+external evidence than on internal. But of this testimony of the
+Christian writers it is essential to observe, that two very
+important points are such as do indeed affect this particular
+question much, but yet do not confer any value on the judgment of
+the witness in other matters. When a very early Christian writer
+quotes a passage from the New Testament, such as we find it now in
+our Bibles, it is indeed an argument, which all can understand,
+that he had before him the same Bible which we have, and that
+though he lived so near to the beginning of the gospel, yet that
+some parts of the New Testament must have been written still nearer
+to it. This is an evidence to the age of the New Testament,
+valuable indeed to us, but implying in the writer who gives it no
+qualities which confer authority; it merely shows that the book
+which he read must have existed before he could quote it. A second
+point of evidence is, when a very early Christian writer quotes any
+part of the New Testament as being considered by those to whom he
+was writing as an authority. This, again, is a valuable piece of
+testimony; but neither does it imply any general wisdom or
+authority in the writer who gives it: its value is derived merely
+from the age at which he lived, and not from his personal
+character. And with regard to the general reception of the New
+Testament by the Christians of his time, which, in the case
+supposed, he states as a fact, no doubt that the general opinion of
+the early Christians, where, as in this case, we can be sure that
+it is reported correctly, is an authority, and a great authority,
+in favour of the Scriptures: combined, as it is, with the still
+stronger internal evidence of the books themselves, it is
+irresistible. But it were too much to argue that, therefore, it was
+alone sufficient, not only when destitute of other evidence, but if
+opposed to it; and especially if it should happen to be opposed to
+that very Scripture which we know they acknowledged to be above
+themselves, but which we do not know that they were enabled in all
+cases either rightly to interpret or faithfully to follow.</p>
+<p>When, therefore, we are told that, as we believe the Scriptures
+themselves upon tradition, so we should believe other things also,
+the answer is, that we do not believe the Scriptures either
+entirely or principally, upon what is called tradition; but for
+their own internal evidence; and that the opinions of the early
+Christians, like those of other men, may be very good in certain
+points, and to a certain degree, without being good in all points,
+and absolutely; that many a man's judgment would justly weigh with
+us, in addition to other strong reasons in the case itself, when we
+should by no means follow it where we were clear that there were
+strong reasons against it. This, indeed, is so obvious, that it
+seems almost foolish to be at the trouble of stating it; but what
+is so absurd in common life, that the contrary to it is a mere
+truism, is, unfortunately, when applied to a subject with which we
+are not familiar, often considered as an unanswerable argument, if
+it happen to suit our disposition or our prejudices.</p>
+<p>But, although the Scripture is to the Church, and to the
+individual, too, who is able to judge for himself, the only
+decisive authority in matters of faith, yet we must not forget that
+it comes to us as it did to Theophilus, to persuade us of the
+certainty of things in which we have been already instructed; not
+to instruct from the beginning, by itself alone, those to whom its
+subject is entirely strange: in other words, it is and ought to be
+the general rule, that the Church teaches, and the Scripture
+confirms that teaching: or, if it be in any part erroneous,
+reproves it. For some appear to think, that by calling the
+Scripture the sole authority in matters of faith, we mean to
+exclude the Church altogether; and to call upon every man,--nay,
+upon every child,--to make out his own religion for himself from
+the volume of the Scriptures. The explanation briefly given is
+this; that while the Scripture alone teaches the Church, the Church
+teaches individuals; and that the authority of her teaching, like
+that of all human teaching, whether of individuals or societies,
+varies justly according to circumstances; being received, as it
+ought to be, almost implicitly by some, as a parent's is by a
+child, and by others listened to with respect, as that which is in
+the main agreeable to the truth, but still not considered to be,
+nor really claiming to be received as, infallible. But this part of
+the subject will require to be considered by itself on another
+occasion.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXXII."></a>LECTURE XXXII.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>LUKE i. 3,4.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>It seemed good to me also, having had perfect
+understanding of<br>
+all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order,
+most<br>
+excellent Theophilus, that than mightest know the certainty of<br>
+those things in which thou hast been instructed</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>I said at the conclusion of my lecture, last Sunday, that when
+we of the Church of England assert that the Scripture is the sole
+authority in matters of faith, we by no means mean to exclude the
+office of the Church, nor to assert any thing so extravagant, as
+that it is the duty of every person to sit down with the volume of
+the Scriptures in his hand, and to make out from that alone,
+without listening to any human authority, what is the revelation
+made by God to man. But I know that many are led to adopt notions
+no less extravagant of the authority of the Church and of
+tradition,--even to the full extent maintained by the Church of
+Rome,--because they see no other refuge from what appears to them,
+and not unreasonably, so miserable and so extreme a folly; for an
+extreme and a most miserable folly doubtless it would be, in any
+one, to throw aside all human aid except his own; to disregard
+alike the wisdom of individuals, and the agreeing decisions of
+bodies of men; to act as if none but himself had ever loved truth,
+or had been able to discover it; and as if he himself did possess
+both the will and the power to do so.</p>
+<p>This is so foolish, that I doubt whether any one ever held such
+notions, and, much more, whether be acted upon them. But is it more
+wise to run from one form of error into its opposite, which,
+generally speaking, is no less foolish and extravagant? What should
+we say of a man who could see no middle course between never asking
+for advice, and always blindly following it; between never
+accepting instruction upon any subject, and believing his
+instructors infallible? And this last comparison, with our
+particular situation here, will enable us, I think, by referring to
+our own daily experience, to understand the present question
+sufficiently. The whole system of education supposes, undoubtedly,
+that the teacher, in those matters which he teaches, should be an
+authority to the taught: a learner in any matter must rely on the
+books, and on the living instructors, out of which and from whom he
+is to learn. There are difficulties, certainly, in all learning;
+but we do not commonly see them increased by a disposition on the
+part of the learner to question and dispute every thing that is
+told him. There is a feeling rather of receiving what he is told
+implicitly; and, by so doing, he learns: but does it ever enter
+into his head that his teacher is infallible? or does any teacher
+of sane mind wish him to think so? And observe, now, what is the
+actual process: the mind of the learner is generally docile,
+trustful, respectful towards his teacher; aware, also, of his own
+comparative ignorance. It is certainly most right that it should be
+so. But this really teachable and humble learner finds a false
+spelling in one of his books; or hears his teacher, from oversight,
+say one word in his explanation instead of another: does he cease
+to be teachable and humble,--is it really a want of childlike
+faith, and an indulgence of the pride of reason, if he decides that
+the false spelling was an error of the press; that the word which
+his teacher used was a mistake? Yet errors, mistakes, of how
+trifling a kind soever, are inconsistent with infallibility; and
+the perceiving that they are errors is an exercise of our
+individual judgment upon our instructors. To hear some men talk, we
+should think that no boy could do so without losing all humility
+and all teachableness; without forthwith supposing that he was able
+to be his own instructor.</p>
+<p>I have begun on purpose with an elementary case, in which a very
+young boy might perceive an error in his books, or in his
+instructors, without, in any degree, forfeiting his true humility.
+But we will now go somewhat farther: we will take a more advanced
+student, such as the oldest of those among you, who are still
+learners, and who know that they have much to learn, but who,
+having been learners for some time past, have also acquired some
+knowledge. In the books which they refer to, and from which they
+are constantly deriving assistance, do they never observe any
+errors in the printing? do they never find explanations given,
+which they perceive to be imperfect, nay, which they often feel to
+be actually wrong? And, passing from books to living instructors,
+should we blame a thoughtful, attentive, and well-informed pupil,
+because his mind did not at once acquiesce in our interpretation of
+some difficult passage; because he consulted other authorities on
+the subject, and was unsatisfied in his judgment; the reason of his
+hesitation being, that our interpretation appeared to him to give
+an unsatisfactory sense, or to be obtained by violating the rules
+of language? Is he proud, rebellious, puffed up, wanting in a
+teachable spirit, without faith, without humility, because he so
+ventures to judge for himself of what his teacher tells him? Does
+such a judging for himself interfere, in the slightest degree, with
+the relation between us and him? Does it make him really cease to
+respect us? or dispose him to believe that he is altogether beyond
+the reach of our instruction? Or are we so mad as to regard our
+authority as wholly set at nought, because it is not allowed to be
+infallible? Doubtless, it would be wholly set at nought, if we had
+presumed to be infallible. Then it would not be merely that, in
+some one particular point, our decision had been doubted, but that
+one point would involve our authority in all; because it would
+prove, that we had set up beforehand a false claim: and he who does
+so is either foolish, or a deceiver; there is apparent a flaw
+either in his understanding, or in his principles, which
+undoubtedly does repel respect.</p>
+<p>Let me go on a step farther still. It has been my happiness to
+retain, in after years, my intercourse with many of those who were
+formerly my pupils; to know them when their minds have been
+matured, and their education, in the ordinary sense of the term,
+completed. Is not the relation between us altered then still more?
+Is it incompatible with true respect and regard, that they should
+now judge still more freely, in those very points, I mean, in which
+heretofore they had received my instructions all but implicitly?
+that on points of scholarship and criticism, they should entirely
+think for themselves? Or does this thinking for themselve mean,
+that they will begin to question all they had ever learnt? or sit
+down to forget purposely all their school instructions, and make
+out a new knowledge of the ancient languages for themselves? Who
+does not know, that they whose minds are most eager to discern
+truth, are the very persons who prize their early instruction most,
+and confess how much they are indebted to it; and that the exercise
+of their judgments loads them to go on freely in the same path in
+which they have walked so long, here and there it may be departing
+from it where they find a better line, but going on towards the
+same object, and generally in the same direction?</p>
+<p>What has been the experience of my life,--the constantly
+observing the natural union between sense and modesty; the perfect
+compatibility of respect for instruction with freedom of judgment;
+the seeing how Nature herself teaches us to proportion the
+implicitness of our belief to our consciousness of ignorance: to
+rise gradually and gently from a state of passively leaning, as it
+were, on the arm of another, to resting more and more of our weight
+on our own limbs, and, at last, to standing alone, this has
+perpetually exemplified our relations, as individuals, to the
+Church. Taught by her, in our childhood and youth, under all
+circumstances; taught by her, in the great majority of instances,
+through our whole lives; never, in any case, becoming so
+independent of her as we do in riper years, of the individual
+instructor of our youth; she has an abiding claim on our respect,
+on our deference, on our regard: but if it should be, that her
+teaching contained any thing at variance with God's word, we should
+perceive it more or less clearly, according to our degrees of
+knowledge; we should trust or mistrust our judgment, according to
+our degree of knowledge; but in the last resort, as we suppose that
+even a young boy might be sure that his book was in error, in the
+case of a manifest false print, so there may be things so certainly
+inconsistent with Scripture, that a common Christian may be able to
+judge of them, and to say that they are like false prints in his
+lesson, they are manifest errors, not to be followed, but avoided.
+So far he may be said to judge of his teacher; but not the less
+will he respect and listen to her authority in general, unless she
+has herself made the slightest error ruinous to her authority by
+claiming to be in all points, great or small, alike infallible.</p>
+<p>Men crave a general rule for their guidance at all times, and
+under all circumstances; whereas life is a constant call upon us to
+consider how far one general rule, in the particular case before
+us, is modified by another, or where one rule should be applied,
+and where another. To separate humility from idolatry, conscience
+from presumption, is often an arduous task: to different persons
+there is a different besetting danger; so it is under different
+circumstances, and at different times. Every day does the seaman,
+on a voyage, take his observations, to know whereabouts he is; he
+compares his position with his charts; he considers the direction
+of the wind, and the set of the current, or tide; and from all
+these together, he judges on which side his danger lies, on what
+course he should steer, or how much sail he may venture to carry.
+This is an image of our own condition: we cannot have a general
+rule to tell us where we should follow others, and where we must
+differ from them; to say what is modesty, and what is indolence;
+what is a proper deference to others, and what is a trusting in man
+so far, that it becomes a want of trust in God. Only, we are sure
+that these are points which we must decide for ourselves; the human
+will must be free, so far as other men are concerned. If we say,
+that we will implicitly trust others, then there is our decision,
+which no one could have made for us, and which is our own choice as
+to the principle of our lives; for which choice, we each of us, and
+no one else in all the world, must answer at the judgment-seat of
+God. Only, in that word there is our comfort, that, for our conduct
+in so doubtful a voyage as that of life, amidst so many conflicting
+opinions, each courting our adherence to it,--amidst such a variety
+of circumstances without, and of feelings within, and on which,
+notwithstanding, our condition for all eternity must depend,--we
+shall be judged, not by erring man, not by our own fallible
+conscience, but by the all-wise, and all-righteous God. With him,
+after all, even in the very courts of his holy Church, we yet, in
+one sense, must each of us live alone. On his gracious aid, given
+to our own individual souls, and determining our own individual
+wills, depends the character of our life here and for ever.
+Trusting to him, praying to him, we shall then make use of all the
+means that his goodness has provided for us; we shall ask counsel
+of friends; we shall listen to teachers; we shall delight to be in
+the company of God's people, of one mind, and of one voice, with
+the good and wise of every generation; we shall be afraid of
+leaning too much to our own understanding, knowing how it is
+encompassed with error; but knowing that other men are encompassed
+with error also, and that we, and not they, must answer for our
+choice before Christ's judgment, we must, in the last resort, if
+our conscience and sense of truth cannot be persuaded that other
+men speak according to God's will,--we must follow our own inward
+convictions, though all the world were to follow the contrary.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXXIII."></a>LECTURE XXXIII.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>JOHN ix. 29.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>We know that God spake unto Moses; as for this fellow,
+we know not from whence he is</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>The questions involved in the conversations recorded in this
+chapter, are of great practical importance. Not perhaps of
+immediate practical importance to all in this present congregation;
+but yet sure to be of importance to all hereafter, and of
+importance to many at this actual moment. Nay, they are of
+importance to those who, from their youth, might be thought to have
+little to do with them, either where the mind is already anxious
+and inquiring beyond its years, or where it happens to be exposed
+to strong party influences, or that its passions are likely to be
+engaged on a particular side, however little the understanding may
+be interested in the matter. In fact, in religious knowledge, as in
+other things, the omissions of youth are hard to make up in
+manhood; they who grow up with a very small knowledge of the
+Scriptures, and with no understanding of any of the questions
+connected with them, can with difficulty make up for this defect in
+after years; they become, according to the influences to which,
+they may happen to be subjected, either unbelieving or
+fanatical.</p>
+<p>If we were to question the youngest boy about the language held
+in this chapter by the Pharisees, and by the man who had been born
+blind, we should, no doubt, be answered, that what the Pharisees
+said, was wrong; and what the man born blind said, was right. This
+would be the answer which it would be thought proper to give;
+because it would be perceived that the Pharisees' language
+expressed unbelief in Christ; and that the man born blind was
+expressing gratitude and faith towards him. Nor, indeed, should we
+expect a young boy to go much farther than this; for such general
+impressions are, at his age, as much many times as can be looked
+for. But it is strange to observe how much this want of
+understanding outlasts the age of boyhood; how apt men are to judge
+according to names, and to see no farther: to say, that the
+language of the Pharisees was wrong, because they find it employed
+against Christ; but yet to use the very same language themselves,
+whilst they think that they are all the while speaking for
+Christ.</p>
+<p>But in this conversation between the Pharisees and the blind
+man, there are, indeed, as I said, points involved of very great
+importance; it contains the question as to the degree of weight to
+be attached to miracles; and the question, no less grave, with what
+degree of tenacity we should reject what claims to be a new truth,
+because it seems to be at a variance with supposed old truths to
+which we have been long accustomed to cling with undoubting
+affection.</p>
+<p>The question as to the weight of miracles is contained in the
+sixteenth verse. Some of the Pharisees said, This man is not of
+God, because he keepeth not the Sabbath day. Others said, How can a
+man that is a sinner do such miracles? That is to say, the first
+party rejected the miracles because they seemed to be wrought in
+favour of a supposed false doctrine; the other accepted the
+doctrine, because it seemed warranted to their belief by the
+miracles.</p>
+<p>The second question is contained in the words of the text, "We
+know that God spake to Moses; as for this fellow, we know not from
+whence he is." We have been taught from our childhood, and have the
+belief associated with every good and pious thought in us, that God
+spake to Moses, and gave him the law as our rule of life; but as
+for this fellow, we know not from whence he is. His works may be
+wonderful, his words may be specious; but we never heard of him
+before, and we cannot tear up all the holiest feelings of our
+nature to receive a new doctrine. We will hold to the old way in
+which, we were taught by our fathers to walk, and in which they
+walked before us.</p>
+<p>This last question is one which, as we well know, is continually
+presented to our minds. No one says, that the Pharisees were right,
+any more than those very Pharisees thought that their fathers were
+right who had killed the prophets. But as our Lord told them, that
+they were in truth the children in spirit of those who had killed
+the prophets; because, although they had been taught to condemn the
+outward form of their fathers' action, they were repeating it
+themselves in its principles and spirit; so many of those who
+condemn the Pharisees are really their exact image, repeating now
+against the truths of their own days the very same arguments which
+the Pharisees used against the truths of theirs.</p>
+<p>For the arguments of these Pharisees, both as regards miracles,
+and as regards the suspicion with which we should look on a
+doctrine opposed to the settled opinions of our lives, have in
+fact, in both cases, a great mixture of justice in them; and it is
+this very mixture which we may hope beguiled them; and also
+beguiles those, who in our own days repeat their language.</p>
+<p>For most certain it is that the Scripture itself supposes the
+possibility of false miracles. The case is especially provided
+against in Deuteronomy. It there says, "If there arise among you a
+prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder,
+and the sign or the wonder come to pass whereof he spake unto thee,
+saying, Let us go after other gods which thou hast not known, and
+let us serve them: thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that
+prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the Lord your God proveth
+you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart
+and with all your soul." Observe how nearly this comes to the
+language of the Pharisees, "This man is not of God, because he
+keepeth not the Sabbath day." "Here," they might have said, "is the
+very case foreseen in the Scriptures: a prophet has wrought a sign
+and a wonder, which is at the same time a breach of God's
+commandments. God has told us that such signs are not to be heeded,
+that he does but prove us with them to see whether we love him
+truly: knowing that where there is a love of him, the heart will
+heed no sign or wonder, how great soever, which would tempt it to
+think lightly of his commandments." Shall we say that this is not a
+just interpretation of the passage in Deuteronomy? shall we say
+that this is the language of unbelief or of sin? or, rather, shall
+we not confess that it is in accordance with God's word, and holy,
+and faithful, and true? And yet this most just language led those
+who used it to reject one of Christ's greatest miracles, and to
+refuse the salvation of the Holy One of God. Can God's truth be
+contrary to itself? or can truth and goodness lead so directly to
+error and to evil?</p>
+<p>Now, then, where is the solution to be found? for some solution
+there must be, unless we will either condemn a most true principle,
+or defend a most false conclusion. The error lies in confounding
+God's moral law with his law of ordinances; precisely the same
+error which led the Jews to stone Stephen. The law had undoubtedly
+commanded that he who blasphemed God should be stoned; the Jews
+called Stephen's speaking against the holy place and against the
+law blasphemy against God, and they murdered God's faithful servant
+and Christ's blessed martyr. Even so the law had said, Let no
+miracle be so great as to tempt you to forsake God: the Jews
+considered the forsaking the law of the Sabbath to be a forsaking
+of God, and they said that Christ's miracle was a work of Satan.
+There is no blasphemy into which we may not fall, no crime from
+which we shall be safe, if we do not separate in our minds most
+clearly such laws as relate to moral and eternal duties, and such
+as relate to outward or positive ordinances, even when commanded or
+instituted by God himself. It is most false to say that the fact of
+their being commanded sets them on a level with each other. So long
+as they are commanded to us, it is no doubt our duty to obey them
+equally: but the difference between them is this, that whereas the
+first are commanded to us and to our children for ever, and no
+possible evidence can be so great as to persuade us that God has
+repealed them; (for the utmost conceivable amount of external
+testimony, such as that of miracles, could only lead to
+madness;--the human mind might, conceivably, be overwhelmed by the
+conflict, but should never and could never be tempted to renounce
+its very being, and lie against its Maker;) the others, that is,
+the commands to observe certain forms and ordinances, are in their
+nature essentially temporary and changeable: we have no right to
+assume that they will be continued, and therefore a miracle at any
+time might justly require us to forsake them; and not only an
+outward miracle, but the changed circumstances of the times may
+speak God's will no less clearly than a miracle, and may absolutely
+make it our duty to lay aside those ordinances, which to us
+hitherto, and to our fathers before us, were indeed the commands of
+God.</p>
+<p>Now let us take the other question,--which may indeed be called
+a question as to the allowableness of resting confidently in truth
+already gained, without consenting to examine the claims of
+something asserting itself to be a new truth, yet which seems to
+interfere with the old. Is nothing within us to be safe from
+possible doubt, or is everything? Or is it here, as in the former
+case, that there are truths so tried and so sacred that it were
+blasphemy to question them; while there are others, often closely
+intermixed with these, which are not so sacred, because they are
+not eternal; which may and ought to be examined when occasion
+requires; and which may be laid aside, or exchanged rather, for
+some higher truth, if it shall reasonably appear that their work is
+done, and that if we retain them longer they will change their
+character, and become no longer true but false. "David having
+served his own generation by the will of God, fell asleep, and was
+gathered unto his fathers, and saw corruption; but He whom God
+raised again saw no corruption." This is the difference between
+positive ordinances and moral: the first serve their appointed
+number of generations by the will of God, and then are gathered to
+their fathers, and perish; the latter are by the right hand of God
+exalted, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.</p>
+<p>"We know," said the Jews, "that God spake to Moses; but for this
+fellow, we know not from whence he is." There was a time when their
+fathers had held almost the very same language to Moses: "they
+refused him, saying Who made thee a ruler and a judge over us?" But
+now they knew that God had spoken to Moses, but were refusing Him
+who was sent unto them after Moses. God had spoken unto Moses, it
+was most true: he had spoken to him and given him commandments
+which were to last for ever; and which Christ, so far from undoing,
+was sent to confirm and to perfect; he had spoken to him other
+things, which were not to last for ever, but yet which were not to
+be cast away with dishonour; but having, in the fulness of time,
+done their work, were then, like David, to fall asleep. All that
+was required of the Jews, was not to reject as blasphemy a doctrine
+which should distinguish between these two sorts of truths: which
+in no way requires to believe that God had not spoken to
+Moses,--which, on the contrary, maintained that he had so
+spoken,--but only contended that he has also, in these last days,
+spoken unto us by his Son; and that his Son, bearing the full image
+of Divine authority, might well be believed if he spoke of some
+parts of Moses's law as having now fulfilled their work, seeing
+that they were such parts only as, by their very nature, were not
+eternal: they had not been from the beginning, and therefore they
+would not live on to the end.</p>
+<p>The practical conclusion is, that, whilst we hold fast, with an
+undoubting and unwavering faith, all truths which, by their very
+nature, are eternal, and to deny which is no other than to speak
+against the Holy Ghost, we should listen patiently to, and pass no
+harsh judgment on, those who question other truths not necessarily
+eternal, while they declare that they are, to the best of their
+consciences, seeking to obey God and Christ. When I say, that we
+should listen patiently, and not pass harsh judgments upon those
+who question such points, I say it without at all meaning that we
+should agree with them. It would be monstrous indeed, to suppose
+that old opinions are never combated wrongly; that old institutions
+are never pronounced to have lived out their appointed time, when,
+in fact, they are still in their full vigour. But the language of
+those who defend the doctrines and the ordinances of the Church
+may, and often does, partake of the sin of that of the Pharisees,
+even when those against whom they are contending, are not, like
+Christ, bringing in a new and higher truth, but an actual error. To
+point out that it is an error, to defend ourselves and the Church
+from it, is most right, and most highly our duty; but it is neither
+right, nor our duty, but the very sin of the Pharisees, to put it
+down merely by saying, "As for this fellow, we know not from whence
+he is;" to treat the whole question as an impiety, and to deny the
+virtues and the holiness of those who maintain it, because they
+are, as we call it, "speaking blasphemous things against the holy
+place and against the law." The mischief of this to ourselves is
+infinite; nay, in its extreme, it leads to language which is
+fearfully resembling the very blasphemy against the Holy Ghost;
+for, when we say, as has been said, that where men's lives are
+apparently good and holy, and their doctrines are against those of
+the Church, the holiness is an unreal holiness, and that we cannot
+see into their hearts, this is, in fact, denying the Holy Spirit's
+most infallible sign--the fruits of righteousness; and being
+positive rather of the truth of the Church, than of the truth of
+God. There is nothing so certain as that goodness is from God;
+nothing so certain as that sin is not from God; nothing so certain
+as that sin is not from him. To deny, or doubt this, is to dispute
+the greatest assurance of truth that God has ever been pleased to
+give to us. It does not, by any means, follow, that all good men
+are free from error, nor that error is less error because good men
+hold it; but to make the error which is less certain, a reason for
+disputing the goodness which is more certain, is the spirit, not of
+God, nor of the Church of God, but of those false zealots who put
+an idol in God's place; of such as rejected Christ and murdered
+Stephen.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXXIV."></a>LECTURE XXXIV.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>1 CORINTHIANS xiv, 20.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>Brethren, be not children in understanding: howbeit,<br>
+in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>It would be going a great deal too far to say, that they who
+fulfilled the latter part of this command, were sure also to fulfil
+the former; that they who were men in understanding, were,
+therefore, likely to be children in malice. But the converse holds
+good, with remarkable certainty, that they who are children in
+understanding, are proportionally apt to be men in malice: that is,
+in proportion as men neglect that which should be the guide of
+their lives, so are they left to the mastery of their passions; and
+as nature and outward circumstances do not allow these passions to
+remain as quiet and as little grown as they are in childhood,--for
+they are sure to ripen without any trouble of ours,--so men are
+left with nothing but the evils of both ages, the vices of the man,
+and the unripeness and ignorance of the child.</p>
+<p>It is indeed a strange and almost incredible thing, that any
+should ever have united in their minds the notions of innocence and
+ignorance as applied to any but literal children: nor is it less
+strange, that any should ever have been afraid of their
+understanding, and should have sought goodness through prejudice,
+and blindness, and folly. Compared with this, their conduct was
+infinitely reasonable who weakened and tormented their bodies in
+order to strengthen, as they thought, their spiritual nature. Such
+conduct was, by comparison, reasonable because there is a great
+deal of bodily weakness and discomfort, which really does not
+interfere with the strength and purity of our character in itself,
+although, by abridging our activity, it may lessen our means of
+usefulness. But what should we say of a man who directed his ill
+usage of his body to that part of our system which is most closely
+connected with the brain; who were purposely to impair his nervous
+system, and subject himself to those delusions and diseased views
+of things which are the well-known result of any disorder there?
+Yet this is precisely what they do who seek to mortify and lower
+their understanding. It is as impossible that they should become
+better men by such a process, as if they were literally to take
+medicines to affect their nerves or their brain, in the hope of
+becoming idiotic or delirious. It is, in fact, the worst kind of
+self-murder; for it is a presumptuous destroying of that which is
+our best life, because we dread to undergo those trials which God
+has appointed for the perfecting both of it and of us.</p>
+<p>But from the wilful blindness of these men, let us turn to the
+Christian wisdom of the Apostle: "In malice be ye children, but in
+understanding be men." Let us turn to what is recorded of our Lord
+in his early life, at that age when, as man, the cultivation of his
+understanding was his particular duty--that he was found in the
+temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and
+asking them questions: not asking questions only, as one too
+impatient or too vain to wait for an answer, or to consider it when
+he had received it; not hearing only, as one careless and passive,
+who thinks that the words of wisdom can improve his mind by being
+indolently admitted through the ears, with no more effort than his
+body uses when it is refreshed by a cooling air, or when it is laid
+down in running water; but both hearing and asking questions;
+docile and patient, yet active and intelligent; knowing that the
+wisdom was to be communicated from without, but that it belongs to
+the vigorous exercise of the power within, to apprehend it, and to
+convert it to nourishment.</p>
+<p>Now, what is recorded of our Lord for our example, as to the
+manner in which he received instruction when delivered by word of
+mouth, this same thing should we do with that instruction, which,
+as is the ease with most of ours, we derive from reading. Put the
+Scriptures in the place of those living teachers whom Christ was so
+eager to hear; the words of Christ, and of his Spirit, instead of
+those far inferior guides from whom, notwithstanding, he, for our
+sakes, once submitted to learn; and what can be more exact than the
+application of the example? Let us be found in God's true temple,
+in the communion of his faithful people,--his universal Church,
+sitting down as it were, surrounded by the voices of the oracles of
+God--prophets, apostles, and Jesus Christ himself: let us be found
+with the record of these oracles in our hands, both reading them
+and asking them questions.</p>
+<p>It is quite clear that what hinders a true understanding of
+anything is vagueness; and it is by this process of asking
+questions that vagueness is to be dispelled: for, in the first
+place, it removes one great vagueness, or indistinctness, which is
+very apt to beset the minds of many; namely, the not clearly seeing
+whether they understand a thing or no; and much more, the not
+seeing what it is that they do understand, and what it is which
+they do not. Take any one of our Lord's parables, and read it even
+to a young child: there will be something of an impression
+conveyed, and some feelings awakened; but all will be indistinct;
+the child will not know whether he understands or no, but will soon
+gain the habit of supposing that he does, as that is at once the
+least troublesome, and the least unpleasant to our vanity. And this
+same vague impression is often received by uneducated persons from
+reading or bearing either the Scriptures or sermons; it is by no
+means the same as if they had read or heard something in an unknown
+language; but yet they can give no distinct account of what they
+have heard or read; they do not know how far they understand it,
+and how far they do not. Here, then, is the use of "asking
+questions,"--asking questions of ourselves or of our book, I mean,
+for I am supposing the case of our reading, when it can rarely
+happen that we have any living person at hand to give us an answer.
+Now, taking the earliest and simplest state of knowledge, it is
+plain that the first question to put to ourselves will be, "Do I
+understand the meaning of all the words and expressions in what I
+have been reading?" I know that this is taking things at their very
+beginning, but it is my wish to do so. Now, so plain and forcible
+is the English of our Bible, generally speaking, that the words
+difficult to be understood will probably not be many: yet some such
+do occur, owing, in some instances, to a change of the language; as
+in the words "let," and "prevent," which now signify, the one, "to
+allow, or suffer to be done," and the other "to stop, or hinder,"
+but which signified, when our translation was made, the first, "to
+stop or hinder," and the second, "to be beforehand with us;" as in
+the prayer, "Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings, with thy most
+gracious favour;" the meaning is, "Let thy favour be with us
+beforehand, O Lord, in whatever we are going to do." In other
+instances the words are difficult because they are used in a
+particular sense, such as we do not learn from our common language;
+of which kind are the words "elect," "saints," "justification,"
+"righteousness," and many others. Now, if we ask ourselves "whether
+we understand these words or no," our common sense, when thus
+questioned, will readily tell us, whether we do or not; although if
+we had not directly asked the question, it might never have thought
+about it. Of course, our common sense cannot tell us what the true
+meaning is; that is a matter of information, and our means of
+gaining information may be more or less; but still, a great step is
+gained, the mist is partly cleared away; we can say to ourselves,
+"Here is something which I do understand, and here is something
+which I do not; I must keep the two distinct, for the first I may
+use, the second I cannot; I will mark it down as a thing about
+which I may get explanation at another time; but at present it is a
+blank in the picture, it is the same as if it were not there."
+This, then, is the first process of self-questioning, adapted, as I
+have already said, to those whose knowledge is most elementary.</p>
+<p>Suppose, however, that we are got beyond difficulties of this
+sort--that the words and particular expressions of the Scriptures
+are mostly clear to us. Now, take again one of our Lord's parables;
+say, for instance, that of the labourers in the vineyard: we read
+it, and find that he who went to work at the eleventh hour received
+as much as he who had been working all the day. This seems to say,
+that he who begins to serve God in his old age shall receive his
+crown of glory no less than he who has served him all his life. But
+now try the process of self-questioning: what do I think that
+Christ means me to learn from this? what is the lesson to me? what
+is it to make me feel, or think, or do? If it makes me think that I
+shall receive an equal crown of glory if I begin to serve God in my
+old age, and therefore if it leads me to live carelessly, this is
+clearly making Christ encourage wickedness; and such a thought is
+blasphemy. He cannot mean me to learn this from it: let me look at
+the parable again. Who is it who is reproved in those words which
+seem to contain its real object? It is one who complains of God for
+having rewarded others equally with himself. Now this I can see is
+not a good feeling: it is pride and jealousy. In order, then to
+learn what the parable means me to learn, let me put myself in the
+position of those reproved in it. If I complain that others are
+rewarded by God as much as I am, it is altogether a bad feeling,
+and one which I ought to check; for I have nothing to do with God's
+dealings to others, let me think of what concerns myself. Here I
+have the lesson of the parable complete: and here I find it is
+useful for me. But if I take it for a different object, and suppose
+that it means to encourage waiting till the eleventh hour--waiting
+till we are old before we repent--we find that we make it only
+actually to be mischievous to us. And thus we gain a great piece of
+knowledge: namely, that the parables of our Lord are mostly
+designed to teach, some one particular lesson, with respect to some
+one particular fault: and that if we take them generally, as if all
+in them was applicable to all persons, whether exposed to that
+particular fault or not, we shall absolutely be in danger of
+deriving mischief from them instead of good. It is true, that in
+this particular parable, the gross wickedness of such an
+interpretation as I have mentioned is guarded against even in the
+story itself; because those who worked only at the eleventh hour
+are expressly said to have stood idle so long only because no man
+had hired them; their delay, therefore, was no fault of their own.
+But even if this circumstance had been left out, it would have been
+just the same; because the general rule is, that we apply to a
+parable only for its particular lesson, and do not strain it to any
+thing else. Had this been well understood, no one would have ever
+found so much difficulty in understanding the parable of the unjust
+steward.</p>
+<p>This is another great step towards the dispelling vagueness, to
+apply the particular lesson of each part of Scripture to that state
+of knowledge, or feeling, or practice in ourselves, which it was
+intended to benefit; to apply it as a lesson to ourselves, not as a
+general truth for our neighbours. And the very desire to do this,
+makes us naturally look with care to the object of every
+passage--to see to whom it was addressed, and on what occasion; for
+this will often surely guide us to the point that we want. But in
+order to do this, we must strive to clothe the whole in our own
+common language; to get rid of those expressions which to us convey
+the meaning faintly; and to put it into such others as shall come
+most strongly home to us. This I have spoken of on other occasions;
+and I have so often witnessed the bad effects of not doing so, that
+I am sure it may well bear to be noticed again; I mean the putting
+such words as "persecution," "the cares and riches of the world,"
+"the kingdom of God," "confessing Christ," "denying Christ," and
+many others, into a language which to us has more lively reality,
+which makes us manifestly see that it is of us, and of our common
+life, and of our dangers, that the scripture is speaking, and not
+only of things in a remote time and country, and under
+circumstances quite unlike our own. Therefore I have a strong
+objection to the use of what is called peculiarly religious
+language, because I am sure that it hinders us from bringing the
+matter of that language thoroughly home to us; our minds do not
+entirely assimilate with, it; or if they fancy that they do, it is
+only by their becoming themselves affected, and losing their sense
+of the reality of things around them. For our language is fixed for
+us, and we cannot alter it; and into that common language in which
+we think and feel, all truth must be translated, if we would think
+and feel respecting it at once rightly, clearly, and vividly. Happy
+is he, who, by practising this early, has imbued his own natural
+language with the spirit of God's wisdom and holiness; and who can
+see, and understand, and feel them the better, because they are so
+put into a form with which he is perfectly familiar.</p>
+<p>More might be said, very much more, but here I will now pause.
+In this world, wherein heavenly things are, after all, hard to
+seize and fix upon, we have great need that no mists of imperfect
+understanding darken them, over and above those of the corrupt
+will. To see them clearly, to understand them distinctly and
+vividly, may, indeed, after all be vain: a thicker veil may yet
+remain behind, and we may see and understand, and yet perish. Only
+the clear sight of God in Christ can be no light blessing; and
+there may be a hope, that understanding and approving with all our
+minds his excellent wisdom, the light may warm us as well as assist
+our sight; that we may see, and not in our vague and empty sense,
+but in the force of the scriptural meaning of the word,--may see,
+and so believe.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXXV."></a>LECTURE XXXV.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>MATTHEW xxvi. 45, 46.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>Sleep on now and take your rest; behold, the hour is at
+hand,<br>
+and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise,<br>
+let us be. going; behold, he is at hand that doth betray
+me</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>I take these verses for my text, in the first place, because
+some have fancied a difficulty in them, and have even proposed to
+alter the translation, and read the first words as a question, "Do
+ye still sleep and take your rest?" and because they are really a
+very good illustration of our Lord's manner of speaking, a manner
+which it is of the highest importance to us fully to understand.
+And, secondly, I take them as a text for the general lesson which
+they convey to us; their mixture of condemnation and mercy; their
+view, at once looking backwards and forwards, not losing sight of
+irreparable evils of a neglected past, nor yet making those evils
+worse by so dwelling upon them as to forget the still available
+future; not concealing from us the solemn truth, that what is done
+cannot be undone, yet warning us also not to undo by a vain despair
+that future which may yet be done to our soul's health.</p>
+<p>First, a difficulty has been fancied to exist in the words, as
+if our Lord had bade his disciples to do two contradictory things:
+telling them, first, to sleep on and take their rust, and then
+saying, "Rise, let us be going." And because in St. Luke's account,
+when our Lord comes to his disciples the last time, his words are
+given thus, "Why sleep ye? rise and pray, that ye enter not into
+temptation:" therefore, as I have said, his words in the text have
+been translated, "Are ye sleeping and resting for the remainder of
+the time?" Now, I should not take up your time with things of this
+sort, where I believe our common translation to be most certainly
+right, were it not for the sake of one or two general remarks,
+which I think may not be out of place. It is a general rule, that
+in passages not obscure, but appearing to contain some moral
+difficulty, if I may so speak; that is, something which seems
+inconsistent with our notions of God's holiness, or wisdom, or
+justice; something, in short, of a stumbling-block, which we fear
+may occasion a triumph to unbelievers; it is a rule, I say, that in
+passages of this kind the difficulty is not to be met by departing
+from the common-received translation. And the reason of this is
+plain; that had not the commonly received translation in such cases
+been clearly the right one, it would never have come to be commonly
+received. Amongst the thousands of interpreters of Scripture, all,
+from the earliest time, anxious to remove grounds of cavil from the
+adversaries of their faith, a passage would never have been
+translated so as to afford such a ground, if the right translation
+of it could have been different. Such places are especially those
+in which the common translation needs not to be suspected: and it
+is merely leading us astray from the true explanation of the
+apparent difficulty, when we thus attempt to evade it by tampering
+with the translation. A notable instance of this was afforded some
+few years since in a new translation of some of the books of the
+Old Testament; in which it was pretended that most of those points
+which had been most attacked by unbelievers were, in fact, mere
+mistranslations, and that the real meaning of the original was
+something totally different; and, in order to show the necessity of
+his alterations, the writer entirely allowed the objections of
+unbelievers to the common reading; and said that no sufficient
+answer had been or could be made to them. This was an extreme case,
+and probably imposed only on a very few: but less instances of the
+same thing are common: St. Paul's words about being baptized for
+the dead, have been twisted to all sorts of senses, from their
+natural and only possible meaning, because men could not bear to
+believe that the superstition of being baptized as proxies for
+another could have existed at a period which they were resolved to
+consider so pure: and so in the text, a force has been put upon the
+words which they cannot bear, in order to remove a supposed
+contradiction: and all that would have been gained by the change
+would be, to have one instructive illustration the less of our
+Lord's peculiar manner of discourse, and one instance the less of
+the inimitable way in which his language, addressed directly to the
+circumstances before him, contains, at the same time, a general
+lesson, for the use of all his disciples in all ages.</p>
+<p>Our Lord's habitual language was parabolical; I use the word in
+a wide sense, to include all language which is not meant to be
+taken according to the letter. Observe his conversation with the
+Samaritan woman; it begins at once with parable, "If thou hadst
+known who it was that asked of thee, saying, Give me to drink, thou
+wouldst have asked of him, and he would have given thee living
+water." And again, "Whoso drinketh of the water that I shall give
+him shall never thirst, but it shall be in him a well of water,
+springing up unto life eternal." This seems to have been, if I may
+venture to say so, the favourite language in which he preferred to
+speak; but when he found that he was not understood, then,
+according to the nature of the case, he went on in two or three
+different manners. When he, to whom all hearts were open, saw that
+the misunderstanding was wilful, that it arose out of a disposition
+glad to find an excuse, in his pretended obscurity, for not
+listening to him and obeying him, then, instead of explaining his
+language, he made it more and more figurative; more likely to be
+misunderstood, or to offend those whom he knew to be disposed
+beforehand to misunderstand and to be offended. A famous example of
+this may be seen in the sixth chapter of St. John; there he first
+calls himself the Bread of Life, and says, that whosoever should
+eat of that bread should live for ever: but when he found that the
+Jews cavilled at this language, instead of explaining it, he only
+added expressions yet more strongly parabolical; "Except ye eat the
+flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in
+you:" and he dwells on this image so long, that we find that many
+of his disciples, bent on interpreting it literally, and, in this
+sense, finding it utterly shocking, went back and walked no more
+with him. Again, when he found not a disposition to cavil, but yet
+a profound ignorance of his meaning, arising from a state of mind
+wholly unused to think of spiritual good and evil, he neither used,
+as to those who wilfully misunderstood him, language that would
+offend them still more, nor yet did he offer a direct explanation;
+but he broke off the conversation, and adopted another method of
+instruction. Thus, when the Samaritan woman, thinking only of
+bodily wants, answered him by saying, "Sir, give me this water,
+that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw," he neither goes on
+to speak to her in the same language, nor yet does he explain it;
+but at once addresses her in a different manner, saying, "Go, call
+thy husband, and come hither." Thirdly, when he was speaking to his
+own disciples, to whom it was given to know the mysteries of the
+kingdom of God, he generally explained his meaning,--at least so
+far as to prevent practical error,--when he found that they had not
+understood him. Thus, when he had said to them, "Beware of the
+leaven of the Pharisees, and of the leaven of Herod," and they
+thought only of leaven and of bread in the literal sense, he
+upbraids them, indeed, for their slowness, saying, "Are ye also yet
+without understanding?" but he goes on to tell them in express
+terms that he did not mean to speak to them of the leaven of bread.
+And the words of the text are an exactly similar instance: his
+first address is parabolical; that is, it is not meant to be taken
+to the letter; "Sleep on now, and take your rest," meaning, "Ye can
+now do me no good by watching, for the time is past, and he who
+betrayed me is at hand; ye might as well sleep on now and take your
+rest, for I need not try you any longer." But, as the time was
+really pressing, and there was a possibility that they might have
+misunderstood his words, and have really continued to sleep, he
+immediately added in different language, "Rise, let us be going;
+behold, he is at hand that doth betray me." We must be prepared,
+then, to find that our Lord's language, not only to the Jews at
+large, but even to his own disciples, is commonly parabolical; the
+worst interpretation which we can give to it is commonly the
+literal one. His conversation with his disciples, just before he
+went out to the garden of Gethsemane, as recorded in the
+thirteenth, and following chapters of St. John, is a most striking
+proof of this. If any one looks through them, he will find how many
+are the comparisons, and figurative manners of speaking, which
+abound in them, and how often his disciples were at a loss to
+understand his meaning, And he himself declares this, for, at the
+end of the sixteenth chapter, he says expressly, "These things I
+have spoken unto you in proverbs;"--that is, language not to be
+taken according to the letter;--"the time is coming when I will no
+more speak unto you in proverbs, but will show you plainly of the
+Father." And then, when he goes on to declare, what he never, it
+seems, had before told them in such express and literal language,
+"I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again I
+leave the world, and go to my Father," his disciples seem to have
+welcomed with joy this departure from his usual manner of speaking,
+and said immediately, "Lo! now speakest thou plainly, and speakest
+no proverb: now we know that thou knowest all things, and needest
+not that any man should ask thee: by this we believe that thou
+earnest forth from God."</p>
+<p>But let us observe what it is that he said: "A time is coming
+when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but shall show you
+plainly of the Father." That time came immediately. He spoke to
+them after his resurrection, opening their understandings to
+understand the Scriptures: he spoke yet more fully, by his Spirit,
+after the day of Pentecost, leading them into all truth. And what
+they thus heard in the ear, they proclaimed, according to his
+bidding, upon the house-tops. When the Holy Spirit brought to their
+remembrance all that he had said to them, and gave their minds a
+spiritual judgment, to compare what they thus had brought before
+them, to see his words in their true light and their true bearings,
+comparing spiritual things with spiritual, they were no niggards of
+this heavenly treasure; nor did they, according to the vain heresy
+of the worst corrupters of Christ's gospel, imitate and surpass
+that sin which they had so heavily judged in Ananias. They kept
+back no part-of that which they professed and were commanded to lay
+wholly and entirely at the feet of God's church. They did not so
+lie to the Holy Ghost, as to erect a wicked system of priestcraft
+in the place of that holy gospel of which they were ministers. They
+had no reserve of a secret doctrine for themselves and a chosen
+few, keeping in their own hands the key of knowledge, and opening
+only half of the door; but as they had freely received, so they
+freely gave; all that they knew, they taught to all: and so,
+through their blessed teaching, we too can understand our Lord's
+words as they were taught to understand them: and what is
+parabolical, is no longer on that account obscure, but full of
+light and of beauty, fulfilling the end for which it was chosen,
+the most effective of all ways of teaching, because the
+liveliest.</p>
+<p>I have left myself but little space to touch upon the second
+part of the subject--the general lesson conveyed in our
+Lord's-words to his disciples: "Sleep on now, and take your
+rest.--Rise; let us be going." How truly do we deserve the reproof;
+how thankfully may we accept the call. We have forfeited many
+opportunities which we would in vain recover; we have been careless
+when we should have been watchful; and that for which we should
+have watched, is now lost by our neglect; and it is no good to
+watch for it any more. Let us remember this, while it is called
+to-day; for how often is it particularly applicable to us here,
+from the passing nature of your stay amongst us! To both you and us
+too often belongs our Lord's remonstrance, "What, could ye not
+watch with me one hour?" So short a time as you stay here, could we
+not be watching with Christ that little period: from which, if well
+improved, there might spring forth a fruit so lasting? But, alas!
+we too often sleep it away: we do not all that we might do, nor do
+you; evil grows instead of good, till the time is past, and you
+leave us; and we may as well sleep on, and take our rest, so far as
+all that particular good was concerned--the improvement, namely, of
+your time at this place, for which we are alike set to watch. But
+are we to take the words of reproach literally? May we really sleep
+on, and take our rest? Oh vain and wilful folly, so to
+misunderstand! But, lest we should misunderstand, let us hear our
+Lord's next words: "Rise; let us be going," and that instantly: the
+time and opportunity already lost for ever is far more than
+enough.--"Rise; let us be going:" so Christ calls us; for he has
+still other work for us to do, for him, and with him. The future is
+yet our own, though the past be lost. We have sinned greatly and
+irreparably; but let us not do so yet again: other opportunities
+are afforded us; the disciples would not watch with him in the
+garden, but he calls them to go with him to his trial and his
+judgment; and one, we know, watched by him even on his cross:--so
+he calls to us; so he calls now; but he will not so call for ever.
+There will be a time when we might strike out the words, "Rise; let
+us be going;" they will concern us then no more. It is only said,
+"Sleep on now, and take your rest: all your watching time has been
+wasted, and you can now watch no more;" there remains only to
+sleep--to sleep that last sleep, from which we shall then never
+wake to God and happiness, but in which we shall be awake for ever
+to sin and to misery.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXXVI."></a>LECTURE XXXVI.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>2 CORINTHIANS v. 17, 18.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>Old things are passed away; behold, all things are
+become new: and<br>
+all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus
+Christ</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>I have, from time to time, spoken of that foolish misuse of the
+Scriptures, by which any one opening the volume of the Bible at
+random, and taking the first words which he finds, straightway
+applies them either to himself or to his neighbour; and then boasts
+that he has the word of God on his side, and that whosoever differs
+from him, is disputing and despising the word of God. The most
+extreme instances of this way of proceeding are so absurd, that
+they could not be noticed in this place becomingly; and these, of
+course, stand palpable to all, except to those who have allowed
+themselves to fall into them. But far short of these manifest
+follies, great errors have been maintained on general points, and
+great mistakes, whether of over presumption or of over fear, have
+been committed as to men's particular state, by quoting Scripture
+unadvisedly; by taking hold of its words to the neglect or actual
+violation of its spirit and real meaning. This is a great and a
+very common mischief, but yet there is a truth at the bottom of the
+error; it is true, that the greatest questions relating to God and
+to ourselves, may find their answer in the Scriptures; it is true,
+that if we search for this answer wisely we may surely find it.</p>
+<p>Consider the words of the text, and see how easily they may be
+perverted, if with no more ado we take them, as said of ourselves,
+each individually, and as containing to each of us a statement
+positive of truth. "Old things are passed away; behold, all things
+are become new." If we believe that this is God's word respecting
+each of us, what violence must we do to our memory of the past, and
+our consciousness of the present, if we do try to persuade
+ourselves that so total a change has taken place in each of us,
+that what we once were, we are no longer; that what we are, we once
+were not; and this not in some few particular points, but in the
+main character of our minds. Again, "All things are of God, who
+hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ." If we apply these
+words to each of us, what exceeding presumption would they breed!
+If all things in us and about us are now of God, what room can
+there be for sin? If God hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus
+Christ, what room can there be for fear or for danger? And thus,
+while we say we are quoting and believing the word of God, we do in
+fact turn it into a lie; we make it assert a falsehood as to our
+past state, and a falsehood as to our future state; we make it say,
+that our old nature is passed away, when it is not; that we have
+got a new nature when we have not; that we are reconciled to God,
+and therefore in safety, when we are, in fact, in the extremest
+danger.</p>
+<p>But it is easy to see that we have no right to apply to
+ourselves words written by St. Paul eighteen hundred years ago, and
+applied by him to other persons. I go, then, farther; and I say,
+that if every member of the church of Corinth, to which they were
+written, had applied them to himself in the manner which I have
+shown above, the words would in many instances have been perverted
+no less, and would have been made to state what was false, and not
+what was true. And the same may be said of many other passages of
+St. Paul's Epistles, which, having been similarly misinterpreted,
+have furnished matter for endless controversies, and on which
+opposite theories of doctrine have been fondly raised, each of them
+alike unchristian and untrue.</p>
+<p>Thus our present position is this:--that oftentimes by taking
+the representations of Scripture as true in fact, whether of
+ourselves or of others, we come to conclusions at once false and
+mischievous; being, as the case may be, either presumptuous, or
+fearful, or uncharitable, and claiming for each of these faults the
+sanction of the word of God.</p>
+<p>A similar mistake in interpreting human compositions, has led to
+faults of another kind. Assuming as before, in interpreting St.
+Paul's words, that the language of our Liturgy is meant to
+describe, as a matter of fact, the actual feelings and condition of
+those who use it, or for whom it is used; and seeing manifestly
+that these feelings and condition do not agree with the words; we
+do not here, as with the Scripture, do violence to our common sense
+and conscience, by insisting upon it that we agree with the words,
+but we find fault with the words as being at variance with the
+matter of fact. Some say that the language of the General
+Confession is too strong a statement of sin; that the language of
+the Communion Service, of the Baptismal Service, and above all, of
+the Burial Service, is too full of encouragement and of assurance;
+that men are not all so bad as to require the one, 'nor so good as
+to deserve the other; that in both cases it should be lowered, to
+agree with the actual condition of those who use it.</p>
+<p>Now it is worthy of notice, at any rate, that the self-same rule
+of interpretation applied to the Scripture and the Liturgy is found
+to suit with neither. We adhere positively to our rule: and thus,
+as we hold the words of Scripture sacred, we force common sense and
+conscience to make the facts agree with them; but not having the
+same respect for the words of the Liturgy, we complain of them as
+faulty and requiring alteration, because they do not agree with the
+facts.</p>
+<p>I will not enter into the question whether the Liturgy has done
+wisely or not in thus imitating the Scripture; but I do contend
+that, in point of fact, there is this resemblance between them. St.
+Paul's Epistles, in particular, although it is true of other parts
+of the Scripture also, contain, as does the Liturgy of our Church,
+a great many passages which, if taken either universally or even
+generally as containing a matter of fact, will lead us into certain
+error. Is it, therefore, so very certain that we do wisely in so
+interpreting them?</p>
+<p>With regard to our Liturgy I need not follow up the question
+now; but with regard to St. Paul, it is certain that he, in many
+parts of his Epistles, chooses to represent that which ought to be
+as that which actually was: he chooses to regard those to whom he
+is writing as being in all respects true Christians, as being
+worthy of their privileges, as answering to what God had done to
+them, as forming a church really inhabited by the Holy Spirit, and
+therefore being a true and living body of due proportions to Christ
+its Divine head. Nor does he trust exclusively to the common sense
+and conscience of those to whom he was writing to interpret his
+language correctly. He might Lave thought indeed that if he wrote
+to them as redeemed, justified, sanctified, as having all things
+new, as being the children of God, and the heirs of God, and the
+temples of the Holy Ghost, any individual who felt that he was none
+of these things, that sin was still mighty within him, and that he
+was sin's slave, would neither deny his own conscience, nor yet
+call St. Paul a deceiver; but would read in the difference between
+St. Paul's description of him and the reality, the exact measure of
+his own sin, and need of repentance and watchfulness. But he does
+not rely on this only: he notices sins as actually existing; he
+mingles the language of reproof and of anxiety, so as to make it
+quite clear that he did not mean his descriptions of their holiness
+and blessedness to apply to them all necessarily; he knew full well
+that they did not: but yet he knew also that, considering what God
+had done for them, it was monstrous that they should not be truly
+applicable.</p>
+<p>But why then, you will say, did he use such language? why did he
+call men forgiven, redeemed, saved, justified, sanctified?--he uses
+all these terms often as applicable generally to those to whom he
+was writing;--why did he call them so, when in fact they were not
+so? He called them so for the same reason which, made prophecy
+foretell blessings upon Israel of old, and on the Christian church
+afterwards, which were fulfilled on neither:--in order to declare,
+and keep ever before us, what God has done and is willing to do for
+us: what he fain would do for us, if we would but suffer him; what
+divine powers are offered to us, and we will not use them; what
+divine happiness is designed for us, and we will not enter into it.
+Let us ponder all the magnificence of the scriptural language,--the
+words of the text for example, not as describing what we are when
+we are full of sin; nor yet as mere exaggerated language, which
+must be brought down to the level of our present reality. Let us
+consider it as containing the words of truth and soberness; not one
+jot or one tittle needs to be abated; it must not be lowered to us,
+but we rather raised to it. It is a truth, it is the word of God,
+it is the seal of our assurance: it is that which good men of old
+would have welcomed with the deepest joy; which, to good men now is
+a source of comfort unspeakable. For it tells us that God has done
+for us, is doing, will do, all that we need; it tells us that the
+price of our redemption has been paid, the kingdom of heaven has
+been set open, the power to walk as God's children has been given:
+that so far as God is concerned we are redeemed, we are saved, we
+are sanctified; it is but our own fault merely that we are not all
+of these actually and surely.</p>
+<p>This is not a little matter to be persuaded of; if it be true,
+as I fear it is, that too many of us do not love God, is it not
+quite as true that we cannot believe that God loves us? Have we any
+thing like a distinct sense of the words of St. John, "We love God
+because he first loved us?" We believe in the love of our earthly
+friends; those who have so lately left their homes have no manner
+of doubt that their parents are interested in their welfare, though
+absent; that they will often think of them; and that, as far as it
+is possible at a distance from them, they are watching over their
+good, and anxious to promote it. The very name home implies all
+this; it implies that it is a place where those live who love us;
+and I do not question that the consciousness of possessing this
+love does, amidst all your faults and forgetfulnesses, rise not
+unfrequently within your minds, and restrain you from making
+yourselves altogether unworthy of it. Now, I say, that the words of
+the text, and hundreds of similar passages, are our assurance, if
+we would but believe them, that we have another home and another
+parent, by whom we are loved constantly and earnestly, who has done
+far more for us than our earthly parents can do. I grant that it is
+hard to believe this really; so infinite is the distance between
+God and us, that we cannot fancy that he cares for us; he may make
+laws for a world, or for a system, but what can he think or feel
+for us? It is, indeed, a thought absolutely overpowering to the
+mind; it may well seem incredible to us, judging either from our
+own littleness or our own forgetfulness; so hard as we find it to
+think enough of those to whom we are most nearly bound, how can the
+Most High. God think of us? But if there be any one particle of
+truth in Christianity, we are warranted in saying that God does
+love us; strange as it may seem, He, whom neither word nor thought
+of created being can compass; He, who made us and ten thousand
+worlds, loves each one of us individually; "the very hairs of our
+heads are all numbered." He so loved us, that he gave his
+only-begotten Son to die for us; and St. Paul well asks, "He that
+spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, will he
+not also with him freely give us all things?"</p>
+<p>Believe me, you could have no better charm to keep you safe
+through, the temptations of the coming half year, than this most
+true persuasion that God loves you. The oldest and the youngest of
+us may alike repeat to himself the blessed words, "God loves me;"
+"God loves me; God has redeemed me: God would dwell in my heart,
+that I might dwell in him: God has placed me in his church, has
+made me a member of Christ his own Son, has made me an inheritor of
+the kingdom of heaven." I might multiply words, but that one little
+sentence is, perhaps, more than all, "God loves me." Oh that you
+would believe him when he assures you of it, for then surely you
+would not fail to love him. But whether you believe it or not,
+still it is so: God loves every one of us; he loves each one of us
+as belonging to Christ his Son. He does love each, of us; let us
+not cast his love away from us, and refuse to love him in return;
+he does love each of us now, but there may be a time to each of
+us,--there will be, assuredly, if we will not believe that he loves
+us, when he will love us no more for ever.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXXVII."></a>LECTURE XXXVII.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>EZEKIEL xx. 49.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>Then said I, Ah, Lord God I they say of me, Doth he not
+speak parables</i>?</center>
+<br>
+<p>Nothing is more disheartening, if we must believe it to be true,
+than the language in which some persons talk of the difficulty of
+the Scriptures, and the absolute certainty that different men will
+ever continue to understand them differently. It is not, we are
+told, with the knowledge of Scripture as with that of outward
+nature: in the knowledge of nature, discoveries are from time to
+time made which set error on the one side, and truth on the other,
+absolutely beyond dispute; there the ground when gained is clearly
+seen to be so; and as fresh sources of knowledge are continually
+opening to us, it is not beyond hope that we may in time arrive
+infinitely near to the enjoyment of truth,--truth certain in
+itself, and acknowledged by all unanimously. But with Scripture, it
+is said, the case is far otherwise; discoveries are not to be
+expected here, nor does a later generation derive from, its
+additional experience any greater insight into the things of God
+than was enjoyed by the generations before it. And when we see that
+actually the complete Scriptures have been in the world not much
+less than eighteen hundred years; that within that period no other
+book has been so much studied; and yet that differences of opinion
+as to the matters spoken of in it have ever existed, and exist now
+as much as ever, what reasonable prospect is there, it is asked, of
+future harmony or of clearer demonstrations of divine truth; and
+will not the good on these points ever continue to differ from the
+good, and the wise to differ from the wise?</p>
+<p>This language, so discouraging as it is, may be heard from two
+very opposite parties, so that their agreement may appear to give
+it the more weight: it is used by men who are indifferent to
+religious truth, as an excuse for their taking no pains to discover
+what the truth really is; it is echoed back quite as strongly by
+another set of persons who wish to magnify the uncertainties of the
+Scripture in order to recommend more plausibly the guidance of some
+supposed authoritative interpreter of it. But yet it ought to be at
+any rate a painful work to any serious mind to be obliged to dwell
+not only on the obscurities of God's word, but on its perpetual and
+invincible obscurities; and, though an interpreter may be necessary
+if we know not the language of those with whom we are conversing,
+yet how much better would it be that we should ourselves know it:
+nay, and if we are told that we cannot know it, that our best
+endeavours will be unable to master it, the suspicion inevitably
+arises in our minds, that our pretended interpreter may be ignorant
+of it also; that he is not in truth better acquainted with it than
+we, but only more presumptuous or more dishonest.</p>
+<p>Still a statement may be painful, but at the same time true.
+There is undoubtedly something in such language as I have been
+alluding to, which appears to be confirmed by experience. There is
+no denying the fact, that the Scriptures have been a long time in
+the world; that they have been very generally and carefully read;
+and yet that men do differ exceedingly as to religious truth, and
+these differences do not seem to be tending towards agreement. It
+seems to me, there fore, desirable that every student of the
+Scriptures should know, as well as may be, what the exact state of
+the question is; for if the subject of his studies is really so
+hopelessly uncertain, it is scarcely possible that his zeal in
+studying it should not be abated; nay, could we wisely encourage
+him to bestow his pains on a hopeless labour?</p>
+<p>Now, in the very outset, there is this consideration which many
+of us here are well able to appreciate. We read many books written
+in dead languages, most of them more ancient than any part of the
+New Testament, some of them older than several of the books of the
+Old. We know well enough that these ancient books are not without
+their difficulties; that time, and thought, and knowledge are
+required to master them; but still we do not doubt that, with the
+exception of particular-passages here and there, the true meaning
+of these books may be discovered with undoubted certainty. We know,
+too, that this certainty has increased; that interpretations,
+which, were maintained some years ago, have been set aside by our
+improved knowledge of the languages and condition of the ancient
+world, quite as certainly as old errors in physical science have
+been laid to rest by later discoveries. Farther, our improved
+knowledge has taught us to distinguish what may be known from what
+may be probably concluded, and what is probable from what can
+merely be guessed at. When we come to points of this last sort, to
+passages which cannot be interpreted or understood, we leave them
+at once as a blank; but we enjoy no less, and understand with no
+less certainty, the greatest portions of the book which, contain
+them. And this experience, with regard to the works of heathen
+antiquity, makes it a startling proposition at the very outset,
+when we are told that with the works of Christian antiquity the
+case is otherwise.</p>
+<p>We thus approach the statement as to the hopless difficulty of
+Scripture, confirmed, as we are told it is, by the actual fact of
+the great disagreements among Christians, with a well-grounded
+mistrust of its soundness; we feel sure that there is something in
+it which is confused or sophistical. And considering the fact which
+appears to confirm it, I mean the actual differences between
+Christians and Christians, it soon appears by no means to bear out
+its supposed conclusion. For the differences between Christians and
+Christians by no means arise generally from the difficulty of
+understanding the Scripture aright, but from disagreement as to
+some other point, quite independent of the interpretation of the
+Scriptures. For example, the great questions at issue between us
+and the Roman Catholics turn upon two points,--Whether there is not
+another authority, in matters of Christianity, distinct from and
+equal to the Scriptures,--and whether certain interpretations of
+Scripture are not to be received as true, for the sake of the
+authority of the interpreter. Now, suppose for a moment, that the
+works of Plato or Aristotle were to us in the place of the
+Scriptures; and that the question was, whether these works of
+theirs could be understood with certainty; it would prove nothing
+against our being able to understand them, if, whilst we look to
+them alone, another man were to say, that, to his judgment, the
+works of other philosophers were no less authoritative; or, if he
+were to insist upon it, that the interpretations given by the
+scholiasts were always sure to be correct, because the scholiasts
+were the authorized interpreters of the text. No doubt our
+philosophical opinions and our practice might differ widely from
+such a man's; but the difference would prove nothing as to the
+obscurity of Plato's or Aristotle's text, because another standard
+had been brought in, distinct from their works, and from the
+acknowledged principles of interpretation, and thus led unavoidably
+to a different result.</p>
+<p>The same also is the case as to the questions at issue between
+the Church of England and many of the Dissenters. In these disputes
+it is notorious that the practice and authority of the church are
+continually appealed to, or, it may be, considerations of another
+kind, as to the inherent reasonableness of a doctrine; all which
+are, again, a distinct matter from the interpretation of Scripture.
+One of the greatest men of our time has declared, that, in the
+early part of his life, he did not believe in the divinity of our
+Lord; but he has stated expressly, that he never for a moment
+persuaded himself that St. Paul or St. John did not believe it;
+their language he thought was clear enough, upon the point; but the
+notion appeared to him so unreasonable in itself, that he
+disbelieved it in spite of their authority. It is manifest, that,
+in this case, great as the difference was between this great man's
+early belief and his later, yet it in no way arose from the
+obscurity of the Scripture. The language of the Scripture was as
+clear to him at first as it was afterwards; but in his early life
+he disbelieved it, while, in his latter life, he embraced it with
+all his heart and soul.</p>
+<p>It must not be denied, however, that we are here arrived at one
+of the causes which are likely, for a long time, to keep alive a
+false interpretation of Scripture, and which do not affect our
+interpretation of heathen writings. For most men, in such a case as
+I have referred to, when they do not believe the language of the
+Scripture, but wish to alter it, whether by omission or addition,
+do not deal so fairly with it as that great man did to whom I have
+alluded. They have neither his knowledge nor his honesty; a false
+interpretation is more easily disguised from them, owing to their
+ignorance, and they let their wishes more readily warp their
+judgment. Thus, they will not say as he did, "The Scripture clearly
+says so and so, but I cannot believe it;" they rather say, "This is
+very unreasonable and shocking, the Scripture cannot mean to say
+this;" or, "This is very pious and very ancient, the Scripture
+cannot but sanction this." And certainly, if men will so deal with
+it, there remains no certainty of interpretation then. But this is
+not the way that we deal with other ancient writings; and its
+unfairness and foolishness, if ever attempted to be practised
+there, are so palpable as to be ridiculous. No doubt it is
+difficult to convince men against their will; nevertheless, there
+is a good hope, that, as sound principles of interpretation are
+more generally known, they will put to shame a flagrant departure
+from them; and that those who try to make the Scripture say more or
+less than it has said, will be gradually driven to confess that
+Scripture is not their real authority; that their own notions in
+the one case, and the authority of the Church in the other case,
+have been the real grounds of their belief, to which they strove to
+make the Scriptures conform.</p>
+<p>Nothing that I have said is, in any degree, meant to countenance
+the opinions of those who talk of the Bible,--or rather, our
+translation of it,--being its own interpreter; meaning, that if you
+give a Bible to any one who can read, he will be able to understand
+it rightly. Even in this extravagance, there is indeed something of
+a truth. If a man were so to read the Bible, much he would,
+unquestionably, be able to understand; enough, I well believe, if
+honestly and devoutly used, to give him, if living in a desert
+island by himself, the knowledge of salvation. But when we talk of
+understanding the Bible, so as to be guided by it amidst the
+infinite varieties of opinion and practice which beset us on every
+side, it is the wildest folly to talk of it as being, in this
+sense, its own interpreter. Our comfort is, not that it can be
+understood without study, but with it; that the same pains which,
+enable us to understand heathen writings, whose meaning is of
+infinitely less value to us, will enable us, with God's blessing,
+to understand the Scriptures also. Neither do I mean, that mere
+intellectual study would make them clear to the careless or the
+undevout; but, supposing us to seek honestly to know God's will,
+and to pray devoutly for his help to guide us to it, then our study
+is not vain nor uncertain; the mind of the Scriptures may be
+discovered; we may distinguish plainly between what is clear, and
+what is not clear; and what is not clear will be found far less in
+amount, and infinitely less in importance, than what is clear. I do
+not say, that a true understanding of the Scriptures will settle at
+once all religious differences;--manifestly, it cannot; for,
+although I may understand them well, yet if a man maintains an
+opinion, or a practice, upon some other authority than theirs, we
+cannot agree together. Nevertheless, we may be allowed to hope and
+believe, that in time, if men could be hindered from
+misinterpreting the Scripture in behalf of their own opinions,
+their opinions themselves would find fewer supporters; for, as
+Christianity must come, after all, from our blessed Lord and his
+apostles, men will shrink from saying that that is no truth of
+Christianity which Christ and his apostles have clearly taught, or
+that that is a truth of Christianity, however ancient, and by
+whatever long line of venerable names supported, which they have as
+clearly, in our sole authentic records of them, not taught. It is
+not, therefore, without great and reasonable hope, that we may
+devote ourselves to the study of the Scriptures; and those habits
+of study which are cultivated here, and in other places of the same
+kind, are the best ordinary means of arriving at the truth. We are
+constantly engaged in extracting the meaning of those who have
+written in times past, and in a dead language. We do this according
+to certain rules, acknowledged as universally as the laws of
+physical science: these rules are developed gradually,--from the
+simple grammar which forms our earliest lessons, to the rules of
+higher criticism, still no less acknowledged, which are understood
+by those of a more advanced age. And we do this for heathen
+writings; but the process is exactly the same--and we continually
+apply it, also, for that very purpose--with what is required to
+interpret the Word of God. After all is done, we shall still, no
+doubt, find that the Scripture has its parables, its passages which
+cannot now be understood; but we shall find, also, that by much the
+larger portion of it may be clearly and certainly known; enough to
+be, in all points which really concern our faith and practice, a
+lantern to our feet, and an enlightener to our souls.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXXVIII."></a>LECTURE XXXVIII.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>ISAIAH v.1.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>Now will I sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved
+touching his vineyard</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>Whatever difficulties we may find in understanding and applying
+many parts of the prophetical Scriptures, yet every thinking person
+could follow readily enough, I suppose, the chapter from which
+these words are taken, as it was read in the course of this
+morning's service; and he would feel, while understanding it as
+said, immediately and in the first instance, of the Jewish Church
+or nation, seven centuries and a half before the birth of our Lord,
+that it was no less applicable to this Christian church and nation
+at the present period. We cannot, indeed, expect to find a minute
+agreement in particular points between ourselves and the Jews of
+old; the difference of times and circumstances renders this
+impossible; both they and we stand, on the one hand, in so nearly
+the same relation to God, and we both so share, on the other hand,
+in the same sinful human nature, that the complaints, and
+remonstrances of the prophets of old may often, be repeated, even
+in the very same words, by the Christian preacher now.</p>
+<p>If this be so, then the language of various parts of the service
+of the Church in this season of Advent ought to excite in us no
+small apprehension; for whilst the lessons from the Old Testament
+describe the evil state of the Jewish people in the eighth century
+before Christ, and threaten it with destruction, so the gospels for
+this day, and for last Sunday, speak of the evil state of the same
+people when our Lord was upon earth; and the chapter from which the
+gospel of this day is taken, contains, as we know, a full prophecy
+of the destruction that was, for the second time, going to
+overwhelm the earthly Jerusalem. We cannot but fear, therefore,
+that if our state now be like that of God's people of old, eight
+centuries before our Lord's coming, and again like their state at
+his coming: and if, after the first period, their city and temple
+were burnt, and they were carried captive to Babylon,--and again,
+after the second period, the city and temple were burnt again, and
+the people were dispersed, even to this day,--that, as the
+punishment has twice surely followed the sin, so it will not fail
+to find it out in this third case also.</p>
+<p>And be it remembered that the people, or church of God, as such,
+can receive their punishment only in this world: for, taken as a
+body, it is an institution for this world only. We each of us, no
+doubt, shall have our own separate individual judgment after death;
+and, in the mean time, our fortunes and our character often bear no
+just correspondence with each other. But nations and churches have
+their judgments here: and although God's long-suffering so suspends
+it for many generations that it may seem as if it would never fall,
+yet does it come surely at the last; and almost always we can
+ourselves trace the connexion between the sin and the punishment,
+and can see that the one was clearly the consequence of the other.
+And thus our church and nation may feel their national judgments in
+this world quite independently of the several personal judgments
+which will be passed upon us each hereafter individually, when we
+stand before Christ's judgment seat.</p>
+<p>I have thus ventured to bring the condition of the church as a
+body before our minds, although well knowing how much more we are
+concerned with the state of our own souls individually. Yet still
+the more general view is not without great use; and indeed it bears
+directly upon our individual state: our actions and our feelings
+having often a close connexion with, general church matters; and
+these actions and feelings being necessarily good or bad, according
+to the soundness of our judgment on the matter which occasions
+them. Besides which, it seems to me that general views, rather than
+what relates to particular faults, may be with most propriety dwelt
+on by those who have no direct connexion with the congregation
+which they are addressing.</p>
+<p>In the first place, then, whenever we think of the state and
+prospects of Christ's church, whether for good or for evil, it is
+most desirable that we should rightly understand our own relations
+to it. "The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel;"
+or, in the language of the New Testament, "Christ is the vine, and
+we are the branches." Men continually seem to forget that they are
+members of the church; citizens, to use St. Paul's expression, of
+Christ's kingdom, as much as ever they are citizens of their
+earthly country. But they speak of the church as they might speak
+of any useful institution or society in their neighbourhood, whose
+object they approved of, and which they were glad to encourage, but
+without becoming members of it, or identifying themselves with its
+success or failure. For example, they speak of the church as they
+might speak of the universities, which indeed are institutions of
+great importance to the whole country, but yet they are manifestly
+distinct from the mass of the community: they have their own
+members, their own laws, and their own government, with which,
+people in general have nothing to do. And so many persons speak and
+feel of the church, regarding it evidently as consisting only of
+the clergy: our common language, no doubt, helping this confusion,
+because we often speak of a man's going into the church when he
+enters into holy orders, just as if ordination were the admission
+into the church, and not baptism. Now, if the clergy did indeed
+constitute the church, then it would very much resemble the
+condition of the universities: for it would then be indeed a
+society very important to the welfare of the whole country, but yet
+one that was completely distinct, and which had its members, laws,
+and government quite apart: for men in general do not belong to the
+clergy, nor are they concerned directly in such canons as relate to
+the peculiar business of the clergy, nor does the bishop's
+superintendence, as commonly exercised, extend at all to them. But
+God designed for his church far more than that it should contain
+one order of men only, or that it should comprise commonly but one
+single individual in a parish, preaching to and teaching the rest
+of the inhabitants, like a missionary amongst a population of
+heathens. Look at St. Paul's account of the church of Corinth, in
+the 12th chapter of his 1st epistle to the Corinthians, and see if
+any two things can be more different than his notion of a church,
+and that which many people seem to entertain amongst us. Compare
+the living body there described, made up of so many various
+members, each having its separate office, yet each useful to and
+needed by the others and by the body,--and our notion of a parish
+committed to the charge of a single individual: as if all the
+manifold gifts which the church requires could by possibility be
+comprised in the person of any one Christian; as if the whole
+burden were to rest upon his shoulders, and the other inhabitants
+might regard the welfare of the church as his concern only, and not
+theirs.</p>
+<p>But not only is the church too often confined in men's notions
+to the single class or profession of the clergy, but it has been
+narrowed still farther by the practical extinction of one of the
+orders of the clergy itself. Where the laity have come to regard
+their own share in the concerns of the church as next to nothing,
+the order of deacons, forming, as it were, a link between the
+clergy and the laity, becomes proportionably of still greater
+importance. The business of the deacons, as we well know, was in an
+especial manner to look after the relief of the poor; and by
+combining this charge with the power of baptizing, of reading the
+Scriptures, and of preaching also, when authorized by the bishop,
+they exhibited the peculiar character of Christianity, that of
+sanctifying the business of this world by doing everything in the
+name of the Lord Jesus. No church, so far as we know, certainly no
+church in any town, existed without its deacons: they were as
+essential to its completeness as its bishop and its presbyters.</p>
+<p>Take any one of our large towns now, and what do we find? A
+bishop, not of that single town only, but of fifty others besides:
+one presbyter in each, church, and no deacons! Practically, and
+according to its proper character, the order of deacons is extinct;
+and those who now bear the name are most commonly found exercising
+the functions of presbyters; that is, instead of acting as the
+assistants of a presbyter, they are often the sole ministers of
+their respective parishes; they alone baptize; alone offer up the
+prayers of the church, alone preach the word: nothing marks their
+original character, except their inability to administer the
+communion; and thus, by a strange anomaly, the church in such
+parishes is actually left without any power of celebrating its
+highest act, that of commemorating the death, of Christ in the
+Lord's supper; and if it were not for another great evil, the
+unfrequent celebration of the Communion, the system could not go
+on: because the deacon would be so often obliged to apply to other
+ministers to perform that duty for him, that the inconvenience, as
+well as the unfitness, of the actual practice, would be manifest to
+every one.</p>
+<p>Again, what has become of church discipline? That it has
+perished, we all well know: but its loss is the consequence of that
+fatal error which makes the clergy alone constitute the church. It
+is quite certain that men will not allow the members of a single
+profession to exercise the authority of society; to create and
+define offences; to determine their punishment, and to be the
+judges of each particular offender. As long as the clergy are
+supposed to constitute the whole church, church discipline would be
+nothing but priestly tyranny. And yet the absence of discipline is
+a most grievous evil; and there is no doubt that, although it must
+be vain when opposed to public opinion, yet, when it is the
+expression of that opinion, there is nothing which it cannot
+achieve. But public opinion cannot enforce church discipline now,
+because that discipline would not be now the expression of the
+voice of the church, but simply of a small part of the church, of
+the clergy only.</p>
+<p>So deeply has this fatal error of regarding the clergy as the
+church extended itself, that at this moment a man's having been
+baptized is no security for his being so much as a believer in the
+truth of Christianity: no matter that he was made in his baptism a
+member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom
+of heaven; no matter that at a more advanced period of his life he
+was confirmed, and entered into the church by his own act and deed;
+still the church belongs to the clergy; they may hold such and
+such, language, and teach such and such doctrine; it would be very
+improper in them to do otherwise; and he has a great respect for
+the church, and would strenuously resist all its enemies, but
+truly, as for his own belief and his own conduct, these he will
+guide according to other principles, as imperative upon him as the
+rules of the church upon churchmen. Well indeed, do such men bear
+witness that they are not of the church, indeed; that their portion
+is not with God's people; that Christ is not their Saviour, nor the
+Holy Spirit their Comforter and Guide: but what blasphemy is it to
+call themselves friends of the church! as if Christ's church could
+have any friends except God and his holy angels: the church has its
+living and redeemed members; it may have those who are craving to
+be admitted within its shelter, being convinced that God is in it
+of a truth; but beyond these he who is not with it is against it;
+he who is not Christ's servant, serves his enemy.</p>
+<p>Farther, it is this same deadly error which is the root and
+substance of popery. There is no one abuse of the Romish system
+which may not be traced to the original and very early error of
+drawing a wide distinction between the clergy and the laity; of
+investing the former in such a peculiar degree with the attributes
+of the church that at last they retained them almost exclusively.
+In other words, the great evil of popery is, that it has destroyed
+the Christian church, and has substituted a priesthood in its room.
