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+Project Gutenberg's Sermons Preached at Brighton, by Frederick W. Robertson
+
+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: Sermons Preached at Brighton
+       Third Series
+
+Author: Frederick W. Robertson
+
+Release Date: September 4, 2005 [EBook #16645]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SERMONS PREACHED AT BRIGHTON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Laura Wisewell and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                               SERMONS
+
+                       _PREACHED AT BRIGHTON._
+
+
+                             BY THE LATE
+
+                     REV. FREDERICK W. ROBERTSON,
+
+                   THE INCUMBENT OF TRINITY CHAPEL.
+
+
+                           _THIRD SERIES._
+
+                             NEW EDITION.
+
+
+                               LONDON:
+           KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH. & CO., 1 PATERNOSTER SQUARE.
+                                1884.
+
+
+
+    (_The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved_)
+
+
+
+                                  TO
+
+                          _THE CONGREGATION_
+
+                            WORSHIPPING IN
+
+                      TRINITY CHAPEL, BRIGHTON,
+
+              FROM AUGUST 15, 1847, TO AUGUST 15, 1853,
+
+                                THESE
+
+                       RECOLLECTIONS OF SERMONS
+
+                    PREACHED BY THEIR LATE PASTOR,
+
+                            ARE DEDICATED
+
+
+
+
+ CONTENTS.
+
+
+ SERMON I.
+
+ Preached April 28, 1850.
+
+ THE TONGUE.
+
+ ST. JAMES iii. 5, 6.--"Even so the tongue is a little
+   member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a
+   little fire kindleth! And the tongue is a fire, a world of
+   iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the
+   whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set
+   on fire of hell."                                            Page 1
+
+
+ SERMON II.
+
+ Preached May 5, 1850.
+
+ THE VICTORY OF FAITH.
+
+ 1 JOHN v. 4, 5.--"For whatsoever is born of God overcometh
+   the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even
+   our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that
+   believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?"                         15
+
+
+ SERMON III.
+
+ Preached Whitsunday, May 19, 1850.
+
+ THE DISPENSATION OF THE SPIRIT.
+
+ 1 CORINTHIANS xii. 4.--"Now there are diversities of gifts,
+   but the same Spirit."                                            29
+
+
+ SERMON IV.
+
+ Preached May 26, 1850.
+
+ THE TRINITY.
+
+ 1 THESS. v. 23.--"And the very God of peace sanctify you
+   wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be
+   preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."   43
+
+
+ SERMON V.
+
+ Preached June 2, 1850.
+
+ ABSOLUTION.
+
+ LUKE v. 21.--"And the Scribes and the Pharisees began to
+   reason saying, Who is this which speaketh blasphemies? Who can
+   forgive sins, but God alone?"                                    61
+
+
+ SERMON VI.
+
+ Preached June 9, 1850.
+
+ THE ILLUSIVENESS OF LIFE.
+
+ HEBREWS xi. 8-10.--"By faith Abraham, when he was called to
+   go out into a place which he should after receive for an
+   inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went.
+   By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange
+   country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs
+   with him of the same promise: for he looked for a city which hath
+   foundations, whose builder and maker is God."                    77
+
+
+ SERMON VII.
+
+ Preached June 23, 1850.
+
+ THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST.
+
+ 2 COR. v. 14, 15.--"For the love of Christ constraineth us;
+   because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all
+   dead: and that he died for all, that they which live should not
+   henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them,
+   and rose again."                                                 90
+
+
+ SERMON VIII.
+
+ Preached June 30, 1850.
+
+ THE POWER OF SORROW.
+
+ 2 COR. vii. 9, 10.--"Now I rejoice, not that ye were made
+   sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance: for ye were made sorry
+   after a godly manner, that ye might receive damage by us in
+   nothing. For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be
+   repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death."        104
+
+
+ SERMON IX.
+
+ Preached August 4, 1850.
+
+ SENSUAL AND SPIRITUAL EXCITEMENT.
+
+ EPHESIANS v. 17, 18.--"Wherefore be ye not unwise, but
+   understanding what the will of the Lord is. And be not drunk with
+   wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit."        112
+
+
+ SERMON X.
+
+ Preached August 11, 1850.
+
+ PURITY.
+
+ TITUS i. 15.--"Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto
+   them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even
+   their mind and conscience is defiled."                          122
+
+
+ SERMON XI.
+
+ Preached February 9, 1851.
+
+ UNITY AND PEACE.
+
+ COL. iii. 15.--"And let the peace of God rule in your
+   hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye
+   thankful."                                                      130
+
+
+ SERMON XII.
+
+ Preached January 4, 1852.
+
+ THE CHRISTIAN AIM AND MOTIVE.
+
+ MATT. v. 48.--"Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father
+   which is in heaven is perfect."                                 143
+
+
+ SERMON XIII.
+
+ Preached January 4, 1852.
+
+ CHRISTIAN CASUISTRY.
+
+ 1 COR. vii. 18-24.--"Is any man called being circumcised?
+   let him not become uncircumcised. Is any called in uncircumcision?
+   let him not be circumcised. Circumcision is nothing, and
+   uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of
+   God. Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called.
+   Art thou called being a servant? care not for it: but if thou
+   mayest be made free use it rather. For he that is called in the
+   Lord, being a servant, is the Lord's freeman; likewise also he that
+   is called being free, is Christ's servant. Ye are bought with a
+   price; be not ye the servants of men. Brethren, let every man
+   wherein he is called therein abide with God."                   156
+
+
+ SERMON XIV.
+
+ Preached January 11, 1852.
+
+ MARRIAGE AND CELIBACY.
+
+ 1 COR. vii. 29-31.--"But this I say, brethren, the time is
+   short: it remaineth that both they that have wives be as though
+   they had none; and they that weep as though they wept not; and they
+   that rejoice as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as
+   though they possessed not; and they that use this world as not
+   abusing it: for the fashion of this world passeth away."        169
+
+
+ SERMON XV.
+
+ Preached January 11, 1852.
+
+ THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH A FAMILY.
+
+ EPH. iii. 14, 15.--"Our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole
+   family in Heaven and earth is named."                           181
+
+
+ SERMON XVI.
+
+ Preached January 25, 1852.
+
+ THE LAW OF CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE.
+
+ 1 COR. viii. 7-13.--"Howbeit there is not in every man that
+   knowledge: for some, with conscience of the idol, unto this hour,
+   eat it as a thing offered unto an idol; and their conscience being
+   weak is defiled. But meat commendeth us not to God: for neither if
+   we eat are we the better; neither if we eat not are we the worse.
+   But take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a
+   stumbling-block to them that are weak. For if any man see thee
+   which hast knowledge, sit at meat in the idol's temple, shall not
+   the conscience of him which is weak be emboldened to eat those
+   things which are offered to idols; and through thy knowledge shall
+   the weak brother perish for whom Christ died? But when ye sin so
+   against the brethren and wound their weak conscience ye sin against
+   Christ. Wherefore if meat make my brother to offend I will eat no
+   flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend."
+                                                                   196
+
+
+ SERMON XVII.
+
+ Preached May 16, 1852.
+
+ VICTORY OVER DEATH.
+
+ 1 COR. xv. 56, 57.--"The sting of death is sin, and the
+   strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God which giveth us
+   the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."                     212
+
+
+ SERMON XVIII.
+
+ Preached June 20, 1852.
+
+ MAN'S GREATNESS AND GOD'S GREATNESS.
+
+ ISAIAH lvii. 15.--"For thus saith the High and Lofty One
+   that inhabiteth Eternity, whose Name is Holy. I dwell in the high
+   and holy place--with him also that is of a contrite and humble
+   spirit."                                                        230
+
+
+ SERMON XIX.
+
+ Preached June 27, 1852.
+
+ THE LAWFUL AND UNLAWFUL USE OF LAW. (A FRAGMENT.)
+
+ 1 TIM. i. 8.--"But we know that the law is good, if a man
+   use it lawfully."                                               246
+
+
+ SERMON XX.
+
+ Preached February 21, 1853.
+
+ THE PRODIGAL AND HIS BROTHER.
+
+ LUKE xv. 31, 32.--"And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever
+   with me, and all that I have is thine. It was meet that we should
+   make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is
+   alive again; was lost, and is found."                           253
+
+
+ SERMON XXI.
+
+ Preached May 15, 1853.
+
+ JOHN'S REBUKE OF HEROD.
+
+ LUKE iii. 19, 20.--"But Herod the tetrarch, being reproved
+   by him for Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, and for all the
+   evils which Herod had done, added yet this above all, that he shut
+   up John in prison."                                             270
+
+
+
+
+ SERMONS.
+
+
+
+
+ I.
+
+ _Preached April 28, 1850._
+
+ THE TONGUE.
+
+
+   "Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things.
+    Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth! And the tongue
+    is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our
+    members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the
+    course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell."--St. James iii.
+    5-6.
+
+ In the development of Christian Truth a peculiar office was assigned
+ to the Apostle James.
+
+ It was given to St. Paul to proclaim Christianity as the spiritual law
+ of liberty, and to exhibit Faith as the most active principle within
+ the breast of man. It was St. John's to say that the deepest quality
+ in the bosom of Deity is Love; and to assert that the life of God in
+ Man is Love. It was the office of St. James to assert the necessity of
+ Moral Rectitude; his very name marked him out peculiarly for this
+ office: he was emphatically called, "the Just:" integrity was his
+ peculiar characteristic. A man singularly honest, earnest, real.
+ Accordingly, if you read through his whole epistle, you will find it
+ is, from first to last, one continued vindication of the first
+ principles of morality against the _semblances_ of religion.
+
+ He protested against the censoriousness which was found connected with
+ peculiar claims of religious feelings. "If any man among you seem to
+ be religious and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own
+ heart, this man's religion is vain." He protested against that spirit
+ which had crept into the Christian Brotherhood, truckling to the rich,
+ and despising the poor. "If ye have respect of persons ye commit sin,
+ and are convinced of the law as transgressors." He protested against
+ that sentimental fatalism which induced men to throw the blame of
+ their own passions upon God. "Let no man say, when he is tempted, I am
+ tempted of God; for God cannot tempt to evil; neither tempteth He any
+ man." He protested against that unreal religion of excitement which
+ diluted the earnestness of real religion in the enjoyment of
+ listening. "Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only; deceiving
+ your own souls." He protested against that trust in the correctness of
+ theological doctrine which neglected the cultivation of character.
+ "What doth it profit, if a man _say_ that he hath faith, and have not
+ works? Can faith save him?"
+
+ Read St. James's epistle through, this is the mind breathing through
+ it all:--all this _talk_ about religion, and spirituality--words,
+ words, words--nay, let us have _realities_.
+
+ It is well known that Luther complained of this epistle, that it did
+ not contain the Gospel; for men who are hampered by a system will
+ say--even of an inspired Apostle--that he does not teach the Gospel if
+ their own favourite doctrine be not the central subject of his
+ discourse; but St. James's reply seems spontaneously to suggest itself
+ to us. The Gospel! how can we speak of the Gospel, when the first
+ principles of _morality_ are forgotten? when Christians are excusing
+ themselves, and slandering one another? How can the superstructure of
+ Love and Faith be built, when the very foundations of human
+ character--Justice, Mercy, Truth--have not been laid?
+
+   1st. The license of the tongue.
+   2nd. The guilt of that license.
+
+ The first license given to the tongue is slander. I am not of course,
+ speaking now of that species of slander against which the law of libel
+ provides a remedy, but of that of which the Gospel alone takes
+ cognisance; for the worst injuries which man can do to man, are
+ precisely those which are too delicate for _law_ to deal with. We
+ consider therefore not the calumny which is reckoned such by the
+ moralities of an earthly court, but that which is found guilty by the
+ spiritualities of the courts of heaven--that is, the mind of God.
+
+ Now observe, this slander is compared in the text to poison--"the
+ tongue is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison." The deadliest
+ poisons are those for which no test is known: there are poisons so
+ destructive that a single drop insinuated into the veins produces
+ death in three seconds, and yet no chemical science can separate that
+ virus from the contaminated blood, and show the metallic particles of
+ poison glittering palpably, and say, "Behold, it is there!"
+
+ In the drop of venom which distils from the sting of the smallest
+ insect, or the spikes of the nettle-leaf, there is concentrated the
+ quintessence of a poison so subtle that the microscope cannot
+ distinguish it, and yet so virulent that it can inflame the blood,
+ irritate the whole constitution, and convert day and night into
+ restless misery.
+
+ In St. James's day, as now, it would appear that there were idle men
+ and idle women, who went about from house to house, dropping slander
+ as they went, and yet you could not take up that slander and detect
+ the falsehood there. You could not evaporate the truth in the slow
+ process of the crucible, and then show the residuum of falsehood
+ glittering and visible. You could not fasten upon any word or
+ sentence, and say that it was calumny; for in order to constitute
+ slander it is not necessary that the word spoken should be false--half
+ truths are often more calumnious than whole falsehoods. It is not even
+ necessary that a word should be distinctly uttered; a dropped lip, an
+ arched eyebrow, a shrugged shoulder, a significant look, an
+ incredulous expression of countenance, nay, even an emphatic silence,
+ may do the work: and when the light and trifling thing which has done
+ the mischief has fluttered off, the venom is left behind, to work and
+ rankle, to inflame hearts, to fever human existence, and to poison
+ human society at the fountain springs of life. Very emphatically was
+ it said by one whose whole being had smarted under such affliction,
+ "Adder's poison is under their lips."
+
+ The second license given to the tongue is in the way of persecution:
+ "therewith curse we men which are made after the similitude of God."
+ "We!"--men who bear the name of Christ--curse our brethren! Christians
+ persecuted Christians. Thus even in St. James's age that spirit had
+ begun, the monstrous fact of Christian persecution; from that day it
+ has continued, through long centuries, up to the present time. The
+ Church of Christ assumed the office of denunciation, and except in the
+ first council, whose object was not to strain, but to relax the bonds
+ of brotherhood, not a council has met for eighteen centuries which has
+ not guarded each profession of belief by the too customary formula,
+ "If any man maintain otherwise than this, let him be accursed."
+
+ Myriad, countless curses have echoed through those long ages; the
+ Church has forgotten her Master's spirit and called down fire from
+ heaven. A fearful thought to consider this as the spectacle on which
+ the eye of God has rested. He looks down upon the creatures He has
+ made, and hears everywhere the language of religious
+ imprecations:--and after all, who is proved right by curses?
+
+ The Church of Rome hurls her thunders against Protestants of every
+ denomination: the Calvinist scarcely recognises the Arminian as a
+ Christian: he who considers himself as the true Anglican, excludes
+ from the Church of Christ all but the adherents of his own orthodoxy;
+ every minister and congregation has its small circle, beyond which all
+ are heretics: nay even among that sect which is most lax as to the
+ dogmatic forms of truth, we find the Unitarian of the old school
+ denouncing the spiritualism of the new and rising school.
+
+ This is the state of things to which we are arrived. Sisters of
+ Charity refuse to permit an act of charity to be done by a Samaritan;
+ ministers of the Gospel fling the thunderbolts of the Lord; ignorant
+ hearers catch and exaggerate the spirit,--boys, girls, and women
+ shudder as one goes by, perhaps more holy than themselves, who adores
+ the same God, believes in the same Redeemer, struggles in the same
+ life-battle, and all this because they have been taught to look upon
+ him as an enemy of God.
+
+ There is a class of religious persons against whom this vehemence has
+ been especially directed. No one who can read the signs of the times
+ can help perceiving that we are on the eve of great changes, perhaps a
+ disruption of the Church of England. Unquestionably there has been a
+ large secession to the Church of Rome.
+
+ Now what has been the position of those who are about to take this
+ step? They have been taunted with dishonest reception of the wages of
+ the Church; a watch has been set over them: not a word they uttered in
+ private, or in public, but was given to the world by some religious
+ busy-body; there was not a visit which they paid, not a foolish dress
+ which they adopted, but became the subject of bitter scrutiny and
+ malevolent gossip. For years the religious press has denounced them
+ with a vehemence as virulent, but happily more impotent than that of
+ the Inquisition. There has been an anguish and an inward struggle
+ little suspected, endured by men who felt themselves outcasts in their
+ own society, and naturally looked for a home elsewhere.
+
+ We congratulate ourselves that the days of persecution are gone by;
+ but persecution is that which affixes penalties upon _views held_,
+ instead of upon _life led_. Is persecution _only_ fire and sword? But
+ suppose a man of sensitive feeling says, The sword is less sharp to me
+ than the slander: fire is less intolerable than the refusal of
+ sympathy!
+
+ Now let us bring this home; you rejoice that the faggot and the stake
+ are given up;--_you_ never persecuted--you leave that to the wicked
+ Church of Rome. Yes, you never burned a human being alive--you never
+ clapped your hands as the death-shriek proclaimed that the lion's fang
+ had gone home into the most vital part of the victim's frame; but did
+ you never rob him of his friends?--gravely shake your head and
+ oracularly insinuate that he was leading souls to hell?--chill the
+ affections of his family?--take from him his good name? Did you never
+ with delight see his Church placarded as the Man of Sin, and hear the
+ platform denunciations which branded it with the spiritual
+ abominations of the Apocalypse? Did you never find a malicious
+ pleasure in repeating all the miserable gossip with which religious
+ slander fastened upon his daily acts, his words, and even his
+ uncommunicated thoughts? Did you never forget that for a man to "work
+ out his own salvation with fear and trembling" is a matter difficult
+ enough to be laid upon a human spirit, without intruding into the most
+ sacred department of another's life--that namely, which lies between
+ himself and God? Did you never say that "it was to be wished he should
+ go to Rome," until at last life became intolerable,--until he was
+ thrown more and more in upon himself; found himself, like his
+ Redeemer, in this world alone, but unable like his Redeemer, calmly to
+ repose upon the thought that his Father was with him? Then a stern
+ defiant spirit took possession of his soul, and there burst from his
+ lips, or heart, the wish for _rest_--rest at any cost,--peace
+ anywhere, if even it is to be found only in the bosom of the Church of
+ Rome!
+
+
+ II. The guilt of this license.
+
+ The first evil consequence is the harm that a man does himself: "so is
+ the tongue among the members, that it defiles the whole body." It is
+ not very obvious, in what way a man does himself harm by calumny. I
+ will take the simplest form in which this injury is done; it effects a
+ dissipation of spiritual energy. There are two ways in which the steam
+ of machinery may find an outlet for its force: it may work, and if so
+ it works silently; or it may escape, and that takes place loudly, in
+ air and noise. There are two ways in which the spiritual energy of a
+ man's soul may find its vent: it may express itself in action,
+ silently; or in words, noisily: but just so much of force as is thrown
+ into the one mode of expression, is taken from the other.
+
+ Few men suspect how much mere talk fritters away spiritual
+ energy,--that which should be spent in action, spends itself in words.
+ The fluent boaster is not the man who is steadiest before the enemy;
+ it is well said to him that his courage is better kept till it is
+ wanted. Loud utterance of virtuous indignation against evil from the
+ platform, or in the drawing-room, do not characterize the spiritual
+ giant: so much indignation as is expressed, has found vent, is wasted,
+ is taken away from the work of coping with evil; the man has so much
+ less left. And hence he who restrains that love of talk, lays up a
+ fund of spiritual strength.
+
+ With large significance, St. James declares, "If any man offend not in
+ word, the same is a perfect man, able also to bridle the whole body."
+ He is entire, powerful, because he has not spent his strength. In
+ these days of loud profession, and bitter, fluent condemnation, it is
+ well for us to learn the divine force of silence. Remember Christ in
+ the Judgment Hall, the very Symbol and Incarnation of spiritual
+ strength; and yet when revilings were loud around Him and charges
+ multiplied, "He held His peace."
+
+ 2. The next feature in the guilt of calumny is its uncontrollable
+ character: "the tongue can no man tame." You cannot arrest a
+ calumnious tongue, you cannot arrest the calumny itself; you may
+ refute a slanderer, you may trace home a slander to its source, you
+ may expose the author of it, you may by that exposure give a lesson so
+ severe as to make the repetition of the offence appear impossible; but
+ the fatal habit is incorrigible: to-morrow the tongue is at work
+ again.
+
+ Neither can you stop the consequences of a slander; you may publicly
+ prove its falsehood, you may sift every atom, explain and annihilate
+ it, and yet, years after you had thought that all had been disposed of
+ for ever, the mention of a name wakes up associations in the mind of
+ some one who heard the calumny, but never heard or never attended to
+ the refutation, or who has only a vague and confused recollection of
+ the whole, and he asks the question doubtfully, "But were there not
+ some suspicious circumstances connected with him?"
+
+ It is like the Greek fire used in ancient warfare, which burnt
+ unquenched beneath the water, or like the weeds which when you have
+ extirpated them in one place are sprouting forth vigorously in another
+ spot, at the distance of many hundred yards; or, to use the metaphor
+ of St. James himself, it is like the wheel which catches fire as it
+ goes, and burns with a fiercer conflagration as its own speed
+ increases; "it sets on fire the whole course of nature" (literally,
+ the wheel of nature). You may tame the wild beast, the conflagration
+ of the American forest will cease when all the timber and the dry
+ underwood is consumed; but you cannot arrest the progress of that
+ cruel word which you uttered carelessly yesterday or this
+ morning,--which you will utter perhaps, before you have passed from
+ this church one hundred yards: that will go on slaying, poisoning,
+ burning beyond your own control, now and for ever.
+
+ 3. The third element of guilt lies in the unnaturalness of calumny.
+ "My brethren, these things ought not so to be;" _ought not_--that is,
+ they are unnatural. That this is St. James's meaning is evident from
+ the second illustration which follows: "Doth a fountain send forth at
+ the same place, sweet water and bitter?" "Can the fig tree, my
+ brethren, bear olive berries, or a vine, figs?"
+
+ There is apparently in these metaphors little that affords an argument
+ against slander; the motive which they suggest would appear to many
+ far-fetched and of small cogency; but to one who looks on this world
+ as a vast whole, and who has recognised the moral law as only a part
+ of the great law of the universe, harmoniously blending with the
+ whole, illustrations such as these are the most powerful of all
+ arguments. The truest definition of evil is that which represents it
+ as something contrary to nature: evil is evil, because it is
+ unnatural; a vine which should bear olive berries, an eye to which
+ blue seems yellow, would be diseased: an unnatural mother, an
+ unnatural son, an unnatural act, are the strongest terms of
+ condemnation. It is this view which Christianity gives of moral evil:
+ the teaching of Christ was the recall of man to nature, not an
+ infusion of something new into Humanity. Christ came to call out all
+ the principles and powers of human nature, to restore the natural
+ equilibrium of all our faculties; not to call us back to our own
+ individual selfish nature, but to human nature as it is in God's
+ ideal--the perfect type which is to be realised in us. Christianity is
+ the regeneration of our whole nature, not the destruction of one atom
+ of it.
+
+ Now the nature of man is to adore God and to love what is god-like in
+ man. The office of the tongue is to bless. Slander is guilty because
+ it contradicts this; yet even in slander itself, perversion as it is,
+ the interest of man in man is still distinguishable. What is it but
+ perverted interest which makes the acts, and words, and thoughts of
+ his brethren, even in their evil, a matter of such strange delight?
+ Remember therefore, this contradicts your nature and your destiny; to
+ speak ill of others makes you a monster in God's world: get the habit
+ of slander, and then there is not a stream which bubbles fresh from
+ the heart of nature,--there is not a tree that silently brings forth
+ its genial fruit in its appointed season,--which does not rebuke and
+ proclaim you to be a monstrous anomaly in God's world.
+
+ 4. The fourth point of guilt is the diabolical character of slander;
+ the tongue "is set on fire of hell." Now, this is no mere strong
+ expression--no mere indignant vituperation--it contains deep and
+ emphatic meaning.
+
+ The apostle means literally what he says, slander is diabolical. The
+ first illustration we give of this is contained in the very meaning of
+ the word devil. "Devil," in the original, means traducer or slanderer.
+ The first introduction of a demon spirit is found connected with a
+ slanderous insinuation against the Almighty, implying that His command
+ had been given in envy of His creature: "for God doth know that in the
+ day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be
+ as gods, knowing good and evil."
+
+ In the magnificent imagery of the book of Job, the accuser is
+ introduced with a demoniacal and malignant sneer, attributing the
+ excellence of a good man to interested motives; "Doth Job serve God
+ for naught?" There is another mode in which the fearful accuracy of
+ St. James's charge may be demonstrated. There is one state only from
+ which there is said to be no recovery--there is but one sin that is
+ called unpardonable. The Pharisees beheld the works of Jesus. They
+ could not deny that they were good works, they could not deny that
+ they were miracles of beneficence, but rather than acknowledge that
+ they were done by a good man through the co-operation of a Divine
+ spirit, they preferred to account for them by the wildest and most
+ incredible hypothesis; they said they were done by the power of
+ Beelzebub, the prince of the devils. It was upon this occasion that
+ our Redeemer said with solemn meaning, "For every idle word that men
+ shall speak, they shall give account in the day of judgment." It was
+ then that He said, for a word spoken against the Holy Ghost there is
+ no forgiveness in this world, or in the world to come.
+
+ Our own hearts respond to the truth of this--to call evil, good, and
+ good, evil--to see the Divinest good, and call it Satanic evil--below
+ this lowest deep there is _not_ a lower still. There is no cure for
+ mortification of the flesh--there is no remedy for ossification of the
+ heart. Oh! that miserable state, when to the jaundiced eye all good
+ transforms itself into evil, and the very instruments of health
+ become the poison of disease. Beware of every approach of
+ this!--Beware of that spirit which controversy fosters, of watching
+ only for the evil in the character of an antagonist!--Beware of that
+ habit which becomes the slanderer's life, of magnifying every speck of
+ evil and closing the eye to goodness!--till at last men arrive at the
+ state in which generous, universal love (which is heaven) becomes
+ impossible, and a suspicious, universal hate takes possession of the
+ heart, and _that_ is hell!
+
+ There is one peculiar manifestation of this spirit to which I desire
+ specially to direct your attention.
+
+ The politics of the community are guided by the political press. The
+ religious views of a vast number are formed by that portion of the
+ press which is called religious; it becomes, therefore, a matter of
+ deepest interest to inquire what is the spirit of that "religious
+ press." I am not asking you what are the views maintained--whether
+ Evangelical, Anglican, or Romish--but what is the _spirit_ of that
+ fountain from which the religious life of so many is nourished?
+
+ Let any man cast his eye over the pages of this portion of the
+ press--it matters little to which party the newspaper or the journal
+ may belong--he will be startled to find the characters of those whom
+ he has most deeply reverenced, whose hearts he knows, whose integrity
+ and life are above suspicion, held up to scorn and hatred: the organ
+ of one party is established against the organ of another, and it is
+ the recognised office of each to point out with microscopic care the
+ names of those whose views are to be shunned; and in order that these
+ may be the more shrunk from, the characters of those who hold such
+ opinions are traduced and vilified. There is no personality too
+ mean--there is no insinuation too audacious or too false for the
+ recklessness of these daring slanderers. I do not like to use the
+ expression, lest it should appear to be merely one of theatrical
+ vehemence; but I say it in all seriousness, adopting the inspired
+ language of the Bible, and using it advisedly and with accurate
+ meaning, the spirit which guides the "religious press" of this
+ country, which dictates those personalities, which prevents
+ controversialists from seeing what is good in their opponents, which
+ attributes low motives to account for excellent lives, and teaches
+ men whom to suspect, and shun, rather than point out where it is
+ possible to admire and love--is a spirit "set on fire of hell."
+
+ Before we conclude, let us get at the root of the matter. "Man," says
+ the Apostle James, "was made in the image of God:" to slander man is
+ to slander God: to love what is good in man is to love it in God. Love
+ is the only remedy for slander: no set of rules or restrictions can
+ stop it; we may denounce, but we shall denounce in vain. The radical
+ cure of it is Charity--"out of a pure heart and faith unfeigned," to
+ feel what is great in the human character; to recognise with delight
+ all high, and generous, and beautiful actions; to find a joy even in
+ seeing the good qualities of your bitterest opponents, and to admire
+ those qualities even in those with whom you have least sympathy--be it
+ either the Romanist or the Unitarian--this is the only spirit which
+ can heal the love of slander and of calumny. If we would bless God, we
+ must _first_ learn to bless man, who is made in the image of God.
+
+
+
+
+ II.
+
+ _Preached May 5, 1850._
+
+ THE VICTORY OF FAITH.
+
+
+   "For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is
+    the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he
+    that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the
+    Son of God?"--1 John v. 4-5.
+
+ There are two words in the system of Christianity which have received
+ a meaning so new, and so emphatic, as to be in a way peculiar to it,
+ and to distinguish it from all other systems of morality and religion;
+ these two words are--the World, and Faith. We find it written in
+ Scripture that to have the friendship of the world is to be the enemy
+ of God--- whereupon the question arises--The world?--did not God make
+ the world? Did He not place us in the world? Are we not to love what
+ God has made? And yet meeting this distinctly we have the inspired
+ record, "Love not the World."
+
+ The object of the Statesman is, or ought to be, to produce as much
+ worldly prosperity as possible--but Christianity, that is Christ,
+ speaks little of this world's prosperity, underrates it--nay, speaks
+ of it at times as infinitely dangerous.
+
+ The legislator prohibits crime--the moralist transgression--the
+ religionist sin. To these Christianity superadds a new enemy--the
+ world and the things of the world. "If any man love the world, the
+ love of the Father is not in him."
+
+ The other word used in a peculiar sense is Faith. It is impossible for
+ any one to have read his Bible ever so negligently, and not to be
+ aware that the word Faith, or the grace of Faith, forms a large
+ element in the Christian system. It is said to work miracles, remove
+ mountains, justify the soul, trample upon impossibilities. Every
+ apostle, in his way, assigns to faith a primary importance. Jude
+ tells us to "build up ourselves in our most holy faith." John tells us
+ that--"he that believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is the born of
+ God;" and Paul tells us that, not by merit nor by works, but by trust
+ or reliance only, can be formed that state of soul by which man is
+ reckoned just before God. In these expressions, the apostles only
+ develope their Master's meaning, when He uses such words as these,
+ "All things are possible to him that believeth:" "O thou of little
+ faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?"
+
+ These two words are brought into diametrical opposition in the text,
+ so that it branches into a two-fold line of thought
+
+    I. The Christian's enemy, the World.
+   II. The victory of Faith.
+
+ In endeavouring to understand first what is meant by the world, we
+ shall feel that the mass of evil which is comprehended under this
+ expression, cannot be told out in any one sermon; it is an expression
+ used in various ways, sometimes meaning one thing, sometimes meaning
+ another;-but we will endeavour to explain its general principles--and
+ these we will divide into three heads; first, the tyranny of the
+ present; secondly, the tyranny of the sensual; and lastly, the spirit
+ of society.
+
+ 1. The tyranny of the present.
+
+ "Christ," says the Apostle Paul, "hath redeemed us from this present
+ evil world;" and again, "Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this,
+ present world."
+
+ Let a stress be laid on the word _present_. Worldliness is the
+ attractive power of something present, in opposition to something to
+ come. It is this rule and tyranny of the present that constitutes
+ Demas a worldly man.
+
+ In this respect, worldliness is the spirit of childhood carried on
+ into manhood. The child lives in the present hour--to-day to him is
+ everything. The holiday promised at a distant interval is no holiday
+ at all--it must be either now or never. Natural in the child, and
+ therefore pardonable, this spirit, when carried on into manhood, is
+ coarse--is worldliness. The most distinct illustration given us of
+ this, is the case of Esau. Esau came from the hunting-field worn and
+ hungry; the only means of procuring the tempting mess of his brother's
+ pottage was the sacrifice of his father's blessing, which in those
+ ages carried with it a substantial advantage; but that birthright
+ could be enjoyed only after _years_--the pottage was _present_, near,
+ and certain; therefore he sacrificed a future and higher blessing, for
+ a present and lower pleasure. For this reason Esau is the Bible type
+ of worldliness: he is called in Scripture a profane, that is, not a
+ distinctly vicious, but a secular or worldly person--an overgrown
+ child; impetuous, inconsistent, not without gleams of generosity and
+ kindliness, but ever accustomed to immediate gratification.
+
+ In this worldliness, moreover, is to be remarked the gamester's
+ desperate play. There is a gambling spirit in human nature. Esau
+ distinctly expresses this: "Behold I am at the point to die, and what
+ shall my birthright profit me?" He might never live to enjoy his
+ birthright; but the pottage was before him, present, certain, _there_.
+
+ Now, observe the utter powerlessness of mere preaching to cope with
+ this tyrannical power of the present. Forty thousand pulpits
+ throughout the land this day, will declaim against the vanity of
+ riches, the uncertainty of life, the sin of worldliness--against the
+ gambling spirit of human nature; I ask what _impression_ will be
+ produced by those forty thousand harangues? In every congregation it
+ is reducible to a certainty that, before a year has passed, some will
+ be numbered with the dead. Every man knows this, but he thinks the
+ chances are that it will not be himself; he feels it a solemn thing
+ for Humanity generally--but for himself there is more than a chance.
+ Upon this chance he plays away life.
+
+ It is so with the child: you tell him of the consequences of to-day's
+ idleness--but the sun is shining brightly, and he cannot sacrifice
+ to-day's pleasure, although he knows the disgrace it will bring
+ to-morrow. So it is with the intemperate man: he says--"Sufficient
+ unto the day is the evil, and the good thereof; let me have my portion
+ now." So that one great secret of the world's victory lies in the
+ mighty power of saying "_Now_."
+
+ 2. The tyranny of the sensual.
+
+ I call it _tyranny_, because the evidences of the senses are all
+ powerful, in spite of the protestations of the reason. In vain you try
+ to persuade the child that _he_ is moving, and not the trees which
+ seem to flit past the carriage--in vain we remind ourselves that this
+ apparently solid earth on which we stand, and which seems so
+ immoveable, is in reality flying through the regions of space with an
+ inconceivable rapidity--in vain philosophers would persuade us that
+ the colour which the eye beholds, resides not in the object itself,
+ but in our own perception; we are victims of the apparent, and the
+ verdict of the senses is taken instead of the verdict of the reason.
+
+ Precisely so is it with the enjoyments of the world. The man who died
+ yesterday, and whom the world called a successful man--for what did he
+ live?--He lived for this world--he gained this world. Houses, lands,
+ name, position in society--all that earth could give of enjoyments--he
+ had: he was the man of whom the Redeemer said that his thoughts were
+ occupied in planning how to pull down his barns and build greater. We
+ hear men complain of the sordid love of gold, but gold is merely a
+ medium of exchange for other things: gold is land, titles, name,
+ comfort--all that the world can give. If the world be _all_, it is
+ _wise_ to live for gold. There may be some little difference in the
+ degree of degradation in different forms of worldliness; it is
+ possible that the ambitious man who lives for power is somewhat higher
+ than he who merely lives for applause, and he again may be a trifle
+ higher than the mere seeker after gold--but after all, looking closely
+ at the matter, you will find that, in respect of the objects of their
+ idolatry, they agree in this, that all belong to the present.
+ Therefore, says the Apostle, all that is in the world--"the lust of
+ the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, is not of the
+ Father, but of the world," and are only various forms of one great
+ tyranny. And then when such a man is at the brink of death, the words
+ said to the man in our Lord's parable must be said to him. "Thou fool,
+ the houses thou hast built, the enjoyments thou hast prepared; and all
+ those things which have formed thy life for years--when thy soul is
+ taken from them, what shall they profit thee?"
+
+ 3. The spirit of society.
+
+ The _World_ has various meanings in Scripture; it does not always mean
+ the Visible, as opposed to the Invisible; nor the Present, as opposed
+ to the Future: it sometimes stands for the secular spirit of the
+ day--the Voice of Society.
+
+ Our Saviour says, "If ye were of the world, the world would love his
+ own." The apostle says, "Be not conformed to this world;" and to the
+ Gentiles he writes, "In time past ye walked according to the course of
+ this world, the spirit which now worketh in the children of
+ disobedience." In these verses, a tone, a temper, a spirit is spoken
+ of. There are two things--the Church and the World--two spirits
+ pervading different bodies of men, brought before us in these
+ verses--those called the Spirit-born, and those called the World,
+ which is to be overcome by the Spirit-born, as in the text,
+ "Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world."
+
+ Let us understand what is meant by the Church of God. When we speak of
+ the Church we generally mean a society to aid men in their progress
+ God-wards; but the Church of God is by no means co-extensive in any
+ age with that organized institution which we _call_ the Church;
+ sometimes it is nearly co-extensive--that is, nearly all on earth who
+ are born of God are found within its pale, nearly all who are of the
+ world are extraneous to it--but sometimes the born of God have been
+ found distinct from the Institution called the Church, opposed to
+ it--persecuted by it. The Institution of the Church is a blessed
+ ordinance of God, organized on earth for the purpose of representing
+ the Eternal Church and of extending its limits, but still ever
+ subordinate to it.
+
+ The Eternal Church is "the general assembly and church of the
+ first-born which are written in heaven;" the selected spirits of the
+ most High, who are struggling with the evil of their day; sometimes
+ alone, like Elijah, and like him, longing that their work was done;
+ sometimes conscious of their union with each other. God is for ever
+ raising up a succession of these--His brave, His true, His good.
+ Apostolical succession, as taught sometimes, means simply this--a
+ succession of miraculous powers flowing in a certain line. The true
+ apostolic succession is--not a succession in an hereditary line, or
+ line marked by visible signs which men can always identify, but a
+ succession emphatically spiritual.
+
+ The Jews looked for an hereditary succession; they thought that
+ because they were Abraham's seed, the spiritual succession was
+ preserved; the Redeemer told them that "God was able of those stones
+ to raise up children unto Abraham." Therefore is this ever a spiritual
+ succession--in the hands of God alone; and they are here called the
+ God-born, coming into the world variously qualified; sometimes
+ baptized with the spirit which makes them, like James and John, the
+ "Sons of Thunder," sometimes with a milder spirit, as Barnabas, which
+ makes them "Sons of Consolation," sometimes having their souls
+ indurated into an adamantine hardness, which makes them living
+ stones--rocks like Peter, against which the billows of this world dash
+ themselves in vain, and against which the gates of hell shall not
+ prevail. But whether as apostles, or visitors of the poor, or parents
+ of a family, born to do a work on earth, to speak a word, to discharge
+ a mission which they themselves perhaps do not know till it is
+ accomplished--these are the Church of God--the children of the Most
+ High--the noble army of the Spirit-born! Opposed to this stands the
+ mighty confederacy called the World. But beware of fixing on
+ individual men in order to stigmatize _them_ as the world. You may not
+ draw a line and say--"We are the sons of God, ye are of the world."
+ The world is not so much individual as it is a certain spirit; the
+ course of this world is "the spirit which now worketh in the children
+ of disobedience." The world and the Church are annexed as inseparably
+ as the elements which compose the atmosphere. Take the smallest
+ portion of this that you will, in a cubic inch the same proportions
+ are found as in a temple. In the ark there was a Ham; in the small
+ band of the twelve apostles there was a Judas.
+
+ The spirit of the world is for ever altering--impalpable; for ever
+ eluding, in fresh forms, your attempts to seize it. In the days of
+ Noah, the spirit of the world was _violence_. In Elijah's day it was
+ _idolatry_. In the day of Christ it was _power_ concentrated and
+ condensed in the government of Rome. In ours, perhaps, it is the _love
+ of money_. It enters in different proportions into different bosoms;
+ it is found in a different form in contiguous towns; in the
+ fashionable watering place, and in the commercial city: it is this
+ thing at Athens, and another in Corinth. This is the spirit of the
+ world--a thing in my heart and yours: to be struggled against, not so
+ much in the case of others, as in the silent battle to be done within
+ our own souls. Pass we on now to consider--
+
+
+ II. The victory of faith.
+
+ Faith is a theological expression; we are apt to forget that it has
+ any other than a theological import; yet it is the commonest principle
+ of man's daily life, called in that region prudence, enterprise, or
+ some such name. It is in effect the principle on which alone any human
+ superiority can be gained. Faith, in religion, is the same principle
+ as faith in worldly matters, differing only in its object: it rises
+ through successive stages. When, in reliance upon your promise, your
+ child gives up the half-hour's idleness of to-day for the holiday of
+ to-morrow, he lives by faith; a future supersedes the present
+ pleasure. When he abstains from over-indulgence of the appetite, in
+ reliance upon your word that the result will be pain and sickness,
+ sacrificing the present pleasure for fear of future punishment, he
+ acts on faith: I do not say that this is a high exercise of faith--it
+ is a very low one--but it _is_ faith.
+
+ Once more: the same motive of action may be carried on into manhood;
+ in our own times two religious principles have been exemplified in the
+ subjugation of a vice. The habit of intoxication has been broken by an
+ appeal to the principle of combination, and the principle of belief.
+ Men were taught to feel that they were not solitary stragglers against
+ the vice; they were enrolled in a mighty army, identified in
+ principles and interests. Here was the principle of the
+ Church--association for reciprocated strength; they were thus taught
+ the inevitable result of the indulgence of the vice. The missionaries
+ of temperance went through the country contrasting the wretchedness
+ and the degradation and the filth of drunkenness with the domestic
+ comfort, and the health, and the regular employment of those who were
+ masters of themselves. So far as men believed this, and gave up the
+ tyranny of the present for the hope of the future--so far they lived
+ by faith.
+
+ Brethren, I do not say that this was a high triumph for the principle
+ of faith; it was in fact, little more than selfishness; it was a high
+ future balanced against a low present; only the preference of a future
+ and higher physical enjoyment to a mean and lower one. Yet still to be
+ ruled by this influence raises a man in the scale of being: it is a
+ low virtue, prudence, a form of selfishness; yet prudence _is_ a
+ virtue. The merchant, who forecasts, saves, denies himself
+ systematically through years, to amass a fortune, is not a very lofty
+ being, yet he is higher, as a man, than he who is sunk in mere bodily
+ gratifications. You would not say that the intemperate man--who has
+ become temperate in order, merely to gain by that temperance honour
+ and happiness--is a great man, but you would say he was a higher and a
+ better man than he who is enslaved by his passions, or than the
+ gambler who improvidently stakes all upon a moment's throw. The
+ worldly mother who plans for the advancement of a family, and
+ sacrifices solid enjoyments for a splendid alliance, is only _worldly_
+ wise, yet in that manoeuvring and worldly prudence there is the
+ exercise of a self-control which raises her above the mere giddy
+ pleasure-hunter of the hour; for want of self-control is the weakness
+ of our nature--to restrain, to wait, to control present feeling with a
+ large foresight, is human strength.
+
+ Once more, instead of a faith like that of the child, which over-leaps
+ a few hours, or that of the worldly man, which over-passes years,
+ there may be a faith which transcends the whole span of life, and,
+ instead of looking for temporal enjoyments, looks for rewards in a
+ future beyond the grave, instead of a future limited to time.
+
+ This is again a step. The child has sacrificed a day; the man has
+ sacrificed a little more. Faith has now reached a stage which deserves
+ to be called religious; not that this however, is very grand; it does
+ but prefer a happiness hereafter to a happiness enjoyed here--an
+ eternal well-being instead of a temporal well-being; it is but
+ prudence on a grand scale--another form of selfishness--an
+ anticipation of infinite rewards instead of finite, and not the more
+ noble because of the infinitude of the gain: and yet this is what is
+ often taught as religion in books and sermons. We are told that sin is
+ wrong, because it will make us miserable hereafter. Guilt is
+ represented as the short-sightedness which barters for a home on
+ earth--a home in heaven.
+
+ In the text-book of ethics studied in one of our universities, virtue
+ is defined as that which is done at the command of God for the sake of
+ an eternal reward. So then, religion is nothing more than a
+ calculation of infinite and finite quantities; vice is nothing more
+ than a grand imprudence; and heaven is nothing more than selfishness
+ rewarded with eternal well-being!
+
+ Yet this you will observe, is a necessary step in the development of
+ faith. Faith is the conviction that God is a rewarder of them who
+ diligently seek Him; and there is a moment in human progress when the
+ anticipated rewards and punishments must be of a Mahometan
+ character--the happiness of the senses. It was thus that the Jews were
+ disciplined; out of a coarse, rude, infantine state, they were
+ educated by rewards and punishments to abstain from present sinful
+ gratification: at first, the promise of the life which now is,
+ afterwards the promise of that which is to come; but even then the
+ rewards and punishments of a future state were spoken of, by
+ inspiration itself, as of an arbitrary character; and some of the best
+ of the Israelites, in looking to the recompense of reward, seemed to
+ have anticipated, coarsely, recompense in exchange for duties
+ performed.
+
+ The last step is that which alone deserves to be called Christian
+ Faith--"Who is he that overcometh but he that believeth that Jesus is
+ the Christ?" The difference between the faith of the Christian and
+ that of the man of the world, or the mere ordinary religionist, is not
+ a difference in mental operation, but in the object of the faith--to
+ believe that Jesus is the Christ is the peculiarity of Christian
+ faith.
+
+ The anticipated heaven of the Christian differs from the anticipated
+ heaven of any other man, not in the distinctness with which its
+ imagery is perceived, but in the kind of objects which are hoped for.
+ The apostle has told us the character of heaven. "Eye hath not seen,
+ nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to
+ conceive the things which God hath prepared for them that love
+ Him"--which glorious words are sometimes strangely misinterpreted, as
+ if the apostle merely meant rhetorically to exalt the conception of
+ the heavenly world, as of something beyond all power to imagine or to
+ paint. The apostle meant something infinitely deeper: the heaven of
+ God is not only that which "eye hath not seen," but that which eye can
+ _never_ see; its glories are not of that kind at all which can ever
+ stream in forms of beauty on the eye, or pour in melody upon the
+ enraptured ear--not such joys as genius in its most gifted hour (here
+ called "the heart of man") can invent or imagine: it is something
+ which these sensuous organs of ours never can appreciate--bliss of
+ another kind altogether, revealed to the spirit of man by the Spirit
+ of God--joys such as spirit alone can receive.
+
+ Do you ask what these are? "The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy,
+ peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness,
+ temperance." That is heaven, and therefore the Apostle tells us that
+ he alone who "believeth that Jesus is the Christ," and only he, feels
+ that. What is it to believe that Jesus is the Christ?--That He is the
+ Anointed One, that His life is the anointed life, the only blessed
+ life, the blessed life divine for thirty years?--Yes, but if so, the
+ blessed Life still, continued throughout all eternity: unless you
+ believe that, you do not believe that Jesus is the Christ.
+
+ What is the blessedness that you expect?--to have the joys of earth
+ with the addition of the element of eternity? Men think that heaven is
+ to be a compensation for earthly loss: the saints are earthly-wretched
+ here, the children of this world are earthly-happy; but _that_, they
+ think, shall be all reversed--Lazarus, beyond the grave, shall have
+ the purple and the fine linen, and the splendour, and the houses, and
+ the lands which Dives had on earth: the one had them for time, the
+ other shall have them for eternity. That is the heaven that men
+ expect--this earth sacrificed _now_, in order that it may be
+ re-granted for _ever_.
+
+ Nor will this expectation be reversed except by a reversal of the
+ nature. None can anticipate such a heaven as God has revealed, except
+ they that are born of the Spirit; therefore to believe that Jesus is
+ the Christ, a man must be born of God. You will observe that no other
+ victory overcomes the world: for this is what St. John means by
+ saying, "Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth
+ that Jesus is the Christ?" For then it comes to pass that a man begins
+ to feel, that to do wrong is hell; and that to love God, to be like
+ God, to have the mind of Christ, is the only heaven. Until this
+ victory is gained, the world retains its stronghold in the heart.
+
+ Do you think that the temperate man has overcome the world, who,
+ instead of the short-lived rapture of intoxication, chooses regular
+ employment, health, and prosperity? Is it not the world in another
+ form, which has his homage? Or do you suppose that the so-called
+ religious man is really the world's conqueror by being content to give
+ up seventy years of enjoyment in order to win innumerable ages of the
+ very same species of enjoyment? Has he not only made earth a hell, in
+ order that earthly things may be his heaven for ever?
+
+ Thus the victory of Faith proceeds from stage to stage: the first
+ victory is, when the Present is conquered by the Future; the last,
+ when the Visible and Sensual is despised in comparison of the
+ Invisible and Eternal. Then earth has lost its power for ever; for if
+ _all_ that it has to give be lost eternally, the gain of faith is
+ still infinite.
+
+
+
+
+ III.
+
+ _Preached Whitsunday, May 19, 1850._
+
+ THE DISPENSATION OF THE SPIRIT.
+
+
+   "Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit."--1
+    Corinthians xii, 4.
+
+ According to a view which contains in it a profound truth, the ages of
+ the world are divisible into three dispensations, presided over by the
+ Father, the Son, and the Spirit.
+
+ In the dispensation of the Father, God was known as a Creator;
+ creation manifested His eternal power and Godhead, and the religion of
+ mankind was the religion of Nature.
+
+ In the dispensation of the Son, God manifested Himself to Humanity
+ through man; the Eternal Word spoke, through the inspired and gifted
+ of the human race, to those that were uninspired and ungifted. This
+ was the dispensation of the prophets--its climax was the advent of the
+ Redeemer; it was completed when _perfect_ Humanity manifested God to
+ man. The characteristic of this dispensation was, that God revealed
+ Himself by an authoritative Voice, speaking from without, and the
+ highest manifestation of God whereof man was capable, was a Divine
+ Humanity.
+
+ The age in which we at present live is the dispensation of the Spirit,
+ in which God has communicated Himself by the highest revelation, and
+ in the most intimate communion, of which man is capable; no longer
+ through Creation, no more as an authoritative Voice from without, but
+ as a Law within--as a Spirit mingling with a spirit. This is the
+ dispensation of which the prophet said of old, that the time should
+ come when they should no longer teach every man his brother and every
+ man his neighbour, saying, "Know the Lord"--that is, by a will
+ revealed by external authority from other human minds--"for they shall
+ all know him, from the least of them to the greatest." This is the
+ dispensation, too, of whose close the Apostle Paul speaks thus: "Then
+ shall the Son also be subject to Him that hath put all things under
+ Him, that God may be all in all."
+
+ The outward humanity is to disappear, that the inward union may be
+ complete. To the same effect, he speaks in another place, "Yea, though
+ we have known Christ after the flesh, yet henceforth know we Him no
+ more." For this reason, the Ascension was necessary before Pentecost
+ could come: the Spirit was not given, we are told, because Jesus was
+ not yet glorified. It was necessary for the Son to disappear as an
+ outward authority, in order that he might re-appear as an inward
+ principle of life. Our salvation is no longer God manifested in a
+ Christ _without_ us, but as a Christ _within_ us, the hope of glory.
+ To-day is the selected anniversary of that memorable day when the
+ first proof was given to the senses, in the gift of Pentecost, that
+ that spiritual dispensation had begun.
+
+ There is a twofold way in which the operations of the Spirit on
+ mankind may be considered--His influence on the Church as a whole, and
+ His influence on individuals; both of these are brought together in
+ the text. It branches, therefore, into a twofold division.
+
+    I. Spiritual gifts conferred on individuals.
+   II. Spiritual union of the Church.
+
+ Let us distinguish between the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit: by
+ the Spirit, the apostle meant the vital principle of new life from
+ God, common to all believers--the animating Spirit of the Church of
+ God; by the gifts of the Spirit, he meant the diversities of form in
+ which He operates on individuals; its influence varied according to
+ their respective peculiarities and characteristics. In the
+ twenty-eighth verse of this chapter a full catalogue of gifts is
+ found; looking at them generally, we discover two classes into which
+ they may be divided--the first are natural, the second are
+ supernatural: the first are those capacities which are originally
+ found in human nature--personal endowments of mind, a character
+ elevated and enlarged by the gift of the Spirit; the second are those
+ which were created and called into existence by the sudden approach of
+ the same influence.
+
+ Just as if the temperature of this Northern hemisphere were raised
+ suddenly, and a mighty tropical river were to pour its fertilizing
+ inundation over the country, the result would be the impartation of a
+ vigorous and gigantic growth to the vegetation already in existence,
+ and at the same time the development of life in seeds and germs which
+ had long lain latent in the soil, incapable of vegetation in the
+ unkindly climate of their birth. Exactly in the same way, the flood of
+ a Divine life, poured suddenly into the souls of men, enlarged and
+ ennobled qualities which had been used already, and at the same time
+ _developed_ powers which never could have become apparent in the cold,
+ low temperature of natural life.
+
+ Among the natural gifts, we may instance these: teaching--healing--the
+ power of government. Teaching is a gift, natural or acquired. To know,
+ is one thing; to have the capacity of imparting knowledge, is another.
+
+ The physician's art again is no supernatural mystery; long and
+ careful study of physical laws capacitate him for his task. To govern,
+ again, is a natural faculty: it may be acquired by habit, but there
+ are some who never could acquire it. Some men seem born to command:
+ place them in what sphere you will, others acknowledge their secret
+ influence, and subordinate themselves to their will. The faculty of
+ organization, the secret of rule, need no supernatural power. They
+ exist among the uninspired. Now the doctrine of the apostle was, that
+ all these are transformed and renovated by the spirit of a new life in
+ such a way as to become almost new powers, or, as he calls them, gifts
+ of the Spirit. A remarkable illustration of this is his view of the
+ human body. If there be anything common to us by nature, it is the
+ members of our corporeal frame; yet the apostle taught that these,
+ guided by the Spirit as its instruments and obeying a holy will,
+ became transfigured; so that, in his language, the body becomes a
+ temple of the Holy Ghost, and the meanest faculties, the lowest
+ appetites, the humblest organs, are ennobled by the Spirit mind which
+ guides them. Thus he bids the Romans yield themselves "unto God as
+ those that are alive from the dead, and their members as instruments
+ of righteousness unto God."
+
+ The second class of gifts are supernatural: of these we find two
+ pre-eminent--the gift of tongues, and the gift of prophecy.
+
+ It does not appear that the gift of tongues was merely the imparted
+ faculty of speaking foreign languages--it could not be that the
+ highest gift of God to His Church merely made them rivals of the
+ linguist; it would rather seem that the Spirit of God, mingling with
+ the soul of man, supernaturally elevated its aspirations and glorified
+ its conceptions, so that an entranced state of ecstasy was
+ produced, and feelings called into energy, for the expression of which
+ the ordinary forms of speech were found inadequate. Even in a far
+ lower department, when a man becomes possessed of ideas for which his
+ ordinary vocabulary supplies no sufficient expression, his language
+ becomes broken, incoherent, struggling, and almost unnaturally
+ elevated; much more was it to be expected that when divine and new
+ feelings rushed like a flood upon the soul, the language of men would
+ have become strange and extraordinary; but in that supposed case, wild
+ as the expressions might appear to one coldly looking on and not
+ participating in the feelings of the speaker, they would be quite
+ sufficient to convey intelligible meaning to any one affected by the
+ same emotions.
+
+ Where perfect sympathy exists, incoherent utterance--a word--a
+ syllable--is quite as efficient as elaborate sentences. Now this is
+ precisely the account given of the phenomenon which attended the gift
+ of tongues. On the day of Pentecost, all who were in the same state of
+ spiritual emotion as those who spoke, understood the speakers; each
+ was as intelligible to all as if he spoke in their several tongues: to
+ those who were coolly and sceptically watching, the effects appeared
+ like those of intoxication. A similar account is given by the Apostle
+ Paul: the voice appeared to unsympathetic ears as that of a barbarian;
+ the uninitiated and unbelieving coming in, heard nothing that was
+ articulate to them, but only what seemed to them the ravings of
+ insanity.
+
+ The next was the gift of prophecy. Prophecy has several meanings in
+ Scripture; sometimes it means the power of predicting future events,
+ sometimes an entranced state accompanied with ravings, sometimes it
+ appears to mean only exposition; but prophecy, as the miraculous
+ spiritual gift granted to the early Church, seems to have been a state
+ of communion with the mind of God lower than that which was called the
+ gift of tongues, at least less ecstatic, less rapt into the world to
+ come, more under the guidance of the reason, more within the control
+ of calm consciousness--as we might say, less supernatural.
+
+ Upon these gifts we make two observations:
+
+ 1. Even the highest were not accompanied with spiritual faultlessness.
+ Inspiration was one thing, infallibility another. The gifts of the
+ Spirit were, like the gifts of Nature, subordinated to the
+ will--capable of being used for good or evil, sometimes pure,
+ sometimes mixed with human infirmity. The supernaturally gifted man
+ was no mere machine, no automaton ruled in spite of himself by a
+ superior spirit. Disorder, vanity, over-weening self-estimation, might
+ accompany these gifts, and the prophetic utterance itself might be
+ degraded to a mere brawling in the Church; therefore St. Paul
+ established laws of control, declared the need of subjection and rule
+ over spiritual gifts: the spirits of the prophets were to be subject
+ to the prophets; if those in the ecstatic state were tempted to break
+ out into utterance and unable to interpret what it meant, those so
+ gifted were to hold their peace.
+
+ The prophet poured out the truths supernaturally imparted to his
+ highest spirit, in an inspired and impassioned eloquence which was
+ intelligible even to the unspiritual, and was one of the appointed
+ means of convincing the unconverted. The lesson derivable from this is
+ not obsolete even in the present day. There is nothing perhaps
+ precisely identical in our own day with those gifts of the early
+ Church; but genius and talent are uncommon gifts, which stand in a
+ somewhat analogous relation--in a closer one certainly--than more
+ ordinary endowments. The flights of genius, we know, appear like
+ maniac ravings to minds not elevated to the same spiritual level. Now
+ these are perfectly compatible with mis-use, abuse, and moral
+ disorder. The most gifted of our countrymen has left this behind him
+ as his epitaph, "The greatest, wisest, _meanest_ of mankind." The most
+ glorious gift of poetic insight--itself in a way divine--having
+ something akin to Deity--is too often associated with degraded life
+ and vicious character. Those gifts which elevate us above the rest of
+ our species, whereby we stand aloof and separate from the crowd,
+ convey no moral--nor even mental--infallibility: nay, they have in
+ themselves a peculiar danger, whereas that gift which is common to us
+ all as brethren, the animating spirit of a divine life, in whose soil
+ the spiritual being of all is rooted, cannot make us vain; we _cannot_
+ pride ourselves on _that_, for it is common to us all.
+
+ 2. Again, the gifts which were higher in one sense were lower in
+ another; as supernatural gifts they would rank thus--the gift of
+ tongues before prophecy, and prophecy before teaching; but as
+ blessings to be desired, this order is reversed: rather than the gift
+ of tongues St. Paul bids the Corinthians desire that they might
+ prophecy. Inferior again to prophecy was the quite simple, and as we
+ should say, lower faculty of explaining truth. Now the principle upon
+ which that was tried was that of utility--not utility in the low sense
+ of the utilitarian, who measures the value of a thing by its
+ susceptibility of application to the purpose of this present life, but
+ a utility whose measure was love, charity. The apostle considered
+ _that_ gift most desirable by which men might most edify one another.
+ And hence that noble declaration of one of the most gifted of
+ mankind--"I had rather speak five words with my understanding, that I
+ might teach others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown
+ tongue."
+
+ Our estimate is almost the reverse of this: we value a gift in
+ proportion to its rarity, its distinctive character, separating its
+ possessor from the rest of his fellow-men; whereas, in truth, those
+ gifts which leave us in lonely majesty apart from our species, useless
+ to them, benefiting ourselves alone, are not the most godlike, but the
+ least so; because they are dissevered from that beneficent charity
+ which is the very being of God. Your lofty incommunicable thoughts,
+ your ecstasies, and aspirations, and contemplative raptures--in virtue
+ of which you have estimated yourself as the porcelain of the earth, of
+ another nature altogether than the clay of common spirits--tried by
+ the test of Charity, what is there grand in these if they cannot be
+ applied as blessings to those that are beneath you? One of our
+ countrymen has achieved for himself extraordinary scientific renown;
+ he pierced the mysteries of nature, he analysed her processes, he gave
+ new elements to the world. The same man applied his rare intellect to
+ the construction of a simple and very common instrument--that
+ well-known lamp which has been the guardian of the miner's life from
+ the explosion of fire. His discoveries are his nobility in this world,
+ his trifling invention gives him rank in the world to come. By the
+ former he shines as one of the brightest luminaries in the firmament
+ of science, by the latter evincing a spirit animated and directed by
+ Christian love, he takes his place as one of the Church of God.
+
+ And such is ever the true order of rank which graces occupy in
+ reference to gifts. The most trifling act which is marked by
+ usefulness to others is nobler in God's sight, than the most brilliant
+ accomplishment of genius. To teach a few Sunday-school children, week
+ after week, commonplace simple truths--persevering in spite of
+ dullness and mean capacities--is a more glorious occupation than the
+ highest meditations or creations of genius which edify or instruct
+ only our own solitary soul.
+
+
+ II. The spiritual unity of the Church--"the same Spirit."
+
+ Men have formed to themselves two ideas of unity: the first is a
+ sameness of form--of expression; the second an identity of spirit.
+ Some of the best of mankind have fondly hoped to realize an unity for
+ the Church of Christ which should be manifested by uniform expressions
+ in everything: their imaginations have loved to paint, as the ideal of
+ a Christian Church, a state in which the same liturgy should be used
+ throughout the world, the same ecclesiastical government, even the
+ same vestments, the same canonical hours, the same form of
+ architecture. They could conceive nothing more entirely one than a
+ Church so constituted that the same prayers, in the very same
+ expressions, at the very same moment, should be ascending to the
+ Eternal Ear.
+
+ There are others who have thrown aside entirely this idea as
+ chimerical; who have not only ceased to hope it, but even to wish it;
+ who if it could be realized, would consider it a matter of regret; who
+ feel that the minds of men are various--their modes and habits of
+ thought, their original capacities and acquired associations,
+ infinitely diverse; and who, perceiving that the law of the universal
+ system is manifoldness in unity, have ceased to expect any other
+ oneness for the Church of Christ than that of a sameness of spirit,
+ showing itself through diversities of gifts. Among these last was the
+ Apostle Paul: his large and glorious mind rejoiced in the
+ contemplation of the countless manifestations of spiritual nature
+ beneath which he detected one and the same pervading Mind. Now let us
+ look at this matter somewhat more closely.
+
+ 1. All real unity is manifold. Feelings in themselves identical find
+ countless forms of expression: for instance, sorrow is the same
+ feeling throughout the human race; but the Oriental prostrates himself
+ upon the ground, throws dust upon his head, tears his garments, is not
+ ashamed to break out into the most violent lamentations. In the north,
+ we rule our grief in public; suffer not even a quiver to be seen upon
+ the lip or brow, and consider calmness as the appropriate expression
+ of manly grief. Nay, two sisters of different temperament will show
+ their grief diversely; one will love to dwell upon the theme of the
+ qualities of the departed, the other feels it a sacred sorrow, on
+ which the lips are sealed for ever; yet would it not be idle to ask
+ which of them has the truest affection? Are they not both in their own
+ way true? In the same East, men take off their sandals in devotion; we
+ exactly reverse the procedure, and uncover the head. The Oriental
+ prostrates himself in the dust before his sovereign; even before his
+ God the Briton only kneels; yet would it not again be idle to ask
+ which is the essential and proper form of reverence? Is not true
+ reverence in all cases modified by the individualities of temperament
+ and education? Should we not say, in all these forms worketh one and
+ the same spirit of reverence?
+
+ Again in the world as God has made it, one law shows itself under
+ diverse, even opposite manifestations; lead sinks in water, wood
+ floats upon the surface. In former times men assigned these different
+ results to different forces, laws, and gods. A knowledge of Nature has
+ demonstrated that they are expressions of one and the same law; and
+ the great difference between the educated and the uneducated man is
+ this--the uneducated sees in this world nothing but an infinite
+ collection of unconnected facts--a broken, distorted, and fragmentary
+ system, which his mind can by no means reduce to order. The educated
+ man, in proportion to his education, sees the number of laws
+ diminished--beholds in the manifold appearances of Nature the
+ expression of a few laws, by degrees fewer, till at last it becomes
+ possible to his conception that they are all reducible to one, and
+ that that which lies beneath the innumerable phenomena of Nature is
+ the One Spirit--God.
+
+ 2. All _living_ unity is spiritual, not formal; not sameness, but
+ manifoldness. You may have a unity shown in identity of form; but it
+ is a lifeless unity. There is a sameness on the sea-beach--that unity
+ which the ocean waves have produced by curling and forcibly destroying
+ the angularities of individual form, so that every stone presents the
+ same monotony of aspect, and you must fracture each again in order to
+ distinguish whether you hold in your hand a mass of flint or fragment
+ of basalt. There is no life in unity such as this.
+
+ But as soon as you arrive at a unity that is living, the form becomes
+ more complex, and you search in vain for uniformity. In the parts, it
+ must be found, if found at all, in the sameness of the pervading life.
+ The illustration given by the apostle is that of the human body--a
+ higher unity, he says, by being composed of many members, than if
+ every member were but a repetition of a single type. It is conceivable
+ that God might have moulded such a form for human life; it is
+ conceivable that every cause, instead of producing in different nerves
+ a variety of sensations, should have affected every one in a mode
+ precisely similar; that instead of producing a sensation of sound--a
+ sensation of colour--a sensation of taste--the outward causes of
+ nature, be they what they may, should have given but one unvaried
+ feeling to every sense, and that the whole universe should have been
+ light or sound.
+
+ That would have been unity, if sameness be unity; but, says the
+ apostle, "if the whole body were seeing, where were the hearing?" That
+ uniformity would have been irreparable loss--the loss of every part
+ that was merged into the one. What is the body's unity? Is it not
+ this? The unity of a living consciousness which marvellously animates
+ every separate atom of the frame, and reduces each to the performance
+ of a function fitted to the welfare of the whole--its own, not
+ another's: so that the inner spirit can say of the remotest, and in
+ form most unlike, member, "That too, is myself."
+
+ 3. None but a spiritual unity can preserve the rights both of the
+ individual and the Church. All other systems of unity, except the
+ apostolic, either sacrifice the Church to the individual, or the
+ individual to the Church.
+
+ Some have claimed the right of private judgment in such a way that
+ every individual opinion becomes truth, and every utterance of private
+ conscience right: thus the Church is sacrificed to the individual; and
+ the universal conscience, the common faith, becomes as nothing; the
+ spirits of the prophets are not subject to the prophets. Again, there
+ are others, who, like the Church of Rome, would surrender the
+ conscience of each man to the conscience of the Church, and coerce the
+ particulars of faith into exact coincidence with a formal creed.
+ Spiritual unity saves the right of both in God's system. The Church
+ exists for the individual, just as truly as the individual for the
+ Church. The Church is then most perfect when all its powers converge,
+ and are concentrated on the formation and protection of individual
+ character; and the individual is then most complete--that is, most a
+ Christian--when he has practically learned that his life is not his
+ own, but owed to others--"that no man liveth to himself, and no man
+ dieth to himself."
+
+ Now, spiritual unity respects the sanctity of the individual
+ conscience. How reverently the Apostle Paul considered its claims,
+ and how tenderly! When once it became a matter of conscience, this was
+ his principle laid down in matters of dispute: "Let every man be fully
+ persuaded in his own mind." The belief of the whole world cannot make
+ that thing true to me which to me seems false. The conscience of the
+ whole world cannot make a thing right to me, if I in my heart believe
+ it wrong. You may coerce the conscience, you may control men's belief,
+ and you may produce a unity by so doing; but it is the unity of
+ pebbles on the sea-shore--a lifeless identity of outward form with no
+ cohesion between the parts--a dead sea-beach on which nothing grows,
+ and where the very seaweed dies.
+
+ Lastly, it respected the sanctity of individual character. Out of
+ eight hundred millions of the human race, a few features diversify
+ themselves into so many forms of countenance, that scarcely two could
+ be mistaken for each other. There are no two leaves on the same tree
+ alike; nor two sides of the same leaf, unless you cut and kill it
+ There is a sacredness in individuality of character; each one born
+ into this world is a fresh new soul intended by his Maker to develope
+ himself in a new fresh way; we are what we are; we cannot be truly
+ other than ourselves. We reach perfection not by copying, much less by
+ aiming at originality; but by consistently and steadily working out
+ the life which is common to us all, according to the character which
+ God has given us.
+
+ And thus will the Church of God be one at last--will present an unity
+ like that of heaven. There is one universe in which each separate star
+ differs from another in glory; one Church in which a single Spirit,
+ the Life of God, pervades each separate soul; and just in proportion
+ as that Life becomes exalted does it enable every one to shine forth
+ in the distinctness of his own separate individuality, like the stars
+ of heaven.
+
+
+
+
+ IV.
+
+ _Preached May 26, 1850._
+
+ THE TRINITY.
+
+
+   "And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God
+    your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto
+    the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."--1 Thess. v. 23.
+
+ The knowledge of God is the blessedness of man. To know God, and to be
+ known by Him--to love God, and to be loved by Him--is the most
+ precious treasure which this life has to give; properly speaking the
+ only treasure; properly speaking the only knowledge; for all
+ knowledge is valuable only so far as it converges towards and ends in
+ the knowledge of God, and enables us to acquaint ourselves with God,
+ and be at peace with Him. The doctrine of the Trinity is the sum of
+ all that knowledge which has as yet been gained by man. I say gained
+ _as yet_. For we presume not to maintain that in the ages which are to
+ come hereafter, our knowledge shall not be superseded by a higher
+ knowledge; we presume not to say that in a state of existence
+ future--yea even here upon this earth, at that period which is
+ mysteriously referred to in Scripture as "the coming of the Son of
+ Man"--there shall not be given to the soul an intellectual conception
+ of the Almighty, a vision of the Eternal, in comparison with whose
+ brightness and clearness our present knowledge of the Trinity shall be
+ as rudimentary and as childlike as the knowledge of the Jew was in
+ comparison with the knowledge of the Christian.
+
+ Now the passage which I have undertaken to expound to-day, is one in
+ which the doctrine of the Trinity is brought into connection
+ practically with the doctrine of our Humanity. Before entering into it
+ brethren, let us lay down these two observations and duties for
+ ourselves. In the first place, let us examine the doctrine of the
+ Trinity ever in the spirit of charity.
+
+ A clear statement of the deepest doctrine that man can know, and the
+ intellectual conception of that doctrine, are by no means easy. We are
+ puzzled and perplexed by _words_; we fight respecting _words_.
+ Quarrels are nearly always verbal quarrels. Words lose their meaning
+ in the course of time; nay, the very words of the Athanasian creed
+ which we read to-day mean not in this age, the same thing which they
+ meant in ages past. Therefore it is possible that men, externally
+ Trinitarians, may differ from each other though using the same words,
+ as greatly as a Unitarian differs from a Trinitarian. There may be
+ found in the same Church and in the same congregation, men holding all
+ possible shades of opinion, though agreeing externally, and in words.
+
+ I speak within the limit of my own experience when I say that persons
+ have been known and heard to express the language of bitter
+ condemnation respecting Unitarianism, who when examined and calmly
+ required to draw out verbally the meaning of their own conceptions,
+ have been proved to be holding all the time--unconsciously--the very
+ doctrine of Sabellianism. And this doctrine is condemned by the Church
+ as distinctly as that of Unitarianism. Therefore let us learn from all
+ this a large and catholic charity. There are in almost every
+ congregation, themselves not knowing it, Trinitarians who are
+ practically Tri-theists, worshipping three Gods; and Sabellians, or
+ worshippers of one person under three different manifestations. To
+ know God so that we may be said intellectually, to appreciate Him, is
+ blessed: to be unable to do so is a misfortune. Be content with your
+ own blessedness, in comparison with others' misfortunes. Do not give
+ to that misfortune the additional sting of illiberal and unchristian
+ vituperation.
+
+ The next observation we have to lay down for ourselves is, that we
+ should examine this doctrine in the spirit of modesty. There are those
+ who are inclined to sneer at the Trinitarian; those to whom the
+ doctrine appears merely a contradiction--a puzzle--an entangled,
+ labyrinthine enigma, in which there is no meaning whatever. But let
+ all such remember, that though the doctrine may appear to them absurd,
+ because they have not the proper conception of it, some of the
+ profoundest thinkers, and some of the holiest spirits among mankind,
+ have believed in this doctrine--have clung to it as a matter of life
+ or death. Let them be assured of this, that whether the doctrine be
+ true or false, it is not necessarily a doctrine self-contradictory.
+ Let them be assured of this, in all modesty, that such men never could
+ have held it unless there was latent in the doctrine a deep
+ truth,--perchance the truth of God.
+
+ We pass on now to the consideration of this verse under the following
+ divisions. In the first place, we shall view it as a triad in discord:
+ "I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved
+ blameless;" in the second place, as a Trinity in Unity: "the God of
+ peace sanctify you wholly." We take then first of all for our
+ consideration the triad in discord: "I pray God your whole body and
+ soul and spirit be preserved blameless."
+
+ The apostle here divides human nature into a three-fold division; and
+ here we have to observe again the difficulty often experienced in
+ understanding words. Thus words in the Athanasian creed have become
+ obsolete, or lost their meaning: so that in the present day the words
+ "person," "substance," "procession," "generation," to an ordinary
+ person, mean almost nothing. So this language of the apostle, when
+ rendered into English, shows no difference whatever between "soul" and
+ "spirit." We say, for instance, that the soul of a man has departed
+ from him. We also say that the spirit of a man has departed from him.
+ There is no distinct difference between the two; but in the original
+ two very different kinds of thoughts--two very different modes of
+ conception--are represented by the two English words "soul" and
+ "spirit."
+
+ It is our business, therefore, in the first place, to understand what
+ is meant by this threefold division. When the apostle speaks of the
+ body, what he means is the animal life--that which we share in common
+ with beasts, birds, and reptiles; for our life my Christian
+ brethren--our sensational existence--differs but little from that of
+ the lower animals. There is the same external form, the same material
+ in the blood-vessels, in the nerves, and in the muscular system. Nay,
+ more than that, our appetites and instincts are alike, our lower
+ pleasures like their lower pleasures, our lower pain like their lower
+ pain, our life is supported by the same means, and our animal
+ functions are almost indistinguishably the same.
+
+ But, once more, the apostle speaks of what he calls the "soul." What
+ the apostle meant by what is translated "soul," is the immortal part
+ of man--the immaterial as distinguished from the material: those
+ powers, in fact, which man has by nature--powers natural, which are
+ yet to survive the grave. There is a distinction made in scripture by
+ our Lord between these two things. "Fear not," says He, "them who can
+ kill the body; but rather fear Him who can destroy both body and
+ soul in hell."
+
+ We have again, to observe respecting this, that what the apostle
+ called the "soul," is not simply distinguishable from the body, but
+ also from the spirit; and on that distinction I have already touched.
+ By the soul the apostle means our powers natural--the powers which we
+ have by nature. Herein is the soul distinguishable from the spirit. In
+ the Epistle to the Corinthians we read--"But the natural man receiveth
+ not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto
+ him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
+ But he that is spiritual judgeth all things." Observe, there is a
+ distinction drawn between the natural man and the spiritual. What is
+ there translated "natural" is derived from precisely the same word as
+ that which is here translated "soul." So that we may read just as
+ correctly: "The man under the dominion of the soul receiveth not the
+ things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him;
+ neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned. But
+ he that is spiritual judgeth all things." And again, the apostle, in
+ the same Epistle to the Corinthians, writes: "That is not first which
+ is spiritual, but that which is natural:" that is, the endowments of
+ the soul precede the endowments of the spirit. You have the same truth
+ in other places. The powers that belong to the Spirit were not the
+ first developed; but the powers which belong to the soul, that is the
+ powers of nature. Again in the same chapter, reference is made to the
+ natural and spiritual body. "There is a natural body and there is a
+ spiritual body." Literally, there is a body governed by the soul--that
+ is, powers natural: and there is a body governed by the Spirit--that
+ is, higher nature.
+
+ Let then this be borne in mind, that what the apostle calls "soul" is
+ the same as that which he calls, in another place, the "natural man."
+ These powers are divisible into two branches--the intellectual powers
+ and the moral sense. The intellectual powers man has by nature. Man
+ need not be regenerated in order to possess the power of reasoning, or
+ in order to invent. The intellectual powers belong to what the apostle
+ calls the "soul." The moral sense distinguishes between right and
+ wrong. The apostle tells us, in the Epistle to the Romans, that the
+ heathen--manifestly natural men--had the "work of the law written in
+ their hearts; their conscience also bearing witness."
+
+ The third division of which the apostle speaks, he calls the "spirit;"
+ and by the spirit he means that life in man which, in his natural
+ state, is in such an embryo condition, that it can scarcely be said to
+ exist at all--that which is called out into power and vitality by
+ regeneration--the perfection of the powers of human nature. And you
+ will observe, that it is not merely the instinctive life, nor the
+ intellectual life, nor the moral life, but it is principally our
+ nobler affections--that existence, that state of being, which we call
+ love. That is the department of human nature which the apostle calls
+ the spirit; and accordingly, when the Spirit of God was given on the
+ day of Pentecost, you will, remember that another power of man was
+ called out, differing from what he had before. That Spirit granted on
+ the day of Pentecost did subordinate to Himself, and was, intended to
+ subordinate to Himself, the will, the understanding, and the affection
+ of man; but you often find these spiritual powers were distinguished
+ from the natural powers, and existed without them.
+
+ So in the highest state of religious life, we are told, men prayed in
+ the spirit. Till the spirit has subordinated the understanding, the
+ gift of God is not complete--has not done its work. It is abundantly
+ evident that a new life was called out. It was not merely the
+ sharpening of the intellectual powers; it was calling out powers of
+ aspiration and love to God; those affections which have in them
+ something boundless, that are not limited to this earth, but seek
+ their completion in the mind of God Himself.
+
+ Now, what we have to say respecting this threefold state of man is, it
+ is a state of discord. Let us take up a very simple, popular,
+ every-day illustration. We hear it remarked frequently in conversation
+ of a man, that if only his will were commensurate with his knowledge,
+ he would be a great man. His knowledge is great--his powers are almost
+ unbounded; he has gained knowledge from nearly every department of
+ science; but somehow or other--you cannot tell why--there is such an
+ indecision, such a vacillation about the man, that he scarcely knows
+ what to do, and, perhaps does nothing in this world. You find it
+ remarked, respecting another class of men, that their will is strong,
+ almost unbounded in its strength--they have iron wills, yet there is
+ something so narrow in their conceptions, something so bounded in
+ their views, so much of stagnation in their thoughts, so much of
+ prejudice in all their opinions, that their will is prevented from
+ being directed to anything in a proper manner. Here is the discord in
+ human nature. There is a distinction between the will and the
+ understanding. And sometimes a feeble will goes with a strong
+ understanding, or a powerful will is found in connection with great
+ feebleness or ignorance of the understanding.
+
+ Let us however, go into this more specially. The first cause of
+ discord in this threefold state of man is the state in which the body
+ is the ruler; and this, my Christian brethren, you find most visibly
+ developed in the uneducated and irreligious poor. I say uneducated and
+ irreligious, because it is by no means education alone which can
+ subordinate the flesh to the higher man. The religious uneducated poor
+ man may be master of his lower passions; but in the uneducated and
+ irreligious poor man, these show themselves in full force; this
+ discord--this want of unity--appears, as it were, in a magnified form.
+ There is a strong man--health bursting, as it were, at every pore,
+ with an athletic body; but coarse, and rude, and intellectually
+ weak--almost an animal. When you are regarding the upper classes of
+ society, you see less distinctly the absence of the spirit, unless,
+ you look with a spiritual eye. The coarseness has passed away--the
+ rudeness is no longer seen: there is a refinement in the pleasures.
+ But if you take the life led by the young men of our country--strong,
+ athletic, healthy men--it is still the life of the flesh: the
+ unthinking, and the unprincipled life in which there is as yet no
+ higher life developed. It is a life which, in spite of its refinement,
+ the Bible condemns as the life of the sensualist.
+
+ We pass on now, to another state of discord--a state in which the soul
+ is ruined. Brethren, this is a natural result--this is what might have
+ been expected. The natural man gradually subordinates the flesh, the
+ body, to the soul. It is natural in the development of individuals, it
+ is natural in the development of society: in the development of
+ individuals, because that childlike, infantine life which exists at
+ first, and is almost entirely a life of appetites, gradually subsides.
+ Higher wants, higher desires, loftier inclinations arise; the passions
+ of the young man gradually subside, and by degrees the more rational
+ life comes: the life is changed--the pleasures of the senses are
+ forsaken for those of the intellect.
+
+ It appears natural, again, in the development of society. Civilization
+ will subordinate the flesh to the soul. In the savage state, you find
+ the life of the animal. Civilization is teaching a man, on the
+ principle of this world, to subordinate his appetites; to rule
+ himself; and there comes a refinement, and a gentleness, and a
+ polish, and an enjoyment of intellectual pleasures; so that the man is
+ no longer what the apostle calls a sensual man, but he becomes now
+ what the apostle calls a natural man. We can see this character
+ delineated in the Epistle to the Ephesians. "Then we were," says the
+ apostle, "in our Gentile state, fulfilling the desires of the flesh
+ and of the mind." Man naturally fulfils not merely the desires of the
+ flesh, but the desires of the mind. "And were," says the apostle,
+ "children of wrath."
+
+ One of the saddest spectacles is the decay of the natural man before
+ the work of the Spirit has been accomplished in him. When the savage
+ dies--when a mere infant dies--when an animal dies--there is nothing
+ that is appalling or depressing there; but when the high, the
+ developed intellect--when the cultivated man comes to the last hours
+ of life, and the memory becomes less powerful, and the judgment fails,
+ and all that belongs to nature and to earth visibly perishes, and the
+ higher life has not been yet developed, though it is destined to
+ survive the grave for ever--even the life of God--there is here ample
+ cause for grief; and it is no wonder that the man of genius merely
+ should shed tears at he idea of decaying life.
+
+ We pass on to consider the Trinity in unity. All this is contained in
+ that simple expression, "The God of peace." God is a God of unity. He
+ makes one where before there were two. He is the God of peace, and
+ therefore can make peace. Now this peace, according to the Trinitarian
+ doctrine, consists in a threefold unity. Brethren, as we remarked
+ respecting this first of all, the distinction in this Trinity is not a
+ physical distinction, but a metaphysical one. The illustrations which
+ are often given are illustrations drawn from material sources: if we
+ take only those, we get into contradiction: for example, when we talk
+ of personality, our idea is of a being bounded by space; and then to
+ say in this sense that three persons are one, and one is three, is
+ simply contradictory and absurd. Remember that the doctrine of the
+ Trinity is a metaphysical doctrine. It is a trinity--a division in the
+ mind of God. It is not three materials; it is three persons in a sense
+ we shall explain by and by.
+
+ In the next place I will endeavour to explain the doctrine--not to
+ prove it, but to show its rationality, and to explain what it is.
+
+ The first illustration we endeavour to give in this is taken from the
+ world of matter. We will take any material substance: we find in that
+ substance qualities; we will say three qualities--colour, shape, and
+ size. Colour is not shape, shape is not size, size is not colour. They
+ are three distinct essences, three distinct qualities, and yet they
+ all form one unity, one single conception, one idea--the idea for
+ example, of a tree.
+
+ Now we will ascend from that into the immaterial world; and here to be
+ something more distinct still. Hitherto we have had but three
+ qualities; we now come to the mind of man, where we find something
+ more than qualities. We will take three--the will, the affections, and
+ the thoughts of man. His will is not his affections, neither are his
+ affections his thoughts; and it would be imperfect and incomplete to
+ say that these are mere qualities in the man. They are separate
+ consciousnesses, living consciousnesses--as distinct, and as really
+ sundered as it is possible for three things to be, yet bound together
+ by one unity of consciousness. Now we have distincter proof than even
+ this that these things are three. The anatomist can tell you that the
+ localities of these powers are different. He can point out the seat of
+ the nerve of sensation; he can localize the feeling of affection; he
+ can point to a nerve and say, "There resides the locality of thought."
+
+ There are three distinct localities for three distinct qualities,
+ personalities, consciousnesses; yet all these three are one.
+
+ Once more, we will give proof even beyond all that. The act that a man
+ does is done by one particular part of that man. You may say it was a
+ work of his genius, or of his fancy; it may have been a manifestation
+ of his love, or an exhibition of his courage; yet that work was the
+ work of the whole man: his courage, his intellect, his habits of
+ perseverance, all helped towards the completion of that single work.
+ Just in this way certain special works are attributed to certain
+ personalities of the Deity; the work of Redemption being attributed to
+ one, the work of Sanctification to another. And yet just as the whole
+ man was engaged in doing that work, so does the whole Deity perform
+ that work which is attributed to one essential.
+
+ Once more, let us remember that principle which we expounded last
+ Sunday, that it is the law of Being that in proportion as you rise
+ from lower to higher life, the parts are more distinctly developed,
+ while yet the unity becomes more entire. You find for example, in the
+ lowest forms of animal life one organ performs several functions, one
+ organ being at the same time heart and brain and blood-vessels. But
+ when you come to man, you find all these various functions existing in
+ different organs, and every organ more distinctly developed; and yet
+ the unity of a man is a higher unity than that of a limpet. When you
+ come from the material world to the world immaterial, you find that
+ the more society is cultivated--the more man is cultivated--the more
+ marvellous is the power of developing distinct powers. In the savage
+ life it is almost all one feeling; but in proportion as the higher
+ education advances and the higher life appears, every power and
+ faculty developes and distinguishes itself, and becomes distinct and
+ separate. And yet just in proportion as in a nation every part is
+ distinct, the unity is greater, and just in proportion as in an
+ individual every power is most complete, and stands out most distinct,
+ just in that proportion has the man reached the entireness of his
+ Humanity.
+
+ Now brethren, we apply all this to the mind of God. The Trinitarian
+ maintains against the Unitarian and the Sabellian, that the higher you
+ ascend in the scale of being, the more distinct are the
+ consciousnesses, and that the law of unity implies and demands a
+ manifold unity. The doctrine of Sabellianism, for example, is this,
+ that God is but one essence--but one person under different
+ manifestations; and that when He made the world He was called the
+ Father, when He redeemed the world He was called the Son, and when He
+ sanctified the world He was called the Holy Ghost. The Sabellian and
+ the Unitarian maintain that the unity of God consists simply in a
+ unity of person, and in opposition to this does the Trinitarian
+ maintain that grandness, either in man or in God, must be a unity of
+ manifoldness.
+
+ But we will enter into this more deeply. The first power or
+ consciousness in which God is made known to us is as the Father, the
+ Author of our being. It is written, "In Him we live, and move, and
+ have our being." He is the Author of all life. In this sense He is not
+ merely our Father as Christians, but the Father of mankind; and not
+ merely the Father of mankind, but the Father of creation; and in this
+ way the sublime language of the prophets may be taken as true
+ literally, "The morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God
+ shouted for joy;" and the language of the canticle which belongs to
+ our morning service, "the deeps, the fountains, the wells," all unite
+ in one hymn of praise, one everlasting hallelujah to God the Father,
+ the Author of their being. In this respect, simply as the Author of
+ life, merely as the supreme Being, God has reference to us in relation
+ to the body. He is the Lord of life: in Him we live, and move, and
+ have our being. In this respect God to us is as law--as the collected
+ laws of the universe; and therefore to offend against law, and bring
+ down the result of transgressing law, is said in Scripture language,
+ because applied to a person, to be provoking the wrath of God the
+ Father.
+
+ In the next place, the second way through which the personality and
+ consciousness of God has been revealed to us is as the Son. Brethren,
+ we see in all those writers who have treated of the Trinity, that much
+ stress is laid upon this eternal generation of the Son, the
+ everlasting sonship. It is this which we have in the Creed--the Creed
+ which was read to-day--"God, of the substance of the Father, begotten
+ before the worlds;" and, again, in the Nicene Creed, that expression,
+ which is so often wrongly read, "God of God, Light of Light, very God
+ of very God," means absolutely nothing. There are two statements made
+ there. The first is this, "The Son was God:" the second is this, "The
+ Son was--_of_ God," showing his derivation. And in that, brethren, we
+ have one of the deepest and most blessed truths of revelation. The
+ Unitarian maintains a divine Humanity--a blessed, blessed truth. There
+ is a truth more blessed still--the Humanity of Deity. Before the world
+ was, there was that in the mind of God which we may call the Humanity
+ of His Divinity. It is called in Scripture the Word: the Son: the Form
+ of God. It is in virtue of this that we have a right to attribute to
+ Him our own feelings; it is in virtue of this that Scripture speaks of
+ His wisdom, His justice, His love. Love in God is what love is in man;
+ justice in God is what justice is in man; creative power in God is
+ what creative power is in man; indignation in God is that which
+ indignation is in man, barring only this, that the one is emotional,
+ but the other is calm, and pure, and everlastingly still. It is
+ through this Humanity in the mind of God, if I may dare so to speak of
+ Deity, that a revelation became possible to man. It was the Word that
+ was made flesh; it was the Word that manifested Itself to man. It is
+ in virtue of the connection between God and man, that God made man in
+ His own image; that through a long line of prophets the human truth of
+ God could be made known to man, till it came forth developed most
+ entirely and at large in the incarnation of the Redeemer. Now in this
+ respect, it will be observed that God stands connected with us in
+ relation to the soul as "the Light which lighteth every man that
+ cometh into the world."
+
+ Once more; there is a nearer, a closer, and a more enduring relation
+ in which God stands to us--that is, the relation of the Spirit. It is
+ to the writings of St. John that we have to turn especially, if we
+ desire to know the doctrines of the Spirit. You will remember the
+ strange way in which he speaks of God. It would almost seem as if the
+ external God has disappeared to him; nay, as if an external Christ
+ were almost forgotten, because the internal Christ has been formed. He
+ speaks of God as kindred with us; he speaks of Christ as Christ _in_
+ us; and "if we love one another," he says, "God dwelleth in us." If a
+ man keep the commandments, "God dwelleth in him, and he in God." So
+ that the spiritual manifestation of God to us is that whereby He
+ blends Himself with the soul of man.
+
+ These then, my Christian brethren, are the three consciousnesses by
+ which He becomes known to us. Three, we said, _known_ to us. We do not
+ dare to limit God; we do not presume to say that there are in God only
+ three personalities--only three consciousnesses: all that we dare
+ presume to say is this, that there are three in reference to us, and
+ only three; that a fourth there is not; that perchance, in the present
+ state a fourth you cannot add to these--Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier.
+
+ Lastly, let us turn to the relation which the Trinity in unity bears
+ to the triad in discord. It is intended for the entireness of our
+ sanctification: "the very God of peace sanctify you wholly." Brethren,
+ we dwell upon that expression "_wholly_." There is this difference
+ between Christianity and every other system: Christianity proposes to
+ ennoble the whole man; every other system subordinates parts to parts.
+ Christianity does not despise the intellect, but it does not exalt the
+ intellect in a one-sided way: it only dwells with emphasis on the
+ third and highest part of man--his spiritual affections; and these it
+ maintains are the chief and real seat of everlasting life, intended to
+ subordinate the other to themselves.
+
+ Asceticism would crush the natural affections--destroy the appetites.
+ Asceticism feels that there is a conflict between the flesh and the
+ spirit, and it would put an end to that conflict; it would bring back
+ unity by the excision of all our natural appetites, and all the
+ desires and feelings which we have by nature. But when the apostle
+ Paul comes forward to proclaim the will of God, he says it is not by
+ the crushing of the body, but by the sanctification of the body: "I
+ pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless
+ unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."
+
+ In this my Christian brethren, there is one of the deepest of all
+ truths. Does a man feel himself the slave and the victim of his lower
+ passions? Let not that man hope to subdue them merely by struggling
+ against them. Let him not by fasting, by austerity, by any earthly
+ rule that he can conceive, expect to subdue the flesh. The more he
+ thinks of his vile and lower feelings, the more will they be brought
+ into distinctness, and therefore into power; the more hopelessly will
+ he become their victim. The only way in which a man can subdue the
+ flesh, is not by the extinction of those feelings, but by the
+ elevation of their character. Let there be added to that character,
+ sublimity of aim, purity of affection; let there be given grandeur,
+ spiritual nobleness; and then, just as the strengthening of the whole
+ constitution of the body makes any particular and local affection
+ disappear, so by degrees, by the raising of the character, do these
+ lower affections become, not extinguished or destroyed by excision,
+ but ennobled by a new and loftier spirit breathed through them.
+
+ This is the account given by the apostle. He speaks of the conflict
+ between the flesh and the spirit. And his remedy is to give vigour to
+ the higher, rather than to struggle with the lower. "This I say then,
+ Walk in the spirit, and ye _shall not_ fulfil the lust of the flesh."
+
+ Once more; the apostle differs from the world in this, that the world
+ would restore this unity, and sanctify man simply from the soul. It is
+ this which civilization pretends to effect. We hear much in these
+ modern days of "the progress of Humanity." We hear of man's invention,
+ of man's increase of knowledge; and it would seem in all this, as if
+ man were necessarily becoming better. Brethren, it always must be the
+ case in that state in which God is looked upon as the Supreme Being
+ merely, where the intellect of man is supposed to be the chief
+ thing--that which makes him most kindred to his Maker.
+
+ The doctrine of Christianity is this--that unity of all this discord
+ must be made. Man is to be made one with God, not by soaring
+ intellect, but by lowly love. It is the Spirit which guides him to all
+ truth; not merely by rendering more acute the reasoning powers, but by
+ convincing of sin, by humbling the man. It is the graces of the Spirit
+ which harmonize the man, and make him one; and that is the end, and
+ aim, and object of all the Gospel: the entireness of sanctification to
+ produce a perfectly developed man.
+
+ Most of us in this world are monsters, with some part of our being
+ bearing the development of a giant, and others showing the proportions
+ of a dwarf: a feeble, dwarfish will--mighty, full-blown passions; and
+ therefore it is that there is to be visible through the Trinity in us,
+ a noble manifold unity; and when the triune power of God shall so have
+ done its work on the entireness of our Humanity, that the body, soul,
+ and spirit have been sanctified, then shall there be exhibited, and
+ only then, a perfect affection in man to his Maker, and body, soul,
+ and spirit shall exhibit a Trinity in unity.
+
+
+
+
+ V.
+
+ _Preached June 2, 1850._
+
+ ABSOLUTION.
+
+
+   "And the Scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, Who is
+    this which speaketh blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God
+    alone?"--Luke v. 21.
+
+ There are questions which having been again and again settled, still
+ from time to time, present themselves for _re_-solution; errors which
+ having been refuted, and cut up by the roots, re-appear in the next
+ century as fresh and vigorous as ever. Like the fabled monsters of
+ old, from whose dissevered neck the blood sprung forth and formed
+ fresh heads, multiplied and indestructible; or like the weeds, which,
+ extirpated in one place, sprout forth vigorously in another.
+
+ In every such case it may be taken for granted that the root of the
+ matter has not been reached; the error has been exposed, but the truth
+ which lay at the bottom of the error has not been disengaged. Every
+ error is connected with a truth; the truth being perennial, springs up
+ again as often as circumstances foster it, or call for it, and the
+ seeds of error which lay about the roots spring up again in the form
+ of weeds, as before.
+
+ A popular illustration of this may be found in the belief in the
+ appearance of the spirits of the departed. You may examine the
+ evidence for every such alleged apparition; you may demonstrate the
+ improbability; you may reduce it to an impossibility; still the
+ popular feeling will remain; and there is a lurking superstition even
+ among the enlightened, which in the midst of professions of
+ incredulity, shows itself in a readiness to believe the wildest new
+ tale, if it possess but the semblance of an authentication. Now two
+ truths lie at the root of this superstition. The first is the reality
+ of the spirit-world, and the instinctive belief in it. The second is
+ the fact that there are certain states of health in which the eye
+ creates the objects which it perceives. The death-blow to such
+ superstition is only struck when we have not only proved that men have
+ been deceived, but shown besides how they came to be deceived; when
+ science has explained the optical delusion, and shown the
+ physiological state in which such apparitions become visible. Ridicule
+ will not do it. Disproof will not do it. So long as men feel that
+ there is a spirit-world, and so long as to some the impression is
+ vivid that they have seen it, you spend your rhetoric in vain. You
+ must show the truth that lies below the error.
+
+ The principle we gain from this is that you cannot overthrow falsehood
+ by negation, but by establishing the antagonistic truth. The
+ refutation which is to last must be positive, not negative. It is an
+ endless work to be uprooting weeds: plant the ground with wholesome
+ vegetation, and then the juices which would have otherwise fed
+ rankness will pour themselves into a more vigorous growth; the
+ dwindled weeds will be easily raked out then. It is an endless task to
+ be refuting error. Plant truth, and the error will pine away.
+
+ The instance to which all this is preliminary, is the pertinacious
+ hold which the belief in a human absolving power retains upon mankind.
+ There has perhaps never yet been known a religion without such a
+ belief. There is not a savage in the islands of the South Pacific who
+ does not believe that his priest can shield him from the consequences
+ of sin. There was not a people in antiquity who had not dispensers of
+ Divine favour. That same belief passed from Paganism into Romanism. It
+ was exposed at the period of the Reformation. A mighty reaction was
+ felt against it throughout Europe. Apparently the whole idea of human
+ priesthood was proved, once and for ever, to be baseless; human
+ mediation, in every possible form, was vehemently controverted; men
+ were referred back to God as the sole absolver.
+
+ Yet now again, three centuries after, the belief is still as strong as
+ ever. That which we thought dead is alive again, and not likely it
+ seems, to die. Recent revelations have shown that confession is daily
+ made in the country whose natural manners are most against it; private
+ absolution asked by English men and given by English priests. A fact
+ so significant might lead us well to pause, and ask ourselves whether
+ we have found the true answer to the question. The negation we have
+ got--the vehement denial; we are weary of its reiteration: but the
+ positive truth which lies at the bottom of this craving--where is
+ that?
+
+ Parliaments and pulpits, senators and clergymen, have vied with each
+ other in the vehemence with which they declare absolution
+ un-Christian, un-English. All that is most abominable in the
+ confessional has been with unsparing and irreverent indelicacy forced
+ before the public mind. Still, men and women, whose holiness and
+ purity are beyond slander's reach, come and crave assurance of
+ forgiveness. How shall we reply to such men? Shall we say, "Who is
+ this that speaketh blasphemies? who can forgive sins, but God only?"
+ Shall we say it is all blasphemy; an impious intrusion upon the
+ prerogatives of the One Absolver? Well, we may; it is _popular_ to say
+ we ought; but you will observe, if we speak so, we do no more than the
+ Pharisees in this text: we establish a negation; but a negation is
+ only one side of truth.
+
+ Moreover, we have been asserting that for 300 years, with small
+ fruits. We keep asserting, Man cannot give assurance that sin is
+ pardoned; in other words, man cannot absolve: but still the heart
+ craves human assurance of forgiveness. What truth have we got to
+ supply that craving? We shall therefore, rather try to fathom the
+ deeps of the positive truth which is the true reply to the error; we
+ shall try to see whether there is not a real answer to the craving
+ contained in the Redeemer's words, "The Son of Man hath power on earth
+ to forgive sins." What power is there in human forgiveness? What does
+ absolution mean in the lips of a son of man? These are our questions
+ for to-day. We shall consider two points.
+
+    I. The impotency of the negation.
+   II. The power of the positive truth.
+
+ The Pharisees denied the efficacy of human absolution: they said,
+ "None can forgive sins, but God only:" that was a negation. What did
+ they effect by their system of negations? They conferred no peace;
+ they produced no holiness. It would be a great error to suppose that
+ the Pharisees were hypocrites in the ordinary sense of the term--that
+ is, pretending to be anxious about religion when they knew that they
+ felt no anxiety. They _were_ anxious, in their way. They heard a
+ startling free announcement of forgiveness by a man. To them it
+ appeared license given to sin. If this new teacher, this upstart--in
+ their own language, "this fellow--of whom every man knew whence he
+ was," were to go about the length and breadth of the land, telling
+ sinners to be at peace; telling them to forget the past, and to work
+ onwards; bidding men's consciences be at rest; and commanding them not
+ to _fear_ the God whom they had offended, but to _trust_ in Him--what
+ would become of morality and religion? This presumptuous Absolver
+ would make men careless about both. If the indispensable safeguards of
+ penalty were removed, what remained to restrain men from sin?
+
+ For the Pharisees had no notion of any other goodness than that which
+ is restrained; they could conceive no goodness free, but only that
+ which is produced by rewards and punishments--law-goodness,
+ law-righteousness: to dread God, not to love and trust Him, was their
+ conception of religion. And this, indeed, is the _ordinary_ conception
+ of religion--the ordinary meaning implied to most minds by the word
+ religion. The word religion means, by derivation, restriction or
+ obligation--obligation to do, obligation to avoid. And this is the
+ negative system of the Pharisees--scrupulous avoidance of evil, rather
+ than positive and free pursuit of excellence. Such a system never
+ produced anything but barren denial. "_This_ is wrong;" "_that_ is
+ heresy;" "_that_ is dangerous."
+
+ There was another class of men who denied human power of absolution.
+ They were called Scribes or writers--pedants, men of ponderous
+ learning and accurate definitions; from being mere transcribers of the
+ law, they had risen to be its expounders. They could define the exact
+ number of yards that might be travelled on the Sabbath-day without
+ infringement of the law; they could decide, according to the most
+ approved theology, the respective importance of each duty; they would
+ tell you, authoritatively, which was the _great_ commandment of the
+ law. The Scribe is a man who turns religion into etiquette: his idea
+ of God is that of a monarch, transgression against whom is an offence
+ against statute law, and he the Scribe, is there to explain the
+ prescribed conditions upon which the offence may be expiated; he has
+ no idea of admission to the sovereign's presence, except by compliance
+ with certain formalities which the Scribe is commissioned to declare.
+
+ There are therefore Scribes in all ages--Romish Scribes, who
+ distinguish between venial and mortal sin, and apportion to each its
+ appointed penance and absolution. There are Protestant Scribes, who
+ have no idea of God but as an incensed judge, and prescribe certain
+ methods of appeasing him--a certain price--in consideration of which
+ He is willing to sell forgiveness; men who accurately draw the
+ distinction between the different kinds of faith--faith historical and
+ faith saving; who bewilder and confuse all natural feeling; who treat
+ the natural love of relations as if it were an idolatry as great as
+ bowing down to mammon; who make intelligible distinction between the
+ work that _may_ and the work that may _not_ be done on the
+ Sabbath-day; who send you into a perilous consideration of the
+ workings of your own feelings, and the examination of your spiritual
+ experiences, to ascertain whether you have the feelings which give you
+ a right to call God a Father. They hate the Romish Scribe as much as
+ the Jewish Scribe hated the Samaritan and called him heretic. But in
+ their way they are true to the spirit of the Scribe.
+
+ Now the result of this is fourfold. Among the tender-minded,
+ despondency; among the vainer, spiritual pride; in the case of the
+ slavish, superstition; with the hard-minded, infidelity. Ponder it
+ well, and you will find these four things rife amongst us:
+ Despondency, Spiritual Pride, Superstition, and Infidelity. In this
+ way we have been going on for many years. In the midst of all this, at
+ last we are informed that the confessional is at work again; whereupon
+ astonishment and indignation are loudly expressed. It is not to be
+ borne that the priests of the Church of England should confess and
+ absolve in private. Yet it is only what might have been expected.
+
+ With our Evangelicalism, Tractarianism, Scribeism, Pharisaism, we have
+ ceased to front the _living fact_--we are as zealous as Scribes and
+ Pharisees ever were for negatives; but in the meantime Human Nature,
+ oppressed and overborne, gasping for breath, demands something real
+ and living. It cannot live on controversies. It cannot be fed on
+ protests against heresy, however vehement. We are trying who can
+ protest loudest. Every book, every journal, rings with warnings.
+ "Beware!" is written upon everything. Beware of Rome; beware of
+ Geneva; beware of Germany; some danger on every side; Satan
+ everywhere--God _nowhere_; everywhere some man to be shunned or
+ dreaded--nowhere one to be loved freely and without suspicion. Is it
+ any wonder if men and women, in the midst of negations, cry, "Ye warn
+ me from the error, but who will guide me into truth? I want guidance.
+ I am sinful, full of evil! I want forgiveness! Absolve me; tell me
+ that I am pardoned; help me to believe it. Your quarrels do not help
+ me; if you cannot do _that_, it matters little what you _can_ do. You
+ have restricted God's love, and narrowed the path to heaven; you have
+ hampered religion with so many mysterious questions and quibbles that
+ I cannot find the way to God; you have terrified me with so many
+ snares and pitfalls on every side, that I dare not tread at all. Give
+ me peace; give me human guidance: I want a human arm to lean on."
+
+ This is a cry, I believe, becoming daily more passionate, and more
+ common. And no wonder that all our information, public and private, is
+ to the same effect--that the recent converts have found peace in Rome;
+ for the secret of the power of Rome is this--that she grounds her
+ teaching, not on variable feelings and correct opinions, but on
+ _facts_. God is not a highly probable God, but a _fact_. God's
+ forgiveness is not a feeling, but a _fact_; and a material symbolic
+ fact is the witness of the invisible one. Rome puts forward her
+ absolution--her false, priestly, magical absolution--a visible fact,
+ as a witness of the invisible. And her perversion prevails because
+ founded on a truth.
+
+
+ II. The power of the positive truth.
+
+ Is it any wonder, if taught on every side distrust of man, the heart
+ should by a violent reaction, and by an extravagant confidence in a
+ priest, proclaim that its normal, natural state is not distrust, but
+ trust?
+
+ What is forgiveness?--It is God reconciled to us. What is
+ absolution?--It is the authoritative declaration that God is
+ reconciled. Authoritative: that is a real power of conveying a sense
+ and feeling of forgiveness. It is the power of the Son of Man _on
+ earth_ to forgive sins. It is man, God's image, representing, by his
+ forgiveness on earth, God's forgiveness in heaven.
+
+ Now distinguish God's forgiveness of sin from an arresting of the
+ consequences of sin. When God forgives a sin, it does not follow that
+ He stops its consequences: for example, when He forgives the
+ intemperate man whose health is ruined, forgiveness does not restore
+ his health. Divine pardon does not interfere with the laws of the
+ universe, for it is itself one of those laws. It is a law that penalty
+ follows transgression. Forgiveness will not save from penalty; but it
+ alters the feelings with which the penalty is accepted. Pain inflicted
+ with a surgeon's knife for a man's good, is as keen as that which
+ results from the knife of the torturer; but in the one case it is
+ calmly borne, because remedial--in the other it exasperates, because
+ it is felt to be intended by malevolence. So with the difference
+ between suffering which comes from a sin which we hope God has
+ forgiven, and suffering which seems to fall hot from the hand of an
+ angry God. It is a fearful truth, that so far as we know at least, the
+ consequences of an act are connected with it indissolubly. Forgiveness
+ does not arrest them; but by producing softness and grateful
+ penitence, it transforms them into blessings. This is God's
+ forgiveness; and absolution is the conveyance to the conscience of the
+ conviction of forgiveness: to absolve is to free--to comfort by
+ strengthening--to afford repose from fear.
+
+ Now it was the way of the Redeemer to emancipate from sin by the
+ freeness of absolution. The dying thief, an hour before a blasphemer,
+ was unconditionally assured; the moment the sinner's feelings changed
+ towards God, He proclaimed that God was reconciled to him: "This day
+ thou shalt be with me in Paradise." And hence, speaking humanly,
+ hence, from this absolving tone and spirit, came His wondrous and
+ unparalleled power with sinful, erring hearts; hence the life and
+ fresh impulse which He imparted to the being and experience to those
+ with whom He dealt. Hence the maniac, freed from the legion, sat at
+ His feet, clothed, and in his right mind. Hence the outcast woman,
+ whom human scorn would have hardened into brazen effrontery, hearing
+ an unwonted voice of human sympathy, "washed His feet with her tears,
+ and wiped them with the hairs of her head."
+
+ And this is what we have forgotten: we have not yet learned to trust
+ the power of redeeming love; we do not believe in the omnipotence of
+ grace, and the might of an appeal to the better parts, and not the
+ slavish parts of human nature. Settle it in your minds, the absolving
+ power is the central secret of the Gospel. Salvation is unconditional;
+ not an offer, but _a Gift_; not clogged with conditions, but free as
+ the air we breathe. God welcomes back the prodigal. God loves without
+ money and without price. To this men reply gravely, It is dangerous to
+ speak thus; it is perilous to dispense with the safeguards of
+ restriction. Law! law! there is nothing like law--a salutary fear--for
+ making men holy. O blind Pharisee! had you ever known the spring, the
+ life which comes from feeling _free_, the gush of gratitude with which
+ the heart springs to duty when all chains are shattered, and it stands
+ fearless and free in the Light, and in the Love of God--you would
+ understand that a large trusting charity, which can throw itself on
+ the better and more generous impulses of a laden spirit, is the safest
+ as well as the most beautiful means of securing obedience.
+
+ So far however, there will not be much objection to the doctrine: it
+ will be admitted that absolution is true in the lips of Christ,
+ because of His Divinity. It will be said He was God, and God speaking
+ on earth is the same thing as God speaking in heaven. No my brethren,
+ it is _not_ the same thing. Christ forgiving on earth is _a new truth_
+ added to that of God's forgiving in heaven. It is not the same truth.
+ The one is forgiveness by Deity; the other is the declaration of
+ forgiveness by Humanity. He bade the palsied man walk, that they might
+ know that "the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins."
+ Therefore we proceed a step further. The same power He delegated to
+ His Church which He had exercised Himself. "Whosesoever sins ye
+ remit, they are remitted." Now perhaps, it will be replied to this,
+ that that promise belongs to the apostles; that they were
+ supernaturally gifted to distinguish genuine from feigned repentance;
+ to absolve therefore, was their natural prerogative, but that we have
+ no right to say it extends beyond the apostles.
+
+ We therefore, bring the question to a point by referring to an
+ instance in which an apostle did absolve. Let us examine whether St.
+ Paul confined the prerogative to himself. "To whom ye forgive
+ anything, I forgive also: for to whom I forgave anything for your
+ sakes, forgave I it in the person of Christ."
+
+ Observe now: it is quite true here that the apostle absolved a man
+ whose excommunication he had formerly required; but he absolved him
+ because the congregation absolved him; not as a plenipotentiary
+ supernaturally gifted to convey a mysterious benefit, but as himself
+ an organ and representative of the Church. The power of absolution
+ therefore, belonged to the Church, and to the apostle through the
+ Church. It was a power belonging to _all_ Christians: to the apostle,
+ because he was a Christian, not because he was an apostle. A priestly
+ power no doubt, because Christ has made all Christians kings and
+ priests.
+
+ Now let us turn again, with this added light, to examine the meaning
+ of that expression, "The Son of man hath power on earth to forgive
+ sins." Mark that form of words--not Christ as God, but Christ as Son
+ of man. It was manifestly said by Him, not solely as divine, but
+ rather as human, as the Son of man; that is, as Man. For we may take
+ it as a rule: when Christ calls himself Son of man, He is asserting
+ His Humanity. It was said by the High Priest of Humanity in the name
+ of the race. It was said on the principle that human nature is the
+ reflection of God's nature: that human love is the image of God's
+ love; and that human forgiveness is the type and assurance of divine
+ forgiveness.
+
+ In Christ Humanity was the perfect type of Deity, and therefore
+ Christ's absolution was always the exact measure and counterpart of
+ God's forgiveness. Herein lies the deep truth of the doctrine of His
+ eternal priesthood--the Eternal Son--the Humanity of the Being of
+ God--the ever Human mind of God. The Absolver ever lives. The Father
+ judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment to the Son--hath given
+ Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of man.
+
+ But further than this. In a subordinate, because less perfect degree,
+ the forgiveness of a man as man carries with it an absolving power.
+ Who has not felt the load taken from his mind when the hidden guilt
+ over which he had brooded long has been acknowledged, and met by
+ forgiving human sympathy, especially at a time when he expected to be
+ treated with coldness and reproof? Who has not felt how such a moment
+ was to him the dawn of a better hope, and how the merciful judgment of
+ some wise and good human being seemed to be the type and the assurance
+ of God's pardon, making it credible? Unconsciously it may be, but
+ still in substance really, I believe some such reasoning as _this_
+ goes on in the whispers of the heart--"He loves me, and has compassion
+ on me--will not God forgive? He, this man, made in God's image, does
+ not think my case hopeless. Well, then, in the larger love of God it
+ is not hopeless." Thus, and only thus, can we understand the
+ _ecclesiastical_ act. Absolution, the prerogative of our humanity, is
+ represented by a formal act of the Church.
+
+ Much controversy and angry bitterness has been spent on the absolution
+ put by the Church of England into the lips of her ministers--I cannot
+ think with justice--if we try to get at the root of these words of
+ Christ. The priest proclaims forgiveness authoritatively as the organ
+ of the congregation--as the voice of the Church, in the name of Man
+ and God. For human nature represents God. The Church represents what
+ human nature is and ought to be. The minister represents the Church.
+ He speaks therefore, in the name of our godlike, human nature. He
+ declares a divine fact, he does not create it. There is no magic in
+ his absolution: he can no more forgive whom God has not forgiven, by
+ the formula of absolution, or reverse the pardon of him whom God has
+ absolved by the formula of excommunication, than he can transfer a
+ demon into an angel by the formula of baptism. He declares what every
+ one has a right to declare, and ought to declare by his lips and by
+ his conduct: but being a minister, he declares it authoritatively in
+ the name of every Christian who by his Christianity is a priest to
+ God; he specializes what is universal; as in baptism, he seals the
+ universal Sonship on the individual by name, saying, "The Sonship with
+ which Christ has redeemed all men, I hereby proclaim for this child;"
+ so by absolution he specializes the universal fact of the love of God
+ to those who are listening then and there, saying, "The Love of God
+ the Absolver, I authoritatively proclaim to be _yours_."
+
+ In the Service for the Visitation of the Sick, the Church of England
+ puts into the lips of her ministers words quite unconditional: "I
+ absolve thee from all thy sins." You know that passage is constantly
+ objected to as Romish and superstitious. I would not give up that
+ precious passage. I love the Church of England, because she has dared
+ to claim her inheritance--because she has courage to assert herself as
+ what she ought to be--God's representative on earth. She says to her
+ minister, Stand there before a darkened spirit, on whom the shadows of
+ death have begun to fall: in human flesh and blood representing the
+ Invisible,--with words of human love making credible the Love Eternal.
+ Say boldly, I am here to declare not a perhaps, _but a fact_. I
+ forgive thee in the name of Humanity. And so far as Humanity
+ represents Deity, that forgiveness is a type of God's. She does not
+ put into her ministers' lips words of incantation. He cannot bless
+ whom God has not blessed--he cannot curse whom God has not cursed. If
+ the Son of absolution be there, his absolution will rest. If you have
+ ever tried the slow and apparently hopeless task of ministering to a
+ heart diseased, and binding up the wound that _will_ bleed afresh, to
+ which no assurances can give comfort, because they are not
+ authoritative, it must have crossed your mind that such a power as
+ that which the Church of England claims, if it were believed, is
+ exactly the remedy you want. You must have felt that even the formula
+ of the Church of Rome would be a blessed power to exercise, could it
+ but once be accepted as a pledge that all the past was obliterated,
+ and that from that moment a free untainted future lay before the
+ soul--you must have _felt_ that; you must have wished you had dared to
+ _say_ it. My whole spirit has absolved my erring brother. Is God less
+ merciful than I? Can I--dare I--say or think it conditionally? Dare I
+ say, I hope? May I not, must I not, say, _I know_ God has forgiven
+ you?
+
+ Every man whose heart has truly bled over another's sin, and watched
+ another's remorse with pangs as sharp as if the crime had been his
+ own, _has_ said it. Every parent has said it who ever received back a
+ repentant daughter, and opened out for her a new hope for life. Every
+ mother has said it who ever by her hope against hope for some
+ profligate, protested for a love deeper and wider than that of
+ society. Every man has said it who forgave a deep wrong. See then,
+ _why_ and _how_ the church absolves. She only exercises that power
+ which belongs to every son of man. If society were Christian--if
+ society, by its forgiveness and its exclusion, truly represented the
+ mind of God--there would be no necessity for a Church to speak; but
+ the absolution of society and the world does not represent by any
+ means God's forgiveness. Society absolves those whom God has _not_
+ absolved--the proud, the selfish, the strong, the seducer; society
+ refuses return and acceptance to the seduced, the frail, and the sad
+ penitent whom God has accepted; therefore it is necessary that a
+ selected body, through its appointed organs, should do in the name of
+ Man what man, as such, does not. The Church is the ideal of Humanity.
+ It represents what God intended man to be--what man is in God's sight
+ as beheld in Christ by Him; and the minister of the Church speaks as
+ the representative of that ideal Humanity. Church absolution is an
+ eternal protest, in the name of God the Absolver, against the false
+ judgments of society.
+
+ One thing more. Beware of making this a dead formula. If absolution be
+ not a living truth, it becomes a monstrous falsehood; if you take
+ absolution as a mystical gift conveyed to an individual man called a
+ priest, and mysteriously efficacious in _his_ lips, and his _alone_,
+ you petrify a truth into death and unreality. I have been striving to
+ show that absolution is not a Church figment, invented by priestcraft,
+ but a living, blessed, human power. It is a power delegated to you and
+ to me, and just so far as we exercise it lovingly and wisely, in our
+ lives, and with our lips, we help men away from sin: just so far as we
+ do not exercise it, or exercise it falsely, we drive men to Rome. For
+ if the heart cannot have a truth it will take a counterfeit of truth.
+ By every magnanimous act, by every free forgiveness with which a pure
+ man forgives, or pleads for mercy, or assures the penitent, he
+ proclaims this truth, that "the Son of man hath power on earth to
+ forgive sins"--he exhibits the priestly power of humanity--_he does_
+ absolve; let theology say what it will of absolution, he gives peace
+ to the conscience--he is a type and assurance of what God is--he
+ breaks the chains and lets the captive go free.
+
+
+
+
+ VI.
+
+ _Preached June 9, 1850._
+
+ THE ILLUSIVENESS OF LIFE.
+
+
+   "By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which
+    he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went
+    out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the
+    land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles
+    with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: for
+    he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and
+    maker is God."--Hebrews xi. 8-10.
+
+ Last Sunday we touched upon a thought which deserves further
+ development. God promised Canaan to Abraham, and yet Abraham never
+ inherited Canaan: to the last he was a wanderer there; he had no
+ possession of his own in its territory: if he wanted even a tomb to
+ bury his dead, he could only obtain it by purchase. This difficulty is
+ expressly admitted in the text, "In the land of promise he sojourned
+ as in a strange country;" he dwelt there in tents--in changeful,
+ moveable tabernacles--not permanent habitations; he had no home
+ there.
+
+ It is stated in all its startling force, in terms still more explicit,
+ in the 7th chapter of the Acts, 5th verse, "And He gave him none
+ inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on: yet He
+ promised that He would give it to him for a possession, and to his
+ seed after him, when as yet he had no child."
+
+ Now the surprising point is that Abraham, deceived, as you might
+ almost say, did not complain of it as a deception; he was even
+ grateful for the non-fulfilment of the promise: he does not seem to
+ have expected its fulfilment; he did not look for Canaan, but for "a
+ city which had foundations;" his faith appears to have consisted in
+ disbelieving the letter, almost as much as in believing the spirit of
+ the promise.
+
+ And herein lies a principle, which, rightly expounded, can help us to
+ interpret this life of ours. God's promises never are fulfilled in the
+ sense in which they seem to have been given. Life is a deception; its
+ anticipations, which are God's promises to the imagination, are never
+ realized; they who know life best, and have trusted God most to fill
+ it with blessings, are ever the first to say that life is a series of
+ disappointments. And in the spirit of this text we have to say that it
+ is a wise and merciful arrangement which ordains it thus.
+
+ The wise and holy do not expect to find it otherwise--would not wish
+ it otherwise; their wisdom consists in disbelieving its promises. To
+ develope this idea would be a glorious task; for to justify God's ways
+ to man, to expound the mysteriousness of our present being, to
+ interpret God,--is not this the very essence of the ministerial
+ office? All that I can hope however to-day, is not to exhaust the
+ subject, but to furnish hints for thought. Over-statements may be
+ made, illustrations may be inadequate, the new ground of an almost
+ untrodden subject may be torn up too rudely; but remember, we are here
+ to live and die; in a few years it will be all over; meanwhile, what
+ we have to do is to try to understand, and to help one another to
+ understand, what it all means--what this strange and contradictory
+ thing, which we call Life, contains within it. Do not stop to ask
+ therefore, whether the subject was satisfactorily worked out; let each
+ man be satisfied to have received a germ of thought which he may
+ develope better for himself.
+
+    I. The deception of life's promise.
+   II. The meaning of that deception.
+
+ Let it be clearly understood in the first place, the promise never was
+ fulfilled. I do not say the fulfilment was delayed. I say it _never_
+ was fulfilled. Abraham had a few feet of earth, obtained by
+ purchase--beyond that nothing; he died a stranger and a pilgrim in the
+ land. Isaac had a little. So small was Jacob's hold upon his country
+ that the last years of his life were spent in Egypt, and he died a
+ foreigner in a strange land. His descendants came into the land of
+ Canaan, expecting to find it a land flowing with milk and honey; they
+ found hard work to do--war and unrest, instead of rest and peace.
+
+ During one brief period, in the history of Israel, the promise may
+ seem to have been fulfilled. It was during the later years of David
+ and the earlier years of Solomon; but we have the warrant of Scripture
+ itself for affirming, that even then the promise was not fulfilled. In
+ the Book of Psalms, David speaks of a hope of entering into a _future_
+ rest. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, quoting this passage,
+ infers from it that God's promise had not been exhausted nor
+ fulfilled, by the entrance into Canaan; for he says, "If Joshua had
+ given them rest then would he not have spoken of another day." Again
+ in this very chapter, after a long list of Hebrew saints--"These _all_
+ died in faith, not having received the promises." To none therefore,
+ had the promise been fulfilled. Accordingly writers on prophecy, in
+ order to get over this difficulty, take for granted that there must be
+ a future fulfilment, because the first was inadequate.
+
+ They who believe that the Jews will be restored to their native land,
+ expect it on the express ground that Canaan has never been actually
+ and permanently theirs. A certain tract of country--300 miles in
+ length, by 200 in breadth--must be given, or else they think the
+ promise has been broken. To quote the expression of one of the most
+ eloquent of their writers, "If there be nothing yet future for Israel,
+ then the magnificence of the promise has been lost in the poverty of
+ its accomplishment."
+
+ I do not quote this to prove the correctness of the interpretation of
+ the prophecy, but as an acknowledgment which may be taken so far as a
+ proof, that the promise made to Abraham has never been accomplished.
+
+ And such is life's disappointment. Its promise is, you shall have a
+ Canaan; it turns out to be a baseless airy dream--toil and
+ warfare--nothing that we can call our own; not the land of rest, by
+ any means. But we will examine this in particulars.
+
+ 1. Our senses deceive us; we begin life with delusion. Our senses
+ deceive us with respect to distance, shape, and colour. That which
+ afar off seems oval, turns out to be circular, modified by the
+ perspective of distance; that which appears a speck, upon nearer
+ approach becomes a vast body. To the earlier ages the stars presented
+ the delusion of small lamps hung in space. The beautiful berry proves
+ to be bitter and poisonous: that which apparently moves is really at
+ rest: that which seems to be stationary is in perpetual motion: the
+ earth moves: the sun is still. All experience is a correction of
+ life's delusions--a modification, a reversal of the judgment of the
+ senses: and all life is a lesson on the falsehood of appearances.
+
+ 2. Our natural anticipations deceive us--I say _natural_ in
+ contra-distinction to extravagant expectations. Every human life is a
+ fresh one, bright with hopes that will never be realized. There may be
+ differences of character in these hopes; finer spirits may look on
+ life as the arena of successful deeds, the more selfish as a place of
+ personal enjoyment.
+
+ With man the turning point of life may be a profession--with woman,
+ marriage; the one gilding the future with the triumphs of intellect,
+ the other with the dreams of affection; but in every case, life is not
+ what any of them expects, but something else. It would almost seem a
+ satire on existence to compare the youth in the outset of his career,
+ flushed and sanguine, with the aspect of the same being when it is
+ nearly done--worn, sobered, covered with the dust of life, and
+ confessing that its days have been few and evil. Where is the land
+ flowing with milk and honey?
+
+ With our affections it is still worse, because they promise more.
+ Man's affections are but the tabernacles of Canaan--the tents of a
+ night; not permanent habitations even for this life. Where are the
+ charms of character, the perfection, and the purity, and the
+ truthfulness, which seemed so resplendent in our friend? They were
+ only the shape of our own conceptions--our creative shaping intellect
+ projected its own fantasies on him: and hence we outgrow our early
+ friendships; outgrow the intensity of all: we dwell in tents; we never
+ find a home, even in the land of promise. Life is an unenjoyable
+ Canaan, with nothing real or substantial in it.
+
+ 3. Our expectations, resting on revelation, deceive us. The world's
+ history has turned round two points of hope; one, the _first_--the
+ other, the _second_ coming of the Messiah. The magnificent imagery of
+ Hebrew prophecy had described the advent of the Conqueror; He came--"a
+ root out of a dry ground, with no form or comeliness; and when they
+ saw Him there was no beauty in Him that they should desire Him." The
+ victory, predicted in such glowing terms, turned out to be the victory
+ of Submission--the Law of our Humanity, which wins by gentleness and
+ love. The promise in the letter was unfulfilled. For ages the world's
+ hope has been the second advent. The early church expected it in their
+ own day. "We, which are alive, and remain until the coming of our
+ Lord."
+
+ The Saviour Himself had said, "This generation shall not pass till all
+ things be fulfilled." Yet the Son of Man has never come; or rather, He
+ has been _ever_ coming. Unnumbered times the judgment eagles have
+ gathered together over corruption ripe for condemnation. Times
+ innumerable the separation has been made between good and bad. The
+ promise has not been fulfilled, or it has been fulfilled, but in
+ either case anticipation has been foiled and disappointed.
+
+ There are two ways of considering this aspect of life. One is the way
+ of sentiment; the other is the way of faith. The sentimental way is
+ trite enough. Saint, sage, sophist, moralist, and preacher, have
+ repeated in every possible image, till there is nothing new to say,
+ that life is a bubble, a dream, a delusion, a phantasm. The other is
+ the way of faith: the ancient saints felt as keenly as any moralist
+ could feel the brokenness of its promises; they confessed that they
+ were strangers and pilgrims here; they said that they had here no
+ continuing city; but they did not mournfully moralize on this; they
+ said it cheerfully, and rejoiced that it was so. They felt that all
+ was right; they knew that the promise itself had a deeper meaning:
+ they looked undauntedly for "a city which hath foundations."
+
+
+ II. The second inquiry, therefore, is the meaning of this
+ delusiveness.
+
+ 1. It serves to allure us on. Suppose that a spiritual promise had
+ been made at first to Israel; imagine that they had been informed at
+ the outset that God's rest is inward; that the promised land is only
+ found in the Jerusalem which is above--not material, but immaterial.
+ That rude, gross people, yearning after the fleshpots of
+ Egypt--willing to go back into slavery, so as only they might have
+ enough to eat and drink--would they have quitted Egypt on such terms?
+ Would they have begun one single step of that pilgrimage, which was to
+ find its meaning in the discipline of ages?
+
+ We are led through life as we are allured upon a journey. Could a man
+ see his route before him--a flat, straight road, unbroken by bush, or
+ tree, or eminence, with the sun's heat burning down upon it, stretched
+ out in dreary monotony--he could scarcely find energy to begin his
+ task; but the uncertainty of what may be seen beyond the next turn
+ keeps expectation alive. The view that may be seen from yonder
+ summit--the glimpse that may be caught perhaps, as the road winds
+ round yonder knoll--hopes like these, not far distant, beguile the
+ traveller on from mile to mile, and from league to league.
+
+ In fact, life is an education. The object for which you educate your
+ son is to give him strength of purpose, self-command, discipline of
+ mental energies; but you do not reveal to your son this aim of his
+ education; you tell him of his place in his class, of the prizes at
+ the end of the year, of the honours to be given at college.
+
+ These are not the true incentives to knowledge, such incentives are
+ not the highest--they are even mean, and partially injurious; yet
+ these mean incentives stimulate and lead on, from day to day and from
+ year to year, by a process the principle of which the boy himself is
+ not aware of. So does God lead on, through life's unsatisfying and
+ false reward, ever educating: Canaan first; then the hope of a
+ Redeemer; then the millennial glory.
+
+ Now what is remarkable in this is, that the delusion continued to the
+ last; they _all_ died in faith, not having received the promises; all
+ were hoping up to the very last, and all died in faith--not in
+ realization; for thus God has constituted the human heart. It never
+ will be believed that this world is unreal. God has mercifully so
+ arranged it, that the idea of delusion is incredible. You may tell the
+ boy or girl as you will that life is a disappointment; yet however you
+ may persuade them to adopt your _tone_, and catch the language of your
+ sentiment, they are both looking forward to some bright distant
+ hope--the rapture of the next vacation, or the unknown joys of the
+ next season--and throwing into it an energy of expectation which only
+ a whole eternity is worth. You may tell the man who has received the
+ heart-shock which in this world, he will not recover, that life has
+ nothing left; yet the stubborn heart still hopes on, ever near the
+ prize--"wealthiest when most undone:" he has reaped the whirlwind, but
+ he will go on still, till life is over, sowing the wind.
+
+ Now observe the beautiful result which comes from this indestructible
+ power of believing in spite of failure. In the first centuries, the
+ early Christians believed that the millennial advent was close; they
+ heard the warning of the apostle, brief and sharp, "The time is
+ short." Now suppose that, instead of this, they had seen all the
+ dreary page of Church history unrolled; suppose that they had known
+ that after two thousand years the world would have scarcely spelled
+ out three letters of the meaning of Christianity, where would have
+ been those gigantic efforts,--that life spent as on the very brink of
+ eternity, which characterize the days of the early Church,--and which
+ was after all, only the true life of man in time? It is thus that God
+ has led on His world. He has conducted it as a father leads his child,
+ when the path homeward lies over many a dreary league. He suffers him
+ to beguile the thought of time, by turning aside to pluck now and then
+ a flower, to chase now a butterfly; the butterfly is crushed, the
+ flower fades, but the child is so much nearer home, invigorated and
+ full of health, and scarcely wearied yet.
+
+ 2. This non-fulfilment of promise fulfils it in a _deeper_ way. The
+ account we have given already, were it to end there, would be
+ insufficient to excuse the failure of life's promise; by saying that
+ it allures us would be really to charge God with deception. Now life
+ is not deception, but illusion. We distinguish between illusion and
+ delusion. We may paint wood so as to be taken for stone, iron, or
+ marble; this is delusion: but you may paint a picture, in which rocks,
+ trees, and sky are never mistaken for what they seem, yet produce all
+ the emotion which real rocks, trees, and sky would produce. This is
+ illusion, and this is the painter's art: never for one moment to
+ deceive by attempted imitation, but to produce a mental state in which
+ the feelings are suggested which the natural objects themselves would
+ create. Let us take an instance drawn from life.
+
+ To a child a rainbow is a real thing--substantial and palpable; its
+ limb rests on the side of yonder hill; he believes that he can
+ appropriate it to himself; and when, instead of gems and gold hid in
+ its radiant bow, he finds nothing but damp mist--cold, dreary drops of
+ disappointment--that disappointment tells that his belief has been
+ delusion.
+
+ To the educated man that bow is a blessed illusion, yet it never once
+ deceives; he does not take it for what it is not, he does not expect
+ to make it his own; he feels its beauty as much as the child could
+ feel it, nay infinitely more--more even from the fact that he knows
+ that it will be transient; but besides and beyond this, to him it
+ presents a deeper loveliness; he knows the laws of light, and the laws
+ of the human soul which gave it being. He has linked it with the laws
+ of the universe, and with the invisible mind of God; and it brings to
+ him a thrill of awe, and the sense of a mysterious, nameless beauty,
+ of which the child did not conceive. It is illusion still; but it has
+ fulfilled the promise. In the realm of spirit, in the temple of the
+ soul, it is the same. All is illusion; "but we look for a city which
+ hath foundations;" and in this the promise is fulfilled.
+
+ And such was Canaan to the Israelites. To some doubtless it was
+ delusion. They expected to find their reward in a land of milk and
+ honey. They were bitterly disappointed, and expressed their
+ disappointment loudly enough in their murmurs against Moses, and their
+ rebellion against his successors. But to others, as to Abraham, Canaan
+ was the bright illusion which never deceived, but for ever shone
+ before as the type of something more real. And even taking the promise
+ literally, though they built in tents, and could not call a foot of
+ land their own, was not its beauty theirs? Were not its trellised
+ vines, and glorious pastures, and rich olive-fields, ministers to the
+ enjoyment of those who had all in God, though its milk, and oil, and
+ honey, could not be enjoyed with exclusiveness of appropriation? Yet
+ over and above and beyond this, there was a more blessed fulfilment of
+ the promise; there was "a city which had foundations"--built and made
+ by God--toward which the anticipation of this Canaan was leading them.
+ The Kingdom of God was forming in their souls, for ever disappointing
+ them by the unreal, and teaching them that what is spiritual, and
+ belongs to mind and character alone can be eternal.
+
+ We will illustrate this principle from the common walks of life. The
+ principle is, that the reward we get is not the reward for which we
+ worked, but a deeper one; deeper and more permanent. The merchant
+ labours all his life, and the hope which leads him on is perhaps
+ wealth: well, at sixty years of age he attains wealth; is that the
+ reward of sixty years of toil? Ten years of enjoyment, when the senses
+ can enjoy no longer--a country seat, splendid plate, a noble
+ establishment? Oh, no! a reward deeper than he dreamed of. Habits of
+ perseverance: a character trained by industry: that is his reward. He
+ was carried on from year to year by, if he were wise, illusion; if he
+ were unwise, delusion; but he reaped a more enduring substance in
+ himself.
+
+ Take another instance: the public man, warrior, or statesman, who has
+ served his country, and complains at last in bitter disappointment,
+ that his country has not fulfilled his expectations in rewarding
+ him--that is, it has not given him titles, honours, wealth. But
+ titles, honours, wealth--are these the rewards of well-doing? can they
+ reward it? would it be well-doing if they could? To _be_ such a man,
+ to have the power of _doing_ such deeds, what could be added to that
+ reward by having? This same apparent contradiction, which was found in
+ Judaism, subsists too in Christianity; we will state it in the words
+ of an apostle: "Godliness is profitable for all things; having the
+ promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to come."
+ Now for the fulfilment: "If in this life only we have hope in Christ,
+ then are we of all men most miserable."
+
+ Godliness is profitable; but its profit it appears, consists in
+ finding that all is loss: yet in this way you teach your son. You will
+ tell him that if he will be good all men will love him. You say that
+ "Honesty is the best policy." yet in your heart of hearts you know
+ that you are leading him on by a delusion. Christ was good. Was he
+ loved by all? In proportion as he--your son--is like Christ, he will
+ be loved, not by the many, but by the few. Honesty is _not_ the best
+ _policy_; the commonplace honesty of the market-place may be--the
+ vulgar honesty which goes no further than paying debts accurately; but
+ that transparent Christian honesty of a life which in every act is
+ bearing witness to the truth, that is not the way to _get on_ in
+ life--the reward of such a life is the Cross. Yet you were right in
+ teaching your son this: you told him what was true; truer than he
+ could comprehend. It _is_ better to be honest and good; better than
+ he can know or dream: better even in this life; better by so much as
+ _being_ good is better than _having_ good. But, in a rude coarse way,
+ you must express the blessedness on a level with his capacity; you
+ must state the truth in a way which he will inevitably interpret
+ falsely. The true interpretation nothing but experience can teach.
+
+ And this is what God does. His promises are true, though illusive; far
+ truer than we at first take them to be. We work for a mean, low,
+ sensual happiness, all the while He is leading us on to a spiritual
+ blessedness--unfathomably deep. This is the life of faith. We live by
+ faith, and not by sight. We do not preach that all is
+ disappointment--the dreary creed of sentimentalism; but we preach that
+ _nothing_ here is disappointment, if rightly understood. We do not
+ comfort the poor man, by saying that the riches that he has not now he
+ will have hereafter--the difference between himself and the man of
+ wealth being only this, that the one has for time what the other will
+ have for eternity; but what we say is, that that which you have failed
+ in reaping here, you never will reap, if you expected the harvest of
+ Canaan. God has no Canaan for His own; no milk and honey for the
+ luxury of the senses: for the city which hath foundations is built in
+ the soul of man. He in whom Godlike character dwells, has all the
+ universe for his own--"All things," saith the apostle, "are yours;
+ whether life or death, or things present, or things to come; if ye be
+ Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the
+ _promise_."
+
+
+
+
+ VII.
+
+ _Preached June 23, 1850._
+
+ THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST.
+
+
+   "For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge,
+    that if one died for all, then were all dead; and that He died for
+    all that they which live should not henceforth live unto
+    themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again."--2
+    Corinthians v. 14, 15.
+
+ It may be, that in reading these verses some of us have understood
+ them in a sense foreign to that of the apostle. It may have seemed
+ that the arguments ran thus--Because Christ died upon the cross for
+ _all_, therefore all must have been in a state of spiritual death
+ before; and if they were asked what doctrines are to be elicited from
+ this passage they would reply, "the doctrine of universal depravity,
+ and the constraining power of the gratitude due to Him who died to
+ redeem us from it." There is, however, in the first place, this fatal
+ objection to such an interpretation, that the death here spoken of is
+ used in two diametrically opposite senses. In reference to Christ,
+ death literal--in reference to all, death spiritual. Now, in the
+ thought of St. Paul, the death of Christ was always viewed as
+ liberation from the power of evil: "in that he died, he died unto sin
+ once," and again, "he that is dead is free from sin." The literal
+ death then in one clause, means _freedom_ from sin; the spiritual
+ death of the next is _slavery_ to it. Wherein then, lies the cogency
+ of the apostle's reasoning? How does it follow that because Christ
+ died to evil, all before that must have died to God? Of course that
+ doctrine is true in itself, but it is _not_ the doctrine of the text.
+
+ In the next place, the ambiguity belongs only to the English word--it
+ is impossible to make the mistake in the original: the word which
+ stands for _were_, is a word which does not imply a continued state,
+ but must imply a single finished act. It cannot by any possibility
+ imply that before the death of Christ men _were_ in a state of
+ death--it can only mean, they became dead at the moment when Christ
+ died. If you read it thus, the meaning of the English will emerge--"if
+ one died for all, then all died;" and the apostle's argument runs
+ thus, that if one acts as the representative of all, then his act is
+ the act of all. If the ambassador of a nation makes reparation in a
+ nation's name, or does homage for a nation, that reparation, or that
+ homage, is the nation's act--if _one_ did it _for_ all, then _all_ did
+ it. So that instead of inferring that because Christ died for all,
+ therefore before that all were dead to God, his natural inference is
+ that therefore all are now dead to sin.
+
+ Once more, the conclusion of the apostle is exactly the reverse of
+ that which this interpretation attributes to him: he does not say that
+ Christ died in order that men might _not_ die, but exactly for this
+ very purpose, that they _might_ die; and this death he represents in
+ the next verse by an equivalent expression--the life of unselfishness:
+ "that they which live might henceforth live not unto themselves." The
+ "dead" of the first verse are "they that live" of the second.
+
+ The form of thought finds its exact parallel in Romans vi. 10, 11.
+ Two points claim our attention:--
+
+   I. The vicarious sacrifice of Christ.
+  II. The influence of that sacrifice on man.
+
+
+ I. The vicariousness of the sacrifice is implied in the word "for". A
+ vicarious act is an act done for another. When the Pope calls himself
+ the vicar of Christ, he implies that he acts for Christ. The vicar or
+ viceroy of a kingdom is one who acts for the king--a vicar's act
+ therefore is virtually the act of the principal whom he represents; so
+ that if the Papal doctrine were true, when the vicar of Christ
+ _pardons_, Christ has pardoned. When the viceroy of a kingdom has
+ published a proclamation or signed a treaty, the sovereign himself is
+ bound by those acts.
+
+ The truth of the expression _for all_, is contained in this fact, that
+ Christ is the representative of Humanity--properly speaking, the
+ representative of human nature. This is the truth contained in the
+ emphatic expression, "Son of Man." What Christ did _for_ Humanity was
+ done by Humanity, because in the name of Humanity. For a truly
+ vicarious act does not supersede the principal's duty of performance,
+ but rather implies and acknowledges it. Take the case from which this
+ very word of vicar has received its origin. In the old monastic times,
+ when the revenues of a cathedral or a cure fell to the lot of a
+ monastery, it became the duty of that monastery to perform the
+ religious services of the cure. But inasmuch as the monastery was a
+ corporate body, they appointed one of their number, whom they
+ denominated their vicar, to discharge those offices for them. His
+ service did not supersede theirs, but was a perpetual and standing
+ acknowledgement that they, as a whole and individually, were under the
+ obligation to perform it. The act of Christ is the act of
+ Humanity--that which all Humanity is bound to do. His righteousness
+ does not supersede our righteousness, nor does His sacrifice supersede
+ our sacrifice. It is the representation of human life and human
+ sacrifice--vicarious for all, yet binding upon all.
+
+ That He died for all is true--
+
+ 1. Because He was the victim of the sin of all. In the peculiar
+ phraseology of St. Paul, he died unto sin. He was the victim of
+ Sin--He died by sin. It is the appalling mystery of our redemption
+ that the Redeemer took the attitude of subjection to evil. There was
+ scarcely a form of evil with which Christ did not come in contact, and
+ by which He did not suffer. He was the victim of false friendship and
+ ingratitude, the victim of bad government and injustice. He fell a
+ sacrifice to the vices of all classes--to the selfishness of the rich
+ and the fickleness of the poor:--intolerance, formalism, scepticism,
+ hatred of goodness, were the foes which crushed Him.
+
+ In the proper sense of the word He was a victim. He did not adroitly
+ wind through the dangerous forms of evil, meeting it with expedient
+ silence. Face to face, and front to front, He met it, rebuked it, and
+ defied it; and just as truly as he is a voluntary victim whose body
+ opposing the progress of the car of Juggernaut is crushed beneath its
+ monstrous wheels, was He a victim to the world's sin: because pure, He
+ was crushed by impurity; because just and real and true, He waked up
+ the rage of injustice, hypocrisy, and falsehood.
+
+ Now this sin was the sin of all. Here arises at once a difficulty: it
+ seems to be most unnatural to assert that in any one sense He was the
+ sacrifice of the sin of all. We did not betray Him--that was Judas's
+ act--Peter denied Him--Thomas doubted--Pilate pronounced sentence--it
+ must be a figment to say that these were our acts; we did not watch
+ Him like the Pharisees, nor circumvent Him like the Scribes and
+ lawyers; by what possible sophistry can we be involved in the
+ complicity of that guilt? The savage of New Zealand who never heard of
+ Him, the learned Egyptian and the voluptuous Assyrian who died before
+ He came; how was it the sin of all?
+
+ The reply that is often given to this query is wonderfully unreal. It
+ is assumed that Christ was conscious, by His Omniscience, of the sins
+ of all mankind; that the duplicity of the child, and the crime of the
+ assassin, and every unholy thought that has ever passed through a
+ human bosom, were present to His mind in that awful hour as if they
+ were His own. This is utterly unscriptural. Where is the single text
+ from which it can be, except by force, extracted? Besides this, it is
+ fanciful and sentimental; and again it is dangerous, for it represents
+ the whole Atonement as a fictitious and shadowy transaction. There is
+ a mental state in which men have felt the burthen of sins which they
+ did not commit. There have been cases in which men have been
+ mysteriously excruciated with the thought of having committed the
+ unpardonable sin. But to represent the mental phenomena of the
+ Redeemer's mind as in any way resembling this--to say that His
+ conscience was oppressed with the responsibility of sins which He had
+ not committed--is to confound a state of sanity with the delusions of
+ a half lucid mind, and the workings of a healthy conscience with those
+ of one unnatural and morbid.