+This is the fault of the Greek church, almost as much as of the
+Roman; and the peculiar tenet of the Romish church, that the
+supreme government is vested in one single member of this
+priesthood, the Bishop of Rome, is in some respects rather an
+improvement of the system, than an aggravation of it. For even an
+absolute monarchy is a less evil than an absolute aristocracy; and
+an infallible Pope is no greater corruption of Christ's truth, than
+an infallible general council. The real evils of the system are of
+a far older date than the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome, and
+exist in places where that supremacy is resolutely denied. And if
+we attend to them carefully, we shall see that these evils have
+especially affected the Christian church as distinguished from the
+Christian religion. It is worth our while to attend to this
+distinction; for the Christian religion and the Christian church
+together, and neither without the other, form the perfect idea of
+Christianity. NOW, by the Christian religion, I mean the revelation
+of what God has done or will do for us in Christ; the great
+doctrines of the Trinity, the incarnation, the atonement, the
+resurrection, the presence of the Holy Spirit amongst us, and our
+own resurrection hereafter, to an existence of eternal happiness or
+misery. And these truths, if revealed to any single person living
+in an uninhabited island, might be abundantly sufficient for his
+salvation; if God disposed his heart to receive them, and to
+believe them earnestly, they would be the means of his overcoming
+his corrupt nature, and of passing from death unto life. But
+because men do not generally live alone, but with one another; and
+because they cannot but greatly hinder, or help each other by their
+mutual influence, therefore the Christian church was instituted for
+the purpose of spreading and furthering the growth of the Christian
+religion in men's hearts; and its various ministeries, its
+sacraments, its services and festivals, and its discipline were all
+designed with that object. And it is all these which popery has
+perverted; popery, whether in the Roman church or in the Greek
+church, or even in the Protestant church, for it has existed more
+or less in all. But even in the Roman church, where the perversion
+has been most complete, it has comparatively affected but little
+the truths of the Christian religion; all the great doctrines,
+which I mentioned, are held as by ourselves; the three creeds, the
+Apostles' creed, the Nicene, and the Athanasian, are used by the
+Roman church no less than by our own. Thus it often happens that we
+can read with great edification the devotional works of Roman
+Catholic writers, because in such works the individual stands apart
+from the Christian church, and is concerned only with the Christian
+religion: they show how one single soul, having learnt the tidings
+of redemption with faith, and thankfulness, improves them to its
+own salvation. But the moment that he goes out of his closet, and
+begins to speak and act amongst other men, then the corruption of
+popery shows itself. The Christian church was designed to help each
+individual towards a more perfect knowledge and love of God, by the
+counsel and example of his brethren, and by the practices which, he
+was to observe in their society. But the corrupt church exercises
+its influence for evil; it omits all the benefits to be derived
+from a living society, and puts forward, in their place, the
+observance of rites and ceremonies; knowledge and love are no
+longer looked to as the perfections of a Christian, but ignorance
+and blind obedience; not the mortifying all our evil passions
+universally, but the keeping them chained up, as it were under
+priestly control, to be let loose at the priest's bidding, against
+those whom he calls the church's enemies; that glorious church
+which he has destroyed and converted it into an idol temple, in
+that he, as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that
+he is God.</p>
+<p>To resist this great and monstrous evil, we must not exclaim
+against it under one of its forms only, even although that form
+exhibit it, indeed, in its most complete deformity; but we must
+strive against it under all its forms, remembering that its essence
+consists in putting the clergy in the place of the church; and
+taking from the great mass of the church their proper share in its
+government, in its offices, and therefore in its benefits, and in
+the sense of its solemn responsibilities. We speak often of church
+extension, meaning by this term the building new places of public
+worship, and the appointing additional ministers to preach the word
+and administer the sacraments. And no doubt such church extension
+is a good and blessed work, for it brings the knowledge of the
+truths of Christ's religion, and the benefit of his ordinances, the
+sacraments, within the reach of many who might otherwise have been
+without them. But it were a yet truer and more blessed church
+extension which should add to the building and the single minister,
+the real living church itself, with all its manifold offices and
+ministries, with its pure discipline, with its holy and loving
+sense of brotherhood. Without this, Christ will still, indeed, as
+heretofore, lay his hands on some few sick folk and heal them; his
+grace will convey the truths of his gospel to individual souls, and
+they will believe and be saved. But the fulfilment of prophecy; the
+triumph of Christ's kingdom; the changing an evil world into a
+world redeemed; this can only be done by a revival of the Christian
+church in its power, the living temple of the Holy Ghost, which,
+visibly to all mankind, in the wisdom and holiness of its members,
+showed that God was in the midst of it. It may be that this is a
+fond hope, which we may not expect to see realized; but looking on
+the one hand to the strong and triumphant language of prophecy, I
+know not how any hope of the advancement of Christ's kingdom can be
+more bold than God's word will warrant: and on the other, tracing
+the past history of the church, its gradual corruption may be
+deduced distinctly from one early and deadly mischief, which has
+destroyed its efficacy; so that, if this mischief can be removed,
+and the church become such as Christ designed it to be, it does not
+seem presumptuous to hope that his appointed instrument, working
+according to his will, should be enabled to obtain the full
+blessings of his promise.</p>
+<p>And now, in conclusion, if we ask, what should follow from all
+that has been said? what it should lead us all, if it be true, to
+feel or to do?--the answer is, that considerations of this sort are
+not such as lead at once to some distinct change in our conduct; to
+the laying aside some favourite sin, or the practising some long
+neglected duty. And yet the thoughts which I have endeavoured to
+suggest to your minds may, if dwelt upon, lead, in the end, to a
+very considerable alteration, both in our feelings and in our
+practice. First of all, it is not a little matter to be convinced
+practically, that it is baptism, and not ordination, which makes us
+members of the church; that it is by sharing in the communion of
+Christ's body and blood, not by being admitted into the ministry,
+that the privileges and graces of Christ's church are conferred
+upon us. And most wisely, and most truly, does our Church separate
+ordination from the two Christian sacraments, as an institution far
+less solemn, and conferring graces far less important: for the
+difference between a Christian and a Christian minister is but one
+of office, not of moral or spiritual advancement, not of greater or
+less nearness to God. One is our master, even Christ; and all we
+are brethren. Words which certainly do not imply that all members
+of the church are to have the same office, or that all offices are
+of equal importance and dignity; but which do imply, most
+certainly, that any attempt to convert the ministry into a
+priesthoood, that is, to represent them as standing, in any matter,
+as mediators between Christ and his people, or as being essentially
+the channel through which his grace must pass to his church, is
+directly in opposition to him; and is no better than idolatry. It
+was by baptism that we have all been engrafted into Christ's body;
+it is by the communion of his body and blood that we continue to
+abide in him; it is in his whole body, in his church, and not in
+its ministers, as distinct from his church, that his Holy Spirit
+abides.</p>
+<p>Thus feeling that we each are members of the church, that it is
+our highest country, to which we are bound with a far deeper love
+than to our earthly country, is not its welfare our welfare; its
+triumph our triumph; its failures our shame? We shall see, then,
+that church questions are not such merely, or principally, as
+concern the payment of the clergy, or their discipline, but all
+questions in which God's glory and man's sins or duties are
+concerned; all questions in the decision of which, there is a moral
+good and evil; a grieving of Christ's Spirit, or a conformity to
+him. And in such questions as concern the church, in the more
+narrow and common sense of the word, seeing that we are all members
+of the church, we should not neglect them, as the concern of
+others, but take an interest in them, and act in them, so far as we
+have opportunity, as in a matter which most nearly concerns
+ourselves. We feel that we have an interest in our country's
+affairs, although we are not members of the government or of the
+legislature; we have our part to perform, without at all
+overstepping the modesty of private life: and it is the constant
+influence of public opinion, and the active interest taken by the
+country at large in its own concerns, which, in spite of occasional
+delusion or violence, is mainly instrumental in preserving to us
+the combined vigour and order of our political constitution. And
+so, if we took an equal interest in the affairs of our divine
+commonwealth, our Christian church, and endeavoured as eagerly to
+promote every thing which tended to its welfare, and to put down
+and prevent every thing which might work it mischief, then the
+efforts of the clergy to advance Christ's kingdom would be
+incalculably aided, while there would then be no danger of our
+investing them with the duties and responsibilities which belong
+properly to the whole church; they could not then have dominion
+over our faith, nor by possibility become lords over God's
+heritage, but would be truly ensamples to the flock, the helpers of
+our joy, the glory of Christ.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XXXIX."></a>LECTURE XXXIX.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<center>COLOSSIANS iii. 17.</center>
+<br>
+<center><i>Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of
+the Lord<br>
+Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<p>This, like the other general rules of the gospel, is familiar
+enough to us all in its own words; but we are very apt to forbear
+making the application of it. In fact, he who were to apply it
+perfectly would be a perfect Christian: for a life of which every
+word and deed were said and done in the name of the Lord Jesus,
+would be a life indeed worthy of the children of God, and such as
+they lead in heaven; it would leave no room for sin to enter. The
+art of our enemy has been therefore to make us leave this command
+of the apostle's in its general sense, and avoid exploring, so to
+speak, all the wisdom contained within it. Certain actions of our
+lives, our religious services, the more solemn transactions in
+which we are engaged, we are willing to do in Christ's name; but
+that multitude of common words and ordinary actions by which more
+than sixty-nine out of our seventy years are filled, we take away
+from our Lord's dominion, under the foolish, and hypocritical
+pretence that they are too trifling and too familiar to be mixed up
+with the thought of things so solemn.</p>
+<p>This is one fault, and by far the most common. We make Christ's
+service the business only of a very small portion of our lives; we
+hallow only a very small part of our words and actions by doing
+them in his name. Unlike our Lord's own parable, where he compares
+Christianity to leaven hidden in the three measures of meal till
+the whole was leavened, the practice rather has been to keep the
+leaven confined to one little corner of the mass of meal; to take
+care that it should not spread so as to leaven the whole mass; to
+keep our hearts still in the state of the world when Christ visited
+it--"the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended
+it not;" that is, it did not take the light into itself so as to be
+wholly enlightened: the light shone, and there was a bright space
+immediately around it; but beyond there was a blackness of darkness
+into which it vainly strove to penetrate.</p>
+<p>On the other hand there has been, though, more rarely, a fault
+of the opposite sort. Men have said that they were in all their
+actions of ordinary life doing Christ's will, that they endeavoured
+always to be promoting some good object; and that the peculiar
+services of religion, as they are called, were useless, inasmuch as
+in spirit they are worshipping God always. This is a great error;
+because, as a matter of fact, it is false. We may safely say that
+no man ever did keep his heart right with God in his ordinary life,
+that no one ever became one with Christ, and Christ with him,
+without seeking Christ where he reveals himself, it may not be more
+really, but to our weakness far more sensibly, than in the common
+business of daily life. We may be happy if we can find Christ
+there, after we have long sought him and found him in the way of
+his own ordinances, in prayer, and in his holy communion. Even
+Christ himself, when on earth, though his whole day was undeniably
+spent in doing the will of his heavenly father,--although to him
+doubtless God was ever present in the commonest acts no less than
+in the most solemn,--yet even he, after a day spent in all good
+works, desired a yet more direct intercourse with God, and was
+accustomed to spend a large portion of the night in retirement and
+prayer.</p>
+<p>Without this, indeed, we shall most certainly not say and do all
+in the name of the Lord Jesus; much more shall we be in danger of
+forgetting him altogether. But supposing that we are not neglectful
+of our religious duties, in the common sense of the term, that we
+do pray and read the Scriptures, and partake of Christ's communion,
+yet it will often happen that we do not connect our prayers, nor
+our reading, nor our communion, with many of the common portions of
+our lives; that there are certain things in which we take great
+interest, which, notwithstanding, we leave, as it were, wholly
+without the range of the light of Christ's Spirit. There is a story
+told that, in times and countries where there prevailed the deepest
+ignorance, some who came to be baptized into the faith of Christ,
+converted from their heathen state, not in reality but only in
+name, were accustomed to leave their right arm unbaptized, with the
+notion that this arm, not being pledged to Christ's service, might
+wreak upon their enemies those works of hatred and revenge which in
+baptism they had promised to renounce. It is too much to say that
+something like this unbaptized right arm is still to be met with
+amongst us--that men too often leave some of their very most
+important concerns, what they call by way of eminence their
+business--their management of their own money affairs, and their
+conduct in public matters--wholly out of the control of Christ's
+law?</p>
+<p>Now at this very time public matters are engaging the thoughts
+of a great many persons all over the kingdom: and are not only
+engaging their thoughts, but are also become a practical matter, in
+which they are acting with great earnestness. Is it nothing that
+there should be so much, interest felt, so much pains taken, and
+yet that neither should be done in the name of the Lord Jesus, nor
+to the glory of God? It cannot be unsuited to the present season to
+dwell a little on this subject, which has nothing whatever to do
+with men's differences of opinion, but relates only to their
+acting, whatever be their political opinions, on Christian
+principles, and in a Christian spirit.</p>
+<p>First, consider what we pray for in the prayer which we have
+been using every week for the high court of parliament: we pray to
+God, that "all things may be so ordered and settled by the
+endeavours of parliament, upon the best and surest foundations,
+that peace and happiness, truth, and justice, religion and piety,
+may be established among us for all generations." These great
+blessings we beg of God to secure to us and to our children through
+the endeavours of parliament; if, therefore, we are any ways
+concerned in fixing who the persons are to be who are to compose
+this parliament, it is plain that there is put into our bands a
+high privilege, if you will; but along with it, as with all other
+privileges, a most solemn responsibility.</p>
+<p>But, if it be a solemn responsibility in the sight of God and of
+Christ, surely the act of voting, which many think so lightly of,
+and which many more consider a thing wholly political and worldly,
+becomes, indeed, a very important Christian duty, not to be
+discharged hastily or selfishly, in blind prejudice or passion,
+from self-interest, or in mere careless good nature and respect of
+persons; but deliberately, seriously, calmly, and, so far as we can
+judge our deceitful hearts, purely; not without prayer to Him who
+giveth wisdom liberally to those that ask it, that he will be
+pleased to guide them aright, to his own glory, and to the good of
+his people.</p>
+<p>Do I say that if we were to approach this duty in this spirit,
+and with such prayers, we should all agree in the same opinion, and
+all think the same of the same men? No, by no means; we might still
+greatly differ; but we should, at least, have reason to respect one
+another, and to be in charity with one another; and if we all
+earnestly desired and prayed to be directed to God's glory, and the
+public good, God, I doubt not, would give us all those ends which
+we so purely desired, although in our estimate of the earthly means
+and instruments by which they were to be gained, we had honestly
+differed from one another.</p>
+<p>Now, supposing that we had this conviction, that what we were
+going to do concerned the glory of God and the good of his people,
+and that we approached it therefore seriously as a Christian duty,
+yet it may be well that many men might feel themselves deficient in
+knowledge; they might not understand the great questions at issue;
+they might honestly doubt how they could best fulfil the trust
+committed to them. I know that the most ignorant man will feel no
+such hesitation if he is going to give his vote from fancy, or from
+prejudice, or from interest; these are motives which determine our
+conduct quickly and decisively. But if we regard our vote as a
+talent for which we must answer before God that we may well be
+embarrassed by a consciousness of ignorance; we may well be anxious
+to get some guidance from others, if we cannot find it in
+ourselves. Here, then, is the place for authority,--for relying,
+that is, on the judgment of others, when we feel that we cannot
+judge for ourselves. But is their no room for the exercise of much
+good sense and fairness in ourselves as to the choice of the person
+by whose judgment we mean to be guided? Are we so little accustomed
+to estimate our neighbours' characters rightly, as to be unable to
+determine whom we may consult with advantage? Surely if their be
+any one whom we have proved, in the affairs of common life, to be
+at once honest and sensible, to such an one we should apply when we
+are at a loss as to public matters. If there is such an one amongst
+our own relations or personal friends, we should go to him in
+preference: if not, we can surely find one such amongst our
+neighbours: and here the authority of such of our neighbours as
+have a direct connexion with us, if we have had reason to respect
+their judgment and their principles, may be properly preferred to
+that of indifferent persons; the authority of a master, or an
+employer, or of our minister, or of our landlord, may and ought,
+under such circumstances, to have a great and decisive influence
+over us.</p>
+<p>On the other hand, supposing again that we have this strong
+sense of the great responsibility in the sight of God of every man
+who has the privilege of a vote, we shall be exceedingly careful
+not to tempt him to sin by fulfilling this duty ill. Nothing can be
+more natural or more proper than that those who have strong
+impressions themselves as to the line to be followed in public
+matters, should be desirous of persuading others to think as they
+do; every man who loves truth and righteousness must wish that what
+he himself earnestly believes to be true and righteous, should be
+loved by others also; but the highest truth, if professed by one
+who believes it not in his heart, is to him a lie, and he sins
+greatly by professing it. Let us try as much as we will to convince
+our neighbours; but let us beware of influencing their conduct,
+when we fail in influencing their convictions: he who bribes or
+frightens his neighbour into doing an act which no good man would
+do for reward or from fear, is tempting his neighbour to sin; he is
+assisting to lower and to harden his conscience,--to make him act
+for the favour or from the fear of man, instead of for the favour
+or from the fear of God; and if this be a sin in him, it is a
+double sin in us to tempt him to it. Nor let us deceive ourselves
+by talking of the greatness of the stake at issue; that God's glory
+and the public good are involved in the result of the contest, and
+that therefore we must do all in our power to win it. Let us by all
+means do all that we can do without sin; but let us not dare to do
+evil that good may come, for that is the part of unbelief; it
+becomes those who will not trust God with the government of the
+world, but would fain guide its course themselves. Here, indeed,
+our Lord's command does apply to us, that we be not anxious; "Which
+of you by taking thought can add to his stature one cubit?" How
+little can we see of the course of Providence! how little can we be
+sure that what we judged for the best in public affairs may not
+lead to mischief! But these things are in God's hand; our business
+is to keep ourselves and our neighbours from sin, and not to do or
+encourage in others any thing that is evil, however great the
+advantages which we may fancy likely to flow from that evil to the
+cause even of the highest good.</p>
+<p>There is no immediate prospect, indeed, that we in this
+particular congregation shall be called upon to practise the duty
+of which I have been now speaking; and, indeed, it is for that very
+reason that I could dwell on the subject more freely. But what is
+going on all around us, what we hear of, read of, and talk of so
+much as we are many of us likely to do in the next week or two
+about political matters, <i>that</i> we should be accustomed to
+look upon as Christians: we should by that standard try our common
+views and language about it, and, if it may be, correct them: that
+so hereafter, if we be called upon to act, we may act, according to
+the Apostle's teaching, in the name of our Lord Jesus. And I am
+quite sure if we do so think and so act, although our differences
+of opinion might remain just the same, yet the change in ourselves,
+and I verily believe in the blessings which God would give us,
+would be more than we can well believe; and a general election,
+instead of calling forth, as it now does, a host of unchristian
+passions and practices, would be rather an exercise of Christian
+judgment, and forbearance, and faith, and charity; promoting,
+whatever was the mere political result, the glory of God, advancing
+Christ's kingdom, and the good of this, as it would be then truly
+called, Christian nation.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="NOTES."></a>NOTES.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>NOTE A. P. 5.</p>
+<p>"<i>But our path is not backwards but onwards</i>"--This thought
+is expressed very beautifully in lines as wise and true as they are
+poetical:</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i4">"Grieve not for these: nor dare lament</p>
+<p class="i5">That thus from childhood's thoughts we roam:</p>
+<p class="i4">Not backward are our glances bent,</p>
+<p class="i5">But forward to our Father's home.</p>
+<p class="i4">Eternal growth has no such fears,</p>
+<p class="i5">But freshening still with seasons past,</p>
+<p class="i4">The old man clogs its earlier years,</p>
+<p class="i5">And simple childhood comes the last."</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i5"><i>Burbridge's Poems</i>, p. 309.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>NOTE B. P. 102.</p>
+<p>"<i>Some may know the story of that German nobleman</i>,"
+&amp;c.--The Baron von Canitz. He lived in the latter half of the
+seventeenth century, and was engaged in the service of the electors
+of Brandenburg, both of the great elector and his successor. He was
+the author of several hymns, one of which is of remarkable beauty,
+as may be seen in the following translation, for the greatest part
+of which I am indebted to the kindness of a friend: but the
+language of the original, in several places, cannot be adequately
+translated in English.</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i4">Come, my soul, thou must be waking--</p>
+<p class="i4">Now is breaking</p>
+<p class="i5">O'er the earth another day.</p>
+<p class="i4">Come to Him who made this splendour</p>
+<p class="i4">See thou render</p>
+<p class="i5">All thy feeble powers can pay.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i4">From the stars thy course be learning:</p>
+<p class="i4">Dimly burning</p>
+<p class="i5">'Neath the sun their light grows pale:</p>
+<p class="i4">So let all that sense delighted</p>
+<p class="i4">While benighted</p>
+<p class="i5">From God's presence fade and fail.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i4">Lo! how all of breath partaking,</p>
+<p class="i4">Gladly waking,</p>
+<p class="i5">Hail the sun's enlivening light!</p>
+<p class="i4">Plants, whose life mere sap doth nourish,</p>
+<p class="i4">Rise and flourish,</p>
+<p class="i5">When he breaks the shades of night.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i4">Thou too hail the light returning,--</p>
+<p class="i4">Ready burning</p>
+<p class="i5">Be the incense of thy powers;--</p>
+<p class="i4">For the night is safely ended:</p>
+<p class="i4">God hath tended</p>
+<p class="i5">With His care thy helpless hours.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i4">Pray that He may prosper ever</p>
+<p class="i4">Each endeavour</p>
+<p class="i5">When thine aim is good and true;</p>
+<p class="i4">But that He may ever thwart thee,</p>
+<p class="i4">And convert thee,</p>
+<p class="i5">When thou evil wouldst pursue.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i4">Think that He thy ways beholdeth--</p>
+<p class="i4">He unfoldeth</p>
+<p class="i5">Every fault that lurks within;</p>
+<p class="i4">Every stain of shame gloss'd over</p>
+<p class="i4">Can discover,</p>
+<p class="i5">And discern each deed of sin.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i4">Fetter'd to the fleeting hours,</p>
+<p class="i4">All our powers,</p>
+<p class="i5">Vain and brief, are borne away;</p>
+<p class="i4">Time, my soul, thy ship is steering,</p>
+<p class="i4">Onward veering,</p>
+<p class="i5">To the gulph of death a prey.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i4">May'st thou then on life's last morrow,</p>
+<p class="i4">Free from sorrow,</p>
+<p class="i5">Pass away in slumber sweet;</p>
+<p class="i4">And released from death's dark sadness,</p>
+<p class="i4">Rise in gladness,</p>
+<p class="i5">That far brighter Sun to greet.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i4">Only God's free gifts abuse not,</p>
+<p class="i4">His light refuse not,</p>
+<p class="i5">But still His Spirit's voice obey;</p>
+<p class="i4">Soon shall joy thy brow be wreathing,</p>
+<p class="i4">Splendour breathing</p>
+<p class="i5">Fairer than the fairest day.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i4">If aught of care this morn oppress thee,</p>
+<p class="i4">To Him address thee,</p>
+<p class="i5">Who, like the sun, is good to all:</p>
+<p class="i4">He gilds the mountain tops, the while</p>
+<p class="i4">His gracious smile</p>
+<p class="i5">Will on the humblest valley fall.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i4">Round the gifts His bounty show'rs,</p>
+<p class="i4">Walls and tow'rs</p>
+<p class="i5">Girt with flames thy God shall rear:</p>
+<p class="i4">Angel legions to defend thee</p>
+<p class="i4">Shall attend thee,</p>
+<p class="i5">Hosts whom Satan's self shall fear.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>NOTE C. P. 122.</p>
+<p>"<i>But, once admit a single exception, and the infallible
+virtue of the rule ceases</i>."--Thus the famous Canon of
+Vincentius Lirinensis is like tradition itself, always either
+superfluous or insufficient. Taken literally, it is true and
+worthless;--because what <i>all</i> have asserted, <i>always</i>,
+and in <i>all places</i>, supposing of course that the means of
+judging were in their power, may be assumed to be some indisputable
+axiom, such as never will be disputed any more than it has been
+disputed hitherto. But take it with any allowance, and then it is
+of no use in settling a question: for what <i>most</i> men have
+asserted, <i>most commonly</i>, and in <i>most places</i>, has a
+certain <i>&agrave; priori</i> probability, it is true, but by no
+means such as may not be outweighed by probabilities on the other
+side; for the extreme improbability consists not in the prevalence
+of error amongst millions, or for centuries, or over whole
+continents,--but in its being absolutely universal, so universal,
+that truth could not find a single witness at any time or in any
+country. But the single witness is enough to "justify the ways of
+God," and reduces what otherwise would have been a monstrous
+triumph of evil to the character of a severe trial of our faith,
+severe indeed as the trials of an evil world will be, but no more
+than a trial such as, with God's grace, may be overcome.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>NOTE D. P. 189.</p>
+<p><i>"It was an admirable definition of that which excites
+laughter,"</i> &amp;c.--[Greek: To geloion apurtaepa ti chai
+aiochos auodnnoy chai on phthartichon oion enthus to geloion
+prosopon aischron ti chai dieotruppenon anen
+odunaes]--<i>Aristotle, Poetic,</i> ii.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>NOTE E. P. 245.</p>
+<p>"<i>I would endeavour just to touch upon some of the purposes
+for which the Scripture tells us that Christ died</i>."--The
+Collects for Easter Sunday and the Sundays just before it and after
+it, illustrate the enumeration here given. The Collect for the
+Sunday next before Easter speaks of Christ's death only as an
+"example of his great humility." The Collect for Easter-day speaks
+of the resurrection, and connects it with our spiritual
+resurrection, as does also the Collect for the first Sunday after
+Easter. But the collect for the Second Sunday after Easter speaks
+of Christ as being at once our sacrifice for sin and our example of
+godly life,--a sacrifice to be regarded with entire thankfulness,
+and an example to be daily followed.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>NOTE F. P. 282.</p>
+<p>"<i>Such also was to be the state of the Christian Church after
+our Lord's ascension</i>."--And therefore, as I think, St. Peter
+applies to the Christians of Asia Minor the very terms applied to
+the Jews living in Assyria or in Egypt; he addresses them as
+[Greek: parepidaemois diasporas], (1 Peter i. 1,) that is, as
+strangers and sojourners, scattered up and down in a country that
+was not properly their own, and living in a sort of banishment from
+their true home. That the words are not addressed to Jewish
+Christians, and therefore are not to be understood in their simple
+historical sense, seems evident from the second chapter of the
+Epistle, verses 9, 10, and iv. 2,3.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>NOTE G. P. 315.</p>
+<p>"<i>Not only an outward miracle, but the changed circumstances
+of the times may speak God's will no less clearly than a
+miracle</i>," &amp;c.--What I have here said does not at all go
+beyond what has been said on the same subject by Hooker: "Laws,
+though both ordained of God himself, and the end for which they
+were ordained continuing, may, notwithstanding, cease, if by
+alteration of persons or times they be found insufficient to attain
+unto that end. In which respect why may we not presume that God
+doth even call for such change or alteration as the very condition
+of things themselves doth make necessary?... In this case,
+therefore, men do not presume to change God's ordinance, but they
+yield thereunto, requiring itself to be
+changed."--<i>Ecclesiastical Polity</i>, b. iii. &sect; 10.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>NOTE H. P. 320.</p>
+<p><i>"Nor is it less strange that any should ever have been afraid
+of their understandings, and should have sought goodness through
+prejudice, and blindness, and folly</i>."--For some time past the
+words "Rationalism" and "Rationalistic" have been freely used as
+terms of reproach by writers on religious subjects; the 73d No. of
+the "Tracts for the Times" is entitled, "On the introduction of
+Rationalistic Principles into Religion," and a whole chapter in Mr.
+Gladstone's late work on Church Principles is headed "Rationalism."
+Yet we still want a clear definition of the thing signified by this
+name. The Tract for the Times says, "To rationalize, is to ask for
+<i>reasons</i> out of place; to ask improperly how we are to
+<i>account</i> for certain things; to be unwilling to believe them
+unless they can be accounted for, i.e. referred to something else
+as a cause, to some existing system, as harmonizing with them, or
+taking them up into itself.... It is characterised by two
+peculiarities;--its love of systematizing, and its basing its
+system upon personal experience, on the evidence of sense."--P. 2.
+Mr. Gladstone says more generally, "Rationalism is commonly, at
+least in this country, taken to be the reduction of Christian
+<i>doctrine</i> to the standard and measure of the human
+understanding."--P. 37. But neither of these definitions will
+include all the arguments and statements which have been called by
+various writers "rationalistic;" and while the terms used are thus
+vague, they are often applied very indiscriminately, and the
+tendency of this use of them is to depreciate the exercise of the
+intellectual faculties generally. The subject seems to deserve
+fuller consideration than it has yet received; there is a real evil
+which the term Rationalism is meant to denounce; but it has not
+been clearly apprehended, and what is good has sometimes been
+confounded with it, and denounced under the same name.</p>
+<p>I cannot pretend to discuss the subject fully in a mere note,
+even if I were otherwise competent to do it. But one or two points
+may be noticed, as likely to assist the inquiry, wherever it is
+worthily entered on.</p>
+<p>1st. It is important to bear in mind the distinction which
+Coleridge enforces so earnestly between the understanding and the
+reason. I do not know whether Mr. Gladstone, in the passage quoted
+above, uses the word "understanding" as synonymous with reason, or
+in that stricter sense in which Coleridge employs it. But the
+writer of the Tract seems to allude to the stricter sense, when he
+calls it a characteristic of rationalism "to base its system upon
+personal experience, on the evidence of sense." If this be the
+case, then it would seem that rationalism is the appealing to the
+decision of the understanding in points where the decision properly
+belongs not to the understanding, but to the reason. This is a
+great fault, and one to which all persons who belong to the
+sensualist school in philosophy, as opposed to the idealist school,
+would be more or less addicted. But then, this fault consists not
+in an over-estimating of man's intellectual nature generally, but
+in the exalting one part of it unduly, to the injury of another
+part; in deferring to the understanding, rather than to the
+reason.</p>
+<p>2d. Faith and reason are often invidiously contrasted with each
+other, as if they were commonly described in Scripture as
+antagonists; whereas faith is more properly opposed to sight, or to
+lust, being, in fact, a very high exercise of the pure reason;
+inasmuch as we believe truths which our senses do not teach us, and
+which our passions would have us, therefore, reject, because those
+truths are taught by Him in whom reason recognises its own author,
+and the infallible source of all truth.</p>
+<p>3d. It were better to oppose reason to passion than to faith;
+for it may be safely said, that he who neglects his reason, so far
+as he does neglect it, does not lead a life of faith afterwards,
+but a life of passion. He does not draw nearer to God, but to the
+brutes, or rather to the devils; for his passions cannot be the
+mere instinctive appetites of the brute, but derive from the wreck
+of his intellectual powers, which he cannot utterly destroy, just
+so much of a higher nature that they are sins, and not instincts,
+belonging to the malignity of diabolic nature, rather than to the
+mere negative evil of the nature of brutes.</p>
+<p>4th. Faith may be described as reason leaning upon God. Without
+God, reason is either overpowered by sense and understanding, and,
+in a manner, overgrown, so that it cannot comprehend its proper
+truths; or, being infinite, it cannot discover all the truths which
+concern it, and therefore needs a farther revelation to enlighten
+it. But with God's grace strengthening it to assert its supremacy
+over sense and understanding, and communicating to it what of
+itself it could not have discovered, it then having gained strength
+and light not its own, and doing and seeing consciously by God's
+help, becomes properly faith.</p>
+<p>5th. Faith without reason, is not properly faith, but mere power
+worship; and power worship may be devil worship; for it is reason
+which entertains the idea of God--an idea essentially made up of
+truth and goodness, no less than of power. A sign of power
+exhibited to the senses might, through them, dispose the whole man
+to acknowledge it as divine; yet power in itself is not divine, it
+may be devilish. But when reason recognises that, along with this
+power, there exist also wisdom and goodness, then it perceives that
+here is God; and the worship which, without reason, might have been
+idolatry, being now according to reason is faith.</p>
+<p>6th. If this were considered, men would be more careful of
+speaking disparagingly of reason, seeing that it is the necessary
+condition of the existence of faith. It is quite true, that when we
+have attained to faith, it supersedes reason; we walk by sunlight,
+rather than by moonlight; following the guidance of infinite
+reason, instead of finite. But how are we to attain to faith? in
+other words, how can we distinguish God's voice from the voice of
+evil? for we must distinguish it to be God's voice before we can
+have faith in it. We distinguish it, and can distinguish it no
+otherwise, by comparing it with that idea of God which reason
+intuitively enjoins, the gift of reason being God's original
+revelation of himself to man. Now, if the voice which comes to us
+from the unseen world agree not with this idea, we have no choice
+but to pronounce it not to be God's voice; for no signs of power,
+in confirmation of it, can alone prove it to be God. God is not
+power only, but power, and truth, and holiness; and the existence
+of even infinite power, does not necessarily involve in it truth
+and holiness also; else the notion of the world being governed by
+an evil being would be no more than a contradiction in terms; and
+the horrible strife of the two principles of Manicheism would be a
+mere matter of indifference; for if power alone constitutes God,
+whichever principle triumphed over the other, would become God by
+the very fact of its victory; and thus triumphant evil would be
+good.</p>
+<p>7th. Reason, then, is the mean whereby we attain to faith, and
+escape the devil worship of idolatry; but the understanding is not
+a necessary condition of faith, and very often impedes it; for the
+understanding having for its basis the reports of sense and
+experience, has no direct way of arriving at things invisible, and
+rather shrinks back from that world with which it is in no way
+familiar. It has a work to do in regard to revelation, and an
+important work; but divine things not being its proper matter, its
+work concerning them must be subordinate, and its tendency is
+always to fall back from the invisible to the visible,--from
+matters of faith to matters of experience. Its work, with respect
+to revelation, is this--that it should inquire into the truth of
+the outward signs of it; which outward signs being necessarily
+things visible and sensible, fall within its province of judgment.
+Thus understanding judges the external witnesses of a revelation:
+if miracles be alleged, it is the business of understanding to
+ascertain the fact of their occurrence; if a book claim to be the
+record of a revelation, it belongs to the understanding to make out
+the origin of this book, the time when it was written, who were its
+authors, and what is the first and grammatical meaning of its
+language. Or, again, if any men profess to be the depositaries of
+divine truth, by an extraordinary commission from God, the
+understanding, being familiar with man's nature and motives, can
+judge of their credibility--can see whether there are any marks of
+folly in them, or of dishonesty, or whether they are at once
+sensible and honest. And in all such matters, the prerogative of
+the understanding to judge is not to be questioned; for all such
+points are strictly within its dominion; and our Lord's words are
+of universal application, that we should render to C&aelig;sar the
+things which are C&aelig;sar's, no less than we should render to
+God the things that are God's.</p>
+<p>Faith may exist, as I said, without the action of the
+understanding, but never without that of the reason. It may exist
+independent of the understanding, because faith in God is the
+natural result of the idea of God: and that idea belongs to the
+reason, and the understanding is not concerned with it. But when a
+special revelation has been given us, through human instruments;
+when the understanding is called in to certify the particular fact,
+that in such and such particular persons, writings, or events, God
+has made himself manifest in an extraordinary manner; it is the
+human instrumentality which requires the judgment of the
+understanding; the bringing in of human characters, and sensible
+facts, which are matters of sense and experience; and, therefore,
+it is mere ignorance when Christians speak slightingly of the
+outward and historical evidences of Christianity, and indulge in
+very misplaced contempt for Paley and others who have worked out
+the historical proof of it. Such persons may observe, if they will,
+that where the historical evidence has not been listened to, there
+a belief in Christianity, properly so called, is wanting. Living
+examples might, I think, be named of men whose reason entirely
+acknowledges the internal proofs of a divine origin which are
+contained in the Christian doctrines, but whose understandings are
+not satisfied as to the facts of the Christian history, and
+particularly as to the fact of our Lord's resurrection. Such men
+are a remarkable contrast to those whose understandings are fully
+satisfied of the historical truth of our Lord's resurrection, but
+who are indifferent to, or actually deny, those doctrinal truths of
+which another power than the understanding must be the warrant. It
+is important to observe, therefore, that in a revelation involving,
+as an essential part of it, certain historical facts, there is
+necessarily a call for the judgment of the understanding, although
+in religious faith simply the understanding may have no place.</p>
+<p>8th. Now, then, the clearest notion which can be given of
+rationalism would, I think, be this: that it is the abuse of the
+understanding in subjects where the divine and the human, so to
+speak, are intermingled. Of human things the understanding can
+judge, of divine things it cannot;--and thus, where the two are
+mixed together, its inability to judge of the one part makes it
+derange the proportions of both, and the judgment of the whole is
+vitiated. For example, the understanding examines a miraculous
+history; it judges truly of what I may call the human part of the
+case; that is to say, of the rarity of miracles,--of the
+fallibility of human testimony,--of the proneness of most minds to
+exaggeration,--and of the critical arguments affecting the
+genuineness or the date of the narrative itself. But it forgets the
+divine part, namely, the power and providence of God, that He is
+really ever present amongst us, and that the spiritual world, which
+exists invisibly all around us, may conceivably, and by no means
+impossibly, exist, at some times and to some persons, even visibly.
+These considerations, which the understanding is ignorant of, would
+often modify our judgment as to the human parts of the case. Things
+not impossible in themselves are believed upon sufficient
+testimony; and with all the carelessness and exaggeration of
+historians, the mass of history is notwithstanding generally
+credible. Again, with regard to the history of the Old Testament,
+our judgment of the human part in it requires to be constantly
+modified by our consciousness of the divine part, or otherwise it
+cannot fail to be rationalistic; that is, it will be the judgment
+of the understanding only, unchecked by the reason. Gesenius'
+Commentary on Isaiah is rationalistic, for it regards Isaiah merely
+as a Jewish writer, zealously attached to the religion of his
+country, and lamenting the decay of his nation, and anxiously
+looking for its future restoration. No doubt Isaiah was all this,
+and therefore Gesenius' Commentary is critically and historically
+very valuable; the human part of Isaiah is nowhere better
+illustrated; but the divine part of the prophecy of Isaiah is no
+less real, and the consciousness of its existence should actually
+qualify our feelings and language even with reference to the human
+part.</p>
+<p>9th. The fault, then, of rationalism appears to me to consist
+not so much in what it has as in what it has not. The understanding
+has its proper work to do with respect to the Bible, because the
+Bible consists of human writings and contains a human history.
+Critical and historical inquiries respecting it are, therefore,
+perfectly legitimate; it contains matter which is within the
+province of the understanding, and the understanding has God's
+warrant for doing that work which he appointed it to do; only, let
+us remember, that the understanding cannot ascend to things divine;
+that for these another faculty is necessary,--reason or faith. If
+this faculty be living in us, then there can be no rationalism; and
+what is called so is then no other than the voice of Christian
+truth. Where a man's writings show that he is keenly alive to the
+divine part of Scripture, that he sees God ever in it, and regards
+it truly as his word, his judgments of the human part in it are not
+likely to be rationalistic; and if his understanding decides
+according to its own laws, upon points within its own province,
+while his faith duly tempers it, and restrains it from venturing
+upon another's dominion, the result will, in all probability, be
+such as commonly attends the use of God's manifold gifts in their
+just proportions,--it will image, after our imperfect measure, the
+holiness of God and the truth of God.</p>
+<p>It is very true, and should be acknowledged in the fullest
+manner, that for the study of the highest moral and spiritual
+questions another faculty than the understanding is wanting; and
+that without this faculty the understanding alone cannot arrive at
+truth. But it is no less true, that while there is, on the one
+side, a faculty higher than the understanding, which is entitled to
+pronounce upon its defects; "for he that is spiritual judgeth all
+things," ([Greek: auachriuei];) so there is a clamour often raised
+against it, not from above, but from below,--the clamour of mere
+shallowness and ignorance, and passion. Of this sort is some of the
+outcry which is raised against rationalism. Men do not leap, <i>per
+saltum mortalem</i>, from ordinary folly to divine wisdom: and the
+foolish have no right to think that they are angels, because they
+are not humanly wise. There is a deep and universal truth in St.
+Paul's words, where he says, that Christians wish "not to be
+unclothed but clothed upon, that mortality may be swallowed up of
+life." Wisdom is gained, not by renouncing or despising the
+understanding, but by adding to its perfect work the perfect work
+of reason, and of reason's perfection, faith.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>NOTE I. P. 331.</p>
+<p>"<i>A famous example of this may be seen in the sixth chapter of
+St. John,"</i> &amp;c.--The interpretation of this chapter, and
+particularly of the part alluded to in the text, is of no small
+importance; for it is remarkable, that the highest notions with
+respect to the presence of our Lord in the Holy Communion are often
+grounded upon this passage in St. John's Gospel, which yet, in the
+judgment of others, most decisively repels them.</p>
+<p>The whole question resolves itself into this--Are our Lord's
+words in this place co-ordinate with the Holy Communion, or
+subordinate to it? That is, do they and the communion alike point
+to some great truth superior to them both: or do our Lord's words,
+in St. John, point to the communion itself as their highest
+meaning?</p>
+<p>The communion itself expresses a truth above itself by a
+symbolical action; the words of our Lord, in St. John, are exactly
+the same with that symbolic action; it is natural, therefore, to
+understand them not as referring to it, but to the same<a name=
+"FNanchor14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14">[14]</a> higher truth to
+which it refers also: and the more so as the communion is not once
+mentioned by St. John either in his Gospel or in his Epistles; but
+the idea which the communion expresses appears to have been
+familiar to his mind; at least, if we suppose that his mention of
+the blood and water flowing from our Lord's side in his Gospel, and
+his allusion again to the same fact in his Epistle, have reference
+in any degree to it, which seems to me most probable.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_14"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor14">[14]</a> The common tendency to make the Christian
+sacraments an ultimate end rather than a mean, is exhibited in the
+heading of the tenth chapter of the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians,
+in our authorized version, where we find the first verses described
+as stating, that "the Jews' sacraments were types of ours."
+Whereas, so far is it from the apostle's argument to represent our
+sacraments as the reality of which the Jews' sacraments were the
+type, that he is describing theirs and ours as co-ordinate with
+each other, and both alike subordinate to the same truth; and he
+argues, that if the Jews, with their sacraments, did
+notwithstanding lose the reality which those sacraments typified,
+so we should take heed lest we, with our sacraments, should lose it
+also. The erroneous heading is not given in the Geneva Bible, where
+we have, on the contrary, the true observation; "the sacraments of
+the old fathers were all one with ours, for they respected Christ
+only." It is true that if no more were meant than that "the Jews'
+sacraments were like ours," there would be no reason to object to
+the expression; but apparently more is meant, as the word type
+seems to imply that what it is compared with is the reality, of
+which it is itself only the image; and one thing cannot properly be
+called the type of another, when both are but types of the same
+third thing. But the divines of James the First's reign and of his
+son's, were to the reformers exactly what the so-called fathers
+were to the apostles: the very same tendencies, growing up even in
+Elizabeth's reign, becoming strengthened under the Stuart kings,
+and fully developed in the nonjurors, which distinguish the divines
+of the seventeenth century from those of the sixteenth, distinguish
+also the church system from the gospel. There are many who readily
+acknowledge this difference in the English church, while they would
+deny it in the case of the ancient church. Indeed, it is not yet
+deemed prudent to avow openly that they prefer the so-called
+fathers to the apostles, and therefore they try to persuade
+themselves that both speak the same language. And doubtless, if the
+Scriptures are to be interpreted according to the rule of the
+writers of the third, and fourth, and fifth centuries, the thing
+can easily be effected; as, by a similar process, the Articles of
+the Church of England, if interpreted according to the rule of the
+nonjurors and their successors, might be made to speak the very
+sentiments which their authors designed to condemn.</blockquote>
+<p>Our Lord repels the notion of a literal acceptation of his
+words, where he says,--"It is the Spirit which profiteth, the flesh
+profiteth nothing; the words which I speak unto you, they are
+Spirit and they are life." It seems impossible, therefore, to refer
+these words, which he tells us expressly are Spirit and life, to
+any outward act of eating and drinking as their highest truth and
+object.</p>
+<p>But the words in the sixth chapter of St. John do highly
+illustrate the institution and purpose of the communion, and
+especially the remarkable words which our Lord used in instituting
+it. They show what infinite importance he attached to that truth
+which he expressed both in symbolical words and action under the
+same figure, of eating His body and drinking His blood. But to
+suppose that that truth can only be realized by one particular
+ritual action, so that the one great work of a Christian is to
+receive the Lord's supper,--which it must be, if our Lord's words
+in the sixth chapter of St. John refer to the communion,--is so
+contrary to the whole character of our Lord's teaching, and not
+least so in the very words so misinterpreted, that to maintain such
+a doctrine, leading, as it does, to such manifold superstitions, is
+actually to preach another Gospel than Christ's--to bring in a
+mystical religion instead of a spiritual one,--to do worse than to
+Judaize.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>NOTE K. P. 345.</p>
+<p><i>"A set of persons, who wish to magnify the uncertainties of
+the Scripture in order to recommend more plausibly the guidance of
+some supposed authoritative interpreter of it."</i>--"The high
+church party," we have been lately told, "take Holy Scripture for
+their guide, and, in the interpretation of it, defer to the
+authority of primitive antiquity: the low church party contend for
+the sufficiency of private judgment." It is become of the greatest
+importance to see clearly, not what one party, or another, may
+contend for, but what is the real truth, and what, accordingly, is
+the duty of every Christian man to do in this matter. The sermon to
+which this note refers, is an attempt to show that Scripture is not
+hopelessly obscure or ambiguous; but it may not be inexpedient here
+to consider a little, what are the objections to the principle of
+the high church party; to clear away certain difficulties which are
+supposed to beset the opposite principle; and to state, if
+possible, what the truth of the whole question is.</p>
+<p>I. The objections to the principle of the high church party are
+these: 1st. Its extreme vagueness. What is primitive antiquity? and
+where is its authority to be found? Does "primitive antiquity" mean
+the first three centuries? or the first two? or the first five? or
+the first seven? Does it include any of the general councils? or
+one of them? or four? or six? Are Iren&aelig;us and Tertullian the
+latest writers of "primitive antiquity?" or does it end with
+Augustine? or does it comprehend the venerable Bede? One writer has
+lately told us, that our Reformers wished the people to be taught,
+"that, for almost seven hundred years, the church was most pure."
+Are we, then, to hold that "primitive antiquity" embraces a period
+of nearly seven centuries? Seven centuries are considerably more
+than a third part of the whole duration of the church, from its
+foundation to this hour: can the third part of a nation's history
+be called its primitive antiquity? Is a tenet, or a practice taught
+when Christianity had been more than six hundred years in the
+world, to be called primitive? We know not, then, in the first
+place, what length of time is signified by "primitive
+antiquity."</p>
+<p>But let it signify any length of time we choose, I ask, next,
+where is its authority to be found? In the decisions of the general
+councils? But if we call the first four centuries "primitive
+antiquity," we find in this period only two general councils; if we
+include the fifth century, we get four; if we take in the sixth and
+seventh centuries, we have then, in all, six general councils. Will
+the decisions of any, or all, of these six councils furnish us with
+an authoritative interpretation of Scripture? They give us the
+Nicene and the Constantinopolitan creeds; they condemn various
+notions with respect to the person of our Lord, and to some other
+points of belief; and they contain a variety of regulations for the
+discipline and order of the church; but, with the exception of some
+particular passages, there is no authority in the creeds, or
+canons, or anathemas of those councils, for the interpretation of
+Scripture; they leave its difficulties just where they were before.
+It is but little then, which the first six general councils will do
+towards providing the student of Scripture with an infallible
+standard of interpretation.</p>
+<p>Where, however, except in the councils, can we find any thing
+claiming to be the voice of the church? Neither individual writers,
+nor yet all the writers of the first seven centuries together, can
+properly be called the church. They form, even altogether, but a
+limited number of individuals, who, in different countries, and at
+different periods, expressed, in writing, their own sentiments, but
+without any public authority. Origen, one of the ablest and most
+learned of them all, was anathematized by the second council of
+Constantinople; Tertullian was heretical during a part of his life;
+Lactantius was taxed with heterodoxy. How are we to know who were
+sound? And if sound generally, that is to say, if they stand
+charged with no heretical error, yet it does not follow that a man
+is infallible because he is not heretical; and none of these
+writers have been distinguished like the five great Roman lawyers
+whom the edict of Theodosius<a name="FNanchor15"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_15">[15]</a> selected from the mass, and gave to their
+decisions a legal authority. Or again, if it be said that the
+agreement of the great majority of them is to be regarded as
+decisive, we answer, that as no individual amongst them is in
+himself an authority legally, so neither can any number of them be
+so; and if a moral authority only be meant, such as we naturally
+ascribe to the concurring judgment of many eminent men, then this
+is a totally different question, and is open to inquiry in every
+separate case; for as, on the one hand, no one denies that such a
+concurring judgment is <i>an</i> authority, yet, on the other hand,
+it may be outweighed, either by the worth of the few who differ
+from the judgment, or by the reason of the case itself; and the
+concurring judgment of the majority may show no more than the force
+of a general prejudice, which only a very few individuals were
+sensible enough to resist.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_15"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor15">[15]</a> Cod. Theodos. lib. i. tit. iv. The edict is
+issued in the name of the emperors Theodosius (the younger) and
+Valentinian (the younger), in the year A.D. 426.</blockquote>
+<p>In fact, it would greatly help to clear this question if we
+understand what we mean by allowing, or denying, the authority of
+the so-called fathers. The term <i>authority</i> is ambiguous, and
+according to the sense in which I use it, I should either
+acknowledge it or deny it.--The writers of the first four, or of
+the first seven centuries, have <i>an</i> authority, just as the
+scholiasts and ancient commentators have: some of them, and in some
+points, are of weight singly; the agreement of many of thorn has
+much weight; the agreement of almost all of them would have great
+weight. In this sense, I acknowledge their authority; and it would
+be against all sound principles of criticism to deny it. But if, by
+authority, is meant a <i>decisive</i> authority, a judgment which
+may not be questioned, then the claim of authority in such a case,
+for any man, or set of men, is either a folly or a revelation. Such
+an authority is not human, but divine: if any man pretends to
+possess it, let him show God's clear warrant for his pretension, or
+he must be regarded as a deceiver or a madman.</p>
+<p>But it may be said, that an authority not to be questioned was
+conferred, by the Roman law, on the opinions of a certain number of
+great lawyers: if a judge believed that their interpretation of the
+law was erroneous, he yet was not at liberty to follow his own
+private judgment in departing from it. Why may not the same thing
+be allowed in the church? and why may not the interpretations of
+Cyprian, or Athanasius, or Augustine, or Chrysostom, be as
+decisive, with respect to the true sense of the Scripture, as those
+of Gaius, Paulus, Modestinus, Ulpian, and Papinian, were
+acknowledged to be with respect to the sense of the Roman law?</p>
+<p>The answer is, that the emperor's edict could absolve the judge
+from following his own convictions about the sense of the law,
+because it gave to the authorized interpretation the force of law.
+The text, as the judge interpreted it, was a law repealed; the
+comment of the great lawyers was now the law in its room. As a mere
+literary composition, he might interpret it rightly, and Gaius, or
+Papinian, might be wrong; but if his interpretation was ever so
+right grammatically or critically, yet, legally it was nothing to
+the purpose;--Gaius's interpretation had superseded it, and was not
+the law which he was bound to obey. But, in the church, the only
+point to be aimed at is the discovery of the true meaning of the
+text of the divine law: no human power can invest the comment with
+equal authority. The emperor said, and might say to his judges,
+"You need not consider what was the meaning of the decemvirs, when
+they wrote the twelve tables, or, of Aquillius, when he drew up the
+Aquillian law. The law for you is not what the decemvirs may have
+meant, but what their interpreters may have meant: the decemvirs'
+meaning, if it was their meaning, is no longer the law of Rome."
+But who can dare to say to a Christian, "You need not consider what
+was the meaning of our Lord and his apostles; the law for you now
+is the meaning of Cyprian, or Ambrose, or Chrysostom;--that meaning
+has superseded the meaning of Christ." A Christian must find out
+Christ's meaning, and believe that he has found it, or else he must
+still seek for it. It is a matter, not of outward submission, but
+of inward faith; and if in our inward mind we are persuaded that
+the interpreter has mistaken our Lord's meaning, how can we by
+possibility adopt that interpretation in faith?</p>
+<p>Here we come to a grave consideration--that this doctrine of an
+infallible rule of interpretation may suit ignorance or scepticism:
+it is death to a sincere and reasonable and earnest faith. It is
+not hard for a sceptical mind to deceive itself by saying, that it
+receives whatever the church declares to be true: it may receive
+any number of doctrines, but it will not really believe them. We
+may restrain our tongues from disputing them, we may watch every
+restless thought that would question them, and instantly, by main
+force, as it were, put it down; but all this time our minds do not
+assimilate to them; they do not take them up into their own nature,
+so as to make them a part of themselves, freshening and supplying
+the life-blood of their very being. Truth must be believed by the
+mind's own act; our souls must be drawn towards it with a
+reasonable love; some affinity there must be between it and them,
+or else they can never really comprehend it. The sceptic may
+desperately become a fanatic also, but he is not become, therefore,
+a believer.</p>
+<p>Authority cannot compel belief; the sceptic who knows not what
+it is to grasp anything with the firm grasp of faith, may mistake
+his acquiescence in a doctrine for belief in it; the ignorant and
+careless, who believe only what their senses tell them, may lay up
+the words of divine truth in their memory, may repeat them loudly,
+and be vehement against all who question them. But minds to which
+faith is a necessity, which cannot be contented to stand by the
+side of truth, but must become altogether one with it,--minds which
+know full well the difference between opinion and conviction,
+between not questioning and believing,--they, when their own action
+is superseded by an authority foreign to themselves, are in a
+condition which they find intolerable. Told to believe what they
+cannot believe; told that they ought not to believe what they feel
+most disposed to believe; they retire altogether from the region of
+divine truth, as from a spot tainted with moral death, and devote
+themselves to other subjects: to physical science, it may be, or to
+political; where the inherent craving of their nature may yet be
+gratified, where, however insignificant the truth may be, they may
+yet find some truth to believe. This has been the condition of too
+many great men in the church of Rome; and it accounts for that
+bitterness of feeling with which Machiavelli, and others like him,
+appear to have regarded the whole subject of Christianity.</p>
+<p>The system, then, of deferring to the authority of what is
+called the ancient church in the interpretation of Scripture, is
+impracticable, inasmuch as, with regard to the greatest part of the
+Scripture, the church, properly speaking, has said nothing at all;
+and if it were practicable, it would be untenable, because neither
+the old councils, nor individual writers, could give any sign that
+they had a divine gift of interpretation; and if such a gift had
+been given to them, it would have been equivalent to a new
+revelation, the sense of the comment being thus preferred to what
+we could not but believe to be the sense of the text. Above all,
+the system is destructive of faith, having a tendency to substitute
+passive acquiescence for real conviction; and therefore I should
+not say that the excess of it was popery, but that it had once and
+actually those characters of evil which we sometimes express by the
+term popery, but which may be better signified by the term
+idolatry; a reverence for that which ought not to be reverenced,
+leading to a want of faith in that which is really deserving of all
+adoration and love.</p>
+<p>II. But it is said that the system of relying on private
+judgment is beset by no less evils: that it is itself inconsistent,
+and leads to Socinianism and Rationalism, and, in the end, to utter
+unbelief; so that, the choice being only between two evils, men may
+choose the system of church authority as being the less evil of the
+two. If this were so, I see not how faith could be attained at all,
+or what place would be left for Christian truth. But the system of
+the Church of England<a name="FNanchor16"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_16">[16]</a> is, I am persuaded, fully consistent, and
+has no tendency either to Socinianism or Rationalism. Let us see
+first what that system is.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_16"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor16">[16]</a> Much has been lately written to show that
+the Church of England allows the authority of the ancient councils
+and writers, and does not allow the right of private judgment. But
+it is perfectly clear, from the 21st Article, that it does not
+allow the authority of councils; that is to say, it holds that a
+council's exposition of doctrine may be false, and that such an
+exposition is of no force "unless it may be declared that it be
+taken out of Holy Scripture." Who, then, is to declare this? for to
+suppose that the declaration of the council itself is meant is
+absurd: the answer, I imagine, would be, according to the mind of
+the Reformers, "Every particular or national church," and
+especially the King as the head of the church. They would not have
+allowed private judgment, because they conceived that a private
+person had nothing to do but to obey the government; and it was for
+the government to determine what the truth of Scripture was. The
+Church of England, then, expressly disclaims the authority of
+councils, and, in its official instruments, it neither allows nor
+condemns private judgment; but the opinions of the Reformers, and
+the constitution of the church in the 16th century, were certainly
+against private judgment: their authority for the interpretation of
+Scripture was undoubtedly the supreme government of the church,
+i.e. not the bishops, but the King and parliament. But then this
+had respect not to the power of discerning truth, but to the right
+of publishing it, which is an wholly different question. That an
+individual was not bound <i>in foro conscienti&aelig;</i> to admit
+the truth of any interpretation of Scripture which did not approve
+itself to his own mind, was no less the judgment of the Church of
+England than that if he publicly disputed the interpretation of the
+church, he might be punished as unruly and a despiser of
+government. But then it should ever be remembered that the church,
+with the Reformers, was not the clergy. And now that the right of
+publication is conceded by the church, it is quite just to say that
+the Church of England allows private judgment; and if that judgment
+differ from her own, she condemns not the act of judging at all,
+but the having come to a false conclusion.<br>
+<br>
+It is urged that the act of I Elizabeth, c. 1, allows that to be
+heresy which the first four councils determined to be so. This is
+true; but it also adjudges to be heresy whatever shall be hereafter
+declared to be so by "the high court of parliament, with the assent
+of the clergy in their convocation." The Church of England
+undoubtedly allowed the decisions of the first four councils, in
+matters of doctrine, to be valid, as it allowed the three creeds,
+because it decided that they were agreeable to Scripture; but the
+binding authority was that of the English Parliament, not of the
+councils of Nic&aelig;a or Constantinople.<br>
+<br>
+As to the canon of 1571, which allows preachers to teach nothing as
+religious truth but what is agreeable to the Scriptures,
+"<i>and</i> which the catholic fathers and ancient bishops have
+collected from that very doctrine of Scripture," it will be
+observed that it is merely negative, and does not sanction the
+teaching of the "catholic fathers and ancient bishops," generally,
+or say that men shall teach what they taught; but that they shall
+not teach as matter of religious faith, a new deduction from
+Scripture of their own making, but such truths as had been actually
+deduced from Scripture before, namely, the great articles of the
+Christian faith. Farther, the canons of 1571 are of no authority,
+not having received the royal assent.--<i>See Strype's Life of
+Parker</i>, p. 322, ed. 1711.</blockquote>
+<p>It is invidiously described as maintaining "the sufficiency of
+private judgment." Now we maintain the sufficiency of private
+judgment in interpreting the Scriptures in no other sense than that
+in which every sane man maintains its sufficiency, in interpreting
+Thucydides or Aristotle; we mean, that, instead of deferring always
+to some one interpreter, as an idle boy follows implicitly the
+Latin version of his Greek lesson, the true method is to consult
+all<a name="FNanchor17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17">[17]</a>
+accessible authorities, and to avail ourselves of the assistance of
+all. And we contend, that, by this process, as we discover, for the
+most part, the true meaning of Thucydides and Aristotle with
+undoubted certainty, so we may also discover, not, indeed, in every
+particular part or passage, but generally, the true meaning of the
+Holy Scriptures with no less certainty.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_17"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor17">[17]</a> Of course no reasonable man can doubt the
+importance of studying the early Christian writers, as illustrating
+not only the history of their own times, but the New Testament
+also. For the Old Testament, indeed, they do little or nothing, and
+for the New they are of much less assistance than might have been
+expected; but still there is no doubt that they are often
+useful.</blockquote>
+<p>But if another man maintains that a different meaning is the
+true one, how are we to silence him, and how are we justified in
+calling him a heretic? If by the term heretic we are to imply moral
+guilt, I am not justified in applying it to any Christian, unless
+his doctrines are positively sinful, or there is something wicked,
+either in the way of dishonesty or bitterness, in his manner of
+maintaining them. The guilt of any given religious error, in any
+particular case, belongs only to the judgment of Him who reads the
+heart. But if we mean by heresy "a grave error in matters of the
+Christian faith, overthrowing or corrupting some fundamental
+article of it," then we are as fully justified in calling a gross
+misinterpretation of Scripture "heresy," as we should be justified
+in calling a gross misinterpretation of a profane Greek or Latin
+author, ignorance, or want of scholarship. There is no infallible
+authority in points of grammar and criticism, yet men do speak
+confidently, notwithstanding, as to learning and ignorance; Porson
+and Herman are known to have understood their business, and a
+writer who were to set their decisions at defiance, and to indulge
+in mere extravagances of interpretation, would be set down as one
+who knew nothing about the matter. So we judge daily in all points
+of literature and science; nay, we in the same manner venture to
+call some persons mad, and on the strength of our conviction we
+deprive them of their property, and shut them up in a madhouse: yet
+if madmen wore to insist that they were sane, and that we were mad,
+I know not to what infallible authority we could appeal; and, after
+all, what are we to do with those who deny that authority to be
+infallible? we must then go to another infallible authority to
+guarantee the infallibility of the first, and this process will run
+on for ever.</p>
+<p>But, in truth, there is more in the matter than the being
+justified or not justified in calling our neighbour a heretic. The
+real point of anxiety, I imagine, with many good and thinking men
+is this: whether a reasonable belief can be fairly carried through;
+whether the notion of the all-sufficiency of Scripture is not
+liable to objections no less than the system of church-authority;
+whether, in short, our Christian faith can be consistently
+maintained without a mortal leap at some part or other of the
+process; nay, whether, in fact, if it were otherwise, our faith
+would not seem to stand rather on the wisdom of man than on the
+power of God.</p>
+<p>I use these words, because these and other such passages of the
+Scripture are often quoted as I have now quoted them, and produce a
+great effect on those who do not observe that they are quoted
+inapplicably; for the question is not between man's wisdom and
+God's power, but simply whether we have reason to believe that
+God's power has been here manifested; or, rather, to see whether we
+cannot give a reason for the faith which is in us, such faith
+resting upon God's power and wisdom as manifested in Christ Jesus;
+for if no reason can be rendered for our faith, then our minds, so
+far as they are concerned, are believing a lie; they are believing
+in spite of those laws by which God has determined their nature and
+condition.</p>
+<p>Yet, however we believe, blindly or reasonably, (for some men,
+by God's mercy, are accidentally, as it were, in possession of the
+truth, the falsehood of their own minds in holding it not being, it
+is to be hoped, imputed to them as a sin;) however we believe, I
+never mean to say that our faith is not God's gift, to be sought
+for and retained by constant prayer and watchfulness, and to be
+forfeited by carelessness or sin. That is no true faith in which
+reason does not accord; yet neither can reason alone and without
+God ever become perfected into faith. For although intellectually,
+the grounds of belief may be made out satisfactorily, yet we are
+not able to follow our pure reason by ourselves; and no work on the
+evidences of Christianity can by itself give us faith; and much
+less can amid the manifold conflicts of life maintain it. That
+faith is thus the gift of God, and not our own work, I would desire
+to feel as keenly and continually, as with the fullest conviction I
+acknowledge it.</p>
+<p>Now, to resume the consideration of that which, as I said, is
+the real point of anxiety with many. They doubt whether the course
+of a reasonable belief can be held to the end without
+interruptions: they say that the received notions of the
+inspiration, and consequently of the complete truth of the
+Scriptures cannot reasonably be maintained; that he who does
+maintain them does so by a happy inconsistency;--he is to be
+congratulated for not following up his own principles; but why
+should he then find fault with others who do that avowedly and
+consistently to which he is driven against his professions by the
+clear necessity of the case?</p>
+<p>This argument was pressed by Mr. Newman, some time since, in one
+of the Tracts for the Times; and it was conducted, as may be
+supposed, with great ingenuity, but with a recklessness of
+consequences, or an ignorance of mankind, truly astonishing; for he
+brought forward all the difficulties and differences which can be
+found in the Scripture narratives, displayed them in their most
+glaring form, and merely observed, that as those with whom he was
+arguing could not solve these difficulties, but yet believed the
+Scriptures no less in spite of them, so the apparent
+unreasonableness of his doctrine about the priesthood was no ground
+why it should be rejected--a method of argument most blameable in
+any Christian to adopt towards his brethren; for what if their
+faith, being thus vehemently strained, were to give way under the
+experiment? and if, being convinced that the Scriptures were not
+more reasonable than Mr. Newman's system, they were to end with
+believing, not both, but neither?</p>
+<p>Therefore the question is one of no small anxiety and interest;
+and it is not idly nor wantonly that we must speak the truth upon
+it, even if that truth may to some seem startling; for by God's
+blessing, if we do go boldly forward wherever truth shall lead us,
+our course needs not be interrupted, neither shall a single hair of
+our faith perish.</p>
+<p>The same laws of criticism which teach us to distinguish between
+various degrees of testimony, authorize us to assign the very
+highest rank to the evidences of the writings of St. John and St.
+Paul. If belief is to be given to any human compositions, it is due
+to these; yet if we believe these merely as human compositions, and
+without assuming anything as to their divine inspiration, our
+Christian faith, as it seems to me, is reasonable;--not merely the
+facts of our Lord's miracles and resurrection; but Christian faith,
+in all its fulness--the whole dispensation of the Spirit, the
+revelation of the redemption of man and of the Divine Persons who
+are its authors--of all that Christian faith, and hope, and love
+can need. And this is so true, that even without reckoning the
+Epistle to the Hebrews amongst St. Paul's writings,--nay, even if
+we choose to reject the three pastoral epistles<a name=
+"FNanchor18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18">[18]</a>--yet taking only
+what neither has been nor can be doubted--the epistles to the
+Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians,
+and Thessalonians, we have in these, together with St. John's
+Gospel and First Epistle,--giving up, if we choose, the other
+two,--a ground on which our faith may stand for ever, according to
+the strictest rules of the understanding, according to the clearest
+intuitions of reason.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_18"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor18">[18]</a> I say this, not as having the slightest
+doubt myself of the genuineness of any one of the three, but merely
+to show how much is left that has not been questioned at all, even
+unreasonably.</blockquote>
+<p>I take the works of St. John and St. Paul as our foundation,
+because, in the first place, we find in them the historical basis
+of Christianity; that is to say, we find the facts of our Lord's
+miracles, and especially of his resurrection, and the miraculous
+powers afterwards continued to the church, established by the
+highest possible evidence. However pure and truly divine the
+principles taught in the gospel may be, yet we crave to know not
+only that we were in need of redemption, but that a Redeemer has
+actually appeared; not only that a resurrection to eternal life is
+probable, but that such a resurrection has actually taken place.
+This basis of historical fact, which is one of the great
+peculiarities of Christianity, is strictly within the cognizance of
+the understanding; and in the writings of St. John and St. Paul we
+have that full and perfect evidence of it which the strictest laws
+of the understanding require.</p>
+<p>But the historical truth being once warranted by the
+understanding, other faculties of our nature now come in to enjoy
+it, and develop it; the highest reason and the moral and spiritual
+affections find respectively their proper field and objects, which,
+whenever presented to them in vision or in theory, they must
+instinctively cling to, but to which they now abandon themselves
+without fear of disappointment, because the understanding has
+assured them of their reality. We must suppose, on any system, the
+existence of reason and spiritual affections as indispensable to
+the understanding of the Scriptures; external authority can do
+nothing for us without these, any more than the mere faculties of
+the common understanding. But with these we apprehend the view
+which St. John and St. Paul afford to us: it opens before us one
+truth after another, one glory after another. St. John evidently
+supposes that his readers were familiar with another account of our
+Lord's life and teaching; and we find accordingly, another account
+existing in the writings of the three other evangelists. One and
+the same account is manifestly the substance of their three
+narratives, to which they thus bear a triple testimony, because
+none of the three has merely transcribed the others, and none of
+them apparently was the original author of it. Thus having now the
+full record of our Lord's teaching, we find that he everywhere
+refers to the Old Testament as to the word of God, and the record
+of God's earlier manifestations of himself to man. He has cleared
+up those especial points in it which might have most perplexed us,
+as I shall notice more fully hereafter, and he represents himself
+as the perpetual subject of its prophecies. We thus receive the Old
+Testament, as it were, from his hand, and learn while sitting at
+his feet to understand the lessons of the law and the prophets.</p>
+<p>Thus we make Christ the centre of both Testaments, and by so
+doing, we cannot be blind to the divinity pervading both. For the
+amazing fact that God should come into the world and be in the
+world cannot by possibility stand alone; it hallows, as it were,
+the whole period of the world's existence, from the beginning to
+the end, placing all time and every place in relation to God; it
+disposes us at once to receive the fact of the special call of the
+people of Israel;--it gives, I had almost said, an <i>&agrave;
+priori</i> reason why there must have been in earlier times some
+shadows, at least, or images, to represent dimly to former
+generations that great thing which they were not actually to
+witness; it leads us to believe that there must have been some
+prophetic voices to announce the future coming of the Lord, or else
+"The very stones must have cried out."</p>
+<p>But those writings of St. John and St. Paul which were our first
+lessons in Christianity, and those other accounts of our Lord's
+life and teaching to which they introduced us,--can we conceive it
+possible, that the real meaning of all these shall be hopelessly
+obscure and uncertain; that if we seek it ever so diligently, we
+shall not find it? With an humble mind ready to learn, with a heart
+fully impressed with the sense of God's presence, so as to be
+morally and spiritually in a condition to receive God's truth, can
+we believe, then, that the use of those intellectual means, which
+open to us certainly the sense of human writers, shall be applied
+in vain to those writers who were commissioned to be the very
+heralds of a divine message, whose especial business it was to make
+known what they had themselves heard? Surely if a sufficient
+certainty of interpretation be attainable in common literature, the
+revelation of God cannot be the solitary exception.</p>
+<p>But we may be mistaken: we may <i>believe</i> that we interpret
+truly, but we cannot be <i>infallibly sure</i> of it; we want an
+authority which shall give us this assurance. This is no doubt the
+natural craving of our weakness; but it is no wiser a craving than
+if we were to long for the heaven to be opened, and for a daily
+sight of our Lord standing at the right hand of God. To live by
+faith is our appointed condition, and faith excludes an infallible
+assurance. We must earnestly believe that we have the truth, and
+die for our belief, if necessary, but we cannot <i>know</i> it. No
+device which the human mind can practise, can exclude the
+possibility of doubt. If we would find an armour which should cover
+us at every point from this subtle enemy, it would be an armour
+that would close up the pores of the skin, and stop our breath; our
+fancied security would kill us. Is it really possible that, with
+our knowledge of man's nature, our belief in any human authority
+can really be more free from doubt than our belief in the
+conclusions of our own reason? There must ever be the liability to
+uncertainty; we can put no moral truth so surely as that our minds
+shall always feel it to be absolutely certain. Where is the
+infallible authority that can assure us even of the existence of
+God? And will the scepticism that can believe its own conclusions
+in nothing else rest satisfied with one conclusion only--that the
+writers of the first four centuries cannot err? Surely to regard
+this as the most certain proposition that can be submitted to the
+human mind, is no better than insanity.</p>
+<p>But we will consent to trust, it may be said, with God's help,
+to our own deliberate convictions that we have interpreted
+Scripture truly; but you tell us that the Scripture itself is not
+inspired in every part; you tell us that there are in it
+chronological and historical difficulties, if not errors; that
+there are possibly some interpolations; that even the apostles may
+have been in some things mistaken, as in their belief that the end
+of the world was at hand. Where shall we find a rest for our feet,
+if you first take away from us our infallible interpreter, and now
+tell us, that even if we can ourselves interpret it aright, yet
+that we cannot be sure that the very Scripture itself is infallibly
+true?</p>
+<p>It is very true that our position with respect to the Scriptures
+is not in all points the same as our fathers'. For sixteen hundred
+years nearly, while physical science, and history, and chronology,
+and criticism, were all in a state of torpor, the questions which
+now present themselves to our minds could not from the nature of
+the case arise. When they did arise, they came forward into notice
+gradually: first the discoveries in astronomy excited uneasiness:
+then as men began to read more critically, differences in the
+several Scripture narratives of the same thing awakened attention;
+more lately, the greater knowledge which has been gained of
+history, and of language, and in all respects the more careful
+inquiry to which all ancient records have been submitted, have
+brought other difficulties to light, and some sort of answer must
+be given to them. Mr. Newman, as we have seen, has made use of
+those difficulties much as the Romanists have used the doctrine of
+the Trinity when arguing with Trinitarians<a name=
+"FNanchor19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19">[19]</a> in defence of
+transubstantiation. The Romanists said,--"Here are all these
+inexplicable difficulties in the doctrine of the Trinity, and yet
+you believe it." So Mr. Newman argues with those who hold the
+plenary inspiration of Scripture, that if they believe that, in
+spite of all the difficulties which beset it, they may as well
+believe his doctrine of the priesthood; and many, if I mistake not,
+alarmed by this representation, have actually embraced his
+opinions.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_19"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor19">[19]</a> On this proceeding of the Romanists,
+Stillingfleet observes, "Methinks for the sake of our common
+Christianity you should no more venture upon such bold and
+unreasonable comparisons. Do you in earnest think it is all one
+whether men do believe a God, or providence, or heaven, or hell, or
+the Trinity, and incarnation of Christ, if they do not believe
+transubstantiation? We have heard much of late about old and new
+popery: but if this be the way of representing new popery, by
+exposing the common articles of faith, it will set the minds of all
+good Christians farther from it than ever. For upon the very same
+grounds we may expect another parallel between the belief of a God
+and transubstantiation, the effect of which will be the exposing of
+all religion. This is a very destructive and mischievous method of
+proceeding; but our comfort is that it is very unreasonable, as I
+hope hath fully appeared by this discourse."--<i>Doctrine of the
+Trinity and Transubstantiation compared</i>, at the
+end.</blockquote>
+<p>It has unfortunately happened that the difficulties of the
+Scripture have been generally treated as objections to the truth of
+Christianity; as such they have been pressed by adversaries, and as
+such Christian writers have replied to them. But then they become
+of such tremendous interest, that it is scarcely possible to
+examine them fairly. If my faith in God and my hope of eternal life
+is to depend on the accuracy of a date or of some minute historical
+particular, who can wonder that I should listen to any sophistry
+that may be used in defence of them, or that I should force my mind
+to do any sort of violence to itself, when life and death seem to
+hang on the issue of its decision?</p>
+<p>Yet what conceivable connexion is there between the date of
+Cyrenius's government, or the question whether our Lord healed a
+blind man as he was going into Jericho or as he was leaving it; or
+whether Judas bought himself the field of blood, or it was bought
+by the high priests: what connexion can there be between such
+questions, and the truth of God's love to man in the redemption,
+and of the resurrection of our Lord? Do we give to any narrative in
+the world, to any statement, verbal or written, no other
+alternative than that it must be either infallible or unworthy of
+belief? Is not such an alternative so extravagant as to be a
+complete reductio ad absurdum? And yet such is the alternative
+which men seem generally to have admitted in considering the
+Scripture narratives: if a single error can be discovered, it is
+supposed to be fatal to the credibility of the whole.</p>
+<p>This has arisen from an unwarranted interpretation of the word
+"inspiration," and by a still more unwarranted inference. An
+inspired work is supposed to mean a work to which God has
+communicated his own perfections; so that the slightest error or
+defect of any kind in it is inconceivable, and that which is other
+than perfect in all points cannot be inspired. This is the
+unwarranted interpretation of the word "inspiration." But then
+follows the still more unwarranted inference,--"If all the
+Scripture is not inspired, Christianity cannot be true," an
+inference which is absolutely entitled to no other consideration
+than what it may seem to derive from the number of those who have
+either openly or tacitly maintained it.</p>
+<p>Most truly do I believe the Scriptures to be inspired; the
+proofs of their inspiration rise continually with the study of
+them. The scriptural narratives are not only about divine things,
+but are themselves divinely framed and superintended. I cannot
+conceive my conviction of this truth being otherwise than sure. Yet
+I must acknowledge that the scriptural narratives do not claim this
+inspiration for themselves; so that if I should be obliged to
+resign my belief in it, which seems to me impossible, I yet should
+have no right to tax the Scriptures with having advanced a
+pretension proved to be unfounded; their whole credibility as a
+most authentic history of the most important facts would remain
+untouched; the gospel of St. John would still be a narrative as
+unimpeachable as that of Thucydides, which no sane man has ever
+disbelieved.</p>
+<p>So much for the unwarranted inference, that if the Scripture
+histories are not inspired, the great facts of the Christian
+revelation cannot be maintained. But it is no less an unwarranted
+interpretation of the term "inspiration," to suppose that it is
+equivalent to a communication of the Divine perfections. Surely,
+many of our words and many of our actions are spoken and done by
+the inspiration of God's Spirit, without whom we can do nothing
+acceptable to God. Yet does the Holy Spirit so inspire us as to
+communicate to us His own perfections? Are our best words or works
+utterly free from error or from sin? All inspiration does not then
+destroy the human and fallible part in the nature which it
+inspires; it does not change man into God.</p>
+<p>In one man, indeed, it was otherwise; but He was both God and
+man. To Him the Spirit was given without measure; and as his life
+was without sin, so his words were without error. But to all others
+the Spirit has been given by measure; in almost infinitely
+different measure it is true: the difference between the
+inspiration of the common and perhaps unworthy Christian who merely
+said that "Jesus was the Lord," and that of Moses, or St. Paul, and
+St. John, is almost to our eyes beyond measuring. Still the
+position remains, that the highest degree of inspiration given to
+man has still suffered to exist along with it a portion of human
+fallibility and corruption.</p>
+<p>Now, then, consider the epistles of the blessed Apostle St.
+Paul, who had the Spirit of God so abundantly, that never we may
+suppose did any merely human being enjoy a larger share of it.
+Endowed with the Spirit as a Christian, and daily receiving grace
+more largely, as he became more and more ripe for glory; endowed
+with the Spirit's extraordinary gifts most eminently; favoured also
+with an abundance of revelations, disclosing to him things
+ineffable and inconceivable,--are not his writings to be most truly
+called inspired? Can we doubt that, in what he has told us of
+things not seen, or not seen as yet,--of Him who pre-existed in the
+form of God before he was manifested in the form of man,--of that
+great day, when we shall arise incorruptible, and meet our Lord in
+the air, and be joined to him for ever,--can any reasonable mind
+doubt, that in speaking of these things he spoke what he had heard
+from God; that to refuse to believe his testimony is really to
+disbelieve God?</p>
+<p>Yet this great Apostle expected that the world would come to an
+end in the generation then existing. When he wrote to the
+Thessalonians some years before his first imprisonment at Rome, he
+warned them, no doubt, against expecting the end immediately: but
+he appears still to have supposed that it would come in the
+lifetime of men then living. At a later period, when writing to the
+Corinthians, his dissuasion of marriage seems to rest mainly upon
+this impression; it is good not to marry, "on account of the
+distress which is close at hand;" ([Greek: dia taen enestosan
+anankaen]; compare 2 Thess. ii. 2, [Greek: hos hoti enestaeken hae
+haemera tou Kyriou].) "The time is short," he adds; "the fashion of
+this world is passing away." And again, when speaking of the
+resurrection, he says emphatically, "the dead shall rise
+incorruptible, and <i>we</i> shall be changed;" where the pronoun
+being expressed in the original, [Greek: chai haemeis
+allagaesometha], shows that by the term "<i>we</i>," he does not
+mean the dead, but those who were to be alive at Christ's coming.
+So again, still later, when writing from Rome to the Philippians,
+he tells them "the Lord is at hand;" and later still, even in his
+first epistle to Timothy, he charges Timothy "to keep his
+commandment without spot, unrebukable, until the appearing of our
+Lord Jesus Christ." These and other passages cannot without
+violence be interpreted even singly in any other sense; but taking
+them together, their meaning seems absolutely certain. Shall we
+say, then, that St. Paul entertained and expressed a belief which
+the event did not verify? We may say so, safely and reverently, in
+this instance; for here he was most certainly speaking as a man,
+and not by revelation; as it has been providentially ordered that
+our Lord's express words on this point have been recorded--"Of that
+day and hour knoweth no man; no, not the angels in heaven." Or
+again, shall we say, that St. Paul advised the Corinthians not to
+marry, chiefly on this ground; and that this throws a suspicion
+over his directions in other points? But again it has been ordered,
+that in this very place, and no where else in all his writing, St.
+Paul has expressly said that he was only giving his judgment as a
+Christian, and not speaking with divine authority;--the concluding
+words of the chapter, [Greek: doko de kago pneuma theou echein] do
+not signify, as our Version renders them, "And I think also that I
+have the Spirit of God," as if he were confirming his own judgment
+by an assertion of his inspiration in a sense beyond that of common
+Christians; but the words say, "And I think that I too have the
+Spirit of God," "I too as well as others whom you might consult, so
+that my judgment is no less worthy of attention than theirs." But
+it is his Christian judgment only that he is giving, as he
+expressly declares, and not his apostolical command or revelation;
+a distinction which he never makes elsewhere, and which is in
+itself so striking, that we seem to recognise in it God's especial
+mercy to us, that our faith in St. Paul's general declarations of
+divine truth might not be shaken, because in one particular point
+he was permitted to speak as a man, giving express notice at the
+same time that he was doing so.</p>
+<p>Now it is at least remarkable, that in the only two instances in
+which the existence of any absence of divine authority is to be
+discerned in St. Paul's epistles, provision is actually made by
+God's fondness to prevent them from prejudicing our faith in St.
+Paul's divine authority generally. And so in whatever points any
+error may be discoverable in Scripture, we shall find either that
+the errors are of a kind wholly unconnected with the revelation of
+what God has done to us, and of what we are to do towards Him; and
+therefore are perfectly consistent with the inspiration of the
+writer, unless we take that unwarranted notion of inspiration which
+considers it as equivalent to a communication of God's attributes
+perfectly; (and of this kind are any errors that may exist either
+in points of physical science, or of chronology, or of history;) or
+if there be any thing else which appears inconsistent with
+inspiration, in the sense in which we really may and do apply it to
+the Scriptures, namely, that they are a perfect guide and rule in
+all matters concerning our relations with God, then we shall find
+that God has made some special provision for the case, to remove
+what it otherwise might have had of real difficulty.</p>
+<p>This merciful care is above all to be recognised with regard to
+one point, which otherwise would, I think, have been a difficulty
+actually insuperable: I mean the manifestly imperfect moral
+standard, which in some cases is displayed in the characters of
+good men in the Old Testament. Put the gospel by the side of the
+law and history of the Israelites; observe what the law permitted,
+and public opinion under the law did not condemn; observe the
+actions recorded of persons who are declared to have been eminently
+good, and to have received God's especial blessing; and it is
+manifest that had not our Lord himself vouchsafed his help, one of
+two things must have happened--either that we must have followed
+the old heresy of rejecting the Old Testament altogether, or else
+that our respect for the Old Testament must have impeded the growth
+of the more perfect law of Christ. The true solution I do not think
+that we could have discovered, or ventured to admit on less
+authority than our Lord's. But his express declaration, that some
+things in the law itself were permitted, because nothing higher
+could then have been borne, and his stating in detail that in
+several points what was accounted good or allowable in the former
+dispensation was not so really, while at the same time he
+constantly refers to the Old Testament as divine, and confirms its
+language of blessing with respect to its most eminent characters,
+has completely cleared to us the whole question, and enables us to
+recognize the divinity of the Old Testament and the holiness of its
+characters, without lying against our consciences and our more
+perfect revelation, by justifying the actions of those characters
+as right, essentially and abstractedly, although they were
+excusable, or in some cases actually virtuous, according to the
+standard of right and wrong which prevailed under the law.</p>
+<p>After observing God's gracious care for us in this instance, as
+well as in those which I have noticed before, I cannot but feel
+that we may safely trust Him for every other similar case, if any
+such there be, and that he will not permit our faith either in him
+or in his holy word to be shaken, because we do not attempt to
+close our eyes against truth, nor seek to support our faith by
+sophistry and falsehood. Feeling what the Scriptures are, I would
+not give unnecessary pain to any one by an enumeration of those
+points in which the literal historical statement of an inspired
+writer has been vainly defended. Some instances will probably occur
+to most readers; others are perhaps not known, and never will be
+known to many, nor is it at all needful or desirable that they
+should know them. But if ever they are brought before them, let
+them not try to put them aside unfairly, from a fear that they will
+injure our faith. Let us not do evil that evil may be escaped from;
+and it is an evil, and the fruitful parent of evils innumerable, to
+do violence to our understanding or to our reason in their own
+appointed fields; to maintain falsehood in their despite, and
+reject the truth which they sanction. If writers of Mr. Newman's
+school will persist in displaying the difficulties of the Scripture
+before the eyes of those who had not been before aware of them, let
+those who are so cruelly tempted be conjured not to be dismayed; to
+refuse utterly to surrender up their sense of truth,--to persist in
+rejecting the unchristian falsehoods which they are called upon to
+worship; sure that after all that can be said, that system will
+remain false to the end; and their Christian faith, if they do not
+faithlessly attempt to strengthen it by unlawful means, will stand
+no less unshaken.</p>
+<p>In conclusion, Christian faith rests upon Scripture; and as it
+is in itself agreeable to the highest reason, so the authenticity
+of the Scriptures on which it rests is assured to us by the
+deliberate conclusions of the understanding; nor is any "mortal
+leap" necessary at any part of the process: nor any rejection of
+one truth, in order to retain our hold on another. And if it should
+happen, as in all probability it will, that we shall be called upon
+to correct in some respects our notions as to the Scriptures, and
+so far to hold views different from those of our fathers, we should
+consider that our fathers did not, and could not stand in our
+circumstances; that the knowledge which may call upon us to
+relinquish some of their opinions, was a knowledge which they had
+not. Till this knowledge comes to us, let us hold our fathers'
+opinions as they held them; but when it does come, it will come by
+God's will, and to do his work: and that work will, assuredly, not
+be our separation from our father's faith; but if we follow God's
+guidance humbly and cheerfully, clinging to God the while in
+personal devotion and obedience, we may be made aware of what to
+them would have been an inexplicable difficulty, and which was,
+therefore, hidden from their knowledge; and yet, "through the grace
+of our Lord Jesus Christ, we believe that we shall be saved even as
+they."</p>
+<br>
+<p>THE END.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Christian Life, by Thomas Arnold
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
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+
+
+Title: The Christian Life
+       Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps
+
+Author: Thomas Arnold
+
+Release Date: August 10, 2004 [EBook #13151]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHRISTIAN LIFE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charlie Kirschner and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE CHRISTIAN LIFE;
+
+ITS COURSE, ITS HINDRANCES,
+AND ITS HELPS.
+
+BY
+THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.,
+HEAD MASTER OF RUGBY SCHOOL,
+AND LATE FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD.
+
+From the Fifth London Edition.
+
+1856.
+
+
+
+     "As far as the principle on which Archbishop Laud and his
+     followers acted went to re-actuate the idea of the church, as
+     a co-ordinate and living power by right of Christ's
+     institution and express promise, I go along with them; but I
+     soon discover that by the church they meant the clergy, the
+     hierarchy exclusively, and then I fly off from them in
+     a tangent.
+
+     "For it is this very interpretation of the church, that,
+     according to my conviction, constituted the first and
+     fundamental apostasy; and I hold it for one of the greatest
+     mistakes of our polemical divines, in their controversies
+     with the Romanists, that they trace all the corruptions of
+     the gospel faith to the Papacy."--COLERIDGE,
+
+     _Literary Remains_, vol. iii. p. 386.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+LECTURE I.
+
+GEN. iii. 22.--And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one
+of us, to know good and evil.
+
+
+LECTURE II.
+
+1 COR. xiii. 11.--When I was a child I spake as a child, I understood as
+a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away
+childish things.
+
+
+LECTURE III.
+
+1 COR. xiii. 11.--When I was a child I spake as a child, I understood as
+a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away
+childish things.
+
+
+LECTURE IV.
+
+COL. i. 9.--We do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might
+be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual
+understanding.
+
+
+LECTURE V.
+
+COL. i. 9.--We do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might
+be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual
+understanding.
+
+
+LECTURE VI.
+
+COL. iii. 3.--Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.
+
+
+LECTURE VII.
+
+1 COR. iii. 21--23.--All things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or
+Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to
+come; all are yours, and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's.
+
+
+LECTURE VIII.
+
+GAL. v. 16, 17.--Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts
+of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit
+against the flesh; and these are contrary the one to the other, so that
+ye cannot do the things that ye would.
+
+
+LECTURE IX.
+
+LUKE xiv. 33.--Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he
+hath, he cannot be my disciple.
+
+
+LECTURE X.
+
+1 TIM. i. 9.--The law is not made for a righteous man, but for the
+lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy
+and profane.
+
+
+LECTURE XI.
+
+LUKE xxi. 36.--Watch ye, therefore, and pray always, that ye may be
+accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and
+to stand before the Son of Man.
+
+
+LECTURE XII.
+
+PROV. i. 28.--Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer: they
+shall seek me early, but they shall not find me.
+
+
+LECTURE XIII.
+
+MARK xii. 34.--Thou art not far from the kingdom of God.
+
+
+LECTURE XIV.
+
+MATT. xxii. 14.--For many are called, but few are chosen.
+
+
+LECTURE XV.
+
+LUKE xi. 25.--When he cometh he findeth it swept and garnished.
+
+JOHN v. 42.--I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you.
+
+
+LECTURE XVI.
+
+MATT. xi. 10.--I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare
+thy way before thee.
+
+
+LECTURE XVII.
+
+1 COR. ii. 12.--We have received not the Spirit of the world, but the
+Spirit which is of God.
+
+
+LECTURE XVIII.
+
+GEN. xxvii. 38.--And Esau said unto his father, Hast thou but one
+blessing, my father? Bless me, even me also, O my father.
+
+MATT. xv. 27.--And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs
+which fall from their master's table.
+
+
+LECTURE XIX.
+
+MATT. xxii. 32.--God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.
+
+
+LECTURE XX.
+
+EZEK. xiii. 22.--With lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad,
+whom I have not made sad; and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that
+he should not return from his wicked way, by promising him life.
+
+
+LECTURE XXI.
+
+ADVENT SUNDAY.
+
+HEB. iii. 16.--For some when they had heard did provoke; howbeit not all
+that came out of Egypt by Moses.
+
+
+LECTURE XXII.
+
+CHRISTMAS DAY.
+
+JOHN i. 10.--He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the
+world knew him not.
+
+
+LECTURE XXIII.
+
+SUNDAY NEXT BEFORE EASTER.
+
+MATT. xxvi. 40, 41.--What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch
+and pray, that ye enter not into temptation; the spirit indeed is
+willing, but the flesh is weak.
+
+
+LECTURE XXIV.
+
+GOOD FRIDAY.
+
+ROMANS v. 8.--God commendeth his love towards us, in that, while we were
+yet sinners, Christ died for us.
+
+
+LECTURE XXV.
+
+EASTER DAY.
+
+JOHN xx. 20.--Then the disciples went away again unto their own home.
+
+
+LECTURE XXVI.
+
+WHITSUNDAY.
+
+ACTS xix. 2.--Have you received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?
+
+
+LECTURE XXVII.
+
+TRINITY SUNDAY.
+
+JOHN iii. 9.--How can these things be?
+
+
+LECTURE XXVIII.
+
+EXOD. iii. 6.--And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon
+God.
+
+LUKE xxiii. 30.--Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on
+us; and to the hills, Cover us.
+
+
+LECTURE XXIX.
+
+PSALM cxxxvii. 4.--- How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange
+land?
+
+
+LECTURE XXX.
+
+1 COR. xi. 26.--For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup,
+ye do show the Lord's death till he come.
+
+
+LECTURE XXXI.
+
+LUKE i. 3, 4.--It seemed good to me, also, having had perfect
+understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in
+order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty
+of those things wherein thou hast been instructed.
+
+
+LECTURE XXXII.
+
+Luke i. 3, 4.--It seemed good to me, also, having had perfect
+understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in
+order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty
+of those things wherein thou hast been instructed.
+
+
+LECTURE XXXIII.
+
+JOHN ix. 29.--We know that God spake unto Moses; as for this fellow, we
+know not from whence he is.
+
+
+LECTURE XXXIV.
+
+1 COR. xiv. 20.--Brethren, be not children in understanding: howbeit, in
+malice be ye children, but in understanding be men.
+
+
+LECTURE XXXV.
+
+MATT. xxvi. 45, 46.--Sleep on now and take your rest; behold the hour is
+at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise,
+let us be going: behold he is at hand that doth betray me.
+
+
+LECTURE XXXVI.
+
+2 COR. v. 17, 18.--Old things are passed away; behold all things are
+become new, and all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself
+by Jesus Christ.
+
+
+LECTURE XXXVII.
+
+EZEK. xx. 49.--Then said I, Ah, Lord God! they say of me Doth he not
+speak parables?
+
+
+LECTURE XXXVIII.
+
+ISAIAH v. 1.--Now will I sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved
+touching his vineyard.
+
+
+LECTURE XXXIX.
+
+COL. iii. 17.--Whatsoever ye do in the word or deed, do all in the name
+of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him.
+
+
+NOTES.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+The contents of this volume will be found, I hope, to be in agreement
+with its title.
+
+Amongst the helps of Christian life, the highest place is due to the
+Christian church and its ordinances. I have been greatly misunderstood
+with respect to my estimate of the Christian church, as distinguished
+from the Christian religion. I agree so far with those, from whom I in
+other things most widely differ, that I hold the revival of the church
+of Christ in its full perfection, to be the one great end to which all
+our efforts should be directed. This is with me no new belief, but one
+which I have entertained for many years. It was impressed most strongly
+upon me, as it appears to have been upon others, by the remarkable state
+of affairs and of opinions which we witnessed in this country about nine
+or ten years ago; and everything since that time has confirmed it in my
+mind more and more.
+
+Others, according to their own statement, received the same impression
+from the phenomena of the same period. But the movement had begun
+earlier; nor should I object to call it, as they do, a movement towards
+"something deeper and truer than satisfied the last century[1]." It
+began, I suppose, in the last ten years of the last century, and has
+ever since been working onwards, though for a long time slowly and
+secretly, and with no distinctly marked direction. But still, in
+philosophy and general literature, there have been sufficient proofs
+that the pendulum, which for nearly two hundred years had been swinging
+one way, was now beginning to swing back again; and as its last
+oscillation brought it far from the true centre, so it may be, that its
+present impulse may be no less in excess, and thus may bring on again,
+in after ages, another corresponding reaction.
+
+[Footnote 1: See Mr. Newman's Letter to Dr. Jelf, p. 27.]
+
+Now if it be asked what, setting aside the metaphor, are the two points
+between which mankind has been thus moving to and fro; and what are the
+tendencies in us which, thus alternately predominating, give so
+different a character to different periods of the human history; the
+answer is not easy to be given summarily, for the generalisation which
+it requires is almost beyond the compass of the human mind. Several
+phenomena appear in each period, and it would be easy to give any one of
+these as marking its tendency: as, for instance, we might describe one
+period as having a tendency to despotism, and another to licentiousness:
+but the true answer lies deeper, and can be only given by discovering
+that common element in human nature which, in religion, in politics, in
+philosophy, and in literature, being modified by the subject-matter of
+each, assumes in each a different form, so that its own proper nature is
+no longer to be recognized. Again, it would be an error to suppose that
+either of the two tendencies which so affect the course of human affairs
+were to be called simply bad or good. Each has its good and evil nicely
+intermingled; and taking the highest good of each, it would be difficult
+to say which was the more excellent;--taking the last corruption of
+each, we could not determine which, was the more hateful. For so far as
+we can trace back the manifold streams, flowing some from the eastern
+mountains, and some from the western, to the highest springs from which
+they rise, we find on the one side the ideas of truth and justice, on
+the other those of beauty and love;--things so exalted, and so
+inseparably united in the divine perfections, that to set either two
+above the other were presumptuous and profane. Yet these most divine
+things separated from each other, and defiled in their passage through
+this lower world, do each assume a form in human nature of very great
+evil: the exclusive and corrupted love of truth and justice becomes in
+man selfish atheism; the exclusive and corrupted worship of beauty and
+love becomes in man a bloody and a lying idolatry.
+
+Such would be the general theory of the two great currents in which
+human affairs may be said to have been successively drifting. But real
+history, even the history of all mankind, and much more that of any
+particular age or country, presents a picture far more complicated.
+First, as to time: as the vessels in a harbour, and in the open sea
+without it, may be seen swinging with the tide at the same moment in
+opposite directions; the ebb has begun in the roadstead, while it is not
+yet high water in the harbour; so one or more nations may be in advance
+of or behind the general tendency of their age, and from either cause
+may be moving in the opposite direction. Again, the tendency or movement
+in itself is liable to frequent interruptions, and short
+counter-movements: even when the tide is coming in upon the shore, every
+wave retires after its advance; and he who follows incautiously the
+retreating waters, may be caught by some stronger billow, overwhelming
+again for an instant the spot which had just been left dry. A child
+standing by the sea-shore for a few minutes, and watching this, as it
+seems, irregular advance and retreat of the water, could not tell
+whether it was ebb or flood; and we, standing for a few years on the
+shore of time, can scarcely tell whether the particular movement which
+we witness is according to or against the general tendency of the whole
+period. Farther yet, as these great tendencies are often interrupted, so
+are they continually mixed: that is, not only are their own good and bad
+elements successively predominant, but they never have the world wholly
+to themselves: the opposite tendency exists, in an under-current it may
+be, and not lightly perceptible; but here and there it struggles to the
+surface, and mingles its own good and evil with the predominant good and
+evil of its antagonist. Wherefore he who would learn wisdom from the
+complex experience of history, must question closely all its phenomena,
+must notice that which is less obvious as well as that which is most
+palpable; must judge not peremptorily or sweepingly, but with reserves
+and exceptions; not as lightly overrunning a wide region of the truth,
+but thankful if after much pains he has advanced his landmarks only a
+little; if he has gained, as it were, but one or two frontier
+fortresses, in which he can establish himself for ever.
+
+Now, then, when Mr. Newman describes the movement of the present moment
+as being directed towards "something better and deeper than satisfied
+the last century," this description, although in some sense true, is yet
+in practice delusive; and the delusion which lurks in it is at the root
+of the errors of Mr. Newman and of his friends. They regard the
+tendencies of the last century as wholly evil; and they appear to extend
+this feeling to the whole period of which the last century was the
+close, and which began nearly with the sixteenth century. Viewing in
+this light the last three hundred years, they regard naturally with
+excessive favour the preceding period, with which they are so strongly
+contrasted; and not the less because this period has been an object of
+scorn to the times which have followed it. They are drawn towards the
+enemy of their enemy, and they fancy that it must be in all points their
+enemy's opposite. And if the faults of its last decline are too palpable
+to be denied, they ascend to its middle and its earlier course, and
+finding that its evils are there less flagrant, they abandon themselves
+wholly to the contemplation of its good points, and end with making it
+an idol. There are few stranger and sadder sights than to see men
+judging of whole periods of the history of mankind with the blindness of
+party-spirit, never naming one century without expressions of contempt
+or abhorrence, never mentioning another but with extravagant and
+undistinguishing admiration.
+
+But the worst was yet to come. The period which Mr. Newman and his
+friends so disliked, had, in its religious character, been distinguished
+by its professions of extreme veneration for the Scriptures; in its
+quarrel with the system of the preceding period, it had rested all its
+cause on the authority of the Scripture,--it had condemned the older
+system because Scripture could give no warrant for it. On the other
+hand, the partizans of the older system protested against the exclusive
+appeal to Scripture; there was, as they maintained, another authority in
+religious matters; if their system was not supported in all its points
+by Scripture, it had at least the warrant of Christian antiquity. Thus
+Mr. Newman and his friends found that the times which they disliked had
+professed to rely on Scripture alone; the times which they loved had
+invested the Church with equal authority. It was natural then to connect
+the evils of the iron age, for so they regarded it, with this notion of
+the sole supremacy of Scripture; and it was no less natural to associate
+the blessings of their imagined golden age with its avowed reverence for
+the Church. If they appealed only to Scripture, they echoed the language
+of men whom they abhorred; if they exalted the Church and Christian
+antiquity, they sympathised with a period which they were resolved to
+love. Their theological writings from the very beginning have too
+plainly shown in this respect the force both of their sympathies and
+their antipathies.
+
+Thus previously disposed, and in their sense or apprehension of the evil
+of their own times already flying as it were for refuge to the system of
+times past, they were overtaken by the political storm of 1831, and the
+two following years. That storm rattled loudly, and alarmed many who had
+viewed the gathering of the clouds with hope and pleasure; no wonder,
+then, if it produced a stormy effect upon those who viewed it as a mere
+calamity, an evil monster bred out of an evil time, and fraught with
+nothing but mischief. Farther, the government of the country was now,
+for the first time for many years, in the hands of men who admired the
+spirit of the age, nearly as much as Mr. Newman and his friends abhorred
+it. Thus all things seemed combined against them: the spirit of the
+period which they so hated was riding as it were upon the whirlwind;
+they knew not where its violence might burst; and the government of the
+country was, as they thought, driving wildly before it, without
+attempting to moderate its fury. Already they were inclined to recognise
+the signs of a national apostasy.
+
+But from this point they have themselves written their own history.--Mr.
+Percival's letter to the editor of the Irish Ecclesiastical Journal,
+which was reprinted in the Oxford Herald of January 80, 1841, is really
+a document of the highest value. It acquaints us, from the very best
+authority, with the immediate occasion of the publication of the Tracts
+for the Times, and with the objects of their writers. It tells us
+whither their eyes were turned for deliverance; with what charm they
+hoped to allay the troubled waters. Ecclesiastical history would be far
+more valuable than it is, if we could thus learn the real character and
+views of every church, or sect, or party, from itself, and not from its
+opponents.
+
+Mr. Percival informs us, that the Irish Church Act of 1833, which
+abolished several of the Irish Bishoprics, was the immediate occasion of
+the publication of the Tracts for the Times; and that the objects of
+that publication were, to enforce the doctrine of the apostolical
+succession, and to preserve the Prayer Book from "the Socinian leaven,
+with which we had reason to fear it would be tainted by the
+parliamentary alteration of it, which at that time was openly talked
+of." But the second of these objects is not mentioned in the more formal
+statements which Mr. Percival gives of them; and in what he calls the
+"matured account" of the principles of the writers, it is only said,
+"Whereas there seems great danger at present of attempts at unauthorized
+and inconsiderate innovation as in other matters so especially in the
+service of our Church, we pledge ourselves to resist any attempt that
+may be made to alter the Liturgy on insufficient authority: i.e. without
+the exercise of the free and deliberate judgment of the Church on the
+alterations proposed." It would seem, therefore, that what was
+particularly deprecated was "the alteration of the Liturgy on
+insufficient authority," without reference to any suspected character of
+the alteration in itself. But at any rate, as all probability of any
+alteration in the Liturgy vanished very soon after the publication of
+the tracts began, the other object, the maintaining the doctrine of the
+apostolical succession, as it had been the principal one from the
+beginning, became in a very short time the only one.
+
+The great remedy, therefore, for the evils of the times, the "something
+deeper and truer than satisfied the last century," or, at least, the
+most effectual means of attaining to it, is declared to be the
+maintenance of the doctrine of apostolical succession. Now let us hear,
+for it is most important, the grounds on which this doctrine is to be
+enforced, and the reason why so much stress is laid on it. I quote again
+from Mr. Percival's letter.
+
+"Considering, 1. That the only way of salvation is the partaking of the
+body and blood of our sacrificed Redeemer;
+
+"2. That the mean expressly authorized by him for that purpose is the
+holy sacrament of his supper;
+
+"3. That the security by him no less expressly authorized, for the
+continuance and due application of that sacrament, is the apostolical
+commission of the bishops, and under them the presbyters of the church;
+
+"4. That under the present circumstances of the church in England, there
+is peculiar danger of these matters being slighted and practically
+disavowed, and of numbers of Christians being left, or tempted to
+precarious and unauthorized ways of communion, which must terminate
+often in vital apostasy:--
+
+"We desire to pledge ourselves one to another, reserving our canonical
+obedience, as follows:--
+
+"1. To be on the watch for all opportunities of inculcating, on all
+committed to our charge, a due sense of the inestimable privilege of
+communion with our Lord, through the successors of the apostles, and of
+leading them to the resolution to transmit it, by his blessing,
+unimpaired to their children."
+
+Then follow two other resolutions: one to provide and circulate books
+and tracts, to familiarize men's minds with this doctrine; and the
+other, "to do what lies in us towards reviving among churchmen, the
+practice of daily common prayer, and more frequent participation of the
+Lord's Supper."
+
+The fourth resolution, "to resist unauthorized alterations of the
+Liturgy," I have already quoted: the fifth and last engages generally to
+place within the reach of all men, accounts of such points in our
+discipline and worship as may appear most likely to be misunderstood or
+undervalued.
+
+These resolutions were drawn up more than seven years ago, and their
+practical results have not been contemptible. The Tracts for the Times
+amount to no fewer than ninety; while the sermons, articles in reviews,
+stories, essays, poems, and writings of all sorts which have enforced
+the same doctrines, have been also extremely numerous. Nor have all
+these labours been without fruit: for it is known that a large
+proportion of the clergy have adopted, either wholly or in great part,
+the opinions and spirit of the Tracts for the Times; and many of the
+laity have embraced them also.
+
+It seems also, that in the various publications of their school, the
+object originally marked out in the resolutions quoted above, has been
+followed with great steadiness. The system has been uniform, and its
+several parts have held well together. It has, perhaps, been carried on
+of late more boldly, which is the natural consequence of success. It has
+in all points been the direct opposite of what may be called the spirit
+of English protestantism of the nineteenth century: upholding whatever
+that spirit would depreciate; decrying whatever it would admire. A
+short statement of the principal views held by Mr. Newman and his
+friends, will show this sufficiently.
+
+"The sacraments, and not preaching, are the sources of divine grace." So
+it is said in the Advertisement prefixed to the first volume of the
+Tracts for the Times, in exact conformity with the preamble to the
+resolutions, which I have already quoted. But the only security for the
+efficacy of the sacraments, is the apostolical commission of the
+bishops, and under them, of the presbyters of the Church. So it is said
+in the preamble to the resolutions. These two doctrines are the
+foundation of the whole system. God's grace, and our salvation, come to
+us principally through the virtue of the sacraments; the virtue of the
+sacraments depends on the apostolical succession of those who administer
+them. The clergy, therefore, thus holding in their hands the most
+precious gifts of the Church, acquire naturally the title of the Church
+itself; the Church, as possessed of so mysterious a virtue as to
+communicate to the only means of salvation their saving efficacy,
+becomes at once an object of the deepest reverence. What wonder if to a
+body endowed with so transcendant a gift, there should be given also the
+spirit of wisdom to discern all truth; so that the solemn voice of the
+Church in its creeds, and in the decrees of its general councils, must
+be received as the voice of God himself. Nor can such a body be supposed
+to have commended any practices or states of life winch are not really
+excellent; and the duty either of all Christians, or of those at least
+who would follow the most excellent way. Fasting, therefore, and the
+state of celibacy, are the one a christian obligation, the other a
+christian perfection. Again, being members of a body so exalted, and
+receiving our very salvation in a way altogether above reason, we must
+be cautious how we either trust to our individual conscience rather
+than to the command of the Church, or how we venture to exercise our
+reason at all in judging of what the Church teaches; childlike faith and
+childlike obedience are the dispositions which God most loves. What,
+then, are they who are not of the Church, who do not receive the
+Sacraments from those who can alone give them their virtue? Surely they
+are aliens from God, they cannot claim his covenanted mercies; and the
+goodness which may be apparent in them, may not be real goodness; God
+may see that it is false, though to us it appears sincere; but it is
+certain that they do not possess the only appointed means of salvation;
+and therefore, we must consider their state as dangerous, although, we
+may not venture to condemn them.
+
+I have not consciously misrepresented the system of Mr. Newman and his
+friends in a single particular; I have not, to my knowledge, expressed
+any one of their tenets invidiously. An attentive reader may deduce, I
+think, all the Subordinate points in their teaching from some one or
+more of the principles which I have given; but I have not wilfully
+omitted any doctrine of importance. And, in every point, the opposition
+to what I may be allowed to call the protestantism of the nineteenth
+century is so manifest, that we cannot but feel that the peculiar
+character of the system is to be traced to what I have before
+noticed--the extreme antipathy of its founders to the spirit which they
+felt to be predominant in their own age and country.
+
+It is worth our while to observe this, because fear and passion are not
+the surest guides to truth, and the rule of contraries is not the rule
+of wisdom. Other men have been indignant against the peculiar evils of
+their own time, and from their strong impression of these have seemed to
+lose sight of its good points; but Mr. Newman and his friends appear to
+hate the nineteenth century for its own sake, and to proscribe all
+belonging to it, whether good or bad, simply because it does belong to
+it.--This diseased state of mind is well shown by the immediate occasion
+of the organization of their party. Mr. Perceval tells us that it was
+the Act for the dissolution of some of the Irish bishoprics, passed in
+1833, winch first made the authors of the Tracts resolve to commence
+their publication. Mr. Perceval himself cannot even now speak of that
+Act temperately; he calls it "a wanton act of sacrilege," "a monstrous
+act," "an outrage upon the Church;" and his friends, it may be presumed,
+spoke of it at the time in language at least equally vehement. Now, I am
+not expressing any opinion upon the justice or expediency of that Act;
+it was opposed by many good men, and its merits or demerits were fairly
+open to discussion; but would any fair and sensible person speak of it
+with such extreme abhorrence as it excited in the minds of Mr. Perceval
+and his friends? The Act deprived the Church of no portion of its
+property; it simply ordered a different distribution of it, with the
+avowed object on the part of its framers of saving the Church from the
+odium and the danger of exacting Church Rates from the Roman Catholics.
+It did nothing more than what, according to the constitution of the
+Churches of England and Ireland, was beyond all question within its
+lawful authority to do. The King's supremacy and the sovereignty of
+Parliament may be good or bad, but they are undoubted facts in the
+constitution of the Church of England, and have been so for nearly three
+hundred years. I repeat that I am stating no opinion as to the merits of
+the Irish Church Act of 1833; I only contend, that no man of sound
+judgment would regard it as "a monstrous act," or as "a wanton
+sacrilege." It bore upon it no marks of flagrant tyranny: nor did it
+restrain the worship of the Church, nor corrupt its faith, nor command
+or encourage anything injurious to men's souls in practice. Luther was
+indignant at the sale of indulgences; and his horror at the selling
+Church pardons for money was, by God's blessing, the occasion of the
+Reformation. The occasion of the new counter-reformation was the
+abolition of a certain number of bishoprics, that their revenues might
+be applied solely to church purposes; and that the Church might so be
+saved from a scandal and a danger. The difference of the exciting cause
+of the two movements gives the measure of the difference between the
+Reformation of 1517, and the views and objects of Mr. Newman and
+his friends.
+
+There are states of nervous excitement, when the noise of a light
+footstep is distracting. In such a condition were the authors of the
+Tracts in 1833, and all their subsequent proceedings have shown that the
+disorder was still upon them. Beset by their horror of the nineteenth
+century, they sought for something most opposite to it, and therefore
+they turned to what they called Christian antiquity. Had they judged of
+their own times fairly, had they appreciated the good of the nineteenth
+century as well as its evil, they would have looked for their remedy not
+to the second or third or fourth centuries, but the first; they would
+have tried to restore, not the Church of Cyprian, or Athanasius, or
+Augustine, but the Church of St. Paul and of St. John. Now, this it is
+most certain that they have not done. Their appeal has been not to
+Scripture, but to the opinions and practices of the dominant party in
+the ancient Church. They have endeavoured to set those opinions and
+practices, under the name of apostolical tradition, on a level with the
+authority of the Scriptures. But their unfortunate excitement has made
+them fail of doing even what they intended to do. It may be true that
+all their doctrines may be found in the writings of those whom they call
+the Fathers; but the effect of their teaching is different because its
+proportions are altered. Along with their doctrines, there are other
+points and another spirit prominent in the writings of the earlier
+Christians, which give to the whole a different complexion. The Tracts
+for the Times do not appear to me to represent faithfully the language
+of Christian antiquity; they are rather its caricature.
+
+Still more is this the case, when we compare the language of Mr. Newman
+and his friends with that of the great divines of the Church of England.
+Granting that many of these believed firmly in apostolical succession;
+that one or two may have held general councils to be infallible; that
+some, provoked by the extravagances of the puritans, have spoken
+over-strongly about the authority of tradition; yet the whole works even
+of those who agree with. Mr. Newman in these points, give a view of
+Christianity different from that of the Tracts, because these points,
+which in the Tracts stand forward without relief, are in our old divines
+tempered by the admixture of other doctrines, which, without
+contradicting them, do in fact alter their effect. This applies most
+strongly, perhaps, to Hooker and Taylor; but it holds good also of Bull
+and Pearson. Pearson's exposition of the article in the Creed relating
+to the Holy Catholic Church is very different from the language of Mr.
+Newman: it is such as, with perhaps one single exception, might be
+subscribed by a man who did not believe in apostolical succession[2].
+Again, Pearson is so far from making the creeds an independent
+authority, co-ordinate with Scripture, that he declares, contrary, I
+suppose, to all probability, that the Apostles' Creed itself was but a
+deduction from our present Scriptures of the New Testament[3].
+Undoubtedly the divines of the seventeenth century are more in agreement
+with the Tracts than the Reformers are; but it is by no means true that
+this agreement is universal. There is but one set of writers whose minds
+are exactly represented by Mr. Newman and his friends, and these are the
+nonjurors.
+
+[Footnote 2: The sixth and last mark which he gives of the unity of the
+Church is, "the unity of discipline and government." "All the Churches
+of God have the same pastoral guides appointed, authorized, sanctified,
+and set apart by the appointment of God, by the direction of the Spirit,
+to direct and lead the people of God in the same way of eternal
+salvation; as, therefore, there is no Church where there is no order, no
+ministry, so where the same order and ministry is, there is the same
+Church. And this is the unity of regiment and discipline." Pearson on
+the Creed, Art. IX. p. 341, seventh edit. fol. 1701. It would be easy to
+put a construction upon this paragraph which I could agree with; but I
+suppose that Pearson meant what I hold to be an error. Yet how gently
+and generally is it expressed; and this doubtful paragraph stands alone
+amidst seventeen folio pages on the article of the Holy Catholic Church.
+And in his conclusion, where he delivers what "every one ought to intend
+when they profess to believe the Holy Catholic Church," there is not a
+word about its government; nor is Pearson one of those interpreters who
+pervert the perfectly certain meaning of the word "Catholic" to favour
+their own notions about episcopacy. I could cordially subscribe to every
+word of this conclusion.]
+
+[Footnote 3: "To believe, therefore, as the word stands in the front of
+the Creed, ... is to assent to the whole and every part of it as to a
+certain and infallible truth revealed by God, ... and delivered unto us
+in the writings of the blessed apostles and prophets immediately
+inspired, moved, and acted by God, out of whose writings this brief sum
+of necessary points of faith was first collected." (P. 12.) And in the
+paragraph immediately preceding, Pearson had said, "The household of God
+is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, who are
+continued unto us only in their writings, and by them alone convoy unto
+us the truths which they received from God, upon whose testimony we
+believe." It appears, therefore, that Pearson not only subscribed the
+6th Article of the Church of England, but also believed it.]
+
+Many reasons, therefore, concur to make it doubtful whether the authors
+of the Tracts have discovered the true remedy for the evils of their
+age; whether they have really inculcated "something better and deeper
+than satisfied the last century." The violent prejudice which previously
+possessed them, and the strong feelings of passion and fear which led
+immediately to their first systematic publications, must in the first
+instance awaken a suspicion as to their wisdom; and this suspicion
+becomes stronger when we find their writings different from the best of
+those which they profess to admire, and bearing a close resemblance only
+to those of the nonjurors. A third consideration is also of much
+weight--that their doctrines do not enforce any great points of moral or
+spiritual perfection which other Christians had neglected; nor do they,
+in any especial manner, "preach Christ." In this they offer a striking
+contrast to the religious movement, if I may so call it, which began
+some years since in the University at Cambridge. That movement, whatever
+human alloy might have mingled with it, bore on it most clear evidence
+that it was in the main God's work. It called upon men to turn from sin
+and be reconciled to God; it emphatically preached Christ crucified. But
+Mr. Newman and his friends have preached as their peculiar doctrine, not
+Christ but the Church; we must go even farther and say, not the Church,
+but themselves. What they teach has no moral or spiritual excellence in
+itself; but it tends greatly to their own exaltation. They exalt the
+sacraments highly, but all that they say of their virtue, all their
+admiration of them as so setting forth the excellence of faith, inasmuch
+as in them the whole work is of God, and man has only to receive and
+believe, would be quite as true, and quite as well-grounded, if they
+were to abandon altogether that doctrine which it is their avowed object
+especially to enforce--the doctrine of apostolical succession.
+Referring again to the preamble of their original resolutions, already
+quoted, we see that the two first articles alone relate to our Lord and
+to his Sacraments; the third, which is the great basis of their system,
+relates only to the Clergy. Doubtless, if apostolical succession be
+God's will, it is our duty to receive it and to teach it; but a number
+of clergymen, claiming themselves to have this succession, and insisting
+that, without it, neither Christ nor Christ's Sacraments will save us,
+do, beyond all contradiction, preach themselves, and magnify their own
+importance. They are quite right in doing so, if God has commanded it;
+but such preaching has no manifest warrant of God in it; if it be
+according to God, it stands alone amongst his dispensations; his
+prophets and his apostles had a different commission. "We preach," said
+St. Paul, "not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your
+servants for Jesus' sake." It is certain that the enforcing apostolical
+succession as the great object of our teaching is precisely to do that
+very thing which St. Paul was commissioned not to do.
+
+This, to my mind, affords a very great presumption that the peculiar
+doctrines of Mr. Newman and his friends, those which they make it their
+professed business to inculcate, are not of God. I am anxious not to be
+misunderstood in saying this. Mr. Newman and his friends preach many
+doctrines which are entirely of God; as Christians, as ministers of
+Christ's Church, they preach God's word; and thus, a very large portion
+of their teaching is of God, blessed both to their hearers and to
+themselves. Nay, even amongst the particular objects to which their own
+"Resolutions" pledge them, one is indeed most excellent--"the revival of
+daily common prayer, and more frequent participation of the Lord's
+Supper." This is their merit, not as Christians generally, but as a
+party, (I use the word in no offensive sense;) in this respect their
+efforts have done, and are doing great good. But they have themselves
+declared that they will especially set themselves to preach apostolical
+succession; and it is with reference to this, that I charge them with
+"preaching themselves;" it was of this I spoke, when I said that there
+was a very great presumption that their peculiar doctrines were not
+of God.
+
+Again, the system which they hold up as "better and deeper than
+satisfied the last century" is a remedy which has been tried once
+already: and its failure was so palpable, that all the evil of the
+eighteenth century was but the reaction from that enormous evil which
+this remedy, if it be one, had at any rate been powerless to cure.
+Apostolical succession, the dignity of the Clergy, the authority of the
+Church, were triumphantly maintained for several centuries; and their
+full development was coincident, to say the least, with the corruption
+alike of Christ's religion and Christ's Church. So far were they from
+tending to realize the promises of prophecy, to perfect Christ's body up
+to the measure of the stature of Christ's own fulness, that Christ's
+Church declined during their ascendancy more and more;--she fell alike
+from truth and from holiness; and these doctrines, if they did not cause
+the evil, were at least quite unable to restrain it. For, in whatever
+points the fifteenth century differed from the fourth, it cannot be said
+that it upheld the apostolical succession less peremptorily, or attached
+a less value to Church tradition, and Church authority. I am greatly
+understating the case, but I am content for the present to do so: I will
+not say that Mr. Newman's favourite doctrines were the very Antichrist
+which corrupted Christianity; I will only say that they did not prevent
+its corruption,--that when they were most exalted Christian truth and
+Christian goodness were most depressed.
+
+After all, however, what has failed once may doubtless be successful on
+a second trial: it is within possibility, perhaps, that a doctrine,
+although destitute of all internal evidence showing it to come from God,
+may be divine notwithstanding;--revealed for some purposes which we
+cannot fathom, or simply as an exercise of our obedience. All this may
+be so; and if it can be shown to be so, there remains no other course
+than to believe God's word, and obey his commandments; only the strength
+of the external evidence must be in proportion to the weakness of the
+internal. A good man would ask for no sign from heaven to assure him
+that God commands judgment, mercy, and truth; whatsoever things are
+pure, and lovely, and of good report, bear in themselves the seal of
+their origin; a seal which to doubt were blasphemy. But the cloud and
+the lightnings and thunders, and all the signs and wonders wrought in
+Egypt and in the Red Sea, were justly required to give divine authority
+to mere positive ordinances, in which, without such external warrant,
+none could have recognised the voice of God. We ask of Mr. Newman and
+his friends to bring some warrant of Scripture for that which they
+declare to be God's will. They speak very positively and say, that "the
+security by our Lord no less expressly authorized for the continuance
+and due application of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, is the
+apostolical commission of the bishops, and under them the presbyters of
+the Church." They say that our Lord has authorized this "no less
+expressly" than he has authorized the Holy Supper as the mean of
+partaking in his body and blood. What our Lord has said concerning the
+communion is not truly represented: he instituted it as one mean of
+grace among many; not as_the_ mean; neither the sole mean, nor the
+principal. But allow, for an instant, that it was instituted as_the_
+mean; and give this sense to those well-known and ever-memorable words
+in which our Lord commanded his disciples to eat the bread and drink of
+the cup, in remembrance of him. His words commanding us to do this are
+express; "not less express," we are told, is his "sanction of the
+apostolical commission of the bishops, as the security for the
+continuance and due application of the Sacrament." Surely these writers
+allow themselves to pervert language so habitually, that they do not
+consider when, and with regard to whom, they are doing it. They say that
+our Lord has sanctioned the necessity of apostolical succession, in
+order to secure the continuance and efficacy of the sacrament, "no less
+expressly" than he instituted the sacrament itself. If they had merely
+asserted that he had sanctioned the necessity of apostolical succession,
+we might have supposed that, by some interpretation of their own, they
+implied his sanction of it, from words which, to other men, bore no such
+meaning. But in saying that he has "expressly sanctioned it," they have,
+most unconsciously, I trust, ascribed their own words to our Lord; they
+make Mm to say what he has not said, unless they can produce[4] some
+other credible record of his words besides the books of the four
+evangelists and the apostolical epistles.
+
+[Footnote 4: "Scripture alone contains what remains to us of our Lord's
+teaching. If there be a portion of revelation sacred beyond other
+portions, distinct and remote in its nature from the rest, it must be
+the words and works of the eternal Son Incarnate. He is the one Prophet
+of the Church, as he is our one Priest and King. His history is as far
+above any other possible revelation, as heaven is above earth: for in it
+we have literally the sight of Almighty God in his judgments, thoughts,
+attributes, and deeds, and his mode of dealing with us his creatures.
+Now, this special revelation is in Scripture, and in Scripture only:
+tradition has no part in it."--_Newman's Lectures on the Prophetical
+Office of the Church_. 1837. Pp. 347, 348.]
+
+That their statement was untrue, and being untrue, that it is a most
+grave matter to speak untruly of our Lord's commands, are points
+absolutely certain. But if they recall the assertion, as to the
+expressness of our Lord's sanction, and mean to say, that his sanction
+is implied, and may be reasonably deduced from what he has said, then I
+answer, that the deduction ought to be clear, because the doctrine in
+itself bears on it no marks of having had Christ for its author. Yet so
+far is it from true, that the necessity of apostolical succession, in
+order to give efficacy to the sacrament, may be clearly deduced from any
+recorded words of our Lord, that there are no words[5] of his from which
+it can be deduced, either probably or plausibly; none with which it has
+any, the faintest, connexion; none from which it could be even
+conjectured that such a tenet had ever been in existence. I am not
+speaking, it will be observed, of apostolical succession simply; but of
+the necessity of apostolical succession, as a security for the efficacy
+of the sacrament. That this doctrine comes from God, is a position
+altogether without evidence, probability, or presumption, either
+internal or external.
+
+[Footnote 5: Since this was written, I have found out, what certainly it
+was impossible to anticipate beforehand, that our Lord's words, "Do this
+in remembrance of me," are supposed to teach the doctrine of the
+priest's consecrating power. But the passage to which I refer is so
+remarkable that I must quote it in its author's own words. Mr. Newman,
+for the tract is apparently one of his, observes, that three out of the
+four Gospels make no mention of the raising of Lazarus. He then goes on,
+"As the raising of Lazarus is true, though not contained at all in the
+first three Gospels; so the gift of consecrating the Eucharist may have
+been committed by Christ to the priesthood, though only indirectly
+taught in any of the four. Will you say I am arguing against our own
+Church, which says the Scripture 'contains all things necessary to be
+believed to salvation?' Doubtless, Scripture _contains_ all things
+necessary to be _believed_; but there may be things _contained_ which
+are not _on the surface_, and things which belong to the _ritual_, and
+not to _belief_. Points of faith may lie _under_ the surface: points of
+observance need not be in Scripture _at all_. The consecrating power is
+a point of ritual, yet it _is_ indirectly taught in Scripture, though
+not brought out, when Christ said, 'Do this,' for he spake to the
+apostles, who were priests, not to his disciples generally."--_Tracts
+for the Times_. Tract 85, p. 46.
+
+This passage is indeed characteristic of the moral and intellectual
+faults which I have alluded to as marking the writings of the supporters
+of Mr. Newman's system. But what is become of the assertion, that this
+security of the apostolical commission was "expressly authorized" by our
+Lord, when it is admitted that it is only indirectly taught in
+Scripture? And what becomes of the notion, that what our Lord did or
+instituted may be learned from another source than Scripture, when Mr.
+Newman has most truly stated, in the passage quoted in the preceding
+note, that our Lord's history, the history of his words and works, "is
+in Scripture, and Scripture only: tradition has no part in it?" I pass
+over the surprising state of mind which could imagine a distinction
+between things necessary to be believed, and necessary to be done; and
+could conceive such a distinction to be according to the meaning of our
+article. It would appear that this shift has been since abandoned, and
+others, no way less extraordinary, have been attempted in its place; for
+an extraordinary process it must be which tries to reconcile Mr.
+Newman's opinions with the declaration of the sixth article. But now for
+Mr. Newman's scriptural proof, that our Lord "committed to the
+priesthood the gift of consecrating the Eucharist." "When Christ said,
+'Do this,' he spake to the apostles, who were priests, not to his
+disciples generally." This would prove too much, for it would prove that
+none but the clergy were ordered to receive the communion at all: the
+words, "Do this," referring, not to any consecration, of which there had
+been no word said, but to the eating the bread, and drinking of the cup.
+Again, when St. Paul says, "the cup which we bless,'--the bread which we
+break," it is certain that the word "we," does not refer to himself and
+Sosthenes, or to himself and Barnabas, but to himself and the whole
+Corinthian church; for he immediately goes on, "for we, the whole number
+of us," ([Greek: oi polloi] compare Romans xii. 5,) "are one body, for
+we all are partakers of the one bread." Thirdly, Tertullian expressly
+contrasts the original institution of our Lord with the church practice
+of his own day, in this very point. "Eucharistiae sacramentum et in
+tempore victus, et omnibus mandatum a Domino, etiam antelucanis coetibus
+nee de aliorum manu quam praeridentium sumimus." (_De Corona Mililis_,
+3.) I know that Tertullian believes the alteration to have been founded
+upon an apostolical tradition; but he no less names it as a change from
+the original institution of our Lord; nor does he appear to consider it
+as more than a point of order. Lastly, what shadow of probability is
+there, and is it not begging the whole question, to assume that our Lord
+spoke to his apostles as priests, and not as representatives of the
+whole Christian church? His language makes no distinction between his
+disciples and those who were without; it repels it as dividing his
+disciples from each other. His twelve disciples were the apostles of the
+church, but they were not priests. In such matters our Lord's words
+apply exactly, "One is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are
+brethren."]
+
+On the whole, then, the movement in the church, excited by Mr. Newman
+and his friends, appears to be made in a false direction, and to be
+incapable of satisfying the feeling which prompted it. I have not
+noticed other presumptions against it, arising from the consequences to
+which the original doctrines of the party have since led, or from
+certain moral and intellectual faults which have marked the writings of
+its supporters. It is enough to say, that the movement originated in
+minds highly prejudiced beforehand, and under the immediate influence of
+passion and fear; that its doctrines, as a whole, resemble the teaching
+of no set of writers entitled to respect, either in the early church, or
+in our own; that they tend, not to Christ's glory, or to the advancement
+of holiness, but simply to the exaltation of the clergy; and that they
+are totally unsupported by the authority of Scripture. They are a plant,
+therefore, which our heavenly Father has not planted; a speaking in the
+name of the Lord what the Lord has not commanded; hay and stubble,
+built upon the foundation of Christ, which are good for nothing but to
+be burned.
+
+I have spoken quite confidently of the total absence of all support in
+Scripture for Mr. Newman's favourite doctrine of "the necessity of
+apostolical succession, in order to ensure the effect of the
+sacraments." This doctrine is very different from that of the Divine
+appointment of episcopacy as a form of government, or even from that of
+the exclusive lawfulness of that episcopacy which has come down by
+succession from the apostles. Much less is it to be confounded with any
+notions, however exalted, of the efficacy of the sacraments, even though
+carried to such a length as we read of in the early church, when living
+men had themselves baptized as proxies for the dead, and when a portion
+of the wine of the communion was placed by the side of a corpse in the
+grave. Such notions may be superstitious and unscriptural, as indeed
+they are, but they are quite distinct from a belief in the necessity of
+a human priest to give the sacraments their virtue. And, without going
+to such lengths as this, men may overestimate the efficacy of the
+sacraments, to the disparagement of prayer, and preaching, and reading
+the Scriptures, and yet may be perfectly clear from the opinion which
+makes this efficacy depend immediately on a human administrator. And so
+again, men may hold episcopacy to be divine, and the episcopacy of
+apostolical succession to be the only true episcopacy, but yet they may
+utterly reject the notion of its being essential to the efficacy of the
+sacraments. It is of this last doctrine only that I assert, in the
+strongest terms, that it is wholly without support in Scripture, direct
+or indirect, and that it does not minister to godliness.
+
+In truth, Mr. Newman and his friends are well aware that the Scripture
+will not support their doctrine, and therefore it is that they have
+proceeded to such, lengths in upholding the authority not of the creeds
+only, but of the opinions and practices of the ancient church generally;
+and that they try to explain away the clear language of our article,
+that nothing "which is neither read therein (i.e. in holy Scripture,)
+nor may be proved thereby, is to be required of any man that it should
+be believed as an article of faith, or be thought requisite or necessary
+to salvation." It would be one of the most unaccountable phenomena of
+the human mind, were any man fairly to come to the conclusion that the
+Scriptures and the early church were of equal authority, and that the
+authority of both were truly divine. If any men resolve to maintain
+doctrines and practices as of divine authority, for which the Scripture
+offers no countenance, they of course are driven to maintain the
+authority of the church in their own defence; and where they have an
+interest in holding any particular opinion, its falsehood, however
+palpable, is unhappily no bar to its reception. Otherwise it would seem
+that the natural result of believing the early church to be of equal
+authority with the Scripture, would be to deny the inspiration of
+either. For two things so different in several points as the
+Christianity of the Scriptures and that of the early church, may
+conceivably be both false, but it is hard to think that they can both be
+perfectly true.
+
+I am here, however, allowing, what is by no means true, without many
+qualifications, that Mr. Newman's system is that of the early church.
+The historical inquiry as to the doctrines of the early church would
+lead me into far too wide a field; I may only notice, in passing, how
+many points require to be carefully defined in conducting such an
+inquiry; as, for instance, what we mean by the term "early church," as
+to time; for that may be fully true of the church in the fourth
+century, which is only partially true of it in the third, and only in a
+very slight degree true of it in the second or first. And again, what do
+we mean by the term "early church," as to persons; for a few eminent
+writers are not even the whole clergy; neither is it by any means to be
+taken on their authority that their views were really those of all the
+bishops and presbyters of the Christian world; but if they were, the
+clergy are not the church, nor can their judgments be morally considered
+as the voice of the church, even if we were to admit that they could at
+any time constitute its voice legally. But, for my present purpose, we
+may take for granted that Mr. Newman's system as to the pre-eminence of
+the sacraments, and the necessity of apostolical succession to give them
+their efficacy, was the doctrine of the early church; then I say that
+this system is so different from that of the New Testament, that to
+invest the two with equal authority is not to make the church system
+divine, but to make the scriptural system human; or, at the best,
+perishable and temporary, like the ceremonial law of Moses. Either the
+church system must be supposed to have superseded the scriptural
+system[6], and its unknown authors are the real apostles of our present
+faith, in which case, we do not see why it should not be superseded in
+its turn, and why the perfect manifestation of Christianity should not
+be found in the Koran, or in any still later system; or else neither of
+the two systems can be divine, but the one is merely the human
+production of the first century, the other that of the second and third.
+If this be so, it is clearly open to all succeeding centuries to adopt
+whichever of the two they choose, or neither.
+
+[Footnote 6: This, it is well known, has been most ably maintained by
+Rothe, (_Artfange der Christlichen Kirche und ihrer Verfassung_,
+Wittenberg, 1837,) with respect to the origin of episcopacy. He contends
+that it was instituted by the surviving apostles after the destruction
+of Jerusalem, as an intentional change from the earlier constitution of
+the church, in order to enable it to meet the peculiar difficulties and
+dangers of the times. To this belongs the question of the meaning of the
+expression, [Greek: oi tais deuterais ton Apostolon diataxesi
+parakolouthaekotes], in the famous Fragments of Irenaeus, published by
+Pfaff, from a manuscript in the library of Turin, and to be found in the
+Venice edition of Irenaeus, 1734, vol. ii. _Fragmentorum_, p. 10. But
+then Rothe would admit that if the apostles altered what they themselves
+had appointed, it would follow that neither their earlier nor their
+later institutions were intended to be for all times and all places, but
+were simply adapted to a particular state of circumstances, and were
+alterable when that state was altered: in short, whatever institutions
+the apostles changed were shown to be essentially changeable; otherwise
+their early institution was defective, which cannot be conceived. And
+thus it may well be that the early church may have altered, in some
+points, the first institutions of the apostles, and may have been guided
+by God's Spirit in doing so; but the error consists in believing that
+the now institutions were to be of necessity more permanent than those
+which they succeeded; in supposing that either the one or the other
+belong to the eternal truths and laws of Christ's religion, when they
+belong, in fact, to the essentially changeable regulations of
+his church.]
+
+To such consequences are those driven who maintain the divine authority
+of the system of Mr. Newman. Assuredly the thirst for "something deeper
+and truer than satisfied the last century," will not be allayed by a
+draught so scanty and so vapid; but after the mirage has beguiled and
+disappointed him for a season, the traveller presses on the more eagerly
+to the true and living well.
+
+In truth, the evils of the last century were but the inevitable fruits
+of the long ascendency of Mr. Newman's favourite principles. Christ's
+religion had been corrupted in the long period before the Reformation,
+but it had ever retained many of its main truths, and it was easy, when
+the appeal was once made to Scripture, to sweep away the corruptions,
+and restore it in its perfect form; but Christ's church had been
+destroyed so long and so completely, that its very idea was all but
+lost, and to revive it actually was impossible. What had been known
+under that name,--I am speaking of Christ's church, be it observed, as
+distinguished from Christ's religion,--was so great an evil, that,
+hopeless of drawing any good from it, men looked rather to Christ's
+religion as all in all; and content with having destroyed the false
+church, never thought that the scheme of Christianity could not be
+perfectly developed without the restoration of the true one. But the
+want was deeply felt, and its consequences were deplorable. At this
+moment men are truly craving something deeper than satisfied the last
+century; they crave to have the true church of Christ, which the last
+century was without. Mr. Newman perceives their want, and again offers
+them that false church which is worse than none at all.
+
+The truths of the Christian religion are to be sought for in the
+Scripture alone; they are the same at all times and in all countries.
+With the Christian church it is otherwise; the church is not a
+revelation concerning the unchangeable and eternal God, but an
+institution to enable changeable man to apprehend the unchangeable.
+Because man is changeable, the church is also changeable; changeable,
+not in its object, which is for ever one and the same, but in its means
+for effecting that object; changeable in its details, because the same
+treatment cannot suit various diseases, various climates, various
+constitutional peculiarities, various external influences.
+
+The Scripture, then, which is the sole and direct authority for all the
+truths of the Christian religion, is not in the same way, an authority
+for the constitution and rules of the Christian church; that is, it does
+not furnish direct authority, but guides us only by analogy: or it
+gives us merely certain main principles, which we must apply to our own
+various circumstances. This is shown by the remarkable fact, that
+neither our Lord nor his apostles have left any commands with respect to
+the constitution and administration of the church generally. Commands in
+abundance they have left us on moral matters; and one commandment of
+another kind has been added, the commandment, namely, to celebrate the
+Lord's Supper. "Do this in remembrance of me," are our Lord's words; and
+St. Paul tells us, if we could otherwise have doubted it, that this
+remembrance is to be kept up for ever. "As often as ye eat that bread or
+drink that cup ye do show the Lord's death _till he come_." This is the
+one perpetual ordinance of the Christian church, and this is commanded
+to be kept perpetually. But its other institutions are mentioned
+historically, as things done once, but not necessarily to be always
+repeated: nay, they are mentioned without any details, so that we do not
+always know what their exact form was in their original state, and
+cannot, therefore, if we would, adopt it as a perpetual model. Nor is it
+unimportant to observe that institutions are recorded as having been
+created on the spur of the occasion, if I may so speak, not as having
+formed a part of an original and universal plan. A great change in the
+character of the deacon, or subordinate minister's office, is introduced
+in consequence of the complaints of the Hellenist Christians: the number
+of the apostles is increased by the addition of Paul and Barnabas, not
+appointed, as Matthias had been, by the other apostles themselves, but
+by the prophets and teachers of the church of Antioch. Again, the
+churches founded by St. Paul were each, at first, placed by him under
+the government of several presbyters; but after his imprisonment at
+Rome, finding that they were become greatly corrupted, he sends out
+single persons, in two instances, with full powers to remodel these
+churches, and with authority to correct the presbyters themselves: yet
+it does not appear that these especial[7] visitors were to alter
+permanently the earlier constitution of the churches; nor that they were
+sent generally to all the churches which St. Paul had founded. Indeed,
+it appears evident from the epistle of Clement, that the original
+constitution of the church of Corinth still subsisted in his time; the
+government was still vested not in one man, but in many[8]. Yet a few
+years later the government of a single man, as we see from Ignatius, was
+become very general; and Ignatius, as is well known, wishes to invest it
+with absolute power[9]. I believe that he acted quite wisely according
+to the circumstances of the church at that period; and that nothing less
+than a vigorous unity of government could have struggled with the
+difficulties and dangers of that crisis. But no man can doubt that the
+system which Ignatius so earnestly recommends was very different from
+that which St. Paul had instituted fifty or sixty years earlier.
+
+[Footnote 7: The command, "to appoint elders in every city," is given to
+Titus, according to Paul's practice when he first formed churches of the
+Gentiles (Acts xiv, 2.) Nor did Timothy, or Titus, remain permanently at
+Ephesus, or in Crete. Timothy, when St. Paul's second Epistle was
+written to him, was certainly not at Ephesus, but apparently in Pontus;
+and Titus, at the same period, was gone to Dalmatia: nor indeed was he
+to remain in Crete beyond the summer of the year in which St. Paul's
+Epistle was written; he was to meet Paul, in the winter, at Nicopolis.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Only elders are spoken of as governing the church of
+Corinth. It is impossible to understand clearly the nature of the
+contest, and of the party against which Clement's Epistle is directed.
+Where he wishes the heads of that party to say, [Greek: ei di eme stasis
+kai eris kai schismata, ekchoro, apeimi, ou ean, boulaesthe, kai poio,
+ta, prostassomena upo tou plaethous], c. 54, it would seem as if they
+had been endeavouring to exercise a despotic authority over the church,
+in defiance of the general feeling, as well as of the existing
+government, like those earlier persons at Corinth, whom St. Paul
+describes, in his second Epistle, xi. 20; and like Diotrephes, mentioned
+by St. John, 3 Epist. 9, 10. But in a society where all power must have
+depended on the consent of those subject to it, how could any one
+exercise a tyranny against the will of the majority, as well as against
+the authority of the Apostles? And [Greek: ta prostassomena upo tou
+plaethous] must signify, I think, "the bidding of the society at large."
+Compare for this use of [Greek: plaethos], Ignatius, Smyrna. 8;
+Trallian. 1, 8. A conjecture might be offered as to the solution of this
+difficulty, but it would lead mo into too long a discussion.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Insomuch that he wished all marriages to be solemnized with
+the consent and approbation of the bishop, [Greek: meta gnomaes tou
+episkopou], that they might be "according to God, and not according to
+passion;" [Greek: kapa Theon kai mae kat epithomian].--_Ad.
+Polycarp_. 5.]
+
+On two points, however,--points not of detail, but of principle,--the
+Scripture does seem to speak decisively. 1st. The whole body of the
+church was to take an active share in its concerns; the various
+faculties of its various members were to perform their several parts: it
+was to be a living society, not an inert mass of mere hearers and
+subjects, who were to be authoritatively taught and absolutely ruled by
+one small portion of its members. It is quite consistent with this,
+that, at particular times, the church should centre all its own power
+and activity in the persons of its rulers. In the field, the imperium of
+the Roman consul was unlimited; and even within the city walls, the
+senate's commission in times of imminent danger, released him from all
+restraints of law; the whole power of the state was, for the moment,
+his, and his only. Such temporary despotisms are sometimes not expedient
+merely, but necessary: without them society would perish. I do not,
+therefore, regard Ignatius's epistles as really contradictory to the
+idea of the church conveyed to us in the twelfth chapter of St. Paul's
+First Epistle to the Corinthians: I believe that the dictatorship, so to
+speak, which Ignatius claims for the bishop in each church, was required
+by the circumstances of the case; but to change the temporary into the
+perpetual dictatorship, was to subvert the Roman constitution; and to
+make Ignatius's language the rule, instead of the exception, is no less
+to subvert the Christian church. Wherever the language of Ignatius is
+repeated with justice, there the church must either be in its infancy,
+or in its dotage, or in some extraordinary crisis of danger; wherever it
+is repeated, as of universal application, it destroys, as in fact it has
+destroyed, the very life of Christ's institution.
+
+But, 2d, the Christian church was absolutely and entirely, at all times,
+and in all places, to be without a human priesthood. Despotic government
+and priesthood are things perfectly distinct from one another. Despotic
+government might be required, from time to time, by this or that portion
+of the Christian church, as by other societies; for government is
+essentially changeable, and all forms, in the manifold varieties of the
+condition of society, are, in their turn, lawful and beneficial. But a
+priesthood belongs to a matter not so varying--the relations subsisting
+between God and man. These relations were fixed for the Christian church
+from its very foundation, being, in fact, no other than the main truths
+of the Christian religion; and they bar, for all time, the very notion
+of an earthly priesthood. They bar it, because they establish the
+everlasting priesthood of our Lord, which leaves no place for any other;
+they bar it, because priesthood is essentially mediation; and they
+establish one Mediator between God and man--the Man Christ Jesus. And,
+therefore, the notion of Mr. Newman and his friends, that the sacraments
+derive their efficacy from the apostolical succession of the minister,
+is so extremely unchristian, that it actually deserves to be called
+anti-christian; for there is no point of the priestly office, properly
+so called, in which the claim of the earthly priest is not absolutely
+precluded. Do we want him for sacrifice? Nay, there is no place for him
+at all; for our one atoning Sacrifice has been once offered; and by its
+virtue we are enabled to offer daily our spiritual sacrifices of
+ourselves, which no other man can by possibility offer for us. Do we
+want him for intercession? Nay, there is One who ever liveth to make
+intercession for us, through whom we have access to ([Greek:
+prosalogaen], admission to the presence of) the Father, and for whose
+sake, Paul, and Apollos, and Peter, and things present, and things to
+come, are all ours already. His claim can neither be advanced or
+received without high dishonour to our true Priest and to his blessed
+gospel. If circumcision could not be practised, as necessary, by a
+believer in Christ, without its involving a forfeiture of the benefits
+of Christ's salvation; how much more does St. Paul's language apply to
+the invention of an earthly priesthood--a priesthood neither after the
+order of Aaron, nor yet of Melchisedek; unlawful alike under the law and
+the gospel.
+
+It is the invention of the human priesthood, which falling in,
+unhappily, with the absolute power rightfully vested in the Christian
+church during the troubles of the second century, fixed the exception as
+the rule, and so in the end destroyed the church. It pretended that the
+clergy were not simply rulers and teachers,--offices which, necessarily
+vary according to the state of those who are ruled and taught,--but that
+they were essentially mediators between God and the church; and as this
+language would have sounded too profanely,--for the mediator between
+God and the church can be none but Christ,--so the clergy began to draw
+to themselves the attributes of the church, and to call the church by a
+different name, such as the faithful, or the laity; so that to speak of
+the church mediating for the people did not sound so shocking, and the
+doctrine so disguised found ready acceptance. Thus the evil work was
+consummated; the great majority of the members of the church, were
+virtually disfranchised; the minority retained the name, but the
+character of the institution was utterly corrupted.
+
+To revive Christ's church, therefore, is to expel the antichrist of
+priesthood, (which, as it was foretold of him, "as God, sitteth in the
+temple of God, showing himself that he is God,") and to restore its
+disfranchised members,--the laity,--to the discharge of their proper
+duties in it, and to the consciousness of their paramount importance.
+This is the point which I have dwelt upon in the XXXVIII^{th} Lecture,
+and which is closely in connection with the point maintained in the
+XL^{th}; and all who value the inestimable blessings of Christ's church
+should labour in arousing the laity to a sense of their great share in
+them. In particular, that discipline, which is one of the greatest of
+those blessings, never can, and, indeed, never ought to be restored,
+till the Church resumes its lawful authority, and puts an end to the
+usurpation of its powers by the clergy. There is a feeling now awakened
+amongst the lay members of our Church, which, if it can but be rightly
+directed, may, by God's blessing, really arrive at something truer and
+deeper than satisfied the last century, or than satisfied the last
+seventeen centuries. Otherwise, whatever else may be improved, the laity
+will take care that church discipline shall continue to slumber, and
+they will best serve the church by doing so. Much may be done to spread
+the knowledge of Christ's religion; new churches may be built; new
+ministers appointed to preach the word and administer the sacraments;
+those may hear who now cannot hear; many more sick persons may be
+visited; many more children may receive religious instruction: all this
+is good, and to be received with sincere thankfulness; but, with a
+knowledge revealed to us of a still more excellent power in Christ's
+church, and with the abundant promises of prophecy in our hands, can we
+rest satisfied with the lesser and imperfect good, which strikes thrice
+and stays? But, if the zeal of the lay members of our Church be directed
+by the principles of Mr. Newman, then the result will be, not merely a
+lesser good, but one fearfully mixed with evil--Christian religion
+profaned by anti-christian fables, Christian holiness marred by
+superstition and uncharitableness; Christian wisdom and Christian
+sincerity scoffed at, reviled, and persecuted out of sight. This is
+declared to us by the sure voice of experience; this was the fruit of
+the spirit of priestcraft, with its accompaniments of superstitious
+rites and lying traditions, in the last decline of the Jewish church;
+this was the fruit of the same spirit, with the same accompaniments, in
+the long decay of the Christian church; although, the indestructible
+virtue of Christ's gospel was manifest in the midst of the evil, and
+Christ, in every age and in every country, has been known with saving
+power by some of his people, and his church, in her worst corruptions,
+has taught many divinest truths, has inculcated many holiest virtues.
+
+When the tide is setting strongly against us, we can scarcely expect to
+make progress; it is enough if we do not drift along with it. Mr.
+Newman's system is now at the flood; it is daily making converts; it is
+daily swelled by many of those who neither love it nor understand it in
+itself, but who hope to make it serve their purposes, or who like to
+swim with the stream. A strong profession, therefore, of an opposite
+system must expect, at the present moment, to meet with little favour;
+nor, indeed, have I any hope of turning the tide, which will flow for
+its appointed season, and its ebb does not seem to be at hand. But
+whilst the hurricane rages, those exposed to it may well encourage one
+another to hold fast their own foundations against it; and many are
+exposed to it in whose welfare I naturally have the deepest interest,
+and in whom old impressions may be supposed to have still so much force
+that I may claim from them, at least, a patient hearing. I am anxious to
+show them that Mr. Newman's system is to be opposed not merely on
+negative grounds, as untrue, but as obstructing that perfect and
+positive truth, that perfection of Christ's church, which the last
+century, it may be, neglected, but which I value and desire as earnestly
+as it can be valued and desired by any man alive. My great objection to
+Mr. Newman's system is, that it destroys Christ's church, and sets up an
+evil in its stead. We do not desire merely to hinder the evil from
+occupying the ground, and to leave it empty; that has been, undoubtedly,
+the misfortune, and partly the fault of Protestantism; but we desire to
+build on the holy ground a no less holy temple, not out of our own
+devices, but according to the teaching of Christ himself, who has given
+us the outline, and told us what should be its purposes.
+
+The true church of Christ would offer to every faculty of our nature its
+proper exercise, and would entirely meet all our wants. No wise man
+doubts that the Reformation was imperfect, or that in the Romish system
+there were many good institutions, and practices, and feelings, which it
+would be most desirable to restore amongst ourselves. Daily church
+services, frequent communions, memorials of our Christian calling
+continually presented to our notice, in crosses and way-side oratories;
+commemorations of holy men, of all times and countries; the doctrine of
+the communion of saints practically taught; religious orders, especially
+of women, of different kinds, and under different rules, delivered only
+from the snare and sin of perpetual vows; all these, most of which are
+of some efficacy for good, even in a corrupt church, belong no less to
+the true church, and would there be purely beneficial. If Mr. Newman's
+system attracts good and thinking men, because it seems to promise them
+all these things, which in our actual Church are not to be found, let
+them remember, that these things belong to the perfect church no less
+than to that of the Romanists and of Mr. Newman, and would flourish in
+the perfect church far more healthily. Or, again, if any man admires Mr.
+Newman's system for its austerities, if he regards fasting as a positive
+duty, he should consider that these might be transferred also to the
+perfect church, and that they have no necessary connexion with the
+peculiar tenets of Mr. Newman. We know that the Puritans were taunted by
+their adversaries for their frequent fasts, and the severity of their
+lives; and they certainly were far enough from agreeing with Mr. Newman.
+Whatever there is of good, or self-denying, or ennobling, in his system,
+is altogether independent of his doctrine concerning the priesthood. It
+is that doctrine which is the peculiarity of his system and of Romanism;
+it is that doctrine which constitutes the evil of both, which
+over-weighs all the good accidentally united with it, and makes the
+systems, as such, false and anti-christian. Nor can any human being find
+in this doctrine anything of a beneficial tendency either to his
+intellectual, his moral, or his spiritual nature. If mere reverence be a
+virtue, without reference to its object, let us, by all means, do
+honour to the virtue of those who fell down to the stock of a tree; and
+let us lament the harsh censure which charged them with "having a lie in
+their right hand[10]."
+
+[Footnote 10: The language which Mr. Newman and his friends have allowed
+themselves to hold, in admiration of what they call reverential and
+submissive faith, might certainly be used in defence of the lowest
+idolatry; what they have dared to call rationalistic can plead such high
+and sacred authority in its favour, that if I were to quote some of the
+language of the "Tracts for the Times," and place by the side of it
+certain passages from the New Testament, Mr. Newman and his friends
+would appear to have been writing blasphemy. It seems scarcely possible
+that they could have remembered what is said in St. Matthew xv. 9-20,
+and who said it, when they have called it rationalism to deny a
+spiritual virtue in things that are applied to the body.]
+
+What does the true and perfect church want, that she should borrow from
+the broken cisterns of idolatry? Holding all those truths in which the
+clear voice of God's word is joined by the accordant confession of God's
+people in all ages; holding all the means of grace of which she was
+designed to be the steward--her common prayers, her pure preaching, her
+uncorrupted sacraments, her free and living society, her wise and
+searching discipline, her commemorations and memorials of God's mercy
+and grace, whether shown in her Lord himself, or in his and her
+members;--looking lovingly upon her elder sisters, the ancient churches,
+and delighting to be in communion with them, as she hopes that her
+younger sisters, the churches of later days, will delight to be in
+communion with her;--what has she not, that Christ's bride should have?
+what has she not, that Mr. Newman's system can give her? But because she
+loves her Lord, and stands fast in his faith, and has been enlightened
+by his truth, she will endure no other mediator than Christ, she will
+repose her trust only on his word, she will worship in the light, and
+will abhor the words, no less than the works, of darkness. Her sisters,
+the elder churches, she loves and respects as she would be herself loved
+and respected; but she will not, and may not, worship them, nor even,
+for their sakes, believe error to be truth, or foolishness to be wisdom.
+She dare not hope that she can be in all things a perfect guide and
+example to the churches that shall come after her; as neither have the
+churches before her been in all things a perfect guide and example to
+herself. She would not impose her yoke upon future generations, nor will
+she submit her own neck to the yoke of antiquity. She honours all men,
+but makes none her idol; and she would have her own individual members
+regard her with honour, but neither would she be an idol to them. She
+dreads especially that sin of which her Lord has so emphatically warned
+her--the sin against the Holy Ghost. She will neither lie against him by
+declaring that he is where his fruits are not manifested; nor blaspheme
+him, by saying that he is not where his fruits are. Rites and ordinances
+may be vain, prophets may be false, miracles may be miracles of Satan;
+but the signs of the Holy Spirit, truth and holiness, can never be
+ineffectual, can never deceive, can never be evil; where they are, and
+only where they are, there is God.
+
+There are states of falsehood and wickedness so monstrous, that, to use
+the language of Eastern mythology, the Destroyer God is greater than the
+Creator or the Preserver, and no good can be conceived so great as the
+destruction of the existing evil. But ordinarily in human affairs
+destruction and creation should go hand in hand; as the evergreen shrubs
+of our gardens do not cast their old leaves till the young ones are
+ready to supply their place. Great as is the falsehood of Mr. Newman's
+system, it would be but an unsatisfactory work to clear it away, if we
+had no positive truth to offer in its room. But the thousands of good
+men whom it has beguiled, because it professed to meet the earnest
+craving of their minds for a restoration of Christ's church with power,
+need not fear to open their eyes to its hollowness; like the false
+miracles of fraud or sorcery, it is but the counterfeit of a real truth.
+The restoration of the church, is, indeed, the best consummation of all
+our prayers, and all our labours; it is not a dream, not a prospect to
+be seen only in the remotest distance; it is possible, it lies very near
+us; with God's blessing it is in the power of this very generation to
+begin and make some progress in the work. If the many good, and wise,
+and influential laymen of our Church would but awake to their true
+position and duties, and would labour heartily to procure for the church
+a living organization and an effective government, in both, of which the
+laity should be essential members, then, indeed, the church would become
+a reality[11]. This is not Erastianism, or rather, it is not what is
+commonly cried down under that name; it is not the subjection of the
+church to the state, which, indeed, would be a most miserable and most
+unchristian condition; but it would be the deliverance of the church,
+and its exaltation to its own proper sovereignty. The members of one
+particular profession are most fit to administer a system in part, most
+unfit to legislate for it or to govern it: we could ill spare the
+ability and learning of our lawyers, but we surely should not wish to
+have none but lawyers concerned even, in the administration of justice,
+much less to have none but lawyers in the government or in parliament.
+What is true of lawyers with regard to the state, is no less true of the
+clergy with regard to the church; indispensable as ministers and
+advisers, they cannot, without great mischief, act as sole judges, sole
+legislators, sole governors. And this is a truth so palpable, that the
+clergy, by pressing such a claim, merely deprive the church of its
+judicial, legislative, and executive functions; whilst the common sense
+of the church will not allow them to exercise these powers, and, whilst
+they assert that no one else may exercise them, the result is, that they
+are not exercised at all, and the essence of the church is destroyed.
+
+[Footnote 11: The famous saying, "extra ecclesiam nulla salus," is, in
+its idea, a most divine truth; historically and in fact it may be, and
+often has been, a practical falsehood. If the truths of Christ's
+religion were necessarily accessible only to the members of some visible
+church, then it would be true always, inasmuch as to be out of the
+church would then be the same thing as to be without Christ; and, as a
+society, the church ought so to attract to itself all goodness, and by
+its internal organization, so to encourage all goodness, that nothing
+would be without its pale but extreme wickedness, or extreme ignorance;
+and he who were voluntarily to forfeit its spiritual advantages, would
+be guilty of moral suicide; so St. Paul calls the church the pillar and
+ground of truth; that is, it was so in its purpose and idea; and he
+therefore conjures Timothy to walk warily in it, and to take heed that
+what ought to be the pillar and ground of truth should not be profaned
+by fables, and so be changed into a pillar of falsehood. But to say
+universally, as an historical fact, that "extra ecclesiam nulla salus,"
+may be often to utter one of the worst of falsehoods. A ferry is set up
+to transport men over an unfordable river, and it might be truly said
+that "extra navem nulla salus;" there is no other safe way, speaking
+generally, of getting over; but the ferryman has got the plague, and if
+you go in the boat with him, you will catch it and die. In despair, a
+man plunges into the water, and swims across; would not the ferryman be
+guilty of a double falsehood who should call out to this man, "extra
+navem nulla salus," insisting that he had not swum over, when he had,
+and saying that his boat would have carried him safely, whereas it would
+have killed him?]
+
+The first step towards the restoration of the church seems to be the
+revival of the order of deacons; which might be effected without any
+other change in our present system than a repeal of all laws, canons, or
+customs which prohibit a deacon from following a secular calling, which
+confer on him any civil exemptions, or subject him to any civil
+disqualifications. The Ordination Service, with the subscription to the
+Articles, would remain perfectly unaltered; and as no deacon can hold
+any benefice, it is manifest that the proposed measure would in no way
+interfere with the rights or duties of the order of presbyters, or
+priests, which would remain precisely what they are at present. But the
+benefit in large towns would be enormous, if, instead of the present
+system of district visiting by private individuals, excellent as that is
+where there is nothing better, we could have a large body of deacons,
+the ordained ministers of the church, visiting the sick, managing
+charitable subscriptions, and sharing with their presbyter in those
+strictly clerical duties, which now, in many cases, are too much for the
+health and powers of the strongest. Yet a still greater advantage would
+be found in the link thus formed between the clergy and laity by the
+revival of an order appertaining in a manner to both. Nor would it be a
+little thing that many who now become teachers in some dissenting
+congregation, not because they differ from our Articles, or dislike our
+Liturgy, but because they cannot afford to go to the universities, and
+have no prospect of being maintained by the church, if they were to give
+up their secular callings, would, in all human probability, be glad to
+join the church, as deacons, and would thus be subject to her
+authorities, and would be engaged in her service, instead of being
+aliens to her, if not enemies.
+
+When we look at the condition of our country: at the poverty and
+wretchedness of so large a portion of the working classes; at the
+intellectual and moral evils which certainly exist among the poor, but
+by no means amongst the poor only; and when we witness the many partial
+attempts to remedy these evils--attempts benevolent indeed and wise, so
+far as they go, but utterly unable to strike to the heart of the
+mischief; can any Christian doubt that here is the work for the church
+of Christ to do; that none else can do it; and that with the blessing of
+her Almighty Head she can? Looking upon the chaos around us, one power
+alone can reduce it into order, and fill it with light and life. And
+does he really apprehend the perfections and high calling of Christ's
+church; does he indeed fathom the depths of man's wants, or has he
+learnt to rise to the fulness of the stature of their divine remedy, who
+comes forward to preach to us the necessity of apostolical succession?
+Grant even that it was of divine appointment, still as it is
+demonstrably and palpably unconnected with holiness, as it would be a
+mere positive and ceremonial ordinance, it cannot be the point of most
+importance to insist on; even if it be a sin to neglect this, there are
+so many far weightier matters equally neglected, that it would be
+assuredly no Christian prophesying which were to strive to direct our
+chief attention to this. But the wholly unmoral character of this
+doctrine, which if it were indeed of God, would make it a single
+mysterious exception to all the other doctrines of the Gospel, is, God
+be thanked, not more certain than its total want of external evidence;
+the Scripture disclaims it, Christ himself condemns it.
+
+I have written at considerable length: yet so vast is the subject, that
+I may seem to some to have written superficially, and to have left my
+statements without adequate support. I can only say that no one
+paragraph has been written hastily, nor in fact is there one the
+substance of which has not been for several years in my mind; indeed, in
+many instances, not only the substance, but the proofs in detail have
+been actually written: but to have inserted them here would have been
+impracticable, as they would have been in themselves a volume. Neither
+have I knowingly remained in ignorance of any argument which may have
+been used in defence of Mr. Newman's system; I have always desired to
+know what he and his friends say, and on what grounds they say it;
+although, as I have not read the Tracts for the Times regularly, I may
+have omitted something which it would have been important to notice.
+Finally, in naming Mr. Newman as the chief author of the system which I
+have been considering, I have in no degree wished to make the question
+personal; but Mr. Percival's letter authorizes us to consider him as one
+of the authors of it; and as I have never had any personal acquaintance
+with him, I could mention his name with no shock to any private feelings
+either in him or in myself. But I have spoken of him simply as the
+maintainer of certain doctrines, not as maintaining them in any
+particular manner, far less as actuated by any particular motives. I
+believe him to be in most serious error; I believe his system to be so
+destructive of Christ's church, that I earnestly pray, and would labour
+to the utmost of my endeavours for its utter overthrow: but on the other
+hand, I will not be tempted to confound the authors of the system with
+the system itself; for I know that the most mischievous errors have been
+promulgated by men who yet have been neither foolish nor wicked; and I
+nothing doubt that there are many points in Mr. Newman, in which I might
+learn truth from his teaching, and should be glad if I could come near
+him in his practice.
+
+
+
+NOTE.
+
+In order to prevent the possibility of misunderstanding, it is proper to
+repeat what has been often said by others, that the English word
+"priest" has two significations,--the one according to its etymology,
+through the French _pretre_, or _prestre_, and the Latin _presbyterus_,
+from the Greek [Greek: presbuteros]; in which sense it is used in our
+Liturgy and Rubrics, and signifies merely "one belonging to the order of
+Presbyters," as distinguished from the other two orders of bishops and
+deacons. But the other signification of the word "priest," and which we
+use, as I think, more commonly, is the same with the meaning of the
+Latin word _sacerdos_, and the Greek word [Greek: iepeus], and means,
+"one who stands as a mediator between God and the people, and brings
+them to God by the virtue of certain ceremonial acts which he performs
+for them, and which they could not perform for themselves without
+profanation, because they are at a distance from God, and cannot, in
+their own persons, venture to approach towards him." In this sense of
+the word "priest," the term is not applied to the ministers of the
+Christian church, either by the Scripture, or by the authorized
+formularies of the Church of England; although, in the other sense, as
+synonymous with Presbyters, it is used in our Prayer Book repeatedly. Of
+course, not one word of what I have written is meant to deny the
+lawfulness and importance of the order of Presbyters in the church; I
+have only spoken against a priesthood, in the other sense of the word,
+in which a "priest" means "a mediator between God and man;" in that
+sense, in short, in which the word is not a translation of [Greek:
+presbuteros], but [iereus].
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE I.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+GENESIS iii. 22.
+
+_And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know
+good and evil_.
+
+
+This is declared to be man's condition after the Fall. I will not
+attempt to penetrate into that which is not to be entered into, nor to
+pretend to discover all that may be concealed beneath the outward, and
+in many points clearly parabolical, form of the account of man's
+temptation and sin. But that condition to which his sin brought him is
+our condition; with that, undoubtedly, we are concerned; that must be
+the foundation of all sound views of human nature; the double fact
+employed in the word fall is of the last importance; the fact on the one
+hand of our present nature being evil, the fact on the other hand that
+this present nature is not our proper nature; that the whole business of
+our lives is to cast it off, and to return to that better and holy
+nature, which, in truth, although not in fact, is the proper nature
+of man.
+
+All individual experience, then, and all history begins in something
+which is evil; all our course, whether as individuals or as nations, is
+a progress, an advance, a leaving behind us something bad, and a going
+forwards towards something that is good. But individual experience, and
+history apart from Christianity, would make us regard this progress as
+fearfully uncertain. Clear it is that we are in an evil case; we have
+lost our way; we are like men who are bewildered in those endless
+forests of reeds which line some of the great American rivers; if we
+stay where we are, the venomous snakes may destroy us; or the deadly
+marsh air when night comes on will be surely fatal; it is death to
+remain, but yet if we move, we know not what way will lead us out, and
+it may be that, while seeming to advance, we shall but be going round
+and round, and shall at last find ourselves hard by the place from which
+we set out in the beginning. Nay, we may even feel a doubt,--a doubt, I
+say, though not a reasonable belief,--but a doubt which at times would
+press us sorely, whether the tangled thicket in which we are placed has
+any end at all; whether our fond notions of a clear and open space, a
+pure air, and a fruitful and habitable country, are not altogether
+merely imaginary; whether the whole world be not such a region of death
+as the spot in which we are actually prisoned; whether there remains any
+thing for us, but to curse our fate, and lie down and die. Under such
+circumstances, although we should admire the spirit which hoped against
+hope; which would make an effort for deliverance; which would, at any
+rate, flee from the actual evil, although, other evil might receive him
+after all his struggles; yet we could forgive those who yielded at once
+to their fate, and who sat down quietly to wait for their death, without
+the unavailing labour of a struggle to avoid it.
+
+But when the declaration has been made to us by God himself, that this
+dismal swamp in which we are prisoners is but an infinitely small
+portion of his universe, that there do exist all those goodly forms
+which we fancied; and more, when God declares too that we were in the
+first instance designed to enjoy them; that our error brought us into
+the thicket, having been once out of it; that we may escape from it
+again; nay, much more still, when He shows us the true path to escape,
+and tells us, that the obstacles in our way have been cleared, and that
+he will give us strength to accomplish, the task of escaping, and will
+guide us that we do not miss the track; then what shall we say to those
+who insist upon, remaining where they are, but that they are either
+infatuated, or indolent and cowardly even to insanity; that they are
+refusing certain salvation, and are, by their own act, giving themselves
+over to inevitable death.
+
+This, then, is the truth taught us by the doctrine of the Fall; not so
+much that it is our certain destruction to remain where we are, for that
+our own sense and reason declare to us, if we will but listen to them;
+but that our present position is not that for which God designed us, and
+that to rest satisfied with it is not a yielding to an unavoidable
+necessity, but the indolently or madly shrinking from the effort which
+would give us certain deliverance.
+
+Now it is a part of our present evil condition from which we must
+escape, that we know good and evil. We are in the world where evil
+exists within us, and about us; we cannot but know it. True it is, that
+it was our misfortune to become acquainted with it; this noisome
+wilderness of reeds, this reeking swamp; it would have been far happier
+for us, no doubt, had we never become aware of their existence. But that
+wish is now too late. We are in the midst of this dismal place, and the
+question now is, how to escape from it. We may shut our eyes, and say we
+will not see objects so unsightly; but what avails it, if the marsh
+poison finds its way by other senses, if we cannot but draw it in with
+our breath, and so we must die? And such is the case of those who now
+in this present world confound ignorance with innocence. This is a fatal
+mistaking of our present condition for our past; there was a time when
+to the human race ignorance was innocence; but now it is only folly and
+sin. For as I supposed that a man lost in one of those noxious swamps
+might shut his eyes, and so keep himself in some measure in ignorance,
+yet the poison would be taken in with his breath, and so he would die:
+even thus, whilst we would fain shut the eyes of our understanding, and
+would so hope to be in safety, our passions are all the time alive and
+active, and they catch the poison of the atmosphere around us, and we
+are not innocent, but foolishly wicked.
+
+We must needs consider this carefully; for, to say nothing of wider
+questions of national importance, who that sees before him, as we must
+see it, the gradual change from childhood to boyhood, who that sees
+added knowledge often accompanied with added sin, can help wishing that
+the earlier ignorance of evil might still be continued; and fancying
+that knowledge is at best but a doubtful blessing?
+
+But our path is not backwards, but onwards. Israel in the desert was
+hungry and thirsty, while in Egypt he had eaten bread to the full;
+Israel in the desert saw a wide waste of sand, or sandy rock, around
+him, while in Egypt he had dwelt in those green pastures and watered
+gardens to which the Nile had given freshness and life. But that
+wilderness is his appointed way to Canaan; its dreariness must be
+exchanged for the hills and valleys of Canaan, and must not drive him
+back again to the low plain of Egypt. There is a moral wilderness which
+lies in the early part of our Christian course; but we must not hope to
+escape from it but by penetrating through it to its furthest side.
+
+Undoubtedly this place, and other similar places, which receive us when
+we have quitted the state of childhood, and before our characters are
+formed in manhood, do partake somewhat of the character of the
+wilderness; and it is not unnatural that many should shrink back from
+them in fear. We see but too often the early beauty of the character
+sadly marred, its simplicity gone, its confidence chilled, its
+tenderness hardened; where there was gentleness, we see roughness and
+coarseness; where there was obedience, we find murmuring, and self-will,
+and pride; where there was a true and blameless conversation, we find
+now something of falsehood, something of profaneness, something of
+impurity. I can well conceive what it must be to a parent to see his
+child return from school, for the first time, with the marks of this
+grievous change upon him: I can well conceive how bitterly he must
+regret having ever sent him to a place of so much, danger; how fondly he
+must look back to the days of his early innocence. And if a parent feels
+thus, what must be our feelings, seeing that this evil has been wrought
+here? Are we not as those who, when pretending to give a wholesome
+draught, have mixed the cup with poison? How can we go on upholding a
+system, the effects of which appear to be so merely mischievous?
+
+Believe me, that such questions must and ought to present themselves to
+the mind of every thinking man who is concerned in the management of a
+school: and I do think that we could not answer them satisfactorily,
+that our work would absolutely be unendurable, if we did not bear in
+mind that our eyes should look forward, and not backward; if we did not
+remember that the victory of fallen man is to be sought for, not in
+innocence, but in tried virtue. Comparing only the state of a boy after
+his first half-year, or year, at school, with his earlier state as a
+child, and our reflections on the evil of our system would be bitter
+indeed; but when we compare a boy's state after his first half-year, or
+year, at school, with what it is afterwards; when we see the clouds
+again clearing off; when we find coarseness succeeded again by delicacy;
+hardness and selfishness again broken up, and giving place to affection
+and benevolence; murmuring and self-will exchanged for humility and
+self-denial; and the profane, or impure, or false tongue, uttering again
+only the words of truth and purity; and when we see that all these good
+things are now, by God's grace, rooted in the character; that they have
+been tried, and grown up amidst the trial; that the knowledge of evil
+has made them hate it the more, and be the more aware of it; then we can
+look upon our calling with patience, and even with thankfulness; we see
+that the wilderness has been gone through triumphantly, and that its
+dangers have hardened and strengthened the traveller for all his
+remaining pilgrimage.
+
+For the truth is, that to the knowledge of good and evil we are born;
+and it must come upon us sooner or later. In the common course of
+things, it comes about that age with which we are here most concerned. I
+do not mean that there are not faults in early childhood--we know that
+there are;--but we know also that with the strength and rapid growth of
+boyhood there is a far greater development of these faults, and
+particularly far less of that submissiveness which belonged naturally to
+the helplessness of mere childhood. I suppose that, by an extreme care,
+the period of childhood might be prolonged considerably; but still it
+must end; and the knowledge of good and evil, in its full force, must
+come. I believe that this must be; I believe that no care can prevent
+it, and that an extreme attempt at carefulness, whilst it could not
+keep off the disorder, would weaken the strength, of the constitution to
+bear it. But yet you should never forget, and I should never forget,
+that although the evils of schools in some respects must be, yet, in
+proportion as they exceed what must be, they do become at once
+mischievous and guilty. And such, or even worse, is the mischief when,
+with the evil which must be, there is not the good which ought to be;
+for, remember, our condition is to know good and evil. If we know only
+evil, it is the condition of hell; and therefore, if schools present an
+unmixed experience, if there is temptation in abundance, but no support
+against temptation, and no examples of overcoming it; if some are losing
+their child's innocence, but none, or very few, are gaining a man's
+virtue; are we in a wholesome state then? or can we shelter ourselves
+under the excuse that our evil is unavoidable, that we do but afford, in
+a mild form, the experience which must be learned sooner or later? It is
+here that we must be acquitted or condemned. I can bear to see the
+overclouding of childish simplicity, if there is a reasonable hope that
+the character so clouded for a time will brighten again into Christian
+holiness. But if we do not see this, if innocence is exchanged only for
+vice, then we have not done our part, then the evil is not unavoidable,
+but our sin: and we may be assured, that for the souls so lost, there
+will be an account demanded hereafter both of us and you.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE II.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+1 CORINTHIANS xiii. 11.
+
+_When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I
+thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away
+childish things_.
+
+
+Taking the Apostle's words literally, it might appear that no words in
+the whole range of Scripture were less applicable to the circumstances
+of this particular congregation: for they speak of childhood and of
+manhood; and as all of us have passed the one, so a very large
+proportion of us have not yet arrived at the other. But when we consider
+the passage a little more carefully, we shall see that this would be a
+very narrow and absurd objection. Neither the Apostle, nor any one else,
+has ever stepped directly from childhood into manhood; it was his
+purpose here only to notice the two extreme points of the change which
+had taken place in him, passing over its intermediate stages; but he,
+like all other men, must have gone through those stages. There must have
+been a time in his life, as in all ours, when his words, his thoughts,
+and his understanding were neither all childish, nor all manly: there
+must have been a period, extending over some years, in which they were
+gradually becoming the one less and less, and the other more and more.
+And as it suited the purposes of his comparison to look at the change in
+himself only when it was completed, so it will suit our object here to
+regard it while in progress, to consider what it is, to ask the two
+great questions, how far it can be hastened, and how far it ought to
+be hastened.
+
+"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I
+thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish
+things." It will be seen at once, that when the Apostle speaks of
+thought and understanding, ([Greek: erronoun elogizomeaen],) he does not
+mean the mere intellect but all the notions, feelings, and desires of
+our minds, which partake of an intellectual and of a moral character
+together. He is comparing what we should call the whole nature and
+character of childhood with those of manhood. Let us see, for a moment,
+in what they most strikingly differ.
+
+Our Lord's well-known words suggest a difference in the first place,
+which is in favour of childhood. When he says, "Except ye be converted,
+and become as little children, ye can in no case enter into the kingdom
+of heaven," he must certainly ascribe some one quality to childhood, in
+which manhood is generally deficient. And the quality which he means is
+clearly humility; or to speak perhaps more correctly, teachableness. It
+is impossible that a child can have that confidence in himself, which
+disposes him to be his own guide. He must of necessity lean on others,
+he must follow others, and therefore he must believe others. There is in
+his mind, properly speaking, nothing which can be called prejudice; he
+will not as yet refuse to listen, as thinking that he knows better than
+his adviser. One feeling, therefore, essential to the perfection of
+every created and reasonable being, childhood has by the very law of its
+nature; a child cannot help believing that there are some who are
+greater, wiser, better than himself, and he is disposed to follow
+their guidance.
+
+This sense of comparative weakness is founded upon truth, for a child
+is of course unfit to guide himself. Without noticing mere bodily
+helplessness, a child knows scarcely what is good and what is evil; his
+desires for the highest good are not yet in existence; his moral sense
+altogether is exceedingly weak, and would yield readily to the first
+temptation. And, because those higher feelings, which are the great
+check to selfishness, have not yet arisen within him, the selfish
+instinct, connected apparently with all animal life, is exceedingly
+predominant in him. If a child then on the one hand be teachable, yet he
+is at the same time morally weak and ignorant, and therefore
+extremely selfish.
+
+It is also a part of the nature of childhood to be the slave of present
+impulses. A child is not apt to look backwards or forwards, to reflect
+or to calculate. In this also he differs entirely from the great quality
+which befits man as an eternal being, the being able to look before
+and after.
+
+Not to embarrass ourselves with too many points, we may be content with
+these four characteristics of childhood, teachableness, ignorance,
+selfishness, and living only for the present. In the last three of
+these, the perfect man should put away childish things; in the first
+point, or teachableness, while he retained it in principle, he should
+modify it in its application. For while modesty, humility, and a
+readiness to learn, are becoming to men no less than to children; yet it
+should be not a simple readiness to follow others, but only to follow
+the wise and good; not a sense of utter helplessness which catches at
+the first stay, whether sound or brittle; but such a consciousness of
+weakness and imperfection, as makes us long to be strengthened by Him
+who is almighty, to be purified by Him who is all pure.
+
+I said, and it is an obvious truth, that the change from childhood to
+manhood is gradual; there is a period in our lives, of several years,
+in which we are, or should be, slowly exchanging the qualities of one
+state for those of the other. During this intermediate state, then, we
+should expect to find persons become less teachable, less ignorant, less
+selfish, less thoughtless. "Less teachable," I would wish to mean, in
+the sense of being "less indiscriminately teachable;" but as the evil
+and the good are, in human things, ever mixed up together, we may be
+obliged to mean "less teachable" simply. And, to say the very truth, if
+I saw in a young man the changes from childhood in the three other
+points, if I found him becoming wiser, and less selfish, and more
+thoughtful, I should not be very much disturbed if I found him for a
+time less teachable also. For whilst he was really becoming wiser and
+better, I should not much wonder if the sense of improvement rather than
+of imperfection possessed him too strongly; if his confidence in himself
+was a little too over-weening. Let him go on a little farther in life,
+and if he really does go on improving in wisdom and goodness, this
+over-confidence will find its proper level. He will perceive not only
+how much he is doing, or can do, but how much there is which he does not
+do, and cannot. To a thoughtful mind added years can scarcely fail to
+teach, humility. And in this the highest wisdom of manhood may be
+resembling more and more the state of what would be perfect childhood,
+that is, not simply teachableness, but tractableness with respect to
+what was good and true, and to that only.
+
+But the danger of the intermediate state between childhood and manhood
+is too often this, that whilst in the one point of teachableness, the
+change runs on too fast, in the other three, of wisdom, of
+unselfishness, and of thoughtfulness, it proceeds much too slowly: that
+the faults of childhood thus remain in the character, whilst
+that quality by means of which these faults are meant to be
+corrected,--namely, teachableness,--is at the same time diminishing.
+Now, teachableness as an instinct, if I may call it so, diminishes
+naturally with the consciousness of growing strength. By strength, I
+mean strength of body, no less than strength of mind, so closely are our
+body and mind connected with, each other. The helplessness of childhood,
+which presses upon it every moment, the sense of inability to avoid or
+resist danger, which makes the child run continually to his nurse or to
+his mother for protection, cannot but diminish, by the mere growth of
+the bodily powers. The boy feels himself to be less helpless than the
+child, and in that very proportion he is apt to become less teachable.
+As this feeling of decreased helplessness changes into a sense of
+positive vigour and power, and as this vigour and power confer an
+importance on their possessor, which is the case especially at schools,
+so self-confidence must in one point at least, arise in the place of
+conscious weakness; and as this point is felt to be more important, so
+will the self-confidence be likely to extend itself more and more over
+the whole character.
+
+And yet, I am bound to say, that, in general, the teachableness of youth
+is, after all, much greater than we might at first sight fancy. Along
+with much self-confidence in many things, it is rare, I think, to find
+in a young man a deliberate pride that rejects advice and instruction,
+on the strength of having no need for them. And therefore, the faults of
+boyhood and youth are more owing, to my mind, to the want of change in
+the other points of the childish character, than to the too great change
+in this. The besetting faults of youth appear to me to arise mainly from
+its retaining too often the ignorance, selfishness, and thoughtlessness
+of a child, and having arrived at the same time at a degree of bodily
+vigour and power, equal, or only a very little inferior, to those
+of manhood.
+
+And in this state of things, the questions become of exceeding interest,
+whether the change from childhood to manhood can be hastened. That it
+ought to be hastened, appears to me to be clear; hastened, I mean, from
+what it is actually, because in this respect, we do not grow in general
+fast enough; and the danger of over-growth is, therefore, small.
+Besides, where change of one sort is going on very rapidly; where the
+limbs are growing and the bones knitting more firmly, where the strength
+of bodily endurance, as well as of bodily activity, is daily becoming
+greater; it is self-evident that, if the inward changes which ought to
+accompany these outward ones are making no progress, there cannot but be
+derangement and deformity in the system. And, therefore, when I look
+around, I cannot but wish generally that the change from childhood to
+manhood in the three great points of wisdom, of unselfishness, and of
+thoughtfulness, might be hastened from its actual rate of progress in
+most instances.
+
+But then comes the other great question, "Can it be hastened, and if it
+can, how is it to be done?" "Can it be hastened" means, of course, can
+it be hastened healthfully and beneficially, consistently with the due
+development of our nature in its after stages, from life temporal to
+life eternal? For as the child should grow up into the man, so also
+there is a term of years given in which, according to God's will, the
+natural man should grow up into the spiritual man; and we must not so
+press the first change as to make it interfere with the wholesome
+working of the second. The question then is, really, can the change
+from childhood to manhood be hastened in the case of boys and young men
+in general from its actual rate of progress in ordinary cases, without
+injury to the future excellence and full development of the man? that
+is, without exhausting prematurely the faculties either of body or mind.
+
+And this is a very grave question, one of the deepest interest for us
+and for you. For us, as, according to the answer to be given to it,
+should depend our whole conduct and feelings towards you in the matter
+of your education; for you, inasmuch as it is quite clear, that if the
+change from childhood to manhood can be hastened safely, it ought to be
+hastened; and that it is a sin in every one not to try to hasten it:
+because, to retain the imperfections of childhood when you can get rid
+of them, is in itself to forfeit the innocence of childhood; to exchange
+the condition of the innocent infant whom Christ blessed, for that of
+the unprofitable servant whom Christ condemned. For with the growth of
+our bodies evil will grow in us unavoidably; and then, if we are not
+positively good, we are, of necessity, positively sinners.
+
+We will consider, then, what can be done to hasten this change in us
+healthfully; whether we can grow in wisdom, in love, and in
+thoughtfulness, faster in youth, than we now commonly do grow: and
+whether any possible danger can be connected with such increased
+exertion. This shall be our subject for consideration next Sunday.
+Meantime, let it be understood, that however extravagant it might be to
+hope for any general change in any moral point, as the direct result of
+setting truth before the mind; yet, that it never can be extravagant to
+hope for a practical result in some one or two particular cases; and
+that, if one or two even be impressed practically with what they hear,
+the good achieved, or, rather, the good granted us by God, is really
+beyond our calculation. It is so strictly; for who can worthily
+calculate the value of a single human soul? but it is so in this sense
+also, that the amount of general good which may be done in the end by
+doing good first in particular cases is really more than we can
+estimate. It was thus that Christ's original eleven apostles became, in
+the end, the instruments of the salvation of millions: and it is on this
+consideration that we never need despair of the most extensive
+improvements in society, if we are content to wait God's appointed time
+and order, and look for the salvation of the many as the gradual fruit
+of the salvation of a few.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE III.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+1 CORINTHIANS xiii. 11.
+
+_When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I
+thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away
+childish things_.
+
+
+After having noticed last Sunday what were those particular points in
+childhood, which in manhood should be put away, and having observed that
+this change cannot take place all at once, but gradually, during a
+period of several years, I proposed to consider, as on this day, whether
+it were possible to hasten this change, that is, whether it could be
+hastened without injury to the future development of the character; for
+undoubtedly, there is such, a thing in minds, as well as in bodies, as
+precocious growth; and although it is not so frequent as precocious
+growth in the body, nor by any means so generally regarded as an evil,
+yet it is really a thing to be deprecated; and we ought not to adopt
+such measures as might be likely to occasion it.
+
+Now I believe the only reason which could make it supposed to be
+possible that there could be danger in hastening this change, is drawn
+from the observation of what takes place sometimes with regard to
+intellectual advancement. It is seen that some young men of great
+ambition, or remarkable love of knowledge, do really injure their
+health, and exhaust their minds, by an excess of early study. I always
+grieve over such cases exceedingly; not only for the individual's sake
+who is the sufferer, but also for the mischievous effect of his example.
+It affords a pretence to others to justify their own want of exertion;
+and those to whom it is in reality the least dangerous, are always the
+very persons who seem to dread it the most. But we should clearly
+understand, that this excess of intellectual exertion at an early age,
+is by no means the same thing with hastening the change from
+childishness to manliness. We are all enough aware, in common life, that
+a very clever and forward boy may be, in his conduct, exceeding
+childish; that those whose talents and book-knowledge are by no means
+remarkable, may be, in their conduct, exceedingly manly. Examples of
+both these truths instantly present themselves to my memory, and perhaps
+may do so to some of yours. I may say farther, that some whose change
+from childhood to manhood had been, in St. Paul's sense of the terms,
+the most remarkably advanced, were so far from being distinguished for
+their cleverness or proficiency in their school-work, that it would
+almost seem as if their only remaining childishness had been displayed
+there. What I mean, therefore, by the change from childhood to manhood,
+is altogether distinct from a premature advance in book-knowledge, and
+involves in it nothing of that over-study which is dreaded as so
+injurious.
+
+Yet it is true that I described the change from childhood to manhood, as
+a change from ignorance to wisdom. I did so, certainly; but yet, rare as
+knowledge is, wisdom is rarer; and knowledge, unhappily, can exist
+without wisdom, as wisdom can exist with a very inferior degree of
+knowledge. We shall see this, if we consider what we mean by knowledge;
+and, without going into a more general definition of it, let us see what
+we mean by it here. We mean by it, either a knowledge of points of
+scholarship, of grammar, and matters connected with grammar; or a
+knowledge of history and geography; or a knowledge of mathematics: or,
+it may be, of natural history; or, if we use the term, "knowledge of the
+world," then we mean, I think, a knowledge of points of manner and
+fashion; such a knowledge as may save us from exposing ourselves in
+trifling things, by awkwardness or inexperience. Now the knowledge of
+none of these things brings us of necessity any nearer to real
+thoughtfulness, such as alone gives wisdom, than the knowledge of a
+well-contrived game. Some of you, probably, well know that there are
+games from which chance is wholly excluded, and skill in which is only
+the result of much thought and calculation. There is no doubt that the
+game of chess may properly be called an intellectual study; but why does
+it not, and cannot, make any man wise? Because, in the first place, the
+calculations do but respect the movements of little pieces of wood or
+ivory, and not those of our own minds and hearts; and, again, they are
+calculations which have nothing to do whatever with our being better
+men, or worse, with our pleasing God or displeasing him. And what is
+true of this game, is true no less of the highest calculations of
+Astronomy, of the profoundest researches into language; nay, what may
+seem stranger still, it is often true no less of the deepest study even
+of the actions and principles of man's nature; and, strangest of all, it
+may be, and is often true, also, of the study of the very Scripture
+itself; and that, not only of the incidental points of Scripture, its
+antiquities, chronology, and history, but of its very most divine
+truths, of man's justification and of God's nature. Here, indeed, we are
+considering about things where wisdom, so to speak, sits enshrined. We
+are very near her, we see the place where she abides; but her very self
+we obtain not. And why?--but because, in the most solemn study, no less
+than in the lightest, our own moral state may be set apart from our
+consideration; we may be unconscious all the while of our great want;
+and forgetting our great business, to be reconciled to God, and to do
+his will: for wisdom, to speak properly, is to us nothing else than the
+true answer to the Philippian jailor's question, "What must I do to
+be saved?"
+
+Now then, as knowledge of all kinds may be gained without being
+received, or meant at all to be applied, as the answer to this question,
+so it may be quite distinct from wisdom. And when I use the term
+thoughtfulness, as opposed to a child's carelessness, I mean it to
+express an anxiety for the obtaining of this wisdom. And farther, I do
+not see how this wisdom, or this thoughtfulness, can be premature in any
+one; or how it can exhaust before their time any faculties, whether of
+body or mind. This requires no sitting up late at night, no giving up of
+healthful exercise; it brings no headaches, no feverishness, no strong
+excitement at first, to be followed by exhaustion afterwards. Hear how
+it is described by one who spoke of it from experience. "The wisdom that
+is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy to be
+entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without
+hypocrisy." There is surely nothing of premature exhaustion
+connected-with any one of these things.
+
+Or, if we turn to the third point of change from childhood to a
+Christian manhood, the change from selfishness to unselfishness, neither
+can we find any possible danger in hastening this. This cannot hurt our
+health or strain our faculties; it can but make life at every age more
+peaceful and more happy. Nor indeed do I suppose that any one could
+fancy that such a change was otherwise than wholesome at the earliest
+possible period.
+
+There may remain, however, a vague notion, that generally, if what we
+mean by an early change from childishness to manliness be that we should
+become religious, then, although it may not exhaust the powers, or
+injure the health, yet it would destroy the natural liveliness and
+gaiety of youth, and by bringing on a premature seriousness of manner
+and language, would be unbecoming and ridiculous. Now, in the first
+place, there is a great deal of confusion and a great deal of folly in
+the common notions of the gaiety of youth. If gaiety mean real happiness
+of mind, I do not believe that there is more of it in youth than in
+manhood; if for this reason only, that the temper in youth being
+commonly not yet brought into good order, irritation and passion are
+felt, probably, oftener than in after life, and these are sad drawbacks,
+as we all know, to a real cheerfulness of mind. And of the outward
+gaiety of youth, there is a part also which is like the gaiety of a
+drunken man; which is riotous, insolent, and annoying to others; which,
+in short, is a folly and a sin. There remains that which strictly
+belongs to youth, partly physically--the lighter step and the livelier
+movement of the growing and vigorous body; partly from circumstances,
+because a young person's parents or friends stand between him and many
+of the cares of life, and protect him from feeling them altogether;
+partly from the abundance of hope which belongs to the beginning of
+every thing, and which continually hinders the mind from dwelling on
+past pain. And I know not which of these causes of gaiety would be taken
+away or lessened by the earlier change from childhood to manhood. True
+it is, that the question, "What must I do to be saved?" is a grave one,
+and must be considered seriously; but I do not suppose that any one
+proposes that a young person should never be serious at all. True it is,
+again, that if we are living in folly and sin, this question may be a
+painful one; we might be gayer for a time without it. But, then, the
+matter is, what is to become of us if we do not think of being
+saved?--shall we be saved without thinking of it? And what is it to be
+not saved but lost? I cannot pretend to say that the thought of God
+would not very much disturb the peace and gaiety of an ungodly and
+sinful mind; that it would not interfere with the mirth of the bully, or
+the drunkard, or the reveller, or the glutton, or the idler, or the
+fool. It would, no doubt; just as the hand that was seen to write on the
+wall threw a gloom over the guests at Belshazzar's festival. I never
+meant or mean to say, that the thought of God, or that God himself, can
+be other than a plague to those who do not love Him. The thought of Him
+is their plague here; the sight of Him will be their judgment for ever.
+But I suppose the point is, whether the thought of Him would cloud the
+gaiety of those who were striving to please Him. It would cloud it as
+much, and be just as unwelcome and no more, as will be the very actual
+presence of our Lord to the righteous, when they shall see Him as He is.
+Can that which we know to be able to make old age, and sickness, and
+poverty, many times full of comfort,--can that make youth and health
+gloomy? When to natural cheerfulness and sanguineness, are added a
+consciousness of God's ever present care, and a knowledge of his rich
+promises, are we likely to be the more sad or the more unhappy?
+
+What reason, then, is there for any one's not anticipating the common
+progress of Christian manliness, and hastening; to exchange, as I said
+before, ignorance for wisdom, selfishness for unselfishness,
+carelessness for thoughtfulness? I see no reason why we should not; but
+is there no reason why we should? You are young, and for the most part
+strong and healthy; I grant that, humanly speaking, the chances of early
+death to any particular person among you are small. But still,
+considering what life is, even to the youngest and strongest, it does
+seem a fearful risk to be living unredeemed; to be living in that state,
+that if we should happen to die, (it may be very unlikely, but still it
+is clearly possible,)--that if we should happen to die, we should be
+most certainly lost for ever. Risks, however, we do not mind; the
+chances, we think, are in our favour, and we will run the hazard. It may
+be so; but he who delays to turn to God when the thought has been once
+put before him, is incurring something more than a risk. He may not die
+these fifty or sixty years; we cannot tell how that may be; but he is
+certainly at this very present time hardening his heart, and doing
+despite unto the Spirit of Grace. By the very wickedness of putting off
+turning to God till a future time, he lessens his power of turning to
+Him ever. This is certain; no one can reject God's call without becoming
+less likely to hear it when it is made to him again. And thus the
+lingering wilfully in the evil things of childhood, when we might be at
+work in putting them off, and when God calls us to do so, is an infinite
+risk, and a certain evil;--an infinite risk, for it is living in such a
+state that death at any moment would be certain condemnation;--and a
+certain evil, because, whether we live or not, we are actually raising
+up barriers between ourselves and our salvation; we not only do not draw
+nigh to God, but we are going farther from Him, and lessening our power
+of drawing nigh to Him hereafter.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE IV.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+COLOSSIANS i. 9.
+
+_We do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled
+with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual
+understanding_.
+
+
+This is the first of three verses, all of them forming a part of the
+Epistle which was read this morning, and containing St. Paul's prayer
+for the Colossians in all the several points of Christian excellence.
+And the first thing which he desires for them, as we have heard, is,
+that they should be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all
+wisdom and spiritual understanding; or, as he expresses the same thing
+to the Ephesians, that they should be not unwise, but understanding what
+the will of the Lord is. He prays for the Colossians that they should
+not be spiritually foolish, but that they should be spiritually wise.
+
+The state of spiritual folly is, I suppose, one of the most universal
+evils in the world. For the number of those who are naturally foolish is
+exceedingly great; of those, I mean, who understand no worldly thing
+well; of those who are careless about everything, carried about by every
+breath of opinion, without knowledge, and without principle. But the
+term spiritual folly includes, unhappily, a great many more than these;
+it takes in not those only who are in the common sense of the term
+foolish, but a great many who are in the common sense of the term
+clever, and many who are even in the common sense of the terms, prudent,
+sensible, thoughtful, and wise. It is but too evident that some of the
+ablest men who have ever lived upon earth, have been in no less a degree
+spiritually fools. And thus, it is not without much truth that Christian
+writers have dwelt upon the insufficiency of worldly wisdom, and have
+warned their readers to beware, lest, while professing themselves to be
+wise, they should be accounted as fools in the sight of God.
+
+But the opposite to this notion, that those who are, as it were, fools
+in worldly matters are wise before God; although this also is true in a
+certain sense, and under certain peculiar circumstances, yet taken
+generally, it is the very reverse of truth; and the careless and
+incautious language which has been often used on this subject, has been
+extremely mischievous. On the contrary, he who is foolish in worldly
+matters is likely also to be, and most commonly is, no less foolish in
+the things of God. And the opposite belief has arisen mainly from that
+strange confusion between ignorance and innocence, with which many
+ignorant persons seem to solace themselves. Whereas, if you take away a
+man's knowledge, you do not bring him to the state of an infant, but to
+that of a brute; and of one of the most mischievous and malignant of the
+brute creation. For you do not lessen or weaken the man's body by
+lowering his mind; he still retains his strength and his passions, the
+passions leading to self-indulgence, the strength which enables him to
+feed them by continued gratification. He will not think it is true to
+any good purpose; it is very possible to destroy in him the power of
+reflection, whether as exercised upon outward things, or upon himself
+and his own nature, or upon God. But you cannot destroy the power of
+adapting means to ends, nor that of concealing his purposes by fraud or
+falsehood; you take only his wisdom, and leave that cunning which marks
+so notoriously both the savage and the madman. He, then, who is a fool
+as far as regards earthly things, is much more a fool with regard to
+heavenly things; he who cannot raise himself even to the lower height,
+how is he to attain to the higher? he who is without reason and
+conscience, how shall he be endowed with the spirit of God?