+
+ There is a way however, much more appalling and much more true, in
+ which this may be true, without resorting to any such fanciful
+ hypothesis. Sin has a great power in this world: it gives laws like
+ those of a sovereign, which bind us all, and to which we are all
+ submissive. There are current maxims in church and state, in society,
+ in trade, in law, to which we yield obedience. For this obedience
+ every one is responsible; for instance in trade, and in the profession
+ of law, every one is the servant of practices the rectitude of which
+ his heart can only half approve--every one complains of them, yet all
+ are involved in them. Now, when such sins reach their climax, as in
+ the case of national bankruptcy or an unjust acquittal, there may be
+ some who are in a special sense, the actors in the guilt; but
+ evidently, for the bankruptcy, each member of the community is
+ responsible in that degree and so far as he himself acquiesced in the
+ duplicities of public dealing; every careless juror, every unrighteous
+ judge, every false witness, has done his part in the reduction of
+ society to that state in which the monster injustice has been
+ perpetrated. In the riot of a tumultuous assembly by night, a house
+ may be burnt, or a murder committed; in the eye of the law, all who
+ are aiding and abetting there are each in his degree responsible for
+ that crime; there may be difference in guilt, from the degree in which
+ he is guilty who with his own hand perpetrated the deed, to that of
+ him who merely joined the rabble from mischievous
+ curiosity--degrees from that of wilful murder to that of more or less
+ excusable homicide.
+
+ The Pharisees were declared by the Saviour to be guilty of the blood
+ of Zacharias, the blood of righteous Abel, and of all the saints and
+ prophets who fell before He came. But how were the Pharisees guilty?
+ They built the sepulchres of the prophets, they honoured and admired
+ them; but they were guilty, in that they were the children of those
+ that slew the prophets; children in this sense, that they inherited
+ their _spirit_, they opposed the good in the form in which it showed
+ itself in _their day_, just as their fathers opposed the form
+ displayed to theirs; therefore He said that they belonged to the same
+ confederacy of evil, and that the guilt of the blood of all who had
+ been slain should rest on that generation. Similarly we are guilty of
+ the death of Christ. If you have been a false friend, a sceptic, a
+ cowardly disciple, a formalist, selfish, an opposer of goodness, an
+ oppressor, whatever evil you have done, in that degree and so far you
+ participate in the evil to which the Just One fell a victim--you are
+ one of that mighty rabble which cry, "Crucify Him, Crucify Him!" for
+ your sin He died; His blood lies at your threshold.
+
+ Again, He died for all, in that His sacrifice represents the sacrifice
+ of all. We have heard of the doctrine of "imputed righteousness;" it
+ is a theological expression to which meanings foolish enough are
+ sometimes attributed, but it contains a very deep truth, which it
+ shall be our endeavour to elicit.
+
+ Christ is the realized idea of our Humanity. He is God's idea of Man
+ completed. There is every difference between the ideal and the
+ actual--between what a man aims to be and what he is; a difference
+ between the race as it is, and the race as it existed in God's
+ creative idea when he pronounced it very good.
+
+ In Christ, therefore, God beholds Humanity; in Christ He sees
+ perfected every one in whom Christ's spirit exists in germ. He to whom
+ the possible is actual, to whom what will be already _is_, sees all
+ things _present_, gazes on the imperfect, and sees it in its
+ perfection. Let me venture an illustration. He who has never seen the
+ vegetable world except in Arctic regions, has but a poor idea of the
+ majesty of vegetable life,--a microscopic red moss tinting the surface
+ of the snow, a few stunted pines, and here and there perhaps a
+ dwindled oak; but to the botanist who has seen the luxuriance of
+ vegetation in its tropical magnificence, all that wretched scene
+ presents another aspect; to him those dwarfs are the representatives
+ of what might be, nay, what has been in a kindlier soil and a more
+ genial climate; he fills up by his conception the miserable actuality
+ presented by these shrubs, and attributes to them--imputes, that is,
+ to them--the majesty of which the undeveloped germ exists already.
+
+ Now the difference between those trees seen in themselves, and seen in
+ the conception of their nature's perfectness which has been previously
+ realized, is the difference between man seen in himself and seen in
+ Christ. We are feeble, dwarfish, stunted specimens of Humanity. Our
+ best resolves are but withered branches, our holiest deeds unripe and
+ blighted fruit; but to the Infinite Eye, who sees in the perfect One
+ the type and assurance of that which shall be, this dwindled Humanity
+ of ours is divine and glorious. Such are we in the sight of God the
+ Father as is the very Son of God Himself. This is what theologians, at
+ least the wisest of them, meant by "imputed righteousness." I do not
+ mean that all who have written or spoken on the subject had this
+ conception of it, but I believe they who thought truly meant this;
+ they did not suppose that in imputing righteousness there was a kind
+ of figment, a self-deception in the mind of God; they did not mean
+ that by an act of will He chose to consider that every act which
+ Christ did was done by us; that He imputed or reckoned to us the
+ baptism in Jordan and the victory in the wilderness, and the agony in
+ the garden, or that He believed, or acted as if He believed, that when
+ Christ died, each one of us died: but He saw Humanity submitted to the
+ law of self-sacrifice; in the light of that idea He beholds us as
+ perfect, and is satisfied. In this sense the apostle speaks of those
+ that are imperfect, yet "by one offering He hath perfected for ever
+ them that are sanctified." It is true again, that He died for us, in
+ that we present His sacrifice as ours. The value of the death of
+ Christ consisted in the surrender of self-will. In the fortieth Psalm,
+ the value of every other kind of sacrifice being first denied, the
+ words follow, "then said I, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God." The
+ profound idea contained, therefore, in the death of Christ is the duty
+ of self-surrender.
+
+ But in _us_ that surrender scarcely deserves the name; even to use the
+ word self-sacrifice covers us with a kind of shame. Then it is that
+ there is an almost boundless joy in acquiescing in the life and death
+ of Christ, recognizing it as ours, and representing it to ourselves
+ and God as what we aim at. If we cannot understand how in this sense
+ it can be a sacrifice for us, we may partly realize it by remembering
+ the joy of feeling how art and nature realize for us what we cannot
+ realize for ourselves. It is recorded of one of the world's gifted
+ painters that he stood before the master-piece of the great genius of
+ his age--one which he could never hope to equal, nor even rival--and
+ yet the infinite superiority, so far from crushing him, only elevated
+ his feeling, for he saw realized those conceptions which had floated
+ before him, dim and unsubstantial; in every line and touch he felt a
+ spirit immeasurably superior yet kindred, and he is reported to have
+ exclaimed, with dignified humility, "And I too am a painter!"
+
+ We must all have felt, when certain effects in nature, combinations of
+ form and colour, have been presented to us, our own idea speaking in
+ intelligible and yet celestial language; when for instance, the long
+ bars of purple, "edged with intolerable radiance," seemed to float in
+ a sea of pale pure green, when the whole sky seemed to reel with
+ thunder, when the night wind moaned. It is wonderful how the most
+ commonplace men and women, beings who, as you would have thought, had
+ no conception that rose beyond a commercial speculation, or a
+ fashionable entertainment, are elevated by such scenes; how the
+ slumbering grandeur of their nature wakes and acknowledges kindred
+ with the sky and storm. "I cannot speak," they would say, "the
+ feelings which are in me; I have had emotions, aspirations, thoughts;
+ I cannot put them into words. Look there! listen now to the storm!
+ That is what I meant, only I never could say it out till now." Thus do
+ art and nature speak for us, and thus do we adopt them as our own.
+ This is the way in which His righteousness becomes righteousness for
+ us. This is the way in which the heart presents to God the sacrifice
+ of Christ; gazing on that perfect Life we, as it were, say, "There,
+ that is my religion--that is my righteousness--what I want to be,
+ which I am not--that is my offering, my life as I would wish to give
+ it, freely and not checked, entire and perfect." So the old prophets,
+ their hearts big with unutterable thoughts, searched "what or what
+ manner of time the spirit of Christ which was in them did signify,
+ when it testified beforehand of the sufferings of Christ, and of the
+ glory which should follow;" and so with us, until it passes into
+ prayer: "My Saviour, fill up the blurred and blotted sketch which my
+ clumsy hand has drawn of a divine life, with the fullness of Thy
+ perfect picture. I feel the beauty which I cannot realize:--robe me in
+ Thine unutterable purity:--
+
+   "Rock of ages cleft for me,
+    Let me hide myself in Thee."
+
+
+ II. The influence of that Sacrifice on man is the introduction of the
+ principle of self-sacrifice into his nature,--"then were all dead."
+ Observe again, not He died that we might not die, but that in His
+ death we might be dead, and that in His sacrifice we might become each
+ a sacrifice to God. Moreover, this death is identical with life. They
+ who in the first sentence, are called dead, are in the second
+ denominated "they who live." So in another place, "I am crucified with
+ Christ, nevertheless I live;" death, therefore--that is the sacrifice
+ of self--is equivalent to life. Now, this rests upon a profound truth.
+ The death of Christ was a representation of the life of God. To me
+ this is the profoundest of all truths, that the whole of the life of
+ God is the sacrifice of self. God is Love; love is sacrifice--to give
+ rather than to receive--the blessedness of self-giving. If the life of
+ God were not such it would be a falsehood, to say that God is Love;
+ for even in our human nature, that which seeks to enjoy all instead of
+ giving all, is known by a very different name from that of love. All
+ the life of God is a flow of this divine self-giving charity. Creation
+ itself is sacrifice--the self-impartation of the divine Being.
+ Redemption too, is sacrifice, else it could not be love; for which
+ reason we will not surrender one iota of the truth that the death of
+ Christ was the sacrifice of God--the manifestation once in time of
+ that which is the eternal law of His life.
+
+ If man therefore, is to rise into the life of God, he must be absorbed
+ into the spirit of that sacrifice--he must die with Christ if he would
+ enter into his proper life. For sin is the withdrawing into self and
+ egotism, out of the vivifying life of God, which alone is our true
+ life. The moment the man sins he dies. Know we not how awfully true
+ that sentence is, "Sin revived, and I died?" The vivid life of sin is
+ the death of the man. Have we never felt that our true existence has
+ absolutely in that moment disappeared, and that _we_ are not?
+
+ I say therefore, that real human life is a perpetual completion and
+ repetition of the sacrifice of Christ--"all are dead;" the explanation
+ of which follows, "to live not to themselves, but to Him who died for
+ them and rose again." This is the truth which lies at the bottom of
+ the Romish doctrine of the mass. Rome asserts that in the mass a true
+ and proper sacrifice is offered up for the sins of all--that the
+ offering of Christ is for ever repeated. To this Protestantism has
+ objected vehemently, that there is but one offering once offered--an
+ objection in itself entirely true; yet the Romish doctrine contains a
+ truth which it is of importance to disengage from the gross and
+ material form with which it has been overlaid. Let us hear St. Paul,
+ "I fill up that which is behindhand of the sufferings of Christ, in my
+ flesh, for His body's sake, which is the Church." Was there then,
+ something behindhand of Christ's sufferings remaining uncompleted, of
+ which the sufferings of Paul could be in any sense the complement? He
+ says there was. Could the sufferings of Paul for the Church in any
+ form of correct expression be said to eke out the sufferings that were
+ complete? In one sense it is true to say that there is one offering
+ once offered _for_ all. But it is equally true to say that that one
+ offering is valueless, except so far as it is completed and repeated
+ in the life and self-offering _of_ all. This is the Christian's
+ sacrifice. Not mechanically completed in the miserable materialism of
+ the mass, but spiritually in the life of all in whom the Crucified
+ lives. The sacrifice of Christ is done over again in every life which
+ is lived, not to self but, to God.
+
+ Let one concluding observation be made--self-denial, self-sacrifice,
+ self-surrender! Hard doctrines, and impossible! Whereupon, in silent
+ hours, we sceptically ask, Is this possible? is it natural? Let
+ preacher and moralist say what they will, I am not here to sacrifice
+ myself for others. God sent me here for happiness, not misery. Now
+ introduce one sentence of this text of which we have as yet said
+ nothing, and the dark doctrine becomes illuminated--"the _love_ of
+ Christ constraineth us." Self-denial, for the sake of self-denial,
+ does no good; self-sacrifice for its own sake is no religious act at
+ all. If you give up a meal for the sake of showing power over self, or
+ for the sake of self-discipline, it is the most miserable of all
+ delusions. You are not more religious in doing this than before. This
+ is mere self-culture, and self-culture being occupied for ever about
+ self, leaves you only in that circle of self from which religion is to
+ free you; but to give up a meal that one you love may have it, is
+ properly a religious act--no hard and dismal duty, because made easy
+ by affection. To bear pain for the sake of bearing it has in it no
+ moral quality at all, but to bear it rather than surrender truth, or
+ in order to save another, is positive enjoyment as well as ennobling
+ to the soul. Did you ever receive even a blow meant for another in
+ order to shield that other? Do you not know that there was actual
+ pleasure in the keen pain far beyond the most rapturous thrill of
+ nerve which could be gained from pleasure in the midst of
+ painlessness? Is not the mystic yearning of love expressed in words
+ most purely thus, Let me suffer for him?
+
+ This element of love is that which makes this doctrine an intelligible
+ and blessed truth. So sacrifice alone, bare and unrelieved, is
+ ghastly, unnatural, and dead; but self-sacrifice, illuminated by love,
+ is warmth and life; it is the death of Christ, the life of God, the
+ blessedness, and only proper life of man.
+
+
+
+
+ VIII.
+
+ _Preached June 30, 1850._
+
+ THE POWER OF SORROW.
+
+
+   "Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed
+    to repentance: for ye were made sorry after a godly manner, that
+    ye might receive damage by us in nothing. For godly sorrow worketh
+    repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of
+    the world worketh death."--2 Corinthians vii. 9, 10.
+
+ That which is chiefly insisted on in this verse, is the distinction
+ between sorrow and repentance. To grieve over sin is one thing, to
+ repent of it is another.
+
+ The apostle rejoiced, not that the Corinthians sorrowed, but that they
+ sorrowed unto repentance. Sorrow has two results; it may end in
+ spiritual life, or in spiritual death; and in themselves, one of these
+ is as natural as the other. Sorrow may produce two kinds of
+ reformation--a transient, or a permanent one--an alteration in habits,
+ which originating in emotion, will last so long as that emotion
+ continues, and then after a few fruitless efforts, be given up,--a
+ repentance which will be repented of; or again, a permanent change,
+ which will be reversed by no after thought--a repentance not to be
+ repented of. Sorrow is in itself, therefore, a thing neither good nor
+ bad: its value depends on the spirit of the person on whom it falls.
+ Fire will inflame straw, soften iron, or harden clay; its effects are
+ determined by the object with which it comes in contact. Warmth
+ developes the energies of life, or helps the progress of decay. It is
+ a great power in the hot-house, a great power also in the coffin; it
+ expands the leaf, matures the fruit, adds precocious vigour to
+ vegetable life: and warmth too developes, with tenfold rapidity, the
+ weltering process of dissolution. So too with sorrow. There are
+ spirits in which it developes the seminal principle of life; there are
+ others in which it prematurely hastens the consummation of irreparable
+ decay. Our subject therefore is the twofold power of sorrow.
+
+    I. The fatal power of the sorrow of the world.
+   II. The life-giving power of the sorrow that is after God.
+
+ The simplest way in which the sorrow of the world works death, is seen
+ in the effect of mere regret for worldly loss. There are certain
+ advantages with which we come into the world. Youth, health, friends,
+ and sometimes property. So long as these are continued we are happy;
+ and because happy, fancy ourselves very grateful to God. We bask in
+ the sunshine of His gifts, and this pleasant sensation of sunning
+ ourselves in life we call religion; that state in which we all are
+ before sorrow comes, to test the temper of the metal of which our
+ souls are made, when the spirits are unbroken and the heart buoyant,
+ when a fresh morning is to a young heart what it is to the skylark.
+ The exuberant burst of joy seems a spontaneous hymn to the Father of
+ all blessing, like the matin carol of the bird; but this is not
+ religion: it is the instinctive utterance of happy feeling, having as
+ little of moral character in it, in the happy human being, as in the
+ happy bird.
+
+ Nay more--the religion which is only sunned into being by happiness,
+ is a suspicious thing: having been warmed by joy, it will become cold
+ when joy is over; and then when these blessings are removed, we count
+ ourselves hardly treated, as if we had been defrauded of a right;
+ rebellious hard feelings come; then it is you see people become
+ bitter, spiteful, discontented. At every step in the solemn path of
+ life, something must be mourned which will come back no more; the
+ temper that was so smooth becomes rugged and uneven; the benevolence
+ that expanded upon all, narrows into an ever dwindling selfishness--we
+ are alone; and then that death-like loneliness deepens as life goes
+ on. The course of man is downwards, and he moves with slow and ever
+ more solitary steps, down to the dark silence--the silence of the
+ grave. This is the death of heart; the sorrow of the world has worked
+ death.
+
+ Again there is a sorrow of the world, when sin is grieved for in a
+ worldly spirit. There are two views of sin: in one it is looked upon
+ as wrong--in the other, as producing loss--loss for example, of
+ character. In such cases, if character could be preserved before the
+ world, grief would not come; but the paroxysms of misery fall upon our
+ proud spirit when our guilt is made public. The most distinct instance
+ we have of this is in the life of Saul. In the midst of his apparent
+ grief, the thing still uppermost was that he had forfeited his kingly
+ character: almost the only longing was, that Samuel should honour him
+ before his people. And hence it comes to pass, that often remorse and
+ anguish only begin with exposure. Suicide takes place, not when the
+ act of wrong is done, but when the guilt is known, and hence too, many
+ a one becomes hardened who would otherwise have remained tolerably
+ happy; in consequence of which we blame the exposure, not the guilt;
+ we say if it had hushed up, all would have been well; that the servant
+ who robbed his master was ruined by taking away his character; and
+ that if the sin had been passed over, repentance might have taken
+ place, and he might have remained a respectable member of society. Do
+ not think so. It is quite true that remorse was produced by exposure,
+ and that the remorse was fatal; the sorrow which worked death arose
+ from that exposure, and so far exposure may be called the cause: had
+ it never taken place, respectability, and comparative peace, might
+ have continued; but outward respectability is not change of heart.
+
+ It is well known that the corpse has been preserved for centuries in
+ the iceberg, or in antiseptic peat; and that when atmospheric air was
+ introduced to the exposed surface it crumbled into dust. Exposure
+ worked dissolution, but it only manifested the death which was already
+ there; so with sorrow, it is not the living heart which drops to
+ pieces, or crumbles into dust, when it is revealed. Exposure did not
+ work death in the Corinthian sinner, but life.
+
+ There is another form of grief for sin, which the apostle would not
+ have rejoiced to see; it is when the hot tears come from pride. No two
+ tones of feeling, apparently similar, are more unlike than that in
+ which Saul exclaimed, "I have played the fool exceedingly," and that
+ in which the Publican cried out, "God be merciful to me a sinner."
+ The charge of folly brought against oneself only proves that we feel
+ bitterly for having lost our own self-respect. It is a humiliation to
+ have forfeited the idea which a man had formed of his own
+ character--to find that the very excellence on which he prided
+ himself, is the one in which he has failed. If there were a virtue for
+ which Saul was conspicuous, it was generosity; yet it was exactly in
+ this point of generosity in which he discovered himself to have
+ failed, when he was overtaken on the mountain, and his life spared by
+ the very man whom he was hunting to the death, with feelings of the
+ meanest jealousy. Yet there was no real repentance there; there was
+ none of that in which a man is sick of state and pomp. Saul could
+ still rejoice in regal splendour, go about complaining of himself to
+ the Ziphites, as if he was the most ill-treated and friendless of
+ mankind; he was still jealous of his reputation, and anxious to be
+ well thought of. Quite different is the tone in which the Publican,
+ who felt himself a sinner, asked for mercy. He heard the contumelious
+ expression of the Pharisee, "this Publican." With no resentment, he
+ meekly bore it as a matter naturally to be taken for granted--"he did
+ not so much as lift up his eyes to heaven;" he was as a worm which
+ turns in agony, but not revenge, upon the foot which treads it into
+ the dust.
+
+ Now this sorrow of Saul's too, works death: no merit can restore
+ self-respect; when once a man has found himself out, he cannot be
+ deceived again. The heart is as a stone: a speck of canker corrodes
+ and spreads within. What on this earth remains, but endless sorrow,
+ for him who has ceased to respect himself, and has no God to turn to?
+
+
+ II. The divine power of sorrow.
+
+ 1. It works repentance. By repentance is meant, in Scripture, change
+ of life, alteration of habits, renewal of heart. This is the aim and
+ meaning of all sorrow. The consequences of sin are meant to wean from
+ sin. The penalty annexed to it is in the first instance, corrective,
+ not penal. Fire burns the child, to teach it one of the truths of this
+ universe--the property of fire to burn. The first time it cuts its
+ hand with a sharp knife, it has gained a lesson which it never will
+ forget. Now, in the case of pain, this experience is seldom, if ever,
+ in vain. There is little chance of a child forgetting that fire will
+ burn, and that sharp steel will cut; but the moral lessons contained
+ in the penalties annexed to wrong-doing are just as truly intended,
+ though they are by no means so unerring in enforcing their
+ application. The fever in the veins and the headache which succeed
+ intoxication, are meant to warn against excess. On the first occasion
+ they are simply corrective; in every succeeding one they assume more
+ and more a penal character in proportion as the conscience carries
+ with them the sense of ill desert.
+
+ Sorrow then, has done its work when it deters from evil; in other
+ words when it works repentance. In the sorrow of the world, the
+ obliquity of the heart towards evil is not cured; it seems as if
+ nothing cured it: heartache and trials come in vain; the history of
+ life at last is what it was at first. The man is found erring where he
+ erred before. The same course, begun with the certainty of the same
+ desperate end which has taken place so often before.
+
+ They have reaped the whirlwind, but they will again sow the wind.
+ Hence I believe, that life-giving sorrow is less remorse for that
+ which is irreparable, than anxiety to save that which remains. The
+ sorrow that ends in death hangs in funeral weeds over the sepulchres
+ of the past. Yet the present does not become more wise. Not one
+ resolution is made more firm, nor one habit more holy. Grief is all.
+ Whereas sorrow avails _only_ when the past is converted into
+ experience, and from failure lessons are learned which never are to be
+ forgotten.
+
+ 2. Permanence of alteration; for after all, a steady reformation is a
+ more decisive test of the value of mourning than depth of grief.
+
+ The susceptibility of emotion varies with individuals. Some men feel
+ intensely, others suffer less keenly; but this is constitutional,
+ belonging to nervous temperament, rather than to moral character.
+ _This_ is the characteristic of the divine sorrow, that it is a
+ repentance "not repented of;" no transient, short-lived resolutions,
+ but sustained resolve.
+
+ And the beautiful law is, that in proportion as the, repentance
+ increases the grief diminishes. "I rejoice," says Paul, that "I made
+ you sorry, though it were but for a time." Grief for a time,
+ repentance for ever. And few things more signally prove the wisdom of
+ this apostle than his way of dealing with this grief of the
+ Corinthian. He tried no artificial means of intensifying it--did not
+ urge the duty of dwelling upon it, magnifying it, nor even of gauging
+ and examining it. So soon as grief had done its work, the apostle was
+ anxious to dry useless tears--he even feared lest haply such an one
+ should be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow. "A true penitent," says
+ Mr. Newman, "never forgives himself." O false estimate of the gospel
+ of Christ, and of the heart of man! A proud remorse does not forgive
+ itself the forfeiture of its own dignity; but it is the very beauty of
+ the penitence which is according to God, that at last the sinner,
+ realizing God's forgiveness, does learn to forgive himself. For what
+ other purpose did St. Paul command the Church of Corinth to give
+ ecclesiastical absolution, but in order to afford a symbol and
+ assurance of the Divine pardon, in which the guilty man's grief should
+ not be overwhelming, but that he should become reconciled to himself?
+ What is meant by the Publican's going _down to his house_ justified,
+ but that he felt at peace with himself and God?
+
+ 3. It is sorrow with God--here called godly sorrow; in the margin
+ sorrowing according to God.
+
+ God sees sin not in its consequences but in itself: a thing infinitely
+ evil, even if the consequences were happiness to the guilty instead of
+ misery. So sorrow according to God, is to see sin as God sees it. The
+ grief of Peter was as bitter as that of Judas. He went out and wept
+ bitterly; how bitterly none can tell but they who have learned to look
+ on sin as God does. But in Peter's grief there was an element of hope;
+ and that sprung precisely from this--that he saw God in it all.
+ Despair of self did not lead to despair of God.
+
+ This is the great, peculiar feature of this sorrow: God is there,
+ accordingly self is less prominent. It is not a microscopic
+ self-examination, nor a mourning in which self is ever uppermost: _my_
+ character gone; the greatness of _my_ sin; the forfeiture of _my_
+ salvation. The thought of God absorbs all that. I believe the feeling
+ of true penitence would express itself in such words as these:--There
+ _is_ a righteousness, though I have not attained it. There is a
+ purity, and a love, and a beauty, though my life exhibits little of
+ it. In that I can rejoice. Of that I can feel the surpassing
+ loveliness. My doings? They are worthless, I cannot endure to think of
+ them. I am not thinking of them. I have something else to think of.
+ There, there; in that Life I see it. And so the Christian--gazing not
+ on what he is, but on what he desires to be--dares in penitence to
+ say, That righteousness is mine: dares, even when the recollection of
+ his sin is most vivid and most poignant, to say with Peter, thinking
+ less of himself than of God, and sorrowing as it were with God--"Lord,
+ Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love Thee."
+
+
+
+
+ IX.
+
+ _Preached August 4, 1850._
+
+ SENSUAL AND SPIRITUAL EXCITEMENT.
+
+
+   "Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of
+    the Lord is. And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be
+    filled with the Spirit."--Ephesians v. 17, 18.
+
+ There is evidently a connection between the different branches of this
+ sentence--for ideas cannot be properly contrasted which have not some
+ connection--but what that connection is, is not at first sight clear.
+ It almost appears like a profane and irreverent juxtaposition to
+ contrast fulness of the Spirit with fulness of wine. Moreover, the
+ structure of the whole context is antithetical. Ideas are opposed to
+ each other in pairs of contraries; for instance, "fools" is the exact
+ opposite to "wise;" "unwise," as opposed to "understanding," its
+ proper opposite.
+
+ And here again, there must be the same true antithesis between
+ drunkenness and spiritual fulness. The propriety of this opposition
+ lies in the intensity of feeling produced in both, cases. There is one
+ intensity of feeling produced by stimulating the senses, another by
+ vivifying the spiritual life within. The one commences with impulses
+ from without, the other is guarded by forces from within. Here then is
+ the similarity, and here the dissimilarity, which constitutes the
+ propriety of the contrast. One is ruin, the other salvation. One
+ degrades, the other exalts. This contrast then is our subject for
+ to-day.
+
+
+ I. The effects are similar. On the day of Pentecost, when the first
+ influences of the Spirit descended on the early Church, the effects
+ resembled intoxication. They were full of the Spirit, and mocking
+ bystanders said, "These men are full of new wine;" for they found
+ themselves elevated into the ecstasy of a life higher than their
+ own, possessed of powers which they could not control; they spoke
+ incoherently and irregularly; to the most part of those assembled,
+ unintelligibly.
+
+ Now compare with this the impression produced upon savage
+ nations--suppose those early ages in which the spectacle of
+ intoxication was presented for the first time. They saw a man under
+ the influence of a force different from and in some respects inferior
+ to, their own. To them the bacchanal appeared a being half inspired;
+ his frenzy seemed a thing for reverence and awe, rather than for
+ horror and disgust; the spirit which possessed him must be they
+ thought, divine; they deified it, worshipped it under different names
+ as a god; even to a clearer insight the effects are wonderfully
+ similar. It is almost proverbial among soldiers that the daring
+ produced by wine is easily mistaken for the self-devotion of a brave
+ heart.
+
+ The play of imagination in the brain of the opium-eater is as free as
+ that of genius itself, and the creations produced in that state by the
+ pen or pencil are as wildly beautiful as those owed to the nobler
+ influences. In years gone by, the oratory of the statesman in the
+ senate has been kindled by semi-intoxication, when his noble
+ utterances were set down by his auditors to the inspiration of
+ patriotism.
+
+ It is this very resemblance which deceives the drunkard: he is led on
+ by his feelings as well as by his imagination. It is not the sensual
+ pleasure of the glutton that fascinates him; it is those fine thoughts
+ and those quickened sensibilities which were excited in that state,
+ which he is powerless to produce out of his own being, or by his own
+ powers, and which he expects to reproduce by the same means. The
+ experience of our first parent is repeated in him: at the very moment
+ when he expects to find himself as the gods, knowing good and evil, he
+ discovers that he is unexpectedly degraded, his health wrecked, and
+ his heart demoralized. Hence it is almost as often the finer as the
+ baser spirits of our race which are found the victims of such
+ indulgence. Many will remember while I speak, the names of the gifted
+ of their species, the degraded men of genius who were the victims of
+ these deceptive influences. The half-inspired painter, poet, musician,
+ who began by soothing opiates to calm the over-excited nerves, or
+ stimulate the exhausted brain, who mistook the sensation for somewhat
+ half divine, and became morally and physically wrecks of manhood,
+ degraded even in their mental conceptions. It was therefore, no mere
+ play of words which induced the apostle to bring these two things
+ together. That which might else seem irreverent appears to have been
+ a deep knowledge of human nature; he contrasts, because his rule was
+ to distinguish two things which are easily mistaken for each other.
+
+ 2. The second point of resemblance is the necessity of intense
+ feeling. We have fulness--fulness, it may be, produced by outward
+ stimulus, or else by an inpouring of the Spirit. What we want is life,
+ "more life, and fuller." To escape from monotony, to get away from the
+ life of mere routine and habits, to feel that we are alive--with more
+ of surprise and wakefulness in our existence. To have less of the
+ gelid, torpid, tortoise-like existence. "To feel the years before us."
+ To be consciously existing.
+
+ Now this desire lies at the bottom of many forms of life which are
+ apparently as diverse as possible. It constitutes the fascination of
+ the gambler's life: money is not what he wants--were he possessed of
+ thousands to-day he would risk them all to-morrow--but it is that
+ being perpetually on the brink of enormous wealth and utter ruin, he
+ is compelled to realize at every moment the possibility of the
+ extremes of life. Every moment is one of feeling. This too,
+ constitutes the charm of all those forms of life in which the gambling
+ feeling is predominant--where a sense of skill is blended with a
+ mixture of chance. If you ask the statesman why it is, that possessed
+ as he is of wealth, he quits his princely home for the dark
+ metropolis, he would reply, "That he loves the excitement of a
+ political existence." It is this too, which gives to the warrior's and
+ the traveller's existence such peculiar reality; and it is this in a
+ far lower form which stimulates the pleasure of a fashionable
+ life--which sends the votaries of the world in a constant round from
+ the capital to the watering place, and from the watering place to the
+ capital; what they crave for is the power of feeling intensely.
+
+ Now the proper and natural outlet for this feeling is the life of the
+ Spirit. What is religion but fuller life? To live in the Spirit, what
+ is it but to have keener feelings and mightier powers--to rise into a
+ higher consciousness of life? What is religion's self but feeling? The
+ highest form of religion is charity. Love is of God, and he that
+ loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. This is an intense feeling,
+ too intense to be excited, profound in its calmness, yet it rises at
+ times in its higher flights into that ecstatic life which glances in a
+ moment intuitively through ages. These are the pentecostal hours of
+ our existence, when the Spirit comes as a mighty rushing wind, in
+ cloven tongues of fire, filling the soul with God.
+
+
+ II. The dissimilarity or contrast in St. Paul's idea. The one fulness
+ begins from without, the other from within. The one proceeds from the
+ flesh and then influences the emotions. The other reverses this order.
+ Stimulants like wine, inflame the senses, and through them set the
+ imaginations and feelings on fire; and the law of our spiritual being
+ is, that that which begins with the flesh, sensualizes the
+ Spirit--whereas that which commences in the region of the Spirit,
+ spiritualizes the senses in which it subsequently stirs emotion. But
+ the misfortune is that men mistake this law of their emotions; and the
+ fatal error is, when having found spiritual feelings existing in
+ connection, and associated with, fleshly sensations, men expect by the
+ mere irritation of the emotions of the frame to reproduce those high
+ and glorious feelings.
+
+ You might conceive the recipients of the Spirit on the day of
+ Pentecost acting under this delusion; it is conceiveable that having
+ observed certain bodily phenomena--for instance, incoherent utterances
+ and thrilled sensibilities coexisting with those sublime
+ spiritualities--they might have endeavoured, by a repetition of those
+ incoherencies, to obtain a fresh descent of the Spirit. In fact, this
+ was exactly what was tried in after ages of the Church. In those
+ events of church history which are denominated revivals, in the camp
+ of the Methodist and the Ranter, a direct attempt was made to arouse
+ the emotions by exciting addresses and vehement language. Convulsions,
+ shrieks, and violent emotions, were produced, and the unfortunate
+ victims of this mistaken attempt to produce the cause by the effect,
+ fancied themselves, and were pronounced by others, converted. Now the
+ misfortune is, that this delusion is the more easy from the fact that
+ the results of the two kinds of causes resemble each other. You may
+ galvanize the nerve of a corpse till the action of a limb startles the
+ spectator with the appearance of life. It is not life, it is only a
+ spasmodic hideous mimicry of life. Men having seen that the spiritual
+ is always associated with forms, endeavour by reproducing the forms to
+ recall spirituality; you do produce thereby a something that looks
+ like spirituality, but it is a resemblance only. The worst case of all
+ occurs in the department of the affections. That which begins in the
+ heart ennobles the whole animal being, but that which begins in the
+ inferior departments of our being is the most entire degradation and
+ sensualizing of the soul.
+
+ Now it is from this point of thought that we learn to extend the
+ apostle's principle. Wine is but a specimen of a class of stimulants.
+ All that begins from _without_ belongs to the same class. The stimulus
+ may be afforded by almost any enjoyment of the senses. Drunkenness may
+ come from anything wherein is excess: from over-indulgence in society,
+ in pleasure, in music, and in the delight of listening to oratory,
+ nay, even from the excitement of sermons and religious meetings. The
+ prophet tells us of those who are drunken, and not with wine.
+
+ The other point of difference is one of effect. Fulness of the Spirit
+ calms; fulness produced by excitement satiates and exhausts. They who
+ know the world of fashion tell us that the tone adopted there is,
+ either to be, or to affect to be, sated with enjoyment, to be proof
+ against surprise, to have lost all keenness of enjoyment, and to have
+ all keenness of wonder gone. That which ought to be men's shame
+ becomes their boast--unsusceptibility of any fresh emotion.
+
+ Whether this be real or affected matters not; it is, in truth, the
+ real result of the indulgence of the senses. The law is this: the
+ "crime of sense is avenged by sense which wears with time;" for it has
+ been well remarked that the terrific punishment attached to the
+ habitual indulgence of the senses is, that the incitements to
+ enjoyment increase in proportion as the power of enjoyment fades.
+
+ Experience at last forbids even the hope of enjoyment; the sin of the
+ intoxicated soul is loathed, detested, abhorred; yet it is done. The
+ irritated sense, like an avenging fury, goads on with a restlessness
+ of craving, and compels a reiteration of the guilt though it has
+ ceased to charm.
+
+ To this danger our own age is peculiarly exposed. In the earlier and
+ simpler ages, the need of keen feeling finds a natural and safe outlet
+ in compulsory exertions. For instance, in the excitement of real
+ warfare, and in the necessity of providing the sustenance of life,
+ warlike habits and healthy labour stimulate, without exhausting life.
+ But in proportion as civilization advances, a large class of the
+ community are exempted from the necessity of these, and thrown upon a
+ life of leisure. Then it is that artificial life begins, and
+ artificial expedients become necessary to sharpen the feelings amongst
+ the monotony of existence; every amusement and all literature become
+ more pungent in their character; life is no longer a thing proceeding
+ from powers _within_, but sustained by new impulses from without.
+
+ There is one peculiar form of this danger to which I would specially
+ direct your attention. There is one nation in Europe which, more than
+ any other, has been subjected to these influences. In ages of
+ revolution, nations live fast; centuries of life are passed in fifty
+ years of time. In such a state, individuals become subjected more or
+ less to the influences which are working around them. Scarcely an
+ enjoyment or a book can be met with which does not bear the impress of
+ this intensity. Now, the particular danger to which I allude is French
+ novels, French romances, and French plays. The overflowings of that
+ cup of excitement have reached our shores. I do not say that these
+ works contain anything coarse or gross--better if it were so: evil
+ which comes in a form of grossness is not nearly so dangerous as that
+ which comes veiled in gracefulness and sentiment. Subjects which are
+ better not touched upon at all are discussed, examined, and exhibited
+ in all the most seductive forms of imagery. You would be shocked at
+ seeing your son in a fit of intoxication; yet, I say it solemnly,
+ better that your son should reel through the streets in a fit of
+ drunkenness, than that the delicacy of your daughter's mind should be
+ injured, and her imagination inflamed with false fire. Twenty-four
+ hours will terminate the evil in the one case. Twenty-four hours will
+ not exhaust the effects of the other; you must seek the consequences
+ at the end of many, many years.
+
+ I speak that which I do know; and if the earnest warning of one who
+ has seen the dangers of which he speaks realized, can reach the heart
+ of one Christian parent, he will put a ban on all such works, and not
+ suffer his children's hearts to be excited by a drunkenness which is
+ worse than that of wine. For the worst of it is, that the men of our
+ time are not yet alive to this growing evil; they are elsewhere--in
+ their studies, counting-houses, professions--not knowing the food, or
+ rather poison, on which their wives' and daughters' intellectual life
+ is sustained. It is precisely those who are most unfitted to sustain
+ the danger, whose feelings need restraint instead of spur, and whose
+ imaginations are most inflammable, that are specially exposed to it.
+
+ On the other hand, spiritual life calms while it fills. True it is
+ that there are pentecostal moments when such life reaches the stage of
+ ecstasy. But these were given to the Church to prepare her for
+ suffering, to give her martyrs a glimpse of blessedness, which might
+ sustain them afterwards in the terrible struggles of death. True it is
+ that there are pentecostal hours when the soul is surrounded by a kind
+ of glory, and we are tempted to make tabernacles upon the Mount, as if
+ life were meant for rest; but out of that very cloud there comes a
+ voice telling of the Cross, and bidding us descend into the common
+ world again, to simple duties and humble life. This very principle
+ seems to be contained in the text. The apostle's remedy for this
+ artificial feeling is--"Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns,
+ and spiritual songs."
+
+ Strange remedy! Occupation fit for children--too simple far for men:
+ as astonishing as the remedy prescribed by the prophet to Naaman--to
+ wash in simple water, and be clean; yet therein lies a very important
+ truth. In ancient medical phraseology, herbs possessed of healing
+ natures were called simples: in God's laboratory, all things that heal
+ are simple--all natural enjoyments--all the deepest--are simple too.
+ At night, man fills his banquet-hall with the glare of splendour which
+ fevers as well as fires the heart; and at the very same hour, as if by
+ intended contrast, the quiet stars of God steal forth, shedding,
+ together with the deepest feeling, the profoundest sense of calm. One
+ from whose knowledge of the sources of natural feeling there lies
+ almost no appeal, has said that to him,
+
+    "The meanest flower that blows can give
+     Thoughts that too often lie too deep for tears."
+
+ This is exceedingly remarkable in the life of Christ. No contrast is
+ more striking than that presented by the thought, that that deep and
+ beautiful Life was spent in the midst of mad Jerusalem. Remember the
+ Son of man standing quietly in the porches of Bethesda, when the
+ streets all around were filled with the revelry of innumerable
+ multitudes, who had come to be present at the annual feast. Remember
+ Him pausing to weep over his country's doomed metropolis, unexcited,
+ while the giddy crowd around Him were shouting "Hosanna to the Son of
+ David!" Remember Him in Pilate's judgment-hall, meek, self-possessed,
+ standing in the serenity of Truth, while all around Him was
+ agitation--hesitation in the breast of Pilate, hatred in the bosom of
+ the Pharisees, and consternation in the heart of the disciples.
+
+ And this in truth, is what we want: we want the vision of a calmer
+ and simpler Beauty, to tranquillize us in the midst of artificial
+ tastes--we want the draught of a purer spring to cool the flame of our
+ excited life;--we want in other words, the Spirit of the Life of
+ Christ, simple, natural, with power to calm and soothe the feelings
+ which it rouses: the fulness of the Spirit which can never intoxicate!
+
+
+
+
+ X.
+
+ _Preached August 11, 1850._
+
+ PURITY.
+
+
+   "Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled
+    and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and
+    conscience is defiled."--Titus i. 15.
+
+ For the evils of this world there are two classes of remedies--one is
+ the world's, the other is God's. The world proposes to remedy evil by
+ adjusting the circumstances of this life to man's desires. The world
+ says, give us a perfect set of _circumstances_, and then we shall have
+ a set of perfect men. This principle lies at the root of the system
+ called Socialism. Socialism proceeds on the principle that all moral
+ and even physical evil arises from unjust laws. If the cause be
+ remedied, the effect will be good. But Christianity throws aside all
+ that as merely chimerical. It proves that the fault is not in outward
+ circumstances, but in ourselves. Like the wise physician, who, instead
+ of busying himself with transcendental theories to improve the
+ climate, and the outward circumstances of man, endeavours to relieve
+ and get rid of the tendencies of disease which are from within,
+ Christianity, leaving all outward circumstances to ameliorate
+ themselves, fastens its attention on the spirit which has to deal with
+ them. Christ has declared that the kingdom of heaven is from within.
+ He said to the Pharisee, "Ye make clean the outside of the cup and
+ platter, but within ye are full of extortion and excess." The remedy
+ for all this is a large and liberal charity, so overflowing that "Unto
+ the pure all things are pure." To internal purity all external things
+ _become_ pure. The principle that St. Paul has here laid down is, that
+ each man is the creator of his own world; he walks in a universe of
+ his own creation.
+
+ As the free air is to one out of health the cause of cold and diseased
+ lungs, so to the healthy man it is a source of greater vigour. The
+ rotten fruit is sweet to the worm, but nauseous to the palate of man.
+ It is the same air and the same fruit acting differently upon
+ different beings. To different men a different world--to one all
+ pollution--to another all purity. To the noble all things are noble,
+ to the mean all things are contemptible.
+
+ The subject divides itself into two parts.
+
+    I. The apostle's principle.
+   II. The application of the principle.
+
+ Here we have the same principle again; each man creates his own world.
+ Take it in its simplest form. The eye creates the outward world it
+ sees. We see not things as they are, but as God has made the eye to
+ receive them.
+
+ In its strictest sense, the creation of a new man is the creation of a
+ new universe. Conceive an eye so constructed as that the planets and
+ all within them should be minutely seen, and all that is near should
+ be dim and invisible like things seen through a telescope, or as we
+ see through a magnifying glass the plumage of the butterfly, and the
+ bloom upon the peach; then it is manifestly clear that we have called
+ into existence actually a new _creation_, and not new objects. The
+ mind's eye creates a world for itself.
+
+ Again, the visible world presents a different aspect to each
+ individual man. You will say that the same things you see are seen by
+ all--that the forest, the valley, the flood, and the sea, are the same
+ to all; and yet all these things so seen, to different minds are a
+ myriad of different universes. One man sees in that noble river an
+ emblem of eternity; he closes his lips and feels that GOD is
+ there. Another sees nothing in it but a very convenient road for
+ transporting his spices, silks, and merchandise. To one this world
+ appears useful, to another beautiful. Whence comes the difference?
+ From the soul within us. It can make of this world a vast chaos--"a
+ mighty maze without a plan;" or a mere machine--a collection of
+ lifeless forces; or it can make it the Living Vesture of GOD,
+ the tissue through which He can become visible to us. In the spirit in
+ which we look on it the world is an arena for mere self-advancement,
+ or a place for noble deeds, in which self is forgotten, and
+ GOD is all.
+
+ Observe, this effect is traceable even in that produced by our
+ different and changeful moods. We make and unmake a world more than
+ once in the space of a single day. In trifling moods all seems
+ trivial. In serious moods all seems solemn. Is the song of the
+ nightingale merry or plaintive? Is it the voice of joy or the
+ harbinger of gloom? Sometimes one, and sometimes the other, according
+ to our different moods. We hear the ocean furious or exulting. The
+ thunder-claps are grand, or angry, according to the different states
+ of our mind. Nay, the very church bells chime sadly or merrily, as our
+ associations determine. They speak the language of our passing moods.
+ The young adventurer revolving sanguine plans upon the milestone,
+ hears them speak to him as God did to Hagar in the wilderness, bidding
+ him back to perseverance and greatness. The soul spreads its own hue
+ over everything; the shroud or wedding-garment of nature is woven in
+ the loom of our own feelings. This universe is the express image and
+ direct counterpart of the souls that dwell in it. Be noble-minded, and
+ all Nature replies--I am divine, the child of God--be thou too, His
+ child, and noble. Be mean, and all Nature dwindles into a contemptible
+ smallness.
+
+ In the second place, there are two ways in which this principle is
+ true. To the pure, all things and all persons are pure, because their
+ purity makes all seem pure.
+
+ There are some who go through life complaining of this world; they say
+ they have found nothing but treachery and deceit; the poor are
+ ungrateful, and the rich are selfish, Yet we do not find such the best
+ men. Experience tells us that each man most keenly and unerringly
+ detects in others the vice with which he is most familiar himself.
+
+ Persons seem to each man what he is himself. One who suspects
+ hypocrisy in the world is rarely transparent; the man constantly on
+ the watch for cheating is generally dishonest; he who suspects
+ impurity is prurient. This is the principle to which Christ alludes
+ when he says, "Give alms of such things as he have; and behold all
+ things are clean unto you."
+
+
+ Have a large charity! Large "charity hopeth all things." Look at that
+ sublime apostle who saw the churches of Ephesus and Thessalonica pure,
+ because he saw them in his own large love, and painted them, not as
+ they were, but as his heart filled up the picture; he viewed them in
+ the light of his own nobleness, as representations of his own purity.
+
+ Once more, to the pure all _things_ are pure, as well as all persons.
+ That which is natural lies not in things, but in the minds of men.
+ There is a difference between prudery and modesty. Prudery detects
+ wrong where no wrong is; the wrong lies in the thoughts, and not in
+ the objects. There is something of over-sensitiveness and
+ over-delicacy which shows not innocence, but an inflammable
+ imagination. And men of the world cannot understand that those
+ subjects and thoughts which to them are full of torture, can be
+ harmless, suggesting nothing evil to the pure in heart.
+
+ Here however, beware! No sentence of Scripture is more frequently in
+ the lips of persons who permit themselves much license, than the text,
+ "To the pure, all things are pure." Yes, all things natural, but not
+ artificial--scenes which pamper the tastes, which excite the senses.
+ Innocence feels healthily. To it all nature is pure. But, just as the
+ dove trembles at the approach of the hawk, and the young calf shudders
+ at the lion never seen before, so innocence shrinks instinctively from
+ what is wrong by the same divine instinct. If that which is wrong
+ seems pure, then the heart is not pure but vitiated. To the right
+ minded all that is right in the course of this world seems pure.
+ Abraham, looking forward to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah,
+ entreated that it might be averted, and afterwards acquiesced! To the
+ disordered mind "all things are out of course." This is the spirit
+ which pervades the whole of the Ecclesiastes. There were two things
+ which were perpetually suggesting themselves to the mind of Solomon;
+ the intolerable sameness of this world, and the constant desire for
+ change. And yet that same world, spread before the serene eye of God,
+ was pronounced to be all "very good."
+
+ This disordered universe is the picture of your own mind. We make a
+ wilderness by encouraging artificial wants, by creating sensitive and
+ selfish feelings; then we project everything stamped with the impress
+ of our own feelings, and we gather the whole of creation into our own
+ pained being--"the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain
+ together until now." The world you complain of as impure and wrong is
+ not God's world, but your world; the blight, the dullness, the blank,
+ are all your own. The light which is in you has become darkness, and
+ therefore the light itself is dark.
+
+ Again, to the pure, all things not only seem pure, but are really so
+ because they are made such.
+
+ 1. As regards persons. It is a marvellous thing to see how a pure and
+ innocent heart purifies all that it approaches. The most ferocious
+ natures are soothed and tamed by innocence. And so with human beings,
+ there is a delicacy so pure, that vicious men in its presence become
+ almost pure; all of purity which is in them is brought out; like
+ attaches itself to like. The pure heart becomes a centre of
+ attraction, round which similar atoms gather, and from which
+ dissimilar ones are repelled. A corrupt heart elicits in an hour all
+ that is bad in us; a spiritual one brings out and draws to itself all
+ that is best and purest. Such was Christ. He stood in the world, the
+ Light of the world, to which all sparks of light gradually gathered.
+ He stood in the presence of impurity, and men became pure. Note this
+ in the history of Zaccheus. In answer to the invitation of the Son of
+ man, he says, "Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor,
+ and if I have done wrong to any man I restore him fourfold." So also
+ the Scribe, "Well, Master, thou hast well said, there is one God, and
+ there is none other than He." To the pure Saviour, all was pure. He
+ was lifted up on high, and drew all men unto Him.
+
+ Lastly, all situations are pure to the pure. According to the world,
+ some professions are reckoned honourable, and some dishonourable. Men
+ judge according to a standard merely conventional, and not by that of
+ moral rectitude. Yet it was in truth, the men who were in these
+ situations which made them such. In the days of the Redeemer, the
+ publican's occupation was a degraded one, merely because low base men
+ filled that place. But since He was born into the world a poor,
+ labouring man, poverty is noble and dignified, and toil is honourable.
+ To the man who feels that "the king's daughter is all glorious
+ within," no outward situation can seem inglorious or impure.
+
+ There are three words which express almost the same thing, but whose
+ meaning is entirely different. These are, the gibbet, the scaffold,
+ and the cross. So far as we know, none die on the gibbet but men of
+ dishonourable and base life. The scaffold suggests to our minds the
+ noble deaths of our greatest martyrs. The cross was once a gibbet, but
+ it is now the highest name we have, because He hung on it. Christ has
+ purified and ennobled the cross. This principle runs through life. It
+ is not the situation which makes the man, but the man who makes the
+ situation. The slave may be a freeman. The monarch may be a slave.
+ Situations are noble or ignoble, as we make them.
+
+ From all this subject we learn to understand two things. Hence we
+ understand the Fall. When man fell, the world fell with him. All
+ creation received a shock. Thorns, briars, and thistles, sprang up.
+ They were there before, but to the now restless and impatient hands of
+ men they became obstacles and weeds. Death, which must ever have
+ existed as a form of dissolution, a passing from one state to another,
+ became a curse; the sting of death was sin--unchanged in itself, it
+ changed in man. A dark, heavy cloud, rested on it--the shadow of his
+ own guilty heart.
+
+ Hence too, we understand the Millennium. The Bible says that these
+ things are not to be for ever. There are glorious things to come. Just
+ as in my former illustration, the alteration of the eye called new
+ worlds into being, so now nothing more is needed than to re-create the
+ soul--the mirror on which all things are reflected. Then is realized
+ the prophecy of Isaiah, "Behold, I create all things new," "new
+ heavens and a new earth."
+
+ The conclusion of this verse proves to us why all these new creations
+ were called into being--"wherein dwelleth righteousness." To be
+ righteous makes all things new. We do not want a new world, we want
+ _new hearts_. Let the Spirit of God purify society, and to the pure
+ all things will be pure. The earth will put off the look of weariness
+ and gloom which it has worn so long, and then the glorious language of
+ the prophets will be fulfilled--"The forests will break out with
+ singing, and the desert will blossom as the rose."
+
+
+
+
+ XI.
+
+ _Preached February 9, 1851._
+
+ UNITY AND PEACE.
+
+
+   "And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also
+    ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful."--Colossians iii.
+    15.
+
+ There is something in these words that might surprise us. It might
+ surprise us to find that peace is urged on us as a duty. There can be
+ no duty except where there is a matter of obedience; and it might seem
+ to us that peace is a something over which we have no power. It is a
+ privilege to have peace, but it would appear as if there were no power
+ of control within the mind of a man able to ensure that peace for
+ itself. "Yet," says the apostle, "let the peace of God rule in your
+ hearts."
+
+ It would seem to _us_ as if peace were as far beyond our own control
+ as happiness. Unquestionably, we are not masters on our own
+ responsibility of our own happiness. Happiness is the gratification
+ of every innocent desire; but it is not given to us to ensure the
+ gratification of every desire; therefore, happiness is not a duty, and
+ it is nowhere written in the Scripture, "You must be happy." But we
+ find it written by the apostle Paul, "Be ye thankful," implying
+ therefore, that peace is a duty. The apostle says, "Let the peace of
+ God rule in your hearts;" from which we infer that peace is
+ attainable, and within the reach of our own wills; that if there be
+ not repose there is blame; if there be not peace but discord in the
+ heart, there is something wrong.
+
+ This is the more surprising when we remember the circumstances under
+ which these words were written. They were written from Rome, where the
+ apostle lay in prison, daily and hourly expecting a violent death.
+ They were written in days of persecution, when false doctrines were
+ rife, and religious animosities fierce; they were written in an
+ epistle abounding with the most earnest and eager controversy, whereby
+ it is therefore implied, that according to the conception of the
+ Apostle Paul, it is possible for a Christian to live at the very point
+ of death, and in the very midst of danger--that it is possible for him
+ to be breathing the atmosphere of religious controversy--it is
+ possible for him to be surrounded by bitterness, and even take up the
+ pen of controversy himself--and yet his soul shall not lose its own
+ deep peace, nor the power of the infinite repose and rest of God.
+ Joined with the apostle's command to be at peace, we find another
+ doctrine, the doctrine of the unity of the Church of Christ. "To the
+ which ye are called in one body," in order that ye may be at peace; in
+ other words, the unity of the Church of Christ is the basis on which,
+ and on which alone, can be built the possibility of the inward peace
+ of individuals.
+
+
+ And thus, my Christian brethren, our subject divides itself into these
+ two simple branches: in the first place, the unity of the Church of
+ Christ; in the second place, the inward peace of the members of that
+ Church.
+
+
+ The first subject then, which we have to consider, is the Unity of the
+ Church of Christ.
+
+ And the first thing we have to do is both clearly to define and
+ understand the meaning of that word "unity." I distinguish the unity
+ of comprehensiveness from the unity of mere singularity. The word one,
+ as oneness, is an ambiguous word. There is a oneness belonging to the
+ army as well as to every soldier in the army. The army is one, and
+ that is the oneness of unity; the soldier is one, but that is the
+ oneness of the unit. There is a difference between the oneness of a
+ body and the oneness of a member of that body. The body is many, and a
+ unity of manifold comprehensiveness. An arm or a member of a body is
+ one, but that is the unity of singularity. Without unity my Christian
+ brethren, peace must be impossible. There can be no peace in the one
+ single soldier of an army. You do not speak of the harmony of one
+ member of a body. There is peace in an army, or in a kingdom joined
+ with other kingdoms; there is harmony in a member united with other
+ members. There is no peace in a unit, there is no possibility of the
+ harmony of that which is but one in itself. In order to have peace you
+ must have a higher unity, and therein consists the unity of God's own
+ Being. The unity of God is the basis of the peace of God--meaning by
+ the unity of God the comprehensive manifoldness of God, and not merely
+ the singularity in the number of God's Being. When the Unitarian
+ speaks of God as one, he means simply singularity of number. We mean
+ that He is of manifold comprehensiveness--that there is unity between
+ His various powers. Amongst the personalities or powers of His Being
+ there is no discord, but perfect harmony, entire union; and that
+ brethren, is repose, the blessedness of infinite rest, that belongs to
+ the unity of God--"I and my Father are one."
+
+ The second thing which we observe respecting this unity, is that it
+ subsists between things not similar or alike, but things dissimilar or
+ unlike. There is no unity in the separate atoms of a sand-pit; they
+ are things similar; there is an aggregate or collection of them. Even
+ if they be hardened in a mass they are not one, they do not form a
+ unity: they are simply a mass. There is no unity in a flock of sheep:
+ it is simply a repetition of a number of things similar to each other.
+ If you strike off from a thousand five hundred, or if you strike off
+ nine hundred, there is nothing lost of unity, because there never was
+ unity. A flock of one thousand or a flock of five is just as much a
+ flock as any other number.
+
+ On the other hand, let us turn to the unity of peace which the apostle
+ speaks of, and we find it is something different; it is made up of
+ dissimilar members, without which dissimilarity there could be no
+ unity. Each is imperfect in itself, each supplying what it has in
+ itself to the deficiencies and wants of the other members. So, if you
+ strike off from this body any one member, if you cut off an arm, or
+ tear out an eye, instantly the unity is destroyed; you have no longer
+ an entire and perfect body, there is nothing but a remnant of the
+ whole, a part, a portion; no unity whatever.
+
+ This will help us to understand the unity of the Church of Christ. If
+ the ages and the centuries of the Church of Christ, if the different
+ Churches whereof it was composed, if the different members of each
+ Church, were similar--one in this, that they all held the same views,
+ all spoke the same words, all viewed truth from the same side, they
+ would have no unity; but would simply be an aggregate of atoms, the
+ sand-pit over again--units, multiplied it may be to infinity, but you
+ would have no real unity, and therefore, no peace. No unity,--for
+ wherein consists the unity of the Church of Christ? The unity of ages,
+ brethren, consists it in this--that every age is merely the repetition
+ of another age, and that which is held in one is held in another?
+ Precisely in the same way, that is _not_ the unity of the ages of the
+ Christian Church.
+
+ Every century and every age has held a different truth, has put forth
+ different fragments of the truth. In early ages for example, by
+ martyrdom was proclaimed the eternal sanctity of truth, rather than
+ give up which a man must lose his life.... In our own age it is quite
+ plain those are not the themes which engage us, or the truths which we
+ put in force now. This age, by its revolutions, its socialisms,
+ proclaims another truth--the brotherhood of the Church of Christ; so
+ that the unity of ages subsists on the same principle as that of the
+ unity of the human body: and just as every separate ray--the violet,
+ the blue, and the orange--make up the white ray, so these manifold
+ fragments of truth blended together make up the one entire and perfect
+ white ray of Truth. And with regard to individuals, taking the case of
+ the Reformation, it was given to one Church to proclaim that salvation
+ is a thing received, and not local; to another to proclaim
+ justification by faith; to another the sovereignty of God; to another
+ the supremacy of the Scriptures; to another the right of private
+ judgment, the duty of the individual conscience. Unite these all, and
+ then you have the Reformation one--one in spite of manifoldness; those
+ very varieties by which they have approached this proving them to be
+ one. Disjoint them and then you have some miserable sect--Calvinism,
+ or Unitarianism; the unity has dispersed. And so again with the unity
+ of the Churches. Whereby would we produce unity? Would we force on
+ other Churches our Anglicanism? Would we have our thirty-nine
+ articles, our creeds, our prayers, our rules and regulations, accepted
+ by every Church throughout the world? If that were unity, then in
+ consistency you are bound to demand that in God's world there shall be
+ but one colour instead of the manifold harmony and accordance of which
+ this universe is full; that there should be but one chaunted note--the
+ one which we conceive most beautiful. This is not the unity of the
+ Church of God. The various Churches advance different doctrines and
+ truths. The Church of Germany something different from those of the
+ Church of England. The Church of Rome, even in its idolatry, proclaims
+ truths which we would be glad to seize. By the worship of the Virgin,
+ the purity of women; by the rigour of ecclesiastical ordinances, the
+ sanctity and permanence of eternal order; by the very priesthood
+ itself, the necessity of the guidance of man by man. Nay, even the
+ dissenting bodies themselves--mere atoms of aggregates as they
+ are--stand forward and proclaim at least this truth, the separateness
+ of the individual conscience, the right of independence.
+
+ Peace subsists not between things exactly alike. We do not speak of
+ peace in a single country. We say peace subsists between different
+ countries where war _might_ be. There can be no _peace_ between two
+ men who agree in everything; peace subsists between those who differ.
+ There is no peace between Baptist and Baptist; so far as they are
+ Baptists, there is perfect accordance and agreement. There may be
+ peace between you and the Romanist, the Jew, or the Dissenter, because
+ there are angles of sharpness which might come into collision if they
+ were not subdued and softened by the power of love. It was given to
+ the Apostle Paul to discern that this was the ground of unity. In the
+ Church of Christ he saw men with different views, and he said So far
+ from that variety destroying unity, it was the only ground of unity.
+ There are many doctrines, all of them different, but let those
+ varieties be blended together--in other words, let there be the peace
+ of love, and then you will have unity.
+
+ Once more this unity, whereof the apostle speaks, consists in
+ submission to one single influence or spirit. Wherein consists the
+ unity of the body? Consists it not in this,--that there is one life
+ uniting, making all the separate members one? Take away the life, and
+ the members fall to pieces: they are no longer one; decomposition
+ begins, and every element separates, no longer having any principle of
+ cohesion or union with the rest.
+
+ There is not one of us who, at some time or other, has not been struck
+ with the power there is in a single living influence. Have we never
+ for instance, felt the power wherewith the orator unites and holds
+ together a thousand men as if they were but one; with flashing eyes
+ and throbbing hearts, all attentive to his words, and by the
+ difference of their attitudes, by the variety of the expressions of
+ their countenances testifying to the unity of that single living
+ feeling with which he had inspired them? Whether it be indignation,
+ whether it be compassion, or whether it be enthusiasm, that one living
+ influence made the thousand for the time, one. Have we not heard how,
+ even in this century in which we live, the various and conflicting
+ feelings of the people of this country were concentrated into one,
+ when the threat of foreign invasion had fused down and broken the
+ edges of conflict and variance, and from shore to shore was heard one
+ cry of terrible defiance, and the different classes and orders of this
+ manifold and mighty England were as one? Have we not heard how the
+ mighty winds hold together, as if one, the various atoms of the
+ desert, so that they rush like a living thing, across the wilderness?
+ And this, brethren, is the unity of the Church of Christ, the
+ subjection to the one uniting spirit of its God.
+
+ It will be said, in reply to this, "Why this is mere enthusiasm. It
+ may be very beautiful in theory, but it is impossible in practice. It
+ is mere enthusiasm to believe, that while all these varieties of
+ conflicting opinion remain, we can have unity; it is mere enthusiasm
+ to think that so long as men's minds reckon on a thing like unity,
+ there can be a thing like oneness." And our reply is, Give us the
+ Spirit of God, and we shall be one. You cannot produce a unity by all
+ the rigour of your ecclesiastical discipline. You cannot produce a
+ unity by consenting in some form of expression such as this, "Let us
+ agree to differ." You cannot produce a unity by Parliamentary
+ regulations or enactments, bidding back the waves of what is called
+ aggression. Give us the living Spirit of God, and we shall be one.
+
+ Once on this earth was exhibited, as it were, a specimen of perfect
+ anticipation of such an unity, when the "rushing mighty wind" of
+ Pentecost came down in the tongues of fire and sat on every man; when
+ the Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in
+ Mesopotamia, the "Cretes and Arabians," the Jew and the Gentile, each
+ speaking one language, yet blended and fused into one unity by
+ enthusiastic love, heard one another speak as it were, in one
+ language, the manifold works of God; when the spirit of giving was
+ substituted for the spirit of mere rivalry and competition, and no man
+ said the things he had were his own, but all shared in common. Let
+ that spirit come again, as come it will, and come it must; and then,
+ beneath the influences of a mightier love, we shall have a nobler and
+ a more real unity.
+
+
+ We pass on now, in the second place, to consider the _individual
+ peace_ resulting from this unity. As we have endeavoured to explain
+ what is meant by unity, so now, let us endeavour to understand what is
+ meant by peace. Peace then, is the opposite of passion, and of labour,
+ toil, and effort. Peace is that state in which there are no desires
+ madly demanding an impossible gratification; that state in which there
+ is no misery, no remorse, no sting. And there are but three things
+ which can break that peace. The first is discord between the mind of
+ man and the lot which he is called on to inherit; the second is
+ discord between the affections and powers of the soul; and the third
+ is doubt of the rectitude, and justice, and love, wherewith this world
+ is ordered. But where these things exist not, where a man is contented
+ with his lot, where the flesh is subdued to the spirit, and where he
+ believes and feels with all his heart that all is right, there is
+ peace, and to this says the apostle, "ye are called,"--the grand,
+ peculiar call of Christianity,--the call, "Come unto Me, all ye that
+ labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
+
+ This was the dying bequest of Christ: "Peace I leave with you, my
+ peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth give I unto you:" and
+ therein lies one of the greatest truths of the blessed and eternal
+ character of Christianity, that it applies to, and satisfies the very
+ deepest want and craving of our nature. The deepest want of man is not
+ a desire for happiness, but a craving for peace; not a wish for the
+ gratification of every desire, but a craving for the repose of
+ acquiescence in the will of God; and it is this which Christianity
+ promises. Christianity does not promise happiness, but it does promise
+ peace. "In the world ye shall have tribulation," saith our Master,
+ "but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." Now, let us look
+ more closely, into this peace.
+
+ The first thing we see respecting it is, that it is called God's
+ peace. God is rest: the infinite nature of God is infinite repose. The
+ "_I am_" of God is contrasted with the _I am become_ of all other
+ things. Everything else is in a state of _becoming_, God is in a state
+ of _Being_. The acorn has become the plant, and the plant has become
+ the oak. The child has become the man, and the man has become good, or
+ wise, or whatever else it may be. God ever _is_; and I pray you once
+ more to observe, that this peace of God, this eternal rest in the
+ Almighty Being, arises out of His unity. Not because He is an unit,
+ but because He is an unity. There is no discord between the powers and
+ attributes of the mind of God; there is no discord between His justice
+ and His love; there is no discord demanding some miserable expedient
+ to unite them together, such as some theologians imagined when they
+ described the sacrifice and atonement of our Redeemer by saying, it is
+ the clever expedient whereby God reconciles His justice with His love.
+ God's justice and love are one. Infinite justice must be infinite
+ love. Justice is but another sign of love. The infinite rest of the
+ "_I am_" of God arises out of the harmony of His attributes.
+
+ The next thing we observe respecting this divine peace which has come
+ down to man on earth is, that it is a _living peace_. Brethren, let us
+ distinguish. There are several things called peace which are by no
+ means divine or Godlike peace. There is peace, for example, in the man
+ who lives for and enjoys self, with no nobler aspiration goading him
+ on to make him feel the rest of God; that is peace, but that is merely
+ the peace of toil. There is rest on the surface of the caverned lake,
+ which no wind can stir; but that is the peace of stagnation. There is
+ peace amongst the stones which have fallen and rolled down the
+ mountain's side, and lie there quietly at rest; but that is the peace
+ of inanity. There is peace in the hearts of enemies who lie together,
+ side by side, in the same trench of the battle-field, the animosities
+ of their souls silenced at length, and their hands no longer clenched
+ in deadly enmity against each other; but that is the peace of death.
+ If our peace be but the peace of the sensualist satisfying pleasure,
+ if it be but the peace of mental torpor and inaction, the peace of
+ apathy, or the peace of the soul dead in trespasses and sins, we may
+ whisper to ourselves, "Peace, peace," but there will be no peace;
+ _there_ is not the peace of unity nor the peace of God, for the peace
+ of God is the living peace of love.
+
+ The next thing we observe respecting this peace is, that it is the
+ manifestation of power--it is the peace which comes from an inward
+ power: "Let the peace of God," says the Apostle, "rule within your
+ hearts." For it is a power, the manifestation of strength. There is no
+ peace except there is the possibility of the opposite of peace
+ although now restrained and controlled. You do not speak of the peace
+ of a grain of sand, because it cannot be otherwise than merely
+ insignificant, and at rest. You do not speak of the peace of a mere
+ pond; you speak of the peace of the sea, because there is the opposite
+ of peace implied, there is power and strength. And this brethren, is
+ the real character of the peace in the mind and soul of man. Oh! we
+ make a great mistake when we say there is strength in passion, in the
+ exhibition of emotion. Passion, and emotion, and all those outward
+ manifestations, prove, not strength, but weakness. If the passions of
+ a man are strong, it proves the man himself is weak, if he cannot
+ restrain or control his passions. The real strength and majesty of the
+ soul of man is calmness, the manifestation of strength; "the peace of
+ God" ruling; the word of Christ saying to the inward storms "Peace!"
+ and there is "a great calm."
+
+ Lastly, the peace of which the apostle speaks is the peace that is
+ received--the peace of reception. You will observe, throughout this
+ passage the apostle speaks of a something received, and not done: "Let
+ the peace of God rule in your hearts." It is throughout receptive, but
+ by no means inactive. And according to this, there are two kinds of
+ peace; the peace of obedience--"Let the peace of God rule" you--and
+ there is the peace of gratefulness--"Be ye thankful." Very great,
+ brethren, is the peace of obedience: when a man has his lot fixed, and
+ his mind made up, and he sees his destiny before him, and quietly
+ acquiesces in it; his spirit is at rest. Great and deep is the peace
+ of the soldier to whom has been assigned even an untenable position,
+ with the command, "Keep that, even if you die," and he obediently
+ remains to die.
+
+ Great was the peace of Elisha--very, very calm are those words by
+ which he expressed his acquiescence in the divine will. "Knowest
+ thou," said the troubled, excited, and restless men around
+ him--"Knowest thou that the Lord will take away thy master from thy
+ head to-day?" He answered, "Yea, I know it; hold ye your peace." Then
+ there is the other peace, it is the peace of gratefulness: "Be ye
+ thankful." It is that peace which the Israelites had when these words
+ were spoken to them on the shores of the Red Sea, while the bodies of
+ their enemies floated past them, destroyed, but not by them: "Stand
+ still and see the salvation of the Lord."
+
+ And here brethren, is another mistake of ours: we look on salvation as
+ a thing to be done, and not received. In God's salvation we can do but
+ little, but there is a great deal to be received. We are here, not
+ merely to act, but to be acted upon. "Let the peace of God rule in
+ your hearts;" there is a peace that will enter there, if you do not
+ thwart it; there is a Spirit that will take possession of your soul,
+ provided that you do not quench it. In this world we are recipients,
+ not creators. In obedience and in gratefulness, and the infinite peace
+ of God in the soul of man, is alone to be found deep calm repose.
+
+
+
+
+ XII.
+
+ _Preached January 4, 1852._
+
+ THE CHRISTIAN AIM AND MOTIVE.
+
+   "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven
+    is perfect."--Matthew v. 48.
+
+
+ There are two erroneous views held respecting the character of the
+ Sermon on the Mount. The first may be called an error of
+ worldly-minded men, the other an error of mistaken religionists.
+ Worldly-minded men--men that is, in whom the devotional feeling is but
+ feeble--are accustomed to look upon morality as the whole of religion;
+ and they suppose that the Sermon on the Mount was designed only to
+ explain and enforce correct principles of morality. It tells of human
+ duties and human proprieties, and an attention to these, they
+ maintain, is the only religion which is required by it. Strange my
+ Christian brethren, that men, whose lives are least remarkable for
+ superhuman excellence, should be the very men to refer most frequently
+ to those sublime comments on Christian principle, and should so
+ confidently conclude from thence, that themselves are right and all
+ others are wrong. Yet so it is.
+
+ The other is an error of mistaken religionists. They sometimes regard
+ the Sermon on the Mount as if it were a collection of moral precepts,
+ and consequently, strictly speaking, not Christianity at all. To them
+ it seems as if the chief value, the chief intention of the discourse,
+ was to show the breadth and spirituality of the requirements of the
+ law of Moses--its chief religious significance, to show the utter
+ impossibility of fulfilling the law, and thus to lead to the necessary
+ inference that justification must be by faith alone. And so they would
+ not scruple to assert that, in the highest sense of that term, it is
+ not Christianity at all, but only preparatory to it--a kind of
+ spiritual Judaism; and that the higher and more developed principles
+ of Christianity are to be found in the writings of the apostles.
+ Before we proceed further, we would remark here that it seems
+ extremely startling to say that He who came to this world expressly to
+ preach the Gospel, should, in the most elaborate of all His
+ discourses, omit to do so: it is indeed something more than startling,
+ it is absolutely revolting to suppose that the letters of those who
+ spoke _of_ Christ, should contain a more perfectly-developed, a freer
+ and fuller Christianity than is to be found in Christ's own words.
+
+ Now you will observe that these two parties, so opposed to each other
+ in their general religious views, are agreed in this--that the Sermon
+ on the Mount is nothing but morality. The man of the world says--"It
+ is morality only, and that is the whole of religion." The mistaken
+ religionist says--"It is morality only, not the entire essence of
+ Christianity." In opposition to both these views, we maintain that the
+ Sermon on the Mount contains the sum and substance of
+ Christianity--the very chief matter of the gospel of our Redeemer.
+
+ It is not, you will observe, a pure and spiritualized Judaism; it is
+ contrasted with Judaism again and again by Him who spoke it. Quoting
+ the words of Moses, he affirmed, "So was it spoken by them of old
+ time, but _I say unto you_--" For example, "Thou shalt not forswear
+ thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths." That is
+ Judaism. "But I say unto you swear not at all, but let your yea be
+ yea, and your nay nay." That is Christianity. And that which is the
+ essential peculiarity of this Christianity lies in these two things.
+ First of all, that the morality which it teaches is _disinterested_
+ goodness--goodness not for the sake of the blessing that follows it,
+ but for its own sake, and because it is right. "Love your enemies," is
+ the Gospel precept. Why?--Because if you love them you shall be
+ blessed; and if you do not cursed? No; but "Love your enemies, bless
+ them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them
+ which despitefully use you and persecute you, that ye may be the
+ children of"--that is, may be like--"your Father which is in Heaven."
+ The second essential peculiarity of Christianity--and this, too, is an
+ essential peculiarity of this Sermon--is, that it teaches and enforces
+ the law of self-sacrifice. "If thy right eye offend thee pluck it out;
+ if thy right hand offend thee cut it off." This, brethren, is the law
+ of self-sacrifice--the very law and spirit of the blessed cross of
+ Christ.
+
+ How deeply and essentially Christian, then, this Sermon on the Mount
+ is, we shall understand if we are enabled in any measure to reach the
+ meaning and spirit of the single passage which I have taken as my
+ text. It tells two things--the Christian aim and the Christian motive.
+
+ 1st. The Christian aim--perfection. 2nd. The Christian
+ motive--because it is right and Godlike to be perfect.
+
+ I. The Christian aim is this--to be perfect. "Be ye therefore
+ perfect." Now distinguish this, I pray you, from mere worldly
+ morality. It is not conformity to a creed that is here required, but
+ aspiration after a _state_. It is not demanded of us to perform a
+ number of duties, but to yield obedience to a certain spiritual law.
+ But let us endeavour to explain this more fully. What is the meaning
+ of this expression, "Be ye perfect?" Why is it that in this discourse,
+ instead of being commanded to perform religious duties, we are
+ commanded to think of being like God? Will not that inflame our pride,
+ and increase our natural vainglory? Now the nature and possibility of
+ human perfection, what it is and how it is possible, are both
+ contained in one single expression in the text. "Even as your Father
+ which is in Heaven is perfect." The relationship between father and
+ son implies consanguinity, likeness, similarity of character and
+ nature. God _made_ the insect, the stone, the lily; but God is not the
+ Father of the caterpillar, the lily, or the stone.
+
+ When therefore, God is said to be our Father, something more is
+ implied in this than that God created man. And so when the Son of Man
+ came proclaiming the fact that we are the children of God, it was in
+ the truest sense a revelation. He told us that the nature of God
+ resembles the nature of man, that love in God is not a mere figure of
+ speech, but means the same thing as love in us, and that divine anger
+ is the same thing as human anger divested of its emotions and
+ imperfections. When we are commanded to be like God, it implies that
+ God has that nature of which we have already the germs. And this has
+ been taught by the incarnation of the Redeemer. Things absolutely
+ dissimilar in their nature cannot mingle. Water cannot coalesce with
+ fire--water cannot mix with oil. If, then, Humanity and Divinity were
+ united in the person of the Redeemer, it follows that there must be
+ something kindred between the two, or else the incarnation had been
+ impossible. So that the incarnation is the realization of man's
+ perfection.
+
+ But let us examine more deeply this assertion, that _our_ nature is
+ kindred with that of God--for if man has not a nature kindred to
+ God's, then a demand such as that, "Be ye the children of"--that is,
+ like--"God," is but a mockery of man. We say then, in the first place,
+ that in the truest sense of the word man can be a creator. The beaver
+ _makes_ its hole, the bee _makes_ its cell; man alone has the power of
+ _creating_. The mason _makes_, the architect _creates_. In the same
+ sense that we say God created the universe, we say that man is also a
+ creator. The creation of the universe was the Eternal Thought taking
+ reality. And thought taking expression is also a creation. Whenever
+ therefore, there is a living thought shaping itself in word or in
+ stone, there is there a creation. And therefore it is, that the
+ simplest effort of what we call genius is prized infinitely more than
+ the most elaborate performances which are done by mere workmanship,
+ and for this reason: that the one is produced by an effort of power
+ which we share with the beaver and the bee, that of _making_, and the
+ other by a faculty and power which man alone shares with God.
+
+ Here however, you will observe another difficulty. It will be said at
+ once--there is something in this comparison of man with God which
+ looks like blasphemy, because one is finite and the other
+ infinite--man is bounded, God boundless; and to speak of resemblance
+ and kindred between these two, is to speak of resemblance and kindred
+ between two natures essentially different. But this is precisely the
+ argument which is brought by the Socinians against the doctrine of
+ the incarnation; and we are bound to add that the Socinian argument is
+ right, unless there be the similarity of which we have been speaking.
+ Unless there be something in man's nature which truly and properly
+ partakes of the divine nature, there could be no incarnation, and the
+ demand for perfection would be a mockery and an impossibility.
+
+ Let us then endeavour to find out the evidences of this infinitude in
+ the nature of man. First of all we find it in this--that the desires
+ of man are for something boundless and unattainable. Thus speaks our
+ Lord--"What shall it profit a man if he should gain the whole world
+ and lose his own soul?" Every schoolboy has heard the story of the
+ youthful prince who enumerated one by one the countries he meant to
+ conquer year after year; and when the enumeration was completed, was
+ asked what he meant to do when all those victories were achieved, and
+ he replied--to sit down, to be happy, to take his rest. But then came
+ the ready rejoinder--Why not do so now? But it is not every schoolboy
+ who has paused to consider the folly of the question. He who asked his
+ son why he did not at once take the rest which it was his ultimate
+ purpose to enjoy, knew not the immensity and nobility of the human
+ soul. He could not _then_ take his rest and be happy. As long as one
+ realm remained unconquered, so long rest was impossible; he would weep
+ for fresh worlds to conquer. And thus, that which was spoken by our
+ Lord of one earthly gratification, is true of all--"Whosoever drinketh
+ of this water shall thirst again." The boundless, endless, infinite
+ void in the soul of man can be satisfied with nothing but God.
+ Satisfaction lies not in _having_, but in _being_. There is no
+ satisfaction even in _doing_. Man cannot be satisfied with his own
+ performances. When the righteous young ruler came to Christ, and
+ declared that in reference to the life gone by, he had kept all the
+ commandments and fulfilled all the duties required by the Law, still
+ came the question--"What lack I yet?"
+
+ The Scribes and Pharisees were the strictest observers of the
+ ceremonies of the Jewish religion, "touching the righteousness which
+ is by the Law" they were blameless, but yet they wanted something more
+ than that, and they were found on the brink of Jordan imploring the
+ baptism of John, seeking after a new and higher state than they had
+ yet attained to,--a significant proof that man cannot be satisfied
+ with his own works. And again, there is not one of us who has ever
+ been satisfied with his own performances. There is no man whose doings
+ are worth anything, who has not felt that he has not yet done that
+ which he feels himself able to do. While he was doing it, he was kept
+ up by the spirit of hope; but when done the thing seemed to him
+ worthless. And therefore it is that the author cannot read his own
+ book again, nor the sculptor look with pleasure upon his finished
+ work. With respect to one of the greatest of all modern sculptors, we
+ are told that he longed for the termination of his earthly career,
+ for this reason--that he had been satisfied with his own performance:
+ satisfied for the first time in his life. And this expression of his
+ satisfaction was but equivalent to saying that he had reached the
+ goal, beyond which there could be no progress. This impossibility of
+ being satisfied with his own performances is one of the strongest
+ proofs of our immortality--a proof of that perfection towards which we
+ shall for ever tend, but which we can never attain.
+
+ A second trace of this infinitude in man's nature we find in the
+ infinite capacities of the soul. This is true intellectually and
+ morally. With reference to our intellectual capacities, it would
+ perhaps be more strictly correct to say that they are indefinite,
+ rather than infinite; that is we can affix to them no limit. For there
+ is no man, however low his intellectual powers may be, who has not at
+ one time or another felt a rush of thought, a glow of inspiration,
+ which seemed to make all things possible, as if it were merely the
+ effect of some imperfect organization which stood in the way of his
+ doing whatever he desired to do. With respect to our moral and
+ spiritual capacities, we remark that they are not only indefinite, but
+ absolutely infinite. Let that man answer who has ever truly and
+ heartily loved another. That man knows what it is to partake of the
+ infinitude of God. Literally, in the emphatic language of the Apostle
+ John, he has felt his immortality--"God in him and he in God." For
+ that moment, infinitude was to him not a name, but a reality. He
+ entered into the infinite of time and space, which is not measured by
+ days, or months, or years, but is alike boundless and eternal.
+
+ Again, we perceive a third trace of this infinitude in man, in the
+ power which he possesses of giving up self. In this, perhaps more than
+ in anything else, man may claim kindred with God. Nor is this power
+ confined to the best of mankind, but is possessed, to some extent at
+ least, by all. There is no man, how low soever he may be, who has not
+ one or two causes or secrets, which no earthly consideration would
+ induce him to betray. There is no man who does not feel towards one or
+ two at least, in this world, a devotion which all the bribes of the
+ universe would not be able to shake. We have heard the story of that
+ degraded criminal who, when sentence of death was passed upon him,
+ turned to his accomplice in guilt, in whose favour a verdict of
+ acquittal was brought in, and in glorious self-forgetfulness
+ exclaimed--"Thank God, _you_ are saved!" The savage and barbarous
+ Indian whose life has been one unbroken series of cruelty and crime,
+ will submit to a slow, lingering, torturing death, rather than betray
+ his country. Now, what shall we say to these things? Do they not tell
+ of an indestructible something in the nature of man, of which the
+ origin is divine?--the remains of a majesty which, though it may be
+ sullied, can never be entirely lost?
+
+ Before passing on let us observe, that were it not for this conviction
+ of the divine origin, and consequent perfectibility of our nature,
+ the very thought of God would be painful to us. God is so great, so
+ glorious, that the mind is overwhelmed by, and shrinks from, the
+ contemplation of His excellence, unless there comes the tender,
+ ennobling thought that we are the children of God, who are to become
+ like our Father in Heaven, whose blessed career it is to go on in an
+ advance of love and duty towards Him, until we love Him as we are
+ loved, and know Him almost as we are known.
+
+
+ II. We pass on, in the second place, to consider the Christian
+ motive--"Even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect." Brethren,
+ worldly prudence, miscalled morality, says--"Be honest; you will find
+ your gain in being so. Do right; you will be the better for it--even
+ in this world you will not lose by it." The mistaken religionist only
+ magnifies this on a large scale. "Your duty," he says, "is to save
+ your soul. Give up this world to have the next. Lose _here_, that you
+ may gain _hereafter_." Now this is but prudence after all--it is but
+ magnified selfishness, carried on into eternity,--none the more noble
+ for being _eternal_ selfishness. In opposition to all such sentiments
+ as these, thus speaks the Gospel--"Be ye perfect." Why? "Because your
+ Father which is in Heaven is perfect." Do right, because it is Godlike
+ and right so to do. Here however, let us be understood. We do not mean
+ to say that the Gospel ignores altogether the personal results of
+ doing right. This would be unnatural--because God has linked together
+ well-doing and blessedness. But we do say that this blessedness is not
+ the motive which the Gospel gives us. It is true the Gospel
+ says--"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth; blessed
+ are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy; blessed are they which
+ do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled."
+ But when these are made our motives--when we become meek in order that
+ we may inherit here--then the promised enjoyment will not come. If we
+ are merciful merely that we may ourselves obtain mercy, we shall not
+ have that in-dwelling love of God which is the result and token of His
+ forgiveness. Such was the law and such the example of our Lord and
+ Master.
+
+ True it is that in the prosecution of the great work of redemption He
+ had "respect to the recompense of reward." True it is He was
+ conscious--how could He but be conscious--that when His work was
+ completed He should be "glorified with that glory which He had with
+ the Father before the world began;" but we deny that this was the
+ _motive_ which induced Him to undertake that work; and that man has a
+ very mistaken idea of the character of the Redeemer, and understands
+ but little of His spirit, who has so mean an opinion of Him as to
+ suppose that it was any consideration of personal happiness and
+ blessedness which led the Son of God to die. "For this end was He
+ born, and for this end came He into the world to bear witness unto the
+ Truth," and "to finish the work which was given Him to do."
+
+ If we were asked, Can you select one text in which more than in any
+ other this unselfish, disinterested feature comes forth, it should be
+ this, "Love ye your enemies, do good and lend, hoping for nothing
+ again." This is the true spirit of Christianity--doing right
+ disinterestedly, not from the hope of any personal advantage or
+ reward, either temporal or spiritual, but entirely forgetting self,
+ "hoping for nothing again." When that glorious philanthropist, whose
+ whole life had been spent in procuring the abolition of the
+ slave-trade, was demanded of by some systematic theologian, whether in
+ his ardour in this great cause he had not been neglecting his personal
+ prospects, and endangering his own soul, this was his magnanimous
+ reply--one of those which show the light of truth breaking through
+ like an inspiration. He said, "I did not think about my own soul, I
+ had no time to think about myself, I had forgotten all about my soul."
+ The Christian is not concerned about his own happiness; he has not
+ time to consider himself; he has not time to put that selfish question
+ which the disciples put to their Lord, when they were but half
+ baptized with His spirit, "Lo, we have left all and followed Thee,
+ what shall we have therefore?"
+
+ In conclusion we observe, there are two things which are to be learned
+ from this passage. The first is this, that happiness is not our end
+ and aim. It has been said, and has since been repeated as frequently
+ as if it were an indisputable axiom, that "Happiness is our being's
+ end and aim." Brethren, happiness is _not_ our being's end and aim.
+ The Christian's aim is perfection, not happiness, and every one of the
+ sons of God must have something of that spirit which marked their
+ Master; that holy sadness, that peculiar unrest, that high and lofty
+ melancholy which belongs to a spirit which strives after heights to
+ which it can never attain.
+
+ The second thing we have to learn is this, that on this earth there
+ can be no rest for man. By rest we mean the attainment of a state
+ beyond which there can be no change. Politically, morally,
+ spiritually, there can be no rest for man here. In one country alone
+ has that system been fully carried out which, conservative of the
+ past, excludes all desire of progress and improvement for the future:
+ but it is not to China that we should look for the perfection of human
+ society. There is one ecclesiastical system which carries out the same
+ spirit, looking rather to the Church of the past than to the Church of
+ the future; but it is not in the Romish that we shall find the model
+ of a Christian Church. In Paradise it may have been right to be at
+ rest, to desire no change, but ever since the Fall every system that
+ tends to check the onward progress of mankind is fatally, radically,
+ curelessly wrong. The motto on every Christian banner is "Forwards."
+ There is no resting in the present, no satisfaction in the past.
+
+ The last thing we learn from this is the impossibility of obtaining
+ that of which some men speak--the satisfaction of a good conscience.
+ Some men write and speak as if the difference between the Christian
+ and the worldly man was this, that in the one conscience is a
+ self-reproaching hell, and in the other a self-congratulating heaven.
+ Oh, brethren, is this the fact? Think you that the Christian goes home
+ at night counting up the noble deeds done during the day, saying to
+ himself, "Well done, good and faithful servant?" Brethren, that habit
+ of looking forwards to the future prevents all pride and
+ self-righteousness, and makes our best and only rest and satisfaction
+ to consist in contemplating the future which is bringing us nearer and
+ nearer home. Our motto, therefore, must be that striking one of the
+ Apostle Paul, "Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching
+ forth to those things which are before, I press towards the mark for
+ the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."
+
+
+
+
+ XIII.
+
+ _Preached January 4, 1852._
+
+ CHRISTIAN CASUISTRY.
+
+
+   "Is any man called being circumcised? let him not become
+    uncircumcised. Is any called in uncircumcision? let him not be
+    circumcised. Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is
+    nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God. Let every man
+    abide in the same calling wherein he was called. Art thou called
+    being a servant? care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free
+    use it rather. For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant,
+    is the Lord's freeman; likewise also he that is called being free,
+    is Christ's servant. Ye are bought with a price; be not ye the
+    servants of men. Brethren, let every man wherein he is called
+    therein abide with God."--1 Corinthians, vii. 18-24.
+
+ The whole of these seven chapters of the First Epistle of the Apostle
+ Paul to the Corinthians, is occupied with questions of Christian
+ casuistry. In the application of the principles of Christianity to the
+ varying circumstances of life, innumerable difficulties had arisen,
+ and the Corinthians upon these difficulties had put certain questions
+ to the Apostle Paul. This seventh chapter contains the apostle's
+ answer to many of these questions. There are however, two great
+ divisions into which these answers generally fall. St. Paul makes a
+ distinction between those things which he speaks by commandment and
+ those which he speaks only by permission; there is a distinction
+ between what he says as from the Lord, and what only from himself;
+ between that which he speaks to them as being taught of God, and that
+ which he speaks only as a servant, "called of the Lord and faithful."
+
+ It is manifestly plain that there are many questions in which _right_
+ and _wrong_ are not variable, but indissoluble and fixed; while there
+ are questions, on the other hand, where these terms are not fixed, but
+ variable, fluctuating, altering, dependent upon circumstances. As, for
+ instance, those in which the apostle teaches in the present chapter
+ the several duties and advantages of marriage and celibacy. There may
+ be circumstances in which it is the duty of a Christian man to be
+ married, there are others in which it may be his duty to remain
+ unmarried. For instance, in the case of a missionary it may be right
+ to be married rather than unmarried; on the other hand, in the case of
+ a pauper, not having the wherewithal to bring up and maintain a
+ family, it may be proper to remain unmarried. You will observe
+ however, that no fixed law can be laid down upon this subject. We
+ cannot say marriage is a Christian duty, nor celibacy is a Christian
+ duty; nor that it is in every case the duty of a missionary to be
+ married, or of a pauper to be unmarried. All these things must vary
+ according to circumstances, and the duty must be stated not
+ universally, but with reference to those circumstances.
+
+ These therefore, are questions of casuistry, which depend upon the
+ particular _case_: from which word the term "casuistry" is derived. On
+ these points the apostle speaks not by commandment, but by permission;
+ not as speaking by God's command, but as having the Spirit of God. A
+ distinction has sometimes been drawn with reference to this chapter
+ between that which the apostle speaks by inspiration, and what he
+ speaks as a man uninspired. The distinction, however, is an altogether
+ false one, and beside the question. For the real distinction is not
+ between inspired and uninspired, but between a _decision_ in matters
+ of Christian duty, and _advice_ in matters of Christian prudence. It
+ is abundantly evident that God cannot give advice; He can only issue a
+ command. God cannot say, "It is better to do this;" His perfections
+ demand something absolute: "Thou shalt _do_ this; thou shalt _not_ do
+ this." Whensoever therefore, we come to advice there is introduced
+ the human element rather than the divine. In all such cases therefore,
+ as are dependent upon circumstances the apostle speaks not as
+ inspired, but as uninspired; as one whose judgment we have no right to
+ find fault with or to cavil at, who lays down what is a matter of
+ Christian prudence, and not a bounden and universal duty. The matter
+ of the present discourse will take in various verses in this
+ chapter--from the tenth to the twenty-fourth verse--leaving part of
+ the commencement and the conclusion for our consideration, if God
+ permit, next Sunday.
+
+ There are three main questions on which the apostle here gives his
+ inspired decision. The first decision is concerning the sanctity of
+ the marriage-bond between two Christians. His verdict is given in the
+ tenth verse: "Unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let
+ not the wife depart from her husband." He lays down this principle,
+ that the union is an indissoluble one.
+
+ Upon such a subject, Christian brethren, before a mixed congregation,
+ it is manifestly evident that we can only speak in general terms. It
+ will be sufficient to say that marriage is of all earthly unions
+ almost the only one permitting of no change but that of death. It is
+ that engagement in which man exerts his most awful and solemn
+ power,--the power of responsibility which belongs to him as one that
+ shall give account,--the power of abnegating the right to change,--the
+ power of parting with his freedom,--the power of doing _that_ which in
+ this world can never be reversed. And yet it is perhaps that
+ relationship which is spoken of most frivolously, and entered into
+ most carelessly and most wantonly. It is not an union merely between
+ two creatures, it is an union between two spirits; and the intention
+ of that bond is to perfect the nature of both, by supplementing their
+ deficiencies with the force of contrast, giving to each sex those
+ excellencies in which it is naturally deficient; to the one strength
+ of character and firmness of moral will, to the other sympathy,
+ meekness, tenderness. And just so solemn, and just so glorious as
+ these ends are for which the union was contemplated and intended, just
+ so terrible are the consequences if it be perverted and abused. For
+ there is no earthly relationship which has so much power to ennoble
+ and to exalt. Very strong language does the apostle use in this
+ chapter respecting it: "What knoweth thou, O wife, whether thou shalt
+ _save_ thy husband? or how knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt
+ save thy wife?" The very power of _saving_ belongs to this
+ relationship. And on the other hand, there is no earthly relationship
+ which has so much power to wreck and ruin the soul. For there are two
+ rocks in this world of ours on which the soul must either anchor or be
+ wrecked. The one is God; the other is the sex opposite to itself. The
+ one is the "Rock of Ages," on which if the human soul anchors it lives
+ the blessed life of faith; against which if the soul be dashed and
+ broken, there ensues the wreck of Atheism--the worst ruin of the soul.
+ The other rock is of another character. Blessed is the man, blessed is
+ the woman whose life-experience has taught a confiding belief in the
+ excellencies of the sex opposite to their own--a blessedness second
+ only to the blessedness of salvation. And the ruin in the other case
+ is second only to the ruin of everlasting perdition--the same wreck
+ and ruin of the soul.
+
+ These then, are the two tremendous alternatives: on the one hand the
+ possibility of securing, in all sympathy and tenderness, the laying of
+ that step on which man rises towards his perfection; on the other hand
+ the blight of all sympathy, to be dragged down to earth, and forced to
+ become frivolous and common-place; to lose all zest and earnestness in
+ life, to have heart and life degraded by mean and
+ perpetually-recurring sources of disagreement; these are the two
+ alternatives, and it is the worst of these alternatives which the
+ young risk when they form an inconsiderate union, excusably
+ indeed--because through inexperience; and it is the worst of these
+ alternatives which parents risk--not excusably but inexcusably--when
+ they bring up their children with no higher view of what that tie is,
+ than the merely prudential one of a rich and honourable marriage.
+
+ The second decision which the apostle makes respecting another of the
+ questions proposed to him by the Corinthians, is as to the sanctity of
+ the marriage bond between a Christian and one who is a heathen. When
+ Christianity first entered into our world, and was little understood,
+ it seemed to threaten the dislocation and alteration of all existing
+ relationships. Many difficulties arose; such for instance, as the one
+ here started. When of two heathen parties only one was converted to
+ Christianity, the question arose, What in this case is the duty of the
+ Christian? Is not the duty separation? Is not the marriage in itself
+ null and void? as if it were an union between one dead and one living?
+ And that perpetual contact with a heathen, and therefore an enemy of
+ God, is not that in a relation so close and intimate, perpetual
+ defilement? The apostle decides this with his usual inspired wisdom.
+ He decides that the marriage-bond is sacred still. Diversities of
+ religious opinion, even the farthest and widest diversity, cannot
+ sanction separation. And so he decides in the 13th verse, "The woman
+ which hath an husband that believeth not, if he be pleased to dwell
+ with her, let her not leave him." And, "if any brother hath a wife
+ that believeth not, and she be pleased to dwell with him, let him not
+ put her away," v. 12.
+
+ Now for us in the present day, the decision on this point is not of so
+ much importance as the reason which is adduced in support of it. The
+ proof which the Apostle gives of the sanctity of the marriage is
+ exceedingly remarkable. Practically it amounts to this;--If this were
+ no marriage, but an unhallowed alliance, it would follow as a
+ necessary consequence that the offspring could not be reckoned in any
+ sense as the children of God; but, on the other hand, it is the
+ instinctive, unwavering conviction of every Christian parent, united
+ though he or she may be to a heathen, "My child is a child of God,"
+ or, in the Jewish form of expression, "My child is _clean_." So the
+ apostle says, "the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and
+ the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your
+ children unclean; but now they are holy," for it follows if the
+ children are holy in this sense of dedicated to God, and are capable
+ of Christian relationship, then the marriage relation was not
+ unhallowed, but sacred and indissoluble.
+
+ The value of this argument in the present day depends on its relation
+ to baptism. The great question we are deciding in the present day may
+ be reduced to a very few words. This question--the Baptismal
+ question--is this:--whether we are baptized because we _are_ the
+ children of God, or, whether we are the children of God because we are
+ _baptized_; whether in other words, when the Catechism of the Church
+ of England says that by baptism we are "made the children of God," we
+ are to understand thereby that we are made something which we were not
+ before--magically and mysteriously changed; or, whether we are to
+ understand that we are made the children of God by baptism in the same
+ sense that a sovereign is made a sovereign by coronation. Here the
+ apostle's argument is full, decisive, and unanswerable. He does not
+ say that these children were Christian, or clean, because they were
+ _baptized_, but they were the children of God because they were the
+ children of one Christian parent; nay more than that, such children
+ could scarcely ever have been baptized, because, if the rite met with
+ opposition from one of the parents, it would be an entire and perfect
+ veto to the possibility of baptism. You will observe that the very
+ fundamental idea out of which infant-baptism arises is, that the
+ impression produced upon the mind and character of the child by the
+ Christian parent, makes the child one of a Christian community; and,
+ therefore, as Peter argued that Cornelius had received the Holy Ghost,
+ and so was to be baptized, just in the same way, as they are adopted
+ into the Christian family and receive a Christian impression, the
+ children of Christian parents are also to be baptized.
+
+ Observe also the important truth which comes out collaterally from
+ this argument--namely, the sacredness of the impression, which arises
+ from the close connection between parent and child. Stronger far than
+ education--going on before education can commence, possibly from the
+ very first moments of consciousness, we begin to impress ourselves on
+ our children. Our character, voice, features, qualities--modified, no
+ doubt, by entering into a new human being, and into a different
+ organization--are impressed upon our children. Not the inculcation of
+ opinions, but much rather the formation of principles, and of the tone
+ of character, the derivation of qualities. Physiologists tell us of
+ the derivation of the mental qualities from the father, and of the
+ moral from the mother. But be this as it may, there is scarcely one
+ here who cannot trace back his present religious character to some
+ impression, in early life, from one or other of his parents--a tone, a
+ look, a word, a habit, or even, it may be, a bitter, miserable
+ exclamation of remorse.
+
+ The third decision which the apostle gives, the third principle which
+ he lays down, is but the development of the last. Christianity he
+ says, does not interfere with existing relationships. First he lays
+ down the principle, and then unfolds the principle in two ways,
+ ecclesiastically and civilly. The principle he lays down in almost
+ every variety of form. In the 17th verse, "As God hath distributed to
+ every man, as the Lord hath called every one, so let him walk." In the
+ 20th verse, "Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was
+ called." In the 24th verse, "Brethren, let every man wherein he is
+ called therein abide with God." This is the principle. Christianity
+ was not to interfere with existing relationships; Christian men were
+ to remain in those relationships in which they were, and in them to
+ develope the inward spirituality of the Christian life. Then he
+ applies this principle in two ways. First of all, ecclesiastically.
+ With respect to their church, or ecclesiastical affairs, he says--"Is
+ any man called being circumcised? Let him not become uncircumcised. Is
+ any man in uncircumcision? Let him not be circumcised." In other
+ words, the Jews, after their conversion, were to continue Jews, if
+ they would. Christianity required no change in these outward things,
+ for it was not in _these_ that the depth and reality of the kingdom of
+ Christ consisted. So the Apostle Paul took Timothy and circumcised
+ him; so, also, he used all the Jewish customs with which he was
+ familiar, and performed a vow, as related in the Acts of the Apostles,
+ "having shorn his head in Cenchrea; for he had a vow." It was not his
+ opinion that it was the duty of a Christian to overthrow the Jewish
+ system. He knew that the Jewish system could not last, but what he
+ wanted was to vitalize the system--to throw into it not a Jewish, but
+ a Christian feeling; and so doing, he might continue in it so long as
+ it would hold together. And so it was no doubt, with all the other
+ apostles. We have no evidence that before the destruction of the
+ Jewish polity, there was any attempt made by them to overthrow the
+ Jewish external religion. They kept the Jewish Sabbath, and observed
+ the Jewish ritual. One of them, James, the Christian Bishop of
+ Jerusalem, though a Christian, was even among the Jews remarkable and
+ honourable for the regularity with which he observed all his Jewish
+ duties. Now let us apply this to modern duties. The great desire among
+ men now, appears to be to alter institutions, to have perfect
+ institutions, as if _they_ would make perfect men. Mark the difference
+ between this feeling and that of the apostle, "Let every man abide in
+ the same calling wherein he was called." We are called to be members
+ of the Church of England--what is our duty now? What would Paul have
+ done? Is this our duty--to put such questions to ourselves as these?
+ "Is there any single, particular sentence in the service of my Church
+ with which I do not entirely agree? Is there any single ceremony with
+ which my whole soul does not go along? If so, then is it my duty to
+ leave it at once?" No, my brethren, all that we have to do is to say,
+ "All our existing institutions are those under which God has placed
+ us, under which we are to mould our lives according to His will." It
+ is our duty to vitalize our forms, to throw into them a holier, deeper
+ meaning. My Christian brethren, surely no man will get true rest, true
+ repose for his soul in these days of controversy, until he has learned
+ the wise significance of these wise words--"Let every man abide in the
+ same calling wherein he was called." He will but gain unrest, he will
+ but disquiet himself, if he says, "I am sinning by continuing in this
+ imperfect system," if he considers it his duty to change his calling
+ if his opinions do not agree in every particular and special point
+ with the system under which God has placed him.
+
+ Lastly, the apostle applies this principle civilly. And you will
+ observe he applies it to that civil relationship which of all others,
+ was the most difficult to harmonize with Christianity--slavery. "Art
+ thou called," he says, "being a servant? Care not for it." Now, in
+ considering this part of the subject we should carry along with us
+ these two recollections. First, we should recollect that Christianity
+ had made much way among this particular class, the class of slaves. No
+ wonder that men cursed with slavery embraced with joy a religion which
+ was perpetually teaching the worth and dignity of the human soul, and
+ declaring that rich and poor, peer and peasant, master and slave, were
+ equal in the sight of God. And yet, great as this growth was, it
+ contained within it elements of danger. It was to be feared, lest men,
+ hearing for ever of brotherhood and Christian equality, should be
+ tempted and excited to throw off the yoke by _force_, and compel their
+ masters and oppressors to do them right.
+
+ The other fact we are to keep in remembrance is this--that all this
+ occurred in an age in which slavery had reached its worst and most
+ fearful form, an age in which the emperors were accustomed, not
+ unfrequently, to feed their fish with living slaves; when captives
+ were led to fight in the amphitheatre with wild beasts or with each
+ other, to glut the Roman appetite for blood upon a Roman holiday. And
+ yet fearful as it was, the apostle says, "Care not for it." And
+ fearful as war was in those days, when the soldiers came to John to be
+ baptized, he did not recommend them to join some "Peace Association,"
+ to use the modern term; he simply exhorted them to be content with
+ their wages.
+
+ And hence we understand the way in which Christianity was to work. It
+ interferes indirectly and not directly with existing institutions. No
+ doubt it will at length abolish war and slavery, but there is not one
+ case where we find Christianity interfering with institutions, as
+ such. Even when Onesimus ran away and came to Paul, the apostle sent
+ him back to his master Philemon, not dissolving the connection between
+ them. And then, as a consolation to the servant, he told him of a
+ higher feeling--a feeling that would make him free, with the chain and
+ shackle upon his arm. And so it was possible for the Christian then,
+ as it is now, to be possessed of the highest liberty even under
+ tyranny. It many times occurred that Christian men found themselves
+ placed under an unjust and tyrannical government, and compelled to pay
+ unjust taxes. The Son of Man showed his freedom not by refusing, but
+ by paying them. His glorious liberty could do so without any feeling
+ of degradation; obeying the laws, not because they were right, but
+ because institutions are to be upheld with cordiality.
+
+ One thing in conclusion we have to observe. It is possible from all
+ this to draw a most inaccurate conclusion. Some men have spoken of
+ Christianity as if it was entirely indifferent about liberty and all
+ public questions--as if with such things as these Christianity did not
+ concern itself at all. This indifference is not to be found in the
+ Apostle Paul. While he asserts that inward liberty is the only true
+ liberty, he still goes on to say, "If thou mayst be free use it
+ rather." For he well knew that although it was possible for a man to
+ be a high and lofty Christian even though he were a slave, yet it was
+ not probable that he would be so. Outward institutions are necessary
+ partly to make a perfect Christian character; and thus Christianity
+ works from what is internal to what is external. It gave to the slave
+ the feeling of his dignity as a man, at the same time it gave to the
+ Christian master a new view of his relation to his slave, and taught
+ him to regard him "not now as a servant, but above a servant, a
+ brother beloved." And so by degrees slavery passed into freed
+ servitude, and freed servitude, under God's blessing, may pass into
+ something else.
+
+ There are two mistakes which are often made upon this subject; one is,
+ the error of supposing that outward institutions are unnecessary for
+ the formation of character, and the other, that of supposing that they
+ are _all_ that is required to form the human soul. If we understand
+ rightly the duty of a Christian man, it is this: to make his brethren
+ free inwardly and outwardly; first inwardly, so that they may become
+ masters of themselves, rulers of their passions, having the power of
+ self-rule and self-control; and then outwardly, so that there may be
+ every power and opportunity of developing the inward life; in the
+ language of the prophet, "To break the rod of the oppressor and let
+ the oppressed go free."
+
+
+
+
+ XIV.
+
+ _Preached January II, 1852._
+
+ MARRIAGE AND CELIBACY.
+
+
+   "But this I say, brethren, the time is short: it remaineth that
+    both they that have wives be as though they had none; and they
+    that weep as though they wept not; and they that rejoice as though
+    they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed
+    not; and they that use this world as not abusing it: for the
+    fashion of this world passeth away."--1 Corinthians vii. 29-31.
+
+ The subject of our exposition last Sunday was an essential portion of
+ this chapter. It is our duty to examine now the former and the latter
+ portions of it. These portions are occupied entirely with the inspired
+ apostolic decision upon this one question--the comparative advantages
+ and merits of celibacy and marriage. One preliminary question,
+ however, is to be discussed. How came it that such a question should
+ be put at all to the apostle?
+
+ In the church at Corinth there were two different sections of society;
+ first there were those who had been introduced into the church through
+ Judaism, and afterwards those who had been converted from different
+ forms of heathenism. Now it is well known, that it was the tendency of
+ Judaism highly to venerate the marriage state, and just in the same
+ proportion to disparage that of celibacy, and to place those who led a
+ single life under a stigma and disgrace. Those converts therefore,
+ entered into the Church of Christ carrying with them their old Jewish
+ prejudices. On the other hand, many who had entered into the Christian
+ Church had been converted to Christianity from different forms of
+ heathenism. Among these prevailed a tendency to the belief (which
+ originated primarily in the oriental schools of philosophy) that the
+ highest virtue consisted in the denial of all natural inclinations,
+ and the suppression of all natural desires; and looking upon marriage
+ on one side only, and that the lowest, they were tempted to consider
+ it as low, earthly, carnal, and sensual. It was at this time that
+ Christianity entered into the world, and while it added fresh dignity
+ and significance to the marriage relationship, it at the same time
+ shed a splendour and a glory upon the other state. The virginity of
+ the mother of Our Lord--the solitary life of John the Baptist--the
+ pure and solitary youth of Christ Himself--had thrown upon celibacy a
+ meaning and dignity which it did not possess before. No marvel
+ therefore, that to men so educated, and but half prepared for
+ Christianity, practices like these should have become exaggerations;
+ for it rarely happens that any right ideas can be given to the world
+ without suffering exaggeration. Human nature progresses, the human
+ mind goes on; but it is rarely in a straight line, almost always
+ through the medium of re-action, rebounding from extremes which
+ produce contrary extremes. So it was in the Church of Corinth. There
+ were two opposite parties holding views diametrically opposed to one
+ another--one honouring the married and depreciating the unmarried
+ life--the other attributing peculiar dignity and sanctity to celibacy,
+ and looking down with contempt upon the married Christian state.
+
+ It is scarcely necessary to remind ourselves that this diversity of
+ sentiment has existed in the Church of Christ in almost all ages. For
+ example in the early ages, in almost all the writings of the Fathers
+ we have exaggerated descriptions of the dignity and glory of the state
+ of celibacy. They speak as if the marriage state was low, carnal, and
+ worldly; and the other the only one in which it is possible to attain
+ to the higher spiritual life--the one the natural state, fit for man,
+ the other the angelic, fit for angels. But ordinarily among men in
+ general, in every age, the state of single life has been looked down
+ upon and contemned. And then there comes to the parties who are so
+ circumstanced a certain sense of shame, and along with this a
+ disposition towards calumny and slander. Let us endeavour to
+ understand the wise, inspired decision which the Apostle Paul
+ pronounced upon this subject. He does not decide, as we might have
+ been led to suppose he would, from his own peculiarity of disposition,
+ upon one side only; but raises into relief the advantages and
+ excellencies of both. He say that neither state has in itself any
+ _intrinsic_ merit--neither is in itself superior to the other. "I
+ suppose, then," he says, "that this is good for the present distress.
+ Art thou bound unto a wife? Seek not to be loosed. Art thou loosed
+ from a wife? Seek not a wife. But and if thou marry, thou hast not
+ sinned: and if a virgin marry, she hath not sinned. Nevertheless, such
+ shall have trouble in the flesh: but I spare you." That is, I will
+ spare you this trouble, in recommending a single, solitary life. You
+ will observe that in these words he attributes no intrinsic merit or
+ dignity to either celibacy or marriage. The comparative advantages of
+ these two states he decides with reference to two considerations;
+ first of all with respect to their comparative power in raising the
+ character of the individual, and afterwards with reference to the
+ opportunities which each respectively gives for the service of God.
+
+
+ I. With respect to the single life, he tells us that he had his own
+ proper gift from God; in other words, he was one of those rare
+ characters who have the power of living without personal sympathy. The
+ feelings and affections of the Apostle Paul were of a strange and rare
+ character--tending to expansiveness rather than concentration. Those
+ sympathies which ordinary men expend upon a few, he extended to many.
+ The members of the churches which he had founded at Corinth, and
+ Ephesus, and Colosse, and Philippi, were to him as children; and he
+ threw upon them all that sympathy and affection which other men throw
+ upon their own domestic circle. To a man so trained and educated, the
+ single life gave opportunities of serving God which the marriage state
+ could not give. St. Paul had risen at once to that philanthropy--that
+ expansive benevolence, which most other men only attain by slow
+ degrees, and this was made, by God's blessing, a means of serving his
+ cause. However we may sneer at the monastic system of the Church of
+ Rome, it is unquestionable that many great works have been done by the
+ monks which could not have been performed by men who had entered into
+ the marriage relationship. Such examples of heroic Christian effort as
+ are seen in the lives of St. Bernard, of Francis Xavier, and many
+ others, are scarcely ever to be found except in the single state. The
+ forlorn hope in battle, as well as in the cause of Christianity, must
+ consist of men who have no domestic relationships to divide their
+ devotion, who will leave no wife nor children to mourn over their
+ loss.
+
+ Let this great truth bring its improvement to those who, either of
+ their own choice, or by the force of circumstances, are destined
+ hereafter to live a single life on earth; and, instead of yielding to
+ that feeling so common among mankind--the feeling of envy at another's
+ happiness--instead of becoming gloomy, and bitter and censorious, let
+ them remember what the Bible has to tell of the deep significance of
+ the Virgin Mary's life--let them reflect upon the snares and
+ difficulties from which they are saved--let them consider how much
+ more time and money they can give to God--that they are called to the
+ great work of serving Causes, of entering into public questions, while
+ others spend their time and talents only upon themselves. The state of
+ single life, however we may be tempted to think lightly of it, is a
+ state that has peculiar opportunities of deep blessedness.
+
+ 2. On the other hand, the Apostle Paul brings forward, into strong
+ relief, the blessedness and advantages of the marriage state. He tells
+ us that it is a type of the union between the Redeemer and the Church.
+ But as this belongs to another part of the subject, we shall not enter
+ into it now. But we observe, that men in general, must have their
+ sympathies drawn out step by step, little by little. We do not rise to
+ philanthropy all at once. We begin with personal, domestic, particular
+ affections. And not only is it true that rarely can any man have the
+ whole of his love drawn out except through this domestic state, but,
+ also, it is to be borne in mind that those who have entered into this
+ relationship have also their own peculiar advantages. It is true that
+ in the marriage-life, interrupted as it is by daily cares and small
+ trifles, those works of Christian usefulness cannot be so continuously
+ carried on as in the other. But is there not a deep meaning to be
+ learned from the old expression--that celibacy is an _angelic_ state?
+ that it is preternatural, and not natural? that the goodness which is
+ induced by it is not, so to speak, the natural goodness of Humanity,
+ but such a goodness as God scarcely intended?
+
+ Who of us cannot recollect a period of his history when all his time
+ was devoted to the cause of Christ; when all his money was given to
+ the service of God; and when we were tempted to look down upon those
+ who were less ardent than ourselves, as if they were not Christians?
+ But now the difficulties of life have come upon us; we have become
+ involved in the trifles and the smallness of social domestic
+ existence; and these have made us less devoted perhaps, less
+ preternatural, less angelic--but more human, better fitted to enter
+ into the daily cares and small difficulties of our ordinary humanity.
+ And this has been represented to us by two great lives--one human, the
+ other divine--one, the life of John the Baptist, and the other, of
+ Jesus Christ. In both these cases is verified the saying, that "Wisdom
+ is justified of all her children." Those who are wisdom's
+ children--the truly wise--will recognise an even wisdom in both these
+ lives; they will see that there are cases in which a solitary life is
+ to be chosen for the sake of God; while there are other cases in which
+ a social life becomes our bounden duty. But it should be specially
+ observed here that _that_ Life which has been given to us as a
+ specimen of life for all, was a social, a human Life. Christ did not
+ refuse to mix with the common joys and common sorrows of Humanity. He
+ was present at the marriage-feast, and by the bier of the widow's son.
+ This of the two lives was the one which, because it was the most
+ human, was the most divine; the most rare, the most difficult, the
+ most natural--therefore, the most Christ-like.
+
+
+ II. Let us notice, in the second place, the principle upon which the
+ apostle founds this decision. It is given in the text--"This I say,
+ brethren, the time is short: it remaineth that both they that have
+ wives be as though they had none," "for the fashion of this world
+ passeth away." Now observe here, I pray you, the deep wisdom of this
+ apostolic decision. In point of fact it comes to this: Christianity is
+ a spirit, not a law; it is a set of principles, not a set of rules; it
+ is not a saying to us--You shall do this, you shall not do that--you
+ shall use this particular dress, you shall not use that--you _shall_
+ lead, you shall _not_ lead a married life--Christianity consists of
+ principles, but the application of those principles is left to every
+ man's individual conscience. With respect not only to this particular
+ case, but to all the questions which had been brought before him, the
+ apostle applies the same principle; the cases upon which he decided
+ were many and various, but the large, broad principle of his decision
+ remains the same in all. You may marry, and you have not sinned; you
+ may remain unmarried, and you do not sin; if you are invited to a
+ heathen feast, you may go, or you may abstain from going; you may
+ remain a slave, or you may become free; in _these things_ Christianity
+ does not consist. But what it does demand is this: that whether
+ married or unmarried, whether a slave or free, in sorrow or in joy,
+ you are to live in a spirit higher and loftier than that of the
+ world.
+
+ The apostle gives us in the text two motives for this Christian
+ unworldliness. The first motive which he lays down is this--"The time
+ is short." You will observe how frequently, in the course of his
+ remarks upon the questions proposed to him, the apostle turns, as it
+ were entirely away from the subject, as if worn-out and wearied by the
+ comparatively trivial character of the questions--as if this balancing
+ of one earthly condition or advantage with another, were but a solemn
+ trifling compared with eternal things. And so here, he seems to turn
+ away from the question before him, and speaks of the shortness of
+ time. "The time is short!"
+
+ Time is short in reference to two things. First, it is short in
+ reference to the person who regards it. That mysterious thing _Time_
+ is a matter of sensation, and not a reality; a modification merely of
+ our own consciousness, and not actual existence; depending upon the
+ flight of ideas--long to one, short to another. The span granted to
+ the butterfly, the child of a single summer, may be long; that which
+ is given to the cedar of Lebanon may be short. The shortness of time,
+ therefore is entirely relative--belonging to us not to God. Time is
+ short in reference to _existence_, whether you look at it before or
+ after. Time past seems nothing; time to come always seems long. We say
+ this chiefly for the sake of the young. To them fifty or sixty years
+ seem a treasure inexhaustible. But, my young brethren, ask the old
+ man, trembling on the verge of the grave, what he thinks of Time and
+ Life. He will tell you that the three-score years and ten, or even
+ the hundred-and-twenty years of Jacob, are but "few and evil." And,
+ therefore, if you are tempted to unbelief in respect to this question,
+ we appeal to experience--experience alone can judge of its truth.
+
+ Once more, time is short with reference to its _opportunities_. For
+ this is the emphatic meaning in the original--literally, "the
+ opportunity is compressed, or shut in." Brethren, time may be long,
+ and yet the opportunity may be very short. The sun in autumn may be
+ bright and clear, but the seed which has not been sown until then will
+ not vegetate. A man may have vigour and energy in manhood and
+ maturity, but the work which ought to have been done in childhood and
+ youth cannot be done in old age. A chance once gone in this world can
+ never be recovered.
+
+ Brother men--have you learned the meaning of yesterday? Do you rightly
+ estimate the importance of to-day? That there are duties to be done
+ to-day which cannot be done to-morrow? This it is that throws so
+ solemn a significance into your work. The time for working is short,
+ therefore begin to-day; "for the night is coming when no man can
+ work." Time is short in reference to _eternity_. It was especially
+ with this reference that the text was written. In those days, and even
+ by the apostles themselves, the day of the Lord's appearance and
+ second advent seemed much nearer than it was. They believed that it
+ would occur during their own lives. And with this belief came the
+ feeling which comes sometimes to all. "Oh, in comparison with that
+ vast Hereafter, this little life shrivels into nothing! What is to-day
+ worth, or its duties or its cares?" All deep minds have thought that.
+ The thought of Time is solemn and awful to all minds in proportion to
+ their depth--and in proportion as the mind is superficial, the thought
+ has appeared little, and has been treated with levity. Brethren, let
+ but a man possess himself of that thought--the deep thought of the
+ brevity of time; this thought--that time is short, and that eternity
+ is long--and he has learned the first great secret of unworldliness.
+
+ 2. The second motive which the apostle gives us is the changing
+ character of the external world. "The fashion of this world passeth
+ away"--literally "the _scenery_ of this world," a dramatic expression,
+ drawn from the Grecian stage. One of the deepest of modern thinkers
+ has told us in words often quoted, "All the world's a stage." And a
+ deeper thinker than he, because inspired, had said long before in the
+ similar words of the text, "the _scenery_ of this world passeth away."
+
+ There are two ways in which this is true. First, it is true with
+ respect to all the things by which we are surrounded. It is only in
+ poetry--the poetry of the Psalms for example--that the hills are
+ called "everlasting." Go to the side of the ocean which bounds our
+ country, and watch the tide going out, bearing with it the sand which
+ it has worn from the cliffs; the very boundaries of our land are
+ changing; they are not the same as they were when these words were
+ written. Every day new relationships are forming around us; new
+ circumstances are calling upon us to act--to act manfully, firmly,
+ decisively, and up to the occasion, remembering that an opportunity
+ once gone is gone for ever. Indulge not in vain regrets for the past,
+ in vainer resolves for the future--act, act in the present.
+
+ Again, this is true with respect to ourselves. "The fashion of this
+ world passeth away" in us. The feelings we have now are not those
+ which we had in childhood. There has passed away a glory from the
+ earth--the stars, the sun, the moon, the green fields have lost their
+ beauty and significance--nothing remains as it was, except their
+ repeated impressions on the mind, the impressions of time, space,
+ eternity, colour, form; these cannot alter, but all besides has
+ changed. Our very minds alter. There is no bereavement so painful, no
+ shock so terrible, but time will remove or alleviate. The keenest
+ feeling in this world time wears out at last, and our minds become
+ like old monumental tablets which have lost the inscription once
+ graven deeply upon them.
+
+ In conclusion, we have to examine the nature of this Christian
+ unworldliness which is taught us in the text. The principle of
+ unworldliness is stated in the latter portion of the text; in the
+ former part the apostle makes an application of the principle to four
+ cases of life. First, to cases of domestic relationship--"it remaineth
+ that they that have wives be as though they had none." Secondly, to
+ cases of sorrow--"and they that weep as though they wept not."
+ Thirdly, to cases of joy--"and they that rejoice as though they
+ rejoiced not." And, finally to cases of the acquisition of worldly
+ property, "and they that buy as though they possessed not." Time will
+ not allow us to go into these applications; we must confine ourselves
+ to a brief consideration of the principle. The principle of Christian
+ unworldliness, then is this, to "use this world as not abusing it."
+ Here Christianity takes its stand, in opposition to two contrary
+ principles. The spirit of the world says, "Time is short, therefore
+ use it while you have it; take your fill of pleasure while you may." A
+ narrow religion says, "Time is short, therefore temporal things should
+ receive no attention: do not weep, do not rejoice; it is beneath a
+ Christian." In opposition to the narrow spirit of religion,
+ Christianity says, "_Use_ this world;"--in opposition to the spirit of
+ the world Christianity says, "Do not _abuse_ it." A distinct duty
+ arises from this principle to use the world. While in the world we are
+ citizens of the world: it is our _duty_ to share its joys, to take our
+ part in its sorrows, not to shrink from its difficulties, but to mix
+ ourselves with its infinite opportunities. So that if time be short,
+ so far from that fact lessening their dignity or importance, it
+ infinitely increases them; since upon these depend the destinies of
+ our eternal being. Unworldliness is this--to hold things from God in
+ the perpetual conviction that they will not last; to have the world,
+ and not to let the world have us; to be the world's masters, and not
+ the world's slaves.
+
+
+
+
+ XV.
+
+ _Preached January 11, 1852._
+
+ THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH A FAMILY.
+
+
+   "Our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and
+    earth is named."--Ephesians iii. 14, 15.
+
+ In the verses immediately before the text the Apostle Paul has been
+ speaking of what he calls a mystery--that is, a revealed secret. And
+ the secret was this, that the Gentiles would be "fellow-heirs and of
+ the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ by the gospel."
+ It had been kept secret from the former ages and generations; it was a
+ secret which the Jew had not suspected, had not even dreamt of. It
+ appeared to him to be his duty to keep as far as possible from the
+ Gentile. Circumcision, which taught him the duty of separation from
+ the Gentile spirit, and Gentile practices, seemed to him to teach
+ hatred towards Gentile _persons_, until at length, in the good
+ pleasure and providence of God, in the fulness of time, through the
+ instrumentality of men whose _hearts_ rather than whose intellects
+ were inspired by God, the truth came out distinct and clear, that God
+ was the Father of the Gentiles as well as of the Jews, "for the same
+ Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon Him."
+
+ In the progress of the months, my Christian brethren, we have arrived
+ again at that period of the year in which our Church calls upon us to
+ commemorate the Epiphany, or manifestation of Jesus Christ to the
+ Gentiles, and we know not that in the whole range of Scripture we
+ could find a passage which more distinctly and definitely than this,
+ brings before us the spirit in which it is incumbent upon us to enter
+ upon this duty. In considering this passage we shall divide it into
+ these two branches:--1st, the definition which the Apostle Paul here
+ gives of the Church of Christ; and, 2ndly, the Name by which this
+ Church is named.
+
+
+ I. In the first place, let us consider the definition given by the
+ Apostle Paul of the Christian Church, taken in its entirety. It is
+ this, "the whole family in heaven and earth." But in order to
+ understand this fully, it will be necessary for us to break it up into
+ its different terms.
+
+ 1. First of all it is taught by this definition that the Church of
+ Christ is a society founded upon natural affinities--a "family." A
+ family is built on affinities which are natural, not artificial; it is
+ not a combination, but a society. In ancient times an association of
+ interest combined men in one guild or corporation for protecting the
+ common persons in that corporation from oppression. In modern times
+ identity of political creed or opinion has bound men together in one
+ league, in order to establish those political principles which
+ appeared to them of importance. Similarity of taste has united men
+ together in what is called an association, or a society, in order by
+ this means to attain more completely the ends of that science to which
+ they had devoted themselves. But as these have been raised
+ artificially, so their end is inevitably, dissolution. Society passes
+ on, and guilds and corporations die; principles are established, and
+ leagues become dissolved; tastes change, and then the association or
+ society breaks up and comes to nothing.
+
+ It is upon another principle altogether that that which we call a
+ family, or true society, is formed. It is not built upon similarity of
+ taste, nor identity of opinion, but upon affinities of nature. You do
+ not _choose_ who shall be your brother; you cannot exclude your mother
+ or your sister; it does not depend upon choice or arbitrary opinion at
+ all, but is founded upon the eternal nature of things. And precisely
+ in the same way is the Christian Church formed--upon natural affinity,
+ and not upon artificial combination. "The family, the whole family in
+ heaven and earth;" not made up of those who _call_ themselves
+ brethren, but of those who _are_ brethren; not founded merely upon the
+ principles of combination, but upon the principles of affinity. That
+ is not a church, or a family, or a society which is made up by men's
+ choice, as when in the upper classes of life, men of fashion unite
+ together, selecting their associates from their own _class_, and form
+ what is technically called a society; it is a combination if you will,
+ but a society it is not--a family it is not--a Church of Christ it
+ cannot be.
+
+ And, again, when the Baptists or the Independents, or any other
+ sectarians, unite themselves with men holding the same faith and
+ entertaining the same opinions, there may be a _sect_, a
+ _combination_, a _persuasion_, but a _Church_ there cannot be. And so
+ again, when the Jew in time past linked himself with the Jew, with
+ those of the same nation, there you have what in ancient times was
+ called Judaism, and in modern times is called Hebraicism--a system, a
+ combination, but not a Church. The Church rises ever out of the
+ family. First of all in the good providence of God, there is the
+ family, then the tribe, then the nation; and then the nation merges
+ itself into Humanity. And the nation which refuses to merge its
+ nationality in Humanity, to lose itself in the general interests of
+ mankind, is left behind, and loses almost its religious
+ nationality--like the Jewish people.
+
+ Such is the first principle. A man is born of the same family, and is
+ not made such by an appointment, or by arbitrary choice.
+
+ 2. Another thing which is taught by this definition is this, that the
+ Church of Christ is a whole made up of manifold diversities. We are
+ told here it is "the _whole_ family," taking into it the great and
+ good of ages past, now in heaven; and also the struggling, the
+ humble, and the weak now existing upon earth. Here again, the analogy
+ holds good between the Church and the family. Never more than in the
+ family is the true entirety of our nature seen. Observe how all the
+ diversities of human condition and character manifest themselves in
+ the family.
+
+ First of all, there are the two opposite poles of masculine and
+ feminine, which contain within them the entire of our Humanity--which
+ together, not separately, make up the whole of man. Then there are the
+ diversities in the degrees and kinds of affection. For when we speak
+ of family affection, we must remember that it is made up of many
+ diversities. There is nothing more different than the love which the
+ sister bears towards the brother, compared with that which the brother
+ bears towards the sister. The affection which a man bears towards his
+ father is quite distinct from that which he feels towards his mother;
+ it is something quite different towards his sister; totally diverse
+ again, towards his brother.
+
+ And then there are diversities of character. First the mature wisdom
+ and stern integrity of the father; then the exuberant tenderness of
+ the mother. And then one is brave and enthusiastic, another
+ thoughtful, and another tender. One is remarkable for being full of
+ rich humour, another is sad, mournful, even melancholy. Again, besides
+ these, there are diversities of condition in life. First, there is the
+ heir, sustaining the name and honour of the family; then perchance the
+ soldier, in whose career all the anxiety and solicitude of the family
+ is centred; then the man of business, to whom they look up, trusting
+ his advice, expecting his counsel; lastly perhaps, there is the
+ invalid, from the very cradle trembling between life and death,
+ drawing out all the sympathies and anxieties of each member of the
+ family, and so uniting them all more closely, from their having one
+ common point of sympathy and solicitude. Now, you will observe that
+ these are not accidental, but absolutely essential to the idea of a
+ family; for so far as any one of them is lost, so far the family is
+ incomplete. A family made up of one sex alone, all brothers and no
+ sisters; or in which all are devoted to one pursuit; or in which there
+ is no diversity of temper and dispositions--the same monotonous
+ repeated identity--a sameness in the type of character--this is not a
+ family, it is only the fragment of a family.
+
+ And precisely in the same way all these diversities of character and
+ condition are necessary to constitute and complete the idea of a
+ Christian Church. For as in ages past it was the delight of the Church
+ to canonize one particular class of virtues--as for instance, purity
+ or martyrdom--so now, in every age, and in every individual bosom,
+ there is a tendency to canonize, or honour, or reckon as Christian,
+ only one or two classes of Christian qualities. For example, if you
+ were to ask in the present day where you should find a type of the
+ Christian character, many in all probability would point you to the
+ man who keeps the Sabbath-day, is regular in his attendance upon the
+ services of the Church, who loves to hear the Christian sermon. This
+ is a phase of Christian character--that which is essentially and
+ peculiarly the _feminine_ type of religion. But is there in God's
+ Church to be found no place for that type which is rather masculine
+ than feminine?--which, not in litanies or in psalm-singing does the
+ will of God, but by struggling for principles, and contending for the
+ truth--_that_ life, whose prayer is action, whose aspiration is
+ continual effort?
+
+ Or again, in every age, amongst all men, in the history of almost
+ every individual, at one time or another, there has been a tendency
+ towards that which has been emphatically named in modern times
+ _hero-worship_--leading us to an admiration of the more singular,
+ powerful, noble qualities of humanity. And wherever this tendency to
+ hero-worship exists there will be found side by side with it a
+ tendency to undervalue and depreciate excellences of an opposite
+ character--the humble, meek, retiring qualities. But it is precisely
+ for these that the Church of Christ finds place. "Blessed are the
+ meek, blessed are the merciful, blessed are they that hunger and
+ thirst after righteousness, blessed are the poor in spirit." In God's
+ world there is a place for the wren and the violet, just as truly as
+ there is for the eagle and the rose. In the Church of God there is a
+ place--and that the noblest--for Dorcas making garments for the poor,
+ and for Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus, just as truly as there is
+ for Elijah confounding a false religion by his noble opposition; for
+ John the Baptist making a king tremble on his throne; or for the
+ Apostle Paul "compassing sea and land" by his wisdom and his heroic
+ deeds.
+
+ Once more, there are ages, as well as times in our own individual
+ experience, when we set up charity as if it were the one only
+ Christian character. And wherever this tendency is found there will be
+ found at the same time, and side by side with it, a tendency to admire
+ the spurious form of charity, which is a sentiment and not a virtue;
+ which can sympathize with crime, but not with law; which can be tender
+ to savages, but has no respect, no care for national honour. And
+ therefore, does this principle of the Apostle Paul call upon us to
+ esteem also another form or type of character, and the opposite one;
+ that which is remarkable for--in which predominates--not so much
+ charity as _justice_; that which was seen in the warriors and prophets
+ of old; who perchance, had a more strong recoil from vice than
+ sympathy with virtue; whose indignation towards that which is wrong
+ and hypocritical was more intense than their love for that which is
+ good: the material, the character, out of which the reformer and the
+ prophet, those who are called to do great works on earth, are made.
+
+ The Church of Christ takes not in one individual form of goodness
+ merely, but every form of excellence that can adorn Humanity. Nor is
+ this wonderful when we remember Who He was from whom this Church was
+ named. It was He in whom centred all excellence--a righteousness
+ which was entire and perfect. But when we speak of the perfection of
+ righteousness, let us remember that it is made not of one exaggerated
+ character, but of a true harmony, a due proportion of all virtues
+ united. In Him were found therefore, that tenderness towards sinners
+ which had no sympathy with sin; that humility which could be
+ dignified, and was yet united with self-respect; that simplicity which
+ is ever to be met with, side by side with true majesty; that love
+ which could weep over Jerusalem at the very moment when He was
+ pronouncing its doom, that truth and justice which appeared to stand
+ as a protection to those who had been oppressed, at the same time that
+ He scathed with indignant invective the Pharisees of the then existing
+ Jews.
+
+ There are two, only two, _perfect_ Humanities. One has existed already
+ in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, the other is to be found only
+ in the collective Church. Once, only once, has God given a perfect
+ representation of Himself, "the brightness of the Father's glory, and
+ the express image of His person." And if we ask again for a perfect
+ Humanity, the answer is, it is not in this Church or in that Church,
+ or in this man or in that man, in this age or in that age, but in the
+ collective blended graces and beauties, and humanities, which are
+ found in every age, in all churches, but not in every separate man.
+ So, at least, Paul has taught us, "Till we _all_ come"--_collectively_
+ not separately--"in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of
+ the Son of God, unto a perfect man"--in other words, to a perfect
+ _Humanity_--"unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of
+ Christ."
+
+ 3. The last thing which is taught us by this definition is, that the
+ Church of Christ is a society which is for ever shifting its locality,
+ and altering its forms. It is the _whole_ church, "the _whole_ family
+ in heaven and earth." So then, those who were on earth, and are now in
+ heaven, are yet members of the same family still. Those who had their
+ home here, now have it there.
+
+ Let us see what it is that we should learn from this doctrine. It is
+ this, that the dead are not lost to us. There is a sense in which the
+ departed are ours more than they were before. There is a sense in
+ which the Apostles Paul, or John, the good and great of ages past,
+ belong to this age more than to that in which they lived, but in which
+ they were not understood; in which the common-place and every-day part
+ of their lives hindered the brightness and glory and beauty of their
+ character from shining forth. So it is in the family. It is possible
+ for men to live in the same house, and partake of the same meal from
+ day to day, and from year to year, and yet remain strangers to each
+ other, mistaking each other's feelings, not comprehending each other's
+ character; and it is only when the Atlantic rolls between, and half a
+ hemisphere is interposed, that we learn how dear they are to us, how
+ all our life is bound up in deep anxiety with their existence.
+ Therefore it is the Christian feels that the family is not broken.
+ Think you that family can break or end?--that because the chair is
+ empty, therefore he, your child, is no more? It may be so with the
+ coarse, the selfish, the unbelieving, the superstitious; but the eye
+ of faith sees there only a transformation. He is not there, he is
+ risen. You see the place where he was, but he has passed to heaven. So
+ at least the parental heart of David felt of old, "by faith and not by
+ sight," when speaking of his infant child. "I shall go to him, but he
+ shall not return to me."
+
+ Once more, the Church of Christ is a society ever altering and
+ changing its external forms. "The _whole_ family"--the Church of the
+ Patriarchs, and of ages before them; and yet the same family.
+ Remember, I pray you, the diversities of form through which, in so
+ many ages and generations, this Church has passed. Consider the
+ difference there was between the patriarchal Church of the time of
+ Abraham and Isaac, and its condition under David; or the difference
+ between the Church so existing and its state in the days of the
+ apostles; and the marvellous difference between that and the same
+ Church four or five centuries later; or, once again, the difference
+ between that, externally one, and the Church as it exists in the
+ present day, broken into so many fragments. Yet diversified as these
+ states may be, they are not more so than the various stages of a
+ family.
+
+ There is a time when the children are all in one room, around their
+ mother's knee. Then comes a time, still further on, when the first
+ separation takes place, and some are leaving their home to prepare for
+ after life. Afterwards, when all in their different professions,
+ trades, or occupations, are separate. At last comes the time when some
+ are gone. And, perchance, the two survivors meet at last--an old,
+ gray-haired man, and a weak, worn-out woman--to mourn over the last
+ graves of a household. Christian brethren, which of these is the right
+ form--the true, external pattern of a family? Say we not truly, it
+ remains the same under all outward mutations? We must think of this,
+ or else we may lose heart in our work. Conceive for instance, the
+ feelings of a pious Jew, when Christianity entered this world; when
+ all his religious system was broken up--the Temple service brought to
+ a violent end; when that polity which he thought was to redeem and
+ ennoble the world was cast aside as a broken and useless thing. Must
+ they not have been as gloomy and as dreary as those of the disciples,
+ when He was dead who they "trusted should have redeemed Israel?" In
+ both cases the body was gone or was altered--the spirit had arisen.
+
+ And precisely so it is with our fears and unbelieving apprehensions
+ now. Institutions pass--churches alter--old forms change--and
+ high-minded and good men cling to these as if _they_ were the only
+ things by which God could regenerate the world. Christianity appears
+ to some men to be effete and worn out. Men who can look back upon the
+ times of Venn, and Newton, and Scott--comparing the degeneracy of
+ their descendants with the men of those days--lose heart, as if all
+ things were going wrong. "Things are not," they say, "as they were in
+ our younger days." No my Christian brethren, things are not as they
+ then were; but the Christian cause lives on--not in the successors of
+ such men as those; the outward form is altered, but the spirit is
+ elsewhere, is risen--risen just as truly as the spirit of the highest
+ Judaism rose again in Christianity. And to mourn over old
+ superstitions and effete creeds, is just as unwise as is the grief of
+ the mother mourning over the form which was once her child. She cannot
+ separate her affection from that form--those hands, those limbs, those
+ features--are they not her child? The true answer is, her child is not
+ there. It is only the form of her child. And it is as unwise to mourn
+ over the decay of those institutions--the change of human forms--as it
+ was unwise in Jonah to mourn with that passionate sorrow over the
+ decay of the gourd which had sheltered him from the heat of the
+ noontide sun. A worm had eaten the root of the gourd, and it was gone.
+ But he who made the gourd the shelter to the weary--the shadow of
+ those who are oppressed by the noontide heat of life--lived on:
+ Jonah's God. And so brethren, all things change--all things outward
+ change and alter; but the God of the Church lives on. The Church of
+ God remains under fresh forms--the one, holy, entire family in heaven
+ and earth.
+
+
+ II. Pass we on now, in the second place, to consider the name by which
+ this Church is named. "Our Lord Jesus Christ," the Apostle says, "of
+ whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named."
+
+ Now, every one familiar with the Jewish modes of thought and
+ expression, will allow here, that _name_ is but another word to
+ express being, actuality, and existence. So when Jacob desired to
+ know the character and nature of Jehovah, he said--"Tell me now, I
+ beseech thee, thy _name_". When the Apostle here says, "Our Lord Jesus
+ Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is _named_," it
+ is but another way of saying that it is He on Whom the Church
+ depends--Who has given it substantive existence--without Whom it could
+ not be at all. It is but another way of saying what he has expressed
+ elsewhere--"that there is none other name under heaven given among
+ men, whereby we may be saved." Let us not lose ourselves in vague
+ generalities. Separate from Christ, there is no salvation; there can
+ be no Christianity. Let us understand what we mean by this. Let us
+ clearly define and enter into the meaning of the words we use. When we
+ say that our Lord Jesus Christ is He "of whom the whole family in
+ heaven and earth is named," we mean that the very being of the Church
+ depends on Christ--that it could not be without Him. Now, the Church
+ of Christ depends upon these three things--first, the recognition of a
+ common Father; secondly, of a common Humanity; and thirdly, of a
+ common Sacrifice.
+
+ 1. First, the recognition of a common Father. That is the sacred truth
+ proclaimed by the Epiphany. God revealed in Christ--not the Father of
+ the Jew only, but also of the Gentile. The Father of a "whole family."
+ Not the partial Father, loving one alone--the elder--but the younger
+ son besides: the outcast prodigal who had spent his living with
+ harlots and sinners, but the child still, and the child of a Father's
+ love. Our Lord taught this in His own blessed prayer--"_Our_ Father;"
+ and as we lose the meaning of that single word _our_, as we say _my_
+ Father--the Father of _me_ and of _my_ faction--of _me_ and _my_
+ fellow believers--_my_ Anglicanism or _my_ Judaism--be it what it
+ may--instead of _our_ Father--the Father of the outcast, the
+ profligate, of all who choose to claim a Father's love; _so_ we lose
+ the meaning of the lesson which the Epiphany was designed to teach,
+ and the possibility of building up a family to God.
+
+ 2. The recognition of a common Humanity. He from whom the Church is
+ named, took upon Him not the nature merely of the noble, of kings, or
+ of the intellectual philosopher--but of the beggar, the slave, the
+ outcast, the infidel, the sinner, and the nature of every one
+ struggling in various ways. Let us learn then brother men, that we
+ shall have no family in God, unless we learn the deep truth of our
+ common Humanity, shared in by the servant and the sinner, as well as
+ the sovereign. Without this we shall have no Church--no family in God.
+
+ 3. Lastly, the Church of Christ proceeds out of, and rests upon, the
+ belief in a common Sacrifice.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+ There are three ways in which the human race hitherto has endeavoured
+ to construct itself into a family; first, by the sword; secondly, by
+ an ecclesiastical system; and thirdly, by trade or commerce. First, by
+ the sword. The Assyrian, the Persian, the Greek, and the Roman, have
+ done their work--in itself a most valuable and important one; but so
+ far as the formation of mankind into a family was the object aimed at,
+ the work of the sword has done almost nothing. Then there was the
+ ecclesiastical system--the grand attempt of the Church of Rome to
+ organize all men into one family, with one ecclesiastical, visible,
+ earthly head. Being Protestants, it is not necessary for us to state
+ our conviction that this attempt has been a signal and complete
+ failure. We now come to the system of commerce and trade. We are told
+ that that which chivalry and honour could not do--which an
+ ecclesiastical system could not do--personal interest _will_ do. Trade
+ is to bind men together into one family. When they feel it their
+ _interest_ to be one, they will be brothers. Brethren, that which is
+ built on selfishness cannot stand. The system of personal interest
+ must be shivered into atoms. Therefore, we, who have observed the ways
+ of God in the past, are waiting in quiet but awful expectation until
+ he shall confound this system as he has confounded those which have
+ gone before. And it may be effected by convulsions more terrible and
+ more bloody than the world has yet seen. While men are talking of
+ peace, and of the great progress of civilization, there is heard in
+ the distance the noise of armies gathering rank on rank: east and
+ west, north and south, are rolling towards us the crushing thunders of
+ universal war.
+
+ Therefore there is but one other system to be tried, and that is the
+ Cross of Christ--a system that is not to be built upon selfishness,
+ nor upon blood, nor upon personal interest, but upon Love. Love, not
+ self--the Cross of Christ, and not the mere working-out of the ideas
+ of individual humanity.
+
+ One word only in conclusion. Upon this, the great truth of the
+ Epiphany, the Apostle founds a prayer. He prays, "For this cause I bow
+ my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole
+ family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you,
+ according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by
+ His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by
+ faith." This manifestation of joy and good to the Gentiles was,
+ according to him, the great mystery of Love. A Love, brighter, deeper,
+ wider, higher than the largest human heart had ever yet dreamed of.
+ But the Apostle tells us it is after all, but a glimpse of the love of
+ God. How should we learn it more? How should we comprehend the whole
+ meaning of the Epiphany? By sitting down to read works of theology?
+ The Apostle Paul tells us--No. You must love, in order to understand
+ love. "That ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to
+ comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length, and depth
+ and height; and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge."