+
+It is my deep conviction and long experience of this truth, which makes
+me so grieve over a want of interest in your own improvement in human
+learning, whenever I observe it, over the prevalence of a thoughtless
+and childish spirit amongst you. I grant that as to the first point
+there are sometimes exceptions to be met with; that is to say, I have
+known persons certainly whose interest in their work here was not great,
+and their proficiency consequently was small; but who, I do not doubt,
+were wise unto God. But then these persons, whilst they were indifferent
+perhaps about their common school-work, were anything but indifferent as
+to the knowledge of the Bible: there was no carelessness there; but they
+read, and read frequently, books of practical improvement, or relating
+otherwise to religious matters, such as many, I believe, would find even
+less inviting than the books of their common business. So that although
+there was a neglect undoubtedly of many parts of the school-work, yet
+there was no spirit of thoughtlessness or childishness in them, nor of
+general idleness; and therefore, although I know that their minds did
+suffer and have suffered from their unwise neglect of a part of their
+duty, yet there was so much attention bestowed on other parts, and so
+manifest and earnest a care for the things of God, that it was
+impossible not to entertain for them the greatest respect and regard.
+These, however, are such rare cases, that it cannot be necessary to do
+more than thus notice them. But the idleness and want of interest which
+I grieve for, is one which extends itself but too impartially to
+knowledge of every kind: to divine knowledge, as might be expected, even
+more than to human. Those whom we commonly find careless about their
+general lessons, are quite as ignorant and as careless about their
+Bibles; those who have no interest in general literature, in poetry, or
+in history, or in philosophy, have certainly no greater interest, I do
+not say in works of theology, but in works of practical devotion, in the
+lives of holy men, in meditations, or in prayers. Alas, the interest of
+their minds is bestowed on things far lower than the very lowest of all
+which I have named; and therefore, to see them desiring something only a
+little higher than their present pursuits, could not but be encouraging;
+it would, at least, show that the mind was rising upwards. It may,
+indeed, stop at a point short of the highest, it may learn to love
+earthly excellence, and rest there contented, and seek for nothing more
+perfect; but that, at any rate, is a future and merely contingent evil.
+It is better to love earthly excellence than earthly folly; it is far
+better in itself, and it is, by many degrees, nearer to the kingdom
+of God.
+
+There is another case, however, which I cannot but think is more
+frequent now than formerly; and if it is so, it may be worth while to
+direct our attention to it. Common idleness and absolute ignorance are
+not what I wish to speak of now, but a character advanced above these; a
+character which does not neglect its school-lessons, but really attains
+to considerable proficiency in them; a character at once regular and
+amiable, abstaining from evil, and for evil in its low and grosser
+forms, having a real abhorrence. What, then, you will say, is wanting
+here? I will tell you what seems to be wanting--a spirit of manly, and
+much more of Christian, thoughtfulness. There is quickness and
+cleverness; much pleasure, perhaps, in distinction, but little in
+improvement; there is no desire of knowledge for its own sake, whether
+human or divine. There is, therefore, but little power of combining and
+digesting what is read; and, consequently, what is read passes away, and
+takes no root in the mind. This same character shows itself in matters
+of conduct; it will adopt, without scruple, the most foolish,
+commonplace notions of boys, about what is right and wrong; it will not,
+and cannot, from the lightness of its mind, concern itself seriously
+about what is evil in the conduct of others, because it takes no regular
+care of its own, with reference to pleasing God; it will not do anything
+low or wicked, but it will sometimes laugh at those who do; and it will
+by no means take pains to encourage, nay, it will sometimes thwart and
+oppose any thing that breathes a higher spirit, and asserts a more manly
+and Christian standard of duty.
+
+I have thought that this character, with its features more or less
+strongly marked, has shown itself sometimes amongst us, marring the good
+and amiable qualities of those in whom we can least bear to see such a
+defect, because there is in them really so much to interest in their
+favour. Now the number of persons of extraordinary abilities who may be
+here at any one time can depend on no calculable causes: nor, again, can
+we give any reason more than what we call accident, if there were to be
+amongst us at any one time a number of persons whose whole tendency was
+decidedly to evil. But if, in these respects, the usual average has
+continued, if there is no lack of ability, and nothing like a prevalence
+of vice, then we begin anxiously to inquire into the causes, which,
+while other things remain the same, have led to a different result. And
+one cause I do find, which, is certainly capable of producing such a
+result: a cause undoubtedly in existence now, and as certainly not in
+existence a few years back; nor can I trace any other besides this which
+appears likely to have produced the same effect. This cause consists in
+the number and character and cheapness, and peculiar mode of
+publication, of the works of amusement of the present day. In all these
+respects the change is great, and extremely recent. The works of
+amusement published only a very few years since were comparatively few
+in number; they were less exciting, and therefore less attractive; they
+were dearer, and therefore less accessible; and, not being published
+periodically, they did not occupy the mind for so long a time, nor keep
+alive so constant an expectation; nor, by thus dwelling upon the mind,
+and distilling themselves into it as it were drop by drop, did they
+possess it so largely, colouring even, in many instances, its very
+language, and affording frequent matter for conversation.
+
+The evil of all these circumstances is actually enormous. The mass of
+human minds, and much more of the minds of young persons, have no great
+appetite for intellectual exercise; but they have some, which by careful
+treatment may be strengthened and increased. But here to this weak and
+delicate appetite is presented an abundance of the most stimulating and
+least nourishing food possible. It snatches it greedily, and is not only
+satisfied, but actually conceives a distaste for anything simpler and
+more wholesome. That curiosity which is wisely given us to lead us on to
+knowledge, finds its full gratification in the details of an exciting
+and protracted story, and then lies down as it were gorged, and goes to
+sleep. Other faculties claim their turn, and have it. We know that in
+youth the healthy body and lively spirits require exercise, and in this
+they may and ought to be indulged: but the time and interest which
+remain over when the body has had its enjoyment, and the mind desires
+its share, this has been already wasted and exhausted upon things
+utterly unprofitable: so that the mind goes to its work hurriedly and
+languidly, and feels it to be no more than a burden. The mere lessons
+may be learnt from a sense of duty; but that freshness of power which,
+in young persons of ability would fasten eagerly upon some one portion
+or other, of the wide field of knowledge, and there expatiate, drinking
+in health and strength to the mind, as surely as the natural exercise of
+the body gives to it bodily vigour,--that is tired prematurely,
+perverted, and corrupted; and all the knowledge which else it might so
+covet, it now seems a wearying effort to attain.
+
+Great and grievous as is the evil, it is peculiarly hard to find the
+remedy for it. If the books to which I have been alluding were books of
+downright wickedness, we might destroy them wherever we found them; we
+might forbid their open circulation; we might conjure you to shun them
+as you would any other clear sin, whether of word or deed. But they are
+not wicked books for the most part; they are of that class which cannot
+be actually prohibited; nor can it be pretended that there is a sin in
+reading them. They are not the more wicked for being published so cheap,
+and at regular intervals; but yet these two circumstances make them so
+peculiarly injurious. All that can be done is to point out the evil;
+that it is real and serious I am very sure, and its effects are most
+deplorable on the minds of the fairest promise; but the remedy for it
+rests with yourselves, or rather with each of you individually, so far
+as he is himself concerned. That an unnatural and constant excitement of
+the mind is most injurious, there is no doubt; that excitement involves
+a consequent weakness, is a law of our nature than which none is surer;
+that the weakness of mind thus produced is and must be adverse to quiet
+study and thought, to that reflection which alone is wisdom, is also
+clear in itself, and proved too largely by experience. And that without
+reflection there can be no spiritual understanding, is at once evident;
+while without spiritual understanding, that is, without a knowledge and
+a study of God's will, there can be no spiritual life. And therefore
+childishness and unthoughtfulness cannot be light evils; and if I have
+rightly traced the prevalence of these defects to its cause, although
+that cause may seem to some to be trifling, yet surely it is well to
+call your attention to it, and to remind you that in reading works of
+amusement, as in every other lawful pleasure, there is and must be an
+abiding responsibility in the sight of God; that, like other lawful
+pleasures, we must beware of excess in it; and not only so, but that if
+we find it hurtful to us, either because we have used it too freely in
+times past, or because our nature is too weak to bear it, that then we
+are bound most solemnly to abstain from it; because, however lawful in
+itself, or to others who can practise it without injury, whatever is to
+us an hindrance in the way of our intellectual and moral and spiritual
+improvement, that is in our case a positive sin.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE V.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+COLOSSIANS i. 9.
+
+_We do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled
+with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual
+understanding_.
+
+
+These words, on which I spoke last Sunday, appeared to contain so much,
+which concerns us all so deeply, and to suit the peculiar ease of many
+of us here so entirely, that I thought they might well furnish us with
+matter for farther consideration to-day. And though I noticed one
+particular cause, which seemed to have acted mischievously, in the last
+few years, upon the growth and freshness of the mind in youth, yet it
+would be absurd to suppose that before this cause came into existence
+all was well; or that if it could be removed, our progress even in
+worldly knowledge would henceforth be unimpeded. There are many other
+causes no doubt which oppose our growth in worldly wisdom; and still
+more which oppose our growth in the wisdom of God.
+
+One of these causes meets us at the very beginning; it exists at this
+very moment; it makes it difficult even to gain your attention for what
+is to be said. This cause is to be found in the want of sympathy between
+persons of very different ages, between what must be, therefore, in the
+common course of nature, different degrees of thoughtfulness. It is the
+want of sympathy, properly speaking, which creates in these matters a
+difficulty of understanding; for the attention and memory are alike apt
+to be careless where the mind is not interested; and how can we
+understand that to which we scarcely listened, and which we imperfectly
+remember? Nature herself seems to lead the old and the young two
+different ways: and when the old call upon the young to be thoughtful,
+it seems as if they were but calling them to a state contrary to their
+nature; and the call is not regarded.
+
+Is it then that we have here an invincible obstacle, which renders all
+attempts to inspire thoughtfulness utterly vain? and if it be so, what
+use can there be in dwelling upon it? None, certainly, if it were
+actually and in all cases invincible; but if it be every thing short of
+invincible, there is much good in noticing it. There is much good surely
+in trying to impress the great truth, that nature must be overcome by a
+mightier power, or we perish. There is much good in meeting and allowing
+to its full extent what we are so apt in our folly to regard as an
+excuse, and which really is the earnest of our condemnation. It is very
+true, and to be allowed to the fullest extent, that it is against the
+nature of youth in all ordinary cases to be thoughtful; that it is very
+difficult for you even to give your attention to serious things when
+spoken of, more difficult still to remember them afterwards and always.
+It is for the very reason because it is so difficult, because it is a
+work so against nature, to raise the young and careless mind to the
+thought of God; because it is so certain that, in the common course of
+things, you will not think of Him, but will follow the bent of your own
+several fancies or desires, that therefore He, who wills in his love to
+bring us to himself, knowing that without the knowledge of Him we must
+perish for ever, was pleased to give his only-begotten Son, that
+through Him we might overcome nature, and might turn to God and live.
+
+I wish that I could increase, if it were possible, the sense which, you
+have of the difficulty of becoming thoughtful, so that you could but see
+that out of this very difficulty, and indissolubly connected with it,
+comes the grace of Christ's redemption. You have not strength of purpose
+enough to shake off folly and sin; surely you have not, or else, why
+should Christ have died? It is so hard to come to God; undoubtedly, so
+hard that no man can come unto God except God will draw him. Nature
+herself leads us to be careless, our very strength and spirits of
+themselves will not allow us to reflect. Most true; for that which is
+born of the flesh, is flesh; and we inherit a nature derived from him in
+whom we all die.
+
+I believe that it is not idle to dwell upon tins; for it is scarcely
+possible but that good and earnest resolutions should often enter the
+minds of many of you; or, if not resolutions, yet at least wishes,
+wishes chilled but too soon, I fear, by the thought or feeling, that
+however much to will may be present with you, yet how to perform it you
+find not. Now, if this true sense of weakness might but lead any one to
+seek for strength where it may be found, then indeed it would be a
+feeling no less blessed than true; for it would urge you to seek God's
+help and Christ's redemption, instead of desperately yielding to your
+weakness, and so remaining weak for ever.
+
+You may look at the prospect before you in all its reality: you may see
+how much must be given up, how much withstood, bow much, endured; how
+hard it is to alter old ways, not in itself only, but because the change
+attracts attention, and is received, it may be, with doubts as to its
+sincerity, with irony, and with sneers. There is all this before you: it
+cannot be denied; it must not be concealed. The way to life is not broad
+and easy; it is not that way which is most trodden. To pass from what we
+are to what we may be hereafter, from an earthly nature to an heavenly,
+cannot be an easy work, to be done at any time, with no effort, with no
+pain. It is the greatest work which is done in the whole world, it is
+the mightiest change; death and birth are, as it were, combined in it;
+but the Lord of birth and of death is at hand, to enable us to effect
+it. Think that this is so; and the more you feel how hard a task is set
+before you, the more you will be able to understand the language of joy
+and thankfulness with which the Scripture speaks of a human soul's
+redemption.
+
+This great work may be wrought for every soul here assembled; the want
+of sympathy in sacred and serious things may be changed to sympathy the
+most intense; the carelessness of fools may be changed into spiritual
+wisdom. It may be wrought for all; but it is more happy to think that it
+will be wrought for some;--for whom, no mortal eye or judgment can
+discern; but it will be wrought for some. If many should yield in
+despair to their enemy, yet some will resist him: if Christ be to many
+no more than foolishness, if his name convey nothing more than a vague
+sense of something solemn, which passes over the mind for an instant,
+and then vanishes, yet to some undoubtedly, he will be found to be the
+wisdom of God, and the power of God. There are some here, we may be
+quite sure, who will be witnesses for ever to all the world of men and
+angels, that what truly was impossible to nature, is possible to nature
+renewed and strengthened by grace.
+
+Without such a change, it is vain, I fear, to look for any thing like
+wisdom or spiritual understanding; for how can such a seed be expected
+to grow in a soil so shallow as common thoughtlessness? and how can
+merely human motives have force to overcome so strong a tendency of
+nature? nay, how can such motives be brought to act upon the mind? for
+it is absolutely impossible that the middle-aged and the young should be
+brought into entire sympathy with each other, unless Christ's love be
+their common bond. Human wisdom in advanced life may be, and is to
+persons of strong faculties of mind, naturally pleasant: but how can it
+be made so to persons of ordinary faculties in early youth? There are
+faults which society condemns strongly, while the temptation to them in
+after life is slight. Persons in middle age may resist these easily, and
+abhor them sincerely; but how can we make young persons do the same when
+the temptation to commit them is strong, and the condemnation of them by
+their society is either very slight, or does not exist at all? And,
+therefore, we find that, do what we will, the same faults' continue to
+be common in schools, the same faults both of omission and commission;
+there is the same inherent difficulty of bringing persons of different
+ages and positions to think and feel alike, unless Christ has become
+possessed of the thoughts and feelings of both, and so they become one
+with each other in him.
+
+But it was our Lord's charge to Peter, "Thou, when thou art converted,
+strengthen thy brethren." As sure as it is that some who hear me are
+turned, or turning, or will turn, to God, so sure is it that these, be
+they few or many, will do something towards the strengthening of their
+brethren. Whatever good is to be done amongst us on a large scale, it
+must be done only in this way, the many half despairing prayer may be,
+"Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief;" but if any one is moved by
+Christ's call, and feels within himself that he should like to follow
+Christ, and to be with him always, let him cherish that work of the Holy
+Spirit within him, which has given him if it be only so much of the will
+to be saved. It is a spark which may be quenched in a moment; in itself
+it can give no assurance; but if any one watches it carefully, and prays
+that it may live and be kindled into a stronger spark, till at last it
+break out into a flame, then for him it is full of assurance; God has
+heard his prayer; and he has received the gift of the Holy Spirit, an
+earnest of his eternal inheritance. Will he not then watch and pray the
+more anxiously, lest the fruit which, is now partly formed should never
+ripen? Will he not see and feel that there is some reality in the things
+of God, that strength, and peace, and victory, are not vainly promised?
+Will he not hold fast the things which he has now not heard only, but
+known, lest by any means he should let them slip? May God strengthen
+such, whoever they may be, with all the might of his Spirit; and may he
+be with them even to the end.
+
+But for those,--who they are, again, we know not, nor how many; but
+here, also, there will too surely be some,--for those who hear now, as
+they have often heard before, words which, they scarcely heed, which,
+have at times partially caught their attention, but have not produced in
+them the slightest real effect, for them the words are coming to an end;
+they will soon be released from the irksome bondage of hearing them; and
+another opportunity of grace will have been offered to them in vain.
+Tomorrow, and the day after, they will walk as they have walked before,
+the wretched slaves of folly and passion; half despairing prayer may
+be, "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief;" but if any one is moved
+by Christ's call, and feels within himself that he should like to follow
+Christ, and to be with him always, let him cherish that work of the Holy
+Spirit within him, which has given him if it be only so much of the will
+to be saved. It is a spark which may be quenched in a moment; in itself
+it can give no assurance; but if any one watches it carefully, and prays
+that it may live and be kindled into a stronger spark, till at last it
+break out into a flame, then for him it is full of assurance; God has
+heard his prayer; and he has received the gift of the Holy Spirit, an
+earnest of his eternal inheritance. Will he not then watch and pray the
+more anxiously, lest the fruit which is now partly formed should never
+ripen? Will he not see and feel that there is some reality in the things
+of God, that strength, and peace, and victory, are not vainly promised?
+Will he not hold fast the things which he has now not heard only, but
+known, lest by any means he should let them slip? May God strengthen
+such, whoever they may be, with all the might of his Spirit; and may he
+be with them even to the end.
+
+But for those,--who they are, again, we know not, nor how many; but
+here, also, there will too surely be some,--for those who hear now, as
+they have often heard before, words which they scarcely heed, which have
+at times partially caught their attention, but have not produced in them
+the slightest real effect, for them the words are coming to an end; they
+will soon be released from the irksome bondage of hearing them; and
+another opportunity of grace will have been offered to them in vain.
+Tomorrow, and the day after, they will walk as they have walked before,
+the wretched slaves of folly and passion; leaving undone all Christ's
+work, and greedily doing his enemy's. Yet even these Christ yet spares,
+he still calls them, he has died for them. Still the word must be spoken
+to them, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear. It may
+be, that they will some day turn; and if not, Christ has perfected his
+mercy towards them; and Christ's servants have delivered their own souls
+in warning them. May there be but few of us on whom this horrible
+portion will fall; yet, is it not an awful thing to think of, that it
+will, in all human probability, fall on some? and that whoever hardens
+his heart, and resists the word spoken to him this day, he is one who
+has done as much as in him lies to make himself among that number.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VI.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+COLOSSIANS iii. 3.
+
+_Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God_.
+
+
+When I have spoken, from time to time, of denying ourselves for the sake
+of relieving others, although self-denial and charity are, in their full
+growth, amongst the highest of Christian graces, yet I have felt much
+hope that, up to a certain degree, in their lowest and elementary forms
+at least, there might be many that would be disposed to practise them.
+For these are virtues which do undoubtedly commend themselves to our
+minds as things clearly good: so much so that I am inclined to think
+that the much-disputed moral sense, the nature of which is said to be so
+hard to ascertain, exists most clearly in the universal perception that
+it is good to deny ourselves and to benefit others. I do not say merely
+that there is a perception that it is good to deny ourselves in order to
+benefit others; but that there is in self-denial, simply, something
+which commands respect; an unconscious tribute, I suppose, to the truth,
+that the self which, is thus denied is one which, if indulged, would
+run to evil.
+
+But a point of far greater difficulty, of absolutely the greatest
+difficulty, is to impress upon our minds the excellence of
+another quality, which is known by the name of spiritual or
+heavenly-mindedness. In fact, this,--and this almost singly,--is the
+transcendent part of Christianity; that part of it which is not
+according to, but above, nature; which, conscience, I think, itself, in
+the natural man, does not acknowledge. When Christianity speaks of
+purity, of truth, of justice, of charity, of faith and love to God, it
+speaks a language which, however belied by our practice, is at once
+allowed by our consciences: the things so recommended are, beyond all
+doubt, good and lovely. But when it says, in St. Paul's words, "Set your
+affections on things above, not on things on the earth: for ye are dead,
+and your life is hid with Christ in God," the language sounds so strange
+that it is scarcely intelligible; and if we do get to understand it, yet
+it seems to give a wrench, as it were, to our whole being, to command a
+thing extravagant and impossible.
+
+I am persuaded that this would be so, more or less, everywhere; but in
+how extreme a degree must it hold good amongst us! Even in poverty, in
+sickness, and old age, where this life would seem to be nothing but a
+burden, and the command to "set the affections on things above" might
+appear superfluous, still the known so prevails over the unknown, the
+familiar over the incomprehensible, that hope and affection find
+continually their objects in this world, there is still a clinging to
+life, and an unwillingness to die. But in a state the very opposite to
+this, in plenty, in health, in youth; with much of enjoyment actually in
+our hands, and more in prospect; with just so much mystery over our
+coming life as to keep alive interest, yet with enough known and
+understood in its prospects to awaken sympathy; what deafest ear of the
+deaf adder could ever be so closed against the voice of the charmer, as
+our minds, so engrossed with the enjoyments and the hopes of earth, are
+closed against the voice which speaks of the things of heaven?
+
+Again, I have said, when speaking of other subjects, that I looked upon
+the older persons among you as a sort of link between me and the
+younger, who communicated, in some instances, by their language and
+example, something of an impression of the meaning of Christian
+teaching. But when we speak of a thing so high as spiritual-mindedness,
+it seems as if none of us can be a link between Christ's words and our
+brethren's minds: as if we all stand alike at an infinite distance from
+the high and unapproachable truth. The mountain of God becomes veiled,
+as it were, with the clouds which rested upon Sinai; we cannot approach
+near it, but stand far off, for a moment, perhaps, in awe; but soon in
+neglect and indifference.
+
+Let any one capable of thinking, but in the full vigour of health of
+body and mind, placed far above want, and with the prospect, according
+to all probability, of many years of happy life before him, let such an
+one go forth, at this season of the year above all, let him see the vast
+preparation for life in all nature, amongst all living creatures, in
+every tree, and in every plant of grass; let him feel the warmth of the
+sun, becoming every day stronger and stronger; let him be possessed, in
+every sense, with an impression of the vigour and beauty and glory
+around him; and let him feel no less a vigour in himself, too, of body
+and mind, and infinitely varied power of enjoyment in so many faculties
+of repose and of energy,--and then let him calmly consider what St. Paul
+could mean, when he says generally to Christians, "Set your affections
+on things above, not on things on the earth; for ye are dead, and your
+life is hid with Christ in God."
+
+Let a person capable of thinking, and such as I have supposed in all
+other respects, consider what St. Paul could mean by calling him "dead."
+With an almost thrilling consciousness of life, with an almost bounding
+sense of vigour in body and mind, he is told that he is "dead." And
+stranger still, he is told so by one whose recorded life, and existing
+writings declare that he too must have had in himself a consciousness of
+life no less lively; that there was in him an activity and energy which
+neither age nor sufferings could quell; that he wielded an influence
+over the minds of thousands, such as kings or conquerors might envy. If
+St. Paul could stand by our side, think we that he, any more than
+ourselves, would be insensible to the power within him, and to the
+beauty and the glory without? Yet his words are recorded; he bids us not
+set our affections on things on the earth; he declares of himself, and
+of us equally, if we are Christ's servants, that we are dead, and that
+our life is hid with Christ in God.
+
+I have put the difficulty in its strongest form, for it is one well
+worth considering. What St. Paul here urges is indeed the highest
+perfection of Christianity, and therefore of human nature; but it is not
+an impossible perfection, and St. Paul's own life and character are our
+warrant that it is nothing sickly, or foolish, or fanatical. But let us
+first hear the whole of St. Paul's language: "If ye, then, be risen with
+Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the
+right hand of God. Set your affections on things above, not on things on
+the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.
+When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall we also appear
+with him in glory. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the
+earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil
+concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry." "Mortify," I need
+not say, is to make dead, to destroy. "Ye are dead;" therefore let your
+members on earth be dead; "fornication, uncleanness, inordinate
+affection," &c. As if he had said, By becoming Christians ye engaged to
+be dead; and therefore see to it that ye are so. But what he requires us
+to make dead or to destroy, are our evil affections and desires; it is
+manifest, then, that it is to these that, by becoming Christians, we
+engage to become dead.
+
+This is true; and it is most certain that Christ requires us to be dead
+only to what is evil. But the essence of spiritual-mindedness consists
+in this, that it is assumed that with earth, and all things earthly,
+evil or imperfection are closely mixed; so that it is not possible to
+set our affections keenly upon, or to abandon ourselves to the enjoyment
+of, any earthly thing without the danger of those affections and that
+enjoyment becoming evil. In other words, there is that in the state of
+things within and around us, which, renders it needful to be ever
+watchful; and watchfulness is inconsistent with an intensity of delight
+and enjoyment.
+
+For, consider the case which I was just supposing; that lively sense of
+the beauty of all nature, that indescribable feeling of delight which
+arises out of the consciousness of health, and strength and power.
+Suppose that we abandon ourselves to such impressions without restraint,
+and is it not manifest that they are the extreme of godless pride and
+selfishness? For do we not know that in this world, and close to us
+wherever we are, there is, along with all the beauty and enjoyment which
+we witness, a large portion also of evil, and of suffering? And do we
+not know that He who gave to the earth its richness, and who set the sun
+to shine in the heavens, and who gave to us that wonderful frame of body
+and mind, whose healthful workings are So delightful to us, that He gave
+them that we might use both body and mind in His service; that the
+soldier has something else to do than to gaze like a child on the
+splendour of his uniform or the brightness of his sword; that those
+faculties which we feel as it were burning within us, have their work
+before them, a work far above their strength, though multiplied a
+thousand fold; that the call to them to be busy is never silent; that
+there is an infinite voice in the infinite sins and sufferings of
+millions which proclaims that the contest is raging around us; that
+every idle moment is treason; that now it is the time for unceasing
+efforts; and that not till the victory is gained may Christ's soldiers
+throw aside their arms, and resign themselves to enjoyment and to rest?
+
+Then when we turn to the words, "our life is hid with Christ in God,"
+the exceeding greatness of Christ's promises rises upon us in something
+of the fulness of their reality. Some may know the story of that German
+nobleman[12], whose life had been distinguished alike by genius and
+worldly distinctions, and by Christian holiness; and who, in the last
+morning of his life, when the dawn broke into his sick chamber, prayed
+that he might be supported to the window, and might look once again upon
+the rising sun. After looking steadily at it for some time, he cried
+out, "Oh! if the appearance of this earthly and created thing is so
+beautiful and so quickening, how much more shall I be enraptured at the
+sight of the unspeakable glory of the Creator Himself!" That was the
+feeling of a man whose sense of earthly beauty had all the keenness of a
+poet's enthusiasm; but who, withal, had in his greatest health and
+vigour preserved the consciousness that his life was hid with Christ in
+God; that the things seen, how beautiful soever, were as nothing to the
+things which are not seen. And so, if from the feeling of natural
+enjoyment we turn, at once thankfully and earnestly, to remember God's
+service, and to address ourselves to his work; and sadly remember, that,
+although we can enjoy, yet that many are suffering; and that, whilst
+they are so, enjoyment in us for more than a brief space of needful rest
+cannot but be sin; then there must come upon us, most strongly, the
+impression of that life where sin and suffering are not; where not God's
+works only, but God Himself is visible; where the vigour and faculties
+which we feel within us are not the passing strength of a decaying body,
+nor the brief prime of a mind which in a few years must sink into
+dotage; but the strength of a body incorruptible and eternal, the
+ripeness of a spirit which shall go on growing in wisdom and love
+for ever.
+
+[Footnote 12: The Baron Von Canitz.]
+
+Thus, then, if we consider again St. Paul's meaning, we shall find that,
+high and pure as it is, it is nothing unreasonable or impossible; that
+what he requires us to be dead to absolutely is that which is evil;
+that, because of the mixture of evil with ourselves and all around us,
+this life must not and cannot be a life of entire enjoyment without
+becoming godless and selfish; that, therefore, our affections cannot be
+set upon earthly things so as to enjoy them in and for themselves
+entirely, without becoming inordinate, and therefore evil. He does
+require us, old and young alike, to set our affection on things above:
+to remember that with God, and with Him alone, can be our rest, and the
+fulness of our joy; and amidst our pleasure in earthly things to retain
+in our minds, first, a grateful sense of their Giver; secondly, a
+remembrance of their passing nature; and thirdly, a consciousness of the
+evil that is in the world, which makes it a sin to resign ourselves to
+any enjoyment, except as a permitted refreshment to strengthen us for
+duty to come. Above all, let one feeling be truly cherished, and it
+will do more, perhaps, than any other to moderate our pleasure in
+earthly things, and to render it safe, and wholesome, and Christianlike.
+That feeling is the remembrance of our own faults. Let us bear these in
+mind as God does; let us consider how displeasing they are in His sight;
+how often they are repeated; how little they deserve the enjoyments
+which are given us. If this does not change our selfish pleasure into a
+zealous gratitude, then, indeed, sin must have a dominion over us; for
+the natural effect would be, that our hearts should burn within us for
+very shame, and should enkindle us to be thankful with all our strength
+for blessings so undeserved; to show something of our love to God who
+has so richly shown his love to us.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CORINTHIANS iii. 21-23.
+
+_All things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the
+world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are
+yours; and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's_.
+
+
+It is very possible, that all may not distinctly understand the force of
+the several clauses of this passage, yet, all, I suppose, would derive a
+general impression from it, that it spoke of the condition of Christians
+in very exalted language, and made it to extend to things in this world,
+as well as to things in the world to come. But can it be good for us to
+dwell on our exaltation? And if we do, may we not dread lest such
+language might be used towards us as that which St. Paul uses in the
+very next chapter to the Corinthians, "Now ye are full, now ye are rich,
+ye have reigned as kings without us; and I would to God ye did reign,
+that we also might reign with you." It would seem, however, that it
+would be good for us to dwell on the greatness of our condition and
+privileges, because St. Paul, who thus upbraids the Corinthians with
+their pride, had yet himself immediately before laid the picture of
+their high privileges, in the words of the text, in full detail before
+them, as if he wished them carefully to consider it. And so indeed it
+is. It feeds pride to dwell upon our good qualities or advantages, as
+individuals, or as a class in society, or as a nation, or as a sect or
+party; but, to speak generally, our advantages and privileges, as
+Christians, have not a tendency to excite pride; for some reasons in the
+nature of the case; for this reason amongst ourselves particularly,
+because the very essence of pride consists in contrast; we are proud
+that we are, in some one or more points, superior to others who come
+immediately under our observation. Now, we have so little to do with any
+who are not Christians, that the contrast is in this case wanting; we
+have none over whom to be proud; none whom we can glory in surpassing;
+and, therefore, a consideration of our Christian advantages, in the
+absence of that one element which might feed pride, is likely with us to
+work in a better manner, and to lead rather to thankfulness and
+increased exertion.
+
+I say to increased exertion; for what would stop exertion is pride. It
+is the turning back, and pausing to look with satisfaction on what is
+below us, rather than the looking upward to the summit, and thinking how
+much our actual elevation has brought us on the way towards it. And,
+further, there is coupled with every consideration of Christian
+privileges, the thought of what it must be to leave such privileges
+unimproved. In this respect, how well does the language of the two
+lessons from Deuteronomy suit the lesson from the Epistle to the
+Corinthians. We heard the description of the beauty and richness of the
+land which God gave to his people,--there were their advantages and
+privileges,--we heard also, the declaration of their unworthiness, and
+the solemn threatening of vengeance if, after having received good, they
+did evil. And as the vengeance has fallen upon them to the utmost, so we
+are taught expressly to apply their example to ourselves. "If God spared
+not the natural branches," such was St. Paul's language to the church at
+Rome, "take heed lest he also spare not thee."
+
+Let us not fear, then, to consider more nearly the high privileges
+which, as Christians, we enjoy: let us endeavour to understand, not
+merely generally, but in detail, the exalted language of the text, where
+it is said, that all things are ours; Paul, Apollos, and Cephas, the
+world, and life, and death, the things of time, and the things of
+eternity. These are ours because we are Christ's, and Christ is God's;
+they are ours so long as we are Christ's, and so far as we are his
+truly. They are not ours so far as we are not his: they are ours in no
+degree whatever the moment that he shall declare that we are his
+no longer.
+
+"Paul, and Apollos, and Peter, are ours." This, perhaps, is the
+expression which we should understand least distinctly of any. It is an
+expression, however, of deep importance, though perhaps less so here
+than in congregations of a different sort. I need not, therefore, dwell
+on it long now. But the Corinthians, as many Christians have done since,
+were apt to think more of their being Christians of a certain sort, than
+of being Christians simply: some said, "We have Paul's view of
+Christianity, the true and sound view of it, free from superstition:"
+others said, "But we have Peter's view of Christianity, one of Christ's
+own apostles, who were with him on earth; ours is the true and earliest
+view of it, free from all innovations:" and others, again, said, "Nay,
+but we have been taught by Apollos, an eloquent man, and mighty in the
+Scriptures; one who best understands how to unite the law and the
+gospel; one who has given us the full perfection of Christianity." No
+doubt there were some differences of views even between Paul, and Peter,
+and Apollos; for while, on the one hand, they were all enlightened by
+the Spirit of God, yet, on the other hand, they retained still their
+human differences of character and disposition, which must on several
+occasions have been manifest. But St. Paul does not tell us what these
+were, nor how far they extended, nor to what degree they had been
+exaggerated by those who heard them. He does not insist upon the truth
+of his own view, nor wish the Corinthians to lay aside their divisions,
+after the manner so zealously enforced by some persons now, namely, that
+those who said they were of Peter, or of Apollos, should confess that
+they had been in error, and declare themselves to be now only of Paul.
+Such a condemnation of schism he would have held to be in itself in the
+highest degree schismatical. But St. Paul was earnest, that schism
+should be ended after another way than this, by all parties remembering,
+that whatever became of the truth or falsehood of their own particular
+views of Christianity, yet, that Christianity according to any of their
+views was the one great thing which was their glory and their salvation.
+"Paul, and Apollos, and Peter, are all yours: but you are Christ's." You
+should not glory in men; that you belong to a purer church than other
+Christians; but that you belong to the church of Christ; that church,
+which, in its most pure particular branches, has never been free from
+some mixture of human infirmity and error; nor yet, in its worst
+branches, has ever lost altogether the seal of Christ's Spirit, nor
+ceased to believe in Christ crucified.
+
+But the next words are of more particular concern to us here. "The
+world, and life, and death, and things present, and things to come, are
+all ours." They are all ours, so far as we are Christ's. The world is
+ours; its manifold riches and delights, its various wisdom, all are
+ours. They are ours, not as a thing stolen, and which will be taken from
+us with a heavy over-payment of penalty, because we stole it when it did
+not belong to us; but they are ours by God's free gift, to minister to
+our comfort, and to our good. And this is the great difference; the good
+things of this world are stolen by many; but they belong, by God's gift,
+to those only who are Christ's: and there is the sure sign, generally,
+to be seen of their being stolen,--an unwillingness that He to whom of
+right they belong should see them. What a man steals, he enjoys, as it
+were, in fear: if the owner of it finds him with it, then all his
+enjoyment is gone; he wishes that he had never touched it; it is no
+source of pleasure to him, but merely one of terror. And so it is often
+with our stolen pleasures,--stolen, I mean, not in respect of man, but
+of God,--stolen, because we do not feel them to be God's gift, nor
+receive them, as from him, with thankfulness. They may be very lawful
+pleasures, so far as other men are concerned; pleasures bought, it may
+be, with our own money, or given to us by our own friends, and enjoyed
+without any injury to any one. They may be the very simplest enjoyments
+of life, our health, the fresh air, our common food, our common
+amusements, our common society; things most permitted to us all, as far
+as man is concerned, but yet things which are constantly stolen by us,
+because we take them without God's leave, and enjoy them not as his
+gifts. They are all his, and he gives them freely to his children. If we
+are his children, he gives them to us; and delights in our enjoyment of
+them, as any human father loves to see the pleasure of his children in
+those things which it is good for them to enjoy. But then, is any child
+afraid of his father so seeing him? or is the thought of his father any
+interruption to his enjoyment? If it would be, we should be sure that
+there was something wrong; that the enjoyment, either in itself, or with
+respect to the particular case of that child, was a stolen one. And even
+as simple is the state of our dread of God, of our wish to keep his
+name and his thought away from us. It is the sure sign that our
+pleasures are stolen, either as being wrong in themselves, or much
+oftener, because we have taken them without being fit for them, have
+snatched them for ourselves, instead of receiving them at the hands of
+God. Two of us may be daily doing the very same thing in most
+respects,--enjoying actually the very same pleasures, whether of body or
+of mind; the same exercises, the same studies, the same indulgences, the
+same society,--and yet these very same things may belong rightfully to
+the one, and be stolen by the other. To the one they may come with a
+double blessing, as the assurance of God's greater love hereafter: to
+the other, they are but an addition to that sad account, when all good
+things enjoyed here, having been not our own rightly, but stolen, shall
+be paid for in over measure, by evil things to be suffered hereafter.
+
+And what I have said of the world, will apply also to life and to death.
+Oh, the infinite difference whether life is ours, or but stolen for an
+instant; whether death is ours, our subject, ministering only to our
+good; or our fearful enemy, our ever keen pursuer, from whose grasp we
+have escaped for a few short years, but who is following fast after us,
+and when he has once caught us will hold us fast for ever! Have we ever
+seen his near approach--has he ever forced himself upon our notice
+whether we would or no? But two days since he was amongst us,--we were,
+as it were, forced to look upon him. Did we think that he was ours, or
+that we were his? If we are his, then indeed he is fearful: fearful to
+the mere consciousness of nature; a consciousness which no arguments can
+overcome; fearful if it be merely the parting from life, if it be
+merely the resigning that wonderful thing which we call our being. It is
+fearful to go from light to darkness, from all that we have ever known
+and loved, to that of which we know and love nothing. But if death, even
+thus stingless, is yet full of horror, what is he with his worst sting
+beside, the sting of our sins? What is he when he is taking us, not to
+nothingness, but to judgment? He is indeed so fearful then, that no
+words can paint him half so truly as our foreboding dread of him, and no
+arguments which the wit of man can furnish can strip him of his terrors.
+
+But what if death too, as well as life, be ours?--which he is, if we are
+Christ's; for Christ has conquered him. If he be ours, our servant, our
+minister, sent but to bring us into the presence of our Lord, then,
+indeed, his terrors, his merely natural terrors, the outside roughness
+of his aspect, are things which the merest child need not shrink from.
+Then disease and decay, however painful to living friends to look upon,
+have but little pain for him who is undergoing them. For it is not only
+amidst the tortures of actual martyrdom that Christians have been more
+than conquerors,--in common life, on the quiet or lonely sick bed, under
+the grasp of fever or of consumption, the conquest has been witnessed as
+often and as completely. It is not a little thing when the faintest
+whisper of thought to which expiring nature can give utterance breathes
+of nothing but of peace and of forgiveness. It is not a little thing
+when the name of Christ possesses us wholly; not distinctly, it may be,
+for reason may be too weak for this; but with an indescribable power of
+support and comfort. Or even if there be a last conflict,--a season of
+terror and of pain, a valley of the shadow of death, dark and
+gloomy,--yet even there Christ is with his servants, and as their trial
+is so is his love. Thus it is, if death be ours; and death is ours, if
+we be Christ's. And are we not Christ's? We bear his name, we have his
+outward seal of belonging to his people,--can we refuse to be his in
+heart and true obedience? Would we rather steal our pleasures than enjoy
+them as our own; steal life for an instant, rather than have it our sure
+possession for ever? Would we rather be fugitives from death, fugitives
+whom he will surely recover and hold fast, than be able to say and to
+feel that death, as well as life is ours, things to come, as well as
+things present, because we are truly Christ's?
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VIII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+GALATIANS V. 16, 17.
+
+_Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh. For
+the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh;
+and these are contrary the one to the other, so that ye cannot do the
+things that ye would_.
+
+
+"We cannot do the things that we would." These are words of familiar and
+common use; this is the language in which we are all apt to excuse,
+whether to ourselves or to others, the various faults of our conduct. We
+should be glad to do better, so we say and think, but the power to do so
+fails us. And so far it may seem that we are but echoing the apostle's
+language; for he says the very same thing, "Ye cannot do the things that
+ye would." Yet the words as we use them, and as the apostle used them,
+have the most opposite meaning in the world. We use them as a reason why
+we should be satisfied, the apostle as a reason why we should be
+alarmed; we intend them to be an excuse, the apostle meant them to be a
+certain sign of condemnation.
+
+The reasons of this difference may be understood very easily. We, in the
+common course of justice, should think it hard to punish a man for not
+doing what he cannot do. We think, therefore, that if we say that we
+cannot do well, we establish also our own claim to escape from
+punishment. But God declares that a state of sin is and must be a state
+of misery; and that if we cannot escape the sin, we cannot escape the
+misery. According to God's meaning, then, the words, "Ye cannot do the
+things which ye would," mean no other than this: "Ye cannot escape from
+hell; ye cannot be redeemed from the power of death and of Satan; the
+power is wanting in you, however much you may wish it: death has got
+you, and it will keep you for ever." So that, in this way, sickness or
+weakness of the soul is very like sickness or weakness of the body. We
+cannot help being ill or weak in many cases: is that any reason why,
+according to the laws of God's providence, we should not suffer the pain
+of illness? Or is it not, rather, clear that we suffer it just because
+we have not the power to get rid of it; if we had the power to be well,
+we should be well. A man's evils are not gone because he wishes them
+away; it is not he who would fain see his chains broken, that escapes
+from his bondage; but he who has the strength to rend them asunder.
+
+Thus, then, in St. Paul's language, "Ye cannot do the things that ye
+would," means exactly, "Ye are not redeemed, but in bondage; ye are not
+saved, but lost." But he goes on to the reason why we cannot do the
+things which we would, which is, "because the flesh and the Spirit are
+contrary to one another," and pull us, as it were, different ways. Just
+as we might say of a man in illness, that the reason why he is not well,
+as he wishes to be, is because his healthy nature and his disease are
+contrary to one another, and are striving within him for the mastery.
+His blood, according to its healthy nature, would flow calmly and
+steadily; his food, according to his healthy nature, would be received
+with appetite, and would give him nourishment and strength; but, behold,
+there is in him now another nature, contrary to his healthy nature: and
+this other nature makes his blood flow with feverish quickness, and
+makes food distasteful to him, and makes the food which he has eaten
+before to become, as it were, poison; it does not nourish him or
+strengthen, but is a burden, a weakness, and a pain. As long as these
+two natures thus struggle within him, the man is sick; as soon as the
+diseased nature prevails, the man sinks and dies. He does not wish to
+die,--not at all,--most earnestly, it may be, does he wish to live; but
+his diseased nature has overcome his healthy nature, and so he must die.
+If he would live, in any sense that deserves to be called life, the
+diseased nature must not overcome, must not struggle equally; it must be
+overcome, it must be kept down, it must be rendered powerless; and then,
+when the healthy nature has prevailed, its victory is health
+and strength.
+
+So far all is alike; but what follows afterwards? As "ye cannot do the
+things which ye would, because the flesh and the Spirit are contrary to
+one another,"--what then? "Therefore," says the apostle, "walk in the
+Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh." Surely there is
+some thing marvellous in this. For, let us speak the same language to
+the sick man: tell him, "Follow thy healthy nature, and them shalt not
+be sick," what would the words be but a bitter mockery? "How can you bid
+me," he would say, "to follow my healthy nature, when ye know that my
+diseased nature has bound me? Have ye no better comfort than this to
+offer me? Tell me rather how I may become able to follow my healthy
+nature; show me the strength which may help my weakness; or else your
+words are vain, and I never can recover." Most true would be this
+answer; and therefore disease and death do make havoc of us all, and the
+healthy nature is in the end borne down by the diseased nature, and
+sooner or later the great enemy triumphs over us, and, in spite of all
+our wishes and fond desires for life, we go down, death's conquered
+subjects, to the common grave of all living.
+
+This happens to the bodies of us all; to the souls of only too many. But
+why does it not happen also to the souls of all? How is it that some do
+fulfil the apostle's bidding? that they do walk in the Spirit, and
+therefore do not fulfil the lusts of the flesh; and therefore having
+conquered their diseased nature, they do walk according to their
+healthful nature, and are verily able to do, and do continually, the
+very things that they would? Surely this so striking difference, between
+the universal conquest of our diseased nature in the body, and the
+occasional victory of the healthy nature in the soul, shows us clearly
+that for the soul there has appeared a Redeemer already, while for the
+body the redemption is delayed till death shall be swallowed up
+in victory.
+
+For most true is it that in ourselves we could not deliver ourselves
+either soul or body. "Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the
+lusts of the flesh," might have been as cruel a mockery to us, as the
+similar words addressed to the man bodily sick,--"Walk according to thy
+healthy nature, and thou shalt not suffer from disease." They might have
+been a mockery, but blessed be God, they are not. They are not, because
+God has given us a Redeemer; they are not, because Christ has died, yea
+rather has risen again; and because the Spirit of Christ helpeth our
+infirmities, and gives us that power which by ourselves we had not.
+
+Not by wishing then to be redeemed, but by being redeemed, shall we
+escape the power of death. Not by saying, "Alas! we cannot do the things
+that we would!" but by becoming able to do them. Walk in the Spirit, and
+ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh; but if ye do fulfil them,
+ye must die.
+
+The power to walk in the Spirit is given by the Spirit; but either all
+have not this power, or all do not use it. I think rather it is that all
+have it not, for if they had it, a power so mighty and so beneficent,
+they surely could not help using it. All have it not; but I do not say
+that they all might not have it; on the contrary, all might have it, but
+in point of fact they have it not. They have it not because they seek it
+not: for an idle wish is one thing; a steady persevering pursuit is
+another. They seek not the Spirit by the appointed means, the means of
+prayer and attending to God's holy word, and thinking of life and death
+and judgment.
+
+Do those seek the spirit of God who never pray to God? Clearly they do
+not. For they who never pray to God never think of Him; they who never
+think of Him, by the very force of the terms it follows that they cannot
+seek his help. And yet they say, "Oh, I wish to be good, but I cannot!"
+But this, in the language of the Scripture, is a lie. If they did wish
+to be good they would seek the help that could make them so. There is no
+boy so young as not to know that, when temptation is on him to evil,
+prayer to God will strengthen him for good. As sure as we live, if he
+wished really to overcome the temptation, he would seek the strength.
+
+Consider what prayer is, and see how it cannot but strengthen us. He who
+stands in a sheltered place, where the wind cannot reach him, and with
+no branches over his head to cause a damp shade, and then holds up his
+face or his hands to the sun, in his strength, can he help feeling the
+sun's warmth? Now, thus it is in prayer: we turn to God, we bring our
+souls, with all their thoughts and feelings, fully before Him; and by
+the very act of so doing, we shelter ourselves from every chill of
+worldly care, we clear away every intercepting screen of worldly thought
+and pleasure. It is an awful thing so to submit ourselves wholly to the
+influence of God. But do it; and as surely as the sun will warm us if we
+stand in the sun, so will the Giver of light and life to the soul pour
+his Spirit of life into us; even as we pray, we become changed into
+his image.
+
+This is not spoken extravagantly. I ask of any one who has ever prayed
+in earnest, whether for that time, and while he was so praying, he did
+not feel, as it were, another man; a man able to do the things which he
+would; a man redeemed and free. But most true is it that this feeling
+passes away but too soon, when the prayer is done. Still for the time,
+there is the effect; we know what it is to put ourselves, in a manner,
+beneath the rays of God's grace; but we do not abide there long, and
+then we feel the damp and the cold of earth again.
+
+Therefore says the Apostle, "Pray without ceasing." If we could
+literally pray always, it is clear that we should sin never: it may be
+thus that Christ's redeemed, at his coming, as they will be for ever
+with him and with the Father, can therefore sin no more. For where God
+is, there is no place left for sin. But we cannot pray always: we cannot
+pray the greatest portion of our time; nay, we can pray, in the common
+sense of the term, only a very small portion of it. Yet, at least, we
+can take heed that we do pray sometimes, and that our prayer be truly in
+earnest. We can pray then for God's help to abide with us when we are
+not praying: we can commit to his care, not only our hours of sleep, but
+our hours of worldly waking. "I have work to do, I have a busy world
+around me; eye, ear, and thought will be all needed for that work, done
+in and amidst that busy world; now, ere I enter upon it, I would commit
+eye, ear, thought and wish to Thee. Do thou bless them, and keep their
+work thine; that as, through thy natural laws, my heart beats and my
+blood flows without my thought for them, so my spiritual life may hold
+on its course, through, thy help, at those times when my mind cannot
+consciously turn to Thee to commit each particular thought to
+thy service."
+
+But I dare not say that by any the most urgent prayers, uttered only at
+night and morning, God's blessing can thus be gained for the whole
+intervening day. For, in truth, if we did nothing more, the prayers
+would soon cease to be urgent; they would become formal, that is, they
+would be no prayers at all. For prayer lives in the heart, and not in
+the mouth; it consists not of words, but wishes. And no man can set
+himself heartily to wish twice a day for things, of which he never
+thinks at other times in the day. So that prayer requires in a manner to
+be fed, and its food is to be found in reading and thinking; in reading
+God's word, and in thinking about him, and about the world as being
+his work.
+
+Young men and boys are generally, we know, not fond of reading for its
+own sake; and when they do read for their own pleasure, they naturally
+read something that interests them. Now, what are called serious books,
+including certainly the Bible, do not interest them, and therefore they
+are not commonly read. What shall we say, then? Are they not interested
+in becoming good, in learning to do the things which, they would? If
+they are not, if they care not for the bondage of sin and death, there
+is, of course, nothing to be said; then they are condemned already; they
+are not the children of God. But one says, "I wish I could find interest
+in a serious book, but I cannot." Observe again, "Ye cannot do the
+things that ye would," because the flesh and the Spirit are contrary to
+one another. However, to return to him who says this, the answer to him
+is this,--"The interest cannot come without the reading; it may and
+will come with it." For interest in a subject depends very much on our
+knowledge of it; and so it is with, the things of Christ. As long as the
+life and death of Christ are strange to us, how can we be interested
+about them? but read them, thinking of what they were, and what were
+their ends, and who can help being interested about them? Read them
+carefully, and read them often, and they will bring before our minds the
+very thoughts which we need, and which the world keeps continually from
+us, the thoughts which naturally feed our prayers; thoughts not of self,
+nor selfishness, nor pleasure, nor passion, nor folly, but of such
+things as are truly God's--love, and self-denial, and purity, and
+wisdom. These thoughts come by reading the Scriptures; and strangely do
+they mingle at first with the common evil thoughts of our evil nature.
+But they soon find a home within us, and more good thoughts gather round
+them, and there comes a time when daily life with its various business,
+which, once seemed to shut them out altogether, now ministers to their
+nourishment.
+
+Wherefore, in conclusion, walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil
+the lusts of the flesh; but do even the things which ye would. And ye
+can walk in the Spirit, if ye seek for the Spirit; if ye seek him by
+prayer, and by reading of Christ, and the things of Christ. If we will
+do neither, then most assuredly we are not seeking him; if we seek him
+not, we shall never find him. If we find him not, we shall never be able
+to do the things that we would; we shall never be redeemed, never made
+free, but our souls shall be overcome by their evil nature, as surely as
+our bodies by their diseased nature; till one death shall possess us
+wholly, a death of body and of soul, the death of eternal misery.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE IX.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LUKE xiv. 33.
+
+_Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot
+be my disciple_.
+
+
+In order to show that these words were not spoken to the apostles alone,
+but to all Christians, we have only to turn to the 25th and 26th verses,
+which run thus:--"And there went great multitudes with him, and he
+turned and said unto them, If any man come to me, and hate not his
+father and mother, and wife and children, and brethren and sisters, yea
+and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." The words were not,
+then, spoken to the twelve apostles only, as if they contained merely
+some rule of extraordinary piety, which was not to be required of common
+Christians; they were spoken to a great multitude; they were spoken to
+warn all persons in that multitude that not one of them could become a
+Christian, unless he gave himself up to Christ body and soul. Thus
+declaring that there is but one rule for all; a rule which the highest
+Christian can never go beyond; and which the lowest, if he would be a
+Christian at all, must make the foundation of his whole life.
+
+Now take the words, either of the text or of the 26th verse, and is it
+possible to avoid seeing that, on the very lowest interpretation, they
+do insist upon a very high standard; that they do require a very entire
+and devoted obedience? Is it possible for any one who believes what
+Christ has said, to rest contented, either for himself or for others,
+with that very low and very unchristian standard which he sees and knows
+to prevail generally in the world? Is it possible for him not to wish,
+for himself and for all in whose welfare he is interested, that they may
+belong to the small minority in matters of principle and practice,
+rather than to the large majority?
+
+And because he so wishes, one who endeavours to follow Christ sincerely
+can never be satisfied with the excuse that he acts and thinks quite as
+well as the mass of persons about him; it can never give him comfort,
+with regard to any judgment or practice, to be told, in common language,
+"Everybody thinks so; everybody does so." If, indeed, this expression
+"everybody" might be taken literally; if it were quite true, without any
+exception, that "everybody thought or did so;" then I grant that it
+would have a very great authority; so great that it would be almost a
+mark of madness to run counter to it. For what all men, all without a
+single exception, were to agree in, must be some truth which the human
+mind could not reject without insanity,--like the axioms of science, or
+some action which if we did not we could not live, as sleeping and
+eating; or if there be any moral point so universally agreed upon, then
+it must be something exceedingly general: as, for instance, that truth
+is in itself to be preferred to falsehood; which to dispute would be
+monstrous. But, once admit a single exception, and the infallible virtue
+of the rule ceases. I can conceive one single good and wise man's
+judgment and practice, requiring, at any rate, to be carefully attended
+to, and his reasons examined, although millions upon millions stood
+against him. But go on with the number of exceptions, and bring the
+expression "everybody," to its real meaning, which is only "most
+persons," "the great majority of the world;" then the rule becomes of
+no virtue at all, but very often the contrary. If in matters of morals
+many are on one side and some on the other, it is impossible to
+pronounce at once which are most likely to be right: it depends on the
+sort of case on which the difference exists; for the victories of truth
+and of good are but partial. It is not all truth that triumphs in the
+world, nor all good; but only truth and good up to a certain point. Let
+them once pass this point, and their progress pauses. Their followers,
+in the mass, cannot keep up with them thus far: fewer and fewer are
+those who still press on in their company, till at last even these fail;
+and there is a perfection at which they are deserted by all men, and are
+in the presence of God and of Christ alone.
+
+Thus it is that, up to a certain point, in moral matters the majority
+are right; and thus Christ's gospel, in a great many respects, goes
+along with public opinion, and the voice of society is the voice of
+truth. But this, to use the expression of our Lord's parable, this is
+but half the height of that tower whose top should reach unto heaven.
+Christianity ascends a great deal higher; and therefore so many who
+begin to build are never able to finish. Christ's disciples and the
+world's disciples work for a certain way together; and thus far the
+world's disciples call themselves Christ's, and so Christ's followers
+seem to be a great majority. But Christ warns us expressly that we are
+not his disciples merely by going a certain way on the same road with
+them. They only are His, who follow Him to the end. They only are His,
+who follow him in spite of everything, who leave all rather than leave
+him. For the rest, He does not own them. What the world can give they
+may enjoy; but Christ's kingdom is shut against them.
+
+Speaking, then, according to Christ's judgment, and we must hold those
+to be of the world, and not of Him,--and therefore in God's judgment, to
+be the evil and not the good,--who do not make up their minds to live in
+His service, and to refer their actions, words, and thoughts to His
+will. Who these are it is very true that we many times cannot know: only
+we may always fear that they are the majority of society; and therefore
+we are rather anxious in any individual's case to get a proof that he is
+not one of them, because, as they are very many, there is always a sort
+of presumption that any given person is of this number, unless there is
+some evidence, or some presumption at any rate, for thinking
+the contrary.
+
+When we speak, then, of the good and of the evil side in human life, in
+any society, whether smaller or larger,--this is what we mean, or should
+mean. The evil side contains much that is, up to a certain point, good:
+the good side,--for does it not consist of human beings?--contains,
+unhappily, much in it that is evil. Not all in the one is to be
+avoided,--far from it; nor is all in the other by any means to be
+followed. But still those are called evil in God's judgment who live
+according to their own impulses, or according to the law of the society
+around them; and those are to be called good, who, in their principles,
+whatever may be the imperfections of their practice, endeavour in all
+things to live according to the will of Christ.
+
+And in this view the characters of Jacob and Esau are, as it seems to
+me, full of instruction; and above all to us here. For I have often
+observed that the early age of an individual bears a great resemblance
+to the early age of the human race, or of any particular nation; so that
+the characters of the Old Testament are often more suited, in a
+Christian country, for the instruction of the young than for those of
+more advanced years. To Christian men, looking at Jacob's life, with the
+faults recorded of it, it is sometimes strange that he should be spoken
+of as good. But it seems that in a rude state of society, where
+knowledge is very low, and passion very strong, the great virtue is to
+be freed from the dominion of the prevailing low principle, to see and
+resolve that we ought and will live according to knowledge, and not
+according to passion or impulse. The knowledge may be very imperfect,
+and probably is so: the practice may in many respects offend against
+knowledge, and probably will do so: yet is a great step taken; it is
+_the_ virtue of man, in such a state of society, to follow, though
+imperfectly, principle, where others follow instinct, or the opinion of
+their fellows. It is the great distinguishing mark, in such a state of
+things, between the good and the evil; for this reason, amongst many
+others, that it is the virtue, under such, circumstances, of the hardest
+attainment.
+
+Now, the Scripture judgment of Jacob and Esau, should be in an especial
+manner the basis of our judgment with regard to the young. None can
+doubt, that amongst the young, when they form a society of their own,
+the great temptation is to live by impulse, or according to the opinion
+of those around them. It is like a light breaking in upon darkness, when
+a young person is led to follow a higher standard, and to live according
+to God's will. Esau, in his faults and amiable points alike, is the very
+image of the prevailing character amongst boys; sometimes violently
+revengeful, as when Esau looked forward with satisfaction to the
+prospect of his father's death, because then we should be able to slay
+his brother Jacob; sometimes full of generosity, as when Esau forgot all
+his grounds of complaint against his brother, and received him on his
+return from Mesopotamia with open arms;--but habitually careless, and
+setting the present before the future, the lower gratification before
+the higher, as when Esau sold his birth-right for a mess of pottage. And
+the point to be noted is, that, because of this carelessness, this
+profaneness or ungodliness, as it is truly called in the New Testament,
+Esau is distinguished from those who were God's people; the promises
+were not his, nor yet the blessing. This is remarkable, because Esau's
+faults, undoubtedly were just the faults of his age: he was no worse
+than the great majority of those around him; he lived as we should say,
+in our common language, that it was natural for him to live. He had,
+therefore, precisely all those excuses which are commonly urged for the
+prevailing faults of boys; yet it is quite certain that the Scripture
+holds him out as a representative of those who were not on the side
+of God,
+
+If the Scripture has so judged of Esau and Jacob, it must be the model
+for our judgments of those whose circumstances, on account of their
+belonging to a society consisting wholly of persons young in age,
+greatly resemble the circumstances of the early society of the world. I
+lay the stress on the belonging to a society wholly formed of young
+persons; for the case of young persons brought up at home, is extremely
+different; and their circumstances would be best suited by a different
+scriptural example. But here, with you, I am quite sure that the great
+distinguishing mark between good and evil, is the endeavouring, or not
+endeavouring, to rise above the carelessness of the society of which you
+are members; the determining, or not determining, to judge of things by
+another rule than that of school morality or honour; the trying, or not
+trying, to please God, instead of those around you: for the notions and
+maxims of a society of young persons are like the notions and maxims of
+men in a half-civilized age, a strange mixture of right and wrong; or
+rather wrong in their result, although with some right feeling in them,
+and therefore as a guide, false and mischievous. That it is natural to
+follow these maxims, is quite obvious: they are the besetting sin of
+your particular condition; and it is always according to our corrupt
+nature to follow our besetting sin. It is quite natural that you should
+be careless, profane, mistaking evil for good, and good for evil; but
+salvation is not for those who follow their nature, but for those in
+whom God's grace has overcome its evil; it is for those, in Christ's
+language, who take up their cross and follow him; that is, for those who
+struggle against their evil nature, that they may gain a better nature,
+and be born, not after the flesh, but after the Spirit of God.
+
+What is to be said to this? or what qualification, or compromise, is to
+be made in it? The words of the text will authorize us, at any rate, to
+make none: their language is not that of indulgent allowance; but it is
+a call, a loud and earnest, even a severe, call, it may be, in the
+judgment of our evil nature,--to shake off the weight that hangs about
+us; to deliver our hearts from the dominion of that which cannot profit,
+and to submit them to Christ alone. This is God's judgment, this is
+Christ's word; and we cannot and dare not qualify it. They are evil, for
+God and Christ declare it, who judge and live after the maxims of the
+society around them, and not after Christ; they are evil who are
+careless; they are evil who live according to their own blind and
+capricious feelings, now hot, now cold; they are evil who call evil
+good, and good evil, because they have not known the Father nor Christ.
+This, and nothing less, we say, lest we should be found false witnesses
+of God: but if this language, which is that of Scripture, seem harsh, to
+any one, oh! let him remember how soon he may change it into the
+language of the most abundant mercy, of the tenderest love; that if he
+calls upon God, God is ready to hear; that if he seeks to know and to do
+God's will, God will be found by him, and will strengthen him; that it
+is true kindness not to disguise from him his real danger, but earnestly
+to conjure him to flee from it, and to offer our humblest prayers to
+God, for him and ourselves, that our judgments and our practice may be
+formed only after his example.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE X.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+1 TIMOTHY i. 9.
+
+_The law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and
+disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy
+and profane_.
+
+
+These words explain the meaning of a great many passages in St. Paul's
+Epistles, in which also he speaks of the law, and of not being under the
+law, and other such expressions. And it is clear also, that he is not
+speaking solely, or chiefly, or, in any considerable degree, of the
+ceremonial law; but much more of the law of moral good, the law which
+told men how they ought to live, and how they ought not. This law, he
+says, is not made for good men, but for evil: a thing so plain, that we
+may well wonder how any could ever have misunderstood it. It is so
+manifest, that strict rules are required, just exactly in proportion to
+our inability or want of will to rule ourselves; it is so very plain,
+that, with regard to those crimes which we are under no temptation to
+commit, we feel exactly as if there were no law. Which of us ever
+thinks, as a matter of personal concern, of the law which sentences to
+death murderers, or housebreakers, or those who maliciously set fire to
+their neighbours' property? Do we not feel that, as far as our own
+conduct is concerned, it would be exactly the same thing if no such law
+were in existence? We should no more murder, or rob, or set fire to
+houses and barns, if the law were wholly done away, than we do now that
+it is in force.
+
+There are, then, some points in which we feel practically that we are
+not under the law, but dead to it; that the law is not made for us: but
+do we think, therefore, that we may murder, and rob, and burn? or do we
+not rather feel that such a notion would be little short of madness? We
+are not under the law, because we do not need it; not because there is
+in reality no law to punish us if we do need it. And just of this kind
+is that general freedom from the law, of which St. Paul speaks, as the
+high privilege of true Christians.
+
+But yet St. Paul would not at all mean that any Christian is altogether
+without the law: that is, that there are no points at all in which his
+inclination is not to evil, and in which, therefore, he needs the fear
+of God to restrain him from it. When he says of himself, that he kept
+under his body lest that by any means he should become a castaway; just
+so far as this fear of being a castaway possessed him, that is, just so
+far as there were any evil tendencies in him, which required him to keep
+them under by an effort, just so far was he under the law. And this is
+so, as we full well know, with us all; for as there is none of us in
+whom sin is utterly dead, so neither can there be any of us who is
+altogether dead to the law.
+
+Yet, although this be so, there is no doubt that the gospel wishes to
+consider us as generally dead to the law, in order that we really may
+become so continually more and more. It supposes that the Spirit of God,
+presenting to our minds the sight of God's love in Christ, sets us free
+from the law of sin and death; that is, that a sense of thankfulness to
+God, and love of God and of Christ, will be so strong a motive, that we
+shall, generally speaking, need no other; that it will so work upon us,
+as to make us feel good, easy, and delightful, and thus to become dead
+to the law. And there is no doubt also, that that same freedom from the
+law, which we ourselves experience daily, in respect of some particular
+great crimes, (for, as I said, we do not feel that it is the fear of the
+law which keeps us from murder or from robbing,) that very same freedom
+is felt by good men in many other points, where it may be that we
+ourselves do not feel it. A common instance may be given with respect to
+prayer, and the outward worship of God. There are a great many who feel
+this as a duty; but there are many also to whom it is not so much a
+duty, as a privilege and a pleasure; and these are dead to the law which
+commands us to be instant in prayer, just as we, in general, are dead to
+the law which commands us to do no murder.
+
+This being understood, it will be perfectly plain, why St. Paul, along
+with all his language as to the law being passed away, and our being
+become dead to it, yet uses, very frequently, language of another kind,
+which shows that the law is not dead in itself, but lives, and ever will
+live. He says, "We must all stand before the judgment seat of Christ,
+that every one may receive according to what he has done in the body."
+And he adds, "Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade
+men." But the judgment, and the terror of the Lord, mean precisely what
+are meant by the law. And this language of St. Paul shows more clearly,
+that, unless we are first dead to the law, the law is not, and never
+will be dead to us.
+
+I should not have thought it useless, to have offered merely this
+explanation of a language, which is very common in the New Testament,
+which, forms one of its characteristic points, (for St. John's
+expression of "Perfect love casteth out fear," is exactly equivalent to
+St. Paul's, "That we are dead to the law,") and which has been often
+misunderstood, or misrepresented. But yet I am well aware, that mere
+explanations of Scripture cannot be expected to interest those to whom
+Scripture is not familiar. The answer to a riddle would be very soon
+forgotten, unless the riddle had first at once amused and puzzled us.
+Just so, explanations of Scripture, to be at all valued, must suppose a
+previous knowledge of, and desire to understand, the difficulty; and
+this we cannot expect to find in very young persons. Thus far, then,
+what I have said has been necessarily addressed, I do not say, or mean,
+to the oldest part of my hearers only, but yet to the older, and more
+considering part of them. But the subject is capable, I think, of being
+brought much more closely home to us; for what St. Paul says of the law,
+with reference to all mankind, is precisely that state of mind which one
+would wish to see here; and the mistakes of his meaning are just such as
+are often prevalent, and are likely to do great mischief, with regard to
+the motives to be appealed to in education.
+
+Now, what is the case in the Scripture? Men had been subject to a strict
+law of rewards and punishments, appealing directly to their hopes, and
+to their fears. The gospel offered itself to them, as a declaration of
+God's love to them; so wonderful, that it seemed as though it could not
+but excite them to love him in return. It also raised their whole
+nature; their understandings, no less than their affections; and thus
+led them to do God's will, from another and higher feeling than they had
+felt heretofore; to do it, not because they must, but because they loved
+it. And to such as answered to this heavenly call, God laid aside, if I
+may venture so to speak, all his terrors; he showed himself to them only
+as a loving father, between whom and his children there was nothing but
+mutual affection; who would be loved by them, and love them forever. But
+to those who answered not to it, and far more, who dared to abuse it;
+who thought that God's love was weakness; that the liberty to which they
+were called, was the liberty of devils, the liberty of doing evil as
+they would; to all such, God was still a consuming fire, and their most
+merciful Saviour himself was a judge to try their very hearts and reins;
+in short, the gospel was to them, not salvation, but condemnation; it
+awakened not the better, but the baser parts of their nature; it did not
+do away, but doubled their guilt, and therefore brought upon them, and
+will bring through all eternity, a double measure of punishment.
+
+Now all this applies exactly to that earlier and, as it were,
+preparatory life, which ends not in death, but in manhood. The state of
+boyhood begins under a law. It is a great mistake to address always the
+reason of a child, when you ought rather to require his obedience. Do
+this, do not do that; if you do this, I shall love you; if you do not, I
+shall punish you;--such is the state, most clearly a state of law, under
+which we are, and must be, placed at the beginning of education. But we
+should desire and endeavour to see this state of law succeeded by
+something better; we should desire so to unfold the love of Christ as to
+draw the affections towards him; we should desire so to raise the
+understanding as that it may fasten itself, by its own native tendrils,
+round the pillar of truth, without requiring to be bound to it by
+external bands. We should avoid all unnecessary harshness; we should
+speak and act with all possible kindness; because love, rather than
+fear, love both of God and man, is the motive which we particularly wish
+to awaken. Thus, keeping punishment in the background and, as it were,
+out of sight, and putting forward encouragement and kindness, we should
+attract, as it were, the good and noble feelings of those with, whom we
+are dealing, and invite them to open, and to answer to, a system of
+confidence and kindness, rather than risk the chilling and hardening
+them by a system of mistrust and severity.
+
+And for those who do answer to this call, how really true is it that
+they do soon become dead, in great measure, to the law of the place
+where they are living! How little do they generally feel its restraints,
+or its tasks, burdensome! How very little have they to do with its
+punishments! Led on by degrees continually higher and higher, their
+relations with us become more and more relations of entire confidence
+and kindness; and when at last their trial is over, and they pass from
+this first life, as I have ventured to call it, into their second life
+of manhood, how beautifully are they ripened for that state! how
+naturally do all the restraints of this first life fall away, like the
+mortal body of the perfected Christian; and they enter upon the full
+liberty of manhood, fitted at once to enjoy and to improve it!
+
+But observe, that St. Paul does not suppose even the best Christian to
+be without the law altogether: there will ever be some points in which
+he will need to remember it. And so it is unkindness, rather than
+kindness, and a very mischievous mistake, to forget that here, in this
+our preparatory life, the law cannot cease altogether with any one; that
+it is not possible to find a perfect sense and feeling of right existing
+in every action; nay, that it is even unreasonable to seem to expect it.
+Little faults, little irregularities, there always will be, with which
+the law is best fitted to deal; which should be met, I mean, by a system
+of rules and of punishments, not severe, certainly, nor one at all
+inconsistent with general respect, kindness, and confidence; but which
+check the particular faults alluded to better, I think, than could be
+done by seeming to expect of the individual that he should, in all such
+cases, be a law to himself. There is a possibility of our over-straining
+the highest principles, by continually appealing to them on very
+trifling occasions. It is far better, here, to apply the system of the
+law; to require obedience to rules, as a matter of discipline; to visit
+the breach of them by moderate punishment, not given in anger, not at
+all inconsistent with general confidence and regard, but gently
+reminding us of that truth which we may never dare wholly to
+forget,--that punishment will exist eternally so long as there is evil,
+and that the only way of remaining for ever entirely strangers to it, is
+by adhering for ever and entirely to good.
+
+This applies to every one amongst us; and is the reason why rules,
+discipline, and punishments, however much they may be, and are, kept in
+the background for such, as have become almost wholly dead to them, must
+yet continue in existence, because none are, or can be, dead to them
+altogether. But now, suppose that we have a nature to deal with, which,
+cannot answer to a system of kindness, but abuses it; which, when
+punishment is kept at a distance, rejoices, as thinking that it may
+follow evil safely; a nature not to be touched by the love of God or
+man, not to be guided by any perception of its own as to what is right
+and true. Is the law dead really to such as these? or should it be so?
+Is punishment a degradation to a nature which, is so self-degraded as to
+be incapable of being moved by anything better? For this is the real
+degradation which we should avoid; not the fear of punishment, which is
+not at all degrading, but the being insensible to the love of Christ and
+of goodness; and so being capable of receiving no other motive than the
+fear of punishment alone. With such natures, to withhold punishment,
+would be indeed to make Christ the minister of sin; to make mercy, that
+is, lead to evil, and not to good. For them, the law never is dead, and
+never will be. Here, of course, in this first life, as I have called it,
+punishment indeed goes but a little way: it is very easy for a hardened
+nature to defy all that could be laid upon it here in the way of actual
+compulsion. Our only course is to cut short the time of trial, when we
+find a nature in whom that trial cannot end in good. Still there may be
+those in whom this life here, like their greater life which shall last
+for ever, will have far more to do with punishment than with kindness;
+they will be living all their time under the law. Continue this to our
+second life, and the law then will be no less alive, and they will never
+be dead to it, nor will it be ever dead to them. And however a hardened
+nature may well despise the punishments of its first life,--punishments,
+whose whole object is correction, and not retribution,--yet, where is
+the nature so hard as to endure, in its relations with God, to feel more
+of his punishment than of his mercy; to know him for ever as a God of
+judgment, and not as a Father of love?
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XI.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+ST. LUKE xxi. 36.
+
+_Watch ye, therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy
+to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before
+the Son of Man_.
+
+
+This might be a text for a history of the Christian Church, from its
+foundation to this hour, or to the latest hour of the world's existence.
+We might observe how it Lad fulfilled its Lord's command; with what
+steadiness it had gone forward on its course, with the constant hope of
+meeting Him once again in glory. We might see how it had escaped all
+these things that were to come to pass: tracing its course amidst the
+manifold revolutions of the world, inward and outward. In the few words,
+"all these things that shall come to pass," are contained all the events
+of the last eighteen hundred years: indistinct and unknown to us, as
+long as they are thus folded up together; but capable of being unrolled
+before our eyes in a long order, in which should be displayed all the
+outward changes of nations, the spread of discovery, the vicissitudes of
+conquest; and yet more, the inward changes of men's minds, the various
+schools of philosophy, the successive forms of public opinion, the
+influences of various races, all the manifold elements by which the
+moral character of the Christian world has been affected. We might
+observe how the Church had escaped all these things, or to what degree
+it had received from any of them good or evil. And then, stopping at
+the point at which it has actually arrived, we might consider how far it
+deserves the character of that Church, "without spot, or wrinkle, or any
+such thing," which should be presented before the Son of Man at his
+coming again.
+
+This would be a great subject; and one, if worthily executed, full of
+the deepest instruction to us all. But our Lord's words may also be made
+the text for a history or inquiry of another sort, far less
+comprehensive in time and space, far less grand, far less interesting to
+the understanding; yet, on the other hand, capable of being wrought out
+far more completely, and far more interesting to the spiritual and
+eternal welfare of each of us. They may be made the text for an inquiry
+into the course hitherto held, not by the Church as a body, but by each
+of us individual members of it; an inquiry how far we, each of us, have
+watched and prayed always, that we might be accounted worthy to escape
+all the things which should come to pass, and to stand before the Son of
+Man. And, in this view of the words, the expression "all these things
+which shall come to pass" has reference no longer to great political
+revolutions, nor to schools of philosophy, nor to prominent points of
+national character; but to those humbler events, to those lesser
+changes, outward and inward, through which we each, pass between our
+cradle and our grave. How have we escaped these, or turned them to good
+account? Have earthly things so ministered to our eternal welfare, that
+if we were each one of us, by a stroke from heaven, cut off at that very
+point in our course to which we have severally attained this day, we
+should be accounted worthy to stand before the Son of Man?
+
+Here is, indeed, a very humble history for us each to study; yet what
+other history can concern us so nearly? And as, in the history of the
+world, experience in part supplies the place of prophecy, and the fate
+of one nation is in a manner a mirror to another, so in our individual
+history, the experience of the old is a lesson to the middle-aged, and
+that of the middle-aged a lesson to the young. If you wish to know what
+are the things which shall come to pass with respect to you, we can draw
+aside the veil from your coming life, because what you will be is no
+other than what we are. If we would go onwards, in like manner, and ask
+what are the things which shall come to pass with respect to us, our
+coming life may be seen in the past and present life of the old; for
+what we shall be is no other than what they have been, or than what
+they are.
+
+Let us take, then, the actual moment with, each of us, and suppose that
+our Lord speaks to each of us as he did to his first disciples: "Watch
+and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these
+things which shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man." We
+ask, naturally, "What are the things which shall come to pass?" and it
+is to this question that I am to try to suggest the answer.
+
+Those arrived at middle age may ask the question, "What are the things
+which shall come to pass to us?" Now, setting aside extraordinary
+accidents, on which we cannot reckon, and the answer would, I think, be
+something of this sort: There will not come to pass, it is likely, any
+great change in our condition or employment in life. In middle age our
+calling, with all the duties which it involves, must generally be fixed
+for each of us. Our particular kind of trial will not, it is probable,
+be much altered. We must not, as in youth, fancy that, although our
+actual occupation does not suit us, although its temptations are often
+too strong for us, yet a change may take place to another line of duty,
+and the temptations in that new line may be less formidable. In middle
+age it will not do to indulge such fond hopes as these. On the contrary,
+our hope must lie, not in escape, but in victory. If our temptations
+press us hard, we cannot expect to have them exchanged for others less
+powerful: they will remain with us, and we must overcome them, or
+perish. Have we tastes not fully reconciled to our calling,--faculties
+which seem not to have found their proper field? We must seek our remedy
+not from without, humanly speaking, but from within: we must discipline
+ourselves; we must teach our tastes to cling gracefully around that duty
+to which else they must be helplessly fastened. If any faculties appear
+not to have found their proper field, we must think that God has, for
+certain wise reasons, judged it best for us that they should not be
+exercised; and we must be content to render him the service of others.
+In this respect, then, the immediate prospect for middle age is not so
+much change as steadfastness. Fortune will not suit herself to our
+wishes: we must learn to suit our wishes to her.
+
+But go on a little farther, and what are the things which must come to
+pass then? A new and most solemn interest arising to us in the entrance
+of our children into active life. Hitherto they have lived under our
+care, and our duty to them was simple; but now there comes the choice of
+a profession, the watching and guiding them, as well as we can, at this
+critical moment of their course. What cares await us here; and yet what
+need of avoiding over care! What a trial for us, how we value our
+children's worldly interests when compared with their eternal--whether
+we prefer for them the path which may lead most readily to worldly
+wealth and honour, or that in, which they may best and safest follow
+Christ! This is a danger which will come to pass to us ere long: do we
+watch and pray that we may be delivered from it?
+
+The interest of life, which had, perhaps, something begun to fade for
+ourselves, will revive with vigour at this period in behalf of our
+children; but after this it will go on steadily ebbing. What life can
+offer we have tasted for ourselves; we have seen it tasted, or in the
+way to be tasted, by them. The harvest is gathered, and the symptoms of
+the fall appear. Is it that some faculty becomes a little impaired, some
+taste a little dulled; or is it that the friends and companions of our
+life are beginning to drop away from us? Long since, those whom we loved
+of the generation before us have been gathered to the grave; now those
+of our own generation are falling fast also--brothers, sisters, friends
+of our early youth, a wife, a husband. We are surrounded by a younger
+generation, to whom the half of our lives, with all their recollections
+and sympathies, are a thing unknown. Impatience, weariness, a clinging
+to the past, a vain wish to prolong it in an earthly future,--these are
+the things which shall befal us then: and they will befal us too surely,
+and too irresistibly, unless, by earlier watchfulness and prayer, we may
+have been enabled to avoid them. For vain will it be, with faculties at
+once weakened by the decay of nature and perverted by long habits of
+worldliness, to essay, for the first time, to force our way into the
+kingdom of heaven. Old age is not the season for contest and victory;
+nor shall we then be so able to escape unharmed from the temptations of
+life as to stand before the Son of Man.
+
+These are the things which will come to pass for us and for you. But for
+you there is much more to come, which to us is not future now, but past
+or present. With you, for a time, it will be all a course forwards and
+upwards. From the preparation for life, you will come to the reality;
+from a state of less importance, you will be passing on to one of
+greater. Your temptations, whatever they may be now, will not certainly
+become weaker. As outward restraint is more and more taken off from you,
+so your need of inward restraint will be greater. Will those who are
+extravagant now on a small scale, be less extravagant on a large scale?
+Will those who are selfish now, become less selfish amidst a wider field
+of enjoyment? Will those who know not or care not for Christ, while yet,
+as it were, standing quietly on the shore, be led to think of him more
+amidst the excitement of the first setting sail, amidst the interest of
+the first newly-seen country?
+
+You know not yet, nor can know, the immense importance of that period of
+life on which many of you are entering, or have just entered. You are
+coming, or come, to what may be called the second beginning of life: to
+which, in the common course of things, there will succeed no third.
+Ignorance, absence of temptation, the presence of all good impressions,
+constitute much of the innocence of mere childhood,--so beautiful while
+it lasts, so sure to be soon blighted! It is blighted in the first
+experience of life, most commonly when a boy first goes to school. Then
+his mere innocence, which indeed he may be said to have worn rather
+instinctively than by choice, becomes grievously polluted. Then come the
+hardness, the coarseness, the intense selfishness; sometimes, too, the
+falsehood, the cruelty, the folly of the boy: then comes that period, so
+trying to the faith of parents, when all their early care seems blasted;
+when the vineyard, which they had fenced so tenderly, seems all
+despoiled and trodden under foot. It is indeed a discouraging season,
+the exact image of the ungenial springs of our natural year. But after
+this there comes, as it were, a second beginning of life, when principle
+takes the place of innocence. There is a time,--many of you must have
+arrived at it,--when thought and inquiry awaken; when, out of the mere
+chaos of boyhood, the elements of the future character of the man begin
+to appear. Blessed are they for whom the confusion and disarray of their
+boyish life is quickened into a true life by the moving of the Spirit of
+God! Blessed are they for whom the beginnings of thought and inquiry are
+the beginnings also of faith and love; when the new character receives,
+as it is forming, the Christian seed, and the man is also the Christian.
+And, then, this second beginning of life, resting on faith and conscious
+principle, and not on mere passive innocence, stands sure for the middle
+and the end: those who so watch and pray as to escape out of this
+critical period, not merely unharmed, but, as it were, set clearly on
+their way to heaven, will, with God's grace, escape out of the things
+which shall befal them afterwards, till they shall stand before the
+Son of Man.
+
+But the word is, "Watch and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy
+to escape." We see the time with many of you come, or immediately
+coming; out of your present state _a_ character will certainly be
+formed; as surely as the innocence of childhood has perished, so surely
+will the carelessness of boyhood perish too. _A_ character will be
+formed, whether you watch and pray, or whether you do neither; but the
+great point is what this character may be. If you do not watch the
+process, it will surely be the character of death eternal. Thought and
+inquiry will satisfy themselves very readily with an answer as far as
+regards spiritual things: their whole vigour will be devoted to the
+things of this world, to science or to business, or to public matters,
+all alike hardening rather than softening to the mind, if its thoughts
+do not go to something higher and deeper still. And as years pass on, we
+may think on these our favourite or professional subjects more and more
+earnestly; our views on them may be clearer and sounder, but there comes
+again nothing like the first free burst of thought in youth; the
+intellect in later life, if its tone was not rightly taken earlier,
+becomes narrowed in proportion to its greater vigour; one thing it sees
+clearly, but it is blind to all beside. It is in youth that the after
+tone of the mind is happily formed, when that natural burst of thought
+is sanctified and quickened by God's Spirit, and we set up within us to
+love and adore, all our days, the one image of the truth of God, our
+Saviour Jesus. Then, whatever else may befal us afterwards, it rarely
+happens that our faith will fail; his image, implanted in us, preserves
+us amid every change; we are counted worthy to escape all the things
+which may come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XII
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PROVERBS i. 28.
+
+_Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me
+early, but they shall not find me_.
+
+
+Christ's gospel gives out the forgiveness of sins; and as this is its
+very essence, so also in what we read connected with Christ's gospel,
+the tone of encouragement, of mercy, of loving-kindness to sinners, is
+ever predominant. What was needed at the beginning of the gospel is no
+less needed now; we cannot spare one jot or one tittle of this gracious
+language; now, as ever, the free grace, that most seems to be without
+the law, does most surely establish the law. But yet there is another
+language, which is to be found alike in the Old Testament and in the
+New; a language not indeed so common as the language of mercy, but yet
+repeated many times; a language which we also need as fully as it was
+ever needed, and of whose severity we can no more spare one tittle than
+we can spare anything of the comfort of the other. And yet this language
+has not, I think, been enforced so often as it should have been. Men
+have rather shrunk from it, and seemed afraid of it; they have connected
+it sometimes with certain foolish and presumptuous questions, which we,
+indeed, do well to turn from; but they have not seen, that with such it
+has no natural connexion, but belongs to a certain fact in the
+constitution of our nature, and is most highly moral and practical.
+
+The language to which. I allude is expressed, amongst other passages,
+by the words of the text. They speak of men's calling upon God, and of
+his refusing to hear them; of men's seeking God, and not finding him.
+Remember, at the same time, our Lord's words, "Ask, and ye shall
+receive; seek, and ye shall find." I purposely put together these
+opposite passages, because the full character of God's Revelation is
+thus seen more clearly. Do we doubt that our Lord's words are true, and
+do we not prize them as some of the most precious which he has left us?
+We do well to do so; but shall we doubt any more the truth of the words
+of the text; and shall we not consider them as a warning no less needful
+than the comfort in the other case? Indeed, as true as it is, that, if
+we seek God, we shall find him; so true is it that we may seek him, and
+yet not find him.
+
+Now, then, how to explain this seeming contradiction? We can see at
+once, that these things are not said of the same persons, or rather of
+the same characters at the same time. They are said of the same persons:
+that is, there is no one here assembled who is not concerned with both,
+and to whom both may not be applicable. Only they are not and cannot be
+both applicable to the same person at the very same time. If God will be
+found by us, at any given moment, on our seeking him, it is impossible
+that, at that same moment, he should also not be found. Thus far is
+plain to every one.
+
+And now, is it true of us, at this present time, that God will be found
+by us if we seek him, or that he will not be found? If we say that he
+will be found, then the words of the text are not applicable to us at
+present, although at some future time they may be; and then we have that
+well-known difficulty to encounter, to attempt to draw the mind's
+attention to a future and only contingent evil. If we say that he will
+not be found, then of what avail can it be to say any word more? Why sit
+we in this place, to preach, or to listen to preaching, if God, after
+all, will not be found? Or, again, should we say that there are some by
+whom he will not be found, then who are they that are thus horribly
+marked out from among their brethren? Can we dare to conceive of any one
+amongst us that he is such an one; that there are some, nay, that there
+is any one amongst us, to whom it is the same thing whether he will
+hear, or whether he will forbear; who may close his ears as safely as
+open them, because God has turned his face from him for ever? It were
+indeed horrible to suppose that any one of us were in such a state; and
+happily it is a thought of horror which the truth may allow us to repel.
+
+But what, if I were to say, that now, at this very moment, the words of
+the text are both applicable to us, and not applicable? Is this a
+contradiction, and therefore impossible? Or is it but a seeming
+contradiction only, and not only possible, but true? Let us see how the
+case appears to be.
+
+We should allow, I suppose, that the words of the text were at no time
+in any man's earthly life so true as they will be at the day of
+judgment. The hardest heart, the most obdurate in sin, the most closed
+against all repentance, is yet more within the reach of grace, we should
+imagine, whilst he is alive and in health, than he will be at the day of
+the resurrection. We can admit, then, that the words of the text may be
+true, in a greater or less degree; that they will be more entirely true
+at the last day, than at any earlier period, but yet that they may be
+substantially true, true almost beyond exception, in the life that now
+is. Now carry this same principle a little farther, and we come to our
+very own case. The words of the text will be more true at the day of
+judgment, than they ever are on earth; and yet on earth they are often
+true substantially and practically. And even so, they may be more true
+to each of us a few years hence, than they are at this moment; and yet,
+in a certain degree, they may be true at this moment; true, not
+absolutely and entirely, but partially; so true as to give a most solemn
+earnest, if we are not warned in time, of their more entire truth
+hereafter,--first, in this earthly life; then most perfectly of all,
+when we shall arise at the last day.
+
+It may be, then, that the words of the text, although not applicable to
+us in their full and most fatal sense, may yet be applicable to us in a
+certain degree: the evil which they speak of may be, not wholly future
+and contingent, and a thing to be feared, but present in part, actual,
+and a matter of experience. This is not contradiction: it is not
+impossible; it _may be_ our case. Let us see whether it really is so,
+that is, whether it is in any degree true of us, that when we call upon
+God he will not answer; that when we seek him, we shall in any manner be
+unable to find him.
+
+It is manifest that, in proportion as Christ's words "Seek, and ye shall
+find," are true to any man, so are the words of the text less true to
+him; and in proportion as Christ's words are less true to any one, so
+are the words of the text more true to him. Now, is Christ's promise,
+"Seek, and ye shall find," equally true to all of us? Conceive of
+one--the thing is rare, but not impossible,--of one who had been so kept
+from evil, and so happily led forward in good, that when arrived at
+boyhood, his soul had scarcely more stain upon it than when it was first
+fully cleansed, and forgiven, in baptism! Conceive him speaking truth,
+without any effort, on all occasions; not greedy, not proud, not
+violent, not selfish, not feeling conscious that he was living a life
+of sin, and therefore glad to come to God, rather than shrinking away
+from him! Conceive how completely to such an one would Christ's words be
+fulfilled, "Seek, and ye shall find!" When would his prayers be
+unblessed or unfruitful? When would he turn his thoughts to God without
+feeling pleasure in doing so; without a lively consciousness of God's
+love to him; without an assured sense of the reality of things not seen,
+of redemption and grace and glory? Would not the communion with God,
+enjoyed by one so untainted, come up to the full measure of those high
+promises, "It shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer,
+and while they are yet speaking, I will hear?" Would it not be plain,
+that God was as truly found, by such a person, as he was sought in
+sincerity and earnestness?
+
+But now, take the most of us: suppose us not to have been kept carefully
+from evil, nor led on steadily in good; suppose us to have reached
+boyhood with bad dispositions, ready for the first temptation, with
+habits of good uncultivated; suppose us to have no great horror of a
+lie, when it can serve our turn; with much love of pleasure, and little
+love of our duty; with much, selfishness, and little or no thought of
+God: suppose such an one, so sadly altered from a state of baptismal
+purity, to be saying his prayers as he had been taught to say them, and
+saying them sometimes with a thought of their meaning and a wish that
+God would hear them. But does God hear them? I ask of your own
+consciences, whether you have had any sense that he has heard you?
+whether death and judgment, Christ and Christ's service, have become
+more real to you after such prayers? If not, then is it not manifest,
+that you have sought God, and have not found him; that you have called
+upon him and he has not heard? You know by experience, that you are not
+as those true children who are ever with him, who listen to catch the
+lightest whisper of his Spirit, for whom, he, too, vouchsafes to bless
+the faintest breathing of their prayer.
+
+Or, again, in trying to turn from evil to good, have you ever found your
+resolutions give way, the ground which you had gained slide from under
+your feet, till you fell back again to what you were at the beginning?
+Has this ever happened to us? If it has, then in that case, also, we
+sought God, but failed to find him; the victory was not yours, but the
+enemy's; the Spirit of Christ did not help you so as to conquer.
+
+Take another case yet again. Has it ever happened to any of you, to have
+done a mischief to yourselves which you could not undo? It need not be
+one of the very highest kind; but has it ever happened, that, by
+neglect, you have lost ground in the society in which you are placed,
+which you cannot recover; that your contemporaries have gained an
+advance upon you, while you have not time left to overtake them? Does it
+ever happen that, from neglecting some particular element of learning in
+its proper season, and other things claiming your attention afterwards,
+you go on with a disadvantage, which you would fain remove, but cannot?
+Does it, in short, ever happen to any, that his complete success here is
+become impossible; that whatever prospects of another kind may be open
+to him elsewhere, yet that he cannot now be numbered amongst those who
+have turned the particular advantages here afforded them to that end
+which they might and ought to have done?
+
+To whomsoever this has happened, the truth of the words of the text is
+matter of experience, not in their full and most dreadful extent, but
+yet quite enough to prove that they are true; and that just as he now
+feels them in part, so, if he continues to be what he is, he will one
+day feel them wholly. He feels that it is possible to seek God, and not
+to find him; he has learnt by experience that neglected good, or
+committed evil, may be beyond the power of after-regret to undo. It is
+true, that as yet, to him, other prospects may be open: prospects which,
+probably, he may deem no less fair than those which he has forfeited.
+This may be so; but the point to observe is, that one prospect was lost
+so irretrievably by his own fault, that afterwards, when he wished to
+regain it, he could not. Now God gives him other prospects, which he may
+realize: but as he forfeited his first prospect beyond recovery, so he
+may do also with his last: and though ill-success at school may be made
+up by success in another sphere, yet what is to make up for ill-success
+in the great business of life, when that, too, has been forfeited as
+irrecoverably; when his last chance is gone as hopelessly as his first?
+
+Now, surely there is in all this an intelligible lesson. I am not at all
+exaggerating the importance of the particular prospect forfeited here:
+but I am pressing upon you, that this prospect may be, and often is,
+forfeited irrecoverably; that when you wish to regain it, it is too
+late, and you cannot. And I press this, because it is a true type of the
+whole of human life; because it is just as possible to forfeit salvation
+irrecoverably, as to forfeit that earthly good which is the prize of
+well-doing here, with this infinite difference, that the last forfeit is
+not only irretrievable, but fatal; it can no more be made up for, than
+it can be regained. Here, then, your present condition is a type of the
+complete truth of the text: but there are other points, to which I
+alluded before, in which it is more than a type; it is the very truth
+itself, although, happily, only in an imperfect measure. That unanswered
+prayer, of which I spoke, those broken resolutions,--are they not
+actually a calling on God, without his hearing us; a seeking him,
+without finding him? We remember who it was that could say with truth to
+his Father, "I know that thou nearest me always." We know what it is
+that hinders God from hearing us always; because we are not thoroughly
+one in his Son Christ Jesus. But this unanswered prayer is not properly
+the State of Christ's redeemed: it is an enemy that hath brought us to
+this; the same enemy who will, in time, make all our prayers to be
+unanswered, as some are now; who will cause God, not only to be slow to
+listen, but to refuse to listen for ever. Now we are not heard at once,
+we must repeat our prayers, with more and more earnestness, that God, at
+last, may hear, and may bless us. But if, instead of repeating them the
+more, we do the very contrary, and repeat them the less; if, because we
+have no comfort, and no seeming good from them, we give them up
+altogether; then the time will surely come when all prayer will be but
+the hopeless prayer of Esau, because it will be only the prayer of fear;
+because it will be only the dread of destruction that will, or can, move
+us:--the love of good will have gone beyond recall. Such prayer does but
+ask for pardon without repentance; and this never is, or can
+be, granted.
+
+So then, in conclusion, that very feeling of coldness, and unwillingness
+to pray, because we have often prayed in vain, is surely working in us
+that perfect death, which is the full truth of the words of the text. Of
+all of us, those who the least like to pray, who have prayed with the
+least benefit, have the most need to pray again. If they have sought
+God, without finding him, let them take heed that this be not their case
+for ever; that the truth, of which the seed is even now in them, may not
+be ripened to their everlasting destruction, when all their seeking, and
+all their prayer, will be as rejected by God, as, in part, it has
+been already.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XIII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MARK xii. 34.
+
+_Thou art not far from the kingdom of God_.
+
+
+Whoever has gone up any hill of more than common height, may remember
+the very different impression which the self-same point, whether bush,
+or stone, or cliff, has made upon him as he viewed it from below and
+from above. In going up it seemed so high, that we fancied, if we were
+once arrived at it, we should be at the summit of our ascent; while,
+when we had got beyond it, and looked down upon it, it seemed almost
+sunk to the level of the common plain; and we wondered that it could
+ever have appeared high to us.
+
+What happens with any natural object according to the different points
+from which we view it, happens also to any particular stage of
+advancement in our moral characters. There is a goodness which appears
+very exalted or very ordinary, according as it is much above or much
+below our own level. And this is the case with the expression of our
+Lord in the text, "Thou art not far from the kingdom of God." Does this
+seem a great thing or a little thing to be said to us? Does it give us a
+notion of a height which we should think it happiness to have readied;
+or of a state so little advanced, that it would be misery to be forced
+to go back to it? For, according as it seems to us the one or the other,
+so we may judge of the greater or less progress which we have made in
+ascending the holy mountain of our God.
+
+But while I say this, it is necessary to distinguish between two several
+senses, in which we may be said to be near to the kingdom of God, or
+actually in it. These two are in respect of knowledge, and in respect of
+feeling and practice. And our Lord's words seem to refer particularly to
+knowledge. The scribe to whom he used them, had expressed so just a
+sense of the true way of pleasing God, had so risen above the common
+false notions of his age and country, that his understanding seemed to
+be ripe for the truths of that kingdom of God, which was to make the
+worship of God to consist in spirit and in truth. Now as far as the
+knowledge of the kingdom of God is concerned, although, undoubtedly,
+there are many amongst us who are deficient in it, yet it is true also,
+that a great many of us are in possession of it; we are familiar enough
+with the truths of the kingdom of God, and our understandings fully
+approve them. But we may be near to or far from the kingdom of God, in
+respect also of feeling and practice; and this is the great matter that
+concerns us. It is here, then, that we should ask ourselves what we
+think of our Lord's words in the text; and whether he to whom they were
+spoken appears to us an object of envy or of compassion; one whom we
+envy for having advanced so far, or pity for not being advanced further.
+
+"Not far from the kingdom of God." Again, if we take the words Kingdom
+of God in their highest sense, then the expression contains all that we
+could desire to have said of us in this life; hope itself on this side
+of the grave can go no higher. For as, in this sense, the kingdom of God
+cannot be actually entered before our death; so the best thing that can
+be said of us here, is, that we are not far from it; but we are in the
+land of Beulah, so happily imagined in the Pilgrim's Progress; all of
+our pilgrimage completed, save the last act of crossing the river; with
+the city of God full in sight, and with hearts ready to enter into it.
+In this sense, even St. Paul himself, when he wrote his last epistle
+from Rome, could say no more, could hope for, could desire no more, than
+to be not far from the kingdom of God.
+
+Yet again, take the words "Kingdom of God" in their lowest sense, and
+then it is woe to us all, if the expression in the text is all that can
+be said of us; if, in this sense, we are only not far from the kingdom
+of God. For take the kingdom of God as God's visible Church, and then,
+if we are not Christians at all, but only not far from becoming so; if
+we have not received Christ, but are not far from receiving him; this is
+a state so imperfect, that he who is in it, has not yet reached to the
+beginning of his Christian course; and we need not say how far he must
+be from its end, if he have not yet come as far as its beginning.
+
+Thus, in one sense, the words express something so high that nothing can
+be higher; in another, something so low, that, to us, nothing can be
+lower. We have yet to seek that sense, in which they may afford us a
+useful criterion of our own several states, by appearing high, perhaps,
+to some of us, and to others low.
+
+The sense which we seek is given by our Lord, when he declares that the
+kingdom of God is within us; or by St. Paul, when he tells us, that it
+is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. And now it is no
+more a thing which we cannot yet have reached, or, on the other hand,
+which we all have reached: there is now a great difference in us, some
+are far from it, some are near it, and some are in it; and thus it is,
+that they who are near it, seem in it to those who are afar off, and
+far from it to those who are in it.
+
+Now, first, do they seem far from it? Then, indeed, ours is a happy
+state, as many of us as can truly feel that they live so constantly in
+holy and heavenly tempers, in such lively faith and love, so tasting all
+the blessings of God's kingdom, its peace, and its hope, and its joy,
+that they cannot bear to think of that time, when these blessings were
+not enjoyed except in prospect; when they rather desired to have faith
+and love, than could be said actually to have them; when their tempers
+were not holy and heavenly, although they were fully alive to the
+excellence of their being so, and had seen them already cleansed from
+the opposites of such a state, from ill-nature, and passion, and pride.
+
+If any such there be, in whom good resolutions have long since ripened
+into good actions, and the continued good actions have now led to
+confirmed good habits, how miserable will they think it to be only "not
+far from the kingdom of God!" How ill could they bear to go over again
+the struggle which used to accompany every action, when it was done in
+defiance of habits of evil; or to be called back to that condition when
+resolutions for good were formed over and over again, because they were
+so often broken, but had as yet rarely led to any solid fruit! How
+thankful will they be to have escaped from that season when they were
+seeking, but had not yet found; when they were asking of God, but had
+not yet received; when they were knocking, but the door had not yet been
+opened! They were then, indeed, not far from the kingdom of God, but
+they were still without its walls; they were still strangers, and not
+citizens. It had held out to them a refuge, and they had fled to it as
+suppliants to the sanctuary; but they had not yet had the word of peace
+spoken, to bid them no more kneel without, as suppliants, but to enter
+and go in and out freely; for that all things were theirs, because they
+were Christ's.
+
+I have dwelt purposely somewhat the longer upon this, because the more
+that we can feel the truth of this picture, the more that we can put
+ourselves into the position of those who are within the kingdom of God,
+and who, living in the light of it, look back with pity upon those who
+are only kneeling without its gates,--the more strongly we shall feel
+what must be our condition, if those who are without its gates appear to
+us to be objects of envy rather than pity, because they are so near to
+that place from which we feel ourselves to be so distant. Or, to speak
+without a figure, if we could but understand how persons advanced in
+goodness would shrink from the thought of being now only resolving to be
+good, then we shall perceive how very evil must be our condition, if
+this very resolving to be good seems to us to be an advance so
+desirable; if we are so far from being good actually, that the very
+setting ourselves in earnest to seek for good strikes us as a point of
+absolute proficiency in comparison of our present degradation.
+
+Yet is not this the case with many of us? Do we not consider it a great
+point gained, if we can be brought to think seriously, to pray in
+earnest, to read the Bible, to begin to look to our own ways and lives?
+We feel it for ourselves, and others also feel it for us: it is natural,
+it is unavoidable, that we feel great joy, that we think a great deal is
+done, if we see any of you, after leading a life of manifest
+carelessness, and therefore of manifest sin, beginning to take more
+pains with himself, and so becoming what is called somewhat more steady
+and more serious. I know that the impression is apt to be too strong
+upon us: we are but too apt to boast for him who putteth on his armour
+as for him who putteth it off; because he who putteth on his armour at
+least shows that he is preparing for the battle, which so many never do
+at all. We observe some of these signs of seriousness: we see perhaps,
+that a person begins to attend at the Communion; that he pays more
+attention to his ordinary duties; that he becomes more regular. We see
+this, and we are not only thankful for it,--this we ought to be,--but we
+satisfy ourselves too readily that all is done: we reckon a person,
+somewhat too hastily, to be already belonging to the kingdom of God,
+because we have seen him turning towards it. Then, if he afterwards does
+not appear to be entered into it; if we see that he is not what we
+expected, that he is no longer serious, no longer attentive to his
+common duties, we are overmuch disappointed; and, perhaps are tempted
+too completely to despair for him. Is it not that we confounded together
+the beginning and the end; the being good, and the trying to become so:
+the resolution with the act; the act with the habit? Did we not forget
+that he is not at once out of danger who begins to mend: that the first
+softening of the dry burning skin, the first abating of the hard quick
+pulse, is far removed from the coolness, and steadiness, and even vigour
+of health restored, or never interrupted?
+
+But what made us forget truths so obvious? What made us confound things
+so different that the most ignorant ought to be able to distinguish
+them? Cannot we tell why it is? Is it not because there are so many in
+whom we cannot see even as good signs as these,--of whom we cannot but
+feel that it would be a great advance for them, a matter of earnest
+thankfulness, if we could only see that they were not far from the
+kingdom of God,--nay, even that their steps were tending thither? Let us
+look ever so earnestly, let us watch ever so carefully, let us hope
+ever so charitably, we cannot see, we can scarcely fancy that we see,
+even the desire to turn to God. We do not see gross wickedness; it is
+well; we see much that is amiable; that is well also: but the desire to
+turn to God, the tending of the steps towards the kingdom of
+heaven,--that we cannot see. But this is a thing, it may be said, that
+man cannot see: it may exist, although we cannot perceive it. Oh, that
+it might and may be so! Yet, surely, as out of the abundance of the
+heart the mouth speaketh, so a principle so mighty as the desire of
+turning to God cannot leave itself without a witness: some symptoms must
+be shown to those who are eagerly watching for them; some ground for
+hope must be afforded where hope is so ready to kindle. If no sign of
+life appears, can the life indeed be stirring? And if the life be not
+stirring; if the disorder is going on in so many cases, raging, with no
+symptom of abatement; is it not natural, that when we do see such
+symptoms, we should rejoice even with over-measure, that we should
+forget how much is yet to be done, when we see that something has
+been done.
+
+To such persons, it would be an enviable state, to be not far from the
+kingdom of God. But what, then, must be their state actually? A hopeful
+one, according to many standards of judgment; a state that promises
+well, it may be, for a healthy and prosperous life, with many friends,
+perhaps with much distinction. We know that all this prospect may be
+blighted; still it exists at present;--the healthy constitution, the
+easy fortune, the cheerful and good-humoured temper, the quickness and
+power of understanding; all these, no doubt, are hopeful signs for a
+period of forty, or fifty, or perhaps sixty years to come. But what is
+to come then? what is the prospect for the next period, not of fifty, or
+sixty, not of a hundred, not of a thousand, years; not of any number
+that can be numbered, but of time everlasting? Is their actual state one
+of hopeful promise for this period, for this life which no death shall
+terminate? Nay, is it a state of any promise at all, of any chance at
+all? Suppose, for a moment, one with a crippled body, full of the seeds
+of hereditary disease, poor, friendless, irritable in temper, low in
+understanding; suppose such an one just entering upon youth, and ask
+yourselves, for what would you consent that his prospects should be
+yours? What should you think would be your chance of happiness in life,
+if you were beginning in such a condition? Yet, I tell you that poor,
+diseased, irritable, friendless cripple has a far better prospect of
+passing his fifty, or sixty, years, tolerably, than they who have not
+begun to turn towards God have of a tolerable eternity. Much more
+wretched is the promise of their life; much more justly should we be
+tempted, concerning them, to breathe that fearful thought, that it were
+good for them if they had never been born. And now if, as by miracle,
+that cripple's limbs were to be at once made sound, if the seeds of
+disease were to vanish, if some large fortune were left him, if his
+temper sweetened, and his mind became vigorous, should not we be
+excused, considering what he had been and what he now was, if we, for a
+moment, forgot the uncertainty of the future; if we thought that a
+promise so changed, was almost equivalent to performance? And may not
+this same excuse be urged for some over-fondness of confidence for their
+well-doing whom we see so near to the kingdom of God, when we consider
+how utter is the misery, how hopeless the condition of those who do not
+appear to have, as yet, stirred one single step towards it?
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XIV.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MATTHEW xxii. 14.
+
+_For many are called, but few are chosen_.
+
+
+The truth here expressed is one of the most solemn in the world, and
+would be one of the most overwhelming to us, if habit had not, in a
+manner, blunted our painful perception of it. There is contained in it
+matter of thought more than we could exhaust, and deeper than we could
+ever fathom. But on this I will not attempt to enter. I will rather take
+that view of the text which concerns us here; I will see in how many
+senses it is true, and with what feeling we should regard it.
+
+"Many are called, but few are chosen." The direct application of this
+was to the parable of those invited to the supper; in which it had been
+related, how a great multitude had been invited, but how one among
+them--and the application as well as the fact in human life, require
+that this _one_ should be taken only as a specimen of a great
+number--had been found unworthy to enjoy the feast prepared for them.
+They had not on the wedding garment; they had not done their part to fit
+themselves for the offered blessing: therefore they were called, but not
+chosen. God had willed to do them good, but they would not; and
+therefore, though he had called them at the beginning, he, in the end,
+cast them out.
+
+We have to do, then, not with an arbitrary call and an arbitrary choice,
+as if God called many in mockery, meaning to choose out of them only a
+few, and making his choice independently of any exertion of theirs. The
+picture is very different; it is a gracious call to us all, to come and
+receive the blessing; it is a reluctant casting out the greatest part of
+us, because we would not try to render ourselves fit for it.
+
+I said, that we would take the words of the text in reference to
+ourselves, for here, too, it is true, that many are called, but few are
+chosen. It is a large number of you, which I see before me; and if we
+add to it all those who, within my memory, have sat in the same places
+before you, we shall have a number very considerable indeed. All these
+have been called; they have been sent here to enjoy the same advantages
+with each other; and those advantages have been put within their reach.
+They have entered into a great society which, on the one hand, might
+raise them forward, or, on the other, depress them. There has been a
+sufficient field for emulation: there have been examples and
+instructions for good; there have been results of credit and of real
+improvement made attainable to them, which might have lasted all their
+lives long. To this, they have been all, in their turns, called; and out
+of those so called, have all, or nearly all, been chosen? I am not
+speaking of those, who, I trust, would be a very small number, to whom
+the trial has failed utterly, who could look back on their stay here
+with no feelings but those of shame. But would there not be a very large
+number, to whom their stay here has been a loss, compared with what it
+might have been; who have reaped but a very small part of those
+advantages to which they had been at first called? Are there not too
+many who must look back on a part, at least, of their time here as
+wasted; on the seeds of bad habits sown, which, if conquered by
+after-care, yet, for a long time, were injurious to them? Are there not
+too many who carry away from here, instead of good notions, to be
+ripened and improved, evil notions, to be weeded out and destroyed? Are
+there not, in short, a great number who, after having had a great
+advantage put within their reach, and purchased for them by their
+friends, at a great expense, have made such insufficient use of their
+opportunities, to say nothing stronger, as to make it a question
+afterwards, whether it might not have been better for them had they
+never come here at all?
+
+Thus far I have been speaking of what are called the advantages of this
+place in our common language. That argument, which Butler has so nobly
+handled, in one of the greatest works in our language, the resemblance,
+namely, between the course of things earthly and that of things
+spiritual, is one which we should never fail to notice. We can discern
+the type, as it were, of the highest truth of our Lord's sayings in the
+experience of our common life in worldly things. When he tells us,
+speaking of things spiritual, that "many are called, but few are
+chosen;" that "whoso hath, to him shall be given; but from him that hath
+not shall be taken away even that which he hath,"--although the highest
+truth contained in these words be yet, in part, matter of faith, for we
+have not yet seen the end of God's dealings with us: yet what we do see,
+the evident truth of the words, that is, in respect to God's dealings
+with us in the course of his earthly providence, may reasonably assure
+us of their truth no less in respect to those dealings of God which as
+yet are future. I began, therefore, with reminding you of the truth of
+the words of the text with regard to worldly advantages; that even here,
+on this small scale, the general law holds good; that more things are
+provided for us than we will consent to use; that, in short, "many are
+called, but few are chosen."
+
+But it were ill done to limit our view to this: we are called to much
+more than worldly advantages; and what if here, too, we add one more
+example to confirm our Lord's words, that "many are called, but few
+chosen?" Now here, as I said, it is very true that God's choice is as
+yet not a matter of sight or of certainty to us; we cannot yet say of
+ourselves, or of any other set of living men, that "few are chosen." But
+though the full truth is not yet revealed, still, as there is a type of
+it in our worldly experience, so there is also a higher type, an
+earnest, of it in our spiritual experience: there is a sense, and that a
+very true and a very important one, in which we can say already, say
+now, actually, in the life that now is; say, even in the early stage of
+it, that some are, and some are not, "chosen."
+
+We have all been called, in a Christian sense, inasmuch as we have been
+all introduced into Christ's church by Baptism; and a very large
+proportion of us have been called again, many of us not very long since,
+at our Confirmation. We have been thus called to enter into Christ's
+kingdom: we have been called to lead a life of holiness and happiness
+from this time forth even for ever. Nothing can be stronger than the
+language in which the Scripture speaks of the nature of our high
+calling: "All things," says St. Paul to the Corinthians, "all things are
+yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Peter, or the world, or life, or
+death, or things present, or things to come, all are yours; and ye are
+Christ's, and Christ is God's." Now, if this be the prize to which we
+are called, who are they who are also chosen to it? In the first and
+most complete sense, no doubt, those who have entered into their rest;
+who are in no more danger, however slight; with whom the struggle is
+altogether past, and the victory securely won. These are entered within
+the veil, whither we can as yet penetrate only in hope. But hope, in
+its highest degree, differs little from assurance; and even, as we
+descend lower and lower, still, where hope is clearly predominant, there
+is, if not assurance, yet a great encouragement; and the Scripture,
+which delights to carry encouragement to the highest pitch to those who
+are following God, allows of our saying of even these that they are
+God's chosen. It gives them, as it were, the title beforehand, to make
+them feel how doubly miserable it must be not only not to obtain it, but
+to forfeit it after it had been already ours. So then, there are senses
+in which we may say that some are chosen now; although, strictly
+speaking, the term can by us be applied, in its full sense, to those
+only who are passed beyond the reach of evil.
+
+Those, then, we may call chosen, who, having heard their call, have
+turned to obey it, and have gone on following it. Those we may call
+chosen,--I do not say chosen irrevocably, but chosen now; chosen so that
+we may be very thankful to God on their behalf, and they thankful for
+themselves,--who, since their Confirmation, or since a period more
+remote, have kept God before their face, and tried to do His will. Those
+are, in the same way, chosen, who having found in themselves the sin
+which did most easily beset them, have struggled with it, and wholly, or
+in a great measure, have overcome it. Thus, they are chosen, who, having
+lived either in the frequent practice of selfish, extravagance, or of
+falsehood, or of idleness, or of excess in eating and drinking, have
+turned away from these things, and, for Christ's sake, have renounced
+them. They are chosen, I think, in yet a higher sense, who, having found
+their besetting sin to be, not so much any one particular fault, as a
+general ungodly carelessness, a lightness which for ever hindered them
+from serving God, have struggled with this most fatal enemy; and, even
+in youth, and health, and happiness, have learnt what it is to be
+sober-minded, what it is to think. Now, such as these have, in a manner,
+entered into their inheritance; they are not merely called, but chosen.
+God and spiritual things are not mere names to them, they are a reality.
+Such persons have tasted of the promises; they have known the
+pleasure--and what pleasure is comparable to it?--of feeling the bonds
+of evil passion or evil habit unwound from about their spirit; they have
+learnt what is that glorious liberty of being able to abstain from the
+things which we condemn, to do the things which we approve. They have
+felt true sense of power succeed to that of weakness. It is a delightful
+thing, after a long illness, after long helplessness, when our legs have
+been unable to support our weight, when our arms could lift nothing, our
+hands grasp nothing, when it was an effort to raise our head from the
+pillow, and it tired us even to speak in a whisper,--it is a delightful
+thing to feel every member restored to its proper strength; to find that
+exercise of limb, of voice, of body, which had been so long a pain,
+become now a source of perpetual pleasure. This is delightful; it pays
+for many an hour of previous weakness. But it is infinitely more
+delightful to feel the change from weakness to strength in our souls; to
+feel the languor of selfishness changed for the vigour of benevolence;
+to feel thought, hope, faith, love, which before were lying, as it were,
+in helplessness, now bounding in vigorous activity; to find the soul,
+which had been so long stretched as upon the sick bed of this earth, now
+able to stand upright, and looking and moving steadily towards heaven.
+
+These are chosen; and they to whom this description does in no degree
+apply, they are not chosen. They are not chosen in any sense, they are
+called only. And, now, what is the proportion between the one and the
+other; are there as many chosen as there have been many called? Or do
+Christ's words apply in our case no less than in others; that though
+they who are called are many, yet they who are chosen are few?
+
+This I dare not answer; there is a good as well as an evil which is
+unseen to the world at large, unseen even by all but those who watch us
+most nearly and most narrowly. All we can say is, that there are too
+many, who we must fear are not chosen; there are too few, of whom we can
+feel sure that they are. Yet hope is a wiser feeling than its opposite;
+it were as wrong as it would be miserable to abandon it. How gladly
+would we hope the best things of all those whom we saw this morning at
+Christ's holy table! How gladly would we believe of all such, that they
+were more than called merely; that they had listened to the call: that
+they had obeyed it; that they had already gained some Christian
+victories; that they were, in some sense, not called only, but chosen.
+But this we may say; that hope which we so long to entertain, that hope
+too happy to be at once indulged in, you may authorize us to feel it;
+you may convert it into confidence. Do you ask how? By going on steadily
+in good, by advancing from good to better, by not letting impressions
+fade with time. Now, with many of you, your confirmation is little more
+than three months distant; when we next meet at Christ's table, it will
+have passed by nearly half-a-year. It may be, that, in that added
+interval, it will have lost much of its force; that, from various
+causes, evil may have abounded in you more than good; that then shame,
+or a willing surrender of yourselves to carelessness, will keep away
+from Christ's Communion, many who have this day joined in it. But, if
+this were not to be so; if those, whom we have seen with joy this day
+communicating with us in the pledges of Christian fellowship, should
+continue to do so steadily; if, in the meantime, traits shall appear in
+you in other things that our hope was well founded; if the hatred of
+evil and the love of good were to be clearly manifest in you; if by
+signs not to be mistaken by those who watch earnestly for them, we might
+be assured that your part was taken, that you were striving with us in
+that service of our common Master, in which we would fain live and die;
+if evil was clearly lessened among us--not laughed at, but discouraged
+and put down; if instead of those turning away, who have now been with
+us at Christ's table, others, who have now turned away, should then be
+added to the number; then we should say, not doubtingly, that you were
+chosen: that you had tasted of the good things of Christ; that the good
+work of God was clearly begun in you. We might not, indeed, be without
+care, either for you or for ourselves: God forbid, that, in that sense,
+any of us should deem that we were chosen, until the grave has put us
+beyond temptation. But how happy were it to think of you as Christ's
+chosen, in that sense which should be a constant encouragement to us
+all: to think of you as going on towards God; to think of you as living
+to him daily; to think of you as on his side against all his enemies; to
+think of you as led by his Spirit, as living members of his holy and
+glorious Church,--militant now, in heaven triumphant!
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XV.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LUKE xi. 25.
+
+_When he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished_.
+
+
+JOHN v. 42.
+
+_I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you_.
+
+
+These passages, of which the first is taken from the gospel of this
+morning's service, the other from the second lesson, differ in words,
+but their meaning is very nearly the same. The house which was empty,
+swept and garnished, was especially one empty of the love of God.
+Whatever evil there may not have been in it; whatever good there may
+have been in those of whom Christ spoke in the second passage: yet it
+and they agreed in this; one thing they had not, which alone was worth,
+all the rest besides; they had not the love of God.
+
+And so it is still; many are the faults which we have not; many are the
+good qualities which we have; but the life is wanting. What is so rare
+as to find one who is not indifferent to God? What so rare, even rarer
+than the other, as to find one who actually loves him?
+
+Therefore it is that those who go in at the broad gate of destruction
+are many, and those who go in at the narrow gate of life are few. For
+destruction and life are but other terms for indifference to God on the
+one hand, and love to him on the other. All who are indifferent to him,
+die; a painless death of mere extinction, if, like the brute creation,
+they have never been made capable of loving him; or a living death of
+perpetual misery, if, like evil spirits and evil men, they might have
+loved him and would not. And so all who love him, live a life, from
+first to last, without sin and sorrow, if, like the holy angels, they
+have loved him always; a life partaking at first of death, but
+brightening more and more unto the perfect day, if, like Christians,
+they were born in sin, but had been redeemed and sanctified to
+righteousness.
+
+Whoever has watched human character, whether in the young or the old,
+must be well aware of the truth of this: he will know that the value of
+any character is in proportion to the existence or to the absence of
+this feeling, or rather, I should say, this principle. An exception may,
+perhaps, be made for a small, a very small number of fanatics; an
+apparent exception likewise exists in the case of many who seem to be
+religious, but who really are not so. The few exceptions of the former
+case are so very few, that we need not now stop to consider them, nor to
+inquire how far even these would be exceptions if we could read the
+heart as God reads it. The seeming exceptions being cases either of
+hypocrisy, or of very common self-deceit, we need not regard either; for
+they are, of course, no real objection to the truth of the general
+statement. It remains true, then, generally, that the value of any
+character is in proportion to the existence, or to the absence, in it of
+the love of God.
+
+But is there not another exception to be made for the case of children,
+and of very young persons? Are they capable of loving God? and are not
+their earthly relations, their parents especially, put to them, as it
+were, in the place of God, as objects of trust, of love, of honour, of
+obedience, till their minds can open to comprehend the love of their
+Father who is in heaven? And does not the Scripture itself, in the few
+places in which it seems directly to address children, content itself
+with directing them to obey and honour their parents? Some notions of
+this sort are allowed, I believe, to serve sometimes as an excuse, when
+young persons are blamed for being utterly wanting in a sense of duty
+to God.
+
+The passages which direct children to obey their parents, are of the
+same kind with those, directing slaves to obey their masters, and
+masters to be kind to their slaves; like those, also, which John the
+Baptist addressed to the soldiers and publicans: in none of all which
+there is any command to love God, but merely a command to fulfil that
+particular duty which most arose out of the particular relation, or
+calling of the persons addressed. In fact, when parents are addressed,
+they are directed only to do their duties to their children, just as
+children are directed to do theirs to their parents; in both cases
+alike, the common duty of parents and children to God is not dwelt upon,
+because that is a duty which does not belong to them as parents, or as
+children, but as human beings; and as such, it belongs to all alike. In
+fact, the very language of St. Paul's command to children implies this;
+for he says, "Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is
+right:" right, that is, in the sight of God: so that the very reason for
+which children are to discharge their earthly duties is, because that
+earthly duty is commanded by, or involved in, their heavenly duty; if
+they do not do it, they will not please God. But it is manifest that, in
+this respect, there is for all of us one only law, so soon as we are
+able to understand it. The moment that a child becomes capable of
+understanding anything about God and Christ,--and how early that is,
+every parent can testify,--that moment the duty to love God and Christ
+begins. It were absurd to say, that this duty has not begun at the age
+of boyhood. A boy is able to understand the force of religious motives,
+as well as he can that of earthly motives: he cannot understand either,
+perhaps, so well as he will hereafter; but he understands both enough,
+for the purposes of his salvation; enough, to condemn him before God, if
+he neglects them; enough to make him derive the greatest benefit from
+faithfully observing them.
+
+And what can have been the purpose with which the only particular of our
+Lord's early life has been handed down to us, if it were not to direct
+our attention to this special truth, that our youth, no less than our
+riper age, belongs to God? "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's
+business?" were words spoken by our Lord when he was no more than twelve
+years old. At twelve years old, he thought of preparing himself for the
+duties of his after-life; and of preparing himself for them, because
+they were God's will. He was to be about his Father's business. This is
+Christ's example for the young; this, and scarcely anything more than
+this, is recorded of his early years. Those are not like Christ who, at
+that same age, or even older, never think at all of the business of
+their future lives, still less would think of it, not as the means of
+their own maintenance or advancement, but as the duty which they owe
+to God.
+
+Such as these are the very persons whose hearts are like the house in
+the parable, empty, swept, and garnished. The house so described in the
+parable is one out of which an evil spirit has just departed. In case of
+the young, the evil spirit in this sense, that is, as representing some
+one particular favourite sin, may perhaps have never entered it. That
+empty, swept, and garnished house, how like is it to what I have seen,
+to what I am seeing so continually, when a boy comes here with much
+still remaining of the innocence of childhood! Evil spirit, in the sense
+of any one particular vice, there is none to be found in that heart, nor
+has there been any ever. It is empty, swept, and garnished: there is the
+absence of evil; there are the various faculties, the furniture, as they
+may be called, of the house of our spirits, which the spirit uses either
+for evil or for good. There is innocence, then; there is, also, the
+promise of power. God hath richly endowed the earthly house of our
+tabernacle: various and wonderful is the furniture of body and mind with
+which it is supplied. How can we help admiring that open and cheerful
+brow which, as yet, no care or sin has furrowed; those light and active
+limbs, full of health and vigour; the eye so quick; the ear so undulled;
+the memory so ready; the young curiosity so eager to take in new
+knowledge; the young feelings, not yet spoiled by over-excitement, ready
+to admire, ready to love? There is the house, the house of God's
+building, the house which must abide for ever; but where is the spirit
+to inhabit it? Evil spirit there is none: is it, then, possessed by the
+Spirit of God? Has the fire from heaven as yet descended upon that
+house,--the living sign of God's presence, which alone can convert the
+house of perishable clay into the everlasting temple?
+
+Can that blessed Spirit of God be indeed there, and yet no sign of his
+presence be manifest? It may be so, or to speak more truly, it might
+have been supposed to be so, if God's word had not declared the
+contrary. What God's secret workings are; in how many ways, to us
+inscrutable, he may pervade all nature; in how many cases he may be near
+us, and we know it not; may, perhaps, be amongst those real mysteries,
+those truths revealed to none, nor to be revealed; those yet uncleared
+forests, so to speak, of the world of nature, into which the light of
+grace has not been permitted to penetrate. But all such mysteries are to
+us as if they did not exist at all: we have nothing to do with them. God
+has told us nothing of his unseen and undiscernible presence; when and
+where he is so present, he is to us as if he were not present at all.
+God was in the wilderness of Horeb before the bush was kindled; but he
+was not there for Moses. God, in some sense discernible, it may be, to
+other beings, may be in that house which, to us is empty; but God, our
+own God, the Holy Spirit, into whose service we were baptized, where he
+is, the house is not empty to us, but full of light. Invisible in
+himself, the signs of his presence are most visible: where no works, no
+fruits of the Holy Spirit are to be discerned, there, according to our
+Lord's express declaration, there the Holy Spirit is not.
+
+But the light which declares his presence may indeed be a little spark;
+just to be seen, and no more. It may show that he has not abandoned all
+his right to the house of our tabernacle as yet; that he would desire to
+possess us fully. Such a little spark, such an evidence of the Holy
+Spirit's presence, is to be found in the outward profession of
+Christianity. They who call Jesus Lord, do it by the Holy Ghost; and,
+therefore, it is quite true in this sense, that in every baptized
+Christian, who has not utterly apostatized, there is that faint sign of
+the Holy Spirit's still having a claim upon him; he is not yet utterly
+cast off. This is true; but it is not to our present purpose; such a
+feeble sign is a sign of God's yet unwearied mercy, but no sign of our
+salvation. The presence with which the parable is concerned, is a far
+more effectual presence than this; the house in which there is no more
+than such a faint sign of a divine inhabitant, is, in the language of
+the parable, empty. To no purpose of our salvation is the Spirit of God
+present in the house, when the light of his presence does not flash
+forth from every part of it, when it is not manifest, not only that he
+has not quite cast it off to go to ruin, but that he has been pleased to
+make it his temple.
+
+In this sense, therefore, in this practical, scriptural, Christian
+sense, those many young minds, which we have seen so often, may truly be
+called empty. But will they remain so long? How often have I seen the
+early innocence of boyhood overcast; the natural simplicity of boyhood,
+its open truth, its confident affection, its honest shame, perverted,
+blunted, hardened! How often have I seen the seven evil spirits enter in
+and dwell there,--I know not, and never may know, whether to be cast out
+again, or to abide for ever. But I have seen them enter, and, whilst the
+person was yet within my view, I have not seen them depart. And why have
+they entered; why have they marred that which was so beautiful? For one
+only reason,--because the house was empty, because the Spirit of God was
+not there: there was no love of God, no thought of God. Mere innocence
+taints and spoils as surely before the influence of the world, as true
+principle flourishes in spite of it, and strengthens. This, too, I have
+seen, not once only: I have seen the innocence of early boyhood
+sanctified by something better than innocence, which gave a promise of
+abiding. I have seen, in other words, that the house was not empty; that
+the Spirit of God was there. I have watched the effect of those
+influences, which you know so well: the second half-year came, a period
+when mere innocence is sure to be worn away, greatly tainted, if not
+utterly gone; but still, in the cases which I am now alluding to, the
+promise of good was not less, but greater, there was a more tried, and,
+therefore, a stronger goodness. I have watched this, too, till it passed
+on, out of my sight. I never saw the blessed Spirit of God depart from
+the house which he had chosen: I well believe that he abides in it
+still, and will abide in it even to the day of Jesus Christ.
+
+This I have seen, and this I shall continue to see; for still the great
+work of evil and of good is going on; still the house, at first empty,
+is possessed by the spirits of evil, or by the Spirit of God. And if we
+do not see the signs of the Spirit of God, we are but too sure that the
+evil spirit is there. We know him by the manifold signs of folly,
+coarseness, carelessness; even when we see not, as yet, his worse fruits
+of falsehood and profligacy. We know him by the sign of an increased,
+and increasing selfishness, the everlasting cry of the thousand passions
+of our nature, all for ever calling out, "Give, give;" all for ever
+impatient, complaining, when their gratification is withheld, when the
+call of duty is set before them. We know him by pride and
+self-importance, as if nothing was so great as self, as if our own
+opinions, judgment, feelings were to be consulted in all things. We know
+him by the deep ungodliness which he occasions--no thought of God, much
+less any love of him; living utterly without him in the world, or, at
+least, whilst health and prosperity continue. These are the fatal signs
+which show that the house is no longer empty; that the evil spirits have
+entered in, and dwell there, to make it theirs, as too often happens,
+for time and for eternity.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XVI.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MATHEW xi. 10.
+
+_I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way before
+thee_.
+
+
+If it was part of God's dispensation, that there should be one to
+prepare the way before Christ's first coming, it may be expected much
+more, that there should be some to prepare the way before his second.
+And so it is expressed in the collect for the third Sunday in Advent: "O
+Lord Jesus Christ, who at thy first coming didst send thy messenger to
+prepare thy way before thee; grant that the ministers and stewards of
+thy mysteries may likewise so prepare and make ready thy way, by turning
+the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, that at thy
+second coming to judge the world we may be found an acceptable people in
+thy sight, who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit,
+ever one God, world without end. Amen." NOW, in what does this preparing
+for him consist; and what is its object? The Scripture will inform us as
+to both. The object is, "Lest he come and smite the earth with a curse;"
+lest, when he shall come, his coming, which should be our greatest joy
+and happiness, should be our everlasting destruction; for there can
+abide before him nothing that is evil. This is the object of preparing
+for Christ's coming. Next, in what does the preparation consist? It
+consists in teaching men to live above the common notions of their age
+and country; to raise their standard higher; to live after what is right
+in God's judgment, which often casts away, as faulty and bad, what men
+were accustomed to think good. And as the people of Israel, although
+they had God's revelation among them, had yet let their standard of good
+and evil become low, even so it has been in the Christian Israel. We
+have God's will in our hands, yet our judgments are not formed upon it;
+and, therefore, they who would prepare us for Christ's coming, must set
+before us a commandment which is new, although old: in one sense old, in
+every generation, inasmuch as it is the same which we had from the
+beginning; in another sense, in every generation more new, inasmuch, as
+the habits opposed to it have become the more confirmed; and the longer
+the night has lasted, the more strange to our eyes is the burst of the
+returning light.
+
+But when we thus speak of the common notions of our age and country
+being deficient, and thus, in effect, commend notions which would be
+singular, do we not hold a language inconsistent with our common
+language and practice? Do we not commonly regard singularity as a fault,
+and attach a considerable authority to the consent of men in general?
+Nay, do we not often appeal to this consent as to a proof which a sane
+mind must admit as decisive? Even in speaking of good and evil, have not
+the very words gained their present sense because the common consent of
+mankind has agreed to combine notions of self-satisfaction, of honour,
+and of love, with what we call good, and the contrary with what we
+call evil?
+
+A short time may, perhaps, not be misapplied in endeavouring to explain
+this matter; in showing where, and for what reasons, the common opinion
+of our society is to be followed, where it is to be suspected, and
+where it is absolutely to be shunned or trampled under foot, as clearly
+and certainly evil.
+
+I must begin with little things, in order to show the whole question
+plainly. Take those tastes in us which most resemble the instincts of a
+brute; and you will find that in these, as with instinct, common consent
+becomes a sure rule. When I speak of those tastes which most resemble
+instincts, I mean those in which nature, doing most for us at first,
+leaves least for us to learn for ourselves. This seems the character of
+instinct: it is far more complete than reason in its first stage, but it
+admits of no after improvement; the brute in the thousandth generation
+is no way advanced beyond the brute in the first. Of our tastes, even of
+those belonging to our bodily senses, that which belongs to what are
+called particularly our organs of taste is the one most resembling an
+instinct: we have less to do for its improvement than in any other
+instance. Men being here, then, upon an equality, with a faculty given
+to all by nature, and improved particularly by none, those who differ
+from the majority are likely to differ not from excellence but from
+defect: not because they have a more advanced reason, but because they
+have a less healthy instinct, than their neighbours. Thus, in those
+matters which relate to the sense of taste--I am obliged to take this
+almost trivial instance, because it so well illustrates the principle of
+the whole question--we hold the consent of men in general to be a good
+rule. If any one were to choose to feed upon what this common taste had
+pronounced to be disgusting, we should not hesitate to say that such an
+appetite was diseased and monstrous.
+
+Now, let us take our senses of sight and hearing, and we shall find that
+just in the proportion in which these less resemble instincts than the
+sense of taste, so is common consent a less certain rule. Up to a
+certain point they are instincts: there are certain sounds which, I
+suppose, are naturally disagreeable to the ear; while, on the other
+hand, bright and rich colours are, perhaps, naturally attractive to the
+eye. But, then, sight and hearing are so connected with our minds that
+they are susceptible of very great cultivation, and thus differ greatly
+from instincts. As the mind opens, outward sights and sounds become
+connected with a great number of associations, and thus we learn to
+think the one or the other beautiful, for reasons which really depend
+very much on the range of our own ideas. Consider, for a moment, the
+beautiful in architecture. If the model of the leaning tower of Pisa
+were generally adopted in our public buildings, all men's common sense
+would cry out against it as a deformity, because a leaning wall would
+convey to every mind the notion of insecurity, and every body would feel
+that it was unpleasant to see a building look exactly as if it were
+going to fall down. Now, what I have called common sense is, in a
+manner, the instinct of our reason: it is that uniform level of reason
+which all sane persons reach to, and the wisest in matters within its
+province do not surpass. But go beyond this, and architecture is no
+longer a matter of mere common sense, but of science, and of cultivated
+taste. Here the standard of beauty is not fixed by common consent; but,
+in the first instance, devised or discovered by the few: and, so far as
+it is received by the many, received by them on the authority of the
+few, and sanctioned, so to speak, not so much from real sympathy and
+understanding, as from a reasonable trust and deference to those who are
+believed the best judges.
+
+Here, then, we suppose that the common judgment is right; but we
+perceive a difference between this case and the one mentioned before,
+inasmuch as in the first instance the right judgment of the mass of
+mankind is their own; in the second instance, they have adopted it out
+of deference to others. Not only, then, will men's common judgment be
+right in matters of instinct and of common sense, but also in higher
+matters, where, although they could not have discovered what was right,
+yet they were perfectly willing to adopt it, when discovered by others.
+And this opens a very wide field. For in all matters which come under
+the dominion of fashion, where the avowed object is the convenience or
+gratification of society, men listen to those who profess to teach them
+with almost an excess of docility: they will adopt sometimes fashions
+which are not convenient. But yet, as men can tell well enough by
+experience whether they do find a thing convenient and agreeable or not,
+so it is most likely that fashions which continue long and generally
+prevalent are founded upon sound principles; because else men, being
+well capable of knowing what convenience is, and being also well
+disposed to follow it, would neither have been very long or very
+generally mistaken in this matter; nor would have acquiesced in their
+mistake contentedly.
+
+We do perfectly right, then, to regard the common opinion as a rule in
+all points of dress, in our houses and furniture, in those lighter
+usages of society which come under the denomination of manners, as
+distinguished from morals. In all these, if the mass of mankind could
+not find out what would best suit them, yet they are quite ready to
+adopt it when it is found out; and so they equally arrive at truth. But
+take away this readiness, and the whole case is altered. If there be any
+point in which men are not ready to adopt what is best for them; if they
+are either indifferent, or still more, if they are averse to it; if
+they thus have neither the power of discovering it for themselves, nor
+the will to avail themselves of it, when discovered for them; then it is
+clear that, in such a point, the common judgment will be of no value,
+nay, there will even be a presumption that it is wrong.
+
+Now as the common consent of mankind was most sure in matters where
+their sense most resembled instinct, that is, where nature had done most
+for them, and left them least to do for themselves; as here, therefore,
+they who are sound are the great majority, and the exceptions are no
+better than disease; so if there be any part of us which is the direct
+opposite to instinct, a part in which nature has done next to nothing
+for us, and all is to be done by ourselves; then, here the common
+consent of mankind will be of the least value; here the majority will be
+helpless and worthless; and they who are happy enough to be exceptions
+to this majority, will be no other than Christ's redeemed.
+
+Now, again, if this deficient part of our nature could be seen purely
+distinct from every other; if it alone dictated our language, and
+inspired our actions, then it would follow, that language which must
+ever be fixed by the majority, would be, in fact, the language of the
+world of infinite evil; and our actions those of mere devils. Then,
+whoever of us would be saved, must needs begin by forswearing,
+altogether, both the language and the actions of his fellow-men. But
+this is not so; in almost every instance this deficient part of our
+nature acts along with others that are not so corrupted; it mars their
+work, undoubtedly; it often confuses and perverts our language; it
+always taints our actions; but it does not wholly usurp either the one
+or the other; and thus, by God's blessing, man's language yet affords a
+high witness to divine truth, and even men's judgments and actions
+testify, though with infinite imperfection, to the existence and
+excellence of goodness.
+
+And this it is which forms one of the great perplexities of life; for as
+there is enough of what is right in men's judgments and conduct to
+forbid us from saying, that we must take the very rule of contraries,
+and think and do just the opposite to the opinions and practice of men
+in general; so, on the other hand, there is always so much wrong in
+them, that we may never dare to follow them as a standard, but shall
+find, that if trusted to as such, they will inevitably betray us. So
+that in points of greater moment than mere manners and fashion, it will
+ever be true, that if we would be prepared for Christ's coming, we must
+rise to a far higher standard than that of society in general; that in
+the greatest concerns of human life, the practice of the majority,
+though always containing something of good, is yet in its prevailing
+character, as regards God, so evil, that they who are content to follow
+it cannot be saved.
+
+This is the explanation of the apparent difficulty in the general, and
+thus, while acknowledging that there are points in which men, by common
+consent, make out what is best; and others in which, although they do
+not make it out, nor at first appreciate it, yet they are very willing
+to adopt it upon trust, and so come by experience to value it; while,
+therefore, there are a great many things in which singularity is either
+a disease or a foolishness; so again there are other points in which men
+in general have not the power to make out what is good, nor yet the
+docility to adopt it; and, therefore, in these points, which relate to
+the great matters of life, singularity is wisdom and salvation, and he
+who does as others do, perishes. That is what is called the corruption
+of human nature. I shall attempt, on another occasion, to go into some
+further details, and show, by common examples, how strangely our
+judgment and practice contain, with much that is right, just that one
+taint or defect which, as a whole, spoils them. And this one defect will
+be found to be, as the Scripture declares, a defect in our sense of our
+relation towards God.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XVII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+1 CORINTHIANS ii. 12.
+
+_We have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is
+of God_.
+
+
+And, therefore, he goes on to say, our language is different from that
+of others, and not always understood by them; the natural man receiveth
+not the things of God, for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he
+know them, because they are spiritually discerned. That is, they are
+discerned only by a faculty which he has not, namely, by the Spirit;
+and, therefore, as beings devoid of reason cannot understand the truths
+of science, or of man's wisdom, for they are without the faculty which
+can discern them; so beings devoid of God's Spirit cannot understand the
+truths of God.
+
+Now, in order to turn this passage to our profit, we need not consider
+those who are wholly without God's Spirit, or inquire whether, indeed,
+there be any such; it is not that there are two broadly marked divisions
+of all men, those who have not the Spirit of God at all, and those who
+have it abundantly: if it were so, the separation of the great day of
+judgment would be begun already, nor would it require, in order to
+effect it rightly, the wisdom of Him who trieth the very hearts and
+reins. No doubt there will be at last but two divisions of us all, the
+saved and the lost; but now the divisions are infinite; so much so that
+the great body of us offer much matter for hope as well as for fear. We
+cannot say, that they are without the Spirit of God; yet neither can we
+say that they are led by the Spirit, so as to be God's true servants. We
+cannot say, that the things of God's are absolutely to them as
+foolishness; yet certainly, we cannot say either, that they are to them
+as the divinest wisdom.
+
+And here we return to the subject on which I was speaking last Sunday.
+It is because we are not led by the Spirit of God, but have within us
+much of the spirit of the world, that our judgments of right and wrong
+are so faulty; and that this faultiness is particularly seen in our
+faint sense of our relations to God. These relations seem continually
+foolishness to us, because they are spiritually discerned, and we have
+so little of God's Spirit to enable us to discern them. And our
+blindness here affects our whole souls; we have, in consequence of it, a
+much fainter perception even of those truths which reason can discern by
+herself; or, at any rate, if we do not doubt them, they have over us
+much less influence.
+
+Now we will first see how much of natural reason, and even of the Spirit
+of God, does exist in our common judgments; for it is fair to see and to
+allow what there is of right in our language and sentiments, as well as
+to note what is wrong. Reason influences thus much, that we not only
+commend good generally, and blame evil; but even, in particular cases,
+we commend, I think, each separate virtue, and we blame each separate
+vice. I never heard of justice, truth, kindness, self-denial, &c., being
+other than approved of in themselves; or injustice, falsehood, malice,
+and selfishness being other than condemned. And the Spirit of God
+influences at least thus much, that we shrink from direct blasphemy and
+profaneness; we cannot but respect those whom we believe to be living
+sincerely in the fear of God; and further, if we thought our death
+near, we should desire to hear of God, and to depart from this life
+under his favour. No doubt, all such feelings, so far as they go, are
+the work of God's Spirit: whatever is good and right in our minds
+towards God, that proceeds not from the spirit of the world, but from
+the Spirit of God.
+
+Where, then, is the great defect which yet continually makes our
+practical judgments quite wrong; which makes us, in fact, so often
+countenance and support evil, and discountenance and discourage good?
+First, it is owing to the spirit of carelessness. One of the most
+emphatic terms by which a good man is expressed in the language of the
+Greek philosophers, is that of [Greek: opdouiaos], "one who is in
+earnest." To be in earnest is, indeed, with, most of us, the same as to
+be good; it is not that we love evil, but that we are indifferent both
+to it and to good. Now, many of us are very seldom in earnest. By this I
+mean, that the highest part of our minds, and that which judges of the
+highest things, is generally slumbering or but half awake. We may go
+through, a very busy day, and yet not be, in this true sense, in earnest
+at all; our best faculties may, as it were, be all the while sleeping or
+playing. It is notorious how much this is so in the common intercourse
+of society in the world. Light anecdotes; playful remarks; discussions,
+it may be, about the affairs of the neighbourhood, or, in some
+companies, on questions of science or party politics; all these may be
+often heard; but we may talk on all these brilliantly and well, and yet
+our best nature may not once be called to exert itself. So again, in
+mere routine business, it is the same: the body may toil; the pen move
+swiftly; the thoughts act in the particular matter before them
+vigorously; and yet we our proper selves, beings understanding and
+choosing between good and evil, have never bestirred ourselves at all.
+It has been but a skirmishing at the outposts; not a sword had been
+drawn in the main battle. Take younger persons, and the same thing is
+the case even more palpably. Here there is less of business in the
+common sense of the term; the mind is almost always unbraced and
+resting. We pass through the good and evil of our daily life, and our
+proper self scarcely ever is aroused to notice either the one or
+the other.
+
+But the worst of it is, that this carelessness is not altogether
+accidental: it is a carelessness which we do not wish to break. So long
+as it lasts, we manage to get the activity and interest of life, without
+a sense of its responsibility. We like exceedingly to lay the reins, as
+it were, upon the neck of our inclinations, to go where they take us,
+and to ask no questions whether we are in the right road or no.
+Inclination is never slumbering: this gives us excitement enough to save
+us from weariness, without the effort of awakening our conscience too.
+Therefore society, expressing in its rules the feelings of its
+individual members, prescribes exactly such a style of conversation as
+may keep in exercise all other parts of our nature except that one which
+should be sovereign of all, and whose exercise is employed on
+things eternal.
+
+Not being, then, properly in earnest,--that is, our conscience and our
+choice of moral good and evil being in a state of repose,--our language
+is happily contrived so as that it shall contain nothing to startle our
+sleeping conscience, if her ears catch any of its sounds. We still
+commend good and dispraise evil, both in the general and in the
+particular. But as good and evil are mixed in every man, and in various
+proportions, he who commends, the little good of a bad man, saying
+nothing of his evil,--or he who condemns the little evil of a good man,
+saying nothing of his good,--leads us evidently to a false practical
+conclusion; he leads us to like the bad man and to dislike the good.
+Again, the lesser good becomes an evil if it keeps out a greater good;
+and, in the same way, the lesser evil becomes a good. If we have no
+thought of comparing good things together, if our sovereign nature be
+asleep, then we shall most estimate the good to which we are most
+inclined; and where we find this we shall praise it, not observing that
+it is taking up the place of a greater good which the case requires,
+and, therefore, that it is in fact an evil. So that our moral judgments
+may lead practically to great evil: we may join with bad men and despise
+good; we may approve of qualities which, are, in fact, ruining a man;
+and despise others which, in the particular case, are virtues; without
+ever in plain words condemning virtue or approving vice.
+
+But, farther, this habit of never being in earnest greatly lowers the
+strength of our feelings even towards the good which we praise and
+towards the evil which we condemn. It was an admirable definition of
+that which excites laughter, that it was that which is out of rule, that
+which is amiss, that which is unsightly, (these three ideas, and other
+similar ones, are alike contained in the single Greek word [Greek:
+aischron],) provided that it was unaccompanied by pain. This definition
+accounts for the otherwise extraordinary fact, that there is something
+in moral evil which, in some instances, affects the mind ludicrously.
+That is to say, if moral evil affects us with no pain; if we see in it
+nothing, so to speak, but its irregularity, its strange contrast with
+what is beautiful, its jarring with the harmony of the system around us;
+then it does acquire that character which is well defined as being
+ridiculous. Thus it is notorious that trifling follies, and even gross
+vices, are often so represented in works of fiction as to be
+exceedingly ludicrous. It is enough, as an instance of what I mean, to
+name the vice of drunkenness. Get rid for the moment of the notions of
+vice or sin which, accompany it, and which give moral pain; get rid also
+of those points in it which awaken physical disgust; retain merely the
+notion of the incoherent language, and the strange capricious gait of
+intoxication; and we have then an image merely ridiculous, as much, so
+as the rambling talk and absurd gestures of the old buffoons.
+
+Here, then, we have the secret of vice becoming laughable; and of things
+which are really wicked, disgusting, hateful, being expressed by names
+purely ludicrous. Where no great physical pain or distress is occasioned
+by what is evil, our sense of its ludicrousness will be exactly in
+proportion to the faintness of our sense of moral evil; or, in other
+words, to our want of being in earnest. The evil that does not seriously
+pain or inconvenience man, is very apt to be regarded with feelings
+approaching to laughter, if we have no sense of pain at the notion of
+its being an offence against God.
+
+Thus, then, we have seen how, from the want of being in earnest, from
+the habitual slumber of conscience, or that sovereign part of us which
+looks upon our whole state with reference to its highest interests, and
+passes judgment upon all our actions,--how, from the practical absence
+of these, we may get to follow evil persons, and be indifferent to the
+good; to admire qualities which, from usurping the place of better ones,
+are actually ruinous; and, finally, to regard all common evil not so
+much with deep abhorrence, as with a disposition to laugh at it. And
+thus the practical judgment and influence of the society around us may
+be fatally evil; while the society all the time shall contain, even in
+its very perversion, various elements of truth and of good.
+
+I have kept to general language, to general views, perhaps too much; but
+all the time my mind has been fixed on the particular application of
+this, which lies scarcely beneath the surface, but which I cannot well
+bear more fully to unveil. But whoever has attended to what I have been
+saying, will be able, I should trust, to make the application, for
+himself, to those points in our society which most need correction. He
+will be able to understand how it is that the influence of the place is
+not better, while it undoubtedly contains so much of good; how the
+public opinion of a Christian school may yet be, in many respects, very
+unchristian. If he has attended at all to what I have said about our so
+rarely being in earnest, he will see something of the mischief of some
+of those publications, of those books, of that tone of conversation,
+which, I suppose, are here, as elsewhere, in fashion. Utterly impossible
+is it to lay down a rule for others in such matters: to say this book is
+too light, or this is an excess of light reading, or this laugh was too
+unrestrained, or that tone of trifling too perpetual. But, in these
+things, we should all judge ourselves; and remember that you are so
+little under outward restraint, your choice of reading is so free, your
+intercourse with one another so wholly uncontrolled, that, enjoying thus
+the full liberty of more advanced years, you incur also their
+responsibility. There is, doubtless, an excess of light reading, both in
+kind and in quantity; there is such a thing as a tone of conversation
+and manner too entirely, and too frequently, trifling. And you must be
+quite aware that we are placed here for something else than to indulge
+such a temper as this. Cheerfulness and thoughtlessness have no
+necessary connexion; the lightest spirits, which are indeed one of the
+greatest of earthly blessings, often play around the most earnest
+thought and the tenderest affection, and with far more grace than when
+they are united with the shallowness and hardness of him who is, in the
+sight of God, a fool. It were a strange notion, that we could never be
+merry without intoxication, yet not stranger than to think that mirth is
+the companion only of folly or of sin. But, setting God in Christ before
+us, then the conscience is awake; then we are in earnest; then we
+measure things rightly; then we feel them strongly; then we love those
+that are good, and shun those that are evil; then we learn that sin is
+no matter of laughter, that it ill deserves to be clothed under a
+ludicrous name; for that thing which we laugh at, that which we so
+miscall, is indeed the cause of infinite evil; for that Christ died; for
+that there are some who die that death which lasts for ever.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XVIII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+GENESIS xxvii. 38.
+
+_And Esau said unto his father, Hast thou but one blessing, my father?
+Bless me, even me also, O my father_.
+
+
+MATTHEW xv. 27.
+
+_And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall
+from their master's table_.
+
+
+Of these two passages, the first, as we must all remember, is taken from
+the first lesson of this morning's service; the second is from the
+morning's gospel. Both speak the same language, and point out, I think,
+that particular view of the story of Jacob obtaining the blessing which
+is most capable of being turned to account; for, as to the conduct of
+Jacob and his mother, it is manifestly no more capable of affording us
+benefit, as a matter of example, than the conduct, in some respects
+similar, of the unjust steward in our Lord's parable. The example,
+indeed, is of the same kind as that. If the steward was so anxious about
+his future worldly welfare, and Jacob about the worldly welfare of his
+descendants, that they did not scruple to obtain their ends, the one by
+dishonesty, the other by falsehood, much more should we be anxious about
+the true welfare of ourselves and those belonging to us, which no such
+unworthy means can be required to gain. But the point of the story to
+which the text refers, and which is illustrated also by the words of
+the Syrophoenician woman, is one which very directly concerns us all,
+being no other than this,--what should be the effect upon our own minds
+of witnessing others possessed of greater advantages than ourselves,
+whether obtained by the immediate gift of God, through the course of his
+ordinary providence, or acquired directly by some unjust or unlawful act
+of those who are in possession of them?
+
+Now, it is evident that, as equality is not the rule either of nature or
+of human society, there must be many in every congregation who are so
+far in the condition of Esau and of the Syrophoenician woman, as to be
+inferior to others around them in some one or more advantages. The
+inferiority may consist in what are called worldly advantages, or in
+natural advantages, or in spiritual advantages, or in some or all of
+these united. And it is not to be doubted that the sense of this
+inferiority is a hard trial, both as respects our feelings towards God
+and towards men. It is a hard trial; but yet, no trial overtakes us but
+such as is common to man: and here, as in all other cases, God will,
+with the trial, also make a way for us to escape, that we may be able
+to bear it.
+
+Let us consider, then, some of the most common cases in which this
+inferiority exists amongst us. With regard to worldly advantages, the
+peculiar nature of this congregation makes it less necessary than it
+generally would be, to dwell upon inequality in these: in fact, speaking
+generally, we are a very unusual example of equality in these respects;
+the advantages of station and fortune are enjoyed not, literally, in an
+equal degree by all of us, but equally as compared with, the lot of the
+great mass of society; we all enjoy the necessaries, and most of the
+comforts of life. What differences there are would, probably, appear in
+instances seemingly trifling, if, indeed, any thing were really
+trifling by which the temper and feelings, and through them the
+principles, of any amongst us may be affected for good or for evil. It
+may possibly happen that, in the indulgences, or means of indulgence,
+given to you by your friends at home, there may be sometimes, such a
+difference as to excite discontent or jealousy. It may be, that some are
+apt to exult over others, by talking of the pleasures, or the liberty,
+which they enjoy; and which the friends of others, either from necessity
+or from a sense of duty, are obliged to withhold. If this be ever felt
+by any of you as a trial; if it gall your pride, as well as restrict
+your enjoyments; then remember, that here, even in this seemingly little
+thing, the inferiority of which you complain may be either increased
+ten-fold, or changed into a blessed superiority. Increased ten-fold,
+even as from him that hath not, shall be taken away even that which he
+hath, if by discontent, and evil passions towards God and man, you make
+yourselves a hundred times more inferior spiritually than you were in
+outward circumstances; but changed into a blessed superiority, if it be
+borne with meekness, and patience, and thankfulness, even as it was said
+of the Gentile centurion, that there had not been found faith equal to
+his, no, not in Israel.
+
+But turning from worldly advantages to those which are called natural,
+and the inequality here is at once as great as elsewhere. In all
+faculties of body and mind; in the vigour of the senses, of the limbs,
+of the general constitution; in the greater or less liability to disease
+generally, or to any particular form of it; or, again, in powers of
+mind, in quickness, in memory, in imagination, in judgment; the
+differences between different persons in this congregation must be
+exceedingly wide. But, with regard to bodily powers, the trial is little
+felt, till the inferiority is shown in actual suffering from pain or
+from disease. So long as we are in health, our enjoyments are so many,
+and we so easily accommodate our habits to our powers, that a mere
+inferiority of strength, whether it be of limb or of constitution, is
+not apt to make us dissatisfied. But if it comes to actual illness or to
+pain, if we are deprived of the common enjoyments and occupations of our
+age, then perhaps the trial begins to be severe; and when we look at
+others who have taken the same liberties with their health as we have
+done, and see them notwithstanding perfectly well and strong, while we
+are disabled or suffering, we may think that God has dealt hardly with
+us, and may be inclined to ask with Esau, "Hast thou but one blessing,
+my Father? bless me, even me also, O my Father!" Now this language,
+according to the sense in which we use it, is either blameable or
+innocent. If we mean to say, "Hast thou health to give to others only
+and not to me? give me this blessing also, as thou hast given it to my
+brethren:" then it has in it somewhat of discontent and murmuring; it
+implies a claim to which God never listens. But if we mean, "Hast thou
+only one kind of blessing, my father? If thou hast blest others in one
+way, I murmur not nor complain: but out of thine infinite store, give me
+also such a blessing as may be convenient for me;" then God hears the
+prayer, then he gives the blessing, and gives it so richly, and makes it
+bear so evidently the mark of his love, that they who were last are
+become first; if others have health, and we have sickness, yet the
+spirit of patience and cheerful submission which God gives with it is so
+great a blessing, and makes us so certainly happy, that the strongest
+and healthiest of our friends have often far more reason to wish to
+change places with us, than we with them.
+
+Let us now take inequality in powers of mind. And here, undoubtedly, the
+difference is apt to be a trial. Not that, probably, it excites
+discontent or murmuring against God; nor jealousy against those whose
+faculties are better than our own: the trial is of another kind; we are
+tempted to make our inferiority an excuse for neglect; because we cannot
+do so much nor so easily as others, we do far less than we might do. But
+the parable shows us plainly, that if one talent only has been given us,
+while others have ten, yet that the one, no less than the ten, must be
+made to yield its increase. Here is the feeling expressed so earnestly
+by the woman entreating Christ to heal her daughter. "The dogs eat of
+the crumbs which fall from their master's table." Small as may be the
+portion of power given us, when compared with the plenty vouchsafed to
+others, still it is capable of nourishing us if we make use of it; still
+it shows that we too have our blessing. And if using it with
+thankfulness, if doing our very best with it, knowing that "a man is
+accepted according to what he hath, and not according to what he hath
+not," we labour humbly and diligently; then, not only does the talent
+itself become increased, so that our Lord, when he comes to reckon with
+us, may receive his own with usury: but a blessing of another kind is
+added to our labours, again, as in the former case, making those who
+were last to become first. For if there be one thing on earth which is
+truly admirable, it is to see God's wisdom blessing an inferiority of
+natural powers, when they have been honestly, humbly, and zealously
+cultivated. From how many pains are they delivered, to which great
+natural talents are continually exposed; irritation, jealousy, a morbid
+and nervous activity, bearing fruits not of peace, but of gall! With
+what blessings are they crowned, to which, the most powerful natural
+understanding is a stranger! the love of truth gratified, without the
+fear that truth will demand the sacrifice of personal vanity; the line
+of duty clearly discerned, because those mists of passion and
+selfishness which obscure it so often from the view of the keenest
+natural perception, have been dispersed by the spirit of humility and
+love; imperfect knowledge patiently endured, because whatever knowledge
+is enjoyed is known to be God's gift, and what he gives, or what he
+withholds, is alike welcome. This is the blessing of those who having
+had inferior natural powers, have so laboured to improve them according
+to God's will, that on all there has been grafted, as it were, some
+better power of grace, to yield a fruit most precious both for earth
+and heaven.
+
+But I spoke of an equality of spiritual advantages also, and this is
+perhaps the hardest trial of all. Oh, how great is this inequality in
+truth, when it seems to be so little! All of you, the children of
+Christian parents; all members of the Christian Church; all partaking
+here of the same worship, the same prayers, the same word of God, the
+same sacrament; are you not all the Israel of God, and not, like Esau,
+or the Syrophoenician woman, strangers to the covenant of blessing? Yet
+your real condition is, notwithstanding, very unequal. How unlike are
+your friends at home; how, unlike, also, are your friends here! Are
+there not some to whom their homes, both by direct precept and by
+example, are a far greater help than to others? Are there not some,
+whose immediate companions here may encourage them in all good far more
+than may be the case with, others? So, then, there may be some to whom
+this great blessing has been denied, whilst others enjoy it. What then?
+Shall we say, that, because we have it not, we will refuse to go in to
+our Father's house; that we will not walk as our brother walks, unless
+we have his advantages? Then must we remain cast out; vessels fashioned
+to dishonour; rejected of God, and cursed. Nay rather let us put a
+Christian sense on Esau's prayer, and cry, "'Hast thou but one blessing,
+my Father? bless me, even me also, O my Father.' If thou hast given to
+others earthly helps, which thou hast denied to me, give me thyself and
+thy own Spirit the more! If father and mother forsake my most precious
+interest, do thou take me up. If my nearest friends will not walk with
+me in the house of God, be thou my friend, and abide with, me always,
+making my house as thine. Outward and earthly means thou givest or
+takest away at thy pleasure; but give me help according to my need, that
+I yet may not lose thee."
+
+How naturally are we interested at the thought of any one so
+circumstanced, and uttering such a prayer! How earnestly do we wish to
+help him, to show our respect and true love for a faith so tried and so
+enduring! And think we that God cares for it less than we do? or have we
+not already the record of his love towards it, when Christ answered the
+Syrophoenician woman, "O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even
+as thou wilt?" He may not, indeed, see fit to give the very same
+blessing which was in the first instance denied: we may still have fewer
+spiritual advantages than others, as far as human helps are concerned;
+fewer good and earnest friends; fewer examples of holiness around us;
+fewer to join with us in our prayers and in our struggles against evil.
+But though this particular blessing may be denied,--as Esau could not
+gain that blessing which had been given to Jacob,--yet there is a
+blessing for us also, which may prove, in the end, even better than our
+brother's. He who serves God steadily, amidst many disadvantages, enjoys
+the blessing of a more confirmed and hardier faith; he has gone through
+trials, and been found conqueror; and for him that overcometh is
+reserved a more abundant measure of glory.
+
+But on the other side, we who, like Jacob, or Jacob's posterity, have
+the blessing,--whether it be natural, worldly, or spiritual,--let us
+consider what became of it when it was not improved. What was the sin
+of Esau,--speaking not of the individual, but of the less favoured
+people of Edom,--compared with the sin of Jacob? Nay, not of Edom only;
+but it shall be more tolerable for Sodom, in the day of judgment, than
+for the unbelieving cities of Israel. So it is, not only with the
+literal, but with the Christian Israel; so it is, not only with the
+Church as a whole compared with heathens, but with all those individuals
+amongst us, who enjoy in any larger measure than others any of God's
+blessings. They are blessings; but they may be made fatal curses. This
+holds true with blessings of every kind: with station and wealth, with
+bodily health and vigour, with, great powers of mind, with large means
+of spiritual improvement. To whom much is given, of him shall be much,
+required. It is required of us to enjoy our blessings by using them: so
+will they be blessings indeed. So it is with money and influence, with
+health, with talents, with spiritual knowledge, and good friends and
+parents. There are first who shall be last; that is, those who began
+their course with advantages which set them before their brethren, if
+they do not exert themselves, will fall grievously behind them: for the
+blessing denied may be, in effect, a blessing given; and the blessing
+given, in like manner, becomes too often a blessing taken away.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XIX.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MATTHEW xxii. 32.
+
+_God is not the God of the dead, but of the living_.
+
+
+We hear these words as a part of our Lord's answer to the Sadducees;
+and, as their question was put in evident profaneness, and the answer to
+it is one which to our minds is quite obvious and natural, so we are apt
+to think that in this particular story there is less than usual that
+particularly concerns us. But it so happens, that our Lord, in answering
+the Sadducees, has brought in one of the most universal and most solemn
+of all truths,--which is indeed implied in many parts of the Old
+Testament, but which the Gospel has revealed to us in all its
+fulness,--the truth contained in the words of the text, that "God is not
+the God of the dead, but of the living."
+
+I would wish to unfold a little what is contained in these words, which
+we often hear even, perhaps, without quite understanding them; and many
+times oftener without fully entering into them. And we may take them,
+first, in their first part, where they say that "God is not the God of
+the dead."
+
+The word "dead," we know, is constantly used in Scripture in a double
+sense, as meaning those who are dead spiritually, as well as those who
+are dead naturally. And, in either sense, the words are alike
+applicable: "God is not the God of the dead."
+
+God's not being the God of the dead signifies two things: that they who
+are without him are dead, as well as that they who are dead are also
+without him. So far as our knowledge goes respecting inferior animals,
+they appear to be examples of this truth. They appear to us to have no
+knowledge of God; and we are not told that they have any other life than
+the short one of which our senses inform us. I am well aware that our
+ignorance of their condition is so great that, we may not dare to say
+anything of them positively; there may be a hundred things true
+respecting them which we neither know nor imagine. I would only say
+that, according to that most imperfect light in which we see them, the
+two points of which I have been speaking appear to meet in them: we
+believe that they have no consciousness of God, and we believe that they
+will die. And so far, therefore, they afford an example of the
+agreement, if I may so speak, between these two points; and were
+intended, perhaps, to be to our view a continual image of it. But we had
+far better speak of ourselves. And here, too, it is the case that "God
+is not the God of the dead." If we are without him we are dead; and if
+we are dead we are without him: in other words, the two ideas of death
+and absence from God are in fact synonymous.
+
+Thus, in the account given of the fall of man, the sentence of death and
+of being cast out of Eden go together; and if any one compares the
+description of the second Eden in the Revelation, and recollects how
+especially it is there said, that God dwells in the midst of it, and is
+its light by day and night, he will see that the banishment from the
+first Eden means a banishment from the presence of God. And thus, in the
+day that Adam sinned, he died; for he was cast out of Eden immediately,
+however long he may have moved about afterwards upon the earth where
+God was not. And how very strong to the same point are the words of
+Hezekiah's prayer, "The grave cannot praise thee, Death cannot celebrate
+thee; they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth;" words
+which express completely the feeling that God is not the God of the
+dead. This, too, appears to be the sense generally of the expression
+used in various parts of the Old Testament, "Thou shalt surely die." It
+is, no doubt, left purposely obscure; nor are we ever told, in so many
+words, all that is meant by death; but, surely, it always implies a
+separation from God, and the being--whatever the notion may extend
+to--the being dead to him. Thus, when David had committed his great sin,
+and had expressed his repentance for it, Nathan tells him, "The Lord
+also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die:" which means, most
+expressively, thou shalt not die to God. In one sense, David died, as
+all men die; nor was he, by any means, freed from the punishment of his
+sin: he was not, in that sense, forgiven; but he was allowed still to
+regard God as his God; and, therefore, his punishments were but fatherly
+chastisements from God's hand, designed for his profit, that he might be
+partaker of God's holiness. And thus although Saul was sentenced to lose
+his kingdom, and although he was killed with his sons on Mount Gilboa,
+yet I do not think that we find the sentence passed upon him, "Thou
+shalt surely die;" and, therefore, we have no right to say that God had
+ceased to be his God, although be visited him with severe chastisements,
+and would not allow him to hand down to his sons the crown of Israel.
+Observe, also, the language of the eighteenth chapter of Ezekiel, where
+the expressions occur so often, "He shall surely live," and "He shall
+surely die." We have no right to refer these to a mere extension, on the
+one hand, or a cutting short, on the other, of the term of earthly
+existence. The promise of living long in the land, or, as in Hezekiah's
+case, of adding to his days fifteen years, is very different from the
+full and unreserved blessing, "Thou shalt surely live." And we know,
+undoubtedly, that both the good and the bad to whom Ezekiel spoke, died
+alike the natural death of the body. But the peculiar force of the
+promise, and of the threat, was, in the one case, Thou shalt belong to
+God; in the other, Thou shalt cease to belong to him; although the veil
+was not yet drawn up which concealed the full import of those terms,
+"belonging to God," and "ceasing to belong to him:" nay, can we venture
+to affirm that it is fully drawn aside even now?
+
+I have dwelt on this at some length, because it really seems to place
+the common state of the minds of too many amongst us in a light which is
+exceedingly awful; for if it be true, as I think the Scripture implies,
+that to be dead, and to be without God, are precisely the same thing,
+then can it be denied, that the symptoms of death are strongly marked
+upon many of us? Are there not many who never think of God, or care
+about his service? Are there not many who live, to all appearance, as
+unconscious of his existence as we fancy the inferior animals to be? And
+is it not quite clear, that to such persons, God cannot be said to be
+their God? He may be the God of heaven and earth, the God of the
+universe, the God of Christ's church; but he is not their God, for they
+feel to have nothing at all to do with him; and, therefore, as he is not
+their God, they are, and must be, according to the Scripture, reckoned
+among the dead.
+
+But God is the God "of the living." That is, as before, all who are
+alive, live unto him; all who live unto him, are alive. "God said, I am
+the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob;" and,
+therefore, says our Lord, "Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, are not and
+cannot be dead." They cannot be dead, because God owns them: he is not
+ashamed to be called their God; therefore, they are not cast out from
+him; therefore, by necessity, they live. Wonderful, indeed, is the truth
+here implied, in exact agreement, as we have seen, with the general
+language of Scripture; that, as she who but touched the hem of Christ's
+garment was, in a moment, relieved from her infirmity, so great was the
+virtue which went out from him; so they who are not cast out from God,
+but have any thing whatever to do with him, feel the virtue of his
+gracious presence penetrating their whole nature; because he lives, they
+must live also.
+
+Behold, then, life and death set before us; not remote, (if a few years
+be, indeed, to be called remote,) but even now present before us; even
+now suffered or enjoyed. Even now, we are alive unto God, or dead unto
+God; and, as we are either the one or the other, so we are, in the
+highest possible sense of the terms, alive or dead. In the highest
+possible sense of the terms; but who can tell what that highest possible
+sense of the terms is? So much has, indeed, been revealed to us, that we
+know now that death means a conscious and perpetual death, as life means
+a conscious and perpetual life. But greatly, indeed, do we deceive
+ourselves, if we fancy that, by having thus much told us, we have also
+risen to the infinite heights, or descended to the infinite depths,
+contained in those little words, life and death. They are far higher,
+and far deeper, than ever thought or fancy of man has reached to. But,
+even on the first edge of either, at the visible beginnings of that
+infinite ascent or descent, there is surely something which may give us
+a foretaste of what is beyond. Even to us in this moral state, even to
+you advanced but so short a way on your very earthly journey, life and
+death have a meaning: to be dead unto God, or to be alive to him, are
+things perceptibly different.
+
+For, let me ask of those who think least of God, who are most separate
+from him, and most without him, whether there is not now actually,
+perceptibly, in their state, something of the coldness, the loneliness,
+the fearfulness of death? I do not ask them whether they are made
+unhappy by the fear of God's anger; of course they are not: for they who
+fear God are not dead to him, nor he to them. The thought of him gives
+them no disquiet at all; this is the very point we start from. But I
+would ask them whether they know what it is to feel God's blessing. For
+instance: we all of us have our troubles of some sort or other, our
+disappointments, if not our sorrows. In these troubles, in these
+disappointments,--I care not how small they may be,--have they known
+what it is to feel that God's hand is over them; that these little
+annoyances are but his fatherly correction; that he is all the time
+loving us, and supporting us? In seasons of joy, such, as they taste
+very often, have they known what it is to feel that they are tasting the
+kindness of their heavenly Father, that their good things come from his
+hand, and are but an infinitely slight foretaste of his love? Sickness,
+danger,--I know that they come to many of us but rarely; but if we have
+known them, or at least sickness, even in its lighter form, if not in
+its graver,--have we felt what it is to know that we are in our Father's
+hands, that he is with us, and will be with us to the end; that nothing
+can hurt those whom he loves? Surely, then, if we have never tasted
+anything of this: if in trouble, or in joy, or in sickness, we are left
+wholly to ourselves, to bear as we can, and enjoy as we can; if there is
+no voice that ever speaks out of the heights and the depths around us,
+to give any answer to our own; if we are thus left to ourselves in this
+vast world,--there is in this a coldness and a loneliness; and whenever
+we come to be, of necessity, driven to be with our own hearts alone, the
+coldness and the loneliness must be felt. But consider that the things
+which, we see around us cannot remain with us, nor we with them. The
+coldness and loneliness of the world, without God, must be felt more and
+more as life wears on: in every change of our own state, in every
+separation from or loss of a friend, in every more sensible weakness of
+our own bodies, in every additional experience of the uncertainty of our
+own counsels,--the deathlike feeling will come upon us more and more
+strongly: we shall gain more of that fearful knowledge which tells us
+that "God is not the God of the dead."
+
+And so, also, the blessed knowledge that he is the God "of the living"
+grows upon those who are truly alive. Surely he "is not far from every
+one of us." No occasion of life fails to remind those who live unto him,
+that he is their God, and that they are his children. On light occasions
+or on grave ones, in sorrow and in joy, still the warmth of his love is
+spread, as it were, all through the atmosphere of their lives: they for
+ever feel his blessing. And if it fills them with joy unspeakable even
+now, when they so often feel how little they deserve it; if they delight
+still in being with God, and in living to him, let them be sure that
+they have in themselves the unerring witness of life eternal: God is the
+God of the living, and all who are with him must live.
+
+Hard it is, I well know, to bring this home, in any degree, to the minds
+of those who are dead: for it is of the very nature of the dead that
+they can hear no words of life. But it has happened that, even whilst
+writing what I have just been uttering to you, the news reached me that
+one, who two months ago was one of your number, who this very half-year
+has shared in all the business and amusements of this place, is passed
+already into that state where the meanings of the terms life and death
+are become fully revealed. He knows what it is to live unto God, and
+what it is to die to him. Those things which are to us unfathomable
+mysteries, are to him all plain: and yet but two months ago he might
+have thought himself as far from attaining this knowledge as any of us
+can do. Wherefore it is clear, that these things, life and death, may
+hurry their lesson upon us sooner than we deem of, sooner than we are
+prepared to receive it. And that were indeed awful, if, being dead to
+God, and yet little feeling it, because of the enjoyments of our worldly
+life, those enjoyments were on a sudden to be struck away from us, and
+we should find then that to be dead to God was death, indeed, a death
+from which there is no waking, and in which there is no sleeping
+for ever.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XX.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+EZEKIEL xiii. 22.
+
+_With lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad, whom I have not
+made sad; and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not
+return from his wicked way, by promising him life_.
+
+
+The verses which immediately precede this, require explanation, but
+perhaps our knowledge is hardly sufficient to enable us to give it
+fully. There are allusions to customs,--to fashions rather,--common
+amongst the Israelites at the time, which we can now scarcely do more
+than guess at; but we may observe, that there was a general practice,
+which even God's own prophets were directed often to comply with, of
+enforcing what was said in word by some corresponding outward action, in
+which the speaker made himself, as it were, a living image of the idea
+which he meant to convey. Thus, when Zedekiah, the son of Chenaanah, was
+assuring Ahab, that he should drive the Syrians before him, he made
+himself horns of iron, and said, "With these shalt thou push the
+Syrians, until thou have consumed them." In the same way, it is imagined
+that the false prophetesses spoken of in the text were in the habit of
+wearing pillows, or cushions, fastened to their arms, and directed those
+who came to consult them to do the same, as a sign of rest and peace;
+that they who trusted to them had nothing to fear, but might lie down
+and enjoy themselves at their feasts, or in sleep, with entire security.
+Or, again, if we connect what is said of the pillows with what
+immediately follows about the kerchiefs put upon the head, we may
+suppose that both are but parts of a fantastic dress, such as was often
+worn by pretended prophets and fortune-tellers, and which they may have
+made those wear, also, who came before them. We know that the covering
+on the head was, for instance, a part of the ceremonial law of the Roman
+augurs, when they began their divinations. But, however this be, the
+exact understanding of these particular points is not necessary to our
+deriving the lesson of the passage in general. I know that there is
+something naturally painful to an active mind in being obliged to
+content itself with an indistinct notion, or still more, with no notion
+at all, of the meaning of any words presented to it. But, whilst we
+should highly value this sensitiveness, as, indeed, few qualities are
+more essential in the pursuit of truth, yet we must be careful not to
+let our disappointment carry us too far, so as to pass over a whole
+passage, or portion, of Scripture, as if in despair, because we cannot
+understand every part of it. Much of the supposed obscurity of the
+prophets arises from this cause--that we find in them particular
+expressions and allusions, which, whether from a, fault in the
+translation, or from our imperfect knowledge of the times of which the
+prophets speak, and of the language in which they wrote, are certainly
+quite unintelligible. But these are only a few expressions, occurring
+here and there; and it is a great evil to fancy that their writings, in
+general, are not to be understood, because of the difficulty of
+particular passages in them. Thus, with the very chapter of which we are
+now speaking, the expression to which I have alluded can only be
+uncertainly interpreted, yet the lesson of the chapter, as a whole, is
+perfectly clear, notwithstanding. The dress, or fashions, or particular
+rites, of the false prophets of Jerusalem and their votaries, may offer
+no distinct image to our minds; but the evil of their doings, how they
+deceived others, and were themselves deceived; the points, that is,
+which alone concern us practically, these are set before us plainly.
+"With their lies they made the heart of the righteous sad, whom God had
+not made sad; and they strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he
+should not return from his wicked way, by promising him life." Where the
+way of life was broad, they strove to make it narrow; and where it was
+narrow, they strove to make it broad: by their solemn and superstitious
+lies, they frightened and perplexed the good, while, by their lives of
+ungodliness, they emboldened and encouraged the wicked.
+
+It may not, at first sight, seem necessary that these two things should
+go together; there might be, it seems, either the fault of making the
+heart of the righteous sad, without that of strengthening the hands of
+the wicked: or there might be the strengthening of the hands of the
+wicked, without making sad the heart of the righteous. And so it
+sometimes has been: there has been a wickedness which has not tried to
+keep up superstition: there has been a superstition, the supporters of
+which have not wilfully encouraged wickedness. Yet, although this has
+been so, with respect to the intention of the parties concerned, yet in
+their own nature, the tendency of either evil to produce the other is
+sure and universal. We cannot exist without some influences of fear and
+restraint, on the one hand, and without some indulgence of freedom, on
+the other. God has provided for both these wants, so to speak, of our
+nature; he has told us whom we should fear, and where we should be
+restrained, and where, also, we may be safely in freedom: there is the
+fruit forbidden, and the fruit which we may eat freely. But if the
+restraint and the liberty be either of them put in the wrong place, the
+double evil is sure to follow. Restrained in his lawful liberty,
+debarred from the good and wholesome fruit of the garden, man breaks out
+into a liberty which is unlawful; he eats of the forbidden fruit, whose
+taste is death; or, surfeited with an unholy freedom, and let to run
+wild in a space far too vast for his strength to compass, he turns
+cravingly for that support to his weariness which a narrowed range would
+afford him; and he limits himself on that very quarter in which alone he
+might expatiate freely. Superstition, in fact, is the rest of
+wickedness, and wickedness is the breaking loose of superstition.
+
+But, however true this may be, are we concerned in it? First of all,
+when we find an evil dwelt upon often in the Prophets, and find it dwelt
+upon again by our Lord and his Apostles with no less earnestness, there
+is, at least, a strong presumption, that an evil of this sort is nothing
+local or passing, but that it is fixed in man's nature, and is apt to
+grow up in all times, and in all countries. Now, the double evil spoken
+of in the text, occurs again in the gospel; there we find men spoken of,
+who, in like manner, insisted upon what was trifling, and were careless
+of what was important; and in the epistles, we find, again, the same
+characters holding up as righteous others than those who worked
+righteousness: men, who spoke lies in hypocrisy, having their conscience
+seared with a hot iron. We may presume, therefore, that this evil is of
+an enduring character; but if we look back to the history of the
+Christian Church, or look around us, the presumption becomes the sad
+conviction of experience.
+
+Nor is the evil merely one which exists in the country at large; a thing
+which might be fully dwelt upon any where but here. On the contrary, I
+hardly know of an age more exposed to it than youth. There exist in
+youth, in a very high degree, those opposite feelings of our nature,
+which I have before spoken of; a tendency to respect, to follow, to be
+led, on the one hand; and on the other, a lively desire for independence
+and freedom. These feelings often exist in the greatest strength in the
+same individual; and when they are not each turned in their proper
+direction, ruin is the consequence. Nothing is more common than to see
+great narrowness of mind, great prejudices, and great disorderliness of
+conduct, united in the same person. Nothing is more common than to see
+the same mind utterly prostrated before some idol of its own, and
+supporting that idol with the most furious zeal, and at the same time
+utterly rebellious to Christ, and rejecting with scorn the enlightening,
+the purifying, and the loving influences of Christ's Spirit.
+
+The idols of various minds are infinitely various, some seducing the
+loftiest natures and some the vilest. But of this we may be sure, that
+every one of us has a tendency to some one idol or other, if not to
+many; and our business is especially each to watch, ourselves, lest we
+be enslaved to our peculiar idol. I will now, however, speak of those
+which, tempt the highest minds; which, by their show of sacredness and
+excellence, make us fancy, that while following them we are following
+Christ. And let none be surprised, if I rank among idols many things,
+which, in themselves and in their proper use and order, are indeed to be
+loved and reverenced. It was most right to respect the Apostle Peter,
+and listen to his word; but that great Apostle would have been ruin to
+Cornelius, and not salvation, if he had suffered him, without reproof,
+to fall down before him, and render to him the service due to Christ
+alone. How many good and pious feelings must have been awakened from age
+to age in many minds, at the sight of the brazen serpent on the pole,
+the memorial of their fathers' deliverance in the wilderness! But when
+this awakening, this solemn memorial was corrupted into an idol, when
+men bowed down before it in superstition, it was the part of true piety
+to do as Hezekiah did, to dash it, notwithstanding all its solemn
+associations, into a thousand pieces.
+
+Thus things good, things noble, things sacred, may all become idols. To
+some minds truth is an idol, to others justice, to others charity or
+benevolence; and others are beguiled by objects of a different sort of
+sacredness: some have made Christ's mother their idol; some, Christ's
+servants; some, again, Christ's sacraments, and Christ's own body, the
+Church. If these may all be idols, where can we find a name so holy, as
+that we may surrender up our whole souls to it; before which obedience,
+reverence, without measure, intense humility, most unreserved adoration,
+may all be duly rendered. One name there is, and one only; one alone in
+heaven and in earth; not truth, not justice, not benevolence, not
+Christ's mother, not his holiest servants, not his blessed sacraments,
+not his very mystical body, but Himself only, who died for us and rose
+again, Jesus Christ, both God and Man.
+
+He is truth, and he is righteousness, and he is love; he gives his grace
+to his sacraments, and his manifold gifts to his Church; whoever hath
+him hath all things; but if we do not take heed, whenever we turn our
+mind to any other object, we shall make it an idol and lose him. Take
+him in all his fulness, not as God merely, not as man merely; not in his
+life on earth only, not in his death only, not in his exaltation at
+God's right hand only; but in all his fulness, the Christ of God, God
+and Man, our Prophet, our Priest, our King and Lord, redeeming us by his
+blood, sanctifying us by his Spirit; and then worship him and love him
+with all the heart, and with, all the soul, and with all the strength;
+and we shall see how all evil will be barred, and all good will abound.
+No man who worships Christ alone, can be a fanatic, nor yet can be a
+more philosopher; he cannot be bigoted, nor yet can he be indifferent;
+he cannot be so the slave of what be calls amiable feelings as to cast
+truth and justice behind him; nor yet can he so pursue truth and justice
+as to lose sight of humbler and softer feelings, self-abasement,
+reverence, devotion. There is no evil tendency in the nature of any one
+of us, which has not its cure in the true worship of Christ our Saviour.
+Let us look into our hearts, and consider their besetting faults. Are we
+indolent, or are we active; are we enthusiastic, or are we cold; zealous
+or indifferent, devout or reasonable; whatever the inclination, or bias
+of our nature be, if we follow its kindred idol, it will be magnified
+and grow on to our ruin; if we worship Christ, it will be pruned and
+chastened, and made to grow up with opposite tendencies, all alike
+tempered, none destroyed; none overgrowing the garden, but all filling
+it with their several fruits; so that it shall be, indeed, the garden of
+the Lord, and the Spirit of the Lord shall dwell in the midst of it.
+
+And who shall dare to make sad the heart of him who is thus drinking
+daily of the well-spring of righteousness, by telling him that he is not
+yet saved, nor can be, unless he will come and bow down before his idol?
+And if, rather than do so, he break the idol in pieces, who shall dare
+to call him profane, or cold in love to his Lord, when it was in his
+very jealousy for his Lord, and in his full purpose to worship him
+alone, that he threw down all that exalted itself above its due
+proportion against him? And if a man be not so worshipping Christ only,
+who shall dare to encourage him in his evil way, by magnifying the
+sacredness of his idol, and ascribing to it that healing virtue which
+belongs to Christ alone?
+
+What has been here said might bear to be followed up at far greater
+length than the present occasion will admit of. But the main point is
+one, I think, of no small importance, that all fanaticism and
+superstition on the one hand, and all unbelief and coldness of heart on
+the other, arise from what is in fact idolatry,--the putting some other
+object, whether it be called a religious or moral one,--and an object
+often in itself very excellent,--in the place of Christ himself, as set
+forth to us fully in the Scriptures. And as no idol can stand in
+Christ's place, or in any way save us, so whoever worships Christ truly
+is preserved from all idols and has life eternal. And if any one demand
+of him further, that he should worship his idol, and tells him that he
+is not safe if he does not; his answer will be rather that he will
+perish if he does; that he is safe, fully safe, and only safe, so long
+as he clings to Christ alone; and that to make anything else necessary
+to his safety, is not only to minister to superstition, but to
+ungodliness also; not only to lay on us a yoke which neither our fathers
+nor we were able to bear; but, by the very act of laying this
+unchristian yoke upon us, to tear from us the easy yoke and light burden
+of Christ himself, our Lord and our life.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXI.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+ADVENT SUNDAY.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+HEBREWS in. 16.