+ Brother men, one act of charity will teach us more of the love of God
+ than a thousand sermons--one act of unselfishness, of real
+ self-denial, the putting forth of one loving feeling to the outcast
+ and "those who are out of the way," will tell us more of the meaning
+ of the Epiphany than whole volumes of the wisest writers on theology.
+
+
+
+
+ XVI.
+
+ _Preached January 25, 1852._
+
+ THE LAW OF CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE.
+
+
+   "Howbeit there is not in every man that knowledge: for some, with
+    conscience of the idol, unto this hour, eat it as a thing offered
+    unto an idol; and their conscience being weak is denied. But meat
+    commendeth us not to God: for neither if we eat are we the better;
+    neither if we eat not are we the worse. But take heed lest by any
+    means this liberty of yours become a stumbling-block to them that
+    are weak. For if any man see thee which hast knowledge, sit at
+    meat in the idol's temple, shall not the conscience of him which
+    is weak be emboldened to eat those things which are offered to
+    idols; and through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish for
+    whom Christ died? But when ye sin so against the brethren and
+    wound their weak conscience ye sin against Christ. Wherefore if
+    meat make my brother to offend I will eat no flesh while the world
+    standeth, lest I make my brother to offend."--1 Corinthians viii.
+    7-13.
+
+ We have already divided this chapter into two branches--the former
+ portion of it containing the difference between Christian knowledge
+ and secular knowledge, and the second portion containing the apostolic
+ exposition of the law of Christian conscience. The first of these we
+ endeavoured to expound last Sunday, but it may be well briefly to
+ recapitulate the principles of that discourse in a somewhat different
+ form.
+
+ Corinth as we all know and remember, was a city built on the sea
+ coast, having a large and free communication with all foreign nations;
+ and there was also within it, and going on amongst its inhabitants, a
+ free interchange of thought, and a vivid power of communicating the
+ philosophy and truths of those days to each other. Now it is plain,
+ that to a society in such a state, and to minds so educated, the
+ gospel of Christ must have presented a peculiar attraction, presenting
+ itself to them as it did, as a law of Christian liberty. And so, in
+ Corinth the gospel had "free course and was glorified," and was
+ received with great joy by almost all men, and by minds of all classes
+ and all sects; and a large number of these attached themselves to the
+ teaching of the Apostle Paul as the most accredited expounder of
+ Christianity--the "royal law of liberty." But it seems, from what we
+ read in this epistle, that a large number of these men received
+ Christianity as a thing intellectual, and that alone--and not as a
+ thing which touched the conscience, and swayed and purified the
+ affections. Thus this liberty became to them almost _all_--they ran
+ into sin or went to extravagance--they rejoiced in their freedom from
+ the superstitions, the ignorances, and the scruples which bound their
+ weaker brethren; but had no charity--none of that intense charity
+ which characterized the Apostle Paul, for those still struggling in
+ the delusions and darkness from which they themselves were free.
+
+ More than that, they demanded their right, their Christian liberty of
+ expressing their opinions in the church, merely for the sake of
+ _exhibiting_ the Christian graces and spiritual gifts which had been
+ showered upon them so largely; until by degrees those very assemblies
+ became a lamentable exhibition of their own depravity, and led to
+ numerous irregularities which we find severely rebuked by the Apostle
+ Paul. Their women, rejoicing in the emancipation which had been given
+ to the Christian community, laid aside the old habits of attire which
+ had been consecrated so long by Grecian and Jewish custom, and
+ appeared with their heads uncovered in the Christian community. Still
+ further than that, the Lord's Supper exhibited an absence of all
+ solemnity, and seemed more a meeting for licentious gratification,
+ where "one was hungry, and another was drunken"--a place in which
+ earthly drunkenness, the mere enjoyment of the appetites, had taken
+ the place of Christian charity towards each other.
+
+ And the same feeling--this love of mere liberty--liberty in
+ itself--manifested itself in many other directions. Holding by this
+ freedom, their philosophy taught that the body, that is the flesh, was
+ the only cause of sin; that the soul was holy and pure; and that
+ therefore, to be free from the body would be entire, perfect,
+ Christian emancipation. And so came in that strange, wrong doctrine,
+ exhibited in Corinth, where immortality was taught separate from, and
+ in opposition to, the doctrine of the resurrection. And afterwards
+ they went on with their conclusions about liberty, to maintain that
+ the body, justified by the sacrifice of Christ, was no longer capable
+ of sin; and that in the evil which was done by the body, the soul had
+ taken no part. And therefore sin was to them but as a name, from which
+ a Christian conscience was to be freed altogether. So that when one of
+ their number had fallen into grievous sin, and had committed
+ fornication, "such as was not so much as named among the Gentiles," so
+ far from being humbled by it, they were "puffed up," as if they were
+ exhibiting to the world an enlightened, true, perfect
+ Christianity--separate from all prejudices.
+
+ To such a society and to such a state of mind, the Apostle Paul
+ preached in all its length, breadth, and fulness, the humbling
+ doctrines of the Cross of Christ. He taught that knowledge was one
+ thing--that charity was _another_ thing; that "knowledge puffeth up,
+ but charity buildeth up." He reminded them that love was the
+ perfection of knowledge. In other words, his teaching came to this:
+ there are two kinds of knowledge; the one the knowledge of the
+ intellect, the other the knowledge of the heart. Intellectually, God
+ never can be known. He must be known by Love--for, "if any man love
+ God, the same is known of Him." Here then, we have arrived in another
+ way, at precisely the same conclusion at which we arrived last Sunday.
+ Here are two kinds of knowledge, secular knowledge and Christian
+ knowledge; and Christian knowledge is this--to know by Love.
+
+ Let us now consider the remainder of the chapter, which treats of the
+ law of Christian conscience. You will observe that it divides itself
+ into two branches--the first containing an exposition of the law
+ itself, and the second the Christian applications which flow out of
+ this exposition.
+
+ I. The way in which the apostle expounds the law of Christian
+ conscience is this:--Guilt is contracted by the soul, in so far as it
+ sins against and transgresses the law of God by doing that which it
+ believes to be wrong: not so much what _is_ wrong as what _appears_ to
+ _it_ to be wrong. This is the doctrine distinctly laid down in the 7th
+ and 8th verses. The apostle tells the Corinthians--these strong-minded
+ Corinthians--that the superstitions of their weaker brethren were
+ unquestionably wrong. "Meat," he says, "commendeth us not to God; for
+ neither if we eat are we the better, neither if we eat not are we the
+ worse." He then tells them further, that "there is not in every man
+ that knowledge; for some with conscience of the idol, eat it as a
+ thing offered unto an idol." Here then, is an ignorant, mistaken,
+ ill-informed conscience; and yet he goes on to tell them that this
+ conscience, so ill-informed, yet binds the possessor of it: "and their
+ conscience being weak, is defiled." For example,--there could be no
+ harm in eating the flesh of an animal that had been offered to an idol
+ or false god; for a false god is nothing, and it is impossible for it
+ to have contracted positive defilement by being offered to that which
+ is a positive and absolute negation. And yet if any man thought it
+ wrong to eat such flesh, to him it _was_ wrong; for in that act there
+ would be a deliberate act of transgression--a deliberate preference of
+ that which was mere enjoyment, to that which was apparently, though it
+ may be only apparently, sanctioned by the law of God. And so it would
+ carry with it all the disobedience, all the guilt, and all the misery
+ which belongs to the doing of an act altogether wrong; or as St. Paul
+ expresses it, the conscience would become denied.
+
+ Here then, we arrive at the first distinction--the distinction between
+ absolute and relative right and wrong. Absolute right and absolute
+ wrong, like absolute truth, can each be but _one_ and unalterable in
+ the sight of God. The one absolute _right_--the charity of God and the
+ sacrifice of Christ--this, from eternity to eternity must be the sole
+ measure of eternal right. But human right or human wrong, that is the
+ merit or demerit, of any action done by any particular man, must be
+ measured, not by that absolute standard, but as a matter relative to
+ his particular circumstances, the state of the age in which he lives,
+ and his own knowledge of right and wrong. For we come into this world
+ with a moral sense; or to speak more Christianly, with a conscience.
+ And yet that will tell us but very little distinctly. It tells us
+ broadly that which is right and that which is wrong, so that every
+ child can understand this. That charity and self-denial are
+ right--this we see recognised in almost every nation. But the
+ boundaries of these two--when and how far self-denial is right--what
+ are the bounds of charity--this it is for different circumstances yet
+ to bring out and determine.
+
+ And so, it will be found that there is a different standard among
+ different nations and in different ages. That for example, which was
+ the standard among the Israelites in the earlier ages, and before
+ their settlement in Canaan, was very different from the higher and
+ truer standard of right and wrong recognised by the later prophets.
+ And the standard in the third and fourth centuries after Christ, was
+ truly and unquestionably an entirely different one from that
+ recognised in the nineteenth century among ourselves.
+
+ Let me not be mistaken. I do not say that right and wrong are merely
+ conventional, or merely chronological or geographical, or that they
+ vary with latitude and longitude. I do not say that there ever was or
+ ever can be a nation so utterly blinded and perverted in its moral
+ sense as to acknowledge that which is wrong--seen and known to be
+ wrong--as right; or on the other hand, to profess that which is seen
+ and understood as right, to be wrong. But what I do say is this: that
+ the form and aspect in which different deeds appear, so vary, that
+ there will be for ever a change and alteration in men's opinions, and
+ that which is really most generous may seem most base, and that which
+ is really most base may appear most generous. So for example, as I
+ have already said, there are two things universally
+ recognised--recognised as right by every man whose conscience is not
+ absolutely perverted--charity and self-denial. The charity of God, the
+ sacrifice of Christ--these are the two grand, leading principles of
+ the Gospel; and in some form or other you will find these lying at the
+ roots of every profession and state of feeling in almost every age.
+ But the form in which these appear, will vary with all the gradations
+ which are to be found between the lowest savage state and the highest
+ and most enlightened Christianity.
+
+ For example, in ancient Israel the law of love was expounded
+ thus:--"Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy." Among
+ the American Indians and at the Cape, the only homage perchance given
+ to self-denial, was the strange admiration given to that prisoner of
+ war who bore with unflinching fortitude the torture of his country's
+ enemies. In ancient India the same principle was exhibited, but in a
+ more strange and perverted manner. The homage there given to
+ self-denial, self-sacrifice, was this--that the highest form of
+ religion was considered to be that exhibited by the devotee who sat in
+ a tree until the birds had built their nests in his hair--until his
+ nails, like those of the King of Babylon, had grown like birds'
+ talons--until they had grown into his hands--and he became absorbed
+ into the Divinity.
+
+ We will take another instance, and one better known. In ancient Sparta
+ it was the custom to teach children to steal. And here there would
+ seem to be a contradiction to our proposition--here it would seem as
+ if right and wrong were matters merely conventional; for surely
+ stealing can never be anything but wrong. But if we look deeper we
+ shall see that there is no contradiction here. It was not stealing
+ which was admired; the child was punished if the theft was discovered;
+ but it was the dexterity which was admired, and that because it was a
+ warlike virtue, necessary it may be to a people in continual rivalry
+ with their neighbours. It was not that honesty was despised and
+ dishonesty esteemed, but that honesty and dishonesty were made
+ subordinate to that which appeared to them of higher importance,
+ namely, the duty of concealment. And so we come back to the principle
+ which we laid down at first. In every age, among all nations, the same
+ broad principle remains; but the application of it varies. The
+ conscience may be ill-informed, and in this sense only are right and
+ wrong conventional--varying with latitude and longitude, depending
+ upon chronology and geography.
+
+ The principle laid down by the Apostle Paul is this:--A man will be
+ judged, not by the abstract law of God, not by the rule of absolute
+ right, but much rather by the relative law of conscience. This he
+ states most distinctly--looking at the question on both sides. That
+ which seems to a man to be right is, in a certain sense, right to him;
+ and that which seems to a man to be wrong, in a certain sense _is_
+ wrong to him. For example: he says in his Epistle to the Romans (v.
+ 14.) that, "sin is not imputed when there is no law," in other words,
+ if a man does not really know a thing to be wrong there is a sense in
+ which, if not right to him, it ceases to be so wrong as it would
+ otherwise be. With respect to the other of these sides however, the
+ case is still more distinct and plain. Here, in the judgment which the
+ apostle delivers in the parallel chapter of the Epistle to the Romans
+ (the 14th), he says, "I know, and am persuaded of the Lord Jesus, that
+ there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth anything
+ to be unclean, to him it is unclean." In other words, whatever may be
+ the abstract merits of the question--however in God's jurisprudence
+ any particular act may stand--to you, thinking it to be wrong, it
+ manifestly _is_ wrong, and your conscience will gather round it a
+ stain of guilt if you do it.
+
+ In order to understand this more fully, let us take a few instances.
+ There is a difference between _truth_ and _veracity_. Veracity--mere
+ veracity--is a small, poor thing. Truth is something greater and
+ higher. Veracity is merely the correspondence between some particular
+ statement and facts--truth is the correspondence between a man's whole
+ soul and reality. It is possible for a man to say that which, unknown
+ to him is false; and yet he may be true: because if deprived of truth
+ he is deprived of it unwillingly. It is possible, on the other hand,
+ for a man to utter veracities, and yet at the very time that he is
+ uttering those veracities to be false to himself, to his brother, and
+ to his God. One of the most signal instances of this is to be seen in
+ the Book of Job. Most of what Job's friends said to him were veracious
+ statements. Much of what Job said for himself was unveracious and
+ mistaken. And yet those veracities of theirs were so torn from all
+ connection with fact and truth, that they became falsehoods; and they
+ were, as has been said, nothing more than "orthodox liars" in the
+ sight of God. On the other hand, Job, blundering perpetually, and
+ falling into false doctrine, was yet a true man--searching for and
+ striving after the truth; and if deprived of it for a time, deprived
+ of it with all his heart and soul unwillingly. And therefore it was
+ that at last the Lord appeared out of the whirlwind, to confound the
+ men of mere veracity, and to stand by and support the honour of the
+ heartily true.
+
+ Let us apply the principle further. It is a matter of less importance
+ that a man should state true views, than that he should state views
+ truly. We will put this in its strongest form. Unitarianism is
+ false--Trinitarianism is true. But yet in the sight of God, and with
+ respect to a man's eternal destinies hereafter, it would surely be
+ better for him earnestly, honestly, truly, to hold the doctrines of
+ Unitarianism, than in a cowardly or indifferent spirit, or influenced
+ by authority, or from considerations of interest, or for the sake of
+ lucre, to hold the doctrines of Trinitarianism.
+
+ For instance:--Not many years ago the Church of Scotland was severed
+ into two great divisions, and gave to this age a marvellous proof that
+ there is still amongst us the power of living faith--when five hundred
+ ministers gave up all that earth holds dear--position in the church
+ they had loved; friendships and affections formed, and consecrated by
+ long fellowship, in its communion; and almost their hopes of gaining a
+ livelihood--rather than assert a principle which seemed to them to be
+ a false one. Now my brethren, surely the question in such a case for
+ us to consider is not this, merely--whether of the two sections held
+ the abstract _right_--held the principle in its integrity--but surely
+ far rather, this: who on either side was true to the light within,
+ true to God, true to the truth as God had revealed it to his soul.
+
+ Now it is precisely upon this principle that we are enabled to indulge
+ a Christian hope that many of those who in ancient times were
+ persecutors, for example, may yet be justified at the bar of Christ.
+ Nothing can make persecution right--it is wrong, essentially,
+ eternally wrong in the sight of God. And yet, if a man sincerely and
+ assuredly thinks that Christ has laid upon him a command to persecute
+ with fire and sword, it is surely better that he should, in spite of
+ all feelings of tenderness and compassion, cast aside the dearest
+ affections at the command of his Redeemer, than that he should, in
+ mere laxity and tenderness, turn aside from what seemed to him to be
+ his duty. At least, this appears to be the opinion of the Apostle
+ Paul. He tells us that he was "a blasphemer and a persecutor and
+ injurious," that "he did many things contrary to the name of Jesus of
+ Nazareth," that "being exceedingly mad against the disciples, he
+ persecuted them even unto strange cities." But he tells us further
+ that, "for this cause he obtained mercy, because he did it ignorantly
+ in unbelief."
+
+ Now take a case precisely opposite. In ancient times the Jews did that
+ by which it appeared to them that they would contract defilement and
+ guilt--they spared the lives of the enemies which they had taken in
+ battle. Brethren the eternal law is, that charity is right: and that
+ law is eternally right which says, "Thou shalt love thine enemy." And
+ had the Jews acted upon this principle they would have done well to
+ spare their enemies: but they did it thinking it to be wrong,
+ transgressing that law which commanded them to slay their idolatrous
+ enemies--not from generosity, but in cupidity--not from charity, but
+ from lax zeal. And so doing, the act was altogether wrong.
+
+
+ II. Such is the apostle's exposition of the law of Christian
+ conscience. Let us now, in the second place, consider the applications
+ both of a personal and of a public nature, which arise out of it.
+
+ 1. The first application is a personal one. It is this:--Do what
+ _seems_ to _you_ to be right: it is only so that you will at last
+ learn by the grace of God to see clearly what _is_ right. A man thinks
+ within himself that it is God's law and God's will that he should act
+ thus and thus. There is nothing possible for us to say--there is no
+ advice for us to give, but this--"You _must_ so act." He is
+ responsible for the opinions he holds, and still more for the way in
+ which he arrived at them--whether in a slothful and selfish, or in an
+ honest and truth-seeking manner; but being now his soul's convictions,
+ you can give no other law than this--"You must obey your conscience."
+ For no man's conscience gets so seared by doing what is wrong
+ unknowingly, as by doing that which appears to be wrong to his
+ conscience. The Jews' consciences did not get seared by their slaying
+ the Canaanites, but they did become seared by their failing to do what
+ appeared to them to be right. Therefore, woe to you if you do what
+ others think right, instead of obeying the dictates of your own
+ conscience; woe to you if you allow authority, or prescription, or
+ fashion, or influence, or any other human thing, to interfere with
+ that awful and sacred thing--responsibility. "Every man," said the
+ apostle, "must give an account of himself to God."
+
+ 2. The second application of this principle has reference to others.
+ No doubt to the large, free, enlightened mind of the Apostle Paul, all
+ these scruples and superstitions must have seemed mean, trivial, and
+ small indeed. It was a matter to him of far less importance that truth
+ should be _established_ than that it should be arrived at truly--a
+ matter of far less importance even, that right should be done, than
+ that right should be done rightly. Conscience was far more sacred to
+ him than even liberty--it was to him a prerogative far more precious
+ to assert the rights of Christian conscience, than to magnify the
+ privileges of Christian liberty. The scruple may be small and foolish,
+ but it may be impossible to uproot the scruple without tearing up the
+ feeling of the sanctity of conscience, and of reverence to the law of
+ God, associated with this scruple. And therefore the Apostle Paul
+ counsels these men to abridge their Christian liberty, and not to eat
+ of those things which had been sacrificed to idols, but to have
+ compassion upon the scruples of their weaker brethren.
+
+ And this, for two reasons. The first of these is a mere reason of
+ Christian feeling. It might cause exquisite pain to sensitive minds to
+ see those things which appeared to them to be wrong, done by Christian
+ brethren. Now you may take a parallel case. It may be, if you will,
+ mere superstition to bow at the name of Jesus. It may be, and no doubt
+ is, founded upon a mistaken interpretation of that passage in the
+ Epistle to the Philippians (ii. 10), which says that "at the name of
+ Jesus every knee shall bow." But there are many congregations in which
+ this has been the long-established rule, and there are many Christians
+ who would feel pained to see such a practice discontinued--as if it
+ implied a declension from the reverence due to "that name which is
+ above every name." Now what in this case is the Christian duty? Is it
+ this--to stand upon our Christian liberty? Or is it not rather
+ this--to comply with a prejudice which is manifestly a harmless one,
+ rather than give pain to a Christian brother?
+
+ Take another case. It may be a mistaken scruple; but there is no doubt
+ that it causes much pain to many Christians to see a carriage used on
+ the Lord's day. But you, with higher views of the spirit of
+ Christianity, who know that "the Sabbath was made for man, and not man
+ for the Sabbath"--who can enter more deeply into the truth taught by
+ our blessed Lord, that every day is to be dedicated to Him and
+ consecrated to His service--upon the high principle of Christian
+ liberty you can use your carriage--you can exercise your liberty. But
+ if there are Christian brethren to whom this would give pain--then I
+ humbly ask you, but most earnestly--What is the duty here? Is it not
+ this--to abridge your Christian liberty--and to go through rain, and
+ mud, and snow, rather than give pain to one Christian conscience?
+
+ To give one more instance. The words, and garb, and customs of that
+ sect of Christians called Quakers may be formal enough; founded, no
+ doubt, as in the former case, upon a mistaken interpretation of a
+ passage in the Bible. But they are at least harmless; and have long
+ been associated with the simplicity, and benevolence, and Christian
+ humbleness of this body of Christians--the followers of one who, three
+ hundred years ago, set out upon the glorious enterprise of making all
+ men friends. Now would it be Christian, or would it not rather be
+ something more than unchristian--would it not be gross rudeness and
+ coarse unfeelingness to treat such words, and habits, and customs,
+ with anything but respect and reverence?
+
+ Further: the apostle enjoined this duty upon the Corinthian converts,
+ of abridging their Christian liberty, not merely because it might give
+ pain to indulge it, but also because it might even lead their brethren
+ into sin. For, if any man should eat of the flesh offered to an idol,
+ feeling himself justified by his conscience, it were well: but if any
+ man, overborne by authority or interest, were to do this, not
+ according to conscience, but against it, there would be a distinct and
+ direct act of disobedience--a conflict between his sense of right and
+ the gratification of his appetites, or the power of influence; and
+ then his compliance would as much damage his conscience and moral
+ sense as if the act had been wrong in itself.
+
+ In the personal application of these remarks, there are three things
+ which we have to say. The first is this:--Distinguish I pray you,
+ between this tenderness for a brother's conscience and mere
+ time-serving. This same apostle whom we here see so gracefully giving
+ way upon the ground of expediency when Christian principles were left
+ entire, was the same who stood firm and strong as a rock when any
+ thing was demanded which trenched upon Christian principle. When some
+ required as a matter of necessity for salvation, that these converts
+ should be circumcised, the apostle says--"To whom we gave place by
+ subjection, no, not for an hour!" It was not indifference--it was not
+ cowardice--it was not the mere love of peace, purchased by the
+ sacrifice of principle, that prompted this counsel--but it was
+ Christian love--that delicate and Christian love which dreads to
+ tamper with the sanctities of a brother's conscience.
+
+ 2. The second thing we have to say is this--that this abridgement of
+ their liberty is a duty more especially incumbent upon all who are
+ possessed of influence. There are some men, happily for themselves we
+ may say, who are so insignificant that they can take their course
+ quietly in the valleys of life, and who can exercise the fullest
+ Christian liberty without giving pain to others. But it is the price
+ which all who are possessed of influence must pay--that their acts
+ must be measured, not in themselves, but according to their influence
+ on others. So, my Christian brethren, to bring this matter home to
+ every-day experience and common life, if the landlord uses his
+ authority and influence to induce his tenant to vote against his
+ conscience, it may be he has secured one voice to the principle which
+ is right, or at all events, to that which seemed to him to be right:
+ but he has gained that single voice at the sacrifice and expense of a
+ brother's soul. Or again--if for the sake of ensuring personal
+ politeness and attention, the rich man puts a gratuity into the hand
+ of a servant of some company which has forbidden him to receive it, he
+ gains the attention, he ensures the politeness, but he gains it at the
+ sacrifice and expense of a man and a Christian brother.
+
+ 3. The last remark which we have to make is this:--How possible it is
+ to mix together the vigour of a masculine and manly intellect with the
+ tenderness and charity which is taught by the gospel of Christ! No man
+ ever breathed so freely when on earth the air and atmosphere of heaven
+ as the Apostle Paul--no man ever soared so high above all prejudices,
+ narrowness, littlenesses, scruples, as he: and yet no man ever bound
+ himself as Paul bound himself to the ignorance, the scruples, the
+ prejudices of his brethren. So that what in other cases was infirmity,
+ imbecility, and superstition, gathered round it in his case the pure
+ high spirit of Christian charity and Christian delicacy.
+
+ And now, out of the writings, and sayings, and deeds of those who
+ loudly proclaim "the rights of man" and the "rights of liberty," match
+ us if you can with one sentence so sublime, so noble, one that will so
+ stand at the bar of God hereafter, as this single, glorious sentence
+ of his, in which he asserts the rights of Christian conscience above
+ the claims of Christian liberty--"Wherefore if meat make my brother to
+ offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my
+ brother to offend."
+
+
+
+
+ XVII.
+
+ _Preached May 16, 1852._
+
+ VICTORY OVER DEATH.
+
+
+   "The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law.
+    But thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through our Lord
+    Jesus Christ."--1 Cor. xv. 56, 57.
+
+ On Sunday last I endeavoured to bring before you the subject of that
+ which Scripture calls the glorious liberty of the Sons of God. The two
+ points on which we were trying to get clear notions were these: what
+ is meant by being under the law, and what is meant by being free from
+ the law? When the Bible says that a man led by the Spirit is not under
+ the law, it does not mean that he is free because he may sin without
+ being punished for it, but it means that he is free because being
+ taught by God's Spirit to love what His law commands he is no longer
+ conscious of acting from restraint. The law does not drive him,
+ because the Spirit leads him.
+
+ There is a state brethren, when we recognize God, but do not love God
+ in Christ. It is that state when we admire what is excellent, but are
+ not able to perform it. It is a state when the love of good comes to
+ nothing, dying away in a mere desire. That is the state of nature,
+ when we are under the law, and not converted to the love of Christ.
+ And then there is another state, when God writes His law upon our
+ hearts by love instead of fear. The one state is this, "I cannot do
+ the things that I would"--the other state is this, "I will walk at
+ liberty; for I seek Thy commandments."
+
+ Just so far therefore, as a Christian is led by the Spirit, he is a
+ conqueror. A Christian in full possession of his privileges is a man
+ whose very step ought to have in it all the elasticity of triumph, and
+ whose very look ought to have in it all the brightness of victory. And
+ just so far as a Christian suffers sin to struggle in him and overcome
+ his resolutions, just so far he is under the law. And that is the key
+ to the whole doctrine of the New Testament. From first to last the
+ great truth put forward is--The law can neither save you nor sanctify
+ you. The gospel can do both; for it is rightly and emphatically called
+ the perfect law of liberty.
+
+ We proceed to-day to a further illustration of this subject--of
+ Christian victory. In the verses which I have read out, the Apostle
+ has evidently the same subject in his mind: slavery through the law:
+ victory through the gospel. "The strength of sin," he says, "is the
+ law." God giveth us the victory through Christ. And when we are
+ familiar with St. Paul's trains of thinking, we find this idea coming
+ in perpetually. It runs like a coloured thread through embroidery,
+ appearing on the upper surface every now and then in a different
+ shape--a leaf, it may be, or a flower; but the same thread still, if
+ you only trace it back with your finger. And this was the golden
+ recurring thread in the mind of Paul. Restraint and law cannot check
+ sin; they only gall it and make it struggle and rebel. The love of God
+ in Christ, that, and only that can give man the victory.
+
+ But in this passage the idea of victory is brought to bear upon the
+ most terrible of all a Christian's enemies. It is faith here
+ conquering in death. And the apostle brings together all the
+ believer's antagonists--the law's power, sin, and death the chief
+ antagonist of all; and then, as it were on a conqueror's battle field,
+ shouts over them the hymn of triumph--"Thanks be to God, which giveth
+ us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ." We shall take up these
+ two points to dwell upon.
+
+    I. The awfulness which hangs round the dying hour.
+   II. Faith conquering in death.
+
+ That which makes it peculiarly terrible to die is asserted in this
+ passage to be, guilt. We lay a stress upon this expression--the sting.
+ It is not said that sin is the only bitterness, but it is the sting
+ which contains in it the venom of a most exquisite torture. And in
+ truth brethren, it is no mark of courage to speak lightly of human
+ dying. We may do it in bravado, or in wantonness; but no man who
+ thinks can call it a trifling thing to die. True thoughtfulness must
+ shrink from death without Christ. There is a world of untold
+ sensations crowded into that moment, when a man puts his hand to his
+ forehead and feels the damp upon it which tells him his hour is come.
+ He has been waiting for death all his life, and now it is come. It is
+ all over--his chance is past, and his eternity is settled. None of us
+ know, except by guess, what that sensation is. Myriads of human beings
+ have felt it to whom life was dear; but they never spoke out their
+ feelings, for such things are untold. And to every individual man
+ throughout all eternity that sensation in its fulness can come but
+ once. It is mockery brethren, for a man to speak lightly of that which
+ he cannot know till it comes.
+
+ Now the first cause which makes it a solemn thing to die, is the
+ instinctive cleaving of every thing that lives to its own existence.
+ That unutterable thing which we call our being--the idea of parting
+ with it is agony. It is the first and the intensest desire of living
+ things, to be. Enjoyment, blessedness, everything we long for, is
+ wrapped up in being. Darkness and all that the spirit recoils from, is
+ contained in this idea, not to be. It is in virtue of this
+ unquenchable impulse that the world, in spite of all the misery that
+ is in it, continues to struggle on. What are war, and trade, and
+ labour, and professions? Are they all the result of struggling to be
+ great? No, my brethren, they are the result of struggling _to be_. The
+ first thing that men and nations labour for is existence. Reduce the
+ nation or the man to their last resources, and only see what
+ marvellous energy of contrivance the love of being arms them with.
+ Read back the pauper's history at the end of seventy years--his
+ strange sad history, in which scarcely a single day could ensure
+ subsistence for the morrow--and yet learn what he has done these long
+ years in the stern struggle with impossibility to hold his being where
+ everything is against him, and to keep an existence, whose only
+ conceivable charm is this, that it _is_ existence.
+
+ Now it is with this intense passion for being, that the idea of death
+ clashes. Let us search why it is we shrink from death. This reason
+ brethren, we shall find, that it presents to us the idea of _not
+ being_. Talk as we will of immortality, there is an obstinate feeling
+ that we cannot master, that we end in death; and _that_ may be felt
+ together with the firmest belief of a resurrection. Brethren, our
+ faith tells us one thing, and our sensations tell us another. When we
+ die, we are surrendering in truth all that with which we have
+ associated existence. All that we know of life is connected with a
+ shape, a form, a body of materialism; and now that that is palpably
+ melting away into nothingness, the boldest heart may be excused a
+ shudder, when there is forced upon it, in spite of itself, the idea of
+ ceasing for ever.
+
+ The second reason is not one of imagination at all, but most sober
+ reality. It is a solemn thing to die, because it is the parting with
+ all round which the heart's best affections have twined themselves.
+ There are some men who have not the capacity for keen enjoyment. Their
+ affections have nothing in them of intensity, and so they pass through
+ life without ever so uniting themselves with what they meet, that
+ there would be anything of pain in the severance. Of course, with them
+ the bitterness of death does not attach so much to the idea of
+ parting. But my brethren, how is it with human nature generally? Our
+ feelings do not weaken as we go on in life; emotions are less shown,
+ and we get a command over our features and our expressions; but the
+ man's feelings are deeper than the boy's. It is length of time that
+ makes attachment. We become wedded to the sights and sounds of this
+ lovely world more closely as years go on.
+
+ Young men, with nothing rooted deep, are prodigal of life. It is an
+ adventure to them, rather than a misfortune, to leave their country
+ for ever. With the old man it is like tearing his own heart from him.
+ And so it was that when Lot quitted Sodom, the younger members of his
+ family went on gladly. It is a touching truth; it was the aged one who
+ looked behind to the home which had so many recollections connected
+ with it. And therefore it is, that when men approach that period of
+ existence when they must go, there is an instinctive lingering over
+ things which they shall never see again. Every time the sun sets,
+ every time the old man sees his children gathering round him, there is
+ a filling of the eye with an emotion that we can understand. There is
+ upon his soul the thought of parting, that strange wrench from all we
+ love which makes death (say what moralists will of it) a bitter thing.
+
+ Another pang which belongs to death, we find in the sensation of
+ loneliness which attaches to it. Have we ever seen a ship preparing to
+ sail with its load of pauper emigrants to a distant colony? If we have
+ we know what that desolation is which comes from feeling unfriended on
+ a new and untried excursion. All beyond the seas, to the ignorant poor
+ man, is a strange land. They are going away from the helps and the
+ friendships and the companionships of life, scarcely knowing what is
+ before them. And it is in such a moment, when a man stands upon a
+ deck, taking his last look of his fatherland, that there comes upon
+ him a sensation new, strange, and inexpressibly miserable--the feeling
+ of being alone in the world.
+
+ Brethren, with all the bitterness of such a moment, it is but a feeble
+ image when placed by the side of the loneliness of death. We die
+ alone. We go on our dark mysterious journey for the first time in all
+ our existence, without one to accompany us. Friends are beside our
+ bed, they must stay behind. Grant that a Christian has something like
+ familiarity with the Most High, _that_ breaks this solitary feeling;
+ but what is it with the mass of men? It is a question full of
+ loneliness to them. What is it they are to see? What are they to meet?
+ Is it not true, that, to the larger number of this congregation, there
+ is no one point in all eternity on which the eye can fix distinctly
+ and rest gladly--nothing beyond the grave, except a dark space into
+ which they must plunge alone?
+
+ And yet my brethren, with all these ideas no doubt vividly before his
+ mind, it was none of them that the apostle selected as the crowning
+ bitterness of dying. It was not the thought of surrendering existence.
+ It was not the parting from all bright and lovely things. It was not
+ the shudder of sinking into the sepulchre alone. "The sting of death
+ is _sin_."
+
+ Now there are two ways in which this deep truth applies itself. There
+ is something that appals in death when there are distinct separate
+ acts of guilt resting on the memory; and there is something too in the
+ possession of a guilty heart, which is quite another thing from acts
+ of sin, that makes it an awful thing to die. There are some who carry
+ about with them the dreadful secret of sin that has been done; guilt
+ that has a name. A man has injured some one; he has made money, or got
+ on by unfair means; he has been unchaste; he has done some of those
+ thousand things of life which leave upon the heart the dark spot that
+ will not come out. All these are sins which you can count up and
+ number. And the recollection of things like these is that agony which
+ we call remorse. Many of us have remembrances of this kind which are
+ fatal to serenity. We shut them out, but it will not do. They bide
+ their time, and then suddenly present themselves, together with the
+ thought of a judgment-seat. When a guilty man begins to think of
+ dying, it is like a vision of the Son of Man presenting itself and
+ calling out the voices of all the unclean spirits in the man--"Art
+ thou come to torment us before the time?"
+
+ But my brethren, it is a mistake if we suppose that is the common way
+ in which sin stings at the thought of death. Men who have lived the
+ career of passionate life have distinct and accumulated acts of guilt
+ before their eyes. But with most men it is not guilty acts, but
+ guiltiness of heart that weighs the heaviest. Only take yesterday as a
+ specimen of life. What was it with most of us? A day of sin. Was it
+ sin palpable and dark, such as we shall remember painfully this day
+ year? Nay my brethren, unkindness, petulance, wasted time,
+ opportunities lost, frivolous conversation, _that_ was our chief
+ guilt. And yet with all that trifling as it may be, when it comes to
+ be the history of life, does it not leave behind a restless
+ undefinable sense of fault, a vague idea of debt, but to what extent
+ we know not, perhaps the more wretched just because it is uncertain?
+
+ My Christian brethren, this is the sting of sinfulness, the wretched
+ consciousness of an unclean heart. It is just this feeling, "God is
+ not my friend; I am going on to the grave, and no _man_ can say aught
+ against me, but my heart is not right; I want a river like that which
+ the ancients fabled--the river of forgetfulness--that I might go down
+ into it and bathe, and come up a new man. It is not so much what I
+ have done; it is what I am. Who shall save me from myself?" Oh, it is
+ a desolate thing to think of the coffin when that thought is in all
+ its misery before the soul. It is the sting of death.
+
+ And now let us bear one thing in mind, the sting of sin is not a
+ constant pressure. It may be that we live many years in the world
+ before a death in our own family forces the thought personally home.
+ Many years before all those sensations which are so often the
+ precursors of the tomb--the quick short cough, lassitude, emaciation,
+ pain--come in startling suddenness upon us in our young vigour, and
+ make us feel what it is to be here with death inevitable to ourselves.
+ And when those things become habitual, habit makes delicacy the same
+ forgetful thing as health, so that neither in sickness, nor in health,
+ is the thought of death a constant pressure. It is only now and then;
+ but so often as death is a reality, the sting of death is sin.
+
+ Once more we remark, that all this power of sin to agonize, is traced
+ by the Apostle to the law--"the strength of sin is the law;" by which
+ he means to say that sin would not be so violent if it were not for
+ the attempt of God's law to restrain it. It is the law which makes sin
+ strong. And he does not mean particularly the law of Moses. He means
+ any law, and all law. Law is what forbids and threatens; law bears
+ gallingly on those who want to break it. And St. Paul declares this,
+ that no law, not even God's law, can make men righteous in heart,
+ unless the Spirit has taught men's hearts to acquiesce in the law. It
+ can only force out into rebellion the sin that is in them.
+
+ It is so, brethren, with a nation's law. The voice of the nation must
+ go along with it. It must be the expression of their own feeling, and
+ then they will have it obeyed. But if it is only the law of a
+ government, a law which is against the whole spirit of the people,
+ there is first the murmur of a nation's disapprobation, and then there
+ is transgression, and then, if the law be vindicated with a high hand,
+ the next step is the bursting that law asunder in national revolution.
+ And so it is with God's law. It will never control a man long who does
+ not from his heart love it. First comes a sensation of restraint, and
+ then comes a murmuring of the heart; and last, there comes the rising
+ of passion in its giant might, made desperate by restraint. That is
+ the law giving strength to sin.
+
+ And therefore brethren, if all we know of God be this, that He has
+ made laws, and that it is terrible to break them; if all our idea of
+ religion be this, that it is a thing of commands and hindrances--Thou
+ shalt, and thou shalt not; we are under the law, and there is no help
+ for it. We _must_ shrink from the encounter with death.
+
+
+ We pass to our second subject--Faith conquering in death.
+
+ And, before we enter upon this topic, there are two general remarks
+ that we have to make. The first is, The elevating power of faith.
+ There is nothing in all this world that ever led man on to real
+ victory but faith. Faith is that looking forward to a future with
+ something like certainty, that raises man above the narrow feelings of
+ the present. Even in this life he is a greater man, a man of more
+ elevated character, who is steadily pursuing a plan that requires some
+ years to accomplish, than he who is living by the day. Look forward
+ but ten years, and plan for it, live for it; there is something of
+ manhood, something of courage required to conquer the thousand things
+ that stand in your way. And therefore it is, that faith, and nothing
+ but faith, gives victory in death. It is that elevation of character
+ which we get from looking steadily and for ever forward, till eternity
+ becomes a real home to us, that enables us to look down upon the last
+ struggle, and the funeral, and the grave, not as the great end of all,
+ but only as something that stands between us and the end. We are
+ conquerors of death when we are able to look beyond it.
+
+ Our second remark is for the purpose of fixing special attention upon
+ this, that ours is not merely to be victory, it is to be victory
+ through Christ "Thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through
+ our Lord Jesus Christ." Victory brethren, mere victory over death is
+ no unearthly thing. You may get it by infidelity. Only let a man sin
+ long enough, and desperately enough to shut judgment altogether out of
+ his creed, and then you have a man who can bid defiance to the grave.
+ It was so that our country's greatest infidel historian met death. He
+ quitted the world without parade and without display. If we want a
+ specimen of victory apart from Christ, we have it on his death-bed. He
+ left all this strange world of restlessness, calmly, like an unreal
+ show that must go to pieces, and he himself an unreality departing
+ from it. A sceptic can be a conqueror in death.
+
+ Or again, mere manhood may give us a victory. He who has only learned
+ not to be afraid to die, has not learned much. We have steel and nerve
+ enough in our hearts to dare anything. And after all, it is a triumph
+ so common as scarcely to deserve the name. Felons die on the scaffold
+ like men; soldiers can be hired by tens of thousands, for a few pence
+ a day, to front death in its worst form. Every minute that we live
+ sixty of the human race are passing away, and the greater part with
+ courage--the weak, and the timid, as well as the resolute. Courage is
+ a very different thing from the Christian's victory.
+
+ Once more brethren, necessity can make man conqueror over death. We
+ can make up our minds to anything when it once becomes inevitable. It
+ is the agony of suspense that makes danger dreadful. History can tell
+ us that men can look with desperate calmness upon hell itself when
+ once it has become a certainty. And it is this after all, that
+ commonly makes the dying hour so quiet a thing. It is more dreadful in
+ the distance than in the reality. When a man feels that there is no
+ help, and he must go, he lays him down to die, as quietly as a tired
+ traveller wraps himself in his cloak to sleep. It is quite another
+ thing from all this that Paul meant by victory.
+
+ In the first place, it is the prerogative of a Christian to be
+ conqueror over Doubt. Brethren, do we all know what doubt means?
+ Perchance not. There are some men who have never believed enough to
+ doubt. There are some who have never thrown their hopes with such
+ earnestness on the world to come, as to feel anxiety for fear it
+ should not all be true. But every one who knows what Faith is, knows
+ too, what is the desolation of Doubt. We pray till we begin to ask, Is
+ there one who hears, or am I whispering to myself?--We hear the
+ consolation administered to the bereaved, and we see the coffin
+ lowered into the grave, and the thought comes, What if all this
+ doctrine of a life to come be but the dream of man's imaginative mind,
+ carried on from age to age, and so believed, because it is a venerable
+ superstition? Mow Christ gives us victory over that terrible suspicion
+ in two ways--first, He does it by His own resurrection. We have got a
+ fact there that all the metaphysics about impossibility cannot rob us
+ of. In moments of perplexity we look back to this. The grave has once,
+ and more than once, at the Redeemer's bidding, given up its dead. It
+ is a world fact. It tells us what the Bible means by our
+ resurrection--not a spiritual rising into new holiness merely--that,
+ but also something more. It means that in our own proper identity, we
+ shall live again. Make that thought real, and God has given you, so
+ far, victory over the grave through Christ.
+
+ There is another way in which we get the victory over doubt, and that
+ is by living in Christ. All doubt comes from living out of habits of
+ affectionate obedience to God. By idleness, by neglected prayer, we
+ lose our power of realizing things not seen. Let a man be religious
+ and irreligious at intervals--irregular, inconsistent, without some
+ distinct thing to live for--it is a matter of impossibility that he
+ can be free from doubts. He must make up his mind for a dark life.
+ Doubts can only be dispelled by that kind of active life that realizes
+ Christ. And there is no faith that gives a victory so steadily
+ triumphant as that. When such a man comes near the opening of the
+ vault, it is no world of sorrows he is entering upon. He is only going
+ to see things that he has felt, for he has been living in heaven. He
+ has his grasp on things that other men are only groping after and
+ touching now and then. Live above this world, Brethren, and then the
+ powers of the world to come are so upon you that there is no room for
+ doubt.
+
+ Besides all this, it is a Christian's privilege to have victory over
+ the fear of death. And here it is exceedingly easy to paint what after
+ all is only the image-picture of a dying hour. It is the easiest thing
+ to represent the dying Christian as a man who always sinks into the
+ grave full of hope, full of triumph, in the certain hope of a blessed
+ resurrection. Brethren, we must paint things in the sober colours of
+ truth; not as they might be supposed to be, but as they are. Often
+ that is only a picture. Either very few death-beds are Christian ones,
+ or else triumph is a very different thing from what the word generally
+ implies. Solemn, subdued, full of awe and full of solemnity, is the
+ dying hour generally of the holiest men: sometimes almost
+ darkness.--Rapture is a rare thing, except in books and scenes.
+
+ Let us understand what really is the victory over fear. It may be
+ rapture or it may not. All that depends very much on temperament; and
+ after all, the broken words of a dying man are a very poor index of
+ his real state before God. Rapturous hope has been granted to martyrs
+ in peculiar moments. It is on record of a minister of our own Church,
+ that his expectation of seeing God in Christ became so intense as his
+ last hour drew near, that his physician was compelled to bid him calm
+ his transports, because in so excited a state he could not die. A
+ strange unnatural energy was imparted to his muscular frame by his
+ nerves overstrung with triumph. But brethren, it fosters a dangerous
+ feeling to take cases like those as precedents. It leads to that most
+ terrible of all unrealities--the acting of a death-bed scene. A
+ Christian conqueror dies calmly. Brave men in battle do not boast that
+ they are not afraid. Courage is so natural to them that they are not
+ conscious they are doing anything out of the common way--Christian
+ bravery is a deep, calm thing, unconscious of itself. There are more
+ triumphant death-beds than we count, if we only remember this--true
+ fearlessness makes no parade.
+
+ Oh, it is not only in those passionate effusions in which the ancient
+ martyrs spoke sometimes of panting for the crushing of their limbs by
+ the lions in the amphitheatre, or of holding out their arms to embrace
+ the flames that were to curl round them--it is not then only that
+ Christ has stood by His servants, and made them more than
+ conquerors:--there may be something of earthly excitement in all that.
+ Every day His servants are dying modestly and peacefully--not a word
+ of victory on their lips; but Christ's deep triumph in their
+ hearts--watching the slow progress of their own decay, and yet so far
+ emancipated from personal anxiety that they are still able to think
+ and to plan for others, not knowing that they are doing any great
+ thing. They die, and the world hears nothing of them; and yet theirs
+ was the completest victory. They came to the battle field, the field
+ to which they had been looking forward all their lives, and the enemy
+ was not to be found. There was no Foe to fight with.
+
+ The last form in which a Christian gets the victory over death is by
+ means of his resurrection. It seems to have been this which was
+ chiefly alluded to by the Apostle here; for he says, "when this
+ corruptible shall have put on incorruption ... _then_ shall come to
+ pass the saying which is written, Death is swallowed up in victory."
+ And to say the truth, brethren, it is a rhetorical expression rather
+ than a sober truth when we call anything, except the resurrection,
+ victory over death. We may conquer doubt and fear when we are dying,
+ but that is not conquering death. It is like a warrior crushed to
+ death by a superior antagonist refusing to yield a groan, and bearing
+ the glance of defiance to the last. You feel that he is an
+ unconquerable spirit, but he is not the conqueror. And when you see
+ flesh melting away, and mental power becoming infantine in its
+ feebleness, and lips scarcely able to articulate, is there left one
+ moment a doubt upon the mind, as to _who_ is the conqueror in spite of
+ all the unshaken fortitude there may be? The victory is on the side of
+ Death, not on the side of the dying.
+
+ And my brethren, if we would enter into the full feeling of triumph
+ contained in this verse, we must just try to bear in mind what this
+ world would be without the thought of a resurrection. If we could
+ conceive an unselfish man looking upon this world of desolation with
+ that infinite compassion which all the brave and good feel, what
+ conception could he have but that of defeat, and failure, and
+ sadness--the sons of man mounting into a bright existence, and one
+ after another falling back into darkness and nothingness, like
+ soldiers trying to mount an impracticable breach, and falling back
+ crushed and mangled into the ditch before the bayonets and the
+ rattling fire of their conquerors. Misery and guilt, look which way
+ you will, till the heart gets sick with looking at it.
+
+ Brethren, until a man looks on evil till it seems to him almost like a
+ real personal enemy rejoicing over the destruction that it has made,
+ he can scarcely conceive the deep rapture which rushed into the mind
+ of the Apostle Paul when he remembered that a day was coming when all
+ this was to be reversed. A day was coming, and it was the day of
+ reality for which he lived, ever present and ever certain, when this
+ sad world was to put _off for ever_ its changefulness and its misery,
+ and the grave was to be robbed of its victory, and the bodies were to
+ come forth purified by their long sleep. He called all this a victory,
+ because he felt that it was a real battle that has to be fought and
+ won before that can be secured. One battle has been fought by Christ,
+ and another battle, most real and difficult, but yet a conquering one,
+ is to be fought by us. He hath imparted to us the virtue of His
+ wrestlings, and the strength of His victory. So that, when the body
+ shall rise again, the power of the law to condemn is gone, because we
+ have learned to love the law.
+
+ And now to conclude all this, there are but two things which remain to
+ say. In the first place, brethren, if we would be conquerors, we must
+ realize God's love in Christ. Take care not to be under the law.
+ Constraint never yet made a conqueror: the utmost it can do is to make
+ either a rebel or a slave. Believe that God loves you. He gave a
+ triumphant demonstration of it in the Cross. Never shall we conquer
+ self till we have learned _to love_. My Christian brethren, let us
+ remember our high privilege. Christian life, so far as it deserves the
+ name, is victory. We are not going forth to mere battle--we are going
+ forth to conquer. To gain mastery over self, and sin, and doubt, and
+ fear: till the last coldness, coming across the brow, tells us that
+ all is over, and our warfare accomplished--that we are safe, the
+ everlasting arms beneath us--_that_ is our calling. Brethren beloved,
+ do not be content with a slothful, dreamy, uncertain struggle. You are
+ to conquer, and the banner under which we are to win is not Fear, but
+ Love. "The strength of sin is the law;" the victory is by keeping
+ before us God in Christ.
+
+ Lastly, there is need of encouragement for those of us whose faith is
+ not of the conquering, but the timid kind. There are some whose hearts
+ will reply to all this, Surely victory is not always a Christian's
+ portion. Is there no cold dark watching in Christian life--no struggle
+ when victory seems a mockery to speak of--no times when light and life
+ seem feeble, and Christ is to us but a name, and death a reality?
+ "Perfect love casteth out fear," but who has it? Victory is by faith,
+ but, oh God, who will tell us what this faith _is_ that men speak of
+ as a thing so easy; and how we are to get it! You tell us to pray for
+ faith, but how shall we pray in earnest unless we first have the very
+ faith we pray for?
+
+ My Christian brethren, it is just to this deepest cry of the human
+ heart that it is impossible to return a full answer. All that is
+ true. To feel Faith is the grand difficulty of life. Faith is a deep
+ impression of God and God's love, and personal trust in it. It is easy
+ to say "Believe and thou shalt be saved," but well we know it is
+ easier said than done. We cannot say how men are to _get_ faith. It is
+ God's gift, almost in the same way that genius is. You cannot work
+ _for_ faith; you must have it first, and then work _from_ it.
+
+ But brethren beloved, we can say, Look up, though we know not how the
+ mechanism of the will which directs the eye is to be put in motion; we
+ can say, Look to God in Christ, though we know not how men are to
+ obtain faith to do it. Let us be in earnest. Our polar star is the
+ love of the Cross. Take the eye off that, and you are in darkness and
+ bewilderment at once. Let us not mind what is past. Perhaps it is all
+ failure, and useless struggle, and broken resolves. What then? Settle
+ this first, brethren, Are you in earnest? If so, though your faith be
+ weak and your struggles unsatisfactory, you may begin the hymn of
+ triumph _now_, for victory is pledged. "Thanks be to God, which" not
+ _shall_ give, but "_giveth_ us the victory through our Lord Jesus
+ Christ."
+
+
+
+
+ XVIII.
+
+ _Preached June 20, 1852._
+
+ MAN'S GREATNESS AND GOD'S GREATNESS.
+
+
+   "For thus saith the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth Eternity,
+    whose Name is Holy. I dwell in the high and holy place--with him
+    also that is of a contrite and humble spirit."--Isaiah lvii. 15.
+
+ The origin of this announcement seems to have been the state of
+ contempt in which religion found itself in the days of Isaiah. One of
+ the most profligate monarchs that ever disgraced the page of sacred
+ history, sat upon the throne of Judah. His court was filled with men
+ who recommended themselves chiefly by their licentiousness. The altar
+ was forsaken. Sacrilegious hands had placed the abominations of
+ heathenism in the Holy Place; and Piety, banished from the State, the
+ Church, and the Royal court, was once more as she had been before, and
+ will be again, a wanderer on the face of the earth.
+
+ Now, however easy it may be to contemplate such a state of things at a
+ distance, it never takes place in a man's own day and time, without
+ suggesting painful perplexities of a twofold nature. In the first
+ place suspicions respecting God's character; and, in the second place,
+ misgivings as to his own duty. For a faithless heart whispers, Is it
+ worth while to suffer for a sinking cause? Honour, preferment,
+ grandeur, follow in the train of unscrupulous conduct. To be strict in
+ goodness, is to be pointed at and shunned. To be no better than one's
+ neighbours is the only way of being at peace. It seems to have been to
+ such a state as this that Isaiah was commissioned to bring light. He
+ vindicated God's character by saying that He is "the High and Lofty
+ One that inhabiteth Eternity." He encouraged those who were trodden
+ down, to perseverance, by reminding them that real dignity is
+ something very different from present success. God dwells with him,
+ "that is of a contrite and humble spirit" We consider
+
+    I. That in which the greatness of God consists.
+   II. That in which man's greatness consists.
+
+ The first measurement, so to speak, which is given us of God's
+ greatness, is in respect of Time. He inhabiteth Eternity. There are
+ some subjects on which it would be good to dwell, if it were only for
+ the sake of that enlargement of mind which is produced by their
+ contemplation. And eternity is one of these, so that you cannot
+ steadily fix the thoughts upon it without being sensible of a peculiar
+ kind of elevation, at the same time that you are humbled by a personal
+ feeling of utter insignificance. You have come in contact with
+ something so immeasurable--beyond the narrow range of our common
+ speculations--that you are exalted by the very conception of it. Now
+ the only way we have of forming any idea of eternity is by going, step
+ by step, up to the largest measures of time we know of, and so
+ ascending, on and on, till we are lost in wonder. We cannot grasp
+ eternity, but we can learn something of it by perceiving, that, rise
+ to what portion of time we will, eternity is vaster than the vastest.
+
+ We take up for instance, the history of our own country, and then,
+ when we have spent months in mastering the mere outline of those great
+ events which, in the slow course of revolving centuries, have made
+ England what she is, her earlier ages seem so far removed from our own
+ times that they appear to belong to a hoary and most remote antiquity.
+ But then, when you compare those times with even the existing works of
+ man, and when you remember that, when England was yet young in
+ civilization, the pyramids of Egypt were already grey with 1500 years,
+ you have got another step which impresses you with a doubled amount of
+ vastness. Double that period, and you come to the far distant moment
+ when the present aspect of this world was called, by creation, out of
+ the formless void in which it was before.
+
+ Modern science has raised us to a pinnacle of thought beyond even
+ this. It has commanded us to think of countless ages in which that
+ formless void existed before it put on the aspect of its present
+ creation. Millions of years before God called the light day, and the
+ darkness night, there was, if science speaks true, creation after
+ creation called into existence, and buried in its own ruins upon the
+ surface of this earth. And then, there was a time beyond even
+ this--there was a moment when this earth itself, with all its
+ countless creations and innumerable ages, did not exist. And, again,
+ in that far back distance it is more than conceivable, it seems by the
+ analogy of God's dealings next to certain, that ten thousand worlds
+ may have been called into existence, and lasted their unnumbered ages,
+ and then perished in succession. Compared with these stupendous
+ figures, 6,000 years of _our_ planet sink into nothingness. The mind
+ is lost in dwelling on such thoughts as these. When you have
+ penetrated far, far back, by successive approximations, and still see
+ the illimitable distance receding before you as distant as before,
+ imagination absolutely gives way, and you feel dizzy and bewildered
+ with new strange thoughts, that have not a name.
+
+ But this is only one aspect of the case. It looks only to time past.
+ The same overpowering calculations wait us when we bend our eyes on
+ that which is to come. Time stretches back immeasurably, but it also
+ stretches on and on for ever. Now it is by such a conception as this
+ that the inspired prophet attempts to measure the immeasurable of God.
+ All that eternity, magnificent as it is, never was without an
+ Inhabitant. Eternity means nothing by itself. It merely expresses the
+ existence of the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth it. We make a
+ fanciful distinction between eternity and time--there is no real
+ distinction. We are in eternity at this moment. That has begun to be
+ with us which never began with God. Our only measure of time is by the
+ succession of ideas. If ideas flow fast, and many sights and many
+ thoughts pass by us, time seems lengthened. If we have the simple
+ routine of a few engagements, the same every day, with little variety,
+ the years roll by us so fast that we cannot mark them. It is not so
+ with God. There is no succession of ideas with Him. Every possible
+ idea is present with Him now. It was present with Him ten thousand
+ years ago. God's dwelling-place is that eternity which has neither
+ past nor future, but one vast, immeasurable present.
+
+ There is a second measure given us of God in this verse. It is in
+ respect of Space. He dwelleth in the High and Lofty place. He dwelleth
+ moreover, in the most insignificant place--even the heart of man. And
+ the idea by which the prophet would here exhibit to us the greatness
+ of God is that of His eternal Omnipresence. It is difficult to say
+ which conception carries with it the greatest exaltation--that of
+ boundless space or that of unbounded time. When we pass from the tame
+ and narrow scenery of our own country, and stand on those spots of
+ earth in which nature puts on her wilder and more awful forms, we are
+ conscious of something of the grandeur which belongs to the thought of
+ space. Go where the strong foundations of the earth lie around you in
+ their massive majesty, and mountain after mountain rears its snow to
+ heaven in a giant chain, and then, when this bursts upon you for the
+ first time in life, there is that peculiar feeling which we call, in
+ common language, an enlargement of ideas. But when we are told that
+ the sublimity of those dizzy heights is but a nameless speck in
+ comparison with the globe of which they form the girdle; and when we
+ pass on to think of that globe itself as a minute spot in the mighty
+ system to which it belongs, so that our world might be annihilated,
+ and its loss would not be felt; and when we are told that eighty
+ millions of such systems roll in the world of space, to which our own
+ system again is as nothing; and when we are again pressed with the
+ recollection that beyond those furthest limits creative power is
+ exerted immeasurably further than eye can reach, or thought can
+ penetrate; then, brethren, the awe which comes upon the heart is only,
+ after all, a tribute to a _portion_ of God's greatness.
+
+ Yet we need not science to teach us this. It is the thought which
+ oppresses very childhood--the overpowering thought of space. A child
+ can put his head upon his hands, and think and think till it reaches
+ in imagination some far distant barrier of the universe, and still the
+ difficulty presents itself to his young mind, "And what is beyond that
+ barrier?" and the only answer is "The high and lofty place." And this
+ brethren, is the inward seal with which God has stamped Himself upon
+ man's heart. If every other trace of Deity has been expunged by the
+ fall, these two at least defy destruction--the thought of Eternal
+ Time, and the thought of Immeasurable Space.
+
+ The third measure which is given us of God respects His character.
+ His name is Holy. The chief idea which this would convey to us is
+ separation from evil. Brethren, there is perhaps a time drawing near
+ when those of us who shall stand at His right hand, purified from all
+ evil taint, shall be able to comprehend absolutely what is meant by
+ the Holiness of God. At present, with hearts cleaving down to earth,
+ and tossed by a thousand gusts of unholy passion, we can only form a
+ dim conception _relatively_ of that which it implies. None but the
+ pure can understand purity. The chief knowledge which we have of God's
+ holiness comes from our acquaintance with unholiness. We know what
+ impurity is--God is _not_ that. We know what injustice is--God is
+ _not_ that. We know what restlessness, and guilt, and passion are, and
+ deceitfulness, and pride, and waywardness--all these we know. God is
+ none of these. And this is our chief acquaintance with His character.
+ We know what God is _not_. We scarcely can be rightly said to know,
+ that is to feel, what God _is_. And therefore, this is implied in the
+ very name of holiness. Holiness in the Jewish sense means simply
+ separateness. From all that is wrong, and mean, and base, our God is
+ for ever separate.
+
+ There is another way in which God gives to us a conception of what
+ this holiness implies. Tell us of His justice, His truth, His
+ loving-kindness. All these are cold abstractions. They convey no
+ distinct idea of themselves to our hearts. What we wanted was, that
+ these should be exhibited to us in tangible reality. And it is just
+ this which God has done. He has exhibited all these attributes, not in
+ the light of _speculation_, but in the light of _facts_. He has given
+ us His own character in all its delicacy of colouring in the history
+ of Christ. Love, Mercy, Tenderness, Purity--these are no mere names
+ when we see them brought out in the human actions of our Master.
+ Holiness is only a shadow to our minds, till it receives shape and
+ substance in the life of Christ. All this character of holiness is
+ intelligible to us in Christ. "No man hath seen God at any time, the
+ only begotten of the Father He hath declared Him."
+
+ There is a third light in which God's holiness is shown to us, and
+ that is in the sternness with which He recoils from guilt. When Christ
+ died for man, I know what God's love means; and when Jesus wept human
+ tears over Jerusalem, I know what God's compassion means; and when the
+ stern denunciations of Jesus rung in the Pharisees' ears, I can
+ comprehend what God's indignation is; and when Jesus stood calm before
+ His murderers, I have a conception of what serenity is. Brethren,
+ revelation opens to us a scene beyond the grave, when this shall be
+ exhibited in full operation. There will be an everlasting banishment
+ from God's presence of that impurity on which the last efforts have
+ been tried in vain. It will be a carrying out of this sentence by a
+ law that cannot be reversed--"Depart from me, ye cursed." But it is
+ quite a mistake to suppose that this is only a matter of revelation.
+ Traces of it we have now on this side the sepulchre. Human life is
+ full of God's recoil from sin. In the writhings of a heart which has
+ been made to possess its own iniquities--in the dark spot which guilt
+ leaves upon the conscience, rising up at times in a man's gayest
+ moments, as if it will not come out--in the restlessness and the
+ feverishness which follow the efforts of the man who has indulged
+ habits of sin too long,--in all these there is a law repelling
+ wickedness from the presence of the Most High,--which proclaims that
+ God is holy.
+
+ Brethren, it is in these that the greatness of God consists--Eternal
+ in Time--Unlimited in Space--Unchangeable--Pure in character--His
+ serenity and His vastness arise from His own perfections.
+
+
+ We are to consider, in the second place, the greatness of man.
+
+   1. The nature of that greatness.
+   2. The persons who are great.
+
+ Now, this is brought before us in the text in this one fact, that man
+ has been made a habitation of the Deity--"I dwell with him that is of
+ a contrite and humble spirit." There is in the very outset this
+ distinction between what is great in God and what is great in man. To
+ be independent of everything in the universe is God's glory, and to be
+ independent is man's shame. All that God has, He has from Himself--all
+ that man has, He has from God. And the moment man cuts himself off
+ from God, that moment he cuts himself off from all true grandeur.
+
+ There are two things implied in Scripture, when it is said that God
+ dwells with man. The first is that peculiar presence which He has
+ conferred upon the members of His church. Brethren, we presume not to
+ define what that Presence is, and how it dwells within us--we are
+ content to leave it as a mystery. But this we know, that something of
+ a very peculiar and supernatural character takes place in the heart of
+ every man upon whom the gospel has been brought to bear with power.
+ "Know ye not," says the Apostle, "that your bodies are the temples of
+ the Holy Ghost." And again in the Epistle to the Ephesians--"In Christ
+ ye are builded for an habitation of God through the Spirit." There is
+ something in these expressions which refuses to be explained away.
+ They leave us but one conclusion, and that is--that in all those who
+ have become Christ's by faith, God personally and locally has taken up
+ His dwelling-place.
+
+ There is a second meaning attached in Scripture to the expression God
+ dwells in man. According to the first meaning, we understand it in the
+ most plain and literal sense the words are capable of conveying.
+ According to the second, we understand His dwelling in a figurative
+ sense, implying this--that He gives an acquaintance with Himself to
+ man. So, for instance, when Judas asked, "Lord, how is it, that Thou
+ wilt manifest Thyself to us and not to the world?" Our Redeemer's
+ reply was this--"If a man love me, he will keep my words, and my
+ Father will love him, and We will come unto him and make Our abode
+ with him." In the question it was asked _how_ God would manifest
+ Himself to His servants. In the answer it was shown _how_ He would
+ make His abode with them. And if the answer be any reply to the
+ question at all, what follows is this--that God making His abode or
+ dwelling in the heart is the same thing exactly as God's manifesting
+ himself to the heart.
+
+ Brethren, in these two things the greatness of man consists. One is to
+ have God so dwelling in us as to impart His character to us; and the
+ other is to have God so dwelling in us that we recognise His presence,
+ and know that we are His and He is ours. They are two things perfectly
+ distinct To _have_ God in us, this is salvation; to _know_ that God is
+ in us, this is assurance.
+
+ Lastly, we inquire as to the persons who are truly great. And these
+ the Holy Scripture has divided into two classes--those who are humble
+ and those who are contrite in heart. Or rather, it will be observed
+ that it is the same class of character under different circumstances.
+ Humbleness is the frame of mind of those who are in a state of
+ innocence, contrition of those who are in a state of repentant guilt.
+ Brethren, let not the expression innocence be misunderstood. Innocence
+ in its true and highest sense never existed but once upon this earth.
+ Innocence cannot be the religion of man now. But yet there are those
+ who have walked with God from youth, not quenching the spirit which He
+ gave them, and who are therefore _comparatively_ innocent beings. All
+ they have to do is to go on, whereas the guilty man has to stop and
+ turn back before he can go on. Repentance with them is the gentle work
+ of every day, not the work of one distinct and miserable part of life.
+ They are those whom the Lord calls just men which need no repentance,
+ and of whom He says, "He that is clean needeth not save to wash his
+ feet."
+
+ Now they are described here as the humble in heart. Two things are
+ required for this state of mind. One is that a man should have a true
+ estimate of God, and the other is that he should have a true estimate
+ of himself.
+
+ Vain, blind man, places himself on a little corner of this planet, a
+ speck upon a speck of the universe, and begins to form conclusions
+ from the small fraction of God's government which he can see from
+ thence. The astronomer looks at the laws of motion and forgets that
+ there must have been a First Cause to commence that motion. The
+ surgeon looks at the materialism of his own frame and forgets that
+ matter cannot organise itself into exquisite beauty. The metaphysician
+ buries himself in the laws of mind and forgets that there may be
+ spiritual influences producing all those laws. And this brethren, is
+ the unhumbled spirit of philosophy--intellectual pride. Men look at
+ Nature, but they do not look through it up to Nature's God. There is
+ awful ignorance of God, arising from indulged sin, which produces an
+ unhumbled heart. God may be shut out from the soul by pride of
+ intellect, or by pride of heart.
+
+ Pharaoh is placed before us in Scripture almost as a type of pride.
+ His pride arose from ignorance of God. "Who is the Lord that I should
+ obey His voice? I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go."
+ And this was not intellectual pride; it was pride in a matter of duty.
+ Pharaoh had been immersing his whole heart in the narrow politics of
+ Egypt. The great problem of his day was to aggrandise his own people
+ and prevent an insurrection of the Israelites; and that small kingdom
+ of Egypt had been his universe. He shut his heart to the voice of
+ justice and the voice of humanity; in other words, great in the pride
+ of human majesty, small in the sight of the High and Lofty One, he
+ shut himself out from the knowledge of God.
+
+ The next ingredient of humbleness is, that a man must have a right
+ estimate of himself. There is a vast amount of self-deception on this
+ point. We say of ourselves that which we could not bear others to say
+ of us. A man truly humbled would take it only as his due when others
+ treated him in the way that he says that he deserves. But my brethren,
+ we kneel in our closets in shame for what we are, and we tell our God
+ that the lowest place is too good for us; and then we go into the
+ world, and if we meet with slight or disrespect, or if our opinion be
+ not attended to, or if another be preferred before us, there is all
+ the anguish of a galled and jealous spirit, and half the bitterness of
+ our lives comes from this, that we are smarting from what we call the
+ wrongs and the neglect of men. My beloved brethren, if we saw
+ ourselves as God sees us, we should be willing to be anywhere, to be
+ silent when others speak, to be passed by in the world's crowd, and
+ thrust aside to make way for others. We should be willing to put
+ others in the way of doing that which we might have got reputation for
+ by doing ourselves. This was the temper of our Master--this is the
+ meek and the quiet spirit, and this is the temper of the humble with
+ whom the High and Lofty One dwells.
+
+ The other class of those who are truly great are the contrite in
+ spirit. At first sight it might be supposed that there must ever be a
+ vast distinction between the innocent and the penitent. It was so that
+ the elder son in the parable thought when he saw his brother restored
+ to his father's favour. He was surprised and hurt. He had served his
+ father these many years--his brother had wasted his substance in
+ riotous living. But in this passage God makes no distinction. He
+ places the humble consistent follower and the broken-hearted sinner on
+ a level. He dwells with both, with Him that is contrite, _and_ with
+ him that is humble. He sheds around them both the grandeur of His own
+ presence, and the annals of Church history are full of
+ exemplifications of this marvel of God's grace. By the transforming
+ grace of Christ men, who have done the very work of Satan, have become
+ as conspicuous in the service of heaven, as they were once conspicuous
+ in the career of guilt.
+
+ So indisputably has this been so, that men have drawn from such
+ instances the perverted conclusion, that if a man is ever to be a
+ great saint, he must first be a great sinner. God forbid brethren,
+ that we should ever make such an inference. But this we infer for our
+ own encouragement, that past sin does not necessarily preclude from
+ high attainments. We must "forget the things that are behind." We
+ must not mourn over past years of folly as if they made saintliness
+ impossible. Deep as we may have been once in earthliness, so deep we
+ may also be in penitence, and so high we may become in spirituality.
+
+ We have so many years the fewer to do our work in. Well brethren, let
+ us try to do it so much the faster. Christ can crowd the work of years
+ into hours. He did it with the dying thief. If the man who has set out
+ early may take his time, it certainly cannot be so with _us_ who have
+ lost our time. If we have lost God's bright and happy presence by our
+ wilfulness, what then? Unrelieved sadness? Nay, brethren, calmness,
+ purity, may have gone from our heart; but _all_ is not gone yet. Just
+ as sweetness comes from the bark of the cinnamon when it is bruised,
+ so can the spirit of the Cross of Christ bring beauty and holiness and
+ peace out of the bruised and broken heart. God dwells with the
+ contrite as much as with the humble.
+
+ And now brethren, to conclude, the first inference we collect from
+ this subject, is the danger of coming into collision with such a God
+ as our God. Day by day we commit sins of thought and word of which the
+ dull eye of man takes no cognisance. He whose name is Holy cannot pass
+ them by. We may elude the vigilance of a human enemy and place
+ ourselves beyond his reach. God fills all space--there is not a spot
+ in which His piercing eye is not on us, and His uplifted hand cannot
+ find us out. Man must strike soon if he would strike at all; for
+ opportunities pass away from him, and his victim may escape his
+ vengeance by death. There is no passing of opportunity with God, and
+ it is this which makes His long suffering a solemn thing. God can
+ wait, for He has a whole eternity before Him in which He may strike.
+ "All things are open, and naked to Him with whom we have to do."
+
+ In the next place we are taught the heavenly character of
+ condescension. It is not from the insignificance of man that God's
+ dwelling with him is so strange. It is as much the glory of God to
+ bend His attention on an atom as to uphold the universe. But the
+ marvel is that the habitation which He has chosen for Himself is an
+ impure one. And when He came down from His magnificence to make this
+ world His home, still the same character of condescension was shown
+ through all the life of Christ. Our God selected the society of the
+ outcasts of earth, those whom none else would speak to.
+
+ Brethren, if we would be Godlike, we must follow in the same steps.
+ Our temptation is to do exactly the reverse. We are for ever wishing
+ to obtain the friendship and the intimacy of those above us in the
+ world. To win over men of influence to truth--to associate with men of
+ talent and station, and title. This is the world-chase, and this,
+ brethren, is too much the religious man's chase. But if you look
+ simply to the question of resemblance to God, then the man who makes
+ it a habit to select that one in life to do good to, and that one in
+ a room to speak with, whom others pass by because there is nothing
+ either of intellect, or power, or name, to recommend him, but only
+ humbleness, _that_ man has stamped upon his heart more of heavenly
+ similitude by condescension, than the man who has made it his business
+ to win this world's great ones, even for the sake of truth.
+
+ Lastly, we learn the guilt of two things of which this world is
+ full--vanity and pride. There is a distinction between these two. But
+ the distinction consists in this, that the vain man looks for the
+ admiration of others--the proud man requires nothing but his own. Now,
+ it is this distinction which makes vanity despicable to us all. We can
+ easily find out the vain man--we soon discover what it is he wants to
+ be observed, whether it be a gift of person, or a gift of mind, or a
+ gift of character. If he be vain of his person, his attitudes will
+ tell the tale. If he be vain of his judgment, or his memory, or his
+ honesty, he cannot help an unnecessary parade. The world finds him
+ out, and this is why vanity is ever looked on with contempt. So soon
+ as we let men see that we are suppliants for their admiration, we are
+ at their mercy. We have given them the privilege of feeling that they
+ are above us. We have invited them to spurn us. And therefore vanity
+ is but a thing for scorn. But it is very different with pride. No man
+ can look down on him that is proud, for he has asked no man for
+ anything. They are forced to feel respect for pride, because it is
+ thoroughly independent of them. It wraps itself up in the consequence
+ of its own excellences, and scorns to care whether others take note
+ of them or not.
+
+ It is just here that the danger lies. We have exalted a sin into a
+ virtue. No man will acknowledge that he is vain, but almost any man
+ will acknowledge that he is proud. But tried by the balance of the
+ sanctuary, there is little to choose between the two. If a man look
+ for greatness out of God, it matters little whether he seek it in his
+ own applause, or in the applause of others. The _proud_ Pharisee, who
+ trusted in himself that he was righteous, was condemned by Christ as
+ severely, and even more, than the _vain_ Jews who "could not believe
+ because they sought honour from one another, and not that honour which
+ cometh from God only." It may be a more dazzling, and a more splendid
+ sin to be proud. It is not less hateful in God's sight. Let us speak
+ God's word to our own unquiet, swelling, burning hearts. Pride may
+ disguise itself as it will in its own majesty, but in the presence of
+ the High and Lofty One, it is but littleness after all.
+
+
+
+
+ XIX.
+
+ _Preached June 27, 1852._
+
+ THE LAWFUL AND UNLAWFUL USE OF LAW.
+
+ (A FRAGMENT.)
+
+
+   "But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully."--1
+    Tim. i. 8.
+
+ It is scarcely ever possible to understand a passage without some
+ acquaintance with the history of the circumstances under which it was
+ written.
+
+ At Ephesus, over which Timothy was bishop, people had been bewildered
+ by the teaching of converted Jews, who mixed the old leaven of Judaism
+ with the new spirituality of Christianity. They maintained the
+ perpetual obligation of the Jewish law.--v. 7. They desired to be
+ teachers of the law. They required strict performance of a number of
+ severe observances. They talked mysteriously of angels and powers
+ intermediate between God and the human soul.--v. 4. The result was an
+ interminable discussion at Ephesus. The Church was filled with
+ disputations and controversies.
+
+ Now there is something always refreshing to see the Apostle Paul
+ descending upon an arena of controversy, where minds have been
+ bewildered; and so much is to be said on both sides, that people are
+ uncertain which to take. You know at once that he will pour light upon
+ the question, and illuminate all the dark corners. You know that he
+ will not trim, and balance, and hang doubtful, or become a partisan;
+ but that he will seize some great principle which lies at the root of
+ the whole controversy, and make its true bearings clear at once.
+
+ This he always does, and this he does on the present occasion.--v. 5
+ and 6. He does not, like a vehement polemic, say Jewish ceremonies and
+ rules are all worthless, nor some ceremonies are worthless, and others
+ essential; but he says, the root of the whole matter is charity. If
+ you turn aside from this, all is lost; here at once the controversy
+ closes. So far as any rule fosters the spirit of love, that is, is
+ used lawfully, it is wise, and has a use. So far as it does not, it is
+ chaff. So far as it hinders it, it is poison.
+
+ Now observe how different this method is from that which is called the
+ sober, moderate way--the _via media_. Some would have said, the great
+ thing is to avoid extremes. If the question respects
+ fasting--fast--only in _moderation_. If the observance of the Sabbath
+ day, observe it on the Jewish principle, only _not so strictly_.
+
+ St. Paul, on the contrary, went down to the root; he said, the true
+ question is not whether the law is good or bad, but on what principle;
+ he said, you are both wrong--_you_, in saying that the observance of
+ the law is essential, for the end of it is charity, and if _that_ be
+ got what matter _how_--_you_, in saying rules may be dispensed with
+ entirely and always, "for we know that the law is good."
+
+    I. The unlawful use, and
+   II. The lawful use of law.
+
+
+ I. The unlawful use.
+
+ Define law.--By law, Paul almost always means not the Mosaic law, but
+ law in its essence and principle, that is, constraint. This chiefly in
+ two forms expresses itself--1st, a custom; 2nd, a maxim. As examples
+ of custom, we might give Circumcision, or the Sabbath, or Sacrifice,
+ or Fasting.
+
+ Law said, thou shalt _do_ these things; and law, as mere law,
+ constrained them. Or again, law may express itself in maxims and
+ rules.
+
+ In rules, as when law said, "Thou shalt not steal"--not saying a word
+ about secret dishonesty of heart, but simply taking cognizance of
+ _acts_.
+
+ In maxims, as when it admonished that man ought to give a tenth to
+ God, leaving the principle of the matter untouched. Principle is one
+ thing, and maxim is another. A principle requires liberality, a maxim
+ says one-tenth. A principle says, "A merciful man is merciful to his
+ beast," leaves mercy to the heart, and does not define how; a maxim
+ says, thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out thy corn. A
+ principle says, Forgive; a maxim defines "seven times;" and thus the
+ whole law falls into two divisions.
+
+   The ceremonial law, which constrains life by customs.
+   The moral law, which guides life by rules and maxims.
+
+ Now it is an illegitimate use of law. First. To expect by obedience to
+ it to make out a title to salvation.
+
+ By the deeds of the law, shall no man living be justified. Salvation
+ is by faith: a state of heart right with God; faith is the spring of
+ holiness--a well of life. Salvation is not the having committed a
+ certain number of good acts. Destruction is not the having committed a
+ certain number of crimes. Salvation is God's Spirit in us, leading to
+ good. Destruction is the selfish spirit in us, leading to wrong.
+
+ For a plain reason then, obedience to law cannot save, because it is
+ merely the performance of a certain number of acts which may be done
+ by habit, from fear, from compulsion. Obedience remains still
+ imperfect. A man may have obeyed the rule, and kept the maxim, and yet
+ not be perfect. "All these commandments have I kept from my youth up."
+ "Yet lackest thou one thing." The law he had kept. The spirit of
+ obedience in its high form of sacrifice he had not.
+
+ Secondly. To use it superstitiously.
+
+ It is plain that this was the use made of it by the Ephesian
+ teachers.--v. 4. It seemed to them that _law_ was pleasing to God as
+ restraint. Then unnatural restraints came to be imposed--on the
+ appetites, fasting; on the affections, celibacy. This is what Paul
+ condemns.--ch. iv., v. 8. "Bodily exercise profiteth little."
+
+ And again, this superstition showed itself in a false
+ reverence--wondrous stories respecting angels--respecting the eternal
+ genealogy of Christ--awful thoughts about spirits. The Apostle calls
+ all these, very unceremoniously, "endless genealogies," v. 4, and "old
+ wives' fables."--ch. iv., v. 7.
+
+ The question at issue is, wherein true reverence consists: according
+ to them, in the multiplicity of the objects of reverence; according to
+ St. Paul, in the character of the object revered ... God and Right the
+ true object.
+
+ But you are not a whit the better for solemn and reverential feelings
+ about a mysterious, invisible world. To tremble before a consecrated
+ wafer is spurious reverence. To bend before the Majesty of Right is
+ Christian reverence.
+
+ Thirdly. To use it as if the letter of it were sacred. The law
+ commanded none to eat the shewbread except the priests. David ate it
+ in hunger. If Abimelech had scrupled to give it, he would have used
+ the law unlawfully.
+
+ The law commanded no manner of work. The apostles in hunger rubbed the
+ ears of corn. The Pharisees used the law unlawfully, in forbidding
+ that.
+
+
+ II. The lawful use of law.
+
+ 1. As a restraint to keep outward evil in check ... "The law was made
+ for sinners and profane." ... Illustrate this by reference to capital
+ punishment. No sane man believes that punishment by death will make a
+ nation's heart right, or that the sight of an execution can soften or
+ ameliorate. Punishment does not work in that way. It is not meant for
+ that purpose. It is meant to guard society.
+
+ The law commanding a blasphemer to be stoned, could not teach one
+ Israelite love to God, but it could save the streets of Israel from
+ scandalous ribaldry.
+
+ And therefore clearly understand, law is a mere check to bad men: it
+ does not improve them; it often makes them worse; it cannot sanctify
+ them. God never intended that it should. It saves society from the
+ open transgression; it does not contemplate the amelioration of the
+ offender.
+
+ Hence we see for what reason the apostle insisted on the use of the
+ law for Christians. Law never can be abrogated. Strict rules are
+ needed exactly in proportion as we want the power or the will to rule
+ ourselves. It is not because the Gospel has come that we are free from
+ the law, but because, and only so far, as we are in a Gospel state.
+ "It is for a righteous man" that the law is not made, and thus we see
+ the true nature of Christian liberty. The liberty to which we are
+ called in Christ, is not the liberty of devils, the liberty of doing
+ what we will, but the blessed liberty of being on the side of the law,
+ and therefore unrestrained by it in doing right.
+
+ Illustrate from laws of coining, housebreaking, &c. We are not under
+ them.--Because we may break them as we like? Nay--the moment we
+ desire, the law is alive again to us.
+
+ 2. As a primer is used by a child to acquire by degrees, principles
+ and a spirit.
+
+ This is the use attributed to it in verse 5. "The end of the
+ commandment is charity."
+
+ Compare with this, two other passages--"Christ is the end of the law
+ for righteousness," and "love is the fulfilling of the law." "Perfect
+ love casteth out fear."
+
+ In every law there is a spirit; in every maxim a principle; and the
+ law and the maxim are laid down for the sake of conserving the spirit
+ and the principle which they enshrine.
+
+ St. Paul compares God's dealing with man to a wise parent's
+ instruction of his child.--See the Epistle to the Galatians. Boyhood
+ is under law; you appeal not to the boy's reason, but his will, by
+ rewards and punishments: Do this, and I will reward you; do it not,
+ and you will be punished. So long as a man is under law, this is
+ salutary and necessary, but only while under law. He is free when he
+ discerns principles, and at the same time has got, by habit, the will
+ to obey. So that rules have done for him a double work, taught him the
+ principle and facilitated obedience to it.
+
+ Distinguish however.--In point of time, law is first--in point of
+ importance, the Spirit.
+
+ In point of _time_, Charity is the "end" of the commandment--in point
+ of _importance_, first and foremost.
+
+ The first thing a boy has to do, is to learn implicit obedience to
+ rules. The first thing in importance for a man to learn is, to sever
+ himself from maxims, rules, laws. Why? That he may become an
+ Antinomian, or a Latitudinarian? No. He is severed from submission to
+ the _maxim_ because he has got allegiance to the _principle_. He is
+ free from the rule and the law because he has got the Spirit written
+ in his heart.
+
+ This is the Gospel. A man is redeemed by Christ so far as he is not
+ under the law; he is free from the law so far as he is free from the
+ evil which the law restrains; he progresses so far as there is no evil
+ in him which it is an effort to keep down; and perfect salvation and
+ liberty are--when we,--who though having the first fruits of the
+ Spirit, yet groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, "to wit,
+ the redemption of our body"--shall have been freed in body, soul, and
+ spirit, from the last traces of the evil which can only be kept down
+ by force. In other words, so far as Christ's statement is true of
+ _us_, "The Prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me."
+
+
+
+
+ XX.
+
+ _Preached February 21, 1853._
+
+ THE PRODIGAL AND HIS BROTHER.
+
+
+   "And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I
+    have is thine. It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad:
+    for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; was lost, and
+    is found."--Luke xv. 31, 32.
+
+ There are two classes of sins. There are some sins by which man
+ crushes, wounds, malevolently injures his brother man: those sins
+ which speak of a bad, tyrannical, and selfish heart. Christ met those
+ with denunciation. There are other sins by which a man injures
+ himself. There is a life of reckless indulgence; there is a career of
+ yielding to ungovernable propensities, which most surely conducts to
+ wretchedness and ruin, but makes a man an object of compassion rather
+ than of condemnation.
+
+ The reception which sinners of this class met from Christ was marked
+ by strange and pitying mercy. There was no maudlin sentiment on his
+ lips. He called sin sin, and guilt guilt. But yet there were sins
+ which His lips scourged, and others over which, containing in
+ themselves their own scourge, His heart bled. That which was
+ melancholy, and marred, and miserable in this world, was more
+ congenial to the heart of Christ than that which was proudly happy. It
+ was in the midst of a triumph, and all the pride of a procession, that
+ He paused to weep over ruined Jerusalem. And if we ask the reason why
+ the character of Christ was marked by this melancholy condescension it
+ is that he was in the midst of a world of ruins, and there was nothing
+ there to gladden, but very much to touch with grief. He was here to
+ restore that which was broken down and crumbling into decay. An
+ enthusiastic antiquarian, standing amidst the fragments of an ancient
+ temple surrounded by dust and moss, broken pillar, and defaced
+ architrave, with magnificent projects in his mind of restoring all
+ this to _former_ majesty, to draw out to light from mere rubbish the
+ ruined glories, and therefore stooping down amongst the dank ivy and
+ the rank nettles; such was Christ amidst the wreck of human nature. He
+ was striving to lift it out of its degradation. He was searching out
+ in revolting places that which had fallen down, that He might build it
+ up again in fair proportions a holy temple to the Lord.
+
+ Therefore He laboured among the guilty; therefore He was the companion
+ of outcasts; therefore He spoke tenderly and lovingly to those whom
+ society counted undone; therefore He loved to bind up the bruised and
+ the broken-hearted; therefore His breath fanned the spark which seemed
+ dying out in the wick of the expiring taper, when men thought that it
+ was too late, and that the hour of _hopeless_ profligacy was come. It
+ was that feature in His character, that tender, hoping, encouraging
+ spirit of His which the prophet Isaiah fixed upon as characteristic.
+ "A bruised reed will He not break."
+
+ It was an illustration of this spirit which He gave in the parable
+ which forms the subject of our consideration to-day. We find the
+ occasion which drew it from Him in the commencement of this chapter,
+ "Then drew near unto Him all the publicans and sinners for to hear
+ Him. And the Pharisees and Scribes murmured, saying, This man
+ receiveth sinners, and eateth with them." It was then that Christ
+ condescended to offer an excuse or an explanation of His conduct. And
+ His excuse was this: It is natural, humanly natural, to rejoice more
+ over that which has been recovered than over that which has been never
+ lost. He proved that by three illustrations taken from human life. The
+ first illustration intended to show the feelings of Christ in winning
+ back a sinner, was the joy which the shepherd feels in the recovery of
+ a sheep from the mountain wilderness. The second was the satisfaction
+ which a person feels for a recovered coin. The last was the gladness
+ which attends the restoration of an erring son.
+
+ Now the three parables are alike in this, that they all describe more
+ or less vividly the feelings of the Redeemer on the recovery of the
+ lost. But the third parable differs from the other two in this, that
+ besides the feelings of the Saviour, it gives us a multitude of
+ particulars respecting the feelings, the steps, and the motives of the
+ penitent who is reclaimed back to goodness. In the two first the thing
+ lost is a coin or a sheep. It would not be possible to find any
+ picture of remorse or gladness there. But in the third parable the
+ thing lost is not a lifeless thing, nor a mute thing, but a being, the
+ workings of whose human heart are all described. So that the subject
+ opened out to us is a more extensive one--not merely the feelings of
+ the finder, God in Christ, but besides that, the sensations of the
+ wanderer himself.
+
+ In dealing with this parable, this is the line which we shall adopt.
+ We shall look at the picture which it draws of--1. God's treatment of
+ the penitent. 2. God's expostulation with the saint. God's treatment
+ of the penitent divides itself in this parable into three distinct
+ epochs. The period of alienation, the period of repentance, and the
+ circumstances of a penitent reception. We shall consider all these in
+ turn.
+
+ The first truth exhibited in this parable is the alienation of man's
+ heart from God. Homelessness, distance from our Father--that is man's
+ state by nature in this world. The youngest son gathered all together
+ and took his journey into a _far_ country. Brethren, this is the
+ history of worldliness. It is a state far from God; in other words, it
+ is a state of homelessness. And now let us ask what that means. To
+ English hearts it is not necessary to expound elaborately the infinite
+ meanings which cluster round that blessed expression "home." Home is
+ the one place in all this world where hearts are sure of each other.
+ It is the place of confidence. It is the place where we tear off that
+ mask of guarded and suspicious coldness which the world forces us to
+ wear in self-defence, and where we pour out the unreserved
+ communications of full and confiding hearts. It is the spot where
+ expressions of tenderness gush out without any sensation of
+ awkwardness and without any dread of ridicule. Let a man travel where
+ he will, home is the place to which "his heart untravelled fondly
+ turns." He is to double all pleasure there. He is there to divide all
+ pain. A _happy home_ is the single spot of rest which a man has upon
+ this earth for the cultivation of his noblest sensibilities.
+
+ And now my brethren, if that be the description of home, is God's
+ place of rest your home? Walk abroad and alone by night. That awful
+ other world in the stillness and the solemn deep of the eternities
+ above, is it your home? Those graves that lie beneath you, holding in
+ them the infinite secret, and stamping upon all earthly loveliness the
+ mark of frailty and change and fleetingness--are those graves the
+ prospect to which in bright days and dark days you can turn without
+ dismay? God in his splendours,--dare we feel with Him affectionate and
+ familiar, so that trial comes softened by this feeling--it is my
+ Father, and enjoyment can be taken with a frank feeling; my Father has
+ given it me, without grudging, to make me happy? All that is having a
+ home in God. Are we at home there? Why there is demonstration in our
+ very childhood that we are not at home with that other world of God's.
+ An infant fears to be alone, because he feels he is not alone. He
+ trembles in the dark, because he is conscious of the presence of the
+ world of spirits. Long before he has been told tales of terror, there
+ is an instinctive dread of the supernatural in the infant mind. It is
+ the instinct which we have from childhood that gives us the feeling of
+ another world. And mark, brethren, if the child is not at home in the
+ thought of that world of God's, the deep of darkness and eternity is,
+ around him--God's home, but not his home, for his flesh creeps. And
+ that feeling grows through life; not the fear--when the child becomes
+ a man he gets over fear--but the dislike. The man feels as much
+ aversion as the child for the world of spirits.
+
+ Sunday comes. It breaks across the current of his worldliness. It
+ suggests thoughts of death and judgment and everlasting existence. Is
+ that home? Can the worldly man feel Sunday like a foretaste of his
+ Father's mansion? If we could but know how many have come here to-day,
+ not to have their souls lifted up heavenwards, but from curiosity, or
+ idleness, or criticism, it would give us an appalling estimate of the
+ number who are living in a far country, "having no hope and without
+ God in the world."
+
+ The second truth conveyed to us in this parable is the unsatisfying
+ nature of worldly happiness. The outcast son tried to satiate his
+ appetite with husks. A husk is an empty thing; it is a thing which
+ looks extremely like food, and promises as much as food; but it is not
+ food. It is a thing which when chewed will stay the appetite, but
+ leaves the emaciated body without nourishment. Earthly happiness is a
+ husk. We say not that there is no satisfaction in the pleasures of a
+ worldly life. That would be an overstatement of the truth. Something
+ there is, or else why should men persist in living for them? The
+ cravings of man's appetite may be stayed by things which cannot
+ satisfy him. Every new pursuit contains in it a new hope; and it is
+ long before hope is bankrupt. But my brethren, it is strange if a man
+ has not found out long before he has reached the age of thirty, that
+ everything here is empty and disappointing. The nobler his heart and
+ the more unquenchable his hunger for the high and the good, the sooner
+ will he find that out. Bubble after bubble bursts, each bubble tinted
+ with the celestial colours of the rainbow, and each leaving in the
+ hand which crushes it a cold damp drop of disappointment. All that is
+ described in Scripture by the emphatic metaphor of "sowing the wind
+ and reaping the whirlwind," the whirlwind of blighted hopes and
+ unreturned feelings and crushed expectations--that is the harvest
+ which the world gives you to reap.
+
+ And now is the question asked, Why is this world unsatisfying?
+ Brethren, it is the grandeur of the soul which God has given us, which
+ makes it insatiable in its desires--with an infinite void which cannot
+ be filled up. A soul which was made for God, how can the world fill
+ it? If the ocean can be still with miles of unstable waters beneath
+ it, then the soul of man, rocking itself upon its own deep longings,
+ with the Infinite beneath it, may rest. We were created once in
+ majesty, to find enjoyment in God, and if our hearts are empty now,
+ there is nothing for it but to fill up the hollowness of the soul with
+ God.
+
+ Let not that expression--filling the soul with God--pass away without
+ a distinct meaning. God is Love and Goodness. Fill the soul with
+ goodness, and fill the soul with love, _that_ is the filling it with
+ God. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us. There is nothing else
+ that can satisfy. So that when we hear men of this world acknowledge,
+ as they sometimes will do, when they are wearied with this phantom
+ chase of life, sick of gaieties and tired of toil, that it is not in
+ their pursuits that they can drink the fount of blessedness; and when
+ we see them, instead of turning aside either broken-hearted or else
+ made wise, still persisting to trust to expectations--at fifty, sixty,
+ or seventy years still feverish about some new plan of ambition--what
+ we see is this: we see a soul formed with a capacity for high and
+ noble things, fit for the banquet table of God Himself, trying to fill
+ its infinite hollowness with husks.
+
+ Once more, there is degradation in the life of irreligion. The things
+ which the wanderer tried to live on were not husks only. They were
+ husks which the swine did eat. Degradation means the application of a
+ thing to purposes lower than that for which it was intended. It is
+ degradation to a man to live on husks, because these are not his true
+ food. We call it degradation when we see the members of an ancient
+ family, decayed by extravagance, working for their bread. It is not
+ degradation for a born labourer to work for an honest livelihood. It
+ is degradation for them, for they are not what they might have been.
+ And therefore, for a man to be degraded, it is not necessary that he
+ should have given himself up to low and mean practices. It is quite
+ enough that he is living for purposes lower than those for which God
+ intended him. He may be a man of unblemished reputation, and yet
+ debased in the truest meaning of the word. We were sent into this
+ world to love God and to love man; to do good--to fill up life with
+ deeds of generosity and usefulness. And he that refuses to work out
+ that high destiny is a degraded man. He may turn away revolted from
+ everything that is gross. His sensuous indulgences may be all marked
+ by refinement and taste. His house may be filled with elegance. His
+ library may be adorned with books. There may be the sounds in his
+ mansion which can regale the ear, the delicacies which can stimulate
+ the palate, and the forms of beauty which can please the eye. There
+ may be nothing in his whole life to offend the most chastened and
+ fastidious delicacy; and yet, if the history of all this be, powers
+ which were meant for eternity frittered upon time, the man is
+ degraded--if the spirit which was created to find its enjoyment in the
+ love of God has settled down satisfied with the love of the world,
+ then, just as surely as the sensualist of this parable, that man has
+ turned aside from a celestial feast to prey on garbage.
+
+ We pass on to the second period of the history of God's treatment of a
+ sinner. It is the period of his coming to himself, or what we call
+ repentance. The first fact of religious experience which this parable
+ suggests to us is that common truth--men desert the world when the
+ world deserts them. The renegade came to himself when there were no
+ more husks to eat. He would have remained away if he could have got
+ them, but it is written, "no man gave unto him." And this, brethren,
+ is the record of our shame. Invitation is not enough; we must be
+ driven to God. And the famine comes not by chance. God sends the
+ famine into the soul--the hunger, and thirst, and the
+ disappointment--to bring back his erring child again.
+
+ Now the world fastens upon that truth, and gets out of it a triumphant
+ sarcasm against religion. They tell us that just as the caterpillar
+ passes into the chrysalis, and the chrysalis into the butterfly, so
+ profligacy passes into disgust, and disgust passes into religion. To
+ use their own phraseology, when people become disappointed with the
+ world, it is the last resource they say, to turn saint. So the men of
+ the world speak, and they think they are profoundly philosophical and
+ concise in the account they give. The world is welcome to its very
+ small sneer. It is the glory of our Master's gospel that it _is_ the
+ refuge of the broken-hearted. It is the strange mercy of our God that
+ he does not reject the writhings of a jaded heart. Let the world curl
+ its lip if it will, when it sees through the causes of the prodigal's
+ return. And if the sinner does not come to God taught by this
+ disappointment, what then? If affections crushed in early life have
+ driven one man to God; if wrecked and ruined hopes have made another
+ man religious; if want of success in a profession has broken the
+ spirit; if the human life lived out too passionately, has left a
+ surfeit and a craving behind which end in seriousness; if one is
+ brought by the sadness of widowed life, and another by the forced
+ desolation of involuntary single life; if when the mighty famine comes
+ into the heart, and not a husk is left, not a pleasure untried, then,
+ and not till then, the remorseful resolve is made, "I will arise and
+ go to my Father:"--Well, brethren, what then? Why this, that the
+ history of penitence, produced as it so often is by mere
+ disappointment, sheds only a brighter lustre round the Love of Christ,
+ who rejoices to receive such wanderers, worthless as they are, back
+ into His bosom. Thank God the world's sneer is true. It _is_ the last
+ resource to turn saint. Thanks to our God that when this gaudy world
+ has ceased to charm, when the heart begins to feel its hollowness, and
+ the world has lost its satisfying power, still all is not yet lost if
+ penitence and Christ remain, to still, to humble, and to soothe a
+ heart which sin has fevered.
+
+ There is another truth contained in this section of the parable. After
+ a life of wild sinfulness religion is servitude at first, not freedom.
+ Observe, he went back to duty with the feelings of a slave: "I am no
+ more worthy to be called thy son, make me as one of thy hired
+ servants." Any one who has lived in the excitement of the world, and
+ then tried to settle down at once to quiet duty, knows how true that
+ is. To borrow a metaphor from Israel's desert life, it is a tasteless
+ thing to live on manna after you have been feasting upon quails. It is
+ a dull cold drudgery to find pleasure in simple occupation when life
+ has been a succession of strong emotions. Sonship it is not; it is
+ slavery. A son obeys in love, entering heartily into his father's
+ meaning. A servant obeys mechanically, rising early because he must;
+ doing it may be, his duty well, but feeling in all its force the
+ irksomeness of the service. Sonship does not come all at once. The
+ yoke of Christ is easy, the burden of Christ is light; but it is not
+ light to everybody. It is light when you love it, and no man who has
+ sinned much can love it all at once.
+
+ Therefore, if I speak to any one who is trying to be religious, and
+ heavy in heart because his duty is done too formally,--my Christian
+ brother, fear not. You are returning, like the prodigal, with the
+ feelings of a servant. Still it is a real return. The spirit of
+ adoption will come afterwards. You will often have to do duties which
+ you cannot relish, and in which you see no meaning. So it was with
+ Naaman at the prophet's command. He bathed, not knowing why he was
+ bidden to bathe in Jordan. When you bend to prayer, often and often
+ you will have to kneel with wandering thoughts, and constraining lips
+ to repeat words into which your heart scarcely enters. You will have
+ to perform duties when the heart is cold, and without a spark of
+ enthusiasm to warm you. But my Christian brother, onwards still.
+ Struggle to the Cross, even though it be struggling as in chains. Just
+ as on a day of clouds, when you have watched the distant hills, dark
+ and gray with mist, suddenly a gleam of sunshine passing over reveals
+ to you, in that flat surface, valleys and dells and spots of sunny
+ happiness, which slept before unsuspected in the fog, so in the gloom
+ of penitential life there will be times when God's deep peace and love
+ will be felt shining into the soul with supernatural refreshment. Let
+ the penitent be content with the servant's lot at first. Liberty and
+ peace, and the bounding sensations of a Father's arms around you, come
+ afterwards.
+
+ The last circumstance in this division of our subject is the reception
+ which a sinner meets with on his return to God. "Bring forth the best
+ robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his
+ feet, and bring hither the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and
+ be merry." This banquet represents to us two things. It tells of the
+ father's gladness on his son's return. That represents God's joy on
+ the reformation of a sinner. It tells of a banquet and a dance given
+ to the long lost son. That represents the sinner's gladness when he
+ first understood that God was reconciled to him in Christ. There is a
+ strange, almost wild, rapture, a strong gush of love and happiness in
+ those days which are called the days of first conversion. When a man
+ who has sinned much--a profligate--turns to God, and it becomes first
+ clear to his apprehension that there is love instead of spurning for
+ him, there is a luxury of emotion--a banquet of tumultuous blessedness
+ in the moment of first love to God, which stands alone in life,
+ nothing before and nothing after like it. And brethren, let us
+ observe:--This forgiveness is a thing granted while a man is yet afar
+ off. We are not to wait for the right of being happy till we are good:
+ we might wait for ever. Joy is not delayed till we deserve it. Just so
+ soon as a sinful man trusts that the mercy of God in Christ has done
+ away with his transgression, the ring, and the robe, and the shoes are
+ his, the banquet and the light of a Father's countenance.
+
+ Lastly, we have to consider very briefly God's expostulation with a
+ saint. There is another brother mentioned in this parable, who
+ expressed something like indignation at the treatment which his
+ brother met with. There are commentators who have imagined that this
+ personage represents the Pharisees who complained that Jesus was
+ receiving sinners. But this is manifestly impossible, because his
+ father expostulates with him in this language, "Son, thou, art ever
+ with me;" not for one moment could that be true of the Pharisees. The
+ true interpretation seems to be that this elder brother represents a
+ real Christian perplexed with God's mysterious dealings. We have
+ before us the description of one of those happy persons who have been
+ filled with the Holy Ghost from their mother's womb, and on the whole
+ (with imperfections of course) remained God's servant all his life.
+ For this is his own account of himself, which the father does not
+ contradict. "Lo! these many years do I serve thee."
+
+ We observe then: The objection made to the reception of a notorious
+ sinner: "Thou never gavest me a kid." Now, in this we have a fact true
+ to Christian experience. Joy seems to be felt more vividly and more
+ exuberantly by men who have sinned much, than by men who have grown up
+ consistently from childhood with religious education. Rapture belongs
+ to him whose sins, which are forgiven, are many. In the perplexity
+ which this fact occasions, there is a feeling which is partly right
+ and partly wrong. There is a surprise which is natural. There is a
+ resentful jealousy which is to be rebuked.
+
+ There is first of all a natural surprise. It was natural that the
+ elder brother should feel perplexed and hurt. When a sinner seems to
+ be rewarded with more happiness than a saint, it appears as if good
+ and evil were alike undistinguished in God's dealings. It seems like
+ putting a reconciled enemy over the head of a tried servant. It looks
+ as if it were a kind of encouragement held out to sin, and a man
+ begins to feel, Well if this is to be the caprice of my father's
+ dealing; if this rich feast of gladness be the reward of a licentious
+ life, "Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in
+ innocency." This is natural surprise.
+
+ But besides this there is a jealousy in these sensations of ours which
+ God sees fit to rebuke. You have been trying to serve God all your
+ life, and find it struggle, and heaviness, and dulness still. You see
+ another who has outraged every obligation of life, and he is not tried
+ by the deep prostration you think he ought to have, but bright with
+ happiness at once. You have been making sacrifices all your life, and
+ your worst trials come out of your most generous sacrifices. Your
+ errors in judgment have been followed by sufferings sharper than those
+ which crime itself could have brought. And you see men who never made
+ a sacrifice unexposed to trial--men whose life has been rapture
+ purchased by the ruin of others' innocence--tasting first the
+ pleasures of sin, and then the banquet of religion. You have been a
+ moral man from childhood, and yet with all your efforts you feel the
+ crushing conviction that it has never once been granted you to win a
+ soul to God. And you see another man marked by inconsistency and
+ impetuosity, banqueting every day upon the blest success of impressing
+ and saving souls. All that is startling. And then comes sadness and
+ despondency; then come all those feelings which are so graphically
+ depicted here: irritation--"he was angry;" swelling pride--"he would
+ not go in;" jealousy, which required soothing--"his father went out
+ and entreated him."
+
+ And now brethren, mark the father's answer. It does not account for
+ this strange dealing by God's sovereignty. It does not cut the knot of
+ the difficulty, instead of untying it, by saying, God has a _right_ to
+ do what He will. He does not urge, God has a right to act on
+ favouritism if He please. But it assigns two reasons. The first reason
+ is, "It was _meet_, right that we should make merry." It is meet that
+ God should be glad on the reclamation of a sinner. It is meet that
+ that sinner, looking down into the dreadful chasm over which he had
+ been tottering, should feel a shudder of delight through all his frame
+ on thinking of his escape. And it is meet that religious men should
+ not feel jealous of one another, but freely and generously join in
+ thanking God that others have got happiness, even if _they_ have not.
+ The spirit of religious exclusiveness, which looks down contemptuously
+ instead of tenderly on worldly men, and banishes a man for ever from
+ the circle of its joys because he has sinned notoriously, is a bad
+ spirit.
+
+ Lastly the reason given for this dealing is, "Son, thou art always
+ with Me, and all that I have is thine." By which Christ seems to tell
+ us that the disproportion between man and man is much less than we
+ suppose. The profligate had had one hour of ecstasy--the other had
+ had a whole life of peace. A consistent Christian may not have
+ rapture; but he has that which is much better than rapture:
+ calmness--God's serene and perpetual presence. And after all brethren,
+ that is the best. One to whom much is forgiven, has much joy. He must
+ have it, if it were only to support him through those fearful trials
+ which are to come--those haunting reminiscences of a polluted
+ heart--those frailties--those inconsistencies to which the habit of
+ past indulgence have made him liable. A terrible struggle is in store
+ for him yet. Grudge him not one hour of unclouded exultation. But
+ religion's best gift--rest, serenity--the quiet daily love of one who
+ lives perpetually with his Father's family--uninterrupted
+ usefulness--_that_ belongs to him who has lived steadily, and walked
+ with duty, neither grieving nor insulting the Holy Spirit of his God.
+ The man who serves God early has the best of it; joy is well in its
+ way, but a few flashes of joy are trifles in comparison with a life of
+ peace. Which is best: the flash of joy lighting up the whole heart,
+ and then darkness till the next flash comes--or the steady calm
+ sunlight of day in which men work?
+
+ And now, one word to those who are living this young man's
+ life--thinking to become religious as he did, when they have got tired
+ of the world. I speak to those who are leading what, in the world's
+ softened language of concealment, is called a gay life. Young
+ brethren, let two motives be urged earnestly upon your attention. The
+ first is the motive of mere honourable feeling. We will say nothing
+ about the uncertainty of life. We will not dwell upon this fact, that
+ impressions resisted now, may never come back again. We will not
+ appeal to terror. That is not the weapon which a Christian minister
+ loves to use. If our lips were clothed with thunder, it is not
+ denunciation which makes men Christians; let the appeal be made to
+ every high and generous feeling in a young man's bosom.
+
+ Deliberately and calmly you are going to do _this_: to spend the best
+ and most vigorous portion of your days in idleness--in uselessness--in
+ the gratification of self--in the contamination of others. And then
+ weakness, the relics, and the miserable dregs of life;--you are going
+ to give _that_ sorry offering to God, because His mercy endureth for
+ ever! Shame--shame upon the heart which can let such a plan rest in it
+ one moment. If it be there, crush it like a man. It is a degrading
+ thing to enjoy husks till there is no man to give them. It is a base
+ thing to resolve to give to God as little as possible, and not to
+ serve Him till you must.
+
+ Young brethren, I speak principally to you. You have health for God
+ now. You have strength of mind and body. You have powers which may fit
+ you for real usefulness. You have appetites for enjoyment which can be
+ consecrated to God. You acknowledge the law of honour. Well then, by
+ every feeling of manliness and generosity remember this: now, and not
+ later, is your time to learn what religion means.
+
+ There is another motive, and a very solemn one, to be urged upon those
+ who are delaying. Every moment of delay adds bitterness to after
+ struggles. The moment of a feeling of hired servitude must come. If a
+ man will not obey God with a warm heart, he may hereafter have to do
+ it with a cold one. To be holy is the work of a long life. The
+ experience of ten thousand lessons teaches only a little of it; and
+ all this, the work of becoming like God, the man who delays is
+ crowding into the space of a few years, or a few months. When we have
+ lived long a life of sin, do we think that repentance and forgiveness
+ will obliterate all the traces of sin upon the character? Be sure that
+ every sin pays its price: "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also
+ reap."
+
+ Oh! there are recollections of past sin which come crowding up to the
+ brain, with temptation in them. There are old habits which refuse to
+ be mastered by a few enthusiastic sensations. There is so much of the
+ old man clinging to the penitent who has waited long--he is so much as
+ a religious man, like what he was when he was a worldly man--that it
+ is doubtful whether he ever reaches in this world the full stature of
+ Christian manhood. Much warm earnestness, but strange inconsistencies,
+ that is the character of one who is an old man and a young Christian.
+ Brethren, do we wish to risk all this? Do we want to learn holiness
+ with terrible struggles, and sore affliction, and the plague of much
+ remaining evil? Then _wait_ before you turn to God.
+
+
+
+
+ XXI.
+
+ _Preached May 15, 1853._
+
+ JOHN'S REBUKE OF HEROD.
+
+
+   "But Herod the tetrarch, being reproved by him for Herodias, his
+    brother Philip's wife, and for all the evils which Herod had done,
+    added yet this above all, that he shut up John in prison,"--Luke
+    iii. 19, 20.
+
+ The life of John the Baptist divides itself into three distinct
+ periods. Of the first we are told almost nothing, but we may
+ conjecture much. We are told that he was in the deserts till his
+ showing unto Israel. It was a period probably, in which, saddened by
+ the hollowness of all life in Israel, and perplexed with the
+ controversies of Jerusalem, the controversies of Sadducee with
+ Pharisee, of formalist with mystic, of the disciples of one infallible
+ Rabbi with the disciples of another infallible Rabbi, he fled for
+ refuge to the wilderness, to see whether God could not be found there
+ by the heart that sought Him, without the aid of churches, rituals,
+ creeds, and forms. This period lasted thirty years.
+
+ The second period is a shorter one. It comprises the few months of his
+ public ministry. His difficulties were over; he had reached conviction
+ enough to live and die on. He knew not all, but he knew something. He
+ could not baptize with the Spirit, but he could at least baptize with
+ water. It was not given to him to build up, but it was given to him
+ to pull down all false foundations. He knew that the highest truth of
+ spiritual life was to be given by One that should come after. What he
+ had learned in the desert was contained in a few words--Reality lies
+ at the root of religious life. Ye must be real, said John. "Bring
+ forth fruits meet for repentance." Let each man do his own duty; let
+ the rich impart to those who are not rich; let the publican accuse no
+ man falsely; let the soldier be content with his wages. The coming
+ kingdom is not a mere piece of machinery which will make you all good
+ and happy without effort of your own. Change yourselves, or you will
+ have no kingdom at all. Personal reformation, personal reality, _that_
+ was John's message to the world.
+
+ It was an incomplete one; but he delivered it as his all, manfully;
+ and his success was signal, astonishing even to himself. Successful it
+ was, because it appealed to all the deepest wants of the human heart.
+ It told of peace to those who had been agitated by tempestuous
+ passion. It promised forgetfulness of past transgression to those
+ whose consciences smarted with self-accusing recollections. It spoke
+ of refuge from the wrath to come to those who had felt it a fearful
+ expectation to fall into the hands of an angry God. And the result of
+ that message, conveyed by the symbol of baptism, was that the desert
+ swarmed with crowds who owned the attractive spell of the power of a
+ new life made possible. Warriors, paupers, profligates--some admiring
+ the nobleness of religious life, others needing it to fill up the
+ empty hollow of an unsatisfied heart; the penitent, the heart-broken,
+ the worldly, and the disappointed, all came. And with them there came
+ two other classes of men, whose approach roused the Baptist to
+ astonishment.
+
+ The formalist, not satisfied with his formality, and the infidel,
+ unable to rest on his infidelity--they came too--startled, for one
+ hour at least, to the real significance of life, and shaken out of
+ unreality. The Baptist's message wrung the confession from their
+ souls. "Yes, our system will not do. We are not happy after all; we
+ are miserable. Prophet, whose solitary life, far away there in the
+ desert, has been making to itself a home in the mysterious and the
+ invisible, what hast thou got to tell us from that awful other world?
+ What are we to do?"
+
+ These things belong to a period of John's life anterior to the text.
+ The prophet has been hitherto in a self-selected solitude, the free
+ wild desert, opening his heart to the strange sights and sounds
+ through which the grand voice of oriental nature speaks of God to the
+ soul, in a way that books cannot speak.
+
+ We have arrived at the third period of his history. We are now to
+ consider him as the tenant of a _compelled_ solitude, in the dungeon
+ of a capricious tyrant. Hitherto, by that rugged energy with which he
+ battled with the temptations of this world, he has been shedding a
+ glory round human life. We are now to look at him equally alone;
+ equally majestic, shedding by martyrdom, almost a brighter glory round
+ human death. He has hitherto been receiving the homage of almost
+ unequalled popularity. We are now to observe him reft of every
+ admirer, every soother, every friend. He has been hitherto overcoming
+ the temptations of existence by entire seclusion from them all. We are
+ now to ask how he will stem those seductions when he is brought into
+ the very midst of them, and the whole outward aspect of his life has
+ laid aside its distinctive and peculiar character; when he has ceased
+ to be the anchorite, and has become the idol of a court.
+
+ Much instruction, brethren, there ought to be in all this, if we only
+ knew rightly how to bring it out, or even to paint in anything like
+ intelligible colours the picture which our own minds have formed.
+ Instructive, because human life must ever be instructive. How a human
+ spirit contrived to get its life accomplished in this confused world:
+ what a man like us, and yet no common man, felt, did, suffered; how he
+ fought, and how he conquered; if we could only get a clear possession
+ and firm grasp of _that_, we should have got almost all that is worth
+ having in truth, with the technicalities stripped off, for what is the
+ use of truth except to teach man how to live? There is a vast value in
+ genuine biography. It is good to have real views of what Life is, and
+ what Christian Life may be. It is good to familiarize ourselves with
+ the history of those whom God has pronounced the salt of the earth. We
+ cannot help contracting good from such association.
+
+ And just one thing respecting this man whom we are to follow for some
+ time to-day. Let us not be afraid of seeming to rise into a mere
+ enthusiastic panegyric of a man. It is a rare man we have to deal
+ with, one of God's heroic ones, a true conqueror; one whose life and
+ motives it is hard to understand without feeling warmly and
+ enthusiastically about them. One of the very highest characters,
+ rightly understood, of all the Bible. Panegyric such as we can give,
+ what is it after he has been stamped by his Master's eulogy, "A
+ prophet? Yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet. Among them that
+ are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the
+ Baptist." In the verse which is to serve us for our guidance on this
+ subject there are two branches which will afford us fruit of
+ contemplation. It is written, "Herod being _reproved_ by John for
+ Herodias."
+
+ Here is our first subject of thought. The truthfulness of Christian
+ character.
+
+ And then next, he "shut up John in prison."
+
+ Here is our second topic. The apparent failure of religious life.
+
+ The point which we have to look at in this section of the Baptist's
+ life is the truthfulness of religious character. For the prophet was
+ now in a sphere of life altogether new. He had got to the third act of
+ his history. The first was performed right manfully in the
+ desert--that is past. He has now become a known man, celebrated
+ through the country, brought into the world, great men listening to
+ him, and in the way, if he chooses it, to become familiar with the
+ polished life of Herod's court. For this we read: Herod observed John,
+ that is, cultivated his acquaintance, paid him marked attention, heard
+ him, did many things at his bidding, and heard him gladly.
+
+ For thirty long years John had lived in that far-off desert, filling
+ his soul with the grandeur of solitude, content to be unknown, not
+ conscious, most likely, that there was anything supernatural in
+ him--living with the mysterious God in silence. And then came the day
+ when the qualities, so secretly nursed, became known in the great
+ world: men felt that there was a greater than themselves before them,
+ and then came the trial of admiration, when the crowds congregated
+ round to listen. And all that trial John bore uninjured, for when
+ those vast crowds dispersed at night, he was left alone with God and
+ the universe once more. That prevented his being spoilt by flattery.
+ But now comes the great trial. John is transplanted from the desert to
+ the town: he has quitted simple life: he has come to artificial life.
+ John has won a king's attention, and now the question is, Will the
+ diamond of the mine bear polishing without breaking into shivers? Is
+ the iron prophet melting into voluptuous softness? Is he getting the
+ world's manners and the world's courtly insincerity? Is he becoming
+ artificial through his change of life? My Christian brethren, we find
+ nothing of the kind. There he stands in Herod's voluptuous court the
+ prophet of the desert still, unseduced by blandishment from his high
+ loyalty, and fronting his patron and his prince with the stern
+ unpalatable truth of God.
+
+ It is refreshing to look on such a scene as this--the highest, the
+ very highest moment, I think, in all John's history; higher than his
+ ascetic life. For after all, ascetic life such as he had led before,
+ when he fed on locusts and wild honey, is hard only in the first
+ resolve. When you have once made up your mind to that, it becomes a
+ habit to live alone. To lecture the poor about religion is not hard.
+ To speak of unworldliness to men with whom we do not associate, and
+ who do not see _our_ daily inconsistencies, _that_ is not hard. To
+ speak contemptuously of the world when we have no power of commanding
+ its admiration, _that_ is not difficult. But when God has given a man
+ accomplishments, or powers, which would enable him to shine in
+ society, and he can still be firm, and steady, and uncompromisingly
+ true; when he can be as undaunted before the rich as before the poor;
+ when rank and fashion cannot subdue him into silence: when he hates
+ moral evil as sternly in a great man as he would in a peasant, there
+ is truth in that man. This was the test to which the Baptist was
+ submitted.
+
+ And now contemplate him for a moment; forget that he is an historical
+ personage, and remember that he was a man like us. Then comes the
+ trial. All the habits and rules of polite life would be whispering
+ such advice as this: "Only keep your remarks within the limits of
+ politeness. If you cannot approve, be silent; you can do no good by
+ finding fault with the great." We know how the whole spirit of a man
+ like John would have revolted at that. Imprisonment? Yes. Death? Well,
+ a man can die but once,--anything but not cowardice,--not
+ meanness,--not pretending what I do not feel, and disguising what I do
+ feel. Brethren, death is not the worst thing in this life; it is not
+ difficult to die--five minutes and the sharpest agony is past. The
+ worst thing in this life is cowardly untruthfulness. Let men be rough
+ if they will, let them be unpolished, but let Christian men in all
+ they say be sincere. No flattery, no speaking smoothly to a man before
+ his face, while all the time there is a disapproval of his conduct in
+ the heart. The thing we want in Christianity is not politeness, it is
+ sincerity.
+
+ There are three things which we remark in this truthfulness of John.
+ The first is its straightforwardness, the second is its
+ unconsciousness, and the last its unselfishness. The
+ straightforwardness is remarkable in this circumstance, that there is
+ no indirect coming to the point. At once, without circumlocution, the
+ true man speaks. "It is not lawful for thee to have her." There are
+ some men whom God has gifted with a rare simplicity of heart, which
+ make them utterly incapable of pursuing the subtle excuses which can
+ be made for evil. There is in John no morbid sympathy for the
+ offender: "It is not lawful." He does not say, "It is _best_ to do
+ otherwise; it is unprofitable for your own happiness to live in this
+ way." He says plainly, "It is wrong for you to do this evil."
+
+ Earnest men in this world have no time for subtleties and casuistry.
+ Sin is detestable, horrible, in God's sight, and when once it has been
+ made clear that it is not lawful, a Christian has nothing to do with
+ toleration of it. If we dare not tell our patron of his sin we must
+ give up his patronage. In the next place there was unconsciousness in
+ John's rebuke. We remark, brethren, that he was utterly ignorant that
+ he was doing a fine thing. There was no sidelong glance, as in a
+ mirror, of admiration for himself. He was not feeling, This is brave.
+ He never stopped to feel that after-ages would stand by, and look at
+ that deed of his, and say, "Well done." His reproof comes out as the
+ natural impulse of an earnest heart. John was the last of all men to
+ feel that he had done anything extraordinary. And this we hold to be
+ an inseparable mark of truth. No true man is conscious that he is
+ true; he is rather conscious of insincerity. No brave man is conscious
+ of his courage; bravery is _natural_ to him. The skin of Moses' face
+ shone after he had been with God, but Moses wist not of it.
+
+ There are many of us who would have prefaced that rebuke with a long
+ speech. We should have begun by observing how difficult it was to
+ speak to a monarch, how delicate the subject, how much proof we were
+ giving of our friendship. We should have asked the great man to accept
+ it as a proof of our devotion. John does nothing of this. Prefaces
+ betray anxiety about self; John was not thinking of himself. He was
+ thinking of God's offended law, and the guilty king's soul. Brethren,
+ it is a lovely and a graceful thing to see men natural. It is
+ beautiful to see men sincere without being haunted with the
+ consciousness of their sincerity. There is a sickly habit that men get
+ of looking into themselves, and thinking how they are appearing. We
+ are always unnatural when we do that. The very tread of one who is
+ thinking how he appears to others, becomes dizzy with affectation. He
+ is too conscious of what he is doing, and self-consciousness is
+ affectation. Let us aim at being natural. And we can only become
+ natural by thinking of God and duty, instead of the way in which we
+ are serving God and duty.
+
+ There was lastly, something exceedingly unselfish in John's
+ truthfulness. We do not build much on a man's being merely true. It
+ costs some men nothing to be true, for they have none of those
+ sensibilities which shrink from inflicting pain. There is a surly
+ bitter way of speaking truth which says little for a man's heart. Some
+ men have not delicacy enough to feel that it is an awkward and a
+ painful thing to rebuke a brother: they are in their element when they
+ can become censors of the great. John's truthfulness was not like
+ that. It was the earnest loving nature of the man which made him say
+ sharp things. Was it to gratify spleen that he reproved Herod for all
+ the evils he had done? Was it to minister to a diseased and
+ disappointed misanthropy? Little do we understand the depth of
+ tenderness which there is in a rugged, true nature, if we think that.
+ John's whole life was an iron determination to crush self in
+ everything.
+
+ Take a single instance. John's ministry was gradually superseded by
+ the ministry of Christ. It was the moon waning before the Sun. They
+ came and told him that, "Rabbi, He to whom thou barest witness beyond
+ Jordan baptizeth, and all men come unto Him." Two of his own personal
+ friends, apparently some of the last he had left, deserted him, and
+ went to the new teacher.
+
+ And now let us estimate the keenness of that trial. Remember John was
+ a man: he had tasted the sweets of influence; that influence was dying
+ away, and just in the prime of life he was to become _nothing_. Who
+ cannot conceive the keenness of that trial? Bearing that in mind--what
+ is the prophet's answer? One of the most touching sentences in all
+ Scripture--calmly, meekly, the hero recognises his destiny--"He must
+ increase, but I must decrease." He does more than recognise it--he
+ rejoices in it, rejoices to be nothing, to be forgotten, despised, so
+ as only Christ can be everything. "The friend of the bridegroom
+ rejoiceth because he heareth the bridegroom's voice, this my joy is
+ fulfilled." And it is _this_ man, with self so thoroughly crushed--the
+ outward self by bodily austerities, the inward self by Christian
+ humbleness--it is this man who speaks so sternly to his sovereign. "It
+ is not lawful." Was there any gratification of human feeling there? Or
+ was not the rebuke unselfish? Meant for God's honour, dictated by the
+ uncontrollable hatred of all evil, careless altogether of personal
+ consequences?
+
+ Now it is this, my brethren, that _we_ want. The world-spirit can
+ rebuke as sharply as the Spirit which was in John; the world-spirit
+ can be severe upon the great when it is jealous. The worldly man
+ cannot bear to hear of another's success, he cannot endure to hear
+ another praised for accomplishments, or another succeeding in a
+ profession, and the world can fasten very bitterly upon a neighbour's
+ faults, and say, "It is not lawful." We expect that in the world. But
+ that this should creep among religious men, that _we_ should be
+ bitter--that we, _Christians_, should suffer jealousy to enthrone
+ itself in our hearts--that we should find fault from spleen, and not
+ from love--that we should not be able to be calm and gentle, and
+ sweet-tempered, when we decrease, when our powers fail--_that_ is the
+ shame. The love of Christ is intended to make such men as John, such
+ high and heavenly characters. What is our Christianity worth if it
+ cannot teach us a truthfulness, an unselfishness, and a generosity
+ beyond the world's?
+
+ We are to say something in the second place of the apparent failure of
+ Christian life.
+
+ The concluding sentence of this verse informs us that John was shut up
+ in prison. And the first thought which suggests itself is, that a
+ magnificent career is cut short too soon. At the very outset of ripe
+ and experienced manhood the whole thing ends in failure. John's day of
+ active usefulness is over; at thirty years of age his work is done;
+ and what permanent effect have all his labours left? The crowds that
+ listened to his voice, awed into silence by Jordan's side, we hear of
+ them no more. Herod heard John gladly, did much good by reason of his
+ influence. What was all that worth? The prophet comes to himself in a
+ dungeon, and wakes to the bitter conviction, that his influence had
+ told much in the way of commanding attention, and even winning
+ reverence, but very little in the way of gaining souls; the bitterest,
+ the most crushing discovery in the whole circle of ministerial
+ experience. All this was seeming failure.
+
+ And this, brethren, is the picture of almost all human life. To some
+ moods, and under some aspects, it seems, as it seemed to the psalmist,
+ "Man walketh in a vain shadow and disquieteth himself in vain." Go to
+ any churchyard, and stand ten minutes among the grave-stones; read
+ inscription after inscription recording the date of birth, and the
+ date of death, of him who lies below, all the trace which myriads have
+ left behind, of their having done their day's work on God's
+ earth,--that is failure or--seems so. Cast the eye down the columns of
+ any commander's despatch after a general action. The men fell by
+ thousands; the officers by hundreds. Courage, high hope,
+ self-devotion, ended in smoke--forgotten by the time of the next list
+ of slain: that is the failure of life once more. Cast your eye over
+ the shelves of a public library--there is the hard toil of years, the
+ product of a life of thought; all that remains of it is there in a
+ worm-eaten folio, taken down once in a century. Failure of human life
+ again. Stand by the most enduring of all human labours, the pyramids
+ of Egypt. One hundred thousand men, year by year, raised those
+ enormous piles to protect the corpses of the buried from rude
+ inspection. The spoiler's hand has been there, and the bodies have
+ been rifled from their mausoleum, and three thousand years have
+ written "failure" upon that. In all that, my Christian brethren, if we
+ look no deeper than the surface, we read the grave of human hope, the
+ apparent nothingness of human labour.
+
+ And then look at this history once more. In the isolation of John's
+ dying hour, there appears failure again. When a great man dies we
+ listen to hear what he has to say, we turn to the last page of his
+ biography first, to see what he had to bequeath to the world as his
+ experience of life. We expect that the wisdom, which he has been
+ hiving up for years, will distil in honeyed sweetness then. It is
+ generally not so. There is stupor and silence at the last. "How dieth
+ the wise man?" asks Solomon: and he answers bitterly, "As the fool."
+ The martyr of truth dies privately in Herod's dungeon. We have no
+ record of his last words. There were no crowds to look on. We cannot
+ describe how he received his sentence. Was he calm? Was he agitated?
+ Did he bless his murderer? Did he give utterance to any deep
+ reflections on human life? All that is shrouded in silence. He bowed
+ his head, and the sharp stroke fell flashing down. We know that, we
+ know no more--apparently a noble life abortive.
+
+ And now let us ask the question distinctly, Was all this indeed
+ failure? No, my Christian brethren, it was sublimest victory. John's
+ work was no failure; he left behind him no sect to which he had given
+ his name, but his disciples passed into the service of Christ, and
+ were absorbed in the Christian church. Words from John had made
+ impressions, and men forgot in after years _where_ the impressions
+ first came from, but the day of judgment will not forget. John laid
+ the foundations of a temple, and others built upon it He laid it in
+ struggle, in martyrdom. It was covered up like the rough masonry below
+ ground, but when we look round on the vast Christian Church, we are
+ looking at the superstructure of John's toil.
+
+ There is a lesson for us in all that, if we will learn it. Work, true
+ work, done honestly and manfully for Christ, _never_ can be a failure.
+ Your own work, my brethren, which God has given you to do, whatever
+ that is, let it be done truly. Leave eternity to show that it has not
+ been in vain in the Lord. Let it but be work, it will tell. True
+ Christian life is like the march of a conquering army into a fortress
+ which has been breached; men fall by hundreds in the ditch. Was their
+ fall a failure? Nay, for their bodies bridge over the hollow, and over
+ them the rest pass on to victory. The quiet religious worship that we
+ have this day--how comes it to be ours? It was purchased for us by the
+ constancy of such men as John, who freely gave their lives. We are
+ treading upon a bridge of martyrs. The suffering was theirs--the
+ victory is ours. John's career was no failure.
+
+ Yet we have one more circumstance which _seems_ to tell of failure. In
+ John's prison, solitude, misgiving, black doubt, seem for a time to
+ have taken possession of the prophet's soul. All that we know of those
+ feelings is this:--John while in confinement sent two of his disciples
+ to Christ, to say to Him, "Art thou He that should come, or do we look
+ for another?" Here is the language of painful uncertainty. We shall
+ not marvel at this, if we look steadily at the circumstances. Let us
+ conceive John's feelings. The enthusiastic child of Nature, who had
+ roved in the desert, free as the air he breathed, is now suddenly
+ arrested, and his strong restless heart limited to the four walls of a
+ narrow dungeon. And there he lay startled. An eagle cleaving the air
+ with motionless wing, and in the midst of his career brought from the
+ black cloud by an arrow to the ground, and looking round with his
+ wild, large eye, stunned, and startled there; just such was the free
+ prophet of the wilderness, when Herod's guards had curbed his noble
+ flight, and left him alone in his dungeon.
+
+ Now there is apparent failure here, brethren; it is not the thing
+ which we should have expected. We should have expected that a man who
+ had lived so close to God all his life, would have no misgivings in
+ his last hours. But, my brethren, it is not so. It is the strange
+ truth that some of the highest of God's servants are tried with
+ darkness on the dying bed. Theory would say, when a religious man is
+ laid up for his last struggles, now he is alone for deep communion
+ with his God. Fact very often says, "No--now he is alone, as his
+ Master was before him, in the wilderness to be tempted of the devil."
+ Look at John in imagination, and you would say, "Now his rough
+ pilgrimage is done. He is quiet, out of the world, with the rapt
+ foretaste of heaven in his soul." Look at John in fact. He is
+ agitated, sending to Christ, not able to rest, grim doubt wrestling
+ with his soul, misgiving for one last black hour whether all his hope
+ has not been delusion.
+
+ There is one thing we remark here by the way. Doubt often comes from
+ inactivity. We cannot give the philosophy of it, but this is the fact,
+ Christians who have nothing to do but to sit thinking of themselves,
+ meditating, sentimentalising, are almost sure to become the prey of
+ dark, black misgivings. John struggling in the desert needs no proof
+ that Jesus is the Christ. John shut up became morbid and doubtful
+ immediately. Brethren all this is very marvellous. The history of a
+ human soul _is_ marvellous. We are mysteries, but here is the
+ practical lesson of it all. For sadness, for suffering, for misgiving,
+ there is no remedy but stirring and doing.
+
+ Now look once more at these doubts of John's. All his life long John
+ had been wishing and expecting that the kingdom of God would come. The
+ kingdom of God is Right triumphant over Wrong, moral evil crushed,
+ goodness set up in its place, the true man recognised, the false man
+ put down and forgotten. All his life long John had panted for that;
+ his hope was to make men better. He tried to make the soldiers
+ merciful, and the publicans honest, and the Pharisees sincere. His
+ complaint was, Why is the world the thing it is? All his life long he
+ had been appealing to the invisible justice of Heaven against the
+ visible brute force which he saw around him. Christ had appeared, and
+ his hopes were straining to the utmost. "Here is the Man!" And now
+ behold, here is no Kingdom of Heaven at all, but one of darkness
+ still, oppression and cruelty triumphant, Herod putting God's prophet
+ in prison, and the Messiah quietly letting things take their course.
+ Can that be indeed Messiah? All this was exceedingly startling. And it
+ seems that then John began to feel the horrible doubt whether the
+ whole thing were not a mistake, and whether all that which he had
+ taken for inspiration were not, after all, only the excited hopes of
+ an enthusiastic temperament. Brethren, the prophet was well nigh on
+ the brink of failure.
+
+ But let us mark--that a man has doubts--_that_ is not the evil; all
+ earnest men must expect to be tried with doubts. All men who feel,
+ with their whole souls, the value of the truth which is at stake,
+ cannot be satisfied with a "perhaps." Why, when all that is true and
+ excellent in this world, all that is worth living for, is in that
+ question of questions, it is no marvel if we sometimes wish, like
+ Thomas, to see the prints of the nails, to know whether Christ be
+ indeed our Lord or not. Cold hearts are not anxious enough to doubt.
+ Men who love will have their misgivings at times; that is not the
+ evil. But the evil is, when men go on in that languid, doubting way,
+ content to doubt, proud of their doubts, morbidly glad to talk about
+ them, liking the romantic gloom of twilight, without the manliness to
+ say--I must and will know the truth. That did not John. Brethren, John
+ appealed to Christ. He did exactly what we do when we pray--and he got
+ his answer. Our Master said to his disciples, Go to my suffering
+ servant, and give him proof. Tell John the things ye see and
+ hear--"The blind see, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor
+ the Gospel is preached." There is a deep lesson wrapped up in this. We
+ get a firm grasp of truth by prayer. Communion with Christ is the best
+ proof of Christ's existence and Christ's love. It is so even in human
+ life. Misgivings gather darkly round our heart about our friend in his
+ absence; but we seek his frank smile, we feel his affectionate grasp:
+ our suspicions go to sleep again. It is just so in religion. No man is
+ in the habit of praying to God in Christ, and then doubts whether
+ Christ is He "that should come." It is in the power of prayer to
+ realize Christ, to bring him near, to make you feel His life stirring
+ like a pulse within you. Jacob could not doubt whether he had been
+ with God when his sinew shrunk. John could not doubt whether Jesus was
+ the Christ when the things He had done were pictured out so vividly in
+ answer to his prayer. Let but a man live with Christ anxious to have
+ his own life destroyed, and Christ's life established in its place,
+ losing himself in Christ, that man will have all his misgivings
+ silenced. These are the two remedies for doubt--Activity and Prayer.
+ He who works, and _feels_ he works--he who prays, and _knows_ he
+ prays, has got the secret of transforming life-failure into
+ life-victory.
+
+ In conclusion brethren, we make three remarks which could not be
+ introduced into the body of this subject. The first is--Let young and
+ ardent minds, under the first impressions of religion, beware how they
+ pledge themselves by any open profession to more than they can
+ perform. Herod warmly took up religion at first, courted the prophet
+ of religion, and then when the hot fit of enthusiasm had passed away,
+ he found that he had a clog round his life from which he could only
+ disengage himself by a rough, rude effort. Brethren whom God has
+ touched, it is good to count the cost before you begin. If you give up
+ present pursuits _impetuously_, are you sure that present impulses
+ will last? Are you quite certain that a day will not come when you
+ will curse the hour in which you broke altogether with the world? Are
+ you quite sure that the revulsion back again, will not be as impetuous
+ as Herod's, and your hatred of the religion which has become a clog,
+ as intense as it is now ardent?
+
+ Many things doubtless there are to be given up--amusements that are
+ dangerous, society that is questionable. What we give up, let us give
+ up, not from quick feeling, but from principle. Enthusiasm is a lovely
+ thing, but let us be calm in what we do. In that solemn, grand
+ thing--Christian life--one step backward is religious death.
+
+ Once more we get from this subject the doctrine of a resurrection.
+ John's life was hardness, his end was agony. That is frequently
+ Christian life. Therefore, says the apostle, if there be no
+ resurrection the Christian's choice is wrong; "If in this life only we
+ have hope in Christ, then are we of all men most miserable." Christian
+ life is not visible success--very often it is the apparent opposite of
+ success. It is the resurrection of Christ working itself out _in_ us;
+ but it is very often the Cross of Christ imprinting itself on us very
+ sharply. The highest prize which God has to give here is martyrdom.
+ The highest style of life is the Baptist's--heroic, enduring, manly
+ love. The noblest coronet which any son of man can wear is a crown of
+ thorns. Christian, _this_ is not your rest. Be content to feel that
+ this world is not your home. Homeless upon earth, try more and more to
+ make your home in heaven, above with Christ.
+
+ Lastly we have to learn from this, that devotedness to Christ is our
+ only blessedness. It is surely a strange thing to see the way in which
+ men crowded round the austere prophet, all saying, "Guide us, we
+ cannot guide ourselves." Publicans, Pharisees, Sadducees, Herod,
+ whenever John appears, all bend before him, offering him homage and
+ leadership. How do we account for this? The truth is, the spirit of
+ man groans beneath the weight of its own freedom. When a man has no
+ guide, no master but himself, he is miserable; we want guidance, and
+ if we find a man nobler, wiser than ourselves, it is almost our
+ instinct to prostrate our affections before that man, as the crowds
+ did by Jordan, and say, "Be my example, my guide, my soul's
+ sovereign." That passionate need of worship--hero-worship it has been
+ called--is a primal, universal instinct of the heart. Christ is the
+ answer to it. Men will not do; we try to find men to reverence
+ thoroughly, and we cannot do it. We go through life, finding guides,
+ rejecting them one after another, expecting nobleness and finding
+ meanness; and we turn away with a recoil of disappointment.
+
+ There is no disappointment in Christ. Christ can be our souls'
+ sovereign. Christ can be our guide. Christ can absorb all the
+ admiration which our hearts long to give. We want to worship men.
+ These Jews wanted to worship man. They were right--man is the rightful
+ object of our worship; but in the roll of ages there has been but one
+ man whom we can adore without idolatry,--the Man Christ Jesus.
+
+
+ THE END.
+
+ _Spottiswoode & Co., Printers, New-street Square, London_
+
+
+
+
+                     A SELECTION FROM THE NOTICES
+
+                                  OF
+
+                       MR. ROBERTSON'S SERMONS,
+
+                              AND OF THE
+
+                 LIFE AND LETTERS OF F.W. ROBERTSON.
+
+                 BY THE REV. STOPFORD A. BROOKE, M.A.
+
+
+
+
+ [BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, August, 1862.]
+
+   "For while hapless Englishmen complain in the papers, and in
+    private, in many a varied wail, over the sermons they have to
+    listen to, it is very apparent that the work of the preacher has
+    not fallen in any respect out of estimation. Here is a book which
+    has gone through as great a number of editions as the most popular
+    novel. It bears Mudie's stamp upon its dingy boards, and has all
+    those marks of arduous service which are only to be seen in books
+    which belong to great public libraries. It is thumbed,
+    dog's-eared, pencil-marked, worn by much perusal. Is it then a
+    novel? On the contrary, it is a volume of sermons. A fine, tender,
+    and lofty mind, full of thoughtfulness, full of devotion, has
+    herein left his legacy to his country. It is not rhetoric or any
+    vulgar excitement of eloquence that charms so many readers to the
+    book, so many hearers to this preacher's feet. It is not with the
+    action of a Demosthenes, with outstretched arms and countenance of
+    flame, that he presses his gospel upon his audience. On the
+    contrary, when we read those calm and lofty utterances, this
+    preacher seems seated, like his Master, with the multitude
+    palpitating round, but no agitation or passion in his own
+    thoughtful, contemplative breast. The Sermons of Robertson, of
+    Brighton, have few of the exciting qualities of oratory. Save for
+    the charm of a singularly pure and lucid style, their almost sole
+    attraction consists in their power of instruction, in their
+    faculty of opening up the mysteries of life and truth. It is pure
+    teaching, so far as that ever can be administered to a popular
+    audience, which is offered to us in these volumes."
+
+
+ [EDINBURGH CHRISTIAN MAGAZINE.]
+
+   "They are Sermons of a bold, uncompromising thinker--of a man
+    resolute for the truth of God, and determined in the strength of
+    God's grace to make that truth clear, to brush away all the
+    fine-spun sophistries and half-truths by which the cunning sins of
+    men have hidden it.... There must be a great and true heart, where
+    there is a great and true preacher. And in that, beyond everything
+    else, lay the secret of Mr. Robertson's influence. His Sermons
+    show evidence enough of acute logical power. His analysis is
+    exquisite in its subtleness and delicacy.... With Mr. Robertson
+    style is but the vehicle, not the substitute for thought.
+    Eloquence, poetry, scholarship, originality--his Sermons show
+    proof enough of these to put him on a level with the foremost men
+    of his time. But, after all, their charm lies in the warm, loving,
+    sympathetic heart, in the well-disciplined mind of the true
+    Christian, in his noble scorn of all lies, of all things mean and
+    crooked, in his brave battling for right, even when wrong seems
+    crowned with success, in his honest simplicity and singleness of
+    purpose, in the high and holy tone--as if, amid the discord of
+    earth, he heard clear, though far off, the perfect harmony of
+    heaven; in the fiery earnestness of his love for Christ, the
+    devotion of his whole being to the goodness and truth revealed in
+    him."
+
+
+ [CHURCH OF ENGLAND MONTHLY REVIEW.]
+
+   "It is hardly too much to say, that had the Church of England
+    produced no other fruit in the present century, this work alone
+    would be amply sufficient to acquit her of the charge of
+    barrenness.... The reputation of Mr. Robertson's Sermons is now so
+    wide-spread, that any commendation of ours may seem superfluous.
+    We will therefore simply, in conclusion, recommend such of our
+    readers as have not yet made their acquaintance, to read them
+    carefully and thoughtfully, and they will find in them more deeply
+    suggestive matter than in almost any book published in the present
+    century."
+
+
+ [MORNING POST.]
+
+   "They are distinguished by masterly exposition of Scriptural
+    truths and the true spirit of Christian charity."
+
+
+ [BRITISH QUARTERLY.]
+
+   "These Sermons are full of thought and beauty, and admirable
+    illustrations of the ease with which a gifted and disciplined mind
+    can make the obscure transparent, the difficult plain. There is
+    not a Sermon that does not furnish evidence of originality without
+    extravagance, of discrimination without tediousness, and of piety
+    without cant or conventionalism."
+
+
+ [ECLECTIC REVIEW.]
+
+   "We hail with unaffected delight the appearance of these volumes.
+    The Sermons are altogether out of the common style. They are
+    strong, free, and beautiful utterances of a gifted and cultivated
+    mind. Occasionally, the expression of theological sentiment fails
+    fully to represent our own thought, and we sometimes detect
+    tendencies with which we cannot sympathize: but, taken as a whole,
+    the discourses are fine specimens of a high order of preaching."
+
+
+ [GUARDIAN.]
+
+   "Very beautiful in feeling, and occasionally striking and forcible
+    in conception to a remarkable degree.... Even in the imperfect
+    shape in which their deceased author left them, they are very
+    remarkable compositions."
+
+
+ [CHRISTIAN REMEMBRANCER.]
+
+   "We should be glad if all preachers more united with ourselves,
+    preached such Sermons as these."
+
+
+ [WESTMINSTER REVIEW.]
+
+   "To those who affectionately remember the author, they will
+    recall, though imperfectly, his living eloquence and his living
+    truthfulness."
+
+
+ [GLOBE.]
+
+   "Mr. Robertson, of Brighton, is a name familiar to most of us, and
+    honoured by all to whom it is familiar. A true servant of Christ,
+    a bold and heart-stirring preacher of the Gospel, his teaching was
+    unlike the teaching of most clergymen, for it was beautified and
+    intensified by genius. New truth, new light, streamed from each
+    well-worn text when he handled it."
+
+
+ [BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.]
+
+   "When teaching of this description keeps the popular ear and
+    secures the general attention, it is unquestionable proof that the
+    office of the preacher has, in no way, lost its hold on the mind
+    of the people. The acceptance of a voice so unimpassioned and
+    thoughtful, so independent of all vulgar auxiliaries, so intent
+    upon bringing every theme it touches to the illustration and
+    sanctifying of the living life of the hour, that which alone can
+    be mended, and purified, and sanctified, is a better tribute to
+    the undying office of the preacher than the success of a hundred
+    Spurgeons. Attention and interest are as eager as ever where there
+    is in reality any instruction to bestow."