+
+_For some, when they had heard, did provoke: howbeit not all that came
+out of Egypt by Moses_.
+
+
+I take this verse as my text, rather than those which immediately go
+before or follow it, because it affords one of the most serious
+instances of mistranslation that are to be met with in the whole New
+Testament. For the true translation of the words is this: "For who were
+they who, when they had heard, did provoke? nay, were they not all who
+came out of Egypt through Moses?" And then it goes on--"And with whom
+was he grieved forty years? was it not with them that had sinned, whose
+carcases fell in the wilderness? And to whom sware he that they should
+not enter into his rest, but to them that believed not?" I call this a
+serious mistranslation, because it lessens the force of the writer's
+comparison. So far from meaning to say that "some, but not all did
+provoke," he lays a stress on the universality of the evil: it was not
+only a few, but the whole people who came out of Egypt, with only the
+two individual exceptions of Caleb and Joshua. All the rest who were
+grown up when they came out of Egypt did provoke God; and the carcases
+of that whole generation, fell in the wilderness.
+
+Had the lesson from the Hebrews been actually chosen for the service of
+this day, it could hardly have suited it better. For this day is the
+New-year's day of the Christian year; and it is probably for this reason
+that the service of the first day of the common year is confined
+entirely to the commemoration of our Lord's circumcision, and takes no
+notice of the beginning of a new year. It is manifest that it could not
+do so without confusion: for the first of January is not the beginning
+of the Christian year, but Advent Sunday; the last Sunday of the
+Christian year is not Christmas-day, as it would be this year if we
+reckoned by the common divisions of time; but it is the last Sunday
+after Trinity. Now, then, we are at the beginning of our year; and well
+it is that, as our trial is now become shorter by another year, as
+another division of our lives has passed away, we should fix our eyes on
+that which makes every year so valuable,--the Judgment, for which it
+ought to be a preparation. In fact, if we observe, we shall see that
+these Sundays in Advent are much more regarded by the Church as the
+beginning of a new year, than as a mere prelude to the celebration of
+the festival of Christmas. That is, Christmas-day is regarded, so to
+speak, in a two-fold light, as representing both the comings of our
+Lord, his first coming in the flesh, and his second coming to judgment.
+When the day actually arrives, it commemorates our Lord's first coming:
+and this is the beginning of the Christian year, historically regarded,
+that is, so far as it is a commemoration of the several events of our
+Lord's life on earth. But before it comes, it is regarded as
+commemorating our Lord's second coming: and wisely, for his first coming
+requires now no previous preparation for it; we cannot well put
+ourselves into the position of those who lived before Christ appeared.
+But our whole life is, or ought to be, a preparation for his second
+coming; and it is this state, of which the season of Advent in the
+Church services is intended to be the representation.
+
+There is something striking in the season of the natural year at which
+we thus celebrate the beginning of another Christian year. It is a true
+type of our condition, of the insensible manner in which all the changes
+of our lives steal upon us, that nature, at this moment, gives no
+outward signs of beginning: it is a period which does not manifest any
+striking change in the state of things around us. The Christian Spring
+begins ere we have reached the half of the natural winter. Nature is not
+bursting into life, but rather preparing itself for a long period of
+death. And this is a type of an universal truth, that the signs and
+warnings which we must look to, must come from within us, not from
+without: that neither sky nor earth, will arouse us from our deadly
+slumber, unless we are ourselves aroused already, and more disposed to
+make warnings for ourselves than to find them.
+
+If this be true of nature, it is true also of all the efforts of man. As
+nature will give no sign, so man cannot. Let the Church do all that she
+may; let her keep her solemn anniversaries, and choose out for her
+services all such passages of Scripture as may be most fitted to impress
+the lesson which she would teach; still we know that these are alike
+powerless and unheeded; that unless there be in our own minds something
+beforehand disposed to profit by them, they are but the words of
+unavailing affection, vainly spoken to the ears of the dead.
+
+Oh that we would remember this, all of us; that there is no voice in
+nature, no voice in man, that can really awaken the sleeping soul. That
+is the work of a far mightier power, to be sought for with most earnest
+prayers for ourselves and for each other: that the Holy Spirit of God
+would speak, and would dispose our hearts to hear; that so being
+awakened from death and our ears being truly opened, all things outward
+may now join in language which we can hear; and nature, and man, life
+and death, things present and things to come, may be but the manifold
+voices of the Spirit of God, all working for us together for good. Till
+this be so, we speak in vain; our words neither reach our own hearts,
+nor the hearts of our hearers; they are but recorded in God's book of
+judgment, to be brought forward hereafter for the condemnation of
+us both.
+
+Yet we must still speak; for the Spirit of God, who alone works in us
+effectually, works also secretly; we know not when, nor how, nor where.
+But we know, that as the Father worketh hitherto, and the Son worketh
+hitherto, so the Holy Spirit worketh hitherto, and is still working
+daily. We know that, every year, he creates in thousands of God's people
+that work which alone shall abide for ever. We know that in the year
+that is just past he has done this; that in the year which is just
+beginning he will do it. Have we not here, also, many in whom he has
+wrought this work? may we not hope, and surely believe, that there are
+many in whom he is even now preparing to work it?
+
+We know not who these are; still less do we know, what were the
+occasions which the Holy Spirit so blessed as to work in them his work
+of life. But this we know, that we are bound to minister all the
+occasions which we can; we must not spare our labour, although it is God
+alone who gives the increase. We must speak of life and of death, of
+Christ and of judgment, not forgetting that we speak often, and shall
+speak, utterly in vain; yet knowing that it is by these very thoughts,
+though long unheeded, that God's Spirit does in his own good time awaken
+the heart; he takes of the things of Christ and shows them to us; and
+then, what was before like a book in a strange language--we saw the
+figures, but they conveyed no meaning to our minds--becomes, on a
+sudden, instinct with the language of God, which we hear and understand
+as readily as if it were our own tongue wherein we were born.
+
+Therefore, we speak and say, that another year has now dawned upon us;
+and we would remind you, and remember, ourselves, in what words the
+various Scriptures of this day's service point out its inestimable
+value. "Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed." So says St.
+Paul in the epistle of this day; and how blessed are all those amongst
+us who can feel that this is truly said of them! Then, indeed, a new
+year's day is a day of rejoicing; we are so much nearer that period when
+all care, all anxiety, all painful labour will be for ever ended. But
+there is other language of a different sort, which, it may be, will suit
+us better. "I have nourished and brought up children, and they have
+rebelled against me." "Their land is full of idols; they worship the
+work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made;" which
+means to us, the work of our own hearts, that which our own fancies and
+desires have made. "Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, for
+fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty." For in the very
+temple of God, his Church, all manner of profane thoughts and words and
+works are crowded together; the din of covetousness and worldliness is
+loud and constant, and will ill abide the day of his coming, who will, a
+second time, cast out of his temple all that is unclean. And is there
+not also in us that evil heart of unbelief and disobedience which
+departs from the living God? are there not here those who are becoming
+daily hardened through the deceitfulness of sin? How are they passing
+their time in the wilderness, and with what prospects when they come to
+the end of it? God said, "I sware in my wrath, that they shall not enter
+into my rest." By the way that they came, by the same shall they return;
+they shall go back to that bondage from which they were once redeemed,
+and from which they will be redeemed again no more for ever.
+
+These are some of the passages of this day's service which speaks to us
+at the beginning of this new Christian year. Let me add to all this
+language of warning, the language in which God, by his apostle Paul,
+answers every one of us, if we ask of him in sincerity of heart, "Lord,
+what wilt thou have me to do?" He answers, "The night is far spent, the
+day is at hand: let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and
+drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and
+envying: but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for
+the flesh, to fulfil the works thereof." Now, I grant, that this day, of
+which the apostle speaks, has never yet shone so brightly, as he had
+hoped and imagined; clouds have, up to this hour, continually
+overshadowed it. I mean, that the lives of Christians have hindered them
+from being the light of the world. It has been a light pale and dim, and
+therefore the works of darkness have continued to abound. But admit
+this, and what follows? Is it, or can it be, anything else but a more
+earnest desire not to be ourselves children of darkness, lest what we
+see to have happened in part should happen altogether; namely, that the
+day should never shine on us at all? We see that God's promises have
+been in part forfeited; we see that Christ's kingdom has not been what
+it was prophesied it should be. Is not this a solemn warning, that for
+us, too, individually, God's promises may be forfeited? that all we read
+in Scripture of light, and life, and glory, and happiness, should really
+prove to us words only, and no reality? that whereas the promise of
+salvation has been made to us, we should be in the end, not saved, but
+lost? If, indeed, God's kingdom were shining around us, in its full
+beauty; if every evil thing were driven out of his temple; if we saw
+nothing but holy lives and happy, the fruits of his Spirit, truth, and
+love, and joy; then we might be less anxious for ourselves; our course
+would be far smoother; the very stream would carry us along to the end
+of our voyage without our labour: what evil thoughts would not be
+withered, and die long ere they could ripen into action, if the very air
+which we breathed were of such, keen and heavenly purity! It is because
+all this is not so, that we have need of so much watchfulness; it is
+because the faults of every one of us make our brethren's task harder;
+because there is not one bad or careless person amongst us who is not a
+hindrance in his brother's path, and does not oblige him to exert
+himself the more. Therefore, because the day is not bright, but
+overclouded; because it is but too like the night, and too many use it
+as the night for all works of darkness; let us take the more heed that
+we do not ourselves so mistake it; let us watch each of us the light
+within us, lest, indeed, we should wholly stumble; let us put on the
+Lord Jesus Christ. You know how often I have dwelt on this; how often I
+have tried to show that Christ is all in all to us; that to put on
+Christ, is a truer and fuller expression, by far, than if we had been
+told to put on truth, or holiness, or goodness. It includes all these,
+with something more, that nothing but itself can give--the sense of
+safety, and joy unspeakable, in feeling ourselves sheltered in our
+Saviour's arms, and taken even into himself. Assuredly, if we put on the
+Lord Jesus Christ, we shall not make provision for the flesh to fulfil
+the lusts thereof; such a warning would then be wholly unnecessary. Or,
+if we do not like language thus figurative, let us put it, if we will,
+into the plainest words that shall express the same meaning; let us call
+it praying to Christ, thinking of him, hoping in him, earnestly loving
+him; these, at least, are words without a figure, which all can surely
+understand. Let us be Christ's this year that is now beginning; be his
+servants, be his disciples, be his redeemed in deed; let us live to him,
+and for him; setting him before us every day to do his will, and to live
+in his blessing. Then, indeed, if it be his pleasure that we should
+serve him throughout this year, even to its end, we may repeat, with a
+deeper feeling of their truth, the words of St. Paul; we may say, when
+next Advent Sunday shall appear, that now is our salvation nearer than
+when we became believers.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CHRISTMAS DAY.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JOHN i. 10.
+
+_He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew
+Him not_.
+
+
+When we use ourselves, or hear others use, the term "mystery," as
+applied to things belonging to the gospel, we should do well to consider
+what is meant by it. For our common notion of the word mystery is of
+something dark; whereas Christ and his gospel are continually spoken of
+as being, above all other things, light. Then come others, and say,
+"Light and darkness cannot go together: what you call the mysteries of
+Christianity are no part of it, but the fond inventions of man:
+Christianity is all simple and clear:" and thus they strike away some of
+the very greatest truths which God has revealed to us. Thus they deal in
+particular with the great truth declared in the text, that He who made
+the world visited it in the likeness of man. Now, if this truth were a
+mystery, in the common notion of that term; if it were a thing full of
+darkness, defying our minds to understand it, or to draw any good from
+it; then, indeed, it would be of little consequence whether we received
+it or no. It is because it is a mystery in a very different sense, in
+the sense in which the word is used commonly in the Scriptures; that
+is, a thing which was a secret, but which God has been pleased to
+reveal, and to reveal for our benefit, that therefore the loss of it
+would be the loss of a real blessing, a loss at once of light
+and comfort.
+
+But we must go a little further, and explain from what this sad
+confusion in the use of the term "mystery" has arisen. There are many
+things relating to ourselves and to things around us, which by nature we
+cannot understand; and of God we can scarcely understand anything. Now,
+while the gospel has revealed much that we did not know before, it yet
+has not revealed everything: of God, in particular, it has given us much
+most precious knowledge, yet it has not removed all the veil. It has
+furnished us with a glass, indeed, to use the apostle's comparison; but
+the glass, although, a great help, although reflecting a likeness of
+what, without it, we could not see at all, is yet a dark and imperfect
+manner of seeing, compared with, the seeing face to face. So, when the
+gospel tells us that He who made the world visited it in our nature, it
+does not indeed enable us yet fully to conceive what He is who made us,
+and then became as one of us; there is still left around the name of God
+that light inaccessible which is to our imperfections darkness; and so
+far as we cannot understand or conceive rightly of God, so far it is
+true that we cannot understand all that is conveyed in the expression
+that God was in the world dwelling among us. Yet it is still most true
+that by the revelation thus made to us we have gained immensely. God, as
+he is in himself, we cannot understand; but Jesus Christ we can. When we
+are told to love God, if we look to the life and death of Christ, we can
+understand and feel how truly he deserves our love; when we are told to
+be perfect as God is perfect, we have the image of this perfection so
+truly set before us in his Son Jesus, that it may be well said, "Whoso
+hath seen Him hath seen the Father;" and why, then, should we ask with
+Philip, that "He should show us the Father?"
+
+What, then, the festival of Christmas presents to us, as distinct from
+that of Easter, is generally the revelation of God in the flesh. True it
+is, that we may make it, if we will, the same as Easter: that is, we may
+celebrate it as the birth of our Saviour, of him who died and rose again
+for us; but then we only celebrate our Lord's birth with reference to
+his death and resurrection: that is, we make Christmas to be Easter
+under another name. And so everything relating to our Lord may be made
+to refer to his death and resurrection; for in them consists our
+redemption, and for that reason Easter has ever been considered as the
+great festival of the Christian year. But yet apart from this, Christmas
+has something peculiarly its own: namely, as I said before, the
+revelation of God in the flesh, not only to make atonement for our
+sins,--which is the peculiar subject of the celebration of the season of
+Easter,--but to give us notions of God at once distinct and lively; to
+enable us to have One in the invisible world, whom we could conceive of
+as distinctly as of a mere man, yet whom we might love with all our
+hearts, and trust with all our hearts, and yet be guilty of no idolatry.
+
+It is not, then, only as the beginning of an earthly life of little more
+than thirty years, that we may celebrate the day of our Lord's birth in
+the flesh. His own words express what this day has brought to us:
+"Henceforth shall ye see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending
+and descending upon the Son of man." The words here, like so many of our
+Lord's, are expressed in a parable; but their meaning is not the less
+clear. They allude evidently to Jacob's vision, to the ladder reaching
+from earth to heaven, on which the angels were ascending and descending
+continually. But this vision is itself a parable; showing, under the
+figure of the ladder reaching from earth to heaven, and the angels going
+up and down on it, a free communication, as it were, between God and
+man, heaven brought nearer to earth, and heavenly things made more
+familiar. Now, this is done, in a manner, by every revelation from God;
+most of all, by the revelation of his Son. Nor is it only by his Spirit
+that Christ communicates with us even now; though, he is ascended again
+into heaven, yet the benefits of his having become man, over and above
+those of his dying and rising again for us, have not yet passed away. It
+is still the man Christ Jesus who brings heaven near to earth, and earth
+near to heaven.
+
+It has been well said by Augustine, that babes in Christ should so think
+of the Son of man as not to lose sight of the Son of God; that more
+advanced Christians should so think of the Son of God as not to lose
+sight of the Son of man. Augustine well understood how the thought of
+the Son of man is fitted to our weakness; and that the best and most
+advanced of us in this mortal life are never so strong as to be able to
+do without it. Have we ever tried this with our children? We tell them
+that God made them, and takes care of them, and loves them, and hears
+their prayers, and knows what is in their hearts, and cannot bear what
+is evil. These are such notions of God as a child requires, and can
+understand. But, if we join with them some of those other notions which
+belong to God as he is in himself; that he is a Spirit, not to be seen,
+not to be conceived of as in any one place, or in any one form; what do
+we but embarrass our child's mind, and lessen that sense of near and
+dear relation to God which, our earlier accounts of God had given him?
+Yet we must teach him something of this sort, if we would prevent him
+from forming unworthy notions of God, such as have been the beginning
+of all idolatry. Here, then, is the blessing of the revelation of God in
+Christ. All that he can understand of God, or love in him, or fear in
+him--that is to be found in Christ. Christ made him, takes care of him,
+can hear his prayers, can read his little heart, loves him tenderly; yet
+cannot bear what is evil, and will strictly judge him at the last day.
+But what we must teach when we speak of God, yet which has a tendency to
+lessen the liveliness of our impressions of him, this has no place when
+we speak of Christ. Christ has a body, incorruptible and glorified
+indeed, such as they who are Christ's shall also wear at his coming, yet
+still a body. Christ is not to be seen, indeed, for the clouds have
+received him out of our sight: yet he may be conceived of as in one
+place--at the right hand of God; as in one certain and well-known
+form--the form of the Son of man. Yet let us observe again, and be
+thankful for the perfect wisdom of God. Even while presenting to us God
+in Christ; that is to say, God with all those attributes which we can
+understand, and fear, and love; and without those which, throw us, as it
+were, to an infinite distance, overwhelming our minds, and baffling all
+our conceptions; even then the utmost care is taken to make us remember
+that God in himself is really that infinite and incomprehensible Being
+to whom we cannot, in our present state, approach; that even his
+manifestation of himself in Christ Jesus, is one less perfect than we
+shall be permitted to see hereafter; that Christ stands at the right
+hand of the Majesty on high; that he has received from the Father all
+his kingdom and his glory; finally, that the Father is greater than he,
+inasmuch as any other nature added to the pure and perfect essence of
+God, must, in a certain measure, if I may venture so to speak, be a
+coming down to a lower point, from the very and unmixed Divinity.
+
+I have purposely mentioned this last circumstance, although it is not
+the view that I wish particularly to take to-day, because such passages
+as that which I quoted, where Christ tells his disciples that his Father
+was greater than he, and many others of the same sort, throughout the
+New Testament, are sometimes apt to embarrass and perplex us, if we do
+not consider their peculiar object. It was very necessary, especially at
+a time when men were so accustomed to worship their highest gods under
+the form of men, that whilst the gospel was itself holding out the man
+Christ Jesus as the object of religious faith, and fear, and love, and
+teaching that all power was given to him, in heaven and in earth,--it
+should, also, guard us against supposing that it meant to represent God
+as, in himself, wearing a human form, or having a nature partaking of
+our infirmities; and, therefore, it always speaks of there being
+something in God higher, and more perfect, than could possibly be
+revealed to man; and for this eternal and infinite, and inconceivable
+Being, it claims the reserve of our highest thoughts, or, rather, it
+commands us to believe, that they who shall hereafter see God face to
+face, shall be allowed to see something still greater than is now
+revealed to us, even in him who is the express image of God, and the
+brightness of his glory.
+
+But, now, to return to what I was dwelling on before. It is not only for
+children, that the revelation of God in Christ is so valuable; it is
+fitted to the wants of us all, at all times, and under all
+circumstances. Say, that we are in joy; say, that we are enjoying some
+of the festivities of this season. It is quite plain, that, at whatever
+moment the thought of God is unwelcome to us, that moment is one of sin
+or unbelief: yet, how can we dare to mix up the notion of the most high
+God with any earthly merriment, or festivity? Then, if we think of him
+who was present at the marriage in Cana of Galilee, and who worked a
+miracle for no other object than to increase the enjoyment of that
+marriage supper, do we not feel how the highest thoughts may be joined
+with the most common occasions? how we may bring Christ home with, us to
+our social meetings, to bless us, and to sanctify them? Imagine him in
+our feasts as he was in Cana:--we may do it without profaneness; being
+sure, from that example, that he condemns not innocent mirth; that it is
+not merely because there is a feast, or because friends and neighbours
+are gathered together, that Christ cannot, therefore, be in the midst of
+us. This alone does not drive him away; but, oh consider, with what ears
+would he have listened to any words of unkindness, of profaneness, or of
+impurity! with what eyes would he have viewed any intemperance, or
+revelling; any such, immoderate yielding up of the night to pleasure,
+that a less portion of the next day can be given to duty and to God!
+Even as he would have heard or seen such things in Cana of Galilee, so
+does he hear and see them amongst us; the same gracious eye of love is
+on our moderate and permitted enjoyments; the same turning away from,
+the same firm and just displeasure at every word or deed which turns
+pleasure into sin.
+
+But if I seek for instances to show how God in Christ is brought very
+near to us, what can I choose more striking than that most solemn act of
+Christian communion to which we are called this day? For, what is there
+in our mortal life, what joy, what sorrow, what feeling elated or
+subdued, which is not in that communion brought near to Christ to
+receive his blessing? What is the first and outward thing of which it
+reminds us? Is it not that last supper in Jerusalem, in which men,--the
+twelve disciples, the first members of our Christian brotherhood,--were
+brought into such solemn nearness to God, as seems to have begun the
+privileges of heaven upon earth? They were brought near at once to
+Christ and to one another: united to one another in him, in that double
+bond which, is the perfection at once of our duty and of our happiness.
+And so in our communion we, too, draw near to Christ and to each other;
+we feel--who is there at that moment, at least, that does not
+feel?--what a tie there is to bind each of us to his brother, when we
+come to the table of our common Lord. So far, the Lord's Supper is but a
+type of what every Christian meeting should be: never should any of us
+be gathered together on any occasion of common life, in our families or
+with our neighbours; we should sit down to no meal, we should meet in no
+company, without having Christ also in the midst of us; without
+remembering what we all are to him, and what we each therefore are to
+our brethren. But when we further recollect what there is in the Lord's
+Supper beyond the mere meeting of Christ and his disciples; what it is
+which the bread and the wine commemorate; of what we partake when, as
+true Christians, we eat of that bread, and drink of that cup; then we
+shall understand that God indeed is brought very near to us; inasmuch,
+as he who is a Christian, and partakes sincerely of Christian communion,
+is a partaker also of Christ: and as belonging to his body, his living
+spiritual body, the universal Church, receives his share of all those
+blessings, of all that infinite love which the Father shows continually
+to the head of that body, his own well-beloved Son.
+
+Say not then in your hearts, Who can ascend up into heaven, that is, to
+bring Christ down? As on this day, when he took our nature upon him, he
+came down to abide with us for ever; to abide with, us, even when we
+should see him with our eyes no more: for whilst he was on earth he so
+took part in all the concerns of life, in all its duties, its sorrows,
+and its joys, that memory, when looking back on the past, can fancy him
+present still; and then let the liveliest fancy do its work to the
+utmost, it cannot go beyond the reality; he is present still, for that
+belongs to his almightiness; he is present with us, because he is God;
+and we can fancy him with us, because he is man. This is the way to
+lessen our distance from God and heaven, by bringing Christ continually
+to us on earth: the sky is closed, and shows no sign; all things
+continue as they were from the beginning of the world; evil abounds, and
+therefore the faith of many waxes cold; but Christ was and is amongst
+us; and we need no surer sign than that sign of the prophet
+Jonah--Christ crucified and Christ risen--to make us feel that we may
+live with God daily upon earth, and doing so, shall live with him for an
+eternal life, in a country that cannot pass away.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXIII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+SUNDAY NEXT BEFORE EASTER.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MATTHEW xxvi. 40, 41.
+
+_What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, that ye
+enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the
+flesh is weak_.
+
+
+These words, we cannot doubt, have an application to ourselves, and to
+all Christians, far beyond the particular occasion on which they were
+actually spoken. They are, in fact, the words which Christ addresses
+daily to all of us. Every day, when he sees how often we have gone
+astray from him, he repeats to us, Could ye not watch with me one hour?
+Every day he commands us to watch and pray, that we enter not into
+temptation; every day he reminds us, that however willing may be our
+spirits, yet our flesh is weak; and that through that weakness, sin
+prevails over it, and having triumphed over our flesh, proceeds to
+enslave our spirit also.
+
+And as the words are applicable to us every day, so also are they in a
+particular manner suitable now, when the season of Lent is so nearly
+over, and Easter is so fast approaching. Have we been unable to watch,
+with Christ one hour? Already are the good resolutions with which, we,
+perhaps, began Lent, broken in many instances; and the impressions, if
+any such were made in us, are already weakened. They have been a
+burden, which we have shaken off, because the weakness of our nature
+found it too heavy to bear. Sad it is to think how often this same
+process has been repeated in all time, how often it will be repeated
+to the end.
+
+Let us just review what the course of this process has probably been.
+Now, as the parable of the Sower describes three several sorts of
+persons, who never bring forth, fruit; so in the very same persons,
+there is at different times something of each of the three characters
+there described. We, the very same persons, are at one time hard, at
+another careless, and at another over-busy; although, if compared with,
+other persons, and in the general form of their characters, some are
+hard, and others are careless, and others over-busy; different persons
+having different faults predominantly. But even the hardness of the road
+side, although God forbid that it should be our prevailing temper, yet
+surely it does sometimes exist in too many of us. In common speech, we
+talk of a person showing a hard temper, meaning, generally, a hard
+temper towards other men. We have done wrong, but being angry when we
+are reproved for it, we will not acknowledge it at all, and cheat our
+consciences, by dwelling upon the supposed wrong that has been done to
+us in some over-severity of reproof or punishment, instead of confessing
+and repenting of the original wrong which we ourselves did. But is it
+not true, that a hard temper towards man is very often, even
+consciously, a hard temper towards God? Does it never happen, that if
+conscience presents to us the thought of God, whether as a God of
+judgment to terrify us, or as a God of love to melt us, we repel it with
+impatience, or with sullenness? Does not the heart sometimes almost
+speak aloud the language of blasphemy: Who is God, that I should mind
+him? I do not care what may happen, I will not be softened. Do not all
+sorts of unbelieving thoughts pass rapidly through the mind at such
+moments; first in their less daring form, whispering, as the serpent did
+to Eve, that we shall not surely die; that we shall have time to repent
+by and by; that God will not be so strict a judge as to condemn us for
+such a little; that by some means or other, we shall escape? But then
+they come, also, in their bolder form: What do I or any man know about
+another world, or God's judgments? may it not be all a fiction, so that
+I have, in reality, nothing to fear? In short, under one form or
+another, is it not true, that our hearts have sometimes displayed
+actually hardness towards God; that the thought of God has been actually
+presented to our minds, but that we have turned it aside, and have not
+suffered it to make any impression upon us? And thus, we have not only
+not watched with Christ according to his command, but have actually told
+him that we would not. But this has been in our worst temper, certainly;
+it may not have happened,--I trust that it has not happened often. More
+commonly, I dare say, the fault has been carelessness. We have gone out
+of this place; sacred names have ceased to sound in our ears; sights in
+any degree connected with, holy things have been all withdrawn from us.
+Other sounds and other sights have been before us, and our minds have
+yielded to them altogether. There are minds, indeed, which have no
+spring of thought in themselves; which are quiet, and in truth empty,
+till some outward objects come to engage them. Take them at a moment
+when they are alone, or when there is no very interesting object before
+them, and ask them of what they are thinking. If the answer were truly
+given, such a mind would say, "Of nothing." Certain images may be
+faintly presented to it; it may be that it is not altogether a blank;
+yet it could not name anything distinctly. No form had been vivid enough
+to produce any corresponding resolution in us; we were, as it were, in a
+state between sleeping and waking, with neither thoughts nor dreams
+definite enough to affect us. This state finds exactly all that it
+desires in the presence or the near hope of outward objects; the mind
+lives in its daily pursuits, and companions, and amusements. What
+impressions have been once produced are soon worn away; and in a soil so
+shallow nothing makes a durable impression: everything can, as it were,
+scratch upon its surface, while nothing can strike deeply down within.
+
+Or, again, take the rarer case of those who are over-busy. There are
+minds, undoubtedly, which are as incapable of rest as those of the
+generality of men are prone to it; there are minds which enter keenly
+into everything presented to them by their outward senses, and which,
+when their senses cease to supply them, have an inexhaustible source of
+thought within, which furnishes them with abundant matter of reflection
+or of speculation. To such a mind, doing is most delightful; whether it
+be outward doing, or the mere exercise of thought, either supplies alike
+the consciousness of power. Where, then, is there room for the less
+obtruding things of God? Into that restless water, another and another
+image is for ever stepping down, pushing aside and keeping at a distance
+the sobering reflections of God and of Christ. Alas! the thorns grow so
+vigorously in such a soil, that they altogether choke and kill the seed
+of God's word.
+
+So, then, we are either asleep, or, if we are awake, we are not waking
+with Christ. On one side, in that garden of Gethsemane were the
+disciples sleeping; below, and fast ascending the hill,--not sleeping,
+certainly, but with lanterns and torches and weapons,--were those whose
+waking was for evil. Where were they who watched with Christ one hour
+then,--or where are those who watch with him now?
+
+HOW gently, yet how earnestly, does he call upon us to "watch and pray,
+lest we enter into temptation." To watch and to pray: for of all those
+around him some were sleeping, and none were praying; so that they who
+watched were not watching with him, but against him. In our careless
+state of mind the call to us is to watch; in our over-busy state the
+call to us is to pray; in our hard state there is equal need for both.
+And even in our best moods, when we are not hard, nor careless, nor
+over-busy, when we are at once sober and earnest and gentle, then not
+least does Christ call upon us to watch and to pray, that we may retain
+that than which else no gleam of April sunshine was ever more fleeting;
+that we may perfect that which else is of the earth, earthly, and when
+we lie down in the dust will wither and come to dust also.
+
+Jesus Christ brought life and immortality, it is said, to light through
+the gospel. He brought life and immortality to light:--is this indeed
+true as far as we are concerned? What do we think would be the
+difference in this point between many of us--who will dare say how
+many?--and a school, I will not say of Jewish, but even of Greek or
+Roman or Egyptian boys, eighteen hundred, or twenty-four hundred, or
+three or four thousand years ago? Compare us at our worship with them,
+and then, I grant, the difference would appear enormous. We have no
+images, making the glory of the incorruptible God like to corruptible
+man; we have no vain stream of incense; no shedding of the blood of
+bulls and calves in sacrifice: the hymns which are sung here are not
+vain repetitions or impious fables, which gave no word of answer to
+those questions which it most concerns mankind to know. Here, indeed,
+Jesus Christ is truly set forth, crucified among us; here life and
+immortality are brought to light. But follow us out of this place,--to
+our respective pursuits and amusements, to our social meetings, or our
+times of solitary thought,--and wherein do we seem to see life and
+immortality more brightly revealed than to those heathen schools of old?
+Do we enjoy any worldly good less keenly, or less shrink from any
+worldly evil? Death, which to the heathen view was the end of all
+things, is to us (so our language goes) the gate of life. Do we think of
+it with more hope and less fear than the heathen did? Christ has risen,
+and has reconciled us to God. Is God more to us?--God now revealed to us
+as our reconciled Father--do we oftener think of him, do we love him
+better, than he was thought of and loved in those heathen schools, which
+had Homer's poetry for their only gospel? We talk of light, of
+revelation, of the knowledge of God, while verily and really we are
+walking, not in light, but in darkness: not in knowledge of God, but in
+blindness and hardness of heart.
+
+"The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." How great is the
+loving-kindness of these words,--how gently does Christ bear with the
+weakness of his disciples! But this thought may be the most blessed or
+the most dangerous thought in the world; the most blessed if it touches
+us with love, the most dangerous if it emboldens us in sin. He is full
+of loving-kindness, full of long-suffering; for days, and weeks, and
+months, and years he bears with us: we grieve him, and he entreats; we
+crucify him afresh, yet he will not come down from the cross in power
+and majesty; he endures and spares. So it is for days, and months, and
+years; for some years it may be to most of us,--for many years to some
+of the youngest. There may be some here who may go on grieving Christ,
+and crucifying him afresh, for as much as seventy years; and he will
+bear with them all that time, and his sun will daily shine upon them,
+and his creatures and his word will minister to their pleasure; and he
+himself will say nothing to them but to entreat them to turn and be
+saved. This may last, I say, to some amongst us for seventy years; to
+others it may last fifty; to many of us it may last for forty, or for
+thirty; none of us, perhaps, are so old but that it may last with us
+twenty, or at the least ten. Such is the prospect before us, if we like
+it: not to be depended upon with certainty, it is true, but yet to be
+regarded as probable. But as these ten, or twenty, or fifty, or seventy
+years pass on, Christ will still spare us, but his voice of entreaty
+will be less often heard; the distance between him and us will be
+consciously wider. From one place after another where we once used
+sometimes to see him, he will have departed; year after year some object
+which used once to catch the light from heaven, will have become
+overgrown, and will lie constantly in gloom; year after year the world
+will become to us more entirely devoid of God. If sorrow, or some
+softening joy ever turns our minds towards Christ, we shall be startled
+at perceiving there is something which keeps us from him, that we cannot
+earnestly believe in him; that if we speak of loving him, our hearts,
+which can still love earthly things, feel that the words are but
+mockery. Alas, alas! the increased weakness of our flesh, has destroyed
+all the power of our spirit, and almost all its willingness: it is bound
+with chains which it cannot break, and, indeed, scarcely desires to
+break. Redemption, Salvation, Victory,--what words are these when
+applied to that enslaved, that lost, that utterly overthrown and
+vanquished soul, which sin is leading in triumph now, and which will
+speedily be given over to walk for ever as a captive in the eternal
+triumph of death!
+
+Not one word of what I have said is raised beyond the simplest
+expression of truth; this is our portion if we will not watch with
+Christ. We know how often we have failed to do so, either sleeping in
+carelessness, or being busy and wakeful, but not with him or for him.
+Still he calls us to watch and pray, lest we enter into temptation; to
+mark our lives and actions; to mark them often; to see whether we have
+done well or ill in the month past, or in the week past, or in the day
+past; to consider whether we are better than we were, or worse; whether
+we think Christ loves us better, or worse; whether we are more or less
+cold towards him. I know not what else can be called watching with
+Christ than such a looking into ourselves as we are in his sight. It is
+very hard to be done;--yes, it is hard--harder than anything probably
+which we ever attempted before; and, therefore, we must pray withal for
+his help, whose strength is perfected in our weakness. And if it be so
+hard, and we have need so greatly to pray for God's help, should we not
+all also be anxious to help one another? And knowing, as we do from our
+own consciences, how difficult it is to watch with Christ, and how
+thankful we should be to any one who were to make it easier to us,
+should we not be sure that our neighbour is in like case with ourselves;
+that our help may be as useful to him as we feel that his would be to
+us? This is our bounden duty of love towards one another; what then
+should be said of us if we not only neglect this duty, but do the very
+contrary to it; if we actually help the evil in our brother's heart to
+destroy him more entirely; if we will not watch with Christ ourselves,
+and strive to prevent others from doing so?
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXIV.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+GOOD FRIDAY.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+ROMANS v. 8.
+
+_God commendeth his love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners,
+Christ died for us_.
+
+
+We all remember the story in the Gospel, of the different treatment
+which our Lord met with in the same house, from the Pharisee, who had
+invited him into it, and from the woman who came in and knelt at his
+feet, and kissed them, and bathed them with her tears. Our Lord
+accounted for the difference in these words, "To whom little is
+forgiven, the same loveth little;" which means to speak of the sense or
+feeling in the person's own mind, "He who feels that little is or needs
+to be forgiven him, he also loves little." And this same difference
+which existed toward him when he was present on earth, exists no less
+now, whenever he is brought before our thoughts. The same sort of
+persons who saw him with indifference, think of him also with
+indifference; they who saw him with love, think of him also with love.
+There is no art, no power in the world, which can give an interest to
+words spoken concerning him, for those who feel that little is and that
+little needs to be forgiven them, or to those who never consider about
+their being forgiven at all. To such, this day, with its services, what
+they hear from the Scriptures, or what they hear from men, must be
+alike a matter of indifference: it is not possible that it should be
+otherwise. Yet, God forbid that we should design what we are saying this
+day only for a certain few of our congregation, as if the rest neither
+would nor could be interested in it. So long as any one is careless, he
+cannot, it is true, be interested about the things of Christ; but who
+can say at what moment, through God's grace, he may cease to be
+careless? Is it too much to say, that scarcely a service is performed in
+any congregation in the land, which does not awaken an interest in some
+one who before was indifferent? I do rot say a deep interest, nor a
+lasting one, but an interest; there is a thought, a heeding, an
+inclination of the mind to listen, created probably by the Church
+services in some one or other, every time that they are performed. As we
+never can know in whom this may be so created, as all have great need
+that it should be created, as all are deeply concerned whether they feel
+that they are so or no, so we speak to all alike; and if the language
+does pass over their ears like an unknown or indistinct sound, the fault
+and the loss are theirs; but the Church has borne her witness, and has
+so far done her duty.
+
+But again, for ears not careless, but most interested; for hearts to
+whom Christ is more than all in the world besides; for minds, before
+whom the wisdom of the gospel is ever growing, rising to a loftier
+height, and striking downwards to a depth more profound,--yet without
+end in its height or its depth; is there not, also, a difficulty in
+speaking to them of that great thing which the Church celebrates to-day?
+Is there no difficulty in awakening their interest, or rather how can we
+escape even from wearying or repelling them, when their own affections
+and deep thoughts must find all words of man, whether of themselves or
+others, infinitely unworthy to express either the one or the other? To
+such, then, the words of the preacher may be no more than music without
+any words at all; which does but serve to lead and accompany our own
+thoughts, without distinctly suggesting any thoughts of another to
+interrupt the workings of our own minds. We would speak of Christ's
+death; most good it is for us and for you to think upon it; so far as
+our words suit the current of your own thoughts, use them and listen to
+them; so far as they are a too unworthy expression of what we ought to
+think and feel, follow your own reflections, and let the words neither
+offend you nor distract you.
+
+I would endeavour just to touch, upon some of the purposes for which the
+Scripture tells us that Christ died, and for which his death was
+declared to be the great object of our faith. This done in the simplest
+and fewest words will best show the infinite greatness of the subject;
+and how truly it is, so to speak, the central point of Christianity.
+
+First of all, Christ died as a proper sacrifice for sin; as a sacrifice,
+the virtue of which, is altogether distinct from our knowledge of it, or
+from any effect which it has a tendency to produce on our own minds. We
+are forgiven for his sake; we are acquitted through his death, and
+through faith in his blood. What a view does this open, partially,
+indeed,--for what mortal eye can reach to the end of it?--of the evil of
+sin, and of God's love! of what God's justice required, and of what
+God's love fulfilled! This great sacrifice was made once, but it will
+not be made again; for those who despise this there remains no more
+offering for sin, but their sin abideth with them for ever.
+
+Secondly, Christ's death is revealed to us as a motive capable of
+overcoming all temptations to evil. "How much more shall the blood of
+Christ purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?"
+"He suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us
+to God;" that is, that a consideration of what Christ's death declares
+to us should have power to melt the hardest heart, and to sober the
+lightest: that, when we think of Christ dying, dying for us, and so
+purchasing for us the forgiveness of sins, and everlasting life, such a
+love, and such a prospect of peace with God, and of glory, should in the
+highest degree soften and enkindle us; and from love for him, and
+confidence of hope through the prospect which he has given us, we should
+be able to overcome all temptations. "I am persuaded," says St. Paul,
+"that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor
+powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth,
+nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of
+God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
+
+Thirdly, Christ suffered for as, leaving us an example that we should
+follow his steps. He left us an example of all meekness, and patience,
+and humility; he left us an example of perfect submission to God's will;
+he left us an infinite comfort by letting us feel when we are in any
+trouble, or pain, or affliction, that he was troubled too; that he knew
+pain, and endured affliction. Above all, in that hour which must come to
+all of us, he has left us the greatest of all supports;--for he endured
+to die; and we may enter with less fear into the darkness of the grave,
+for even there Christ has been for our sakes, and arose from out of it a
+conqueror.
+
+Fourthly, Christ died that he might gather together in one the children
+of God that were scattered abroad; he died to purchase to himself his
+universal Church. So it is said in the Scriptures: and on this
+particular purpose of his death, it may not be amiss to dwell, for none
+so needs to be held in remembrance. Many there are, and ever have been,
+who have rested their whole hope towards God on his sacrifice; many who
+have learnt from his cross to overcome sin; from his resurrection to
+overcome the world; many who, amidst all the troubles of life, and in
+the hour of death, have been supported by the thought of his example.
+But where is his universal Church? where the company of God's children
+gathered together into one? where is the city set upon the hill, that
+cannot be hid? where is the visible kingdom of God, where all its people
+are striving under one Divine Head, against sin, the world, and the
+devil? This is the sign which we look for and cannot find; this is the
+fulfilment of the prophecies for which we seem destined to wait in vain.
+
+And what if, on the contrary, that which is called the Church act rather
+the part of the world; if our worst foes be truly those of our own
+household: if they who should have been for our help, be rather an
+occasion of falling: if one of our greatest difficulties in following
+Christ steadily, arise from the total want of encouragement, yea, often
+from the direct opposition of those who are themselves pledged to follow
+him to the death; if that Church, which was to have been the clearest
+sign to the world of the truth of Christ's gospel, be now, in many
+respects, rather a stumbling-block to the adversary and unbeliever, so
+that the name of God is through us blasphemed among the heathen, rather
+than glorified; may we not humble ourselves before God in sorrow and in
+shame? and must we not confess, that through our sin, and the sin of our
+fathers, Christ, in respect of this one purpose of his death, has as yet
+died in vain?
+
+Israel after the flesh, lamenting their Jerusalem which is now not
+theirs, and mourning over their ruined temple, in all their synagogues
+repeat constantly the prayer, O Lord, build thou the walls of Jerusalem!
+O Lord, build! O Lord, build! O Lord, build! is the solemn chorus,
+marking by its repetition the earnestness of their desire. And should
+not this be the prayer of the Israel of God, scattered now as they are
+into their thousand divided and corrupted synagogues, and no token to be
+seen of the pure and universal Church, the living temple of the Spirit
+of God; should not we too, privately and publicly, join in the prayer of
+the earthly Israel, and pray that Christ would build for us the walls of
+our true Jerusalem? For only think what it would be, if Christ's Church
+existed more than in name; consider what it would be if baptism were a
+real bond; if we looked on one another as brethren, redeemed by one
+ransom, pledged to one service; if we bore with one another's
+weaknesses; if we helped one another's endeavours; if each saw and
+heard, in the words and life of his neighbour, an image of Christ, and a
+pledge of the truth of his promises. Consider what it would be, if, with
+no quarrels, with no jealousies, with no unkindness, we sought not every
+man his own, but every man also another's welfare; as true members one
+of another,--of one body, of which Christ is the head. Consider what it
+would be, if our judgments of men and things were like Christ's
+judgments; neither strengthening the heart of the careless and sinful by
+our laxity, nor making sad the heart of God's true servant by our
+uncharitableness; not putting little things in the place of great, nor
+great things in the place of little; not neglecting the unity of the
+Spirit; not stickling for a sameness in the form. Or, if we carry our
+views a little wider; if we look out upon the world at large, and hear
+of rumours of wars, and see the signs of internal disorders, and
+perhaps may think that the clouds are gathering which, herald one of the
+comings of the Son of man to judgment, whether the last of all or not it
+were vain to ask; how blessed would it be, if we could see such an ark
+of Christ's Church as should float visibly upon, the stormy waters;
+gathering within it, in peace and safety, men of various dispositions
+and conditions, and opinions; those who held much of truth, and those
+who had mixed with it much of error: those whom Christ would call clean,
+and those, too, whom some of their brethren call unclean, but whom
+Christ has redeemed, and will save no less than their despisers; all, in
+short, who fled from sin and from the world to Christ, and to the
+company of Christ's people! O if we could but see such an ark preparing
+while God's long-suffering yet withholds the flood! O that all God's
+scattered and divided children would join together in one earnest
+prayer, O Lord, build thou the walls of Jerusalem! O Lord, build! O
+Lord, build! O Lord, build!
+
+Yet, for this, among other purposes of mercy, did the Son of God, as on
+this day, suffer death upon the cross: he died that we might be one in
+him. Let us turn, then, from the thought of the general temple in ruins,
+and let us see whether we cannot, at any rate, within the walls of our
+own little particular congregation, fulfil also this object of Christ's
+death, and be one in him. Let us consider one another, to provoke unto
+love and to good works: we too often consider one another for the very
+contrary purpose, to provoke to contempt or ill-will. True it is, that
+if we look for it we can find much of evil in our brethren, and they can
+find much also in us; and we might become all haters of one another, all
+in some sort deserving to be hated. But where is he who is entitled to
+hate another's evil when he has evil in himself; and when Christ, who
+had none, did not hate the evil of us all, but rather died to save it?
+And is it not true also, that, if we look for it, we can also find in
+every one something to love? something, undoubtedly, even in him who has
+in himself least: but much, infinitely much in all, when we look upon
+them as Christ's redeemed. Not more beautifully than truly has it been
+said, that Christian souls--
+
+     "Though worn and soiled by sinful clay,
+     Are yet, to eyes that see them true,
+     All glistening with baptismal dew."
+
+They have the seal of belonging to Christ; they are his and our
+brethren. And, as his latest command, and his beloved Apostle's also,
+was that we should love one another; so, if we would bring all our
+solemn thoughts of Christ's death to one point, and endeavour to derive
+from it some one particular lesson for our daily lives, I know not that
+any would be more needed or better for us, than that we should
+especially apply the thought of Christ dying on the cross for us to
+soften our angry, and proud, and selfish feelings; to restrain us from
+angry or sneering words; from unkind, offensive, rude, or insulting
+actions; to excite us to gentleness, courtesy, kindness; remembering
+that he, be he who he may, whom we allow ourselves to despise, or to
+dislike, or to annoy, or to neglect, was one so precious in Christ's
+sight, that he laid down his life for his sake, and invites him to be
+for ever with, him and with his Father.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXV.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+EASTER DAY.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JOHN xx. 20.
+
+_Then the disciples went away again unto their own home_.
+
+
+With this verse ends the portion of the scripture chosen for the gospel
+in this morning's service. It finishes the account of the visit of Peter
+and John to the sepulchre; and, therefore, the close of the extract at
+this point is sufficiently natural. Yet the effect of the quiet tone of
+these words, just following the account of the greatest event which
+earth has ever witnessed, is, I think, singularly impressive; the more
+so when we remember that they were written by one of the very persons,
+whose visit had been just described; and that the writer, therefore,
+could tell full well, to how intense an interest there had succeeded
+that solemn calm. They went away from the very sight, if I may so speak,
+of Christ risen, to their own homes. And what thoughts do we suppose
+that they carried with them? Let us endeavour to recall them, for our
+benefit, also, who, like them, are going, as it were, to the ordinary
+tenure of our daily lives from this day's high solemnity.
+
+The disciples went away to their own homes; and there they waited,
+either in Jerusalem or in Galilee, pursuing, as we find from the last
+chapter of St. John, their common occupations, till, after their Lord's
+ascension, power was given them from on high, and the great work of
+their apostleship began. During this period, Christ appeared to them
+several times: he conversed with them, he ate and drank with them: but
+he did not live continually with them, as he had done before his
+crucifixion: he did not take them about with him as before, while he was
+performing the part of the great prophet of the house of Israel. They
+were now at their own homes waiting for his call to more active duties.
+They had seen him dead, and they had seen, him risen, and they were
+receiving into their souls all the lessons of his life and death and
+resurrection, brought before them, and impressed upon them by that Holy
+Spirit, who, according to Christ's promise, was to take of the things
+which are Christ's, and to show them to Christ's disciples.
+
+It is true that there came upon them, after this, an especial visitation
+of the Spirit of power, to fit them for their particular work of
+apostles or messengers to mankind. Having been converted themselves,
+they were to strengthen their brethren. And as this especial visitation
+of the Holy Spirit was given to them only, and to those on whom they
+themselves laid their hands, so none have ever since been called to that
+particular work to which they were called, in any thing of the same
+degree of fulness. What is peculiar to them as apostles is not
+applicable exactly to us; but we are all concerned in what belongs to
+them as Christians: in this respect, their case is ours; and they, when
+at their own homes, and engaged in their own callings, stand in the same
+situation as we all.
+
+We may, however, still make a two-fold division; we may regard the
+apostles going away to their own homes, as a temporary thing, as a mere
+term of preparation for the duties which they were afterwards called to;
+or we may look upon it as complete so far as earth is concerned, since,
+taking them as Christians only and not as apostles, they might have so
+lived on to the end of their lives, having received all those helps
+which were needed for their own personal salvation, and having only to
+use them daily for their soul's benefit. This same distinction we may
+apply to ourselves. We may consider ourselves as going to our own homes
+for a time only, awaiting our call to active life; or we may consider
+ourselves as withdrawing, after every celebration of Christ's
+resurrection, to that round of daily duties which on earth shall never
+alter; and to which all the helps derived from our communion with Christ
+are to be applied, with nothing future, so for as earth is concerned,
+for which we may need them. So then, of whatever age we may be, what is
+said of the apostles in the text may apply to us also: after having
+witnessed, as it were, Christ's resurrection, we go away to our own
+homes. Let us first take that part of the text which is common to us
+all, though not in the same degree--the having been witnesses of
+Christ's resurrection. John and Peter found him not in the sepulchre;
+they found the linen clothes and the napkin lying there, but he was
+gone. And upon this, as John assures us, both for himself and his
+companion, "they believed." They believed, we should observe, when as
+yet they had no more seen Jesus himself after his resurrection, than we
+Lave now. They only knew that he had been dead, and that he was not in
+the sepulchre. And this we know also; we have not seen him, indeed,
+since his resurrection: but we are sure he is not in the sepulchre. We
+are sure that the malice of his enemies did not do its work: we are
+sure, for we are ourselves witnesses of it, that that name, and that
+word, which they hoped would have been destroyed for ever, like the
+names of many, not only of false prophets and deceivers, but even of
+good men and of wise, have not perished, but have brought forth fruit
+more abundantly, from the very cause that was intended to put them out.
+Christ's gospel, assuredly, is a living thing, full of vigour and full
+of power; it has worked mightily for good, and is working; it is so full
+of blessing, it tends so largely towards the happiness that is enjoyed
+upon earth, that we are quite sure it is not lying still buried in
+Christ's sepulchre.
+
+They (the two disciples) then went away believing, because they found
+that he was not in the sepulchre. But Mary Magdalene came and told them,
+that she had seen him risen, and had heard his voice with her ears. What
+she told Peter and John, Peter and John are now telling to us. They tell
+us that they have heard him, have seen him with their eyes, have looked
+upon him, yea, that their hands have handled him. They tell us even more
+than Mary Magdalene told them; for she had not been allowed to touch
+him. We may well trust their testimony, as they trusted hers, being
+quite ready indeed to believe that he was alive, because they had found
+that he was not amongst the dead. And so we, finding that he is not
+amongst the dead, seeing and knowing the fruits of his gospel, the
+living and ever increasing fruits of it, may well believe that its
+author is risen, and that the pains of death were loosed from off him,
+because it was not possible that he should be holden by them.
+
+In this way, we, like the two disciples, may be all said to be witnesses
+of Christ's resurrection. May it not be said still more of those amongst
+us who assembled this morning round Christ's table, to keep alive the
+memory of his death; when we partook of that bread, and drank of that
+cup, of which so many thousands and millions, in every age and in every
+land, have eaten and drunken, all receiving them, with nearly the same
+words,--the body that was given for us, the blood that was shed for
+us,--all, making allowances for human weakness, finding in that
+communion the peace and the strength of God; all alike receiving it with
+penitent hearts, and with faith, and purposes of good for the time to
+come? Did we not then witness that Christ is not perished? that he has
+been ever, and still is, mighty to save? That command given to twelve
+persons, in an obscure chamber in Jerusalem, by one who, the next day,
+was to die as a malefactor, has been, and is obeyed from one end of the
+world to another; and wherever it has been obeyed, there, in proportion
+to the sincerity of the obedience, has been the fulness of the blessing.
+
+But this is now past, as with the two disciples, and we are going again
+to our own homes. There, neither the empty sepulchre nor the risen
+Saviour are present before us, but common scenes and familiar
+occupations, which, in themselves have nothing in them of Christ. So it
+must be; we cannot be always within these walls; we cannot always be
+engaged in public prayer; we cannot always be hearing Christ's word, nor
+partaking of his communion; we must be going about our several works,
+and must be busied in them; some of us in preparation for other work to
+come, others to go on till the end of their lives with this only. May we
+not hope that Christ, and Christ's Spirit, will visit us the while in
+these our daily callings, as he came to his disciples Peter and John,
+when following their business as fishers on the lake of Gennesareth?
+
+How can we get him to visit us? There is one answer--by prayer and by
+watchfulness. By prayer, whether we are in our preparatory state, or our
+fixed one; by prayer, and I think I may add, by praying in our own
+words. Of course, when we pray together, some of us must join in the
+words of others; and it makes little difference, whether those words be
+spoken or read. But when we pray alone, some, perhaps, may still use
+none but prayers made by others, especially the Lord's prayer. We should
+remember, however, that the Lord's prayer was given for this very
+purpose, to teach us how to pray for ourselves. But it does not do this,
+if we use it alone, and still more, if we use it without understanding
+it. If we do understand it, and study it, it will indeed teach us to
+pray; it will show us what we most need in prayer, and what are our
+greatest evils; but surely it may be said, that no man ever learnt this
+lesson well without wishing to practise it; no man ever used the Lord's
+prayer with understanding and with earnestness, without adding to it
+others of his own. And this is not a trifling matter. We know the
+difficulty of attending in prayer; and if we use the words of others
+only, which we must, therefore, repeat from memory, it is perfectly
+possible to say them over without really joining with them in our minds:
+we may say them over to ourselves, and be actually thinking of other
+things the while. And the same thing holds good, of course, even with
+prayers that we have made ourselves, if we accustom ourselves to repeat
+them without alteration; they then become, in fact, the work of another
+than our actual mind, and may be repeated by memory alone. Therefore, it
+seems to be of consequence to vary the words, and even the matter of our
+private prayers, that so we may not deceive ourselves, by repeating
+merely, when we fancy that we are praying. Ten words actually made by
+ourselves at the moment, and not remembered, are a real prayer; for it
+is not hypocrisy that is the most common danger; our temper, when we are
+on our knees, is apt indeed to be careless, but not, I hope and believe,
+deceitful. This, of course, must be well known to a very large
+proportion of us; but, perhaps, there are some to whom it may be
+useful; some to whom the advice may not yet have suggested itself, that
+they should make their own prayers, in part, at least, whenever they
+kneel down to their private devotions.
+
+And this sort of prayer, with God's blessing, is likely to make us
+watchful. We rise in the morning: we say some prayers of our own; we
+hear others read to us; and yet it is possible that we may not have
+really prayed ourselves in either case; we may not have brought
+ourselves truly into the presence of God. Hence our true condition, with
+all its dangers, has not been brought before our minds; the need of
+watchfulness has not been shown to us. But with real prayer of our own
+hearts' making it is different; God is then present to us, and sin and
+righteousness: our dream of carelessness is, for a moment at least,
+broken. No doubt it is but too easy to dream again; yet still an
+opportunity of exerting ourselves to keep awake is given us; we are
+roused to consciousness of our situation; and that, at any rate, renders
+exertion possible. There is no doubt that souls are most commonly lost
+by this continued dreaming, till at length, when seemingly awake (they
+are not so really), they are like men who answer to the call that would
+arouse them, but they answer, in fact, unconsciously. We cannot tell for
+ourselves or others any way by which our souls shall certainly be saved,
+in spite of carelessness; or any way by which, carelessness shall be
+overcome necessarily; all that can be done is, to point out how it may
+be overcome, by what means the soul may be helped in its endeavours; not
+how those endeavours and holy desires may be rendered needless.
+
+Thus, then, we may gain Christ to visit us at our own homes and in our
+common callings, when we are returned to them. And that difference which
+I spoke of as existing between us, that some of us are waiting for
+Christ's call to a higher field of action, while others are engaged in
+that sort of duty which will last their lives, I know not that
+this--though it be often important, and though I am often obliged to
+dwell on it--need enter into our considerations to-day. Rather, perhaps,
+may we overlook this difference, and feel that all of us here
+assembled--those in their state of earliest preparation for after
+duties; those to whom that earliest state is passed away, and who are
+entered into another state, in part preparatory, in part partaking of
+the character of actual life; and those also whose preparation, speaking
+of earth, only, is completed altogether, who must be doing, and whose
+time even of doing is far advanced--that all of us have in truth one
+great call yet before us: and that, with respect to that, we are all, as
+it were, preparing still. And for that great call, common to all of us,
+we need all the same common readiness; and that readiness will be
+effected in us only by the same means,--if now, before it come, Christ
+and Christ's Spirit shall, in our homes and daily callings, be persuaded
+to visit us.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXVI.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+WHITSUNDAY.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+ACTS xix. 2.
+
+_Have you received the Holy Ghost since ye believed_?
+
+
+It appears, by what follows these words, that the question here related
+especially to those gifts of the Holy Ghost which were given, in the
+first age of the church, as a sign of God's power, and a witness that
+the work of the gospel was from God. Yet although this be so, and
+therefore the words, in this particular sense, cannot to any good
+purpose be asked now; yet there is another sense, and that not a lower
+but a far higher one, in which we may ask them, and in which it concerns
+us in the highest degree, what sort of answer we can give to them, I
+say, "what sort of answer;" for I think it is true of all Christians
+that, in a certain measure, they have received the Holy Ghost. Not only
+does the doctrine of our own, and I believe every other, church,
+concerning baptism, show this: but it seems also necessarily to follow,
+from those words of St. Paul, that "No man can say that Jesus is the
+Lord but by the Holy Ghost." And yet the Scripture and common experience
+alike show us, that a man may call Jesus Lord, and yet not be really
+his, nor one who will be owned by Him at the last day. So that what is
+of real importance to us is, the degree of fulness and force with which
+we could give the answer to the words of the text; not simply saying
+that we have received the Holy Ghost, which would be true, but might be
+far from sufficient; but saying that we have received Him and are
+receiving Him more and more, so that our hearts and lives are showing
+the impression of his heavenly seal daily more and more clearly and
+completely.
+
+And this must really have always been the answer which it concerned
+every Christian to be able to make; although it has been in various
+instances, and by very opposite parties, tried to be evaded. It is
+evaded alike by those who set too highly the grace given in baptism, and
+by those who, setting this too low, direct our attention to another
+point in a man's life, which they call his justification or conversion.
+For both alike would give an exaggerated importance to one particular
+moment of our lives, and to the grace then given. Now, the importance of
+particular moments in men's lives differs exceedingly in different
+persons; but yet in all may be exaggerated. I suppose that if ever in
+any man's life a particular point was of immense importance, it was the
+point of his conversion in the case of St. Paul. There were here united
+all that grace which according to one view accompanies baptism
+especially, and all which according to the other view accompanies
+conversion and justification. Here was a point which separated St.
+Paul's later life from his earlier with a broader line of separation
+than can possibly be the ease in general. There can be no doubt that he,
+if ever man did, received at that particular time the Holy Ghost. But
+if, ten or twenty years afterwards, St. Paul had been asked concerning
+what the Holy Ghost had done for him, he would not certainly have
+confined himself in his answer to the grace once given him at his
+conversion and baptism, but would have spoken of that which he had been
+receiving since every hour and every day, carrying forward and
+completing that work of God which had been begun at the time of his
+journey to Damascus. And as he had received more and more grace, so was
+his confidence in his acceptance with God at the last day more and more
+assured. For he writes to the Corinthians, many years after his
+conversion and baptism, that he kept under his body, and was bringing it
+into subjection, lest that by any means, after having preached to
+others, he should be himself a castaway. And some years later still,
+though he does not use so strong an expression as that of becoming a
+castaway, yet he still says, even when writing to the Philippians from
+Rome, that he counted not himself to have apprehended, nor to have
+attained his object fully; but forgetting what was behind, even the
+grace of his conversion and baptism, he pressed on to the things which
+were before, even that continued and increasing grace which was required
+to bring him in safety to his heavenly crown. But if we go on some years
+yet farther, when his labours were ended, and the sure prospect of
+speedy death was before him; when the past grace was everything, and
+what he could expect yet to come was scarcely any other than that
+particular aid which we need in our struggle with the last enemy--death;
+then, his language is free from all uncertainty; then, in the full sense
+of the words, he could say that he had received the Holy Ghost, that his
+spirit had been fully born again for its eternal being, and that there
+only remained the raising up also of his mortal body, to complete that
+new creation of body and soul which Christ's Spirit works in Christ's
+redeemed. "I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I
+have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me my crown of
+righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me at
+that day."
+
+It seems, then, that the great question which we should be anxious to
+be able to answer in the affirmative, is this, "_Are we receiving_ the
+Holy Ghost since we believed?" "Since we believed," whether we choose to
+carry back the date of our first belief to the very time of our baptism,
+when grace was given to us,--we know not to what degree nor how,--yet
+given to us, as being then received into Christ's flock; or whether we
+go back only to that time when we can ourselves remember ourselves to
+have believed, and so can remember that God's grace was given to us.
+Have we been ever since, and are we still, receiving the Holy Ghost? O
+blessed above all blessedness, if we can say that this is true of us! O
+blessed with a blessedness most complete, if we only do not too entirely
+abandon ourselves to enjoy it! Elect of God; holy and beloved; justified
+and sanctified; there is nothing in all the world that could impair or
+destroy such happiness, except we ourselves, in evil hour, believed it
+to be out of the reach of danger.
+
+But if the witness of memory and conscience be less favourable; if we
+can remember long seasons of our lives during which we were not
+receiving the Holy Ghost; long seasons of a cold and hard state, in
+which there was, as it were, neither rain nor dew, nor yet sun to ripen
+what had grown before; but all was so ungenial that no new thing grew;
+and what had grown was withering and almost dying; what shall be said,
+then, and how can the time be made up which was so wasted? But we
+remember, it may be, that this deadly season passed away: the rain fell
+once more, and the tender dew, and the quickening sun shone brightly:
+our spiritual growth began again, and is now going on healthily; we have
+not always been receiving the Holy Ghost since we believed, but we are
+receiving him now. How gracious, then, has God been to us, that he has
+again renewed us unto repentance; that he has shown that we have not, in
+the fullest sense, sinned against the Holy Ghost, seeing that the Holy
+Ghost still abides with us! we grieved him, and tried his
+long-suffering, but he has not abandoned us to our own evil hearts; we
+are receiving him who is the giver of life, and we still live.
+
+But must not we speak of others? is not another case to be supposed
+possible? may there not be some who cannot say with truth that they are
+receiving the holy Ghost now? They received him once; we doubt it not;
+perhaps they were receiving him for some length of time; their early
+childhood was watched by Christian care; their youth and early manhood,
+when it received freshly things of this world, received also, with
+lively thankfulness, the grace of God; they can remember a time when
+they were growing in goodness; when they were being renewed after the
+image of God. But they can remember, also, that this time passed away;
+the grace of early childhood was put out by the temptations of boyhood;
+the grace of youth and opening manhood died away amid the hardness of
+this life's maturity. It is so, I believe, often; that boyhood, which
+is, as it were, ripened childhood, destroys the grace of our earliest
+years; that again, when youth offers us a second beginning of life, we
+are again impressed with good; but that ripened youth, which is manhood,
+brings with it again the reason of hardness, and again our spiritual
+growth, is destroyed. We can remember, I am supposing, that this fatal
+change did take place; but can we date it to any particular act, or
+month, or day, or hour? We can do so most rarely: in this respect the
+seed of death can even less be traced to its beginning than the seed of
+life. And yet there _was_ a beginning, only we do not remember it. And
+why do we not remember it? Because the real beginning was in some act
+which seemed of so little consequence that it made no impression; in the
+altering some habit which we judged to be a mere trifle; in the
+indulging some temper which even at the time we hardly noticed. Some
+such little thing,--little in our view of it,--made the fatal turn; we
+received the grace of God less and less: we heeded not the change for a
+season; and when it was so marked that we could not but heed it, then we
+had ceased to regard it; and so it was that the spring of our life was
+dried up: and it is of no more avail to our present and future state,
+that we once received grace, than the rain of last winter will be
+sufficient to ripen the summer's harvest, if from this time forward we
+have nothing but drought and cold.
+
+Some few, again, there may be, who, within their own recollection, could
+not say that they have received the Holy Ghost: persons who have lived
+among careless friends, to whom the way of life has never been steadily
+pointed out; while the way of death, with all its manifold paths,
+meeting at last in one, has been continually before them. Shall we say
+that these, because they have been baptized, are therefore guilty of
+having rejected grace given? that this sin is aggravated, because a
+mercy was offered them once of which they were unconscious? We would not
+say this; but we would say that it is impossible but that they must have
+received the Holy Ghost within their memory; it is impossible but that
+conscience must have sometimes spoken, and that they must have sometimes
+been enabled to obey it; it is impossible but that they must have had
+some notions of sin, and some desires to struggle against it; and so far
+as they ever felt that desire, it was the work of God's Holy Spirit.
+Man cannot dare to say how great the amount of their guilt may be; but
+guilt there certainly is; they have grieved the Holy Spirit; and, though
+we dare not say that they have utterly blasphemed him, yet they have a
+long hardness to overcome, and every hour of delayed turning to God
+increases it: it may be possible still to overcome it, but meanwhile it
+is not overcome; they are not receiving the Holy Spirit; they are not
+being renewed into the likeness of Christ, without which no man can
+see God.
+
+Here, then, are the four cases, one of which must belong to every one of
+us here assembled. Either we have been always and still are receiving
+the Holy Ghost; or we can remember when we were not, but yet are
+receiving him now; or we can remember when we were, but yet now are not;
+or we cannot remember to have received him ever, nor are we yet
+receiving him. I cannot say which of the last two states is the most
+dreadful, nor scarcely which of the first two states is the most
+blessed. But yet as even those happy states admit not of
+over-confidence, so neither do the last two most unhappy states oblige
+us to despair. Not to despair; but they do urge us to every degree of
+fear less than despair. There is far more danger of our not fearing
+enough than of our being driven to despair. There is far more danger of
+your looking on the season of youth, of our looking on to old age; you
+trusting to the second freshness and tenderness of the first,--we to the
+calmness and necessary reflection of the last. There is far more danger
+of our thus hardening ourselves beyond recall; there is not only the
+danger, but there is the sin, the greatest sin, I suppose, of which the
+human mind is capable, that of deliberately choosing evil for the
+present rather than good, calculating that, by and by, we shall choose
+good rather than evil. I believe, that it is impossible to conceive of
+any state of mind more sinful than one which should so feel and so
+choose; and this is the state which we incur, and which we persist in
+whenever we put off the thought of repentance. Now, then, it only
+remains, that we apply this each to ourselves; I say all of us apply it,
+the young and the old alike; for there is not one here so young as not
+to have cause to apply it; there is not one of us who would not, I am
+sure, be a different person from what he now is, if he were to ask
+himself steadily every day, Have I been and am I receiving the Holy
+Ghost since I believed?
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXVII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+TRINITY SUNDAY.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JOHN iii. 9.
+
+_How can these things be_?
+
+
+This is the second question put by Nicodemus to our Lord with regard to
+the truths which Jesus was declaring to him. The first was, "How can a
+man be born when he is old?" which was said upon our Lord's telling him
+that, "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."
+Now, it will be observed, that these two questions are treated by our
+Lord in a different manner: to the first he, in fact, gives an answer;
+that is, he removes by his answer that difficulty in Nicodemus's mind
+which led to the question; but to the second he gives no answer, and
+leaves Nicodemus--and with Nicodemus, us all also--exactly in the same
+ignorance as he found him at the beginning.
+
+Now, is there any difference in the nature of these two questions, which
+led our Lord to treat them so differently? We might suppose beforehand
+that there would be; and when we come to examine them, so we shall find
+it. The difficulty in the first question rendered true faith impossible,
+and, therefore, our Lord removed it; the difficulty in the second
+question did not properly interfere with faith at all, but might,
+through man's fault, be a temptation to him to refuse to believe. And
+as this, like other temptations, must be overcome by us, and not taken
+away from our path before we encounter it, so our Lord did not think
+proper to remove it or to lessen it.
+
+We must now unfold this difference more clearly. When Christ said,
+"Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God,"
+Nicodemus could not possibly believe what our Lord said, because he did
+not understand his meaning. He did not know what he meant by "a man's
+being born again," and, therefore, he could not believe, as he did not
+know what he was to believe. Words which we do not understand, are like
+words spoken in an unknown language; we can neither believe them nor
+disbelieve them, because we do not know what they say. For instance, I
+repeat these words, [Greek: tous pantas haemas phanerothaenai dei
+emprosaen tou baematos tou Christou.] Now, if I were to ask, Do you
+believe these words? is it not manifest that all of you who know Greek
+enough, to understand them may also believe them; but of those who do
+not know Greek, not a single person can yet believe them? They are as
+yet words spoken as to the air. But when I add, that these words mean,
+"We must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ;" now we can all
+believe them because we can all understand them.
+
+It is, then, perfectly impossible for any man to believe a statement
+except in proportion as he understands its meaning. And, therefore, our
+Lord explained what he meant to Nicodemus, and told him that, by being
+born again, he did not mean the natural birth of the body; but a birth
+caused by the Spirit, and therefore itself a birth of a spirit: for, as
+that which is born from a body is itself also a body, so that which is
+born of a spirit is itself also a spirit. So that Christ's words now are
+seen to have this meaning,--No man can enter into the kingdom of God
+except God's Spirit creates in him a spirit or mind like unto himself,
+and like unto Christ, and like unto the Father. Nicodemus, then, could
+now understand what was meant, and might have believed it. But he asks
+rather another question, "How can these things be?" How can God's Spirit
+create within me a spirit like himself, while I continue a man as
+before? Many persons since have asked similar questions; but to none of
+them is an answer given. How God's Spirit works within us I cannot tell;
+but if we take the appointed means of procuring his aid, we shall surely
+find that he has worked and does work in us to life eternal.
+
+We must, then, in order to believe, understand what it is that is told
+us; but it is by no means necessary that we should understand how it is
+to happen. It is not necessary, and in a thousand instances we do not
+know. "If we take poison, we shall die:" there is a statement which we
+can understand, and therefore believe. But do we understand how it is
+that poison kills us? Does every one here know how poisons act upon the
+human frame, and what is the different operation of different
+poisons,--how laudanum kills, for instance, and how arsenic? Surely
+there are very few of us, at most, who do understand this: and yet would
+it not be exceedingly unreasonable to refuse to believe that poison will
+kill us, because we do not understand the manner _how_?
+
+Thus far, I think, the question is perfectly plain, so soon as it is
+once laid before us. But the real point of perplexity is to be found a
+step further. In almost all propositions there is something about the
+terms which we do understand, and something which we do not. For
+instance, let me say these few words:--"A frigate was lost amidst the
+breakers." These words would be understood in a certain degree, by all
+who hear me: and so far as all understand them, all can believe them.
+All would understand that a ship had sunk in the water, or been dashed
+to pieces; that it would be useful no more for the purposes for which it
+had been made. But what is meant by the words "frigate" and "breakers"
+all would not understand, and many would understand very differently:
+that is to say, those who had happened to have known most about the sea
+and sea affairs would understand most about them, while those who knew
+less would understand less; but probably none of us would understand
+their meaning so fully, or would have so distinct and lively an image of
+the things, as would be enjoyed by an actual seaman; and even amongst
+seamen themselves, there would again be different degrees of
+understanding, according to their different degrees of experience, or
+knowledge of ships, or powers of mind.
+
+I have taken the instance at random, and any other proposition might
+have served my purpose as well. But men do not speak to one another at
+random; when they say anything to their neighbour, they mean it to
+produce on his mind a certain effect. Suppose that we were living near
+the sea-coast, and any one were suddenly to come in, and to utter the
+words which I have taken as my example: should we not know that what the
+man meant by these words was, that there was a danger at hand for which
+our help was needed? It matters not that we have no distinct ideas of
+the terms "frigate" or "breakers;" we understand enough for our belief
+and practice, and we should hasten to the sea-shore accordingly. Or
+suppose that the same words were told us of a frigate in which we had
+some near relation: should we not see at once that what we were meant to
+understand and to believe in the words was, that we had lost a relation?
+That is the truth with which we are concerned; and this we can
+understand and feel, although we may be able to understand nothing more
+of the words in which that truth is conveyed to us. Now, in like manner,
+in whatever God says to us there is a purpose: it is intended to produce
+on our minds a certain impression, and so far it must be understood. But
+when God speaks to us of heavenly things, the terms employed can only be
+understood in part, and so far as God's purpose with regard to our minds
+reaches; but there must be a great deal in them which we can no more
+understand than one who had never seen a ship, or a picture of one,
+could understand the word "frigate." Our business is to consider what
+impression or what actions the words are intended to produce in us. Up
+to this point we can and must understand them: beyond this they may be
+wholly above the reach of our faculties, and we can form of them no
+ideas at all.
+
+It is clear that this will be the case most especially whenever God
+reveals to us anything concerning himself. Take these few words, for
+example, "God is a spirit;" take them as a mere abstract truth, and how
+little can we understand about them! Who will dare to say that he
+understands all that is contained in the words "God" and "spirit?" We
+might weary ourselves for ever in attempting so to search out either.
+But God said these words to us: and the point is, What impression did he
+mean them to have upon us? how far can we understand them? This he has
+not by any means left doubtful, for it follows immediately, "They who
+worship him should worship Him in spirit and in truth." For this end the
+words were spoken, and thus far they are clear to us. God lives not on
+Mount Gerizim or at Jerusalem: but in every place he hears the prayers
+of the sincere and contrite heart, in no place will he regard the
+offerings of the proud and evil.
+
+Or again, "God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son,
+to the end that all who believe in him should not perish, but have
+eternal life." Here are words in themselves, as abstract truths,
+perfectly overwhelming; "God," "God's only-begotten Son," "Eternity."
+Who shall understand these things, when it is said, that "none knoweth
+the Son, save the Father; that none knoweth the Father, save the Son?"
+But did God tell us the words for nothing? can we understand nothing
+from them? believe nothing? feel nothing? Nay, they were spoken that we
+might both understand, and believe, and feel. How must He love us, who
+gives for us his only-begotten Son! how surely may we believe in Him who
+is an only-begotten Son to his Father,--so equal in nature, so entire in
+union!--What must that happiness be, which reaches beyond our powers of
+counting! Would we go further?--then the veil is drawn before us; other
+truths there are, no doubt, contained in the words; truths which the
+angels might desire to look into; truths which even they may be unable
+to understand. But these are the secret things which belong unto our
+God; the things which are revealed they are what belong to us and to our
+children, that we may understand, and believe, and do them.
+
+Again, "the Comforter, whom Christ will send unto us from the Father,
+even the Spirit of Truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall
+testify of Christ." What words are here! "The Spirit of Truth," "the
+Spirit proceeding from the Father;" the Spirit "whom Christ will send,"
+and "send from the Father." Can any created being understand, to the
+full, such "heavenly things" as these? But would Christ have uttered to
+his disciples mere unintelligible words, which could tell them nothing,
+and excite in them no feeling but mere wonder? Not so; but the words
+told them that Christ was not to be lost to them after he had left them
+on earth; that every gift of God was his: that even that Spirit of God,
+in which is contained all the fulness of the Godhead, is the Spirit of
+Christ also; that that mighty power which should work in them so
+abundantly, was of no other or lower origin than God himself; as
+entirely God, as the spirit of man is man. But can we therefore
+understand the Spirit of God, or conceive of him? How should we, when we
+cannot understand our own? This, and this only, we understand and
+believe, that without him our spirits cannot be quickened; that unless
+we pray daily for his aid, and listen to his calls within us, our spirit
+will never be created after his image, and we cannot enter into the
+kingdom of God.
+
+It is thus, and thus only, that the revelations of God's word are beyond
+our understandings: that in them, beings and things are spoken of,
+which, taken generally, and in themselves, we should in vain endeavour
+to comprehend. But what God means us to know, or feel, or do, respecting
+them, that we can understand; and beyond this we have no concern. It is,
+in fact, a contradiction to speak of revealing what is unintelligible;
+for so far as it is a revealed truth it is intelligible; so far as it is
+unintelligible, it is not revealed. But though a thing revealed must be
+intelligible in itself, yet it by no means follows that we can
+understand _how_ it happens. When we are told that the dead shall rise
+again, we can understand quite well what is meant; that we beings who
+feel happiness and misery, shall feel them again, either the one or the
+other, after we seemingly have done with them for ever in the grave. But
+"How are the dead raised up, and with what body do they come?" are
+questions to which, whether asked scoffingly or sincerely, we can give
+no answers; here our understanding fails, and here the truth is not
+revealed to us.
+
+How, then, has Christianity no mysteries? In one sense, blessed be God
+for it, it has many. Using mysteries in St. Paul's sense of great
+revelations of things which were and must be unknown to all, except God
+had revealed them: then, indeed, they are many; the pillar and ground of
+truth, great without controversy, and full of salvation. But take
+mysteries in our more common sense of the word,--as things which are
+revealed to none, and can be understood by none,--then it is true that
+Christianity leaves many such in existence; that many such she has done
+away; that none has she created. She leaves many mysteries with respect
+to God, and with respect to ourselves; God is still incomprehensible;
+life and death have many things in them beyond our questioning; we may
+still look around us, above us, and within us, and wonder, and be
+ignorant. But if she still leaves the veil drawn over much in heaven and
+in earth, yet from how much has she removed it! Life and death are still
+in many respects dark; but she has brought to light immortality. God is
+still in himself incomprehensible; but all his glory, and all his
+perfections, are revealed to us in his only-begotten Son Christ Jesus.
+God's Spirit who can search out in his own proper essence? yet
+Christianity has taught us how we may have him to dwell with us for
+ever, and taste the fulness of his blessings. Yea, thanks be to God for
+the great Christian mystery which we this day celebrate; that he has
+revealed himself to us as our Saviour and our Comforter; that he has
+revealed to us his infinite love, in that he has given us his
+only-begotten Son to die for us, and his own Eternal Spirit to make our
+hearts his temple.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXVIII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+EXODUS iii. 6.
+
+_And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God_.
+
+
+LUKE xxiii. 30.
+
+_Then shall they begin to say to the mountains. Fall on us; and to the
+hills, Cover us_.
+
+
+These two passages occur, the one in the first lesson of this morning's
+service, the other in the second. One or other of them must have been,
+or must be, the case of you, of me, of every soul of man that lives or
+has lived since the world began. There must be a time in the existence
+of every human being when he will fear God. But the great, the infinite
+difference is, whether we fear him at the beginning of our relations to
+him, or at the end.
+
+The fear of Moses was felt at the beginning of his knowledge of God.
+When God revealed himself to him at the bush, it was, so far as we are
+told, the first time that Moses learnt to know him. The fear of those
+who say to the mountains, "Fall on us," is felt at the very end of their
+knowledge of God; for to those who are punished with everlasting
+destruction from the presence of the Lord, God is not. So that the two
+cases in the text are exact instances of the difference of which I
+spoke, in the most extreme degree. Moses, the greatest of the prophets,
+fears God at first; those who are cast into hell, fear him at last.
+
+The appearance of God, as described in this passage of Scripture, is an
+image also of his dealings with us at the beginning of our course, when
+we fear him with a saving fear. "The bush burned with fire, but the bush
+was not consumed." God shows his terrors, but he does not, as yet,
+destroy with them. It is the very opposite to this at last, for then he
+is expressly said to be a consuming fire.
+
+Moses turned aside to see this great sight, why the bush was not burnt.
+That sight is the very same which the world has been offering for so
+many hundreds of years: God's terrors are around it, but, as yet, it is
+not consumed, because he wills that we should fear him before it is
+too late.
+
+There is, indeed, this great difference;--that the signs of God's
+presence do not now force themselves upon our eyes; so that we may, if
+we choose, walk on our own way, without turning aside to see and observe
+them. And thus we do not see God, and do not, therefore, hide our faces
+for fear of him, but go on, and feel no fear, till the time when we
+cannot help seeing him. And it may be, that this time will never come
+till our life, and with it our space of trial, is gone for ever.
+
+Here, then, is our state, that God will manifest himself no more to us
+in such a way as that we cannot help seeing him. The burning bush will
+be no more given us as a sign; Christ will no more manifest himself unto
+the world. And yet, unless we do see him, unless we learn to fear him
+while he is yet an unconsuming fire, unless we know that he is near, and
+that the place whereon we stand is holy ground, we shall most certainly
+see him when he will be a consuming fire, and when we shall join in
+crying to the mountains, to fall on us, and to the hills, to cover us.
+
+Every person who thinks at all, must, I am sure, be satisfied, that our
+great want, the great need of our condition, is this one thing--to
+realize to ourselves the presence of God. It is a want not at all
+peculiar to the young. Thoughtfulness, in one sense, is indeed likely to
+come with advancing years: we are more apt to think at forty than at
+fifteen; but it by no means follows that we are more apt to think about
+God. In this matter we are nearly at a level at all times of our life:
+it is with all of us our one great want, to bring the idea of God, with
+a living and abiding power, home to our minds.
+
+This is illustrated by a wish ascribed to a great and good man--Johnson,
+and which has been noticed with a sneer by unbelievers, a wish that he
+might see a spirit from the other world, to testify to him of the truth
+of the resurrection. This has been sneered at, as if it were a
+confession of the unsatisfactory nature of the evidence which we
+actually possess: but, in truth, it is a confession only of the weakness
+which clings to us all, that things unseen, which our reason only
+assures us to be real, are continually overpowered by things affecting
+our senses; and, therefore, it was a natural wish that sight might, in a
+manner, come to the aid of reason; that the eye might see, and the ear
+might hear, a form and words which belonged to another world. And this
+wish might arise (I do not say wisely, or that his deliberate judgment
+would sanction it, but it might arise) in the breast of a good man, and
+one who would be willing to lay down his life in proof of his belief in
+Christ's promises. It might arise, not because he felt any doubt, when
+his mind turned calmly to the subject; not because he was hesitating
+what should be the main principle of his life; but because his
+experience had told him, that there are many times in the life of man
+when the mind does not fully exert itself; when habit and impressions
+rule us, in a manner, in its stead. And when so many of our impressions
+must be earthly, and as our impressions colour our habits, is it not
+natural (I do not say wise, but is it not natural) to desire some one
+forcible unearthly impression, which might, on the other side, colour
+our habits, and so influence us at those times when the mind, almost by
+the necessity of our condition, cannot directly interpose its own
+deliberate decision as our authority?
+
+No doubt the wish to which I have been alluding is not one which our
+reason would sanction; but it expresses in a very lively and striking
+manner a want which is most true and real, although it proposes an
+impossible remedy. But the question cannot but occur to us, Can it be
+that our heavenly Father, who knows whereof we are made, should have
+intended us to live wholly by faith in this world? That is, Can it have
+been his will that all visible signs of himself should be withdrawn from
+us; and that we should be left only with the record and the evidence of
+his mighty works done in our behalf in past times; and with that other
+evidence of his wisdom and power which is afforded by the wonders of
+his creation?
+
+We look into the Scriptures and we learn that such was not his will. We
+were to live by faith, indeed, with, respect to the unseen world, there
+the sign given was to be for ever only the sign of Christ's
+resurrection. But yet it was not designed that the evidence of Christ's
+having redeemed us should be sought for only in the records of the past;
+he purposed that there should be a living record, a record that might
+speak to our senses as well as to our reason; that should continually
+present us with impressions of the reality of Christ's salvation; and so
+might work upon the habits of our life, as insensibly as the air we
+breathe. This living witness, which should last till Christ came again,
+was to be no other than his own body instinct with his own Spirit--his
+people, the temple of the Holy Ghost, his holy universal Church.
+
+If we consider for a moment, this would entirely meet the want of which
+I have been speaking. It is possible, certainly, to look upon the face
+of nature without being reminded of God; yet it is surely true, that in
+the outward creation, in the order of the seasons, the laws of the
+heavenly bodies, the wonderful wisdom and goodness displayed in the
+constitution of every living thing in its order, there is a tendency at
+least to impress us with, the thought of God, if nothing else obstructed
+it. But there is a constant obstruction in the state of man. Looking at
+men, hearing them, considering them, it is not only possible not to be
+reminded of God; but their very tendency is to exclude him from our
+minds, because the moral workmanship which is so predominant in them has
+assuredly not had God for its author. We all in our dealings with one
+another, lead each other away from God. We present to each other's view
+what seems to be a complete world of our own, in which God is not. We
+see a beginning, a middle, and an end; we see faculties for acquiring
+knowledge, and for receiving enjoyment; and earth furnishes knowledge to
+the one and enjoyment to the other. We see desires, and we see the
+objects to which they are limited; we see that death removes men from
+all these objects, and consistently with this, we observe, that death is
+generally regarded as the greatest of all evils. Man's witness, then, as
+far as it goes, is against the reality of God and of eternity. His life,
+his language, his desires, his understanding appear, when we look over
+the world, to refer to no being higher than himself, to no other state
+of things than that of which sight testifies.
+
+Now, Christ's Church, the living temple of the Holy Ghost, puts in the
+place of this natural and corrupt man, whose witness is against God,
+another sort of man, redeemed and regenerate, whose whole being breathes
+a perpetual witness of God. Consider, again, what we should see in such
+a Church. We should see a beginning, a middle, but the end is not yet
+visible; we should see, besides the faculties for knowledge and
+enjoyment which were receiving their gratification daily, other
+faculties of both kinds, whose gratification was as yet withheld; we
+should see desires not limited to any object now visible or attainable.
+We should see death looked to as the gate by which these hitherto
+unobtained objects were to be sought for; and we should hear it spoken
+of, not as the greatest of evils, but as an event solemn, indeed, and
+painful to nature, but full of blessing and of happiness. We should see
+love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness,
+temperance; a constitution of nature as manifestly proclaiming its
+author to be the God of all holiness and loving-kindness, as the
+wonderful structure of our eyes or hands declares them to be the work of
+the God of all wisdom and power. We should thus see in all our
+fellow-men, not only as much, but far more than in the constitution of
+the lower animals, or of the plants, or of the heavenly bodies, a
+witness of God and of eternity. Their whole lives would be a witness;
+their whole conversation would be a witness; their outward and more
+peculiar acts of worship would then bear their part in harmony with all
+the rest. Every day would the voices of the Church be heard in its
+services of prayer and thanksgiving; every day would its members renew
+their pledges of faithfulness to Christ, and to one another, upon
+partaking together the memorials of his sacrifice.
+
+What could we desire more than such a living witness as this? What sign
+in the sky, what momentary appearance of a spirit from the unseen world,
+could so impress us with the reality of God, as this daily worshipping
+in his living temple; this daily sight, of more than the Shechinah of
+old, even of his most Holy Spirit, diffusing on every side light and
+blessing? And what is now become of this witness? can names, and forms,
+and ordinances, supply its place? can our unfrequent worship, our most
+seldom communion, impress on us an image of men living altogether in the
+presence of God, and in communion with Christ? But before we dwell on
+this, we may, while considering the design of the true Church of Christ,
+well understand how such excellent things should be spoken of it, and
+how it should have been introduced into the Creed itself, following
+immediately after the mention of the Holy Ghost. That holy universal
+Church was to be the abiding witness of Christ's love and of Christ's
+promises; not in its outward forms only, for they by themselves are not
+a living witness; they cannot meet our want--to have God and heavenly
+things made real to us; but in its whole spirit, by which renewed man
+was to bear as visibly the image of God, as corrupted man had lost it.
+This was the sure sign that Christ had appointed to abide until his
+coming again; this sign, as striking as the burning bush, would compel
+us to observe; would make us sure that the place whereon we stand is
+holy ground.
+
+Then follows the question: With this sign lost in its most essential
+points, how can we supply its place? and how can we best avail ourselves
+of those parts of it which still remain? and how can we each endeavour
+to build up a partial and most imperfect imitation of it, which may
+yet, in some sort, serve to supply our great want, and remind us daily
+of God? This opens a wide field for thought, to those who are willing to
+follow it; but much of it belongs to other occasions rather than this:
+the practical part of it,--the means of most imperfectly supplying the
+want of God's own appointed sign, a true and living universal Church,
+shall be the subject of my next Lecture.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXIX.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PSALM cxxxvii. 4.
+
+_How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land_?
+
+
+This was said by the exiles of Jerusalem, when they were in the land of
+their captivity in Babylon. There is no reason to suppose that their
+condition was one of bondage, as it had been in Egypt: the nations
+removed by conquest, under the Persian kings, from their own country to
+another land, were no otherwise ill-treated; they had new homes given
+them in which they lived unmolested; only they were torn away from their
+own land, and were as sojourners in a land of strangers. But the
+peculiar evil of this state was, that they were torn away from the
+proper seat of their worship. The Jew in Babylon might have his own
+home, and his own land to cultivate, as he had in Judaea; but nothing
+could replace to him the loss of the temple at Jerusalem: there alone
+could the morning and evening sacrifices be offered; there alone could
+the sin-offering for the people be duly made. Banished from the temple,
+therefore, he was deprived also of the most solemn part of his religion;
+he was, as it were, exiled from God; and the worship of God, as it was
+now left to him,--that is, the offering up of prayers and praises,--was
+almost painful to him, as it reminded him so forcibly of his changed
+condition.
+
+Such also, in some respects, was to be the state of the Christian
+Church after our Lord's ascension. The only acceptable sacrifice was now
+that of their great High Priest interceding for them in the presence of
+the Father: heaven was their temple, and they were far removed from it
+upon earth: they, too, like the Jews in Babylon, were a little society
+by themselves living in the midst of strangers. "Our citizenship," says
+St. Paul to the Philippians, "is in heaven:" here they were not
+citizens, but sojourners. Why, then, should not the early Christians
+have joined altogether in the feeling of the Jews at Babylon? why should
+not they, too, have felt and said, "How can we sing the Lord's song in a
+strange land?"
+
+The answer is contained in what I said last Sunday; because Christ had
+not left them comfortless or forsaken, but was come again to them by his
+Holy Spirit; because God was dwelling in the midst of them; because they
+were not exiles from the temple of God, but were themselves become God's
+temple; because through the virtue of the one offering for sin once
+made, but for ever presented before God by their High Priest in heaven,
+they, in God's temple on earth, were presenting also their daily and
+acceptable sacrifice, the sacrifice of themselves; because also, though
+as yet they were a small society in a land of strangers, yet the stone
+formed without hands was to become a mighty mountain, and cover the
+whole earth: what was now the land of strangers was to become theirs;
+the whole earth should be full of the knowledge of the Lord; the
+kingdoms of the world were to become his kingdom; and thus earth,
+redeemed from the curse of sin, was again to be so blessed that God's
+servants living upon it should find it no place of exile.
+
+But if this, in its reality, does not now exist; if, although God's
+temple be on earth, the appointed sacrifice in it is not offered, the
+living sacrifice of ourselves; if the society has, by spreading, become
+weak, and the kingdoms of the earth are Christ's kingdoms in name alone;
+are we, then, come back once more to the condition of the Jews in
+Babylon? are we exiles from God, living amongst strangers? and must we,
+too, say, with the prophet, "How can we sing the Lord's song in a
+strange land?"
+
+This was the question which I proposed to answer: What can we do to make
+our condition unlike that of exiles from God: to restore that true sign
+of his presence amongst us, the living fire of his Holy Spirit pervading
+every part of his temple? I mean, what can we do as individuals? for the
+question in any other sense is not to be asked or answered here. But we,
+each of us, must have felt, at some time or other, our distance from
+God. Put the idea in what form or what words we will, we must--every one
+of us who has ever thought seriously at all--we must regret that there
+is not a stronger and more abiding influence over us, to keep us from
+evil, and to turn us to good.
+
+Now, the vestiges of Christ's church left among us are chiefly these:
+our prayers together, whether in our families or in this place; our
+reading of the Scriptures together; our communion, rare as it is, in the
+memorials of the body and blood of Christ our Saviour. These are the
+vestiges of that which was designed to be with us always, and in every
+part of our lives, the holy temple of God, his living church; but which
+now presents itself to us only at particular times, and places, and
+actions; in our worship and in our joint reading of the Scriptures, and
+in our communion.
+
+It will be understood at once why I have not spoken here of prayer and
+reading the Scriptures by ourselves alone. Most necessary as these are
+to us, yet they do not belong to the helps ministered to us by the
+church; they belong to us each as individuals, and in these respects we
+must be in the same state everywhere: these were enjoyed by the Jews
+even in their exile in Babylon. But the church acts upon us through one
+another, and therefore the vestiges of the church can only be sought for
+in what we do, not alone, but together. I, therefore, noticed only that
+prayer, and that reading of the Scriptures, in which many of us took
+part in common.
+
+Such common prayer takes place amongst us every morning and evening, as
+well as on Sundays within these walls. Whenever we meet on those
+occasions, we meet as Christ's church. Now, conceive how the effect of
+such meeting depends on the conduct of each of us. It is not necessary
+to notice behaviour openly profane and disorderly: this does not occur
+amongst us. We see, however, that if it did occur in any meeting for the
+purposes of religious worship, such a meeting would do us harm rather
+than good: its witness to us would not be in favour of God, but against
+him. But take another case: when we are assembled for prayers, suppose
+our behaviour, without being disorderly, was yet so manifestly
+indifferent as to be really indecent; that is, suppose every countenance
+showed such manifest signs of weariness, and impatience, and want of
+interest in what was going forward, that it was evident there was no
+general sympathy with any feeling of devotion. Would not the effect here
+also be injurious? would not such a meeting also shock and check our
+approaches towards God? would it not rather convince us that God was
+really far distant from us, instead of showing that he was in the
+midst of us?
+
+Ascend one step higher. Our behaviour is neither disorderly, nor
+manifestly indifferent: it is decent, serious, respectful. What is the
+effect in this case? Not absolutely unfavourable certainly; but yet far
+from being much help towards good. We bear our witness that we are
+engaged in a matter that should be treated with reverence: this is very
+right; but do we more than this? Do we show that we are engaged in a
+matter that commands our interest also, as well as our respect? If not,
+our witness is not the witness of Christ's church: it does not go to
+declare that God is in us of a truth.
+
+Let us go on one step more. We meet together to pray: we are orderly, we
+are quiet, we are serious; but the countenance shows that we are
+something more than these. There is on it the expression, never to be
+mistaken, of real interest. Remember I am speaking of meetings for
+prayer, where the words are perfectly familiar to us, and where the
+interest therefore cannot be the mere interest of novelty. Say, then,
+that our countenances express interest: I do not mean strong and excited
+feeling; but interest, which may be very real yet very quiet also. We
+look as if we thought of what we were engaged in, of what we are
+ourselves, and of what God is to us. We are joined in one common feeling
+of thankfulness to him for mercies past, of wishing for his help and
+love for the time to come. Now, think what would be the effect of such a
+meeting. Would it not be, clearly, positively good! Would not every
+individual's earnestness be confirmed by the manifest earnestness of
+others? Would not his own sense of God's reality be rendered stronger,
+by seeing that others felt it just as he did? Then, here would be the
+church of God rendering her appointed witness: she would be giving her
+sure sign that God is not far from any one of us.
+
+Now, then, observe what we may lose or gain by our different behaviour,
+whenever we meet together in prayer; what we lose, nay, what positive
+mischief we do, by any visible impatience or indifference; what we
+should gain by really joining in our hearts in the meaning of what was
+uttered. It is a solemn thing for the consciences of us all; but surely
+it must be true, that, whenever we are careless or indifferent in our
+public prayers, we are actually injuring our neighbours, and are, so far
+as in us lies, destroying the witness which the church of Christ should
+render to the truth of God her Saviour.
+
+I do not know that there is anything more impressive than the sight of a
+congregation evidently in earnest in the service in which they are
+engaged. We then feel how different is our own lonely prayer from the
+united voice of many hearts; each cheering, strengthening, enkindling
+the other. We then consider one another to provoke unto love and good
+works. How different are the feelings with which we regard a number of
+persons met for any common purpose, and the same persons engaged
+together in serious prayer or praise! Then Christ seems to appear to us
+in each of them; we are all one in him. How little do all earthly
+unkindnesses, dislikes, prejudices, become in our eyes, when the real
+bond of our common faith is discerned clearly! There is indeed neither
+Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian,
+bond nor free, but Christ is all, and in all. And to look at our
+brethren, once or twice in every day, with these Christian eyes, would
+it not also, by degrees, impress us at other times, and begin to form
+something of our habitual temper and regard towards them?
+
+Thus much of our meetings for prayer. One word only on those in which we
+meet to read the Scriptures. Here I know, that difference of age, and
+our peculiar relations to each other, make us very apt to lose the
+religious character of our readings of the Scriptures, and to regard
+them merely as lessons. No doubt, the object here is instruction; it is
+not so much in itself a religious exercise, as a means to enable you to
+perform religious exercises with understanding and sincerity. Still
+there is a peculiar character attached even to lessons, when they are
+taken out of the Scriptures: and the duty of attention and interest in
+the work becomes even stronger than under other circumstances. But with
+those of a more advanced age, I think there is more than this; I think
+it must be our own fault, if, whilst engaged together in reading the
+Scriptures, which we only read because we are Christians, we do not feel
+that there also we are employed on a duty belonging to the Church
+of Christ.
+
+Lastly, there is our joint communion in the bread, and in the cup, of
+the Lord's Supper. Here there is seriousness; here there is always, I
+trust and believe, something of real interest; and, therefore, we never,
+I think, meet together at the Lord's table, without feeling a true
+effect of Christ's gifts to and in his Church; we are strengthened and
+brought nearer to one another, and to him. But this most precious pledge
+of Christ's Church we too often forfeit for ourselves. That we have lost
+so much of the help which the Church was designed to give, is not our
+fault individually; but it is our fault that we neglect this means of
+strength, so great in bearing witness to Christ, and in kindling love
+towards one another. What can be said of us, if, with so many helps
+lost, we throw away that which still remains? if, of the great treasure
+which the Church yet keeps, we are wilfully ignorant? How much good
+might we do, both to ourselves and to each other, by joining in that
+communion! How surely should we be strengthened in all that is good, and
+have a help from each other, through his Spirit working in us all, to
+struggle against our evil!
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXX.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+1 CORINTHIANS xi. 26.
+
+_For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the
+Lord's death till he come_.
+
+
+When I spoke last Sunday of the benefits yet to be derived from Christ's
+Church, I spoke of them, as being, for the most part, three in
+number--our communion in prayer, our communion in reading the
+Scriptures, and our communion in the Lord's Supper; and, after having
+spoken of the first two of these, I proposed to leave the third for our
+consideration to-day.
+
+The words of the text are enough to show how closely this subject is
+connected with that event which we celebrate to-day[13]: "As often as ye
+eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he
+come." The communion, then, with one another in the Lord's Supper is
+doing that which this day was also designed to do; it is showing forth,
+or declaring the Lord's death; it is declaring, in the face of all the
+world, that we partake of the Lord's Supper because we believe that
+Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us.
+
+[Footnote 13: Good Friday.]
+
+God might, no doubt, if it had so pleased him, have made all spiritual
+blessing come to us immediately from himself. Without ascending any
+higher with the idea, it is plain that Christianity might have been made
+a thing wholly between each individual man and Christ; all our worship
+might have been the secret worship of our own hearts; and in eating the
+bread, and drinking the cup, to show forth the Lord's death, each one of
+us might have done this singly, holding communion with Christ alone. I
+mean, that it is quite conceivable that we should have had Christianity,
+and a great number of Christians spread all over the world, but yet no
+Christian Church. But, although this is conceivable, and, in fact, is
+practically the case in some particular instances where individual
+Christians happen to be quite cut off from all other Christians,--as has
+been known sometimes in foreign and remote countries; and although,
+through various evil causes, it has become, in many respects, too much
+the case with us all; for our religion is with all of us, I am inclined
+to think, too much a matter between God and ourselves alone; yet still
+it is not the design of Christ that it should be so: his people were not
+only to be good men, redeemed from sin and death and brought to know and
+love the truth, in which relation Christianity would appear like a
+divine philosophy only, working not only upon individuals, but through
+their individual minds, and as individuals; but they were to be the
+Christian Church, helping one another in things pertaining to God, and
+making their mutual brotherhood to one another an essential part of what
+are called peculiarly their acts of religion. So that the Church of
+England seems to have well borne in mind this character of Christianity,
+namely, that it presents us not each, but all together, before God; and
+therefore it is ordered that even in very small parishes, where "there
+are not more than twenty persons in the parish of discretion to receive
+the communion, yet there shall be no communion, except four, or three at
+the least, out of these twenty communicate together with the priest."
+Nay, even in the Communion of the Sick, under circumstances which seem
+to make religion particularly an individual matter between Christ and
+our own single selves; when the expected approach of death seems to
+separate, in the most marked manner, according to human judgment, him
+who is going hence from his brethren still in the world; even then it is
+ordered that two other persons, at the least, shall communicate along
+with the sick man and the minister. Nor is this ever relaxed except in
+times of pestilence; when it is provided, that if no other person can be
+persuaded to join from their fear of infection, then, and then only upon
+special request of the diseased, the minister may alone communicate with
+them. So faithfully does our Church adhere to this true Christian
+notion, that at the Lord's Supper we are not to communicate with Christ
+alone, but with him in and together with our brethren; so that I was
+justified in regarding the Holy Communion as one of those helps and
+blessings which we still derive from the Christian Church--from Christ's
+mystical body.
+
+It is the natural process of all false and corrupt religions, on the
+contrary, to destroy this notion of Christ's Church, and to lead away
+our thoughts from our brethren in matters of religion, and to fix them
+merely upon God as known to us through a priest. The great evil in this
+is, (if there is any one evil greater than another in a system so wholly
+made up of falsehood, and so leading to all wickedness; but, at any
+rate, one great evil of it is,) that whereas the greatest part of all
+our lives is engaged in our relations towards our brethren, that there
+lie most of our temptations to evil, as well as of our opportunities of
+good, if our brethren do not form an essential part of our religions
+views, it follows, and always has followed, that our behaviour and
+feelings towards them are guided by views and principles not religious;
+and that by this fatal separation of what God has joined together, our
+worship and religious services become superstitious, while our life and
+actions become worldly, in the bad sense of the term, low principled,
+and profane.
+
+If this is not so clear when put into a general form, it will be plain
+enough when I show it in that particular example which we are concerned
+with here. Nowhere, I believe, is the temptation stronger to lose sight
+of one another in our religious exercises, and especially in our
+Communion. Our serious thoughts in turning to God, turn away almost
+instinctively from our companions about us. Practically, as far as the
+heart is concerned, we are a great deal too apt to go to the Lord's
+table each alone. But consider how much we lose by this. We are
+necessarily in constant relations with one another; some of those
+relations are formal, others are trivial; we connect each other every
+day with a great many thoughts, I do not say of unkindness, but yet of
+that indifferent character which is no hindrance to any unkindness when
+the temptation to it happens to arise. This must always be the case in
+life; business, neighbourhood, pleasure,--the occasions of most of our
+intercourse with one another,--have in them nothing solemn or softening:
+they have in themselves but little tendency to lead us to the love of
+one another. Now, if this be so in the world, it is even more so here;
+your intercourse with one another is much closer and more constant than
+what can exist in after life with any but the members of your own
+family; and yet the various relations which this intercourse has to do
+with, are even less serious and less softening than those of ordinary
+life in manhood. The kindliness of feeling which is awakened in after
+years between two men, by the remembrance of having been at school
+together, even without any particular acquaintance with each other, is a
+very different thing from the feeling of being at school with each
+other now. I do not wonder, then, that any one of you, when he resolves
+to come to the Holy Communion, should rather try to turn away his
+thoughts from his companions, and to think of himself alone as being
+concerned in what he is going to do. I do not wonder at it; but, then,
+neither do I wonder that, when the Communion is over, and thoughts of
+his companions must return, they receive little or no colour from his
+religious act so lately performed; that they are as indifferent as they
+were before, as little furnishing a security against neglect, or
+positive unkindness, or encouragement of others to evil. Depend upon it,
+unless your common life is made a part of your religion, your religion
+will never sanctify your common life.
+
+Now consider, on the one hand, what might be the effect of going to the
+Holy Communion with a direct feeling that, in that Communion, we, though
+many, were all brought together in Christ Jesus. And first, I will speak
+of our thoughts of those who are partakers of the Communion with us,
+then of those who are not. When others are gone out, and we who are to
+communicate are left alone with each other, then, if we perceive that
+there are many of us, the first natural feeling is one of joy, that we
+are so many; that our party,--that only true and good party to which we
+may belong with all our hearts,--that our party,--that Christ's party,
+seems so considerable. Then there comes the thought, that we are all met
+together freely, willingly, not as a matter of form, to receive the
+pledges of Christ's love to us, to pledge ourselves to him in return. If
+we are serious, those around us may be supposed to be serious too; if we
+wish to have help from God to lead a holier life, they surely wish the
+same; if the thought of past sin is humbling us, the same shame is
+working in our brethren's bosoms; if we are secretly resolving, by
+God's grace, to serve him in earnest, the hearts around us are, no
+doubt, resolving the same. There is the consciousness, (when and where
+else can we enjoy it?) that we are in sympathy with all present; that,
+coloured merely by the lesser distinctions of individual character, one
+and the same current of feeling is working within us all. And, if
+feeling this of our sympathy with one another, how strongly is it
+heightened by the thought of what Christ has done for us all! We are all
+loving him, because he loved us all; we are going together to celebrate
+his death, because he died for us all; we are resolving all to serve
+him, because his Holy Spirit is given to us all, and we are all brought
+to drink of the same Spirit. Then let us boldly carry our thoughts a
+little forward to that time, only a short hour hence, when we shall
+again be meeting one another, in very different relations; even in those
+common indifferent relations of ordinary life which are connected so
+little with Christ. Is it impossible to think, that, although we shall
+meet without these walls in very different circumstances, yet that we
+have seen each other pledging ourselves to serve Christ together? if the
+recollection of this lives in us, why should it not live in our
+neighbour? If we are labouring to keep alive our good resolutions made
+at Christ's table, why should we think that others have forgotten them?
+We do not talk of them openly, yet still they exist within us. May not
+our neighbour's silence also conceal within his breast the same good
+purposes? At any rate, we may and ought to regard him as ranged on our
+side in the great struggle of life; and if outward circumstances do not
+so bring us together as to allow of our openly declaring our sympathy,
+yet we may presume that it still exists; and this consciousness may
+communicate to the ordinary relations of life that very softness which
+they need, in order to make them Christian.
+
+Again, with regard to those who go out, and do not approach to the
+Lord's table. With some it is owing to their youth; with others to a
+mistaken notion of their youth; with others to some less excusable
+reason, perhaps, but yet to such as cannot yet exclude kindness and
+hope. But having once felt what it is to be only with those who are met
+really as Christians, our sense of what it is to want this feeling is
+proportionably raised. Is it sad to us to think that our neighbour does
+not look upon us as fellow Christians? is it something cold to feel that
+he regards us only in those common worldly relations which leave men in
+heart so far asunder? Then let us take heed that we do not ourselves
+feel so towards him. We have learnt to judge more truly, to feel more
+justly, of our relations to every one who bears Christ's name: if we
+forget this, we have no excuse; for we have been at Christ's table, and
+have been taught what Christians are to one another. And let our
+neighbour be ever so careless, yet we know that Christ cares for him;
+that his Spirit has not yet forsaken him, but is still striving with
+him. And if God vouchsafes so much to him, how can we look upon him as
+though he were no way connected with us? how can we be as careless of
+his welfare, as apt either to annoy him, or to lead him into evil, or to
+take no pains to rescue him from it, as if he were no more to us than
+the accidental inhabitant of the same place, who was going on his way as
+we may be on ours, neither having any concern with the other?
+
+And, now, is it nothing to learn so to feel towards those around us; to
+have thus gained what will add kindness and interest to all our
+relations with others; and, in the case of many, will give an abiding
+sense of the truest sympathy, and consequently greater confidence and
+encouragement to ourselves? Be sure that this is not to profane the
+Lord's Supper, but to use it according to Christ's own ordinance. For
+though the thoughts of which I have been speaking, have, in one sense,
+man and not God for their object, yet as they do not begin in man but in
+Christ, and in his love to us all, so neither do they, properly
+speaking, rest in man as such, but convert him, as it were, into an
+image of Christ: so that their end, as well as their beginning, is with
+Him. I do earnestly desire that you would come to Christ's table, in
+order to learn a Christian's feelings towards one another. This is what
+you want every day; and the absence of which leads to more and worse
+faults than, perhaps, any other single cause. But, then, this Christian
+feeling towards one another, how is it to be gained but by a Christian
+feeling towards Christ? and where are we to learn brotherly love in all
+our common dealings, but from a grateful thought of that Divine love
+towards us all which is shown forth in the sacrament of the Lord's
+Supper; inasmuch as, so often as we eat that bread and drink that cup,
+we do show the Lord's death till He come.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXXI.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LUKE i. 3, 4.
+
+_It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all
+things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent
+Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of those things
+wherein thou hast been instructed_.
+
+
+These words, from the preface to St. Luke's Gospel, contain in them one
+or two points on which it may be of use to dwell; and not least so at
+the present time, when they are more frequently brought under our notice
+than was the case a few years ago. On a subject which we never, or very
+rarely hear mentioned, it may be difficult to excite attention; and, as
+a general rule, there is little use in making the attempt. But when
+names and notions are very frequently brought to our ears, and in a
+degree to our minds, then it becomes important that we should comprehend
+the matter to which they relate clearly and correctly; and a previous
+interest respecting it may be supposed to exist, which make further
+explanation acceptable.
+
+St. Luke tells Theophilus that it seemed good to him to write in order
+an account of our Lord's life and death, that Theophilus might know the
+certainty of those things in which he had been instructed; and this, as
+a general rule, might well describe one great use of the Scripture to
+each of us, as individual members of Christ's Church--it enables us to
+know the certainty of the things in which we have been instructed. We do
+not, in the first instance, get our knowledge of Christ from the
+Scriptures,--we, each of us, I mean as individuals,--but from the
+teaching of our parents first; then of our instructors, and from books
+fitted for the instruction of children; whether it be the Catechism of
+the Church, or books written by private persons, of which we know that
+there are many. But as our minds open, and our opportunities of judging
+for ourselves increase, then the Scripture presents itself to acquaint
+us with the certainty of what we had heard already; to show us the
+original and perfect truth, of which we have received impressions
+before, but such as were not original nor perfect; to confirm and
+enforce all that was good and true in our early teaching; and if it
+should so happen that it contained any thing of grave error mixed with
+truth, then to enable us to discover and reject it.
+
+It is apparent, then, that the Scripture, to do this, must have an
+authority distinct from, and higher than, that of our early teaching;
+but yet it is no less true that it comes to us individually recommended,
+in the first instance, by the authority of our early teaching, and
+received by us, not for its own sake, but for the sake of those who put
+it into our hands. What child can, by possibility, go into the evidence
+which makes it reasonable to believe the Bible, and to reject the
+authority of the Koran? Our children believe the Bible for our sakes;
+they look at it with respect, because we tell them that it ought to be
+respected; they read it, and learn it, because we desire them; they
+acquire a habit of veneration for it long before they could give any
+other reason for venerating it than their parents' authority. And
+blessed be God that they do; for, as it has been well said, if we their
+parents do not endeavour to give our children habits of love and respect
+for what is good and true, Satan will give them habits of love for what
+is evil: for the child must receive impressions from without; and it is
+God's wisdom that he should receive these impressions from his parents,
+who have the strongest interest in his welfare, and who have besides
+that instinctive parental love which, more surely, as well as more
+purely, than any possible sense of interest, makes them earnestly desire
+their child's good.
+
+But when our children are old enough to understand and to inquire, do we
+then content ourselves with saying that they must take our word for it;
+that the Bible is true because we tell them so? Where is the father who
+does not feel, first, that he himself is not fitted to be an infallible
+authority; and, secondly, that if he were, he should be thwarting the
+providence of God, who has willed not simply that we should believe with
+understanding. He gladly therefore observes the beginnings of a spirit
+of inquiry in his son's mind, knowing that it is not inconsistent with a
+belief in truth, but is a necessary step to that which alone in a man
+deserves the name of belief--a belief, namely, sanctioned by reason.
+With what pleasure does he point out to his son the grounds of his own
+faith! how gladly does he introduce him to the critical and historical
+evidence for the truth of the Scriptures, that he may complete the work
+which he had long since begun, and deliver over the faith which had been
+so long nursed under the shade of parental authority, to the care of his
+son's own conscience and reason!
+
+We see clearly that our individual faith, although grounded in the first
+instance on parental authority, yet rests afterwards on wholly different
+grounds; namely, on the direct evidence in confirmation of it which is
+presented to our own minds. But with regard to those who are called the
+Fathers of the Church, it is contended sometimes that we do receive the
+Scriptures, in the end, upon their authority: and it is argued, that if
+their authority is sufficient for so great a thing as this, it must be
+sufficient for every thing else; that if, in short, we believe the
+Scriptures for their sake, then we ought also to believe other things
+which they may tell us, for their sake, even though they are not to be
+found in Scripture.
+
+In the argument there is this great fault, that it misstates the
+question at the outset. The authority of the Fathers, as they are
+called, is never to any sound mind the only reason for believing in the
+Scriptures; I think it is by no means so much as the principle reason.
+It is one reason, amongst many; but not the strongest. And, in like
+manner, their authority in other points, if there were other and
+stronger reasons which confirmed it,--as in many cases there are,--is
+and ought to be respected. But, because we lay a certain stress upon it,
+it does not follow that we should do well to make it bear the whole
+weight of the building. Because we believe the Scriptures, partly on the
+authority of the Fathers, as they are called, but more for other
+reasons, does it follow that we should equally respect the authority of
+the Fathers when there are no other reasons in support of it, but many
+which make against it?
+
+In truth, however, the internal evidence in favour of the authenticity
+and genuineness of the Scriptures is that on which the mind can rest
+with far greater satisfaction than on any external testimonies, however
+valuable. On one point, which might seem most to require other
+evidence--the age, namely, and origin of the writings of the New
+Testament--it has been wonderfully ordered that the books, generally
+speaking, are their own witness. I mean that their peculiar language
+proves them to have been written by persons such as the apostles were,
+and such as the Christian writers immediately following them were not;
+persons, namely, whose original language and habits of thinking were
+those of Jews, and to whom the Greek in which they wrote was, in its
+language and associations, essentially foreign. I do not dwell on the
+many other points of internal evidence: it is sufficient to say that
+those who are most familar with such inquiries, and who best know how
+little any external testimony can avail in favour of a book where the
+internal evidence is against it, are most satisfied that the principal
+writings of the New Testament do contain abundantly in themselves, for
+competent judges, the evidence of their own genuineness and
+authenticity.
+
+That the testimony of the early Christian writers goes along with this
+evidence and confirms it, is matter indeed of sincere thankfulness;
+because more minds, perhaps, are able to believe on external evidence
+than on internal. But of this testimony of the Christian writers it is
+essential to observe, that two very important points are such as do
+indeed affect this particular question much, but yet do not confer any
+value on the judgment of the witness in other matters. When a very early
+Christian writer quotes a passage from the New Testament, such as we
+find it now in our Bibles, it is indeed an argument, which all can
+understand, that he had before him the same Bible which we have, and
+that though he lived so near to the beginning of the gospel, yet that
+some parts of the New Testament must have been written still nearer to
+it. This is an evidence to the age of the New Testament, valuable indeed
+to us, but implying in the writer who gives it no qualities which confer
+authority; it merely shows that the book which he read must have existed
+before he could quote it. A second point of evidence is, when a very
+early Christian writer quotes any part of the New Testament as being
+considered by those to whom he was writing as an authority. This, again,
+is a valuable piece of testimony; but neither does it imply any general
+wisdom or authority in the writer who gives it: its value is derived
+merely from the age at which he lived, and not from his personal
+character. And with regard to the general reception of the New Testament
+by the Christians of his time, which, in the case supposed, he states as
+a fact, no doubt that the general opinion of the early Christians,
+where, as in this case, we can be sure that it is reported correctly, is
+an authority, and a great authority, in favour of the Scriptures:
+combined, as it is, with the still stronger internal evidence of the
+books themselves, it is irresistible. But it were too much to argue
+that, therefore, it was alone sufficient, not only when destitute of
+other evidence, but if opposed to it; and especially if it should happen
+to be opposed to that very Scripture which we know they acknowledged to
+be above themselves, but which we do not know that they were enabled in
+all cases either rightly to interpret or faithfully to follow.
+
+When, therefore, we are told that, as we believe the Scriptures
+themselves upon tradition, so we should believe other things also, the
+answer is, that we do not believe the Scriptures either entirely or
+principally, upon what is called tradition; but for their own internal
+evidence; and that the opinions of the early Christians, like those of
+other men, may be very good in certain points, and to a certain degree,
+without being good in all points, and absolutely; that many a man's
+judgment would justly weigh with us, in addition to other strong reasons
+in the case itself, when we should by no means follow it where we were
+clear that there were strong reasons against it. This, indeed, is so
+obvious, that it seems almost foolish to be at the trouble of stating
+it; but what is so absurd in common life, that the contrary to it is a
+mere truism, is, unfortunately, when applied to a subject with which we
+are not familiar, often considered as an unanswerable argument, if it
+happen to suit our disposition or our prejudices.
+
+But, although the Scripture is to the Church, and to the individual,
+too, who is able to judge for himself, the only decisive authority in
+matters of faith, yet we must not forget that it comes to us as it did
+to Theophilus, to persuade us of the certainty of things in which we
+have been already instructed; not to instruct from the beginning, by
+itself alone, those to whom its subject is entirely strange: in other
+words, it is and ought to be the general rule, that the Church teaches,
+and the Scripture confirms that teaching: or, if it be in any part
+erroneous, reproves it. For some appear to think, that by calling the
+Scripture the sole authority in matters of faith, we mean to exclude the
+Church altogether; and to call upon every man,--nay, upon every
+child,--to make out his own religion for himself from the volume of the
+Scriptures. The explanation briefly given is this; that while the
+Scripture alone teaches the Church, the Church teaches individuals; and
+that the authority of her teaching, like that of all human teaching,
+whether of individuals or societies, varies justly according to
+circumstances; being received, as it ought to be, almost implicitly by
+some, as a parent's is by a child, and by others listened to with
+respect, as that which is in the main agreeable to the truth, but still
+not considered to be, nor really claiming to be received as, infallible.
+But this part of the subject will require to be considered by itself on
+another occasion.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXXII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LUKE i. 3,4.
+
+_It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all
+things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent
+Theophilus, that than mightest know the certainty of those things in
+which thou hast been instructed_.
+
+
+I said at the conclusion of my lecture, last Sunday, that when we of the
+Church of England assert that the Scripture is the sole authority in
+matters of faith, we by no means mean to exclude the office of the
+Church, nor to assert any thing so extravagant, as that it is the duty
+of every person to sit down with the volume of the Scriptures in his
+hand, and to make out from that alone, without listening to any human
+authority, what is the revelation made by God to man. But I know that
+many are led to adopt notions no less extravagant of the authority of
+the Church and of tradition,--even to the full extent maintained by the
+Church of Rome,--because they see no other refuge from what appears to
+them, and not unreasonably, so miserable and so extreme a folly; for an
+extreme and a most miserable folly doubtless it would be, in any one, to
+throw aside all human aid except his own; to disregard alike the wisdom
+of individuals, and the agreeing decisions of bodies of men; to act as
+if none but himself had ever loved truth, or had been able to discover
+it; and as if he himself did possess both the will and the power to
+do so.
+
+This is so foolish, that I doubt whether any one ever held such
+notions, and, much more, whether be acted upon them. But is it more wise
+to run from one form of error into its opposite, which, generally
+speaking, is no less foolish and extravagant? What should we say of a
+man who could see no middle course between never asking for advice, and
+always blindly following it; between never accepting instruction upon
+any subject, and believing his instructors infallible? And this last
+comparison, with our particular situation here, will enable us, I think,
+by referring to our own daily experience, to understand the present
+question sufficiently. The whole system of education supposes,
+undoubtedly, that the teacher, in those matters which he teaches, should
+be an authority to the taught: a learner in any matter must rely on the
+books, and on the living instructors, out of which and from whom he is
+to learn. There are difficulties, certainly, in all learning; but we do
+not commonly see them increased by a disposition on the part of the
+learner to question and dispute every thing that is told him. There is a
+feeling rather of receiving what he is told implicitly; and, by so
+doing, he learns: but does it ever enter into his head that his teacher
+is infallible? or does any teacher of sane mind wish him to think so?
+And observe, now, what is the actual process: the mind of the learner is
+generally docile, trustful, respectful towards his teacher; aware, also,
+of his own comparative ignorance. It is certainly most right that it
+should be so. But this really teachable and humble learner finds a false
+spelling in one of his books; or hears his teacher, from oversight, say
+one word in his explanation instead of another: does he cease to be
+teachable and humble,--is it really a want of childlike faith, and an
+indulgence of the pride of reason, if he decides that the false spelling
+was an error of the press; that the word which his teacher used was a
+mistake? Yet errors, mistakes, of how trifling a kind soever, are
+inconsistent with infallibility; and the perceiving that they are errors
+is an exercise of our individual judgment upon our instructors. To hear
+some men talk, we should think that no boy could do so without losing
+all humility and all teachableness; without forthwith supposing that he
+was able to be his own instructor.
+
+I have begun on purpose with an elementary case, in which a very young
+boy might perceive an error in his books, or in his instructors,
+without, in any degree, forfeiting his true humility. But we will now go
+somewhat farther: we will take a more advanced student, such as the
+oldest of those among you, who are still learners, and who know that
+they have much to learn, but who, having been learners for some time
+past, have also acquired some knowledge. In the books which they refer
+to, and from which they are constantly deriving assistance, do they
+never observe any errors in the printing? do they never find
+explanations given, which they perceive to be imperfect, nay, which they
+often feel to be actually wrong? And, passing from books to living
+instructors, should we blame a thoughtful, attentive, and well-informed
+pupil, because his mind did not at once acquiesce in our interpretation
+of some difficult passage; because he consulted other authorities on the
+subject, and was unsatisfied in his judgment; the reason of his
+hesitation being, that our interpretation appeared to him to give an
+unsatisfactory sense, or to be obtained by violating the rules of
+language? Is he proud, rebellious, puffed up, wanting in a teachable
+spirit, without faith, without humility, because he so ventures to judge
+for himself of what his teacher tells him? Does such a judging for
+himself interfere, in the slightest degree, with the relation between us
+and him? Does it make him really cease to respect us? or dispose him to
+believe that he is altogether beyond the reach of our instruction? Or
+are we so mad as to regard our authority as wholly set at nought,
+because it is not allowed to be infallible? Doubtless, it would be
+wholly set at nought, if we had presumed to be infallible. Then it would
+not be merely that, in some one particular point, our decision had been
+doubted, but that one point would involve our authority in all; because
+it would prove, that we had set up beforehand a false claim: and he who
+does so is either foolish, or a deceiver; there is apparent a flaw
+either in his understanding, or in his principles, which undoubtedly
+does repel respect.
+
+Let me go on a step farther still. It has been my happiness to retain,
+in after years, my intercourse with many of those who were formerly my
+pupils; to know them when their minds have been matured, and their
+education, in the ordinary sense of the term, completed. Is not the
+relation between us altered then still more? Is it incompatible with
+true respect and regard, that they should now judge still more freely,
+in those very points, I mean, in which heretofore they had received my
+instructions all but implicitly? that on points of scholarship and
+criticism, they should entirely think for themselves? Or does this
+thinking for themselve mean, that they will begin to question all they
+had ever learnt? or sit down to forget purposely all their school
+instructions, and make out a new knowledge of the ancient languages for
+themselves? Who does not know, that they whose minds are most eager to
+discern truth, are the very persons who prize their early instruction
+most, and confess how much they are indebted to it; and that the
+exercise of their judgments loads them to go on freely in the same path
+in which they have walked so long, here and there it may be departing
+from it where they find a better line, but going on towards the same
+object, and generally in the same direction?
+
+What has been the experience of my life,--the constantly observing the
+natural union between sense and modesty; the perfect compatibility of
+respect for instruction with freedom of judgment; the seeing how Nature
+herself teaches us to proportion the implicitness of our belief to our
+consciousness of ignorance: to rise gradually and gently from a state of
+passively leaning, as it were, on the arm of another, to resting more
+and more of our weight on our own limbs, and, at last, to standing
+alone, this has perpetually exemplified our relations, as individuals,
+to the Church. Taught by her, in our childhood and youth, under all
+circumstances; taught by her, in the great majority of instances,
+through our whole lives; never, in any case, becoming so independent of
+her as we do in riper years, of the individual instructor of our youth;
+she has an abiding claim on our respect, on our deference, on our
+regard: but if it should be, that her teaching contained any thing at
+variance with God's word, we should perceive it more or less clearly,
+according to our degrees of knowledge; we should trust or mistrust our
+judgment, according to our degree of knowledge; but in the last resort,
+as we suppose that even a young boy might be sure that his book was in
+error, in the case of a manifest false print, so there may be things so
+certainly inconsistent with Scripture, that a common Christian may be
+able to judge of them, and to say that they are like false prints in his
+lesson, they are manifest errors, not to be followed, but avoided. So
+far he may be said to judge of his teacher; but not the less will he
+respect and listen to her authority in general, unless she has herself
+made the slightest error ruinous to her authority by claiming to be in
+all points, great or small, alike infallible.
+
+Men crave a general rule for their guidance at all times, and under all
+circumstances; whereas life is a constant call upon us to consider how
+far one general rule, in the particular case before us, is modified by
+another, or where one rule should be applied, and where another. To
+separate humility from idolatry, conscience from presumption, is often
+an arduous task: to different persons there is a different besetting
+danger; so it is under different circumstances, and at different times.
+Every day does the seaman, on a voyage, take his observations, to know
+whereabouts he is; he compares his position with his charts; he
+considers the direction of the wind, and the set of the current, or
+tide; and from all these together, he judges on which side his danger
+lies, on what course he should steer, or how much sail he may venture to
+carry. This is an image of our own condition: we cannot have a general
+rule to tell us where we should follow others, and where we must differ
+from them; to say what is modesty, and what is indolence; what is a
+proper deference to others, and what is a trusting in man so far, that
+it becomes a want of trust in God. Only, we are sure that these are
+points which we must decide for ourselves; the human will must be free,
+so far as other men are concerned. If we say, that we will implicitly
+trust others, then there is our decision, which no one could have made
+for us, and which is our own choice as to the principle of our lives;
+for which choice, we each of us, and no one else in all the world, must
+answer at the judgment-seat of God. Only, in that word there is our
+comfort, that, for our conduct in so doubtful a voyage as that of life,
+amidst so many conflicting opinions, each courting our adherence to
+it,--amidst such a variety of circumstances without, and of feelings
+within, and on which, notwithstanding, our condition for all eternity
+must depend,--we shall be judged, not by erring man, not by our own
+fallible conscience, but by the all-wise, and all-righteous God. With
+him, after all, even in the very courts of his holy Church, we yet, in
+one sense, must each of us live alone. On his gracious aid, given to our
+own individual souls, and determining our own individual wills, depends
+the character of our life here and for ever. Trusting to him, praying to
+him, we shall then make use of all the means that his goodness has
+provided for us; we shall ask counsel of friends; we shall listen to
+teachers; we shall delight to be in the company of God's people, of one
+mind, and of one voice, with the good and wise of every generation; we
+shall be afraid of leaning too much to our own understanding, knowing
+how it is encompassed with error; but knowing that other men are
+encompassed with error also, and that we, and not they, must answer for
+our choice before Christ's judgment, we must, in the last resort, if our
+conscience and sense of truth cannot be persuaded that other men speak
+according to God's will,--we must follow our own inward convictions,
+though all the world were to follow the contrary.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXXIII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JOHN ix. 29.
+
+_We know that God spake unto Moses; as for this fellow, we know not from
+whence he is_.
+
+
+The questions involved in the conversations recorded in this chapter,
+are of great practical importance. Not perhaps of immediate practical
+importance to all in this present congregation; but yet sure to be of
+importance to all hereafter, and of importance to many at this actual
+moment. Nay, they are of importance to those who, from their youth,
+might be thought to have little to do with them, either where the mind
+is already anxious and inquiring beyond its years, or where it happens
+to be exposed to strong party influences, or that its passions are
+likely to be engaged on a particular side, however little the
+understanding may be interested in the matter. In fact, in religious
+knowledge, as in other things, the omissions of youth are hard to make
+up in manhood; they who grow up with a very small knowledge of the
+Scriptures, and with no understanding of any of the questions connected
+with them, can with difficulty make up for this defect in after years;
+they become, according to the influences to which, they may happen to be
+subjected, either unbelieving or fanatical.
+
+If we were to question the youngest boy about the language held in this
+chapter by the Pharisees, and by the man who had been born blind, we
+should, no doubt, be answered, that what the Pharisees said, was wrong;
+and what the man born blind said, was right. This would be the answer
+which it would be thought proper to give; because it would be perceived
+that the Pharisees' language expressed unbelief in Christ; and that the
+man born blind was expressing gratitude and faith towards him. Nor,
+indeed, should we expect a young boy to go much farther than this; for
+such general impressions are, at his age, as much many times as can be
+looked for. But it is strange to observe how much this want of
+understanding outlasts the age of boyhood; how apt men are to judge
+according to names, and to see no farther: to say, that the language of
+the Pharisees was wrong, because they find it employed against Christ;
+but yet to use the very same language themselves, whilst they think that
+they are all the while speaking for Christ.
+
+But in this conversation between the Pharisees and the blind man, there
+are, indeed, as I said, points involved of very great importance; it
+contains the question as to the degree of weight to be attached to
+miracles; and the question, no less grave, with what degree of tenacity
+we should reject what claims to be a new truth, because it seems to be
+at a variance with supposed old truths to which we have been long
+accustomed to cling with undoubting affection.
+
+The question as to the weight of miracles is contained in the sixteenth
+verse. Some of the Pharisees said, This man is not of God, because he
+keepeth not the Sabbath day. Others said, How can a man that is a sinner
+do such miracles? That is to say, the first party rejected the miracles
+because they seemed to be wrought in favour of a supposed false
+doctrine; the other accepted the doctrine, because it seemed warranted
+to their belief by the miracles.
+
+The second question is contained in the words of the text, "We know
+that God spake to Moses; as for this fellow, we know not from whence he
+is." We have been taught from our childhood, and have the belief
+associated with every good and pious thought in us, that God spake to
+Moses, and gave him the law as our rule of life; but as for this fellow,
+we know not from whence he is. His works may be wonderful, his words may
+be specious; but we never heard of him before, and we cannot tear up all
+the holiest feelings of our nature to receive a new doctrine. We will
+hold to the old way in which, we were taught by our fathers to walk, and
+in which they walked before us.
+
+This last question is one which, as we well know, is continually
+presented to our minds. No one says, that the Pharisees were right, any
+more than those very Pharisees thought that their fathers were right who
+had killed the prophets. But as our Lord told them, that they were in
+truth the children in spirit of those who had killed the prophets;
+because, although they had been taught to condemn the outward form of
+their fathers' action, they were repeating it themselves in its
+principles and spirit; so many of those who condemn the Pharisees are
+really their exact image, repeating now against the truths of their own
+days the very same arguments which the Pharisees used against the truths
+of theirs.
+
+For the arguments of these Pharisees, both as regards miracles, and as
+regards the suspicion with which we should look on a doctrine opposed to
+the settled opinions of our lives, have in fact, in both cases, a great
+mixture of justice in them; and it is this very mixture which we may
+hope beguiled them; and also beguiles those, who in our own days repeat
+their language.
+
+For most certain it is that the Scripture itself supposes the
+possibility of false miracles. The case is especially provided against
+in Deuteronomy. It there says, "If there arise among you a prophet or a
+dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or
+the wonder come to pass whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go
+after other gods which thou hast not known, and let us serve them: thou
+shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet or that dreamer of
+dreams, for the Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the
+Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul." Observe how
+nearly this comes to the language of the Pharisees, "This man is not of
+God, because he keepeth not the Sabbath day." "Here," they might have
+said, "is the very case foreseen in the Scriptures: a prophet has
+wrought a sign and a wonder, which is at the same time a breach of God's
+commandments. God has told us that such signs are not to be heeded, that
+he does but prove us with them to see whether we love him truly: knowing
+that where there is a love of him, the heart will heed no sign or
+wonder, how great soever, which would tempt it to think lightly of his
+commandments." Shall we say that this is not a just interpretation of
+the passage in Deuteronomy? shall we say that this is the language of
+unbelief or of sin? or, rather, shall we not confess that it is in
+accordance with God's word, and holy, and faithful, and true? And yet
+this most just language led those who used it to reject one of Christ's
+greatest miracles, and to refuse the salvation of the Holy One of God.
+Can God's truth be contrary to itself? or can truth and goodness lead so
+directly to error and to evil?
+
+Now, then, where is the solution to be found? for some solution there
+must be, unless we will either condemn a most true principle, or defend
+a most false conclusion. The error lies in confounding God's moral law
+with his law of ordinances; precisely the same error which led the Jews
+to stone Stephen. The law had undoubtedly commanded that he who
+blasphemed God should be stoned; the Jews called Stephen's speaking
+against the holy place and against the law blasphemy against God, and
+they murdered God's faithful servant and Christ's blessed martyr. Even
+so the law had said, Let no miracle be so great as to tempt you to
+forsake God: the Jews considered the forsaking the law of the Sabbath to
+be a forsaking of God, and they said that Christ's miracle was a work of
+Satan. There is no blasphemy into which we may not fall, no crime from
+which we shall be safe, if we do not separate in our minds most clearly
+such laws as relate to moral and eternal duties, and such as relate to
+outward or positive ordinances, even when commanded or instituted by God
+himself. It is most false to say that the fact of their being commanded
+sets them on a level with each other. So long as they are commanded to
+us, it is no doubt our duty to obey them equally: but the difference
+between them is this, that whereas the first are commanded to us and to
+our children for ever, and no possible evidence can be so great as to
+persuade us that God has repealed them; (for the utmost conceivable
+amount of external testimony, such as that of miracles, could only lead
+to madness;--the human mind might, conceivably, be overwhelmed by the
+conflict, but should never and could never be tempted to renounce its
+very being, and lie against its Maker;) the others, that is, the
+commands to observe certain forms and ordinances, are in their nature
+essentially temporary and changeable: we have no right to assume that
+they will be continued, and therefore a miracle at any time might justly
+require us to forsake them; and not only an outward miracle, but the
+changed circumstances of the times may speak God's will no less clearly
+than a miracle, and may absolutely make it our duty to lay aside those
+ordinances, which to us hitherto, and to our fathers before us, were
+indeed the commands of God.
+
+Now let us take the other question,--which may indeed be called a
+question as to the allowableness of resting confidently in truth already
+gained, without consenting to examine the claims of something asserting
+itself to be a new truth, yet which seems to interfere with the old. Is
+nothing within us to be safe from possible doubt, or is everything? Or
+is it here, as in the former case, that there are truths so tried and so
+sacred that it were blasphemy to question them; while there are others,
+often closely intermixed with these, which are not so sacred, because
+they are not eternal; which may and ought to be examined when occasion
+requires; and which may be laid aside, or exchanged rather, for some
+higher truth, if it shall reasonably appear that their work is done, and
+that if we retain them longer they will change their character, and
+become no longer true but false. "David having served his own generation
+by the will of God, fell asleep, and was gathered unto his fathers, and
+saw corruption; but He whom God raised again saw no corruption." This is
+the difference between positive ordinances and moral: the first serve
+their appointed number of generations by the will of God, and then are
+gathered to their fathers, and perish; the latter are by the right hand
+of God exalted, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.
+
+"We know," said the Jews, "that God spake to Moses; but for this fellow,
+we know not from whence he is." There was a time when their fathers had
+held almost the very same language to Moses: "they refused him, saying
+Who made thee a ruler and a judge over us?" But now they knew that God
+had spoken to Moses, but were refusing Him who was sent unto them after
+Moses. God had spoken unto Moses, it was most true: he had spoken to him
+and given him commandments which were to last for ever; and which
+Christ, so far from undoing, was sent to confirm and to perfect; he had
+spoken to him other things, which were not to last for ever, but yet
+which were not to be cast away with dishonour; but having, in the
+fulness of time, done their work, were then, like David, to fall asleep.
+All that was required of the Jews, was not to reject as blasphemy a
+doctrine which should distinguish between these two sorts of truths:
+which in no way requires to believe that God had not spoken to
+Moses,--which, on the contrary, maintained that he had so spoken,--but
+only contended that he has also, in these last days, spoken unto us by
+his Son; and that his Son, bearing the full image of Divine authority,
+might well be believed if he spoke of some parts of Moses's law as
+having now fulfilled their work, seeing that they were such parts only
+as, by their very nature, were not eternal: they had not been from the
+beginning, and therefore they would not live on to the end.
+
+The practical conclusion is, that, whilst we hold fast, with an
+undoubting and unwavering faith, all truths which, by their very nature,
+are eternal, and to deny which is no other than to speak against the
+Holy Ghost, we should listen patiently to, and pass no harsh judgment
+on, those who question other truths not necessarily eternal, while they
+declare that they are, to the best of their consciences, seeking to obey
+God and Christ. When I say, that we should listen patiently, and not
+pass harsh judgments upon those who question such points, I say it
+without at all meaning that we should agree with them. It would be
+monstrous indeed, to suppose that old opinions are never combated
+wrongly; that old institutions are never pronounced to have lived out
+their appointed time, when, in fact, they are still in their full
+vigour. But the language of those who defend the doctrines and the
+ordinances of the Church may, and often does, partake of the sin of that
+of the Pharisees, even when those against whom they are contending, are
+not, like Christ, bringing in a new and higher truth, but an actual
+error. To point out that it is an error, to defend ourselves and the
+Church from it, is most right, and most highly our duty; but it is
+neither right, nor our duty, but the very sin of the Pharisees, to put
+it down merely by saying, "As for this fellow, we know not from whence
+he is;" to treat the whole question as an impiety, and to deny the
+virtues and the holiness of those who maintain it, because they are, as
+we call it, "speaking blasphemous things against the holy place and
+against the law." The mischief of this to ourselves is infinite; nay, in
+its extreme, it leads to language which is fearfully resembling the very
+blasphemy against the Holy Ghost; for, when we say, as has been said,
+that where men's lives are apparently good and holy, and their doctrines
+are against those of the Church, the holiness is an unreal holiness, and
+that we cannot see into their hearts, this is, in fact, denying the Holy
+Spirit's most infallible sign--the fruits of righteousness; and being
+positive rather of the truth of the Church, than of the truth of God.
+There is nothing so certain as that goodness is from God; nothing so
+certain as that sin is not from God; nothing so certain as that sin is
+not from him. To deny, or doubt this, is to dispute the greatest
+assurance of truth that God has ever been pleased to give to us. It does
+not, by any means, follow, that all good men are free from error, nor
+that error is less error because good men hold it; but to make the error
+which is less certain, a reason for disputing the goodness which is more
+certain, is the spirit, not of God, nor of the Church of God, but of
+those false zealots who put an idol in God's place; of such as rejected
+Christ and murdered Stephen.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXXIV.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+1 CORINTHIANS xiv, 20.
+
+_Brethren, be not children in understanding: howbeit, in malice be ye
+children, but in understanding be men_.
+
+
+It would be going a great deal too far to say, that they who fulfilled
+the latter part of this command, were sure also to fulfil the former;
+that they who were men in understanding, were, therefore, likely to be
+children in malice. But the converse holds good, with remarkable
+certainty, that they who are children in understanding, are
+proportionally apt to be men in malice: that is, in proportion as men
+neglect that which should be the guide of their lives, so are they left
+to the mastery of their passions; and as nature and outward
+circumstances do not allow these passions to remain as quiet and as
+little grown as they are in childhood,--for they are sure to ripen
+without any trouble of ours,--so men are left with nothing but the evils
+of both ages, the vices of the man, and the unripeness and ignorance of
+the child.
+
+It is indeed a strange and almost incredible thing, that any should ever
+have united in their minds the notions of innocence and ignorance as
+applied to any but literal children: nor is it less strange, that any
+should ever have been afraid of their understanding, and should have
+sought goodness through prejudice, and blindness, and folly. Compared
+with this, their conduct was infinitely reasonable who weakened and
+tormented their bodies in order to strengthen, as they thought, their
+spiritual nature. Such conduct was, by comparison, reasonable because
+there is a great deal of bodily weakness and discomfort, which really
+does not interfere with the strength and purity of our character in
+itself, although, by abridging our activity, it may lessen our means of
+usefulness. But what should we say of a man who directed his ill usage
+of his body to that part of our system which is most closely connected
+with the brain; who were purposely to impair his nervous system, and
+subject himself to those delusions and diseased views of things which
+are the well-known result of any disorder there? Yet this is precisely
+what they do who seek to mortify and lower their understanding. It is as
+impossible that they should become better men by such a process, as if
+they were literally to take medicines to affect their nerves or their
+brain, in the hope of becoming idiotic or delirious. It is, in fact, the
+worst kind of self-murder; for it is a presumptuous destroying of that
+which is our best life, because we dread to undergo those trials which
+God has appointed for the perfecting both of it and of us.
+
+But from the wilful blindness of these men, let us turn to the Christian
+wisdom of the Apostle: "In malice be ye children, but in understanding
+be men." Let us turn to what is recorded of our Lord in his early life,
+at that age when, as man, the cultivation of his understanding was his
+particular duty--that he was found in the temple, sitting in the midst
+of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions: not asking
+questions only, as one too impatient or too vain to wait for an answer,
+or to consider it when he had received it; not hearing only, as one
+careless and passive, who thinks that the words of wisdom can improve
+his mind by being indolently admitted through the ears, with no more
+effort than his body uses when it is refreshed by a cooling air, or when
+it is laid down in running water; but both hearing and asking questions;
+docile and patient, yet active and intelligent; knowing that the wisdom
+was to be communicated from without, but that it belongs to the vigorous
+exercise of the power within, to apprehend it, and to convert it to
+nourishment.
+
+Now, what is recorded of our Lord for our example, as to the manner in
+which he received instruction when delivered by word of mouth, this same
+thing should we do with that instruction, which, as is the ease with
+most of ours, we derive from reading. Put the Scriptures in the place of
+those living teachers whom Christ was so eager to hear; the words of
+Christ, and of his Spirit, instead of those far inferior guides from
+whom, notwithstanding, he, for our sakes, once submitted to learn; and
+what can be more exact than the application of the example? Let us be
+found in God's true temple, in the communion of his faithful
+people,--his universal Church, sitting down as it were, surrounded by
+the voices of the oracles of God--prophets, apostles, and Jesus Christ
+himself: let us be found with the record of these oracles in our hands,
+both reading them and asking them questions.
+
+It is quite clear that what hinders a true understanding of anything is
+vagueness; and it is by this process of asking questions that vagueness
+is to be dispelled: for, in the first place, it removes one great
+vagueness, or indistinctness, which is very apt to beset the minds of
+many; namely, the not clearly seeing whether they understand a thing or
+no; and much more, the not seeing what it is that they do understand,
+and what it is which they do not. Take any one of our Lord's parables,
+and read it even to a young child: there will be something of an
+impression conveyed, and some feelings awakened; but all will be
+indistinct; the child will not know whether he understands or no, but
+will soon gain the habit of supposing that he does, as that is at once
+the least troublesome, and the least unpleasant to our vanity. And this
+same vague impression is often received by uneducated persons from
+reading or bearing either the Scriptures or sermons; it is by no means
+the same as if they had read or heard something in an unknown language;
+but yet they can give no distinct account of what they have heard or
+read; they do not know how far they understand it, and how far they do
+not. Here, then, is the use of "asking questions,"--asking questions of
+ourselves or of our book, I mean, for I am supposing the case of our
+reading, when it can rarely happen that we have any living person at
+hand to give us an answer. Now, taking the earliest and simplest state
+of knowledge, it is plain that the first question to put to ourselves
+will be, "Do I understand the meaning of all the words and expressions
+in what I have been reading?" I know that this is taking things at their
+very beginning, but it is my wish to do so. Now, so plain and forcible
+is the English of our Bible, generally speaking, that the words
+difficult to be understood will probably not be many: yet some such do
+occur, owing, in some instances, to a change of the language; as in the
+words "let," and "prevent," which now signify, the one, "to allow, or
+suffer to be done," and the other "to stop, or hinder," but which
+signified, when our translation was made, the first, "to stop or
+hinder," and the second, "to be beforehand with us;" as in the prayer,
+"Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings, with thy most gracious favour;"
+the meaning is, "Let thy favour be with us beforehand, O Lord, in
+whatever we are going to do." In other instances the words are difficult
+because they are used in a particular sense, such as we do not learn
+from our common language; of which kind are the words "elect," "saints,"
+"justification," "righteousness," and many others. Now, if we ask
+ourselves "whether we understand these words or no," our common sense,
+when thus questioned, will readily tell us, whether we do or not;
+although if we had not directly asked the question, it might never have
+thought about it. Of course, our common sense cannot tell us what the
+true meaning is; that is a matter of information, and our means of
+gaining information may be more or less; but still, a great step is
+gained, the mist is partly cleared away; we can say to ourselves, "Here
+is something which I do understand, and here is something which I do
+not; I must keep the two distinct, for the first I may use, the second I
+cannot; I will mark it down as a thing about which I may get explanation
+at another time; but at present it is a blank in the picture, it is the
+same as if it were not there." This, then, is the first process of
+self-questioning, adapted, as I have already said, to those whose
+knowledge is most elementary.
+
+Suppose, however, that we are got beyond difficulties of this sort--that
+the words and particular expressions of the Scriptures are mostly clear
+to us. Now, take again one of our Lord's parables; say, for instance,
+that of the labourers in the vineyard: we read it, and find that he who
+went to work at the eleventh hour received as much as he who had been
+working all the day. This seems to say, that he who begins to serve God
+in his old age shall receive his crown of glory no less than he who has
+served him all his life. But now try the process of self-questioning:
+what do I think that Christ means me to learn from this? what is the
+lesson to me? what is it to make me feel, or think, or do? If it makes
+me think that I shall receive an equal crown of glory if I begin to
+serve God in my old age, and therefore if it leads me to live
+carelessly, this is clearly making Christ encourage wickedness; and such
+a thought is blasphemy. He cannot mean me to learn this from it: let me
+look at the parable again. Who is it who is reproved in those words
+which seem to contain its real object? It is one who complains of God
+for having rewarded others equally with himself. Now this I can see is
+not a good feeling: it is pride and jealousy. In order, then to learn
+what the parable means me to learn, let me put myself in the position of
+those reproved in it. If I complain that others are rewarded by God as
+much as I am, it is altogether a bad feeling, and one which I ought to
+check; for I have nothing to do with God's dealings to others, let me
+think of what concerns myself. Here I have the lesson of the parable
+complete: and here I find it is useful for me. But if I take it for a
+different object, and suppose that it means to encourage waiting till
+the eleventh hour--waiting till we are old before we repent--we find
+that we make it only actually to be mischievous to us. And thus we gain
+a great piece of knowledge: namely, that the parables of our Lord are
+mostly designed to teach, some one particular lesson, with respect to
+some one particular fault: and that if we take them generally, as if all
+in them was applicable to all persons, whether exposed to that
+particular fault or not, we shall absolutely be in danger of deriving
+mischief from them instead of good. It is true, that in this particular
+parable, the gross wickedness of such an interpretation as I have
+mentioned is guarded against even in the story itself; because those who
+worked only at the eleventh hour are expressly said to have stood idle
+so long only because no man had hired them; their delay, therefore, was
+no fault of their own. But even if this circumstance had been left out,
+it would have been just the same; because the general rule is, that we
+apply to a parable only for its particular lesson, and do not strain it
+to any thing else. Had this been well understood, no one would have ever
+found so much difficulty in understanding the parable of the
+unjust steward.
+
+This is another great step towards the dispelling vagueness, to apply
+the particular lesson of each part of Scripture to that state of
+knowledge, or feeling, or practice in ourselves, which it was intended
+to benefit; to apply it as a lesson to ourselves, not as a general truth
+for our neighbours. And the very desire to do this, makes us naturally
+look with care to the object of every passage--to see to whom it was
+addressed, and on what occasion; for this will often surely guide us to
+the point that we want. But in order to do this, we must strive to
+clothe the whole in our own common language; to get rid of those
+expressions which to us convey the meaning faintly; and to put it into
+such others as shall come most strongly home to us. This I have spoken
+of on other occasions; and I have so often witnessed the bad effects of
+not doing so, that I am sure it may well bear to be noticed again; I
+mean the putting such words as "persecution," "the cares and riches of
+the world," "the kingdom of God," "confessing Christ," "denying Christ,"
+and many others, into a language which to us has more lively reality,
+which makes us manifestly see that it is of us, and of our common life,
+and of our dangers, that the scripture is speaking, and not only of
+things in a remote time and country, and under circumstances quite
+unlike our own. Therefore I have a strong objection to the use of what
+is called peculiarly religious language, because I am sure that it
+hinders us from bringing the matter of that language thoroughly home to
+us; our minds do not entirely assimilate with, it; or if they fancy that
+they do, it is only by their becoming themselves affected, and losing
+their sense of the reality of things around them. For our language is
+fixed for us, and we cannot alter it; and into that common language in
+which we think and feel, all truth must be translated, if we would think
+and feel respecting it at once rightly, clearly, and vividly. Happy is
+he, who, by practising this early, has imbued his own natural language
+with the spirit of God's wisdom and holiness; and who can see, and
+understand, and feel them the better, because they are so put into a
+form with which he is perfectly familiar.
+
+More might be said, very much more, but here I will now pause. In this
+world, wherein heavenly things are, after all, hard to seize and fix
+upon, we have great need that no mists of imperfect understanding darken
+them, over and above those of the corrupt will. To see them clearly, to
+understand them distinctly and vividly, may, indeed, after all be vain:
+a thicker veil may yet remain behind, and we may see and understand, and
+yet perish. Only the clear sight of God in Christ can be no light
+blessing; and there may be a hope, that understanding and approving with
+all our minds his excellent wisdom, the light may warm us as well as
+assist our sight; that we may see, and not in our vague and empty sense,
+but in the force of the scriptural meaning of the word,--may see, and
+so believe.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXXV.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MATTHEW xxvi. 45, 46.
+
+_Sleep on now and take your rest; behold, the hour is at hand, and the
+Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be.
+going; behold, he is at hand that doth betray me_.
+
+
+I take these verses for my text, in the first place, because some have
+fancied a difficulty in them, and have even proposed to alter the
+translation, and read the first words as a question, "Do ye still sleep
+and take your rest?" and because they are really a very good
+illustration of our Lord's manner of speaking, a manner which it is of
+the highest importance to us fully to understand. And, secondly, I take
+them as a text for the general lesson which they convey to us; their
+mixture of condemnation and mercy; their view, at once looking backwards
+and forwards, not losing sight of irreparable evils of a neglected past,
+nor yet making those evils worse by so dwelling upon them as to forget
+the still available future; not concealing from us the solemn truth,
+that what is done cannot be undone, yet warning us also not to undo by a
+vain despair that future which may yet be done to our soul's health.
+
+First, a difficulty has been fancied to exist in the words, as if our
+Lord had bade his disciples to do two contradictory things: telling
+them, first, to sleep on and take their rust, and then saying, "Rise,
+let us be going." And because in St. Luke's account, when our Lord
+comes to his disciples the last time, his words are given thus, "Why
+sleep ye? rise and pray, that ye enter not into temptation:" therefore,
+as I have said, his words in the text have been translated, "Are ye
+sleeping and resting for the remainder of the time?" Now, I should not
+take up your time with things of this sort, where I believe our common
+translation to be most certainly right, were it not for the sake of one
+or two general remarks, which I think may not be out of place. It is a
+general rule, that in passages not obscure, but appearing to contain
+some moral difficulty, if I may so speak; that is, something which seems
+inconsistent with our notions of God's holiness, or wisdom, or justice;
+something, in short, of a stumbling-block, which we fear may occasion a
+triumph to unbelievers; it is a rule, I say, that in passages of this
+kind the difficulty is not to be met by departing from the
+common-received translation. And the reason of this is plain; that had
+not the commonly received translation in such cases been clearly the
+right one, it would never have come to be commonly received. Amongst the
+thousands of interpreters of Scripture, all, from the earliest time,
+anxious to remove grounds of cavil from the adversaries of their faith,
+a passage would never have been translated so as to afford such a
+ground, if the right translation of it could have been different. Such
+places are especially those in which the common translation needs not to
+be suspected: and it is merely leading us astray from the true
+explanation of the apparent difficulty, when we thus attempt to evade it
+by tampering with the translation. A notable instance of this was
+afforded some few years since in a new translation of some of the books
+of the Old Testament; in which it was pretended that most of those
+points which had been most attacked by unbelievers were, in fact, mere
+mistranslations, and that the real meaning of the original was
+something totally different; and, in order to show the necessity of his
+alterations, the writer entirely allowed the objections of unbelievers
+to the common reading; and said that no sufficient answer had been or
+could be made to them. This was an extreme case, and probably imposed
+only on a very few: but less instances of the same thing are common: St.
+Paul's words about being baptized for the dead, have been twisted to all
+sorts of senses, from their natural and only possible meaning, because
+men could not bear to believe that the superstition of being baptized as
+proxies for another could have existed at a period which they were
+resolved to consider so pure: and so in the text, a force has been put
+upon the words which they cannot bear, in order to remove a supposed
+contradiction: and all that would have been gained by the change would
+be, to have one instructive illustration the less of our Lord's peculiar
+manner of discourse, and one instance the less of the inimitable way in
+which his language, addressed directly to the circumstances before him,
+contains, at the same time, a general lesson, for the use of all his
+disciples in all ages.
+
+Our Lord's habitual language was parabolical; I use the word in a wide
+sense, to include all language which is not meant to be taken according
+to the letter. Observe his conversation with the Samaritan woman; it
+begins at once with parable, "If thou hadst known who it was that asked
+of thee, saying, Give me to drink, thou wouldst have asked of him, and
+he would have given thee living water." And again, "Whoso drinketh of
+the water that I shall give him shall never thirst, but it shall be in
+him a well of water, springing up unto life eternal." This seems to have
+been, if I may venture to say so, the favourite language in which he
+preferred to speak; but when he found that he was not understood, then,
+according to the nature of the case, he went on in two or three
+different manners. When he, to whom all hearts were open, saw that the
+misunderstanding was wilful, that it arose out of a disposition glad to
+find an excuse, in his pretended obscurity, for not listening to him and
+obeying him, then, instead of explaining his language, he made it more
+and more figurative; more likely to be misunderstood, or to offend those
+whom he knew to be disposed beforehand to misunderstand and to be
+offended. A famous example of this may be seen in the sixth chapter of
+St. John; there he first calls himself the Bread of Life, and says, that
+whosoever should eat of that bread should live for ever: but when he
+found that the Jews cavilled at this language, instead of explaining it,
+he only added expressions yet more strongly parabolical; "Except ye eat
+the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in
+you:" and he dwells on this image so long, that we find that many of his
+disciples, bent on interpreting it literally, and, in this sense,
+finding it utterly shocking, went back and walked no more with him.
+Again, when he found not a disposition to cavil, but yet a profound
+ignorance of his meaning, arising from a state of mind wholly unused to
+think of spiritual good and evil, he neither used, as to those who
+wilfully misunderstood him, language that would offend them still more,
+nor yet did he offer a direct explanation; but he broke off the
+conversation, and adopted another method of instruction. Thus, when the
+Samaritan woman, thinking only of bodily wants, answered him by saying,
+"Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to
+draw," he neither goes on to speak to her in the same language, nor yet
+does he explain it; but at once addresses her in a different manner,
+saying, "Go, call thy husband, and come hither." Thirdly, when he was
+speaking to his own disciples, to whom it was given to know the
+mysteries of the kingdom of God, he generally explained his meaning,--at
+least so far as to prevent practical error,--when he found that they had
+not understood him. Thus, when he had said to them, "Beware of the
+leaven of the Pharisees, and of the leaven of Herod," and they thought
+only of leaven and of bread in the literal sense, he upbraids them,
+indeed, for their slowness, saying, "Are ye also yet without
+understanding?" but he goes on to tell them in express terms that he did
+not mean to speak to them of the leaven of bread. And the words of the
+text are an exactly similar instance: his first address is parabolical;
+that is, it is not meant to be taken to the letter; "Sleep on now, and
+take your rest," meaning, "Ye can now do me no good by watching, for the
+time is past, and he who betrayed me is at hand; ye might as well sleep
+on now and take your rest, for I need not try you any longer." But, as
+the time was really pressing, and there was a possibility that they
+might have misunderstood his words, and have really continued to sleep,
+he immediately added in different language, "Rise, let us be going;
+behold, he is at hand that doth betray me." We must be prepared, then,
+to find that our Lord's language, not only to the Jews at large, but
+even to his own disciples, is commonly parabolical; the worst
+interpretation which we can give to it is commonly the literal one. His
+conversation with his disciples, just before he went out to the garden
+of Gethsemane, as recorded in the thirteenth, and following chapters of
+St. John, is a most striking proof of this. If any one looks through
+them, he will find how many are the comparisons, and figurative manners
+of speaking, which abound in them, and how often his disciples were at a
+loss to understand his meaning, And he himself declares this, for, at
+the end of the sixteenth chapter, he says expressly, "These things I
+have spoken unto you in proverbs;"--that is, language not to be taken
+according to the letter;--"the time is coming when I will no more speak
+unto you in proverbs, but will show you plainly of the Father." And
+then, when he goes on to declare, what he never, it seems, had before
+told them in such express and literal language, "I came forth from the
+Father, and am come into the world: again I leave the world, and go to
+my Father," his disciples seem to have welcomed with joy this departure
+from his usual manner of speaking, and said immediately, "Lo! now
+speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb: now we know that thou
+knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask thee: by
+this we believe that thou earnest forth from God."
+
+But let us observe what it is that he said: "A time is coming when I
+shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but shall show you plainly of
+the Father." That time came immediately. He spoke to them after his
+resurrection, opening their understandings to understand the Scriptures:
+he spoke yet more fully, by his Spirit, after the day of Pentecost,
+leading them into all truth. And what they thus heard in the ear, they
+proclaimed, according to his bidding, upon the house-tops. When the Holy
+Spirit brought to their remembrance all that he had said to them, and
+gave their minds a spiritual judgment, to compare what they thus had
+brought before them, to see his words in their true light and their true
+bearings, comparing spiritual things with spiritual, they were no
+niggards of this heavenly treasure; nor did they, according to the vain
+heresy of the worst corrupters of Christ's gospel, imitate and surpass
+that sin which they had so heavily judged in Ananias. They kept back no
+part-of that which they professed and were commanded to lay wholly and
+entirely at the feet of God's church. They did not so lie to the Holy
+Ghost, as to erect a wicked system of priestcraft in the place of that
+holy gospel of which they were ministers. They had no reserve of a
+secret doctrine for themselves and a chosen few, keeping in their own
+hands the key of knowledge, and opening only half of the door; but as
+they had freely received, so they freely gave; all that they knew, they
+taught to all: and so, through their blessed teaching, we too can
+understand our Lord's words as they were taught to understand them: and
+what is parabolical, is no longer on that account obscure, but full of
+light and of beauty, fulfilling the end for which it was chosen, the
+most effective of all ways of teaching, because the liveliest.
+
+I have left myself but little space to touch upon the second part of the
+subject--the general lesson conveyed in our Lord's-words to his
+disciples: "Sleep on now, and take your rest.--Rise; let us be going."
+How truly do we deserve the reproof; how thankfully may we accept the
+call. We have forfeited many opportunities which we would in vain
+recover; we have been careless when we should have been watchful; and
+that for which we should have watched, is now lost by our neglect; and
+it is no good to watch for it any more. Let us remember this, while it
+is called to-day; for how often is it particularly applicable to us
+here, from the passing nature of your stay amongst us! To both you and
+us too often belongs our Lord's remonstrance, "What, could ye not watch
+with me one hour?" So short a time as you stay here, could we not be
+watching with Christ that little period: from which, if well improved,
+there might spring forth a fruit so lasting? But, alas! we too often
+sleep it away: we do not all that we might do, nor do you; evil grows
+instead of good, till the time is past, and you leave us; and we may as
+well sleep on, and take our rest, so far as all that particular good
+was concerned--the improvement, namely, of your time at this place, for
+which we are alike set to watch. But are we to take the words of
+reproach literally? May we really sleep on, and take our rest? Oh vain
+and wilful folly, so to misunderstand! But, lest we should
+misunderstand, let us hear our Lord's next words: "Rise; let us be
+going," and that instantly: the time and opportunity already lost for
+ever is far more than enough.--"Rise; let us be going:" so Christ calls
+us; for he has still other work for us to do, for him, and with him. The
+future is yet our own, though the past be lost. We have sinned greatly
+and irreparably; but let us not do so yet again: other opportunities are
+afforded us; the disciples would not watch with him in the garden, but
+he calls them to go with him to his trial and his judgment; and one, we
+know, watched by him even on his cross:--so he calls to us; so he calls
+now; but he will not so call for ever. There will be a time when we
+might strike out the words, "Rise; let us be going;" they will concern
+us then no more. It is only said, "Sleep on now, and take your rest: all
+your watching time has been wasted, and you can now watch no more;"
+there remains only to sleep--to sleep that last sleep, from which we
+shall then never wake to God and happiness, but in which we shall be
+awake for ever to sin and to misery.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXXVI.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+2 CORINTHIANS v. 17, 18.
+
+_Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new: and all
+things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ_.
+
+
+I have, from time to time, spoken of that foolish misuse of the
+Scriptures, by which any one opening the volume of the Bible at random,
+and taking the first words which he finds, straightway applies them
+either to himself or to his neighbour; and then boasts that he has the
+word of God on his side, and that whosoever differs from him, is
+disputing and despising the word of God. The most extreme instances of
+this way of proceeding are so absurd, that they could not be noticed in
+this place becomingly; and these, of course, stand palpable to all,
+except to those who have allowed themselves to fall into them. But far
+short of these manifest follies, great errors have been maintained on
+general points, and great mistakes, whether of over presumption or of
+over fear, have been committed as to men's particular state, by quoting
+Scripture unadvisedly; by taking hold of its words to the neglect or
+actual violation of its spirit and real meaning. This is a great and a
+very common mischief, but yet there is a truth at the bottom of the
+error; it is true, that the greatest questions relating to God and to
+ourselves, may find their answer in the Scriptures; it is true, that if
+we search for this answer wisely we may surely find it.
+
+Consider the words of the text, and see how easily they may be
+perverted, if with no more ado we take them, as said of ourselves, each
+individually, and as containing to each of us a statement positive of
+truth. "Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."
+If we believe that this is God's word respecting each of us, what
+violence must we do to our memory of the past, and our consciousness of
+the present, if we do try to persuade ourselves that so total a change
+has taken place in each of us, that what we once were, we are no longer;
+that what we are, we once were not; and this not in some few particular
+points, but in the main character of our minds. Again, "All things are
+of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ." If we apply
+these words to each of us, what exceeding presumption would they breed!
+If all things in us and about us are now of God, what room can there be
+for sin? If God hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, what room
+can there be for fear or for danger? And thus, while we say we are
+quoting and believing the word of God, we do in fact turn it into a lie;
+we make it assert a falsehood as to our past state, and a falsehood as
+to our future state; we make it say, that our old nature is passed away,
+when it is not; that we have got a new nature when we have not; that we
+are reconciled to God, and therefore in safety, when we are, in fact, in
+the extremest danger.
+
+But it is easy to see that we have no right to apply to ourselves words
+written by St. Paul eighteen hundred years ago, and applied by him to
+other persons. I go, then, farther; and I say, that if every member of
+the church of Corinth, to which they were written, had applied them to
+himself in the manner which I have shown above, the words would in many
+instances have been perverted no less, and would have been made to state
+what was false, and not what was true. And the same may be said of many
+other passages of St. Paul's Epistles, which, having been similarly
+misinterpreted, have furnished matter for endless controversies, and on
+which opposite theories of doctrine have been fondly raised, each of
+them alike unchristian and untrue.
+
+Thus our present position is this:--that oftentimes by taking the
+representations of Scripture as true in fact, whether of ourselves or of
+others, we come to conclusions at once false and mischievous; being, as
+the case may be, either presumptuous, or fearful, or uncharitable, and
+claiming for each of these faults the sanction of the word of God.
+
+A similar mistake in interpreting human compositions, has led to faults
+of another kind. Assuming as before, in interpreting St. Paul's words,
+that the language of our Liturgy is meant to describe, as a matter of
+fact, the actual feelings and condition of those who use it, or for whom
+it is used; and seeing manifestly that these feelings and condition do
+not agree with the words; we do not here, as with the Scripture, do
+violence to our common sense and conscience, by insisting upon it that
+we agree with the words, but we find fault with the words as being at
+variance with the matter of fact. Some say that the language of the
+General Confession is too strong a statement of sin; that the language
+of the Communion Service, of the Baptismal Service, and above all, of
+the Burial Service, is too full of encouragement and of assurance; that
+men are not all so bad as to require the one, 'nor so good as to deserve
+the other; that in both cases it should be lowered, to agree with the
+actual condition of those who use it.
+
+Now it is worthy of notice, at any rate, that the self-same rule of
+interpretation applied to the Scripture and the Liturgy is found to suit
+with neither. We adhere positively to our rule: and thus, as we hold the
+words of Scripture sacred, we force common sense and conscience to make
+the facts agree with them; but not having the same respect for the words
+of the Liturgy, we complain of them as faulty and requiring alteration,
+because they do not agree with the facts.
+
+I will not enter into the question whether the Liturgy has done wisely
+or not in thus imitating the Scripture; but I do contend that, in point
+of fact, there is this resemblance between them. St. Paul's Epistles, in
+particular, although it is true of other parts of the Scripture also,
+contain, as does the Liturgy of our Church, a great many passages which,
+if taken either universally or even generally as containing a matter of
+fact, will lead us into certain error. Is it, therefore, so very certain
+that we do wisely in so interpreting them?
+
+With regard to our Liturgy I need not follow up the question now; but
+with regard to St. Paul, it is certain that he, in many parts of his
+Epistles, chooses to represent that which ought to be as that which
+actually was: he chooses to regard those to whom he is writing as being
+in all respects true Christians, as being worthy of their privileges, as
+answering to what God had done to them, as forming a church really
+inhabited by the Holy Spirit, and therefore being a true and living body
+of due proportions to Christ its Divine head. Nor does he trust
+exclusively to the common sense and conscience of those to whom he was
+writing to interpret his language correctly. He might Lave thought
+indeed that if he wrote to them as redeemed, justified, sanctified, as
+having all things new, as being the children of God, and the heirs of
+God, and the temples of the Holy Ghost, any individual who felt that he
+was none of these things, that sin was still mighty within him, and that
+he was sin's slave, would neither deny his own conscience, nor yet call
+St. Paul a deceiver; but would read in the difference between St. Paul's
+description of him and the reality, the exact measure of his own sin,
+and need of repentance and watchfulness. But he does not rely on this
+only: he notices sins as actually existing; he mingles the language of
+reproof and of anxiety, so as to make it quite clear that he did not
+mean his descriptions of their holiness and blessedness to apply to them
+all necessarily; he knew full well that they did not: but yet he knew
+also that, considering what God had done for them, it was monstrous that
+they should not be truly applicable.
+
+But why then, you will say, did he use such language? why did he call
+men forgiven, redeemed, saved, justified, sanctified?--he uses all these
+terms often as applicable generally to those to whom he was
+writing;--why did he call them so, when in fact they were not so? He
+called them so for the same reason which, made prophecy foretell
+blessings upon Israel of old, and on the Christian church afterwards,
+which were fulfilled on neither:--in order to declare, and keep ever
+before us, what God has done and is willing to do for us: what he fain
+would do for us, if we would but suffer him; what divine powers are
+offered to us, and we will not use them; what divine happiness is
+designed for us, and we will not enter into it. Let us ponder all the
+magnificence of the scriptural language,--the words of the text for
+example, not as describing what we are when we are full of sin; nor yet
+as mere exaggerated language, which must be brought down to the level of
+our present reality. Let us consider it as containing the words of
+truth and soberness; not one jot or one tittle needs to be abated; it
+must not be lowered to us, but we rather raised to it. It is a truth, it
+is the word of God, it is the seal of our assurance: it is that which
+good men of old would have welcomed with the deepest joy; which, to good
+men now is a source of comfort unspeakable. For it tells us that God has
+done for us, is doing, will do, all that we need; it tells us that the
+price of our redemption has been paid, the kingdom of heaven has been
+set open, the power to walk as God's children has been given: that so
+far as God is concerned we are redeemed, we are saved, we are
+sanctified; it is but our own fault merely that we are not all of these
+actually and surely.
+
+This is not a little matter to be persuaded of; if it be true, as I fear
+it is, that too many of us do not love God, is it not quite as true that
+we cannot believe that God loves us? Have we any thing like a distinct
+sense of the words of St. John, "We love God because he first loved us?"
+We believe in the love of our earthly friends; those who have so lately
+left their homes have no manner of doubt that their parents are
+interested in their welfare, though absent; that they will often think
+of them; and that, as far as it is possible at a distance from them,
+they are watching over their good, and anxious to promote it. The very
+name home implies all this; it implies that it is a place where those
+live who love us; and I do not question that the consciousness of
+possessing this love does, amidst all your faults and forgetfulnesses,
+rise not unfrequently within your minds, and restrain you from making
+yourselves altogether unworthy of it. Now, I say, that the words of the
+text, and hundreds of similar passages, are our assurance, if we would
+but believe them, that we have another home and another parent, by whom
+we are loved constantly and earnestly, who has done far more for us
+than our earthly parents can do. I grant that it is hard to believe this
+really; so infinite is the distance between God and us, that we cannot
+fancy that he cares for us; he may make laws for a world, or for a
+system, but what can he think or feel for us? It is, indeed, a thought
+absolutely overpowering to the mind; it may well seem incredible to us,
+judging either from our own littleness or our own forgetfulness; so hard
+as we find it to think enough of those to whom we are most nearly bound,
+how can the Most High. God think of us? But if there be any one particle
+of truth in Christianity, we are warranted in saying that God does love
+us; strange as it may seem, He, whom neither word nor thought of created
+being can compass; He, who made us and ten thousand worlds, loves each
+one of us individually; "the very hairs of our heads are all numbered."
+He so loved us, that he gave his only-begotten Son to die for us; and
+St. Paul well asks, "He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him
+up for us all, will he not also with him freely give us all things?"
+
+Believe me, you could have no better charm to keep you safe through, the
+temptations of the coming half year, than this most true persuasion that
+God loves you. The oldest and the youngest of us may alike repeat to
+himself the blessed words, "God loves me;" "God loves me; God has
+redeemed me: God would dwell in my heart, that I might dwell in him: God
+has placed me in his church, has made me a member of Christ his own Son,
+has made me an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven." I might multiply
+words, but that one little sentence is, perhaps, more than all, "God
+loves me." Oh that you would believe him when he assures you of it, for
+then surely you would not fail to love him. But whether you believe it
+or not, still it is so: God loves every one of us; he loves each one of
+us as belonging to Christ his Son. He does love each, of us; let us not
+cast his love away from us, and refuse to love him in return; he does
+love each of us now, but there may be a time to each of us,--there will
+be, assuredly, if we will not believe that he loves us, when he will
+love us no more for ever.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXXVII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+EZEKIEL xx. 49.
+
+_Then said I, Ah, Lord God I they say of me, Doth he not speak
+parables_?
+
+
+Nothing is more disheartening, if we must believe it to be true, than
+the language in which some persons talk of the difficulty of the
+Scriptures, and the absolute certainty that different men will ever
+continue to understand them differently. It is not, we are told, with
+the knowledge of Scripture as with that of outward nature: in the
+knowledge of nature, discoveries are from time to time made which set
+error on the one side, and truth on the other, absolutely beyond
+dispute; there the ground when gained is clearly seen to be so; and as
+fresh sources of knowledge are continually opening to us, it is not
+beyond hope that we may in time arrive infinitely near to the enjoyment
+of truth,--truth certain in itself, and acknowledged by all unanimously.
+But with Scripture, it is said, the case is far otherwise; discoveries
+are not to be expected here, nor does a later generation derive from,
+its additional experience any greater insight into the things of God
+than was enjoyed by the generations before it. And when we see that
+actually the complete Scriptures have been in the world not much less
+than eighteen hundred years; that within that period no other book has
+been so much studied; and yet that differences of opinion as to the
+matters spoken of in it have ever existed, and exist now as much as
+ever, what reasonable prospect is there, it is asked, of future harmony
+or of clearer demonstrations of divine truth; and will not the good on
+these points ever continue to differ from the good, and the wise to
+differ from the wise?
+
+This language, so discouraging as it is, may be heard from two very
+opposite parties, so that their agreement may appear to give it the more
+weight: it is used by men who are indifferent to religious truth, as an
+excuse for their taking no pains to discover what the truth really is;
+it is echoed back quite as strongly by another set of persons who wish
+to magnify the uncertainties of the Scripture in order to recommend more
+plausibly the guidance of some supposed authoritative interpreter of it.
+But yet it ought to be at any rate a painful work to any serious mind to
+be obliged to dwell not only on the obscurities of God's word, but on
+its perpetual and invincible obscurities; and, though an interpreter may
+be necessary if we know not the language of those with whom we are
+conversing, yet how much better would it be that we should ourselves
+know it: nay, and if we are told that we cannot know it, that our best
+endeavours will be unable to master it, the suspicion inevitably arises
+in our minds, that our pretended interpreter may be ignorant of it also;
+that he is not in truth better acquainted with it than we, but only more
+presumptuous or more dishonest.
+
+Still a statement may be painful, but at the same time true. There is
+undoubtedly something in such language as I have been alluding to, which
+appears to be confirmed by experience. There is no denying the fact,
+that the Scriptures have been a long time in the world; that they have
+been very generally and carefully read; and yet that men do differ
+exceedingly as to religious truth, and these differences do not seem to
+be tending towards agreement. It seems to me, there fore, desirable
+that every student of the Scriptures should know, as well as may be,
+what the exact state of the question is; for if the subject of his
+studies is really so hopelessly uncertain, it is scarcely possible that
+his zeal in studying it should not be abated; nay, could we wisely
+encourage him to bestow his pains on a hopeless labour?
+
+Now, in the very outset, there is this consideration which many of us
+here are well able to appreciate. We read many books written in dead
+languages, most of them more ancient than any part of the New Testament,
+some of them older than several of the books of the Old. We know well
+enough that these ancient books are not without their difficulties; that
+time, and thought, and knowledge are required to master them; but still
+we do not doubt that, with the exception of particular-passages here and
+there, the true meaning of these books may be discovered with undoubted
+certainty. We know, too, that this certainty has increased; that
+interpretations, which, were maintained some years ago, have been set
+aside by our improved knowledge of the languages and condition of the
+ancient world, quite as certainly as old errors in physical science have
+been laid to rest by later discoveries. Farther, our improved knowledge
+has taught us to distinguish what may be known from what may be probably
+concluded, and what is probable from what can merely be guessed at. When
+we come to points of this last sort, to passages which cannot be
+interpreted or understood, we leave them at once as a blank; but we
+enjoy no less, and understand with no less certainty, the greatest
+portions of the book which, contain them. And this experience, with
+regard to the works of heathen antiquity, makes it a startling
+proposition at the very outset, when we are told that with the works of
+Christian antiquity the case is otherwise.
+
+We thus approach the statement as to the hopless difficulty of
+Scripture, confirmed, as we are told it is, by the actual fact of the
+great disagreements among Christians, with a well-grounded mistrust of
+its soundness; we feel sure that there is something in it which is
+confused or sophistical. And considering the fact which appears to
+confirm it, I mean the actual differences between Christians and
+Christians, it soon appears by no means to bear out its supposed
+conclusion. For the differences between Christians and Christians by no
+means arise generally from the difficulty of understanding the Scripture
+aright, but from disagreement as to some other point, quite independent
+of the interpretation of the Scriptures. For example, the great
+questions at issue between us and the Roman Catholics turn upon two
+points,--Whether there is not another authority, in matters of
+Christianity, distinct from and equal to the Scriptures,--and whether
+certain interpretations of Scripture are not to be received as true, for
+the sake of the authority of the interpreter. Now, suppose for a moment,
+that the works of Plato or Aristotle were to us in the place of the
+Scriptures; and that the question was, whether these works of theirs
+could be understood with certainty; it would prove nothing against our
+being able to understand them, if, whilst we look to them alone, another
+man were to say, that, to his judgment, the works of other philosophers
+were no less authoritative; or, if he were to insist upon it, that the
+interpretations given by the scholiasts were always sure to be correct,
+because the scholiasts were the authorized interpreters of the text. No
+doubt our philosophical opinions and our practice might differ widely
+from such a man's; but the difference would prove nothing as to the
+obscurity of Plato's or Aristotle's text, because another standard had
+been brought in, distinct from their works, and from the acknowledged
+principles of interpretation, and thus led unavoidably to a
+different result.
+
+The same also is the case as to the questions at issue between the
+Church of England and many of the Dissenters. In these disputes it is
+notorious that the practice and authority of the church are continually
+appealed to, or, it may be, considerations of another kind, as to the
+inherent reasonableness of a doctrine; all which are, again, a distinct
+matter from the interpretation of Scripture. One of the greatest men of
+our time has declared, that, in the early part of his life, he did not
+believe in the divinity of our Lord; but he has stated expressly, that
+he never for a moment persuaded himself that St. Paul or St. John did
+not believe it; their language he thought was clear enough, upon the
+point; but the notion appeared to him so unreasonable in itself, that he
+disbelieved it in spite of their authority. It is manifest, that, in
+this case, great as the difference was between this great man's early
+belief and his later, yet it in no way arose from the obscurity of the
+Scripture. The language of the Scripture was as clear to him at first as
+it was afterwards; but in his early life he disbelieved it, while, in
+his latter life, he embraced it with all his heart and soul.
+
+It must not be denied, however, that we are here arrived at one of the
+causes which are likely, for a long time, to keep alive a false
+interpretation of Scripture, and which do not affect our interpretation
+of heathen writings. For most men, in such a case as I have referred to,
+when they do not believe the language of the Scripture, but wish to
+alter it, whether by omission or addition, do not deal so fairly with it
+as that great man did to whom I have alluded. They have neither his
+knowledge nor his honesty; a false interpretation is more easily
+disguised from them, owing to their ignorance, and they let their wishes
+more readily warp their judgment. Thus, they will not say as he did,
+"The Scripture clearly says so and so, but I cannot believe it;" they
+rather say, "This is very unreasonable and shocking, the Scripture
+cannot mean to say this;" or, "This is very pious and very ancient, the
+Scripture cannot but sanction this." And certainly, if men will so deal
+with it, there remains no certainty of interpretation then. But this is
+not the way that we deal with other ancient writings; and its unfairness
+and foolishness, if ever attempted to be practised there, are so
+palpable as to be ridiculous. No doubt it is difficult to convince men
+against their will; nevertheless, there is a good hope, that, as sound
+principles of interpretation are more generally known, they will put to
+shame a flagrant departure from them; and that those who try to make the
+Scripture say more or less than it has said, will be gradually driven to
+confess that Scripture is not their real authority; that their own
+notions in the one case, and the authority of the Church in the other
+case, have been the real grounds of their belief, to which they strove
+to make the Scriptures conform.
+
+Nothing that I have said is, in any degree, meant to countenance the
+opinions of those who talk of the Bible,--or rather, our translation of
+it,--being its own interpreter; meaning, that if you give a Bible to any
+one who can read, he will be able to understand it rightly. Even in this
+extravagance, there is indeed something of a truth. If a man were so to
+read the Bible, much he would, unquestionably, be able to understand;
+enough, I well believe, if honestly and devoutly used, to give him, if
+living in a desert island by himself, the knowledge of salvation. But
+when we talk of understanding the Bible, so as to be guided by it
+amidst the infinite varieties of opinion and practice which beset us on
+every side, it is the wildest folly to talk of it as being, in this
+sense, its own interpreter. Our comfort is, not that it can be
+understood without study, but with it; that the same pains which, enable
+us to understand heathen writings, whose meaning is of infinitely less
+value to us, will enable us, with God's blessing, to understand the
+Scriptures also. Neither do I mean, that mere intellectual study would
+make them clear to the careless or the undevout; but, supposing us to
+seek honestly to know God's will, and to pray devoutly for his help to
+guide us to it, then our study is not vain nor uncertain; the mind of
+the Scriptures may be discovered; we may distinguish plainly between
+what is clear, and what is not clear; and what is not clear will be
+found far less in amount, and infinitely less in importance, than what
+is clear. I do not say, that a true understanding of the Scriptures will
+settle at once all religious differences;--manifestly, it cannot; for,
+although I may understand them well, yet if a man maintains an opinion,
+or a practice, upon some other authority than theirs, we cannot agree
+together. Nevertheless, we may be allowed to hope and believe, that in
+time, if men could be hindered from misinterpreting the Scripture in
+behalf of their own opinions, their opinions themselves would find fewer
+supporters; for, as Christianity must come, after all, from our blessed
+Lord and his apostles, men will shrink from saying that that is no truth
+of Christianity which Christ and his apostles have clearly taught, or
+that that is a truth of Christianity, however ancient, and by whatever
+long line of venerable names supported, which they have as clearly, in
+our sole authentic records of them, not taught. It is not, therefore,
+without great and reasonable hope, that we may devote ourselves to the
+study of the Scriptures; and those habits of study which are cultivated
+here, and in other places of the same kind, are the best ordinary means
+of arriving at the truth. We are constantly engaged in extracting the
+meaning of those who have written in times past, and in a dead language.
+We do this according to certain rules, acknowledged as universally as
+the laws of physical science: these rules are developed gradually,--from
+the simple grammar which forms our earliest lessons, to the rules of
+higher criticism, still no less acknowledged, which are understood by
+those of a more advanced age. And we do this for heathen writings; but
+the process is exactly the same--and we continually apply it, also, for
+that very purpose--with what is required to interpret the Word of God.
+After all is done, we shall still, no doubt, find that the Scripture has
+its parables, its passages which cannot now be understood; but we shall
+find, also, that by much the larger portion of it may be clearly and
+certainly known; enough to be, in all points which really concern our
+faith and practice, a lantern to our feet, and an enlightener to
+our souls.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXXVIII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+ISAIAH v.1.
+
+_Now will I sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved touching his
+vineyard_.
+
+
+Whatever difficulties we may find in understanding and applying many
+parts of the prophetical Scriptures, yet every thinking person could
+follow readily enough, I suppose, the chapter from which these words are
+taken, as it was read in the course of this morning's service; and he
+would feel, while understanding it as said, immediately and in the first
+instance, of the Jewish Church or nation, seven centuries and a half
+before the birth of our Lord, that it was no less applicable to this
+Christian church and nation at the present period. We cannot, indeed,
+expect to find a minute agreement in particular points between ourselves
+and the Jews of old; the difference of times and circumstances renders
+this impossible; both they and we stand, on the one hand, in so nearly
+the same relation to God, and we both so share, on the other hand, in
+the same sinful human nature, that the complaints, and remonstrances of
+the prophets of old may often, be repeated, even in the very same words,
+by the Christian preacher now.