+
+
+ [LITERARY GAZETTE.]
+
+   "In earnestness of practical appeal, and in eloquent and graceful
+    diction, Mr. Robertson has few rivals, and these characteristics
+    are sufficient to account for his unusual popularity."
+
+
+ [NATIONAL REVIEW.]
+
+   "A volume of very fine Sermons, quite equal to the previous
+    series."
+
+
+ [BRIGHTON EXAMINER.]
+
+   "There is in the Sermons in this volume the same freshness, vigour
+    of thought and felicity of expression, as characterised whatever
+    Mr. Robertson said."
+
+
+ [ECONOMIST.]
+
+   "Mr. Robertson's Sermons have the great and rare merit of
+    neutralising by a more charitable and affectionate spirit, and by
+    a wider intelligence, all that may appear rigid and _doctrinaire_
+    in the Church of England. The result seems to have been his
+    special mission: it most fully explains the mind of the man.... We
+    recommend the Sermons to the perusal of our readers. They will
+    find in them thought of so rare and beautiful a description, an
+    earnestness of mind so steadfast in the search of truth, and a
+    charity so pure and all-embracing, that we cannot venture to offer
+    praise, which would be, in this case, almost as presumptuous as
+    criticism."
+
+
+ [SATURDAY REVIEW.]
+
+   "When Mr. Robertson died, his name was scarcely known beyond the
+    circle of his own private friends, and of those among whom he had
+    laboured in his calling. Now, every word he wrote is eagerly
+    sought for and affectionately treasured up, and meets with the
+    most reverent and admiring welcome from men of all parties and all
+    shades of opinion.... To those that find in his writings what they
+    themselves want, he is a teacher quite beyond comparison--his
+    words having a meaning, his thoughts a truth and depth, which they
+    cannot find elsewhere. And they never look to him in vain.... He
+    fixes himself upon the recollection as a most original and
+    profound thinker, and as a man in whom excellence puts on a new
+    form.... There are many persons, and the number increases every
+    year, to whom Robertson's writings are the most stable,
+    satisfactory, and exhaustless form of religious teaching which the
+    nineteenth century has given--the most wise, suggestive, and
+    practical."
+
+
+ [BRIGHTON HERALD.]
+
+   "To our thinking, no compositions of the same class, at least
+    since the days of Jeremy Taylor, can be compared with these
+    Sermons delivered to the congregation of Trinity Chapel, Brighton,
+    by their late minister. They have that power over the mind which
+    belongs only to the highest works of genius: they stir the soul to
+    its inmost depths: they move the affections, raise the
+    imagination, bring out the higher and spiritual part of our nature
+    by the continual appeal that is made to it, and tend to make us,
+    at the same time, humble and aspiring--merciful to others and
+    doubtful of ourselves."
+
+
+ [From a SERMON preached at the CONSECRATION of the BISHOP of NORWICH,
+ by the REV. J.H. GURNEY, late of MARYLEBONE.]
+
+   "I do not commit myself to all his theology; I may differ from the
+    preacher in some things, and listen doubtfully to others. But I
+    know of no modern sermons at once so suggestive and so
+    inspiriting, with reference to the whole range of Christian duty.
+    He is fresh and original without being recondite: plain-spoken
+    without severity; and discusses some of the exciting topics of the
+    day without provoking strife or lowering his tone as a Christian
+    teacher. He delivers his message, in fact, like one who is
+    commissioned to call men off from trifles and squabbles, and
+    conventional sins and follies, to something higher and nobler than
+    their common life: like a man in earnest, too, avoiding
+    technicalities, speaking his honest mind in phrases that are his
+    own, and with a directness from which there is no escape. O that a
+    hundred like him were given us by God, and placed in prominent
+    stations throughout our land!"
+
+
+ [GUARDIAN.]
+
+   "Without anything of that artificial symmetry which the
+    traditional division into heads was apt to display, they present
+    each reflection in a distinct method of statement, clearly and
+    briefly worked out; the sentences are short and terse, as in all
+    popular addresses they should be; the thoughts are often very
+    striking, and entirely out of the track of ordinary sermonising.
+    In matters of doctrine such novelty is sometimes unsafe; but the
+    language is that of one who tries earnestly to penetrate into the
+    very centre of the truth he has to expound, and differs as widely
+    as possible from the sceptic's doubt or the controversialist's
+    mistake. More frequently Mr. Robertson deals with questions of
+    practical life, of public opinion, and of what we may call social
+    casuistry--turning the light of Christian ethics upon this
+    unnoticed though familiar ground. The use of a carriage on Sunday,
+    the morality of feeing a railway porter against his employers'
+    rules, are topics not too small for illustration or application of
+    his lessons in divine truth."
+
+
+ [BRIGHTON GAZETTE.]
+
+   "As an author, Mr. Robertson was, in his lifetime, unknown; for
+    with the exception of one or two addresses, he never published,
+    having a singular disinclination to bring his thoughts before the
+    public in the form of published sermons. As a minister, he was
+    beloved and esteemed for his unswerving fidelity to his principles
+    and his fearless propagation of his religious views. As a
+    townsman, he was held in the highest estimation; his hand and
+    voice being ever ready to do all in his power to advance the moral
+    and social position of the working man. It was not till after his
+    decease, which event created a sensation and demonstration such as
+    Brighton never before or since witnessed, that his works were
+    subjected to public criticism. It was then found that in the
+    comparatively retired minister of Trinity Chapel there had existed
+    a man possessed of consummate ability and intellect of the highest
+    order; that the sermons laid before his congregation were replete
+    with the subtleties of intellect, and bore evidence of the keenest
+    perception and most exalted catholicity. His teaching was of an
+    extremely liberal character, and if fair to assign a man possessed
+    of such a universality of sympathy to any party, we should say
+    that he belonged to what is denominated the 'Broad Church.' We,
+    with many others, cannot agree in the fullest extent of his
+    teaching, but, at the same time, feel bound to accord the tribute
+    due to his genius."
+
+
+ [MORNING CHRONICLE.]
+
+   "A volume of very excellent Sermons, by the late lamented
+    Incumbent of Trinity Chapel, Brighton."
+
+
+ [TITAN.]
+
+   "But the Sermons now under notice are, we venture to say, taking
+    all the circumstances into consideration, the most remarkable
+    discourses of the age.... They are throughout vital with the
+    rarest force, burning with an earnestness perhaps never surpassed,
+    and luminous with the light of genius.... We suspect that even
+    Brighton little knew what a man Providence had placed in its
+    midst."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+ On the "_Analysis of Mr. Tennyson's In Memoriam_:"--
+
+ [GUARDIAN.]
+
+   "An endeavour to give, in a few weighty words, the key-note (so to
+    speak) of each poem in the series. Those will best appreciate the
+    amount of success attained by Mr. Robertson who try to do the same
+    work better."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+ From a few of the Notices on Mr. Robertson's "_Lecture on the Epistles
+ to the Corinthians_:"--
+
+
+ [MORNING POST.]
+
+   "It was Mr. Robertson's custom every Sunday afternoon, instead of
+    preaching from one text, to expound an entire chapter of some book
+    in the Scriptures. The present volume is made up from notes of
+    fifty-six discourses of this kind. 'Some people were startled by
+    the introduction of what they called secular subjects into the
+    pulpit. But the lecturer in all his ministrations refused to
+    recognize the distinction so drawn. He said that the whole life of
+    a Christian was sacred--that common every-day doings, whether of a
+    trade, or of a profession, or the minuter details of a woman's
+    household life, were the arenas in which trial and temptation
+    arose; and that therefore it became the Christian minister's duty
+    to enter into this family working life with his people, and help
+    them to understand its meaning, its trials, and its
+    compensations.' It is enough to add that the lectures now given to
+    the public are written in this spirit."
+
+
+ [CRITIC.]
+
+   "Such discourses as these before us, so different from the shallow
+    rhapsodies or tedious hair-splitting which are now so much in
+    vogue, may well make us regret that Mr. Robertson can never be
+    heard again in the pulpit. This single volume would in itself
+    establish a reputation for its writer."
+
+
+ [BRIGHTON HERALD.]
+
+   "... Were there no name on the title-page, the spirit which,
+    shines forth in these lectures could but be recognized as that of
+    the earnest, true-hearted man, the deep thinker, the sympathizer
+    with all kinds of human trouble, the aspirant for all things holy,
+    and one who joined to these rare gifts, the faculty of speaking to
+    his fellow-men in such a manner as to fix their attention and win
+    their love.... In whatever spirit the volume is read--of doubt, of
+    criticism, or of full belief in the truths it teaches--it can but
+    do good; it can but leave behind the conviction that here was a
+    genuine, true-hearted man, gifted with the highest intellect,
+    inspired by the most disinterested motives and the purest love for
+    his fellow-men, and that the fountain at which he warmed his heart
+    and kindled his eloquence was that which flows from Christ."
+
+
+ [BRITISH QUARTERLY REVIEW.]
+
+   "This volume will be a welcome gift to many an intelligent and
+    devout mind. There are few of our modern questions, theological or
+    ecclesiastical, that do not come up for discussion in the course
+    of these Epistles to the Christians at Corinth."
+
+
+ [MORNING HERALD.]
+
+   "No one can read these lectures without being charmed by their
+    singular freshness and originality of thought, their earnest,
+    simple eloquence, and their manly piety. There is no mawkish
+    sentiment, no lukewarm, semi-religious twaddle, smacking of the
+    _Record_; no proclamation of party views or party opinions, but a
+    broad, healthy, living, and fervent exposition of one of the most
+    difficult books in the Bible. Every page is full of personal
+    earnestness and depth of feeling; but every page is also free from
+    the slightest trace of vanity and egotism. The words come home to
+    the reader's heart as the utterance of a sincere man who felt
+    every sentence which flowed from his lips."
+
+
+ [PRESS.]
+
+   "One of the most marked features of these lectures is the deep
+    feeling which the preacher had of the emptiness and hollowness of
+    the conventional religionism of the day. The clap-trap of popular
+    ministers, the pride and uncharitableness of exclusive
+    Evangelicalism, the pomp and pretension of ritualism and priestly
+    affectation--the miserable Pharisaism which is lurking underneath
+    them all--form the subject of many strikingly true and often
+    cutting remarks. He has no patience with the unrealities of
+    sectarian purism and pedantic orthodoxy. His constant cry, the
+    constant struggle of his soul is for reality. Hence while his
+    views of objective truth are at times deficient, or, at least,
+    very imperfectly stated, he leaves a deep impress of subjective
+    religion upon the mind, by a style of teaching which, far from
+    uninstructive, is yet more eminently suggestive."
+
+
+ [THE SPECTATOR.]
+
+   "The _Notes on Genesis_--sketches more or less full of lectures on
+    Genesis, delivered by Mr. Robertson--will be welcomed by the many
+    who have read, with a profound interest, those writings of his
+    which have already been given to the world.... Few will be able to
+    read this volume without having brought before them certain
+    passages out of their own lives, which they will be compelled to
+    reconsider from a fresh point of view. As an interpreter of
+    Scripture also, Mr. Robertson nowhere appears to greater
+    advantage. While not ignoring difficult points, he is always
+    looking for, and never fails to find, that which is profitable and
+    edifying."
+
+ From a few of the Notices on Mr. Robertson's "_The Human Race and
+ other Sermons_."
+
+
+ [THE ACADEMY.]
+
+   "It need not be said that there is here much that is beautiful and
+    happily expressed."
+
+
+ [THE BRITISH QUARTERLY REVIEW.]
+
+   "The volume is as fresh and striking and suggestive as any of its
+    predecessors. For unconventional and spiritual conceptions of
+    Bible teachings; for unexpected, penetrating, and practical
+    applications of them, and for general spiritual truth and force,
+    these Sermons and Notes of Sermons are as noble as their
+    predecessors."
+
+
+ [THE ENGLISH CHURCHMAN.]
+
+   "We are glad to see the publication of the eloquent Sermons now
+    before us, especially those of a devout and practical character,
+    such as those on the human race and education."
+
+
+ [THE CHRISTIAN WORLD.]
+
+   "These Sermons exhibit many of those features of unsurpassable
+    excellence which have gained for the preacher a reputation which
+    has had no equal in our time. They are full of thought and
+    suggestiveness, and are marked by that rare beauty of style which
+    Mr. Robertson's readers have learned to associate with all his
+    Sermons. His devoted admirers--and how numerous they are--will be
+    sure to place this new volume upon their shelves."
+
+
+
+
+                         A SELECTION FROM THE
+
+                       NOTICES BY THE PRESS OF
+
+                  "THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF THE LATE
+
+                        REV. F.W. ROBERTSON."
+
+
+
+
+ [THE SPECTATOR.]
+
+   "No book published since the 'Life of Dr. Arnold' has produced so
+    strong an impression on the moral imagination and spiritual
+    theology of England as we may expect from these volumes. Even for
+    those who knew Mr. Robertson well, and for many who knew _him_, as
+    they thought, better than his Sermons, the free and full
+    discussion of the highest subjects in the familiar letters so
+    admirably selected by the Editor of Mr. Robertson's _Life_, will
+    give a far clearer insight into his remarkable character and
+    inspire a deeper respect for his clear and manly intellect. Mr.
+    Brooke has done his work as Dr. Stanley did his in writing the
+    'Life of Arnold,' and it is not possible to give higher praise....
+    Everyone will talk of Mr. Robertson, and no one of Mr. Brooke,
+    because Mr. Brooke has thought much of his subject, nothing of
+    himself, and hence the figure which he wished to present comes out
+    quite clear and keen, without any interposing haze of literary
+    vapour."
+
+
+ [THE CHRISTIAN WORLD.]
+
+   "The Life of Robertson of Brighton supplies a very unique
+    illustration of the way in which a man may attain his highest fame
+    after he has passed away from earth. There are few who make any
+    pretension to an acquaintance with modern literature who do not
+    know something of Mr. Robertson's works. His sermons are
+    indisputably ranked with the highest sacred classics.... The
+    publication of his 'Life and Letters' helps us to some information
+    which is very precious, and explains much mystery that hangs
+    around the name of the great Brighton preacher. It will be
+    generally admitted that these two volumes will furnish means for
+    estimating the character of Mr. Robertson which are not supplied
+    in any or all of his published works.... There was no
+    artificiality or show about the pulpit production, no
+    half-utterances or whispers of solemn belief; but there was the
+    natural restraint which would be imposed by a true gentleman upon
+    his words when speaking to mixed congregations. Many of us wanted
+    to know how he talked and wrote when the restraint was removed.
+    This privilege is granted to us in these volumes.... There was no
+    romance of scene and circumstance in the life of Frederick
+    Robertson; but there was more than romance about the real life of
+    the man. In some respects it was like the life of a new Elijah....
+    A more thoughtful, suggestive, and beautiful preacher never
+    entered a pulpit; a simpler and braver man never lived; a truer
+    Christian never adorned any religious community. His life and
+    death were _vicarious_, as he himself might have put it. He lived
+    and died for others, for us all. The sorrows and agonies of his
+    heart pressed rare music out of it, and the experience of a
+    terribly bitter life leaves a wealth of thought and reflection
+    never more than equalled in the history of men."
+
+
+ [THE GUARDIAN.]
+
+   "With all drawbacks of what seem to us imperfect taste, an
+    imperfect standard of character, and an imperfect appreciation of
+    what there is in the world beyond a given circle of interest, the
+    book does what a biography ought to do--it shows us a remarkable
+    man, and it gives us the means of forming our own judgment about
+    him. It is not a tame panegyric or a fancy picture. The main
+    portion of the book consists of Mr. Robertson's own letters, and
+    his own account of himself, and we are allowed to see him, in a
+    great degree at least, as he really was.... It is the record of a
+    genuine spontaneous character, seeking its way, its duty, its
+    perfection, with much sincerity and elevation of purpose, many
+    anxieties and sorrows, and not, we doubt not, without much of the
+    fruits that come with real self-devotion; a record disclosing a
+    man with great faults and conspicuous blanks in his nature."
+
+
+ [THE MORNING POST.]
+
+   "Mr. Brooke has done good service in giving to the world so
+    faithful a sketch of so worthy a man. It would have been a
+    reproach to the Church if this enduring and appropriate memorial
+    had not been erected to one who was so entirely devoted to its
+    service; and the labour of love, for such it evidently was, was
+    committed to no unskilful hands.... Mr. Robertson's epistolary
+    writings--gathered in these valuable volumes--often unstudied,
+    always necessarily from their nature free and unrestrained, but
+    evidencing depth and vigour of thought, clear perception, varied
+    knowledge, sound judgment, earnest piety, are doubtless destined
+    to become as widely known and as largely beneficial as his
+    published Sermons. It is impossible to peruse them without
+    receiving impressions for good, and being persuaded that they are
+    the offspring of no ordinary mind."
+
+
+ [THE MORNING HERALD.]
+
+   "Mr. Brooke has done his own work as a biographer with good sense,
+    feeling, and taste.... These volumes are of real value to all
+    thoughtful readers. For many a year we have had no such picture of
+    a pure and noble and well spent life."
+
+
+ [THE ATHENÆUM.]
+
+   "There is something here for all kinds of readers, but the higher
+    a man's mind and the more general his sympathies, the keener will
+    be his interest in the 'Life of Robertson.'"
+
+
+ [THE NONCONFORMIST.]
+
+   "As no English sermons of the century have been so widely read,
+    and as few leaders of religious thought have exerted (especially
+    by works in so much of an unperfected and fragmentary character)
+    so penetrating and powerful an influence on the spiritual
+    tendencies of the times, we can well believe that no biography
+    since Arnold's will presently be possible to be compared with
+    this, for the interest excited by it in the minds of readers who
+    consciously live in the presence of the invisible and eternal, who
+    feel the pressure of difficult questions and painful experiences,
+    and who seek reality and depth, and freedom in the life and
+    activity of the Church of Christ.... Mr. Brooke has produced a
+    'Life of Robertson' which will not unworthily compare with Dean
+    Stanley's 'Life of Arnold,' and which, with that, and Ryland's
+    'Life of Foster,' and the 'Life of Channing,' is likely to be
+    prized as one of the most precious records of genuine manly and
+    godly excellence."
+
+
+ [THE MORNING STAR.]
+
+   "The beautiful work which Mr. Brooke has written contains few, if
+    any, romantic episodes. It is the life of a man who worked hard
+    and died early.... Mr. Brooke has acted wisely in allowing Mr.
+    Robertson to speak so fully for himself, and in blending his
+    letters with his narrative, and arranging them in chronological
+    order. These letters are in themselves a mine of intellectual
+    wealth. They contain little of table-talk or parlour gossip: but
+    they abound with many of his best and most ripened thoughts on
+    multitudes of subjects, political, literary, and scientific, as
+    well as theological. We wish we could present our readers with
+    extracts from them; but even if we had space, it would be unfair
+    to the writer to quote disjointed fragments from a correspondence
+    which now belongs to the literature of the country.... Mr. Brooke
+    has performed his responsible task as a biographer and an editor
+    in a spirit of just and discriminating appreciation, and with
+    admirable ability."
+
+
+
+                          LONDON: PRINTED BY
+               SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
+                        AND PARLIAMENT STREET
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sermons Preached at Brighton
+by Frederick W. Robertson
+
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+  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=us-ascii" />
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+  <title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Sermons Preached at Brighton, by the Rev. Frederick W. Robertson.</title>
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+
+
+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's Sermons Preached at Brighton, by Frederick W. Robertson
+
+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: Sermons Preached at Brighton
+       Third Series
+
+Author: Frederick W. Robertson
+
+Release Date: September 4, 2005 [EBook #16645]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SERMONS PREACHED AT BRIGHTON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Laura Wisewell and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<h1>
+<span style="font-size:150%; letter-spacing:0.5em;">SERMONS</span><br /><br />
+<small><i>PREACHED AT BRIGHTON.</i></small>
+</h1>
+
+<p class="center">BY THE LATE
+<br />
+<big>REV. FREDERICK W. ROBERTSON,</big>
+<br />
+THE INCUMBENT OF TRINITY CHAPEL.</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="border-top:thin solid black; border-bottom:thin solid black; padding:1em; width:10em; margin: 4em auto 4em auto;"><span><i>THIRD SERIES</i>.</span> </p>
+<p class="center">
+NEW EDITION.
+</p>
+<p class="center">
+LONDON:<br />
+KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH. &amp; CO., 1 PATERNOSTER SQUARE.<br />
+1884.</p>
+<p class="center"><small>
+(<i>The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved</i>)
+</small></p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p class="center">
+TO
+<br />
+<big><i>THE CONGREGATION</i></big>
+<br /><br />
+WORSHIPPING IN
+<br />
+<big>TRINITY CHAPEL, BRIGHTON,</big>
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">From August 15, 1847, to August 15, 1853,</span><br />
+<br />
+THESE
+<br />
+RECOLLECTIONS OF SERMONS
+<br />
+PREACHED BY THEIR LATE PASTOR,
+<br />
+ARE DEDICATED
+</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+<h3 class="TOC"><a href="#I">SERMON I.</a><br />
+<small>Preached April 28, 1850.</small><br />
+THE TONGUE.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="TOC"><span class="smcap">St. James</span> iii. 5, 6.&mdash;&ldquo;Even so the tongue is a little
+member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a
+little fire kindleth! And the tongue is a fire, a world of
+iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the
+whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set
+on fire of hell.&rdquo; <span class="ralign"><a href="#I">Page 1</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3 class="TOC"><a href="#II">SERMON II.</a><br />
+<small>Preached May 5, 1850.</small><br />
+THE VICTORY OF FAITH.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="TOC"><span class="smcap">1 John</span> v. 4, 5.&mdash;&ldquo;For whatsoever is born of God overcometh
+the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even
+our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that
+believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?&rdquo; <span class="ralign"><a href="#II">15</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3 class="TOC"><a href="#III">SERMON III.</a><br />
+<small>Preached Whitsunday, May 19, 1850.</small><br />
+THE DISPENSATION OF THE SPIRIT.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="TOC"><span class="smcap">1 Corinthians</span> xii. 4.&mdash;&ldquo;Now there are diversities of gifts,
+but the same Spirit.&rdquo; <span class="ralign"><a href="#III">29</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3 class="TOC"><a href="#IV">SERMON IV.</a><br />
+<small>Preached May 26, 1850.</small><br />
+THE TRINITY.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="TOC"><span class="smcap">1 Thess.</span> v. 23.&mdash;&ldquo;And the very God of peace sanctify you
+wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be
+preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.&rdquo; <span class="ralign"><a href="#IV">43</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3 class="TOC"><a href="#V">SERMON V.</a><br />
+<small>Preached June 2, 1850.</small><br />
+ABSOLUTION.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="TOC"><span class="smcap">Luke</span> v. 21.&mdash;&ldquo;And the Scribes and the Pharisees began to
+reason saying, Who is this which speaketh blasphemies? Who can
+forgive sins, but God alone?&rdquo; <span class="ralign"><a href="#V">61</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3 class="TOC"><a href="#VI">SERMON VI.</a><br />
+<small>Preached June 9, 1850.</small><br />
+THE ILLUSIVENESS OF LIFE.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="TOC"><span class="smcap">Hebrews</span> xi. 8-10.&mdash;&ldquo;By faith Abraham, when he was called to
+go out into a place which he should after receive for an
+inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went.
+By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange
+country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs
+with him of the same promise: for he looked for a city which hath
+foundations, whose builder and maker is God.&rdquo; <span class="ralign"><a href="#VI">77</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3 class="TOC"><a href="#VII">SERMON VII.</a><br />
+<small>Preached June 23, 1850.</small><br />
+THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="TOC"><span class="smcap">2 Cor.</span> v. 14, 15.&mdash;&ldquo;For the love of Christ constraineth us;
+because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all
+dead: and that he died for all, that they which live should not
+henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them,
+and rose again.&rdquo; <span class="ralign"><a href="#VII">90</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3 class="TOC"><a href="#VIII">SERMON VIII.</a><br />
+<small>Preached June 30, 1850.</small><br />
+THE POWER OF SORROW.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="TOC"><span class="smcap">2 Cor.</span> vii. 9, 10.&mdash;&ldquo;Now I rejoice, not that ye were made
+sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance: for ye were made sorry
+after a godly manner, that ye might receive damage by us in
+nothing. For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be
+repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.&rdquo;  <span class="ralign"><a href="#VIII">104</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3 class="TOC"><a href="#IX">SERMON IX.</a><br />
+<small>Preached August 4, 1850.</small><br />
+SENSUAL AND SPIRITUAL EXCITEMENT.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="TOC"><span class="smcap">Ephesians</span> v. 17, 18.&mdash;&ldquo;Wherefore be ye not unwise, but
+understanding what the will of the Lord is. And be not drunk with
+wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit.&rdquo; <span class="ralign"><a href="#IX">112</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3 class="TOC"><a href="#X">SERMON X.</a><br />
+<small>Preached August 11, 1850.</small><br />
+PURITY.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="TOC"><span class="smcap">Titus</span> i. 15.&mdash;&ldquo;Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto
+them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even
+their mind and conscience is defiled.&rdquo; <span class="ralign"><a href="#X">122</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3 class="TOC"><a href="#XI">SERMON XI.</a><br />
+<small>Preached February 9, 1851.</small><br />
+UNITY AND PEACE.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="TOC"><span class="smcap">Col.</span> iii. 15.&mdash;&ldquo;And let the peace of God rule in your
+hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye
+thankful.&rdquo; <span class="ralign"><a href="#XI">130</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3 class="TOC"><a href="#XII">SERMON XII.</a><br />
+<small>Preached January 4, 1852.</small><br />
+THE CHRISTIAN AIM AND MOTIVE.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="TOC"><span class="smcap">Matt.</span> v. 48.&mdash;&ldquo;Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father
+which is in heaven is perfect.&rdquo;  <span class="ralign"><a href="#XII">143</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3 class="TOC"><a href="#XIII">SERMON XIII.</a><br />
+<small>Preached January 4, 1852.</small><br />
+CHRISTIAN CASUISTRY.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="TOC"><span class="smcap">1 Cor.</span> vii. 18-24.&mdash;&ldquo;Is any man called being circumcised?
+let him not become uncircumcised. Is any called in uncircumcision?
+let him not be circumcised. Circumcision is nothing, and
+uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of
+God. Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called.
+Art thou called being a servant? care not for it: but if thou
+mayest be made free use it rather. For he that is called in the
+Lord, being a servant, is the Lord's freeman; likewise also he that
+is called being free, is Christ's servant. Ye are bought with a
+price; be not ye the servants of men. Brethren, let every man
+wherein he is called therein abide with God.&rdquo; <span class="ralign"><a href="#XIII">156</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3 class="TOC"><a href="#XIV">SERMON XIV.</a><br />
+<small>Preached January 11, 1852.</small><br />
+MARRIAGE AND CELIBACY.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="TOC"><span class="smcap">1 Cor.</span> vii. 29-31.&mdash;&ldquo;But this I say, brethren, the time is
+short: it remaineth that both they that have wives be as though
+they had none; and they that weep as though they wept not; and they
+that rejoice as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as
+though they possessed not; and they that use this world as not
+abusing it: for the fashion of this world passeth away.&rdquo; <span class="ralign"><a href="#XIV">169</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3 class="TOC"><a href="#XV">SERMON XV.</a><br />
+<small>Preached January 11, 1852.</small><br />
+THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH A FAMILY.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="TOC"><span class="smcap">Eph.</span> iii. 14, 15.&mdash;&ldquo;Our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole
+family in Heaven and earth is named.&rdquo; <span class="ralign"><a href="#XV">181</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3 class="TOC"><a href="#XVI">SERMON XVI.</a><br />
+<small>Preached January 25, 1852.</small><br />
+THE LAW OF CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="TOC"><span class="smcap">1 Cor.</span> viii. 7-13.&mdash;&ldquo;Howbeit there is not in every man that
+knowledge: for some, with conscience of the idol, unto this hour,
+eat it as a thing offered unto an idol; and their conscience being
+weak is defiled. But meat commendeth us not to God: for neither if
+we eat are we the better; neither if we eat not are we the worse.
+But take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a
+stumbling-block to them that are weak. For if any man see thee
+which hast knowledge, sit at meat in the idol's temple, shall not
+the conscience of him which is weak be emboldened to eat those
+things which are offered to idols; and through thy knowledge shall
+the weak brother perish for whom Christ died? But when ye sin so
+against the brethren and wound their weak conscience ye sin against
+Christ. Wherefore if meat make my brother to offend I will eat no
+flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend.&rdquo;
+ <span class="ralign"><a href="#XVI">196</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3 class="TOC"><a href="#XVII">SERMON XVII.</a><br />
+<small>Preached May 16, 1852.</small><br />
+VICTORY OVER DEATH.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="TOC"><span class="smcap">1 Cor.</span> xv. 56, 57.&mdash;&ldquo;The sting of death is sin, and the
+strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God which giveth us
+the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.&rdquo; <span class="ralign"><a href="#XVII">212</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3 class="TOC"><a href="#XVIII">SERMON XVIII.</a><br />
+<small>Preached June 20, 1852.</small><br />
+MAN'S GREATNESS AND GOD'S GREATNESS.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="TOC"><span class="smcap">Isaiah</span> lvii. 15.&mdash;&ldquo;For thus saith the High and Lofty One
+that inhabiteth Eternity, whose Name is Holy. I dwell in the high
+and holy place&mdash;with him also that is of a contrite and humble
+spirit.&rdquo; <span class="ralign"><a href="#XVIII">230</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3 class="TOC"><a href="#XIX">SERMON XIX.</a><br />
+<small>Preached June 27, 1852.</small><br />
+THE LAWFUL AND UNLAWFUL USE OF LAW.<br />
+<small>(A FRAGMENT.)</small></h3>
+
+
+<p class="TOC"><span class="smcap">1 Tim.</span> i. 8.&mdash;&ldquo;But we know that the law is good, if a man
+use it lawfully.&rdquo;  <span class="ralign"><a href="#XIX">246</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3 class="TOC"><a href="#XX">SERMON XX.</a><br />
+<small>Preached February 21, 1853.</small><br />
+THE PRODIGAL AND HIS BROTHER.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="TOC"><span class="smcap">Luke</span> xv. 31, 32.&mdash;&ldquo;And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever
+with me, and all that I have is thine. It was meet that we should
+make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is
+alive again; was lost, and is found.&rdquo; <span class="ralign"><a href="#XX">253</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3 class="TOC"><a href="#XXI">SERMON XXI.</a><br />
+<small>Preached May 15, 1853.</small><br />
+JOHN'S REBUKE OF HEROD.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="TOC"><span class="smcap">Luke</span> iii. 19, 20.&mdash;&ldquo;But Herod the tetrarch, being reproved
+by him for Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, and for all the
+evils which Herod had done, added yet this above all, that he shut
+up John in prison.&rdquo; <span class="ralign"><a href="#XXI">270</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<h1 style="width:10em; margin: 4em auto 4em auto; padding:2em; border-top:thin solid black; border-bottom:thin solid black;"><a name="SERMONS" id="SERMONS"></a>SERMONS.</h1>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I.<br />
+<small><i>Preached April 28, 1850.</i></small><br />
+THE TONGUE.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote class="scripture"><p>&ldquo;Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things.
+Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth! And the tongue
+is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our
+members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the
+course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.&rdquo;&mdash;St. James iii.
+5-6.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">In the development of Christian Truth a peculiar office was assigned
+to the Apostle James.</p>
+
+<p>It was given to St. Paul to proclaim Christianity as the spiritual law
+of liberty, and to exhibit Faith as the most active principle within
+the breast of man. It was St. John's to say that the deepest quality
+in the bosom of Deity is Love; and to assert that the life of God in
+Man is Love. It was the office of St. James to assert the necessity of
+Moral Rectitude; his very name marked him out peculiarly for this
+office: he was emphatically called, &ldquo;the Just:&rdquo; integrity was his
+peculiar characteristic. A man singularly honest, earnest, real.
+Accordingly, if you read through his whole epistle, you will find it
+is, from first to last, one continued vindication of the first
+principles of morality against the <i>semblances</i> of religion.</p>
+
+<p>He protested against the censoriousness which was found connected
+with peculiar claims of religious feelings. &ldquo;If any man among you seem
+to be religious and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own
+heart, this man's religion is vain.&rdquo; He protested against that spirit
+which had crept into the Christian Brotherhood, truckling to the rich,
+and despising the poor. &ldquo;If ye have respect of persons ye commit sin,
+and are convinced of the law as transgressors.&rdquo; He protested against
+that sentimental fatalism which induced men to throw the blame of
+their own passions upon God. &ldquo;Let no man say, when he is tempted, I am
+tempted of God; for God cannot tempt to evil; neither tempteth He any
+man.&rdquo; He protested against that unreal religion of excitement which
+diluted the earnestness of real religion in the enjoyment of
+listening. &ldquo;Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only; deceiving
+your own souls.&rdquo; He protested against that trust in the correctness of
+theological doctrine which neglected the cultivation of character.
+&ldquo;What doth it profit, if a man <i>say</i> that he hath faith, and have not
+works? Can faith save him?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Read St. James's epistle through, this is the mind breathing through
+it all:&mdash;all this <i>talk</i> about religion, and spirituality&mdash;words,
+words, words&mdash;nay, let us have <i>realities</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It is well known that Luther complained of this epistle, that it did
+not contain the Gospel; for men who are hampered by a system will
+say&mdash;even of an inspired Apostle&mdash;that he does not teach the Gospel if
+their own favourite doctrine be not the central subject of his
+discourse; but St. James's reply seems spontaneously to suggest itself
+to us. The Gospel! how can we speak of the Gospel, when the first
+principles of <i>morality</i> are forgotten? when Christians are excusing
+themselves, and slandering one another? How can the superstructure of
+Love and Faith be built, when the very foundations of human
+character&mdash;Justice, Mercy, Truth&mdash;have not been laid?</p>
+
+<ol class="off">
+<li>1st. The license of the tongue.</li>
+<li>2nd. The guilt of that license.</li>
+</ol>
+
+<p>The first license given to the tongue is slander. I am not of course,
+speaking now of that species of slander against which the law of libel
+provides a remedy, but of that of which the Gospel alone takes
+cognisance; for the worst injuries which man can do to man, are
+precisely those which are too delicate for <i>law</i> to deal with. We
+consider therefore not the calumny which is reckoned such by the
+moralities of an earthly court, but that which is found guilty by the
+spiritualities of the courts of heaven&mdash;that is, the mind of God.</p>
+
+<p>Now observe, this slander is compared in the text to poison&mdash;&ldquo;the
+tongue is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.&rdquo; The deadliest
+poisons are those for which no test is known: there are poisons so
+destructive that a single drop insinuated into the veins produces
+death in three seconds, and yet no chemical science can separate that
+virus from the contaminated blood, and show the metallic particles of
+poison glittering palpably, and say, &ldquo;Behold, it is there!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In the drop of venom which distils from the sting of the smallest
+insect, or the spikes of the nettle-leaf, there is concentrated the
+quintessence of a poison so subtle that the microscope cannot
+distinguish it, and yet so virulent that it can inflame the blood,
+irritate the whole constitution, and convert day and night into
+restless misery.</p>
+
+<p>In St. James's day, as now, it would appear that there were idle men
+and idle women, who went about from house to house, dropping slander
+as they went, and yet you could not take up that slander and detect
+the falsehood there. You could not evaporate the truth in the slow
+process of the crucible, and then show the residuum of falsehood
+glittering and visible. You could not fasten upon any word or
+sentence, and say that it was calumny; for in order to constitute
+slander it is not necessary that the word spoken should be false&mdash;half
+truths are often more calumnious than whole falsehoods. It is not even
+necessary that a word should be distinctly uttered; a dropped lip, an
+arched eyebrow, a shrugged shoulder, a significant look, an
+incredulous expression of countenance, nay, even an emphatic silence,
+may do the work: and when the light and trifling thing which has done
+the mischief has fluttered off, the venom is left behind, to work and
+rankle, to inflame hearts, to fever human existence, and to poison
+human society at the fountain springs of life. Very emphatically was
+it said by one whose whole being had smarted under such affliction,
+&ldquo;Adder's poison is under their lips.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The second license given to the tongue is in the way of persecution:
+&ldquo;therewith curse we men which are made after the similitude of God.&rdquo;
+&ldquo;We!&rdquo;&mdash;men who bear the name of Christ&mdash;curse our brethren! Christians
+persecuted Christians. Thus even in St. James's age that spirit had
+begun, the monstrous fact of Christian persecution; from that day it
+has continued, through long centuries, up to the present time. The
+Church of Christ assumed the office of denunciation, and except in the
+first council, whose object was not to strain, but to relax the bonds
+of brotherhood, not a council has met for eighteen centuries which
+has not guarded each profession of belief by the too customary
+formula, &ldquo;If any man maintain otherwise than this, let him be
+accursed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Myriad, countless curses have echoed through those long ages; the
+Church has forgotten her Master's spirit and called down fire from
+heaven. A fearful thought to consider this as the spectacle on which
+the eye of God has rested. He looks down upon the creatures He has
+made, and hears everywhere the language of religious
+imprecations:&mdash;and after all, who is proved right by curses?</p>
+
+<p>The Church of Rome hurls her thunders against Protestants of every
+denomination: the Calvinist scarcely recognises the Arminian as a
+Christian: he who considers himself as the true Anglican, excludes
+from the Church of Christ all but the adherents of his own orthodoxy;
+every minister and congregation has its small circle, beyond which all
+are heretics: nay even among that sect which is most lax as to the
+dogmatic forms of truth, we find the Unitarian of the old school
+denouncing the spiritualism of the new and rising school.</p>
+
+<p>This is the state of things to which we are arrived. Sisters of
+Charity refuse to permit an act of charity to be done by a Samaritan;
+ministers of the Gospel fling the thunderbolts of the Lord; ignorant
+hearers catch and exaggerate the spirit,&mdash;boys, girls, and women
+shudder as one goes by, perhaps more holy than themselves, who adores
+the same God, believes in the same Redeemer, struggles in the same
+life-battle, and all this because they have been taught to look upon
+him as an enemy of God.</p>
+
+<p>There is a class of religious persons against whom this vehemence has
+been especially directed. No one who can read the signs of the times
+can help perceiving that we are on the eve of great changes, perhaps
+a disruption of the Church of England. Unquestionably there has been a
+large secession to the Church of Rome.</p>
+
+<p>Now what has been the position of those who are about to take this
+step? They have been taunted with dishonest reception of the wages of
+the Church; a watch has been set over them: not a word they uttered in
+private, or in public, but was given to the world by some religious
+busy-body; there was not a visit which they paid, not a foolish dress
+which they adopted, but became the subject of bitter scrutiny and
+malevolent gossip. For years the religious press has denounced them
+with a vehemence as virulent, but happily more impotent than that of
+the Inquisition. There has been an anguish and an inward struggle
+little suspected, endured by men who felt themselves outcasts in their
+own society, and naturally looked for a home elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>We congratulate ourselves that the days of persecution are gone by;
+but persecution is that which affixes penalties upon <i>views held</i>,
+instead of upon <i>life led</i>. Is persecution <i>only</i> fire and sword? But
+suppose a man of sensitive feeling says, The sword is less sharp to me
+than the slander: fire is less intolerable than the refusal of
+sympathy!</p>
+
+<p>Now let us bring this home; you rejoice that the faggot and the stake
+are given up;&mdash;<i>you</i> never persecuted&mdash;you leave that to the wicked
+Church of Rome. Yes, you never burned a human being alive&mdash;you never
+clapped your hands as the death-shriek proclaimed that the lion's fang
+had gone home into the most vital part of the victim's frame; but did
+you never rob him of his friends?&mdash;gravely shake your head and
+oracularly insinuate that he was leading souls to hell?&mdash;chill the
+affections of his family?&mdash;take from him his good name? Did you never
+with delight see his Church placarded as the Man of Sin, and hear the
+platform denunciations which branded it with the spiritual
+abominations of the Apocalypse? Did you never find a malicious
+pleasure in repeating all the miserable gossip with which religious
+slander fastened upon his daily acts, his words, and even his
+uncommunicated thoughts? Did you never forget that for a man to &ldquo;work
+out his own salvation with fear and trembling&rdquo; is a matter difficult
+enough to be laid upon a human spirit, without intruding into the most
+sacred department of another's life&mdash;that namely, which lies between
+himself and God? Did you never say that &ldquo;it was to be wished he should
+go to Rome,&rdquo; until at last life became intolerable,&mdash;until he was
+thrown more and more in upon himself; found himself, like his
+Redeemer, in this world alone, but unable like his Redeemer, calmly to
+repose upon the thought that his Father was with him? Then a stern
+defiant spirit took possession of his soul, and there burst from his
+lips, or heart, the wish for <i>rest</i>&mdash;rest at any cost,&mdash;peace
+anywhere, if even it is to be found only in the bosom of the Church of
+Rome!</p>
+
+
+<h3>II. The guilt of this license.</h3>
+
+<p>The first evil consequence is the harm that a man does himself: &ldquo;so is
+the tongue among the members, that it defiles the whole body.&rdquo; It is
+not very obvious, in what way a man does himself harm by calumny. I
+will take the simplest form in which this injury is done; it effects a
+dissipation of spiritual energy. There are two ways in which the steam
+of machinery may find an outlet for its force: it may work, and if so
+it works silently; or it may escape, and that takes place loudly, in
+air and noise. There are two ways in which the spiritual energy of a
+man's soul may find its vent: it may express itself in action,
+silently; or in words, noisily: but just so much of force as is thrown
+into the one mode of expression, is taken from the other.</p>
+
+<p>Few men suspect how much mere talk fritters away spiritual
+energy,&mdash;that which should be spent in action, spends itself in words.
+The fluent boaster is not the man who is steadiest before the enemy;
+it is well said to him that his courage is better kept till it is
+wanted. Loud utterance of virtuous indignation against evil from the
+platform, or in the drawing-room, do not characterize the spiritual
+giant: so much indignation as is expressed, has found vent, is wasted,
+is taken away from the work of coping with evil; the man has so much
+less left. And hence he who restrains that love of talk, lays up a
+fund of spiritual strength.</p>
+
+<p>With large significance, St. James declares, &ldquo;If any man offend not in
+word, the same is a perfect man, able also to bridle the whole body.&rdquo;
+He is entire, powerful, because he has not spent his strength. In
+these days of loud profession, and bitter, fluent condemnation, it is
+well for us to learn the divine force of silence. Remember Christ in
+the Judgment Hall, the very Symbol and Incarnation of spiritual
+strength; and yet when revilings were loud around Him and charges
+multiplied, &ldquo;He held His peace.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><b>2.</b> The next feature in the guilt of calumny is its uncontrollable
+character: &ldquo;the tongue can no man tame.&rdquo; You cannot arrest a
+calumnious tongue, you cannot arrest the calumny itself; you may
+refute a slanderer, you may trace home a slander to its source, you
+may expose the author of it, you may by that exposure give a lesson so
+severe as to make the repetition of the offence appear impossible; but
+the fatal habit is incorrigible: to-morrow the tongue is at work
+again.</p>
+
+<p>Neither can you stop the consequences of a slander; you may publicly
+prove its falsehood, you may sift every atom, explain and annihilate
+it, and yet, years after you had thought that all had been disposed of
+for ever, the mention of a name wakes up associations in the mind of
+some one who heard the calumny, but never heard or never attended to
+the refutation, or who has only a vague and confused recollection of
+the whole, and he asks the question doubtfully, &ldquo;But were there not
+some suspicious circumstances connected with him?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It is like the Greek fire used in ancient warfare, which burnt
+unquenched beneath the water, or like the weeds which when you have
+extirpated them in one place are sprouting forth vigorously in another
+spot, at the distance of many hundred yards; or, to use the metaphor
+of St. James himself, it is like the wheel which catches fire as it
+goes, and burns with a fiercer conflagration as its own speed
+increases; &ldquo;it sets on fire the whole course of nature&rdquo; (literally,
+the wheel of nature). You may tame the wild beast, the conflagration
+of the American forest will cease when all the timber and the dry
+underwood is consumed; but you cannot arrest the progress of that
+cruel word which you uttered carelessly yesterday or this
+morning,&mdash;which you will utter perhaps, before you have passed from
+this church one hundred yards: that will go on slaying, poisoning,
+burning beyond your own control, now and for ever.</p>
+
+<p><b>3.</b> The third element of guilt lies in the unnaturalness of calumny.
+&ldquo;My brethren, these things ought not so to be;&rdquo; <i>ought not</i>&mdash;that is,
+they are unnatural. That this is St. James's meaning is evident from
+the second illustration which follows: &ldquo;Doth a fountain send forth at
+the same place, sweet water and bitter?&rdquo; &ldquo;Can the fig tree, my
+brethren, bear olive berries, or a vine, figs?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>There is apparently in these metaphors little that affords an argument
+against slander; the motive which they suggest would appear to many
+far-fetched and of small cogency; but to one who looks on this world
+as a vast whole, and who has recognised the moral law as only a part
+of the great law of the universe, harmoniously blending with the
+whole, illustrations such as these are the most powerful of all
+arguments. The truest definition of evil is that which represents it
+as something contrary to nature: evil is evil, because it is
+unnatural; a vine which should bear olive berries, an eye to which
+blue seems yellow, would be diseased: an unnatural mother, an
+unnatural son, an unnatural act, are the strongest terms of
+condemnation. It is this view which Christianity gives of moral evil:
+the teaching of Christ was the recall of man to nature, not an
+infusion of something new into Humanity. Christ came to call out all
+the principles and powers of human nature, to restore the natural
+equilibrium of all our faculties; not to call us back to our own
+individual selfish nature, but to human nature as it is in God's
+ideal&mdash;the perfect type which is to be realised in us. Christianity is
+the regeneration of our whole nature, not the destruction of one atom
+of it.</p>
+
+<p>Now the nature of man is to adore God and to love what is god-like in
+man. The office of the tongue is to bless. Slander is guilty because
+it contradicts this; yet even in slander itself, perversion as it is,
+the interest of man in man is still distinguishable. What is it but
+perverted interest which makes the acts, and words, and thoughts of
+his brethren, even in their evil, a matter of such strange delight?
+Remember therefore, this contradicts your nature and your destiny; to
+speak ill of others makes you a monster in God's world: get the habit
+of slander, and then there is not a stream which bubbles fresh from
+the heart of nature,&mdash;there is not a tree that silently brings forth
+its genial fruit in its appointed season,&mdash;which does not rebuke and
+proclaim you to be a monstrous anomaly in God's world.</p>
+
+<p><b>4.</b> The fourth point of guilt is the diabolical character of slander;
+the tongue &ldquo;is set on fire of hell.&rdquo; Now, this is no mere strong
+expression&mdash;no mere indignant vituperation&mdash;it contains deep and
+emphatic meaning.</p>
+
+<p>The apostle means literally what he says, slander is diabolical. The
+first illustration we give of this is contained in the very meaning of
+the word devil. &ldquo;Devil,&rdquo; in the original, means traducer or slanderer.
+The first introduction of a demon spirit is found connected with a
+slanderous insinuation against the Almighty, implying that His command
+had been given in envy of His creature: &ldquo;for God doth know that in the
+day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as
+gods, knowing good and evil.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In the magnificent imagery of the book of Job, the accuser is
+introduced with a demoniacal and malignant sneer, attributing the
+excellence of a good man to interested motives; &ldquo;Doth Job serve God
+for naught?&rdquo; There is another mode in which the fearful accuracy of
+St. James's charge may be demonstrated. There is one state only from
+which there is said to be no recovery&mdash;there is but one sin that is
+called unpardonable. The Pharisees beheld the works of Jesus. They
+could not deny that they were good works, they could not deny that
+they were miracles of beneficence, but rather than acknowledge that
+they were done by a good man through the co-operation of a Divine
+spirit, they preferred to account for them by the wildest and most
+incredible hypothesis; they said they were done by the power of
+Beelzebub, the prince of the devils. It was upon this occasion that
+our Redeemer said with solemn meaning, &ldquo;For every idle word that men
+shall speak, they shall give account in the day of judgment.&rdquo; It was
+then that He said, for a word spoken against the Holy Ghost there is
+no forgiveness in this world, or in the world to come.</p>
+
+<p>Our own hearts respond to the truth of this&mdash;to call evil, good, and
+good, evil&mdash;to see the Divinest good, and call it Satanic evil&mdash;below
+this lowest deep there is <i>not</i> a lower still. There is no cure for
+mortification of the flesh&mdash;there is no remedy for ossification of the
+heart. Oh! that miserable state, when to the jaundiced eye all good
+transforms itself into evil, and the very instruments of health become
+the poison of disease. Beware of every approach of this!&mdash;Beware of
+that spirit which controversy fosters, of watching only for the evil
+in the character of an antagonist!&mdash;Beware of that habit which becomes
+the slanderer's life, of magnifying every speck of evil and closing
+the eye to goodness!&mdash;till at last men arrive at the state in which
+generous, universal love (which is heaven) becomes impossible, and a
+suspicious, universal hate takes possession of the heart, and <i>that</i>
+is hell!</p>
+
+<p>There is one peculiar manifestation of this spirit to which I desire
+specially to direct your attention.</p>
+
+<p>The politics of the community are guided by the political press. The
+religious views of a vast number are formed by that portion of the
+press which is called religious; it becomes, therefore, a matter of
+deepest interest to inquire what is the spirit of that &ldquo;religious
+press.&rdquo; I am not asking you what are the views maintained&mdash;whether
+Evangelical, Anglican, or Romish&mdash;but what is the <i>spirit</i> of that
+fountain from which the religious life of so many is nourished?</p>
+
+<p>Let any man cast his eye over the pages of this portion of the
+press&mdash;it matters little to which party the newspaper or the journal
+may belong&mdash;he will be startled to find the characters of those whom
+he has most deeply reverenced, whose hearts he knows, whose integrity
+and life are above suspicion, held up to scorn and hatred: the organ
+of one party is established against the organ of another, and it is
+the recognised office of each to point out with microscopic care the
+names of those whose views are to be shunned; and in order that these
+may be the more shrunk from, the characters of those who hold such
+opinions are traduced and vilified. There is no personality too
+mean&mdash;there is no insinuation too audacious or too false for the
+recklessness of these daring slanderers. I do not like to use the
+expression, lest it should appear to be merely one of theatrical
+vehemence; but I say it in all seriousness, adopting the inspired
+language of the Bible, and using it advisedly and with accurate
+meaning, the spirit which guides the &ldquo;religious press&rdquo; of this
+country, which dictates those personalities, which prevents
+controversialists from seeing what is good in their opponents, which
+attributes low motives to account for excellent lives, and teaches men
+whom to suspect, and shun, rather than point out where it is possible
+to admire and love&mdash;is a spirit &ldquo;set on fire of hell.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Before we conclude, let us get at the root of the matter. &ldquo;Man,&rdquo; says
+the Apostle James, &ldquo;was made in the image of God:&rdquo; to slander man is
+to slander God: to love what is good in man is to love it in God. Love
+is the only remedy for slander: no set of rules or restrictions can
+stop it; we may denounce, but we shall denounce in vain. The radical
+cure of it is Charity&mdash;&ldquo;out of a pure heart and faith unfeigned,&rdquo; to
+feel what is great in the human character; to recognise with delight
+all high, and generous, and beautiful actions; to find a joy even in
+seeing the good qualities of your bitterest opponents, and to admire
+those qualities even in those with whom you have least sympathy&mdash;be it
+either the Romanist or the Unitarian&mdash;this is the only spirit which
+can heal the love of slander and of calumny. If we would bless God, we
+must <i>first</i> learn to bless man, who is made in the image of God.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II.<br />
+<small><i>Preached May 5, 1850.</i></small><br />
+THE VICTORY OF FAITH.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote class="scripture"><p>&ldquo;For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is
+the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he
+that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the
+Son of God?&rdquo;&mdash;1 John v. 4-5.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">There are two words in the system of Christianity which have received
+a meaning so new, and so emphatic, as to be in a way peculiar to it,
+and to distinguish it from all other systems of morality and religion;
+these two words are&mdash;the World, and Faith. We find it written in
+Scripture that to have the friendship of the world is to be the enemy
+of God&mdash;- whereupon the question arises&mdash;The world?&mdash;did not God make
+the world? Did He not place us in the world? Are we not to love what
+God has made? And yet meeting this distinctly we have the inspired
+record, &ldquo;Love not the World.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The object of the Statesman is, or ought to be, to produce as much
+worldly prosperity as possible&mdash;but Christianity, that is Christ,
+speaks little of this world's prosperity, underrates it&mdash;nay, speaks
+of it at times as infinitely dangerous.</p>
+
+<p>The legislator prohibits crime&mdash;the moralist transgression&mdash;the
+religionist sin. To these Christianity superadds a new enemy&mdash;the
+world and the things of the world. &ldquo;If any man love the world, the
+love of the Father is not in him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The other word used in a peculiar sense is Faith. It is impossible for
+any one to have read his Bible ever so negligently, and not to be
+aware that the word Faith, or the grace of Faith, forms a large
+element in the Christian system. It is said to work miracles, remove
+mountains, justify the soul, trample upon impossibilities. Every
+apostle, in his way, assigns to faith a primary importance. Jude tells
+us to &ldquo;build up ourselves in our most holy faith.&rdquo; John tells us
+that&mdash;&ldquo;he that believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is the born of
+God;&rdquo; and Paul tells us that, not by merit nor by works, but by trust
+or reliance only, can be formed that state of soul by which man is
+reckoned just before God. In these expressions, the apostles only
+develope their Master's meaning, when He uses such words as these,
+&ldquo;All things are possible to him that believeth:&rdquo; &ldquo;O thou of little
+faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>These two words are brought into diametrical opposition in the text,
+so that it branches into a two-fold line of thought</p>
+
+<ol class="Rom"><li>The Christian's enemy, the World.</li>
+<li>The victory of Faith.</li>
+</ol>
+
+<p>In endeavouring to understand first what is meant by the world, we
+shall feel that the mass of evil which is comprehended under this
+expression, cannot be told out in any one sermon; it is an expression
+used in various ways, sometimes meaning one thing, sometimes meaning
+another;-but we will endeavour to explain its general principles&mdash;and
+these we will divide into three heads; first, the tyranny of the
+present; secondly, the tyranny of the sensual; and lastly, the spirit
+of society.</p>
+
+
+<h4>1. The tyranny of the present.</h4>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Christ,&rdquo; says the Apostle Paul, &ldquo;hath redeemed us from this present
+evil world;&rdquo; and again, &ldquo;Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this,
+present world.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Let a stress be laid on the word <i>present</i>. Worldliness is the
+attractive power of something present, in opposition to something to
+come. It is this rule and tyranny of the present that constitutes
+Demas a worldly man.</p>
+
+<p>In this respect, worldliness is the spirit of childhood carried on
+into manhood. The child lives in the present hour&mdash;to-day to him is
+everything. The holiday promised at a distant interval is no holiday
+at all&mdash;it must be either now or never. Natural in the child, and
+therefore pardonable, this spirit, when carried on into manhood, is
+coarse&mdash;is worldliness. The most distinct illustration given us of
+this, is the case of Esau. Esau came from the hunting-field worn and
+hungry; the only means of procuring the tempting mess of his brother's
+pottage was the sacrifice of his father's blessing, which in those
+ages carried with it a substantial advantage; but that birthright
+could be enjoyed only after <i>years</i>&mdash;the pottage was <i>present</i>, near,
+and certain; therefore he sacrificed a future and higher blessing, for
+a present and lower pleasure. For this reason Esau is the Bible type
+of worldliness: he is called in Scripture a profane, that is, not a
+distinctly vicious, but a secular or worldly person&mdash;an overgrown
+child; impetuous, inconsistent, not without gleams of generosity and
+kindliness, but ever accustomed to immediate gratification.</p>
+
+<p>In this worldliness, moreover, is to be remarked the gamester's
+desperate play. There is a gambling spirit in human nature. Esau
+distinctly expresses this: &ldquo;Behold I am at the point to die, and what
+shall my birthright profit me?&rdquo; He might never live to enjoy his
+birthright; but the pottage was before him, present, certain, <i>there</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Now, observe the utter powerlessness of mere preaching to cope with
+this tyrannical power of the present. Forty thousand pulpits
+throughout the land this day, will declaim against the vanity of
+riches, the uncertainty of life, the sin of worldliness&mdash;against the
+gambling spirit of human nature; I ask what <i>impression</i> will be
+produced by those forty thousand harangues? In every congregation it
+is reducible to a certainty that, before a year has passed, some will
+be numbered with the dead. Every man knows this, but he thinks the
+chances are that it will not be himself; he feels it a solemn thing
+for Humanity generally&mdash;but for himself there is more than a chance.
+Upon this chance he plays away life.</p>
+
+<p>It is so with the child: you tell him of the consequences of to-day's
+idleness&mdash;but the sun is shining brightly, and he cannot sacrifice
+to-day's pleasure, although he knows the disgrace it will bring
+to-morrow. So it is with the intemperate man: he says&mdash;&ldquo;Sufficient
+unto the day is the evil, and the good thereof; let me have my portion
+now.&rdquo; So that one great secret of the world's victory lies in the
+mighty power of saying &ldquo;<i>Now</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+
+<h4>2. The tyranny of the sensual.</h4>
+
+<p>I call it <i>tyranny</i>, because the evidences of the senses are all
+powerful, in spite of the protestations of the reason. In vain you try
+to persuade the child that <i>he</i> is moving, and not the trees which
+seem to flit past the carriage&mdash;in vain we remind ourselves that this
+apparently solid earth on which we stand, and which seems so
+immoveable, is in reality flying through the regions of space with an
+inconceivable rapidity&mdash;in vain philosophers would persuade us that
+the colour which the eye beholds, resides not in the object itself,
+but in our own perception; we are victims of the apparent, and the
+verdict of the senses is taken instead of the verdict of the reason.</p>
+
+<p>Precisely so is it with the enjoyments of the world. The man who died
+yesterday, and whom the world called a successful man&mdash;for what did he
+live?&mdash;He lived for this world&mdash;he gained this world. Houses, lands,
+name, position in society&mdash;all that earth could give of enjoyments&mdash;he
+had: he was the man of whom the Redeemer said that his thoughts were
+occupied in planning how to pull down his barns and build greater. We
+hear men complain of the sordid love of gold, but gold is merely a
+medium of exchange for other things: gold is land, titles, name,
+comfort&mdash;all that the world can give. If the world be <i>all</i>, it is
+<i>wise</i> to live for gold. There may be some little difference in the
+degree of degradation in different forms of worldliness; it is
+possible that the ambitious man who lives for power is somewhat higher
+than he who merely lives for applause, and he again may be a trifle
+higher than the mere seeker after gold&mdash;but after all, looking closely
+at the matter, you will find that, in respect of the objects of their
+idolatry, they agree in this, that all belong to the present.
+Therefore, says the Apostle, all that is in the world&mdash;&ldquo;the lust of
+the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, is not of the
+Father, but of the world,&rdquo; and are only various forms of one great
+tyranny. And then when such a man is at the brink of death, the words
+said to the man in our Lord's parable must be said to him. &ldquo;Thou fool,
+the houses thou hast built, the enjoyments thou hast prepared; and all
+those things which have formed thy life for years&mdash;when thy soul is
+taken from them, what shall they profit thee?&rdquo;</p>
+
+
+<h4>3. The spirit of society.</h4>
+
+<p>The <i>World</i> has various meanings in Scripture; it does not always mean
+the Visible, as opposed to the Invisible; nor the Present, as opposed
+to the Future: it sometimes stands for the secular spirit of the
+day&mdash;the Voice of Society.</p>
+
+<p>Our Saviour says, &ldquo;If ye were of the world, the world would love his
+own.&rdquo; The apostle says, &ldquo;Be not conformed to this world;&rdquo; and to the
+Gentiles he writes, &ldquo;In time past ye walked according to the course of
+this world, the spirit which now worketh in the children of
+disobedience.&rdquo; In these verses, a tone, a temper, a spirit is spoken
+of. There are two things&mdash;the Church and the World&mdash;two spirits
+pervading different bodies of men, brought before us in these
+verses&mdash;those called the Spirit-born, and those called the World,
+which is to be overcome by the Spirit-born, as in the text,
+&ldquo;Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Let us understand what is meant by the Church of God. When we speak of
+the Church we generally mean a society to aid men in their progress
+God-wards; but the Church of God is by no means co-extensive in any
+age with that organized institution which we <i>call</i> the Church;
+sometimes it is nearly co-extensive&mdash;that is, nearly all on earth who
+are born of God are found within its pale, nearly all who are of the
+world are extraneous to it&mdash;but sometimes the born of God have been
+found distinct from the Institution called the Church, opposed to
+it&mdash;persecuted by it. The Institution of the Church is a blessed
+ordinance of God, organized on earth for the purpose of representing
+the Eternal Church and of extending its limits, but still ever
+subordinate to it.</p>
+
+<p>The Eternal Church is &ldquo;the general assembly and church of the
+first-born which are written in heaven;&rdquo; the selected spirits of the
+most High, who are struggling with the evil of their day; sometimes
+alone, like Elijah, and like him, longing that their work was done;
+sometimes conscious of their union with each other. God is for ever
+raising up a succession of these&mdash;His brave, His true, His good.
+Apostolical succession, as taught sometimes, means simply this&mdash;a
+succession of miraculous powers flowing in a certain line. The true
+apostolic succession is&mdash;not a succession in an hereditary line, or
+line marked by visible signs which men can always identify, but a
+succession emphatically spiritual.</p>
+
+<p>The Jews looked for an hereditary succession; they thought that
+because they were Abraham's seed, the spiritual succession was
+preserved; the Redeemer told them that &ldquo;God was able of those stones
+to raise up children unto Abraham.&rdquo; Therefore is this ever a spiritual
+succession&mdash;in the hands of God alone; and they are here called the
+God-born, coming into the world variously qualified; sometimes
+baptized with the spirit which makes them, like James and John, the
+&ldquo;Sons of Thunder,&rdquo; sometimes with a milder spirit, as Barnabas, which
+makes them &ldquo;Sons of Consolation,&rdquo; sometimes having their souls
+indurated into an adamantine hardness, which makes them living
+stones&mdash;rocks like Peter, against which the billows of this world dash
+themselves in vain, and against which the gates of hell shall not
+prevail. But whether as apostles, or visitors of the poor, or parents
+of a family, born to do a work on earth, to speak a word, to discharge
+a mission which they themselves perhaps do not know till it is
+accomplished&mdash;these are the Church of God&mdash;the children of the Most
+High&mdash;the noble army of the Spirit-born! Opposed to this stands the
+mighty confederacy called the World. But beware of fixing on
+individual men in order to stigmatize <i>them</i> as the world. You may not
+draw a line and say&mdash;&ldquo;We are the sons of God, ye are of the world.&rdquo;
+The world is not so much individual as it is a certain spirit; the
+course of this world is &ldquo;the spirit which now worketh in the children
+of disobedience.&rdquo; The world and the Church are annexed as inseparably
+as the elements which compose the atmosphere. Take the smallest
+portion of this that you will, in a cubic inch the same proportions
+are found as in a temple. In the ark there was a Ham; in the small
+band of the twelve apostles there was a Judas.</p>
+
+<p>The spirit of the world is for ever altering&mdash;impalpable; for ever
+eluding, in fresh forms, your attempts to seize it. In the days of
+Noah, the spirit of the world was <i>violence</i>. In Elijah's day it was
+<i>idolatry</i>. In the day of Christ it was <i>power</i> concentrated and
+condensed in the government of Rome. In ours, perhaps, it is the <i>love
+of money</i>. It enters in different proportions into different bosoms;
+it is found in a different form in contiguous towns; in the
+fashionable watering place, and in the commercial city: it is this
+thing at Athens, and another in Corinth. This is the spirit of the
+world&mdash;a thing in my heart and yours: to be struggled against, not so
+much in the case of others, as in the silent battle to be done within
+our own souls. Pass we on now to consider&mdash;</p>
+
+
+<h3>II. The victory of faith.</h3>
+
+<p>Faith is a theological expression; we are apt to forget that it has
+any other than a theological import; yet it is the commonest principle
+of man's daily life, called in that region prudence, enterprise, or
+some such name. It is in effect the principle on which alone any
+human superiority can be gained. Faith, in religion, is the same
+principle as faith in worldly matters, differing only in its object:
+it rises through successive stages. When, in reliance upon your
+promise, your child gives up the half-hour's idleness of to-day for
+the holiday of to-morrow, he lives by faith; a future supersedes the
+present pleasure. When he abstains from over-indulgence of the
+appetite, in reliance upon your word that the result will be pain and
+sickness, sacrificing the present pleasure for fear of future
+punishment, he acts on faith: I do not say that this is a high
+exercise of faith&mdash;it is a very low one&mdash;but it <i>is</i> faith.</p>
+
+<p>Once more: the same motive of action may be carried on into manhood;
+in our own times two religious principles have been exemplified in the
+subjugation of a vice. The habit of intoxication has been broken by an
+appeal to the principle of combination, and the principle of belief.
+Men were taught to feel that they were not solitary stragglers against
+the vice; they were enrolled in a mighty army, identified in
+principles and interests. Here was the principle of the
+Church&mdash;association for reciprocated strength; they were thus taught
+the inevitable result of the indulgence of the vice. The missionaries
+of temperance went through the country contrasting the wretchedness
+and the degradation and the filth of drunkenness with the domestic
+comfort, and the health, and the regular employment of those who were
+masters of themselves. So far as men believed this, and gave up the
+tyranny of the present for the hope of the future&mdash;so far they lived
+by faith.</p>
+
+<p>Brethren, I do not say that this was a high triumph for the principle
+of faith; it was in fact, little more than selfishness; it was a high
+future balanced against a low present; only the preference of a
+future and higher physical enjoyment to a mean and lower one. Yet
+still to be ruled by this influence raises a man in the scale of
+being: it is a low virtue, prudence, a form of selfishness; yet
+prudence <i>is</i> a virtue. The merchant, who forecasts, saves, denies
+himself systematically through years, to amass a fortune, is not a
+very lofty being, yet he is higher, as a man, than he who is sunk in
+mere bodily gratifications. You would not say that the intemperate
+man&mdash;who has become temperate in order, merely to gain by that
+temperance honour and happiness&mdash;is a great man, but you would say he
+was a higher and a better man than he who is enslaved by his passions,
+or than the gambler who improvidently stakes all upon a moment's
+throw. The worldly mother who plans for the advancement of a family,
+and sacrifices solid enjoyments for a splendid alliance, is only
+<i>worldly</i> wise, yet in that man&oelig;uvring and worldly prudence there
+is the exercise of a self-control which raises her above the mere
+giddy pleasure-hunter of the hour; for want of self-control is the
+weakness of our nature&mdash;to restrain, to wait, to control present
+feeling with a large foresight, is human strength.</p>
+
+<p>Once more, instead of a faith like that of the child, which over-leaps
+a few hours, or that of the worldly man, which over-passes years,
+there may be a faith which transcends the whole span of life, and,
+instead of looking for temporal enjoyments, looks for rewards in a
+future beyond the grave, instead of a future limited to time.</p>
+
+<p>This is again a step. The child has sacrificed a day; the man has
+sacrificed a little more. Faith has now reached a stage which deserves
+to be called religious; not that this however, is very grand; it does
+but prefer a happiness hereafter to a happiness enjoyed here&mdash;an
+eternal well-being instead of a temporal well-being; it is but
+prudence on a grand scale&mdash;another form of selfishness&mdash;an
+anticipation of infinite rewards instead of finite, and not the more
+noble because of the infinitude of the gain: and yet this is what is
+often taught as religion in books and sermons. We are told that sin is
+wrong, because it will make us miserable hereafter. Guilt is
+represented as the short-sightedness which barters for a home on
+earth&mdash;a home in heaven.</p>
+
+<p>In the text-book of ethics studied in one of our universities, virtue
+is defined as that which is done at the command of God for the sake of
+an eternal reward. So then, religion is nothing more than a
+calculation of infinite and finite quantities; vice is nothing more
+than a grand imprudence; and heaven is nothing more than selfishness
+rewarded with eternal well-being!</p>
+
+<p>Yet this you will observe, is a necessary step in the development of
+faith. Faith is the conviction that God is a rewarder of them who
+diligently seek Him; and there is a moment in human progress when the
+anticipated rewards and punishments must be of a Mahometan
+character&mdash;the happiness of the senses. It was thus that the Jews were
+disciplined; out of a coarse, rude, infantine state, they were
+educated by rewards and punishments to abstain from present sinful
+gratification: at first, the promise of the life which now is,
+afterwards the promise of that which is to come; but even then the
+rewards and punishments of a future state were spoken of, by
+inspiration itself, as of an arbitrary character; and some of the best
+of the Israelites, in looking to the recompense of reward, seemed to
+have anticipated, coarsely, recompense in exchange for duties
+performed.</p>
+
+<p>The last step is that which alone deserves to be called Christian
+Faith&mdash;&ldquo;Who is he that overcometh but he that believeth that Jesus is
+the Christ?&rdquo; The difference between the faith of the Christian and
+that of the man of the world, or the mere ordinary religionist, is not
+a difference in mental operation, but in the object of the faith&mdash;to
+believe that Jesus is the Christ is the peculiarity of Christian
+faith.</p>
+
+<p>The anticipated heaven of the Christian differs from the anticipated
+heaven of any other man, not in the distinctness with which its
+imagery is perceived, but in the kind of objects which are hoped for.
+The apostle has told us the character of heaven. &ldquo;Eye hath not seen,
+nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to
+conceive the things which God hath prepared for them that love
+Him&rdquo;&mdash;which glorious words are sometimes strangely misinterpreted, as
+if the apostle merely meant rhetorically to exalt the conception of
+the heavenly world, as of something beyond all power to imagine or to
+paint. The apostle meant something infinitely deeper: the heaven of
+God is not only that which &ldquo;eye hath not seen,&rdquo; but that which eye can
+<i>never</i> see; its glories are not of that kind at all which can ever
+stream in forms of beauty on the eye, or pour in melody upon the
+enraptured ear&mdash;not such joys as genius in its most gifted hour (here
+called &ldquo;the heart of man&rdquo;) can invent or imagine: it is something
+which these sensuous organs of ours never can appreciate&mdash;bliss of
+another kind altogether, revealed to the spirit of man by the Spirit
+of God&mdash;joys such as spirit alone can receive.</p>
+
+<p>Do you ask what these are? &ldquo;The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy,
+peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness,
+temperance.&rdquo; That is heaven, and therefore the Apostle tells us that
+he alone who &ldquo;believeth that Jesus is the Christ,&rdquo; and only he, feels
+that. What is it to believe that Jesus is the Christ?&mdash;That He is the
+Anointed One, that His life is the anointed life, the only blessed
+life, the blessed life divine for thirty years?&mdash;Yes, but if so, the
+blessed Life still, continued throughout all eternity: unless you
+believe that, you do not believe that Jesus is the Christ.</p>
+
+<p>What is the blessedness that you expect?&mdash;to have the joys of earth
+with the addition of the element of eternity? Men think that heaven is
+to be a compensation for earthly loss: the saints are earthly-wretched
+here, the children of this world are earthly-happy; but <i>that</i>, they
+think, shall be all reversed&mdash;Lazarus, beyond the grave, shall have
+the purple and the fine linen, and the splendour, and the houses, and
+the lands which Dives had on earth: the one had them for time, the
+other shall have them for eternity. That is the heaven that men
+expect&mdash;this earth sacrificed <i>now</i>, in order that it may be
+re-granted for <i>ever</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Nor will this expectation be reversed except by a reversal of the
+nature. None can anticipate such a heaven as God has revealed, except
+they that are born of the Spirit; therefore to believe that Jesus is
+the Christ, a man must be born of God. You will observe that no other
+victory overcomes the world: for this is what St. John means by
+saying, &ldquo;Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth
+that Jesus is the Christ?&rdquo; For then it comes to pass that a man begins
+to feel, that to do wrong is hell; and that to love God, to be like
+God, to have the mind of Christ, is the only heaven. Until this
+victory is gained, the world retains its stronghold in the heart.</p>
+
+<p>Do you think that the temperate man has overcome the world, who,
+instead of the short-lived rapture of intoxication, chooses regular
+employment, health, and prosperity? Is it not the world in another
+form, which has his homage? Or do you suppose that the so-called
+religious man is really the world's conqueror by being content to give
+up seventy years of enjoyment in order to win innumerable ages of the
+very same species of enjoyment? Has he not only made earth a hell, in
+order that earthly things may be his heaven for ever?</p>
+
+<p>Thus the victory of Faith proceeds from stage to stage: the first
+victory is, when the Present is conquered by the Future; the last,
+when the Visible and Sensual is despised in comparison of the
+Invisible and Eternal. Then earth has lost its power for ever; for if
+<i>all</i> that it has to give be lost eternally, the gain of faith is
+still infinite.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III.<br />
+<small><i>Preached Whitsunday, May 19, 1850.</i></small><br />
+THE DISPENSATION OF THE SPIRIT.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote class="scripture"><p>&ldquo;Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.&rdquo;&mdash;1
+Corinthians xii, 4.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">According to a view which contains in it a profound truth, the ages of
+the world are divisible into three dispensations, presided over by the
+Father, the Son, and the Spirit.</p>
+
+<p>In the dispensation of the Father, God was known as a Creator;
+creation manifested His eternal power and Godhead, and the religion of
+mankind was the religion of Nature.</p>
+
+<p>In the dispensation of the Son, God manifested Himself to Humanity
+through man; the Eternal Word spoke, through the inspired and gifted
+of the human race, to those that were uninspired and ungifted. This
+was the dispensation of the prophets&mdash;its climax was the advent of the
+Redeemer; it was completed when <i>perfect</i> Humanity manifested God to
+man. The characteristic of this dispensation was, that God revealed
+Himself by an authoritative Voice, speaking from without, and the
+highest manifestation of God whereof man was capable, was a Divine
+Humanity.</p>
+
+<p>The age in which we at present live is the dispensation of the
+Spirit, in which God has communicated Himself by the highest
+revelation, and in the most intimate communion, of which man is
+capable; no longer through Creation, no more as an authoritative Voice
+from without, but as a Law within&mdash;as a Spirit mingling with a spirit.
+This is the dispensation of which the prophet said of old, that the
+time should come when they should no longer teach every man his
+brother and every man his neighbour, saying, &ldquo;Know the Lord&rdquo;&mdash;that is,
+by a will revealed by external authority from other human minds&mdash;&ldquo;for
+they shall all know him, from the least of them to the greatest.&rdquo; This
+is the dispensation, too, of whose close the Apostle Paul speaks thus:
+&ldquo;Then shall the Son also be subject to Him that hath put all things
+under Him, that God may be all in all.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The outward humanity is to disappear, that the inward union may be
+complete. To the same effect, he speaks in another place, &ldquo;Yea, though
+we have known Christ after the flesh, yet henceforth know we Him no
+more.&rdquo; For this reason, the Ascension was necessary before Pentecost
+could come: the Spirit was not given, we are told, because Jesus was
+not yet glorified. It was necessary for the Son to disappear as an
+outward authority, in order that he might re-appear as an inward
+principle of life. Our salvation is no longer God manifested in a
+Christ <i>without</i> us, but as a Christ <i>within</i> us, the hope of glory.
+To-day is the selected anniversary of that memorable day when the
+first proof was given to the senses, in the gift of Pentecost, that
+that spiritual dispensation had begun.</p>
+
+<p>There is a twofold way in which the operations of the Spirit on
+mankind may be considered&mdash;His influence on the Church as a whole, and
+His influence on individuals; both of these are brought together in
+the text. It branches, therefore, into a twofold division.</p>
+
+<ol class="Rom">
+<li>Spiritual gifts conferred on individuals.</li>
+<li>Spiritual union of the Church.</li>
+</ol>
+
+<p>Let us distinguish between the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit: by
+the Spirit, the apostle meant the vital principle of new life from
+God, common to all believers&mdash;the animating Spirit of the Church of
+God; by the gifts of the Spirit, he meant the diversities of form in
+which He operates on individuals; its influence varied according to
+their respective peculiarities and characteristics. In the
+twenty-eighth verse of this chapter a full catalogue of gifts is
+found; looking at them generally, we discover two classes into which
+they may be divided&mdash;the first are natural, the second are
+supernatural: the first are those capacities which are originally
+found in human nature&mdash;personal endowments of mind, a character
+elevated and enlarged by the gift of the Spirit; the second are those
+which were created and called into existence by the sudden approach of
+the same influence.</p>
+
+<p>Just as if the temperature of this Northern hemisphere were raised
+suddenly, and a mighty tropical river were to pour its fertilizing
+inundation over the country, the result would be the impartation of a
+vigorous and gigantic growth to the vegetation already in existence,
+and at the same time the development of life in seeds and germs which
+had long lain latent in the soil, incapable of vegetation in the
+unkindly climate of their birth. Exactly in the same way, the flood of
+a Divine life, poured suddenly into the souls of men, enlarged and
+ennobled qualities which had been used already, and at the same time
+<i>developed</i> powers which never could have become apparent in the cold,
+low temperature of natural life.</p>
+
+<p>Among the natural gifts, we may instance these:
+teaching&mdash;healing&mdash;the power of government. Teaching is a gift,
+natural or acquired. To know, is one thing; to have the capacity of
+imparting knowledge, is another.</p>
+
+<p>The physician's art again is no supernatural mystery; long and careful
+study of physical laws capacitate him for his task. To govern, again,
+is a natural faculty: it may be acquired by habit, but there are some
+who never could acquire it. Some men seem born to command: place them
+in what sphere you will, others acknowledge their secret influence,
+and subordinate themselves to their will. The faculty of organization,
+the secret of rule, need no supernatural power. They exist among the
+uninspired. Now the doctrine of the apostle was, that all these are
+transformed and renovated by the spirit of a new life in such a way as
+to become almost new powers, or, as he calls them, gifts of the
+Spirit. A remarkable illustration of this is his view of the human
+body. If there be anything common to us by nature, it is the members
+of our corporeal frame; yet the apostle taught that these, guided by
+the Spirit as its instruments and obeying a holy will, became
+transfigured; so that, in his language, the body becomes a temple of
+the Holy Ghost, and the meanest faculties, the lowest appetites, the
+humblest organs, are ennobled by the Spirit mind which guides them.
+Thus he bids the Romans yield themselves &ldquo;unto God as those that are
+alive from the dead, and their members as instruments of righteousness
+unto God.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The second class of gifts are supernatural: of these we find two
+pre-eminent&mdash;the gift of tongues, and the gift of prophecy.</p>
+
+<p>It does not appear that the gift of tongues was merely the imparted
+faculty of speaking foreign languages&mdash;it could not be that the
+highest gift of God to His Church merely made them rivals of the
+linguist; it would rather seem that the Spirit of God, mingling with
+the soul of man, supernaturally elevated its aspirations and glorified
+its conceptions, so that an entranced state of <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: original reads 'ecstacy'">ecstasy</ins> was
+produced, and feelings called into energy, for the expression of which
+the ordinary forms of speech were found inadequate. Even in a far
+lower department, when a man becomes possessed of ideas for which his
+ordinary vocabulary supplies no sufficient expression, his language
+becomes broken, incoherent, struggling, and almost unnaturally
+elevated; much more was it to be expected that when divine and new
+feelings rushed like a flood upon the soul, the language of men would
+have become strange and extraordinary; but in that supposed case, wild
+as the expressions might appear to one coldly looking on and not
+participating in the feelings of the speaker, they would be quite
+sufficient to convey intelligible meaning to any one affected by the
+same emotions.</p>
+
+<p>Where perfect sympathy exists, incoherent utterance&mdash;a word&mdash;a
+syllable&mdash;is quite as efficient as elaborate sentences. Now this is
+precisely the account given of the phenomenon which attended the gift
+of tongues. On the day of Pentecost, all who were in the same state of
+spiritual emotion as those who spoke, understood the speakers; each
+was as intelligible to all as if he spoke in their several tongues: to
+those who were coolly and sceptically watching, the effects appeared
+like those of intoxication. A similar account is given by the Apostle
+Paul: the voice appeared to unsympathetic ears as that of a barbarian;
+the uninitiated and unbelieving coming in, heard nothing that was
+articulate to them, but only what seemed to them the ravings of
+insanity.</p>
+
+<p>The next was the gift of prophecy. Prophecy has several meanings in
+Scripture; sometimes it means the power of predicting future events,
+sometimes an entranced state accompanied with ravings, sometimes it
+appears to mean only exposition; but prophecy, as the miraculous
+spiritual gift granted to the early Church, seems to have been a state
+of communion with the mind of God lower than that which was called the
+gift of tongues, at least less ecstatic, less rapt into the world to
+come, more under the guidance of the reason, more within the control
+of calm consciousness&mdash;as we might say, less supernatural.</p>
+
+<p>Upon these gifts we make two observations:</p>
+
+<p><b>1.</b> Even the highest were not accompanied with spiritual faultlessness.
+Inspiration was one thing, infallibility another. The gifts of the
+Spirit were, like the gifts of Nature, subordinated to the
+will&mdash;capable of being used for good or evil, sometimes pure,
+sometimes mixed with human infirmity. The supernaturally gifted man
+was no mere machine, no automaton ruled in spite of himself by a
+superior spirit. Disorder, vanity, over-weening self-estimation, might
+accompany these gifts, and the prophetic utterance itself might be
+degraded to a mere brawling in the Church; therefore St. Paul
+established laws of control, declared the need of subjection and rule
+over spiritual gifts: the spirits of the prophets were to be subject
+to the prophets; if those in the ecstatic state were tempted to break
+out into utterance and unable to interpret what it meant, those so
+gifted were to hold their peace.</p>
+
+<p>The prophet poured out the truths supernaturally imparted to his
+highest spirit, in an inspired and impassioned eloquence which was
+intelligible even to the unspiritual, and was one of the appointed
+means of convincing the unconverted. The lesson derivable from this is
+not obsolete even in the present day. There is nothing perhaps
+precisely identical in our own day with those gifts of the early
+Church; but genius and talent are uncommon gifts, which stand in a
+somewhat analogous relation&mdash;in a closer one certainly&mdash;than more
+ordinary endowments. The flights of genius, we know, appear like
+maniac ravings to minds not elevated to the same spiritual level. Now
+these are perfectly compatible with mis-use, abuse, and moral
+disorder. The most gifted of our countrymen has left this behind him
+as his epitaph, &ldquo;The greatest, wisest, <i>meanest</i> of mankind.&rdquo; The most
+glorious gift of poetic insight&mdash;itself in a way divine&mdash;having
+something akin to Deity&mdash;is too often associated with degraded life
+and vicious character. Those gifts which elevate us above the rest of
+our species, whereby we stand aloof and separate from the crowd,
+convey no moral&mdash;nor even mental&mdash;infallibility: nay, they have in
+themselves a peculiar danger, whereas that gift which is common to us
+all as brethren, the animating spirit of a divine life, in whose soil
+the spiritual being of all is rooted, cannot make us vain; we <i>cannot</i>
+pride ourselves on <i>that</i>, for it is common to us all.</p>
+
+<p><b>2.</b> Again, the gifts which were higher in one sense were lower in
+another; as supernatural gifts they would rank thus&mdash;the gift of
+tongues before prophecy, and prophecy before teaching; but as
+blessings to be desired, this order is reversed: rather than the gift
+of tongues St. Paul bids the Corinthians desire that they might
+prophecy. Inferior again to prophecy was the quite simple, and as we
+should say, lower faculty of explaining truth. Now the principle upon
+which that was tried was that of utility&mdash;not utility in the low sense
+of the utilitarian, who measures the value of a thing by its
+susceptibility of application to the purpose of this present life, but
+a utility whose measure was love, charity. The apostle considered
+<i>that</i> gift most desirable by which men might most edify one another.
+And hence that noble declaration of one of the most gifted of
+mankind&mdash;&ldquo;I had rather speak five words with my understanding, that I
+might teach others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown
+tongue.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Our estimate is almost the reverse of this: we value a gift in
+proportion to its rarity, its distinctive character, separating its
+possessor from the rest of his fellow-men; whereas, in truth, those
+gifts which leave us in lonely majesty apart from our species, useless
+to them, benefiting ourselves alone, are not the most godlike, but the
+least so; because they are dissevered from that beneficent charity
+which is the very being of God. Your lofty incommunicable thoughts,
+your <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: original reads 'ecstacies'">ecstasies</ins>, and aspirations, and contemplative raptures&mdash;in virtue
+of which you have estimated yourself as the porcelain of the earth, of
+another nature altogether than the clay of common spirits&mdash;tried by
+the test of Charity, what is there grand in these if they cannot be
+applied as blessings to those that are beneath you? One of our
+countrymen has achieved for himself extraordinary scientific renown;
+he pierced the mysteries of nature, he analysed her processes, he gave
+new elements to the world. The same man applied his rare intellect to
+the construction of a simple and very common instrument&mdash;that
+well-known lamp which has been the guardian of the miner's life from
+the explosion of fire. His discoveries are his nobility in this world,
+his trifling invention gives him rank in the world to come. By the
+former he shines as one of the brightest luminaries in the firmament
+of science, by the latter evincing a spirit animated and directed by
+Christian love, he takes his place as one of the Church of God.</p>
+
+<p>And such is ever the true order of rank which graces occupy in
+reference to gifts. The most trifling act which is marked by
+usefulness to others is nobler in God's sight, than the most brilliant
+accomplishment of genius. To teach a few Sunday-school children, week
+after week, commonplace simple truths&mdash;persevering in spite of
+dullness and mean capacities&mdash;is a more glorious occupation than the
+highest meditations or creations of genius which edify or instruct
+only our own solitary soul.</p>
+
+
+<h3>II. The spiritual unity of the Church&mdash;&ldquo;the same Spirit.&rdquo;</h3>
+
+<p>Men have formed to themselves two ideas of unity: the first is a
+sameness of form&mdash;of expression; the second an identity of spirit.
+Some of the best of mankind have fondly hoped to realize an unity for
+the Church of Christ which should be manifested by uniform expressions
+in everything: their imaginations have loved to paint, as the ideal of
+a Christian Church, a state in which the same liturgy should be used
+throughout the world, the same ecclesiastical government, even the
+same vestments, the same canonical hours, the same form of
+architecture. They could conceive nothing more entirely one than a
+Church so constituted that the same prayers, in the very same
+expressions, at the very same moment, should be ascending to the
+Eternal Ear.</p>
+
+<p>There are others who have thrown aside entirely this idea as
+chimerical; who have not only ceased to hope it, but even to wish it;
+who if it could be realized, would consider it a matter of regret; who
+feel that the minds of men are various&mdash;their modes and habits of
+thought, their original capacities and acquired associations,
+infinitely diverse; and who, perceiving that the law of the universal
+system is manifoldness in unity, have ceased to expect any other
+oneness for the Church of Christ than that of a sameness of spirit,
+showing itself through diversities of gifts. Among these last was the
+Apostle Paul: his large and glorious mind rejoiced in the
+contemplation of the countless manifestations of spiritual nature
+beneath which he detected one and the same pervading Mind. Now let us
+look at this matter somewhat more closely.</p>
+
+<p><b>1.</b> All real unity is manifold. Feelings in themselves identical find
+countless forms of expression: for instance, sorrow is the same
+feeling throughout the human race; but the Oriental prostrates himself
+upon the ground, throws dust upon his head, tears his garments, is not
+ashamed to break out into the most violent lamentations. In the north,
+we rule our grief in public; suffer not even a quiver to be seen upon
+the lip or brow, and consider calmness as the appropriate expression
+of manly grief. Nay, two sisters of different temperament will show
+their grief diversely; one will love to dwell upon the theme of the
+qualities of the departed, the other feels it a sacred sorrow, on
+which the lips are sealed for ever; yet would it not be idle to ask
+which of them has the truest affection? Are they not both in their own
+way true? In the same East, men take off their sandals in devotion; we
+exactly reverse the procedure, and uncover the head. The Oriental
+prostrates himself in the dust before his sovereign; even before his
+God the Briton only kneels; yet would it not again be idle to ask
+which is the essential and proper form of reverence? Is not true
+reverence in all cases modified by the individualities of temperament
+and education? Should we not say, in all these forms worketh one and
+the same spirit of reverence?</p>
+
+<p>Again in the world as God has made it, one law shows itself under
+diverse, even opposite manifestations; lead sinks in water, wood
+floats upon the surface. In former times men assigned these different
+results to different forces, laws, and gods. A knowledge of Nature has
+demonstrated that they are expressions of one and the same law; and
+the great difference between the educated and the uneducated man is
+this&mdash;the uneducated sees in this world nothing but an infinite
+collection of unconnected facts&mdash;a broken, distorted, and fragmentary
+system, which his mind can by no means reduce to order. The educated
+man, in proportion to his education, sees the number of laws
+diminished&mdash;beholds in the manifold appearances of Nature the
+expression of a few laws, by degrees fewer, till at last it becomes
+possible to his conception that they are all reducible to one, and
+that that which lies beneath the innumerable phenomena of Nature is
+the One Spirit&mdash;God.</p>
+
+<p><b>2.</b> All <i>living</i> unity is spiritual, not formal; not sameness, but
+manifoldness. You may have a unity shown in identity of form; but it
+is a lifeless unity. There is a sameness on the sea-beach&mdash;that unity
+which the ocean waves have produced by curling and forcibly destroying
+the angularities of individual form, so that every stone presents the
+same monotony of aspect, and you must fracture each again in order to
+distinguish whether you hold in your hand a mass of flint or fragment
+of basalt. There is no life in unity such as this.</p>
+
+<p>But as soon as you arrive at a unity that is living, the form becomes
+more complex, and you search in vain for uniformity. In the parts, it
+must be found, if found at all, in the sameness of the pervading life.
+The illustration given by the apostle is that of the human body&mdash;a
+higher unity, he says, by being composed of many members, than if
+every member were but a repetition of a single type. It is conceivable
+that God might have moulded such a form for human life; it is
+conceivable that every cause, instead of producing in different nerves
+a variety of sensations, should have affected every one in a mode
+precisely similar; that instead of producing a sensation of sound&mdash;a
+sensation of colour&mdash;a sensation of taste&mdash;the outward causes of
+nature, be they what they may, should have given but one unvaried
+feeling to every sense, and that the whole universe should have been
+light or sound.</p>
+
+<p>That would have been unity, if sameness be unity; but, says the
+apostle, &ldquo;if the whole body were seeing, where were the hearing?&rdquo; That
+uniformity would have been irreparable loss&mdash;the loss of every part
+that was merged into the one. What is the body's unity? Is it not
+this? The unity of a living consciousness which marvellously animates
+every separate atom of the frame, and reduces each to the performance
+of a function fitted to the welfare of the whole&mdash;its own, not
+another's: so that the inner spirit can say of the remotest, and in
+form most unlike, member, &ldquo;That too, is myself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><b>3.</b> None but a spiritual unity can preserve the rights both of the
+individual and the Church. All other systems of unity, except the
+apostolic, either sacrifice the Church to the individual, or the
+individual to the Church.</p>
+
+<p>Some have claimed the right of private judgment in such a way that
+every individual opinion becomes truth, and every utterance of private
+conscience right: thus the Church is sacrificed to the individual; and
+the universal conscience, the common faith, becomes as nothing; the
+spirits of the prophets are not subject to the prophets. Again, there
+are others, who, like the Church of Rome, would surrender the
+conscience of each man to the conscience of the Church, and coerce the
+particulars of faith into exact coincidence with a formal creed.
+Spiritual unity saves the right of both in God's system. The Church
+exists for the individual, just as truly as the individual for the
+Church. The Church is then most perfect when all its powers converge,
+and are concentrated on the formation and protection of individual
+character; and the individual is then most complete&mdash;that is, most a
+Christian&mdash;when he has practically learned that his life is not his
+own, but owed to others&mdash;&ldquo;that no man liveth to himself, and no man
+dieth to himself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Now, spiritual unity respects the sanctity of the individual
+conscience. How reverently the Apostle Paul considered its claims, and
+how tenderly! When once it became a matter of conscience, this was his
+principle laid down in matters of dispute: &ldquo;Let every man be fully
+persuaded in his own mind.&rdquo; The belief of the whole world cannot make
+that thing true to me which to me seems false. The conscience of the
+whole world cannot make a thing right to me, if I in my heart believe
+it wrong. You may coerce the conscience, you may control men's belief,
+and you may produce a unity by so doing; but it is the unity of
+pebbles on the sea-shore&mdash;a lifeless identity of outward form with no
+cohesion between the parts&mdash;a dead sea-beach on which nothing grows,
+and where the very seaweed dies.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, it respected the sanctity of individual character. Out of
+eight hundred millions of the human race, a few features diversify
+themselves into so many forms of countenance, that scarcely two could
+be mistaken for each other. There are no two leaves on the same tree
+alike; nor two sides of the same leaf, unless you cut and kill it
+There is a sacredness in individuality of character; each one born
+into this world is a fresh new soul intended by his Maker to develope
+himself in a new fresh way; we are what we are; we cannot be truly
+other than ourselves. We reach perfection not by copying, much less by
+aiming at originality; but by consistently and steadily working out
+the life which is common to us all, according to the character which
+God has given us.</p>
+
+<p>And thus will the Church of God be one at last&mdash;will present an unity
+like that of heaven. There is one universe in which each separate star
+differs from another in glory; one Church in which a single Spirit,
+the Life of God, pervades each separate soul; and just in proportion
+as that Life becomes exalted does it enable every one to shine forth
+in the distinctness of his own separate individuality, like the stars
+of heaven.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV.<br />
+<small><i>Preached May 26, 1850.</i></small><br />
+THE TRINITY.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote class="scripture"><p>&ldquo;And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God
+your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto
+the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.&rdquo;&mdash;1 Thess. v. 23.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">The knowledge of God is the blessedness of man. To know God, and to be
+known by Him&mdash;to love God, and to be loved by Him&mdash;is the most
+precious treasure which this life has to give; properly speaking the
+only treasure; properly speaking the only knowledge; for all knowledge
+is valuable only so far as it converges towards and ends in the
+knowledge of God, and enables us to acquaint ourselves with God, and
+be at peace with Him. The doctrine of the Trinity is the sum of all
+that knowledge which has as yet been gained by man. I say gained <i>as
+yet</i>. For we presume not to maintain that in the ages which are to
+come hereafter, our knowledge shall not be superseded by a higher
+knowledge; we presume not to say that in a state of existence
+future&mdash;yea even here upon this earth, at that period which is
+mysteriously referred to in Scripture as &ldquo;the coming of the Son of
+Man&rdquo;&mdash;there shall not be given to the soul an intellectual conception
+of the Almighty, a vision of the Eternal, in comparison with whose
+brightness and clearness our present knowledge of the Trinity shall be
+as rudimentary and as childlike as the knowledge of the Jew was in
+comparison with the knowledge of the Christian.</p>
+
+<p>Now the passage which I have undertaken to expound to-day, is one in
+which the doctrine of the Trinity is brought into connection
+practically with the doctrine of our Humanity. Before entering into it
+brethren, let us lay down these two observations and duties for
+ourselves. In the first place, let us examine the doctrine of the
+Trinity ever in the spirit of charity.</p>
+
+<p>A clear statement of the deepest doctrine that man can know, and the
+intellectual conception of that doctrine, are by no means easy. We are
+puzzled and perplexed by <i>words</i>; we fight respecting <i>words</i>.
+Quarrels are nearly always verbal quarrels. Words lose their meaning
+in the course of time; nay, the very words of the Athanasian creed
+which we read to-day mean not in this age, the same thing which they
+meant in ages past. Therefore it is possible that men, externally
+Trinitarians, may differ from each other though using the same words,
+as greatly as a Unitarian differs from a Trinitarian. There may be
+found in the same Church and in the same congregation, men holding all
+possible shades of opinion, though agreeing externally, and in words.</p>
+
+<p>I speak within the limit of my own experience when I say that persons
+have been known and heard to express the language of bitter
+condemnation respecting Unitarianism, who when examined and calmly
+required to draw out verbally the meaning of their own conceptions,
+have been proved to be holding all the time&mdash;unconsciously&mdash;the very
+doctrine of Sabellianism. And this doctrine is condemned by the Church
+as distinctly as that of Unitarianism. Therefore let us learn from
+all this a large and catholic charity. There are in almost every
+congregation, themselves not knowing it, Trinitarians who are
+practically Tri-theists, worshipping three Gods; and Sabellians, or
+worshippers of one person under three different manifestations. To
+know God so that we may be said intellectually, to appreciate Him, is
+blessed: to be unable to do so is a misfortune. Be content with your
+own blessedness, in comparison with others' misfortunes. Do not give
+to that misfortune the additional sting of illiberal and unchristian
+vituperation.</p>
+
+<p>The next observation we have to lay down for ourselves is, that we
+should examine this doctrine in the spirit of modesty. There are those
+who are inclined to sneer at the Trinitarian; those to whom the
+doctrine appears merely a contradiction&mdash;a puzzle&mdash;an entangled,
+labyrinthine enigma, in which there is no meaning whatever. But let
+all such remember, that though the doctrine may appear to them absurd,
+because they have not the proper conception of it, some of the
+profoundest thinkers, and some of the holiest spirits among mankind,
+have believed in this doctrine&mdash;have clung to it as a matter of life
+or death. Let them be assured of this, that whether the doctrine be
+true or false, it is not necessarily a doctrine self-contradictory.
+Let them be assured of this, in all modesty, that such men never could
+have held it unless there was latent in the doctrine a deep
+truth,&mdash;perchance the truth of God.</p>
+
+<p>We pass on now to the consideration of this verse under the following
+divisions. In the first place, we shall view it as a triad in discord:
+&ldquo;I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved
+blameless;&rdquo; in the second place, as a Trinity in Unity: &ldquo;the God of
+peace sanctify you wholly.&rdquo; We take then first of all for our
+consideration the triad in discord: &ldquo;I pray God your whole body and
+soul and spirit be preserved blameless.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The apostle here divides human nature into a three-fold division; and
+here we have to observe again the difficulty often experienced in
+understanding words. Thus words in the Athanasian creed have become
+obsolete, or lost their meaning: so that in the present day the words
+&ldquo;person,&rdquo; &ldquo;substance,&rdquo; &ldquo;procession,&rdquo; &ldquo;generation,&rdquo; to an ordinary
+person, mean almost nothing. So this language of the apostle, when
+rendered into English, shows no difference whatever between &ldquo;soul&rdquo; and
+&ldquo;spirit.&rdquo; We say, for instance, that the soul of a man has departed
+from him. We also say that the spirit of a man has departed from him.
+There is no distinct difference between the two; but in the original
+two very different kinds of thoughts&mdash;two very different modes of
+conception&mdash;are represented by the two English words &ldquo;soul&rdquo; and
+&ldquo;spirit.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It is our business, therefore, in the first place, to understand what
+is meant by this threefold division. When the apostle speaks of the
+body, what he means is the animal life&mdash;that which we share in common
+with beasts, birds, and reptiles; for our life my Christian
+brethren&mdash;our sensational existence&mdash;differs but little from that of
+the lower animals. There is the same external form, the same material
+in the blood-vessels, in the nerves, and in the muscular system. Nay,
+more than that, our appetites and instincts are alike, our lower
+pleasures like their lower pleasures, our lower pain like their lower
+pain, our life is supported by the same means, and our animal
+functions are almost indistinguishably the same.</p>
+
+<p>But, once more, the apostle speaks of what he calls the &ldquo;soul.&rdquo; What
+the apostle meant by what is translated &ldquo;soul,&rdquo; is the immortal part
+of man&mdash;the immaterial as distinguished from the material: those
+powers, in fact, which man has by nature&mdash;powers natural, which are
+yet to survive the grave. There is a distinction made in scripture by
+our Lord between these two things. &ldquo;Fear not,&rdquo; says He, &ldquo;them who can
+kill the body; but rather fear Him who can destroy both body and
+soul in hell.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We have again, to observe respecting this, that what the apostle
+called the &ldquo;soul,&rdquo; is not simply distinguishable from the body, but
+also from the spirit; and on that distinction I have already touched.
+By the soul the apostle means our powers natural&mdash;the powers which we
+have by nature. Herein is the soul distinguishable from the spirit. In
+the Epistle to the Corinthians we read&mdash;&ldquo;But the natural man receiveth
+not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto
+him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
+But he that is spiritual judgeth all things.&rdquo; Observe, there is a
+distinction drawn between the natural man and the spiritual. What is
+there translated &ldquo;natural&rdquo; is derived from precisely the same word as
+that which is here translated &ldquo;soul.&rdquo; So that we may read just as
+correctly: &ldquo;The man under the dominion of the soul receiveth not the
+things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him;
+neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned. But
+he that is spiritual judgeth all things.&rdquo; And again, the apostle, in
+the same Epistle to the Corinthians, writes: &ldquo;That is not first which
+is spiritual, but that which is natural:&rdquo; that is, the endowments of
+the soul precede the endowments of the spirit. You have the same truth
+in other places. The powers that belong to the Spirit were not the
+first developed; but the powers which belong to the soul, that is the
+powers of nature. Again in the same chapter, reference is made to the
+natural and spiritual body. &ldquo;There is a natural body and there is a
+spiritual body.&rdquo; Literally, there is a body governed by the soul&mdash;that
+is, powers natural: and there is a body governed by the Spirit&mdash;that
+is, higher nature.</p>
+
+<p>Let then this be borne in mind, that what the apostle calls &ldquo;soul&rdquo; is
+the same as that which he calls, in another place, the &ldquo;natural man.&rdquo;
+These powers are divisible into two branches&mdash;the intellectual powers
+and the moral sense. The intellectual powers man has by nature. Man
+need not be regenerated in order to possess the power of reasoning, or
+in order to invent. The intellectual powers belong to what the apostle
+calls the &ldquo;soul.&rdquo; The moral sense distinguishes between right and
+wrong. The apostle tells us, in the Epistle to the Romans, that the
+heathen&mdash;manifestly natural men&mdash;had the &ldquo;work of the law written in
+their hearts; their conscience also bearing witness.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The third division of which the apostle speaks, he calls the &ldquo;spirit;&rdquo;
+and by the spirit he means that life in man which, in his natural
+state, is in such an embryo condition, that it can scarcely be said to
+exist at all&mdash;that which is called out into power and vitality by
+regeneration&mdash;the perfection of the powers of human nature. And you
+will observe, that it is not merely the instinctive life, nor the
+intellectual life, nor the moral life, but it is principally our
+nobler affections&mdash;that existence, that state of being, which we call
+love. That is the department of human nature which the apostle calls
+the spirit; and accordingly, when the Spirit of God was given on the
+day of Pentecost, you will, remember that another power of man was
+called out, differing from what he had before. That Spirit granted on
+the day of Pentecost did subordinate to Himself, and was, intended to
+subordinate to Himself, the will, the understanding, and the
+affection of man; but you often find these spiritual powers were
+distinguished from the natural powers, and existed without them.</p>
+
+<p>So in the highest state of religious life, we are told, men prayed in
+the spirit. Till the spirit has subordinated the understanding, the
+gift of God is not complete&mdash;has not done its work. It is abundantly
+evident that a new life was called out. It was not merely the
+sharpening of the intellectual powers; it was calling out powers of
+aspiration and love to God; those affections which have in them
+something boundless, that are not limited to this earth, but seek
+their completion in the mind of God Himself.</p>
+
+<p>Now, what we have to say respecting this threefold state of man is, it
+is a state of discord. Let us take up a very simple, popular,
+every-day illustration. We hear it remarked frequently in conversation
+of a man, that if only his will were commensurate with his knowledge,
+he would be a great man. His knowledge is great&mdash;his powers are almost
+unbounded; he has gained knowledge from nearly every department of
+science; but somehow or other&mdash;you cannot tell why&mdash;there is such an
+indecision, such a vacillation about the man, that he scarcely knows
+what to do, and, perhaps does nothing in this world. You find it
+remarked, respecting another class of men, that their will is strong,
+almost unbounded in its strength&mdash;they have iron wills, yet there is
+something so narrow in their conceptions, something so bounded in
+their views, so much of stagnation in their thoughts, so much of
+prejudice in all their opinions, that their will is prevented from
+being directed to anything in a proper manner. Here is the discord in
+human nature. There is a distinction between the will and the
+understanding. And sometimes a feeble will goes with a strong
+understanding, or a powerful will is found in connection with great
+feebleness or ignorance of the understanding.</p>
+
+<p>Let us however, go into this more specially. The first cause of
+discord in this threefold state of man is the state in which the body
+is the ruler; and this, my Christian brethren, you find most visibly
+developed in the uneducated and irreligious poor. I say uneducated and
+irreligious, because it is by no means education alone which can
+subordinate the flesh to the higher man. The religious uneducated poor
+man may be master of his lower passions; but in the uneducated and
+irreligious poor man, these show themselves in full force; this
+discord&mdash;this want of unity&mdash;appears, as it were, in a magnified form.
+There is a strong man&mdash;health bursting, as it were, at every pore,
+with an athletic body; but coarse, and rude, and intellectually
+weak&mdash;almost an animal. When you are regarding the upper classes of
+society, you see less distinctly the absence of the spirit, unless,
+you look with a spiritual eye. The coarseness has passed away&mdash;the
+rudeness is no longer seen: there is a refinement in the pleasures.
+But if you take the life led by the young men of our country&mdash;strong,
+athletic, healthy men&mdash;it is still the life of the flesh: the
+unthinking, and the unprincipled life in which there is as yet no
+higher life developed. It is a life which, in spite of its refinement,
+the Bible condemns as the life of the sensualist.</p>
+
+<p>We pass on now, to another state of discord&mdash;a state in which the soul
+is ruined. Brethren, this is a natural result&mdash;this is what might have
+been expected. The natural man gradually subordinates the flesh, the
+body, to the soul. It is natural in the development of individuals, it
+is natural in the development of society: in the development of
+individuals, because that childlike, infantine life which exists at
+first, and is almost entirely a life of appetites, gradually
+subsides. Higher wants, higher desires, loftier inclinations arise;
+the passions of the young man gradually subside, and by degrees the
+more rational life comes: the life is changed&mdash;the pleasures of the
+senses are forsaken for those of the intellect.</p>
+
+<p>It appears natural, again, in the development of society. Civilization
+will subordinate the flesh to the soul. In the savage state, you find
+the life of the animal. Civilization is teaching a man, on the
+principle of this world, to subordinate his appetites; to rule
+himself; and there comes a refinement, and a gentleness, and a polish,
+and an enjoyment of intellectual pleasures; so that the man is no
+longer what the apostle calls a sensual man, but he becomes now what
+the apostle calls a natural man. We can see this character delineated
+in the Epistle to the Ephesians. &ldquo;Then we were,&rdquo; says the apostle, &ldquo;in
+our Gentile state, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the
+mind.&rdquo; Man naturally fulfils not merely the desires of the flesh, but
+the desires of the mind. &ldquo;And were,&rdquo; says the apostle, &ldquo;children of
+wrath.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>One of the saddest spectacles is the decay of the natural man before
+the work of the Spirit has been accomplished in him. When the savage
+dies&mdash;when a mere infant dies&mdash;when an animal dies&mdash;there is nothing
+that is appalling or depressing there; but when the high, the
+developed intellect&mdash;when the cultivated man comes to the last hours
+of life, and the memory becomes less powerful, and the judgment fails,
+and all that belongs to nature and to earth visibly perishes, and the
+higher life has not been yet developed, though it is destined to
+survive the grave for ever&mdash;even the life of God&mdash;there is here ample
+cause for grief; and it is no wonder that the man of genius merely
+should shed tears at he idea of decaying life.</p>
+
+<p>We pass on to consider the Trinity in unity. All this is contained in
+that simple expression, &ldquo;The God of peace.&rdquo; God is a God of unity. He
+makes one where before there were two. He is the God of peace, and
+therefore can make peace. Now this peace, according to the Trinitarian
+doctrine, consists in a threefold unity. Brethren, as we remarked
+respecting this first of all, the distinction in this Trinity is not a
+physical distinction, but a metaphysical one. The illustrations which
+are often given are illustrations drawn from material sources: if we
+take only those, we get into contradiction: for example, when we talk
+of personality, our idea is of a being bounded by space; and then to
+say in this sense that three persons are one, and one is three, is
+simply contradictory and absurd. Remember that the doctrine of the
+Trinity is a metaphysical doctrine. It is a trinity&mdash;a division in the
+mind of God. It is not three materials; it is three persons in a sense
+we shall explain by and by.</p>
+
+<p>In the next place I will endeavour to explain the doctrine&mdash;not to
+prove it, but to show its rationality, and to explain what it is.</p>
+
+<p>The first illustration we endeavour to give in this is taken from the
+world of matter. We will take any material substance: we find in that
+substance qualities; we will say three qualities&mdash;colour, shape, and
+size. Colour is not shape, shape is not size, size is not colour. They
+are three distinct essences, three distinct qualities, and yet they
+all form one unity, one single conception, one idea&mdash;the idea for
+example, of a tree.</p>
+
+<p>Now we will ascend from that into the immaterial world; and here to
+be something more distinct still. Hitherto we have had but three
+qualities; we now come to the mind of man, where we find something
+more than qualities. We will take three&mdash;the will, the affections, and
+the thoughts of man. His will is not his affections, neither are his
+affections his thoughts; and it would be imperfect and incomplete to
+say that these are mere qualities in the man. They are separate
+consciousnesses, living consciousnesses&mdash;as distinct, and as really
+sundered as it is possible for three things to be, yet bound together
+by one unity of consciousness. Now we have distincter proof than even
+this that these things are three. The anatomist can tell you that the
+localities of these powers are different. He can point out the seat of
+the nerve of sensation; he can localize the feeling of affection; he
+can point to a nerve and say, &ldquo;There resides the locality of thought.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>There are three distinct localities for three distinct qualities,
+personalities, consciousnesses; yet all these three are one.</p>
+
+<p>Once more, we will give proof even beyond all that. The act that a man
+does is done by one particular part of that man. You may say it was a
+work of his genius, or of his fancy; it may have been a manifestation
+of his love, or an exhibition of his courage; yet that work was the
+work of the whole man: his courage, his intellect, his habits of
+perseverance, all helped towards the completion of that single work.
+Just in this way certain special works are attributed to certain
+personalities of the Deity; the work of Redemption being attributed to
+one, the work of Sanctification to another. And yet just as the whole
+man was engaged in doing that work, so does the whole Deity perform
+that work which is attributed to one essential.</p>
+
+<p>Once more, let us remember that principle which we expounded last
+Sunday, that it is the law of Being that in proportion as you rise
+from lower to higher life, the parts are more distinctly developed,
+while yet the unity becomes more entire. You find for example, in the
+lowest forms of animal life one organ performs several functions, one
+organ being at the same time heart and brain and blood-vessels. But
+when you come to man, you find all these various functions existing in
+different organs, and every organ more distinctly developed; and yet
+the unity of a man is a higher unity than that of a limpet. When you
+come from the material world to the world immaterial, you find that
+the more society is cultivated&mdash;the more man is cultivated&mdash;the more
+marvellous is the power of developing distinct powers. In the savage
+life it is almost all one feeling; but in proportion as the higher
+education advances and the higher life appears, every power and
+faculty developes and distinguishes itself, and becomes distinct and
+separate. And yet just in proportion as in a nation every part is
+distinct, the unity is greater, and just in proportion as in an
+individual every power is most complete, and stands out most distinct,
+just in that proportion has the man reached the entireness of his
+Humanity.</p>
+
+<p>Now brethren, we apply all this to the mind of God. The Trinitarian
+maintains against the Unitarian and the Sabellian, that the higher you
+ascend in the scale of being, the more distinct are the
+consciousnesses, and that the law of unity implies and demands a
+manifold unity. The doctrine of Sabellianism, for example, is this,
+that God is but one essence&mdash;but one person under different
+manifestations; and that when He made the world He was called the
+Father, when He redeemed the world He was called the Son, and when He
+sanctified the world He was called the Holy Ghost. The Sabellian and
+the Unitarian maintain that the unity of God consists simply in a
+unity of person, and in opposition to this does the Trinitarian
+maintain that grandness, either in man or in God, must be a unity of
+manifoldness.</p>
+
+<p>But we will enter into this more deeply. The first power or
+consciousness in which God is made known to us is as the Father, the
+Author of our being. It is written, &ldquo;In Him we live, and move, and
+have our being.&rdquo; He is the Author of all life. In this sense He is not
+merely our Father as Christians, but the Father of mankind; and not
+merely the Father of mankind, but the Father of creation; and in this
+way the sublime language of the prophets may be taken as true
+literally, &ldquo;The morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God
+shouted for joy;&rdquo; and the language of the canticle which belongs to
+our morning service, &ldquo;the deeps, the fountains, the wells,&rdquo; all unite
+in one hymn of praise, one everlasting hallelujah to God the Father,
+the Author of their being. In this respect, simply as the Author of
+life, merely as the supreme Being, God has reference to us in relation
+to the body. He is the Lord of life: in Him we live, and move, and
+have our being. In this respect God to us is as law&mdash;as the collected
+laws of the universe; and therefore to offend against law, and bring
+down the result of transgressing law, is said in Scripture language,
+because applied to a person, to be provoking the wrath of God the
+Father.</p>
+
+<p>In the next place, the second way through which the personality and
+consciousness of God has been revealed to us is as the Son. Brethren,
+we see in all those writers who have treated of the Trinity, that much
+stress is laid upon this eternal generation of the Son, the
+everlasting sonship. It is this which we have in the Creed&mdash;the Creed
+which was read to-day&mdash;&ldquo;God, of the substance of the Father, begotten
+before the worlds;&rdquo; and, again, in the Nicene Creed, that expression,
+which is so often wrongly read, &ldquo;God of God, Light of Light, very God
+of very God,&rdquo; means absolutely nothing. There are two statements made
+there. The first is this, &ldquo;The Son was God:&rdquo; the second is this, &ldquo;The
+Son was&mdash;<i>of</i> God,&rdquo; showing his derivation. And in that, brethren, we
+have one of the deepest and most blessed truths of revelation. The
+Unitarian maintains a divine Humanity&mdash;a blessed, blessed truth. There
+is a truth more blessed still&mdash;the Humanity of Deity. Before the world
+was, there was that in the mind of God which we may call the Humanity
+of His Divinity. It is called in Scripture the Word: the Son: the Form
+of God. It is in virtue of this that we have a right to attribute to
+Him our own feelings; it is in virtue of this that Scripture speaks of
+His wisdom, His justice, His love. Love in God is what love is in man;
+justice in God is what justice is in man; creative power in God is
+what creative power is in man; indignation in God is that which
+indignation is in man, barring only this, that the one is emotional,
+but the other is calm, and pure, and everlastingly still. It is
+through this Humanity in the mind of God, if I may dare so to speak of
+Deity, that a revelation became possible to man. It was the Word that
+was made flesh; it was the Word that manifested Itself to man. It is
+in virtue of the connection between God and man, that God made man in
+His own image; that through a long line of prophets the human truth of
+God could be made known to man, till it came forth developed most
+entirely and at large in the incarnation of the Redeemer. Now in this
+respect, it will be observed that God stands connected with us in
+relation to the soul as &ldquo;the Light which lighteth every man that
+cometh into the world.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Once more; there is a nearer, a closer, and a more enduring relation
+in which God stands to us&mdash;that is, the relation of the Spirit. It is
+to the writings of St. John that we have to turn especially, if we
+desire to know the doctrines of the Spirit. You will remember the
+strange way in which he speaks of God. It would almost seem as if the
+external God has disappeared to him; nay, as if an external Christ
+were almost forgotten, because the internal Christ has been formed. He
+speaks of God as kindred with us; he speaks of Christ as Christ <i>in</i>
+us; and &ldquo;if we love one another,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;God dwelleth in us.&rdquo; If a
+man keep the commandments, &ldquo;God dwelleth in him, and he in God.&rdquo; So
+that the spiritual manifestation of God to us is that whereby He
+blends Himself with the soul of man.</p>
+
+<p>These then, my Christian brethren, are the three consciousnesses by
+which He becomes known to us. Three, we said, <i>known</i> to us. We do not
+dare to limit God; we do not presume to say that there are in God only
+three personalities&mdash;only three consciousnesses: all that we dare
+presume to say is this, that there are three in reference to us, and
+only three; that a fourth there is not; that perchance, in the present
+state a fourth you cannot add to these&mdash;Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, let us turn to the relation which the Trinity in unity bears
+to the triad in discord. It is intended for the entireness of our
+sanctification: &ldquo;the very God of peace sanctify you wholly.&rdquo; Brethren,
+we dwell upon that expression &ldquo;<i>wholly</i>.&rdquo; There is this difference
+between Christianity and every other system: Christianity proposes to
+ennoble the whole man; every other system subordinates parts to
+parts. Christianity does not despise the intellect, but it does not
+exalt the intellect in a one-sided way: it only dwells with emphasis
+on the third and highest part of man&mdash;his spiritual affections; and
+these it maintains are the chief and real seat of everlasting life,
+intended to subordinate the other to themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Asceticism would crush the natural affections&mdash;destroy the appetites.
+Asceticism feels that there is a conflict between the flesh and the
+spirit, and it would put an end to that conflict; it would bring back
+unity by the excision of all our natural appetites, and all the
+desires and feelings which we have by nature. But when the apostle
+Paul comes forward to proclaim the will of God, he says it is not by
+the crushing of the body, but by the sanctification of the body: &ldquo;I
+pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless
+unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In this my Christian brethren, there is one of the deepest of all
+truths. Does a man feel himself the slave and the victim of his lower
+passions? Let not that man hope to subdue them merely by struggling
+against them. Let him not by fasting, by austerity, by any earthly
+rule that he can conceive, expect to subdue the flesh. The more he
+thinks of his vile and lower feelings, the more will they be brought
+into distinctness, and therefore into power; the more hopelessly will
+he <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: original reads 'beome'">become</ins> their victim. The only way in which a man can subdue the
+flesh, is not by the extinction of those feelings, but by the
+elevation of their character. Let there be added to that character,
+sublimity of aim, purity of affection; let there be given grandeur,
+spiritual nobleness; and then, just as the strengthening of the whole
+constitution of the body makes any particular and local affection
+disappear, so by degrees, by the raising of the character, do these
+lower affections become, not extinguished or destroyed by excision,
+but ennobled by a new and loftier spirit breathed through them.</p>
+
+<p>This is the account given by the apostle. He speaks of the conflict
+between the flesh and the spirit. And his remedy is to give vigour to
+the higher, rather than to struggle with the lower. &ldquo;This I say then,
+Walk in the spirit, and ye <i>shall not</i> fulfil the lust of the flesh.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Once more; the apostle differs from the world in this, that the world
+would restore this unity, and sanctify man simply from the soul. It is
+this which civilization pretends to effect. We hear much in these
+modern days of &ldquo;the progress of Humanity.&rdquo; We hear of man's invention,
+of man's increase of knowledge; and it would seem in all this, as if
+man were necessarily becoming better. Brethren, it always must be the
+case in that state in which God is looked upon as the Supreme Being
+merely, where the intellect of man is supposed to be the chief
+thing&mdash;that which makes him most kindred to his Maker.</p>
+
+<p>The doctrine of Christianity is this&mdash;that unity of all this discord
+must be made. Man is to be made one with God, not by soaring
+intellect, but by lowly love. It is the Spirit which guides him to all
+truth; not merely by rendering more acute the reasoning powers, but by
+convincing of sin, by humbling the man. It is the graces of the Spirit
+which harmonize the man, and make him one; and that is the end, and
+aim, and object of all the Gospel: the entireness of sanctification to
+produce a perfectly developed man.</p>
+
+<p>Most of us in this world are monsters, with some part of our being
+bearing the development of a giant, and others showing the proportions
+of a dwarf: a feeble, dwarfish will&mdash;mighty, full-blown passions; and
+therefore it is that there is to be visible through the Trinity in us,
+a noble manifold unity; and when the triune power of God shall so have
+done its work on the entireness of our Humanity, that the body, soul,
+and spirit have been sanctified, then shall there be exhibited, and
+only then, a perfect affection in man to his Maker, and body, soul,
+and spirit shall exhibit a Trinity in unity.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V.<br />
+<small><i>Preached June 2, 1850.</i></small><br />
+ABSOLUTION.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote class="scripture"><p>&ldquo;And the Scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, Who is
+this which speaketh blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God
+alone?&rdquo;&mdash;Luke v. 21.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">There are questions which having been again and again settled, still
+from time to time, present themselves for <i>re</i>-solution; errors which
+having been refuted, and cut up by the roots, re-appear in the next
+century as fresh and vigorous as ever. Like the fabled monsters of
+old, from whose dissevered neck the blood sprung forth and formed
+fresh heads, multiplied and indestructible; or like the weeds, which,
+extirpated in one place, sprout forth vigorously in another.</p>
+
+<p>In every such case it may be taken for granted that the root of the
+matter has not been reached; the error has been exposed, but the truth
+which lay at the bottom of the error has not been disengaged. Every
+error is connected with a truth; the truth being perennial, springs up
+again as often as circumstances foster it, or call for it, and the
+seeds of error which lay about the roots spring up again in the form
+of weeds, as before.</p>
+
+<p>A popular illustration of this may be found in the belief in the
+appearance of the spirits of the departed. You may examine the
+evidence for every such alleged apparition; you may demonstrate the
+improbability; you may reduce it to an impossibility; still the
+popular feeling will remain; and there is a lurking superstition even
+among the enlightened, which in the midst of professions of
+incredulity, shows itself in a readiness to believe the wildest new
+tale, if it possess but the semblance of an authentication. Now two
+truths lie at the root of this superstition. The first is the reality
+of the spirit-world, and the instinctive belief in it. The second is
+the fact that there are certain states of health in which the eye
+creates the objects which it perceives. The death-blow to such
+superstition is only struck when we have not only proved that men have
+been deceived, but shown besides how they came to be deceived; when
+science has explained the optical delusion, and shown the
+physiological state in which such apparitions become visible. Ridicule
+will not do it. Disproof will not do it. So long as men feel that
+there is a spirit-world, and so long as to some the impression is
+vivid that they have seen it, you spend your rhetoric in vain. You
+must show the truth that lies below the error.</p>
+
+<p>The principle we gain from this is that you cannot overthrow falsehood
+by negation, but by establishing the antagonistic truth. The
+refutation which is to last must be positive, not negative. It is an
+endless work to be uprooting weeds: plant the ground with wholesome
+vegetation, and then the juices which would have otherwise fed
+rankness will pour themselves into a more vigorous growth; the
+dwindled weeds will be easily raked out then. It is an endless task to
+be refuting error. Plant truth, and the error will pine away.</p>
+
+<p>The instance to which all this is preliminary, is the pertinacious
+hold which the belief in a human absolving power retains upon
+mankind. There has perhaps never yet been known a religion without
+such a belief. There is not a savage in the islands of the South
+Pacific who does not believe that his priest can shield him from the
+consequences of sin. There was not a people in antiquity who had not
+dispensers of Divine favour. That same belief passed from Paganism
+into Romanism. It was exposed at the period of the Reformation. A
+mighty reaction was felt against it throughout Europe. Apparently the
+whole idea of human priesthood was proved, once and for ever, to be
+baseless; human mediation, in every possible form, was vehemently
+controverted; men were referred back to God as the sole absolver.</p>
+
+<p>Yet now again, three centuries after, the belief is still as strong as
+ever. That which we thought dead is alive again, and not likely it
+seems, to die. Recent revelations have shown that confession is daily
+made in the country whose natural manners are most against it; private
+absolution asked by English men and given by English priests. A fact
+so significant might lead us well to pause, and ask ourselves whether
+we have found the true answer to the question. The negation we have
+got&mdash;the vehement denial; we are weary of its reiteration: but the
+positive truth which lies at the bottom of this craving&mdash;where is
+that?</p>
+
+<p>Parliaments and pulpits, senators and clergymen, have vied with each
+other in the vehemence with which they declare absolution
+un-Christian, un-English. All that is most abominable in the
+confessional has been with unsparing and irreverent indelicacy forced
+before the public mind. Still, men and women, whose holiness and
+purity are beyond slander's reach, come and crave assurance of
+forgiveness. How shall we reply to such men? Shall we say, &ldquo;Who is
+this that speaketh blasphemies? who can forgive sins, but God only?&rdquo;
+Shall we say it is all blasphemy; an impious intrusion upon the
+prerogatives of the One Absolver? Well, we may; it is <i>popular</i> to say
+we ought; but you will observe, if we speak so, we do no more than the
+Pharisees in this text: we establish a negation; but a negation is
+only one side of truth.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, we have been asserting that for 300 years, with small
+fruits. We keep asserting, Man cannot give assurance that sin is
+pardoned; in other words, man cannot absolve: but still the heart
+craves human assurance of forgiveness. What truth have we got to
+supply that craving? We shall therefore, rather try to fathom the
+deeps of the positive truth which is the true reply to the error; we
+shall try to see whether there is not a real answer to the craving
+contained in the Redeemer's words, &ldquo;The Son of Man hath power on earth
+to forgive sins.&rdquo; What power is there in human forgiveness? What does
+absolution mean in the lips of a son of man? These are our questions
+for to-day. We shall consider two points.</p>
+
+<ol class="Rom">
+<li>The impotency of the negation.</li>
+<li>The power of the positive truth.</li>
+</ol>
+
+<p>The Pharisees denied the efficacy of human absolution: they said,
+&ldquo;None can forgive sins, but God only:&rdquo; that was a negation. What did
+they effect by their system of negations? They conferred no peace;
+they produced no holiness. It would be a great error to suppose that
+the Pharisees were hypocrites in the ordinary sense of the term&mdash;that
+is, pretending to be anxious about religion when they knew that they
+felt no anxiety. They <i>were</i> anxious, in their way. They heard a
+startling free announcement of forgiveness by a man. To them it
+appeared license given to sin. If this new teacher, this upstart&mdash;in
+their own language, &ldquo;this fellow&mdash;of whom every man knew whence he
+was,&rdquo; were to go about the length and breadth of the land, telling
+sinners to be at peace; telling them to forget the past, and to work
+onwards; bidding men's consciences be at rest; and commanding them not
+to <i>fear</i> the God whom they had offended, but to <i>trust</i> in Him&mdash;what
+would become of morality and religion? This presumptuous Absolver
+would make men careless about both. If the indispensable safeguards of
+penalty were removed, what remained to restrain men from sin?</p>
+
+<p>For the Pharisees had no notion of any other goodness than that which
+is restrained; they could conceive no goodness free, but only that
+which is produced by rewards and punishments&mdash;law-goodness,
+law-righteousness: to dread God, not to love and trust Him, was their
+conception of religion. And this, indeed, is the <i>ordinary</i> conception
+of religion&mdash;the ordinary meaning implied to most minds by the word
+religion. The word religion means, by derivation, restriction or
+obligation&mdash;obligation to do, obligation to avoid. And this is the
+negative system of the Pharisees&mdash;scrupulous avoidance of evil, rather
+than positive and free pursuit of excellence. Such a system never
+produced anything but barren denial. &ldquo;<i>This</i> is wrong;&rdquo; &ldquo;<i>that</i> is
+heresy;&rdquo; &ldquo;<i>that</i> is dangerous.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>There was another class of men who denied human power of absolution.
+They were called Scribes or writers&mdash;pedants, men of ponderous
+learning and accurate definitions; from being mere transcribers of the
+law, they had risen to be its expounders. They could define the exact
+number of yards that might be travelled on the Sabbath-day without
+infringement of the law; they could decide, according to the most
+approved theology, the respective importance of each duty; they would
+tell you, authoritatively, which was the <i>great</i> commandment of the
+law. The Scribe is a man who turns religion into etiquette: his idea
+of God is that of a monarch, transgression against whom is an offence
+against statute law, and he the Scribe, is there to explain the
+prescribed conditions upon which the offence may be expiated; he has
+no idea of admission to the sovereign's presence, except by compliance
+with certain formalities which the Scribe is commissioned to declare.</p>
+
+<p>There are therefore Scribes in all ages&mdash;Romish Scribes, who
+distinguish between venial and mortal sin, and apportion to each its
+appointed penance and absolution. There are Protestant Scribes, who
+have no idea of God but as an incensed judge, and prescribe certain
+methods of appeasing him&mdash;a certain price&mdash;in consideration of which
+He is willing to sell forgiveness; men who accurately draw the
+distinction between the different kinds of faith&mdash;faith historical and
+faith saving; who bewilder and confuse all natural feeling; who treat
+the natural love of relations as if it were an idolatry as great as
+bowing down to mammon; who make intelligible distinction between the
+work that <i>may</i> and the work that may <i>not</i> be done on the
+Sabbath-day; who send you into a perilous consideration of the
+workings of your own feelings, and the examination of your spiritual
+experiences, to ascertain whether you have the feelings which give you
+a right to call God a Father. They hate the Romish Scribe as much as
+the Jewish Scribe hated the Samaritan and called him heretic. But in
+their way they are true to the spirit of the Scribe.</p>
+
+<p>Now the result of this is fourfold. Among the tender-minded,
+despondency; among the vainer, spiritual pride; in the case of the
+slavish, superstition; with the hard-minded, infidelity. Ponder it
+well, and you will find these four things rife amongst us:
+Despondency, Spiritual Pride, Superstition, and Infidelity. In this
+way we have been going on for many years. In the midst of all this, at
+last we are informed that the confessional is at work again; whereupon
+astonishment and indignation are loudly expressed. It is not to be
+borne that the priests of the Church of England should confess and
+absolve in private. Yet it is only what might have been expected.</p>
+
+<p>With our Evangelicalism, Tractarianism, Scribeism, Pharisaism, we have
+ceased to front the <i>living fact</i>&mdash;we are as zealous as Scribes and
+Pharisees ever were for negatives; but in the meantime Human Nature,
+oppressed and overborne, gasping for breath, demands something real
+and living. It cannot live on controversies. It cannot be fed on
+protests against heresy, however vehement. We are trying who can
+protest loudest. Every book, every journal, rings with warnings.
+&ldquo;Beware!&rdquo; is written upon everything. Beware of Rome; beware of
+Geneva; beware of Germany; some danger on every side; Satan
+everywhere&mdash;God <i>nowhere</i>; everywhere some man to be shunned or
+dreaded&mdash;nowhere one to be loved freely and without suspicion. Is it
+any wonder if men and women, in the midst of negations, cry, &ldquo;Ye warn
+me from the error, but who will guide me into truth? I want guidance.
+I am sinful, full of evil! I want forgiveness! Absolve me; tell me
+that I am pardoned; help me to believe it. Your quarrels do not help
+me; if you cannot do <i>that</i>, it matters little what you <i>can</i> do. You
+have restricted God's love, and narrowed the path to heaven; you have
+hampered religion with so many mysterious questions and quibbles that
+I cannot find the way to God; you have terrified me with so many
+snares and pitfalls on every side, that I dare not tread at all. Give
+me peace; give me human guidance: I want a human arm to lean on.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This is a cry, I believe, becoming daily more passionate, and more
+common. And no wonder that all our information, public and private, is
+to the same effect&mdash;that the recent converts have found peace in Rome;
+for the secret of the power of Rome is this&mdash;that she grounds her
+teaching, not on variable feelings and correct opinions, but on
+<i>facts</i>. God is not a highly probable God, but a <i>fact</i>. God's
+forgiveness is not a feeling, but a <i>fact</i>; and a material symbolic
+fact is the witness of the invisible one. Rome puts forward her
+absolution&mdash;her false, priestly, magical absolution&mdash;a visible fact,
+as a witness of the invisible. And her perversion prevails because
+founded on a truth.</p>
+
+
+<h3>II. The power of the positive truth.</h3>
+
+<p>Is it any wonder, if taught on every side distrust of man, the heart
+should by a violent reaction, and by an extravagant confidence in a
+priest, proclaim that its normal, natural state is not distrust, but
+trust?</p>
+
+<p>What is forgiveness?&mdash;It is God reconciled to us. What is
+absolution?&mdash;It is the authoritative declaration that God is
+reconciled. Authoritative: that is a real power of conveying a sense
+and feeling of forgiveness. It is the power of the Son of Man <i>on
+earth</i> to forgive sins. It is man, God's image, representing, by his
+forgiveness on earth, God's forgiveness in heaven.</p>
+
+<p>Now distinguish God's forgiveness of sin from an arresting of the
+consequences of sin. When God forgives a sin, it does not follow that
+He stops its consequences: for example, when He forgives the
+intemperate man whose health is ruined, forgiveness does not restore
+his health. Divine pardon does not interfere with the laws of the
+universe, for it is itself one of those laws. It is a law that penalty
+follows transgression. Forgiveness will not save from penalty; but it
+alters the feelings with which the penalty is accepted. Pain inflicted
+with a surgeon's knife for a man's good, is as keen as that which
+results from the knife of the torturer; but in the one case it is
+calmly borne, because remedial&mdash;in the other it exasperates, because
+it is felt to be intended by malevolence. So with the difference
+between suffering which comes from a sin which we hope God has
+forgiven, and suffering which seems to fall hot from the hand of an
+angry God. It is a fearful truth, that so far as we know at least, the
+consequences of an act are connected with it indissolubly. Forgiveness
+does not arrest them; but by producing softness and grateful
+penitence, it transforms them into blessings. This is God's
+forgiveness; and absolution is the conveyance to the conscience of the
+conviction of forgiveness: to absolve is to free&mdash;to comfort by
+strengthening&mdash;to afford repose from fear.</p>
+
+<p>Now it was the way of the Redeemer to emancipate from sin by the
+freeness of absolution. The dying thief, an hour before a blasphemer,
+was unconditionally assured; the moment the sinner's feelings changed
+towards God, He proclaimed that God was reconciled to him: &ldquo;This day
+thou shalt be with me in Paradise.&rdquo; And hence, speaking humanly,
+hence, from this absolving tone and spirit, came His wondrous and
+unparalleled power with sinful, erring hearts; hence the life and
+fresh impulse which He imparted to the being and experience to those
+with whom He dealt. Hence the maniac, freed from the legion, sat at
+His feet, clothed, and in his right mind. Hence the outcast woman,
+whom human scorn would have hardened into brazen effrontery, hearing
+an unwonted voice of human sympathy, &ldquo;washed His feet with her tears,
+and wiped them with the hairs of her head.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And this is what we have forgotten: we have not yet learned to trust
+the power of redeeming love; we do not believe in the omnipotence of
+grace, and the might of an appeal to the better parts, and not the
+slavish parts of human nature. Settle it in your minds, the absolving
+power is the central secret of the Gospel. Salvation is unconditional;
+not an offer, but <i>a Gift</i>; not clogged with conditions, but free as
+the air we breathe. God welcomes back the prodigal. God loves without
+money and without price. To this men reply gravely, It is dangerous to
+speak thus; it is perilous to dispense with the safeguards of
+restriction. Law! law! there is nothing like law&mdash;a salutary fear&mdash;for
+making men holy. O blind Pharisee! had you ever known the spring, the
+life which comes from feeling <i>free</i>, the gush of gratitude with which
+the heart springs to duty when all chains are shattered, and it stands
+fearless and free in the Light, and in the Love of God&mdash;you would
+understand that a large trusting charity, which can throw itself on
+the better and more generous impulses of a laden spirit, is the safest
+as well as the most beautiful means of securing obedience.</p>
+
+<p>So far however, there will not be much objection to the doctrine: it
+will be admitted that absolution is true in the lips of Christ,
+because of His Divinity. It will be said He was God, and God speaking
+on earth is the same thing as God speaking in heaven. No my brethren,
+it is <i>not</i> the same thing. Christ forgiving on earth is <i>a new truth</i>
+added to that of God's forgiving in heaven. It is not the same truth.
+The one is forgiveness by Deity; the other is the declaration of
+forgiveness by Humanity. He bade the palsied man walk, that they might
+know that &ldquo;the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins.&rdquo;
+Therefore we proceed a step further. The same power He delegated to
+His Church which He had exercised Himself. &ldquo;Whosesoever sins ye remit,
+they are remitted.&rdquo; Now perhaps, it will be replied to this, that that
+promise belongs to the apostles; that they were supernaturally gifted
+to distinguish genuine from feigned repentance; to absolve therefore,
+was their natural prerogative, but that we have no right to say it
+extends beyond the apostles.</p>
+
+<p>We therefore, bring the question to a point by referring to an
+instance in which an apostle did absolve. Let us examine whether St.
+Paul confined the prerogative to himself. &ldquo;To whom ye forgive
+anything, I forgive also: for to whom I forgave anything for your
+sakes, forgave I it in the person of Christ.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Observe now: it is quite true here that the apostle absolved a man
+whose excommunication he had formerly required; but he absolved him
+because the congregation absolved him; not as a plenipotentiary
+supernaturally gifted to convey a mysterious benefit, but as himself
+an organ and representative of the Church. The power of absolution
+therefore, belonged to the Church, and to the apostle through the
+Church. It was a power belonging to <i>all</i> Christians: to the apostle,
+because he was a Christian, not because he was an apostle. A priestly
+power no doubt, because Christ has made all Christians kings and
+priests.</p>
+
+<p>Now let us turn again, with this added light, to examine the meaning
+of that expression, &ldquo;The Son of man hath power on earth to forgive
+sins.&rdquo; Mark that form of words&mdash;not Christ as God, but Christ as Son
+of man. It was manifestly said by Him, not solely as divine, but
+rather as human, as the Son of man; that is, as Man. For we may take
+it as a rule: when Christ calls himself Son of man, He is asserting
+His Humanity. It was said by the High Priest of Humanity in the name
+of the race. It was said on the principle that human nature is the
+reflection of God's nature: that human love is the image of God's
+love; and that human forgiveness is the type and assurance of divine
+forgiveness.</p>
+
+<p>In Christ Humanity was the perfect type of Deity, and therefore
+Christ's absolution was always the exact measure and counterpart of
+God's forgiveness. Herein lies the deep truth of the doctrine of His
+eternal priesthood&mdash;the Eternal Son&mdash;the Humanity of the Being of
+God&mdash;the ever Human mind of God. The Absolver ever lives. The Father
+judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment to the Son&mdash;hath given
+Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of man.</p>
+
+<p>But further than this. In a subordinate, because less perfect degree,
+the forgiveness of a man as man carries with it an absolving power.
+Who has not felt the load taken from his mind when the hidden guilt
+over which he had brooded long has been acknowledged, and met by
+forgiving human sympathy, especially at a time when he expected to be
+treated with coldness and reproof? Who has not felt how such a moment
+was to him the dawn of a better hope, and how the merciful judgment of
+some wise and good human being seemed to be the type and the assurance
+of God's pardon, making it credible? Unconsciously it may be, but
+still in substance really, I believe some such reasoning as <i>this</i>
+goes on in the whispers of the heart&mdash;&ldquo;He loves me, and has compassion
+on me&mdash;will not God forgive? He, this man, made in God's image, does
+not think my case hopeless. Well, then, in the larger love of God it
+is not hopeless.&rdquo; Thus, and only thus, can we understand the
+<i>ecclesiastical</i> act. Absolution, the prerogative of our humanity, is
+represented by a formal act of the Church.</p>
+
+<p>Much controversy and angry bitterness has been spent on the absolution
+put by the Church of England into the lips of her ministers&mdash;I cannot
+think with justice&mdash;if we try to get at the root of these words of
+Christ. The priest proclaims forgiveness authoritatively as the organ
+of the congregation&mdash;as the voice of the Church, in the name of Man
+and God. For human nature represents God. The Church represents what
+human nature is and ought to be. The minister represents the Church.
+He speaks therefore, in the name of our godlike, human nature. He
+declares a divine fact, he does not create it. There is no magic in
+his absolution: he can no more forgive whom God has not forgiven, by
+the formula of absolution, or reverse the pardon of him whom God has
+absolved by the formula of excommunication, than he can transfer a
+demon into an angel by the formula of baptism. He declares what every
+one has a right to declare, and ought to declare by his lips and by
+his conduct: but being a minister, he declares it authoritatively in
+the name of every Christian who by his Christianity is a priest to
+God; he specializes what is universal; as in baptism, he seals the
+universal Sonship on the individual by name, saying, &ldquo;The Sonship with
+which Christ has redeemed all men, I hereby proclaim for this child;&rdquo;
+so by absolution he specializes the universal fact of the love of God
+to those who are listening then and there, saying, &ldquo;The Love of God
+the Absolver, I authoritatively proclaim to be <i>yours</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In the Service for the Visitation of the Sick, the Church of England
+puts into the lips of her ministers words quite unconditional: &ldquo;I
+absolve thee from all thy sins.&rdquo; You know that passage is constantly
+objected to as Romish and superstitious. I would not give up that
+precious passage. I love the Church of England, because she has dared
+to claim her inheritance&mdash;because she has courage to assert herself as
+what she ought to be&mdash;God's representative on earth. She says to her
+minister, Stand there before a darkened spirit, on whom the shadows of
+death have begun to fall: in human flesh and blood representing the
+Invisible,&mdash;with words of human love making credible the Love Eternal.
+Say boldly, I am here to declare not a perhaps, <i>but a fact</i>. I
+forgive thee in the name of Humanity. And so far as Humanity
+represents Deity, that forgiveness is a type of God's. She does not
+put into her ministers' lips words of incantation. He cannot bless
+whom God has not blessed&mdash;he cannot curse whom God has not cursed. If
+the Son of absolution be there, his absolution will rest. If you have
+ever tried the slow and apparently hopeless task of ministering to a
+heart diseased, and binding up the wound that <i>will</i> bleed afresh, to
+which no assurances can give comfort, because they are not
+authoritative, it must have crossed your mind that such a power as
+that which the Church of England claims, if it were believed, is
+exactly the remedy you want. You must have felt that even the formula
+of the Church of Rome would be a blessed power to exercise, could it
+but once be accepted as a pledge that all the past was obliterated,
+and that from that moment a free untainted future lay before the
+soul&mdash;you must have <i>felt</i> that; you must have wished you had dared
+to <i>say</i> it. My whole spirit has absolved my erring brother. Is God
+less merciful than I? Can I&mdash;dare I&mdash;say or think it conditionally?
+Dare I say, I hope? May I not, must I not, say, <i>I know</i> God has
+forgiven you?</p>
+
+<p>Every man whose heart has truly bled over another's sin, and watched
+another's remorse with pangs as sharp as if the crime had been his
+own, <i>has</i> said it. Every parent has said it who ever received back a
+repentant daughter, and opened out for her a new hope for life. Every
+mother has said it who ever by her hope against hope for some
+profligate, protested for a love deeper and wider than that of
+society. Every man has said it who forgave a deep wrong. See then,
+<i>why</i> and <i>how</i> the church absolves. She only exercises that power
+which belongs to every son of man. If society were Christian&mdash;if
+society, by its forgiveness and its exclusion, truly represented the
+mind of God&mdash;there would be no necessity for a Church to speak; but
+the absolution of society and the world does not represent by any
+means God's forgiveness. Society absolves those whom God has <i>not</i>
+absolved&mdash;the proud, the selfish, the strong, the seducer; society
+refuses return and acceptance to the seduced, the frail, and the sad
+penitent whom God has accepted; therefore it is necessary that a
+selected body, through its appointed organs, should do in the name of
+Man what man, as such, does not. The Church is the ideal of Humanity.
+It represents what God intended man to be&mdash;what man is in God's sight
+as beheld in Christ by Him; and the minister of the Church speaks as
+the representative of that ideal Humanity. Church absolution is an
+eternal protest, in the name of God the Absolver, against the false
+judgments of society.</p>
+
+<p>One thing more. Beware of making this a dead formula. If absolution
+be not a living truth, it becomes a monstrous falsehood; if you take
+absolution as a mystical gift conveyed to an individual man called a
+priest, and mysteriously efficacious in <i>his</i> lips, and his <i>alone</i>,
+you petrify a truth into death and unreality. I have been striving to
+show that absolution is not a Church figment, invented by priestcraft,
+but a living, blessed, human power. It is a power delegated to you and
+to me, and just so far as we exercise it lovingly and wisely, in our
+lives, and with our lips, we help men away from sin: just so far as we
+do not exercise it, or exercise it falsely, we drive men to Rome. For
+if the heart cannot have a truth it will take a counterfeit of truth.
+By every magnanimous act, by every free forgiveness with which a pure
+man forgives, or pleads for mercy, or assures the penitent, he
+proclaims this truth, that &ldquo;the Son of man hath power on earth to
+forgive sins&rdquo;&mdash;he exhibits the priestly power of humanity&mdash;<i>he does</i>
+absolve; let theology say what it will of absolution, he gives peace
+to the conscience&mdash;he is a type and assurance of what God is&mdash;he
+breaks the chains and lets the captive go free.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI.<br />
+<small><i>Preached June 9, 1850.</i></small><br />
+THE ILLUSIVENESS OF LIFE.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote class="scripture"><p>&ldquo;By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which
+he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went
+out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the
+land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles
+with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: for
+he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and
+maker is God.&rdquo;&mdash;Hebrews xi. 8-10.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">Last Sunday we touched upon a thought which deserves further
+development. God promised Canaan to Abraham, and yet Abraham never
+inherited Canaan: to the last he was a wanderer there; he had no
+possession of his own in its territory: if he wanted even a tomb to
+bury his dead, he could only obtain it by purchase. This difficulty is
+expressly admitted in the text, &ldquo;In the land of promise he sojourned
+as in a strange country;&rdquo; he dwelt there in tents&mdash;in changeful,
+moveable tabernacles&mdash;not permanent habitations; he had no home there.</p>
+
+<p>It is stated in all its startling force, in terms still more explicit,
+in the 7th chapter of the Acts, 5th verse, &ldquo;And He gave him none
+inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on: yet He
+promised that He would give it to him for a possession, and to his
+seed after him, when as yet he had no child.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Now the surprising point is that Abraham, deceived, as you might
+almost say, did not complain of it as a deception; he was even
+grateful for the non-fulfilment of the promise: he does not seem to
+have expected its fulfilment; he did not look for Canaan, but for &ldquo;a
+city which had foundations;&rdquo; his faith appears to have consisted in
+disbelieving the letter, almost as much as in believing the spirit of
+the promise.</p>
+
+<p>And herein lies a principle, which, rightly expounded, can help us to
+interpret this life of ours. God's promises never are fulfilled in the
+sense in which they seem to have been given. Life is a deception; its
+anticipations, which are God's promises to the imagination, are never
+realized; they who know life best, and have trusted God most to fill
+it with blessings, are ever the first to say that life is a series of
+disappointments. And in the spirit of this text we have to say that it
+is a wise and merciful arrangement which ordains it thus.</p>
+
+<p>The wise and holy do not expect to find it otherwise&mdash;would not wish
+it otherwise; their wisdom consists in disbelieving its promises. To
+develope this idea would be a glorious task; for to justify God's ways
+to man, to expound the mysteriousness of our present being, to
+interpret God,&mdash;is not this the very essence of the ministerial
+office? All that I can hope however to-day, is not to exhaust the
+subject, but to furnish hints for thought. Over-statements may be
+made, illustrations may be inadequate, the new ground of an almost
+untrodden subject may be torn up too rudely; but remember, we are here
+to live and die; in a few years it will be all over; meanwhile, what
+we have to do is to try to understand, and to help one another to
+understand, what it all means&mdash;what this strange and contradictory
+thing, which we call Life, contains within it. Do not stop to ask
+therefore, whether the subject was satisfactorily worked out; let each
+man be satisfied to have received a germ of thought which he may
+develope better for himself.</p>
+
+<ol class="Rom">
+<li>The deception of life's promise.</li>
+<li>The meaning of that deception.</li>
+</ol>
+
+<p>Let it be clearly understood in the first place, the promise never was
+fulfilled. I do not say the fulfilment was delayed. I say it <i>never</i>
+was fulfilled. Abraham had a few feet of earth, obtained by
+purchase&mdash;beyond that nothing; he died a stranger and a pilgrim in the
+land. Isaac had a little. So small was Jacob's hold upon his country
+that the last years of his life were spent in Egypt, and he died a
+foreigner in a strange land. His descendants came into the land of
+Canaan, expecting to find it a land flowing with milk and honey; they
+found hard work to do&mdash;war and unrest, instead of rest and peace.</p>
+
+<p>During one brief period, in the history of Israel, the promise may
+seem to have been fulfilled. It was during the later years of David
+and the earlier years of Solomon; but we have the warrant of Scripture
+itself for affirming, that even then the promise was not fulfilled. In
+the Book of Psalms, David speaks of a hope of entering into a <i>future</i>
+rest. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, quoting this passage,
+infers from it that God's promise had not been exhausted nor
+fulfilled, by the entrance into Canaan; for he says, &ldquo;If Joshua had
+given them rest then would he not have spoken of another day.&rdquo; Again
+in this very chapter, after a long list of Hebrew saints&mdash;&ldquo;These <i>all</i>
+died in faith, not having received the promises.&rdquo; To none therefore,
+had the promise been fulfilled. Accordingly writers on prophecy, in
+order to get over this difficulty, take for granted that there must be
+a future fulfilment, because the first was inadequate.</p>
+
+<p>They who believe that the Jews will be restored to their native land,
+expect it on the express ground that Canaan has never been actually
+and permanently theirs. A certain tract of country&mdash;300 miles in
+length, by 200 in breadth&mdash;must be given, or else they think the
+promise has been broken. To quote the expression of one of the most
+eloquent of their writers, &ldquo;If there be nothing yet future for Israel,
+then the magnificence of the promise has been lost in the poverty of
+its accomplishment.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I do not quote this to prove the correctness of the interpretation of
+the prophecy, but as an acknowledgment which may be taken so far as a
+proof, that the promise made to Abraham has never been accomplished.</p>
+
+<p>And such is life's disappointment. Its promise is, you shall have a
+Canaan; it turns out to be a baseless airy dream&mdash;toil and
+warfare&mdash;nothing that we can call our own; not the land of rest, by
+any means. But we will examine this in particulars.</p>
+
+<p><b>1.</b> Our senses deceive us; we begin life with delusion. Our senses
+deceive us with respect to distance, shape, and colour. That which
+afar off seems oval, turns out to be circular, modified by the
+perspective of distance; that which appears a speck, upon nearer
+approach becomes a vast body. To the earlier ages the stars presented
+the delusion of small lamps hung in space. The beautiful berry proves
+to be bitter and poisonous: that which apparently moves is really at
+rest: that which seems to be stationary is in perpetual motion: the
+earth moves: the sun is still. All experience is a correction of
+life's delusions&mdash;a modification, a reversal of the judgment of the
+senses: and all life is a lesson on the falsehood of appearances.</p>
+
+<p><b>2.</b> Our natural anticipations deceive us&mdash;I say <i>natural</i> in
+contra-distinction to extravagant expectations. Every human life is a
+fresh one, bright with hopes that will never be realized. There may be
+differences of character in these hopes; finer spirits may look on
+life as the arena of successful deeds, the more selfish as a place of
+personal enjoyment.</p>
+
+<p>With man the turning point of life may be a profession&mdash;with woman,
+marriage; the one gilding the future with the triumphs of intellect,
+the other with the dreams of affection; but in every case, life is not
+what any of them expects, but something else. It would almost seem a
+satire on existence to compare the youth in the outset of his career,
+flushed and sanguine, with the aspect of the same being when it is
+nearly done&mdash;worn, sobered, covered with the dust of life, and
+confessing that its days have been few and evil. Where is the land
+flowing with milk and honey?</p>
+
+<p>With our affections it is still worse, because they promise more.
+Man's affections are but the tabernacles of Canaan&mdash;the tents of a
+night; not permanent habitations even for this life. Where are the
+charms of character, the perfection, and the purity, and the
+truthfulness, which seemed so resplendent in our friend? They were
+only the shape of our own conceptions&mdash;our creative shaping intellect
+projected its own fantasies on him: and hence we outgrow our early
+friendships; outgrow the intensity of all: we dwell in tents; we never
+find a home, even in the land of promise. Life is an unenjoyable
+Canaan, with nothing real or substantial in it.</p>
+
+<p><b>3.</b> Our expectations, resting on revelation, deceive us. The world's
+history has turned round two points of hope; one, the <i>first</i>&mdash;the
+other, the <i>second</i> coming of the Messiah. The magnificent imagery of
+Hebrew prophecy had described the advent of the Conqueror; He came&mdash;&ldquo;a
+root out of a dry ground, with no form or comeliness; and when they
+saw Him there was no beauty in Him that they should desire Him.&rdquo; The
+victory, predicted in such glowing terms, turned out to be the victory
+of Submission&mdash;the Law of our Humanity, which wins by gentleness and
+love. The promise in the letter was unfulfilled. For ages the world's
+hope has been the second advent. The early church expected it in their
+own day. &ldquo;We, which are alive, and remain until the coming of our
+Lord.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The Saviour Himself had said, &ldquo;This generation shall not pass till all
+things be fulfilled.&rdquo; Yet the Son of Man has never come; or rather, He
+has been <i>ever</i> coming. Unnumbered times the judgment eagles have
+gathered together over corruption ripe for condemnation. Times
+innumerable the separation has been made between good and bad. The
+promise has not been fulfilled, or it has been fulfilled, but in
+either case anticipation has been foiled and disappointed.</p>
+
+<p>There are two ways of considering this aspect of life. One is the way
+of sentiment; the other is the way of faith. The sentimental way is
+trite enough. Saint, sage, sophist, moralist, and preacher, have
+repeated in every possible image, till there is nothing new to say,
+that life is a bubble, a dream, a delusion, a phantasm. The other is
+the way of faith: the ancient saints felt as keenly as any moralist
+could feel the brokenness of its promises; they confessed that they
+were strangers and pilgrims here; they said that they had here no
+continuing city; but they did not mournfully moralize on this; they
+said it cheerfully, and rejoiced that it was so. They felt that all
+was right; they knew that the promise itself had a deeper meaning:
+they looked undauntedly for &ldquo;a city which hath foundations.&rdquo;</p>
+
+
+<p class="break"><b>II.</b> The second inquiry, therefore, is the meaning of this
+delusiveness.</p>
+
+<p><b>1.</b> It serves to allure us on. Suppose that a spiritual promise had
+been made at first to Israel; imagine that they had been informed at
+the outset that God's rest is inward; that the promised land is only
+found in the Jerusalem which is above&mdash;not material, but immaterial.
+That rude, gross people, yearning after the fleshpots of
+Egypt&mdash;willing to go back into slavery, so as only they might have
+enough to eat and drink&mdash;would they have quitted Egypt on such terms?
+Would they have begun one single step of that pilgrimage, which was to
+find its meaning in the discipline of ages?</p>
+
+<p>We are led through life as we are allured upon a journey. Could a man
+see his route before him&mdash;a flat, straight road, unbroken by bush, or
+tree, or eminence, with the sun's heat burning down upon it, stretched
+out in dreary monotony&mdash;he could scarcely find energy to begin his
+task; but the uncertainty of what may be seen beyond the next turn
+keeps expectation alive. The view that may be seen from yonder
+summit&mdash;the glimpse that may be caught perhaps, as the road winds
+round yonder knoll&mdash;hopes like these, not far distant, beguile the
+traveller on from mile to mile, and from league to league.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, life is an education. The object for which you educate your
+son is to give him strength of purpose, self-command, discipline of
+mental energies; but you do not reveal to your son this aim of his
+education; you tell him of his place in his class, of the prizes at
+the end of the year, of the honours to be given at college.</p>
+
+<p>These are not the true incentives to knowledge, such incentives are
+not the highest&mdash;they are even mean, and partially injurious; yet
+these mean incentives stimulate and lead on, from day to day and from
+year to year, by a process the principle of which the boy himself is
+not aware of. So does God lead on, through life's unsatisfying and
+false reward, ever educating: Canaan first; then the hope of a
+Redeemer; then the millennial glory.</p>
+
+<p>Now what is remarkable in this is, that the delusion continued to the
+last; they <i>all</i> died in faith, not having received the promises; all
+were hoping up to the very last, and all died in faith&mdash;not in
+realization; for thus God has constituted the human heart. It never
+will be believed that this world is unreal. God has mercifully so
+arranged it, that the idea of delusion is incredible. You may tell the
+boy or girl as you will that life is a disappointment; yet however you
+may persuade them to adopt your <i>tone</i>, and catch the language of your
+sentiment, they are both looking forward to some bright distant
+hope&mdash;the rapture of the next vacation, or the unknown joys of the
+next season&mdash;and throwing into it an energy of expectation which only
+a whole eternity is worth. You may tell the man who has received the
+heart-shock which in this world, he will not recover, that life has
+nothing left; yet the stubborn heart still hopes on, ever near the
+prize&mdash;&ldquo;wealthiest when most undone:&rdquo; he has reaped the whirlwind, but
+he will go on still, till life is over, sowing the wind.</p>
+
+<p>Now observe the beautiful result which comes from this indestructible
+power of believing in spite of failure. In the first centuries, the
+early Christians believed that the millennial advent was close; they
+heard the warning of the apostle, brief and sharp, &ldquo;The time is
+short.&rdquo; Now suppose that, instead of this, they had seen all the
+dreary page of Church history unrolled; suppose that they had known
+that after two thousand years the world would have scarcely spelled
+out three letters of the meaning of Christianity, where would have
+been those gigantic efforts,&mdash;that life spent as on the very brink of
+eternity, which characterize the days of the early Church,&mdash;and which
+was after all, only the true life of man in time? It is thus that God
+has led on His world. He has conducted it as a father leads his child,
+when the path homeward lies over many a dreary league. He suffers him
+to beguile the thought of time, by turning aside to pluck now and then
+a flower, to chase now a butterfly; the butterfly is crushed, the
+flower fades, but the child is so much nearer home, invigorated and
+full of health, and scarcely wearied yet.</p>
+
+<p><b>2.</b> This non-fulfilment of promise fulfils it in a <i>deeper</i> way. The
+account we have given already, were it to end there, would be
+insufficient to excuse the failure of life's promise; by saying that
+it allures us would be really to charge God with deception. Now life
+is not deception, but illusion. We distinguish between illusion and
+delusion. We may paint wood so as to be taken for stone, iron, or
+marble; this is delusion: but you may paint a picture, in which rocks,
+trees, and sky are never mistaken for what they seem, yet produce all
+the emotion which real rocks, trees, and sky would produce. This is
+illusion, and this is the painter's art: never for one moment to
+deceive by attempted imitation, but to produce a mental state in which
+the feelings are suggested which the natural objects themselves would
+create. Let us take an instance drawn from life.</p>
+
+<p>To a child a rainbow is a real thing&mdash;substantial and palpable; its
+limb rests on the side of yonder hill; he believes that he can
+appropriate it to himself; and when, instead of gems and gold hid in
+its radiant bow, he finds nothing but damp mist&mdash;cold, dreary drops of
+disappointment&mdash;that disappointment tells that his belief has been
+delusion.</p>
+
+<p>To the educated man that bow is a blessed illusion, yet it never once
+deceives; he does not take it for what it is not, he does not expect
+to make it his own; he feels its beauty as much as the child could
+feel it, nay infinitely more&mdash;more even from the fact that he knows
+that it will be transient; but besides and beyond this, to him it
+presents a deeper loveliness; he knows the laws of light, and the laws
+of the human soul which gave it being. He has linked it with the laws
+of the universe, and with the invisible mind of God; and it brings to
+him a thrill of awe, and the sense of a mysterious, nameless beauty,
+of which the child did not conceive. It is illusion still; but it has
+fulfilled the promise. In the realm of spirit, in the temple of the
+soul, it is the same. All is illusion; &ldquo;but we look for a city which
+hath foundations;&rdquo; and in this the promise is fulfilled.</p>
+
+<p>And such was Canaan to the Israelites. To some doubtless it was
+delusion. They expected to find their reward in a land of milk and
+honey. They were bitterly disappointed, and expressed their
+disappointment loudly enough in their murmurs against Moses, and their
+rebellion against his successors. But to others, as to Abraham, Canaan
+was the bright illusion which never deceived, but for ever shone
+before as the type of something more real. And even taking the promise
+literally, though they built in tents, and could not call a foot of
+land their own, was not its beauty theirs? Were not its trellised
+vines, and glorious pastures, and rich olive-fields, ministers to the
+enjoyment of those who had all in God, though its milk, and oil, and
+honey, could not be enjoyed with exclusiveness of appropriation? Yet
+over and above and beyond this, there was a more blessed fulfilment of
+the promise; there was &ldquo;a city which had foundations&rdquo;&mdash;built and made
+by God&mdash;toward which the anticipation of this Canaan was leading them.
+The Kingdom of God was forming in their souls, for ever disappointing
+them by the unreal, and teaching them that what is spiritual, and
+belongs to mind and character alone can be eternal.</p>
+
+<p>We will illustrate this principle from the common walks of life. The
+principle is, that the reward we get is not the reward for which we
+worked, but a deeper one; deeper and more permanent. The merchant
+labours all his life, and the hope which leads him on is perhaps
+wealth: well, at sixty years of age he attains wealth; is that the
+reward of sixty years of toil? Ten years of enjoyment, when the senses
+can enjoy no longer&mdash;a country seat, splendid plate, a noble
+establishment? Oh, no! a reward deeper than he dreamed of. Habits of
+perseverance: a character trained by industry: that is his reward. He
+was carried on from year to year by, if he were wise, illusion; if he
+were unwise, delusion; but he reaped a more enduring substance in
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>Take another instance: the public man, warrior, or statesman, who has
+served his country, and complains at last in bitter disappointment,
+that his country has not fulfilled his expectations in rewarding
+him&mdash;that is, it has not given him titles, honours, wealth. But
+titles, honours, wealth&mdash;are these the rewards of well-doing? can they
+reward it? would it be well-doing if they could? To <i>be</i> such a man,
+to have the power of <i>doing</i> such deeds, what could be added to that
+reward by having? This same apparent contradiction, which was found in
+Judaism, subsists too in Christianity; we will state it in the words
+of an apostle: &ldquo;Godliness is profitable for all things; having the
+promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to come.&rdquo;
+Now for the fulfilment: &ldquo;If in this life only we have hope in Christ,
+then are we of all men most miserable.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Godliness is profitable; but its profit it appears, consists in
+finding that all is loss: yet in this way you teach your son. You will
+tell him that if he will be good all men will love him. You say that
+&ldquo;Honesty is the best policy.&rdquo; yet in your heart of hearts you know
+that you are leading him on by a delusion. Christ was good. Was he
+loved by all? In proportion as he&mdash;your son&mdash;is like Christ, he will
+be loved, not by the many, but by the few. Honesty is <i>not</i> the best
+<i>policy</i>; the commonplace honesty of the market-place may be&mdash;the
+vulgar honesty which goes no further than paying debts accurately; but
+that transparent Christian honesty of a life which in every act is
+bearing witness to the truth, that is not the way to <i>get on</i> in
+life&mdash;the reward of such a life is the Cross. Yet you were right in
+teaching your son this: you told him what was true; truer than he
+could comprehend. It <i>is</i> better to be honest and good; better than he
+can know or dream: better even in this life; better by so much as
+<i>being</i> good is better than <i>having</i> good. But, in a rude coarse way,
+you must express the blessedness on a level with his capacity; you
+must state the truth in a way which he will inevitably interpret
+falsely. The true interpretation nothing but experience can teach.</p>
+
+<p>And this is what God does. His promises are true, though illusive; far
+truer than we at first take them to be. We work for a mean, low,
+sensual happiness, all the while He is leading us on to a spiritual
+blessedness&mdash;unfathomably deep. This is the life of faith. We live by
+faith, and not by sight. We do not preach that all is
+disappointment&mdash;the dreary creed of sentimentalism; but we preach that
+<i>nothing</i> here is disappointment, if rightly understood. We do not
+comfort the poor man, by saying that the riches that he has not now he
+will have hereafter&mdash;the difference between himself and the man of
+wealth being only this, that the one has for time what the other will
+have for eternity; but what we say is, that that which you have failed
+in reaping here, you never will reap, if you expected the harvest of
+Canaan. God has no Canaan for His own; no milk and honey for the
+luxury of the senses: for the city which hath foundations is built in
+the soul of man. He in whom Godlike character dwells, has all the
+universe for his own&mdash;&ldquo;All things,&rdquo; saith the apostle, &ldquo;are yours;
+whether life or death, or things present, or things to come; if ye be
+Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the
+<i>promise</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII.<br />
+<small><i>Preached June 23, 1850.</i></small><br />
+THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST.</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote class="scripture"><p>&ldquo;For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge,
+that if one died for all, then were all dead; and that He died for
+all that they which live should not henceforth live unto
+themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again.&rdquo;&mdash;2
+Corinthians v. 14, 15.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">It may be, that in reading these verses some of us have understood
+them in a sense foreign to that of the apostle. It may have seemed
+that the arguments ran thus&mdash;Because Christ died upon the cross for
+<i>all</i>, therefore all must have been in a state of spiritual death
+before; and if they were asked what doctrines are to be elicited from
+this passage they would reply, &ldquo;the doctrine of universal depravity,
+and the constraining power of the gratitude due to Him who died to
+redeem us from it.&rdquo; There is, however, in the first place, this fatal
+objection to such an interpretation, that the death here spoken of is
+used in two diametrically opposite senses. In reference to Christ,
+death literal&mdash;in reference to all, death spiritual. Now, in the
+thought of St. Paul, the death of Christ was always viewed as
+liberation from the power of evil: &ldquo;in that he died, he died unto sin
+once,&rdquo; and again, &ldquo;he that is dead is free from sin.&rdquo; The literal
+death then in one clause, means <i>freedom</i> from sin; the spiritual
+death of the next is <i>slavery</i> to it. Wherein then, lies the cogency
+of the apostle's reasoning? How does it follow that because Christ
+died to evil, all before that must have died to God? Of course that
+doctrine is true in itself, but it is <i>not</i> the doctrine of the text.</p>
+
+<p>In the next place, the ambiguity belongs only to the English word&mdash;it
+is impossible to make the mistake in the original: the word which
+stands for <i>were</i>, is a word which does not imply a continued state,
+but must imply a single finished act. It cannot by any possibility
+imply that before the death of Christ men <i>were</i> in a state of
+death&mdash;it can only mean, they became dead at the moment when Christ
+died. If you read it thus, the meaning of the English will emerge&mdash;&ldquo;if
+one died for all, then all died;&rdquo; and the apostle's argument runs
+thus, that if one acts as the representative of all, then his act is
+the act of all. If the ambassador of a nation makes reparation in a
+nation's name, or does homage for a nation, that reparation, or that
+homage, is the nation's act&mdash;if <i>one</i> did it <i>for</i> all, then <i>all</i> did
+it. So that instead of inferring that because Christ died for all,
+therefore before that all were dead to God, his natural inference is
+that therefore all are now dead to sin.</p>
+
+<p>Once more, the conclusion of the apostle is exactly the reverse of
+that which this interpretation attributes to him: he does not say that
+Christ died in order that men might <i>not</i> die, but exactly for this
+very purpose, that they <i>might</i> die; and this death he represents in
+the next verse by an equivalent expression&mdash;the life of unselfishness:
+&ldquo;that they which live might henceforth live not unto themselves.&rdquo; The
+&ldquo;dead&rdquo; of the first verse are &ldquo;they that live&rdquo; of the second.</p>
+
+<p>The form of thought finds its exact parallel in Romans vi. 10, 11.
+Two points claim our attention:&mdash;</p>
+
+<ol class="Rom">
+<li>The vicarious sacrifice of Christ.</li>
+<li>The influence of that sacrifice on man.</li>
+</ol>
+
+
+<p class="break"><b>I.</b> The vicariousness of the sacrifice is implied in the word &ldquo;for&rdquo;. A
+vicarious act is an act done for another. When the Pope calls himself
+the vicar of Christ, he implies that he acts for Christ. The vicar or
+viceroy of a kingdom is one who acts for the king&mdash;a vicar's act
+therefore is virtually the act of the principal whom he represents; so
+that if the Papal doctrine were true, when the vicar of Christ
+<i>pardons</i>, Christ has pardoned. When the viceroy of a kingdom has
+published a proclamation or signed a treaty, the sovereign himself is
+bound by those acts.</p>
+
+<p>The truth of the expression <i>for all</i>, is contained in this fact, that
+Christ is the representative of Humanity&mdash;properly speaking, the
+representative of human nature. This is the truth contained in the
+emphatic expression, &ldquo;Son of Man.&rdquo; What Christ did <i>for</i> Humanity was
+done by Humanity, because in the name of Humanity. For a truly
+vicarious act does not supersede the principal's duty of performance,
+but rather implies and acknowledges it. Take the case from which this
+very word of vicar has received its origin. In the old monastic times,
+when the revenues of a cathedral or a cure fell to the lot of a
+monastery, it became the duty of that monastery to perform the
+religious services of the cure. But inasmuch as the monastery was a
+corporate body, they appointed one of their number, whom they
+denominated their vicar, to discharge those offices for them. His
+service did not supersede theirs, but was a perpetual and standing
+acknowledgement that they, as a whole and individually, were under
+the obligation to perform it. The act of Christ is the act of
+Humanity&mdash;that which all Humanity is bound to do. His righteousness
+does not supersede our righteousness, nor does His sacrifice supersede
+our sacrifice. It is the representation of human life and human
+sacrifice&mdash;vicarious for all, yet binding upon all.</p>
+
+<p>That He died for all is true&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><b>1.</b> Because He was the victim of the sin of all. In the peculiar
+phraseology of St. Paul, he died unto sin. He was the victim of
+Sin&mdash;He died by sin. It is the appalling mystery of our redemption
+that the Redeemer took the attitude of subjection to evil. There was
+scarcely a form of evil with which Christ did not come in contact, and
+by which He did not suffer. He was the victim of false friendship and
+ingratitude, the victim of bad government and injustice. He fell a
+sacrifice to the vices of all classes&mdash;to the selfishness of the rich
+and the fickleness of the poor:&mdash;intolerance, formalism, scepticism,
+hatred of goodness, were the foes which crushed Him.</p>
+
+<p>In the proper sense of the word He was a victim. He did not adroitly
+wind through the dangerous forms of evil, meeting it with expedient
+silence. Face to face, and front to front, He met it, rebuked it, and
+defied it; and just as truly as he is a voluntary victim whose body
+opposing the progress of the car of Juggernaut is crushed beneath its
+monstrous wheels, was He a victim to the world's sin: because pure, He
+was crushed by impurity; because just and real and true, He waked up
+the rage of injustice, hypocrisy, and falsehood.</p>
+
+<p>Now this sin was the sin of all. Here arises at once a difficulty: it
+seems to be most unnatural to assert that in any one sense He was the
+sacrifice of the sin of all. We did not betray Him&mdash;that was Judas's
+act&mdash;Peter denied Him&mdash;Thomas doubted&mdash;Pilate pronounced sentence&mdash;it
+must be a figment to say that these were our acts; we did not watch
+Him like the Pharisees, nor circumvent Him like the Scribes and
+lawyers; by what possible sophistry can we be involved in the
+complicity of that guilt? The savage of New Zealand who never heard of
+Him, the learned Egyptian and the voluptuous Assyrian who died before
+He came; how was it the sin of all?</p>
+
+<p>The reply that is often given to this query is wonderfully unreal. It
+is assumed that Christ was conscious, by His Omniscience, of the sins
+of all mankind; that the duplicity of the child, and the crime of the
+assassin, and every unholy thought that has ever passed through a
+human bosom, were present to His mind in that awful hour as if they
+were His own. This is utterly unscriptural. Where is the single text
+from which it can be, except by force, extracted? Besides this, it is
+fanciful and sentimental; and again it is dangerous, for it represents
+the whole Atonement as a fictitious and shadowy transaction. There is
+a mental state in which men have felt the burthen of sins which they
+did not commit. There have been cases in which men have been
+<ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: original reads 'mysteriouly'">mysteriously</ins> excruciated with the thought of having committed the
+unpardonable sin. But to represent the mental phenomena of the
+Redeemer's mind as in any way resembling this&mdash;to say that His
+conscience was oppressed with the responsibility of sins which He had
+not committed&mdash;is to confound a state of sanity with the delusions of
+a half lucid mind, and the workings of a healthy conscience with those
+of one unnatural and morbid.</p>
+
+<p>There is a way however, much more appalling and much more true, in
+which this may be true, without resorting to any such fanciful
+hypothesis. Sin has a great power in this world: it gives laws like
+those of a sovereign, which bind us all, and to which we are all
+submissive. There are current maxims in church and state, in society,
+in trade, in law, to which we yield obedience. For this obedience
+every one is responsible; for instance in trade, and in the profession
+of law, every one is the servant of practices the rectitude of which
+his heart can only half approve&mdash;every one complains of them, yet all
+are involved in them. Now, when such sins reach their climax, as in
+the case of national bankruptcy or an unjust acquittal, there may be
+some who are in a special sense, the actors in the guilt; but
+evidently, for the bankruptcy, each member of the community is
+responsible in that degree and so far as he himself acquiesced in the
+duplicities of public dealing; every careless juror, every unrighteous
+judge, every false witness, has done his part in the reduction of
+society to that state in which the monster injustice has been
+perpetrated. In the riot of a tumultuous assembly by night, a house
+may be burnt, or a murder committed; in the eye of the law, all who
+are aiding and abetting there are each in his degree responsible for
+that crime; there may be difference in guilt, from the degree in which
+he is guilty who with his own hand perpetrated the deed, to that of
+him who merely joined the <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: original reads 'rable'">rabble</ins> from mischievous
+curiosity&mdash;degrees from that of wilful murder to that of more or less
+excusable homicide.</p>
+
+<p>The Pharisees were declared by the Saviour to be guilty of the blood
+of Zacharias, the blood of righteous Abel, and of all the saints and
+prophets who fell before He came. But how were the Pharisees guilty?
+They built the sepulchres of the prophets, they honoured and admired
+them; but they were guilty, in that they were the children of those
+that slew the prophets; children in this sense, that they inherited
+their <i>spirit</i>, they opposed the good in the form in which it showed
+itself in <i>their day</i>, just as their fathers opposed the form
+displayed to theirs; therefore He said that they belonged to the same
+confederacy of evil, and that the guilt of the blood of all who had
+been slain should rest on that generation. Similarly we are guilty of
+the death of Christ. If you have been a false friend, a sceptic, a
+cowardly disciple, a formalist, selfish, an opposer of goodness, an
+oppressor, whatever evil you have done, in that degree and so far you
+participate in the evil to which the Just One fell a victim&mdash;you are
+one of that mighty rabble which cry, &ldquo;Crucify Him, Crucify Him!&rdquo; for
+your sin He died; His blood lies at your threshold.</p>
+
+<p>Again, He died for all, in that His sacrifice represents the sacrifice
+of all. We have heard of the doctrine of &ldquo;imputed righteousness;&rdquo; it
+is a theological expression to which meanings foolish enough are
+sometimes attributed, but it contains a very deep truth, which it
+shall be our endeavour to elicit.</p>
+
+<p>Christ is the realized idea of our Humanity. He is God's idea of Man
+completed. There is every difference between the ideal and the
+actual&mdash;between what a man aims to be and what he is; a difference
+between the race as it is, and the race as it existed in God's
+creative idea when he pronounced it very good.</p>
+
+<p>In Christ, therefore, God beholds Humanity; in Christ He sees
+perfected every one in whom Christ's spirit exists in germ. He to whom
+the possible is actual, to whom what will be already <i>is</i>, sees all
+things <i>present</i>, gazes on the imperfect, and sees it in its
+perfection. Let me venture an illustration. He who has never seen the
+vegetable world except in Arctic regions, has but a poor idea of the
+majesty of vegetable life,&mdash;a microscopic red moss tinting the surface
+of the snow, a few stunted pines, and here and there perhaps a
+dwindled oak; but to the botanist who has seen the luxuriance of
+vegetation in its tropical magnificence, all that wretched scene
+presents another aspect; to him those dwarfs are the representatives
+of what might be, nay, what has been in a kindlier soil and a more
+genial climate; he fills up by his conception the miserable actuality
+presented by these shrubs, and attributes to them&mdash;imputes, that is,
+to them&mdash;the majesty of which the undeveloped germ exists already.</p>
+
+<p>Now the difference between those trees seen in themselves, and seen in
+the conception of their nature's perfectness which has been previously
+realized, is the difference between man seen in himself and seen in
+Christ. We are feeble, dwarfish, stunted specimens of Humanity. Our
+best resolves are but withered branches, our holiest deeds unripe and
+blighted fruit; but to the Infinite Eye, who sees in the perfect One
+the type and assurance of that which shall be, this dwindled Humanity
+of ours is divine and glorious. Such are we in the sight of God the
+Father as is the very Son of God Himself. This is what theologians, at
+least the wisest of them, meant by &ldquo;imputed righteousness.&rdquo; I do not
+mean that all who have written or spoken on the subject had this
+conception of it, but I believe they who thought truly meant this;
+they did not suppose that in imputing righteousness there was a kind
+of figment, a self-deception in the mind of God; they did not mean
+that by an act of will He chose to consider that every act which
+Christ did was done by us; that He imputed or reckoned to us the
+baptism in Jordan and the victory in the wilderness, and the agony in
+the garden, or that He believed, or acted as if He believed, that when
+Christ died, each one of us died: but He saw Humanity submitted to the
+law of self-sacrifice; in the light of that idea He beholds us as
+perfect, and is satisfied. In this sense the apostle speaks of those
+that are imperfect, yet &ldquo;by one offering He hath perfected for ever
+them that are sanctified.&rdquo; It is true again, that He died for us, in
+that we present His sacrifice as ours. The value of the death of
+Christ consisted in the surrender of self-will. In the fortieth Psalm,
+the value of every other kind of sacrifice being first denied, the
+words follow, &ldquo;then said I, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God.&rdquo; The
+profound idea contained, therefore, in the death of Christ is the duty
+of self-surrender.</p>
+
+<p>But in <i>us</i> that surrender scarcely deserves the name; even to use the
+word self-sacrifice covers us with a kind of shame. Then it is that
+there is an almost boundless joy in acquiescing in the life and death
+of Christ, recognizing it as ours, and representing it to ourselves
+and God as what we aim at. If we cannot understand how in this sense
+it can be a sacrifice for us, we may partly realize it by remembering
+the joy of feeling how art and nature realize for us what we cannot
+realize for ourselves. It is recorded of one of the world's gifted
+painters that he stood before the master-piece of the great genius of
+his age&mdash;one which he could never hope to equal, nor even rival&mdash;and
+yet the infinite superiority, so far from crushing him, only elevated
+his feeling, for he saw realized those conceptions which had floated
+before him, dim and unsubstantial; in every line and touch he felt a
+spirit immeasurably superior yet kindred, and he is reported to have
+exclaimed, with dignified humility, &ldquo;And I too am a painter!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We must all have felt, when certain effects in nature, combinations of
+form and colour, have been presented to us, our own idea speaking in
+intelligible and yet celestial language; when for instance, the long
+bars of purple, &ldquo;edged with intolerable radiance,&rdquo; seemed to float in
+a sea of pale pure green, when the whole sky seemed to reel with
+thunder, when the night wind moaned. It is wonderful how the most
+commonplace men and women, beings who, as you would have thought, had
+no conception that rose beyond a commercial speculation, or a
+fashionable entertainment, are elevated by such scenes; how the
+slumbering grandeur of their nature wakes and acknowledges kindred
+with the sky and storm. &ldquo;I cannot speak,&rdquo; they would say, &ldquo;the
+feelings which are in me; I have had emotions, aspirations, thoughts;
+I cannot put them into words. Look there! listen now to the storm!
+That is what I meant, only I never could say it out till now.&rdquo; Thus do
+art and nature speak for us, and thus do we adopt them as our own.
+This is the way in which His righteousness becomes righteousness for
+us. This is the way in which the heart presents to God the sacrifice
+of Christ; gazing on that perfect Life we, as it were, say, &ldquo;There,
+that is my religion&mdash;that is my righteousness&mdash;what I want to be,
+which I am not&mdash;that is my offering, my life as I would wish to give
+it, freely and not checked, entire and perfect.&rdquo; So the old prophets,
+their hearts big with unutterable thoughts, searched &ldquo;what or what
+manner of time the spirit of Christ which was in them did signify,
+when it testified beforehand of the sufferings of Christ, and of the
+glory which should follow;&rdquo; and so with us, until it passes into
+prayer: &ldquo;My Saviour, fill up the blurred and blotted sketch which my
+clumsy hand has drawn of a divine life, with the fullness of Thy
+perfect picture. I feel the beauty which I cannot realize:&mdash;robe me in
+Thine unutterable purity:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote class="poem">
+<p>&ldquo;Rock of ages cleft for me,<br />
+Let me hide myself in Thee.&rdquo;
+</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<p class="break"><b>II.</b> The influence of that Sacrifice on man is the introduction of the
+principle of self-sacrifice into his nature,&mdash;&ldquo;then were all dead.&rdquo;
+Observe again, not He died that we might not die, but that in His
+death we might be dead, and that in His sacrifice we might become each
+a sacrifice to God. Moreover, this death is identical with life. They
+who in the first sentence, are called dead, are in the second
+denominated &ldquo;they who live.&rdquo; So in another place, &ldquo;I am crucified with
+Christ, nevertheless I live;&rdquo; death, therefore&mdash;that is the sacrifice
+of self&mdash;is equivalent to life. Now, this rests upon a profound truth.
+The death of Christ was a representation of the life of God. To me
+this is the profoundest of all truths, that the whole of the life of
+God is the sacrifice of self. God is Love; love is sacrifice&mdash;to give
+rather than to receive&mdash;the blessedness of self-giving. If the life of
+God were not such it would be a falsehood, to say that God is Love;
+for even in our human nature, that which seeks to enjoy all instead of
+giving all, is known by a very different name from that of love. All
+the life of God is a flow of this divine self-giving charity. Creation
+itself is sacrifice&mdash;the self-impartation of the divine Being.
+Redemption too, is sacrifice, else it could not be love; for which
+reason we will not surrender one iota of the truth that the death of
+Christ was the sacrifice of God&mdash;the manifestation once in time of
+that which is the eternal law of His life.</p>
+
+<p>If man therefore, is to rise into the life of God, he must be absorbed
+into the spirit of that sacrifice&mdash;he must die with Christ if he
+would enter into his proper life. For sin is the withdrawing into self
+and egotism, out of the vivifying life of God, which alone is our true
+life. The moment the man sins he dies. Know we not how awfully true
+that sentence is, &ldquo;Sin revived, and I died?&rdquo; The vivid life of sin is
+the death of the man. Have we never felt that our true existence has
+absolutely in that moment disappeared, and that <i>we</i> are not?</p>
+
+<p>I say therefore, that real human life is a perpetual completion and
+repetition of the sacrifice of Christ&mdash;&ldquo;all are dead;&rdquo; the explanation
+of which follows, &ldquo;to live not to themselves, but to Him who died for
+them and rose again.&rdquo; This is the truth which lies at the bottom of
+the Romish doctrine of the mass. Rome asserts that in the mass a true
+and proper sacrifice is offered up for the sins of all&mdash;that the
+offering of Christ is for ever repeated. To this Protestantism has
+objected vehemently, that there is but one offering once offered&mdash;an
+objection in itself entirely true; yet the Romish doctrine contains a
+truth which it is of importance to disengage from the gross and
+material form with which it has been overlaid. Let us hear St. Paul,
+&ldquo;I fill up that which is behindhand of the sufferings of Christ, in my
+flesh, for His body's sake, which is the Church.&rdquo; Was there then,
+something behindhand of Christ's sufferings remaining uncompleted, of
+which the sufferings of Paul could be in any sense the complement? He
+says there was. Could the sufferings of Paul for the Church in any
+form of correct expression be said to eke out the sufferings that were
+complete? In one sense it is true to say that there is one offering
+once offered <i>for</i> all. But it is equally true to say that that one
+offering is valueless, except so far as it is completed and repeated
+in the life and self-offering <i>of</i> all. This is the Christian's
+sacrifice. Not mechanically completed in the miserable materialism of
+the mass, but spiritually in the life of all in whom the Crucified
+lives. The sacrifice of Christ is done over again in every life which
+is lived, not to self but, to God.</p>
+
+<p>Let one concluding observation be made&mdash;self-denial, self-sacrifice,
+self-surrender! Hard doctrines, and impossible! Whereupon, in silent
+hours, we sceptically ask, Is this possible? is it natural? Let
+preacher and moralist say what they will, I am not here to sacrifice
+myself for others. God sent me here for happiness, not misery. Now
+introduce one sentence of this text of which we have as yet said
+nothing, and the dark doctrine becomes illuminated&mdash;&ldquo;the <i>love</i> of
+Christ constraineth us.&rdquo; Self-denial, for the sake of self-denial,
+does no good; self-sacrifice for its own sake is no religious act at
+all. If you give up a meal for the sake of showing power over self, or
+for the sake of self-discipline, it is the most miserable of all
+delusions. You are not more religious in doing this than before. This
+is mere self-culture, and self-culture being occupied for ever about
+self, leaves you only in that circle of self from which religion is to
+free you; but to give up a meal that one you love may have it, is
+properly a religious act&mdash;no hard and dismal duty, because made easy
+by affection. To bear pain for the sake of bearing it has in it no
+moral quality at all, but to bear it rather than surrender truth, or
+in order to save another, is positive enjoyment as well as ennobling
+to the soul. Did you ever receive even a blow meant for another in
+order to shield that other? Do you not know that there was actual
+pleasure in the keen pain far beyond the most rapturous thrill of
+nerve which could be gained from pleasure in the midst of
+painlessness? Is not the mystic yearning of love expressed in words
+most purely thus, Let me suffer for him?</p>
+
+<p>This element of love is that which makes this doctrine an intelligible
+and blessed truth. So sacrifice alone, bare and unrelieved, is
+ghastly, unnatural, and dead; but self-sacrifice, illuminated by love,
+is warmth and life; it is the death of Christ, the life of God, the
+blessedness, and only proper life of man.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII.<br />
+<small><i>Preached June 30, 1850.</i></small><br />
+THE POWER OF SORROW.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote class="scripture"><p>&ldquo;Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed
+to repentance: for ye were made sorry after a godly manner, that
+ye might receive damage by us in nothing. For godly sorrow worketh
+repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of
+the world worketh death.&rdquo;&mdash;2 Corinthians vii. 9, 10.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">That which is chiefly insisted on in this verse, is the distinction
+between sorrow and repentance. To grieve over sin is one thing, to
+repent of it is another.</p>
+
+<p>The apostle rejoiced, not that the Corinthians sorrowed, but that they
+sorrowed unto repentance. Sorrow has two results; it may end in
+spiritual life, or in spiritual death; and in themselves, one of these
+is as natural as the other. Sorrow may produce two kinds of
+reformation&mdash;a transient, or a permanent one&mdash;an alteration in habits,
+which originating in emotion, will last so long as that emotion
+continues, and then after a few fruitless efforts, be given up,&mdash;a
+repentance which will be repented of; or again, a permanent change,
+which will be reversed by no after thought&mdash;a repentance not to be
+repented of. Sorrow is in itself, therefore, a thing neither good nor
+bad: its value depends on the spirit of the person on whom it falls.
+Fire will inflame straw, soften iron, or harden clay; its effects are
+determined by the object with which it comes in contact. Warmth
+developes the energies of life, or helps the progress of decay. It is
+a great power in the hot-house, a great power also in the coffin; it
+expands the leaf, matures the fruit, adds precocious vigour to
+vegetable life: and warmth too developes, with tenfold rapidity, the
+weltering process of dissolution. So too with sorrow. There are
+spirits in which it developes the seminal principle of life; there are
+others in which it prematurely hastens the consummation of irreparable
+decay. Our subject therefore is the twofold power of sorrow.</p>
+
+<ol class="Rom">
+<li>The fatal power of the sorrow of the world.</li>
+<li>The life-giving power of the sorrow that is after God.</li>
+</ol>
+
+<p>The simplest way in which the sorrow of the world works death, is seen
+in the effect of mere regret for worldly loss. There are certain
+advantages with which we come into the world. Youth, health, friends,
+and sometimes property. So long as these are continued we are happy;
+and because happy, fancy ourselves very grateful to God. We bask in
+the sunshine of His gifts, and this pleasant sensation of sunning
+ourselves in life we call religion; that state in which we all are
+before sorrow comes, to test the temper of the metal of which our
+souls are made, when the spirits are unbroken and the heart buoyant,
+when a fresh morning is to a young heart what it is to the skylark.
+The exuberant burst of joy seems a spontaneous hymn to the Father of
+all blessing, like the matin carol of the bird; but this is not
+religion: it is the instinctive utterance of happy feeling, having as
+little of moral character in it, in the happy human being, as in the
+happy bird.</p>
+
+<p>Nay more&mdash;the religion which is only sunned into being by happiness,
+is a suspicious thing: having been warmed by joy, it will become cold
+when joy is over; and then when these blessings are removed, we count
+ourselves hardly treated, as if we had been defrauded of a right;
+rebellious hard feelings come; then it is you see people become
+bitter, spiteful, discontented. At every step in the solemn path of
+life, something must be mourned which will come back no more; the
+temper that was so smooth becomes rugged and uneven; the benevolence
+that expanded upon all, narrows into an ever dwindling selfishness&mdash;we
+are alone; and then that death-like loneliness deepens as life goes
+on. The course of man is downwards, and he moves with slow and ever
+more solitary steps, down to the dark silence&mdash;the silence of the
+grave. This is the death of heart; the sorrow of the world has worked
+death.</p>
+
+<p>Again there is a sorrow of the world, when sin is grieved for in a
+worldly spirit. There are two views of sin: in one it is looked upon
+as wrong&mdash;in the other, as producing loss&mdash;loss for example, of
+character. In such cases, if character could be preserved before the
+world, grief would not come; but the paroxysms of misery fall upon our
+proud spirit when our guilt is made public. The most distinct instance
+we have of this is in the life of Saul. In the midst of his apparent
+grief, the thing still uppermost was that he had forfeited his kingly
+character: almost the only longing was, that Samuel should honour him
+before his people. And hence it comes to pass, that often remorse and
+anguish only begin with exposure. Suicide takes place, not when the
+act of wrong is done, but when the guilt is known, and hence too, many
+a one becomes hardened who would otherwise have remained tolerably
+happy; in consequence of which we blame the exposure, not the guilt;
+we say if it had hushed up, all would have been well; that the servant
+who robbed his master was ruined by taking away his character; and
+that if the sin had been passed over, repentance might have taken
+place, and he might have remained a respectable member of society. Do
+not think so. It is quite true that remorse was produced by exposure,
+and that the remorse was fatal; the sorrow which worked death arose
+from that exposure, and so far exposure may be called the cause: had
+it never taken place, respectability, and comparative peace, might
+have continued; but outward respectability is not change of heart.</p>
+
+<p>It is well known that the corpse has been preserved for centuries in
+the iceberg, or in antiseptic peat; and that when atmospheric air was
+introduced to the exposed surface it crumbled into dust. Exposure
+worked dissolution, but it only manifested the death which was already
+there; so with sorrow, it is not the living heart which drops to
+pieces, or crumbles into dust, when it is revealed. Exposure did not
+work death in the Corinthian sinner, but life.</p>
+
+<p>There is another form of grief for sin, which the apostle would not
+have rejoiced to see; it is when the hot tears come from pride. No two
+tones of feeling, apparently similar, are more unlike than that in
+which Saul exclaimed, &ldquo;I have played the fool exceedingly,&rdquo; and that
+in which the Publican cried out, &ldquo;God be merciful to me a sinner.&rdquo; The
+charge of folly brought against oneself only proves that we feel
+bitterly for having lost our own self-respect. It is a humiliation to
+have forfeited the idea which a man had formed of his own
+character&mdash;to find that the very excellence on which he prided
+himself, is the one in which he has failed. If there were a virtue for
+which Saul was conspicuous, it was generosity; yet it was exactly in
+this point of generosity in which he discovered himself to have
+failed, when he was overtaken on the mountain, and his life spared by
+the very man whom he was hunting to the death, with feelings of the
+meanest jealousy. Yet there was no real repentance there; there was
+none of that in which a man is sick of state and pomp. Saul could
+still rejoice in regal splendour, go about complaining of himself to
+the Ziphites, as if he was the most ill-treated and friendless of
+mankind; he was still jealous of his reputation, and anxious to be
+well thought of. Quite different is the tone in which the Publican,
+who felt himself a sinner, asked for mercy. He heard the contumelious
+expression of the Pharisee, &ldquo;this Publican.&rdquo; With no resentment, he
+meekly bore it as a matter naturally to be taken for granted&mdash;&ldquo;he did
+not so much as lift up his eyes to heaven;&rdquo; he was as a worm which
+turns in agony, but not revenge, upon the foot which treads it into
+the dust.</p>
+
+<p>Now this sorrow of Saul's too, works death: no merit can restore
+self-respect; when once a man has found himself out, he cannot be
+deceived again. The heart is as a stone: a speck of canker corrodes
+and spreads within. What on this earth remains, but endless sorrow,
+for him who has ceased to respect himself, and has no God to turn to?</p>
+
+
+<h3>II. The divine power of sorrow.</h3>
+
+<p><b>1.</b> It works repentance. By repentance is meant, in Scripture, change
+of life, alteration of habits, renewal of heart. This is the aim and
+meaning of all sorrow. The consequences of sin are meant to wean from
+sin. The penalty annexed to it is in the first instance, corrective,
+not penal. Fire burns the child, to teach it one of the truths of
+this universe&mdash;the property of fire to burn. The first time it cuts
+its hand with a sharp knife, it has gained a lesson which it never
+will forget. Now, in the case of pain, this experience is seldom, if
+ever, in vain. There is little chance of a child forgetting that fire
+will burn, and that sharp steel will cut; but the moral lessons
+contained in the penalties annexed to wrong-doing are just as truly
+intended, though they are by no means so unerring in enforcing their
+application. The fever in the veins and the headache which succeed
+intoxication, are meant to warn against excess. On the first occasion
+they are simply corrective; in every succeeding one they assume more
+and more a penal character in proportion as the conscience carries
+with them the sense of ill desert.</p>
+
+<p>Sorrow then, has done its work when it deters from evil; in other
+words when it works repentance. In the sorrow of the world, the
+obliquity of the heart towards evil is not cured; it seems as if
+nothing cured it: heartache and trials come in vain; the history of
+life at last is what it was at first. The man is found erring where he
+erred before. The same course, begun with the certainty of the same
+desperate end which has taken place so often before.</p>
+
+<p>They have reaped the whirlwind, but they will again sow the wind.
+Hence I believe, that life-giving sorrow is less remorse for that
+which is irreparable, than anxiety to save that which remains. The
+sorrow that ends in death hangs in funeral weeds over the sepulchres
+of the past. Yet the present does not become more wise. Not one
+resolution is made more firm, nor one habit more holy. Grief is all.
+Whereas sorrow avails <i>only</i> when the past is converted into
+experience, and from failure lessons are learned which never are to be
+forgotten.</p>
+
+<p><b>2.</b> Permanence of alteration; for after all, a steady reformation is a
+more decisive test of the value of mourning than depth of grief.</p>
+
+<p>The susceptibility of emotion varies with individuals. Some men feel
+intensely, others suffer less keenly; but this is constitutional,
+belonging to nervous temperament, rather than to moral character.
+<i>This</i> is the characteristic of the divine sorrow, that it is a
+repentance &ldquo;not repented of;&rdquo; no transient, short-lived resolutions,
+but sustained resolve.</p>
+
+<p>And the beautiful law is, that in proportion as the, repentance
+increases the grief diminishes. &ldquo;I rejoice,&rdquo; says Paul, that &ldquo;I made
+you sorry, though it were but for a time.&rdquo; Grief for a time,
+repentance for ever. And few things more signally prove the wisdom of
+this apostle than his way of dealing with this grief of the
+Corinthian. He tried no artificial means of intensifying it&mdash;did not
+urge the duty of dwelling upon it, magnifying it, nor even of gauging
+and examining it. So soon as grief had done its work, the apostle was
+anxious to dry useless tears&mdash;he even feared lest haply such an one
+should be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow. &ldquo;A true penitent,&rdquo; says
+Mr. Newman, &ldquo;never forgives himself.&rdquo; O false estimate of the gospel
+of Christ, and of the heart of man! A proud remorse does not forgive
+itself the forfeiture of its own dignity; but it is the very beauty of
+the penitence which is according to God, that at last the sinner,
+realizing God's forgiveness, does learn to forgive himself. For what
+other purpose did St. Paul command the Church of Corinth to give
+ecclesiastical absolution, but in order to afford a symbol and
+assurance of the Divine pardon, in which the guilty man's grief should
+not be overwhelming, but that he should become reconciled to himself?
+What is meant by the Publican's going <i>down to his house</i> justified,
+but that he felt at peace with himself and God?</p>
+
+<p><b>3.</b> It is sorrow with God&mdash;here called godly sorrow; in the margin
+sorrowing according to God.</p>
+
+<p>God sees sin not in its consequences but in itself: a thing infinitely
+evil, even if the consequences were happiness to the guilty instead of
+misery. So sorrow according to God, is to see sin as God sees it. The
+grief of Peter was as bitter as that of Judas. He went out and wept
+bitterly; how bitterly none can tell but they who have learned to look
+on sin as God does. But in Peter's grief there was an element of hope;
+and that sprung precisely from this&mdash;that he saw God in it all.
+Despair of self did not lead to despair of God.</p>
+
+<p>This is the great, peculiar feature of this sorrow: God is there,
+accordingly self is less prominent. It is not a microscopic
+self-examination, nor a mourning in which self is ever uppermost: <i>my</i>
+character gone; the greatness of <i>my</i> sin; the forfeiture of <i>my</i>
+salvation. The thought of God absorbs all that. I believe the feeling
+of true penitence would express itself in such words as these:&mdash;There
+<i>is</i> a righteousness, though I have not attained it. There is a
+purity, and a love, and a beauty, though my life exhibits little of
+it. In that I can rejoice. Of that I can feel the surpassing
+loveliness. My doings? They are worthless, I cannot endure to think of
+them. I am not thinking of them. I have something else to think of.
+There, there; in that Life I see it. And so the Christian&mdash;gazing not
+on what he is, but on what he desires to be&mdash;dares in penitence to
+say, That righteousness is mine: dares, even when the recollection of
+his sin is most vivid and most poignant, to say with Peter, thinking
+less of himself than of God, and sorrowing as it were with God&mdash;&ldquo;Lord,
+Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love Thee.&rdquo;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX.<br />
+<small><i>Preached August 4, 1850.</i></small><br />
+SENSUAL AND SPIRITUAL EXCITEMENT.</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote class="scripture"><p>&ldquo;Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of
+the Lord is. And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be
+filled with the Spirit.&rdquo;&mdash;Ephesians v. 17, 18.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">There is evidently a connection between the different branches of this
+sentence&mdash;for ideas cannot be properly contrasted which have not some
+connection&mdash;but what that connection is, is not at first sight clear.
+It almost appears like a profane and irreverent juxtaposition to
+contrast fulness of the Spirit with fulness of wine. Moreover, the
+structure of the whole context is antithetical. Ideas are opposed to
+each other in pairs of contraries; for instance, &ldquo;fools&rdquo; is the exact
+opposite to &ldquo;wise;&rdquo; &ldquo;unwise,&rdquo; as opposed to &ldquo;understanding,&rdquo; its
+proper opposite.</p>
+
+<p>And here again, there must be the same true antithesis between
+drunkenness and spiritual fulness. The propriety of this opposition
+lies in the intensity of feeling produced in both, cases. There is one
+intensity of feeling produced by stimulating the senses, another by
+vivifying the spiritual life within. The one commences with impulses
+from without, the other is guarded by forces from within. Here then is
+the similarity, and here the dissimilarity, which constitutes the
+propriety of the contrast. One is ruin, the other salvation. One
+degrades, the other exalts. This contrast then is our subject for
+to-day.</p>
+
+
+<p class="break"><b>I.</b> The effects are similar. On the day of Pentecost, when the first
+influences of the Spirit descended on the early Church, the effects
+resembled intoxication. They were full of the Spirit, and mocking
+bystanders said, &ldquo;These men are full of new wine;&rdquo; for they found
+themselves elevated into the <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: original reads 'ectasy'">ecstasy</ins> of a life higher than their
+own, possessed of powers which they could not control; they spoke
+incoherently and irregularly; to the most part of those assembled,
+unintelligibly.</p>
+
+<p>Now compare with this the impression produced upon savage
+nations&mdash;suppose those early ages in which the spectacle of
+intoxication was presented for the first time. They saw a man under
+the influence of a force different from and in some respects inferior
+to, their own. To them the bacchanal appeared a being half inspired;
+his frenzy seemed a thing for reverence and awe, rather than for
+horror and disgust; the spirit which possessed him must be they
+thought, divine; they deified it, worshipped it under different names
+as a god; even to a clearer insight the effects are wonderfully
+similar. It is almost proverbial among soldiers that the daring
+produced by wine is easily mistaken for the self-devotion of a brave
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>The play of imagination in the brain of the opium-eater is as free as
+that of genius itself, and the creations produced in that state by the
+pen or pencil are as wildly beautiful as those owed to the nobler
+influences. In years gone by, the oratory of the statesman in the
+senate has been kindled by semi-intoxication, when his noble
+utterances were set down by his auditors to the inspiration of
+patriotism.</p>
+
+<p>It is this very resemblance which deceives the drunkard: he is led on
+by his feelings as well as by his imagination. It is not the sensual
+pleasure of the glutton that fascinates him; it is those fine thoughts
+and those quickened sensibilities which were excited in that state,
+which he is powerless to produce out of his own being, or by his own
+powers, and which he expects to reproduce by the same means. The
+experience of our first parent is repeated in him: at the very moment
+when he expects to find himself as the gods, knowing good and evil, he
+discovers that he is unexpectedly degraded, his health wrecked, and
+his heart demoralized. Hence it is almost as often the finer as the
+baser spirits of our race which are found the victims of such
+indulgence. Many will remember while I speak, the names of the gifted
+of their species, the degraded men of genius who were the victims of
+these deceptive influences. The half-inspired painter, poet, musician,
+who began by soothing opiates to calm the over-excited nerves, or
+stimulate the exhausted brain, who mistook the sensation for somewhat
+half divine, and became morally and physically wrecks of manhood,
+degraded even in their mental conceptions. It was therefore, no mere
+play of words which induced the apostle to bring these two things
+together. That which might else seem irreverent appears to have been a
+deep knowledge of human nature; he contrasts, because his rule was to
+distinguish two things which are easily mistaken for each other.</p>
+
+<p><b>2.</b> The second point of resemblance is the necessity of intense
+feeling. We have fulness&mdash;fulness, it may be, produced by outward
+stimulus, or else by an inpouring of the Spirit. What we want is life,
+&ldquo;more life, and fuller.&rdquo; To escape from monotony, to get away from
+the life of mere routine and habits, to feel that we are alive&mdash;with
+more of surprise and wakefulness in our existence. To have less of the
+gelid, torpid, tortoise-like existence. &ldquo;To feel the years before us.&rdquo;
+To be consciously existing.</p>
+
+<p>Now this desire lies at the bottom of many forms of life which are
+apparently as diverse as possible. It constitutes the fascination of
+the gambler's life: money is not what he wants&mdash;were he possessed of
+thousands to-day he would risk them all to-morrow&mdash;but it is that
+being perpetually on the brink of enormous wealth and utter ruin, he
+is compelled to realize at every moment the possibility of the
+extremes of life. Every moment is one of feeling. This too,
+constitutes the charm of all those forms of life in which the gambling
+feeling is predominant&mdash;where a sense of skill is blended with a
+mixture of chance. If you ask the statesman why it is, that possessed
+as he is of wealth, he quits his princely home for the dark
+metropolis, he would reply, &ldquo;That he loves the excitement of a
+political existence.&rdquo; It is this too, which gives to the warrior's and
+the traveller's existence such peculiar reality; and it is this in a
+far lower form which stimulates the pleasure of a fashionable
+life&mdash;which sends the votaries of the world in a constant round from
+the capital to the watering place, and from the watering place to the
+capital; what they crave for is the power of feeling intensely.</p>
+
+<p>Now the proper and natural outlet for this feeling is the life of the
+Spirit. What is religion but fuller life? To live in the Spirit, what
+is it but to have keener feelings and mightier powers&mdash;to rise into a
+higher consciousness of life? What is religion's self but feeling? The
+highest form of religion is charity. Love is of God, and he that
+loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. This is an intense feeling,
+too intense to be excited, profound in its calmness, yet it rises at
+times in its higher flights into that ecstatic life which glances in a
+moment intuitively through ages. These are the pentecostal hours of
+our existence, when the Spirit comes as a mighty rushing wind, in
+cloven tongues of fire, filling the soul with God.</p>
+
+
+<p class="break"><b>II.</b> The dissimilarity or contrast in St. Paul's idea. The one fulness
+begins from without, the other from within. The one proceeds from the
+flesh and then influences the emotions. The other reverses this order.
+Stimulants like wine, inflame the senses, and through them set the
+imaginations and feelings on fire; and the law of our spiritual being
+is, that that which begins with the flesh, sensualizes the
+Spirit&mdash;whereas that which commences in the region of the Spirit,
+spiritualizes the senses in which it subsequently stirs emotion. But
+the misfortune is that men mistake this law of their emotions; and the
+fatal error is, when having found spiritual feelings existing in
+connection, and associated with, fleshly sensations, men expect by the
+mere irritation of the emotions of the frame to reproduce those high
+and glorious feelings.</p>
+
+<p>You might conceive the recipients of the Spirit on the day of
+Pentecost acting under this delusion; it is conceiveable that having
+observed certain bodily phenomena&mdash;for instance, incoherent utterances
+and thrilled sensibilities coexisting with those sublime
+spiritualities&mdash;they might have endeavoured, by a repetition of those
+incoherencies, to obtain a fresh descent of the Spirit. In fact, this
+was exactly what was tried in after ages of the Church. In those
+events of church history which are denominated revivals, in the camp
+of the Methodist and the Ranter, a direct attempt was made to arouse
+the emotions by exciting addresses and vehement language. Convulsions,
+shrieks, and violent emotions, were produced, and the unfortunate
+victims of this mistaken attempt to produce the cause by the effect,
+fancied themselves, and were pronounced by others, converted. Now the
+misfortune is, that this delusion is the more easy from the fact that
+the results of the two kinds of causes resemble each other. You may
+galvanize the nerve of a corpse till the action of a limb startles the
+spectator with the appearance of life. It is not life, it is only a
+spasmodic hideous mimicry of life. Men having seen that the spiritual
+is always associated with forms, endeavour by reproducing the forms to
+recall spirituality; you do produce thereby a something that looks
+like spirituality, but it is a resemblance only. The worst case of all
+occurs in the department of the affections. That which begins in the
+heart ennobles the whole animal being, but that which begins in the
+inferior departments of our being is the most entire degradation and
+sensualizing of the soul.</p>
+
+<p>Now it is from this point of thought that we learn to extend the
+apostle's principle. Wine is but a specimen of a class of stimulants.
+All that begins from <i>without</i> belongs to the same class. The stimulus
+may be afforded by almost any enjoyment of the senses. Drunkenness may
+come from anything wherein is excess: from over-indulgence in society,
+in pleasure, in music, and in the delight of listening to oratory,
+nay, even from the excitement of sermons and religious meetings. The
+prophet tells us of those who are drunken, and not with wine.</p>
+
+<p>The other point of difference is one of effect. Fulness of the Spirit
+calms; fulness produced by excitement satiates and exhausts. They who
+know the world of fashion tell us that the tone adopted there is,
+either to be, or to affect to be, sated with enjoyment, to be proof
+against surprise, to have lost all keenness of enjoyment, and to have
+all keenness of wonder gone. That which ought to be men's shame
+becomes their boast&mdash;unsusceptibility of any fresh emotion.</p>
+
+<p>Whether this be real or affected matters not; it is, in truth, the
+real result of the indulgence of the senses. The law is this: the
+&ldquo;crime of sense is avenged by sense which wears with time;&rdquo; for it has
+been well remarked that the terrific punishment attached to the
+habitual indulgence of the senses is, that the incitements to
+enjoyment increase in proportion as the power of enjoyment fades.</p>
+
+<p>Experience at last forbids even the hope of enjoyment; the sin of the
+intoxicated soul is loathed, detested, abhorred; yet it is done. The
+irritated sense, like an avenging fury, goads on with a restlessness
+of craving, and compels a reiteration of the guilt though it has
+ceased to charm.</p>
+
+<p>To this danger our own age is peculiarly exposed. In the earlier and
+simpler ages, the need of keen feeling finds a natural and safe outlet
+in compulsory exertions. For instance, in the excitement of real
+warfare, and in the necessity of providing the sustenance of life,
+warlike habits and healthy labour stimulate, without exhausting life.
+But in proportion as civilization advances, a large class of the
+community are exempted from the necessity of these, and thrown upon a
+life of leisure. Then it is that artificial life begins, and
+artificial expedients become necessary to sharpen the feelings amongst
+the monotony of existence; every amusement and all literature become
+more pungent in their character; life is no longer a thing proceeding
+from powers <i>within</i>, but sustained by new impulses from without.</p>
+
+<p>There is one peculiar form of this danger to which I would specially
+direct your attention. There is one nation in Europe which, more than
+any other, has been subjected to these influences. In ages of
+revolution, nations live fast; centuries of life are passed in fifty
+years of time. In such a state, individuals become subjected more or
+less to the influences which are working around them. Scarcely an
+enjoyment or a book can be met with which does not bear the impress of
+this intensity. Now, the particular danger to which I allude is French
+novels, French romances, and French plays. The overflowings of that
+cup of excitement have reached our shores. I do not say that these
+works contain anything coarse or gross&mdash;better if it were so: evil
+which comes in a form of grossness is not nearly so dangerous as that
+which comes veiled in gracefulness and sentiment. Subjects which are
+better not touched upon at all are discussed, examined, and exhibited
+in all the most seductive forms of imagery. You would be shocked at
+seeing your son in a fit of intoxication; yet, I say it solemnly,
+better that your son should reel through the streets in a fit of
+drunkenness, than that the delicacy of your daughter's mind should be
+injured, and her imagination inflamed with false fire. Twenty-four
+hours will terminate the evil in the one case. Twenty-four hours will
+not exhaust the effects of the other; you must seek the consequences
+at the end of many, many years.</p>
+
+<p>I speak that which I do know; and if the earnest warning of one who
+has seen the dangers of which he speaks realized, can reach the heart
+of one Christian parent, he will put a ban on all such works, and not
+suffer his children's hearts to be excited by a drunkenness which is
+worse than that of wine. For the worst of it is, that the men of our
+time are not yet alive to this growing evil; they are elsewhere&mdash;in
+their studies, counting-houses, professions&mdash;not knowing the food, or
+rather poison, on which their wives' and daughters' intellectual life
+is sustained. It is precisely those who are most unfitted to sustain
+the danger, whose feelings need restraint instead of spur, and whose
+imaginations are most inflammable, that are specially exposed to it.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, spiritual life calms while it fills. True it is
+that there are pentecostal moments when such life reaches the stage of
+ecstasy. But these were given to the Church to prepare her for
+suffering, to give her martyrs a glimpse of blessedness, which might
+sustain them afterwards in the terrible struggles of death. True it is
+that there are pentecostal hours when the soul is surrounded by a kind
+of glory, and we are tempted to make tabernacles upon the Mount, as if
+life were meant for rest; but out of that very cloud there comes a
+voice telling of the Cross, and bidding us descend into the common
+world again, to simple duties and humble life. This very principle
+seems to be contained in the text. The apostle's remedy for this
+artificial feeling is&mdash;&ldquo;Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns,
+and spiritual songs.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Strange remedy! Occupation fit for children&mdash;too simple far for men:
+as astonishing as the remedy prescribed by the prophet to Naaman&mdash;to
+wash in simple water, and be clean; yet therein lies a very important
+truth. In ancient medical phraseology, herbs possessed of healing
+natures were called simples: in God's laboratory, all things that heal
+are simple&mdash;all natural enjoyments&mdash;all the deepest&mdash;are simple too.
+At night, man fills his banquet-hall with the glare of splendour which
+fevers as well as fires the heart; and at the very same hour, as if by
+intended contrast, the quiet stars of God steal forth, shedding,
+together with the deepest feeling, the profoundest sense of calm. One
+from whose knowledge of the sources of natural feeling there lies
+almost no appeal, has said that to him,</p>
+
+<blockquote class="poem">
+<p>&ldquo;The meanest flower that blows can give<br />
+Thoughts that too often lie too deep for tears.&rdquo;
+</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>This is exceedingly remarkable in the life of Christ. No contrast is
+more striking than that presented by the thought, that that deep and
+beautiful Life was spent in the midst of mad Jerusalem. Remember the
+Son of man standing quietly in the porches of Bethesda, when the
+streets all around were filled with the revelry of innumerable
+multitudes, who had come to be present at the annual feast. Remember
+Him pausing to weep over his country's doomed metropolis, unexcited,
+while the giddy crowd around Him were shouting &ldquo;Hosanna to the Son of
+David!&rdquo; Remember Him in Pilate's judgment-hall, meek, self-possessed,
+standing in the serenity of Truth, while all around Him was
+agitation&mdash;hesitation in the breast of Pilate, hatred in the bosom of
+the Pharisees, and consternation in the heart of the disciples.</p>
+
+<p>And this in truth, is what we want: we want the vision of a calmer and
+simpler Beauty, to tranquillize us in the midst of artificial
+tastes&mdash;we want the draught of a purer spring to cool the flame of our
+excited life;&mdash;we want in other words, the Spirit of the Life of
+Christ, simple, natural, with power to calm and soothe the feelings
+which it rouses: the fulness of the Spirit which can never intoxicate!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X.<br />
+<small><i>Preached August 11, 1850.</i></small><br />
+PURITY.</h2>
+
+<blockquote class="scripture"><p>&ldquo;Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled
+and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and
+conscience is defiled.&rdquo;&mdash;Titus i. 15.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">For the evils of this world there are two classes of remedies&mdash;one is
+the world's, the other is God's. The world proposes to remedy evil by
+adjusting the circumstances of this life to man's desires. The world
+says, give us a perfect set of <i>circumstances</i>, and then we shall have
+a set of perfect men. This principle lies at the root of the system
+called Socialism. Socialism proceeds on the principle that all moral
+and even physical evil arises from unjust laws. If the cause be
+remedied, the effect will be good. But Christianity throws aside all
+that as merely chimerical. It proves that the fault is not in outward
+circumstances, but in ourselves. Like the wise physician, who, instead
+of busying himself with transcendental theories to improve the
+climate, and the outward circumstances of man, endeavours to relieve
+and get rid of the tendencies of disease which are from within,
+Christianity, leaving all outward circumstances to ameliorate
+themselves, fastens its attention on the spirit which has to deal with
+them. Christ has declared that the kingdom of heaven is from within.
+He said to the Pharisee, &ldquo;Ye make clean the outside of the cup and
+platter, but within ye are full of extortion and excess.&rdquo; The remedy
+for all this is a large and liberal charity, so overflowing that &ldquo;Unto
+the pure all things are pure.&rdquo; To internal purity all external things
+<i>become</i> pure. The principle that St. Paul has here laid down is, that
+each man is the creator of his own world; he walks in a universe of
+his own creation.</p>
+
+<p>As the free air is to one out of health the cause of cold and diseased
+lungs, so to the healthy man it is a source of greater vigour. The
+rotten fruit is sweet to the worm, but nauseous to the palate of man.
+It is the same air and the same fruit acting differently upon
+different beings. To different men a different world&mdash;to one all
+pollution&mdash;to another all purity. To the noble all things are noble,
+to the mean all things are contemptible.</p>
+
+<p>The subject divides itself into two parts.</p>
+
+<ol class="Rom">
+<li>The apostle's principle.</li>
+<li>The application of the principle.</li>
+</ol>
+
+<p>Here we have the same principle again; each man creates his own world.
+Take it in its simplest form. The eye creates the outward world it
+sees. We see not things as they are, but as God has made the eye to
+receive them.</p>
+
+<p>In its strictest sense, the creation of a new man is the creation of a
+new universe. Conceive an eye so constructed as that the planets and
+all within them should be minutely seen, and all that is near should
+be dim and invisible like things seen through a telescope, or as we
+see through a magnifying glass the plumage of the butterfly, and the
+bloom upon the peach; then it is manifestly clear that we have called
+into existence actually a new <i>creation</i>, and not new objects. The
+mind's eye creates a world for itself.</p>
+
+<p>Again, the visible world presents a different aspect to each
+individual man. You will say that the same things you see are seen by
+all&mdash;that the forest, the valley, the flood, and the sea, are the same
+to all; and yet all these things so seen, to different minds are a
+myriad of different universes. One man sees in that noble river an
+emblem of eternity; he closes his lips and feels that <span class="smcap">God</span> is
+there. Another sees nothing in it but a very convenient road for
+transporting his spices, silks, and merchandise. To one this world
+appears useful, to another beautiful. Whence comes the difference?
+From the soul within us. It can make of this world a vast chaos&mdash;&ldquo;a
+mighty maze without a plan;&rdquo; or a mere machine&mdash;a collection of
+lifeless forces; or it can make it the Living Vesture of <span class="smcap">God</span>,
+the tissue through which He can become visible to us. In the spirit in
+which we look on it the world is an arena for mere self-advancement,
+or a place for noble deeds, in which self is forgotten, and
+<span class="smcap">God</span> is all.</p>
+
+<p>Observe, this effect is traceable even in that produced by our
+different and changeful moods. We make and unmake a world more than
+once in the space of a single day. In trifling moods all seems
+trivial. In serious moods all seems solemn. Is the song of the
+nightingale merry or plaintive? Is it the voice of joy or the
+harbinger of gloom? Sometimes one, and sometimes the other, according
+to our different moods. We hear the ocean furious or exulting. The
+thunder-claps are grand, or angry, according to the different states
+of our mind. Nay, the very church bells chime sadly or merrily, as our
+associations determine. They speak the language of our passing moods.
+The young adventurer revolving sanguine plans upon the milestone,
+hears them speak to him as God did to Hagar in the wilderness, bidding
+him back to perseverance and greatness. The soul spreads its own hue
+over everything; the shroud or wedding-garment of nature is woven in
+the loom of our own feelings. This universe is the express image and
+direct counterpart of the souls that dwell in it. Be noble-minded, and
+all Nature replies&mdash;I am divine, the child of God&mdash;be thou too, His
+child, and noble. Be mean, and all Nature dwindles into a contemptible
+smallness.</p>
+
+<p>In the second place, there are two ways in which this principle is
+true. To the pure, all things and all persons are pure, because their
+purity makes all seem pure.</p>
+
+<p>There are some who go through life complaining of this world; they say
+they have found nothing but treachery and deceit; the poor are
+ungrateful, and the rich are selfish, Yet we do not find such the best
+men. Experience tells us that each man most keenly and unerringly
+detects in others the vice with which he is most familiar himself.</p>
+
+<p>Persons seem to each man what he is himself. One who suspects
+hypocrisy in the world is rarely transparent; the man constantly on
+the watch for cheating is generally dishonest; he who suspects
+impurity is prurient. This is the principle to which Christ alludes
+when he says, &ldquo;Give alms of such things as he have; and behold all
+things are clean unto you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+
+<p class="break">Have a large charity! Large &ldquo;charity hopeth all things.&rdquo; Look at that
+sublime apostle who saw the churches of Ephesus and Thessalonica pure,
+because he saw them in his own large love, and painted them, not as
+they were, but as his heart filled up the picture; he viewed them in
+the light of his own nobleness, as representations of his own purity.</p>
+
+<p>Once more, to the pure all <i>things</i> are pure, as well as all persons.
+That which is natural lies not in things, but in the minds of men.
+There is a difference between prudery and modesty. Prudery detects
+wrong where no wrong is; the wrong lies in the thoughts, and not in
+the objects. There is something of over-sensitiveness and
+over-delicacy which shows not innocence, but an inflammable
+imagination. And men of the world cannot understand that those
+subjects and thoughts which to them are full of torture, can be
+harmless, suggesting nothing evil to the pure in heart.</p>
+
+<p>Here however, beware! No sentence of Scripture is more frequently in
+the lips of persons who permit themselves much license, than the text,
+&ldquo;To the pure, all things are pure.&rdquo; Yes, all things natural, but not
+artificial&mdash;scenes which pamper the tastes, which excite the senses.
+Innocence feels healthily. To it all nature is pure. But, just as the
+dove trembles at the approach of the hawk, and the young calf shudders
+at the lion never seen before, so innocence shrinks instinctively from
+what is wrong by the same divine instinct. If that which is wrong
+seems pure, then the heart is not pure but vitiated. To the right
+minded all that is right in the course of this world seems pure.
+Abraham, looking forward to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah,
+entreated that it might be averted, and afterwards acquiesced! To the
+disordered mind &ldquo;all things are out of course.&rdquo; This is the spirit
+which pervades the whole of the Ecclesiastes. There were two things
+which were perpetually suggesting themselves to the mind of Solomon;
+the intolerable sameness of this world, and the constant desire for
+change. And yet that same world, spread before the serene eye of God,
+was pronounced to be all &ldquo;very good.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This disordered universe is the picture of your own mind. We make a
+wilderness by encouraging artificial wants, by creating sensitive and
+selfish feelings; then we project everything stamped with the impress
+of our own feelings, and we gather the whole of creation into our own
+pained being&mdash;&ldquo;the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain
+together until now.&rdquo; The world you complain of as impure and wrong is
+not God's world, but your world; the blight, the dullness, the blank,
+are all your own. The light which is in you has become darkness, and
+therefore the light itself is dark.</p>
+
+<p>Again, to the pure, all things not only seem pure, but are really so
+because they are made such.</p>
+
+<p><b>1.</b> As regards persons. It is a marvellous thing to see how a pure and
+innocent heart purifies all that it approaches. The most ferocious
+natures are soothed and tamed by innocence. And so with human beings,
+there is a delicacy so pure, that vicious men in its presence become
+almost pure; all of purity which is in them is brought out; like
+attaches itself to like. The pure heart becomes a centre of
+attraction, round which similar atoms gather, and from which
+dissimilar ones are repelled. A corrupt heart elicits in an hour all
+that is bad in us; a spiritual one brings out and draws to itself all
+that is best and purest. Such was Christ. He stood in the world, the
+Light of the world, to which all sparks of light gradually gathered.
+He stood in the presence of impurity, and men became pure. Note this
+in the history of Zaccheus. In answer to the invitation of the Son of
+man, he says, &ldquo;Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor,
+and if I have done wrong to any man I restore him fourfold.&rdquo; So also
+the Scribe, &ldquo;Well, Master, thou hast well said, there is one God, and
+there is none other than He.&rdquo; To the pure Saviour, all was pure. He
+was lifted up on high, and drew all men unto Him.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, all situations are pure to the pure. According to the world,
+some professions are reckoned honourable, and some dishonourable. Men
+judge according to a standard merely conventional, and not by that of
+moral rectitude. Yet it was in truth, the men who were in these
+situations which made them such. In the days of the Redeemer, the
+publican's occupation was a degraded one, merely because low base men
+filled that place. But since He was born into the world a poor,
+labouring man, poverty is noble and dignified, and toil is honourable.
+To the man who feels that &ldquo;the king's daughter is all glorious
+within,&rdquo; no outward situation can seem inglorious or impure.</p>
+
+<p>There are three words which express almost the same thing, but whose
+meaning is entirely different. These are, the gibbet, the scaffold,
+and the cross. So far as we know, none die on the gibbet but men of
+dishonourable and base life. The scaffold suggests to our minds the
+noble deaths of our greatest martyrs. The cross was once a gibbet, but
+it is now the highest name we have, because He hung on it. Christ has
+purified and ennobled the cross. This principle runs through life. It
+is not the situation which makes the man, but the man who makes the
+situation. The slave may be a freeman. The monarch may be a slave.
+Situations are noble or ignoble, as we make them.</p>
+
+<p>From all this subject we learn to understand two things. Hence we
+understand the Fall. When man fell, the world fell with him. All
+creation received a shock. Thorns, briars, and thistles, sprang up.
+They were there before, but to the now restless and impatient hands
+of men they became obstacles and weeds. Death, which must ever have
+existed as a form of dissolution, a passing from one state to another,
+became a curse; the sting of death was sin&mdash;unchanged in itself, it
+changed in man. A dark, heavy cloud, rested on it&mdash;the shadow of his
+own guilty heart.</p>
+
+<p>Hence too, we understand the Millennium. The Bible says that these
+things are not to be for ever. There are glorious things to come. Just
+as in my former illustration, the alteration of the eye called new
+worlds into being, so now nothing more is needed than to re-create the
+soul&mdash;the mirror on which all things are reflected. Then is realized
+the prophecy of Isaiah, &ldquo;Behold, I create all things new,&rdquo; &ldquo;new
+heavens and a new earth.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The conclusion of this verse proves to us why all these new creations
+were called into being&mdash;&ldquo;wherein dwelleth righteousness.&rdquo; To be
+righteous makes all things new. We do not want a new world, we want
+<i>new hearts</i>. Let the Spirit of God purify society, and to the pure
+all things will be pure. The earth will put off the look of weariness
+and gloom which it has worn so long, and then the glorious language of
+the prophets will be fulfilled&mdash;&ldquo;The forests will break out with
+singing, and the desert will blossom as the rose.&rdquo;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI.<br />
+<small><i>Preached February 9, 1851.</i></small><br />
+UNITY AND PEACE.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote class="scripture"><p>&ldquo;And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also
+ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful.&rdquo;&mdash;Colossians iii.
+15.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">There is something in these words that might surprise us. It might
+surprise us to find that peace is urged on us as a duty. There can be
+no duty except where there is a matter of obedience; and it might seem
+to us that peace is a something over which we have no power. It is a
+privilege to have peace, but it would appear as if there were no power
+of control within the mind of a man able to ensure that peace for
+itself. &ldquo;Yet,&rdquo; says the apostle, &ldquo;let the peace of God rule in your
+hearts.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It would seem to <i>us</i> as if peace were as far beyond our own control
+as happiness. Unquestionably, we are not masters on our own
+responsibility of our own happiness. Happiness is the gratification of
+every innocent desire; but it is not given to us to ensure the
+gratification of every desire; therefore, happiness is not a duty, and
+it is nowhere written in the Scripture, &ldquo;You must be happy.&rdquo; But we
+find it written by the apostle Paul, &ldquo;Be ye thankful,&rdquo; implying
+therefore, that peace is a duty. The apostle says, &ldquo;Let the peace of
+God rule in your hearts;&rdquo; from which we infer that peace is
+attainable, and within the reach of our own wills; that if there be
+not repose there is blame; if there be not peace but discord in the
+heart, there is something wrong.</p>
+
+<p>This is the more surprising when we remember the circumstances under
+which these words were written. They were written from Rome, where the
+apostle lay in prison, daily and hourly expecting a violent death.
+They were written in days of persecution, when false doctrines were
+rife, and religious animosities fierce; they were written in an
+epistle abounding with the most earnest and eager controversy, whereby
+it is therefore implied, that according to the conception of the
+Apostle Paul, it is possible for a Christian to live at the very point
+of death, and in the very midst of danger&mdash;that it is possible for him
+to be breathing the atmosphere of religious controversy&mdash;it is
+possible for him to be surrounded by bitterness, and even take up the
+pen of controversy himself&mdash;and yet his soul shall not lose its own
+deep peace, nor the power of the infinite repose and rest of God.
+Joined with the apostle's command to be at peace, we find another
+doctrine, the doctrine of the unity of the Church of Christ. &ldquo;To the
+which ye are called in one body,&rdquo; in order that ye may be at peace; in
+other words, the unity of the Church of Christ is the basis on which,
+and on which alone, can be built the possibility of the inward peace
+of individuals.</p>
+
+
+<p class="break">And thus, my Christian brethren, our subject divides itself into these
+two simple branches: in the first place, the unity of the Church of
+Christ; in the second place, the inward peace of the members of that
+Church.</p>
+
+
+<p class="break">The first subject then, which we have to consider, is the Unity of the
+Church of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>And the first thing we have to do is both clearly to define and
+understand the meaning of that word &ldquo;unity.&rdquo; I distinguish the unity
+of comprehensiveness from the unity of mere singularity. The word one,
+as oneness, is an ambiguous word. There is a oneness belonging to the
+army as well as to every soldier in the army. The army is one, and
+that is the oneness of unity; the soldier is one, but that is the
+oneness of the unit. There is a difference between the oneness of a
+body and the oneness of a member of that body. The body is many, and a
+unity of manifold comprehensiveness. An arm or a member of a body is
+one, but that is the unity of singularity. Without unity my Christian
+brethren, peace must be impossible. There can be no peace in the one
+single soldier of an army. You do not speak of the harmony of one
+member of a body. There is peace in an army, or in a kingdom joined
+with other kingdoms; there is harmony in a member united with other
+members. There is no peace in a unit, there is no possibility of the
+harmony of that which is but one in itself. In order to have peace you
+must have a higher unity, and therein consists the unity of God's own
+Being. The unity of God is the basis of the peace of God&mdash;meaning by
+the unity of God the comprehensive manifoldness of God, and not merely
+the singularity in the number of God's Being. When the Unitarian
+speaks of God as one, he means simply singularity of number. We mean
+that He is of manifold comprehensiveness&mdash;that there is unity between
+His various powers. Amongst the personalities or powers of His Being
+there is no discord, but perfect harmony, entire union; and that
+brethren, is repose, the blessedness of infinite rest, that belongs to
+the unity of God&mdash;&ldquo;I and my Father are one.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The second thing which we observe respecting this unity, is that it
+subsists between things not similar or alike, but things dissimilar or
+unlike. There is no unity in the separate atoms of a sand-pit; they
+are things similar; there is an aggregate or collection of them. Even
+if they be hardened in a mass they are not one, they do not form a
+unity: they are simply a mass. There is no unity in a flock of sheep:
+it is simply a repetition of a number of things similar to each other.
+If you strike off from a thousand five hundred, or if you strike off
+nine hundred, there is nothing lost of unity, because there never was
+unity. A flock of one thousand or a flock of five is just as much a
+flock as any other number.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, let us turn to the unity of peace which the apostle
+speaks of, and we find it is something different; it is made up of
+dissimilar members, without which dissimilarity there could be no
+unity. Each is imperfect in itself, each supplying what it has in
+itself to the deficiencies and wants of the other members. So, if you
+strike off from this body any one member, if you cut off an arm, or
+tear out an eye, instantly the unity is destroyed; you have no longer
+an entire and perfect body, there is nothing but a remnant of the
+whole, a part, a portion; no unity whatever.</p>
+
+<p>This will help us to understand the unity of the Church of Christ. If
+the ages and the centuries of the Church of Christ, if the different
+Churches whereof it was composed, if the different members of each
+Church, were similar&mdash;one in this, that they all held the same views,
+all spoke the same words, all viewed truth from the same side, they
+would have no unity; but would simply be an aggregate of atoms, the
+sand-pit over again&mdash;units, multiplied it may be to infinity, but you
+would have no real unity, and therefore, no peace. No unity,&mdash;for
+wherein consists the unity of the Church of Christ? The unity of ages,
+brethren, consists it in this&mdash;that every age is merely the repetition
+of another age, and that which is held in one is held in another?
+Precisely in the same way, that is <i>not</i> the unity of the ages of the
+Christian Church.</p>
+
+<p>Every century and every age has held a different truth, has put forth
+different fragments of the truth. In early ages for example, by
+martyrdom was proclaimed the eternal sanctity of truth, rather than
+give up which a man must lose his life.... In our own age it is quite
+plain those are not the themes which engage us, or the truths which we
+put in force now. This age, by its revolutions, its socialisms,
+proclaims another truth&mdash;the brotherhood of the Church of Christ; so
+that the unity of ages subsists on the same principle as that of the
+unity of the human body: and just as every separate ray&mdash;the violet,
+the blue, and the orange&mdash;make up the white ray, so these manifold
+fragments of truth blended together make up the one entire and perfect
+white ray of Truth. And with regard to individuals, taking the case of
+the Reformation, it was given to one Church to proclaim that salvation
+is a thing received, and not local; to another to proclaim
+justification by faith; to another the sovereignty of God; to another
+the supremacy of the Scriptures; to another the right of private
+judgment, the duty of the individual conscience. Unite these all, and
+then you have the Reformation one&mdash;one in spite of manifoldness; those
+very varieties by which they have approached this proving them to be
+one. Disjoint them and then you have some miserable sect&mdash;Calvinism,
+or Unitarianism; the unity has dispersed. And so again with the unity
+of the Churches. Whereby would we produce unity? Would we force on
+other Churches our Anglicanism? Would we have our thirty-nine
+articles, our creeds, our prayers, our rules and regulations, accepted
+by every Church throughout the world? If that were unity, then in
+consistency you are bound to demand that in God's world there shall be
+but one colour instead of the manifold harmony and accordance of which
+this universe is full; that there should be but one chaunted note&mdash;the
+one which we conceive most beautiful. This is not the unity of the
+Church of God. The various Churches advance different doctrines and
+truths. The Church of Germany something different from those of the
+Church of England. The Church of Rome, even in its idolatry, proclaims
+truths which we would be glad to seize. By the worship of the Virgin,
+the purity of women; by the rigour of ecclesiastical ordinances, the
+sanctity and permanence of eternal order; by the very priesthood
+itself, the necessity of the guidance of man by man. Nay, even the
+dissenting bodies themselves&mdash;mere atoms of aggregates as they
+are&mdash;stand forward and proclaim at least this truth, the separateness
+of the individual conscience, the right of independence.</p>
+
+<p>Peace subsists not between things exactly alike. We do not speak of
+peace in a single country. We say peace subsists between different
+countries where war <i>might</i> be. There can be no <i>peace</i> between two
+men who agree in everything; peace subsists between those who differ.
+There is no peace between Baptist and Baptist; so far as they are
+Baptists, there is perfect accordance and agreement. There may be
+peace between you and the Romanist, the Jew, or the Dissenter, because
+there are angles of sharpness which might come into collision if they
+were not subdued and softened by the power of love. It was given to
+the Apostle Paul to discern that this was the ground of unity. In the
+Church of Christ he saw men with different views, and he said So far
+from that variety destroying unity, it was the only ground of unity.
+There are many doctrines, all of them different, but let those
+varieties be blended together&mdash;in other words, let there be the peace
+of love, and then you will have unity.</p>
+
+<p>Once more this unity, whereof the apostle speaks, consists in
+submission to one single influence or spirit. Wherein consists the
+unity of the body? Consists it not in this,&mdash;that there is one life
+uniting, making all the separate members one? Take away the life, and
+the members fall to pieces: they are no longer one; decomposition
+begins, and every element separates, no longer having any principle of
+cohesion or union with the rest.</p>
+
+<p>There is not one of us who, at some time or other, has not been struck
+with the power there is in a single living influence. Have we never
+for instance, felt the power wherewith the orator unites and holds
+together a thousand men as if they were but one; with flashing eyes
+and throbbing hearts, all attentive to his words, and by the
+difference of their attitudes, by the variety of the expressions of
+their countenances testifying to the unity of that single living
+feeling with which he had inspired them? Whether it be indignation,
+whether it be compassion, or whether it be enthusiasm, that one living
+influence made the thousand for the time, one. Have we not heard how,
+even in this century in which we live, the various and conflicting
+feelings of the people of this country were concentrated into one,
+when the threat of foreign invasion had fused down and broken the
+edges of conflict and variance, and from shore to shore was heard one
+cry of terrible defiance, and the different classes and orders of this
+manifold and mighty England were as one? Have we not heard how the
+mighty winds hold together, as if one, the various atoms of the
+desert, so that they rush like a living thing, across the wilderness?
+And this, brethren, is the unity of the Church of Christ, the
+subjection to the one uniting spirit of its God.</p>
+
+<p>It will be said, in reply to this, &ldquo;Why this is mere enthusiasm. It
+may be very beautiful in theory, but it is impossible in practice. It
+is mere enthusiasm to believe, that while all these varieties of
+conflicting opinion remain, we can have unity; it is mere enthusiasm
+to think that so long as men's minds reckon on a thing like unity,
+there can be a thing like oneness.&rdquo; And our reply is, Give us the
+Spirit of God, and we shall be one. You cannot produce a unity by all
+the rigour of your ecclesiastical discipline. You cannot produce a
+unity by consenting in some form of expression such as this, &ldquo;Let us
+agree to differ.&rdquo; You cannot produce a unity by Parliamentary
+regulations or enactments, bidding back the waves of what is called
+aggression. Give us the living Spirit of God, and we shall be one.</p>
+
+<p>Once on this earth was exhibited, as it were, a specimen of perfect
+anticipation of such an unity, when the &ldquo;rushing mighty wind&rdquo; of
+Pentecost came down in the tongues of fire and sat on every man; when
+the Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in
+Mesopotamia, the &ldquo;Cretes and Arabians,&rdquo; the Jew and the Gentile, each
+speaking one language, yet blended and fused into one unity by
+enthusiastic love, heard one another speak as it were, in one
+language, the manifold works of God; when the spirit of giving was
+substituted for the spirit of mere rivalry and competition, and no man
+said the things he had were his own, but all shared in common. Let
+that spirit come again, as come it will, and come it must; and then,
+beneath the influences of a mightier love, we shall have a nobler and
+a more real unity.</p>
+
+
+<p class="break">We pass on now, in the second place, to consider the <i>individual
+peace</i> resulting from this unity. As we have endeavoured to explain
+what is meant by unity, so now, let us endeavour to understand what is
+meant by peace. Peace then, is the opposite of passion, and of labour,
+toil, and effort. Peace is that state in which there are no desires
+madly demanding an impossible gratification; that state in which there
+is no misery, no remorse, no sting. And there are but three things
+which can break that peace. The first is discord between the mind of
+man and the lot which he is called on to inherit; the second is
+discord between the affections and powers of the soul; and the third
+is doubt of the rectitude, and justice, and love, wherewith this world
+is ordered. But where these things exist not, where a man is contented
+with his lot, where the flesh is subdued to the spirit, and where he
+believes and feels with all his heart that all is right, there is
+peace, and to this says the apostle, &ldquo;ye are called,&rdquo;&mdash;the grand,
+peculiar call of Christianity,&mdash;the call, &ldquo;Come unto Me, all ye that
+labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This was the dying bequest of Christ: &ldquo;Peace I leave with you, my
+peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth give I unto you:&rdquo; and
+therein lies one of the greatest truths of the blessed and eternal
+character of Christianity, that it applies to, and satisfies the very
+deepest want and craving of our nature. The deepest want of man is not
+a desire for happiness, but a craving for peace; not a wish for the
+gratification of every desire, but a craving for the repose of
+acquiescence in the will of God; and it is this which Christianity
+promises. Christianity does not promise happiness, but it does promise
+peace. &ldquo;In the world ye shall have tribulation,&rdquo; saith our Master,
+&ldquo;but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.&rdquo; Now, let us look
+more closely, into this peace.</p>
+
+<p>The first thing we see respecting it is, that it is called God's
+peace. God is rest: the infinite nature of God is infinite repose. The
+&ldquo;<i>I am</i>&rdquo; of God is contrasted with the <i>I am become</i> of all other
+things. Everything else is in a state of <i>becoming</i>, God is in a state
+of <i>Being</i>. The acorn has become the plant, and the plant has become
+the oak. The child has become the man, and the man has become good, or
+wise, or whatever else it may be. God ever <i>is</i>; and I pray you once
+more to observe, that this peace of God, this eternal rest in the
+Almighty Being, arises out of His unity. Not because He is an unit,
+but because He is an unity. There is no discord between the powers and
+attributes of the mind of God; there is no discord between His justice
+and His love; there is no discord demanding some miserable expedient
+to unite them together, such as some theologians imagined when they
+described the sacrifice and atonement of our Redeemer by saying, it is
+the clever expedient whereby God reconciles His justice with His love.
+God's justice and love are one. Infinite justice must be infinite
+love. Justice is but another sign of love. The infinite rest of the
+&ldquo;<i>I am</i>&rdquo; of God arises out of the harmony of His attributes.</p>
+
+<p>The next thing we observe respecting this divine peace which has come
+down to man on earth is, that it is a <i>living peace</i>. Brethren, let us
+distinguish. There are several things called peace which are by no
+means divine or Godlike peace. There is peace, for example, in the man
+who lives for and enjoys self, with no nobler aspiration goading him
+on to make him feel the rest of God; that is peace, but that is merely
+the peace of toil. There is rest on the surface of the caverned lake,
+which no wind can stir; but that is the peace of stagnation. There is
+peace amongst the stones which have fallen and rolled down the
+mountain's side, and lie there quietly at rest; but that is the peace
+of inanity. There is peace in the hearts of enemies who lie together,
+side by side, in the same trench of the battle-field, the animosities
+of their souls silenced at length, and their hands no longer clenched
+in deadly enmity against each other; but that is the peace of death.
+If our peace be but the peace of the sensualist satisfying pleasure,
+if it be but the peace of mental torpor and inaction, the peace of
+apathy, or the peace of the soul dead in trespasses and sins, we may
+whisper to ourselves, &ldquo;Peace, peace,&rdquo; but there will be no peace;
+<i>there</i> is not the peace of unity nor the peace of God, for the peace
+of God is the living peace of love.</p>
+
+<p>The next thing we observe respecting this peace is, that it is the
+manifestation of power&mdash;it is the peace which comes from an inward
+power: &ldquo;Let the peace of God,&rdquo; says the Apostle, &ldquo;rule within your
+hearts.&rdquo; For it is a power, the manifestation of strength. There is no
+peace except there is the possibility of the opposite of peace
+although now restrained and controlled. You do not speak of the peace
+of a grain of sand, because it cannot be otherwise than merely
+insignificant, and at rest. You do not speak of the peace of a mere
+pond; you speak of the peace of the sea, because there is the opposite
+of peace implied, there is power and strength. And this brethren, is
+the real character of the peace in the mind and soul of man. Oh! we
+make a great mistake when we say there is strength in passion, in the
+exhibition of emotion. Passion, and emotion, and all those outward
+manifestations, prove, not strength, but weakness. If the passions of
+a man are strong, it proves the man himself is weak, if he cannot
+restrain or control his passions. The real strength and majesty of the
+soul of man is calmness, the manifestation of strength; &ldquo;the peace of
+God&rdquo; ruling; the word of Christ saying to the inward storms &ldquo;Peace!&rdquo;
+and there is &ldquo;a great calm.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, the peace of which the apostle speaks is the peace that is
+received&mdash;the peace of reception. You will observe, throughout this
+passage the apostle speaks of a something received, and not done: &ldquo;Let
+the peace of God rule in your hearts.&rdquo; It is throughout receptive, but
+by no means inactive. And according to this, there are two kinds of
+peace; the peace of obedience&mdash;&ldquo;Let the peace of God rule&rdquo; you&mdash;and
+there is the peace of gratefulness&mdash;&ldquo;Be ye thankful.&rdquo; Very great,
+brethren, is the peace of obedience: when a man has his lot fixed, and
+his mind made up, and he sees his destiny before him, and quietly
+acquiesces in it; his spirit is at rest. Great and deep is the peace
+of the soldier to whom has been assigned even an untenable position,
+with the command, &ldquo;Keep that, even if you die,&rdquo; and he obediently
+remains to die.</p>
+
+<p>Great was the peace of Elisha&mdash;very, very calm are those words by
+which he expressed his acquiescence in the divine will. &ldquo;Knowest
+thou,&rdquo; said the troubled, excited, and restless men around
+him&mdash;&ldquo;Knowest thou that the Lord will take away thy master from thy
+head to-day?&rdquo; He answered, &ldquo;Yea, I know it; hold ye your peace.&rdquo; Then
+there is the other peace, it is the peace of gratefulness: &ldquo;Be ye
+thankful.&rdquo; It is that peace which the Israelites had when these words
+were spoken to them on the shores of the Red Sea, while the bodies of
+their enemies floated past them, destroyed, but not by them: &ldquo;Stand
+still and see the salvation of the Lord.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And here brethren, is another mistake of ours: we look on salvation as
+a thing to be done, and not received. In God's salvation we can do but
+little, but there is a great deal to be received. We are here, not
+merely to act, but to be acted upon. &ldquo;Let the peace of God rule in
+your hearts;&rdquo; there is a peace that will enter there, if you do not
+thwart it; there is a Spirit that will take possession of your soul,
+provided that you do not quench it. In this world we are recipients,
+not creators. In obedience and in gratefulness, and the infinite peace
+of God in the soul of man, is alone to be found deep calm repose.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII.<br />
+<small><i>Preached January 4, 1852.</i></small><br />
+THE CHRISTIAN AIM AND MOTIVE.</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote class="scripture"><p>&ldquo;Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven
+is perfect.&rdquo;&mdash;Matthew v. 48.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">There are two erroneous views held respecting the character of the
+Sermon on the Mount. The first may be called an error of
+worldly-minded men, the other an error of mistaken religionists.
+Worldly-minded men&mdash;men that is, in whom the devotional feeling is but
+feeble&mdash;are accustomed to look upon morality as the whole of religion;
+and they suppose that the Sermon on the Mount was designed only to
+explain and enforce correct principles of morality. It tells of human
+duties and human proprieties, and an attention to these, they
+maintain, is the only religion which is required by it. Strange my
+Christian brethren, that men, whose lives are least remarkable for
+superhuman excellence, should be the very men to refer most frequently
+to those sublime comments on Christian principle, and should so
+confidently conclude from thence, that themselves are right and all
+others are wrong. Yet so it is.</p>
+
+<p>The other is an error of mistaken religionists. They sometimes regard
+the Sermon on the Mount as if it were a collection of moral precepts,
+and consequently, strictly speaking, not Christianity at all. To them
+it seems as if the chief value, the chief intention of the discourse,
+was to show the breadth and spirituality of the requirements of the
+law of Moses&mdash;its chief religious significance, to show the utter
+impossibility of fulfilling the law, and thus to lead to the necessary
+inference that justification must be by faith alone. And so they would
+not scruple to assert that, in the highest sense of that term, it is
+not Christianity at all, but only preparatory to it&mdash;a kind of
+spiritual Judaism; and that the higher and more developed principles
+of Christianity are to be found in the writings of the apostles.
+Before we proceed further, we would remark here that it seems
+extremely startling to say that He who came to this world expressly to
+preach the Gospel, should, in the most elaborate of all His
+discourses, omit to do so: it is indeed something more than startling,
+it is absolutely revolting to suppose that the letters of those who
+spoke <i>of</i> Christ, should contain a more perfectly-developed, a freer
+and fuller Christianity than is to be found in Christ's own words.</p>
+
+<p>Now you will observe that these two parties, so opposed to each other
+in their general religious views, are agreed in this&mdash;that the Sermon
+on the Mount is nothing but morality. The man of the world says&mdash;&ldquo;It
+is morality only, and that is the whole of religion.&rdquo; The mistaken
+religionist says&mdash;&ldquo;It is morality only, not the entire essence of
+Christianity.&rdquo; In opposition to both these views, we maintain that the
+Sermon on the Mount contains the sum and substance of
+Christianity&mdash;the very chief matter of the gospel of our Redeemer.</p>
+
+<p>It is not, you will observe, a pure and spiritualized Judaism; it is
+contrasted with Judaism again and again by Him who spoke it. Quoting
+the words of Moses, he affirmed, &ldquo;So was it spoken by them of old
+time, but <i>I say unto you</i>&mdash;&rdquo; For example, &ldquo;Thou shalt not forswear
+thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths.&rdquo; That is
+Judaism. &ldquo;But I say unto you swear not at all, but let your yea be
+yea, and your nay nay.&rdquo; That is Christianity. And that which is the
+essential peculiarity of this Christianity lies in these two things.
+First of all, that the morality which it teaches is <i>disinterested</i>
+goodness&mdash;goodness not for the sake of the blessing that follows it,
+but for its own sake, and because it is right. &ldquo;Love your enemies,&rdquo; is
+the Gospel precept. Why?&mdash;Because if you love them you shall be
+blessed; and if you do not cursed? No; but &ldquo;Love your enemies, bless
+them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them
+which despitefully use you and persecute you, that ye may be the
+children of&rdquo;&mdash;that is, may be like&mdash;&ldquo;your Father which is in Heaven.&rdquo;
+The second essential peculiarity of Christianity&mdash;and this, too, is an
+essential peculiarity of this Sermon&mdash;is, that it teaches and enforces
+the law of self-sacrifice. &ldquo;If thy right eye offend thee pluck it out;
+if thy right hand offend thee cut it off.&rdquo; This, brethren, is the law
+of self-sacrifice&mdash;the very law and spirit of the blessed cross of
+Christ.</p>
+
+<p>How deeply and essentially Christian, then, this Sermon on the Mount
+is, we shall understand if we are enabled in any measure to reach the
+meaning and spirit of the single passage which I have taken as my
+text. It tells two things&mdash;the Christian aim and the Christian motive.</p>
+
+<p>1st. The Christian aim&mdash;perfection. 2nd. The Christian motive&mdash;because
+it is right and Godlike to be perfect.</p>
+
+
+<p><b>I.</b> The Christian aim is this&mdash;to be perfect. &ldquo;Be ye therefore
+perfect.&rdquo; Now distinguish this, I pray you, from mere worldly
+morality. It is not conformity to a creed that is here required, but
+aspiration after a <i>state</i>. It is not demanded of us to perform a
+number of duties, but to yield obedience to a certain spiritual law.
+But let us endeavour to explain this more fully. What is the meaning
+of this expression, &ldquo;Be ye perfect?&rdquo; Why is it that in this discourse,
+instead of being commanded to perform religious duties, we are
+commanded to think of being like God? Will not that inflame our pride,
+and increase our natural vainglory? Now the nature and possibility of
+human perfection, what it is and how it is possible, are both
+contained in one single expression in the text. &ldquo;Even as your Father
+which is in Heaven is perfect.&rdquo; The relationship between father and
+son implies consanguinity, likeness, similarity of character and
+nature. God <i>made</i> the insect, the stone, the lily; but God is not the
+Father of the caterpillar, the lily, or the stone.</p>
+
+<p>When therefore, God is said to be our Father, something more is
+implied in this than that God created man. And so when the Son of Man
+came proclaiming the fact that we are the children of God, it was in
+the truest sense a revelation. He told us that the nature of God
+resembles the nature of man, that love in God is not a mere figure of
+speech, but means the same thing as love in us, and that divine anger
+is the same thing as human anger divested of its emotions and
+imperfections. When we are commanded to be like God, it implies that
+God has that nature of which we have already the germs. And this has
+been taught by the incarnation of the Redeemer. Things absolutely
+dissimilar in their nature cannot mingle. Water cannot coalesce with
+fire&mdash;water cannot mix with oil. If, then, Humanity and Divinity were
+united in the person of the Redeemer, it follows that there must be
+something kindred between the two, or else the incarnation had been
+impossible. So that the incarnation is the realization of man's
+perfection.</p>
+
+<p>But let us examine more deeply this assertion, that <i>our</i> nature is
+kindred with that of God&mdash;for if man has not a nature kindred to
+God's, then a demand such as that, &ldquo;Be ye the children of&rdquo;&mdash;that is,
+like&mdash;&ldquo;God,&rdquo; is but a mockery of man. We say then, in the first place,
+that in the truest sense of the word man can be a creator. The beaver
+<i>makes</i> its hole, the bee <i>makes</i> its cell; man alone has the power of
+<i>creating</i>. The mason <i>makes</i>, the architect <i>creates</i>. In the same
+sense that we say God created the universe, we say that man is also a
+creator. The creation of the universe was the Eternal Thought taking
+reality. And thought taking expression is also a creation. Whenever
+therefore, there is a living thought shaping itself in word or in
+stone, there is there a creation. And therefore it is, that the
+simplest effort of what we call genius is prized infinitely more than
+the most elaborate performances which are done by mere workmanship,
+and for this reason: that the one is produced by an effort of power
+which we share with the beaver and the bee, that of <i>making</i>, and the
+other by a faculty and power which man alone shares with God.</p>
+
+<p>Here however, you will observe another difficulty. It will be said at
+once&mdash;there is something in this comparison of man with God which
+looks like blasphemy, because one is finite and the other
+infinite&mdash;man is bounded, God boundless; and to speak of resemblance
+and kindred between these two, is to speak of resemblance and kindred
+between two natures essentially different. But this is precisely the
+argument which is brought by the Socinians against the doctrine of the
+incarnation; and we are bound to add that the Socinian argument is
+right, unless there be the similarity of which we have been speaking.
+Unless there be something in man's nature which truly and properly
+partakes of the divine nature, there could be no incarnation, and the
+demand for perfection would be a mockery and an impossibility.</p>
+
+<p>Let us then endeavour to find out the evidences of this infinitude in
+the nature of man. First of all we find it in this&mdash;that the desires
+of man are for something boundless and unattainable. Thus speaks our
+Lord&mdash;&ldquo;What shall it profit a man if he should gain the whole world
+and lose his own soul?&rdquo; Every schoolboy has heard the story of the
+youthful prince who enumerated one by one the countries he meant to
+conquer year after year; and when the enumeration was completed, was
+asked what he meant to do when all those victories were achieved, and
+he replied&mdash;to sit down, to be happy, to take his rest. But then came
+the ready rejoinder&mdash;Why not do so now? But it is not every schoolboy
+who has paused to consider the folly of the question. He who asked his
+son why he did not at once take the rest which it was his ultimate
+purpose to enjoy, knew not the immensity and nobility of the human
+soul. He could not <i>then</i> take his rest and be happy. As long as one
+realm remained unconquered, so long rest was impossible; he would weep
+for fresh worlds to conquer. And thus, that which was spoken by our
+Lord of one earthly gratification, is true of all&mdash;&ldquo;Whosoever drinketh
+of this water shall thirst again.&rdquo; The boundless, endless, infinite
+void in the soul of man can be satisfied with nothing but God.
+Satisfaction lies not in <i>having</i>, but in <i>being</i>. There is no
+satisfaction even in <i>doing</i>. Man cannot be satisfied with his own
+performances. When the righteous young ruler came to Christ, and
+declared that in reference to the life gone by, he had kept all the
+commandments and fulfilled all the duties required by the Law, still
+came the question&mdash;&ldquo;What lack I yet?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The Scribes and Pharisees were the strictest observers of the
+ceremonies of the Jewish religion, &ldquo;touching the righteousness which
+is by the Law&rdquo; they were blameless, but yet they wanted something more
+than that, and they were found on the brink of Jordan imploring the
+baptism of John, seeking after a new and higher state than they had
+yet attained to,&mdash;a significant proof that man cannot be satisfied
+with his own works. And again, there is not one of us who has ever
+been satisfied with his own performances. There is no man whose doings
+are worth anything, who has not felt that he has not yet done that
+which he feels himself able to do. While he was doing it, he was kept
+up by the spirit of hope; but when done the thing seemed to him
+worthless. And therefore it is that the author cannot read his own
+book again, nor the sculptor look with pleasure upon his finished
+work. With respect to one of the greatest of all modern sculptors, we
+are told that he longed for the termination of his earthly career, for
+this reason&mdash;that he had been satisfied with his own performance:
+satisfied for the first time in his life. And this expression of his
+satisfaction was but equivalent to saying that he had reached the
+goal, beyond which there could be no progress. This impossibility of
+being satisfied with his own performances is one of the strongest
+proofs of our immortality&mdash;a proof of that perfection towards which we
+shall for ever tend, but which we can never attain.</p>
+
+<p>A second trace of this infinitude in man's nature we find in the
+infinite capacities of the soul. This is true intellectually and
+morally. With reference to our intellectual capacities, it would
+perhaps be more strictly correct to say that they are indefinite,
+rather than infinite; that is we can affix to them no limit. For there
+is no man, however low his intellectual powers may be, who has not at
+one time or another felt a rush of thought, a glow of inspiration,
+which seemed to make all things possible, as if it were merely the
+effect of some imperfect organization which stood in the way of his
+doing whatever he desired to do. With respect to our moral and
+spiritual capacities, we remark that they are not only indefinite, but
+absolutely infinite. Let that man answer who has ever truly and
+heartily loved another. That man knows what it is to partake of the
+infinitude of God. Literally, in the emphatic language of the Apostle
+John, he has felt his immortality&mdash;&ldquo;God in him and he in God.&rdquo; For
+that moment, infinitude was to him not a name, but a reality. He
+entered into the infinite of time and space, which is not measured by
+days, or months, or years, but is alike boundless and eternal.</p>
+
+<p>Again, we perceive a third trace of this infinitude in man, in the
+power which he possesses of giving up self. In this, perhaps more than
+in anything else, man may claim kindred with God. Nor is this power
+confined to the best of mankind, but is possessed, to some extent at
+least, by all. There is no man, how low soever he may be, who has not
+one or two causes or secrets, which no earthly consideration would
+induce him to betray. There is no man who does not feel towards one or
+two at least, in this world, a devotion which all the bribes of the
+universe would not be able to shake. We have heard the story of that
+degraded criminal who, when sentence of death was passed upon him,
+turned to his accomplice in guilt, in whose favour a verdict of
+acquittal was brought in, and in glorious self-forgetfulness
+exclaimed&mdash;&ldquo;Thank God, <i>you</i> are saved!&rdquo; The savage and barbarous
+Indian whose life has been one unbroken series of cruelty and crime,
+will submit to a slow, lingering, torturing death, rather than betray
+his country. Now, what shall we say to these things? Do they not tell
+of an indestructible something in the nature of man, of which the
+origin is divine?&mdash;the remains of a majesty which, though it may be
+sullied, can never be entirely lost?</p>
+
+<p>Before passing on let us observe, that were it not for this conviction
+of the divine origin, and consequent perfectibility of our nature, the
+very thought of God would be painful to us. God is so great, so
+glorious, that the mind is overwhelmed by, and shrinks from, the
+contemplation of His excellence, unless there comes the tender,
+ennobling thought that we are the children of God, who are to become
+like our Father in Heaven, whose blessed career it is to go on in an
+advance of love and duty towards Him, until we love Him as we are
+loved, and know Him almost as we are known.</p>
+
+
+<p class="break"><b>II.</b> We pass on, in the second place, to consider the Christian
+motive&mdash;&ldquo;Even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect.&rdquo; Brethren,
+worldly prudence, miscalled morality, says&mdash;&ldquo;Be honest; you will find
+your gain in being so. Do right; you will be the better for it&mdash;even
+in this world you will not lose by it.&rdquo; The mistaken religionist only
+magnifies this on a large scale. &ldquo;Your duty,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;is to save
+your soul. Give up this world to have the next. Lose <i>here</i>, that you
+may gain <i>hereafter</i>.&rdquo; Now this is but prudence after all&mdash;it is but
+magnified selfishness, carried on into eternity,&mdash;none the more noble
+for being <i>eternal</i> selfishness. In opposition to all such sentiments
+as these, thus speaks the Gospel&mdash;&ldquo;Be ye perfect.&rdquo; Why? &ldquo;Because your
+Father which is in Heaven is perfect.&rdquo; Do right, because it is
+Godlike and right so to do. Here however, let us be understood. We do
+not mean to say that the Gospel ignores altogether the personal
+results of doing right. This would be unnatural&mdash;because God has
+linked together well-doing and blessedness. But we do say that this
+blessedness is not the motive which the Gospel gives us. It is true
+the Gospel says&mdash;&ldquo;Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the
+earth; blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy; blessed
+are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they
+shall be filled.&rdquo; But when these are made our motives&mdash;when we become
+meek in order that we may inherit here&mdash;then the promised enjoyment
+will not come. If we are merciful merely that we may ourselves obtain
+mercy, we shall not have that in-dwelling love of God which is the
+result and token of His forgiveness. Such was the law and such the
+example of our Lord and Master.</p>
+
+<p>True it is that in the prosecution of the great work of redemption He
+had &ldquo;respect to the recompense of reward.&rdquo; True it is He was
+conscious&mdash;how could He but be conscious&mdash;that when His work was
+completed He should be &ldquo;glorified with that glory which He had with
+the Father before the world began;&rdquo; but we deny that this was the
+<i>motive</i> which induced Him to undertake that work; and that man has a
+very mistaken idea of the character of the Redeemer, and understands
+but little of His spirit, who has so mean an opinion of Him as to
+suppose that it was any consideration of personal happiness and
+blessedness which led the Son of God to die. &ldquo;For this end was He
+born, and for this end came He into the world to bear witness unto the
+Truth,&rdquo; and &ldquo;to finish the work which was given Him to do.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>If we were asked, Can you select one text in which more than in any
+other this unselfish, disinterested feature comes forth, it should be
+this, &ldquo;Love ye your enemies, do good and lend, hoping for nothing
+again.&rdquo; This is the true spirit of Christianity&mdash;doing right
+disinterestedly, not from the hope of any personal advantage or
+reward, either temporal or spiritual, but entirely forgetting self,
+&ldquo;hoping for nothing again.&rdquo; When that glorious philanthropist, whose
+whole life had been spent in procuring the abolition of the
+slave-trade, was demanded of by some systematic theologian, whether in
+his ardour in this great cause he had not been neglecting his personal
+prospects, and endangering his own soul, this was his magnanimous
+reply&mdash;one of those which show the light of truth breaking through
+like an inspiration. He said, &ldquo;I did not think about my own soul, I
+had no time to think about myself, I had forgotten all about my soul.&rdquo;
+The Christian is not concerned about his own happiness; he has not
+time to consider himself; he has not time to put that selfish question
+which the disciples put to their Lord, when they were but half
+baptized with His spirit, &ldquo;Lo, we have left all and followed Thee,
+what shall we have therefore?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In conclusion we observe, there are two things which are to be learned
+from this passage. The first is this, that happiness is not our end
+and aim. It has been said, and has since been repeated as frequently
+as if it were an indisputable axiom, that &ldquo;Happiness is our being's
+end and aim.&rdquo; Brethren, happiness is <i>not</i> our being's end and aim.
+The Christian's aim is perfection, not happiness, and every one of the
+sons of God must have something of that spirit which marked their
+Master; that holy sadness, that peculiar unrest, that high and lofty
+melancholy which belongs to a spirit which strives after heights to
+which it can never attain.</p>
+
+<p>The second thing we have to learn is this, that on this earth there
+can be no rest for man. By rest we mean the attainment of a state
+beyond which there can be no change. Politically, morally,
+spiritually, there can be no rest for man here. In one country alone
+has that system been fully carried out which, conservative of the
+past, excludes all desire of progress and improvement for the future:
+but it is not to China that we should look for the perfection of human
+society. There is one ecclesiastical system which carries out the same
+spirit, looking rather to the Church of the past than to the Church of
+the future; but it is not in the Romish that we shall find the model
+of a Christian Church. In Paradise it may have been right to be at
+rest, to desire no change, but ever since the Fall every system that
+tends to check the onward progress of mankind is fatally, radically,
+curelessly wrong. The motto on every Christian banner is &ldquo;Forwards.&rdquo;
+There is no resting in the present, no satisfaction in the past.</p>
+
+<p>The last thing we learn from this is the impossibility of obtaining
+that of which some men speak&mdash;the satisfaction of a good conscience.
+Some men write and speak as if the difference between the Christian
+and the worldly man was this, that in the one conscience is a
+self-reproaching hell, and in the other a self-congratulating heaven.
+Oh, brethren, is this the fact? Think you that the Christian goes home
+at night counting up the noble deeds done during the day, saying to
+himself, &ldquo;Well done, good and faithful servant?&rdquo; Brethren, that habit
+of looking forwards to the future prevents all pride and
+self-righteousness, and makes our best and only rest and satisfaction
+to consist in contemplating the future which is bringing us nearer
+and nearer home. Our motto, therefore, must be that striking one of
+the Apostle Paul, &ldquo;Forgetting those things which are behind, and
+reaching forth to those things which are before, I press towards the
+mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.&rdquo;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII"></a>XIII.<br />
+<small><i>Preached January 4, 1852.</i></small><br />
+CHRISTIAN CASUISTRY.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote class="scripture"><p>&ldquo;Is any man called being circumcised? let him not become
+uncircumcised. Is any called in uncircumcision? let him not be
+circumcised. Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is
+nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God. Let every man
+abide in the same calling wherein he was called. Art thou called
+being a servant? care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free
+use it rather. For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant,
+is the Lord's freeman; likewise also he that is called being free,
+is Christ's servant. Ye are bought with a price; be not ye the
+servants of men. Brethren, let every man wherein he is called
+therein abide with God.&rdquo;&mdash;1 Corinthians, vii. 18-24.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">The whole of these seven chapters of the First Epistle of the Apostle
+Paul to the Corinthians, is occupied with questions of Christian
+casuistry. In the application of the principles of Christianity to the
+varying circumstances of life, innumerable difficulties had arisen,
+and the Corinthians upon these difficulties had put certain questions
+to the Apostle Paul. This seventh chapter contains the apostle's
+answer to many of these questions. There are however, two great
+divisions into which these answers generally fall. St. Paul makes a
+distinction between those things which he speaks by commandment and
+those which he speaks only by permission; there is a distinction
+between what he says as from the Lord, and what only from himself;
+between that which he speaks to them as being taught of God, and that
+which he speaks only as a servant, &ldquo;called of the Lord and faithful.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It is manifestly plain that there are many questions in which <i>right</i>
+and <i>wrong</i> are not variable, but indissoluble and fixed; while there
+are questions, on the other hand, where these terms are not fixed, but
+variable, fluctuating, altering, dependent upon circumstances. As, for
+instance, those in which the apostle teaches in the present chapter
+the several duties and advantages of marriage and celibacy. There may
+be circumstances in which it is the duty of a Christian man to be
+married, there are others in which it may be his duty to remain
+unmarried. For instance, in the case of a missionary it may be right
+to be married rather than unmarried; on the other hand, in the case of
+a pauper, not having the wherewithal to bring up and maintain a
+family, it may be proper to remain unmarried. You will observe
+however, that no fixed law can be laid down upon this subject. We
+cannot say marriage is a Christian duty, nor celibacy is a Christian
+duty; nor that it is in every case the duty of a missionary to be
+married, or of a pauper to be unmarried. All these things must vary
+according to circumstances, and the duty must be stated not
+universally, but with reference to those circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>These therefore, are questions of casuistry, which depend upon the
+particular <i>case</i>: from which word the term &ldquo;casuistry&rdquo; is derived. On
+these points the apostle speaks not by commandment, but by permission;
+not as speaking by God's command, but as having the Spirit of God. A
+distinction has sometimes been drawn with reference to this chapter
+between that which the apostle speaks by inspiration, and what he
+speaks as a man uninspired. The distinction, however, is an altogether
+false one, and beside the question. For the real distinction is not
+between inspired and uninspired, but between a <i>decision</i> in matters
+of Christian duty, and <i>advice</i> in matters of Christian prudence. It
+is abundantly evident that God cannot give advice; He can only issue a
+command. God cannot say, &ldquo;It is better to do this;&rdquo; His perfections
+demand something absolute: &ldquo;Thou shalt <i>do</i> this; thou shalt <i>not</i> do
+this.&rdquo; Whensoever therefore, we come to advice there is introduced the
+human element rather than the divine. In all such cases therefore, as
+are dependent upon circumstances the apostle speaks not as inspired,
+but as uninspired; as one whose judgment we have no right to find
+fault with or to cavil at, who lays down what is a matter of Christian
+prudence, and not a bounden and universal duty. The matter of the
+present discourse will take in various verses in this chapter&mdash;from
+the tenth to the twenty-fourth verse&mdash;leaving part of the commencement
+and the conclusion for our consideration, if God permit, next Sunday.</p>
+
+<p>There are three main questions on which the apostle here gives his
+inspired decision. The first decision is concerning the sanctity of
+the marriage-bond between two Christians. His verdict is given in the
+tenth verse: &ldquo;Unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let
+not the wife depart from her husband.&rdquo; He lays down this principle,
+that the union is an indissoluble one.</p>
+
+<p>Upon such a subject, Christian brethren, before a mixed congregation,
+it is manifestly evident that we can only speak in general terms. It
+will be sufficient to say that marriage is of all earthly unions
+almost the only one permitting of no change but that of death. It is
+that engagement in which man exerts his most awful and solemn
+power,&mdash;the power of responsibility which belongs to him as one that
+shall give account,&mdash;the power of abnegating the right to change,&mdash;the
+power of parting with his freedom,&mdash;the power of doing <i>that</i> which in
+this world can never be reversed. And yet it is perhaps that
+relationship which is spoken of most frivolously, and entered into
+most carelessly and most wantonly. It is not an union merely between
+two creatures, it is an union between two spirits; and the intention
+of that bond is to perfect the nature of both, by supplementing their
+deficiencies with the force of contrast, giving to each sex those
+excellencies in which it is naturally deficient; to the one strength
+of character and firmness of moral will, to the other sympathy,
+meekness, tenderness. And just so solemn, and just so glorious as
+these ends are for which the union was contemplated and intended, just
+so terrible are the consequences if it be perverted and abused. For
+there is no earthly relationship which has so much power to ennoble
+and to exalt. Very strong language does the apostle use in this
+chapter respecting it: &ldquo;What knoweth thou, O wife, whether thou shalt
+<i>save</i> thy husband? or how knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt
+save thy wife?&rdquo; The very power of <i>saving</i> belongs to this
+relationship. And on the other hand, there is no earthly relationship
+which has so much power to wreck and ruin the soul. For there are two
+rocks in this world of ours on which the soul must either anchor or be
+wrecked. The one is God; the other is the sex opposite to itself. The
+one is the &ldquo;Rock of Ages,&rdquo; on which if the human soul anchors it lives
+the blessed life of faith; against which if the soul be dashed and
+broken, there ensues the wreck of Atheism&mdash;the worst ruin of the soul.
+The other rock is of another character. Blessed is the man, blessed is
+the woman whose life-experience has taught a confiding belief in the
+excellencies of the sex opposite to their own&mdash;a blessedness second
+only to the blessedness of salvation. And the ruin in the other case
+is second only to the ruin of everlasting perdition&mdash;the same wreck
+and ruin of the soul.</p>
+
+<p>These then, are the two tremendous alternatives: on the one hand the
+possibility of securing, in all sympathy and tenderness, the laying of
+that step on which man rises towards his perfection; on the other hand
+the blight of all sympathy, to be dragged down to earth, and forced to
+become frivolous and common-place; to lose all zest and earnestness in
+life, to have heart and life degraded by mean and
+perpetually-recurring sources of disagreement; these are the two
+alternatives, and it is the worst of these alternatives which the
+young risk when they form an inconsiderate union, excusably
+indeed&mdash;because through inexperience; and it is the worst of these
+alternatives which parents risk&mdash;not excusably but inexcusably&mdash;when
+they bring up their children with no higher view of what that tie is,
+than the merely prudential one of a rich and honourable marriage.</p>
+
+<p>The second decision which the apostle makes respecting another of the
+questions proposed to him by the Corinthians, is as to the sanctity of
+the marriage bond between a Christian and one who is a heathen. When
+Christianity first entered into our world, and was little understood,
+it seemed to threaten the dislocation and alteration of all existing
+relationships. Many difficulties arose; such for instance, as the one
+here started. When of two heathen parties only one was converted to
+Christianity, the question arose, What in this case is the duty of the
+Christian? Is not the duty separation? Is not the marriage in itself
+null and void? as if it were an union between one dead and one
+living? And that perpetual contact with a heathen, and therefore an
+enemy of God, is not that in a relation so close and intimate,
+perpetual defilement? The apostle decides this with his usual inspired
+wisdom. He decides that the marriage-bond is sacred still. Diversities
+of religious opinion, even the farthest and widest diversity, cannot
+sanction separation. And so he decides in the 13th verse, &ldquo;The woman
+which hath an husband that believeth not, if he be pleased to dwell
+with her, let her not leave him.&rdquo; And, &ldquo;if any brother hath a wife
+that believeth not, and she be pleased to dwell with him, let him not
+put her away,&rdquo; v. 12.</p>
+
+<p>Now for us in the present day, the decision on this point is not of so
+much importance as the reason which is adduced in support of it. The
+proof which the Apostle gives of the sanctity of the marriage is
+exceedingly remarkable. Practically it amounts to this;&mdash;If this were
+no marriage, but an unhallowed alliance, it would follow as a
+necessary consequence that the offspring could not be reckoned in any
+sense as the children of God; but, on the other hand, it is the
+instinctive, unwavering conviction of every Christian parent, united
+though he or she may be to a heathen, &ldquo;My child is a child of God,&rdquo;
+or, in the Jewish form of expression, &ldquo;My child is <i>clean</i>.&rdquo; So the
+apostle says, &ldquo;the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and
+the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your
+children unclean; but now they are holy,&rdquo; for it follows if the
+children are holy in this sense of dedicated to God, and are capable
+of Christian relationship, then the marriage relation was not
+unhallowed, but sacred and indissoluble.</p>
+
+<p>The value of this argument in the present day depends on its relation
+to baptism. The great question we are deciding in the present day may
+be reduced to a very few words. This question&mdash;the Baptismal
+question&mdash;is this:&mdash;whether we are baptized because we <i>are</i> the
+children of God, or, whether we are the children of God because we are
+<i>baptized</i>; whether in other words, when the Catechism of the Church
+of England says that by baptism we are &ldquo;made the children of God,&rdquo; we
+are to understand thereby that we are made something which we were not
+before&mdash;magically and mysteriously changed; or, whether we are to
+understand that we are made the children of God by baptism in the same
+sense that a sovereign is made a sovereign by coronation. Here the
+apostle's argument is full, decisive, and unanswerable. He does not
+say that these children were Christian, or clean, because they were
+<i>baptized</i>, but they were the children of God because they were the
+children of one Christian parent; nay more than that, such children
+could scarcely ever have been baptized, because, if the rite met with
+opposition from one of the parents, it would be an entire and perfect
+veto to the possibility of baptism. You will observe that the very
+fundamental idea out of which infant-baptism arises is, that the
+impression produced upon the mind and character of the child by the
+Christian parent, makes the child one of a Christian community; and,
+therefore, as Peter argued that Cornelius had received the Holy Ghost,
+and so was to be baptized, just in the same way, as they are adopted
+into the Christian family and receive a Christian impression, the
+children of Christian parents are also to be baptized.</p>
+
+<p>Observe also the important truth which comes out collaterally from
+this argument&mdash;namely, the sacredness of the impression, which arises
+from the close connection between parent and child. Stronger far than
+education&mdash;going on before education can commence, possibly from the
+very first moments of consciousness, we begin to impress ourselves on
+our children. Our character, voice, features, qualities&mdash;modified, no
+doubt, by entering into a new human being, and into a different
+organization&mdash;are impressed upon our children. Not the inculcation of
+opinions, but much rather the formation of principles, and of the tone
+of character, the derivation of qualities. Physiologists tell us of
+the derivation of the mental qualities from the father, and of the
+moral from the mother. But be this as it may, there is scarcely one
+here who cannot trace back his present religious character to some
+impression, in early life, from one or other of his parents&mdash;a tone, a
+look, a word, a habit, or even, it may be, a bitter, miserable
+exclamation of remorse.</p>
+
+<p>The third decision which the apostle gives, the third principle which
+he lays down, is but the development of the last. Christianity he
+says, does not interfere with existing relationships. First he lays
+down the principle, and then unfolds the principle in two ways,
+ecclesiastically and civilly. The principle he lays down in almost
+every variety of form. In the 17th verse, &ldquo;As God hath distributed to
+every man, as the Lord hath called every one, so let him walk.&rdquo; In the
+20th verse, &ldquo;Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was
+called.&rdquo; In the 24th verse, &ldquo;Brethren, let every man wherein he is
+called therein abide with God.&rdquo; This is the principle. Christianity
+was not to interfere with existing relationships; Christian men were
+to remain in those relationships in which they were, and in them to
+develope the inward spirituality of the Christian life. Then he
+applies this principle in two ways. First of all, ecclesiastically.
+With respect to their church, or ecclesiastical affairs, he says&mdash;&ldquo;Is
+any man called being circumcised? Let him not become uncircumcised. Is
+any man in uncircumcision? Let him not be circumcised.&rdquo; In other
+words, the Jews, after their conversion, were to continue Jews, if
+they would. Christianity required no change in these outward things,
+for it was not in <i>these</i> that the depth and reality of the kingdom of
+Christ consisted. So the Apostle Paul took Timothy and circumcised
+him; so, also, he used all the Jewish customs with which he was
+familiar, and performed a vow, as related in the Acts of the Apostles,
+&ldquo;having shorn his head in Cenchrea; for he had a vow.&rdquo; It was not his
+opinion that it was the duty of a Christian to overthrow the Jewish
+system. He knew that the Jewish system could not last, but what he
+wanted was to vitalize the system&mdash;to throw into it not a Jewish, but
+a Christian feeling; and so doing, he might continue in it so long as
+it would hold together. And so it was no doubt, with all the other
+apostles. We have no evidence that before the destruction of the
+Jewish polity, there was any attempt made by them to overthrow the
+Jewish external religion. They kept the Jewish Sabbath, and observed
+the Jewish ritual. One of them, James, the Christian Bishop of
+Jerusalem, though a Christian, was even among the Jews remarkable and
+honourable for the regularity with which he observed all his Jewish
+duties. Now let us apply this to modern duties. The great desire among
+men now, appears to be to alter institutions, to have perfect
+institutions, as if <i>they</i> would make perfect men. Mark the difference
+between this feeling and that of the apostle, &ldquo;Let every man abide in
+the same calling wherein he was called.&rdquo; We are called to be members
+of the Church of England&mdash;what is our duty now? What would Paul have
+done? Is this our duty&mdash;to put such questions to ourselves as these?
+&ldquo;Is there any single, particular sentence in the service of my Church
+with which I do not entirely agree? Is there any single ceremony with
+which my whole soul does not go along? If so, then is it my duty to
+leave it at once?&rdquo; No, my brethren, all that we have to do is to say,
+&ldquo;All our existing institutions are those under which God has placed
+us, under which we are to mould our lives according to His will.&rdquo; It
+is our duty to vitalize our forms, to throw into them a holier, deeper
+meaning. My Christian brethren, surely no man will get true rest, true
+repose for his soul in these days of controversy, until he has learned
+the wise significance of these wise words&mdash;&ldquo;Let every man abide in the
+same calling wherein he was called.&rdquo; He will but gain unrest, he will
+but disquiet himself, if he says, &ldquo;I am sinning by continuing in this
+imperfect system,&rdquo; if he considers it his duty to change his calling
+if his opinions do not agree in every particular and special point
+with the system under which God has placed him.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, the apostle applies this principle civilly. And you will
+observe he applies it to that civil relationship which of all others,
+was the most difficult to harmonize with Christianity&mdash;slavery. &ldquo;Art
+thou called,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;being a servant? Care not for it.&rdquo; Now, in
+considering this part of the subject we should carry along with us
+these two recollections. First, we should recollect that Christianity
+had made much way among this particular class, the class of slaves. No
+wonder that men cursed with slavery embraced with joy a religion which
+was perpetually teaching the worth and dignity of the human soul, and
+declaring that rich and poor, peer and peasant, master and slave, were
+equal in the sight of God. And yet, great as this growth was, it
+contained within it elements of danger. It was to be feared, lest men,
+hearing for ever of brotherhood and Christian equality, should be
+tempted and excited to throw off the yoke by <i>force</i>, and compel their
+masters and oppressors to do them right.</p>
+
+<p>The other fact we are to keep in remembrance is this&mdash;that all this
+occurred in an age in which slavery had reached its worst and most
+fearful form, an age in which the emperors were accustomed, not
+unfrequently, to feed their fish with living slaves; when captives
+were led to fight in the amphitheatre with wild beasts or with each
+other, to glut the Roman appetite for blood upon a Roman holiday. And
+yet fearful as it was, the apostle says, &ldquo;Care not for it.&rdquo; And
+fearful as war was in those days, when the soldiers came to John to be
+baptized, he did not recommend them to join some &ldquo;Peace Association,&rdquo;
+to use the modern term; he simply exhorted them to be content with
+their wages.</p>
+
+<p>And hence we understand the way in which Christianity was to work. It
+interferes indirectly and not directly with existing institutions. No
+doubt it will at length abolish war and slavery, but there is not one
+case where we find Christianity interfering with institutions, as
+such. Even when Onesimus ran away and came to Paul, the apostle sent
+him back to his master Philemon, not dissolving the connection between
+them. And then, as a consolation to the servant, he told him of a
+higher feeling&mdash;a feeling that would make him free, with the chain and
+shackle upon his arm. And so it was possible for the Christian then,
+as it is now, to be possessed of the highest liberty even under
+tyranny. It many times occurred that Christian men found themselves
+placed under an unjust and tyrannical government, and compelled to
+pay unjust taxes. The Son of Man showed his freedom not by refusing,
+but by paying them. His glorious liberty could do so without any
+feeling of degradation; obeying the laws, not because they were right,
+but because institutions are to be upheld with cordiality.</p>
+
+<p>One thing in conclusion we have to observe. It is possible from all
+this to draw a most inaccurate conclusion. Some men have spoken of
+Christianity as if it was entirely indifferent about liberty and all
+public questions&mdash;as if with such things as these Christianity did not
+concern itself at all. This indifference is not to be found in the
+Apostle Paul. While he asserts that inward liberty is the only true
+liberty, he still goes on to say, &ldquo;If thou mayst be free use it
+rather.&rdquo; For he well knew that although it was possible for a man to
+be a high and lofty Christian even though he were a slave, yet it was
+not probable that he would be so. Outward institutions are necessary
+partly to make a perfect Christian character; and thus Christianity
+works from what is internal to what is external. It gave to the slave
+the feeling of his dignity as a man, at the same time it gave to the
+Christian master a new view of his relation to his slave, and taught
+him to regard him &ldquo;not now as a servant, but above a servant, a
+brother beloved.&rdquo; And so by degrees slavery passed into freed
+servitude, and freed servitude, under God's blessing, may pass into
+something else.</p>
+
+<p>There are two mistakes which are often made upon this subject; one is,
+the error of supposing that outward institutions are unnecessary for
+the formation of character, and the other, that of supposing that they
+are <i>all</i> that is required to form the human soul. If we understand
+rightly the duty of a Christian man, it is this: to make his brethren
+free inwardly and outwardly; first inwardly, so that they may become
+masters of themselves, rulers of their passions, having the power of
+self-rule and self-control; and then outwardly, so that there may be
+every power and opportunity of developing the inward life; in the
+language of the prophet, &ldquo;To break the rod of the oppressor and let
+the oppressed go free.&rdquo;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIV" id="XIV"></a>XIV.<br />
+<small><i>Preached January II, 1852.</i></small><br />
+MARRIAGE AND CELIBACY.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote class="scripture"><p>&ldquo;But this I say, brethren, the time is short: it remaineth that
+both they that have wives be as though they had none; and they
+that weep as though they wept not; and they that rejoice as though
+they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed
+not; and they that use this world as not abusing it: for the
+fashion of this world passeth away.&rdquo;&mdash;1 Corinthians vii. 29-31.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">The subject of our exposition last Sunday was an essential portion of
+this chapter. It is our duty to examine now the former and the latter
+portions of it. These portions are occupied entirely with the inspired
+apostolic decision upon this one question&mdash;the comparative advantages
+and merits of celibacy and marriage. One preliminary question,
+however, is to be discussed. How came it that such a question should
+be put at all to the apostle?</p>
+
+<p>In the church at Corinth there were two different sections of society;
+first there were those who had been introduced into the church through
+Judaism, and afterwards those who had been converted from different
+forms of heathenism. Now it is well known, that it was the tendency of
+Judaism highly to venerate the marriage state, and just in the same
+proportion to disparage that of celibacy, and to place those who led a
+single life under a stigma and disgrace. Those converts therefore,
+entered into the Church of Christ carrying with them their old Jewish
+prejudices. On the other hand, many who had entered into the Christian
+Church had been converted to Christianity from different forms of
+heathenism. Among these prevailed a tendency to the belief (which
+originated primarily in the oriental schools of philosophy) that the
+highest virtue consisted in the denial of all natural inclinations,
+and the suppression of all natural desires; and looking upon marriage
+on one side only, and that the lowest, they were tempted to consider
+it as low, earthly, carnal, and sensual. It was at this time that
+Christianity entered into the world, and while it added fresh dignity
+and significance to the marriage relationship, it at the same time
+shed a splendour and a glory upon the other state. The virginity of
+the mother of Our Lord&mdash;the solitary life of John the Baptist&mdash;the
+pure and solitary youth of Christ Himself&mdash;had thrown upon celibacy a
+meaning and dignity which it did not possess before. No marvel
+therefore, that to men so educated, and but half prepared for
+Christianity, practices like these should have become exaggerations;
+for it rarely happens that any right ideas can be given to the world
+without suffering exaggeration. Human nature progresses, the human
+mind goes on; but it is rarely in a straight line, almost always
+through the medium of re-action, rebounding from extremes which
+produce contrary extremes. So it was in the Church of Corinth. There
+were two opposite parties holding views diametrically opposed to one
+another&mdash;one honouring the married and depreciating the unmarried
+life&mdash;the other attributing peculiar dignity and sanctity to celibacy,
+and looking down with contempt upon the married Christian state.</p>
+
+<p>It is scarcely necessary to remind ourselves that this diversity of
+sentiment has existed in the Church of Christ in almost all ages. For
+example in the early ages, in almost all the writings of the Fathers
+we have exaggerated descriptions of the dignity and glory of the state
+of celibacy. They speak as if the marriage state was low, carnal, and
+worldly; and the other the only one in which it is possible to attain
+to the higher spiritual life&mdash;the one the natural state, fit for man,
+the other the angelic, fit for angels. But ordinarily among men in
+general, in every age, the state of single life has been looked down
+upon and contemned. And then there comes to the parties who are so
+circumstanced a certain sense of shame, and along with this a
+disposition towards calumny and slander. Let us endeavour to
+understand the wise, inspired decision which the Apostle Paul
+pronounced upon this subject. He does not decide, as we might have
+been led to suppose he would, from his own peculiarity of disposition,
+upon one side only; but raises into relief the advantages and
+excellencies of both. He say that neither state has in itself any
+<i>intrinsic</i> merit&mdash;neither is in itself superior to the other. &ldquo;I
+suppose, then,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;that this is good for the present distress.
+Art thou bound unto a wife? Seek not to be loosed. Art thou loosed
+from a wife? Seek not a wife. But and if thou marry, thou hast not
+sinned: and if a virgin marry, she hath not sinned. Nevertheless, such
+shall have trouble in the flesh: but I spare you.&rdquo; That is, I will
+spare you this trouble, in recommending a single, solitary life. You
+will observe that in these words he attributes no intrinsic merit or
+dignity to either celibacy or marriage. The comparative advantages of
+these two states he decides with reference to two considerations;
+first of all with respect to their comparative power in raising the
+character of the individual, and afterwards with reference to the
+opportunities which each respectively gives for the service of God.</p>
+
+
+<p class="break"><b>I.</b> With respect to the single life, he tells us that he had his own
+proper gift from God; in other words, he was one of those rare
+characters who have the power of living without personal sympathy. The
+feelings and affections of the Apostle Paul were of a strange and rare
+character&mdash;tending to expansiveness rather than concentration. Those
+sympathies which ordinary men expend upon a few, he extended to many.