+
+If this be so, then the language of various parts of the service of the
+Church in this season of Advent ought to excite in us no small
+apprehension; for whilst the lessons from the Old Testament describe
+the evil state of the Jewish people in the eighth century before Christ,
+and threaten it with destruction, so the gospels for this day, and for
+last Sunday, speak of the evil state of the same people when our Lord
+was upon earth; and the chapter from which the gospel of this day is
+taken, contains, as we know, a full prophecy of the destruction that
+was, for the second time, going to overwhelm the earthly Jerusalem. We
+cannot but fear, therefore, that if our state now be like that of God's
+people of old, eight centuries before our Lord's coming, and again like
+their state at his coming: and if, after the first period, their city
+and temple were burnt, and they were carried captive to Babylon,--and
+again, after the second period, the city and temple were burnt again,
+and the people were dispersed, even to this day,--that, as the
+punishment has twice surely followed the sin, so it will not fail to
+find it out in this third case also.
+
+And be it remembered that the people, or church of God, as such, can
+receive their punishment only in this world: for, taken as a body, it is
+an institution for this world only. We each of us, no doubt, shall have
+our own separate individual judgment after death; and, in the mean time,
+our fortunes and our character often bear no just correspondence with
+each other. But nations and churches have their judgments here: and
+although God's long-suffering so suspends it for many generations that
+it may seem as if it would never fall, yet does it come surely at the
+last; and almost always we can ourselves trace the connexion between the
+sin and the punishment, and can see that the one was clearly the
+consequence of the other. And thus our church and nation may feel their
+national judgments in this world quite independently of the several
+personal judgments which will be passed upon us each hereafter
+individually, when we stand before Christ's judgment seat.
+
+I have thus ventured to bring the condition of the church as a body
+before our minds, although well knowing how much more we are concerned
+with the state of our own souls individually. Yet still the more general
+view is not without great use; and indeed it bears directly upon our
+individual state: our actions and our feelings having often a close
+connexion with, general church matters; and these actions and feelings
+being necessarily good or bad, according to the soundness of our
+judgment on the matter which occasions them. Besides which, it seems to
+me that general views, rather than what relates to particular faults,
+may be with most propriety dwelt on by those who have no direct
+connexion with the congregation which they are addressing.
+
+In the first place, then, whenever we think of the state and prospects
+of Christ's church, whether for good or for evil, it is most desirable
+that we should rightly understand our own relations to it. "The vineyard
+of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel;" or, in the language of the
+New Testament, "Christ is the vine, and we are the branches." Men
+continually seem to forget that they are members of the church;
+citizens, to use St. Paul's expression, of Christ's kingdom, as much as
+ever they are citizens of their earthly country. But they speak of the
+church as they might speak of any useful institution or society in their
+neighbourhood, whose object they approved of, and which they were glad
+to encourage, but without becoming members of it, or identifying
+themselves with its success or failure. For example, they speak of the
+church as they might speak of the universities, which indeed are
+institutions of great importance to the whole country, but yet they are
+manifestly distinct from the mass of the community: they have their own
+members, their own laws, and their own government, with which, people in
+general have nothing to do. And so many persons speak and feel of the
+church, regarding it evidently as consisting only of the clergy: our
+common language, no doubt, helping this confusion, because we often
+speak of a man's going into the church when he enters into holy orders,
+just as if ordination were the admission into the church, and not
+baptism. Now, if the clergy did indeed constitute the church, then it
+would very much resemble the condition of the universities: for it would
+then be indeed a society very important to the welfare of the whole
+country, but yet one that was completely distinct, and which had its
+members, laws, and government quite apart: for men in general do not
+belong to the clergy, nor are they concerned directly in such canons as
+relate to the peculiar business of the clergy, nor does the bishop's
+superintendence, as commonly exercised, extend at all to them. But God
+designed for his church far more than that it should contain one order
+of men only, or that it should comprise commonly but one single
+individual in a parish, preaching to and teaching the rest of the
+inhabitants, like a missionary amongst a population of heathens. Look at
+St. Paul's account of the church of Corinth, in the 12th chapter of his
+1st epistle to the Corinthians, and see if any two things can be more
+different than his notion of a church, and that which many people seem
+to entertain amongst us. Compare the living body there described, made
+up of so many various members, each having its separate office, yet each
+useful to and needed by the others and by the body,--and our notion of a
+parish committed to the charge of a single individual: as if all the
+manifold gifts which the church requires could by possibility be
+comprised in the person of any one Christian; as if the whole burden
+were to rest upon his shoulders, and the other inhabitants might regard
+the welfare of the church as his concern only, and not theirs.
+
+But not only is the church too often confined in men's notions to the
+single class or profession of the clergy, but it has been narrowed still
+farther by the practical extinction of one of the orders of the clergy
+itself. Where the laity have come to regard their own share in the
+concerns of the church as next to nothing, the order of deacons,
+forming, as it were, a link between the clergy and the laity, becomes
+proportionably of still greater importance. The business of the deacons,
+as we well know, was in an especial manner to look after the relief of
+the poor; and by combining this charge with the power of baptizing, of
+reading the Scriptures, and of preaching also, when authorized by the
+bishop, they exhibited the peculiar character of Christianity, that of
+sanctifying the business of this world by doing everything in the name
+of the Lord Jesus. No church, so far as we know, certainly no church in
+any town, existed without its deacons: they were as essential to its
+completeness as its bishop and its presbyters.
+
+Take any one of our large towns now, and what do we find? A bishop, not
+of that single town only, but of fifty others besides: one presbyter in
+each, church, and no deacons! Practically, and according to its proper
+character, the order of deacons is extinct; and those who now bear the
+name are most commonly found exercising the functions of presbyters;
+that is, instead of acting as the assistants of a presbyter, they are
+often the sole ministers of their respective parishes; they alone
+baptize; alone offer up the prayers of the church, alone preach the
+word: nothing marks their original character, except their inability to
+administer the communion; and thus, by a strange anomaly, the church in
+such parishes is actually left without any power of celebrating its
+highest act, that of commemorating the death, of Christ in the Lord's
+supper; and if it were not for another great evil, the unfrequent
+celebration of the Communion, the system could not go on: because the
+deacon would be so often obliged to apply to other ministers to perform
+that duty for him, that the inconvenience, as well as the unfitness, of
+the actual practice, would be manifest to every one.
+
+Again, what has become of church discipline? That it has perished, we
+all well know: but its loss is the consequence of that fatal error which
+makes the clergy alone constitute the church. It is quite certain that
+men will not allow the members of a single profession to exercise the
+authority of society; to create and define offences; to determine their
+punishment, and to be the judges of each particular offender. As long as
+the clergy are supposed to constitute the whole church, church
+discipline would be nothing but priestly tyranny. And yet the absence of
+discipline is a most grievous evil; and there is no doubt that, although
+it must be vain when opposed to public opinion, yet, when it is the
+expression of that opinion, there is nothing which it cannot achieve.
+But public opinion cannot enforce church discipline now, because that
+discipline would not be now the expression of the voice of the church,
+but simply of a small part of the church, of the clergy only.
+
+So deeply has this fatal error of regarding the clergy as the church
+extended itself, that at this moment a man's having been baptized is no
+security for his being so much as a believer in the truth of
+Christianity: no matter that he was made in his baptism a member of
+Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven; no
+matter that at a more advanced period of his life he was confirmed, and
+entered into the church by his own act and deed; still the church
+belongs to the clergy; they may hold such and such, language, and teach
+such and such doctrine; it would be very improper in them to do
+otherwise; and he has a great respect for the church, and would
+strenuously resist all its enemies, but truly, as for his own belief and
+his own conduct, these he will guide according to other principles, as
+imperative upon him as the rules of the church upon churchmen. Well
+indeed, do such men bear witness that they are not of the church,
+indeed; that their portion is not with God's people; that Christ is not
+their Saviour, nor the Holy Spirit their Comforter and Guide: but what
+blasphemy is it to call themselves friends of the church! as if Christ's
+church could have any friends except God and his holy angels: the church
+has its living and redeemed members; it may have those who are craving
+to be admitted within its shelter, being convinced that God is in it of
+a truth; but beyond these he who is not with it is against it; he who is
+not Christ's servant, serves his enemy.
+
+Farther, it is this same deadly error which is the root and substance of
+popery. There is no one abuse of the Romish system which may not be
+traced to the original and very early error of drawing a wide
+distinction between the clergy and the laity; of investing the former in
+such a peculiar degree with the attributes of the church that at last
+they retained them almost exclusively. In other words, the great evil of
+popery is, that it has destroyed the Christian church, and has
+substituted a priesthood in its room. This is the fault of the Greek
+church, almost as much as of the Roman; and the peculiar tenet of the
+Romish church, that the supreme government is vested in one single
+member of this priesthood, the Bishop of Rome, is in some respects
+rather an improvement of the system, than an aggravation of it. For
+even an absolute monarchy is a less evil than an absolute aristocracy;
+and an infallible Pope is no greater corruption of Christ's truth, than
+an infallible general council. The real evils of the system are of a far
+older date than the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome, and exist in places
+where that supremacy is resolutely denied. And if we attend to them
+carefully, we shall see that these evils have especially affected the
+Christian church as distinguished from the Christian religion. It is
+worth our while to attend to this distinction; for the Christian
+religion and the Christian church together, and neither without the
+other, form the perfect idea of Christianity. NOW, by the Christian
+religion, I mean the revelation of what God has done or will do for us
+in Christ; the great doctrines of the Trinity, the incarnation, the
+atonement, the resurrection, the presence of the Holy Spirit amongst us,
+and our own resurrection hereafter, to an existence of eternal happiness
+or misery. And these truths, if revealed to any single person living in
+an uninhabited island, might be abundantly sufficient for his salvation;
+if God disposed his heart to receive them, and to believe them
+earnestly, they would be the means of his overcoming his corrupt nature,
+and of passing from death unto life. But because men do not generally
+live alone, but with one another; and because they cannot but greatly
+hinder, or help each other by their mutual influence, therefore the
+Christian church was instituted for the purpose of spreading and
+furthering the growth of the Christian religion in men's hearts; and its
+various ministeries, its sacraments, its services and festivals, and its
+discipline were all designed with that object. And it is all these which
+popery has perverted; popery, whether in the Roman church or in the
+Greek church, or even in the Protestant church, for it has existed more
+or less in all. But even in the Roman church, where the perversion has
+been most complete, it has comparatively affected but little the truths
+of the Christian religion; all the great doctrines, which I mentioned,
+are held as by ourselves; the three creeds, the Apostles' creed, the
+Nicene, and the Athanasian, are used by the Roman church no less than by
+our own. Thus it often happens that we can read with great edification
+the devotional works of Roman Catholic writers, because in such works
+the individual stands apart from the Christian church, and is concerned
+only with the Christian religion: they show how one single soul, having
+learnt the tidings of redemption with faith, and thankfulness, improves
+them to its own salvation. But the moment that he goes out of his
+closet, and begins to speak and act amongst other men, then the
+corruption of popery shows itself. The Christian church was designed to
+help each individual towards a more perfect knowledge and love of God,
+by the counsel and example of his brethren, and by the practices which,
+he was to observe in their society. But the corrupt church exercises its
+influence for evil; it omits all the benefits to be derived from a
+living society, and puts forward, in their place, the observance of
+rites and ceremonies; knowledge and love are no longer looked to as the
+perfections of a Christian, but ignorance and blind obedience; not the
+mortifying all our evil passions universally, but the keeping them
+chained up, as it were under priestly control, to be let loose at the
+priest's bidding, against those whom he calls the church's enemies; that
+glorious church which he has destroyed and converted it into an idol
+temple, in that he, as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself
+that he is God.
+
+To resist this great and monstrous evil, we must not exclaim against it
+under one of its forms only, even although that form exhibit it,
+indeed, in its most complete deformity; but we must strive against it
+under all its forms, remembering that its essence consists in putting
+the clergy in the place of the church; and taking from the great mass of
+the church their proper share in its government, in its offices, and
+therefore in its benefits, and in the sense of its solemn
+responsibilities. We speak often of church extension, meaning by this
+term the building new places of public worship, and the appointing
+additional ministers to preach the word and administer the sacraments.
+And no doubt such church extension is a good and blessed work, for it
+brings the knowledge of the truths of Christ's religion, and the benefit
+of his ordinances, the sacraments, within the reach of many who might
+otherwise have been without them. But it were a yet truer and more
+blessed church extension which should add to the building and the single
+minister, the real living church itself, with all its manifold offices
+and ministries, with its pure discipline, with its holy and loving sense
+of brotherhood. Without this, Christ will still, indeed, as heretofore,
+lay his hands on some few sick folk and heal them; his grace will convey
+the truths of his gospel to individual souls, and they will believe and
+be saved. But the fulfilment of prophecy; the triumph of Christ's
+kingdom; the changing an evil world into a world redeemed; this can only
+be done by a revival of the Christian church in its power, the living
+temple of the Holy Ghost, which, visibly to all mankind, in the wisdom
+and holiness of its members, showed that God was in the midst of it. It
+may be that this is a fond hope, which we may not expect to see
+realized; but looking on the one hand to the strong and triumphant
+language of prophecy, I know not how any hope of the advancement of
+Christ's kingdom can be more bold than God's word will warrant: and on
+the other, tracing the past history of the church, its gradual
+corruption may be deduced distinctly from one early and deadly mischief,
+which has destroyed its efficacy; so that, if this mischief can be
+removed, and the church become such as Christ designed it to be, it does
+not seem presumptuous to hope that his appointed instrument, working
+according to his will, should be enabled to obtain the full blessings of
+his promise.
+
+And now, in conclusion, if we ask, what should follow from all that has
+been said? what it should lead us all, if it be true, to feel or to
+do?--the answer is, that considerations of this sort are not such as
+lead at once to some distinct change in our conduct; to the laying aside
+some favourite sin, or the practising some long neglected duty. And yet
+the thoughts which I have endeavoured to suggest to your minds may, if
+dwelt upon, lead, in the end, to a very considerable alteration, both in
+our feelings and in our practice. First of all, it is not a little
+matter to be convinced practically, that it is baptism, and not
+ordination, which makes us members of the church; that it is by sharing
+in the communion of Christ's body and blood, not by being admitted into
+the ministry, that the privileges and graces of Christ's church are
+conferred upon us. And most wisely, and most truly, does our Church
+separate ordination from the two Christian sacraments, as an institution
+far less solemn, and conferring graces far less important: for the
+difference between a Christian and a Christian minister is but one of
+office, not of moral or spiritual advancement, not of greater or less
+nearness to God. One is our master, even Christ; and all we are
+brethren. Words which certainly do not imply that all members of the
+church are to have the same office, or that all offices are of equal
+importance and dignity; but which do imply, most certainly, that any
+attempt to convert the ministry into a priesthoood, that is, to
+represent them as standing, in any matter, as mediators between Christ
+and his people, or as being essentially the channel through which his
+grace must pass to his church, is directly in opposition to him; and is
+no better than idolatry. It was by baptism that we have all been
+engrafted into Christ's body; it is by the communion of his body and
+blood that we continue to abide in him; it is in his whole body, in his
+church, and not in its ministers, as distinct from his church, that his
+Holy Spirit abides.
+
+Thus feeling that we each are members of the church, that it is our
+highest country, to which we are bound with a far deeper love than to
+our earthly country, is not its welfare our welfare; its triumph our
+triumph; its failures our shame? We shall see, then, that church
+questions are not such merely, or principally, as concern the payment of
+the clergy, or their discipline, but all questions in which God's glory
+and man's sins or duties are concerned; all questions in the decision of
+which, there is a moral good and evil; a grieving of Christ's Spirit, or
+a conformity to him. And in such questions as concern the church, in the
+more narrow and common sense of the word, seeing that we are all members
+of the church, we should not neglect them, as the concern of others, but
+take an interest in them, and act in them, so far as we have
+opportunity, as in a matter which most nearly concerns ourselves. We
+feel that we have an interest in our country's affairs, although we are
+not members of the government or of the legislature; we have our part to
+perform, without at all overstepping the modesty of private life: and it
+is the constant influence of public opinion, and the active interest
+taken by the country at large in its own concerns, which, in spite of
+occasional delusion or violence, is mainly instrumental in preserving to
+us the combined vigour and order of our political constitution. And so,
+if we took an equal interest in the affairs of our divine commonwealth,
+our Christian church, and endeavoured as eagerly to promote every thing
+which tended to its welfare, and to put down and prevent every thing
+which might work it mischief, then the efforts of the clergy to advance
+Christ's kingdom would be incalculably aided, while there would then be
+no danger of our investing them with the duties and responsibilities
+which belong properly to the whole church; they could not then have
+dominion over our faith, nor by possibility become lords over God's
+heritage, but would be truly ensamples to the flock, the helpers of our
+joy, the glory of Christ.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XXXIX.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+COLOSSIANS iii. 17.
+
+_Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus,
+giving thanks to God and the Father by Him_.
+
+
+This, like the other general rules of the gospel, is familiar enough to
+us all in its own words; but we are very apt to forbear making the
+application of it. In fact, he who were to apply it perfectly would be a
+perfect Christian: for a life of which every word and deed were said and
+done in the name of the Lord Jesus, would be a life indeed worthy of the
+children of God, and such as they lead in heaven; it would leave no room
+for sin to enter. The art of our enemy has been therefore to make us
+leave this command of the apostle's in its general sense, and avoid
+exploring, so to speak, all the wisdom contained within it. Certain
+actions of our lives, our religious services, the more solemn
+transactions in which we are engaged, we are willing to do in Christ's
+name; but that multitude of common words and ordinary actions by which
+more than sixty-nine out of our seventy years are filled, we take away
+from our Lord's dominion, under the foolish, and hypocritical pretence
+that they are too trifling and too familiar to be mixed up with the
+thought of things so solemn.
+
+This is one fault, and by far the most common. We make Christ's service
+the business only of a very small portion of our lives; we hallow only
+a very small part of our words and actions by doing them in his name.
+Unlike our Lord's own parable, where he compares Christianity to leaven
+hidden in the three measures of meal till the whole was leavened, the
+practice rather has been to keep the leaven confined to one little
+corner of the mass of meal; to take care that it should not spread so as
+to leaven the whole mass; to keep our hearts still in the state of the
+world when Christ visited it--"the light shineth in darkness, and the
+darkness comprehended it not;" that is, it did not take the light into
+itself so as to be wholly enlightened: the light shone, and there was a
+bright space immediately around it; but beyond there was a blackness of
+darkness into which it vainly strove to penetrate.
+
+On the other hand there has been, though, more rarely, a fault of the
+opposite sort. Men have said that they were in all their actions of
+ordinary life doing Christ's will, that they endeavoured always to be
+promoting some good object; and that the peculiar services of religion,
+as they are called, were useless, inasmuch as in spirit they are
+worshipping God always. This is a great error; because, as a matter of
+fact, it is false. We may safely say that no man ever did keep his heart
+right with God in his ordinary life, that no one ever became one with
+Christ, and Christ with him, without seeking Christ where he reveals
+himself, it may not be more really, but to our weakness far more
+sensibly, than in the common business of daily life. We may be happy if
+we can find Christ there, after we have long sought him and found him in
+the way of his own ordinances, in prayer, and in his holy communion.
+Even Christ himself, when on earth, though his whole day was undeniably
+spent in doing the will of his heavenly father,--although to him
+doubtless God was ever present in the commonest acts no less than in the
+most solemn,--yet even he, after a day spent in all good works, desired
+a yet more direct intercourse with God, and was accustomed to spend a
+large portion of the night in retirement and prayer.
+
+Without this, indeed, we shall most certainly not say and do all in the
+name of the Lord Jesus; much more shall we be in danger of forgetting
+him altogether. But supposing that we are not neglectful of our
+religious duties, in the common sense of the term, that we do pray and
+read the Scriptures, and partake of Christ's communion, yet it will
+often happen that we do not connect our prayers, nor our reading, nor
+our communion, with many of the common portions of our lives; that there
+are certain things in which we take great interest, which,
+notwithstanding, we leave, as it were, wholly without the range of the
+light of Christ's Spirit. There is a story told that, in times and
+countries where there prevailed the deepest ignorance, some who came to
+be baptized into the faith of Christ, converted from their heathen
+state, not in reality but only in name, were accustomed to leave their
+right arm unbaptized, with the notion that this arm, not being pledged
+to Christ's service, might wreak upon their enemies those works of
+hatred and revenge which in baptism they had promised to renounce. It is
+too much to say that something like this unbaptized right arm is still
+to be met with amongst us--that men too often leave some of their very
+most important concerns, what they call by way of eminence their
+business--their management of their own money affairs, and their conduct
+in public matters--wholly out of the control of Christ's law?
+
+Now at this very time public matters are engaging the thoughts of a
+great many persons all over the kingdom: and are not only engaging their
+thoughts, but are also become a practical matter, in which they are
+acting with great earnestness. Is it nothing that there should be so
+much, interest felt, so much pains taken, and yet that neither should be
+done in the name of the Lord Jesus, nor to the glory of God? It cannot
+be unsuited to the present season to dwell a little on this subject,
+which has nothing whatever to do with men's differences of opinion, but
+relates only to their acting, whatever be their political opinions, on
+Christian principles, and in a Christian spirit.
+
+First, consider what we pray for in the prayer which we have been using
+every week for the high court of parliament: we pray to God, that "all
+things may be so ordered and settled by the endeavours of parliament,
+upon the best and surest foundations, that peace and happiness, truth,
+and justice, religion and piety, may be established among us for all
+generations." These great blessings we beg of God to secure to us and to
+our children through the endeavours of parliament; if, therefore, we are
+any ways concerned in fixing who the persons are to be who are to
+compose this parliament, it is plain that there is put into our bands a
+high privilege, if you will; but along with it, as with all other
+privileges, a most solemn responsibility.
+
+But, if it be a solemn responsibility in the sight of God and of Christ,
+surely the act of voting, which many think so lightly of, and which many
+more consider a thing wholly political and worldly, becomes, indeed, a
+very important Christian duty, not to be discharged hastily or
+selfishly, in blind prejudice or passion, from self-interest, or in mere
+careless good nature and respect of persons; but deliberately,
+seriously, calmly, and, so far as we can judge our deceitful hearts,
+purely; not without prayer to Him who giveth wisdom liberally to those
+that ask it, that he will be pleased to guide them aright, to his own
+glory, and to the good of his people.
+
+Do I say that if we were to approach this duty in this spirit, and with
+such prayers, we should all agree in the same opinion, and all think the
+same of the same men? No, by no means; we might still greatly differ;
+but we should, at least, have reason to respect one another, and to be
+in charity with one another; and if we all earnestly desired and prayed
+to be directed to God's glory, and the public good, God, I doubt not,
+would give us all those ends which we so purely desired, although in our
+estimate of the earthly means and instruments by which they were to be
+gained, we had honestly differed from one another.
+
+Now, supposing that we had this conviction, that what we were going to
+do concerned the glory of God and the good of his people, and that we
+approached it therefore seriously as a Christian duty, yet it may be
+well that many men might feel themselves deficient in knowledge; they
+might not understand the great questions at issue; they might honestly
+doubt how they could best fulfil the trust committed to them. I know
+that the most ignorant man will feel no such hesitation if he is going
+to give his vote from fancy, or from prejudice, or from interest; these
+are motives which determine our conduct quickly and decisively. But if
+we regard our vote as a talent for which we must answer before God that
+we may well be embarrassed by a consciousness of ignorance; we may well
+be anxious to get some guidance from others, if we cannot find it in
+ourselves. Here, then, is the place for authority,--for relying, that
+is, on the judgment of others, when we feel that we cannot judge for
+ourselves. But is their no room for the exercise of much good sense and
+fairness in ourselves as to the choice of the person by whose judgment
+we mean to be guided? Are we so little accustomed to estimate our
+neighbours' characters rightly, as to be unable to determine whom we may
+consult with advantage? Surely if their be any one whom we have proved,
+in the affairs of common life, to be at once honest and sensible, to
+such an one we should apply when we are at a loss as to public matters.
+If there is such an one amongst our own relations or personal friends,
+we should go to him in preference: if not, we can surely find one such
+amongst our neighbours: and here the authority of such of our neighbours
+as have a direct connexion with us, if we have had reason to respect
+their judgment and their principles, may be properly preferred to that
+of indifferent persons; the authority of a master, or an employer, or of
+our minister, or of our landlord, may and ought, under such
+circumstances, to have a great and decisive influence over us.
+
+On the other hand, supposing again that we have this strong sense of the
+great responsibility in the sight of God of every man who has the
+privilege of a vote, we shall be exceedingly careful not to tempt him to
+sin by fulfilling this duty ill. Nothing can be more natural or more
+proper than that those who have strong impressions themselves as to the
+line to be followed in public matters, should be desirous of persuading
+others to think as they do; every man who loves truth and righteousness
+must wish that what he himself earnestly believes to be true and
+righteous, should be loved by others also; but the highest truth, if
+professed by one who believes it not in his heart, is to him a lie, and
+he sins greatly by professing it. Let us try as much as we will to
+convince our neighbours; but let us beware of influencing their conduct,
+when we fail in influencing their convictions: he who bribes or
+frightens his neighbour into doing an act which no good man would do for
+reward or from fear, is tempting his neighbour to sin; he is assisting
+to lower and to harden his conscience,--to make him act for the favour
+or from the fear of man, instead of for the favour or from the fear of
+God; and if this be a sin in him, it is a double sin in us to tempt him
+to it. Nor let us deceive ourselves by talking of the greatness of the
+stake at issue; that God's glory and the public good are involved in the
+result of the contest, and that therefore we must do all in our power to
+win it. Let us by all means do all that we can do without sin; but let
+us not dare to do evil that good may come, for that is the part of
+unbelief; it becomes those who will not trust God with the government of
+the world, but would fain guide its course themselves. Here, indeed, our
+Lord's command does apply to us, that we be not anxious; "Which of you
+by taking thought can add to his stature one cubit?" How little can we
+see of the course of Providence! how little can we be sure that what we
+judged for the best in public affairs may not lead to mischief! But
+these things are in God's hand; our business is to keep ourselves and
+our neighbours from sin, and not to do or encourage in others any thing
+that is evil, however great the advantages which we may fancy likely to
+flow from that evil to the cause even of the highest good.
+
+There is no immediate prospect, indeed, that we in this particular
+congregation shall be called upon to practise the duty of which I have
+been now speaking; and, indeed, it is for that very reason that I could
+dwell on the subject more freely. But what is going on all around us,
+what we hear of, read of, and talk of so much as we are many of us
+likely to do in the next week or two about political matters, _that_ we
+should be accustomed to look upon as Christians: we should by that
+standard try our common views and language about it, and, if it may be,
+correct them: that so hereafter, if we be called upon to act, we may
+act, according to the Apostle's teaching, in the name of our Lord Jesus.
+And I am quite sure if we do so think and so act, although our
+differences of opinion might remain just the same, yet the change in
+ourselves, and I verily believe in the blessings which God would give
+us, would be more than we can well believe; and a general election,
+instead of calling forth, as it now does, a host of unchristian passions
+and practices, would be rather an exercise of Christian judgment, and
+forbearance, and faith, and charity; promoting, whatever was the mere
+political result, the glory of God, advancing Christ's kingdom, and the
+good of this, as it would be then truly called, Christian nation.
+
+
+
+NOTES.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE A. P. 5.
+
+"_But our path is not backwards but onwards_"--This thought is expressed
+very beautifully in lines as wise and true as they are poetical:
+
+     "Grieve not for these: nor dare lament
+       That thus from childhood's thoughts we roam:
+     Not backward are our glances bent,
+       But forward to our Father's home.
+     Eternal growth has no such fears,
+       But freshening still with seasons past,
+     The old man clogs its earlier years,
+       And simple childhood comes the last."
+
+_Burbridge's Poems_, p. 309.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE B. P. 102.
+
+"_Some may know the story of that German nobleman_," &c.--The Baron von
+Canitz. He lived in the latter half of the seventeenth century, and was
+engaged in the service of the electors of Brandenburg, both of the great
+elector and his successor. He was the author of several hymns, one of
+which is of remarkable beauty, as may be seen in the following
+translation, for the greatest part of which I am indebted to the
+kindness of a friend: but the language of the original, in several
+places, cannot be adequately translated in English.
+
+     Come, my soul, thou must be waking--
+     Now is breaking
+       O'er the earth another day.
+     Come to Him who made this splendour
+     See thou render
+       All thy feeble powers can pay.
+
+     From the stars thy course be learning:
+     Dimly burning
+       'Neath the sun their light grows pale:
+     So let all that sense delighted
+     While benighted
+       From God's presence fade and fail.
+
+     Lo! how all of breath partaking,
+     Gladly waking,
+       Hail the sun's enlivening light!
+     Plants, whose life mere sap doth nourish,
+     Rise and flourish,
+       When he breaks the shades of night.
+
+     Thou too hail the light returning,--
+     Ready burning
+       Be the incense of thy powers;--
+     For the night is safely ended:
+     God hath tended
+       With His care thy helpless hours.
+
+     Pray that He may prosper ever
+     Each endeavour
+       When thine aim is good and true;
+     But that He may ever thwart thee,
+     And convert thee,
+       When thou evil wouldst pursue.
+
+     Think that He thy ways beholdeth--
+     He unfoldeth
+       Every fault that lurks within;
+     Every stain of shame gloss'd over
+     Can discover,
+       And discern each deed of sin.
+
+     Fetter'd to the fleeting hours,
+     All our powers,
+       Vain and brief, are borne away;
+     Time, my soul, thy ship is steering,
+     Onward veering,
+       To the gulph of death a prey.
+
+     May'st thou then on life's last morrow,
+     Free from sorrow,
+       Pass away in slumber sweet;
+     And released from death's dark sadness,
+     Rise in gladness,
+       That far brighter Sun to greet.
+
+     Only God's free gifts abuse not,
+     His light refuse not,
+       But still His Spirit's voice obey;
+     Soon shall joy thy brow be wreathing,
+     Splendour breathing
+       Fairer than the fairest day.
+
+     If aught of care this morn oppress thee,
+     To Him address thee,
+       Who, like the sun, is good to all:
+     He gilds the mountain tops, the while
+     His gracious smile
+       Will on the humblest valley fall.
+
+     Round the gifts His bounty show'rs,
+     Walls and tow'rs
+       Girt with flames thy God shall rear:
+     Angel legions to defend thee
+     Shall attend thee,
+       Hosts whom Satan's self shall fear.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE C. P. 122.
+
+"_But, once admit a single exception, and the infallible virtue of the
+rule ceases_."--Thus the famous Canon of Vincentius Lirinensis is like
+tradition itself, always either superfluous or insufficient. Taken
+literally, it is true and worthless;--because what _all_ have asserted,
+_always_, and in _all places_, supposing of course that the means of
+judging were in their power, may be assumed to be some indisputable
+axiom, such as never will be disputed any more than it has been disputed
+hitherto. But take it with any allowance, and then it is of no use in
+settling a question: for what _most_ men have asserted, _most commonly_,
+and in _most places_, has a certain _a priori_ probability, it is true,
+but by no means such as may not be outweighed by probabilities on the
+other side; for the extreme improbability consists not in the prevalence
+of error amongst millions, or for centuries, or over whole
+continents,--but in its being absolutely universal, so universal, that
+truth could not find a single witness at any time or in any country. But
+the single witness is enough to "justify the ways of God," and reduces
+what otherwise would have been a monstrous triumph of evil to the
+character of a severe trial of our faith, severe indeed as the trials of
+an evil world will be, but no more than a trial such as, with God's
+grace, may be overcome.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE D. P. 189.
+
+_"It was an admirable definition of that which excites laughter,"_
+&c.--[Greek: To geloion apurtaepa ti chai aiochos auodnnoy chai on
+phthartichon oion enthus to geloion prosopon aischron ti chai
+dieotruppenon anen odunaes]--_Aristotle, Poetic,_ ii.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE E. P. 245.
+
+"_I would endeavour just to touch upon some of the purposes for which
+the Scripture tells us that Christ died_."--The Collects for Easter
+Sunday and the Sundays just before it and after it, illustrate the
+enumeration here given. The Collect for the Sunday next before Easter
+speaks of Christ's death only as an "example of his great humility." The
+Collect for Easter-day speaks of the resurrection, and connects it with
+our spiritual resurrection, as does also the Collect for the first
+Sunday after Easter. But the collect for the Second Sunday after Easter
+speaks of Christ as being at once our sacrifice for sin and our example
+of godly life,--a sacrifice to be regarded with entire thankfulness, and
+an example to be daily followed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE F. P. 282.
+
+"_Such also was to be the state of the Christian Church after our Lord's
+ascension_."--And therefore, as I think, St. Peter applies to the
+Christians of Asia Minor the very terms applied to the Jews living in
+Assyria or in Egypt; he addresses them as [Greek: parepidaemois
+diasporas], (1 Peter i. 1,) that is, as strangers and sojourners,
+scattered up and down in a country that was not properly their own, and
+living in a sort of banishment from their true home. That the words are
+not addressed to Jewish Christians, and therefore are not to be
+understood in their simple historical sense, seems evident from the
+second chapter of the Epistle, verses 9, 10, and iv. 2,3.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE G. P. 315.
+
+"_Not only an outward miracle, but the changed circumstances of the
+times may speak God's will no less clearly than a miracle_," &c.--What I
+have here said does not at all go beyond what has been said on the same
+subject by Hooker: "Laws, though both ordained of God himself, and the
+end for which they were ordained continuing, may, notwithstanding,
+cease, if by alteration of persons or times they be found insufficient
+to attain unto that end. In which respect why may we not presume that
+God doth even call for such change or alteration as the very condition
+of things themselves doth make necessary?... In this case, therefore,
+men do not presume to change God's ordinance, but they yield thereunto,
+requiring itself to be changed."--_Ecclesiastical Polity_, b. iii. Sec. 10.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE H. P. 320.
+
+_"Nor is it less strange that any should ever have been afraid of their
+understandings, and should have sought goodness through prejudice, and
+blindness, and folly_."--For some time past the words "Rationalism" and
+"Rationalistic" have been freely used as terms of reproach by writers on
+religious subjects; the 73d No. of the "Tracts for the Times" is
+entitled, "On the introduction of Rationalistic Principles into
+Religion," and a whole chapter in Mr. Gladstone's late work on Church
+Principles is headed "Rationalism." Yet we still want a clear definition
+of the thing signified by this name. The Tract for the Times says, "To
+rationalize, is to ask for _reasons_ out of place; to ask improperly how
+we are to _account_ for certain things; to be unwilling to believe them
+unless they can be accounted for, i.e. referred to something else as a
+cause, to some existing system, as harmonizing with them, or taking them
+up into itself.... It is characterised by two peculiarities;--its love
+of systematizing, and its basing its system upon personal experience, on
+the evidence of sense."--P. 2. Mr. Gladstone says more generally,
+"Rationalism is commonly, at least in this country, taken to be the
+reduction of Christian _doctrine_ to the standard and measure of the
+human understanding."--P. 37. But neither of these definitions will
+include all the arguments and statements which have been called by
+various writers "rationalistic;" and while the terms used are thus
+vague, they are often applied very indiscriminately, and the tendency of
+this use of them is to depreciate the exercise of the intellectual
+faculties generally. The subject seems to deserve fuller consideration
+than it has yet received; there is a real evil which the term
+Rationalism is meant to denounce; but it has not been clearly
+apprehended, and what is good has sometimes been confounded with it, and
+denounced under the same name.
+
+I cannot pretend to discuss the subject fully in a mere note, even if I
+were otherwise competent to do it. But one or two points may be noticed,
+as likely to assist the inquiry, wherever it is worthily entered on.
+
+1st. It is important to bear in mind the distinction which Coleridge
+enforces so earnestly between the understanding and the reason. I do not
+know whether Mr. Gladstone, in the passage quoted above, uses the word
+"understanding" as synonymous with reason, or in that stricter sense in
+which Coleridge employs it. But the writer of the Tract seems to allude
+to the stricter sense, when he calls it a characteristic of rationalism
+"to base its system upon personal experience, on the evidence of sense."
+If this be the case, then it would seem that rationalism is the
+appealing to the decision of the understanding in points where the
+decision properly belongs not to the understanding, but to the reason.
+This is a great fault, and one to which all persons who belong to the
+sensualist school in philosophy, as opposed to the idealist school,
+would be more or less addicted. But then, this fault consists not in an
+over-estimating of man's intellectual nature generally, but in the
+exalting one part of it unduly, to the injury of another part; in
+deferring to the understanding, rather than to the reason.
+
+2d. Faith and reason are often invidiously contrasted with each other,
+as if they were commonly described in Scripture as antagonists; whereas
+faith is more properly opposed to sight, or to lust, being, in fact, a
+very high exercise of the pure reason; inasmuch as we believe truths
+which our senses do not teach us, and which our passions would have us,
+therefore, reject, because those truths are taught by Him in whom reason
+recognises its own author, and the infallible source of all truth.
+
+3d. It were better to oppose reason to passion than to faith; for it may
+be safely said, that he who neglects his reason, so far as he does
+neglect it, does not lead a life of faith afterwards, but a life of
+passion. He does not draw nearer to God, but to the brutes, or rather to
+the devils; for his passions cannot be the mere instinctive appetites of
+the brute, but derive from the wreck of his intellectual powers, which
+he cannot utterly destroy, just so much of a higher nature that they are
+sins, and not instincts, belonging to the malignity of diabolic nature,
+rather than to the mere negative evil of the nature of brutes.
+
+4th. Faith may be described as reason leaning upon God. Without God,
+reason is either overpowered by sense and understanding, and, in a
+manner, overgrown, so that it cannot comprehend its proper truths; or,
+being infinite, it cannot discover all the truths which concern it, and
+therefore needs a farther revelation to enlighten it. But with God's
+grace strengthening it to assert its supremacy over sense and
+understanding, and communicating to it what of itself it could not have
+discovered, it then having gained strength and light not its own, and
+doing and seeing consciously by God's help, becomes properly faith.
+
+5th. Faith without reason, is not properly faith, but mere power
+worship; and power worship may be devil worship; for it is reason which
+entertains the idea of God--an idea essentially made up of truth and
+goodness, no less than of power. A sign of power exhibited to the senses
+might, through them, dispose the whole man to acknowledge it as divine;
+yet power in itself is not divine, it may be devilish. But when reason
+recognises that, along with this power, there exist also wisdom and
+goodness, then it perceives that here is God; and the worship which,
+without reason, might have been idolatry, being now according to
+reason is faith.
+
+6th. If this were considered, men would be more careful of speaking
+disparagingly of reason, seeing that it is the necessary condition of
+the existence of faith. It is quite true, that when we have attained to
+faith, it supersedes reason; we walk by sunlight, rather than by
+moonlight; following the guidance of infinite reason, instead of finite.
+But how are we to attain to faith? in other words, how can we
+distinguish God's voice from the voice of evil? for we must distinguish
+it to be God's voice before we can have faith in it. We distinguish it,
+and can distinguish it no otherwise, by comparing it with that idea of
+God which reason intuitively enjoins, the gift of reason being God's
+original revelation of himself to man. Now, if the voice which comes to
+us from the unseen world agree not with this idea, we have no choice but
+to pronounce it not to be God's voice; for no signs of power, in
+confirmation of it, can alone prove it to be God. God is not power only,
+but power, and truth, and holiness; and the existence of even infinite
+power, does not necessarily involve in it truth and holiness also; else
+the notion of the world being governed by an evil being would be no more
+than a contradiction in terms; and the horrible strife of the two
+principles of Manicheism would be a mere matter of indifference; for if
+power alone constitutes God, whichever principle triumphed over the
+other, would become God by the very fact of its victory; and thus
+triumphant evil would be good.
+
+7th. Reason, then, is the mean whereby we attain to faith, and escape
+the devil worship of idolatry; but the understanding is not a necessary
+condition of faith, and very often impedes it; for the understanding
+having for its basis the reports of sense and experience, has no direct
+way of arriving at things invisible, and rather shrinks back from that
+world with which it is in no way familiar. It has a work to do in regard
+to revelation, and an important work; but divine things not being its
+proper matter, its work concerning them must be subordinate, and its
+tendency is always to fall back from the invisible to the visible,--from
+matters of faith to matters of experience. Its work, with respect to
+revelation, is this--that it should inquire into the truth of the
+outward signs of it; which outward signs being necessarily things
+visible and sensible, fall within its province of judgment. Thus
+understanding judges the external witnesses of a revelation: if miracles
+be alleged, it is the business of understanding to ascertain the fact of
+their occurrence; if a book claim to be the record of a revelation, it
+belongs to the understanding to make out the origin of this book, the
+time when it was written, who were its authors, and what is the first
+and grammatical meaning of its language. Or, again, if any men profess
+to be the depositaries of divine truth, by an extraordinary commission
+from God, the understanding, being familiar with man's nature and
+motives, can judge of their credibility--can see whether there are any
+marks of folly in them, or of dishonesty, or whether they are at once
+sensible and honest. And in all such matters, the prerogative of the
+understanding to judge is not to be questioned; for all such points are
+strictly within its dominion; and our Lord's words are of universal
+application, that we should render to Caesar the things which are
+Caesar's, no less than we should render to God the things that are God's.
+
+Faith may exist, as I said, without the action of the understanding, but
+never without that of the reason. It may exist independent of the
+understanding, because faith in God is the natural result of the idea of
+God: and that idea belongs to the reason, and the understanding is not
+concerned with it. But when a special revelation has been given us,
+through human instruments; when the understanding is called in to
+certify the particular fact, that in such and such particular persons,
+writings, or events, God has made himself manifest in an extraordinary
+manner; it is the human instrumentality which requires the judgment of
+the understanding; the bringing in of human characters, and sensible
+facts, which are matters of sense and experience; and, therefore, it is
+mere ignorance when Christians speak slightingly of the outward and
+historical evidences of Christianity, and indulge in very misplaced
+contempt for Paley and others who have worked out the historical proof
+of it. Such persons may observe, if they will, that where the historical
+evidence has not been listened to, there a belief in Christianity,
+properly so called, is wanting. Living examples might, I think, be named
+of men whose reason entirely acknowledges the internal proofs of a
+divine origin which are contained in the Christian doctrines, but whose
+understandings are not satisfied as to the facts of the Christian
+history, and particularly as to the fact of our Lord's resurrection.
+Such men are a remarkable contrast to those whose understandings are
+fully satisfied of the historical truth of our Lord's resurrection, but
+who are indifferent to, or actually deny, those doctrinal truths of
+which another power than the understanding must be the warrant. It is
+important to observe, therefore, that in a revelation involving, as an
+essential part of it, certain historical facts, there is necessarily a
+call for the judgment of the understanding, although in religious faith
+simply the understanding may have no place.
+
+8th. Now, then, the clearest notion which can be given of rationalism
+would, I think, be this: that it is the abuse of the understanding in
+subjects where the divine and the human, so to speak, are intermingled.
+Of human things the understanding can judge, of divine things it
+cannot;--and thus, where the two are mixed together, its inability to
+judge of the one part makes it derange the proportions of both, and the
+judgment of the whole is vitiated. For example, the understanding
+examines a miraculous history; it judges truly of what I may call the
+human part of the case; that is to say, of the rarity of miracles,--of
+the fallibility of human testimony,--of the proneness of most minds to
+exaggeration,--and of the critical arguments affecting the genuineness
+or the date of the narrative itself. But it forgets the divine part,
+namely, the power and providence of God, that He is really ever present
+amongst us, and that the spiritual world, which exists invisibly all
+around us, may conceivably, and by no means impossibly, exist, at some
+times and to some persons, even visibly. These considerations, which the
+understanding is ignorant of, would often modify our judgment as to the
+human parts of the case. Things not impossible in themselves are
+believed upon sufficient testimony; and with all the carelessness and
+exaggeration of historians, the mass of history is notwithstanding
+generally credible. Again, with regard to the history of the Old
+Testament, our judgment of the human part in it requires to be
+constantly modified by our consciousness of the divine part, or
+otherwise it cannot fail to be rationalistic; that is, it will be the
+judgment of the understanding only, unchecked by the reason. Gesenius'
+Commentary on Isaiah is rationalistic, for it regards Isaiah merely as a
+Jewish writer, zealously attached to the religion of his country, and
+lamenting the decay of his nation, and anxiously looking for its future
+restoration. No doubt Isaiah was all this, and therefore Gesenius'
+Commentary is critically and historically very valuable; the human part
+of Isaiah is nowhere better illustrated; but the divine part of the
+prophecy of Isaiah is no less real, and the consciousness of its
+existence should actually qualify our feelings and language even with
+reference to the human part.
+
+9th. The fault, then, of rationalism appears to me to consist not so
+much in what it has as in what it has not. The understanding has its
+proper work to do with respect to the Bible, because the Bible consists
+of human writings and contains a human history. Critical and historical
+inquiries respecting it are, therefore, perfectly legitimate; it
+contains matter which is within the province of the understanding, and
+the understanding has God's warrant for doing that work which he
+appointed it to do; only, let us remember, that the understanding cannot
+ascend to things divine; that for these another faculty is
+necessary,--reason or faith. If this faculty be living in us, then there
+can be no rationalism; and what is called so is then no other than the
+voice of Christian truth. Where a man's writings show that he is keenly
+alive to the divine part of Scripture, that he sees God ever in it, and
+regards it truly as his word, his judgments of the human part in it are
+not likely to be rationalistic; and if his understanding decides
+according to its own laws, upon points within its own province, while
+his faith duly tempers it, and restrains it from venturing upon
+another's dominion, the result will, in all probability, be such as
+commonly attends the use of God's manifold gifts in their just
+proportions,--it will image, after our imperfect measure, the holiness
+of God and the truth of God.
+
+It is very true, and should be acknowledged in the fullest manner, that
+for the study of the highest moral and spiritual questions another
+faculty than the understanding is wanting; and that without this faculty
+the understanding alone cannot arrive at truth. But it is no less true,
+that while there is, on the one side, a faculty higher than the
+understanding, which is entitled to pronounce upon its defects; "for he
+that is spiritual judgeth all things," ([Greek: auachriuei];) so there
+is a clamour often raised against it, not from above, but from
+below,--the clamour of mere shallowness and ignorance, and passion. Of
+this sort is some of the outcry which is raised against rationalism. Men
+do not leap, _per saltum mortalem_, from ordinary folly to divine
+wisdom: and the foolish have no right to think that they are angels,
+because they are not humanly wise. There is a deep and universal truth
+in St. Paul's words, where he says, that Christians wish "not to be
+unclothed but clothed upon, that mortality may be swallowed up of life."
+Wisdom is gained, not by renouncing or despising the understanding, but
+by adding to its perfect work the perfect work of reason, and of
+reason's perfection, faith.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE I. P. 331.
+
+"_A famous example of this may be seen in the sixth chapter of St.
+John,"_ &c.--The interpretation of this chapter, and particularly of the
+part alluded to in the text, is of no small importance; for it is
+remarkable, that the highest notions with respect to the presence of
+our Lord in the Holy Communion are often grounded upon this passage in
+St. John's Gospel, which yet, in the judgment of others, most decisively
+repels them.
+
+The whole question resolves itself into this--Are our Lord's words in
+this place co-ordinate with the Holy Communion, or subordinate to it?
+That is, do they and the communion alike point to some great truth
+superior to them both: or do our Lord's words, in St. John, point to the
+communion itself as their highest meaning?
+
+The communion itself expresses a truth above itself by a symbolical
+action; the words of our Lord, in St. John, are exactly the same with
+that symbolic action; it is natural, therefore, to understand them not
+as referring to it, but to the same[14] higher truth to which it refers
+also: and the more so as the communion is not once mentioned by St. John
+either in his Gospel or in his Epistles; but the idea which the
+communion expresses appears to have been familiar to his mind; at least,
+if we suppose that his mention of the blood and water flowing from our
+Lord's side in his Gospel, and his allusion again to the same fact in
+his Epistle, have reference in any degree to it, which seems to me
+most probable.
+
+[Footnote 14: The common tendency to make the Christian sacraments an
+ultimate end rather than a mean, is exhibited in the heading of the
+tenth chapter of the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians, in our authorized
+version, where we find the first verses described as stating, that "the
+Jews' sacraments were types of ours." Whereas, so far is it from the
+apostle's argument to represent our sacraments as the reality of which
+the Jews' sacraments were the type, that he is describing theirs and
+ours as co-ordinate with each other, and both alike subordinate to the
+same truth; and he argues, that if the Jews, with their sacraments, did
+notwithstanding lose the reality which those sacraments typified, so we
+should take heed lest we, with our sacraments, should lose it also. The
+erroneous heading is not given in the Geneva Bible, where we have, on
+the contrary, the true observation; "the sacraments of the old fathers
+were all one with ours, for they respected Christ only." It is true that
+if no more were meant than that "the Jews' sacraments were like ours,"
+there would be no reason to object to the expression; but apparently
+more is meant, as the word type seems to imply that what it is compared
+with is the reality, of which it is itself only the image; and one thing
+cannot properly be called the type of another, when both are but types
+of the same third thing. But the divines of James the First's reign and
+of his son's, were to the reformers exactly what the so-called fathers
+were to the apostles: the very same tendencies, growing up even in
+Elizabeth's reign, becoming strengthened under the Stuart kings, and
+fully developed in the nonjurors, which distinguish the divines of the
+seventeenth century from those of the sixteenth, distinguish also the
+church system from the gospel. There are many who readily acknowledge
+this difference in the English church, while they would deny it in the
+case of the ancient church. Indeed, it is not yet deemed prudent to avow
+openly that they prefer the so-called fathers to the apostles, and
+therefore they try to persuade themselves that both speak the same
+language. And doubtless, if the Scriptures are to be interpreted
+according to the rule of the writers of the third, and fourth, and fifth
+centuries, the thing can easily be effected; as, by a similar process,
+the Articles of the Church of England, if interpreted according to the
+rule of the nonjurors and their successors, might be made to speak the
+very sentiments which their authors designed to condemn.]
+
+Our Lord repels the notion of a literal acceptation of his words, where
+he says,--"It is the Spirit which profiteth, the flesh profiteth
+nothing; the words which I speak unto you, they are Spirit and they are
+life." It seems impossible, therefore, to refer these words, which he
+tells us expressly are Spirit and life, to any outward act of eating and
+drinking as their highest truth and object.
+
+But the words in the sixth chapter of St. John do highly illustrate the
+institution and purpose of the communion, and especially the remarkable
+words which our Lord used in instituting it. They show what infinite
+importance he attached to that truth which he expressed both in
+symbolical words and action under the same figure, of eating His body
+and drinking His blood. But to suppose that that truth can only be
+realized by one particular ritual action, so that the one great work of
+a Christian is to receive the Lord's supper,--which it must be, if our
+Lord's words in the sixth chapter of St. John refer to the
+communion,--is so contrary to the whole character of our Lord's
+teaching, and not least so in the very words so misinterpreted, that to
+maintain such a doctrine, leading, as it does, to such manifold
+superstitions, is actually to preach another Gospel than Christ's--to
+bring in a mystical religion instead of a spiritual one,--to do worse
+than to Judaize.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE K. P. 345.
+
+_"A set of persons, who wish to magnify the uncertainties of the
+Scripture in order to recommend more plausibly the guidance of some
+supposed authoritative interpreter of it."_--"The high church party," we
+have been lately told, "take Holy Scripture for their guide, and, in the
+interpretation of it, defer to the authority of primitive antiquity: the
+low church party contend for the sufficiency of private judgment." It is
+become of the greatest importance to see clearly, not what one party, or
+another, may contend for, but what is the real truth, and what,
+accordingly, is the duty of every Christian man to do in this matter.
+The sermon to which this note refers, is an attempt to show that
+Scripture is not hopelessly obscure or ambiguous; but it may not be
+inexpedient here to consider a little, what are the objections to the
+principle of the high church party; to clear away certain difficulties
+which are supposed to beset the opposite principle; and to state, if
+possible, what the truth of the whole question is.
+
+I. The objections to the principle of the high church party are these:
+1st. Its extreme vagueness. What is primitive antiquity? and where is
+its authority to be found? Does "primitive antiquity" mean the first
+three centuries? or the first two? or the first five? or the first
+seven? Does it include any of the general councils? or one of them? or
+four? or six? Are Irenaeus and Tertullian the latest writers of
+"primitive antiquity?" or does it end with Augustine? or does it
+comprehend the venerable Bede? One writer has lately told us, that our
+Reformers wished the people to be taught, "that, for almost seven
+hundred years, the church was most pure." Are we, then, to hold that
+"primitive antiquity" embraces a period of nearly seven centuries? Seven
+centuries are considerably more than a third part of the whole duration
+of the church, from its foundation to this hour: can the third part of a
+nation's history be called its primitive antiquity? Is a tenet, or a
+practice taught when Christianity had been more than six hundred years
+in the world, to be called primitive? We know not, then, in the first
+place, what length of time is signified by "primitive antiquity."
+
+But let it signify any length of time we choose, I ask, next, where is
+its authority to be found? In the decisions of the general councils? But
+if we call the first four centuries "primitive antiquity," we find in
+this period only two general councils; if we include the fifth century,
+we get four; if we take in the sixth and seventh centuries, we have
+then, in all, six general councils. Will the decisions of any, or all,
+of these six councils furnish us with an authoritative interpretation of
+Scripture? They give us the Nicene and the Constantinopolitan creeds;
+they condemn various notions with respect to the person of our Lord, and
+to some other points of belief; and they contain a variety of
+regulations for the discipline and order of the church; but, with the
+exception of some particular passages, there is no authority in the
+creeds, or canons, or anathemas of those councils, for the
+interpretation of Scripture; they leave its difficulties just where they
+were before. It is but little then, which the first six general
+councils will do towards providing the student of Scripture with an
+infallible standard of interpretation.
+
+Where, however, except in the councils, can we find any thing claiming
+to be the voice of the church? Neither individual writers, nor yet all
+the writers of the first seven centuries together, can properly be
+called the church. They form, even altogether, but a limited number of
+individuals, who, in different countries, and at different periods,
+expressed, in writing, their own sentiments, but without any public
+authority. Origen, one of the ablest and most learned of them all, was
+anathematized by the second council of Constantinople; Tertullian was
+heretical during a part of his life; Lactantius was taxed with
+heterodoxy. How are we to know who were sound? And if sound generally,
+that is to say, if they stand charged with no heretical error, yet it
+does not follow that a man is infallible because he is not heretical;
+and none of these writers have been distinguished like the five great
+Roman lawyers whom the edict of Theodosius[15] selected from the mass,
+and gave to their decisions a legal authority. Or again, if it be said
+that the agreement of the great majority of them is to be regarded as
+decisive, we answer, that as no individual amongst them is in himself an
+authority legally, so neither can any number of them be so; and if a
+moral authority only be meant, such as we naturally ascribe to the
+concurring judgment of many eminent men, then this is a totally
+different question, and is open to inquiry in every separate case; for
+as, on the one hand, no one denies that such a concurring judgment is
+_an_ authority, yet, on the other hand, it may be outweighed, either by
+the worth of the few who differ from the judgment, or by the reason of
+the case itself; and the concurring judgment of the majority may show no
+more than the force of a general prejudice, which only a very few
+individuals were sensible enough to resist.
+
+[Footnote 15: Cod. Theodos. lib. i. tit. iv. The edict is issued in the
+name of the emperors Theodosius (the younger) and Valentinian (the
+younger), in the year A.D. 426.]
+
+In fact, it would greatly help to clear this question if we understand
+what we mean by allowing, or denying, the authority of the so-called
+fathers. The term _authority_ is ambiguous, and according to the sense
+in which I use it, I should either acknowledge it or deny it.--The
+writers of the first four, or of the first seven centuries, have _an_
+authority, just as the scholiasts and ancient commentators have: some of
+them, and in some points, are of weight singly; the agreement of many
+of thorn has much weight; the agreement of almost all of them would have
+great weight. In this sense, I acknowledge their authority; and it would
+be against all sound principles of criticism to deny it. But if, by
+authority, is meant a _decisive_ authority, a judgment which may not be
+questioned, then the claim of authority in such a case, for any man, or
+set of men, is either a folly or a revelation. Such an authority is not
+human, but divine: if any man pretends to possess it, let him show God's
+clear warrant for his pretension, or he must be regarded as a deceiver
+or a madman.
+
+But it may be said, that an authority not to be questioned was
+conferred, by the Roman law, on the opinions of a certain number of
+great lawyers: if a judge believed that their interpretation of the law
+was erroneous, he yet was not at liberty to follow his own private
+judgment in departing from it. Why may not the same thing be allowed in
+the church? and why may not the interpretations of Cyprian, or
+Athanasius, or Augustine, or Chrysostom, be as decisive, with respect to
+the true sense of the Scripture, as those of Gaius, Paulus, Modestinus,
+Ulpian, and Papinian, were acknowledged to be with respect to the sense
+of the Roman law?
+
+The answer is, that the emperor's edict could absolve the judge from
+following his own convictions about the sense of the law, because it
+gave to the authorized interpretation the force of law. The text, as the
+judge interpreted it, was a law repealed; the comment of the great
+lawyers was now the law in its room. As a mere literary composition, he
+might interpret it rightly, and Gaius, or Papinian, might be wrong; but
+if his interpretation was ever so right grammatically or critically,
+yet, legally it was nothing to the purpose;--Gaius's interpretation had
+superseded it, and was not the law which he was bound to obey. But, in
+the church, the only point to be aimed at is the discovery of the true
+meaning of the text of the divine law: no human power can invest the
+comment with equal authority. The emperor said, and might say to his
+judges, "You need not consider what was the meaning of the decemvirs,
+when they wrote the twelve tables, or, of Aquillius, when he drew up the
+Aquillian law. The law for you is not what the decemvirs may have meant,
+but what their interpreters may have meant: the decemvirs' meaning, if
+it was their meaning, is no longer the law of Rome." But who can dare to
+say to a Christian, "You need not consider what was the meaning of our
+Lord and his apostles; the law for you now is the meaning of Cyprian, or
+Ambrose, or Chrysostom;--that meaning has superseded the meaning of
+Christ." A Christian must find out Christ's meaning, and believe that he
+has found it, or else he must still seek for it. It is a matter, not of
+outward submission, but of inward faith; and if in our inward mind we
+are persuaded that the interpreter has mistaken our Lord's meaning, how
+can we by possibility adopt that interpretation in faith?
+
+Here we come to a grave consideration--that this doctrine of an
+infallible rule of interpretation may suit ignorance or scepticism: it
+is death to a sincere and reasonable and earnest faith. It is not hard
+for a sceptical mind to deceive itself by saying, that it receives
+whatever the church declares to be true: it may receive any number of
+doctrines, but it will not really believe them. We may restrain our
+tongues from disputing them, we may watch every restless thought that
+would question them, and instantly, by main force, as it were, put it
+down; but all this time our minds do not assimilate to them; they do not
+take them up into their own nature, so as to make them a part of
+themselves, freshening and supplying the life-blood of their very being.
+Truth must be believed by the mind's own act; our souls must be drawn
+towards it with a reasonable love; some affinity there must be between
+it and them, or else they can never really comprehend it. The sceptic
+may desperately become a fanatic also, but he is not become, therefore,
+a believer.
+
+Authority cannot compel belief; the sceptic who knows not what it is to
+grasp anything with the firm grasp of faith, may mistake his
+acquiescence in a doctrine for belief in it; the ignorant and careless,
+who believe only what their senses tell them, may lay up the words of
+divine truth in their memory, may repeat them loudly, and be vehement
+against all who question them. But minds to which faith is a necessity,
+which cannot be contented to stand by the side of truth, but must become
+altogether one with it,--minds which know full well the difference
+between opinion and conviction, between not questioning and
+believing,--they, when their own action is superseded by an authority
+foreign to themselves, are in a condition which they find intolerable.
+Told to believe what they cannot believe; told that they ought not to
+believe what they feel most disposed to believe; they retire altogether
+from the region of divine truth, as from a spot tainted with moral
+death, and devote themselves to other subjects: to physical science, it
+may be, or to political; where the inherent craving of their nature may
+yet be gratified, where, however insignificant the truth may be, they
+may yet find some truth to believe. This has been the condition of too
+many great men in the church of Rome; and it accounts for that
+bitterness of feeling with which Machiavelli, and others like him,
+appear to have regarded the whole subject of Christianity.
+
+The system, then, of deferring to the authority of what is called the
+ancient church in the interpretation of Scripture, is impracticable,
+inasmuch as, with regard to the greatest part of the Scripture, the
+church, properly speaking, has said nothing at all; and if it were
+practicable, it would be untenable, because neither the old councils,
+nor individual writers, could give any sign that they had a divine gift
+of interpretation; and if such a gift had been given to them, it would
+have been equivalent to a new revelation, the sense of the comment being
+thus preferred to what we could not but believe to be the sense of the
+text. Above all, the system is destructive of faith, having a tendency
+to substitute passive acquiescence for real conviction; and therefore I
+should not say that the excess of it was popery, but that it had once
+and actually those characters of evil which we sometimes express by the
+term popery, but which may be better signified by the term idolatry; a
+reverence for that which ought not to be reverenced, leading to a want
+of faith in that which is really deserving of all adoration and love.
+
+II. But it is said that the system of relying on private judgment is
+beset by no less evils: that it is itself inconsistent, and leads to
+Socinianism and Rationalism, and, in the end, to utter unbelief; so
+that, the choice being only between two evils, men may choose the system
+of church authority as being the less evil of the two. If this were so,
+I see not how faith could be attained at all, or what place would be
+left for Christian truth. But the system of the Church of England[16]
+is, I am persuaded, fully consistent, and has no tendency either to
+Socinianism or Rationalism. Let us see first what that system is.
+
+[Footnote 16: Much has been lately written to show that the Church of
+England allows the authority of the ancient councils and writers, and
+does not allow the right of private judgment. But it is perfectly clear,
+from the 21st Article, that it does not allow the authority of councils;
+that is to say, it holds that a council's exposition of doctrine may be
+false, and that such an exposition is of no force "unless it may be
+declared that it be taken out of Holy Scripture." Who, then, is to
+declare this? for to suppose that the declaration of the council itself
+is meant is absurd: the answer, I imagine, would be, according to the
+mind of the Reformers, "Every particular or national church," and
+especially the King as the head of the church. They would not have
+allowed private judgment, because they conceived that a private person
+had nothing to do but to obey the government; and it was for the
+government to determine what the truth of Scripture was. The Church of
+England, then, expressly disclaims the authority of councils, and, in
+its official instruments, it neither allows nor condemns private
+judgment; but the opinions of the Reformers, and the constitution of the
+church in the 16th century, were certainly against private judgment:
+their authority for the interpretation of Scripture was undoubtedly the
+supreme government of the church, i.e. not the bishops, but the King and
+parliament. But then this had respect not to the power of discerning
+truth, but to the right of publishing it, which is an wholly different
+question. That an individual was not bound _in foro conscientiae_ to
+admit the truth of any interpretation of Scripture which did not approve
+itself to his own mind, was no less the judgment of the Church of
+England than that if he publicly disputed the interpretation of the
+church, he might be punished as unruly and a despiser of government. But
+then it should ever be remembered that the church, with the Reformers,
+was not the clergy. And now that the right of publication is conceded by
+the church, it is quite just to say that the Church of England allows
+private judgment; and if that judgment differ from her own, she condemns
+not the act of judging at all, but the having come to a false
+conclusion.
+
+It is urged that the act of I Elizabeth, c. 1, allows that to be heresy
+which the first four councils determined to be so. This is true; but it
+also adjudges to be heresy whatever shall be hereafter declared to be so
+by "the high court of parliament, with the assent of the clergy in their
+convocation." The Church of England undoubtedly allowed the decisions of
+the first four councils, in matters of doctrine, to be valid, as it
+allowed the three creeds, because it decided that they were agreeable to
+Scripture; but the binding authority was that of the English Parliament,
+not of the councils of Nicaea or Constantinople.
+
+As to the canon of 1571, which allows preachers to teach nothing as
+religious truth but what is agreeable to the Scriptures, "_and_ which
+the catholic fathers and ancient bishops have collected from that very
+doctrine of Scripture," it will be observed that it is merely negative,
+and does not sanction the teaching of the "catholic fathers and ancient
+bishops," generally, or say that men shall teach what they taught; but
+that they shall not teach as matter of religious faith, a new deduction
+from Scripture of their own making, but such truths as had been actually
+deduced from Scripture before, namely, the great articles of the
+Christian faith. Farther, the canons of 1571 are of no authority, not
+having received the royal assent.--_See Strype's Life of Parker_, p.
+322, ed. 1711.]
+
+It is invidiously described as maintaining "the sufficiency of private
+judgment." Now we maintain the sufficiency of private judgment in
+interpreting the Scriptures in no other sense than that in which every
+sane man maintains its sufficiency, in interpreting Thucydides or
+Aristotle; we mean, that, instead of deferring always to some one
+interpreter, as an idle boy follows implicitly the Latin version of his
+Greek lesson, the true method is to consult all[17] accessible
+authorities, and to avail ourselves of the assistance of all. And we
+contend, that, by this process, as we discover, for the most part, the
+true meaning of Thucydides and Aristotle with undoubted certainty, so we
+may also discover, not, indeed, in every particular part or passage, but
+generally, the true meaning of the Holy Scriptures with no less
+certainty.
+
+[Footnote 17: Of course no reasonable man can doubt the importance of
+studying the early Christian writers, as illustrating not only the
+history of their own times, but the New Testament also. For the Old
+Testament, indeed, they do little or nothing, and for the New they are
+of much less assistance than might have been expected; but still there
+is no doubt that they are often useful.]
+
+But if another man maintains that a different meaning is the true one,
+how are we to silence him, and how are we justified in calling him a
+heretic? If by the term heretic we are to imply moral guilt, I am not
+justified in applying it to any Christian, unless his doctrines are
+positively sinful, or there is something wicked, either in the way of
+dishonesty or bitterness, in his manner of maintaining them. The guilt
+of any given religious error, in any particular case, belongs only to
+the judgment of Him who reads the heart. But if we mean by heresy "a
+grave error in matters of the Christian faith, overthrowing or
+corrupting some fundamental article of it," then we are as fully
+justified in calling a gross misinterpretation of Scripture "heresy," as
+we should be justified in calling a gross misinterpretation of a profane
+Greek or Latin author, ignorance, or want of scholarship. There is no
+infallible authority in points of grammar and criticism, yet men do
+speak confidently, notwithstanding, as to learning and ignorance; Porson
+and Herman are known to have understood their business, and a writer who
+were to set their decisions at defiance, and to indulge in mere
+extravagances of interpretation, would be set down as one who knew
+nothing about the matter. So we judge daily in all points of literature
+and science; nay, we in the same manner venture to call some persons
+mad, and on the strength of our conviction we deprive them of their
+property, and shut them up in a madhouse: yet if madmen wore to insist
+that they were sane, and that we were mad, I know not to what infallible
+authority we could appeal; and, after all, what are we to do with those
+who deny that authority to be infallible? we must then go to another
+infallible authority to guarantee the infallibility of the first, and
+this process will run on for ever.
+
+But, in truth, there is more in the matter than the being justified or
+not justified in calling our neighbour a heretic. The real point of
+anxiety, I imagine, with many good and thinking men is this: whether a
+reasonable belief can be fairly carried through; whether the notion of
+the all-sufficiency of Scripture is not liable to objections no less
+than the system of church-authority; whether, in short, our Christian
+faith can be consistently maintained without a mortal leap at some part
+or other of the process; nay, whether, in fact, if it were otherwise,
+our faith would not seem to stand rather on the wisdom of man than on
+the power of God.
+
+I use these words, because these and other such passages of the
+Scripture are often quoted as I have now quoted them, and produce a
+great effect on those who do not observe that they are quoted
+inapplicably; for the question is not between man's wisdom and God's
+power, but simply whether we have reason to believe that God's power has
+been here manifested; or, rather, to see whether we cannot give a reason
+for the faith which is in us, such faith resting upon God's power and
+wisdom as manifested in Christ Jesus; for if no reason can be rendered
+for our faith, then our minds, so far as they are concerned, are
+believing a lie; they are believing in spite of those laws by which God
+has determined their nature and condition.
+
+Yet, however we believe, blindly or reasonably, (for some men, by God's
+mercy, are accidentally, as it were, in possession of the truth, the
+falsehood of their own minds in holding it not being, it is to be hoped,
+imputed to them as a sin;) however we believe, I never mean to say that
+our faith is not God's gift, to be sought for and retained by constant
+prayer and watchfulness, and to be forfeited by carelessness or sin.
+That is no true faith in which reason does not accord; yet neither can
+reason alone and without God ever become perfected into faith. For
+although intellectually, the grounds of belief may be made out
+satisfactorily, yet we are not able to follow our pure reason by
+ourselves; and no work on the evidences of Christianity can by itself
+give us faith; and much less can amid the manifold conflicts of life
+maintain it. That faith is thus the gift of God, and not our own work, I
+would desire to feel as keenly and continually, as with the fullest
+conviction I acknowledge it.
+
+Now, to resume the consideration of that which, as I said, is the real
+point of anxiety with many. They doubt whether the course of a
+reasonable belief can be held to the end without interruptions: they say
+that the received notions of the inspiration, and consequently of the
+complete truth of the Scriptures cannot reasonably be maintained; that
+he who does maintain them does so by a happy inconsistency;--he is to
+be congratulated for not following up his own principles; but why should
+he then find fault with others who do that avowedly and consistently to
+which he is driven against his professions by the clear necessity of
+the case?
+
+This argument was pressed by Mr. Newman, some time since, in one of the
+Tracts for the Times; and it was conducted, as may be supposed, with
+great ingenuity, but with a recklessness of consequences, or an
+ignorance of mankind, truly astonishing; for he brought forward all the
+difficulties and differences which can be found in the Scripture
+narratives, displayed them in their most glaring form, and merely
+observed, that as those with whom he was arguing could not solve these
+difficulties, but yet believed the Scriptures no less in spite of them,
+so the apparent unreasonableness of his doctrine about the priesthood
+was no ground why it should be rejected--a method of argument most
+blameable in any Christian to adopt towards his brethren; for what if
+their faith, being thus vehemently strained, were to give way under the
+experiment? and if, being convinced that the Scriptures were not more
+reasonable than Mr. Newman's system, they were to end with believing,
+not both, but neither?
+
+Therefore the question is one of no small anxiety and interest; and it
+is not idly nor wantonly that we must speak the truth upon it, even if
+that truth may to some seem startling; for by God's blessing, if we do
+go boldly forward wherever truth shall lead us, our course needs not be
+interrupted, neither shall a single hair of our faith perish.
+
+The same laws of criticism which teach us to distinguish between various
+degrees of testimony, authorize us to assign the very highest rank to
+the evidences of the writings of St. John and St. Paul. If belief is to
+be given to any human compositions, it is due to these; yet if we
+believe these merely as human compositions, and without assuming
+anything as to their divine inspiration, our Christian faith, as it
+seems to me, is reasonable;--not merely the facts of our Lord's miracles
+and resurrection; but Christian faith, in all its fulness--the whole
+dispensation of the Spirit, the revelation of the redemption of man and
+of the Divine Persons who are its authors--of all that Christian faith,
+and hope, and love can need. And this is so true, that even without
+reckoning the Epistle to the Hebrews amongst St. Paul's writings,--nay,
+even if we choose to reject the three pastoral epistles[18]--yet taking
+only what neither has been nor can be doubted--the epistles to the
+Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and
+Thessalonians, we have in these, together with St. John's Gospel and
+First Epistle,--giving up, if we choose, the other two,--a ground on
+which our faith may stand for ever, according to the strictest rules of
+the understanding, according to the clearest intuitions of reason.
+
+[Footnote 18: I say this, not as having the slightest doubt myself of
+the genuineness of any one of the three, but merely to show how much is
+left that has not been questioned at all, even unreasonably.]
+
+I take the works of St. John and St. Paul as our foundation, because, in
+the first place, we find in them the historical basis of Christianity;
+that is to say, we find the facts of our Lord's miracles, and especially
+of his resurrection, and the miraculous powers afterwards continued to
+the church, established by the highest possible evidence. However pure
+and truly divine the principles taught in the gospel may be, yet we
+crave to know not only that we were in need of redemption, but that a
+Redeemer has actually appeared; not only that a resurrection to eternal
+life is probable, but that such a resurrection has actually taken place.
+This basis of historical fact, which is one of the great peculiarities
+of Christianity, is strictly within the cognizance of the understanding;
+and in the writings of St. John and St. Paul we have that full and
+perfect evidence of it which the strictest laws of the understanding
+require.
+
+But the historical truth being once warranted by the understanding,
+other faculties of our nature now come in to enjoy it, and develop it;
+the highest reason and the moral and spiritual affections find
+respectively their proper field and objects, which, whenever presented
+to them in vision or in theory, they must instinctively cling to, but to
+which they now abandon themselves without fear of disappointment,
+because the understanding has assured them of their reality. We must
+suppose, on any system, the existence of reason and spiritual affections
+as indispensable to the understanding of the Scriptures; external
+authority can do nothing for us without these, any more than the mere
+faculties of the common understanding. But with these we apprehend the
+view which St. John and St. Paul afford to us: it opens before us one
+truth after another, one glory after another. St. John evidently
+supposes that his readers were familiar with another account of our
+Lord's life and teaching; and we find accordingly, another account
+existing in the writings of the three other evangelists. One and the
+same account is manifestly the substance of their three narratives, to
+which they thus bear a triple testimony, because none of the three has
+merely transcribed the others, and none of them apparently was the
+original author of it. Thus having now the full record of our Lord's
+teaching, we find that he everywhere refers to the Old Testament as to
+the word of God, and the record of God's earlier manifestations of
+himself to man. He has cleared up those especial points in it which
+might have most perplexed us, as I shall notice more fully hereafter,
+and he represents himself as the perpetual subject of its prophecies. We
+thus receive the Old Testament, as it were, from his hand, and learn
+while sitting at his feet to understand the lessons of the law and
+the prophets.
+
+Thus we make Christ the centre of both Testaments, and by so doing, we
+cannot be blind to the divinity pervading both. For the amazing fact
+that God should come into the world and be in the world cannot by
+possibility stand alone; it hallows, as it were, the whole period of the
+world's existence, from the beginning to the end, placing all time and
+every place in relation to God; it disposes us at once to receive the
+fact of the special call of the people of Israel;--it gives, I had
+almost said, an _a priori_ reason why there must have been in earlier
+times some shadows, at least, or images, to represent dimly to former
+generations that great thing which they were not actually to witness; it
+leads us to believe that there must have been some prophetic voices to
+announce the future coming of the Lord, or else "The very stones must
+have cried out."
+
+But those writings of St. John and St. Paul which were our first lessons
+in Christianity, and those other accounts of our Lord's life and
+teaching to which they introduced us,--can we conceive it possible, that
+the real meaning of all these shall be hopelessly obscure and uncertain;
+that if we seek it ever so diligently, we shall not find it? With an
+humble mind ready to learn, with a heart fully impressed with the sense
+of God's presence, so as to be morally and spiritually in a condition to
+receive God's truth, can we believe, then, that the use of those
+intellectual means, which open to us certainly the sense of human
+writers, shall be applied in vain to those writers who were commissioned
+to be the very heralds of a divine message, whose especial business it
+was to make known what they had themselves heard? Surely if a sufficient
+certainty of interpretation be attainable in common literature, the
+revelation of God cannot be the solitary exception.
+
+But we may be mistaken: we may _believe_ that we interpret truly, but
+we cannot be _infallibly sure_ of it; we want an authority which shall
+give us this assurance. This is no doubt the natural craving of our
+weakness; but it is no wiser a craving than if we were to long for the
+heaven to be opened, and for a daily sight of our Lord standing at the
+right hand of God. To live by faith is our appointed condition, and
+faith excludes an infallible assurance. We must earnestly believe that
+we have the truth, and die for our belief, if necessary, but we cannot
+_know_ it. No device which the human mind can practise, can exclude the
+possibility of doubt. If we would find an armour which should cover us
+at every point from this subtle enemy, it would be an armour that would
+close up the pores of the skin, and stop our breath; our fancied
+security would kill us. Is it really possible that, with our knowledge
+of man's nature, our belief in any human authority can really be more
+free from doubt than our belief in the conclusions of our own reason?
+There must ever be the liability to uncertainty; we can put no moral
+truth so surely as that our minds shall always feel it to be absolutely
+certain. Where is the infallible authority that can assure us even of
+the existence of God? And will the scepticism that can believe its own
+conclusions in nothing else rest satisfied with one conclusion
+only--that the writers of the first four centuries cannot err? Surely to
+regard this as the most certain proposition that can be submitted to the
+human mind, is no better than insanity.
+
+But we will consent to trust, it may be said, with God's help, to our
+own deliberate convictions that we have interpreted Scripture truly; but
+you tell us that the Scripture itself is not inspired in every part; you
+tell us that there are in it chronological and historical difficulties,
+if not errors; that there are possibly some interpolations; that even
+the apostles may have been in some things mistaken, as in their belief
+that the end of the world was at hand. Where shall we find a rest for
+our feet, if you first take away from us our infallible interpreter, and
+now tell us, that even if we can ourselves interpret it aright, yet that
+we cannot be sure that the very Scripture itself is infallibly true?
+
+It is very true that our position with respect to the Scriptures is not
+in all points the same as our fathers'. For sixteen hundred years
+nearly, while physical science, and history, and chronology, and
+criticism, were all in a state of torpor, the questions which now
+present themselves to our minds could not from the nature of the case
+arise. When they did arise, they came forward into notice gradually:
+first the discoveries in astronomy excited uneasiness: then as men
+began to read more critically, differences in the several Scripture
+narratives of the same thing awakened attention; more lately, the
+greater knowledge which has been gained of history, and of language, and
+in all respects the more careful inquiry to which all ancient records
+have been submitted, have brought other difficulties to light, and some
+sort of answer must be given to them. Mr. Newman, as we have seen, has
+made use of those difficulties much as the Romanists have used the
+doctrine of the Trinity when arguing with Trinitarians[19] in defence of
+transubstantiation. The Romanists said,--"Here are all these
+inexplicable difficulties in the doctrine of the Trinity, and yet you
+believe it." So Mr. Newman argues with those who hold the plenary
+inspiration of Scripture, that if they believe that, in spite of all the
+difficulties which beset it, they may as well believe his doctrine of
+the priesthood; and many, if I mistake not, alarmed by this
+representation, have actually embraced his opinions.
+
+[Footnote 19: On this proceeding of the Romanists, Stillingfleet
+observes, "Methinks for the sake of our common Christianity you should
+no more venture upon such bold and unreasonable comparisons. Do you in
+earnest think it is all one whether men do believe a God, or providence,
+or heaven, or hell, or the Trinity, and incarnation of Christ, if they
+do not believe transubstantiation? We have heard much of late about old
+and new popery: but if this be the way of representing new popery, by
+exposing the common articles of faith, it will set the minds of all good
+Christians farther from it than ever. For upon the very same grounds we
+may expect another parallel between the belief of a God and
+transubstantiation, the effect of which will be the exposing of all
+religion. This is a very destructive and mischievous method of
+proceeding; but our comfort is that it is very unreasonable, as I hope
+hath fully appeared by this discourse."--_Doctrine of the Trinity and
+Transubstantiation compared_, at the end.]
+
+It has unfortunately happened that the difficulties of the Scripture
+have been generally treated as objections to the truth of Christianity;
+as such they have been pressed by adversaries, and as such Christian
+writers have replied to them. But then they become of such tremendous
+interest, that it is scarcely possible to examine them fairly. If my
+faith in God and my hope of eternal life is to depend on the accuracy of
+a date or of some minute historical particular, who can wonder that I
+should listen to any sophistry that may be used in defence of them, or
+that I should force my mind to do any sort of violence to itself, when
+life and death seem to hang on the issue of its decision?
+
+Yet what conceivable connexion is there between the date of Cyrenius's
+government, or the question whether our Lord healed a blind man as he
+was going into Jericho or as he was leaving it; or whether Judas bought
+himself the field of blood, or it was bought by the high priests: what
+connexion can there be between such questions, and the truth of God's
+love to man in the redemption, and of the resurrection of our Lord? Do
+we give to any narrative in the world, to any statement, verbal or
+written, no other alternative than that it must be either infallible or
+unworthy of belief? Is not such an alternative so extravagant as to be a
+complete reductio ad absurdum? And yet such is the alternative which men
+seem generally to have admitted in considering the Scripture narratives:
+if a single error can be discovered, it is supposed to be fatal to the
+credibility of the whole.
+
+This has arisen from an unwarranted interpretation of the word
+"inspiration," and by a still more unwarranted inference. An inspired
+work is supposed to mean a work to which God has communicated his own
+perfections; so that the slightest error or defect of any kind in it is
+inconceivable, and that which is other than perfect in all points cannot
+be inspired. This is the unwarranted interpretation of the word
+"inspiration." But then follows the still more unwarranted
+inference,--"If all the Scripture is not inspired, Christianity cannot
+be true," an inference which is absolutely entitled to no other
+consideration than what it may seem to derive from the number of those
+who have either openly or tacitly maintained it.
+
+Most truly do I believe the Scriptures to be inspired; the proofs of
+their inspiration rise continually with the study of them. The
+scriptural narratives are not only about divine things, but are
+themselves divinely framed and superintended. I cannot conceive my
+conviction of this truth being otherwise than sure. Yet I must
+acknowledge that the scriptural narratives do not claim this inspiration
+for themselves; so that if I should be obliged to resign my belief in
+it, which seems to me impossible, I yet should have no right to tax the
+Scriptures with having advanced a pretension proved to be unfounded;
+their whole credibility as a most authentic history of the most
+important facts would remain untouched; the gospel of St. John would
+still be a narrative as unimpeachable as that of Thucydides, which no
+sane man has ever disbelieved.
+
+So much for the unwarranted inference, that if the Scripture histories
+are not inspired, the great facts of the Christian revelation cannot be
+maintained. But it is no less an unwarranted interpretation of the term
+"inspiration," to suppose that it is equivalent to a communication of
+the Divine perfections. Surely, many of our words and many of our
+actions are spoken and done by the inspiration of God's Spirit, without
+whom we can do nothing acceptable to God. Yet does the Holy Spirit so
+inspire us as to communicate to us His own perfections? Are our best
+words or works utterly free from error or from sin? All inspiration does
+not then destroy the human and fallible part in the nature which it
+inspires; it does not change man into God.
+
+In one man, indeed, it was otherwise; but He was both God and man. To
+Him the Spirit was given without measure; and as his life was without
+sin, so his words were without error. But to all others the Spirit has
+been given by measure; in almost infinitely different measure it is
+true: the difference between the inspiration of the common and perhaps
+unworthy Christian who merely said that "Jesus was the Lord," and that
+of Moses, or St. Paul, and St. John, is almost to our eyes beyond
+measuring. Still the position remains, that the highest degree of
+inspiration given to man has still suffered to exist along with it a
+portion of human fallibility and corruption.
+
+Now, then, consider the epistles of the blessed Apostle St. Paul, who
+had the Spirit of God so abundantly, that never we may suppose did any
+merely human being enjoy a larger share of it. Endowed with the Spirit
+as a Christian, and daily receiving grace more largely, as he became
+more and more ripe for glory; endowed with the Spirit's extraordinary
+gifts most eminently; favoured also with an abundance of revelations,
+disclosing to him things ineffable and inconceivable,--are not his
+writings to be most truly called inspired? Can we doubt that, in what he
+has told us of things not seen, or not seen as yet,--of Him who
+pre-existed in the form of God before he was manifested in the form of
+man,--of that great day, when we shall arise incorruptible, and meet our
+Lord in the air, and be joined to him for ever,--can any reasonable mind
+doubt, that in speaking of these things he spoke what he had heard from
+God; that to refuse to believe his testimony is really to
+disbelieve God?
+
+Yet this great Apostle expected that the world would come to an end in
+the generation then existing. When he wrote to the Thessalonians some
+years before his first imprisonment at Rome, he warned them, no doubt,
+against expecting the end immediately: but he appears still to have
+supposed that it would come in the lifetime of men then living. At a
+later period, when writing to the Corinthians, his dissuasion of
+marriage seems to rest mainly upon this impression; it is good not to
+marry, "on account of the distress which is close at hand;" ([Greek:
+dia taen enestosan anankaen]; compare 2 Thess. ii. 2, [Greek: hos hoti
+enestaeken hae haemera tou Kyriou].) "The time is short," he adds; "the
+fashion of this world is passing away." And again, when speaking of the
+resurrection, he says emphatically, "the dead shall rise incorruptible,
+and _we_ shall be changed;" where the pronoun being expressed in the
+original, [Greek: chai haemeis allagaesometha], shows that by the term
+"_we_," he does not mean the dead, but those who were to be alive at
+Christ's coming. So again, still later, when writing from Rome to the
+Philippians, he tells them "the Lord is at hand;" and later still, even
+in his first epistle to Timothy, he charges Timothy "to keep his
+commandment without spot, unrebukable, until the appearing of our Lord
+Jesus Christ." These and other passages cannot without violence be
+interpreted even singly in any other sense; but taking them together,
+their meaning seems absolutely certain. Shall we say, then, that St.
+Paul entertained and expressed a belief which the event did not verify?
+We may say so, safely and reverently, in this instance; for here he was
+most certainly speaking as a man, and not by revelation; as it has been
+providentially ordered that our Lord's express words on this point have
+been recorded--"Of that day and hour knoweth no man; no, not the angels
+in heaven." Or again, shall we say, that St. Paul advised the
+Corinthians not to marry, chiefly on this ground; and that this throws a
+suspicion over his directions in other points? But again it has been
+ordered, that in this very place, and no where else in all his writing,
+St. Paul has expressly said that he was only giving his judgment as a
+Christian, and not speaking with divine authority;--the concluding words
+of the chapter, [Greek: doko de kago pneuma theou echein] do not
+signify, as our Version renders them, "And I think also that I have the
+Spirit of God," as if he were confirming his own judgment by an
+assertion of his inspiration in a sense beyond that of common
+Christians; but the words say, "And I think that I too have the Spirit
+of God," "I too as well as others whom you might consult, so that my
+judgment is no less worthy of attention than theirs." But it is his
+Christian judgment only that he is giving, as he expressly declares, and
+not his apostolical command or revelation; a distinction which he never
+makes elsewhere, and which is in itself so striking, that we seem to
+recognise in it God's especial mercy to us, that our faith in St. Paul's
+general declarations of divine truth might not be shaken, because in one
+particular point he was permitted to speak as a man, giving express
+notice at the same time that he was doing so.
+
+Now it is at least remarkable, that in the only two instances in which
+the existence of any absence of divine authority is to be discerned in
+St. Paul's epistles, provision is actually made by God's fondness to
+prevent them from prejudicing our faith in St. Paul's divine authority
+generally. And so in whatever points any error may be discoverable in
+Scripture, we shall find either that the errors are of a kind wholly
+unconnected with the revelation of what God has done to us, and of what
+we are to do towards Him; and therefore are perfectly consistent with
+the inspiration of the writer, unless we take that unwarranted notion of
+inspiration which considers it as equivalent to a communication of God's
+attributes perfectly; (and of this kind are any errors that may exist
+either in points of physical science, or of chronology, or of history;)
+or if there be any thing else which appears inconsistent with
+inspiration, in the sense in which we really may and do apply it to the
+Scriptures, namely, that they are a perfect guide and rule in all
+matters concerning our relations with God, then we shall find that God
+has made some special provision for the case, to remove what it
+otherwise might have had of real difficulty.
+
+This merciful care is above all to be recognised with regard to one
+point, which otherwise would, I think, have been a difficulty actually
+insuperable: I mean the manifestly imperfect moral standard, which in
+some cases is displayed in the characters of good men in the Old
+Testament. Put the gospel by the side of the law and history of the
+Israelites; observe what the law permitted, and public opinion under the
+law did not condemn; observe the actions recorded of persons who are
+declared to have been eminently good, and to have received God's
+especial blessing; and it is manifest that had not our Lord himself
+vouchsafed his help, one of two things must have happened--either that
+we must have followed the old heresy of rejecting the Old Testament
+altogether, or else that our respect for the Old Testament must have
+impeded the growth of the more perfect law of Christ. The true solution
+I do not think that we could have discovered, or ventured to admit on
+less authority than our Lord's. But his express declaration, that some
+things in the law itself were permitted, because nothing higher could
+then have been borne, and his stating in detail that in several points
+what was accounted good or allowable in the former dispensation was not
+so really, while at the same time he constantly refers to the Old
+Testament as divine, and confirms its language of blessing with respect
+to its most eminent characters, has completely cleared to us the whole
+question, and enables us to recognize the divinity of the Old Testament
+and the holiness of its characters, without lying against our
+consciences and our more perfect revelation, by justifying the actions
+of those characters as right, essentially and abstractedly, although
+they were excusable, or in some cases actually virtuous, according to
+the standard of right and wrong which prevailed under the law.
+
+After observing God's gracious care for us in this instance, as well as
+in those which I have noticed before, I cannot but feel that we may
+safely trust Him for every other similar case, if any such there be, and
+that he will not permit our faith either in him or in his holy word to
+be shaken, because we do not attempt to close our eyes against truth,
+nor seek to support our faith by sophistry and falsehood. Feeling what
+the Scriptures are, I would not give unnecessary pain to any one by an
+enumeration of those points in which the literal historical statement of
+an inspired writer has been vainly defended. Some instances will
+probably occur to most readers; others are perhaps not known, and never
+will be known to many, nor is it at all needful or desirable that they
+should know them. But if ever they are brought before them, let them not
+try to put them aside unfairly, from a fear that they will injure our
+faith. Let us not do evil that evil may be escaped from; and it is an
+evil, and the fruitful parent of evils innumerable, to do violence to
+our understanding or to our reason in their own appointed fields; to
+maintain falsehood in their despite, and reject the truth which they
+sanction. If writers of Mr. Newman's school will persist in displaying
+the difficulties of the Scripture before the eyes of those who had not
+been before aware of them, let those who are so cruelly tempted be
+conjured not to be dismayed; to refuse utterly to surrender up their
+sense of truth,--to persist in rejecting the unchristian falsehoods
+which they are called upon to worship; sure that after all that can be
+said, that system will remain false to the end; and their Christian
+faith, if they do not faithlessly attempt to strengthen it by unlawful
+means, will stand no less unshaken.
+
+In conclusion, Christian faith rests upon Scripture; and as it is in
+itself agreeable to the highest reason, so the authenticity of the
+Scriptures on which it rests is assured to us by the deliberate
+conclusions of the understanding; nor is any "mortal leap" necessary at
+any part of the process: nor any rejection of one truth, in order to
+retain our hold on another. And if it should happen, as in all
+probability it will, that we shall be called upon to correct in some
+respects our notions as to the Scriptures, and so far to hold views
+different from those of our fathers, we should consider that our
+fathers did not, and could not stand in our circumstances; that the
+knowledge which may call upon us to relinquish some of their opinions,
+was a knowledge which they had not. Till this knowledge comes to us, let
+us hold our fathers' opinions as they held them; but when it does come,
+it will come by God's will, and to do his work: and that work will,
+assuredly, not be our separation from our father's faith; but if we
+follow God's guidance humbly and cheerfully, clinging to God the while
+in personal devotion and obedience, we may be made aware of what to them
+would have been an inexplicable difficulty, and which was, therefore,
+hidden from their knowledge; and yet, "through the grace of our Lord
+Jesus Christ, we believe that we shall be saved even as they."
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Christian Life, by Thomas Arnold
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHRISTIAN LIFE ***
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