+The members of the churches which he had founded at Corinth, and
+Ephesus, and Colosse, and Philippi, were to him as children; and he
+threw upon them all that sympathy and affection which other men throw
+upon their own domestic circle. To a man so trained and educated, the
+single life gave opportunities of serving God which the marriage state
+could not give. St. Paul had risen at once to that philanthropy&mdash;that
+expansive benevolence, which most other men only attain by slow
+degrees, and this was made, by God's blessing, a means of serving his
+cause. However we may sneer at the monastic system of the Church of
+Rome, it is unquestionable that many great works have been done by the
+monks which could not have been performed by men who had entered into
+the marriage relationship. Such examples of heroic Christian effort as
+are seen in the lives of St. Bernard, of Francis Xavier, and many
+others, are scarcely ever to be found except in the single state. The
+forlorn hope in battle, as well as in the cause of Christianity, must
+consist of men who have no domestic relationships to divide their
+devotion, who will leave no wife nor children to mourn over their
+loss.</p>
+
+<p>Let this great truth bring its improvement to those who, either of
+their own choice, or by the force of circumstances, are destined
+hereafter to live a single life on earth; and, instead of yielding to
+that feeling so common among mankind&mdash;the feeling of envy at another's
+happiness&mdash;instead of becoming gloomy, and bitter and censorious, let
+them remember what the Bible has to tell of the deep significance of
+the Virgin Mary's life&mdash;let them reflect upon the snares and
+difficulties from which they are saved&mdash;let them consider how much
+more time and money they can give to God&mdash;that they are called to the
+great work of serving Causes, of entering into public questions, while
+others spend their time and talents only upon themselves. The state of
+single life, however we may be tempted to think lightly of it, is a
+state that has peculiar opportunities of deep blessedness.</p>
+
+<p><b>2.</b> On the other hand, the Apostle Paul brings forward, into strong
+relief, the blessedness and advantages of the marriage state. He tells
+us that it is a type of the union between the Redeemer and the Church.
+But as this belongs to another part of the subject, we shall not enter
+into it now. But we observe, that men in general, must have their
+sympathies drawn out step by step, little by little. We do not rise to
+philanthropy all at once. We begin with personal, domestic, particular
+affections. And not only is it true that rarely can any man have the
+whole of his love drawn out except through this domestic state, but,
+also, it is to be borne in mind that those who have entered into this
+relationship have also their own peculiar advantages. It is true that
+in the marriage-life, interrupted as it is by daily cares and small
+trifles, those works of Christian usefulness cannot be so continuously
+carried on as in the other. But is there not a deep meaning to be
+learned from the old expression&mdash;that celibacy is an <i>angelic</i> state?
+that it is preternatural, and not natural? that the goodness which is
+induced by it is not, so to speak, the natural goodness of Humanity,
+but such a goodness as God scarcely intended?</p>
+
+<p>Who of us cannot recollect a period of his history when all his time
+was devoted to the cause of Christ; when all his money was given to
+the service of God; and when we were tempted to look down upon those
+who were less ardent than ourselves, as if they were not Christians?
+But now the difficulties of life have come upon us; we have become
+involved in the trifles and the smallness of social domestic
+existence; and these have made us less devoted perhaps, less
+preternatural, less angelic&mdash;but more human, better fitted to enter
+into the daily cares and small difficulties of our ordinary humanity.
+And this has been represented to us by two great lives&mdash;one human, the
+other divine&mdash;one, the life of John the Baptist, and the other, of
+Jesus Christ. In both these cases is verified the saying, that &ldquo;Wisdom
+is justified of all her children.&rdquo; Those who are wisdom's
+children&mdash;the truly wise&mdash;will recognise an even wisdom in both these
+lives; they will see that there are cases in which a solitary life is
+to be chosen for the sake of God; while there are other cases in which
+a social life becomes our bounden duty. But it should be specially
+observed here that <i>that</i> Life which has been given to us as a
+specimen of life for all, was a social, a human Life. Christ did not
+refuse to mix with the common joys and common sorrows of Humanity. He
+was present at the marriage-feast, and by the bier of the widow's son.
+This of the two lives was the one which, because it was the most
+human, was the most divine; the most rare, the most difficult, the
+most natural&mdash;therefore, the most Christ-like.</p>
+
+
+<p class="break"><b>II.</b> Let us notice, in the second place, the principle upon which the
+apostle founds this decision. It is given in the text&mdash;&ldquo;This I say,
+brethren, the time is short: it remaineth that both they that have
+wives be as though they had none,&rdquo; &ldquo;for the fashion of this world
+passeth away.&rdquo; Now observe here, I pray you, the deep wisdom of this
+apostolic decision. In point of fact it comes to this: Christianity is
+a spirit, not a law; it is a set of principles, not a set of rules; it
+is not a saying to us&mdash;You shall do this, you shall not do that&mdash;you
+shall use this particular dress, you shall not use that&mdash;you <i>shall</i>
+lead, you shall <i>not</i> lead a married life&mdash;Christianity consists of
+principles, but the application of those principles is left to every
+man's individual conscience. With respect not only to this particular
+case, but to all the questions which had been brought before him, the
+apostle applies the same principle; the cases upon which he decided
+were many and various, but the large, broad principle of his decision
+remains the same in all. You may marry, and you have not sinned; you
+may remain unmarried, and you do not sin; if you are invited to a
+heathen feast, you may go, or you may abstain from going; you may
+remain a slave, or you may become free; in <i>these things</i> Christianity
+does not consist. But what it does demand is this: that whether
+married or unmarried, whether a slave or free, in sorrow or in joy,
+you are to live in a spirit higher and loftier than that of the world.</p>
+
+<p>The apostle gives us in the text two motives for this Christian
+unworldliness. The first motive which he lays down is this&mdash;&ldquo;The time
+is short.&rdquo; You will observe how frequently, in the course of his
+remarks upon the questions proposed to him, the apostle turns, as it
+were entirely away from the subject, as if worn-out and wearied by the
+comparatively trivial character of the questions&mdash;as if this
+balancing of one earthly condition or advantage with another, were but
+a solemn trifling compared with eternal things. And so here, he seems
+to turn away from the question before him, and speaks of the shortness
+of time. &ldquo;The time is short!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Time is short in reference to two things. First, it is short in
+reference to the person who regards it. That mysterious thing <i>Time</i>
+is a matter of sensation, and not a reality; a modification merely of
+our own consciousness, and not actual existence; depending upon the
+flight of ideas&mdash;long to one, short to another. The span granted to
+the butterfly, the child of a single summer, may be long; that which
+is given to the cedar of Lebanon may be short. The shortness of time,
+therefore is entirely relative&mdash;belonging to us not to God. Time is
+short in reference to <i>existence</i>, whether you look at it before or
+after. Time past seems nothing; time to come always seems long. We say
+this chiefly for the sake of the young. To them fifty or sixty years
+seem a treasure inexhaustible. But, my young brethren, ask the old
+man, trembling on the verge of the grave, what he thinks of Time and
+Life. He will tell you that the three-score years and ten, or even the
+hundred-and-twenty years of Jacob, are but &ldquo;few and evil.&rdquo; And,
+therefore, if you are tempted to unbelief in respect to this question,
+we appeal to experience&mdash;experience alone can judge of its truth.</p>
+
+<p>Once more, time is short with reference to its <i>opportunities</i>. For
+this is the emphatic meaning in the original&mdash;literally, &ldquo;the
+opportunity is compressed, or shut in.&rdquo; Brethren, time may be long,
+and yet the opportunity may be very short. The sun in autumn may be
+bright and clear, but the seed which has not been sown until then
+will not vegetate. A man may have vigour and energy in manhood and
+maturity, but the work which ought to have been done in childhood and
+youth cannot be done in old age. A chance once gone in this world can
+never be recovered.</p>
+
+<p>Brother men&mdash;have you learned the meaning of yesterday? Do you rightly
+estimate the importance of to-day? That there are duties to be done
+to-day which cannot be done to-morrow? This it is that throws so
+solemn a significance into your work. The time for working is short,
+therefore begin to-day; &ldquo;for the night is coming when no man can
+work.&rdquo; Time is short in reference to <i>eternity</i>. It was especially
+with this reference that the text was written. In those days, and even
+by the apostles themselves, the day of the Lord's appearance and
+second advent seemed much nearer than it was. They believed that it
+would occur during their own lives. And with this belief came the
+feeling which comes sometimes to all. &ldquo;Oh, in comparison with that
+vast Hereafter, this little life shrivels into nothing! What is to-day
+worth, or its duties or its cares?&rdquo; All deep minds have thought that.
+The thought of Time is solemn and awful to all minds in proportion to
+their depth&mdash;and in proportion as the mind is superficial, the thought
+has appeared little, and has been treated with levity. Brethren, let
+but a man possess himself of that thought&mdash;the deep thought of the
+brevity of time; this thought&mdash;that time is short, and that eternity
+is long&mdash;and he has learned the first great secret of unworldliness.</p>
+
+<p><b>2.</b> The second motive which the apostle gives us is the changing
+character of the external world. &ldquo;The fashion of this world passeth
+away&rdquo;&mdash;literally &ldquo;the <i>scenery</i> of this world,&rdquo; a dramatic
+expression, drawn from the Grecian stage. One of the deepest of modern
+thinkers has told us in words often quoted, &ldquo;All the world's a stage.&rdquo;
+And a deeper thinker than he, because inspired, had said long before
+in the similar words of the text, &ldquo;the <i>scenery</i> of this world passeth
+away.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>There are two ways in which this is true. First, it is true with
+respect to all the things by which we are surrounded. It is only in
+poetry&mdash;the poetry of the Psalms for example&mdash;that the hills are
+called &ldquo;everlasting.&rdquo; Go to the side of the ocean which bounds our
+country, and watch the tide going out, bearing with it the sand which
+it has worn from the cliffs; the very boundaries of our land are
+changing; they are not the same as they were when these words were
+written. Every day new relationships are forming around us; new
+circumstances are calling upon us to act&mdash;to act manfully, firmly,
+decisively, and up to the occasion, remembering that an opportunity
+once gone is gone for ever. Indulge not in vain regrets for the past,
+in vainer resolves for the future&mdash;act, act in the present.</p>
+
+<p>Again, this is true with respect to ourselves. &ldquo;The fashion of this
+world passeth away&rdquo; in us. The feelings we have now are not those
+which we had in childhood. There has passed away a glory from the
+earth&mdash;the stars, the sun, the moon, the green fields have lost their
+beauty and significance&mdash;nothing remains as it was, except their
+repeated impressions on the mind, the impressions of time, space,
+eternity, colour, form; these cannot alter, but all besides has
+changed. Our very minds alter. There is no bereavement so painful, no
+shock so terrible, but time will remove or alleviate. The keenest
+feeling in this world time wears out at last, and our minds become
+like old monumental tablets which have lost the inscription once
+graven deeply upon them.</p>
+
+<p>In conclusion, we have to examine the nature of this Christian
+unworldliness which is taught us in the text. The principle of
+unworldliness is stated in the latter portion of the text; in the
+former part the apostle makes an application of the principle to four
+cases of life. First, to cases of domestic relationship&mdash;&ldquo;it remaineth
+that they that have wives be as though they had none.&rdquo; Secondly, to
+cases of sorrow&mdash;&ldquo;and they that weep as though they wept not.&rdquo;
+Thirdly, to cases of joy&mdash;&ldquo;and they that rejoice as though they
+rejoiced not.&rdquo; And, finally to cases of the acquisition of worldly
+property, &ldquo;and they that buy as though they possessed not.&rdquo; Time will
+not allow us to go into these applications; we must confine ourselves
+to a brief consideration of the principle. The principle of Christian
+unworldliness, then is this, to &ldquo;use this world as not abusing it.&rdquo;
+Here Christianity takes its stand, in opposition to two contrary
+principles. The spirit of the world says, &ldquo;Time is short, therefore
+use it while you have it; take your fill of pleasure while you may.&rdquo; A
+narrow religion says, &ldquo;Time is short, therefore temporal things should
+receive no attention: do not weep, do not rejoice; it is beneath a
+Christian.&rdquo; In opposition to the narrow spirit of religion,
+Christianity says, &ldquo;<i>Use</i> this world;&rdquo;&mdash;in opposition to the spirit of
+the world Christianity says, &ldquo;Do not <i>abuse</i> it.&rdquo; A distinct duty
+arises from this principle to use the world. While in the world we are
+citizens of the world: it is our <i>duty</i> to share its joys, to take our
+part in its sorrows, not to shrink from its difficulties, but to mix
+ourselves with its infinite opportunities. So that if time be short,
+so far from that fact lessening their dignity or importance, it
+infinitely increases them; since upon these depend the destinies of
+our eternal being. Unworldliness is this&mdash;to hold things from God in
+the perpetual conviction that they will not last; to have the world,
+and not to let the world have us; to be the world's masters, and not
+the world's slaves.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XV" id="XV"></a>XV.<br />
+<small><i>Preached January 11, 1852.</i></small><br />
+THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH A FAMILY.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote class="scripture"><p>&ldquo;Our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and
+earth is named.&rdquo;&mdash;Ephesians iii. 14, 15.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">In the verses immediately before the text the Apostle Paul has been
+speaking of what he calls a mystery&mdash;that is, a revealed secret. And
+the secret was this, that the Gentiles would be &ldquo;fellow-heirs and of
+the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ by the gospel.&rdquo;
+It had been kept secret from the former ages and generations; it was a
+secret which the Jew had not suspected, had not even dreamt of. It
+appeared to him to be his duty to keep as far as possible from the
+Gentile. Circumcision, which taught him the duty of separation from
+the Gentile spirit, and Gentile practices, seemed to him to teach
+hatred towards Gentile <i>persons</i>, until at length, in the good
+pleasure and providence of God, in the fulness of time, through the
+instrumentality of men whose <i>hearts</i> rather than whose intellects
+were inspired by God, the truth came out distinct and clear, that God
+was the Father of the Gentiles as well as of the Jews, &ldquo;for the same
+Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon Him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In the progress of the months, my Christian brethren, we have arrived
+again at that period of the year in which our Church calls upon us to
+commemorate the Epiphany, or manifestation of Jesus Christ to the
+Gentiles, and we know not that in the whole range of Scripture we
+could find a passage which more distinctly and definitely than this,
+brings before us the spirit in which it is incumbent upon us to enter
+upon this duty. In considering this passage we shall divide it into
+these two branches:&mdash;1st, the definition which the Apostle Paul here
+gives of the Church of Christ; and, 2ndly, the Name by which this
+Church is named.</p>
+
+
+<p class="break"><b>I.</b> In the first place, let us consider the definition given by the
+Apostle Paul of the Christian Church, taken in its entirety. It is
+this, &ldquo;the whole family in heaven and earth.&rdquo; But in order to
+understand this fully, it will be necessary for us to break it up into
+its different terms.</p>
+
+<p><b>1.</b> First of all it is taught by this definition that the Church of
+Christ is a society founded upon natural affinities&mdash;a &ldquo;family.&rdquo; A
+family is built on affinities which are natural, not artificial; it is
+not a combination, but a society. In ancient times an association of
+interest combined men in one guild or corporation for protecting the
+common persons in that corporation from oppression. In modern times
+identity of political creed or opinion has bound men together in one
+league, in order to establish those political principles which
+appeared to them of importance. Similarity of taste has united men
+together in what is called an association, or a society, in order by
+this means to attain more completely the ends of that science to which
+they had devoted themselves. But as these have been raised
+artificially, so their end is inevitably, dissolution. Society passes
+on, and guilds and corporations die; principles are established, and
+leagues become dissolved; tastes change, and then the association or
+society breaks up and comes to nothing.</p>
+
+<p>It is upon another principle altogether that that which we call a
+family, or true society, is formed. It is not built upon similarity of
+taste, nor identity of opinion, but upon affinities of nature. You do
+not <i>choose</i> who shall be your brother; you cannot exclude your mother
+or your sister; it does not depend upon choice or arbitrary opinion at
+all, but is founded upon the eternal nature of things. And precisely
+in the same way is the Christian Church formed&mdash;upon natural affinity,
+and not upon artificial combination. &ldquo;The family, the whole family in
+heaven and earth;&rdquo; not made up of those who <i>call</i> themselves
+brethren, but of those who <i>are</i> brethren; not founded merely upon the
+principles of combination, but upon the principles of affinity. That
+is not a church, or a family, or a society which is made up by men's
+choice, as when in the upper classes of life, men of fashion unite
+together, selecting their associates from their own <i>class</i>, and form
+what is technically called a society; it is a combination if you will,
+but a society it is not&mdash;a family it is not&mdash;a Church of Christ it
+cannot be.</p>
+
+<p>And, again, when the Baptists or the Independents, or any other
+sectarians, unite themselves with men holding the same faith and
+entertaining the same opinions, there may be a <i>sect</i>, a
+<i>combination</i>, a <i>persuasion</i>, but a <i>Church</i> there cannot be. And so
+again, when the Jew in time past linked himself with the Jew, with
+those of the same nation, there you have what in ancient times was
+called Judaism, and in modern times is called Hebraicism&mdash;a system, a
+combination, but not a Church. The Church rises ever out of the
+family. First of all in the good providence of God, there is the
+family, then the tribe, then the nation; and then the nation merges
+itself into Humanity. And the nation which refuses to merge its
+nationality in Humanity, to lose itself in the general interests of
+mankind, is left behind, and loses almost its religious
+nationality&mdash;like the Jewish people.</p>
+
+<p>Such is the first principle. A man is born of the same family, and is
+not made such by an appointment, or by arbitrary choice.</p>
+
+<p><b>2.</b> Another thing which is taught by this definition is this, that the
+Church of Christ is a whole made up of manifold diversities. We are
+told here it is &ldquo;the <i>whole</i> family,&rdquo; taking into it the great and
+good of ages past, now in heaven; and also the struggling, the humble,
+and the weak now existing upon earth. Here again, the analogy holds
+good between the Church and the family. Never more than in the family
+is the true entirety of our nature seen. Observe how all the
+diversities of human condition and character manifest themselves in
+the family.</p>
+
+<p>First of all, there are the two opposite poles of masculine and
+feminine, which contain within them the entire of our Humanity&mdash;which
+together, not separately, make up the whole of man. Then there are the
+diversities in the degrees and kinds of affection. For when we speak
+of family affection, we must remember that it is made up of many
+diversities. There is nothing more different than the love which the
+sister bears towards the brother, compared with that which the brother
+bears towards the sister. The affection which a man bears towards his
+father is quite distinct from that which he feels towards his mother;
+it is something quite different towards his sister; totally diverse
+again, towards his brother.</p>
+
+<p>And then there are diversities of character. First the mature wisdom
+and stern integrity of the father; then the exuberant tenderness of
+the mother. And then one is brave and enthusiastic, another
+thoughtful, and another tender. One is remarkable for being full of
+rich humour, another is sad, mournful, even melancholy. Again, besides
+these, there are diversities of condition in life. First, there is the
+heir, sustaining the name and honour of the family; then perchance the
+soldier, in whose career all the anxiety and solicitude of the family
+is centred; then the man of business, to whom they look up, trusting
+his advice, expecting his counsel; lastly perhaps, there is the
+invalid, from the very cradle trembling between life and death,
+drawing out all the sympathies and anxieties of each member of the
+family, and so uniting them all more closely, from their having one
+common point of sympathy and solicitude. Now, you will observe that
+these are not accidental, but absolutely essential to the idea of a
+family; for so far as any one of them is lost, so far the family is
+incomplete. A family made up of one sex alone, all brothers and no
+sisters; or in which all are devoted to one pursuit; or in which there
+is no diversity of temper and dispositions&mdash;the same monotonous
+repeated identity&mdash;a sameness in the type of character&mdash;this is not a
+family, it is only the fragment of a family.</p>
+
+<p>And precisely in the same way all these diversities of character and
+condition are necessary to constitute and complete the idea of a
+Christian Church. For as in ages past it was the delight of the Church
+to canonize one particular class of virtues&mdash;as for instance, purity
+or martyrdom&mdash;so now, in every age, and in every individual bosom,
+there is a tendency to canonize, or honour, or reckon as Christian,
+only one or two classes of Christian qualities. For example, if you
+were to ask in the present day where you should find a type of the
+Christian character, many in all probability would point you to the
+man who keeps the Sabbath-day, is regular in his attendance upon the
+services of the Church, who loves to hear the Christian sermon. This
+is a phase of Christian character&mdash;that which is essentially and
+peculiarly the <i>feminine</i> type of religion. But is there in God's
+Church to be found no place for that type which is rather masculine
+than feminine?&mdash;which, not in litanies or in psalm-singing does the
+will of God, but by struggling for principles, and contending for the
+truth&mdash;<i>that</i> life, whose prayer is action, whose aspiration is
+continual effort?</p>
+
+<p>Or again, in every age, amongst all men, in the history of almost
+every individual, at one time or another, there has been a tendency
+towards that which has been emphatically named in modern times
+<i>hero-worship</i>&mdash;leading us to an admiration of the more singular,
+powerful, noble qualities of humanity. And wherever this tendency to
+hero-worship exists there will be found side by side with it a
+tendency to undervalue and depreciate excellences of an opposite
+character&mdash;the humble, meek, retiring qualities. But it is precisely
+for these that the Church of Christ finds place. &ldquo;Blessed are the
+meek, blessed are the merciful, blessed are they that hunger and
+thirst after righteousness, blessed are the poor in spirit.&rdquo; In God's
+world there is a place for the wren and the violet, just as truly as
+there is for the eagle and the rose. In the Church of God there is a
+place&mdash;and that the noblest&mdash;for Dorcas making garments for the poor,
+and for Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus, just as truly as there is
+for Elijah confounding a false religion by his noble opposition; for
+John the Baptist making a king tremble on his throne; or for the
+Apostle Paul &ldquo;compassing sea and land&rdquo; by his wisdom and his heroic
+deeds.</p>
+
+<p>Once more, there are ages, as well as times in our own individual
+experience, when we set up charity as if it were the one only
+Christian character. And wherever this tendency is found there will be
+found at the same time, and side by side with it, a tendency to admire
+the spurious form of charity, which is a sentiment and not a virtue;
+which can sympathize with crime, but not with law; which can be tender
+to savages, but has no respect, no care for national honour. And
+therefore, does this principle of the Apostle Paul call upon us to
+esteem also another form or type of character, and the opposite one;
+that which is remarkable for&mdash;in which predominates&mdash;not so much
+charity as <i>justice</i>; that which was seen in the warriors and prophets
+of old; who perchance, had a more strong recoil from vice than
+sympathy with virtue; whose indignation towards that which is wrong
+and hypocritical was more intense than their love for that which is
+good: the material, the character, out of which the reformer and the
+prophet, those who are called to do great works on earth, are made.</p>
+
+<p>The Church of Christ takes not in one individual form of goodness
+merely, but every form of excellence that can adorn Humanity. Nor is
+this wonderful when we remember Who He was from whom this Church was
+named. It was He in whom centred all excellence&mdash;a righteousness which
+was entire and perfect. But when we speak of the perfection of
+righteousness, let us remember that it is made not of one exaggerated
+character, but of a true harmony, a due proportion of all virtues
+united. In Him were found therefore, that tenderness towards sinners
+which had no sympathy with sin; that humility which could be
+dignified, and was yet united with self-respect; that simplicity which
+is ever to be met with, side by side with true majesty; that love
+which could weep over Jerusalem at the very moment when He was
+pronouncing its doom, that truth and justice which appeared to stand
+as a protection to those who had been oppressed, at the same time that
+He scathed with indignant invective the Pharisees of the then existing
+Jews.</p>
+
+<p>There are two, only two, <i>perfect</i> Humanities. One has existed already
+in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, the other is to be found only
+in the collective Church. Once, only once, has God given a perfect
+representation of Himself, &ldquo;the brightness of the Father's glory, and
+the express image of His person.&rdquo; And if we ask again for a perfect
+Humanity, the answer is, it is not in this Church or in that Church,
+or in this man or in that man, in this age or in that age, but in the
+collective blended graces and beauties, and humanities, which are
+found in every age, in all churches, but not in every separate man.
+So, at least, Paul has taught us, &ldquo;Till we <i>all</i> come&rdquo;&mdash;<i>collectively</i>
+not separately&mdash;&ldquo;in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of
+the Son of God, unto a perfect man&rdquo;&mdash;in other words, to a perfect
+<i>Humanity</i>&mdash;&ldquo;unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of
+Christ.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><b>3.</b> The last thing which is taught us by this definition is, that the
+Church of Christ is a society which is for ever shifting its locality,
+and altering its forms. It is the <i>whole</i> church, &ldquo;the <i>whole</i> family
+in heaven and earth.&rdquo; So then, those who were on earth, and are now in
+heaven, are yet members of the same family still. Those who had their
+home here, now have it there.</p>
+
+<p>Let us see what it is that we should learn from this doctrine. It is
+this, that the dead are not lost to us. There is a sense in which the
+departed are ours more than they were before. There is a sense in
+which the Apostles Paul, or John, the good and great of ages past,
+belong to this age more than to that in which they lived, but in which
+they were not understood; in which the common-place and every-day part
+of their lives hindered the brightness and glory and beauty of their
+character from shining forth. So it is in the family. It is possible
+for men to live in the same house, and partake of the same meal from
+day to day, and from year to year, and yet remain strangers to each
+other, mistaking each other's feelings, not comprehending each other's
+character; and it is only when the Atlantic rolls between, and half a
+hemisphere is interposed, that we learn how dear they are to us, how
+all our life is bound up in deep anxiety with their existence.
+Therefore it is the Christian feels that the family is not broken.
+Think you that family can break or end?&mdash;that because the chair is
+empty, therefore he, your child, is no more? It may be so with the
+coarse, the selfish, the unbelieving, the superstitious; but the eye
+of faith sees there only a transformation. He is not there, he is
+risen. You see the place where he was, but he has passed to heaven. So
+at least the parental heart of David felt of old, &ldquo;by faith and not by
+sight,&rdquo; when speaking of his infant child. &ldquo;I shall go to him, but he
+shall not return to me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Once more, the Church of Christ is a society ever altering and
+changing its external forms. &ldquo;The <i>whole</i> family&rdquo;&mdash;the Church of the
+Patriarchs, and of ages before them; and yet the same family.
+Remember, I pray you, the diversities of form through which, in so
+many ages and generations, this Church has passed. Consider the
+difference there was between the patriarchal Church of the time of
+Abraham and Isaac, and its condition under David; or the difference
+between the Church so existing and its state in the days of the
+apostles; and the marvellous difference between that and the same
+Church four or five centuries later; or, once again, the difference
+between that, externally one, and the Church as it exists in the
+present day, broken into so many fragments. Yet diversified as these
+states may be, they are not more so than the various stages of a
+family.</p>
+
+<p>There is a time when the children are all in one room, around their
+mother's knee. Then comes a time, still further on, when the first
+separation takes place, and some are leaving their home to prepare for
+after life. Afterwards, when all in their different professions,
+trades, or occupations, are separate. At last comes the time when some
+are gone. And, perchance, the two survivors meet at last&mdash;an old,
+gray-haired man, and a weak, worn-out woman&mdash;to mourn over the last
+graves of a household. Christian brethren, which of these is the right
+form&mdash;the true, external pattern of a family? Say we not truly, it
+remains the same under all outward mutations? We must think of this,
+or else we may lose heart in our work. Conceive for instance, the
+feelings of a pious Jew, when Christianity entered this world; when
+all his religious system was broken up&mdash;the Temple service brought to
+a violent end; when that polity which he thought was to redeem and
+ennoble the world was cast aside as a broken and useless thing. Must
+they not have been as gloomy and as dreary as those of the disciples,
+when He was dead who they &ldquo;trusted should have redeemed Israel?&rdquo; In
+both cases the body was gone or was altered&mdash;the spirit had arisen.</p>
+
+<p>And precisely so it is with our fears and unbelieving apprehensions
+now. Institutions pass&mdash;churches alter&mdash;old forms change&mdash;and
+high-minded and good men cling to these as if <i>they</i> were the only
+things by which God could regenerate the world. Christianity appears
+to some men to be effete and worn out. Men who can look back upon the
+times of Venn, and Newton, and Scott&mdash;comparing the degeneracy of
+their descendants with the men of those days&mdash;lose heart, as if all
+things were going wrong. &ldquo;Things are not,&rdquo; they say, &ldquo;as they were in
+our younger days.&rdquo; No my Christian brethren, things are not as they
+then were; but the Christian cause lives on&mdash;not in the successors of
+such men as those; the outward form is altered, but the spirit is
+elsewhere, is risen&mdash;risen just as truly as the spirit of the highest
+Judaism rose again in Christianity. And to mourn over old
+superstitions and effete creeds, is just as unwise as is the grief of
+the mother mourning over the form which was once her child. She cannot
+separate her affection from that form&mdash;those hands, those limbs, those
+features&mdash;are they not her child? The true answer is, her child is not
+there. It is only the form of her child. And it is as unwise to mourn
+over the decay of those institutions&mdash;the change of human forms&mdash;as it
+was unwise in Jonah to mourn with that passionate sorrow over the
+decay of the gourd which had sheltered him from the heat of the
+noontide sun. A worm had eaten the root of the gourd, and it was gone.
+But he who made the gourd the shelter to the weary&mdash;the shadow of
+those who are oppressed by the noontide heat of life&mdash;lived on:
+Jonah's God. And so brethren, all things change&mdash;all things outward
+change and alter; but the God of the Church lives on. The Church of
+God remains under fresh forms&mdash;the one, holy, entire family in heaven
+and earth.</p>
+
+
+<p class="break"><b>II.</b> Pass we on now, in the second place, to consider the name by which
+this Church is named. &ldquo;Our Lord Jesus Christ,&rdquo; the Apostle says, &ldquo;of
+whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Now, every one familiar with the Jewish modes of thought and
+expression, will allow here, that <i>name</i> is but another word to
+express being, actuality, and existence. So when Jacob desired to know
+the character and nature of Jehovah, he said&mdash;&ldquo;Tell me now, I beseech
+thee, thy <i>name</i>&rdquo;. When the Apostle here says, &ldquo;Our Lord Jesus Christ,
+of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is <i>named</i>,&rdquo; it is but
+another way of saying that it is He on Whom the Church depends&mdash;Who
+has given it substantive existence&mdash;without Whom it could not be at
+all. It is but another way of saying what he has expressed
+elsewhere&mdash;&ldquo;that there is none other name under heaven given among
+men, whereby we may be saved.&rdquo; Let us not lose ourselves in vague
+generalities. Separate from Christ, there is no salvation; there can
+be no Christianity. Let us understand what we mean by this. Let us
+clearly define and enter into the meaning of the words we use. When we
+say that our Lord Jesus Christ is He &ldquo;of whom the whole family in
+heaven and earth is named,&rdquo; we mean that the very being of the Church
+depends on Christ&mdash;that it could not be without Him. Now, the Church
+of Christ depends upon these three things&mdash;first, the recognition of a
+common Father; secondly, of a common Humanity; and thirdly, of a
+common Sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p><b>1.</b> First, the recognition of a common Father. That is the sacred truth
+proclaimed by the Epiphany. God revealed in Christ&mdash;not the Father of
+the Jew only, but also of the Gentile. The Father of a &ldquo;whole family.&rdquo;
+Not the partial Father, loving one alone&mdash;the elder&mdash;but the younger
+son besides: the outcast prodigal who had spent his living with
+harlots and sinners, but the child still, and the child of a Father's
+love. Our Lord taught this in His own blessed prayer&mdash;&ldquo;<i>Our</i> Father;&rdquo;
+and as we lose the meaning of that single word <i>our</i>, as we say <i>my</i>
+Father&mdash;the Father of <i>me</i> and of <i>my</i> faction&mdash;of <i>me</i> and <i>my</i>
+fellow believers&mdash;<i>my</i> Anglicanism or <i>my</i> Judaism&mdash;be it what it
+may&mdash;instead of <i>our</i> Father&mdash;the Father of the outcast, the
+profligate, of all who choose to claim a Father's love; <i>so</i> we lose
+the meaning of the lesson which the Epiphany was designed to teach,
+and the possibility of building up a family to God.</p>
+
+<p><b>2.</b> The recognition of a common Humanity. He from whom the Church is
+named, took upon Him not the nature merely of the noble, of kings, or
+of the intellectual philosopher&mdash;but of the beggar, the slave, the
+outcast, the infidel, the sinner, and the nature of every one
+struggling in various ways. Let us learn then brother men, that we
+shall have no family in God, unless we learn the deep truth of our
+common Humanity, shared in by the servant and the sinner, as well as
+the sovereign. Without this we shall have no Church&mdash;no family in God.</p>
+
+<p><b>3.</b> Lastly, the Church of Christ proceeds out of, and rests upon, the
+belief in a common Sacrifice.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>There are three ways in which the human race hitherto has endeavoured
+to construct itself into a family; first, by the sword; secondly, by
+an ecclesiastical system; and thirdly, by trade or commerce. First, by
+the sword. The Assyrian, the Persian, the Greek, and the Roman, have
+done their work&mdash;in itself a most valuable and important one; but so
+far as the formation of mankind into a family was the object aimed at,
+the work of the sword has done almost nothing. Then there was the
+ecclesiastical system&mdash;the grand attempt of the Church of Rome to
+organize all men into one family, with one ecclesiastical, visible,
+earthly head. Being Protestants, it is not necessary for us to state
+our conviction that this attempt has been a signal and complete
+failure. We now come to the system of commerce and trade. We are told
+that that which chivalry and honour could not do&mdash;which an
+ecclesiastical system could not do&mdash;personal interest <i>will</i> do. Trade
+is to bind men together into one family. When they feel it their
+<i>interest</i> to be one, they will be brothers. Brethren, that which is
+built on selfishness cannot stand. The system of personal interest
+must be shivered into atoms. Therefore, we, who have observed the ways
+of God in the past, are waiting in quiet but awful expectation until
+he shall confound this system as he has confounded those which have
+gone before. And it may be effected by convulsions more terrible and
+more bloody than the world has yet seen. While men are talking of
+peace, and of the great progress of civilization, there is heard in
+the distance the noise of armies gathering rank on rank: east and
+west, north and south, are rolling towards us the crushing thunders of
+universal war.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore there is but one other system to be tried, and that is the
+Cross of Christ&mdash;a system that is not to be built upon selfishness,
+nor upon blood, nor upon personal interest, but upon Love. Love, not
+self&mdash;the Cross of Christ, and not the mere working-out of the ideas
+of individual humanity.</p>
+
+<p>One word only in conclusion. Upon this, the great truth of the
+Epiphany, the Apostle founds a prayer. He prays, &ldquo;For this cause I bow
+my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole
+family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you,
+according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by
+His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by
+faith.&rdquo; This manifestation of joy and good to the Gentiles was,
+according to him, the great mystery of Love. A Love, brighter, deeper,
+wider, higher than the largest human heart had ever yet dreamed of.
+But the Apostle tells us it is after all, but a glimpse of the love of
+God. How should we learn it more? How should we comprehend the whole
+meaning of the Epiphany? By sitting down to read works of theology?
+The Apostle Paul tells us&mdash;No. You must love, in order to understand
+love. &ldquo;That ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to
+comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length, and depth
+and height; and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge.&rdquo;
+Brother men, one act of charity will teach us more of the love of God
+than a thousand sermons&mdash;one act of unselfishness, of real
+self-denial, the putting forth of one loving feeling to the outcast
+and &ldquo;those who are out of the way,&rdquo; will tell us more of the meaning
+of the Epiphany than whole volumes of the wisest writers on theology.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVI" id="XVI"></a>XVI.<br />
+<small><i>Preached January 25, 1852.</i></small><br />
+THE LAW OF CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote class="scripture"><p>&ldquo;Howbeit there is not in every man that knowledge: for some, with
+conscience of the idol, unto this hour, eat it as a thing offered
+unto an idol; and their conscience being weak is denied. But meat
+commendeth us not to God: for neither if we eat are we the better;
+neither if we eat not are we the worse. But take heed lest by any
+means this liberty of yours become a stumbling-block to them that
+are weak. For if any man see thee which hast knowledge, sit at
+meat in the idol's temple, shall not the conscience of him which
+is weak be emboldened to eat those things which are offered to
+idols; and through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish for
+whom Christ died? But when ye sin so against the brethren and
+wound their weak conscience ye sin against Christ. Wherefore if
+meat make my brother to offend I will eat no flesh while the world
+standeth, lest I make my brother to offend.&rdquo;&mdash;1 Corinthians viii.
+7-13.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">We have already divided this chapter into two branches&mdash;the former
+portion of it containing the difference between Christian knowledge
+and secular knowledge, and the second portion containing the apostolic
+exposition of the law of Christian conscience. The first of these we
+endeavoured to expound last Sunday, but it may be well briefly to
+recapitulate the principles of that discourse in a somewhat different
+form.</p>
+
+<p>Corinth as we all know and remember, was a city built on the sea
+coast, having a large and free communication with all foreign
+nations; and there was also within it, and going on amongst its
+inhabitants, a free interchange of thought, and a vivid power of
+communicating the philosophy and truths of those days to each other.
+Now it is plain, that to a society in such a state, and to minds so
+educated, the gospel of Christ must have presented a peculiar
+attraction, presenting itself to them as it did, as a law of Christian
+liberty. And so, in Corinth the gospel had &ldquo;free course and was
+glorified,&rdquo; and was received with great joy by almost all men, and by
+minds of all classes and all sects; and a large number of these
+attached themselves to the teaching of the Apostle Paul as the most
+accredited expounder of Christianity&mdash;the &ldquo;royal law of liberty.&rdquo; But
+it seems, from what we read in this epistle, that a large number of
+these men received Christianity as a thing intellectual, and that
+alone&mdash;and not as a thing which touched the conscience, and swayed and
+purified the affections. Thus this liberty became to them almost
+<i>all</i>&mdash;they ran into sin or went to extravagance&mdash;they rejoiced in
+their freedom from the superstitions, the ignorances, and the scruples
+which bound their weaker brethren; but had no charity&mdash;none of that
+intense charity which characterized the Apostle Paul, for those still
+struggling in the delusions and darkness from which they themselves
+were free.</p>
+
+<p>More than that, they demanded their right, their Christian liberty of
+expressing their opinions in the church, merely for the sake of
+<i>exhibiting</i> the Christian graces and spiritual gifts which had been
+showered upon them so largely; until by degrees those very assemblies
+became a lamentable exhibition of their own depravity, and led to
+numerous irregularities which we find severely rebuked by the Apostle
+Paul. Their women, rejoicing in the emancipation which had been given
+to the Christian community, laid aside the old habits of attire which
+had been consecrated so long by Grecian and Jewish custom, and
+appeared with their heads uncovered in the Christian community. Still
+further than that, the Lord's Supper exhibited an absence of all
+solemnity, and seemed more a meeting for licentious gratification,
+where &ldquo;one was hungry, and another was drunken&rdquo;&mdash;a place in which
+earthly drunkenness, the mere enjoyment of the appetites, had taken
+the place of Christian charity towards each other.</p>
+
+<p>And the same feeling&mdash;this love of mere liberty&mdash;liberty in
+itself&mdash;manifested itself in many other directions. Holding by this
+freedom, their philosophy taught that the body, that is the flesh, was
+the only cause of sin; that the soul was holy and pure; and that
+therefore, to be free from the body would be entire, perfect,
+Christian emancipation. And so came in that strange, wrong doctrine,
+exhibited in Corinth, where immortality was taught separate from, and
+in opposition to, the doctrine of the resurrection. And afterwards
+they went on with their conclusions about liberty, to maintain that
+the body, justified by the sacrifice of Christ, was no longer capable
+of sin; and that in the evil which was done by the body, the soul had
+taken no part. And therefore sin was to them but as a name, from which
+a Christian conscience was to be freed altogether. So that when one of
+their number had fallen into grievous sin, and had committed
+fornication, &ldquo;such as was not so much as named among the Gentiles,&rdquo; so
+far from being humbled by it, they were &ldquo;puffed up,&rdquo; as if they were
+exhibiting to the world an enlightened, true, perfect
+Christianity&mdash;separate from all prejudices.</p>
+
+<p>To such a society and to such a state of mind, the Apostle Paul
+preached in all its length, breadth, and fulness, the humbling
+doctrines of the Cross of Christ. He taught that knowledge was one
+thing&mdash;that charity was <i>another</i> thing; that &ldquo;knowledge puffeth up,
+but charity buildeth up.&rdquo; He reminded them that love was the
+perfection of knowledge. In other words, his teaching came to this:
+there are two kinds of knowledge; the one the knowledge of the
+intellect, the other the knowledge of the heart. Intellectually, God
+never can be known. He must be known by Love&mdash;for, &ldquo;if any man love
+God, the same is known of Him.&rdquo; Here then, we have arrived in another
+way, at precisely the same conclusion at which we arrived last Sunday.
+Here are two kinds of knowledge, secular knowledge and Christian
+knowledge; and Christian knowledge is this&mdash;to know by Love.</p>
+
+<p>Let us now consider the remainder of the chapter, which treats of the
+law of Christian conscience. You will observe that it divides itself
+into two branches&mdash;the first containing an exposition of the law
+itself, and the second the Christian applications which flow out of
+this exposition.</p>
+
+
+<p><b>I.</b> The way in which the apostle expounds the law of Christian
+conscience is this:&mdash;Guilt is contracted by the soul, in so far as it
+sins against and transgresses the law of God by doing that which it
+believes to be wrong: not so much what <i>is</i> wrong as what <i>appears</i> to
+<i>it</i> to be wrong. This is the doctrine distinctly laid down in the 7th
+and 8th verses. The apostle tells the Corinthians&mdash;these strong-minded
+Corinthians&mdash;that the superstitions of their weaker brethren were
+unquestionably wrong. &ldquo;Meat,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;commendeth us not to God; for
+neither if we eat are we the better, neither if we eat not are we the
+worse.&rdquo; He then tells them further, that &ldquo;there is not in every man
+that knowledge; for some with conscience of the idol, eat it as a
+thing offered unto an idol.&rdquo; Here then, is an ignorant, mistaken,
+ill-informed conscience; and yet he goes on to tell them that this
+conscience, so ill-informed, yet binds the possessor of it: &ldquo;and their
+conscience being weak, is defiled.&rdquo; For example,&mdash;there could be no
+harm in eating the flesh of an animal that had been offered to an idol
+or false god; for a false god is nothing, and it is impossible for it
+to have contracted positive defilement by being offered to that which
+is a positive and absolute negation. And yet if any man thought it
+wrong to eat such flesh, to him it <i>was</i> wrong; for in that act there
+would be a deliberate act of transgression&mdash;a deliberate preference of
+that which was mere enjoyment, to that which was apparently, though it
+may be only apparently, sanctioned by the law of God. And so it would
+carry with it all the disobedience, all the guilt, and all the misery
+which belongs to the doing of an act altogether wrong; or as St. Paul
+expresses it, the conscience would become denied.</p>
+
+<p>Here then, we arrive at the first distinction&mdash;the distinction between
+absolute and relative right and wrong. Absolute right and absolute
+wrong, like absolute truth, can each be but <i>one</i> and unalterable in
+the sight of God. The one absolute <i>right</i>&mdash;the charity of God and the
+sacrifice of Christ&mdash;this, from eternity to eternity must be the sole
+measure of eternal right. But human right or human wrong, that is the
+merit or demerit, of any action done by any particular man, must be
+measured, not by that absolute standard, but as a matter relative to
+his particular circumstances, the state of the age in which he lives,
+and his own knowledge of right and wrong. For we come into this world
+with a moral sense; or to speak more Christianly, with a conscience.
+And yet that will tell us but very little distinctly. It tells us
+broadly that which is right and that which is wrong, so that every
+child can understand this. That charity and self-denial are
+right&mdash;this we see recognised in almost every nation. But the
+boundaries of these two&mdash;when and how far self-denial is right&mdash;what
+are the bounds of charity&mdash;this it is for different circumstances yet
+to bring out and determine.</p>
+
+<p>And so, it will be found that there is a different standard among
+different nations and in different ages. That for example, which was
+the standard among the Israelites in the earlier ages, and before
+their settlement in Canaan, was very different from the higher and
+truer standard of right and wrong recognised by the later prophets.
+And the standard in the third and fourth centuries after Christ, was
+truly and unquestionably an entirely different one from that
+recognised in the nineteenth century among ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>Let me not be mistaken. I do not say that right and wrong are merely
+conventional, or merely chronological or geographical, or that they
+vary with latitude and longitude. I do not say that there ever was or
+ever can be a nation so utterly blinded and perverted in its moral
+sense as to acknowledge that which is wrong&mdash;seen and known to be
+wrong&mdash;as right; or on the other hand, to profess that which is seen
+and understood as right, to be wrong. But what I do say is this: that
+the form and aspect in which different deeds appear, so vary, that
+there will be for ever a change and alteration in men's opinions, and
+that which is really most generous may seem most base, and that which
+is really most base may appear most generous. So for example, as I
+have already said, there are two things universally
+recognised&mdash;recognised as right by every man whose conscience is not
+absolutely perverted&mdash;charity and self-denial. The charity of God,
+the sacrifice of Christ&mdash;these are the two grand, leading principles
+of the Gospel; and in some form or other you will find these lying at
+the roots of every profession and state of feeling in almost every
+age. But the form in which these appear, will vary with all the
+gradations which are to be found between the lowest savage state and
+the highest and most enlightened Christianity.</p>
+
+<p>For example, in ancient Israel the law of love was expounded
+thus:&mdash;&ldquo;Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.&rdquo; Among
+the American Indians and at the Cape, the only homage perchance given
+to self-denial, was the strange admiration given to that prisoner of
+war who bore with unflinching fortitude the torture of his country's
+enemies. In ancient India the same principle was exhibited, but in a
+more strange and perverted manner. The homage there given to
+self-denial, self-sacrifice, was this&mdash;that the highest form of
+religion was considered to be that exhibited by the devotee who sat in
+a tree until the birds had built their nests in his hair&mdash;until his
+nails, like those of the King of Babylon, had grown like birds'
+talons&mdash;until they had grown into his hands&mdash;and he became absorbed
+into the Divinity.</p>
+
+<p>We will take another instance, and one better known. In ancient Sparta
+it was the custom to teach children to steal. And here there would
+seem to be a contradiction to our proposition&mdash;here it would seem as
+if right and wrong were matters merely conventional; for surely
+stealing can never be anything but wrong. But if we look deeper we
+shall see that there is no contradiction here. It was not stealing
+which was admired; the child was punished if the theft was discovered;
+but it was the dexterity which was admired, and that because it was a
+warlike virtue, necessary it may be to a people in continual rivalry
+with their neighbours. It was not that honesty was despised and
+dishonesty esteemed, but that honesty and dishonesty were made
+subordinate to that which appeared to them of higher importance,
+namely, the duty of concealment. And so we come back to the principle
+which we laid down at first. In every age, among all nations, the same
+broad principle remains; but the application of it varies. The
+conscience may be ill-informed, and in this sense only are right and
+wrong conventional&mdash;varying with latitude and longitude, depending
+upon chronology and geography.</p>
+
+<p>The principle laid down by the Apostle Paul is this:&mdash;A man will be
+judged, not by the abstract law of God, not by the rule of absolute
+right, but much rather by the relative law of conscience. This he
+states most distinctly&mdash;looking at the question on both sides. That
+which seems to a man to be right is, in a certain sense, right to him;
+and that which seems to a man to be wrong, in a certain sense <i>is</i>
+wrong to him. For example: he says in his Epistle to the Romans (v.
+14.) that, &ldquo;sin is not imputed when there is no law,&rdquo; in other words,
+if a man does not really know a thing to be wrong there is a sense in
+which, if not right to him, it ceases to be so wrong as it would
+otherwise be. With respect to the other of these sides however, the
+case is still more distinct and plain. Here, in the judgment which the
+apostle delivers in the parallel chapter of the Epistle to the Romans
+(the 14th), he says, &ldquo;I know, and am persuaded of the Lord Jesus, that
+there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth anything
+to be unclean, to him it is unclean.&rdquo; In other words, whatever may be
+the abstract merits of the question&mdash;however in God's jurisprudence
+any particular act may stand&mdash;to you, thinking it to be wrong, it
+manifestly <i>is</i> wrong, and your conscience will gather round it a
+stain of guilt if you do it.</p>
+
+<p>In order to understand this more fully, let us take a few instances.
+There is a difference between <i>truth</i> and <i>veracity</i>. Veracity&mdash;mere
+veracity&mdash;is a small, poor thing. Truth is something greater and
+higher. Veracity is merely the correspondence between some particular
+statement and facts&mdash;truth is the correspondence between a man's whole
+soul and reality. It is possible for a man to say that which, unknown
+to him is false; and yet he may be true: because if deprived of truth
+he is deprived of it unwillingly. It is possible, on the other hand,
+for a man to utter veracities, and yet at the very time that he is
+uttering those veracities to be false to himself, to his brother, and
+to his God. One of the most signal instances of this is to be seen in
+the Book of Job. Most of what Job's friends said to him were veracious
+statements. Much of what Job said for himself was unveracious and
+mistaken. And yet those veracities of theirs were so torn from all
+connection with fact and truth, that they became falsehoods; and they
+were, as has been said, nothing more than &ldquo;orthodox liars&rdquo; in the
+sight of God. On the other hand, Job, blundering perpetually, and
+falling into false doctrine, was yet a true man&mdash;searching for and
+striving after the truth; and if deprived of it for a time, deprived
+of it with all his heart and soul unwillingly. And therefore it was
+that at last the Lord appeared out of the whirlwind, to confound the
+men of mere veracity, and to stand by and support the honour of the
+heartily true.</p>
+
+<p>Let us apply the principle further. It is a matter of less importance
+that a man should state true views, than that he should state views
+truly. We will put this in its strongest form. Unitarianism is
+false&mdash;Trinitarianism is true. But yet in the sight of God, and with
+respect to a man's eternal destinies hereafter, it would surely be
+better for him earnestly, honestly, truly, to hold the doctrines of
+Unitarianism, than in a cowardly or indifferent spirit, or influenced
+by authority, or from considerations of interest, or for the sake of
+lucre, to hold the doctrines of Trinitarianism.</p>
+
+<p>For instance:&mdash;Not many years ago the Church of Scotland was severed
+into two great divisions, and gave to this age a marvellous proof that
+there is still amongst us the power of living faith&mdash;when five hundred
+ministers gave up all that earth holds dear&mdash;position in the church
+they had loved; friendships and affections formed, and consecrated by
+long fellowship, in its communion; and almost their hopes of gaining a
+livelihood&mdash;rather than assert a principle which seemed to them to be
+a false one. Now my brethren, surely the question in such a case for
+us to consider is not this, merely&mdash;whether of the two sections held
+the abstract <i>right</i>&mdash;held the principle in its integrity&mdash;but surely
+far rather, this: who on either side was true to the light within,
+true to God, true to the truth as God had revealed it to his soul.</p>
+
+<p>Now it is precisely upon this principle that we are enabled to indulge
+a Christian hope that many of those who in ancient times were
+persecutors, for example, may yet be justified at the bar of Christ.
+Nothing can make persecution right&mdash;it is wrong, essentially,
+eternally wrong in the sight of God. And yet, if a man sincerely and
+assuredly thinks that Christ has laid upon him a command to persecute
+with fire and sword, it is surely better that he should, in spite of
+all feelings of tenderness and compassion, cast aside the dearest
+affections at the command of his Redeemer, than that he should, in
+mere laxity and tenderness, turn aside from what seemed to him to be
+his duty. At least, this appears to be the opinion of the Apostle
+Paul. He tells us that he was &ldquo;a blasphemer and a persecutor and
+injurious,&rdquo; that &ldquo;he did many things contrary to the name of Jesus of
+Nazareth,&rdquo; that &ldquo;being exceedingly mad against the disciples, he
+persecuted them even unto strange cities.&rdquo; But he tells us further
+that, &ldquo;for this cause he obtained mercy, because he did it ignorantly
+in unbelief.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Now take a case precisely opposite. In ancient times the Jews did that
+by which it appeared to them that they would contract defilement and
+guilt&mdash;they spared the lives of the enemies which they had taken in
+battle. Brethren the eternal law is, that charity is right: and that
+law is eternally right which says, &ldquo;Thou shalt love thine enemy.&rdquo; And
+had the Jews acted upon this principle they would have done well to
+spare their enemies: but they did it thinking it to be wrong,
+transgressing that law which commanded them to slay their idolatrous
+enemies&mdash;not from generosity, but in cupidity&mdash;not from charity, but
+from lax zeal. And so doing, the act was altogether wrong.</p>
+
+
+<p class="break"><b>II.</b> Such is the apostle's exposition of the law of Christian
+conscience. Let us now, in the second place, consider the applications
+both of a personal and of a public nature, which arise out of it.</p>
+
+<p><b>1.</b> The first application is a personal one. It is this:&mdash;Do what
+<i>seems</i> to <i>you</i> to be right: it is only so that you will at last
+learn by the grace of God to see clearly what <i>is</i> right. A man thinks
+within himself that it is God's law and God's will that he should act
+thus and thus. There is nothing possible for us to say&mdash;there is no
+advice for us to give, but this&mdash;&ldquo;You <i>must</i> so act.&rdquo; He is
+responsible for the opinions he holds, and still more for the way in
+which he arrived at them&mdash;whether in a slothful and selfish, or in an
+honest and truth-seeking manner; but being now his soul's convictions,
+you can give no other law than this&mdash;&ldquo;You must obey your conscience.&rdquo;
+For no man's conscience gets so seared by doing what is wrong
+unknowingly, as by doing that which appears to be wrong to his
+conscience. The Jews' consciences did not get seared by their slaying
+the Canaanites, but they did become seared by their failing to do what
+appeared to them to be right. Therefore, woe to you if you do what
+others think right, instead of obeying the dictates of your own
+conscience; woe to you if you allow authority, or prescription, or
+fashion, or influence, or any other human thing, to interfere with
+that awful and sacred thing&mdash;responsibility. &ldquo;Every man,&rdquo; said the
+apostle, &ldquo;must give an account of himself to God.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><b>2.</b> The second application of this principle has reference to others.
+No doubt to the large, free, enlightened mind of the Apostle Paul, all
+these scruples and superstitions must have seemed mean, trivial, and
+small indeed. It was a matter to him of far less importance that truth
+should be <i>established</i> than that it should be arrived at truly&mdash;a
+matter of far less importance even, that right should be done, than
+that right should be done rightly. Conscience was far more sacred to
+him than even liberty&mdash;it was to him a prerogative far more precious
+to assert the rights of Christian conscience, than to magnify the
+privileges of Christian liberty. The scruple may be small and foolish,
+but it may be impossible to uproot the scruple without tearing up the
+feeling of the sanctity of conscience, and of reverence to the law of
+God, associated with this scruple. And therefore the Apostle Paul
+counsels these men to abridge their Christian liberty, and not to eat
+of those things which had been sacrificed to idols, but to have
+compassion upon the scruples of their weaker brethren.</p>
+
+<p>And this, for two reasons. The first of these is a mere reason of
+Christian feeling. It might cause exquisite pain to sensitive minds to
+see those things which appeared to them to be wrong, done by Christian
+brethren. Now you may take a parallel case. It may be, if you will,
+mere superstition to bow at the name of Jesus. It may be, and no doubt
+is, founded upon a mistaken interpretation of that passage in the
+Epistle to the Philippians (ii. 10), which says that &ldquo;at the name of
+Jesus every knee shall bow.&rdquo; But there are many congregations in which
+this has been the long-established rule, and there are many Christians
+who would feel pained to see such a practice discontinued&mdash;as if it
+implied a declension from the reverence due to &ldquo;that name which is
+above every name.&rdquo; Now what in this case is the Christian duty? Is it
+this&mdash;to stand upon our Christian liberty? Or is it not rather
+this&mdash;to comply with a prejudice which is manifestly a harmless one,
+rather than give pain to a Christian brother?</p>
+
+<p>Take another case. It may be a mistaken scruple; but there is no doubt
+that it causes much pain to many Christians to see a carriage used on
+the Lord's day. But you, with higher views of the spirit of
+Christianity, who know that &ldquo;the Sabbath was made for man, and not man
+for the Sabbath&rdquo;&mdash;who can enter more deeply into the truth taught by
+our blessed Lord, that every day is to be dedicated to Him and
+consecrated to His service&mdash;upon the high principle of Christian
+liberty you can use your carriage&mdash;you can exercise your liberty. But
+if there are Christian brethren to whom this would give pain&mdash;then I
+humbly ask you, but most earnestly&mdash;What is the duty here? Is it not
+this&mdash;to abridge your Christian liberty&mdash;and to go through rain, and
+mud, and snow, rather than give pain to one Christian conscience?</p>
+
+<p>To give one more instance. The words, and garb, and customs of that
+sect of Christians called Quakers may be formal enough; founded, no
+doubt, as in the former case, upon a mistaken interpretation of a
+passage in the Bible. But they are at least harmless; and have long
+been associated with the simplicity, and benevolence, and Christian
+humbleness of this body of Christians&mdash;the followers of one who, three
+hundred years ago, set out upon the glorious enterprise of making all
+men friends. Now would it be Christian, or would it not rather be
+something more than unchristian&mdash;would it not be gross rudeness and
+coarse unfeelingness to treat such words, and habits, and customs,
+with anything but respect and reverence?</p>
+
+<p>Further: the apostle enjoined this duty upon the Corinthian converts,
+of abridging their Christian liberty, not merely because it might give
+pain to indulge it, but also because it might even lead their brethren
+into sin. For, if any man should eat of the flesh offered to an idol,
+feeling himself justified by his conscience, it were well: but if any
+man, overborne by authority or interest, were to do this, not
+according to conscience, but against it, there would be a distinct and
+direct act of disobedience&mdash;a conflict between his sense of right and
+the gratification of his appetites, or the power of influence; and
+then his compliance would as much damage his conscience and moral
+sense as if the act had been wrong in itself.</p>
+
+<p>In the personal application of these remarks, there are three things
+which we have to say. The first is this:&mdash;Distinguish I pray you,
+between this tenderness for a brother's conscience and mere
+time-serving. This same apostle whom we here see so gracefully giving
+way upon the ground of expediency when Christian principles were left
+entire, was the same who stood firm and strong as a rock when any
+thing was demanded which trenched upon Christian principle. When some
+required as a matter of necessity for salvation, that these converts
+should be circumcised, the apostle says&mdash;&ldquo;To whom we gave place by
+subjection, no, not for an hour!&rdquo; It was not indifference&mdash;it was not
+cowardice&mdash;it was not the mere love of peace, purchased by the
+sacrifice of principle, that prompted this counsel&mdash;but it was
+Christian love&mdash;that delicate and Christian love which dreads to
+tamper with the sanctities of a brother's conscience.</p>
+
+<p><b>2.</b> The second thing we have to say is this&mdash;that this abridgement of
+their liberty is a duty more especially incumbent upon all who are
+possessed of influence. There are some men, happily for themselves we
+may say, who are so insignificant that they can take their course
+quietly in the valleys of life, and who can exercise the fullest
+Christian liberty without giving pain to others. But it is the price
+which all who are possessed of influence must pay&mdash;that their acts
+must be measured, not in themselves, but according to their influence
+on others. So, my Christian brethren, to bring this matter home to
+every-day experience and common life, if the landlord uses his
+authority and influence to induce his tenant to vote against his
+conscience, it may be he has secured one voice to the principle which
+is right, or at all events, to that which seemed to him to be right:
+but he has gained that single voice at the sacrifice and expense of a
+brother's soul. Or again&mdash;if for the sake of ensuring personal
+politeness and attention, the rich man puts a gratuity into the hand
+of a servant of some company which has forbidden him to receive it,
+he gains the attention, he ensures the politeness, but he gains it at
+the sacrifice and expense of a man and a Christian brother.</p>
+
+<p><b>3.</b> The last remark which we have to make is this:&mdash;How possible it is
+to mix together the vigour of a masculine and manly intellect with the
+tenderness and charity which is taught by the gospel of Christ! No man
+ever breathed so freely when on earth the air and atmosphere of heaven
+as the Apostle Paul&mdash;no man ever soared so high above all prejudices,
+narrowness, littlenesses, scruples, as he: and yet no man ever bound
+himself as Paul bound himself to the ignorance, the scruples, the
+prejudices of his brethren. So that what in other cases was infirmity,
+imbecility, and superstition, gathered round it in his case the pure
+high spirit of Christian charity and Christian delicacy.</p>
+
+<p>And now, out of the writings, and sayings, and deeds of those who
+loudly proclaim &ldquo;the rights of man&rdquo; and the &ldquo;rights of liberty,&rdquo; match
+us if you can with one sentence so sublime, so noble, one that will so
+stand at the bar of God hereafter, as this single, glorious sentence
+of his, in which he asserts the rights of Christian conscience above
+the claims of Christian liberty&mdash;&ldquo;Wherefore if meat make my brother to
+offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my
+brother to offend.&rdquo;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVII" id="XVII"></a>XVII.<br />
+<small><i>Preached May 16, 1852.</i></small><br />
+VICTORY OVER DEATH.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote class="scripture"><p>&ldquo;The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law.
+But thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through our Lord
+Jesus Christ.&rdquo;&mdash;1 Cor. xv. 56, 57.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">On Sunday last I endeavoured to bring before you the subject of that
+which Scripture calls the glorious liberty of the Sons of God. The two
+points on which we were trying to get clear notions were these: what
+is meant by being under the law, and what is meant by being free from
+the law? When the Bible says that a man led by the Spirit is not under
+the law, it does not mean that he is free because he may sin without
+being punished for it, but it means that he is free because being
+taught by God's Spirit to love what His law commands he is no longer
+conscious of acting from restraint. The law does not drive him,
+because the Spirit leads him.</p>
+
+<p>There is a state brethren, when we recognize God, but do not love God
+in Christ. It is that state when we admire what is excellent, but are
+not able to perform it. It is a state when the love of good comes to
+nothing, dying away in a mere desire. That is the state of nature,
+when we are under the law, and not converted to the love of Christ.
+And then there is another state, when God writes His law upon our
+hearts by love instead of fear. The one state is this, &ldquo;I cannot do
+the things that I would&rdquo;&mdash;the other state is this, &ldquo;I will walk at
+liberty; for I seek Thy commandments.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Just so far therefore, as a Christian is led by the Spirit, he is a
+conqueror. A Christian in full possession of his privileges is a man
+whose very step ought to have in it all the elasticity of triumph, and
+whose very look ought to have in it all the brightness of victory. And
+just so far as a Christian suffers sin to struggle in him and overcome
+his resolutions, just so far he is under the law. And that is the key
+to the whole doctrine of the New Testament. From first to last the
+great truth put forward is&mdash;The law can neither save you nor sanctify
+you. The gospel can do both; for it is rightly and emphatically called
+the perfect law of liberty.</p>
+
+<p>We proceed to-day to a further illustration of this subject&mdash;of
+Christian victory. In the verses which I have read out, the Apostle
+has evidently the same subject in his mind: slavery through the law:
+victory through the gospel. &ldquo;The strength of sin,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;is the
+law.&rdquo; God giveth us the victory through Christ. And when we are
+familiar with St. Paul's trains of thinking, we find this idea coming
+in perpetually. It runs like a coloured thread through embroidery,
+appearing on the upper surface every now and then in a different
+shape&mdash;a leaf, it may be, or a flower; but the same thread still, if
+you only trace it back with your finger. And this was the golden
+recurring thread in the mind of Paul. Restraint and law cannot check
+sin; they only gall it and make it struggle and rebel. The love of
+God in Christ, that, and only that can give man the victory.</p>
+
+<p>But in this passage the idea of victory is brought to bear upon the
+most terrible of all a Christian's enemies. It is faith here
+conquering in death. And the apostle brings together all the
+believer's antagonists&mdash;the law's power, sin, and death the chief
+antagonist of all; and then, as it were on a conqueror's battle field,
+shouts over them the hymn of triumph&mdash;&ldquo;Thanks be to God, which giveth
+us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ.&rdquo; We shall take up these
+two points to dwell upon.</p>
+
+<ol class="Rom">
+<li>The awfulness which hangs round the dying hour.</li>
+<li>Faith conquering in death.</li>
+</ol>
+
+<p>That which makes it peculiarly terrible to die is asserted in this
+passage to be, guilt. We lay a stress upon this expression&mdash;the sting.
+It is not said that sin is the only bitterness, but it is the sting
+which contains in it the venom of a most exquisite torture. And in
+truth brethren, it is no mark of courage to speak lightly of human
+dying. We may do it in bravado, or in wantonness; but no man who
+thinks can call it a trifling thing to die. True thoughtfulness must
+shrink from death without Christ. There is a world of untold
+sensations crowded into that moment, when a man puts his hand to his
+forehead and feels the damp upon it which tells him his hour is come.
+He has been waiting for death all his life, and now it is come. It is
+all over&mdash;his chance is past, and his eternity is settled. None of us
+know, except by guess, what that sensation is. Myriads of human beings
+have felt it to whom life was dear; but they never spoke out their
+feelings, for such things are untold. And to every individual man
+throughout all eternity that sensation in its fulness can come but
+once. It is mockery brethren, for a man to speak lightly of that which
+he cannot know till it comes.</p>
+
+<p>Now the first cause which makes it a solemn thing to die, is the
+instinctive cleaving of every thing that lives to its own existence.
+That unutterable thing which we call our being&mdash;the idea of parting
+with it is agony. It is the first and the intensest desire of living
+things, to be. Enjoyment, blessedness, everything we long for, is
+wrapped up in being. Darkness and all that the spirit recoils from, is
+contained in this idea, not to be. It is in virtue of this
+unquenchable impulse that the world, in spite of all the misery that
+is in it, continues to struggle on. What are war, and trade, and
+labour, and professions? Are they all the result of struggling to be
+great? No, my brethren, they are the result of struggling <i>to be</i>. The
+first thing that men and nations labour for is existence. Reduce the
+nation or the man to their last resources, and only see what
+marvellous energy of contrivance the love of being arms them with.
+Read back the pauper's history at the end of seventy years&mdash;his
+strange sad history, in which scarcely a single day could ensure
+subsistence for the morrow&mdash;and yet learn what he has done these long
+years in the stern struggle with impossibility to hold his being where
+everything is against him, and to keep an existence, whose only
+conceivable charm is this, that it <i>is</i> existence.</p>
+
+<p>Now it is with this intense passion for being, that the idea of death
+clashes. Let us search why it is we shrink from death. This reason
+brethren, we shall find, that it presents to us the idea of <i>not
+being</i>. Talk as we will of immortality, there is an obstinate feeling
+that we cannot master, that we end in death; and <i>that</i> may be felt
+together with the firmest belief of a resurrection. Brethren, our
+faith tells us one thing, and our sensations tell us another. When we
+die, we are surrendering in truth all that with which we have
+associated existence. All that we know of life is connected with a
+shape, a form, a body of materialism; and now that that is palpably
+melting away into nothingness, the boldest heart may be excused a
+shudder, when there is forced upon it, in spite of itself, the idea of
+ceasing for ever.</p>
+
+<p>The second reason is not one of imagination at all, but most sober
+reality. It is a solemn thing to die, because it is the parting with
+all round which the heart's best affections have twined themselves.
+There are some men who have not the capacity for keen enjoyment. Their
+affections have nothing in them of intensity, and so they pass through
+life without ever so uniting themselves with what they meet, that
+there would be anything of pain in the severance. Of course, with them
+the bitterness of death does not attach so much to the idea of
+parting. But my brethren, how is it with human nature generally? Our
+feelings do not weaken as we go on in life; emotions are less shown,
+and we get a command over our features and our expressions; but the
+man's feelings are deeper than the boy's. It is length of time that
+makes attachment. We become wedded to the sights and sounds of this
+lovely world more closely as years go on.</p>
+
+<p>Young men, with nothing rooted deep, are prodigal of life. It is an
+adventure to them, rather than a misfortune, to leave their country
+for ever. With the old man it is like tearing his own heart from him.
+And so it was that when Lot quitted Sodom, the younger members of his
+family went on gladly. It is a touching truth; it was the aged one who
+looked behind to the home which had so many recollections connected
+with it. And therefore it is, that when men approach that period of
+existence when they must go, there is an instinctive lingering over
+things which they shall never see again. Every time the sun sets,
+every time the old man sees his children gathering round him, there is
+a filling of the eye with an emotion that we can understand. There is
+upon his soul the thought of parting, that strange wrench from all we
+love which makes death (say what moralists will of it) a bitter thing.</p>
+
+<p>Another pang which belongs to death, we find in the sensation of
+loneliness which attaches to it. Have we ever seen a ship preparing to
+sail with its load of pauper emigrants to a distant colony? If we have
+we know what that desolation is which comes from feeling unfriended on
+a new and untried excursion. All beyond the seas, to the ignorant poor
+man, is a strange land. They are going away from the helps and the
+friendships and the companionships of life, scarcely knowing what is
+before them. And it is in such a moment, when a man stands upon a
+deck, taking his last look of his fatherland, that there comes upon
+him a sensation new, strange, and inexpressibly miserable&mdash;the feeling
+of being alone in the world.</p>
+
+<p>Brethren, with all the bitterness of such a moment, it is but a feeble
+image when placed by the side of the loneliness of death. We die
+alone. We go on our dark mysterious journey for the first time in all
+our existence, without one to accompany us. Friends are beside our
+bed, they must stay behind. Grant that a Christian has something like
+familiarity with the Most High, <i>that</i> breaks this solitary feeling;
+but what is it with the mass of men? It is a question full of
+loneliness to them. What is it they are to see? What are they to
+meet? Is it not true, that, to the larger number of this congregation,
+there is no one point in all eternity on which the eye can fix
+distinctly and rest gladly&mdash;nothing beyond the grave, except a dark
+space into which they must plunge alone?</p>
+
+<p>And yet my brethren, with all these ideas no doubt vividly before his
+mind, it was none of them that the apostle selected as the crowning
+bitterness of dying. It was not the thought of surrendering existence.
+It was not the parting from all bright and lovely things. It was not
+the shudder of sinking into the sepulchre alone. &ldquo;The sting of death
+is <i>sin</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Now there are two ways in which this deep truth applies itself. There
+is something that appals in death when there are distinct separate
+acts of guilt resting on the memory; and there is something too in the
+possession of a guilty heart, which is quite another thing from acts
+of sin, that makes it an awful thing to die. There are some who carry
+about with them the dreadful secret of sin that has been done; guilt
+that has a name. A man has injured some one; he has made money, or got
+on by unfair means; he has been unchaste; he has done some of those
+thousand things of life which leave upon the heart the dark spot that
+will not come out. All these are sins which you can count up and
+number. And the recollection of things like these is that agony which
+we call remorse. Many of us have remembrances of this kind which are
+fatal to serenity. We shut them out, but it will not do. They bide
+their time, and then suddenly present themselves, together with the
+thought of a judgment-seat. When a guilty man begins to think of
+dying, it is like a vision of the Son of Man presenting itself and
+calling out the voices of all the unclean spirits in the man&mdash;&ldquo;Art
+thou come to torment us before the time?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But my brethren, it is a mistake if we suppose that is the common way
+in which sin stings at the thought of death. Men who have lived the
+career of passionate life have distinct and accumulated acts of guilt
+before their eyes. But with most men it is not guilty acts, but
+guiltiness of heart that weighs the heaviest. Only take yesterday as a
+specimen of life. What was it with most of us? A day of sin. Was it
+sin palpable and dark, such as we shall remember painfully this day
+year? Nay my brethren, unkindness, petulance, wasted time,
+opportunities lost, frivolous conversation, <i>that</i> was our chief
+guilt. And yet with all that trifling as it may be, when it comes to
+be the history of life, does it not leave behind a restless
+undefinable sense of fault, a vague idea of debt, but to what extent
+we know not, perhaps the more wretched just because it is uncertain?</p>
+
+<p>My Christian brethren, this is the sting of sinfulness, the wretched
+consciousness of an unclean heart. It is just this feeling, &ldquo;God is
+not my friend; I am going on to the grave, and no <i>man</i> can say aught
+against me, but my heart is not right; I want a river like that which
+the ancients fabled&mdash;the river of forgetfulness&mdash;that I might go down
+into it and bathe, and come up a new man. It is not so much what I
+have done; it is what I am. Who shall save me from myself?&rdquo; Oh, it is
+a desolate thing to think of the coffin when that thought is in all
+its misery before the soul. It is the sting of death.</p>
+
+<p>And now let us bear one thing in mind, the sting of sin is not a
+constant pressure. It may be that we live many years in the world
+before a death in our own family forces the thought personally home.
+Many years before all those sensations which are so often the
+precursors of the tomb&mdash;the quick short cough, lassitude, emaciation,
+pain&mdash;come in startling suddenness upon us in our young vigour, and
+make us feel what it is to be here with death inevitable to ourselves.
+And when those things become habitual, habit makes delicacy the same
+forgetful thing as health, so that neither in sickness, nor in health,
+is the thought of death a constant pressure. It is only now and then;
+but so often as death is a reality, the sting of death is sin.</p>
+
+<p>Once more we remark, that all this power of sin to agonize, is traced
+by the Apostle to the law&mdash;&ldquo;the strength of sin is the law;&rdquo; by which
+he means to say that sin would not be so violent if it were not for
+the attempt of God's law to restrain it. It is the law which makes sin
+strong. And he does not mean particularly the law of Moses. He means
+any law, and all law. Law is what forbids and threatens; law bears
+gallingly on those who want to break it. And St. Paul declares this,
+that no law, not even God's law, can make men righteous in heart,
+unless the Spirit has taught men's hearts to acquiesce in the law. It
+can only force out into rebellion the sin that is in them.</p>
+
+<p>It is so, brethren, with a nation's law. The voice of the nation must
+go along with it. It must be the expression of their own feeling, and
+then they will have it obeyed. But if it is only the law of a
+government, a law which is against the whole spirit of the people,
+there is first the murmur of a nation's disapprobation, and then there
+is transgression, and then, if the law be vindicated with a high hand,
+the next step is the bursting that law asunder in national revolution.
+And so it is with God's law. It will never control a man long who does
+not from his heart love it. First comes a sensation of restraint, and
+then comes a murmuring of the heart; and last, there comes the rising
+of passion in its giant might, made desperate by restraint. That is
+the law giving strength to sin.</p>
+
+<p>And therefore brethren, if all we know of God be this, that He has
+made laws, and that it is terrible to break them; if all our idea of
+religion be this, that it is a thing of commands and hindrances&mdash;Thou
+shalt, and thou shalt not; we are under the law, and there is no help
+for it. We <i>must</i> shrink from the encounter with death.</p>
+
+
+<p class="break">We pass to our second subject&mdash;Faith conquering in death.</p>
+
+<p>And, before we enter upon this topic, there are two general remarks
+that we have to make. The first is, The elevating power of faith.
+There is nothing in all this world that ever led man on to real
+victory but faith. Faith is that looking forward to a future with
+something like certainty, that raises man above the narrow feelings of
+the present. Even in this life he is a greater man, a man of more
+elevated character, who is steadily pursuing a plan that requires some
+years to accomplish, than he who is living by the day. Look forward
+but ten years, and plan for it, live for it; there is something of
+manhood, something of courage required to conquer the thousand things
+that stand in your way. And therefore it is, that faith, and nothing
+but faith, gives victory in death. It is that elevation of character
+which we get from looking steadily and for ever forward, till eternity
+becomes a real home to us, that enables us to look down upon the last
+struggle, and the funeral, and the grave, not as the great end of all,
+but only as something that stands between us and the end. We are
+conquerors of death when we are able to look beyond it.</p>
+
+<p>Our second remark is for the purpose of fixing special attention upon
+this, that ours is not merely to be victory, it is to be victory
+through Christ &ldquo;Thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through
+our Lord Jesus Christ.&rdquo; Victory brethren, mere victory over death is
+no unearthly thing. You may get it by infidelity. Only let a man sin
+long enough, and desperately enough to shut judgment altogether out of
+his creed, and then you have a man who can bid defiance to the grave.
+It was so that our country's greatest infidel historian met death. He
+quitted the world without parade and without display. If we want a
+specimen of victory apart from Christ, we have it on his death-bed. He
+left all this strange world of restlessness, calmly, like an unreal
+show that must go to pieces, and he himself an unreality departing
+from it. A sceptic can be a conqueror in death.</p>
+
+<p>Or again, mere manhood may give us a victory. He who has only learned
+not to be afraid to die, has not learned much. We have steel and nerve
+enough in our hearts to dare anything. And after all, it is a triumph
+so common as scarcely to deserve the name. Felons die on the scaffold
+like men; soldiers can be hired by tens of thousands, for a few pence
+a day, to front death in its worst form. Every minute that we live
+sixty of the human race are passing away, and the greater part with
+courage&mdash;the weak, and the timid, as well as the resolute. Courage is
+a very different thing from the Christian's victory.</p>
+
+<p>Once more brethren, necessity can make man conqueror over death. We
+can make up our minds to anything when it once becomes inevitable. It
+is the agony of suspense that makes danger dreadful. History can tell
+us that men can look with desperate calmness upon hell itself when
+once it has become a certainty. And it is this after all, that
+commonly makes the dying hour so quiet a thing. It is more dreadful in
+the distance than in the reality. When a man feels that there is no
+help, and he must go, he lays him down to die, as quietly as a tired
+traveller wraps himself in his cloak to sleep. It is quite another
+thing from all this that Paul meant by victory.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, it is the prerogative of a Christian to be
+conqueror over Doubt. Brethren, do we all know what doubt means?
+Perchance not. There are some men who have never believed enough to
+doubt. There are some who have never thrown their hopes with such
+earnestness on the world to come, as to feel anxiety for fear it
+should not all be true. But every one who knows what Faith is, knows
+too, what is the desolation of Doubt. We pray till we begin to ask, Is
+there one who hears, or am I whispering to myself?&mdash;We hear the
+consolation administered to the bereaved, and we see the coffin
+lowered into the grave, and the thought comes, What if all this
+doctrine of a life to come be but the dream of man's imaginative mind,
+carried on from age to age, and so believed, because it is a venerable
+superstition? Mow Christ gives us victory over that terrible suspicion
+in two ways&mdash;first, He does it by His own resurrection. We have got a
+fact there that all the metaphysics about impossibility cannot rob us
+of. In moments of perplexity we look back to this. The grave has once,
+and more than once, at the Redeemer's bidding, given up its dead. It
+is a world fact. It tells us what the Bible means by our
+resurrection&mdash;not a spiritual rising into new holiness merely&mdash;that,
+but also something more. It means that in our own proper identity, we
+shall live again. Make that thought real, and God has given you, so
+far, victory over the grave through Christ.</p>
+
+<p>There is another way in which we get the victory over doubt, and that
+is by living in Christ. All doubt comes from living out of habits of
+affectionate obedience to God. By idleness, by neglected prayer, we
+lose our power of realizing things not seen. Let a man be religious
+and irreligious at intervals&mdash;irregular, inconsistent, without some
+distinct thing to live for&mdash;it is a matter of impossibility that he
+can be free from doubts. He must make up his mind for a dark life.
+Doubts can only be dispelled by that kind of active life that realizes
+Christ. And there is no faith that gives a victory so steadily
+triumphant as that. When such a man comes near the opening of the
+vault, it is no world of sorrows he is entering upon. He is only going
+to see things that he has felt, for he has been living in heaven. He
+has his grasp on things that other men are only groping after and
+touching now and then. Live above this world, Brethren, and then the
+powers of the world to come are so upon you that there is no room for
+doubt.</p>
+
+<p>Besides all this, it is a Christian's privilege to have victory over
+the fear of death. And here it is exceedingly easy to paint what after
+all is only the image-picture of a dying hour. It is the easiest thing
+to represent the dying Christian as a man who always sinks into the
+grave full of hope, full of triumph, in the certain hope of a blessed
+resurrection. Brethren, we must paint things in the sober colours of
+truth; not as they might be supposed to be, but as they are. Often
+that is only a picture. Either very few death-beds are Christian ones,
+or else triumph is a very different thing from what the word generally
+implies. Solemn, subdued, full of awe and full of solemnity, is the
+dying hour generally of the holiest men: sometimes almost
+darkness.&mdash;Rapture is a rare thing, except in books and scenes.</p>
+
+<p>Let us understand what really is the victory over fear. It may be
+rapture or it may not. All that depends very much on temperament; and
+after all, the broken words of a dying man are a very poor index of
+his real state before God. Rapturous hope has been granted to martyrs
+in peculiar moments. It is on record of a minister of our own Church,
+that his expectation of seeing God in Christ became so intense as his
+last hour drew near, that his physician was compelled to bid him calm
+his transports, because in so excited a state he could not die. A
+strange unnatural energy was imparted to his muscular frame by his
+nerves overstrung with triumph. But brethren, it fosters a dangerous
+feeling to take cases like those as precedents. It leads to that most
+terrible of all unrealities&mdash;the acting of a death-bed scene. A
+Christian conqueror dies calmly. Brave men in battle do not boast that
+they are not afraid. Courage is so natural to them that they are not
+conscious they are doing anything out of the common way&mdash;Christian
+bravery is a deep, calm thing, unconscious of itself. There are more
+triumphant death-beds than we count, if we only remember this&mdash;true
+fearlessness makes no parade.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, it is not only in those passionate effusions in which the ancient
+martyrs spoke sometimes of panting for the crushing of their limbs by
+the lions in the amphitheatre, or of holding out their arms to embrace
+the flames that were to curl round them&mdash;it is not then only that
+Christ has stood by His servants, and made them more than
+conquerors:&mdash;there may be something of earthly excitement in all that.
+Every day His servants are dying modestly and peacefully&mdash;not a word
+of victory on their lips; but Christ's deep triumph in their
+hearts&mdash;watching the slow progress of their own decay, and yet so far
+emancipated from personal anxiety that they are still able to think
+and to plan for others, not knowing that they are doing any great
+thing. They die, and the world hears nothing of them; and yet theirs
+was the completest victory. They came to the battle field, the field
+to which they had been looking forward all their lives, and the enemy
+was not to be found. There was no Foe to fight with.</p>
+
+<p>The last form in which a Christian gets the victory over death is by
+means of his resurrection. It seems to have been this which was
+chiefly alluded to by the Apostle here; for he says, &ldquo;when this
+corruptible shall have put on incorruption ... <i>then</i> shall come to
+pass the saying which is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.&rdquo;
+And to say the truth, brethren, it is a rhetorical expression rather
+than a sober truth when we call anything, except the resurrection,
+victory over death. We may conquer doubt and fear when we are dying,
+but that is not conquering death. It is like a warrior crushed to
+death by a superior antagonist refusing to yield a groan, and bearing
+the glance of defiance to the last. You feel that he is an
+unconquerable spirit, but he is not the conqueror. And when you see
+flesh melting away, and mental power becoming infantine in its
+feebleness, and lips scarcely able to articulate, is there left one
+moment a doubt upon the mind, as to <i>who</i> is the conqueror in spite of
+all the unshaken fortitude there may be? The victory is on the side of
+Death, not on the side of the dying.</p>
+
+<p>And my brethren, if we would enter into the full feeling of triumph
+contained in this verse, we must just try to bear in mind what this
+world would be without the thought of a resurrection. If we could
+conceive an unselfish man looking upon this world of desolation with
+that infinite compassion which all the brave and good feel, what
+conception could he have but that of defeat, and failure, and
+sadness&mdash;the sons of man mounting into a bright existence, and one
+after another falling back into darkness and nothingness, like
+soldiers trying to mount an impracticable breach, and falling back
+crushed and mangled into the ditch before the bayonets and the
+rattling fire of their conquerors. Misery and guilt, look which way
+you will, till the heart gets sick with looking at it.</p>
+
+<p>Brethren, until a man looks on evil till it seems to him almost like a
+real personal enemy rejoicing over the destruction that it has made,
+he can scarcely conceive the deep rapture which rushed into the mind
+of the Apostle Paul when he remembered that a day was coming when all
+this was to be reversed. A day was coming, and it was the day of
+reality for which he lived, ever present and ever certain, when this
+sad world was to put <i>off for ever</i> its changefulness and its misery,
+and the grave was to be robbed of its victory, and the bodies were to
+come forth purified by their long sleep. He called all this a victory,
+because he felt that it was a real battle that has to be fought and
+won before that can be secured. One battle has been fought by Christ,
+and another battle, most real and difficult, but yet a conquering one,
+is to be fought by us. He hath imparted to us the virtue of His
+wrestlings, and the strength of His victory. So that, when the body
+shall rise again, the power of the law to condemn is gone, because we
+have learned to love the law.</p>
+
+<p>And now to conclude all this, there are but two things which remain to
+say. In the first place, brethren, if we would be conquerors, we must
+realize God's love in Christ. Take care not to be under the law.
+Constraint never yet made a conqueror: the utmost it can do is to make
+either a rebel or a slave. Believe that God loves you. He gave a
+triumphant demonstration of it in the Cross. Never shall we conquer
+self till we have learned <i>to love</i>. My Christian brethren, let us
+remember our high privilege. Christian life, so far as it deserves
+the name, is victory. We are not going forth to mere battle&mdash;we are
+going forth to conquer. To gain mastery over self, and sin, and doubt,
+and fear: till the last coldness, coming across the brow, tells us
+that all is over, and our warfare accomplished&mdash;that we are safe, the
+everlasting arms beneath us&mdash;<i>that</i> is our calling. Brethren beloved,
+do not be content with a slothful, dreamy, uncertain struggle. You are
+to conquer, and the banner under which we are to win is not Fear, but
+Love. &ldquo;The strength of sin is the law;&rdquo; the victory is by keeping
+before us God in Christ.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, there is need of encouragement for those of us whose faith is
+not of the conquering, but the timid kind. There are some whose hearts
+will reply to all this, Surely victory is not always a Christian's
+portion. Is there no cold dark watching in Christian life&mdash;no struggle
+when victory seems a mockery to speak of&mdash;no times when light and life
+seem feeble, and Christ is to us but a name, and death a reality?
+&ldquo;Perfect love casteth out fear,&rdquo; but who has it? Victory is by faith,
+but, oh God, who will tell us what this faith <i>is</i> that men speak of
+as a thing so easy; and how we are to get it! You tell us to pray for
+faith, but how shall we pray in earnest unless we first have the very
+faith we pray for?</p>
+
+<p>My Christian brethren, it is just to this deepest cry of the human
+heart that it is impossible to return a full answer. All that is true.
+To feel Faith is the grand difficulty of life. Faith is a deep
+impression of God and God's love, and personal trust in it. It is easy
+to say &ldquo;Believe and thou shalt be saved,&rdquo; but well we know it is
+easier said than done. We cannot say how men are to <i>get</i> faith. It is
+God's gift, almost in the same way that genius is. You cannot work
+<i>for</i> faith; you must have it first, and then work <i>from</i> it.</p>
+
+<p>But brethren beloved, we can say, Look up, though we know not how the
+mechanism of the will which directs the eye is to be put in motion; we
+can say, Look to God in Christ, though we know not how men are to
+obtain faith to do it. Let us be in earnest. Our polar star is the
+love of the Cross. Take the eye off that, and you are in darkness and
+bewilderment at once. Let us not mind what is past. Perhaps it is all
+failure, and useless struggle, and broken resolves. What then? Settle
+this first, brethren, Are you in earnest? If so, though your faith be
+weak and your struggles unsatisfactory, you may begin the hymn of
+triumph <i>now</i>, for victory is pledged. &ldquo;Thanks be to God, which&rdquo; not
+<i>shall</i> give, but &ldquo;<i>giveth</i> us the victory through our Lord Jesus
+Christ.&rdquo;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVIII" id="XVIII"></a>XVIII.<br />
+<small><i>Preached June 20, 1852.</i></small><br />
+MAN'S GREATNESS AND GOD'S GREATNESS.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote class="scripture"><p>&ldquo;For thus saith the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth Eternity,
+whose Name is Holy. I dwell in the high and holy place&mdash;with him
+also that is of a contrite and humble spirit.&rdquo;&mdash;Isaiah lvii. 15.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">The origin of this announcement seems to have been the state of
+contempt in which religion found itself in the days of Isaiah. One of
+the most profligate monarchs that ever disgraced the page of sacred
+history, sat upon the throne of Judah. His court was filled with men
+who recommended themselves chiefly by their licentiousness. The altar
+was forsaken. Sacrilegious hands had placed the abominations of
+heathenism in the Holy Place; and Piety, banished from the State, the
+Church, and the Royal court, was once more as she had been before, and
+will be again, a wanderer on the face of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>Now, however easy it may be to contemplate such a state of things at a
+distance, it never takes place in a man's own day and time, without
+suggesting painful perplexities of a twofold nature. In the first
+place suspicions respecting God's character; and, in the second place,
+misgivings as to his own duty. For a faithless heart whispers, Is it
+worth while to suffer for a sinking cause? Honour, preferment,
+grandeur, follow in the train of unscrupulous conduct. To be strict
+in goodness, is to be pointed at and shunned. To be no better than
+one's neighbours is the only way of being at peace. It seems to have
+been to such a state as this that Isaiah was commissioned to bring
+light. He vindicated God's character by saying that He is &ldquo;the High
+and Lofty One that inhabiteth Eternity.&rdquo; He encouraged those who were
+trodden down, to perseverance, by reminding them that real dignity is
+something very different from present success. God dwells with him,
+&ldquo;that is of a contrite and humble spirit&rdquo; We consider</p>
+
+<ol class="Rom">
+<li>That in which the greatness of God consists.</li>
+<li>That in which man's greatness consists.</li>
+</ol>
+
+<p>The first measurement, so to speak, which is given us of God's
+greatness, is in respect of Time. He inhabiteth Eternity. There are
+some subjects on which it would be good to dwell, if it were only for
+the sake of that enlargement of mind which is produced by their
+contemplation. And eternity is one of these, so that you cannot
+steadily fix the thoughts upon it without being sensible of a peculiar
+kind of elevation, at the same time that you are humbled by a personal
+feeling of utter insignificance. You have come in contact with
+something so immeasurable&mdash;beyond the narrow range of our common
+speculations&mdash;that you are exalted by the very conception of it. Now
+the only way we have of forming any idea of eternity is by going, step
+by step, up to the largest measures of time we know of, and so
+ascending, on and on, till we are lost in wonder. We cannot grasp
+eternity, but we can learn something of it by perceiving, that, rise
+to what portion of time we will, eternity is vaster than the vastest.</p>
+
+<p>We take up for instance, the history of our own country, and then,
+when we have spent months in mastering the mere outline of those great
+events which, in the slow course of revolving centuries, have made
+England what she is, her earlier ages seem so far removed from our own
+times that they appear to belong to a hoary and most remote antiquity.
+But then, when you compare those times with even the existing works of
+man, and when you remember that, when England was yet young in
+civilization, the pyramids of Egypt were already grey with 1500 years,
+you have got another step which impresses you with a doubled amount of
+vastness. Double that period, and you come to the far distant moment
+when the present aspect of this world was called, by creation, out of
+the formless void in which it was before.</p>
+
+<p>Modern science has raised us to a pinnacle of thought beyond even
+this. It has commanded us to think of countless ages in which that
+formless void existed before it put on the aspect of its present
+creation. Millions of years before God called the light day, and the
+darkness night, there was, if science speaks true, creation after
+creation called into existence, and buried in its own ruins upon the
+surface of this earth. And then, there was a time beyond even
+this&mdash;there was a moment when this earth itself, with all its
+countless creations and innumerable ages, did not exist. And, again,
+in that far back distance it is more than conceivable, it seems by the
+analogy of God's dealings next to certain, that ten thousand worlds
+may have been called into existence, and lasted their unnumbered ages,
+and then perished in succession. Compared with these stupendous
+figures, 6,000 years of <i>our</i> planet sink into nothingness. The mind
+is lost in dwelling on such thoughts as these. When you have
+penetrated far, far back, by successive approximations, and still see
+the illimitable distance receding before you as distant as before,
+imagination absolutely gives way, and you feel dizzy and bewildered
+with new strange thoughts, that have not a name.</p>
+
+<p>But this is only one aspect of the case. It looks only to time past.
+The same overpowering calculations wait us when we bend our eyes on
+that which is to come. Time stretches back immeasurably, but it also
+stretches on and on for ever. Now it is by such a conception as this
+that the inspired prophet attempts to measure the immeasurable of God.
+All that eternity, magnificent as it is, never was without an
+Inhabitant. Eternity means nothing by itself. It merely expresses the
+existence of the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth it. We make a
+fanciful distinction between eternity and time&mdash;there is no real
+distinction. We are in eternity at this moment. That has begun to be
+with us which never began with God. Our only measure of time is by the
+succession of ideas. If ideas flow fast, and many sights and many
+thoughts pass by us, time seems lengthened. If we have the simple
+routine of a few engagements, the same every day, with little variety,
+the years roll by us so fast that we cannot mark them. It is not so
+with God. There is no succession of ideas with Him. Every possible
+idea is present with Him now. It was present with Him ten thousand
+years ago. God's dwelling-place is that eternity which has neither
+past nor future, but one vast, immeasurable present.</p>
+
+<p>There is a second measure given us of God in this verse. It is in
+respect of Space. He dwelleth in the High and Lofty place. He dwelleth
+moreover, in the most insignificant place&mdash;even the heart of man. And
+the idea by which the prophet would here exhibit to us the greatness
+of God is that of His eternal Omnipresence. It is difficult to say
+which conception carries with it the greatest exaltation&mdash;that of
+boundless space or that of unbounded time. When we pass from the tame
+and narrow scenery of our own country, and stand on those spots of
+earth in which nature puts on her wilder and more awful forms, we are
+conscious of something of the grandeur which belongs to the thought of
+space. Go where the strong foundations of the earth lie around you in
+their massive majesty, and mountain after mountain rears its snow to
+heaven in a giant chain, and then, when this bursts upon you for the
+first time in life, there is that peculiar feeling which we call, in
+common language, an enlargement of ideas. But when we are told that
+the sublimity of those dizzy heights is but a nameless speck in
+comparison with the globe of which they form the girdle; and when we
+pass on to think of that globe itself as a minute spot in the mighty
+system to which it belongs, so that our world might be annihilated,
+and its loss would not be felt; and when we are told that eighty
+millions of such systems roll in the world of space, to which our own
+system again is as nothing; and when we are again pressed with the
+recollection that beyond those furthest limits creative power is
+exerted immeasurably further than eye can reach, or thought can
+penetrate; then, brethren, the awe which comes upon the heart is only,
+after all, a tribute to a <i>portion</i> of God's greatness.</p>
+
+<p>Yet we need not science to teach us this. It is the thought which
+oppresses very childhood&mdash;the overpowering thought of space. A child
+can put his head upon his hands, and think and think till it reaches
+in imagination some far distant barrier of the universe, and still the
+difficulty presents itself to his young mind, &ldquo;And what is beyond
+that barrier?&rdquo; and the only answer is &ldquo;The high and lofty place.&rdquo; And
+this brethren, is the inward seal with which God has stamped Himself
+upon man's heart. If every other trace of Deity has been expunged by
+the fall, these two at least defy destruction&mdash;the thought of Eternal
+Time, and the thought of Immeasurable Space.</p>
+
+<p>The third measure which is given us of God respects His character. His
+name is Holy. The chief idea which this would convey to us is
+separation from evil. Brethren, there is perhaps a time drawing near
+when those of us who shall stand at His right hand, purified from all
+evil taint, shall be able to comprehend absolutely what is meant by
+the Holiness of God. At present, with hearts cleaving down to earth,
+and tossed by a thousand gusts of unholy passion, we can only form a
+dim conception <i>relatively</i> of that which it implies. None but the
+pure can understand purity. The chief knowledge which we have of God's
+holiness comes from our acquaintance with unholiness. We know what
+impurity is&mdash;God is <i>not</i> that. We know what injustice is&mdash;God is
+<i>not</i> that. We know what restlessness, and guilt, and passion are, and
+deceitfulness, and pride, and waywardness&mdash;all these we know. God is
+none of these. And this is our chief acquaintance with His character.
+We know what God is <i>not</i>. We scarcely can be rightly said to know,
+that is to feel, what God <i>is</i>. And therefore, this is implied in the
+very name of holiness. Holiness in the Jewish sense means simply
+separateness. From all that is wrong, and mean, and base, our God is
+for ever separate.</p>
+
+<p>There is another way in which God gives to us a conception of what
+this holiness implies. Tell us of His justice, His truth, His
+loving-kindness. All these are cold abstractions. They convey no
+distinct idea of themselves to our hearts. What we wanted was, that
+these should be exhibited to us in tangible reality. And it is just
+this which God has done. He has exhibited all these attributes, not in
+the light of <i>speculation</i>, but in the light of <i>facts</i>. He has given
+us His own character in all its delicacy of colouring in the history
+of Christ. Love, Mercy, Tenderness, Purity&mdash;these are no mere names
+when we see them brought out in the human actions of our Master.
+Holiness is only a shadow to our minds, till it receives shape and
+substance in the life of Christ. All this character of holiness is
+intelligible to us in Christ. &ldquo;No man hath seen God at any time, the
+only begotten of the Father He hath declared Him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>There is a third light in which God's holiness is shown to us, and
+that is in the sternness with which He recoils from guilt. When Christ
+died for man, I know what God's love means; and when Jesus wept human
+tears over Jerusalem, I know what God's compassion means; and when the
+stern denunciations of Jesus rung in the Pharisees' ears, I can
+comprehend what God's indignation is; and when Jesus stood calm before
+His murderers, I have a conception of what serenity is. Brethren,
+revelation opens to us a scene beyond the grave, when this shall be
+exhibited in full operation. There will be an everlasting banishment
+from God's presence of that impurity on which the last efforts have
+been tried in vain. It will be a carrying out of this sentence by a
+law that cannot be reversed&mdash;&ldquo;Depart from me, ye cursed.&rdquo; But it is
+quite a mistake to suppose that this is only a matter of revelation.
+Traces of it we have now on this side the sepulchre. Human life is
+full of God's recoil from sin. In the writhings of a heart which has
+been made to possess its own iniquities&mdash;in the dark spot which guilt
+leaves upon the conscience, rising up at times in a man's gayest
+moments, as if it will not come out&mdash;in the restlessness and the
+feverishness which follow the efforts of the man who has indulged
+habits of sin too long,&mdash;in all these there is a law repelling
+wickedness from the presence of the Most High,&mdash;which proclaims that
+God is holy.</p>
+
+<p>Brethren, it is in these that the greatness of God consists&mdash;Eternal
+in Time&mdash;Unlimited in Space&mdash;Unchangeable&mdash;Pure in character&mdash;His
+serenity and His vastness arise from His own perfections.</p>
+
+
+<p class="break">We are to consider, in the second place, the greatness of man.</p>
+
+<ol>
+<li>The nature of that greatness.</li>
+<li>The persons who are great.</li>
+</ol>
+
+<p>Now, this is brought before us in the text in this one fact, that man
+has been made a habitation of the Deity&mdash;&ldquo;I dwell with him that is of
+a contrite and humble spirit.&rdquo; There is in the very outset this
+distinction between what is great in God and what is great in man. To
+be independent of everything in the universe is God's glory, and to be
+independent is man's shame. All that God has, He has from Himself&mdash;all
+that man has, He has from God. And the moment man cuts himself off
+from God, that moment he cuts himself off from all true grandeur.</p>
+
+<p>There are two things implied in Scripture, when it is said that God
+dwells with man. The first is that peculiar presence which He has
+conferred upon the members of His church. Brethren, we presume not to
+define what that Presence is, and how it dwells within us&mdash;we are
+content to leave it as a mystery. But this we know, that something of
+a very peculiar and supernatural character takes place in the heart
+of every man upon whom the gospel has been brought to bear with power.
+&ldquo;Know ye not,&rdquo; says the Apostle, &ldquo;that your bodies are the temples of
+the Holy Ghost.&rdquo; And again in the Epistle to the Ephesians&mdash;&ldquo;In Christ
+ye are builded for an habitation of God through the Spirit.&rdquo; There is
+something in these expressions which refuses to be explained away.
+They leave us but one conclusion, and that is&mdash;that in all those who
+have become Christ's by faith, God personally and locally has taken up
+His dwelling-place.</p>
+
+<p>There is a second meaning attached in Scripture to the expression God
+dwells in man. According to the first meaning, we understand it in the
+most plain and literal sense the words are capable of conveying.
+According to the second, we understand His dwelling in a figurative
+sense, implying this&mdash;that He gives an acquaintance with Himself to
+man. So, for instance, when Judas asked, &ldquo;Lord, how is it, that Thou
+wilt manifest Thyself to us and not to the world?&rdquo; Our Redeemer's
+reply was this&mdash;&ldquo;If a man love me, he will keep my words, and my
+Father will love him, and We will come unto him and make Our abode
+with him.&rdquo; In the question it was asked <i>how</i> God would manifest
+Himself to His servants. In the answer it was shown <i>how</i> He would
+make His abode with them. And if the answer be any reply to the
+question at all, what follows is this&mdash;that God making His abode or
+dwelling in the heart is the same thing exactly as God's manifesting
+himself to the heart.</p>
+
+<p>Brethren, in these two things the greatness of man consists. One is to
+have God so dwelling in us as to impart His character to us; and the
+other is to have God so dwelling in us that we recognise His presence,
+and know that we are His and He is ours. They are two things
+perfectly distinct To <i>have</i> God in us, this is salvation; to <i>know</i>
+that God is in us, this is assurance.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, we inquire as to the persons who are truly great. And these
+the Holy Scripture has divided into two classes&mdash;those who are humble
+and those who are contrite in heart. Or rather, it will be observed
+that it is the same class of character under different circumstances.
+Humbleness is the frame of mind of those who are in a state of
+innocence, contrition of those who are in a state of repentant guilt.
+Brethren, let not the expression innocence be misunderstood. Innocence
+in its true and highest sense never existed but once upon this earth.
+Innocence cannot be the religion of man now. But yet there are those
+who have walked with God from youth, not quenching the spirit which He
+gave them, and who are therefore <i>comparatively</i> innocent beings. All
+they have to do is to go on, whereas the guilty man has to stop and
+turn back before he can go on. Repentance with them is the gentle work
+of every day, not the work of one distinct and miserable part of life.
+They are those whom the Lord calls just men which need no repentance,
+and of whom He says, &ldquo;He that is clean needeth not save to wash his
+feet.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Now they are described here as the humble in heart. Two things are
+required for this state of mind. One is that a man should have a true
+estimate of God, and the other is that he should have a true estimate
+of himself.</p>
+
+<p>Vain, blind man, places himself on a little corner of this planet, a
+speck upon a speck of the universe, and begins to form conclusions
+from the small fraction of God's government which he can see from
+thence. The astronomer looks at the laws of motion and forgets that
+there must have been a First Cause to commence that motion. The
+surgeon looks at the materialism of his own frame and forgets that
+matter cannot organise itself into exquisite beauty. The metaphysician
+buries himself in the laws of mind and forgets that there may be
+spiritual influences producing all those laws. And this brethren, is
+the unhumbled spirit of philosophy&mdash;intellectual pride. Men look at
+Nature, but they do not look through it up to Nature's God. There is
+awful ignorance of God, arising from indulged sin, which produces an
+unhumbled heart. God may be shut out from the soul by pride of
+intellect, or by pride of heart.</p>
+
+<p>Pharaoh is placed before us in Scripture almost as a type of pride.
+His pride arose from ignorance of God. &ldquo;Who is the Lord that I should
+obey His voice? I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go.&rdquo;
+And this was not intellectual pride; it was pride in a matter of duty.
+Pharaoh had been immersing his whole heart in the narrow politics of
+Egypt. The great problem of his day was to aggrandise his own people
+and prevent an insurrection of the Israelites; and that small kingdom
+of Egypt had been his universe. He shut his heart to the voice of
+justice and the voice of humanity; in other words, great in the pride
+of human majesty, small in the sight of the High and Lofty One, he
+shut himself out from the knowledge of God.</p>
+
+<p>The next ingredient of humbleness is, that a man must have a right
+estimate of himself. There is a vast amount of self-deception on this
+point. We say of ourselves that which we could not bear others to say
+of us. A man truly humbled would take it only as his due when others
+treated him in the way that he says that he deserves. But my brethren,
+we kneel in our closets in shame for what we are, and we tell our God
+that the lowest place is too good for us; and then we go into the
+world, and if we meet with slight or disrespect, or if our opinion be
+not attended to, or if another be preferred before us, there is all
+the anguish of a galled and jealous spirit, and half the bitterness of
+our lives comes from this, that we are smarting from what we call the
+wrongs and the neglect of men. My beloved brethren, if we saw
+ourselves as God sees us, we should be willing to be anywhere, to be
+silent when others speak, to be passed by in the world's crowd, and
+thrust aside to make way for others. We should be willing to put
+others in the way of doing that which we might have got reputation for
+by doing ourselves. This was the temper of our Master&mdash;this is the
+meek and the quiet spirit, and this is the temper of the humble with
+whom the High and Lofty One dwells.</p>
+
+<p>The other class of those who are truly great are the contrite in
+spirit. At first sight it might be supposed that there must ever be a
+vast distinction between the innocent and the penitent. It was so that
+the elder son in the parable thought when he saw his brother restored
+to his father's favour. He was surprised and hurt. He had served his
+father these many years&mdash;his brother had wasted his substance in
+riotous living. But in this passage God makes no distinction. He
+places the humble consistent follower and the broken-hearted sinner on
+a level. He dwells with both, with Him that is contrite, <i>and</i> with
+him that is humble. He sheds around them both the grandeur of His own
+presence, and the annals of Church history are full of
+exemplifications of this marvel of God's grace. By the transforming
+grace of Christ men, who have done the very work of Satan, have become
+as conspicuous in the service of heaven, as they were once conspicuous
+in the career of guilt.</p>
+
+<p>So indisputably has this been so, that men have drawn from such
+instances the perverted conclusion, that if a man is ever to be a
+great saint, he must first be a great sinner. God forbid brethren,
+that we should ever make such an inference. But this we infer for our
+own encouragement, that past sin does not necessarily preclude from
+high attainments. We must &ldquo;forget the things that are behind.&rdquo; We must
+not mourn over past years of folly as if they made saintliness
+impossible. Deep as we may have been once in earthliness, so deep we
+may also be in penitence, and so high we may become in spirituality.</p>
+
+<p>We have so many years the fewer to do our work in. Well brethren, let
+us try to do it so much the faster. Christ can crowd the work of years
+into hours. He did it with the dying thief. If the man who has set out
+early may take his time, it certainly cannot be so with <i>us</i> who have
+lost our time. If we have lost God's bright and happy presence by our
+wilfulness, what then? Unrelieved sadness? Nay, brethren, calmness,
+purity, may have gone from our heart; but <i>all</i> is not gone yet. Just
+as sweetness comes from the bark of the cinnamon when it is bruised,
+so can the spirit of the Cross of Christ bring beauty and holiness and
+peace out of the bruised and broken heart. God dwells with the
+contrite as much as with the humble.</p>
+
+<p>And now brethren, to conclude, the first inference we collect from
+this subject, is the danger of coming into collision with such a God
+as our God. Day by day we commit sins of thought and word of which the
+dull eye of man takes no cognisance. He whose name is Holy cannot pass
+them by. We may elude the vigilance of a human enemy and place
+ourselves beyond his reach. God fills all space&mdash;there is not a spot
+in which His piercing eye is not on us, and His uplifted hand cannot
+find us out. Man must strike soon if he would strike at all; for
+opportunities pass away from him, and his victim may escape his
+vengeance by death. There is no passing of opportunity with God, and
+it is this which makes His long suffering a solemn thing. God can
+wait, for He has a whole eternity before Him in which He may strike.
+&ldquo;All things are open, and naked to Him with whom we have to do.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In the next place we are taught the heavenly character of
+condescension. It is not from the insignificance of man that God's
+dwelling with him is so strange. It is as much the glory of God to
+bend His attention on an atom as to uphold the universe. But the
+marvel is that the habitation which He has chosen for Himself is an
+impure one. And when He came down from His magnificence to make this
+world His home, still the same character of condescension was shown
+through all the life of Christ. Our God selected the society of the
+outcasts of earth, those whom none else would speak to.</p>
+
+<p>Brethren, if we would be Godlike, we must follow in the same steps.
+Our temptation is to do exactly the reverse. We are for ever wishing
+to obtain the friendship and the intimacy of those above us in the
+world. To win over men of influence to truth&mdash;to associate with men of
+talent and station, and title. This is the world-chase, and this,
+brethren, is too much the religious man's chase. But if you look
+simply to the question of resemblance to God, then the man who makes
+it a habit to select that one in life to do good to, and that one in a
+room to speak with, whom others pass by because there is nothing
+either of intellect, or power, or name, to recommend him, but only
+humbleness, <i>that</i> man has stamped upon his heart more of heavenly
+similitude by condescension, than the man who has made it his
+business to win this world's great ones, even for the sake of truth.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, we learn the guilt of two things of which this world is
+full&mdash;vanity and pride. There is a distinction between these two. But
+the distinction consists in this, that the vain man looks for the
+admiration of others&mdash;the proud man requires nothing but his own. Now,
+it is this distinction which makes vanity despicable to us all. We can
+easily find out the vain man&mdash;we soon discover what it is he wants to
+be observed, whether it be a gift of person, or a gift of mind, or a
+gift of character. If he be vain of his person, his attitudes will
+tell the tale. If he be vain of his judgment, or his memory, or his
+honesty, he cannot help an unnecessary parade. The world finds him
+out, and this is why vanity is ever looked on with contempt. So soon
+as we let men see that we are suppliants for their admiration, we are
+at their mercy. We have given them the privilege of feeling that they
+are above us. We have invited them to spurn us. And therefore vanity
+is but a thing for scorn. But it is very different with pride. No man
+can look down on him that is proud, for he has asked no man for
+anything. They are forced to feel respect for pride, because it is
+thoroughly independent of them. It wraps itself up in the consequence
+of its own excellences, and scorns to care whether others take note of
+them or not.</p>
+
+<p>It is just here that the danger lies. We have exalted a sin into a
+virtue. No man will acknowledge that he is vain, but almost any man
+will acknowledge that he is proud. But tried by the balance of the
+sanctuary, there is little to choose between the two. If a man look
+for greatness out of God, it matters little whether he seek it in his
+own applause, or in the applause of others. The <i>proud</i> Pharisee, who
+trusted in himself that he was righteous, was condemned by Christ as
+severely, and even more, than the <i>vain</i> Jews who &ldquo;could not believe
+because they sought honour from one another, and not that honour which
+cometh from God only.&rdquo; It may be a more dazzling, and a more splendid
+sin to be proud. It is not less hateful in God's sight. Let us speak
+God's word to our own unquiet, swelling, burning hearts. Pride may
+disguise itself as it will in its own majesty, but in the presence of
+the High and Lofty One, it is but littleness after all.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIX" id="XIX"></a>XIX.<br />
+<small><i>Preached June 27, 1852.</i></small><br />
+THE LAWFUL AND UNLAWFUL USE OF LAW.<br />
+<small>(A FRAGMENT.)</small></h2>
+
+
+<blockquote class="scripture"><p>&ldquo;But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully.&rdquo;<ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Original omits this emdash, unlike the other sermons.">&mdash;</ins>1
+Tim. i. 8.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">It is scarcely ever possible to understand a passage without some
+acquaintance with the history of the circumstances under which it was
+written.</p>
+
+<p>At Ephesus, over which Timothy was bishop, people had been bewildered
+by the teaching of converted Jews, who mixed the old leaven of Judaism
+with the new spirituality of Christianity. They maintained the
+perpetual obligation of the Jewish law.&mdash;v. 7. They desired to be
+teachers of the law. They required strict performance of a number of
+severe observances. They talked mysteriously of angels and powers
+intermediate between God and the human soul.&mdash;v. 4. The result was an
+interminable discussion at Ephesus. The Church was filled with
+disputations and controversies.</p>
+
+<p>Now there is something always refreshing to see the Apostle Paul
+descending upon an arena of controversy, where minds have been
+bewildered; and so much is to be said on both sides, that people are
+uncertain which to take. You know at once that he will pour light upon
+the question, and illuminate all the dark corners. You know that he
+will not trim, and balance, and hang doubtful, or become a partisan;
+but that he will seize some great principle which lies at the root of
+the whole controversy, and make its true bearings clear at once.</p>
+
+<p>This he always does, and this he does on the present occasion.&mdash;v. 5
+and 6. He does not, like a vehement polemic, say Jewish ceremonies and
+rules are all worthless, nor some ceremonies are worthless, and others
+essential; but he says, the root of the whole matter is charity. If
+you turn aside from this, all is lost; here at once the controversy
+closes. So far as any rule fosters the spirit of love, that is, is
+used lawfully, it is wise, and has a use. So far as it does not, it is
+chaff. So far as it hinders it, it is poison.</p>
+
+<p>Now observe how different this method is from that which is called the
+sober, moderate way&mdash;the <i>via media</i>. Some would have said, the great
+thing is to avoid extremes. If the question respects
+fasting&mdash;fast&mdash;only in <i>moderation</i>. If the observance of the Sabbath
+day, observe it on the Jewish principle, only <i>not so strictly</i>.</p>
+
+<p>St. Paul, on the contrary, went down to the root; he said, the true
+question is not whether the law is good or bad, but on what principle;
+he said, you are both wrong&mdash;<i>you</i>, in saying that the observance of
+the law is essential, for the end of it is charity, and if <i>that</i> be
+got what matter <i>how</i>&mdash;<i>you</i>, in saying rules may be dispensed with
+entirely and always, &ldquo;for we know that the law is good.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<ol class="Rom">
+<li>The unlawful use, and</li>
+<li>The lawful use of law.</li>
+</ol>
+
+
+<h3>I. The unlawful use.</h3>
+
+<p>Define law.&mdash;By law, Paul almost always means not the Mosaic law, but
+law in its essence and principle, that is, constraint. This chiefly in
+two forms expresses itself&mdash;1st, a custom; 2nd, a maxim. As examples
+of custom, we might give Circumcision, or the Sabbath, or Sacrifice,
+or Fasting.</p>
+
+<p>Law said, thou shalt <i>do</i> these things; and law, as mere law,
+constrained them. Or again, law may express itself in maxims and
+rules.</p>
+
+<p>In rules, as when law said, &ldquo;Thou shalt not steal&rdquo;&mdash;not saying a word
+about secret dishonesty of heart, but simply taking cognizance of
+<i>acts</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In maxims, as when it admonished that man ought to give a tenth to
+God, leaving the principle of the matter untouched. Principle is one
+thing, and maxim is another. A principle requires liberality, a maxim
+says one-tenth. A principle says, &ldquo;A merciful man is merciful to his
+beast,&rdquo; leaves mercy to the heart, and does not define how; a maxim
+says, thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out thy corn. A
+principle says, Forgive; a maxim defines &ldquo;seven times;&rdquo; and thus the
+whole law falls into two divisions.</p>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>The ceremonial law, which constrains life by customs.</li>
+<li>The moral law, which guides life by rules and maxims.</li>
+</ul>
+<p>Now it is an illegitimate use of law. First. To expect by obedience to
+it to make out a title to salvation.</p>
+
+<p>By the deeds of the law, shall no man living be justified. Salvation
+is by faith: a state of heart right with God; faith is the spring of
+holiness&mdash;a well of life. Salvation is not the having committed a
+certain number of good acts. Destruction is not the having committed a
+certain number of crimes. Salvation is God's Spirit in us, leading to
+good. Destruction is the selfish spirit in us, leading to wrong.</p>
+
+<p>For a plain reason then, obedience to law cannot save, because it is
+merely the performance of a certain number of acts which may be done
+by habit, from fear, from compulsion. Obedience remains still
+imperfect. A man may have obeyed the rule, and kept the maxim, and yet
+not be perfect. &ldquo;All these commandments have I kept from my youth up.&rdquo;
+&ldquo;Yet lackest thou one thing.&rdquo; The law he had kept. The spirit of
+obedience in its high form of sacrifice he had not.</p>
+
+<p>Secondly. To use it superstitiously.</p>
+
+<p>It is plain that this was the use made of it by the Ephesian
+teachers.&mdash;v. 4. It seemed to them that <i>law</i> was pleasing to God as
+restraint. Then unnatural restraints came to be imposed&mdash;on the
+appetites, fasting; on the affections, celibacy. This is what Paul
+condemns.&mdash;ch. iv., v. 8. &ldquo;Bodily exercise profiteth little.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And again, this superstition showed itself in a false
+reverence&mdash;wondrous stories respecting angels&mdash;respecting the eternal
+genealogy of Christ&mdash;awful thoughts about spirits. The Apostle calls
+all these, very unceremoniously, &ldquo;endless genealogies,&rdquo; v. 4, and &ldquo;old
+wives' fables.&rdquo;&mdash;ch. iv., v. 7.</p>
+
+<p>The question at issue is, wherein true reverence consists: according
+to them, in the multiplicity of the objects of reverence; according to
+St. Paul, in the character of the object revered ... God and Right the
+true object.</p>
+
+<p>But you are not a whit the better for solemn and reverential feelings
+about a mysterious, invisible world. To tremble before a consecrated
+wafer is spurious reverence. To bend before the Majesty of Right is
+Christian reverence.</p>
+
+<p>Thirdly. To use it as if the letter of it were sacred. The law
+commanded none to eat the shewbread except the priests. David ate it
+in hunger. If Abimelech had scrupled to give it, he would have used
+the law unlawfully.</p>
+
+<p>The law commanded no manner of work. The apostles in hunger rubbed the
+ears of corn. The Pharisees used the law unlawfully, in forbidding
+that.</p>
+
+
+<h3>II. The lawful use of law.</h3>
+
+<p><b>1.</b> As a restraint to keep outward evil in check ... &ldquo;The law was made
+for sinners and profane.&rdquo; ... Illustrate this by reference to capital
+punishment. No sane man believes that punishment by death will make a
+nation's heart right, or that the sight of an execution can soften or
+ameliorate. Punishment does not work in that way. It is not meant for
+that purpose. It is meant to guard society.</p>
+
+<p>The law commanding a blasphemer to be stoned, could not teach one
+Israelite love to God, but it could save the streets of Israel from
+scandalous ribaldry.</p>
+
+<p>And therefore clearly understand, law is a mere check to bad men: it
+does not improve them; it often makes them worse; it cannot sanctify
+them. God never intended that it should. It saves society from the
+open transgression; it does not contemplate the amelioration of the
+offender.</p>
+
+<p>Hence we see for what reason the apostle insisted on the use of the
+law for Christians. Law never can be abrogated. Strict rules are
+needed exactly in proportion as we want the power or the will to rule
+ourselves. It is not because the Gospel has come that we are free from
+the law, but because, and only so far, as we are in a Gospel state.
+&ldquo;It is for a righteous man&rdquo; that the law is not made, and thus we see
+the true nature of Christian liberty. The liberty to which we are
+called in Christ, is not the liberty of devils, the liberty of doing
+what we will, but the blessed liberty of being on the side of the law,
+and therefore unrestrained by it in doing right.</p>
+
+<p>Illustrate from laws of coining, housebreaking, &amp;c. We are not under
+them.&mdash;Because we may break them as we like? Nay&mdash;the moment we
+desire, the law is alive again to us.</p>
+
+<p><b>2.</b> As a primer is used by a child to acquire by degrees, principles
+and a spirit.</p>
+
+<p>This is the use attributed to it in verse 5. &ldquo;The end of the
+commandment is charity.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Compare with this, two other passages&mdash;&ldquo;Christ is the end of the law
+for righteousness,&rdquo; and &ldquo;love is the fulfilling of the law.&rdquo; &ldquo;Perfect
+love casteth out fear.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In every law there is a spirit; in every maxim a principle; and the
+law and the maxim are laid down for the sake of conserving the spirit
+and the principle which they enshrine.</p>
+
+<p>St. Paul compares God's dealing with man to a wise parent's
+instruction of his child.&mdash;See the Epistle to the Galatians. Boyhood
+is under law; you appeal not to the boy's reason, but his will, by
+rewards and punishments: Do this, and I will reward you; do it not,
+and you will be punished. So long as a man is under law, this is
+salutary and necessary, but only while under law. He is free when he
+discerns principles, and at the same time has got, by habit, the will
+to obey. So that rules have done for him a double work, taught him the
+principle and facilitated obedience to it.</p>
+
+<p>Distinguish however.&mdash;In point of time, law is first&mdash;in point of
+importance, the Spirit.</p>
+
+<p>In point of <i>time</i>, Charity is the &ldquo;end&rdquo; of the commandment&mdash;in point
+of <i>importance</i>, first and foremost.</p>
+
+<p>The first thing a boy has to do, is to learn implicit obedience to
+rules. The first thing in importance for a man to learn is, to sever
+himself from maxims, rules, laws. Why? That he may become an
+Antinomian, or a Latitudinarian? No. He is severed from submission to
+the <i>maxim</i> because he has got allegiance to the <i>principle</i>. He is
+free from the rule and the law because he has got the Spirit written
+in his heart.</p>
+
+<p>This is the Gospel. A man is redeemed by Christ so far as he is not
+under the law; he is free from the law so far as he is free from the
+evil which the law restrains; he progresses so far as there is no evil
+in him which it is an effort to keep down; and perfect salvation and
+liberty are&mdash;when we,&mdash;who though having the first fruits of the
+Spirit, yet groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, &ldquo;to wit,
+the redemption of our body&rdquo;&mdash;shall have been freed in body, soul, and
+spirit, from the last traces of the evil which can only be kept down
+by force. In other words, so far as Christ's statement is true of
+<i>us</i>, &ldquo;The Prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XX" id="XX"></a>XX.<br />
+<small><i>Preached February 21, 1853.</i></small><br />
+THE PRODIGAL AND HIS BROTHER.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote class="scripture"><p>&ldquo;And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I
+have is thine. It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad:
+for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; was lost, and
+is found.&rdquo;&mdash;Luke xv. 31, 32.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">There are two classes of sins. There are some sins by which man
+crushes, wounds, malevolently injures his brother man: those sins
+which speak of a bad, tyrannical, and selfish heart. Christ met those
+with denunciation. There are other sins by which a man injures
+himself. There is a life of reckless indulgence; there is a career of
+yielding to ungovernable propensities, which most surely conducts to
+wretchedness and ruin, but makes a man an object of compassion rather
+than of condemnation.</p>
+
+<p>The reception which sinners of this class met from Christ was marked
+by strange and pitying mercy. There was no maudlin sentiment on his
+lips. He called sin sin, and guilt guilt. But yet there were sins
+which His lips scourged, and others over which, containing in
+themselves their own scourge, His heart bled. That which was
+melancholy, and marred, and miserable in this world, was more
+congenial to the heart of Christ than that which was proudly happy. It
+was in the midst of a triumph, and all the pride of a procession,
+that He paused to weep over ruined Jerusalem. And if we ask the reason
+why the character of Christ was marked by this melancholy
+condescension it is that he was in the midst of a world of ruins, and
+there was nothing there to gladden, but very much to touch with grief.
+He was here to restore that which was broken down and crumbling into
+decay. An enthusiastic antiquarian, standing amidst the fragments of
+an ancient temple surrounded by dust and moss, broken pillar, and
+defaced architrave, with magnificent projects in his mind of restoring
+all this to <i>former</i> majesty, to draw out to light from mere rubbish
+the ruined glories, and therefore stooping down amongst the dank ivy
+and the rank nettles; such was Christ amidst the wreck of human
+nature. He was striving to lift it out of its degradation. He was
+searching out in revolting places that which had fallen down, that He
+might build it up again in fair proportions a holy temple to the Lord.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore He laboured among the guilty; therefore He was the companion
+of outcasts; therefore He spoke tenderly and lovingly to those whom
+society counted undone; therefore He loved to bind up the bruised and
+the broken-hearted; therefore His breath fanned the spark which seemed
+dying out in the wick of the expiring taper, when men thought that it
+was too late, and that the hour of <i>hopeless</i> profligacy was come. It
+was that feature in His character, that tender, hoping, encouraging
+spirit of His which the prophet Isaiah fixed upon as characteristic.
+&ldquo;A bruised reed will He not break.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It was an illustration of this spirit which He gave in the parable
+which forms the subject of our consideration to-day. We find the
+occasion which drew it from Him in the commencement of this chapter,
+&ldquo;Then drew near unto Him all the publicans and sinners for to hear
+Him. And the Pharisees and Scribes murmured, saying, This man
+receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.&rdquo; It was then that Christ
+condescended to offer an excuse or an explanation of His conduct. And
+His excuse was this: It is natural, humanly natural, to rejoice more
+over that which has been recovered than over that which has been never
+lost. He proved that by three illustrations taken from human life. The
+first illustration intended to show the feelings of Christ in winning
+back a sinner, was the joy which the shepherd feels in the recovery of
+a sheep from the mountain wilderness. The second was the satisfaction
+which a person feels for a recovered coin. The last was the gladness
+which attends the restoration of an erring son.</p>
+
+<p>Now the three parables are alike in this, that they all describe more
+or less vividly the feelings of the Redeemer on the recovery of the
+lost. But the third parable differs from the other two in this, that
+besides the feelings of the Saviour, it gives us a multitude of
+particulars respecting the feelings, the steps, and the motives of the
+penitent who is reclaimed back to goodness. In the two first the thing
+lost is a coin or a sheep. It would not be possible to find any
+picture of remorse or gladness there. But in the third parable the
+thing lost is not a lifeless thing, nor a mute thing, but a being, the
+workings of whose human heart are all described. So that the subject
+opened out to us is a more extensive one&mdash;not merely the feelings of
+the finder, God in Christ, but besides that, the sensations of the
+wanderer himself.</p>
+
+<p>In dealing with this parable, this is the line which we shall adopt.
+We shall look at the picture which it draws of&mdash;1. God's treatment of
+the penitent. 2. God's expostulation with the saint. God's treatment
+of the penitent divides itself in this parable into three distinct
+epochs. The period of alienation, the period of repentance, and the
+circumstances of a penitent reception. We shall consider all these in
+turn.</p>
+
+<p>The first truth exhibited in this parable is the alienation of man's
+heart from God. Homelessness, distance from our Father&mdash;that is man's
+state by nature in this world. The youngest son gathered all together
+and took his journey into a <i>far</i> country. Brethren, this is the
+history of worldliness. It is a state far from God; in other words, it
+is a state of homelessness. And now let us ask what that means. To
+English hearts it is not necessary to expound elaborately the infinite
+meanings which cluster round that blessed expression &ldquo;home.&rdquo; Home is
+the one place in all this world where hearts are sure of each other.
+It is the place of confidence. It is the place where we tear off that
+mask of guarded and suspicious coldness which the world forces us to
+wear in self-defence, and where we pour out the unreserved
+communications of full and confiding hearts. It is the spot where
+expressions of tenderness gush out without any sensation of
+awkwardness and without any dread of ridicule. Let a man travel where
+he will, home is the place to which &ldquo;his heart untravelled fondly
+turns.&rdquo; He is to double all pleasure there. He is there to divide all
+pain. A <i>happy home</i> is the single spot of rest which a man has upon
+this earth for the cultivation of his noblest sensibilities.</p>
+
+<p>And now my brethren, if that be the description of home, is God's
+place of rest your home? Walk abroad and alone by night. That awful
+other world in the stillness and the solemn deep of the eternities
+above, is it your home? Those graves that lie beneath you, holding in
+them the infinite secret, and stamping upon all earthly loveliness the
+mark of frailty and change and fleetingness&mdash;are those graves the
+prospect to which in bright days and dark days you can turn without
+dismay? God in his splendours,&mdash;dare we feel with Him affectionate and
+familiar, so that trial comes softened by this feeling&mdash;it is my
+Father, and enjoyment can be taken with a frank feeling; my Father has
+given it me, without grudging, to make me happy? All that is having a
+home in God. Are we at home there? Why there is demonstration in our
+very childhood that we are not at home with that other world of God's.
+An infant fears to be alone, because he feels he is not alone. He
+trembles in the dark, because he is conscious of the presence of the
+world of spirits. Long before he has been told tales of terror, there
+is an instinctive dread of the supernatural in the infant mind. It is
+the instinct which we have from childhood that gives us the feeling of
+another world. And mark, brethren, if the child is not at home in the
+thought of that world of God's, the deep of darkness and eternity is,
+around him&mdash;God's home, but not his home, for his flesh creeps. And
+that feeling grows through life; not the fear&mdash;when the child becomes
+a man he gets over fear&mdash;but the dislike. The man feels as much
+aversion as the child for the world of spirits.</p>
+
+<p>Sunday comes. It breaks across the current of his worldliness. It
+suggests thoughts of death and judgment and everlasting existence. Is
+that home? Can the worldly man feel Sunday like a foretaste of his
+Father's mansion? If we could but know how many have come here to-day,
+not to have their souls lifted up heavenwards, but from curiosity, or
+idleness, or criticism, it would give us an appalling estimate of the
+number who are living in a far country, &ldquo;having no hope and without
+God in the world.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The second truth conveyed to us in this parable is the unsatisfying
+nature of worldly happiness. The outcast son tried to satiate his
+appetite with husks. A husk is an empty thing; it is a thing which
+looks extremely like food, and promises as much as food; but it is not
+food. It is a thing which when chewed will stay the appetite, but
+leaves the emaciated body without nourishment. Earthly happiness is a
+husk. We say not that there is no satisfaction in the pleasures of a
+worldly life. That would be an overstatement of the truth. Something
+there is, or else why should men persist in living for them? The
+cravings of man's appetite may be stayed by things which cannot
+satisfy him. Every new pursuit contains in it a new hope; and it is
+long before hope is bankrupt. But my brethren, it is strange if a man
+has not found out long before he has reached the age of thirty, that
+everything here is empty and disappointing. The nobler his heart and
+the more unquenchable his hunger for the high and the good, the sooner
+will he find that out. Bubble after bubble bursts, each bubble tinted
+with the celestial colours of the rainbow, and each leaving in the
+hand which crushes it a cold damp drop of disappointment. All that is
+described in Scripture by the emphatic metaphor of &ldquo;sowing the wind
+and reaping the whirlwind,&rdquo; the whirlwind of blighted hopes and
+unreturned feelings and crushed expectations&mdash;that is the harvest
+which the world gives you to reap.</p>
+
+<p>And now is the question asked, Why is this world unsatisfying?
+Brethren, it is the grandeur of the soul which God has given us, which
+makes it insatiable in its desires&mdash;with an infinite void which cannot
+be filled up. A soul which was made for God, how can the world fill
+it? If the ocean can be still with miles of unstable waters beneath
+it, then the soul of man, rocking itself upon its own deep longings,
+with the Infinite beneath it, may rest. We were created once in
+majesty, to find enjoyment in God, and if our hearts are empty now,
+there is nothing for it but to fill up the hollowness of the soul with
+God.</p>
+
+<p>Let not that expression&mdash;filling the soul with God&mdash;pass away without
+a distinct meaning. God is Love and Goodness. Fill the soul with
+goodness, and fill the soul with love, <i>that</i> is the filling it with
+God. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us. There is nothing else
+that can satisfy. So that when we hear men of this world acknowledge,
+as they sometimes will do, when they are wearied with this phantom
+chase of life, sick of gaieties and tired of toil, that it is not in
+their pursuits that they can drink the fount of blessedness; and when
+we see them, instead of turning aside either broken-hearted or else
+made wise, still persisting to trust to expectations&mdash;at fifty, sixty,
+or seventy years still feverish about some new plan of ambition&mdash;what
+we see is this: we see a soul formed with a capacity for high and
+noble things, fit for the banquet table of God Himself, trying to fill
+its infinite hollowness with husks.</p>
+
+<p>Once more, there is degradation in the life of irreligion. The things
+which the wanderer tried to live on were not husks only. They were
+husks which the swine did eat. Degradation means the application of a
+thing to purposes lower than that for which it was intended. It is
+degradation to a man to live on husks, because these are not his true
+food. We call it degradation when we see the members of an ancient
+family, decayed by extravagance, working for their bread. It is not
+degradation for a born labourer to work for an honest livelihood. It
+is degradation for them, for they are not what they might have been.
+And therefore, for a man to be degraded, it is not necessary that he
+should have given himself up to low and mean practices. It is quite
+enough that he is living for purposes lower than those for which God
+intended him. He may be a man of unblemished reputation, and yet
+debased in the truest meaning of the word. We were sent into this
+world to love God and to love man; to do good&mdash;to fill up life with
+deeds of generosity and usefulness. And he that refuses to work out
+that high destiny is a degraded man. He may turn away revolted from
+everything that is gross. His sensuous indulgences may be all marked
+by refinement and taste. His house may be filled with elegance. His
+library may be adorned with books. There may be the sounds in his
+mansion which can regale the ear, the delicacies which can stimulate
+the palate, and the forms of beauty which can please the eye. There
+may be nothing in his whole life to offend the most chastened and
+fastidious delicacy; and yet, if the history of all this be, powers
+which were meant for eternity frittered upon time, the man is
+degraded&mdash;if the spirit which was created to find its enjoyment in the
+love of God has settled down satisfied with the love of the world,
+then, just as surely as the sensualist of this parable, that man has
+turned aside from a celestial feast to prey on garbage.</p>
+
+<p>We pass on to the second period of the history of God's treatment of a
+sinner. It is the period of his coming to himself, or what we call
+repentance. The first fact of religious experience which this parable
+suggests to us is that common truth&mdash;men desert the world when the
+world deserts them. The renegade came to himself when there were no
+more husks to eat. He would have remained away if he could have got
+them, but it is written, &ldquo;no man gave unto him.&rdquo; And this, brethren,
+is the record of our shame. Invitation is not enough; we must be
+driven to God. And the famine comes not by chance. God sends the
+famine into the soul&mdash;the hunger, and thirst, and the
+disappointment&mdash;to bring back his erring child again.</p>
+
+<p>Now the world fastens upon that truth, and gets out of it a triumphant
+sarcasm against religion. They tell us that just as the caterpillar
+passes into the chrysalis, and the chrysalis into the butterfly, so
+profligacy passes into disgust, and disgust passes into religion. To
+use their own phraseology, when people become disappointed with the
+world, it is the last resource they say, to turn saint. So the men of
+the world speak, and they think they are profoundly philosophical and
+concise in the account they give. The world is welcome to its very
+small sneer. It is the glory of our Master's gospel that it <i>is</i> the
+refuge of the broken-hearted. It is the strange mercy of our God that
+he does not reject the writhings of a jaded heart. Let the world curl
+its lip if it will, when it sees through the causes of the prodigal's
+return. And if the sinner does not come to God taught by this
+disappointment, what then? If affections crushed in early life have
+driven one man to God; if wrecked and ruined hopes have made another
+man religious; if want of success in a profession has broken the
+spirit; if the human life lived out too passionately, has left a
+surfeit and a craving behind which end in seriousness; if one is
+brought by the sadness of widowed life, and another by the forced
+desolation of involuntary single life; if when the mighty famine comes
+into the heart, and not a husk is left, not a pleasure untried, then,
+and not till then, the remorseful resolve is made, &ldquo;I will arise and
+go to my Father:&rdquo;&mdash;Well, brethren, what then? Why this, that the
+history of penitence, produced as it so often is by mere
+disappointment, sheds only a brighter lustre round the Love of Christ,
+who rejoices to receive such wanderers, worthless as they are, back
+into His bosom. Thank God the world's sneer is true. It <i>is</i> the last
+resource to turn saint. Thanks to our God that when this gaudy world
+has ceased to charm, when the heart begins to feel its hollowness, and
+the world has lost its satisfying power, still all is not yet lost if
+penitence and Christ remain, to still, to humble, and to soothe a
+heart which sin has fevered.</p>
+
+<p>There is another truth contained in this section of the parable. After
+a life of wild sinfulness religion is servitude at first, not freedom.
+Observe, he went back to duty with the feelings of a slave: &ldquo;I am no
+more worthy to be called thy son, make me as one of thy hired
+servants.&rdquo; Any one who has lived in the excitement of the world, and
+then tried to settle down at once to quiet duty, knows how true that
+is. To borrow a metaphor from Israel's desert life, it is a tasteless
+thing to live on manna after you have been feasting upon quails. It is
+a dull cold drudgery to find pleasure in simple occupation when life
+has been a succession of strong emotions. Sonship it is not; it is
+slavery. A son obeys in love, entering heartily into his father's
+meaning. A servant obeys mechanically, rising early because he must;
+doing it may be, his duty well, but feeling in all its force the
+irksomeness of the service. Sonship does not come all at once. The
+yoke of Christ is easy, the burden of Christ is light; but it is not
+light to everybody. It is light when you love it, and no man who has
+sinned much can love it all at once.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, if I speak to any one who is trying to be religious, and
+heavy in heart because his duty is done too formally,&mdash;my Christian
+brother, fear not. You are returning, like the prodigal, with the
+feelings of a servant. Still it is a real return. The spirit of
+adoption will come afterwards. You will often have to do duties which
+you cannot relish, and in which you see no meaning. So it was with
+Naaman at the prophet's command. He bathed, not knowing why he was
+bidden to bathe in Jordan. When you bend to prayer, often and often
+you will have to kneel with wandering thoughts, and constraining lips
+to repeat words into which your heart scarcely enters. You will have
+to perform duties when the heart is cold, and without a spark of
+enthusiasm to warm you. But my Christian brother, onwards still.
+Struggle to the Cross, even though it be struggling as in chains. Just
+as on a day of clouds, when you have watched the distant hills, dark
+and gray with mist, suddenly a gleam of sunshine passing over reveals
+to you, in that flat surface, valleys and dells and spots of sunny
+happiness, which slept before unsuspected in the fog, so in the gloom
+of penitential life there will be times when God's deep peace and love
+will be felt shining into the soul with supernatural refreshment. Let
+the penitent be content with the servant's lot at first. Liberty and
+peace, and the bounding sensations of a Father's arms around you, come
+afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>The last circumstance in this division of our subject is the reception
+which a sinner meets with on his return to God. &ldquo;Bring forth the best
+robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his
+feet, and bring hither the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and
+be merry.&rdquo; This banquet represents to us two things. It tells of the
+father's gladness on his son's return. That represents God's joy on
+the reformation of a sinner. It tells of a banquet and a dance given
+to the long lost son. That represents the sinner's gladness when he
+first understood that God was reconciled to him in Christ. There is a
+strange, almost wild, rapture, a strong gush of love and happiness in
+those days which are called the days of first conversion. When a man
+who has sinned much&mdash;a profligate&mdash;turns to God, and it becomes first
+clear to his apprehension that there is love instead of spurning for
+him, there is a luxury of emotion&mdash;a banquet of tumultuous blessedness
+in the moment of first love to God, which stands alone in life,
+nothing before and nothing after like it. And brethren, let us
+observe:&mdash;This forgiveness is a thing granted while a man is yet afar
+off. We are not to wait for the right of being happy till we are good:
+we might wait for ever. Joy is not delayed till we deserve it. Just so
+soon as a sinful man trusts that the mercy of God in Christ has done
+away with his transgression, the ring, and the robe, and the shoes are
+his, the banquet and the light of a Father's countenance.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, we have to consider very briefly God's expostulation with a
+saint. There is another brother mentioned in this parable, who
+expressed something like indignation at the treatment which his
+brother met with. There are commentators who have imagined that this
+personage represents the Pharisees who complained that Jesus was
+receiving sinners. But this is manifestly impossible, because his
+father expostulates with him in this language, &ldquo;Son, thou, art ever
+with me;&rdquo; not for one moment could that be true of the Pharisees. The
+true interpretation seems to be that this elder brother represents a
+real Christian perplexed with God's mysterious dealings. We have
+before us the description of one of those happy persons who have been
+filled with the Holy Ghost from their mother's womb, and on the whole
+(with imperfections of course) remained God's servant all his life.
+For this is his own account of himself, which the father does not
+contradict. &ldquo;Lo! these many years do I serve thee.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We observe then: The objection made to the reception of a notorious
+sinner: &ldquo;Thou never gavest me a kid.&rdquo; Now, in this we have a fact true
+to Christian experience. Joy seems to be felt more vividly and more
+exuberantly by men who have sinned much, than by men who have grown up
+consistently from childhood with religious education. Rapture belongs
+to him whose sins, which are forgiven, are many. In the perplexity
+which this fact occasions, there is a feeling which is partly right
+and partly wrong. There is a surprise which is natural. There is a
+resentful jealousy which is to be rebuked.</p>
+
+<p>There is first of all a natural surprise. It was natural that the
+elder brother should feel perplexed and hurt. When a sinner seems to
+be rewarded with more happiness than a saint, it appears as if good
+and evil were alike undistinguished in God's dealings. It seems like
+putting a reconciled enemy over the head of a tried servant. It looks
+as if it were a kind of encouragement held out to sin, and a man
+begins to feel, Well if this is to be the caprice of my father's
+dealing; if this rich feast of gladness be the reward of a licentious
+life, &ldquo;Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in
+innocency.&rdquo; This is natural surprise.</p>
+
+<p>But besides this there is a jealousy in these sensations of ours which
+God sees fit to rebuke. You have been trying to serve God all your
+life, and find it struggle, and heaviness, and dulness still. You see
+another who has outraged every obligation of life, and he is not
+tried by the deep prostration you think he ought to have, but bright
+with happiness at once. You have been making sacrifices all your life,
+and your worst trials come out of your most generous sacrifices. Your
+errors in judgment have been followed by sufferings sharper than those
+which crime itself could have brought. And you see men who never made
+a sacrifice unexposed to trial&mdash;men whose life has been rapture
+purchased by the ruin of others' innocence&mdash;tasting first the
+pleasures of sin, and then the banquet of religion. You have been a
+moral man from childhood, and yet with all your efforts you feel the
+crushing conviction that it has never once been granted you to win a
+soul to God. And you see another man marked by inconsistency and
+impetuosity, banqueting every day upon the blest success of impressing
+and saving souls. All that is startling. And then comes sadness and
+despondency; then come all those feelings which are so graphically
+depicted here: irritation&mdash;&ldquo;he was angry;&rdquo; swelling pride&mdash;&ldquo;he would
+not go in;&rdquo; jealousy, which required soothing&mdash;&ldquo;his father went out
+and entreated him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And now brethren, mark the father's answer. It does not account for
+this strange dealing by God's sovereignty. It does not cut the knot of
+the difficulty, instead of untying it, by saying, God has a <i>right</i> to
+do what He will. He does not urge, God has a right to act on
+favouritism if He please. But it assigns two reasons. The first reason
+is, &ldquo;It was <i>meet</i>, right that we should make merry.&rdquo; It is meet that
+God should be glad on the reclamation of a sinner. It is meet that
+that sinner, looking down into the dreadful chasm over which he had
+been tottering, should feel a shudder of delight through all his frame
+on thinking of his escape. And it is meet that religious men should
+not feel jealous of one another, but freely and generously join in
+thanking God that others have got happiness, even if <i>they</i> have not.
+The spirit of religious exclusiveness, which looks down contemptuously
+instead of tenderly on worldly men, and banishes a man for ever from
+the circle of its joys because he has sinned notoriously, is a bad
+spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly the reason given for this dealing is, &ldquo;Son, thou art always
+with Me, and all that I have is thine.&rdquo; By which Christ seems to tell
+us that the disproportion between man and man is much less than we
+suppose. The profligate had had one hour of <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: original reads 'ecstacy'">ecstasy</ins>&mdash;the other had
+had a whole life of peace. A consistent Christian may not have
+rapture; but he has that which is much better than rapture:
+calmness&mdash;God's serene and perpetual presence. And after all brethren,
+that is the best. One to whom much is forgiven, has much joy. He must
+have it, if it were only to support him through those fearful trials
+which are to come&mdash;those haunting reminiscences of a polluted
+heart&mdash;those frailties&mdash;those inconsistencies to which the habit of
+past indulgence have made him liable. A terrible struggle is in store
+for him yet. Grudge him not one hour of unclouded exultation. But
+religion's best gift&mdash;rest, serenity&mdash;the quiet daily love of one who
+lives perpetually with his Father's family&mdash;uninterrupted
+usefulness&mdash;<i>that</i> belongs to him who has lived steadily, and walked
+with duty, neither grieving nor insulting the Holy Spirit of his God.
+The man who serves God early has the best of it; joy is well in its
+way, but a few flashes of joy are trifles in comparison with a life of
+peace. Which is best: the flash of joy lighting up the whole heart,
+and then darkness till the next flash comes&mdash;or the steady calm
+sunlight of day in which men work?</p>
+
+<p>And now, one word to those who are living this young man's
+life&mdash;thinking to become religious as he did, when they have got tired
+of the world. I speak to those who are leading what, in the world's
+softened language of concealment, is called a gay life. Young
+brethren, let two motives be urged earnestly upon your attention. The
+first is the motive of mere honourable feeling. We will say nothing
+about the uncertainty of life. We will not dwell upon this fact, that
+impressions resisted now, may never come back again. We will not
+appeal to terror. That is not the weapon which a Christian minister
+loves to use. If our lips were clothed with thunder, it is not
+denunciation which makes men Christians; let the appeal be made to
+every high and generous feeling in a young man's bosom.</p>
+
+<p>Deliberately and calmly you are going to do <i>this</i>: to spend the best
+and most vigorous portion of your days in idleness&mdash;in uselessness&mdash;in
+the gratification of self&mdash;in the contamination of others. And then
+weakness, the relics, and the miserable dregs of life;&mdash;you are going
+to give <i>that</i> sorry offering to God, because His mercy endureth for
+ever! Shame&mdash;shame upon the heart which can let such a plan rest in it
+one moment. If it be there, crush it like a man. It is a degrading
+thing to enjoy husks till there is no man to give them. It is a base
+thing to resolve to give to God as little as possible, and not to
+serve Him till you must.</p>
+
+<p>Young brethren, I speak principally to you. You have health for God
+now. You have strength of mind and body. You have powers which may fit
+you for real usefulness. You have appetites for enjoyment which can be
+consecrated to God. You acknowledge the law of honour. Well then, by
+every feeling of manliness and generosity remember this: now, and not
+later, is your time to learn what religion means.</p>
+
+<p>There is another motive, and a very solemn one, to be urged upon
+those who are delaying. Every moment of delay adds bitterness to after
+struggles. The moment of a feeling of hired servitude must come. If a
+man will not obey God with a warm heart, he may hereafter have to do
+it with a cold one. To be holy is the work of a long life. The
+experience of ten thousand lessons teaches only a little of it; and
+all this, the work of becoming like God, the man who delays is
+crowding into the space of a few years, or a few months. When we have
+lived long a life of sin, do we think that repentance and forgiveness
+will obliterate all the traces of sin upon the character? Be sure that
+every sin pays its price: &ldquo;Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also
+reap.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Oh! there are recollections of past sin which come crowding up to the
+brain, with temptation in them. There are old habits which refuse to
+be mastered by a few enthusiastic sensations. There is so much of the
+old man clinging to the penitent who has waited long&mdash;he is so much as
+a religious man, like what he was when he was a worldly man&mdash;that it
+is doubtful whether he ever reaches in this world the full stature of
+Christian manhood. Much warm earnestness, but strange inconsistencies,
+that is the character of one who is an old man and a young Christian.
+Brethren, do we wish to risk all this? Do we want to learn holiness
+with terrible struggles, and sore affliction, and the plague of much
+remaining evil? Then <i>wait</i> before you turn to God.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXI" id="XXI"></a>XXI.<br />
+<small><i>Preached May 15, 1853.</i></small><br />
+JOHN'S REBUKE OF HEROD.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote class="scripture"><p>&ldquo;But Herod the tetrarch, being reproved by him for Herodias, his
+brother Philip's wife, and for all the evils which Herod had done,
+added yet this above all, that he shut up John in prison.&rdquo;&mdash;Luke
+iii. 19, 20.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">The life of John the Baptist divides itself into three distinct
+periods. Of the first we are told almost nothing, but we may
+conjecture much. We are told that he was in the deserts till his
+showing unto Israel. It was a period probably, in which, saddened by
+the hollowness of all life in Israel, and perplexed with the
+controversies of Jerusalem, the controversies of Sadducee with
+Pharisee, of formalist with mystic, of the disciples of one infallible
+Rabbi with the disciples of another infallible Rabbi, he fled for
+refuge to the wilderness, to see whether God could not be found there
+by the heart that sought Him, without the aid of churches, rituals,
+creeds, and forms. This period lasted thirty years.</p>
+
+<p>The second period is a shorter one. It comprises the few months of his
+public ministry. His difficulties were over; he had reached conviction
+enough to live and die on. He knew not all, but he knew something. He
+could not baptize with the Spirit, but he could at least baptize with
+water. It was not given to him to build up, but it was given to him
+to pull down all false foundations. He knew that the highest truth of
+spiritual life was to be given by One that should come after. What he
+had learned in the desert was contained in a few words&mdash;Reality lies
+at the root of religious life. Ye must be real, said John. &ldquo;Bring
+forth fruits meet for repentance.&rdquo; Let each man do his own duty; let
+the rich impart to those who are not rich; let the publican accuse no
+man falsely; let the soldier be content with his wages. The coming
+kingdom is not a mere piece of machinery which will make you all good
+and happy without effort of your own. Change yourselves, or you will
+have no kingdom at all. Personal reformation, personal reality, <i>that</i>
+was John's message to the world.</p>
+
+<p>It was an incomplete one; but he delivered it as his all, manfully;
+and his success was signal, astonishing even to himself. Successful it
+was, because it appealed to all the deepest wants of the human heart.
+It told of peace to those who had been agitated by tempestuous
+passion. It promised forgetfulness of past transgression to those
+whose consciences smarted with self-accusing recollections. It spoke
+of refuge from the wrath to come to those who had felt it a fearful
+expectation to fall into the hands of an angry God. And the result of
+that message, conveyed by the symbol of baptism, was that the desert
+swarmed with crowds who owned the attractive spell of the power of a
+new life made possible. Warriors, paupers, profligates&mdash;some admiring
+the nobleness of religious life, others needing it to fill up the
+empty hollow of an unsatisfied heart; the penitent, the heart-broken,
+the worldly, and the disappointed, all came. And with them there came
+two other classes of men, whose approach roused the Baptist to
+astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>The formalist, not satisfied with his formality, and the infidel,
+unable to rest on his infidelity&mdash;they came too&mdash;startled, for one
+hour at least, to the real significance of life, and shaken out of
+unreality. The Baptist's message wrung the confession from their
+souls. &ldquo;Yes, our system will not do. We are not happy after all; we
+are miserable. Prophet, whose solitary life, far away there in the
+desert, has been making to itself a home in the mysterious and the
+invisible, what hast thou got to tell us from that awful other world?
+What are we to do?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>These things belong to a period of John's life anterior to the text.
+The prophet has been hitherto in a self-selected solitude, the free
+wild desert, opening his heart to the strange sights and sounds
+through which the grand voice of oriental nature speaks of God to the
+soul, in a way that books cannot speak.</p>
+
+<p>We have arrived at the third period of his history. We are now to
+consider him as the tenant of a <i>compelled</i> solitude, in the dungeon
+of a capricious tyrant. Hitherto, by that rugged energy with which he
+battled with the temptations of this world, he has been shedding a
+glory round human life. We are now to look at him equally alone;
+equally majestic, shedding by martyrdom, almost a brighter glory round
+human death. He has hitherto been receiving the homage of almost
+unequalled popularity. We are now to observe him reft of every
+admirer, every soother, every friend. He has been hitherto overcoming
+the temptations of existence by entire seclusion from them all. We are
+now to ask how he will stem those seductions when he is brought into
+the very midst of them, and the whole outward aspect of his life has
+laid aside its distinctive and peculiar character; when he has ceased
+to be the anchorite, and has become the idol of a court.</p>
+
+<p>Much instruction, brethren, there ought to be in all this, if we only
+knew rightly how to bring it out, or even to paint in anything like
+intelligible colours the picture which our own minds have formed.
+Instructive, because human life must ever be instructive. How a human
+spirit contrived to get its life accomplished in this confused world:
+what a man like us, and yet no common man, felt, did, suffered; how he
+fought, and how he conquered; if we could only get a clear possession
+and firm grasp of <i>that</i>, we should have got almost all that is worth
+having in truth, with the technicalities stripped off, for what is the
+use of truth except to teach man how to live? There is a vast value in
+genuine biography. It is good to have real views of what Life is, and
+what Christian Life may be. It is good to familiarize ourselves with
+the history of those whom God has pronounced the salt of the earth. We
+cannot help contracting good from such association.</p>
+
+<p>And just one thing respecting this man whom we are to follow for some
+time to-day. Let us not be afraid of seeming to rise into a mere
+enthusiastic panegyric of a man. It is a rare man we have to deal
+with, one of God's heroic ones, a true conqueror; one whose life and
+motives it is hard to understand without feeling warmly and
+enthusiastically about them. One of the very highest characters,
+rightly understood, of all the Bible. Panegyric such as we can give,
+what is it after he has been stamped by his Master's eulogy, &ldquo;A
+prophet? Yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet. Among them that
+are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the
+Baptist.&rdquo; In the verse which is to serve us for our guidance on this
+subject there are two branches which will afford us fruit of
+contemplation. It is written, &ldquo;Herod being <i>reproved</i> by John for
+Herodias.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Here is our first subject of thought. The truthfulness of Christian
+character.</p>
+
+<p>And then next, he &ldquo;shut up John in prison.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Here is our second topic. The apparent failure of religious life.</p>
+
+<p>The point which we have to look at in this section of the Baptist's
+life is the truthfulness of religious character. For the prophet was
+now in a sphere of life altogether new. He had got to the third act of
+his history. The first was performed right manfully in the
+desert&mdash;that is past. He has now become a known man, celebrated
+through the country, brought into the world, great men listening to
+him, and in the way, if he chooses it, to become familiar with the
+polished life of Herod's court. For this we read: Herod observed John,
+that is, cultivated his acquaintance, paid him marked attention, heard
+him, did many things at his bidding, and heard him gladly.</p>
+
+<p>For thirty long years John had lived in that far-off desert, filling
+his soul with the grandeur of solitude, content to be unknown, not
+conscious, most likely, that there was anything supernatural in
+him&mdash;living with the mysterious God in silence. And then came the day
+when the qualities, so secretly nursed, became known in the great
+world: men felt that there was a greater than themselves before them,
+and then came the trial of admiration, when the crowds congregated
+round to listen. And all that trial John bore uninjured, for when
+those vast crowds dispersed at night, he was left alone with God and
+the universe once more. That prevented his being spoilt by flattery.
+But now comes the great trial. John is transplanted from the desert to
+the town: he has quitted simple life: he has come to artificial life.
+John has won a king's attention, and now the question is, Will the
+diamond of the mine bear polishing without breaking into shivers? Is
+the iron prophet melting into voluptuous softness? Is he getting the
+world's manners and the world's courtly insincerity? Is he becoming
+artificial through his change of life? My Christian brethren, we find
+nothing of the kind. There he stands in Herod's voluptuous court the
+prophet of the desert still, unseduced by blandishment from his high
+loyalty, and fronting his patron and his prince with the stern
+unpalatable truth of God.</p>
+
+<p>It is refreshing to look on such a scene as this&mdash;the highest, the
+very highest moment, I think, in all John's history; higher than his
+ascetic life. For after all, ascetic life such as he had led before,
+when he fed on locusts and wild honey, is hard only in the first
+resolve. When you have once made up your mind to that, it becomes a
+habit to live alone. To lecture the poor about religion is not hard.
+To speak of unworldliness to men with whom we do not associate, and
+who do not see <i>our</i> daily inconsistencies, <i>that</i> is not hard. To
+speak contemptuously of the world when we have no power of commanding
+its admiration, <i>that</i> is not difficult. But when God has given a man
+accomplishments, or powers, which would enable him to shine in
+society, and he can still be firm, and steady, and uncompromisingly
+true; when he can be as undaunted before the rich as before the poor;
+when rank and fashion cannot subdue him into silence: when he hates
+moral evil as sternly in a great man as he would in a peasant, there
+is truth in that man. This was the test to which the Baptist was
+submitted.</p>
+
+<p>And now contemplate him for a moment; forget that he is an historical
+personage, and remember that he was a man like us. Then comes the
+trial. All the habits and rules of polite life would be whispering
+such advice as this: &ldquo;Only keep your remarks within the limits of
+politeness. If you cannot approve, be silent; you can do no good by
+finding fault with the great.&rdquo; We know how the whole spirit of a man
+like John would have revolted at that. Imprisonment? Yes. Death? Well,
+a man can die but once,&mdash;anything but not cowardice,&mdash;not
+meanness,&mdash;not pretending what I do not feel, and disguising what I do
+feel. Brethren, death is not the worst thing in this life; it is not
+difficult to die&mdash;five minutes and the sharpest agony is past. The
+worst thing in this life is cowardly untruthfulness. Let men be rough
+if they will, let them be unpolished, but let Christian men in all
+they say be sincere. No flattery, no speaking smoothly to a man before
+his face, while all the time there is a disapproval of his conduct in
+the heart. The thing we want in Christianity is not politeness, it is
+sincerity.</p>
+
+<p>There are three things which we remark in this truthfulness of John.
+The first is its straightforwardness, the second is its
+unconsciousness, and the last its unselfishness. The
+straightforwardness is remarkable in this circumstance, that there is
+no indirect coming to the point. At once, without circumlocution, the
+true man speaks. &ldquo;It is not lawful for thee to have her.&rdquo; There are
+some men whom God has gifted with a rare simplicity of heart, which
+make them utterly incapable of pursuing the subtle excuses which can
+be made for evil. There is in John no morbid sympathy for the
+offender: &ldquo;It is not lawful.&rdquo; He does not say, &ldquo;It is <i>best</i> to do
+otherwise; it is unprofitable for your own happiness to live in this
+way.&rdquo; He says plainly, &ldquo;It is wrong for you to do this evil.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Earnest men in this world have no time for subtleties and casuistry.
+Sin is detestable, horrible, in God's sight, and when once it has
+been made clear that it is not lawful, a Christian has nothing to do
+with toleration of it. If we dare not tell our patron of his sin we
+must give up his patronage. In the next place there was
+unconsciousness in John's rebuke. We remark, brethren, that he was
+utterly ignorant that he was doing a fine thing. There was no sidelong
+glance, as in a mirror, of admiration for himself. He was not feeling,
+This is brave. He never stopped to feel that after-ages would stand
+by, and look at that deed of his, and say, &ldquo;Well done.&rdquo; His reproof
+comes out as the natural impulse of an earnest heart. John was the
+last of all men to feel that he had done anything extraordinary. And
+this we hold to be an inseparable mark of truth. No true man is
+conscious that he is true; he is rather conscious of insincerity. No
+brave man is conscious of his courage; bravery is <i>natural</i> to him.
+The skin of Moses' face shone after he had been with God, but Moses
+wist not of it.</p>
+
+<p>There are many of us who would have prefaced that rebuke with a long
+speech. We should have begun by observing how difficult it was to
+speak to a monarch, how delicate the subject, how much proof we were
+giving of our friendship. We should have asked the great man to accept
+it as a proof of our devotion. John does nothing of this. Prefaces
+betray anxiety about self; John was not thinking of himself. He was
+thinking of God's offended law, and the guilty king's soul. Brethren,
+it is a lovely and a graceful thing to see men natural. It is
+beautiful to see men sincere without being haunted with the
+consciousness of their sincerity. There is a sickly habit that men get
+of looking into themselves, and thinking how they are appearing. We
+are always unnatural when we do that. The very tread of one who is
+thinking how he appears to others, becomes dizzy with affectation. He
+is too conscious of what he is doing, and self-consciousness is
+affectation. Let us aim at being natural. And we can only become
+natural by thinking of God and duty, instead of the way in which we
+are serving God and duty.</p>
+
+<p>There was lastly, something exceedingly unselfish in John's
+truthfulness. We do not build much on a man's being merely true. It
+costs some men nothing to be true, for they have none of those
+sensibilities which shrink from inflicting pain. There is a surly
+bitter way of speaking truth which says little for a man's heart. Some
+men have not delicacy enough to feel that it is an awkward and a
+painful thing to rebuke a brother: they are in their element when they
+can become censors of the great. John's truthfulness was not like
+that. It was the earnest loving nature of the man which made him say
+sharp things. Was it to gratify spleen that he reproved Herod for all
+the evils he had done? Was it to minister to a diseased and
+disappointed misanthropy? Little do we understand the depth of
+tenderness which there is in a rugged, true nature, if we think that.
+John's whole life was an iron determination to crush self in
+everything.</p>
+
+<p>Take a single instance. John's ministry was gradually superseded by
+the ministry of Christ. It was the moon waning before the Sun. They
+came and told him that, &ldquo;Rabbi, He to whom thou barest witness beyond
+Jordan baptizeth, and all men come unto Him.&rdquo; Two of his own personal
+friends, apparently some of the last he had left, deserted him, and
+went to the new teacher.</p>
+
+<p>And now let us estimate the keenness of that trial. Remember John was
+a man: he had tasted the sweets of influence; that influence was dying
+away, and just in the prime of life he was to become <i>nothing</i>. Who
+cannot conceive the keenness of that trial? Bearing that in mind&mdash;what
+is the prophet's answer? One of the most touching sentences in all
+Scripture&mdash;calmly, meekly, the hero recognises his destiny&mdash;&ldquo;He must
+increase, but I must decrease.&rdquo; He does more than recognise it&mdash;he
+rejoices in it, rejoices to be nothing, to be forgotten, despised, so
+as only Christ can be everything. &ldquo;The friend of the bridegroom
+rejoiceth because he heareth the bridegroom's voice, this my joy is
+fulfilled.&rdquo; And it is <i>this</i> man, with self so thoroughly crushed&mdash;the
+outward self by bodily austerities, the inward self by Christian
+humbleness&mdash;it is this man who speaks so sternly to his sovereign. &ldquo;It
+is not lawful.&rdquo; Was there any gratification of human feeling there? Or
+was not the rebuke unselfish? Meant for God's honour, dictated by the
+uncontrollable hatred of all evil, careless altogether of personal
+consequences?</p>
+
+<p>Now it is this, my brethren, that <i>we</i> want. The world-spirit can
+rebuke as sharply as the Spirit which was in John; the world-spirit
+can be severe upon the great when it is jealous. The worldly man
+cannot bear to hear of another's success, he cannot endure to hear
+another praised for accomplishments, or another succeeding in a
+profession, and the world can fasten very bitterly upon a neighbour's
+faults, and say, &ldquo;It is not lawful.&rdquo; We expect that in the world. But
+that this should creep among religious men, that <i>we</i> should be
+bitter&mdash;that we, <i>Christians</i>, should suffer jealousy to enthrone
+itself in our hearts&mdash;that we should find fault from spleen, and not
+from love&mdash;that we should not be able to be calm and gentle, and
+sweet-tempered, when we decrease, when our powers fail&mdash;<i>that</i> is the
+shame. The love of Christ is intended to make such men as John, such
+high and heavenly characters. What is our Christianity worth if it
+cannot teach us a truthfulness, an unselfishness, and a generosity
+beyond the world's?</p>
+
+<p>We are to say something in the second place of the apparent failure of
+Christian life.</p>
+
+<p>The concluding sentence of this verse informs us that John was shut up
+in prison. And the first thought which suggests itself is, that a
+magnificent career is cut short too soon. At the very outset of ripe
+and experienced manhood the whole thing ends in failure. John's day of
+active usefulness is over; at thirty years of age his work is done;
+and what permanent effect have all his labours left? The crowds that
+listened to his voice, awed into silence by Jordan's side, we hear of
+them no more. Herod heard John gladly, did much good by reason of his
+influence. What was all that worth? The prophet comes to himself in a
+dungeon, and wakes to the bitter conviction, that his influence had
+told much in the way of commanding attention, and even winning
+reverence, but very little in the way of gaining souls; the bitterest,
+the most crushing discovery in the whole circle of ministerial
+experience. All this was seeming failure.</p>
+
+<p>And this, brethren, is the picture of almost all human life. To some
+moods, and under some aspects, it seems, as it seemed to the psalmist,
+&ldquo;Man walketh in a vain shadow and disquieteth himself in vain.&rdquo; Go to
+any churchyard, and stand ten minutes among the grave-stones; read
+inscription after inscription recording the date of birth, and the
+date of death, of him who lies below, all the trace which myriads have
+left behind, of their having done their day's work on God's
+earth,&mdash;that is failure or&mdash;seems so. Cast the eye down the columns of
+any commander's despatch after a general action. The men fell by
+thousands; the officers by hundreds. Courage, high hope,
+self-devotion, ended in smoke&mdash;forgotten by the time of the next list
+of slain: that is the failure of life once more. Cast your eye over
+the shelves of a public library&mdash;there is the hard toil of years, the
+product of a life of thought; all that remains of it is there in a
+worm-eaten folio, taken down once in a century. Failure of human life
+again. Stand by the most enduring of all human labours, the pyramids
+of Egypt. One hundred thousand men, year by year, raised those
+enormous piles to protect the corpses of the buried from rude
+inspection. The spoiler's hand has been there, and the bodies have
+been rifled from their mausoleum, and three thousand years have
+written &ldquo;failure&rdquo; upon that. In all that, my Christian brethren, if we
+look no deeper than the surface, we read the grave of human hope, the
+apparent nothingness of human labour.</p>
+
+<p>And then look at this history once more. In the isolation of John's
+dying hour, there appears failure again. When a great man dies we
+listen to hear what he has to say, we turn to the last page of his
+biography first, to see what he had to bequeath to the world as his
+experience of life. We expect that the wisdom, which he has been
+hiving up for years, will distil in honeyed sweetness then. It is
+generally not so. There is stupor and silence at the last. &ldquo;How dieth
+the wise man?&rdquo; asks Solomon: and he answers bitterly, &ldquo;As the fool.&rdquo;
+The martyr of truth dies privately in Herod's dungeon. We have no
+record of his last words. There were no crowds to look on. We cannot
+describe how he received his sentence. Was he calm? Was he agitated?
+Did he bless his murderer? Did he give utterance to any deep
+reflections on human life? All that is shrouded in silence. He bowed
+his head, and the sharp stroke fell flashing down. We know that, we
+know no more&mdash;apparently a noble life abortive.</p>
+
+<p>And now let us ask the question distinctly, Was all this indeed
+failure? No, my Christian brethren, it was sublimest victory. John's
+work was no failure; he left behind him no sect to which he had given
+his name, but his disciples passed into the service of Christ, and
+were absorbed in the Christian church. Words from John had made
+impressions, and men forgot in after years <i>where</i> the impressions
+first came from, but the day of judgment will not forget. John laid
+the foundations of a temple, and others built upon it He laid it in
+struggle, in martyrdom. It was covered up like the rough masonry below
+ground, but when we look round on the vast Christian Church, we are
+looking at the superstructure of John's toil.</p>
+
+<p>There is a lesson for us in all that, if we will learn it. Work, true
+work, done honestly and manfully for Christ, <i>never</i> can be a failure.
+Your own work, my brethren, which God has given you to do, whatever
+that is, let it be done truly. Leave eternity to show that it has not
+been in vain in the Lord. Let it but be work, it will tell. True
+Christian life is like the march of a conquering army into a fortress
+which has been breached; men fall by hundreds in the ditch. Was their
+fall a failure? Nay, for their bodies bridge over the hollow, and over
+them the rest pass on to victory. The quiet religious worship that we
+have this day&mdash;how comes it to be ours? It was purchased for us by the
+constancy of such men as John, who freely gave their lives. We are
+treading upon a bridge of martyrs. The suffering was theirs&mdash;the
+victory is ours. John's career was no failure.</p>
+
+<p>Yet we have one more circumstance which <i>seems</i> to tell of failure.
+In John's prison, solitude, misgiving, black doubt, seem for a time to
+have taken possession of the prophet's soul. All that we know of those
+feelings is this:&mdash;John while in confinement sent two of his disciples
+to Christ, to say to Him, &ldquo;Art thou He that should come, or do we look
+for another?&rdquo; Here is the language of painful uncertainty. We shall
+not marvel at this, if we look steadily at the circumstances. Let us
+conceive John's feelings. The enthusiastic child of Nature, who had
+roved in the desert, free as the air he breathed, is now suddenly
+arrested, and his strong restless heart limited to the four walls of a
+narrow dungeon. And there he lay startled. An eagle cleaving the air
+with motionless wing, and in the midst of his career brought from the
+black cloud by an arrow to the ground, and looking round with his
+wild, large eye, stunned, and startled there; just such was the free
+prophet of the wilderness, when Herod's guards had curbed his noble
+flight, and left him alone in his dungeon.</p>
+
+<p>Now there is apparent failure here, brethren; it is not the thing
+which we should have expected. We should have expected that a man who
+had lived so close to God all his life, would have no misgivings in
+his last hours. But, my brethren, it is not so. It is the strange
+truth that some of the highest of God's servants are tried with
+darkness on the dying bed. Theory would say, when a religious man is
+laid up for his last struggles, now he is alone for deep communion
+with his God. Fact very often says, &ldquo;No&mdash;now he is alone, as his
+Master was before him, in the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.&rdquo;
+Look at John in imagination, and you would say, &ldquo;Now his rough
+pilgrimage is done. He is quiet, out of the world, with the rapt
+foretaste of heaven in his soul.&rdquo; Look at John in fact. He is
+agitated, sending to Christ, not able to rest, grim doubt wrestling
+with his soul, misgiving for one last black hour whether all his hope
+has not been delusion.</p>
+
+<p>There is one thing we remark here by the way. Doubt often comes from
+inactivity. We cannot give the philosophy of it, but this is the fact,
+Christians who have nothing to do but to sit thinking of themselves,
+meditating, sentimentalising, are almost sure to become the prey of
+dark, black misgivings. John struggling in the desert needs no proof
+that Jesus is the Christ. John shut up became morbid and doubtful
+immediately. Brethren all this is very marvellous. The history of a
+human soul <i>is</i> marvellous. We are mysteries, but here is the
+practical lesson of it all. For sadness, for suffering, for misgiving,
+there is no remedy but stirring and doing.</p>
+
+<p>Now look once more at these doubts of John's. All his life long John
+had been wishing and expecting that the kingdom of God would come. The
+kingdom of God is Right triumphant over Wrong, moral evil crushed,
+goodness set up in its place, the true man recognised, the false man
+put down and forgotten. All his life long John had panted for that;
+his hope was to make men better. He tried to make the soldiers
+merciful, and the publicans honest, and the Pharisees sincere. His
+complaint was, Why is the world the thing it is? All his life long he
+had been appealing to the invisible justice of Heaven against the
+visible brute force which he saw around him. Christ had appeared, and
+his hopes were straining to the utmost. &ldquo;Here is the Man!&rdquo; And now
+behold, here is no Kingdom of Heaven at all, but one of darkness
+still, oppression and cruelty triumphant, Herod putting God's prophet
+in prison, and the Messiah quietly letting things take their course.
+Can that be indeed Messiah? All this was exceedingly startling. And it
+seems that then John began to feel the horrible doubt whether the
+whole thing were not a mistake, and whether all that which he had
+taken for inspiration were not, after all, only the excited hopes of
+an enthusiastic temperament. Brethren, the prophet was well nigh on
+the brink of failure.</p>
+
+<p>But let us mark&mdash;that a man has doubts&mdash;<i>that</i> is not the evil; all
+earnest men must expect to be tried with doubts. All men who feel,
+with their whole souls, the value of the truth which is at stake,
+cannot be satisfied with a &ldquo;perhaps.&rdquo; Why, when all that is true and
+excellent in this world, all that is worth living for, is in that
+question of questions, it is no marvel if we sometimes wish, like
+Thomas, to see the prints of the nails, to know whether Christ be
+indeed our Lord or not. Cold hearts are not anxious enough to doubt.
+Men who love will have their misgivings at times; that is not the
+evil. But the evil is, when men go on in that languid, doubting way,
+content to doubt, proud of their doubts, morbidly glad to talk about
+them, liking the romantic gloom of twilight, without the manliness to
+say&mdash;I must and will know the truth. That did not John. Brethren, John
+appealed to Christ. He did exactly what we do when we pray&mdash;and he got
+his answer. Our Master said to his disciples, Go to my suffering
+servant, and give him proof. Tell John the things ye see and
+hear&mdash;&ldquo;The blind see, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor
+the Gospel is preached.&rdquo; There is a deep lesson wrapped up in this. We
+get a firm grasp of truth by prayer. Communion with Christ is the best
+proof of Christ's existence and Christ's love. It is so even in human
+life. Misgivings gather darkly round our heart about our friend in
+his absence; but we seek his frank smile, we feel his affectionate
+grasp: our suspicions go to sleep again. It is just so in religion. No
+man is in the habit of praying to God in Christ, and then doubts
+whether Christ is He &ldquo;that should come.&rdquo; It is in the power of prayer
+to realize Christ, to bring him near, to make you feel His life
+stirring like a pulse within you. Jacob could not doubt whether he had
+been with God when his sinew shrunk. John could not doubt whether
+Jesus was the Christ when the things He had done were pictured out so
+vividly in answer to his prayer. Let but a man live with Christ
+anxious to have his own life destroyed, and Christ's life established
+in its place, losing himself in Christ, that man will have all his
+misgivings silenced. These are the two remedies for doubt&mdash;Activity
+and Prayer. He who works, and <i>feels</i> he works&mdash;he who prays, and
+<i>knows</i> he prays, has got the secret of transforming life-failure into
+life-victory.</p>
+
+<p>In conclusion brethren, we make three remarks which could not be
+introduced into the body of this subject. The first is&mdash;Let young and
+ardent minds, under the first impressions of religion, beware how they
+pledge themselves by any open profession to more than they can
+perform. Herod warmly took up religion at first, courted the prophet
+of religion, and then when the hot fit of enthusiasm had passed away,
+he found that he had a clog round his life from which he could only
+disengage himself by a rough, rude effort. Brethren whom God has
+touched, it is good to count the cost before you begin. If you give up
+present pursuits <i>impetuously</i>, are you sure that present impulses
+will last? Are you quite certain that a day will not come when you
+will curse the hour in which you broke altogether with the world? Are
+you quite sure that the revulsion back again, will not be as impetuous
+as Herod's, and your hatred of the religion which has become a clog,
+as intense as it is now ardent?</p>
+
+<p>Many things doubtless there are to be given up&mdash;amusements that are
+dangerous, society that is questionable. What we give up, let us give
+up, not from quick feeling, but from principle. Enthusiasm is a lovely
+thing, but let us be calm in what we do. In that solemn, grand
+thing&mdash;Christian life&mdash;one step backward is religious death.</p>
+
+<p>Once more we get from this subject the doctrine of a resurrection.
+John's life was hardness, his end was agony. That is frequently
+Christian life. Therefore, says the apostle, if there be no
+resurrection the Christian's choice is wrong; &ldquo;If in this life only we
+have hope in Christ, then are we of all men most miserable.&rdquo; Christian
+life is not visible success&mdash;very often it is the apparent opposite of
+success. It is the resurrection of Christ working itself out <i>in</i> us;
+but it is very often the Cross of Christ imprinting itself on us very
+sharply. The highest prize which God has to give here is martyrdom.
+The highest style of life is the Baptist's&mdash;heroic, enduring, manly
+love. The noblest coronet which any son of man can wear is a crown of
+thorns. Christian, <i>this</i> is not your rest. Be content to feel that
+this world is not your home. Homeless upon earth, try more and more to
+make your home in heaven, above with Christ.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly we have to learn from this, that devotedness to Christ is our
+only blessedness. It is surely a strange thing to see the way in which
+men crowded round the austere prophet, all saying, &ldquo;Guide us, we
+cannot guide ourselves.&rdquo; Publicans, Pharisees, Sadducees, Herod,
+whenever John appears, all bend before him, offering him homage and
+leadership. How do we account for this? The truth is, the spirit of
+man groans beneath the weight of its own freedom. When a man has no
+guide, no master but himself, he is miserable; we want guidance, and
+if we find a man nobler, wiser than ourselves, it is almost our
+instinct to prostrate our affections before that man, as the crowds
+did by Jordan, and say, &ldquo;Be my example, my guide, my soul's
+sovereign.&rdquo; That passionate need of worship&mdash;hero-worship it has been
+called&mdash;is a primal, universal instinct of the heart. Christ is the
+answer to it. Men will not do; we try to find men to reverence
+thoroughly, and we cannot do it. We go through life, finding guides,
+rejecting them one after another, expecting nobleness and finding
+meanness; and we turn away with a recoil of disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>There is no disappointment in Christ. Christ can be our souls'
+sovereign. Christ can be our guide. Christ can absorb all the
+admiration which our hearts long to give. We want to worship men.
+These Jews wanted to worship man. They were right&mdash;man is the rightful
+object of our worship; but in the roll of ages there has been but one
+man whom we can adore without idolatry,&mdash;the Man Christ Jesus.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">THE END.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Spottiswoode &amp; Co., Printers, New-street Square, London</i></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>A SELECTION FROM THE NOTICES<br />
+<small><span class="smcap">of</span></small><br />
+MR. ROBERTSON'S SERMONS,<br />
+<small><span class="smcap">and of the</span></small><br />
+LIFE AND LETTERS OF F.W. ROBERTSON.<br />
+<small><span class="smcap">By the Rev. Stopford A. Brooke, M.A.</span></small></h2>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">Blackwood's Magazine</span>, August, 1862.]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;For while hapless Englishmen complain in the papers, and in
+private, in many a varied wail, over the sermons they have to
+listen to, it is very apparent that the work of the preacher has
+not fallen in any respect out of estimation. Here is a book which
+has gone through as great a number of editions as the most popular
+novel. It bears Mudie's stamp upon its dingy boards, and has all
+those marks of arduous service which are only to be seen in books
+which belong to great public libraries. It is thumbed,
+dog's-eared, pencil-marked, worn by much perusal. Is it then a
+novel? On the contrary, it is a volume of sermons. A fine, tender,
+and lofty mind, full of thoughtfulness, full of devotion, has
+herein left his legacy to his country. It is not rhetoric or any
+vulgar excitement of eloquence that charms so many readers to the
+book, so many hearers to this preacher's feet. It is not with the
+action of a Demosthenes, with outstretched arms and countenance of
+flame, that he presses his gospel upon his audience. On the
+contrary, when we read those calm and lofty utterances, this
+preacher seems seated, like his Master, with the multitude
+palpitating round, but no agitation or passion in his own
+thoughtful, contemplative breast. The Sermons of Robertson, of
+Brighton, have few of the exciting qualities of oratory. Save for
+the charm of a singularly pure and lucid style, their almost sole
+attraction consists in their power of instruction, in their
+faculty of opening up the mysteries of life and truth. It is pure
+teaching, so far as that ever can be administered to a popular
+audience, which is offered to us in these volumes.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">Edinburgh Christian Magazine.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;They are Sermons of a bold, uncompromising thinker&mdash;of a man
+resolute for the truth of God, and determined in the strength of
+God's grace to make that truth clear, to brush away all the
+fine-spun sophistries and half-truths by which the cunning sins of
+men have hidden it.... There must be a great and true heart, where
+there is a great and true preacher. And in that, beyond everything
+else, lay the secret of Mr. Robertson's influence. His Sermons
+show evidence enough of acute logical power. His analysis is
+exquisite in its subtleness and delicacy.... With Mr. Robertson
+style is but the vehicle, not the substitute for thought.
+Eloquence, poetry, scholarship, originality&mdash;his Sermons show
+proof enough of these to put him on a level with the foremost men
+of his time. But, after all, their charm lies in the warm, loving,
+sympathetic heart, in the well-disciplined mind of the true
+Christian, in his noble scorn of all lies, of all things mean and
+crooked, in his brave battling for right, even when wrong seems
+crowned with success, in his honest simplicity and singleness of
+purpose, in the high and holy tone&mdash;as if, amid the discord of
+earth, he heard clear, though far off, the perfect harmony of
+heaven; in the fiery earnestness of his love for Christ, the
+devotion of his whole being to the goodness and truth revealed in
+him.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">Church of England Monthly Review.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;It is hardly too much to say, that had the Church of England
+produced no other fruit in the present century, this work alone
+would be amply sufficient to acquit her of the charge of
+barrenness.... The reputation of Mr. Robertson's Sermons is now so
+wide-spread, that any commendation of ours may seem superfluous.
+We will therefore simply, in conclusion, recommend such of our
+readers as have not yet made their acquaintance, to read them
+carefully and thoughtfully, and they will find in them more deeply
+suggestive matter than in almost any book published in the present
+century.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">Morning Post.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;They are distinguished by masterly exposition of Scriptural
+truths and the true spirit of Christian charity.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">British Quarterly.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;These Sermons are full of thought and beauty, and admirable
+illustrations of the ease with which a gifted and disciplined mind
+can make the obscure transparent, the difficult plain. There is
+not a Sermon that does not furnish evidence of originality without
+extravagance, of discrimination without tediousness, and of piety
+without cant or conventionalism.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">Eclectic Review.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;We hail with unaffected delight the appearance of these volumes.
+The Sermons are altogether out of the common style. They are
+strong, free, and beautiful utterances of a gifted and cultivated
+mind. Occasionally, the expression of theological sentiment fails
+fully to represent our own thought, and we sometimes detect
+tendencies with which we cannot sympathize: but, taken as a whole,
+the discourses are fine specimens of a high order of preaching.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">Guardian.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;Very beautiful in feeling, and occasionally striking and forcible
+in conception to a remarkable degree.... Even in the imperfect
+shape in which their deceased author left them, they are very
+remarkable compositions.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">Christian Remembrancer.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;We should be glad if all preachers more united with ourselves,
+preached such Sermons as these.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">Westminster Review.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;To those who affectionately remember the author, they will
+recall, though imperfectly, his living eloquence and his living
+truthfulness.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">Globe.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;Mr. Robertson, of Brighton, is a name familiar to most of us, and
+honoured by all to whom it is familiar. A true servant of Christ,
+a bold and heart-stirring preacher of the Gospel, his teaching was
+unlike the teaching of most clergymen, for it was beautified and
+intensified by genius. New truth, new light, streamed from each
+well-worn text when he handled it.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">Blackwood's Magazine.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;When teaching of this description keeps the popular ear and
+secures the general attention, it is unquestionable proof that the
+office of the preacher has, in no way, lost its hold on the mind
+of the people. The acceptance of a voice so unimpassioned and
+thoughtful, so independent of all vulgar auxiliaries, so intent
+upon bringing every theme it touches to the illustration and
+sanctifying of the living life of the hour, that which alone can
+be mended, and purified, and sanctified, is a better tribute to
+the undying office of the preacher than the success of a hundred
+Spurgeons. Attention and interest are as eager as ever where there
+is in reality any instruction to bestow.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">Literary Gazette.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;In earnestness of practical appeal, and in eloquent and graceful
+diction, Mr. Robertson has few rivals, and these characteristics
+are sufficient to account for his unusual popularity.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">National Review.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;A volume of very fine Sermons, quite equal to the previous
+series.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">Brighton Examiner.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;There is in the Sermons in this volume the same freshness, vigour
+of thought and felicity of expression, as characterised whatever
+Mr. Robertson said.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">Economist.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;Mr. Robertson's Sermons have the great and rare merit of
+neutralising by a more charitable and affectionate spirit, and by
+a wider intelligence, all that may appear rigid and <i>doctrinaire</i>
+in the Church of England. The result seems to have been his
+special mission: it most fully explains the mind of the man.... We
+recommend the Sermons to the perusal of our readers. They will
+find in them thought of so rare and beautiful a description, an
+earnestness of mind so steadfast in the search of truth, and a
+charity so pure and all-embracing, that we cannot venture to offer
+praise, which would be, in this case, almost as presumptuous as
+criticism.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">Saturday Review.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;When Mr. Robertson died, his name was scarcely known beyond the
+circle of his own private friends, and of those among whom he had
+laboured in his calling. Now, every word he wrote is eagerly
+sought for and affectionately treasured up, and meets with the
+most reverent and admiring welcome from men of all parties and all
+shades of opinion.... To those that find in his writings what they
+themselves want, he is a teacher quite beyond comparison&mdash;his
+words having a meaning, his thoughts a truth and depth, which they
+cannot find elsewhere. And they never look to him in vain.... He
+fixes himself upon the recollection as a most original and
+profound thinker, and as a man in whom excellence puts on a new
+form.... There are many persons, and the number increases every
+year, to whom Robertson's writings are the most stable,
+satisfactory, and exhaustless form of religious teaching which the
+nineteenth century has given&mdash;the most wise, suggestive, and
+practical.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">Brighton Herald.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;To our thinking, no compositions of the same class, at least
+since the days of Jeremy Taylor, can be compared with these
+Sermons delivered to the congregation of Trinity Chapel, Brighton,
+by their late minister. They have that power over the mind which
+belongs only to the highest works of genius: they stir the soul to
+its inmost depths: they move the affections, raise the
+imagination, bring out the higher and spiritual part of our nature
+by the continual appeal that is made to it, and tend to make us,
+at the same time, humble and aspiring&mdash;merciful to others and
+doubtful of ourselves.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[From a <span class="smcap">Sermon</span> preached at the <span class="smcap">Consecration</span> of the
+<span class="smcap">Bishop</span> of <span class="smcap">Norwich</span>, by the <span class="smcap">Rev. J.H. Gurney</span>,
+late of <span class="smcap">Marylebone</span>.]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;I do not commit myself to all his theology; I may differ from the
+preacher in some things, and listen doubtfully to others. But I
+know of no modern sermons at once so suggestive and so
+inspiriting, with reference to the whole range of Christian duty.
+He is fresh and original without being recondite: plain-spoken
+without severity; and discusses some of the exciting topics of the
+day without provoking strife or lowering his tone as a Christian
+teacher. He delivers his message, in fact, like one who is
+commissioned to call men off from trifles and squabbles, and
+conventional sins and follies, to something higher and nobler than
+their common life: like a man in earnest, too, avoiding
+technicalities, speaking his honest mind in phrases that are his
+own, and with a directness from which there is no escape. O that a
+hundred like him were given us by God, and placed in prominent
+stations throughout our land!&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">Guardian.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;Without anything of that artificial symmetry which the
+traditional division into heads was apt to display, they present
+each reflection in a distinct method of statement, clearly and
+briefly worked out; the sentences are short and terse, as in all
+popular addresses they should be; the thoughts are often very
+striking, and entirely out of the track of ordinary sermonising.
+In matters of doctrine such novelty is sometimes unsafe; but the
+language is that of one who tries earnestly to penetrate into the
+very centre of the truth he has to expound, and differs as widely
+as possible from the sceptic's doubt or the controversialist's
+mistake. More frequently Mr. Robertson deals with questions of
+practical life, of public opinion, and of what we may call social
+casuistry&mdash;turning the light of Christian ethics upon this
+unnoticed though familiar ground. The use of a carriage on Sunday,
+the morality of feeing a railway porter against his employers'
+rules, are topics not too small for illustration or application of
+his lessons in divine truth.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">Brighton Gazette.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;As an author, Mr. Robertson was, in his lifetime, unknown; for
+with the exception of one or two addresses, he never published,
+having a singular disinclination to bring his thoughts before the
+public in the form of published sermons. As a minister, he was
+beloved and esteemed for his unswerving fidelity to his principles
+and his fearless propagation of his religious views. As a
+townsman, he was held in the highest estimation; his hand and
+voice being ever ready to do all in his power to advance the moral
+and social position of the working man. It was not till after his
+decease, which event created a sensation and demonstration such as
+Brighton never before or since witnessed, that his works were
+subjected to public criticism. It was then found that in the
+comparatively retired minister of Trinity Chapel there had existed
+a man possessed of consummate ability and intellect of the highest
+order; that the sermons laid before his congregation were replete
+with the subtleties of intellect, and bore evidence of the keenest
+perception and most exalted catholicity. His teaching was of an
+extremely liberal character, and if fair to assign a man possessed
+of such a universality of sympathy to any party, we should say
+that he belonged to what is denominated the &lsquo;Broad Church.&rsquo; We,
+with many others, cannot agree in the fullest extent of his
+teaching, but, at the same time, feel bound to accord the tribute
+due to his genius.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">Morning Chronicle.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;A volume of very excellent Sermons, by the late lamented
+Incumbent of Trinity Chapel, Brighton.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">Titan.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;But the Sermons now under notice are, we venture to say, taking
+all the circumstances into consideration, the most remarkable
+discourses of the age.... They are throughout vital with the
+rarest force, burning with an earnestness perhaps never surpassed,
+and luminous with the light of genius.... We suspect that even
+Brighton little knew what a man Providence had placed in its
+midst.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>On the &ldquo;<i>Analysis of Mr. Tennyson's In Memoriam</i>:&rdquo;&mdash;</p>
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">Guardian.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;An endeavour to give, in a few weighty words, the key-note (so to
+speak) of each poem in the series. Those will best appreciate the
+amount of success attained by Mr. Robertson who try to do the same
+work better.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>From a few of the Notices on Mr. Robertson's &ldquo;<i>Lecture on the
+Epistles to the Corinthians</i>:&rdquo;&mdash;</p>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">Morning Post.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;It was Mr. Robertson's custom every Sunday afternoon, instead of
+preaching from one text, to expound an entire chapter of some book
+in the Scriptures. The present volume is made up from notes of
+fifty-six discourses of this kind. &lsquo;Some people were startled by
+the introduction of what they called secular subjects into the
+pulpit. But the lecturer in all his ministrations refused to
+recognize the distinction so drawn. He said that the whole life of
+a Christian was sacred&mdash;that common every-day doings, whether of a
+trade, or of a profession, or the minuter details of a woman's
+household life, were the arenas in which trial and temptation
+arose; and that therefore it became the Christian minister's duty
+to enter into this family working life with his people, and help
+them to understand its meaning, its trials, and its
+compensations.&rsquo; It is enough to add that the lectures now given to
+the public are written in this spirit.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">Critic.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;Such discourses as these before us, so different from the shallow
+rhapsodies or tedious hair-splitting which are now so much in
+vogue, may well make us regret that Mr. Robertson can never be
+heard again in the pulpit. This single volume would in itself
+establish a reputation for its writer.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">Brighton Herald.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>"... Were there no name on the title-page, the spirit which,
+shines forth in these lectures could but be recognized as that of
+the earnest, true-hearted man, the deep thinker, the sympathizer
+with all kinds of human trouble, the aspirant for all things holy,
+and one who joined to these rare gifts, the faculty of speaking to
+his fellow-men in such a manner as to fix their attention and win
+their love.... In whatever spirit the volume is read&mdash;of doubt, of
+criticism, or of full belief in the truths it teaches&mdash;it can but
+do good; it can but leave behind the conviction that here was a
+genuine, true-hearted man, gifted with the highest intellect,
+inspired by the most disinterested motives and the purest love
+for his fellow-men, and that the fountain at which he warmed his
+heart and kindled his eloquence was that which flows from Christ.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">British Quarterly Review.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;This volume will be a welcome gift to many an intelligent and
+devout mind. There are few of our modern questions, theological or
+ecclesiastical, that do not come up for discussion in the course
+of these Epistles to the Christians at Corinth.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">Morning Herald.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;No one can read these lectures without being charmed by their
+singular freshness and originality of thought, their earnest,
+simple eloquence, and their manly piety. There is no mawkish
+sentiment, no lukewarm, semi-religious twaddle, smacking of the
+<i>Record</i>; no proclamation of party views or party opinions, but a
+broad, healthy, living, and fervent exposition of one of the most
+difficult books in the Bible. Every page is full of personal
+earnestness and depth of feeling; but every page is also free from
+the slightest trace of vanity and egotism. The words come home to
+the reader's heart as the utterance of a sincere man who felt
+every sentence which flowed from his lips.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">Press.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;One of the most marked features of these lectures is the deep
+feeling which the preacher had of the emptiness and hollowness of
+the conventional religionism of the day. The clap-trap of popular
+ministers, the pride and uncharitableness of exclusive
+Evangelicalism, the pomp and pretension of ritualism and priestly
+affectation&mdash;the miserable Pharisaism which is lurking underneath
+them all&mdash;form the subject of many strikingly true and often
+cutting remarks. He has no patience with the unrealities of
+sectarian purism and pedantic orthodoxy. His constant cry, the
+constant struggle of his soul is for reality. Hence while his
+views of objective truth are at times deficient, or, at least,
+very imperfectly stated, he leaves a deep impress of subjective
+religion upon the mind, by a style of teaching which, far from
+uninstructive, is yet more eminently suggestive.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">The Spectator.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;The <i>Notes on Genesis</i>&mdash;sketches more or less full of lectures on
+Genesis, delivered by Mr. Robertson&mdash;will be welcomed by the many
+who have read, with a profound interest, those writings of his
+which have already been given to the world.... Few will be able to
+read this volume without having brought before them certain
+passages out of their own lives, which they will be compelled to
+reconsider from a fresh point of view. As an interpreter of
+Scripture also, Mr. Robertson nowhere appears to greater
+advantage. While not ignoring difficult points, he is always
+looking for, and never fails to find, that which is profitable and
+edifying.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>From a few of the Notices on Mr. Robertson's &ldquo;<i>The Human Race and
+other Sermons</i>."</p>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">The Academy.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;It need not be said that there is here much that is beautiful and
+happily expressed.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">The British Quarterly Review.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;The volume is as fresh and striking and suggestive as any of its
+predecessors. For unconventional and spiritual conceptions of
+Bible teachings; for unexpected, penetrating, and practical
+applications of them, and for general spiritual truth and force,
+these Sermons and Notes of Sermons are as noble as their
+predecessors.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">The English Churchman.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;We are glad to see the publication of the eloquent Sermons now
+before us, especially those of a devout and practical character,
+such as those on the human race and education.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">The Christian World.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;These Sermons exhibit many of those features of unsurpassable
+excellence which have gained for the preacher a reputation which
+has had no equal in our time. They are full of thought and
+suggestiveness, and are marked by that rare beauty of style which
+Mr. Robertson's readers have learned to associate with all his
+Sermons. His devoted admirers&mdash;and how numerous they are&mdash;will be
+sure to place this new volume upon their shelves.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><small>A SELECTION FROM THE<br /> NOTICES BY THE PRESS OF</small><br />&ldquo;THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF THE LATE REV. F.W. ROBERTSON.&rdquo;</h2>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">The Spectator.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;No book published since the &lsquo;Life of Dr. Arnold&rsquo; has produced so
+strong an impression on the moral imagination and spiritual
+theology of England as we may expect from these volumes. Even for
+those who knew Mr. Robertson well, and for many who knew <i>him</i>, as
+they thought, better than his Sermons, the free and full
+discussion of the highest subjects in the familiar letters so
+admirably selected by the Editor of Mr. Robertson's <i>Life</i>, will
+give a far clearer insight into his remarkable character and
+inspire a deeper respect for his clear and manly intellect. Mr.
+Brooke has done his work as Dr. Stanley did his in writing the
+&lsquo;Life of Arnold,&rsquo; and it is not possible to give higher praise....
+Everyone will talk of Mr. Robertson, and no one of Mr. Brooke,
+because Mr. Brooke has thought much of his subject, nothing of
+himself, and hence the figure which he wished to present comes out
+quite clear and keen, without any interposing haze of literary
+vapour.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">The Christian World.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;The Life of Robertson of Brighton supplies a very unique
+illustration of the way in which a man may attain his highest fame
+after he has passed away from earth. There are few who make any
+pretension to an acquaintance with modern literature who do not
+know something of Mr. Robertson's works. His sermons are
+indisputably ranked with the highest sacred classics.... The
+publication of his &lsquo;Life and Letters&rsquo; helps us to some information
+which is very precious, and explains much mystery that hangs
+around the name of the great Brighton preacher. It will be
+generally admitted that these two volumes will furnish means for
+estimating the character of Mr. Robertson which are not supplied
+in any or all of his published works.... There was no
+artificiality or show about the pulpit production, no
+half-utterances or whispers of solemn belief; but there was the
+natural restraint which would be imposed by a true gentleman upon
+his words when speaking to mixed congregations. Many of us wanted
+to know how he talked and wrote when the restraint was removed.
+This privilege is granted to us in these volumes.... There was no
+romance of scene and circumstance in the life of Frederick
+Robertson; but there was more than romance about the real life of
+the man. In some respects it was like the life of a new Elijah....
+A more thoughtful, suggestive, and beautiful preacher never
+entered a pulpit; a simpler and braver man never lived; a truer
+Christian never adorned any religious community. His life and
+death were <i>vicarious</i>, as he himself might have put it. He lived
+and died for others, for us all. The sorrows and agonies of his
+heart pressed rare music out of it, and the experience of a
+terribly bitter life leaves a wealth of thought and reflection
+never more than equalled in the history of men.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">The Guardian.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;With all drawbacks of what seem to us imperfect taste, an
+imperfect standard of character, and an imperfect appreciation of
+what there is in the world beyond a given circle of interest, the
+book does what a biography ought to do&mdash;it shows us a remarkable
+man, and it gives us the means of forming our own judgment about
+him. It is not a tame panegyric or a fancy picture. The main
+portion of the book consists of Mr. Robertson's own letters, and
+his own account of himself, and we are allowed to see him, in a
+great degree at least, as he really was.... It is the record of a
+genuine spontaneous character, seeking its way, its duty, its
+perfection, with much sincerity and elevation of purpose, many
+anxieties and sorrows, and not, we doubt not, without much of the
+fruits that come with real self-devotion; a record disclosing a
+man with great faults and conspicuous blanks in his nature.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">The Morning Post.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;Mr. Brooke has done good service in giving to the world so
+faithful a sketch of so worthy a man. It would have been a
+reproach to the Church if this enduring and appropriate memorial
+had not been erected to one who was so entirely devoted to its
+service; and the labour of love, for such it evidently was, was
+committed to no unskilful hands.... Mr. Robertson's epistolary
+writings&mdash;gathered in these valuable volumes&mdash;often unstudied,
+always necessarily from their nature free and unrestrained, but
+evidencing depth and vigour of thought, clear perception, varied
+knowledge, sound judgment, earnest piety, are doubtless destined
+to become as widely known and as largely beneficial as his
+published Sermons. It is impossible to peruse them without
+receiving impressions for good, and being persuaded that they are
+the offspring of no ordinary mind.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">The Morning Herald.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;Mr. Brooke has done his own work as a biographer with good sense,
+feeling, and taste.... These volumes are of real value to all
+thoughtful readers. For many a year we have had no such picture of
+a pure and noble and well spent life.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">The Athen&aelig;um.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;There is something here for all kinds of readers, but the higher
+a man's mind and the more general his sympathies, the keener will
+be his interest in the &lsquo;Life of Robertson.&rsquo;"</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">The Nonconformist.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;As no English sermons of the century have been so widely read,
+and as few leaders of religious thought have exerted (especially
+by works in so much of an unperfected and fragmentary character)
+so penetrating and powerful an influence on the spiritual
+tendencies of the times, we can well believe that no biography
+since Arnold's will presently be possible to be compared with
+this, for the interest excited by it in the minds of readers who
+consciously live in the presence of the invisible and eternal, who
+feel the pressure of difficult questions and painful experiences,
+and who seek reality and depth, and freedom in the life and
+activity of the Church of Christ.... Mr. Brooke has produced a
+&lsquo;Life of Robertson&rsquo; which will not unworthily compare with Dean
+Stanley's &lsquo;Life of Arnold,&rsquo; and which, with that, and Ryland's
+&lsquo;Life of Foster,&rsquo; and the &lsquo;Life of Channing,&rsquo; is likely to be
+prized as one of the most precious records of genuine manly and
+godly excellence.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h4 class="end">[<span class="smcap">The Morning Star.</span>]</h4>
+
+<blockquote class="end"><p>&ldquo;The beautiful work which Mr. Brooke has written contains few, if
+any, romantic episodes. It is the life of a man who worked hard
+and died early.... Mr. Brooke has acted wisely in allowing Mr.
+Robertson to speak so fully for himself, and in blending his
+letters with his narrative, and arranging them in chronological
+order. These letters are in themselves a mine of intellectual
+wealth. They contain little of table-talk or parlour gossip: but
+they abound with many of his best and most ripened thoughts on
+multitudes of subjects, political, literary, and scientific, as
+well as theological. We wish we could present our readers with
+extracts from them; but even if we had space, it would be unfair
+to the writer to quote disjointed fragments from a correspondence
+which now belongs to the literature of the country.... Mr. Brooke
+has performed his responsible task as a biographer and an editor
+in a spirit of just and discriminating appreciation, and with
+admirable ability.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p class="center">LONDON: PRINTED BY<br />SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE<br />AND PARLIAMENT STREET</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sermons Preached at Brighton
+by Frederick W. Robertson
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SERMONS PREACHED AT BRIGHTON ***
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+Project Gutenberg's Sermons Preached at Brighton, by Frederick W. Robertson
+
+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: Sermons Preached at Brighton
+       Third Series
+
+Author: Frederick W. Robertson
+
+Release Date: September 4, 2005 [EBook #16645]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SERMONS PREACHED AT BRIGHTON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Laura Wisewell and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                               SERMONS
+
+                       _PREACHED AT BRIGHTON._
+
+
+                             BY THE LATE
+
+                     REV. FREDERICK W. ROBERTSON,
+
+                   THE INCUMBENT OF TRINITY CHAPEL.
+
+
+                           _THIRD SERIES._
+
+                             NEW EDITION.
+
+
+                               LONDON:
+           KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH. & CO., 1 PATERNOSTER SQUARE.
+                                1884.
+
+
+
+    (_The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved_)
+
+
+
+                                  TO
+
+                          _THE CONGREGATION_
+
+                            WORSHIPPING IN
+
+                      TRINITY CHAPEL, BRIGHTON,
+
+              FROM AUGUST 15, 1847, TO AUGUST 15, 1853,
+
+                                THESE
+
+                       RECOLLECTIONS OF SERMONS
+
+                    PREACHED BY THEIR LATE PASTOR,
+
+                            ARE DEDICATED
+
+
+
+
+ CONTENTS.
+
+
+ SERMON I.
+
+ Preached April 28, 1850.
+
+ THE TONGUE.
+
+ ST. JAMES iii. 5, 6.--"Even so the tongue is a little
+   member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a
+   little fire kindleth! And the tongue is a fire, a world of
+   iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the
+   whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set
+   on fire of hell."                                            Page 1
+
+
+ SERMON II.
+
+ Preached May 5, 1850.
+
+ THE VICTORY OF FAITH.
+
+ 1 JOHN v. 4, 5.--"For whatsoever is born of God overcometh
+   the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even
+   our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that
+   believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?"                         15
+
+
+ SERMON III.
+
+ Preached Whitsunday, May 19, 1850.
+
+ THE DISPENSATION OF THE SPIRIT.
+
+ 1 CORINTHIANS xii. 4.--"Now there are diversities of gifts,
+   but the same Spirit."                                            29
+
+
+ SERMON IV.
+
+ Preached May 26, 1850.
+
+ THE TRINITY.
+
+ 1 THESS. v. 23.--"And the very God of peace sanctify you
+   wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be
+   preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."   43
+
+
+ SERMON V.
+
+ Preached June 2, 1850.
+
+ ABSOLUTION.
+
+ LUKE v. 21.--"And the Scribes and the Pharisees began to
+   reason saying, Who is this which speaketh blasphemies? Who can
+   forgive sins, but God alone?"                                    61
+
+
+ SERMON VI.
+
+ Preached June 9, 1850.
+
+ THE ILLUSIVENESS OF LIFE.
+
+ HEBREWS xi. 8-10.--"By faith Abraham, when he was called to
+   go out into a place which he should after receive for an
+   inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went.
+   By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange
+   country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs
+   with him of the same promise: for he looked for a city which hath
+   foundations, whose builder and maker is God."                    77
+
+
+ SERMON VII.
+
+ Preached June 23, 1850.
+
+ THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST.
+
+ 2 COR. v. 14, 15.--"For the love of Christ constraineth us;
+   because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all
+   dead: and that he died for all, that they which live should not
+   henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them,
+   and rose again."                                                 90
+
+
+ SERMON VIII.
+
+ Preached June 30, 1850.
+
+ THE POWER OF SORROW.
+
+ 2 COR. vii. 9, 10.--"Now I rejoice, not that ye were made
+   sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance: for ye were made sorry
+   after a godly manner, that ye might receive damage by us in
+   nothing. For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be
+   repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death."        104
+
+
+ SERMON IX.
+
+ Preached August 4, 1850.
+
+ SENSUAL AND SPIRITUAL EXCITEMENT.
+
+ EPHESIANS v. 17, 18.--"Wherefore be ye not unwise, but
+   understanding what the will of the Lord is. And be not drunk with
+   wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit."        112
+
+
+ SERMON X.
+
+ Preached August 11, 1850.
+
+ PURITY.
+
+ TITUS i. 15.--"Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto
+   them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even
+   their mind and conscience is defiled."                          122
+
+
+ SERMON XI.
+
+ Preached February 9, 1851.
+
+ UNITY AND PEACE.
+
+ COL. iii. 15.--"And let the peace of God rule in your
+   hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye
+   thankful."                                                      130
+
+
+ SERMON XII.
+
+ Preached January 4, 1852.
+
+ THE CHRISTIAN AIM AND MOTIVE.
+
+ MATT. v. 48.--"Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father
+   which is in heaven is perfect."                                 143
+
+
+ SERMON XIII.
+
+ Preached January 4, 1852.
+
+ CHRISTIAN CASUISTRY.
+
+ 1 COR. vii. 18-24.--"Is any man called being circumcised?
+   let him not become uncircumcised. Is any called in uncircumcision?
+   let him not be circumcised. Circumcision is nothing, and
+   uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of
+   God. Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called.
+   Art thou called being a servant? care not for it: but if thou
+   mayest be made free use it rather. For he that is called in the
+   Lord, being a servant, is the Lord's freeman; likewise also he that
+   is called being free, is Christ's servant. Ye are bought with a
+   price; be not ye the servants of men. Brethren, let every man
+   wherein he is called therein abide with God."                   156
+
+
+ SERMON XIV.
+
+ Preached January 11, 1852.
+
+ MARRIAGE AND CELIBACY.
+
+ 1 COR. vii. 29-31.--"But this I say, brethren, the time is
+   short: it remaineth that both they that have wives be as though
+   they had none; and they that weep as though they wept not; and they
+   that rejoice as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as
+   though they possessed not; and they that use this world as not
+   abusing it: for the fashion of this world passeth away."        169
+
+
+ SERMON XV.
+
+ Preached January 11, 1852.
+
+ THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH A FAMILY.
+
+ EPH. iii. 14, 15.--"Our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole
+   family in Heaven and earth is named."                           181
+
+
+ SERMON XVI.
+
+ Preached January 25, 1852.
+
+ THE LAW OF CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE.
+
+ 1 COR. viii. 7-13.--"Howbeit there is not in every man that
+   knowledge: for some, with conscience of the idol, unto this hour,
+   eat it as a thing offered unto an idol; and their conscience being
+   weak is defiled. But meat commendeth us not to God: for neither if
+   we eat are we the better; neither if we eat not are we the worse.
+   But take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a
+   stumbling-block to them that are weak. For if any man see thee
+   which hast knowledge, sit at meat in the idol's temple, shall not
+   the conscience of him which is weak be emboldened to eat those
+   things which are offered to idols; and through thy knowledge shall
+   the weak brother perish for whom Christ died? But when ye sin so
+   against the brethren and wound their weak conscience ye sin against
+   Christ. Wherefore if meat make my brother to offend I will eat no
+   flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend."
+                                                                   196
+
+
+ SERMON XVII.
+
+ Preached May 16, 1852.
+
+ VICTORY OVER DEATH.
+
+ 1 COR. xv. 56, 57.--"The sting of death is sin, and the
+   strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God which giveth us
+   the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."                     212
+
+
+ SERMON XVIII.
+
+ Preached June 20, 1852.
+
+ MAN'S GREATNESS AND GOD'S GREATNESS.
+
+ ISAIAH lvii. 15.--"For thus saith the High and Lofty One
+   that inhabiteth Eternity, whose Name is Holy. I dwell in the high
+   and holy place--with him also that is of a contrite and humble
+   spirit."                                                        230
+
+
+ SERMON XIX.
+
+ Preached June 27, 1852.
+
+ THE LAWFUL AND UNLAWFUL USE OF LAW. (A FRAGMENT.)
+
+ 1 TIM. i. 8.--"But we know that the law is good, if a man
+   use it lawfully."                                               246
+
+
+ SERMON XX.
+
+ Preached February 21, 1853.
+
+ THE PRODIGAL AND HIS BROTHER.
+
+ LUKE xv. 31, 32.--"And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever
+   with me, and all that I have is thine. It was meet that we should
+   make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is
+   alive again; was lost, and is found."                           253
+
+
+ SERMON XXI.
+
+ Preached May 15, 1853.
+
+ JOHN'S REBUKE OF HEROD.
+
+ LUKE iii. 19, 20.--"But Herod the tetrarch, being reproved
+   by him for Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, and for all the
+   evils which Herod had done, added yet this above all, that he shut
+   up John in prison."                                             270
+
+
+
+
+ SERMONS.
+
+
+
+
+ I.
+
+ _Preached April 28, 1850._
+
+ THE TONGUE.
+
+
+   "Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things.
+    Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth! And the tongue
+    is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our
+    members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the
+    course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell."--St. James iii.
+    5-6.
+
+ In the development of Christian Truth a peculiar office was assigned
+ to the Apostle James.
+
+ It was given to St. Paul to proclaim Christianity as the spiritual law
+ of liberty, and to exhibit Faith as the most active principle within
+ the breast of man. It was St. John's to say that the deepest quality
+ in the bosom of Deity is Love; and to assert that the life of God in
+ Man is Love. It was the office of St. James to assert the necessity of
+ Moral Rectitude; his very name marked him out peculiarly for this
+ office: he was emphatically called, "the Just:" integrity was his
+ peculiar characteristic. A man singularly honest, earnest, real.
+ Accordingly, if you read through his whole epistle, you will find it
+ is, from first to last, one continued vindication of the first
+ principles of morality against the _semblances_ of religion.
+
+ He protested against the censoriousness which was found connected with
+ peculiar claims of religious feelings. "If any man among you seem to
+ be religious and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own
+ heart, this man's religion is vain." He protested against that spirit
+ which had crept into the Christian Brotherhood, truckling to the rich,
+ and despising the poor. "If ye have respect of persons ye commit sin,
+ and are convinced of the law as transgressors." He protested against
+ that sentimental fatalism which induced men to throw the blame of
+ their own passions upon God. "Let no man say, when he is tempted, I am
+ tempted of God; for God cannot tempt to evil; neither tempteth He any
+ man." He protested against that unreal religion of excitement which
+ diluted the earnestness of real religion in the enjoyment of
+ listening. "Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only; deceiving
+ your own souls." He protested against that trust in the correctness of
+ theological doctrine which neglected the cultivation of character.
+ "What doth it profit, if a man _say_ that he hath faith, and have not
+ works? Can faith save him?"
+
+ Read St. James's epistle through, this is the mind breathing through
+ it all:--all this _talk_ about religion, and spirituality--words,
+ words, words--nay, let us have _realities_.
+
+ It is well known that Luther complained of this epistle, that it did
+ not contain the Gospel; for men who are hampered by a system will
+ say--even of an inspired Apostle--that he does not teach the Gospel if
+ their own favourite doctrine be not the central subject of his
+ discourse; but St. James's reply seems spontaneously to suggest itself
+ to us. The Gospel! how can we speak of the Gospel, when the first
+ principles of _morality_ are forgotten? when Christians are excusing
+ themselves, and slandering one another? How can the superstructure of
+ Love and Faith be built, when the very foundations of human
+ character--Justice, Mercy, Truth--have not been laid?
+
+   1st. The license of the tongue.
+   2nd. The guilt of that license.
+
+ The first license given to the tongue is slander. I am not of course,
+ speaking now of that species of slander against which the law of libel
+ provides a remedy, but of that of which the Gospel alone takes
+ cognisance; for the worst injuries which man can do to man, are
+ precisely those which are too delicate for _law_ to deal with. We
+ consider therefore not the calumny which is reckoned such by the
+ moralities of an earthly court, but that which is found guilty by the
+ spiritualities of the courts of heaven--that is, the mind of God.
+
+ Now observe, this slander is compared in the text to poison--"the
+ tongue is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison." The deadliest
+ poisons are those for which no test is known: there are poisons so
+ destructive that a single drop insinuated into the veins produces
+ death in three seconds, and yet no chemical science can separate that
+ virus from the contaminated blood, and show the metallic particles of
+ poison glittering palpably, and say, "Behold, it is there!"
+
+ In the drop of venom which distils from the sting of the smallest
+ insect, or the spikes of the nettle-leaf, there is concentrated the
+ quintessence of a poison so subtle that the microscope cannot
+ distinguish it, and yet so virulent that it can inflame the blood,
+ irritate the whole constitution, and convert day and night into
+ restless misery.
+
+ In St. James's day, as now, it would appear that there were idle men
+ and idle women, who went about from house to house, dropping slander
+ as they went, and yet you could not take up that slander and detect
+ the falsehood there. You could not evaporate the truth in the slow
+ process of the crucible, and then show the residuum of falsehood
+ glittering and visible. You could not fasten upon any word or
+ sentence, and say that it was calumny; for in order to constitute
+ slander it is not necessary that the word spoken should be false--half
+ truths are often more calumnious than whole falsehoods. It is not even
+ necessary that a word should be distinctly uttered; a dropped lip, an
+ arched eyebrow, a shrugged shoulder, a significant look, an
+ incredulous expression of countenance, nay, even an emphatic silence,
+ may do the work: and when the light and trifling thing which has done
+ the mischief has fluttered off, the venom is left behind, to work and
+ rankle, to inflame hearts, to fever human existence, and to poison
+ human society at the fountain springs of life. Very emphatically was
+ it said by one whose whole being had smarted under such affliction,
+ "Adder's poison is under their lips."
+
+ The second license given to the tongue is in the way of persecution:
+ "therewith curse we men which are made after the similitude of God."
+ "We!"--men who bear the name of Christ--curse our brethren! Christians
+ persecuted Christians. Thus even in St. James's age that spirit had
+ begun, the monstrous fact of Christian persecution; from that day it
+ has continued, through long centuries, up to the present time. The
+ Church of Christ assumed the office of denunciation, and except in the
+ first council, whose object was not to strain, but to relax the bonds
+ of brotherhood, not a council has met for eighteen centuries which has
+ not guarded each profession of belief by the too customary formula,
+ "If any man maintain otherwise than this, let him be accursed."
+
+ Myriad, countless curses have echoed through those long ages; the
+ Church has forgotten her Master's spirit and called down fire from
+ heaven. A fearful thought to consider this as the spectacle on which
+ the eye of God has rested. He looks down upon the creatures He has
+ made, and hears everywhere the language of religious
+ imprecations:--and after all, who is proved right by curses?
+
+ The Church of Rome hurls her thunders against Protestants of every
+ denomination: the Calvinist scarcely recognises the Arminian as a
+ Christian: he who considers himself as the true Anglican, excludes
+ from the Church of Christ all but the adherents of his own orthodoxy;
+ every minister and congregation has its small circle, beyond which all
+ are heretics: nay even among that sect which is most lax as to the
+ dogmatic forms of truth, we find the Unitarian of the old school
+ denouncing the spiritualism of the new and rising school.
+
+ This is the state of things to which we are arrived. Sisters of
+ Charity refuse to permit an act of charity to be done by a Samaritan;
+ ministers of the Gospel fling the thunderbolts of the Lord; ignorant
+ hearers catch and exaggerate the spirit,--boys, girls, and women
+ shudder as one goes by, perhaps more holy than themselves, who adores
+ the same God, believes in the same Redeemer, struggles in the same
+ life-battle, and all this because they have been taught to look upon
+ him as an enemy of God.
+
+ There is a class of religious persons against whom this vehemence has
+ been especially directed. No one who can read the signs of the times
+ can help perceiving that we are on the eve of great changes, perhaps a
+ disruption of the Church of England. Unquestionably there has been a
+ large secession to the Church of Rome.
+
+ Now what has been the position of those who are about to take this
+ step? They have been taunted with dishonest reception of the wages of
+ the Church; a watch has been set over them: not a word they uttered in
+ private, or in public, but was given to the world by some religious
+ busy-body; there was not a visit which they paid, not a foolish dress
+ which they adopted, but became the subject of bitter scrutiny and
+ malevolent gossip. For years the religious press has denounced them
+ with a vehemence as virulent, but happily more impotent than that of
+ the Inquisition. There has been an anguish and an inward struggle
+ little suspected, endured by men who felt themselves outcasts in their
+ own society, and naturally looked for a home elsewhere.
+
+ We congratulate ourselves that the days of persecution are gone by;
+ but persecution is that which affixes penalties upon _views held_,
+ instead of upon _life led_. Is persecution _only_ fire and sword? But
+ suppose a man of sensitive feeling says, The sword is less sharp to me
+ than the slander: fire is less intolerable than the refusal of
+ sympathy!
+
+ Now let us bring this home; you rejoice that the faggot and the stake
+ are given up;--_you_ never persecuted--you leave that to the wicked
+ Church of Rome. Yes, you never burned a human being alive--you never
+ clapped your hands as the death-shriek proclaimed that the lion's fang
+ had gone home into the most vital part of the victim's frame; but did
+ you never rob him of his friends?--gravely shake your head and
+ oracularly insinuate that he was leading souls to hell?--chill the
+ affections of his family?--take from him his good name? Did you never
+ with delight see his Church placarded as the Man of Sin, and hear the
+ platform denunciations which branded it with the spiritual
+ abominations of the Apocalypse? Did you never find a malicious
+ pleasure in repeating all the miserable gossip with which religious
+ slander fastened upon his daily acts, his words, and even his
+ uncommunicated thoughts? Did you never forget that for a man to "work
+ out his own salvation with fear and trembling" is a matter difficult
+ enough to be laid upon a human spirit, without intruding into the most
+ sacred department of another's life--that namely, which lies between
+ himself and God? Did you never say that "it was to be wished he should
+ go to Rome," until at last life became intolerable,--until he was
+ thrown more and more in upon himself; found himself, like his
+ Redeemer, in this world alone, but unable like his Redeemer, calmly to
+ repose upon the thought that his Father was with him? Then a stern
+ defiant spirit took possession of his soul, and there burst from his
+ lips, or heart, the wish for _rest_--rest at any cost,--peace
+ anywhere, if even it is to be found only in the bosom of the Church of
+ Rome!
+
+
+ II. The guilt of this license.
+
+ The first evil consequence is the harm that a man does himself: "so is
+ the tongue among the members, that it defiles the whole body." It is
+ not very obvious, in what way a man does himself harm by calumny. I
+ will take the simplest form in which this injury is done; it effects a
+ dissipation of spiritual energy. There are two ways in which the steam
+ of machinery may find an outlet for its force: it may work, and if so
+ it works silently; or it may escape, and that takes place loudly, in
+ air and noise. There are two ways in which the spiritual energy of a
+ man's soul may find its vent: it may express itself in action,
+ silently; or in words, noisily: but just so much of force as is thrown
+ into the one mode of expression, is taken from the other.
+
+ Few men suspect how much mere talk fritters away spiritual
+ energy,--that which should be spent in action, spends itself in words.
+ The fluent boaster is not the man who is steadiest before the enemy;
+ it is well said to him that his courage is better kept till it is
+ wanted. Loud utterance of virtuous indignation against evil from the
+ platform, or in the drawing-room, do not characterize the spiritual
+ giant: so much indignation as is expressed, has found vent, is wasted,
+ is taken away from the work of coping with evil; the man has so much
+ less left. And hence he who restrains that love of talk, lays up a
+ fund of spiritual strength.
+
+ With large significance, St. James declares, "If any man offend not in
+ word, the same is a perfect man, able also to bridle the whole body."
+ He is entire, powerful, because he has not spent his strength. In
+ these days of loud profession, and bitter, fluent condemnation, it is
+ well for us to learn the divine force of silence. Remember Christ in
+ the Judgment Hall, the very Symbol and Incarnation of spiritual
+ strength; and yet when revilings were loud around Him and charges
+ multiplied, "He held His peace."
+
+ 2. The next feature in the guilt of calumny is its uncontrollable
+ character: "the tongue can no man tame." You cannot arrest a
+ calumnious tongue, you cannot arrest the calumny itself; you may
+ refute a slanderer, you may trace home a slander to its source, you
+ may expose the author of it, you may by that exposure give a lesson so
+ severe as to make the repetition of the offence appear impossible; but
+ the fatal habit is incorrigible: to-morrow the tongue is at work
+ again.
+
+ Neither can you stop the consequences of a slander; you may publicly
+ prove its falsehood, you may sift every atom, explain and annihilate
+ it, and yet, years after you had thought that all had been disposed of
+ for ever, the mention of a name wakes up associations in the mind of
+ some one who heard the calumny, but never heard or never attended to
+ the refutation, or who has only a vague and confused recollection of
+ the whole, and he asks the question doubtfully, "But were there not
+ some suspicious circumstances connected with him?"
+
+ It is like the Greek fire used in ancient warfare, which burnt
+ unquenched beneath the water, or like the weeds which when you have
+ extirpated them in one place are sprouting forth vigorously in another
+ spot, at the distance of many hundred yards; or, to use the metaphor
+ of St. James himself, it is like the wheel which catches fire as it
+ goes, and burns with a fiercer conflagration as its own speed
+ increases; "it sets on fire the whole course of nature" (literally,
+ the wheel of nature). You may tame the wild beast, the conflagration
+ of the American forest will cease when all the timber and the dry
+ underwood is consumed; but you cannot arrest the progress of that
+ cruel word which you uttered carelessly yesterday or this
+ morning,--which you will utter perhaps, before you have passed from
+ this church one hundred yards: that will go on slaying, poisoning,
+ burning beyond your own control, now and for ever.
+
+ 3. The third element of guilt lies in the unnaturalness of calumny.
+ "My brethren, these things ought not so to be;" _ought not_--that is,
+ they are unnatural. That this is St. James's meaning is evident from
+ the second illustration which follows: "Doth a fountain send forth at
+ the same place, sweet water and bitter?" "Can the fig tree, my
+ brethren, bear olive berries, or a vine, figs?"
+
+ There is apparently in these metaphors little that affords an argument
+ against slander; the motive which they suggest would appear to many
+ far-fetched and of small cogency; but to one who looks on this world
+ as a vast whole, and who has recognised the moral law as only a part
+ of the great law of the universe, harmoniously blending with the
+ whole, illustrations such as these are the most powerful of all
+ arguments. The truest definition of evil is that which represents it
+ as something contrary to nature: evil is evil, because it is
+ unnatural; a vine which should bear olive berries, an eye to which
+ blue seems yellow, would be diseased: an unnatural mother, an
+ unnatural son, an unnatural act, are the strongest terms of
+ condemnation. It is this view which Christianity gives of moral evil:
+ the teaching of Christ was the recall of man to nature, not an
+ infusion of something new into Humanity. Christ came to call out all
+ the principles and powers of human nature, to restore the natural
+ equilibrium of all our faculties; not to call us back to our own
+ individual selfish nature, but to human nature as it is in God's
+ ideal--the perfect type which is to be realised in us. Christianity is
+ the regeneration of our whole nature, not the destruction of one atom
+ of it.
+
+ Now the nature of man is to adore God and to love what is god-like in
+ man. The office of the tongue is to bless. Slander is guilty because
+ it contradicts this; yet even in slander itself, perversion as it is,
+ the interest of man in man is still distinguishable. What is it but
+ perverted interest which makes the acts, and words, and thoughts of
+ his brethren, even in their evil, a matter of such strange delight?
+ Remember therefore, this contradicts your nature and your destiny; to
+ speak ill of others makes you a monster in God's world: get the habit
+ of slander, and then there is not a stream which bubbles fresh from
+ the heart of nature,--there is not a tree that silently brings forth
+ its genial fruit in its appointed season,--which does not rebuke and
+ proclaim you to be a monstrous anomaly in God's world.
+
+ 4. The fourth point of guilt is the diabolical character of slander;
+ the tongue "is set on fire of hell." Now, this is no mere strong
+ expression--no mere indignant vituperation--it contains deep and
+ emphatic meaning.
+
+ The apostle means literally what he says, slander is diabolical. The
+ first illustration we give of this is contained in the very meaning of
+ the word devil. "Devil," in the original, means traducer or slanderer.
+ The first introduction of a demon spirit is found connected with a
+ slanderous insinuation against the Almighty, implying that His command
+ had been given in envy of His creature: "for God doth know that in the
+ day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be
+ as gods, knowing good and evil."
+
+ In the magnificent imagery of the book of Job, the accuser is
+ introduced with a demoniacal and malignant sneer, attributing the
+ excellence of a good man to interested motives; "Doth Job serve God
+ for naught?" There is another mode in which the fearful accuracy of
+ St. James's charge may be demonstrated. There is one state only from
+ which there is said to be no recovery--there is but one sin that is
+ called unpardonable. The Pharisees beheld the works of Jesus. They
+ could not deny that they were good works, they could not deny that
+ they were miracles of beneficence, but rather than acknowledge that
+ they were done by a good man through the co-operation of a Divine
+ spirit, they preferred to account for them by the wildest and most
+ incredible hypothesis; they said they were done by the power of
+ Beelzebub, the prince of the devils. It was upon this occasion that
+ our Redeemer said with solemn meaning, "For every idle word that men
+ shall speak, they shall give account in the day of judgment." It was
+ then that He said, for a word spoken against the Holy Ghost there is
+ no forgiveness in this world, or in the world to come.
+
+ Our own hearts respond to the truth of this--to call evil, good, and
+ good, evil--to see the Divinest good, and call it Satanic evil--below
+ this lowest deep there is _not_ a lower still. There is no cure for
+ mortification of the flesh--there is no remedy for ossification of the
+ heart. Oh! that miserable state, when to the jaundiced eye all good
+ transforms itself into evil, and the very instruments of health
+ become the poison of disease. Beware of every approach of
+ this!--Beware of that spirit which controversy fosters, of watching
+ only for the evil in the character of an antagonist!--Beware of that
+ habit which becomes the slanderer's life, of magnifying every speck of
+ evil and closing the eye to goodness!--till at last men arrive at the
+ state in which generous, universal love (which is heaven) becomes
+ impossible, and a suspicious, universal hate takes possession of the
+ heart, and _that_ is hell!
+
+ There is one peculiar manifestation of this spirit to which I desire
+ specially to direct your attention.
+
+ The politics of the community are guided by the political press. The
+ religious views of a vast number are formed by that portion of the
+ press which is called religious; it becomes, therefore, a matter of
+ deepest interest to inquire what is the spirit of that "religious
+ press." I am not asking you what are the views maintained--whether
+ Evangelical, Anglican, or Romish--but what is the _spirit_ of that
+ fountain from which the religious life of so many is nourished?
+
+ Let any man cast his eye over the pages of this portion of the
+ press--it matters little to which party the newspaper or the journal
+ may belong--he will be startled to find the characters of those whom
+ he has most deeply reverenced, whose hearts he knows, whose integrity
+ and life are above suspicion, held up to scorn and hatred: the organ
+ of one party is established against the organ of another, and it is
+ the recognised office of each to point out with microscopic care the
+ names of those whose views are to be shunned; and in order that these
+ may be the more shrunk from, the characters of those who hold such
+ opinions are traduced and vilified. There is no personality too
+ mean--there is no insinuation too audacious or too false for the
+ recklessness of these daring slanderers. I do not like to use the
+ expression, lest it should appear to be merely one of theatrical
+ vehemence; but I say it in all seriousness, adopting the inspired
+ language of the Bible, and using it advisedly and with accurate
+ meaning, the spirit which guides the "religious press" of this
+ country, which dictates those personalities, which prevents
+ controversialists from seeing what is good in their opponents, which
+ attributes low motives to account for excellent lives, and teaches
+ men whom to suspect, and shun, rather than point out where it is
+ possible to admire and love--is a spirit "set on fire of hell."
+
+ Before we conclude, let us get at the root of the matter. "Man," says
+ the Apostle James, "was made in the image of God:" to slander man is
+ to slander God: to love what is good in man is to love it in God. Love
+ is the only remedy for slander: no set of rules or restrictions can
+ stop it; we may denounce, but we shall denounce in vain. The radical
+ cure of it is Charity--"out of a pure heart and faith unfeigned," to
+ feel what is great in the human character; to recognise with delight
+ all high, and generous, and beautiful actions; to find a joy even in
+ seeing the good qualities of your bitterest opponents, and to admire
+ those qualities even in those with whom you have least sympathy--be it
+ either the Romanist or the Unitarian--this is the only spirit which
+ can heal the love of slander and of calumny. If we would bless God, we
+ must _first_ learn to bless man, who is made in the image of God.
+
+
+
+
+ II.
+
+ _Preached May 5, 1850._
+
+ THE VICTORY OF FAITH.
+
+
+   "For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is
+    the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he
+    that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the
+    Son of God?"--1 John v. 4-5.
+
+ There are two words in the system of Christianity which have received
+ a meaning so new, and so emphatic, as to be in a way peculiar to it,
+ and to distinguish it from all other systems of morality and religion;
+ these two words are--the World, and Faith. We find it written in
+ Scripture that to have the friendship of the world is to be the enemy
+ of God--- whereupon the question arises--The world?--did not God make
+ the world? Did He not place us in the world? Are we not to love what
+ God has made? And yet meeting this distinctly we have the inspired
+ record, "Love not the World."
+
+ The object of the Statesman is, or ought to be, to produce as much
+ worldly prosperity as possible--but Christianity, that is Christ,
+ speaks little of this world's prosperity, underrates it--nay, speaks
+ of it at times as infinitely dangerous.
+
+ The legislator prohibits crime--the moralist transgression--the
+ religionist sin. To these Christianity superadds a new enemy--the
+ world and the things of the world. "If any man love the world, the
+ love of the Father is not in him."
+
+ The other word used in a peculiar sense is Faith. It is impossible for
+ any one to have read his Bible ever so negligently, and not to be
+ aware that the word Faith, or the grace of Faith, forms a large
+ element in the Christian system. It is said to work miracles, remove
+ mountains, justify the soul, trample upon impossibilities. Every
+ apostle, in his way, assigns to faith a primary importance. Jude
+ tells us to "build up ourselves in our most holy faith." John tells us
+ that--"he that believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is the born of
+ God;" and Paul tells us that, not by merit nor by works, but by trust
+ or reliance only, can be formed that state of soul by which man is
+ reckoned just before God. In these expressions, the apostles only
+ develope their Master's meaning, when He uses such words as these,
+ "All things are possible to him that believeth:" "O thou of little
+ faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?"
+
+ These two words are brought into diametrical opposition in the text,
+ so that it branches into a two-fold line of thought
+
+    I. The Christian's enemy, the World.
+   II. The victory of Faith.
+
+ In endeavouring to understand first what is meant by the world, we
+ shall feel that the mass of evil which is comprehended under this
+ expression, cannot be told out in any one sermon; it is an expression
+ used in various ways, sometimes meaning one thing, sometimes meaning
+ another;-but we will endeavour to explain its general principles--and
+ these we will divide into three heads; first, the tyranny of the
+ present; secondly, the tyranny of the sensual; and lastly, the spirit
+ of society.
+
+ 1. The tyranny of the present.
+
+ "Christ," says the Apostle Paul, "hath redeemed us from this present
+ evil world;" and again, "Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this,
+ present world."
+
+ Let a stress be laid on the word _present_. Worldliness is the
+ attractive power of something present, in opposition to something to
+ come. It is this rule and tyranny of the present that constitutes
+ Demas a worldly man.
+
+ In this respect, worldliness is the spirit of childhood carried on
+ into manhood. The child lives in the present hour--to-day to him is
+ everything. The holiday promised at a distant interval is no holiday
+ at all--it must be either now or never. Natural in the child, and
+ therefore pardonable, this spirit, when carried on into manhood, is
+ coarse--is worldliness. The most distinct illustration given us of
+ this, is the case of Esau. Esau came from the hunting-field worn and
+ hungry; the only means of procuring the tempting mess of his brother's
+ pottage was the sacrifice of his father's blessing, which in those
+ ages carried with it a substantial advantage; but that birthright
+ could be enjoyed only after _years_--the pottage was _present_, near,
+ and certain; therefore he sacrificed a future and higher blessing, for
+ a present and lower pleasure. For this reason Esau is the Bible type
+ of worldliness: he is called in Scripture a profane, that is, not a
+ distinctly vicious, but a secular or worldly person--an overgrown
+ child; impetuous, inconsistent, not without gleams of generosity and
+ kindliness, but ever accustomed to immediate gratification.
+
+ In this worldliness, moreover, is to be remarked the gamester's
+ desperate play. There is a gambling spirit in human nature. Esau
+ distinctly expresses this: "Behold I am at the point to die, and what
+ shall my birthright profit me?" He might never live to enjoy his
+ birthright; but the pottage was before him, present, certain, _there_.
+
+ Now, observe the utter powerlessness of mere preaching to cope with
+ this tyrannical power of the present. Forty thousand pulpits
+ throughout the land this day, will declaim against the vanity of
+ riches, the uncertainty of life, the sin of worldliness--against the
+ gambling spirit of human nature; I ask what _impression_ will be
+ produced by those forty thousand harangues? In every congregation it
+ is reducible to a certainty that, before a year has passed, some will
+ be numbered with the dead. Every man knows this, but he thinks the
+ chances are that it will not be himself; he feels it a solemn thing
+ for Humanity generally--but for himself there is more than a chance.
+ Upon this chance he plays away life.
+
+ It is so with the child: you tell him of the consequences of to-day's
+ idleness--but the sun is shining brightly, and he cannot sacrifice
+ to-day's pleasure, although he knows the disgrace it will bring
+ to-morrow. So it is with the intemperate man: he says--"Sufficient
+ unto the day is the evil, and the good thereof; let me have my portion
+ now." So that one great secret of the world's victory lies in the
+ mighty power of saying "_Now_."
+
+ 2. The tyranny of the sensual.
+
+ I call it _tyranny_, because the evidences of the senses are all
+ powerful, in spite of the protestations of the reason. In vain you try
+ to persuade the child that _he_ is moving, and not the trees which
+ seem to flit past the carriage--in vain we remind ourselves that this
+ apparently solid earth on which we stand, and which seems so
+ immoveable, is in reality flying through the regions of space with an
+ inconceivable rapidity--in vain philosophers would persuade us that
+ the colour which the eye beholds, resides not in the object itself,
+ but in our own perception; we are victims of the apparent, and the
+ verdict of the senses is taken instead of the verdict of the reason.
+
+ Precisely so is it with the enjoyments of the world. The man who died
+ yesterday, and whom the world called a successful man--for what did he
+ live?--He lived for this world--he gained this world. Houses, lands,
+ name, position in society--all that earth could give of enjoyments--he
+ had: he was the man of whom the Redeemer said that his thoughts were
+ occupied in planning how to pull down his barns and build greater. We
+ hear men complain of the sordid love of gold, but gold is merely a
+ medium of exchange for other things: gold is land, titles, name,
+ comfort--all that the world can give. If the world be _all_, it is
+ _wise_ to live for gold. There may be some little difference in the
+ degree of degradation in different forms of worldliness; it is
+ possible that the ambitious man who lives for power is somewhat higher
+ than he who merely lives for applause, and he again may be a trifle
+ higher than the mere seeker after gold--but after all, looking closely
+ at the matter, you will find that, in respect of the objects of their
+ idolatry, they agree in this, that all belong to the present.
+ Therefore, says the Apostle, all that is in the world--"the lust of
+ the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, is not of the
+ Father, but of the world," and are only various forms of one great
+ tyranny. And then when such a man is at the brink of death, the words
+ said to the man in our Lord's parable must be said to him. "Thou fool,
+ the houses thou hast built, the enjoyments thou hast prepared; and all
+ those things which have formed thy life for years--when thy soul is
+ taken from them, what shall they profit thee?"
+
+ 3. The spirit of society.
+
+ The _World_ has various meanings in Scripture; it does not always mean
+ the Visible, as opposed to the Invisible; nor the Present, as opposed
+ to the Future: it sometimes stands for the secular spirit of the
+ day--the Voice of Society.
+
+ Our Saviour says, "If ye were of the world, the world would love his
+ own." The apostle says, "Be not conformed to this world;" and to the
+ Gentiles he writes, "In time past ye walked according to the course of
+ this world, the spirit which now worketh in the children of
+ disobedience." In these verses, a tone, a temper, a spirit is spoken
+ of. There are two things--the Church and the World--two spirits
+ pervading different bodies of men, brought before us in these
+ verses--those called the Spirit-born, and those called the World,
+ which is to be overcome by the Spirit-born, as in the text,
+ "Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world."
+
+ Let us understand what is meant by the Church of God. When we speak of
+ the Church we generally mean a society to aid men in their progress
+ God-wards; but the Church of God is by no means co-extensive in any
+ age with that organized institution which we _call_ the Church;
+ sometimes it is nearly co-extensive--that is, nearly all on earth who
+ are born of God are found within its pale, nearly all who are of the
+ world are extraneous to it--but sometimes the born of God have been
+ found distinct from the Institution called the Church, opposed to
+ it--persecuted by it. The Institution of the Church is a blessed
+ ordinance of God, organized on earth for the purpose of representing
+ the Eternal Church and of extending its limits, but still ever
+ subordinate to it.
+
+ The Eternal Church is "the general assembly and church of the
+ first-born which are written in heaven;" the selected spirits of the
+ most High, who are struggling with the evil of their day; sometimes
+ alone, like Elijah, and like him, longing that their work was done;
+ sometimes conscious of their union with each other. God is for ever
+ raising up a succession of these--His brave, His true, His good.
+ Apostolical succession, as taught sometimes, means simply this--a
+ succession of miraculous powers flowing in a certain line. The true
+ apostolic succession is--not a succession in an hereditary line, or
+ line marked by visible signs which men can always identify, but a
+ succession emphatically spiritual.
+
+ The Jews looked for an hereditary succession; they thought that
+ because they were Abraham's seed, the spiritual succession was
+ preserved; the Redeemer told them that "God was able of those stones
+ to raise up children unto Abraham." Therefore is this ever a spiritual
+ succession--in the hands of God alone; and they are here called the
+ God-born, coming into the world variously qualified; sometimes
+ baptized with the spirit which makes them, like James and John, the
+ "Sons of Thunder," sometimes with a milder spirit, as Barnabas, which
+ makes them "Sons of Consolation," sometimes having their souls
+ indurated into an adamantine hardness, which makes them living
+ stones--rocks like Peter, against which the billows of this world dash
+ themselves in vain, and against which the gates of hell shall not
+ prevail. But whether as apostles, or visitors of the poor, or parents
+ of a family, born to do a work on earth, to speak a word, to discharge
+ a mission which they themselves perhaps do not know till it is
+ accomplished--these are the Church of God--the children of the Most
+ High--the noble army of the Spirit-born! Opposed to this stands the
+ mighty confederacy called the World. But beware of fixing on
+ individual men in order to stigmatize _them_ as the world. You may not
+ draw a line and say--"We are the sons of God, ye are of the world."
+ The world is not so much individual as it is a certain spirit; the
+ course of this world is "the spirit which now worketh in the children
+ of disobedience." The world and the Church are annexed as inseparably
+ as the elements which compose the atmosphere. Take the smallest
+ portion of this that you will, in a cubic inch the same proportions
+ are found as in a temple. In the ark there was a Ham; in the small
+ band of the twelve apostles there was a Judas.
+
+ The spirit of the world is for ever altering--impalpable; for ever
+ eluding, in fresh forms, your attempts to seize it. In the days of
+ Noah, the spirit of the world was _violence_. In Elijah's day it was
+ _idolatry_. In the day of Christ it was _power_ concentrated and
+ condensed in the government of Rome. In ours, perhaps, it is the _love
+ of money_. It enters in different proportions into different bosoms;
+ it is found in a different form in contiguous towns; in the
+ fashionable watering place, and in the commercial city: it is this
+ thing at Athens, and another in Corinth. This is the spirit of the
+ world--a thing in my heart and yours: to be struggled against, not so
+ much in the case of others, as in the silent battle to be done within
+ our own souls. Pass we on now to consider--
+
+
+ II. The victory of faith.
+
+ Faith is a theological expression; we are apt to forget that it has
+ any other than a theological import; yet it is the commonest principle
+ of man's daily life, called in that region prudence, enterprise, or
+ some such name. It is in effect the principle on which alone any human
+ superiority can be gained. Faith, in religion, is the same principle
+ as faith in worldly matters, differing only in its object: it rises
+ through successive stages. When, in reliance upon your promise, your
+ child gives up the half-hour's idleness of to-day for the holiday of
+ to-morrow, he lives by faith; a future supersedes the present
+ pleasure. When he abstains from over-indulgence of the appetite, in
+ reliance upon your word that the result will be pain and sickness,
+ sacrificing the present pleasure for fear of future punishment, he
+ acts on faith: I do not say that this is a high exercise of faith--it
+ is a very low one--but it _is_ faith.
+
+ Once more: the same motive of action may be carried on into manhood;
+ in our own times two religious principles have been exemplified in the
+ subjugation of a vice. The habit of intoxication has been broken by an
+ appeal to the principle of combination, and the principle of belief.
+ Men were taught to feel that they were not solitary stragglers against
+ the vice; they were enrolled in a mighty army, identified in
+ principles and interests. Here was the principle of the
+ Church--association for reciprocated strength; they were thus taught
+ the inevitable result of the indulgence of the vice. The missionaries
+ of temperance went through the country contrasting the wretchedness
+ and the degradation and the filth of drunkenness with the domestic
+ comfort, and the health, and the regular employment of those who were
+ masters of themselves. So far as men believed this, and gave up the
+ tyranny of the present for the hope of the future--so far they lived
+ by faith.
+
+ Brethren, I do not say that this was a high triumph for the principle
+ of faith; it was in fact, little more than selfishness; it was a high
+ future balanced against a low present; only the preference of a future
+ and higher physical enjoyment to a mean and lower one. Yet still to be
+ ruled by this influence raises a man in the scale of being: it is a
+ low virtue, prudence, a form of selfishness; yet prudence _is_ a
+ virtue. The merchant, who forecasts, saves, denies himself
+ systematically through years, to amass a fortune, is not a very lofty
+ being, yet he is higher, as a man, than he who is sunk in mere bodily
+ gratifications. You would not say that the intemperate man--who has
+ become temperate in order, merely to gain by that temperance honour
+ and happiness--is a great man, but you would say he was a higher and a
+ better man than he who is enslaved by his passions, or than the
+ gambler who improvidently stakes all upon a moment's throw. The
+ worldly mother who plans for the advancement of a family, and
+ sacrifices solid enjoyments for a splendid alliance, is only _worldly_
+ wise, yet in that manoeuvring and worldly prudence there is the
+ exercise of a self-control which raises her above the mere giddy
+ pleasure-hunter of the hour; for want of self-control is the weakness
+ of our nature--to restrain, to wait, to control present feeling with a
+ large foresight, is human strength.
+
+ Once more, instead of a faith like that of the child, which over-leaps
+ a few hours, or that of the worldly man, which over-passes years,
+ there may be a faith which transcends the whole span of life, and,
+ instead of looking for temporal enjoyments, looks for rewards in a
+ future beyond the grave, instead of a future limited to time.
+
+ This is again a step. The child has sacrificed a day; the man has
+ sacrificed a little more. Faith has now reached a stage which deserves
+ to be called religious; not that this however, is very grand; it does
+ but prefer a happiness hereafter to a happiness enjoyed here--an
+ eternal well-being instead of a temporal well-being; it is but
+ prudence on a grand scale--another form of selfishness--an
+ anticipation of infinite rewards instead of finite, and not the more
+ noble because of the infinitude of the gain: and yet this is what is
+ often taught as religion in books and sermons. We are told that sin is
+ wrong, because it will make us miserable hereafter. Guilt is
+ represented as the short-sightedness which barters for a home on
+ earth--a home in heaven.
+
+ In the text-book of ethics studied in one of our universities, virtue
+ is defined as that which is done at the command of God for the sake of
+ an eternal reward. So then, religion is nothing more than a
+ calculation of infinite and finite quantities; vice is nothing more
+ than a grand imprudence; and heaven is nothing more than selfishness
+ rewarded with eternal well-being!
+
+ Yet this you will observe, is a necessary step in the development of
+ faith. Faith is the conviction that God is a rewarder of them who
+ diligently seek Him; and there is a moment in human progress when the
+ anticipated rewards and punishments must be of a Mahometan
+ character--the happiness of the senses. It was thus that the Jews were
+ disciplined; out of a coarse, rude, infantine state, they were
+ educated by rewards and punishments to abstain from present sinful
+ gratification: at first, the promise of the life which now is,
+ afterwards the promise of that which is to come; but even then the
+ rewards and punishments of a future state were spoken of, by
+ inspiration itself, as of an arbitrary character; and some of the best
+ of the Israelites, in looking to the recompense of reward, seemed to
+ have anticipated, coarsely, recompense in exchange for duties
+ performed.
+
+ The last step is that which alone deserves to be called Christian
+ Faith--"Who is he that overcometh but he that believeth that Jesus is
+ the Christ?" The difference between the faith of the Christian and
+ that of the man of the world, or the mere ordinary religionist, is not
+ a difference in mental operation, but in the object of the faith--to
+ believe that Jesus is the Christ is the peculiarity of Christian
+ faith.
+
+ The anticipated heaven of the Christian differs from the anticipated
+ heaven of any other man, not in the distinctness with which its
+ imagery is perceived, but in the kind of objects which are hoped for.
+ The apostle has told us the character of heaven. "Eye hath not seen,
+ nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to
+ conceive the things which God hath prepared for them that love
+ Him"--which glorious words are sometimes strangely misinterpreted, as
+ if the apostle merely meant rhetorically to exalt the conception of
+ the heavenly world, as of something beyond all power to imagine or to
+ paint. The apostle meant something infinitely deeper: the heaven of
+ God is not only that which "eye hath not seen," but that which eye can
+ _never_ see; its glories are not of that kind at all which can ever
+ stream in forms of beauty on the eye, or pour in melody upon the
+ enraptured ear--not such joys as genius in its most gifted hour (here
+ called "the heart of man") can invent or imagine: it is something
+ which these sensuous organs of ours never can appreciate--bliss of
+ another kind altogether, revealed to the spirit of man by the Spirit
+ of God--joys such as spirit alone can receive.
+
+ Do you ask what these are? "The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy,
+ peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness,
+ temperance." That is heaven, and therefore the Apostle tells us that
+ he alone who "believeth that Jesus is the Christ," and only he, feels
+ that. What is it to believe that Jesus is the Christ?--That He is the
+ Anointed One, that His life is the anointed life, the only blessed
+ life, the blessed life divine for thirty years?--Yes, but if so, the
+ blessed Life still, continued throughout all eternity: unless you
+ believe that, you do not believe that Jesus is the Christ.
+
+ What is the blessedness that you expect?--to have the joys of earth
+ with the addition of the element of eternity? Men think that heaven is
+ to be a compensation for earthly loss: the saints are earthly-wretched
+ here, the children of this world are earthly-happy; but _that_, they
+ think, shall be all reversed--Lazarus, beyond the grave, shall have
+ the purple and the fine linen, and the splendour, and the houses, and
+ the lands which Dives had on earth: the one had them for time, the
+ other shall have them for eternity. That is the heaven that men
+ expect--this earth sacrificed _now_, in order that it may be
+ re-granted for _ever_.
+
+ Nor will this expectation be reversed except by a reversal of the
+ nature. None can anticipate such a heaven as God has revealed, except
+ they that are born of the Spirit; therefore to believe that Jesus is
+ the Christ, a man must be born of God. You will observe that no other
+ victory overcomes the world: for this is what St. John means by
+ saying, "Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth
+ that Jesus is the Christ?" For then it comes to pass that a man begins
+ to feel, that to do wrong is hell; and that to love God, to be like
+ God, to have the mind of Christ, is the only heaven. Until this
+ victory is gained, the world retains its stronghold in the heart.
+
+ Do you think that the temperate man has overcome the world, who,
+ instead of the short-lived rapture of intoxication, chooses regular
+ employment, health, and prosperity? Is it not the world in another
+ form, which has his homage? Or do you suppose that the so-called
+ religious man is really the world's conqueror by being content to give
+ up seventy years of enjoyment in order to win innumerable ages of the
+ very same species of enjoyment? Has he not only made earth a hell, in
+ order that earthly things may be his heaven for ever?
+
+ Thus the victory of Faith proceeds from stage to stage: the first
+ victory is, when the Present is conquered by the Future; the last,
+ when the Visible and Sensual is despised in comparison of the
+ Invisible and Eternal. Then earth has lost its power for ever; for if
+ _all_ that it has to give be lost eternally, the gain of faith is
+ still infinite.
+
+
+
+
+ III.
+
+ _Preached Whitsunday, May 19, 1850._
+
+ THE DISPENSATION OF THE SPIRIT.
+
+
+   "Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit."--1
+    Corinthians xii, 4.
+
+ According to a view which contains in it a profound truth, the ages of
+ the world are divisible into three dispensations, presided over by the
+ Father, the Son, and the Spirit.
+
+ In the dispensation of the Father, God was known as a Creator;
+ creation manifested His eternal power and Godhead, and the religion of
+ mankind was the religion of Nature.
+
+ In the dispensation of the Son, God manifested Himself to Humanity
+ through man; the Eternal Word spoke, through the inspired and gifted
+ of the human race, to those that were uninspired and ungifted. This
+ was the dispensation of the prophets--its climax was the advent of the
+ Redeemer; it was completed when _perfect_ Humanity manifested God to
+ man. The characteristic of this dispensation was, that God revealed
+ Himself by an authoritative Voice, speaking from without, and the
+ highest manifestation of God whereof man was capable, was a Divine
+ Humanity.
+
+ The age in which we at present live is the dispensation of the Spirit,
+ in which God has communicated Himself by the highest revelation, and
+ in the most intimate communion, of which man is capable; no longer
+ through Creation, no more as an authoritative Voice from without, but
+ as a Law within--as a Spirit mingling with a spirit. This is the
+ dispensation of which the prophet said of old, that the time should
+ come when they should no longer teach every man his brother and every
+ man his neighbour, saying, "Know the Lord"--that is, by a will
+ revealed by external authority from other human minds--"for they shall
+ all know him, from the least of them to the greatest." This is the
+ dispensation, too, of whose close the Apostle Paul speaks thus: "Then
+ shall the Son also be subject to Him that hath put all things under
+ Him, that God may be all in all."
+
+ The outward humanity is to disappear, that the inward union may be
+ complete. To the same effect, he speaks in another place, "Yea, though
+ we have known Christ after the flesh, yet henceforth know we Him no
+ more." For this reason, the Ascension was necessary before Pentecost
+ could come: the Spirit was not given, we are told, because Jesus was
+ not yet glorified. It was necessary for the Son to disappear as an
+ outward authority, in order that he might re-appear as an inward
+ principle of life. Our salvation is no longer God manifested in a
+ Christ _without_ us, but as a Christ _within_ us, the hope of glory.
+ To-day is the selected anniversary of that memorable day when the
+ first proof was given to the senses, in the gift of Pentecost, that
+ that spiritual dispensation had begun.
+
+ There is a twofold way in which the operations of the Spirit on
+ mankind may be considered--His influence on the Church as a whole, and
+ His influence on individuals; both of these are brought together in
+ the text. It branches, therefore, into a twofold division.
+
+    I. Spiritual gifts conferred on individuals.
+   II. Spiritual union of the Church.
+
+ Let us distinguish between the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit: by
+ the Spirit, the apostle meant the vital principle of new life from
+ God, common to all believers--the animating Spirit of the Church of
+ God; by the gifts of the Spirit, he meant the diversities of form in
+ which He operates on individuals; its influence varied according to
+ their respective peculiarities and characteristics. In the
+ twenty-eighth verse of this chapter a full catalogue of gifts is
+ found; looking at them generally, we discover two classes into which
+ they may be divided--the first are natural, the second are
+ supernatural: the first are those capacities which are originally
+ found in human nature--personal endowments of mind, a character
+ elevated and enlarged by the gift of the Spirit; the second are those
+ which were created and called into existence by the sudden approach of
+ the same influence.
+
+ Just as if the temperature of this Northern hemisphere were raised
+ suddenly, and a mighty tropical river were to pour its fertilizing
+ inundation over the country, the result would be the impartation of a
+ vigorous and gigantic growth to the vegetation already in existence,
+ and at the same time the development of life in seeds and germs which
+ had long lain latent in the soil, incapable of vegetation in the
+ unkindly climate of their birth. Exactly in the same way, the flood of
+ a Divine life, poured suddenly into the souls of men, enlarged and
+ ennobled qualities which had been used already, and at the same time
+ _developed_ powers which never could have become apparent in the cold,
+ low temperature of natural life.
+
+ Among the natural gifts, we may instance these: teaching--healing--the
+ power of government. Teaching is a gift, natural or acquired. To know,
+ is one thing; to have the capacity of imparting knowledge, is another.
+
+ The physician's art again is no supernatural mystery; long and
+ careful study of physical laws capacitate him for his task. To govern,
+ again, is a natural faculty: it may be acquired by habit, but there
+ are some who never could acquire it. Some men seem born to command:
+ place them in what sphere you will, others acknowledge their secret
+ influence, and subordinate themselves to their will. The faculty of
+ organization, the secret of rule, need no supernatural power. They
+ exist among the uninspired. Now the doctrine of the apostle was, that
+ all these are transformed and renovated by the spirit of a new life in
+ such a way as to become almost new powers, or, as he calls them, gifts
+ of the Spirit. A remarkable illustration of this is his view of the
+ human body. If there be anything common to us by nature, it is the
+ members of our corporeal frame; yet the apostle taught that these,
+ guided by the Spirit as its instruments and obeying a holy will,
+ became transfigured; so that, in his language, the body becomes a
+ temple of the Holy Ghost, and the meanest faculties, the lowest
+ appetites, the humblest organs, are ennobled by the Spirit mind which
+ guides them. Thus he bids the Romans yield themselves "unto God as
+ those that are alive from the dead, and their members as instruments
+ of righteousness unto God."
+
+ The second class of gifts are supernatural: of these we find two
+ pre-eminent--the gift of tongues, and the gift of prophecy.
+
+ It does not appear that the gift of tongues was merely the imparted
+ faculty of speaking foreign languages--it could not be that the
+ highest gift of God to His Church merely made them rivals of the
+ linguist; it would rather seem that the Spirit of God, mingling with
+ the soul of man, supernaturally elevated its aspirations and glorified
+ its conceptions, so that an entranced state of ecstasy was
+ produced, and feelings called into energy, for the expression of which
+ the ordinary forms of speech were found inadequate. Even in a far
+ lower department, when a man becomes possessed of ideas for which his
+ ordinary vocabulary supplies no sufficient expression, his language
+ becomes broken, incoherent, struggling, and almost unnaturally
+ elevated; much more was it to be expected that when divine and new
+ feelings rushed like a flood upon the soul, the language of men would
+ have become strange and extraordinary; but in that supposed case, wild
+ as the expressions might appear to one coldly looking on and not
+ participating in the feelings of the speaker, they would be quite
+ sufficient to convey intelligible meaning to any one affected by the
+ same emotions.
+
+ Where perfect sympathy exists, incoherent utterance--a word--a
+ syllable--is quite as efficient as elaborate sentences. Now this is
+ precisely the account given of the phenomenon which attended the gift
+ of tongues. On the day of Pentecost, all who were in the same state of
+ spiritual emotion as those who spoke, understood the speakers; each
+ was as intelligible to all as if he spoke in their several tongues: to
+ those who were coolly and sceptically watching, the effects appeared
+ like those of intoxication. A similar account is given by the Apostle
+ Paul: the voice appeared to unsympathetic ears as that of a barbarian;
+ the uninitiated and unbelieving coming in, heard nothing that was
+ articulate to them, but only what seemed to them the ravings of
+ insanity.
+
+ The next was the gift of prophecy. Prophecy has several meanings in
+ Scripture; sometimes it means the power of predicting future events,
+ sometimes an entranced state accompanied with ravings, sometimes it
+ appears to mean only exposition; but prophecy, as the miraculous
+ spiritual gift granted to the early Church, seems to have been a state
+ of communion with the mind of God lower than that which was called the
+ gift of tongues, at least less ecstatic, less rapt into the world to
+ come, more under the guidance of the reason, more within the control
+ of calm consciousness--as we might say, less supernatural.
+
+ Upon these gifts we make two observations:
+
+ 1. Even the highest were not accompanied with spiritual faultlessness.
+ Inspiration was one thing, infallibility another. The gifts of the
+ Spirit were, like the gifts of Nature, subordinated to the
+ will--capable of being used for good or evil, sometimes pure,
+ sometimes mixed with human infirmity. The supernaturally gifted man
+ was no mere machine, no automaton ruled in spite of himself by a
+ superior spirit. Disorder, vanity, over-weening self-estimation, might
+ accompany these gifts, and the prophetic utterance itself might be
+ degraded to a mere brawling in the Church; therefore St. Paul
+ established laws of control, declared the need of subjection and rule
+ over spiritual gifts: the spirits of the prophets were to be subject
+ to the prophets; if those in the ecstatic state were tempted to break
+ out into utterance and unable to interpret what it meant, those so
+ gifted were to hold their peace.
+
+ The prophet poured out the truths supernaturally imparted to his
+ highest spirit, in an inspired and impassioned eloquence which was
+ intelligible even to the unspiritual, and was one of the appointed
+ means of convincing the unconverted. The lesson derivable from this is
+ not obsolete even in the present day. There is nothing perhaps
+ precisely identical in our own day with those gifts of the early
+ Church; but genius and talent are uncommon gifts, which stand in a
+ somewhat analogous relation--in a closer one certainly--than more
+ ordinary endowments. The flights of genius, we know, appear like
+ maniac ravings to minds not elevated to the same spiritual level. Now
+ these are perfectly compatible with mis-use, abuse, and moral
+ disorder. The most gifted of our countrymen has left this behind him
+ as his epitaph, "The greatest, wisest, _meanest_ of mankind." The most
+ glorious gift of poetic insight--itself in a way divine--having
+ something akin to Deity--is too often associated with degraded life
+ and vicious character. Those gifts which elevate us above the rest of
+ our species, whereby we stand aloof and separate from the crowd,
+ convey no moral--nor even mental--infallibility: nay, they have in
+ themselves a peculiar danger, whereas that gift which is common to us
+ all as brethren, the animating spirit of a divine life, in whose soil
+ the spiritual being of all is rooted, cannot make us vain; we _cannot_
+ pride ourselves on _that_, for it is common to us all.
+
+ 2. Again, the gifts which were higher in one sense were lower in
+ another; as supernatural gifts they would rank thus--the gift of
+ tongues before prophecy, and prophecy before teaching; but as
+ blessings to be desired, this order is reversed: rather than the gift
+ of tongues St. Paul bids the Corinthians desire that they might
+ prophecy. Inferior again to prophecy was the quite simple, and as we
+ should say, lower faculty of explaining truth. Now the principle upon
+ which that was tried was that of utility--not utility in the low sense
+ of the utilitarian, who measures the value of a thing by its
+ susceptibility of application to the purpose of this present life, but
+ a utility whose measure was love, charity. The apostle considered
+ _that_ gift most desirable by which men might most edify one another.
+ And hence that noble declaration of one of the most gifted of
+ mankind--"I had rather speak five words with my understanding, that I
+ might teach others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown
+ tongue."
+
+ Our estimate is almost the reverse of this: we value a gift in
+ proportion to its rarity, its distinctive character, separating its
+ possessor from the rest of his fellow-men; whereas, in truth, those
+ gifts which leave us in lonely majesty apart from our species, useless
+ to them, benefiting ourselves alone, are not the most godlike, but the
+ least so; because they are dissevered from that beneficent charity
+ which is the very being of God. Your lofty incommunicable thoughts,
+ your ecstasies, and aspirations, and contemplative raptures--in virtue
+ of which you have estimated yourself as the porcelain of the earth, of
+ another nature altogether than the clay of common spirits--tried by
+ the test of Charity, what is there grand in these if they cannot be
+ applied as blessings to those that are beneath you? One of our
+ countrymen has achieved for himself extraordinary scientific renown;
+ he pierced the mysteries of nature, he analysed her processes, he gave
+ new elements to the world. The same man applied his rare intellect to
+ the construction of a simple and very common instrument--that
+ well-known lamp which has been the guardian of the miner's life from
+ the explosion of fire. His discoveries are his nobility in this world,
+ his trifling invention gives him rank in the world to come. By the
+ former he shines as one of the brightest luminaries in the firmament
+ of science, by the latter evincing a spirit animated and directed by
+ Christian love, he takes his place as one of the Church of God.
+
+ And such is ever the true order of rank which graces occupy in
+ reference to gifts. The most trifling act which is marked by
+ usefulness to others is nobler in God's sight, than the most brilliant
+ accomplishment of genius. To teach a few Sunday-school children, week
+ after week, commonplace simple truths--persevering in spite of
+ dullness and mean capacities--is a more glorious occupation than the
+ highest meditations or creations of genius which edify or instruct
+ only our own solitary soul.
+
+
+ II. The spiritual unity of the Church--"the same Spirit."
+
+ Men have formed to themselves two ideas of unity: the first is a
+ sameness of form--of expression; the second an identity of spirit.
+ Some of the best of mankind have fondly hoped to realize an unity for
+ the Church of Christ which should be manifested by uniform expressions
+ in everything: their imaginations have loved to paint, as the ideal of
+ a Christian Church, a state in which the same liturgy should be used
+ throughout the world, the same ecclesiastical government, even the
+ same vestments, the same canonical hours, the same form of
+ architecture. They could conceive nothing more entirely one than a
+ Church so constituted that the same prayers, in the very same
+ expressions, at the very same moment, should be ascending to the
+ Eternal Ear.
+
+ There are others who have thrown aside entirely this idea as
+ chimerical; who have not only ceased to hope it, but even to wish it;
+ who if it could be realized, would consider it a matter of regret; who
+ feel that the minds of men are various--their modes and habits of
+ thought, their original capacities and acquired associations,
+ infinitely diverse; and who, perceiving that the law of the universal
+ system is manifoldness in unity, have ceased to expect any other
+ oneness for the Church of Christ than that of a sameness of spirit,
+ showing itself through diversities of gifts. Among these last was the
+ Apostle Paul: his large and glorious mind rejoiced in the
+ contemplation of the countless manifestations of spiritual nature
+ beneath which he detected one and the same pervading Mind. Now let us
+ look at this matter somewhat more closely.
+
+ 1. All real unity is manifold. Feelings in themselves identical find
+ countless forms of expression: for instance, sorrow is the same
+ feeling throughout the human race; but the Oriental prostrates himself
+ upon the ground, throws dust upon his head, tears his garments, is not
+ ashamed to break out into the most violent lamentations. In the north,
+ we rule our grief in public; suffer not even a quiver to be seen upon
+ the lip or brow, and consider calmness as the appropriate expression
+ of manly grief. Nay, two sisters of different temperament will show
+ their grief diversely; one will love to dwell upon the theme of the
+ qualities of the departed, the other feels it a sacred sorrow, on
+ which the lips are sealed for ever; yet would it not be idle to ask
+ which of them has the truest affection? Are they not both in their own
+ way true? In the same East, men take off their sandals in devotion; we
+ exactly reverse the procedure, and uncover the head. The Oriental
+ prostrates himself in the dust before his sovereign; even before his
+ God the Briton only kneels; yet would it not again be idle to ask
+ which is the essential and proper form of reverence? Is not true
+ reverence in all cases modified by the individualities of temperament
+ and education? Should we not say, in all these forms worketh one and
+ the same spirit of reverence?
+
+ Again in the world as God has made it, one law shows itself under
+ diverse, even opposite manifestations; lead sinks in water, wood
+ floats upon the surface. In former times men assigned these different
+ results to different forces, laws, and gods. A knowledge of Nature has
+ demonstrated that they are expressions of one and the same law; and
+ the great difference between the educated and the uneducated man is
+ this--the uneducated sees in this world nothing but an infinite
+ collection of unconnected facts--a broken, distorted, and fragmentary
+ system, which his mind can by no means reduce to order. The educated
+ man, in proportion to his education, sees the number of laws
+ diminished--beholds in the manifold appearances of Nature the
+ expression of a few laws, by degrees fewer, till at last it becomes
+ possible to his conception that they are all reducible to one, and
+ that that which lies beneath the innumerable phenomena of Nature is
+ the One Spirit--God.
+
+ 2. All _living_ unity is spiritual, not formal; not sameness, but
+ manifoldness. You may have a unity shown in identity of form; but it
+ is a lifeless unity. There is a sameness on the sea-beach--that unity
+ which the ocean waves have produced by curling and forcibly destroying
+ the angularities of individual form, so that every stone presents the
+ same monotony of aspect, and you must fracture each again in order to
+ distinguish whether you hold in your hand a mass of flint or fragment
+ of basalt. There is no life in unity such as this.
+
+ But as soon as you arrive at a unity that is living, the form becomes
+ more complex, and you search in vain for uniformity. In the parts, it
+ must be found, if found at all, in the sameness of the pervading life.
+ The illustration given by the apostle is that of the human body--a
+ higher unity, he says, by being composed of many members, than if
+ every member were but a repetition of a single type. It is conceivable
+ that God might have moulded such a form for human life; it is
+ conceivable that every cause, instead of producing in different nerves
+ a variety of sensations, should have affected every one in a mode
+ precisely similar; that instead of producing a sensation of sound--a
+ sensation of colour--a sensation of taste--the outward causes of
+ nature, be they what they may, should have given but one unvaried
+ feeling to every sense, and that the whole universe should have been
+ light or sound.
+
+ That would have been unity, if sameness be unity; but, says the
+ apostle, "if the whole body were seeing, where were the hearing?" That
+ uniformity would have been irreparable loss--the loss of every part
+ that was merged into the one. What is the body's unity? Is it not
+ this? The unity of a living consciousness which marvellously animates
+ every separate atom of the frame, and reduces each to the performance
+ of a function fitted to the welfare of the whole--its own, not
+ another's: so that the inner spirit can say of the remotest, and in
+ form most unlike, member, "That too, is myself."
+
+ 3. None but a spiritual unity can preserve the rights both of the
+ individual and the Church. All other systems of unity, except the
+ apostolic, either sacrifice the Church to the individual, or the
+ individual to the Church.
+
+ Some have claimed the right of private judgment in such a way that
+ every individual opinion becomes truth, and every utterance of private
+ conscience right: thus the Church is sacrificed to the individual; and
+ the universal conscience, the common faith, becomes as nothing; the
+ spirits of the prophets are not subject to the prophets. Again, there
+ are others, who, like the Church of Rome, would surrender the
+ conscience of each man to the conscience of the Church, and coerce the
+ particulars of faith into exact coincidence with a formal creed.
+ Spiritual unity saves the right of both in God's system. The Church
+ exists for the individual, just as truly as the individual for the
+ Church. The Church is then most perfect when all its powers converge,
+ and are concentrated on the formation and protection of individual
+ character; and the individual is then most complete--that is, most a
+ Christian--when he has practically learned that his life is not his
+ own, but owed to others--"that no man liveth to himself, and no man
+ dieth to himself."
+
+ Now, spiritual unity respects the sanctity of the individual
+ conscience. How reverently the Apostle Paul considered its claims,
+ and how tenderly! When once it became a matter of conscience, this was
+ his principle laid down in matters of dispute: "Let every man be fully
+ persuaded in his own mind." The belief of the whole world cannot make
+ that thing true to me which to me seems false. The conscience of the
+ whole world cannot make a thing right to me, if I in my heart believe
+ it wrong. You may coerce the conscience, you may control men's belief,
+ and you may produce a unity by so doing; but it is the unity of
+ pebbles on the sea-shore--a lifeless identity of outward form with no
+ cohesion between the parts--a dead sea-beach on which nothing grows,
+ and where the very seaweed dies.
+
+ Lastly, it respected the sanctity of individual character. Out of
+ eight hundred millions of the human race, a few features diversify
+ themselves into so many forms of countenance, that scarcely two could
+ be mistaken for each other. There are no two leaves on the same tree
+ alike; nor two sides of the same leaf, unless you cut and kill it
+ There is a sacredness in individuality of character; each one born
+ into this world is a fresh new soul intended by his Maker to develope
+ himself in a new fresh way; we are what we are; we cannot be truly
+ other than ourselves. We reach perfection not by copying, much less by
+ aiming at originality; but by consistently and steadily working out
+ the life which is common to us all, according to the character which
+ God has given us.
+
+ And thus will the Church of God be one at last--will present an unity
+ like that of heaven. There is one universe in which each separate star
+ differs from another in glory; one Church in which a single Spirit,
+ the Life of God, pervades each separate soul; and just in proportion
+ as that Life becomes exalted does it enable every one to shine forth
+ in the distinctness of his own separate individuality, like the stars
+ of heaven.
+
+
+
+
+ IV.
+
+ _Preached May 26, 1850._
+
+ THE TRINITY.
+
+
+   "And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God
+    your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto
+    the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."--1 Thess. v. 23.
+
+ The knowledge of God is the blessedness of man. To know God, and to be
+ known by Him--to love God, and to be loved by Him--is the most
+ precious treasure which this life has to give; properly speaking the
+ only treasure; properly speaking the only knowledge; for all
+ knowledge is valuable only so far as it converges towards and ends in
+ the knowledge of God, and enables us to acquaint ourselves with God,
+ and be at peace with Him. The doctrine of the Trinity is the sum of
+ all that knowledge which has as yet been gained by man. I say gained
+ _as yet_. For we presume not to maintain that in the ages which are to
+ come hereafter, our knowledge shall not be superseded by a higher
+ knowledge; we presume not to say that in a state of existence
+ future--yea even here upon this earth, at that period which is
+ mysteriously referred to in Scripture as "the coming of the Son of
+ Man"--there shall not be given to the soul an intellectual conception
+ of the Almighty, a vision of the Eternal, in comparison with whose
+ brightness and clearness our present knowledge of the Trinity shall be
+ as rudimentary and as childlike as the knowledge of the Jew was in
+ comparison with the knowledge of the Christian.
+
+ Now the passage which I have undertaken to expound to-day, is one in
+ which the doctrine of the Trinity is brought into connection
+ practically with the doctrine of our Humanity. Before entering into it
+ brethren, let us lay down these two observations and duties for
+ ourselves. In the first place, let us examine the doctrine of the
+ Trinity ever in the spirit of charity.
+
+ A clear statement of the deepest doctrine that man can know, and the
+ intellectual conception of that doctrine, are by no means easy. We are
+ puzzled and perplexed by _words_; we fight respecting _words_.
+ Quarrels are nearly always verbal quarrels. Words lose their meaning
+ in the course of time; nay, the very words of the Athanasian creed
+ which we read to-day mean not in this age, the same thing which they
+ meant in ages past. Therefore it is possible that men, externally
+ Trinitarians, may differ from each other though using the same words,
+ as greatly as a Unitarian differs from a Trinitarian. There may be
+ found in the same Church and in the same congregation, men holding all
+ possible shades of opinion, though agreeing externally, and in words.
+
+ I speak within the limit of my own experience when I say that persons
+ have been known and heard to express the language of bitter
+ condemnation respecting Unitarianism, who when examined and calmly
+ required to draw out verbally the meaning of their own conceptions,
+ have been proved to be holding all the time--unconsciously--the very
+ doctrine of Sabellianism. And this doctrine is condemned by the Church
+ as distinctly as that of Unitarianism. Therefore let us learn from all
+ this a large and catholic charity. There are in almost every
+ congregation, themselves not knowing it, Trinitarians who are
+ practically Tri-theists, worshipping three Gods; and Sabellians, or
+ worshippers of one person under three different manifestations. To
+ know God so that we may be said intellectually, to appreciate Him, is
+ blessed: to be unable to do so is a misfortune. Be content with your
+ own blessedness, in comparison with others' misfortunes. Do not give
+ to that misfortune the additional sting of illiberal and unchristian
+ vituperation.
+
+ The next observation we have to lay down for ourselves is, that we
+ should examine this doctrine in the spirit of modesty. There are those
+ who are inclined to sneer at the Trinitarian; those to whom the
+ doctrine appears merely a contradiction--a puzzle--an entangled,
+ labyrinthine enigma, in which there is no meaning whatever. But let
+ all such remember, that though the doctrine may appear to them absurd,
+ because they have not the proper conception of it, some of the
+ profoundest thinkers, and some of the holiest spirits among mankind,
+ have believed in this doctrine--have clung to it as a matter of life
+ or death. Let them be assured of this, that whether the doctrine be
+ true or false, it is not necessarily a doctrine self-contradictory.
+ Let them be assured of this, in all modesty, that such men never could
+ have held it unless there was latent in the doctrine a deep
+ truth,--perchance the truth of God.
+
+ We pass on now to the consideration of this verse under the following
+ divisions. In the first place, we shall view it as a triad in discord:
+ "I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved
+ blameless;" in the second place, as a Trinity in Unity: "the God of
+ peace sanctify you wholly." We take then first of all for our
+ consideration the triad in discord: "I pray God your whole body and
+ soul and spirit be preserved blameless."
+
+ The apostle here divides human nature into a three-fold division; and
+ here we have to observe again the difficulty often experienced in
+ understanding words. Thus words in the Athanasian creed have become
+ obsolete, or lost their meaning: so that in the present day the words
+ "person," "substance," "procession," "generation," to an ordinary
+ person, mean almost nothing. So this language of the apostle, when
+ rendered into English, shows no difference whatever between "soul" and
+ "spirit." We say, for instance, that the soul of a man has departed
+ from him. We also say that the spirit of a man has departed from him.
+ There is no distinct difference between the two; but in the original
+ two very different kinds of thoughts--two very different modes of
+ conception--are represented by the two English words "soul" and
+ "spirit."
+
+ It is our business, therefore, in the first place, to understand what
+ is meant by this threefold division. When the apostle speaks of the
+ body, what he means is the animal life--that which we share in common
+ with beasts, birds, and reptiles; for our life my Christian
+ brethren--our sensational existence--differs but little from that of
+ the lower animals. There is the same external form, the same material
+ in the blood-vessels, in the nerves, and in the muscular system. Nay,
+ more than that, our appetites and instincts are alike, our lower
+ pleasures like their lower pleasures, our lower pain like their lower
+ pain, our life is supported by the same means, and our animal
+ functions are almost indistinguishably the same.
+
+ But, once more, the apostle speaks of what he calls the "soul." What
+ the apostle meant by what is translated "soul," is the immortal part
+ of man--the immaterial as distinguished from the material: those
+ powers, in fact, which man has by nature--powers natural, which are
+ yet to survive the grave. There is a distinction made in scripture by
+ our Lord between these two things. "Fear not," says He, "them who can
+ kill the body; but rather fear Him who can destroy both body and
+ soul in hell."
+
+ We have again, to observe respecting this, that what the apostle
+ called the "soul," is not simply distinguishable from the body, but
+ also from the spirit; and on that distinction I have already touched.
+ By the soul the apostle means our powers natural--the powers which we
+ have by nature. Herein is the soul distinguishable from the spirit. In
+ the Epistle to the Corinthians we read--"But the natural man receiveth
+ not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto
+ him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
+ But he that is spiritual judgeth all things." Observe, there is a
+ distinction drawn between the natural man and the spiritual. What is
+ there translated "natural" is derived from precisely the same word as
+ that which is here translated "soul." So that we may read just as
+ correctly: "The man under the dominion of the soul receiveth not the
+ things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him;
+ neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned. But
+ he that is spiritual judgeth all things." And again, the apostle, in
+ the same Epistle to the Corinthians, writes: "That is not first which
+ is spiritual, but that which is natural:" that is, the endowments of
+ the soul precede the endowments of the spirit. You have the same truth
+ in other places. The powers that belong to the Spirit were not the
+ first developed; but the powers which belong to the soul, that is the
+ powers of nature. Again in the same chapter, reference is made to the
+ natural and spiritual body. "There is a natural body and there is a
+ spiritual body." Literally, there is a body governed by the soul--that
+ is, powers natural: and there is a body governed by the Spirit--that
+ is, higher nature.
+
+ Let then this be borne in mind, that what the apostle calls "soul" is
+ the same as that which he calls, in another place, the "natural man."
+ These powers are divisible into two branches--the intellectual powers
+ and the moral sense. The intellectual powers man has by nature. Man
+ need not be regenerated in order to possess the power of reasoning, or
+ in order to invent. The intellectual powers belong to what the apostle
+ calls the "soul." The moral sense distinguishes between right and
+ wrong. The apostle tells us, in the Epistle to the Romans, that the
+ heathen--manifestly natural men--had the "work of the law written in
+ their hearts; their conscience also bearing witness."
+
+ The third division of which the apostle speaks, he calls the "spirit;"
+ and by the spirit he means that life in man which, in his natural
+ state, is in such an embryo condition, that it can scarcely be said to
+ exist at all--that which is called out into power and vitality by
+ regeneration--the perfection of the powers of human nature. And you
+ will observe, that it is not merely the instinctive life, nor the
+ intellectual life, nor the moral life, but it is principally our
+ nobler affections--that existence, that state of being, which we call
+ love. That is the department of human nature which the apostle calls
+ the spirit; and accordingly, when the Spirit of God was given on the
+ day of Pentecost, you will, remember that another power of man was
+ called out, differing from what he had before. That Spirit granted on
+ the day of Pentecost did subordinate to Himself, and was, intended to
+ subordinate to Himself, the will, the understanding, and the affection
+ of man; but you often find these spiritual powers were distinguished
+ from the natural powers, and existed without them.
+
+ So in the highest state of religious life, we are told, men prayed in
+ the spirit. Till the spirit has subordinated the understanding, the
+ gift of God is not complete--has not done its work. It is abundantly
+ evident that a new life was called out. It was not merely the
+ sharpening of the intellectual powers; it was calling out powers of
+ aspiration and love to God; those affections which have in them
+ something boundless, that are not limited to this earth, but seek
+ their completion in the mind of God Himself.
+
+ Now, what we have to say respecting this threefold state of man is, it
+ is a state of discord. Let us take up a very simple, popular,
+ every-day illustration. We hear it remarked frequently in conversation
+ of a man, that if only his will were commensurate with his knowledge,
+ he would be a great man. His knowledge is great--his powers are almost
+ unbounded; he has gained knowledge from nearly every department of
+ science; but somehow or other--you cannot tell why--there is such an
+ indecision, such a vacillation about the man, that he scarcely knows
+ what to do, and, perhaps does nothing in this world. You find it
+ remarked, respecting another class of men, that their will is strong,
+ almost unbounded in its strength--they have iron wills, yet there is
+ something so narrow in their conceptions, something so bounded in
+ their views, so much of stagnation in their thoughts, so much of
+ prejudice in all their opinions, that their will is prevented from
+ being directed to anything in a proper manner. Here is the discord in
+ human nature. There is a distinction between the will and the
+ understanding. And sometimes a feeble will goes with a strong
+ understanding, or a powerful will is found in connection with great
+ feebleness or ignorance of the understanding.
+
+ Let us however, go into this more specially. The first cause of
+ discord in this threefold state of man is the state in which the body
+ is the ruler; and this, my Christian brethren, you find most visibly
+ developed in the uneducated and irreligious poor. I say uneducated and
+ irreligious, because it is by no means education alone which can
+ subordinate the flesh to the higher man. The religious uneducated poor
+ man may be master of his lower passions; but in the uneducated and
+ irreligious poor man, these show themselves in full force; this
+ discord--this want of unity--appears, as it were, in a magnified form.
+ There is a strong man--health bursting, as it were, at every pore,
+ with an athletic body; but coarse, and rude, and intellectually
+ weak--almost an animal. When you are regarding the upper classes of
+ society, you see less distinctly the absence of the spirit, unless,
+ you look with a spiritual eye. The coarseness has passed away--the
+ rudeness is no longer seen: there is a refinement in the pleasures.
+ But if you take the life led by the young men of our country--strong,
+ athletic, healthy men--it is still the life of the flesh: the
+ unthinking, and the unprincipled life in which there is as yet no
+ higher life developed. It is a life which, in spite of its refinement,
+ the Bible condemns as the life of the sensualist.
+
+ We pass on now, to another state of discord--a state in which the soul
+ is ruined. Brethren, this is a natural result--this is what might have
+ been expected. The natural man gradually subordinates the flesh, the
+ body, to the soul. It is natural in the development of individuals, it
+ is natural in the development of society: in the development of
+ individuals, because that childlike, infantine life which exists at
+ first, and is almost entirely a life of appetites, gradually subsides.
+ Higher wants, higher desires, loftier inclinations arise; the passions
+ of the young man gradually subside, and by degrees the more rational
+ life comes: the life is changed--the pleasures of the senses are
+ forsaken for those of the intellect.
+
+ It appears natural, again, in the development of society. Civilization
+ will subordinate the flesh to the soul. In the savage state, you find
+ the life of the animal. Civilization is teaching a man, on the
+ principle of this world, to subordinate his appetites; to rule
+ himself; and there comes a refinement, and a gentleness, and a
+ polish, and an enjoyment of intellectual pleasures; so that the man is
+ no longer what the apostle calls a sensual man, but he becomes now
+ what the apostle calls a natural man. We can see this character
+ delineated in the Epistle to the Ephesians. "Then we were," says the
+ apostle, "in our Gentile state, fulfilling the desires of the flesh
+ and of the mind." Man naturally fulfils not merely the desires of the
+ flesh, but the desires of the mind. "And were," says the apostle,
+ "children of wrath."
+
+ One of the saddest spectacles is the decay of the natural man before
+ the work of the Spirit has been accomplished in him. When the savage
+ dies--when a mere infant dies--when an animal dies--there is nothing
+ that is appalling or depressing there; but when the high, the
+ developed intellect--when the cultivated man comes to the last hours
+ of life, and the memory becomes less powerful, and the judgment fails,
+ and all that belongs to nature and to earth visibly perishes, and the
+ higher life has not been yet developed, though it is destined to
+ survive the grave for ever--even the life of God--there is here ample
+ cause for grief; and it is no wonder that the man of genius merely
+ should shed tears at he idea of decaying life.
+
+ We pass on to consider the Trinity in unity. All this is contained in
+ that simple expression, "The God of peace." God is a God of unity. He
+ makes one where before there were two. He is the God of peace, and
+ therefore can make peace. Now this peace, according to the Trinitarian
+ doctrine, consists in a threefold unity. Brethren, as we remarked
+ respecting this first of all, the distinction in this Trinity is not a
+ physical distinction, but a metaphysical one. The illustrations which
+ are often given are illustrations drawn from material sources: if we
+ take only those, we get into contradiction: for example, when we talk
+ of personality, our idea is of a being bounded by space; and then to
+ say in this sense that three persons are one, and one is three, is
+ simply contradictory and absurd. Remember that the doctrine of the
+ Trinity is a metaphysical doctrine. It is a trinity--a division in the
+ mind of God. It is not three materials; it is three persons in a sense
+ we shall explain by and by.
+
+ In the next place I will endeavour to explain the doctrine--not to
+ prove it, but to show its rationality, and to explain what it is.
+
+ The first illustration we endeavour to give in this is taken from the
+ world of matter. We will take any material substance: we find in that
+ substance qualities; we will say three qualities--colour, shape, and
+ size. Colour is not shape, shape is not size, size is not colour. They
+ are three distinct essences, three distinct qualities, and yet they
+ all form one unity, one single conception, one idea--the idea for
+ example, of a tree.
+
+ Now we will ascend from that into the immaterial world; and here to be
+ something more distinct still. Hitherto we have had but three
+ qualities; we now come to the mind of man, where we find something
+ more than qualities. We will take three--the will, the affections, and
+ the thoughts of man. His will is not his affections, neither are his
+ affections his thoughts; and it would be imperfect and incomplete to
+ say that these are mere qualities in the man. They are separate
+ consciousnesses, living consciousnesses--as distinct, and as really
+ sundered as it is possible for three things to be, yet bound together
+ by one unity of consciousness. Now we have distincter proof than even
+ this that these things are three. The anatomist can tell you that the
+ localities of these powers are different. He can point out the seat of
+ the nerve of sensation; he can localize the feeling of affection; he
+ can point to a nerve and say, "There resides the locality of thought."
+
+ There are three distinct localities for three distinct qualities,
+ personalities, consciousnesses; yet all these three are one.
+
+ Once more, we will give proof even beyond all that. The act that a man
+ does is done by one particular part of that man. You may say it was a
+ work of his genius, or of his fancy; it may have been a manifestation
+ of his love, or an exhibition of his courage; yet that work was the
+ work of the whole man: his courage, his intellect, his habits of
+ perseverance, all helped towards the completion of that single work.
+ Just in this way certain special works are attributed to certain
+ personalities of the Deity; the work of Redemption being attributed to
+ one, the work of Sanctification to another. And yet just as the whole
+ man was engaged in doing that work, so does the whole Deity perform
+ that work which is attributed to one essential.
+
+ Once more, let us remember that principle which we expounded last
+ Sunday, that it is the law of Being that in proportion as you rise
+ from lower to higher life, the parts are more distinctly developed,
+ while yet the unity becomes more entire. You find for example, in the
+ lowest forms of animal life one organ performs several functions, one
+ organ being at the same time heart and brain and blood-vessels. But
+ when you come to man, you find all these various functions existing in
+ different organs, and every organ more distinctly developed; and yet
+ the unity of a man is a higher unity than that of a limpet. When you
+ come from the material world to the world immaterial, you find that
+ the more society is cultivated--the more man is cultivated--the more
+ marvellous is the power of developing distinct powers. In the savage
+ life it is almost all one feeling; but in proportion as the higher
+ education advances and the higher life appears, every power and
+ faculty developes and distinguishes itself, and becomes distinct and
+ separate. And yet just in proportion as in a nation every part is
+ distinct, the unity is greater, and just in proportion as in an
+ individual every power is most complete, and stands out most distinct,
+ just in that proportion has the man reached the entireness of his
+ Humanity.
+
+ Now brethren, we apply all this to the mind of God. The Trinitarian
+ maintains against the Unitarian and the Sabellian, that the higher you
+ ascend in the scale of being, the more distinct are the
+ consciousnesses, and that the law of unity implies and demands a
+ manifold unity. The doctrine of Sabellianism, for example, is this,
+ that God is but one essence--but one person under different
+ manifestations; and that when He made the world He was called the
+ Father, when He redeemed the world He was called the Son, and when He
+ sanctified the world He was called the Holy Ghost. The Sabellian and
+ the Unitarian maintain that the unity of God consists simply in a
+ unity of person, and in opposition to this does the Trinitarian
+ maintain that grandness, either in man or in God, must be a unity of
+ manifoldness.
+
+ But we will enter into this more deeply. The first power or
+ consciousness in which God is made known to us is as the Father, the
+ Author of our being. It is written, "In Him we live, and move, and
+ have our being." He is the Author of all life. In this sense He is not
+ merely our Father as Christians, but the Father of mankind; and not
+ merely the Father of mankind, but the Father of creation; and in this
+ way the sublime language of the prophets may be taken as true
+ literally, "The morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God
+ shouted for joy;" and the language of the canticle which belongs to
+ our morning service, "the deeps, the fountains, the wells," all unite
+ in one hymn of praise, one everlasting hallelujah to God the Father,
+ the Author of their being. In this respect, simply as the Author of
+ life, merely as the supreme Being, God has reference to us in relation
+ to the body. He is the Lord of life: in Him we live, and move, and
+ have our being. In this respect God to us is as law--as the collected
+ laws of the universe; and therefore to offend against law, and bring
+ down the result of transgressing law, is said in Scripture language,
+ because applied to a person, to be provoking the wrath of God the
+ Father.
+
+ In the next place, the second way through which the personality and
+ consciousness of God has been revealed to us is as the Son. Brethren,
+ we see in all those writers who have treated of the Trinity, that much
+ stress is laid upon this eternal generation of the Son, the
+ everlasting sonship. It is this which we have in the Creed--the Creed
+ which was read to-day--"God, of the substance of the Father, begotten
+ before the worlds;" and, again, in the Nicene Creed, that expression,
+ which is so often wrongly read, "God of God, Light of Light, very God
+ of very God," means absolutely nothing. There are two statements made
+ there. The first is this, "The Son was God:" the second is this, "The
+ Son was--_of_ God," showing his derivation. And in that, brethren, we
+ have one of the deepest and most blessed truths of revelation. The
+ Unitarian maintains a divine Humanity--a blessed, blessed truth. There
+ is a truth more blessed still--the Humanity of Deity. Before the world
+ was, there was that in the mind of God which we may call the Humanity
+ of His Divinity. It is called in Scripture the Word: the Son: the Form
+ of God. It is in virtue of this that we have a right to attribute to
+ Him our own feelings; it is in virtue of this that Scripture speaks of
+ His wisdom, His justice, His love. Love in God is what love is in man;
+ justice in God is what justice is in man; creative power in God is
+ what creative power is in man; indignation in God is that which
+ indignation is in man, barring only this, that the one is emotional,
+ but the other is calm, and pure, and everlastingly still. It is
+ through this Humanity in the mind of God, if I may dare so to speak of
+ Deity, that a revelation became possible to man. It was the Word that
+ was made flesh; it was the Word that manifested Itself to man. It is
+ in virtue of the connection between God and man, that God made man in
+ His own image; that through a long line of prophets the human truth of
+ God could be made known to man, till it came forth developed most
+ entirely and at large in the incarnation of the Redeemer. Now in this
+ respect, it will be observed that God stands connected with us in
+ relation to the soul as "the Light which lighteth every man that
+ cometh into the world."
+
+ Once more; there is a nearer, a closer, and a more enduring relation
+ in which God stands to us--that is, the relation of the Spirit. It is
+ to the writings of St. John that we have to turn especially, if we
+ desire to know the doctrines of the Spirit. You will remember the
+ strange way in which he speaks of God. It would almost seem as if the
+ external God has disappeared to him; nay, as if an external Christ
+ were almost forgotten, because the internal Christ has been formed. He
+ speaks of God as kindred with us; he speaks of Christ as Christ _in_
+ us; and "if we love one another," he says, "God dwelleth in us." If a
+ man keep the commandments, "God dwelleth in him, and he in God." So
+ that the spiritual manifestation of God to us is that whereby He
+ blends Himself with the soul of man.
+
+ These then, my Christian brethren, are the three consciousnesses by
+ which He becomes known to us. Three, we said, _known_ to us. We do not
+ dare to limit God; we do not presume to say that there are in God only
+ three personalities--only three consciousnesses: all that we dare
+ presume to say is this, that there are three in reference to us, and
+ only three; that a fourth there is not; that perchance, in the present
+ state a fourth you cannot add to these--Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier.
+
+ Lastly, let us turn to the relation which the Trinity in unity bears
+ to the triad in discord. It is intended for the entireness of our
+ sanctification: "the very God of peace sanctify you wholly." Brethren,
+ we dwell upon that expression "_wholly_." There is this difference
+ between Christianity and every other system: Christianity proposes to
+ ennoble the whole man; every other system subordinates parts to parts.
+ Christianity does not despise the intellect, but it does not exalt the
+ intellect in a one-sided way: it only dwells with emphasis on the
+ third and highest part of man--his spiritual affections; and these it
+ maintains are the chief and real seat of everlasting life, intended to
+ subordinate the other to themselves.
+
+ Asceticism would crush the natural affections--destroy the appetites.
+ Asceticism feels that there is a conflict between the flesh and the
+ spirit, and it would put an end to that conflict; it would bring back
+ unity by the excision of all our natural appetites, and all the
+ desires and feelings which we have by nature. But when the apostle
+ Paul comes forward to proclaim the will of God, he says it is not by
+ the crushing of the body, but by the sanctification of the body: "I
+ pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless
+ unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."
+
+ In this my Christian brethren, there is one of the deepest of all
+ truths. Does a man feel himself the slave and the victim of his lower
+ passions? Let not that man hope to subdue them merely by struggling
+ against them. Let him not by fasting, by austerity, by any earthly
+ rule that he can conceive, expect to subdue the flesh. The more he
+ thinks of his vile and lower feelings, the more will they be brought
+ into distinctness, and therefore into power; the more hopelessly will
+ he become their victim. The only way in which a man can subdue the
+ flesh, is not by the extinction of those feelings, but by the
+ elevation of their character. Let there be added to that character,
+ sublimity of aim, purity of affection; let there be given grandeur,
+ spiritual nobleness; and then, just as the strengthening of the whole
+ constitution of the body makes any particular and local affection
+ disappear, so by degrees, by the raising of the character, do these
+ lower affections become, not extinguished or destroyed by excision,
+ but ennobled by a new and loftier spirit breathed through them.
+
+ This is the account given by the apostle. He speaks of the conflict
+ between the flesh and the spirit. And his remedy is to give vigour to
+ the higher, rather than to struggle with the lower. "This I say then,
+ Walk in the spirit, and ye _shall not_ fulfil the lust of the flesh."
+
+ Once more; the apostle differs from the world in this, that the world
+ would restore this unity, and sanctify man simply from the soul. It is
+ this which civilization pretends to effect. We hear much in these
+ modern days of "the progress of Humanity." We hear of man's invention,
+ of man's increase of knowledge; and it would seem in all this, as if
+ man were necessarily becoming better. Brethren, it always must be the
+ case in that state in which God is looked upon as the Supreme Being
+ merely, where the intellect of man is supposed to be the chief
+ thing--that which makes him most kindred to his Maker.
+
+ The doctrine of Christianity is this--that unity of all this discord
+ must be made. Man is to be made one with God, not by soaring
+ intellect, but by lowly love. It is the Spirit which guides him to all
+ truth; not merely by rendering more acute the reasoning powers, but by
+ convincing of sin, by humbling the man. It is the graces of the Spirit
+ which harmonize the man, and make him one; and that is the end, and
+ aim, and object of all the Gospel: the entireness of sanctification to
+ produce a perfectly developed man.
+
+ Most of us in this world are monsters, with some part of our being
+ bearing the development of a giant, and others showing the proportions
+ of a dwarf: a feeble, dwarfish will--mighty, full-blown passions; and
+ therefore it is that there is to be visible through the Trinity in us,
+ a noble manifold unity; and when the triune power of God shall so have
+ done its work on the entireness of our Humanity, that the body, soul,
+ and spirit have been sanctified, then shall there be exhibited, and
+ only then, a perfect affection in man to his Maker, and body, soul,
+ and spirit shall exhibit a Trinity in unity.
+
+
+
+
+ V.
+
+ _Preached June 2, 1850._
+
+ ABSOLUTION.
+
+
+   "And the Scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, Who is
+    this which speaketh blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God
+    alone?"--Luke v. 21.
+
+ There are questions which having been again and again settled, still
+ from time to time, present themselves for _re_-solution; errors which
+ having been refuted, and cut up by the roots, re-appear in the next
+ century as fresh and vigorous as ever. Like the fabled monsters of
+ old, from whose dissevered neck the blood sprung forth and formed
+ fresh heads, multiplied and indestructible; or like the weeds, which,
+ extirpated in one place, sprout forth vigorously in another.
+
+ In every such case it may be taken for granted that the root of the
+ matter has not been reached; the error has been exposed, but the truth
+ which lay at the bottom of the error has not been disengaged. Every
+ error is connected with a truth; the truth being perennial, springs up
+ again as often as circumstances foster it, or call for it, and the
+ seeds of error which lay about the roots spring up again in the form
+ of weeds, as before.
+
+ A popular illustration of this may be found in the belief in the
+ appearance of the spirits of the departed. You may examine the
+ evidence for every such alleged apparition; you may demonstrate the
+ improbability; you may reduce it to an impossibility; still the
+ popular feeling will remain; and there is a lurking superstition even
+ among the enlightened, which in the midst of professions of
+ incredulity, shows itself in a readiness to believe the wildest new
+ tale, if it possess but the semblance of an authentication. Now two
+ truths lie at the root of this superstition. The first is the reality
+ of the spirit-world, and the instinctive belief in it. The second is
+ the fact that there are certain states of health in which the eye
+ creates the objects which it perceives. The death-blow to such
+ superstition is only struck when we have not only proved that men have
+ been deceived, but shown besides how they came to be deceived; when
+ science has explained the optical delusion, and shown the
+ physiological state in which such apparitions become visible. Ridicule
+ will not do it. Disproof will not do it. So long as men feel that
+ there is a spirit-world, and so long as to some the impression is
+ vivid that they have seen it, you spend your rhetoric in vain. You
+ must show the truth that lies below the error.
+
+ The principle we gain from this is that you cannot overthrow falsehood
+ by negation, but by establishing the antagonistic truth. The
+ refutation which is to last must be positive, not negative. It is an
+ endless work to be uprooting weeds: plant the ground with wholesome
+ vegetation, and then the juices which would have otherwise fed
+ rankness will pour themselves into a more vigorous growth; the
+ dwindled weeds will be easily raked out then. It is an endless task to
+ be refuting error. Plant truth, and the error will pine away.
+
+ The instance to which all this is preliminary, is the pertinacious
+ hold which the belief in a human absolving power retains upon mankind.
+ There has perhaps never yet been known a religion without such a
+ belief. There is not a savage in the islands of the South Pacific who
+ does not believe that his priest can shield him from the consequences
+ of sin. There was not a people in antiquity who had not dispensers of
+ Divine favour. That same belief passed from Paganism into Romanism. It
+ was exposed at the period of the Reformation. A mighty reaction was
+ felt against it throughout Europe. Apparently the whole idea of human
+ priesthood was proved, once and for ever, to be baseless; human
+ mediation, in every possible form, was vehemently controverted; men
+ were referred back to God as the sole absolver.
+
+ Yet now again, three centuries after, the belief is still as strong as
+ ever. That which we thought dead is alive again, and not likely it
+ seems, to die. Recent revelations have shown that confession is daily
+ made in the country whose natural manners are most against it; private
+ absolution asked by English men and given by English priests. A fact
+ so significant might lead us well to pause, and ask ourselves whether
+ we have found the true answer to the question. The negation we have
+ got--the vehement denial; we are weary of its reiteration: but the
+ positive truth which lies at the bottom of this craving--where is
+ that?
+
+ Parliaments and pulpits, senators and clergymen, have vied with each
+ other in the vehemence with which they declare absolution
+ un-Christian, un-English. All that is most abominable in the
+ confessional has been with unsparing and irreverent indelicacy forced
+ before the public mind. Still, men and women, whose holiness and
+ purity are beyond slander's reach, come and crave assurance of
+ forgiveness. How shall we reply to such men? Shall we say, "Who is
+ this that speaketh blasphemies? who can forgive sins, but God only?"
+ Shall we say it is all blasphemy; an impious intrusion upon the
+ prerogatives of the One Absolver? Well, we may; it is _popular_ to say
+ we ought; but you will observe, if we speak so, we do no more than the
+ Pharisees in this text: we establish a negation; but a negation is
+ only one side of truth.
+
+ Moreover, we have been asserting that for 300 years, with small
+ fruits. We keep asserting, Man cannot give assurance that sin is
+ pardoned; in other words, man cannot absolve: but still the heart
+ craves human assurance of forgiveness. What truth have we got to
+ supply that craving? We shall therefore, rather try to fathom the
+ deeps of the positive truth which is the true reply to the error; we
+ shall try to see whether there is not a real answer to the craving
+ contained in the Redeemer's words, "The Son of Man hath power on earth
+ to forgive sins." What power is there in human forgiveness? What does
+ absolution mean in the lips of a son of man? These are our questions
+ for to-day. We shall consider two points.
+
+    I. The impotency of the negation.
+   II. The power of the positive truth.
+
+ The Pharisees denied the efficacy of human absolution: they said,
+ "None can forgive sins, but God only:" that was a negation. What did
+ they effect by their system of negations? They conferred no peace;
+ they produced no holiness. It would be a great error to suppose that
+ the Pharisees were hypocrites in the ordinary sense of the term--that
+ is, pretending to be anxious about religion when they knew that they
+ felt no anxiety. They _were_ anxious, in their way. They heard a
+ startling free announcement of forgiveness by a man. To them it
+ appeared license given to sin. If this new teacher, this upstart--in
+ their own language, "this fellow--of whom every man knew whence he
+ was," were to go about the length and breadth of the land, telling
+ sinners to be at peace; telling them to forget the past, and to work
+ onwards; bidding men's consciences be at rest; and commanding them not
+ to _fear_ the God whom they had offended, but to _trust_ in Him--what
+ would become of morality and religion? This presumptuous Absolver
+ would make men careless about both. If the indispensable safeguards of
+ penalty were removed, what remained to restrain men from sin?
+
+ For the Pharisees had no notion of any other goodness than that which
+ is restrained; they could conceive no goodness free, but only that
+ which is produced by rewards and punishments--law-goodness,
+ law-righteousness: to dread God, not to love and trust Him, was their
+ conception of religion. And this, indeed, is the _ordinary_ conception
+ of religion--the ordinary meaning implied to most minds by the word
+ religion. The word religion means, by derivation, restriction or
+ obligation--obligation to do, obligation to avoid. And this is the
+ negative system of the Pharisees--scrupulous avoidance of evil, rather
+ than positive and free pursuit of excellence. Such a system never
+ produced anything but barren denial. "_This_ is wrong;" "_that_ is
+ heresy;" "_that_ is dangerous."
+
+ There was another class of men who denied human power of absolution.
+ They were called Scribes or writers--pedants, men of ponderous
+ learning and accurate definitions; from being mere transcribers of the
+ law, they had risen to be its expounders. They could define the exact
+ number of yards that might be travelled on the Sabbath-day without
+ infringement of the law; they could decide, according to the most
+ approved theology, the respective importance of each duty; they would
+ tell you, authoritatively, which was the _great_ commandment of the
+ law. The Scribe is a man who turns religion into etiquette: his idea
+ of God is that of a monarch, transgression against whom is an offence
+ against statute law, and he the Scribe, is there to explain the
+ prescribed conditions upon which the offence may be expiated; he has
+ no idea of admission to the sovereign's presence, except by compliance
+ with certain formalities which the Scribe is commissioned to declare.
+
+ There are therefore Scribes in all ages--Romish Scribes, who
+ distinguish between venial and mortal sin, and apportion to each its
+ appointed penance and absolution. There are Protestant Scribes, who
+ have no idea of God but as an incensed judge, and prescribe certain
+ methods of appeasing him--a certain price--in consideration of which
+ He is willing to sell forgiveness; men who accurately draw the
+ distinction between the different kinds of faith--faith historical and
+ faith saving; who bewilder and confuse all natural feeling; who treat
+ the natural love of relations as if it were an idolatry as great as
+ bowing down to mammon; who make intelligible distinction between the
+ work that _may_ and the work that may _not_ be done on the
+ Sabbath-day; who send you into a perilous consideration of the
+ workings of your own feelings, and the examination of your spiritual
+ experiences, to ascertain whether you have the feelings which give you
+ a right to call God a Father. They hate the Romish Scribe as much as
+ the Jewish Scribe hated the Samaritan and called him heretic. But in
+ their way they are true to the spirit of the Scribe.
+
+ Now the result of this is fourfold. Among the tender-minded,
+ despondency; among the vainer, spiritual pride; in the case of the
+ slavish, superstition; with the hard-minded, infidelity. Ponder it
+ well, and you will find these four things rife amongst us:
+ Despondency, Spiritual Pride, Superstition, and Infidelity. In this
+ way we have been going on for many years. In the midst of all this, at
+ last we are informed that the confessional is at work again; whereupon
+ astonishment and indignation are loudly expressed. It is not to be
+ borne that the priests of the Church of England should confess and
+ absolve in private. Yet it is only what might have been expected.
+
+ With our Evangelicalism, Tractarianism, Scribeism, Pharisaism, we have
+ ceased to front the _living fact_--we are as zealous as Scribes and
+ Pharisees ever were for negatives; but in the meantime Human Nature,
+ oppressed and overborne, gasping for breath, demands something real
+ and living. It cannot live on controversies. It cannot be fed on
+ protests against heresy, however vehement. We are trying who can
+ protest loudest. Every book, every journal, rings with warnings.
+ "Beware!" is written upon everything. Beware of Rome; beware of
+ Geneva; beware of Germany; some danger on every side; Satan
+ everywhere--God _nowhere_; everywhere some man to be shunned or
+ dreaded--nowhere one to be loved freely and without suspicion. Is it
+ any wonder if men and women, in the midst of negations, cry, "Ye warn
+ me from the error, but who will guide me into truth? I want guidance.
+ I am sinful, full of evil! I want forgiveness! Absolve me; tell me
+ that I am pardoned; help me to believe it. Your quarrels do not help
+ me; if you cannot do _that_, it matters little what you _can_ do. You
+ have restricted God's love, and narrowed the path to heaven; you have
+ hampered religion with so many mysterious questions and quibbles that
+ I cannot find the way to God; you have terrified me with so many
+ snares and pitfalls on every side, that I dare not tread at all. Give
+ me peace; give me human guidance: I want a human arm to lean on."
+
+ This is a cry, I believe, becoming daily more passionate, and more
+ common. And no wonder that all our information, public and private, is
+ to the same effect--that the recent converts have found peace in Rome;
+ for the secret of the power of Rome is this--that she grounds her
+ teaching, not on variable feelings and correct opinions, but on
+ _facts_. God is not a highly probable God, but a _fact_. God's
+ forgiveness is not a feeling, but a _fact_; and a material symbolic
+ fact is the witness of the invisible one. Rome puts forward her
+ absolution--her false, priestly, magical absolution--a visible fact,
+ as a witness of the invisible. And her perversion prevails because
+ founded on a truth.
+
+
+ II. The power of the positive truth.
+
+ Is it any wonder, if taught on every side distrust of man, the heart
+ should by a violent reaction, and by an extravagant confidence in a
+ priest, proclaim that its normal, natural state is not distrust, but
+ trust?
+
+ What is forgiveness?--It is God reconciled to us. What is
+ absolution?--It is the authoritative declaration that God is
+ reconciled. Authoritative: that is a real power of conveying a sense
+ and feeling of forgiveness. It is the power of the Son of Man _on
+ earth_ to forgive sins. It is man, God's image, representing, by his
+ forgiveness on earth, God's forgiveness in heaven.
+
+ Now distinguish God's forgiveness of sin from an arresting of the
+ consequences of sin. When God forgives a sin, it does not follow that
+ He stops its consequences: for example, when He forgives the
+ intemperate man whose health is ruined, forgiveness does not restore
+ his health. Divine pardon does not interfere with the laws of the
+ universe, for it is itself one of those laws. It is a law that penalty
+ follows transgression. Forgiveness will not save from penalty; but it
+ alters the feelings with which the penalty is accepted. Pain inflicted
+ with a surgeon's knife for a man's good, is as keen as that which
+ results from the knife of the torturer; but in the one case it is
+ calmly borne, because remedial--in the other it exasperates, because
+ it is felt to be intended by malevolence. So with the difference
+ between suffering which comes from a sin which we hope God has
+ forgiven, and suffering which seems to fall hot from the hand of an
+ angry God. It is a fearful truth, that so far as we know at least, the
+ consequences of an act are connected with it indissolubly. Forgiveness
+ does not arrest them; but by producing softness and grateful
+ penitence, it transforms them into blessings. This is God's
+ forgiveness; and absolution is the conveyance to the conscience of the
+ conviction of forgiveness: to absolve is to free--to comfort by
+ strengthening--to afford repose from fear.
+
+ Now it was the way of the Redeemer to emancipate from sin by the
+ freeness of absolution. The dying thief, an hour before a blasphemer,
+ was unconditionally assured; the moment the sinner's feelings changed
+ towards God, He proclaimed that God was reconciled to him: "This day
+ thou shalt be with me in Paradise." And hence, speaking humanly,
+ hence, from this absolving tone and spirit, came His wondrous and
+ unparalleled power with sinful, erring hearts; hence the life and
+ fresh impulse which He imparted to the being and experience to those
+ with whom He dealt. Hence the maniac, freed from the legion, sat at
+ His feet, clothed, and in his right mind. Hence the outcast woman,
+ whom human scorn would have hardened into brazen effrontery, hearing
+ an unwonted voice of human sympathy, "washed His feet with her tears,
+ and wiped them with the hairs of her head."
+
+ And this is what we have forgotten: we have not yet learned to trust
+ the power of redeeming love; we do not believe in the omnipotence of
+ grace, and the might of an appeal to the better parts, and not the
+ slavish parts of human nature. Settle it in your minds, the absolving
+ power is the central secret of the Gospel. Salvation is unconditional;
+ not an offer, but _a Gift_; not clogged with conditions, but free as
+ the air we breathe. God welcomes back the prodigal. God loves without
+ money and without price. To this men reply gravely, It is dangerous to
+ speak thus; it is perilous to dispense with the safeguards of
+ restriction. Law! law! there is nothing like law--a salutary fear--for
+ making men holy. O blind Pharisee! had you ever known the spring, the
+ life which comes from feeling _free_, the gush of gratitude with which
+ the heart springs to duty when all chains are shattered, and it stands
+ fearless and free in the Light, and in the Love of God--you would
+ understand that a large trusting charity, which can throw itself on
+ the better and more generous impulses of a laden spirit, is the safest
+ as well as the most beautiful means of securing obedience.
+
+ So far however, there will not be much objection to the doctrine: it
+ will be admitted that absolution is true in the lips of Christ,
+ because of His Divinity. It will be said He was God, and God speaking
+ on earth is the same thing as God speaking in heaven. No my brethren,
+ it is _not_ the same thing. Christ forgiving on earth is _a new truth_
+ added to that of God's forgiving in heaven. It is not the same truth.
+ The one is forgiveness by Deity; the other is the declaration of
+ forgiveness by Humanity. He bade the palsied man walk, that they might
+ know that "the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins."
+ Therefore we proceed a step further. The same power He delegated to
+ His Church which He had exercised Himself. "Whosesoever sins ye
+ remit, they are remitted." Now perhaps, it will be replied to this,
+ that that promise belongs to the apostles; that they were
+ supernaturally gifted to distinguish genuine from feigned repentance;
+ to absolve therefore, was their natural prerogative, but that we have
+ no right to say it extends beyond the apostles.
+
+ We therefore, bring the question to a point by referring to an
+ instance in which an apostle did absolve. Let us examine whether St.
+ Paul confined the prerogative to himself. "To whom ye forgive
+ anything, I forgive also: for to whom I forgave anything for your
+ sakes, forgave I it in the person of Christ."
+
+ Observe now: it is quite true here that the apostle absolved a man
+ whose excommunication he had formerly required; but he absolved him
+ because the congregation absolved him; not as a plenipotentiary
+ supernaturally gifted to convey a mysterious benefit, but as himself
+ an organ and representative of the Church. The power of absolution
+ therefore, belonged to the Church, and to the apostle through the
+ Church. It was a power belonging to _all_ Christians: to the apostle,
+ because he was a Christian, not because he was an apostle. A priestly
+ power no doubt, because Christ has made all Christians kings and
+ priests.
+
+ Now let us turn again, with this added light, to examine the meaning
+ of that expression, "The Son of man hath power on earth to forgive
+ sins." Mark that form of words--not Christ as God, but Christ as Son
+ of man. It was manifestly said by Him, not solely as divine, but
+ rather as human, as the Son of man; that is, as Man. For we may take
+ it as a rule: when Christ calls himself Son of man, He is asserting
+ His Humanity. It was said by the High Priest of Humanity in the name
+ of the race. It was said on the principle that human nature is the
+ reflection of God's nature: that human love is the image of God's
+ love; and that human forgiveness is the type and assurance of divine
+ forgiveness.
+
+ In Christ Humanity was the perfect type of Deity, and therefore
+ Christ's absolution was always the exact measure and counterpart of
+ God's forgiveness. Herein lies the deep truth of the doctrine of His
+ eternal priesthood--the Eternal Son--the Humanity of the Being of
+ God--the ever Human mind of God. The Absolver ever lives. The Father
+ judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment to the Son--hath given
+ Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of man.
+
+ But further than this. In a subordinate, because less perfect degree,
+ the forgiveness of a man as man carries with it an absolving power.
+ Who has not felt the load taken from his mind when the hidden guilt
+ over which he had brooded long has been acknowledged, and met by
+ forgiving human sympathy, especially at a time when he expected to be
+ treated with coldness and reproof? Who has not felt how such a moment
+ was to him the dawn of a better hope, and how the merciful judgment of
+ some wise and good human being seemed to be the type and the assurance
+ of God's pardon, making it credible? Unconsciously it may be, but
+ still in substance really, I believe some such reasoning as _this_
+ goes on in the whispers of the heart--"He loves me, and has compassion
+ on me--will not God forgive? He, this man, made in God's image, does
+ not think my case hopeless. Well, then, in the larger love of God it
+ is not hopeless." Thus, and only thus, can we understand the
+ _ecclesiastical_ act. Absolution, the prerogative of our humanity, is
+ represented by a formal act of the Church.
+
+ Much controversy and angry bitterness has been spent on the absolution
+ put by the Church of England into the lips of her ministers--I cannot
+ think with justice--if we try to get at the root of these words of
+ Christ. The priest proclaims forgiveness authoritatively as the organ
+ of the congregation--as the voice of the Church, in the name of Man
+ and God. For human nature represents God. The Church represents what
+ human nature is and ought to be. The minister represents the Church.
+ He speaks therefore, in the name of our godlike, human nature. He
+ declares a divine fact, he does not create it. There is no magic in
+ his absolution: he can no more forgive whom God has not forgiven, by
+ the formula of absolution, or reverse the pardon of him whom God has
+ absolved by the formula of excommunication, than he can transfer a
+ demon into an angel by the formula of baptism. He declares what every
+ one has a right to declare, and ought to declare by his lips and by
+ his conduct: but being a minister, he declares it authoritatively in
+ the name of every Christian who by his Christianity is a priest to
+ God; he specializes what is universal; as in baptism, he seals the
+ universal Sonship on the individual by name, saying, "The Sonship with
+ which Christ has redeemed all men, I hereby proclaim for this child;"
+ so by absolution he specializes the universal fact of the love of God
+ to those who are listening then and there, saying, "The Love of God
+ the Absolver, I authoritatively proclaim to be _yours_."
+
+ In the Service for the Visitation of the Sick, the Church of England
+ puts into the lips of her ministers words quite unconditional: "I
+ absolve thee from all thy sins." You know that passage is constantly
+ objected to as Romish and superstitious. I would not give up that
+ precious passage. I love the Church of England, because she has dared
+ to claim her inheritance--because she has courage to assert herself as
+ what she ought to be--God's representative on earth. She says to her
+ minister, Stand there before a darkened spirit, on whom the shadows of
+ death have begun to fall: in human flesh and blood representing the
+ Invisible,--with words of human love making credible the Love Eternal.
+ Say boldly, I am here to declare not a perhaps, _but a fact_. I
+ forgive thee in the name of Humanity. And so far as Humanity
+ represents Deity, that forgiveness is a type of God's. She does not
+ put into her ministers' lips words of incantation. He cannot bless
+ whom God has not blessed--he cannot curse whom God has not cursed. If
+ the Son of absolution be there, his absolution will rest. If you have
+ ever tried the slow and apparently hopeless task of ministering to a
+ heart diseased, and binding up the wound that _will_ bleed afresh, to
+ which no assurances can give comfort, because they are not
+ authoritative, it must have crossed your mind that such a power as
+ that which the Church of England claims, if it were believed, is
+ exactly the remedy you want. You must have felt that even the formula
+ of the Church of Rome would be a blessed power to exercise, could it
+ but once be accepted as a pledge that all the past was obliterated,
+ and that from that moment a free untainted future lay before the
+ soul--you must have _felt_ that; you must have wished you had dared to
+ _say_ it. My whole spirit has absolved my erring brother. Is God less
+ merciful than I? Can I--dare I--say or think it conditionally? Dare I
+ say, I hope? May I not, must I not, say, _I know_ God has forgiven
+ you?
+
+ Every man whose heart has truly bled over another's sin, and watched
+ another's remorse with pangs as sharp as if the crime had been his
+ own, _has_ said it. Every parent has said it who ever received back a
+ repentant daughter, and opened out for her a new hope for life. Every
+ mother has said it who ever by her hope against hope for some
+ profligate, protested for a love deeper and wider than that of
+ society. Every man has said it who forgave a deep wrong. See then,
+ _why_ and _how_ the church absolves. She only exercises that power
+ which belongs to every son of man. If society were Christian--if
+ society, by its forgiveness and its exclusion, truly represented the
+ mind of God--there would be no necessity for a Church to speak; but
+ the absolution of society and the world does not represent by any
+ means God's forgiveness. Society absolves those whom God has _not_
+ absolved--the proud, the selfish, the strong, the seducer; society
+ refuses return and acceptance to the seduced, the frail, and the sad
+ penitent whom God has accepted; therefore it is necessary that a
+ selected body, through its appointed organs, should do in the name of
+ Man what man, as such, does not. The Church is the ideal of Humanity.
+ It represents what God intended man to be--what man is in God's sight
+ as beheld in Christ by Him; and the minister of the Church speaks as
+ the representative of that ideal Humanity. Church absolution is an
+ eternal protest, in the name of God the Absolver, against the false
+ judgments of society.
+
+ One thing more. Beware of making this a dead formula. If absolution be
+ not a living truth, it becomes a monstrous falsehood; if you take
+ absolution as a mystical gift conveyed to an individual man called a
+ priest, and mysteriously efficacious in _his_ lips, and his _alone_,
+ you petrify a truth into death and unreality. I have been striving to
+ show that absolution is not a Church figment, invented by priestcraft,
+ but a living, blessed, human power. It is a power delegated to you and
+ to me, and just so far as we exercise it lovingly and wisely, in our
+ lives, and with our lips, we help men away from sin: just so far as we
+ do not exercise it, or exercise it falsely, we drive men to Rome. For
+ if the heart cannot have a truth it will take a counterfeit of truth.
+ By every magnanimous act, by every free forgiveness with which a pure
+ man forgives, or pleads for mercy, or assures the penitent, he
+ proclaims this truth, that "the Son of man hath power on earth to
+ forgive sins"--he exhibits the priestly power of humanity--_he does_
+ absolve; let theology say what it will of absolution, he gives peace
+ to the conscience--he is a type and assurance of what God is--he
+ breaks the chains and lets the captive go free.
+
+
+
+
+ VI.
+
+ _Preached June 9, 1850._
+
+ THE ILLUSIVENESS OF LIFE.
+
+
+   "By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which
+    he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went
+    out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the
+    land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles
+    with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: for
+    he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and
+    maker is God."--Hebrews xi. 8-10.
+
+ Last Sunday we touched upon a thought which deserves further
+ development. God promised Canaan to Abraham, and yet Abraham never
+ inherited Canaan: to the last he was a wanderer there; he had no
+ possession of his own in its territory: if he wanted even a tomb to
+ bury his dead, he could only obtain it by purchase. This difficulty is
+ expressly admitted in the text, "In the land of promise he sojourned
+ as in a strange country;" he dwelt there in tents--in changeful,
+ moveable tabernacles--not permanent habitations; he had no home
+ there.
+
+ It is stated in all its startling force, in terms still more explicit,
+ in the 7th chapter of the Acts, 5th verse, "And He gave him none
+ inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on: yet He
+ promised that He would give it to him for a possession, and to his
+ seed after him, when as yet he had no child."
+
+ Now the surprising point is that Abraham, deceived, as you might
+ almost say, did not complain of it as a deception; he was even
+ grateful for the non-fulfilment of the promise: he does not seem to
+ have expected its fulfilment; he did not look for Canaan, but for "a
+ city which had foundations;" his faith appears to have consisted in
+ disbelieving the letter, almost as much as in believing the spirit of
+ the promise.
+
+ And herein lies a principle, which, rightly expounded, can help us to
+ interpret this life of ours. God's promises never are fulfilled in the
+ sense in which they seem to have been given. Life is a deception; its
+ anticipations, which are God's promises to the imagination, are never
+ realized; they who know life best, and have trusted God most to fill
+ it with blessings, are ever the first to say that life is a series of
+ disappointments. And in the spirit of this text we have to say that it
+ is a wise and merciful arrangement which ordains it thus.
+
+ The wise and holy do not expect to find it otherwise--would not wish
+ it otherwise; their wisdom consists in disbelieving its promises. To
+ develope this idea would be a glorious task; for to justify God's ways
+ to man, to expound the mysteriousness of our present being, to
+ interpret God,--is not this the very essence of the ministerial
+ office? All that I can hope however to-day, is not to exhaust the
+ subject, but to furnish hints for thought. Over-statements may be
+ made, illustrations may be inadequate, the new ground of an almost
+ untrodden subject may be torn up too rudely; but remember, we are here
+ to live and die; in a few years it will be all over; meanwhile, what
+ we have to do is to try to understand, and to help one another to
+ understand, what it all means--what this strange and contradictory
+ thing, which we call Life, contains within it. Do not stop to ask
+ therefore, whether the subject was satisfactorily worked out; let each
+ man be satisfied to have received a germ of thought which he may
+ develope better for himself.
+
+    I. The deception of life's promise.
+   II. The meaning of that deception.
+
+ Let it be clearly understood in the first place, the promise never was
+ fulfilled. I do not say the fulfilment was delayed. I say it _never_
+ was fulfilled. Abraham had a few feet of earth, obtained by
+ purchase--beyond that nothing; he died a stranger and a pilgrim in the
+ land. Isaac had a little. So small was Jacob's hold upon his country
+ that the last years of his life were spent in Egypt, and he died a
+ foreigner in a strange land. His descendants came into the land of
+ Canaan, expecting to find it a land flowing with milk and honey; they
+ found hard work to do--war and unrest, instead of rest and peace.
+
+ During one brief period, in the history of Israel, the promise may
+ seem to have been fulfilled. It was during the later years of David
+ and the earlier years of Solomon; but we have the warrant of Scripture
+ itself for affirming, that even then the promise was not fulfilled. In
+ the Book of Psalms, David speaks of a hope of entering into a _future_
+ rest. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, quoting this passage,
+ infers from it that God's promise had not been exhausted nor
+ fulfilled, by the entrance into Canaan; for he says, "If Joshua had
+ given them rest then would he not have spoken of another day." Again
+ in this very chapter, after a long list of Hebrew saints--"These _all_
+ died in faith, not having received the promises." To none therefore,
+ had the promise been fulfilled. Accordingly writers on prophecy, in
+ order to get over this difficulty, take for granted that there must be
+ a future fulfilment, because the first was inadequate.
+
+ They who believe that the Jews will be restored to their native land,
+ expect it on the express ground that Canaan has never been actually
+ and permanently theirs. A certain tract of country--300 miles in
+ length, by 200 in breadth--must be given, or else they think the
+ promise has been broken. To quote the expression of one of the most
+ eloquent of their writers, "If there be nothing yet future for Israel,
+ then the magnificence of the promise has been lost in the poverty of
+ its accomplishment."
+
+ I do not quote this to prove the correctness of the interpretation of
+ the prophecy, but as an acknowledgment which may be taken so far as a
+ proof, that the promise made to Abraham has never been accomplished.
+
+ And such is life's disappointment. Its promise is, you shall have a
+ Canaan; it turns out to be a baseless airy dream--toil and
+ warfare--nothing that we can call our own; not the land of rest, by
+ any means. But we will examine this in particulars.
+
+ 1. Our senses deceive us; we begin life with delusion. Our senses
+ deceive us with respect to distance, shape, and colour. That which
+ afar off seems oval, turns out to be circular, modified by the
+ perspective of distance; that which appears a speck, upon nearer
+ approach becomes a vast body. To the earlier ages the stars presented
+ the delusion of small lamps hung in space. The beautiful berry proves
+ to be bitter and poisonous: that which apparently moves is really at
+ rest: that which seems to be stationary is in perpetual motion: the
+ earth moves: the sun is still. All experience is a correction of
+ life's delusions--a modification, a reversal of the judgment of the
+ senses: and all life is a lesson on the falsehood of appearances.
+
+ 2. Our natural anticipations deceive us--I say _natural_ in
+ contra-distinction to extravagant expectations. Every human life is a
+ fresh one, bright with hopes that will never be realized. There may be
+ differences of character in these hopes; finer spirits may look on
+ life as the arena of successful deeds, the more selfish as a place of
+ personal enjoyment.
+
+ With man the turning point of life may be a profession--with woman,
+ marriage; the one gilding the future with the triumphs of intellect,
+ the other with the dreams of affection; but in every case, life is not
+ what any of them expects, but something else. It would almost seem a
+ satire on existence to compare the youth in the outset of his career,
+ flushed and sanguine, with the aspect of the same being when it is
+ nearly done--worn, sobered, covered with the dust of life, and
+ confessing that its days have been few and evil. Where is the land
+ flowing with milk and honey?
+
+ With our affections it is still worse, because they promise more.
+ Man's affections are but the tabernacles of Canaan--the tents of a
+ night; not permanent habitations even for this life. Where are the
+ charms of character, the perfection, and the purity, and the
+ truthfulness, which seemed so resplendent in our friend? They were
+ only the shape of our own conceptions--our creative shaping intellect
+ projected its own fantasies on him: and hence we outgrow our early
+ friendships; outgrow the intensity of all: we dwell in tents; we never
+ find a home, even in the land of promise. Life is an unenjoyable
+ Canaan, with nothing real or substantial in it.
+
+ 3. Our expectations, resting on revelation, deceive us. The world's
+ history has turned round two points of hope; one, the _first_--the
+ other, the _second_ coming of the Messiah. The magnificent imagery of
+ Hebrew prophecy had described the advent of the Conqueror; He came--"a
+ root out of a dry ground, with no form or comeliness; and when they
+ saw Him there was no beauty in Him that they should desire Him." The
+ victory, predicted in such glowing terms, turned out to be the victory
+ of Submission--the Law of our Humanity, which wins by gentleness and
+ love. The promise in the letter was unfulfilled. For ages the world's
+ hope has been the second advent. The early church expected it in their
+ own day. "We, which are alive, and remain until the coming of our
+ Lord."
+
+ The Saviour Himself had said, "This generation shall not pass till all
+ things be fulfilled." Yet the Son of Man has never come; or rather, He
+ has been _ever_ coming. Unnumbered times the judgment eagles have
+ gathered together over corruption ripe for condemnation. Times
+ innumerable the separation has been made between good and bad. The
+ promise has not been fulfilled, or it has been fulfilled, but in
+ either case anticipation has been foiled and disappointed.
+
+ There are two ways of considering this aspect of life. One is the way
+ of sentiment; the other is the way of faith. The sentimental way is
+ trite enough. Saint, sage, sophist, moralist, and preacher, have
+ repeated in every possible image, till there is nothing new to say,
+ that life is a bubble, a dream, a delusion, a phantasm. The other is
+ the way of faith: the ancient saints felt as keenly as any moralist
+ could feel the brokenness of its promises; they confessed that they
+ were strangers and pilgrims here; they said that they had here no
+ continuing city; but they did not mournfully moralize on this; they
+ said it cheerfully, and rejoiced that it was so. They felt that all
+ was right; they knew that the promise itself had a deeper meaning:
+ they looked undauntedly for "a city which hath foundations."
+
+
+ II. The second inquiry, therefore, is the meaning of this
+ delusiveness.
+
+ 1. It serves to allure us on. Suppose that a spiritual promise had
+ been made at first to Israel; imagine that they had been informed at
+ the outset that God's rest is inward; that the promised land is only
+ found in the Jerusalem which is above--not material, but immaterial.
+ That rude, gross people, yearning after the fleshpots of
+ Egypt--willing to go back into slavery, so as only they might have
+ enough to eat and drink--would they have quitted Egypt on such terms?
+ Would they have begun one single step of that pilgrimage, which was to
+ find its meaning in the discipline of ages?
+
+ We are led through life as we are allured upon a journey. Could a man
+ see his route before him--a flat, straight road, unbroken by bush, or
+ tree, or eminence, with the sun's heat burning down upon it, stretched
+ out in dreary monotony--he could scarcely find energy to begin his
+ task; but the uncertainty of what may be seen beyond the next turn
+ keeps expectation alive. The view that may be seen from yonder
+ summit--the glimpse that may be caught perhaps, as the road winds
+ round yonder knoll--hopes like these, not far distant, beguile the
+ traveller on from mile to mile, and from league to league.
+
+ In fact, life is an education. The object for which you educate your
+ son is to give him strength of purpose, self-command, discipline of
+ mental energies; but you do not reveal to your son this aim of his
+ education; you tell him of his place in his class, of the prizes at
+ the end of the year, of the honours to be given at college.
+
+ These are not the true incentives to knowledge, such incentives are
+ not the highest--they are even mean, and partially injurious; yet
+ these mean incentives stimulate and lead on, from day to day and from
+ year to year, by a process the principle of which the boy himself is
+ not aware of. So does God lead on, through life's unsatisfying and
+ false reward, ever educating: Canaan first; then the hope of a
+ Redeemer; then the millennial glory.
+
+ Now what is remarkable in this is, that the delusion continued to the
+ last; they _all_ died in faith, not having received the promises; all
+ were hoping up to the very last, and all died in faith--not in
+ realization; for thus God has constituted the human heart. It never
+ will be believed that this world is unreal. God has mercifully so
+ arranged it, that the idea of delusion is incredible. You may tell the
+ boy or girl as you will that life is a disappointment; yet however you
+ may persuade them to adopt your _tone_, and catch the language of your
+ sentiment, they are both looking forward to some bright distant
+ hope--the rapture of the next vacation, or the unknown joys of the
+ next season--and throwing into it an energy of expectation which only
+ a whole eternity is worth. You may tell the man who has received the
+ heart-shock which in this world, he will not recover, that life has
+ nothing left; yet the stubborn heart still hopes on, ever near the
+ prize--"wealthiest when most undone:" he has reaped the whirlwind, but
+ he will go on still, till life is over, sowing the wind.
+
+ Now observe the beautiful result which comes from this indestructible
+ power of believing in spite of failure. In the first centuries, the
+ early Christians believed that the millennial advent was close; they
+ heard the warning of the apostle, brief and sharp, "The time is
+ short." Now suppose that, instead of this, they had seen all the
+ dreary page of Church history unrolled; suppose that they had known
+ that after two thousand years the world would have scarcely spelled
+ out three letters of the meaning of Christianity, where would have
+ been those gigantic efforts,--that life spent as on the very brink of
+ eternity, which characterize the days of the early Church,--and which
+ was after all, only the true life of man in time? It is thus that God
+ has led on His world. He has conducted it as a father leads his child,
+ when the path homeward lies over many a dreary league. He suffers him
+ to beguile the thought of time, by turning aside to pluck now and then
+ a flower, to chase now a butterfly; the butterfly is crushed, the
+ flower fades, but the child is so much nearer home, invigorated and
+ full of health, and scarcely wearied yet.
+
+ 2. This non-fulfilment of promise fulfils it in a _deeper_ way. The
+ account we have given already, were it to end there, would be
+ insufficient to excuse the failure of life's promise; by saying that
+ it allures us would be really to charge God with deception. Now life
+ is not deception, but illusion. We distinguish between illusion and
+ delusion. We may paint wood so as to be taken for stone, iron, or
+ marble; this is delusion: but you may paint a picture, in which rocks,
+ trees, and sky are never mistaken for what they seem, yet produce all
+ the emotion which real rocks, trees, and sky would produce. This is
+ illusion, and this is the painter's art: never for one moment to
+ deceive by attempted imitation, but to produce a mental state in which
+ the feelings are suggested which the natural objects themselves would
+ create. Let us take an instance drawn from life.
+
+ To a child a rainbow is a real thing--substantial and palpable; its
+ limb rests on the side of yonder hill; he believes that he can
+ appropriate it to himself; and when, instead of gems and gold hid in
+ its radiant bow, he finds nothing but damp mist--cold, dreary drops of
+ disappointment--that disappointment tells that his belief has been
+ delusion.
+
+ To the educated man that bow is a blessed illusion, yet it never once
+ deceives; he does not take it for what it is not, he does not expect
+ to make it his own; he feels its beauty as much as the child could
+ feel it, nay infinitely more--more even from the fact that he knows
+ that it will be transient; but besides and beyond this, to him it
+ presents a deeper loveliness; he knows the laws of light, and the laws
+ of the human soul which gave it being. He has linked it with the laws
+ of the universe, and with the invisible mind of God; and it brings to
+ him a thrill of awe, and the sense of a mysterious, nameless beauty,
+ of which the child did not conceive. It is illusion still; but it has
+ fulfilled the promise. In the realm of spirit, in the temple of the
+ soul, it is the same. All is illusion; "but we look for a city which
+ hath foundations;" and in this the promise is fulfilled.
+
+ And such was Canaan to the Israelites. To some doubtless it was
+ delusion. They expected to find their reward in a land of milk and
+ honey. They were bitterly disappointed, and expressed their
+ disappointment loudly enough in their murmurs against Moses, and their
+ rebellion against his successors. But to others, as to Abraham, Canaan
+ was the bright illusion which never deceived, but for ever shone
+ before as the type of something more real. And even taking the promise
+ literally, though they built in tents, and could not call a foot of
+ land their own, was not its beauty theirs? Were not its trellised
+ vines, and glorious pastures, and rich olive-fields, ministers to the
+ enjoyment of those who had all in God, though its milk, and oil, and
+ honey, could not be enjoyed with exclusiveness of appropriation? Yet
+ over and above and beyond this, there was a more blessed fulfilment of
+ the promise; there was "a city which had foundations"--built and made
+ by God--toward which the anticipation of this Canaan was leading them.
+ The Kingdom of God was forming in their souls, for ever disappointing
+ them by the unreal, and teaching them that what is spiritual, and
+ belongs to mind and character alone can be eternal.
+
+ We will illustrate this principle from the common walks of life. The
+ principle is, that the reward we get is not the reward for which we
+ worked, but a deeper one; deeper and more permanent. The merchant
+ labours all his life, and the hope which leads him on is perhaps
+ wealth: well, at sixty years of age he attains wealth; is that the
+ reward of sixty years of toil? Ten years of enjoyment, when the senses
+ can enjoy no longer--a country seat, splendid plate, a noble
+ establishment? Oh, no! a reward deeper than he dreamed of. Habits of
+ perseverance: a character trained by industry: that is his reward. He
+ was carried on from year to year by, if he were wise, illusion; if he
+ were unwise, delusion; but he reaped a more enduring substance in
+ himself.
+
+ Take another instance: the public man, warrior, or statesman, who has
+ served his country, and complains at last in bitter disappointment,
+ that his country has not fulfilled his expectations in rewarding
+ him--that is, it has not given him titles, honours, wealth. But
+ titles, honours, wealth--are these the rewards of well-doing? can they
+ reward it? would it be well-doing if they could? To _be_ such a man,
+ to have the power of _doing_ such deeds, what could be added to that
+ reward by having? This same apparent contradiction, which was found in
+ Judaism, subsists too in Christianity; we will state it in the words
+ of an apostle: "Godliness is profitable for all things; having the
+ promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to come."
+ Now for the fulfilment: "If in this life only we have hope in Christ,
+ then are we of all men most miserable."
+
+ Godliness is profitable; but its profit it appears, consists in
+ finding that all is loss: yet in this way you teach your son. You will
+ tell him that if he will be good all men will love him. You say that
+ "Honesty is the best policy." yet in your heart of hearts you know
+ that you are leading him on by a delusion. Christ was good. Was he
+ loved by all? In proportion as he--your son--is like Christ, he will
+ be loved, not by the many, but by the few. Honesty is _not_ the best
+ _policy_; the commonplace honesty of the market-place may be--the
+ vulgar honesty which goes no further than paying debts accurately; but
+ that transparent Christian honesty of a life which in every act is
+ bearing witness to the truth, that is not the way to _get on_ in
+ life--the reward of such a life is the Cross. Yet you were right in
+ teaching your son this: you told him what was true; truer than he
+ could comprehend. It _is_ better to be honest and good; better than
+ he can know or dream: better even in this life; better by so much as
+ _being_ good is better than _having_ good. But, in a rude coarse way,
+ you must express the blessedness on a level with his capacity; you
+ must state the truth in a way which he will inevitably interpret
+ falsely. The true interpretation nothing but experience can teach.
+
+ And this is what God does. His promises are true, though illusive; far
+ truer than we at first take them to be. We work for a mean, low,
+ sensual happiness, all the while He is leading us on to a spiritual
+ blessedness--unfathomably deep. This is the life of faith. We live by
+ faith, and not by sight. We do not preach that all is
+ disappointment--the dreary creed of sentimentalism; but we preach that
+ _nothing_ here is disappointment, if rightly understood. We do not
+ comfort the poor man, by saying that the riches that he has not now he
+ will have hereafter--the difference between himself and the man of
+ wealth being only this, that the one has for time what the other will
+ have for eternity; but what we say is, that that which you have failed
+ in reaping here, you never will reap, if you expected the harvest of
+ Canaan. God has no Canaan for His own; no milk and honey for the
+ luxury of the senses: for the city which hath foundations is built in
+ the soul of man. He in whom Godlike character dwells, has all the
+ universe for his own--"All things," saith the apostle, "are yours;
+ whether life or death, or things present, or things to come; if ye be
+ Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the
+ _promise_."
+
+
+
+
+ VII.
+
+ _Preached June 23, 1850._
+
+ THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST.
+
+
+   "For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge,
+    that if one died for all, then were all dead; and that He died for
+    all that they which live should not henceforth live unto
+    themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again."--2
+    Corinthians v. 14, 15.
+
+ It may be, that in reading these verses some of us have understood
+ them in a sense foreign to that of the apostle. It may have seemed
+ that the arguments ran thus--Because Christ died upon the cross for
+ _all_, therefore all must have been in a state of spiritual death
+ before; and if they were asked what doctrines are to be elicited from
+ this passage they would reply, "the doctrine of universal depravity,
+ and the constraining power of the gratitude due to Him who died to
+ redeem us from it." There is, however, in the first place, this fatal
+ objection to such an interpretation, that the death here spoken of is
+ used in two diametrically opposite senses. In reference to Christ,
+ death literal--in reference to all, death spiritual. Now, in the
+ thought of St. Paul, the death of Christ was always viewed as
+ liberation from the power of evil: "in that he died, he died unto sin
+ once," and again, "he that is dead is free from sin." The literal
+ death then in one clause, means _freedom_ from sin; the spiritual
+ death of the next is _slavery_ to it. Wherein then, lies the cogency
+ of the apostle's reasoning? How does it follow that because Christ
+ died to evil, all before that must have died to God? Of course that
+ doctrine is true in itself, but it is _not_ the doctrine of the text.
+
+ In the next place, the ambiguity belongs only to the English word--it
+ is impossible to make the mistake in the original: the word which
+ stands for _were_, is a word which does not imply a continued state,
+ but must imply a single finished act. It cannot by any possibility
+ imply that before the death of Christ men _were_ in a state of
+ death--it can only mean, they became dead at the moment when Christ
+ died. If you read it thus, the meaning of the English will emerge--"if
+ one died for all, then all died;" and the apostle's argument runs
+ thus, that if one acts as the representative of all, then his act is
+ the act of all. If the ambassador of a nation makes reparation in a
+ nation's name, or does homage for a nation, that reparation, or that
+ homage, is the nation's act--if _one_ did it _for_ all, then _all_ did
+ it. So that instead of inferring that because Christ died for all,
+ therefore before that all were dead to God, his natural inference is
+ that therefore all are now dead to sin.
+
+ Once more, the conclusion of the apostle is exactly the reverse of
+ that which this interpretation attributes to him: he does not say that
+ Christ died in order that men might _not_ die, but exactly for this
+ very purpose, that they _might_ die; and this death he represents in
+ the next verse by an equivalent expression--the life of unselfishness:
+ "that they which live might henceforth live not unto themselves." The
+ "dead" of the first verse are "they that live" of the second.
+
+ The form of thought finds its exact parallel in Romans vi. 10, 11.
+ Two points claim our attention:--
+
+   I. The vicarious sacrifice of Christ.
+  II. The influence of that sacrifice on man.
+
+
+ I. The vicariousness of the sacrifice is implied in the word "for". A
+ vicarious act is an act done for another. When the Pope calls himself
+ the vicar of Christ, he implies that he acts for Christ. The vicar or
+ viceroy of a kingdom is one who acts for the king--a vicar's act
+ therefore is virtually the act of the principal whom he represents; so
+ that if the Papal doctrine were true, when the vicar of Christ
+ _pardons_, Christ has pardoned. When the viceroy of a kingdom has
+ published a proclamation or signed a treaty, the sovereign himself is
+ bound by those acts.
+
+ The truth of the expression _for all_, is contained in this fact, that
+ Christ is the representative of Humanity--properly speaking, the
+ representative of human nature. This is the truth contained in the
+ emphatic expression, "Son of Man." What Christ did _for_ Humanity was
+ done by Humanity, because in the name of Humanity. For a truly
+ vicarious act does not supersede the principal's duty of performance,
+ but rather implies and acknowledges it. Take the case from which this
+ very word of vicar has received its origin. In the old monastic times,
+ when the revenues of a cathedral or a cure fell to the lot of a
+ monastery, it became the duty of that monastery to perform the
+ religious services of the cure. But inasmuch as the monastery was a
+ corporate body, they appointed one of their number, whom they
+ denominated their vicar, to discharge those offices for them. His
+ service did not supersede theirs, but was a perpetual and standing
+ acknowledgement that they, as a whole and individually, were under the
+ obligation to perform it. The act of Christ is the act of
+ Humanity--that which all Humanity is bound to do. His righteousness
+ does not supersede our righteousness, nor does His sacrifice supersede
+ our sacrifice. It is the representation of human life and human
+ sacrifice--vicarious for all, yet binding upon all.
+
+ That He died for all is true--
+
+ 1. Because He was the victim of the sin of all. In the peculiar
+ phraseology of St. Paul, he died unto sin. He was the victim of
+ Sin--He died by sin. It is the appalling mystery of our redemption
+ that the Redeemer took the attitude of subjection to evil. There was
+ scarcely a form of evil with which Christ did not come in contact, and
+ by which He did not suffer. He was the victim of false friendship and
+ ingratitude, the victim of bad government and injustice. He fell a
+ sacrifice to the vices of all classes--to the selfishness of the rich
+ and the fickleness of the poor:--intolerance, formalism, scepticism,
+ hatred of goodness, were the foes which crushed Him.
+
+ In the proper sense of the word He was a victim. He did not adroitly
+ wind through the dangerous forms of evil, meeting it with expedient
+ silence. Face to face, and front to front, He met it, rebuked it, and
+ defied it; and just as truly as he is a voluntary victim whose body
+ opposing the progress of the car of Juggernaut is crushed beneath its
+ monstrous wheels, was He a victim to the world's sin: because pure, He
+ was crushed by impurity; because just and real and true, He waked up
+ the rage of injustice, hypocrisy, and falsehood.
+
+ Now this sin was the sin of all. Here arises at once a difficulty: it
+ seems to be most unnatural to assert that in any one sense He was the
+ sacrifice of the sin of all. We did not betray Him--that was Judas's
+ act--Peter denied Him--Thomas doubted--Pilate pronounced sentence--it
+ must be a figment to say that these were our acts; we did not watch
+ Him like the Pharisees, nor circumvent Him like the Scribes and
+ lawyers; by what possible sophistry can we be involved in the
+ complicity of that guilt? The savage of New Zealand who never heard of
+ Him, the learned Egyptian and the voluptuous Assyrian who died before
+ He came; how was it the sin of all?
+
+ The reply that is often given to this query is wonderfully unreal. It
+ is assumed that Christ was conscious, by His Omniscience, of the sins
+ of all mankind; that the duplicity of the child, and the crime of the
+ assassin, and every unholy thought that has ever passed through a
+ human bosom, were present to His mind in that awful hour as if they
+ were His own. This is utterly unscriptural. Where is the single text
+ from which it can be, except by force, extracted? Besides this, it is
+ fanciful and sentimental; and again it is dangerous, for it represents
+ the whole Atonement as a fictitious and shadowy transaction. There is
+ a mental state in which men have felt the burthen of sins which they
+ did not commit. There have been cases in which men have been
+ mysteriously excruciated with the thought of having committed the
+ unpardonable sin. But to represent the mental phenomena of the
+ Redeemer's mind as in any way resembling this--to say that His
+ conscience was oppressed with the responsibility of sins which He had
+ not committed--is to confound a state of sanity with the delusions of
+ a half lucid mind, and the workings of a healthy conscience with those
+ of one unnatural and morbid.
+
+ There is a way however, much more appalling and much more true, in
+ which this may be true, without resorting to any such fanciful
+ hypothesis. Sin has a great power in this world: it gives laws like
+ those of a sovereign, which bind us all, and to which we are all
+ submissive. There are current maxims in church and state, in society,
+ in trade, in law, to which we yield obedience. For this obedience
+ every one is responsible; for instance in trade, and in the profession
+ of law, every one is the servant of practices the rectitude of which
+ his heart can only half approve--every one complains of them, yet all
+ are involved in them. Now, when such sins reach their climax, as in
+ the case of national bankruptcy or an unjust acquittal, there may be
+ some who are in a special sense, the actors in the guilt; but
+ evidently, for the bankruptcy, each member of the community is
+ responsible in that degree and so far as he himself acquiesced in the
+ duplicities of public dealing; every careless juror, every unrighteous
+ judge, every false witness, has done his part in the reduction of
+ society to that state in which the monster injustice has been
+ perpetrated. In the riot of a tumultuous assembly by night, a house
+ may be burnt, or a murder committed; in the eye of the law, all who
+ are aiding and abetting there are each in his degree responsible for
+ that crime; there may be difference in guilt, from the degree in which
+ he is guilty who with his own hand perpetrated the deed, to that of
+ him who merely joined the rabble from mischievous
+ curiosity--degrees from that of wilful murder to that of more or less
+ excusable homicide.
+
+ The Pharisees were declared by the Saviour to be guilty of the blood
+ of Zacharias, the blood of righteous Abel, and of all the saints and
+ prophets who fell before He came. But how were the Pharisees guilty?
+ They built the sepulchres of the prophets, they honoured and admired
+ them; but they were guilty, in that they were the children of those
+ that slew the prophets; children in this sense, that they inherited
+ their _spirit_, they opposed the good in the form in which it showed
+ itself in _their day_, just as their fathers opposed the form
+ displayed to theirs; therefore He said that they belonged to the same
+ confederacy of evil, and that the guilt of the blood of all who had
+ been slain should rest on that generation. Similarly we are guilty of
+ the death of Christ. If you have been a false friend, a sceptic, a
+ cowardly disciple, a formalist, selfish, an opposer of goodness, an
+ oppressor, whatever evil you have done, in that degree and so far you
+ participate in the evil to which the Just One fell a victim--you are
+ one of that mighty rabble which cry, "Crucify Him, Crucify Him!" for
+ your sin He died; His blood lies at your threshold.
+
+ Again, He died for all, in that His sacrifice represents the sacrifice
+ of all. We have heard of the doctrine of "imputed righteousness;" it
+ is a theological expression to which meanings foolish enough are
+ sometimes attributed, but it contains a very deep truth, which it
+ shall be our endeavour to elicit.
+
+ Christ is the realized idea of our Humanity. He is God's idea of Man
+ completed. There is every difference between the ideal and the
+ actual--between what a man aims to be and what he is; a difference
+ between the race as it is, and the race as it existed in God's
+ creative idea when he pronounced it very good.
+
+ In Christ, therefore, God beholds Humanity; in Christ He sees
+ perfected every one in whom Christ's spirit exists in germ. He to whom
+ the possible is actual, to whom what will be already _is_, sees all
+ things _present_, gazes on the imperfect, and sees it in its
+ perfection. Let me venture an illustration. He who has never seen the
+ vegetable world except in Arctic regions, has but a poor idea of the
+ majesty of vegetable life,--a microscopic red moss tinting the surface
+ of the snow, a few stunted pines, and here and there perhaps a
+ dwindled oak; but to the botanist who has seen the luxuriance of
+ vegetation in its tropical magnificence, all that wretched scene
+ presents another aspect; to him those dwarfs are the representatives
+ of what might be, nay, what has been in a kindlier soil and a more
+ genial climate; he fills up by his conception the miserable actuality
+ presented by these shrubs, and attributes to them--imputes, that is,
+ to them--the majesty of which the undeveloped germ exists already.
+
+ Now the difference between those trees seen in themselves, and seen in
+ the conception of their nature's perfectness which has been previously
+ realized, is the difference between man seen in himself and seen in
+ Christ. We are feeble, dwarfish, stunted specimens of Humanity. Our
+ best resolves are but withered branches, our holiest deeds unripe and
+ blighted fruit; but to the Infinite Eye, who sees in the perfect One
+ the type and assurance of that which shall be, this dwindled Humanity
+ of ours is divine and glorious. Such are we in the sight of God the
+ Father as is the very Son of God Himself. This is what theologians, at
+ least the wisest of them, meant by "imputed righteousness." I do not
+ mean that all who have written or spoken on the subject had this
+ conception of it, but I believe they who thought truly meant this;
+ they did not suppose that in imputing righteousness there was a kind
+ of figment, a self-deception in the mind of God; they did not mean
+ that by an act of will He chose to consider that every act which
+ Christ did was done by us; that He imputed or reckoned to us the
+ baptism in Jordan and the victory in the wilderness, and the agony in
+ the garden, or that He believed, or acted as if He believed, that when
+ Christ died, each one of us died: but He saw Humanity submitted to the
+ law of self-sacrifice; in the light of that idea He beholds us as
+ perfect, and is satisfied. In this sense the apostle speaks of those
+ that are imperfect, yet "by one offering He hath perfected for ever
+ them that are sanctified." It is true again, that He died for us, in
+ that we present His sacrifice as ours. The value of the death of
+ Christ consisted in the surrender of self-will. In the fortieth Psalm,
+ the value of every other kind of sacrifice being first denied, the
+ words follow, "then said I, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God." The
+ profound idea contained, therefore, in the death of Christ is the duty
+ of self-surrender.
+
+ But in _us_ that surrender scarcely deserves the name; even to use the
+ word self-sacrifice covers us with a kind of shame. Then it is that
+ there is an almost boundless joy in acquiescing in the life and death
+ of Christ, recognizing it as ours, and representing it to ourselves
+ and God as what we aim at. If we cannot understand how in this sense
+ it can be a sacrifice for us, we may partly realize it by remembering
+ the joy of feeling how art and nature realize for us what we cannot
+ realize for ourselves. It is recorded of one of the world's gifted
+ painters that he stood before the master-piece of the great genius of
+ his age--one which he could never hope to equal, nor even rival--and
+ yet the infinite superiority, so far from crushing him, only elevated
+ his feeling, for he saw realized those conceptions which had floated
+ before him, dim and unsubstantial; in every line and touch he felt a
+ spirit immeasurably superior yet kindred, and he is reported to have
+ exclaimed, with dignified humility, "And I too am a painter!"
+
+ We must all have felt, when certain effects in nature, combinations of
+ form and colour, have been presented to us, our own idea speaking in
+ intelligible and yet celestial language; when for instance, the long
+ bars of purple, "edged with intolerable radiance," seemed to float in
+ a sea of pale pure green, when the whole sky seemed to reel with
+ thunder, when the night wind moaned. It is wonderful how the most
+ commonplace men and women, beings who, as you would have thought, had
+ no conception that rose beyond a commercial speculation, or a
+ fashionable entertainment, are elevated by such scenes; how the
+ slumbering grandeur of their nature wakes and acknowledges kindred
+ with the sky and storm. "I cannot speak," they would say, "the
+ feelings which are in me; I have had emotions, aspirations, thoughts;
+ I cannot put them into words. Look there! listen now to the storm!
+ That is what I meant, only I never could say it out till now." Thus do
+ art and nature speak for us, and thus do we adopt them as our own.
+ This is the way in which His righteousness becomes righteousness for
+ us. This is the way in which the heart presents to God the sacrifice
+ of Christ; gazing on that perfect Life we, as it were, say, "There,
+ that is my religion--that is my righteousness--what I want to be,
+ which I am not--that is my offering, my life as I would wish to give
+ it, freely and not checked, entire and perfect." So the old prophets,
+ their hearts big with unutterable thoughts, searched "what or what
+ manner of time the spirit of Christ which was in them did signify,
+ when it testified beforehand of the sufferings of Christ, and of the
+ glory which should follow;" and so with us, until it passes into
+ prayer: "My Saviour, fill up the blurred and blotted sketch which my
+ clumsy hand has drawn of a divine life, with the fullness of Thy
+ perfect picture. I feel the beauty which I cannot realize:--robe me in
+ Thine unutterable purity:--
+
+   "Rock of ages cleft for me,
+    Let me hide myself in Thee."
+
+
+ II. The influence of that Sacrifice on man is the introduction of the
+ principle of self-sacrifice into his nature,--"then were all dead."
+ Observe again, not He died that we might not die, but that in His
+ death we might be dead, and that in His sacrifice we might become each
+ a sacrifice to God. Moreover, this death is identical with life. They
+ who in the first sentence, are called dead, are in the second
+ denominated "they who live." So in another place, "I am crucified with
+ Christ, nevertheless I live;" death, therefore--that is the sacrifice
+ of self--is equivalent to life. Now, this rests upon a profound truth.
+ The death of Christ was a representation of the life of God. To me
+ this is the profoundest of all truths, that the whole of the life of
+ God is the sacrifice of self. God is Love; love is sacrifice--to give
+ rather than to receive--the blessedness of self-giving. If the life of
+ God were not such it would be a falsehood, to say that God is Love;
+ for even in our human nature, that which seeks to enjoy all instead of
+ giving all, is known by a very different name from that of love. All
+ the life of God is a flow of this divine self-giving charity. Creation
+ itself is sacrifice--the self-impartation of the divine Being.
+ Redemption too, is sacrifice, else it could not be love; for which
+ reason we will not surrender one iota of the truth that the death of
+ Christ was the sacrifice of God--the manifestation once in time of
+ that which is the eternal law of His life.
+
+ If man therefore, is to rise into the life of God, he must be absorbed
+ into the spirit of that sacrifice--he must die with Christ if he would
+ enter into his proper life. For sin is the withdrawing into self and
+ egotism, out of the vivifying life of God, which alone is our true
+ life. The moment the man sins he dies. Know we not how awfully true
+ that sentence is, "Sin revived, and I died?" The vivid life of sin is
+ the death of the man. Have we never felt that our true existence has
+ absolutely in that moment disappeared, and that _we_ are not?
+
+ I say therefore, that real human life is a perpetual completion and
+ repetition of the sacrifice of Christ--"all are dead;" the explanation
+ of which follows, "to live not to themselves, but to Him who died for
+ them and rose again." This is the truth which lies at the bottom of
+ the Romish doctrine of the mass. Rome asserts that in the mass a true
+ and proper sacrifice is offered up for the sins of all--that the
+ offering of Christ is for ever repeated. To this Protestantism has
+ objected vehemently, that there is but one offering once offered--an
+ objection in itself entirely true; yet the Romish doctrine contains a
+ truth which it is of importance to disengage from the gross and
+ material form with which it has been overlaid. Let us hear St. Paul,
+ "I fill up that which is behindhand of the sufferings of Christ, in my
+ flesh, for His body's sake, which is the Church." Was there then,
+ something behindhand of Christ's sufferings remaining uncompleted, of
+ which the sufferings of Paul could be in any sense the complement? He
+ says there was. Could the sufferings of Paul for the Church in any
+ form of correct expression be said to eke out the sufferings that were
+ complete? In one sense it is true to say that there is one offering
+ once offered _for_ all. But it is equally true to say that that one
+ offering is valueless, except so far as it is completed and repeated
+ in the life and self-offering _of_ all. This is the Christian's
+ sacrifice. Not mechanically completed in the miserable materialism of
+ the mass, but spiritually in the life of all in whom the Crucified
+ lives. The sacrifice of Christ is done over again in every life which
+ is lived, not to self but, to God.
+
+ Let one concluding observation be made--self-denial, self-sacrifice,
+ self-surrender! Hard doctrines, and impossible! Whereupon, in silent
+ hours, we sceptically ask, Is this possible? is it natural? Let
+ preacher and moralist say what they will, I am not here to sacrifice
+ myself for others. God sent me here for happiness, not misery. Now
+ introduce one sentence of this text of which we have as yet said
+ nothing, and the dark doctrine becomes illuminated--"the _love_ of
+ Christ constraineth us." Self-denial, for the sake of self-denial,
+ does no good; self-sacrifice for its own sake is no religious act at
+ all. If you give up a meal for the sake of showing power over self, or
+ for the sake of self-discipline, it is the most miserable of all
+ delusions. You are not more religious in doing this than before. This
+ is mere self-culture, and self-culture being occupied for ever about
+ self, leaves you only in that circle of self from which religion is to
+ free you; but to give up a meal that one you love may have it, is
+ properly a religious act--no hard and dismal duty, because made easy
+ by affection. To bear pain for the sake of bearing it has in it no
+ moral quality at all, but to bear it rather than surrender truth, or
+ in order to save another, is positive enjoyment as well as ennobling
+ to the soul. Did you ever receive even a blow meant for another in
+ order to shield that other? Do you not know that there was actual
+ pleasure in the keen pain far beyond the most rapturous thrill of
+ nerve which could be gained from pleasure in the midst of
+ painlessness? Is not the mystic yearning of love expressed in words
+ most purely thus, Let me suffer for him?
+
+ This element of love is that which makes this doctrine an intelligible
+ and blessed truth. So sacrifice alone, bare and unrelieved, is
+ ghastly, unnatural, and dead; but self-sacrifice, illuminated by love,
+ is warmth and life; it is the death of Christ, the life of God, the
+ blessedness, and only proper life of man.
+
+
+
+
+ VIII.
+
+ _Preached June 30, 1850._
+
+ THE POWER OF SORROW.
+
+
+   "Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed
+    to repentance: for ye were made sorry after a godly manner, that
+    ye might receive damage by us in nothing. For godly sorrow worketh
+    repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of
+    the world worketh death."--2 Corinthians vii. 9, 10.
+
+ That which is chiefly insisted on in this verse, is the distinction
+ between sorrow and repentance. To grieve over sin is one thing, to
+ repent of it is another.
+
+ The apostle rejoiced, not that the Corinthians sorrowed, but that they
+ sorrowed unto repentance. Sorrow has two results; it may end in
+ spiritual life, or in spiritual death; and in themselves, one of these
+ is as natural as the other. Sorrow may produce two kinds of
+ reformation--a transient, or a permanent one--an alteration in habits,
+ which originating in emotion, will last so long as that emotion
+ continues, and then after a few fruitless efforts, be given up,--a
+ repentance which will be repented of; or again, a permanent change,
+ which will be reversed by no after thought--a repentance not to be
+ repented of. Sorrow is in itself, therefore, a thing neither good nor
+ bad: its value depends on the spirit of the person on whom it falls.
+ Fire will inflame straw, soften iron, or harden clay; its effects are
+ determined by the object with which it comes in contact. Warmth
+ developes the energies of life, or helps the progress of decay. It is
+ a great power in the hot-house, a great power also in the coffin; it
+ expands the leaf, matures the fruit, adds precocious vigour to
+ vegetable life: and warmth too developes, with tenfold rapidity, the
+ weltering process of dissolution. So too with sorrow. There are
+ spirits in which it developes the seminal principle of life; there are
+ others in which it prematurely hastens the consummation of irreparable
+ decay. Our subject therefore is the twofold power of sorrow.
+
+    I. The fatal power of the sorrow of the world.
+   II. The life-giving power of the sorrow that is after God.
+
+ The simplest way in which the sorrow of the world works death, is seen
+ in the effect of mere regret for worldly loss. There are certain
+ advantages with which we come into the world. Youth, health, friends,
+ and sometimes property. So long as these are continued we are happy;
+ and because happy, fancy ourselves very grateful to God. We bask in
+ the sunshine of His gifts, and this pleasant sensation of sunning
+ ourselves in life we call religion; that state in which we all are
+ before sorrow comes, to test the temper of the metal of which our
+ souls are made, when the spirits are unbroken and the heart buoyant,
+ when a fresh morning is to a young heart what it is to the skylark.
+ The exuberant burst of joy seems a spontaneous hymn to the Father of
+ all blessing, like the matin carol of the bird; but this is not
+ religion: it is the instinctive utterance of happy feeling, having as
+ little of moral character in it, in the happy human being, as in the
+ happy bird.
+
+ Nay more--the religion which is only sunned into being by happiness,
+ is a suspicious thing: having been warmed by joy, it will become cold
+ when joy is over; and then when these blessings are removed, we count
+ ourselves hardly treated, as if we had been defrauded of a right;
+ rebellious hard feelings come; then it is you see people become
+ bitter, spiteful, discontented. At every step in the solemn path of
+ life, something must be mourned which will come back no more; the
+ temper that was so smooth becomes rugged and uneven; the benevolence
+ that expanded upon all, narrows into an ever dwindling selfishness--we
+ are alone; and then that death-like loneliness deepens as life goes
+ on. The course of man is downwards, and he moves with slow and ever
+ more solitary steps, down to the dark silence--the silence of the
+ grave. This is the death of heart; the sorrow of the world has worked
+ death.
+
+ Again there is a sorrow of the world, when sin is grieved for in a
+ worldly spirit. There are two views of sin: in one it is looked upon
+ as wrong--in the other, as producing loss--loss for example, of
+ character. In such cases, if character could be preserved before the
+ world, grief would not come; but the paroxysms of misery fall upon our
+ proud spirit when our guilt is made public. The most distinct instance
+ we have of this is in the life of Saul. In the midst of his apparent
+ grief, the thing still uppermost was that he had forfeited his kingly
+ character: almost the only longing was, that Samuel should honour him
+ before his people. And hence it comes to pass, that often remorse and
+ anguish only begin with exposure. Suicide takes place, not when the
+ act of wrong is done, but when the guilt is known, and hence too, many
+ a one becomes hardened who would otherwise have remained tolerably
+ happy; in consequence of which we blame the exposure, not the guilt;
+ we say if it had hushed up, all would have been well; that the servant
+ who robbed his master was ruined by taking away his character; and
+ that if the sin had been passed over, repentance might have taken
+ place, and he might have remained a respectable member of society. Do
+ not think so. It is quite true that remorse was produced by exposure,
+ and that the remorse was fatal; the sorrow which worked death arose
+ from that exposure, and so far exposure may be called the cause: had
+ it never taken place, respectability, and comparative peace, might
+ have continued; but outward respectability is not change of heart.
+
+ It is well known that the corpse has been preserved for centuries in
+ the iceberg, or in antiseptic peat; and that when atmospheric air was
+ introduced to the exposed surface it crumbled into dust. Exposure
+ worked dissolution, but it only manifested the death which was already
+ there; so with sorrow, it is not the living heart which drops to
+ pieces, or crumbles into dust, when it is revealed. Exposure did not
+ work death in the Corinthian sinner, but life.
+
+ There is another form of grief for sin, which the apostle would not
+ have rejoiced to see; it is when the hot tears come from pride. No two
+ tones of feeling, apparently similar, are more unlike than that in
+ which Saul exclaimed, "I have played the fool exceedingly," and that
+ in which the Publican cried out, "God be merciful to me a sinner."
+ The charge of folly brought against oneself only proves that we feel
+ bitterly for having lost our own self-respect. It is a humiliation to
+ have forfeited the idea which a man had formed of his own
+ character--to find that the very excellence on which he prided
+ himself, is the one in which he has failed. If there were a virtue for
+ which Saul was conspicuous, it was generosity; yet it was exactly in
+ this point of generosity in which he discovered himself to have
+ failed, when he was overtaken on the mountain, and his life spared by
+ the very man whom he was hunting to the death, with feelings of the
+ meanest jealousy. Yet there was no real repentance there; there was
+ none of that in which a man is sick of state and pomp. Saul could
+ still rejoice in regal splendour, go about complaining of himself to
+ the Ziphites, as if he was the most ill-treated and friendless of
+ mankind; he was still jealous of his reputation, and anxious to be
+ well thought of. Quite different is the tone in which the Publican,
+ who felt himself a sinner, asked for mercy. He heard the contumelious
+ expression of the Pharisee, "this Publican." With no resentment, he
+ meekly bore it as a matter naturally to be taken for granted--"he did
+ not so much as lift up his eyes to heaven;" he was as a worm which
+ turns in agony, but not revenge, upon the foot which treads it into
+ the dust.
+
+ Now this sorrow of Saul's too, works death: no merit can restore
+ self-respect; when once a man has found himself out, he cannot be
+ deceived again. The heart is as a stone: a speck of canker corrodes
+ and spreads within. What on this earth remains, but endless sorrow,
+ for him who has ceased to respect himself, and has no God to turn to?
+
+
+ II. The divine power of sorrow.
+
+ 1. It works repentance. By repentance is meant, in Scripture, change
+ of life, alteration of habits, renewal of heart. This is the aim and
+ meaning of all sorrow. The consequences of sin are meant to wean from
+ sin. The penalty annexed to it is in the first instance, corrective,
+ not penal. Fire burns the child, to teach it one of the truths of this
+ universe--the property of fire to burn. The first time it cuts its
+ hand with a sharp knife, it has gained a lesson which it never will
+ forget. Now, in the case of pain, this experience is seldom, if ever,
+ in vain. There is little chance of a child forgetting that fire will
+ burn, and that sharp steel will cut; but the moral lessons contained
+ in the penalties annexed to wrong-doing are just as truly intended,
+ though they are by no means so unerring in enforcing their
+ application. The fever in the veins and the headache which succeed
+ intoxication, are meant to warn against excess. On the first occasion
+ they are simply corrective; in every succeeding one they assume more
+ and more a penal character in proportion as the conscience carries
+ with them the sense of ill desert.
+
+ Sorrow then, has done its work when it deters from evil; in other
+ words when it works repentance. In the sorrow of the world, the
+ obliquity of the heart towards evil is not cured; it seems as if
+ nothing cured it: heartache and trials come in vain; the history of
+ life at last is what it was at first. The man is found erring where he
+ erred before. The same course, begun with the certainty of the same
+ desperate end which has taken place so often before.
+
+ They have reaped the whirlwind, but they will again sow the wind.
+ Hence I believe, that life-giving sorrow is less remorse for that
+ which is irreparable, than anxiety to save that which remains. The
+ sorrow that ends in death hangs in funeral weeds over the sepulchres
+ of the past. Yet the present does not become more wise. Not one
+ resolution is made more firm, nor one habit more holy. Grief is all.
+ Whereas sorrow avails _only_ when the past is converted into
+ experience, and from failure lessons are learned which never are to be
+ forgotten.
+
+ 2. Permanence of alteration; for after all, a steady reformation is a
+ more decisive test of the value of mourning than depth of grief.
+
+ The susceptibility of emotion varies with individuals. Some men feel
+ intensely, others suffer less keenly; but this is constitutional,
+ belonging to nervous temperament, rather than to moral character.
+ _This_ is the characteristic of the divine sorrow, that it is a
+ repentance "not repented of;" no transient, short-lived resolutions,
+ but sustained resolve.
+
+ And the beautiful law is, that in proportion as the, repentance
+ increases the grief diminishes. "I rejoice," says Paul, that "I made
+ you sorry, though it were but for a time." Grief for a time,
+ repentance for ever. And few things more signally prove the wisdom of
+ this apostle than his way of dealing with this grief of the
+ Corinthian. He tried no artificial means of intensifying it--did not
+ urge the duty of dwelling upon it, magnifying it, nor even of gauging
+ and examining it. So soon as grief had done its work, the apostle was
+ anxious to dry useless tears--he even feared lest haply such an one
+ should be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow. "A true penitent," says
+ Mr. Newman, "never forgives himself." O false estimate of the gospel
+ of Christ, and of the heart of man! A proud remorse does not forgive
+ itself the forfeiture of its own dignity; but it is the very beauty of
+ the penitence which is according to God, that at last the sinner,
+ realizing God's forgiveness, does learn to forgive himself. For what
+ other purpose did St. Paul command the Church of Corinth to give
+ ecclesiastical absolution, but in order to afford a symbol and
+ assurance of the Divine pardon, in which the guilty man's grief should
+ not be overwhelming, but that he should become reconciled to himself?
+ What is meant by the Publican's going _down to his house_ justified,
+ but that he felt at peace with himself and God?
+
+ 3. It is sorrow with God--here called godly sorrow; in the margin
+ sorrowing according to God.
+
+ God sees sin not in its consequences but in itself: a thing infinitely
+ evil, even if the consequences were happiness to the guilty instead of
+ misery. So sorrow according to God, is to see sin as God sees it. The
+ grief of Peter was as bitter as that of Judas. He went out and wept
+ bitterly; how bitterly none can tell but they who have learned to look
+ on sin as God does. But in Peter's grief there was an element of hope;
+ and that sprung precisely from this--that he saw God in it all.
+ Despair of self did not lead to despair of God.
+
+ This is the great, peculiar feature of this sorrow: God is there,
+ accordingly self is less prominent. It is not a microscopic
+ self-examination, nor a mourning in which self is ever uppermost: _my_
+ character gone; the greatness of _my_ sin; the forfeiture of _my_
+ salvation. The thought of God absorbs all that. I believe the feeling
+ of true penitence would express itself in such words as these:--There
+ _is_ a righteousness, though I have not attained it. There is a
+ purity, and a love, and a beauty, though my life exhibits little of
+ it. In that I can rejoice. Of that I can feel the surpassing
+ loveliness. My doings? They are worthless, I cannot endure to think of
+ them. I am not thinking of them. I have something else to think of.
+ There, there; in that Life I see it. And so the Christian--gazing not
+ on what he is, but on what he desires to be--dares in penitence to
+ say, That righteousness is mine: dares, even when the recollection of
+ his sin is most vivid and most poignant, to say with Peter, thinking
+ less of himself than of God, and sorrowing as it were with God--"Lord,
+ Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love Thee."
+
+
+
+
+ IX.
+
+ _Preached August 4, 1850._
+
+ SENSUAL AND SPIRITUAL EXCITEMENT.
+
+
+   "Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of
+    the Lord is. And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be
+    filled with the Spirit."--Ephesians v. 17, 18.
+
+ There is evidently a connection between the different branches of this
+ sentence--for ideas cannot be properly contrasted which have not some
+ connection--but what that connection is, is not at first sight clear.
+ It almost appears like a profane and irreverent juxtaposition to
+ contrast fulness of the Spirit with fulness of wine. Moreover, the
+ structure of the whole context is antithetical. Ideas are opposed to
+ each other in pairs of contraries; for instance, "fools" is the exact
+ opposite to "wise;" "unwise," as opposed to "understanding," its
+ proper opposite.
+
+ And here again, there must be the same true antithesis between
+ drunkenness and spiritual fulness. The propriety of this opposition
+ lies in the intensity of feeling produced in both, cases. There is one
+ intensity of feeling produced by stimulating the senses, another by
+ vivifying the spiritual life within. The one commences with impulses
+ from without, the other is guarded by forces from within. Here then is
+ the similarity, and here the dissimilarity, which constitutes the
+ propriety of the contrast. One is ruin, the other salvation. One
+ degrades, the other exalts. This contrast then is our subject for
+ to-day.
+
+
+ I. The effects are similar. On the day of Pentecost, when the first
+ influences of the Spirit descended on the early Church, the effects
+ resembled intoxication. They were full of the Spirit, and mocking
+ bystanders said, "These men are full of new wine;" for they found
+ themselves elevated into the ecstasy of a life higher than their
+ own, possessed of powers which they could not control; they spoke
+ incoherently and irregularly; to the most part of those assembled,
+ unintelligibly.
+
+ Now compare with this the impression produced upon savage
+ nations--suppose those early ages in which the spectacle of
+ intoxication was presented for the first time. They saw a man under
+ the influence of a force different from and in some respects inferior
+ to, their own. To them the bacchanal appeared a being half inspired;
+ his frenzy seemed a thing for reverence and awe, rather than for
+ horror and disgust; the spirit which possessed him must be they
+ thought, divine; they deified it, worshipped it under different names
+ as a god; even to a clearer insight the effects are wonderfully
+ similar. It is almost proverbial among soldiers that the daring
+ produced by wine is easily mistaken for the self-devotion of a brave
+ heart.
+
+ The play of imagination in the brain of the opium-eater is as free as
+ that of genius itself, and the creations produced in that state by the
+ pen or pencil are as wildly beautiful as those owed to the nobler
+ influences. In years gone by, the oratory of the statesman in the
+ senate has been kindled by semi-intoxication, when his noble
+ utterances were set down by his auditors to the inspiration of
+ patriotism.
+
+ It is this very resemblance which deceives the drunkard: he is led on
+ by his feelings as well as by his imagination. It is not the sensual
+ pleasure of the glutton that fascinates him; it is those fine thoughts
+ and those quickened sensibilities which were excited in that state,
+ which he is powerless to produce out of his own being, or by his own
+ powers, and which he expects to reproduce by the same means. The
+ experience of our first parent is repeated in him: at the very moment
+ when he expects to find himself as the gods, knowing good and evil, he
+ discovers that he is unexpectedly degraded, his health wrecked, and
+ his heart demoralized. Hence it is almost as often the finer as the
+ baser spirits of our race which are found the victims of such
+ indulgence. Many will remember while I speak, the names of the gifted
+ of their species, the degraded men of genius who were the victims of
+ these deceptive influences. The half-inspired painter, poet, musician,
+ who began by soothing opiates to calm the over-excited nerves, or
+ stimulate the exhausted brain, who mistook the sensation for somewhat
+ half divine, and became morally and physically wrecks of manhood,
+ degraded even in their mental conceptions. It was therefore, no mere
+ play of words which induced the apostle to bring these two things
+ together. That which might else seem irreverent appears to have been
+ a deep knowledge of human nature; he contrasts, because his rule was
+ to distinguish two things which are easily mistaken for each other.
+
+ 2. The second point of resemblance is the necessity of intense
+ feeling. We have fulness--fulness, it may be, produced by outward
+ stimulus, or else by an inpouring of the Spirit. What we want is life,
+ "more life, and fuller." To escape from monotony, to get away from the
+ life of mere routine and habits, to feel that we are alive--with more
+ of surprise and wakefulness in our existence. To have less of the
+ gelid, torpid, tortoise-like existence. "To feel the years before us."
+ To be consciously existing.
+
+ Now this desire lies at the bottom of many forms of life which are
+ apparently as diverse as possible. It constitutes the fascination of
+ the gambler's life: money is not what he wants--were he possessed of
+ thousands to-day he would risk them all to-morrow--but it is that
+ being perpetually on the brink of enormous wealth and utter ruin, he
+ is compelled to realize at every moment the possibility of the
+ extremes of life. Every moment is one of feeling. This too,
+ constitutes the charm of all those forms of life in which the gambling
+ feeling is predominant--where a sense of skill is blended with a
+ mixture of chance. If you ask the statesman why it is, that possessed
+ as he is of wealth, he quits his princely home for the dark
+ metropolis, he would reply, "That he loves the excitement of a
+ political existence." It is this too, which gives to the warrior's and
+ the traveller's existence such peculiar reality; and it is this in a
+ far lower form which stimulates the pleasure of a fashionable
+ life--which sends the votaries of the world in a constant round from
+ the capital to the watering place, and from the watering place to the
+ capital; what they crave for is the power of feeling intensely.
+
+ Now the proper and natural outlet for this feeling is the life of the
+ Spirit. What is religion but fuller life? To live in the Spirit, what
+ is it but to have keener feelings and mightier powers--to rise into a
+ higher consciousness of life? What is religion's self but feeling? The
+ highest form of religion is charity. Love is of God, and he that
+ loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. This is an intense feeling,
+ too intense to be excited, profound in its calmness, yet it rises at
+ times in its higher flights into that ecstatic life which glances in a
+ moment intuitively through ages. These are the pentecostal hours of
+ our existence, when the Spirit comes as a mighty rushing wind, in
+ cloven tongues of fire, filling the soul with God.
+
+
+ II. The dissimilarity or contrast in St. Paul's idea. The one fulness
+ begins from without, the other from within. The one proceeds from the
+ flesh and then influences the emotions. The other reverses this order.
+ Stimulants like wine, inflame the senses, and through them set the
+ imaginations and feelings on fire; and the law of our spiritual being
+ is, that that which begins with the flesh, sensualizes the
+ Spirit--whereas that which commences in the region of the Spirit,
+ spiritualizes the senses in which it subsequently stirs emotion. But
+ the misfortune is that men mistake this law of their emotions; and the
+ fatal error is, when having found spiritual feelings existing in
+ connection, and associated with, fleshly sensations, men expect by the
+ mere irritation of the emotions of the frame to reproduce those high
+ and glorious feelings.
+
+ You might conceive the recipients of the Spirit on the day of
+ Pentecost acting under this delusion; it is conceiveable that having
+ observed certain bodily phenomena--for instance, incoherent utterances
+ and thrilled sensibilities coexisting with those sublime
+ spiritualities--they might have endeavoured, by a repetition of those
+ incoherencies, to obtain a fresh descent of the Spirit. In fact, this
+ was exactly what was tried in after ages of the Church. In those
+ events of church history which are denominated revivals, in the camp
+ of the Methodist and the Ranter, a direct attempt was made to arouse
+ the emotions by exciting addresses and vehement language. Convulsions,
+ shrieks, and violent emotions, were produced, and the unfortunate
+ victims of this mistaken attempt to produce the cause by the effect,
+ fancied themselves, and were pronounced by others, converted. Now the
+ misfortune is, that this delusion is the more easy from the fact that
+ the results of the two kinds of causes resemble each other. You may
+ galvanize the nerve of a corpse till the action of a limb startles the
+ spectator with the appearance of life. It is not life, it is only a
+ spasmodic hideous mimicry of life. Men having seen that the spiritual
+ is always associated with forms, endeavour by reproducing the forms to
+ recall spirituality; you do produce thereby a something that looks
+ like spirituality, but it is a resemblance only. The worst case of all
+ occurs in the department of the affections. That which begins in the
+ heart ennobles the whole animal being, but that which begins in the
+ inferior departments of our being is the most entire degradation and
+ sensualizing of the soul.
+
+ Now it is from this point of thought that we learn to extend the
+ apostle's principle. Wine is but a specimen of a class of stimulants.
+ All that begins from _without_ belongs to the same class. The stimulus
+ may be afforded by almost any enjoyment of the senses. Drunkenness may
+ come from anything wherein is excess: from over-indulgence in society,
+ in pleasure, in music, and in the delight of listening to oratory,
+ nay, even from the excitement of sermons and religious meetings. The
+ prophet tells us of those who are drunken, and not with wine.
+
+ The other point of difference is one of effect. Fulness of the Spirit
+ calms; fulness produced by excitement satiates and exhausts. They who
+ know the world of fashion tell us that the tone adopted there is,
+ either to be, or to affect to be, sated with enjoyment, to be proof
+ against surprise, to have lost all keenness of enjoyment, and to have
+ all keenness of wonder gone. That which ought to be men's shame
+ becomes their boast--unsusceptibility of any fresh emotion.
+
+ Whether this be real or affected matters not; it is, in truth, the
+ real result of the indulgence of the senses. The law is this: the
+ "crime of sense is avenged by sense which wears with time;" for it has
+ been well remarked that the terrific punishment attached to the
+ habitual indulgence of the senses is, that the incitements to
+ enjoyment increase in proportion as the power of enjoyment fades.
+
+ Experience at last forbids even the hope of enjoyment; the sin of the
+ intoxicated soul is loathed, detested, abhorred; yet it is done. The
+ irritated sense, like an avenging fury, goads on with a restlessness
+ of craving, and compels a reiteration of the guilt though it has
+ ceased to charm.
+
+ To this danger our own age is peculiarly exposed. In the earlier and
+ simpler ages, the need of keen feeling finds a natural and safe outlet
+ in compulsory exertions. For instance, in the excitement of real
+ warfare, and in the necessity of providing the sustenance of life,
+ warlike habits and healthy labour stimulate, without exhausting life.
+ But in proportion as civilization advances, a large class of the
+ community are exempted from the necessity of these, and thrown upon a
+ life of leisure. Then it is that artificial life begins, and
+ artificial expedients become necessary to sharpen the feelings amongst
+ the monotony of existence; every amusement and all literature become
+ more pungent in their character; life is no longer a thing proceeding
+ from powers _within_, but sustained by new impulses from without.
+
+ There is one peculiar form of this danger to which I would specially
+ direct your attention. There is one nation in Europe which, more than
+ any other, has been subjected to these influences. In ages of
+ revolution, nations live fast; centuries of life are passed in fifty
+ years of time. In such a state, individuals become subjected more or
+ less to the influences which are working around them. Scarcely an
+ enjoyment or a book can be met with which does not bear the impress of
+ this intensity. Now, the particular danger to which I allude is French
+ novels, French romances, and French plays. The overflowings of that
+ cup of excitement have reached our shores. I do not say that these
+ works contain anything coarse or gross--better if it were so: evil
+ which comes in a form of grossness is not nearly so dangerous as that
+ which comes veiled in gracefulness and sentiment. Subjects which are
+ better not touched upon at all are discussed, examined, and exhibited
+ in all the most seductive forms of imagery. You would be shocked at
+ seeing your son in a fit of intoxication; yet, I say it solemnly,
+ better that your son should reel through the streets in a fit of
+ drunkenness, than that the delicacy of your daughter's mind should be
+ injured, and her imagination inflamed with false fire. Twenty-four
+ hours will terminate the evil in the one case. Twenty-four hours will
+ not exhaust the effects of the other; you must seek the consequences
+ at the end of many, many years.
+
+ I speak that which I do know; and if the earnest warning of one who
+ has seen the dangers of which he speaks realized, can reach the heart
+ of one Christian parent, he will put a ban on all such works, and not
+ suffer his children's hearts to be excited by a drunkenness which is
+ worse than that of wine. For the worst of it is, that the men of our
+ time are not yet alive to this growing evil; they are elsewhere--in
+ their studies, counting-houses, professions--not knowing the food, or
+ rather poison, on which their wives' and daughters' intellectual life
+ is sustained. It is precisely those who are most unfitted to sustain
+ the danger, whose feelings need restraint instead of spur, and whose
+ imaginations are most inflammable, that are specially exposed to it.
+
+ On the other hand, spiritual life calms while it fills. True it is
+ that there are pentecostal moments when such life reaches the stage of
+ ecstasy. But these were given to the Church to prepare her for
+ suffering, to give her martyrs a glimpse of blessedness, which might
+ sustain them afterwards in the terrible struggles of death. True it is
+ that there are pentecostal hours when the soul is surrounded by a kind
+ of glory, and we are tempted to make tabernacles upon the Mount, as if
+ life were meant for rest; but out of that very cloud there comes a
+ voice telling of the Cross, and bidding us descend into the common
+ world again, to simple duties and humble life. This very principle
+ seems to be contained in the text. The apostle's remedy for this
+ artificial feeling is--"Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns,
+ and spiritual songs."
+
+ Strange remedy! Occupation fit for children--too simple far for men:
+ as astonishing as the remedy prescribed by the prophet to Naaman--to
+ wash in simple water, and be clean; yet therein lies a very important
+ truth. In ancient medical phraseology, herbs possessed of healing
+ natures were called simples: in God's laboratory, all things that heal
+ are simple--all natural enjoyments--all the deepest--are simple too.
+ At night, man fills his banquet-hall with the glare of splendour which
+ fevers as well as fires the heart; and at the very same hour, as if by
+ intended contrast, the quiet stars of God steal forth, shedding,
+ together with the deepest feeling, the profoundest sense of calm. One
+ from whose knowledge of the sources of natural feeling there lies
+ almost no appeal, has said that to him,
+
+    "The meanest flower that blows can give
+     Thoughts that too often lie too deep for tears."
+
+ This is exceedingly remarkable in the life of Christ. No contrast is
+ more striking than that presented by the thought, that that deep and
+ beautiful Life was spent in the midst of mad Jerusalem. Remember the
+ Son of man standing quietly in the porches of Bethesda, when the
+ streets all around were filled with the revelry of innumerable
+ multitudes, who had come to be present at the annual feast. Remember
+ Him pausing to weep over his country's doomed metropolis, unexcited,
+ while the giddy crowd around Him were shouting "Hosanna to the Son of
+ David!" Remember Him in Pilate's judgment-hall, meek, self-possessed,
+ standing in the serenity of Truth, while all around Him was
+ agitation--hesitation in the breast of Pilate, hatred in the bosom of
+ the Pharisees, and consternation in the heart of the disciples.
+
+ And this in truth, is what we want: we want the vision of a calmer
+ and simpler Beauty, to tranquillize us in the midst of artificial
+ tastes--we want the draught of a purer spring to cool the flame of our
+ excited life;--we want in other words, the Spirit of the Life of
+ Christ, simple, natural, with power to calm and soothe the feelings
+ which it rouses: the fulness of the Spirit which can never intoxicate!
+
+
+
+
+ X.
+
+ _Preached August 11, 1850._
+
+ PURITY.
+
+
+   "Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled
+    and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and
+    conscience is defiled."--Titus i. 15.
+
+ For the evils of this world there are two classes of remedies--one is
+ the world's, the other is God's. The world proposes to remedy evil by
+ adjusting the circumstances of this life to man's desires. The world
+ says, give us a perfect set of _circumstances_, and then we shall have
+ a set of perfect men. This principle lies at the root of the system
+ called Socialism. Socialism proceeds on the principle that all moral
+ and even physical evil arises from unjust laws. If the cause be
+ remedied, the effect will be good. But Christianity throws aside all
+ that as merely chimerical. It proves that the fault is not in outward
+ circumstances, but in ourselves. Like the wise physician, who, instead
+ of busying himself with transcendental theories to improve the
+ climate, and the outward circumstances of man, endeavours to relieve
+ and get rid of the tendencies of disease which are from within,
+ Christianity, leaving all outward circumstances to ameliorate
+ themselves, fastens its attention on the spirit which has to deal with
+ them. Christ has declared that the kingdom of heaven is from within.
+ He said to the Pharisee, "Ye make clean the outside of the cup and
+ platter, but within ye are full of extortion and excess." The remedy
+ for all this is a large and liberal charity, so overflowing that "Unto
+ the pure all things are pure." To internal purity all external things
+ _become_ pure. The principle that St. Paul has here laid down is, that
+ each man is the creator of his own world; he walks in a universe of
+ his own creation.
+
+ As the free air is to one out of health the cause of cold and diseased
+ lungs, so to the healthy man it is a source of greater vigour. The
+ rotten fruit is sweet to the worm, but nauseous to the palate of man.
+ It is the same air and the same fruit acting differently upon
+ different beings. To different men a different world--to one all
+ pollution--to another all purity. To the noble all things are noble,
+ to the mean all things are contemptible.
+
+ The subject divides itself into two parts.
+
+    I. The apostle's principle.
+   II. The application of the principle.
+
+ Here we have the same principle again; each man creates his own world.
+ Take it in its simplest form. The eye creates the outward world it
+ sees. We see not things as they are, but as God has made the eye to
+ receive them.
+
+ In its strictest sense, the creation of a new man is the creation of a
+ new universe. Conceive an eye so constructed as that the planets and
+ all within them should be minutely seen, and all that is near should
+ be dim and invisible like things seen through a telescope, or as we
+ see through a magnifying glass the plumage of the butterfly, and the
+ bloom upon the peach; then it is manifestly clear that we have called
+ into existence actually a new _creation_, and not new objects. The
+ mind's eye creates a world for itself.
+
+ Again, the visible world presents a different aspect to each
+ individual man. You will say that the same things you see are seen by
+ all--that the forest, the valley, the flood, and the sea, are the same
+ to all; and yet all these things so seen, to different minds are a
+ myriad of different universes. One man sees in that noble river an
+ emblem of eternity; he closes his lips and feels that GOD is
+ there. Another sees nothing in it but a very convenient road for
+ transporting his spices, silks, and merchandise. To one this world
+ appears useful, to another beautiful. Whence comes the difference?
+ From the soul within us. It can make of this world a vast chaos--"a
+ mighty maze without a plan;" or a mere machine--a collection of
+ lifeless forces; or it can make it the Living Vesture of GOD,
+ the tissue through which He can become visible to us. In the spirit in
+ which we look on it the world is an arena for mere self-advancement,
+ or a place for noble deeds, in which self is forgotten, and
+ GOD is all.
+
+ Observe, this effect is traceable even in that produced by our
+ different and changeful moods. We make and unmake a world more than
+ once in the space of a single day. In trifling moods all seems
+ trivial. In serious moods all seems solemn. Is the song of the
+ nightingale merry or plaintive? Is it the voice of joy or the
+ harbinger of gloom? Sometimes one, and sometimes the other, according
+ to our different moods. We hear the ocean furious or exulting. The
+ thunder-claps are grand, or angry, according to the different states
+ of our mind. Nay, the very church bells chime sadly or merrily, as our
+ associations determine. They speak the language of our passing moods.
+ The young adventurer revolving sanguine plans upon the milestone,
+ hears them speak to him as God did to Hagar in the wilderness, bidding
+ him back to perseverance and greatness. The soul spreads its own hue
+ over everything; the shroud or wedding-garment of nature is woven in
+ the loom of our own feelings. This universe is the express image and
+ direct counterpart of the souls that dwell in it. Be noble-minded, and
+ all Nature replies--I am divine, the child of God--be thou too, His
+ child, and noble. Be mean, and all Nature dwindles into a contemptible
+ smallness.
+
+ In the second place, there are two ways in which this principle is
+ true. To the pure, all things and all persons are pure, because their
+ purity makes all seem pure.
+
+ There are some who go through life complaining of this world; they say
+ they have found nothing but treachery and deceit; the poor are
+ ungrateful, and the rich are selfish, Yet we do not find such the best
+ men. Experience tells us that each man most keenly and unerringly
+ detects in others the vice with which he is most familiar himself.
+
+ Persons seem to each man what he is himself. One who suspects
+ hypocrisy in the world is rarely transparent; the man constantly on
+ the watch for cheating is generally dishonest; he who suspects
+ impurity is prurient. This is the principle to which Christ alludes
+ when he says, "Give alms of such things as he have; and behold all
+ things are clean unto you."
+
+
+ Have a large charity! Large "charity hopeth all things." Look at that
+ sublime apostle who saw the churches of Ephesus and Thessalonica pure,
+ because he saw them in his own large love, and painted them, not as
+ they were, but as his heart filled up the picture; he viewed them in
+ the light of his own nobleness, as representations of his own purity.
+
+ Once more, to the pure all _things_ are pure, as well as all persons.
+ That which is natural lies not in things, but in the minds of men.
+ There is a difference between prudery and modesty. Prudery detects
+ wrong where no wrong is; the wrong lies in the thoughts, and not in
+ the objects. There is something of over-sensitiveness and
+ over-delicacy which shows not innocence, but an inflammable
+ imagination. And men of the world cannot understand that those
+ subjects and thoughts which to them are full of torture, can be
+ harmless, suggesting nothing evil to the pure in heart.
+
+ Here however, beware! No sentence of Scripture is more frequently in
+ the lips of persons who permit themselves much license, than the text,
+ "To the pure, all things are pure." Yes, all things natural, but not
+ artificial--scenes which pamper the tastes, which excite the senses.
+ Innocence feels healthily. To it all nature is pure. But, just as the
+ dove trembles at the approach of the hawk, and the young calf shudders
+ at the lion never seen before, so innocence shrinks instinctively from
+ what is wrong by the same divine instinct. If that which is wrong
+ seems pure, then the heart is not pure but vitiated. To the right
+ minded all that is right in the course of this world seems pure.
+ Abraham, looking forward to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah,
+ entreated that it might be averted, and afterwards acquiesced! To the
+ disordered mind "all things are out of course." This is the spirit
+ which pervades the whole of the Ecclesiastes. There were two things
+ which were perpetually suggesting themselves to the mind of Solomon;
+ the intolerable sameness of this world, and the constant desire for
+ change. And yet that same world, spread before the serene eye of God,
+ was pronounced to be all "very good."
+
+ This disordered universe is the picture of your own mind. We make a
+ wilderness by encouraging artificial wants, by creating sensitive and
+ selfish feelings; then we project everything stamped with the impress
+ of our own feelings, and we gather the whole of creation into our own
+ pained being--"the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain
+ together until now." The world you complain of as impure and wrong is
+ not God's world, but your world; the blight, the dullness, the blank,
+ are all your own. The light which is in you has become darkness, and
+ therefore the light itself is dark.
+
+ Again, to the pure, all things not only seem pure, but are really so
+ because they are made such.
+
+ 1. As regards persons. It is a marvellous thing to see how a pure and
+ innocent heart purifies all that it approaches. The most ferocious
+ natures are soothed and tamed by innocence. And so with human beings,
+ there is a delicacy so pure, that vicious men in its presence become
+ almost pure; all of purity which is in them is brought out; like
+ attaches itself to like. The pure heart becomes a centre of
+ attraction, round which similar atoms gather, and from which
+ dissimilar ones are repelled. A corrupt heart elicits in an hour all
+ that is bad in us; a spiritual one brings out and draws to itself all
+ that is best and purest. Such was Christ. He stood in the world, the
+ Light of the world, to which all sparks of light gradually gathered.
+ He stood in the presence of impurity, and men became pure. Note this
+ in the history of Zaccheus. In answer to the invitation of the Son of
+ man, he says, "Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor,
+ and if I have done wrong to any man I restore him fourfold." So also
+ the Scribe, "Well, Master, thou hast well said, there is one God, and
+ there is none other than He." To the pure Saviour, all was pure. He
+ was lifted up on high, and drew all men unto Him.
+
+ Lastly, all situations are pure to the pure. According to the world,
+ some professions are reckoned honourable, and some dishonourable. Men
+ judge according to a standard merely conventional, and not by that of
+ moral rectitude. Yet it was in truth, the men who were in these
+ situations which made them such. In the days of the Redeemer, the
+ publican's occupation was a degraded one, merely because low base men
+ filled that place. But since He was born into the world a poor,
+ labouring man, poverty is noble and dignified, and toil is honourable.
+ To the man who feels that "the king's daughter is all glorious
+ within," no outward situation can seem inglorious or impure.
+
+ There are three words which express almost the same thing, but whose
+ meaning is entirely different. These are, the gibbet, the scaffold,
+ and the cross. So far as we know, none die on the gibbet but men of
+ dishonourable and base life. The scaffold suggests to our minds the
+ noble deaths of our greatest martyrs. The cross was once a gibbet, but
+ it is now the highest name we have, because He hung on it. Christ has
+ purified and ennobled the cross. This principle runs through life. It
+ is not the situation which makes the man, but the man who makes the
+ situation. The slave may be a freeman. The monarch may be a slave.
+ Situations are noble or ignoble, as we make them.
+
+ From all this subject we learn to understand two things. Hence we
+ understand the Fall. When man fell, the world fell with him. All
+ creation received a shock. Thorns, briars, and thistles, sprang up.
+ They were there before, but to the now restless and impatient hands of
+ men they became obstacles and weeds. Death, which must ever have
+ existed as a form of dissolution, a passing from one state to another,
+ became a curse; the sting of death was sin--unchanged in itself, it
+ changed in man. A dark, heavy cloud, rested on it--the shadow of his
+ own guilty heart.
+
+ Hence too, we understand the Millennium. The Bible says that these
+ things are not to be for ever. There are glorious things to come. Just
+ as in my former illustration, the alteration of the eye called new
+ worlds into being, so now nothing more is needed than to re-create the
+ soul--the mirror on which all things are reflected. Then is realized
+ the prophecy of Isaiah, "Behold, I create all things new," "new
+ heavens and a new earth."
+
+ The conclusion of this verse proves to us why all these new creations
+ were called into being--"wherein dwelleth righteousness." To be
+ righteous makes all things new. We do not want a new world, we want
+ _new hearts_. Let the Spirit of God purify society, and to the pure
+ all things will be pure. The earth will put off the look of weariness
+ and gloom which it has worn so long, and then the glorious language of
+ the prophets will be fulfilled--"The forests will break out with
+ singing, and the desert will blossom as the rose."
+
+
+
+
+ XI.
+
+ _Preached February 9, 1851._
+
+ UNITY AND PEACE.
+
+
+   "And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also
+    ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful."--Colossians iii.
+    15.
+
+ There is something in these words that might surprise us. It might
+ surprise us to find that peace is urged on us as a duty. There can be
+ no duty except where there is a matter of obedience; and it might seem
+ to us that peace is a something over which we have no power. It is a
+ privilege to have peace, but it would appear as if there were no power
+ of control within the mind of a man able to ensure that peace for
+ itself. "Yet," says the apostle, "let the peace of God rule in your
+ hearts."
+
+ It would seem to _us_ as if peace were as far beyond our own control
+ as happiness. Unquestionably, we are not masters on our own
+ responsibility of our own happiness. Happiness is the gratification
+ of every innocent desire; but it is not given to us to ensure the
+ gratification of every desire; therefore, happiness is not a duty, and
+ it is nowhere written in the Scripture, "You must be happy." But we
+ find it written by the apostle Paul, "Be ye thankful," implying
+ therefore, that peace is a duty. The apostle says, "Let the peace of
+ God rule in your hearts;" from which we infer that peace is
+ attainable, and within the reach of our own wills; that if there be
+ not repose there is blame; if there be not peace but discord in the
+ heart, there is something wrong.
+
+ This is the more surprising when we remember the circumstances under
+ which these words were written. They were written from Rome, where the
+ apostle lay in prison, daily and hourly expecting a violent death.
+ They were written in days of persecution, when false doctrines were
+ rife, and religious animosities fierce; they were written in an
+ epistle abounding with the most earnest and eager controversy, whereby
+ it is therefore implied, that according to the conception of the
+ Apostle Paul, it is possible for a Christian to live at the very point
+ of death, and in the very midst of danger--that it is possible for him
+ to be breathing the atmosphere of religious controversy--it is
+ possible for him to be surrounded by bitterness, and even take up the
+ pen of controversy himself--and yet his soul shall not lose its own
+ deep peace, nor the power of the infinite repose and rest of God.
+ Joined with the apostle's command to be at peace, we find another
+ doctrine, the doctrine of the unity of the Church of Christ. "To the
+ which ye are called in one body," in order that ye may be at peace; in
+ other words, the unity of the Church of Christ is the basis on which,
+ and on which alone, can be built the possibility of the inward peace
+ of individuals.
+
+
+ And thus, my Christian brethren, our subject divides itself into these
+ two simple branches: in the first place, the unity of the Church of
+ Christ; in the second place, the inward peace of the members of that
+ Church.
+
+
+ The first subject then, which we have to consider, is the Unity of the
+ Church of Christ.
+
+ And the first thing we have to do is both clearly to define and
+ understand the meaning of that word "unity." I distinguish the unity
+ of comprehensiveness from the unity of mere singularity. The word one,
+ as oneness, is an ambiguous word. There is a oneness belonging to the
+ army as well as to every soldier in the army. The army is one, and
+ that is the oneness of unity; the soldier is one, but that is the
+ oneness of the unit. There is a difference between the oneness of a
+ body and the oneness of a member of that body. The body is many, and a
+ unity of manifold comprehensiveness. An arm or a member of a body is
+ one, but that is the unity of singularity. Without unity my Christian
+ brethren, peace must be impossible. There can be no peace in the one
+ single soldier of an army. You do not speak of the harmony of one
+ member of a body. There is peace in an army, or in a kingdom joined
+ with other kingdoms; there is harmony in a member united with other
+ members. There is no peace in a unit, there is no possibility of the
+ harmony of that which is but one in itself. In order to have peace you
+ must have a higher unity, and therein consists the unity of God's own
+ Being. The unity of God is the basis of the peace of God--meaning by
+ the unity of God the comprehensive manifoldness of God, and not merely
+ the singularity in the number of God's Being. When the Unitarian
+ speaks of God as one, he means simply singularity of number. We mean
+ that He is of manifold comprehensiveness--that there is unity between
+ His various powers. Amongst the personalities or powers of His Being
+ there is no discord, but perfect harmony, entire union; and that
+ brethren, is repose, the blessedness of infinite rest, that belongs to
+ the unity of God--"I and my Father are one."
+
+ The second thing which we observe respecting this unity, is that it
+ subsists between things not similar or alike, but things dissimilar or
+ unlike. There is no unity in the separate atoms of a sand-pit; they
+ are things similar; there is an aggregate or collection of them. Even
+ if they be hardened in a mass they are not one, they do not form a
+ unity: they are simply a mass. There is no unity in a flock of sheep:
+ it is simply a repetition of a number of things similar to each other.
+ If you strike off from a thousand five hundred, or if you strike off
+ nine hundred, there is nothing lost of unity, because there never was
+ unity. A flock of one thousand or a flock of five is just as much a
+ flock as any other number.
+
+ On the other hand, let us turn to the unity of peace which the apostle
+ speaks of, and we find it is something different; it is made up of
+ dissimilar members, without which dissimilarity there could be no
+ unity. Each is imperfect in itself, each supplying what it has in
+ itself to the deficiencies and wants of the other members. So, if you
+ strike off from this body any one member, if you cut off an arm, or
+ tear out an eye, instantly the unity is destroyed; you have no longer
+ an entire and perfect body, there is nothing but a remnant of the
+ whole, a part, a portion; no unity whatever.
+
+ This will help us to understand the unity of the Church of Christ. If
+ the ages and the centuries of the Church of Christ, if the different
+ Churches whereof it was composed, if the different members of each
+ Church, were similar--one in this, that they all held the same views,
+ all spoke the same words, all viewed truth from the same side, they
+ would have no unity; but would simply be an aggregate of atoms, the
+ sand-pit over again--units, multiplied it may be to infinity, but you
+ would have no real unity, and therefore, no peace. No unity,--for
+ wherein consists the unity of the Church of Christ? The unity of ages,
+ brethren, consists it in this--that every age is merely the repetition
+ of another age, and that which is held in one is held in another?
+ Precisely in the same way, that is _not_ the unity of the ages of the
+ Christian Church.
+
+ Every century and every age has held a different truth, has put forth
+ different fragments of the truth. In early ages for example, by
+ martyrdom was proclaimed the eternal sanctity of truth, rather than
+ give up which a man must lose his life.... In our own age it is quite
+ plain those are not the themes which engage us, or the truths which we
+ put in force now. This age, by its revolutions, its socialisms,
+ proclaims another truth--the brotherhood of the Church of Christ; so
+ that the unity of ages subsists on the same principle as that of the
+ unity of the human body: and just as every separate ray--the violet,
+ the blue, and the orange--make up the white ray, so these manifold
+ fragments of truth blended together make up the one entire and perfect
+ white ray of Truth. And with regard to individuals, taking the case of
+ the Reformation, it was given to one Church to proclaim that salvation
+ is a thing received, and not local; to another to proclaim
+ justification by faith; to another the sovereignty of God; to another
+ the supremacy of the Scriptures; to another the right of private
+ judgment, the duty of the individual conscience. Unite these all, and
+ then you have the Reformation one--one in spite of manifoldness; those
+ very varieties by which they have approached this proving them to be
+ one. Disjoint them and then you have some miserable sect--Calvinism,
+ or Unitarianism; the unity has dispersed. And so again with the unity
+ of the Churches. Whereby would we produce unity? Would we force on
+ other Churches our Anglicanism? Would we have our thirty-nine
+ articles, our creeds, our prayers, our rules and regulations, accepted
+ by every Church throughout the world? If that were unity, then in
+ consistency you are bound to demand that in God's world there shall be
+ but one colour instead of the manifold harmony and accordance of which
+ this universe is full; that there should be but one chaunted note--the
+ one which we conceive most beautiful. This is not the unity of the
+ Church of God. The various Churches advance different doctrines and
+ truths. The Church of Germany something different from those of the
+ Church of England. The Church of Rome, even in its idolatry, proclaims
+ truths which we would be glad to seize. By the worship of the Virgin,
+ the purity of women; by the rigour of ecclesiastical ordinances, the
+ sanctity and permanence of eternal order; by the very priesthood
+ itself, the necessity of the guidance of man by man. Nay, even the
+ dissenting bodies themselves--mere atoms of aggregates as they
+ are--stand forward and proclaim at least this truth, the separateness
+ of the individual conscience, the right of independence.
+
+ Peace subsists not between things exactly alike. We do not speak of
+ peace in a single country. We say peace subsists between different
+ countries where war _might_ be. There can be no _peace_ between two
+ men who agree in everything; peace subsists between those who differ.
+ There is no peace between Baptist and Baptist; so far as they are
+ Baptists, there is perfect accordance and agreement. There may be
+ peace between you and the Romanist, the Jew, or the Dissenter, because
+ there are angles of sharpness which might come into collision if they
+ were not subdued and softened by the power of love. It was given to
+ the Apostle Paul to discern that this was the ground of unity. In the
+ Church of Christ he saw men with different views, and he said So far
+ from that variety destroying unity, it was the only ground of unity.
+ There are many doctrines, all of them different, but let those
+ varieties be blended together--in other words, let there be the peace
+ of love, and then you will have unity.
+
+ Once more this unity, whereof the apostle speaks, consists in
+ submission to one single influence or spirit. Wherein consists the
+ unity of the body? Consists it not in this,--that there is one life
+ uniting, making all the separate members one? Take away the life, and
+ the members fall to pieces: they are no longer one; decomposition
+ begins, and every element separates, no longer having any principle of
+ cohesion or union with the rest.
+
+ There is not one of us who, at some time or other, has not been struck
+ with the power there is in a single living influence. Have we never
+ for instance, felt the power wherewith the orator unites and holds
+ together a thousand men as if they were but one; with flashing eyes
+ and throbbing hearts, all attentive to his words, and by the
+ difference of their attitudes, by the variety of the expressions of
+ their countenances testifying to the unity of that single living
+ feeling with which he had inspired them? Whether it be indignation,
+ whether it be compassion, or whether it be enthusiasm, that one living
+ influence made the thousand for the time, one. Have we not heard how,
+ even in this century in which we live, the various and conflicting
+ feelings of the people of this country were concentrated into one,
+ when the threat of foreign invasion had fused down and broken the
+ edges of conflict and variance, and from shore to shore was heard one
+ cry of terrible defiance, and the different classes and orders of this
+ manifold and mighty England were as one? Have we not heard how the
+ mighty winds hold together, as if one, the various atoms of the
+ desert, so that they rush like a living thing, across the wilderness?
+ And this, brethren, is the unity of the Church of Christ, the
+ subjection to the one uniting spirit of its God.
+
+ It will be said, in reply to this, "Why this is mere enthusiasm. It
+ may be very beautiful in theory, but it is impossible in practice. It
+ is mere enthusiasm to believe, that while all these varieties of
+ conflicting opinion remain, we can have unity; it is mere enthusiasm
+ to think that so long as men's minds reckon on a thing like unity,
+ there can be a thing like oneness." And our reply is, Give us the
+ Spirit of God, and we shall be one. You cannot produce a unity by all
+ the rigour of your ecclesiastical discipline. You cannot produce a
+ unity by consenting in some form of expression such as this, "Let us
+ agree to differ." You cannot produce a unity by Parliamentary
+ regulations or enactments, bidding back the waves of what is called
+ aggression. Give us the living Spirit of God, and we shall be one.
+
+ Once on this earth was exhibited, as it were, a specimen of perfect
+ anticipation of such an unity, when the "rushing mighty wind" of
+ Pentecost came down in the tongues of fire and sat on every man; when
+ the Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in
+ Mesopotamia, the "Cretes and Arabians," the Jew and the Gentile, each
+ speaking one language, yet blended and fused into one unity by
+ enthusiastic love, heard one another speak as it were, in one
+ language, the manifold works of God; when the spirit of giving was
+ substituted for the spirit of mere rivalry and competition, and no man
+ said the things he had were his own, but all shared in common. Let
+ that spirit come again, as come it will, and come it must; and then,
+ beneath the influences of a mightier love, we shall have a nobler and
+ a more real unity.
+
+
+ We pass on now, in the second place, to consider the _individual
+ peace_ resulting from this unity. As we have endeavoured to explain
+ what is meant by unity, so now, let us endeavour to understand what is
+ meant by peace. Peace then, is the opposite of passion, and of labour,
+ toil, and effort. Peace is that state in which there are no desires
+ madly demanding an impossible gratification; that state in which there
+ is no misery, no remorse, no sting. And there are but three things
+ which can break that peace. The first is discord between the mind of
+ man and the lot which he is called on to inherit; the second is
+ discord between the affections and powers of the soul; and the third
+ is doubt of the rectitude, and justice, and love, wherewith this world
+ is ordered. But where these things exist not, where a man is contented
+ with his lot, where the flesh is subdued to the spirit, and where he
+ believes and feels with all his heart that all is right, there is
+ peace, and to this says the apostle, "ye are called,"--the grand,
+ peculiar call of Christianity,--the call, "Come unto Me, all ye that
+ labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
+
+ This was the dying bequest of Christ: "Peace I leave with you, my
+ peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth give I unto you:" and
+ therein lies one of the greatest truths of the blessed and eternal
+ character of Christianity, that it applies to, and satisfies the very
+ deepest want and craving of our nature. The deepest want of man is not
+ a desire for happiness, but a craving for peace; not a wish for the
+ gratification of every desire, but a craving for the repose of
+ acquiescence in the will of God; and it is this which Christianity
+ promises. Christianity does not promise happiness, but it does promise
+ peace. "In the world ye shall have tribulation," saith our Master,
+ "but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." Now, let us look
+ more closely, into this peace.
+
+ The first thing we see respecting it is, that it is called God's
+ peace. God is rest: the infinite nature of God is infinite repose. The
+ "_I am_" of God is contrasted with the _I am become_ of all other
+ things. Everything else is in a state of _becoming_, God is in a state
+ of _Being_. The acorn has become the plant, and the plant has become
+ the oak. The child has become the man, and the man has become good, or
+ wise, or whatever else it may be. God ever _is_; and I pray you once
+ more to observe, that this peace of God, this eternal rest in the
+ Almighty Being, arises out of His unity. Not because He is an unit,
+ but because He is an unity. There is no discord between the powers and
+ attributes of the mind of God; there is no discord between His justice
+ and His love; there is no discord demanding some miserable expedient
+ to unite them together, such as some theologians imagined when they
+ described the sacrifice and atonement of our Redeemer by saying, it is
+ the clever expedient whereby God reconciles His justice with His love.
+ God's justice and love are one. Infinite justice must be infinite
+ love. Justice is but another sign of love. The infinite rest of the
+ "_I am_" of God arises out of the harmony of His attributes.
+
+ The next thing we observe respecting this divine peace which has come
+ down to man on earth is, that it is a _living peace_. Brethren, let us
+ distinguish. There are several things called peace which are by no
+ means divine or Godlike peace. There is peace, for example, in the man
+ who lives for and enjoys self, with no nobler aspiration goading him
+ on to make him feel the rest of God; that is peace, but that is merely
+ the peace of toil. There is rest on the surface of the caverned lake,
+ which no wind can stir; but that is the peace of stagnation. There is
+ peace amongst the stones which have fallen and rolled down the
+ mountain's side, and lie there quietly at rest; but that is the peace
+ of inanity. There is peace in the hearts of enemies who lie together,
+ side by side, in the same trench of the battle-field, the animosities
+ of their souls silenced at length, and their hands no longer clenched
+ in deadly enmity against each other; but that is the peace of death.
+ If our peace be but the peace of the sensualist satisfying pleasure,
+ if it be but the peace of mental torpor and inaction, the peace of
+ apathy, or the peace of the soul dead in trespasses and sins, we may
+ whisper to ourselves, "Peace, peace," but there will be no peace;
+ _there_ is not the peace of unity nor the peace of God, for the peace
+ of God is the living peace of love.
+
+ The next thing we observe respecting this peace is, that it is the
+ manifestation of power--it is the peace which comes from an inward
+ power: "Let the peace of God," says the Apostle, "rule within your
+ hearts." For it is a power, the manifestation of strength. There is no
+ peace except there is the possibility of the opposite of peace
+ although now restrained and controlled. You do not speak of the peace
+ of a grain of sand, because it cannot be otherwise than merely
+ insignificant, and at rest. You do not speak of the peace of a mere
+ pond; you speak of the peace of the sea, because there is the opposite
+ of peace implied, there is power and strength. And this brethren, is
+ the real character of the peace in the mind and soul of man. Oh! we
+ make a great mistake when we say there is strength in passion, in the
+ exhibition of emotion. Passion, and emotion, and all those outward
+ manifestations, prove, not strength, but weakness. If the passions of
+ a man are strong, it proves the man himself is weak, if he cannot
+ restrain or control his passions. The real strength and majesty of the
+ soul of man is calmness, the manifestation of strength; "the peace of
+ God" ruling; the word of Christ saying to the inward storms "Peace!"
+ and there is "a great calm."
+
+ Lastly, the peace of which the apostle speaks is the peace that is
+ received--the peace of reception. You will observe, throughout this
+ passage the apostle speaks of a something received, and not done: "Let
+ the peace of God rule in your hearts." It is throughout receptive, but
+ by no means inactive. And according to this, there are two kinds of
+ peace; the peace of obedience--"Let the peace of God rule" you--and
+ there is the peace of gratefulness--"Be ye thankful." Very great,
+ brethren, is the peace of obedience: when a man has his lot fixed, and
+ his mind made up, and he sees his destiny before him, and quietly
+ acquiesces in it; his spirit is at rest. Great and deep is the peace
+ of the soldier to whom has been assigned even an untenable position,
+ with the command, "Keep that, even if you die," and he obediently
+ remains to die.
+
+ Great was the peace of Elisha--very, very calm are those words by
+ which he expressed his acquiescence in the divine will. "Knowest
+ thou," said the troubled, excited, and restless men around
+ him--"Knowest thou that the Lord will take away thy master from thy
+ head to-day?" He answered, "Yea, I know it; hold ye your peace." Then
+ there is the other peace, it is the peace of gratefulness: "Be ye
+ thankful." It is that peace which the Israelites had when these words
+ were spoken to them on the shores of the Red Sea, while the bodies of
+ their enemies floated past them, destroyed, but not by them: "Stand
+ still and see the salvation of the Lord."
+
+ And here brethren, is another mistake of ours: we look on salvation as
+ a thing to be done, and not received. In God's salvation we can do but
+ little, but there is a great deal to be received. We are here, not
+ merely to act, but to be acted upon. "Let the peace of God rule in
+ your hearts;" there is a peace that will enter there, if you do not
+ thwart it; there is a Spirit that will take possession of your soul,
+ provided that you do not quench it. In this world we are recipients,
+ not creators. In obedience and in gratefulness, and the infinite peace
+ of God in the soul of man, is alone to be found deep calm repose.
+
+
+
+
+ XII.
+
+ _Preached January 4, 1852._
+
+ THE CHRISTIAN AIM AND MOTIVE.
+
+   "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven
+    is perfect."--Matthew v. 48.
+
+
+ There are two erroneous views held respecting the character of the
+ Sermon on the Mount. The first may be called an error of
+ worldly-minded men, the other an error of mistaken religionists.
+ Worldly-minded men--men that is, in whom the devotional feeling is but
+ feeble--are accustomed to look upon morality as the whole of religion;
+ and they suppose that the Sermon on the Mount was designed only to
+ explain and enforce correct principles of morality. It tells of human
+ duties and human proprieties, and an attention to these, they
+ maintain, is the only religion which is required by it. Strange my
+ Christian brethren, that men, whose lives are least remarkable for
+ superhuman excellence, should be the very men to refer most frequently
+ to those sublime comments on Christian principle, and should so
+ confidently conclude from thence, that themselves are right and all
+ others are wrong. Yet so it is.
+
+ The other is an error of mistaken religionists. They sometimes regard
+ the Sermon on the Mount as if it were a collection of moral precepts,
+ and consequently, strictly speaking, not Christianity at all. To them
+ it seems as if the chief value, the chief intention of the discourse,
+ was to show the breadth and spirituality of the requirements of the
+ law of Moses--its chief religious significance, to show the utter
+ impossibility of fulfilling the law, and thus to lead to the necessary
+ inference that justification must be by faith alone. And so they would
+ not scruple to assert that, in the highest sense of that term, it is
+ not Christianity at all, but only preparatory to it--a kind of
+ spiritual Judaism; and that the higher and more developed principles
+ of Christianity are to be found in the writings of the apostles.
+ Before we proceed further, we would remark here that it seems
+ extremely startling to say that He who came to this world expressly to
+ preach the Gospel, should, in the most elaborate of all His
+ discourses, omit to do so: it is indeed something more than startling,
+ it is absolutely revolting to suppose that the letters of those who
+ spoke _of_ Christ, should contain a more perfectly-developed, a freer
+ and fuller Christianity than is to be found in Christ's own words.
+
+ Now you will observe that these two parties, so opposed to each other
+ in their general religious views, are agreed in this--that the Sermon
+ on the Mount is nothing but morality. The man of the world says--"It
+ is morality only, and that is the whole of religion." The mistaken
+ religionist says--"It is morality only, not the entire essence of
+ Christianity." In opposition to both these views, we maintain that the
+ Sermon on the Mount contains the sum and substance of
+ Christianity--the very chief matter of the gospel of our Redeemer.
+
+ It is not, you will observe, a pure and spiritualized Judaism; it is
+ contrasted with Judaism again and again by Him who spoke it. Quoting
+ the words of Moses, he affirmed, "So was it spoken by them of old
+ time, but _I say unto you_--" For example, "Thou shalt not forswear
+ thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths." That is
+ Judaism. "But I say unto you swear not at all, but let your yea be
+ yea, and your nay nay." That is Christianity. And that which is the
+ essential peculiarity of this Christianity lies in these two things.
+ First of all, that the morality which it teaches is _disinterested_
+ goodness--goodness not for the sake of the blessing that follows it,
+ but for its own sake, and because it is right. "Love your enemies," is
+ the Gospel precept. Why?--Because if you love them you shall be
+ blessed; and if you do not cursed? No; but "Love your enemies, bless
+ them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them
+ which despitefully use you and persecute you, that ye may be the
+ children of"--that is, may be like--"your Father which is in Heaven."
+ The second essential peculiarity of Christianity--and this, too, is an
+ essential peculiarity of this Sermon--is, that it teaches and enforces
+ the law of self-sacrifice. "If thy right eye offend thee pluck it out;
+ if thy right hand offend thee cut it off." This, brethren, is the law
+ of self-sacrifice--the very law and spirit of the blessed cross of
+ Christ.
+
+ How deeply and essentially Christian, then, this Sermon on the Mount
+ is, we shall understand if we are enabled in any measure to reach the
+ meaning and spirit of the single passage which I have taken as my
+ text. It tells two things--the Christian aim and the Christian motive.
+
+ 1st. The Christian aim--perfection. 2nd. The Christian
+ motive--because it is right and Godlike to be perfect.
+
+ I. The Christian aim is this--to be perfect. "Be ye therefore
+ perfect." Now distinguish this, I pray you, from mere worldly
+ morality. It is not conformity to a creed that is here required, but
+ aspiration after a _state_. It is not demanded of us to perform a
+ number of duties, but to yield obedience to a certain spiritual law.
+ But let us endeavour to explain this more fully. What is the meaning
+ of this expression, "Be ye perfect?" Why is it that in this discourse,
+ instead of being commanded to perform religious duties, we are
+ commanded to think of being like God? Will not that inflame our pride,
+ and increase our natural vainglory? Now the nature and possibility of
+ human perfection, what it is and how it is possible, are both
+ contained in one single expression in the text. "Even as your Father
+ which is in Heaven is perfect." The relationship between father and
+ son implies consanguinity, likeness, similarity of character and
+ nature. God _made_ the insect, the stone, the lily; but God is not the
+ Father of the caterpillar, the lily, or the stone.
+
+ When therefore, God is said to be our Father, something more is
+ implied in this than that God created man. And so when the Son of Man
+ came proclaiming the fact that we are the children of God, it was in
+ the truest sense a revelation. He told us that the nature of God
+ resembles the nature of man, that love in God is not a mere figure of
+ speech, but means the same thing as love in us, and that divine anger
+ is the same thing as human anger divested of its emotions and
+ imperfections. When we are commanded to be like God, it implies that
+ God has that nature of which we have already the germs. And this has
+ been taught by the incarnation of the Redeemer. Things absolutely
+ dissimilar in their nature cannot mingle. Water cannot coalesce with
+ fire--water cannot mix with oil. If, then, Humanity and Divinity were
+ united in the person of the Redeemer, it follows that there must be
+ something kindred between the two, or else the incarnation had been
+ impossible. So that the incarnation is the realization of man's
+ perfection.
+
+ But let us examine more deeply this assertion, that _our_ nature is
+ kindred with that of God--for if man has not a nature kindred to
+ God's, then a demand such as that, "Be ye the children of"--that is,
+ like--"God," is but a mockery of man. We say then, in the first place,
+ that in the truest sense of the word man can be a creator. The beaver
+ _makes_ its hole, the bee _makes_ its cell; man alone has the power of
+ _creating_. The mason _makes_, the architect _creates_. In the same
+ sense that we say God created the universe, we say that man is also a
+ creator. The creation of the universe was the Eternal Thought taking
+ reality. And thought taking expression is also a creation. Whenever
+ therefore, there is a living thought shaping itself in word or in
+ stone, there is there a creation. And therefore it is, that the
+ simplest effort of what we call genius is prized infinitely more than
+ the most elaborate performances which are done by mere workmanship,
+ and for this reason: that the one is produced by an effort of power
+ which we share with the beaver and the bee, that of _making_, and the
+ other by a faculty and power which man alone shares with God.
+
+ Here however, you will observe another difficulty. It will be said at
+ once--there is something in this comparison of man with God which
+ looks like blasphemy, because one is finite and the other
+ infinite--man is bounded, God boundless; and to speak of resemblance
+ and kindred between these two, is to speak of resemblance and kindred
+ between two natures essentially different. But this is precisely the
+ argument which is brought by the Socinians against the doctrine of
+ the incarnation; and we are bound to add that the Socinian argument is
+ right, unless there be the similarity of which we have been speaking.
+ Unless there be something in man's nature which truly and properly
+ partakes of the divine nature, there could be no incarnation, and the
+ demand for perfection would be a mockery and an impossibility.
+
+ Let us then endeavour to find out the evidences of this infinitude in
+ the nature of man. First of all we find it in this--that the desires
+ of man are for something boundless and unattainable. Thus speaks our
+ Lord--"What shall it profit a man if he should gain the whole world
+ and lose his own soul?" Every schoolboy has heard the story of the
+ youthful prince who enumerated one by one the countries he meant to
+ conquer year after year; and when the enumeration was completed, was
+ asked what he meant to do when all those victories were achieved, and
+ he replied--to sit down, to be happy, to take his rest. But then came
+ the ready rejoinder--Why not do so now? But it is not every schoolboy
+ who has paused to consider the folly of the question. He who asked his
+ son why he did not at once take the rest which it was his ultimate
+ purpose to enjoy, knew not the immensity and nobility of the human
+ soul. He could not _then_ take his rest and be happy. As long as one
+ realm remained unconquered, so long rest was impossible; he would weep
+ for fresh worlds to conquer. And thus, that which was spoken by our
+ Lord of one earthly gratification, is true of all--"Whosoever drinketh
+ of this water shall thirst again." The boundless, endless, infinite
+ void in the soul of man can be satisfied with nothing but God.
+ Satisfaction lies not in _having_, but in _being_. There is no
+ satisfaction even in _doing_. Man cannot be satisfied with his own
+ performances. When the righteous young ruler came to Christ, and
+ declared that in reference to the life gone by, he had kept all the
+ commandments and fulfilled all the duties required by the Law, still
+ came the question--"What lack I yet?"
+
+ The Scribes and Pharisees were the strictest observers of the
+ ceremonies of the Jewish religion, "touching the righteousness which
+ is by the Law" they were blameless, but yet they wanted something more
+ than that, and they were found on the brink of Jordan imploring the
+ baptism of John, seeking after a new and higher state than they had
+ yet attained to,--a significant proof that man cannot be satisfied
+ with his own works. And again, there is not one of us who has ever
+ been satisfied with his own performances. There is no man whose doings
+ are worth anything, who has not felt that he has not yet done that
+ which he feels himself able to do. While he was doing it, he was kept
+ up by the spirit of hope; but when done the thing seemed to him
+ worthless. And therefore it is that the author cannot read his own
+ book again, nor the sculptor look with pleasure upon his finished
+ work. With respect to one of the greatest of all modern sculptors, we
+ are told that he longed for the termination of his earthly career,
+ for this reason--that he had been satisfied with his own performance:
+ satisfied for the first time in his life. And this expression of his
+ satisfaction was but equivalent to saying that he had reached the
+ goal, beyond which there could be no progress. This impossibility of
+ being satisfied with his own performances is one of the strongest
+ proofs of our immortality--a proof of that perfection towards which we
+ shall for ever tend, but which we can never attain.
+
+ A second trace of this infinitude in man's nature we find in the
+ infinite capacities of the soul. This is true intellectually and
+ morally. With reference to our intellectual capacities, it would
+ perhaps be more strictly correct to say that they are indefinite,
+ rather than infinite; that is we can affix to them no limit. For there
+ is no man, however low his intellectual powers may be, who has not at
+ one time or another felt a rush of thought, a glow of inspiration,
+ which seemed to make all things possible, as if it were merely the
+ effect of some imperfect organization which stood in the way of his
+ doing whatever he desired to do. With respect to our moral and
+ spiritual capacities, we remark that they are not only indefinite, but
+ absolutely infinite. Let that man answer who has ever truly and
+ heartily loved another. That man knows what it is to partake of the
+ infinitude of God. Literally, in the emphatic language of the Apostle
+ John, he has felt his immortality--"God in him and he in God." For
+ that moment, infinitude was to him not a name, but a reality. He
+ entered into the infinite of time and space, which is not measured by
+ days, or months, or years, but is alike boundless and eternal.
+
+ Again, we perceive a third trace of this infinitude in man, in the
+ power which he possesses of giving up self. In this, perhaps more than
+ in anything else, man may claim kindred with God. Nor is this power
+ confined to the best of mankind, but is possessed, to some extent at
+ least, by all. There is no man, how low soever he may be, who has not
+ one or two causes or secrets, which no earthly consideration would
+ induce him to betray. There is no man who does not feel towards one or
+ two at least, in this world, a devotion which all the bribes of the
+ universe would not be able to shake. We have heard the story of that
+ degraded criminal who, when sentence of death was passed upon him,
+ turned to his accomplice in guilt, in whose favour a verdict of
+ acquittal was brought in, and in glorious self-forgetfulness
+ exclaimed--"Thank God, _you_ are saved!" The savage and barbarous
+ Indian whose life has been one unbroken series of cruelty and crime,
+ will submit to a slow, lingering, torturing death, rather than betray
+ his country. Now, what shall we say to these things? Do they not tell
+ of an indestructible something in the nature of man, of which the
+ origin is divine?--the remains of a majesty which, though it may be
+ sullied, can never be entirely lost?
+
+ Before passing on let us observe, that were it not for this conviction
+ of the divine origin, and consequent perfectibility of our nature,
+ the very thought of God would be painful to us. God is so great, so
+ glorious, that the mind is overwhelmed by, and shrinks from, the
+ contemplation of His excellence, unless there comes the tender,
+ ennobling thought that we are the children of God, who are to become
+ like our Father in Heaven, whose blessed career it is to go on in an
+ advance of love and duty towards Him, until we love Him as we are
+ loved, and know Him almost as we are known.
+
+
+ II. We pass on, in the second place, to consider the Christian
+ motive--"Even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect." Brethren,
+ worldly prudence, miscalled morality, says--"Be honest; you will find
+ your gain in being so. Do right; you will be the better for it--even
+ in this world you will not lose by it." The mistaken religionist only
+ magnifies this on a large scale. "Your duty," he says, "is to save
+ your soul. Give up this world to have the next. Lose _here_, that you
+ may gain _hereafter_." Now this is but prudence after all--it is but
+ magnified selfishness, carried on into eternity,--none the more noble
+ for being _eternal_ selfishness. In opposition to all such sentiments
+ as these, thus speaks the Gospel--"Be ye perfect." Why? "Because your
+ Father which is in Heaven is perfect." Do right, because it is Godlike
+ and right so to do. Here however, let us be understood. We do not mean
+ to say that the Gospel ignores altogether the personal results of
+ doing right. This would be unnatural--because God has linked together
+ well-doing and blessedness. But we do say that this blessedness is not
+ the motive which the Gospel gives us. It is true the Gospel
+ says--"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth; blessed
+ are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy; blessed are they which
+ do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled."
+ But when these are made our motives--when we become meek in order that
+ we may inherit here--then the promised enjoyment will not come. If we
+ are merciful merely that we may ourselves obtain mercy, we shall not
+ have that in-dwelling love of God which is the result and token of His
+ forgiveness. Such was the law and such the example of our Lord and
+ Master.
+
+ True it is that in the prosecution of the great work of redemption He
+ had "respect to the recompense of reward." True it is He was
+ conscious--how could He but be conscious--that when His work was
+ completed He should be "glorified with that glory which He had with
+ the Father before the world began;" but we deny that this was the
+ _motive_ which induced Him to undertake that work; and that man has a
+ very mistaken idea of the character of the Redeemer, and understands
+ but little of His spirit, who has so mean an opinion of Him as to
+ suppose that it was any consideration of personal happiness and
+ blessedness which led the Son of God to die. "For this end was He
+ born, and for this end came He into the world to bear witness unto the
+ Truth," and "to finish the work which was given Him to do."
+
+ If we were asked, Can you select one text in which more than in any
+ other this unselfish, disinterested feature comes forth, it should be
+ this, "Love ye your enemies, do good and lend, hoping for nothing
+ again." This is the true spirit of Christianity--doing right
+ disinterestedly, not from the hope of any personal advantage or
+ reward, either temporal or spiritual, but entirely forgetting self,
+ "hoping for nothing again." When that glorious philanthropist, whose
+ whole life had been spent in procuring the abolition of the
+ slave-trade, was demanded of by some systematic theologian, whether in
+ his ardour in this great cause he had not been neglecting his personal
+ prospects, and endangering his own soul, this was his magnanimous
+ reply--one of those which show the light of truth breaking through
+ like an inspiration. He said, "I did not think about my own soul, I
+ had no time to think about myself, I had forgotten all about my soul."
+ The Christian is not concerned about his own happiness; he has not
+ time to consider himself; he has not time to put that selfish question
+ which the disciples put to their Lord, when they were but half
+ baptized with His spirit, "Lo, we have left all and followed Thee,
+ what shall we have therefore?"
+
+ In conclusion we observe, there are two things which are to be learned
+ from this passage. The first is this, that happiness is not our end
+ and aim. It has been said, and has since been repeated as frequently
+ as if it were an indisputable axiom, that "Happiness is our being's
+ end and aim." Brethren, happiness is _not_ our being's end and aim.
+ The Christian's aim is perfection, not happiness, and every one of the
+ sons of God must have something of that spirit which marked their
+ Master; that holy sadness, that peculiar unrest, that high and lofty
+ melancholy which belongs to a spirit which strives after heights to
+ which it can never attain.
+
+ The second thing we have to learn is this, that on this earth there
+ can be no rest for man. By rest we mean the attainment of a state
+ beyond which there can be no change. Politically, morally,
+ spiritually, there can be no rest for man here. In one country alone
+ has that system been fully carried out which, conservative of the
+ past, excludes all desire of progress and improvement for the future:
+ but it is not to China that we should look for the perfection of human
+ society. There is one ecclesiastical system which carries out the same
+ spirit, looking rather to the Church of the past than to the Church of
+ the future; but it is not in the Romish that we shall find the model
+ of a Christian Church. In Paradise it may have been right to be at
+ rest, to desire no change, but ever since the Fall every system that
+ tends to check the onward progress of mankind is fatally, radically,
+ curelessly wrong. The motto on every Christian banner is "Forwards."
+ There is no resting in the present, no satisfaction in the past.
+
+ The last thing we learn from this is the impossibility of obtaining
+ that of which some men speak--the satisfaction of a good conscience.
+ Some men write and speak as if the difference between the Christian
+ and the worldly man was this, that in the one conscience is a
+ self-reproaching hell, and in the other a self-congratulating heaven.
+ Oh, brethren, is this the fact? Think you that the Christian goes home
+ at night counting up the noble deeds done during the day, saying to
+ himself, "Well done, good and faithful servant?" Brethren, that habit
+ of looking forwards to the future prevents all pride and
+ self-righteousness, and makes our best and only rest and satisfaction
+ to consist in contemplating the future which is bringing us nearer and
+ nearer home. Our motto, therefore, must be that striking one of the
+ Apostle Paul, "Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching
+ forth to those things which are before, I press towards the mark for
+ the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."
+
+
+
+
+ XIII.
+
+ _Preached January 4, 1852._
+
+ CHRISTIAN CASUISTRY.
+
+
+   "Is any man called being circumcised? let him not become
+    uncircumcised. Is any called in uncircumcision? let him not be
+    circumcised. Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is
+    nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God. Let every man
+    abide in the same calling wherein he was called. Art thou called
+    being a servant? care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free
+    use it rather. For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant,
+    is the Lord's freeman; likewise also he that is called being free,
+    is Christ's servant. Ye are bought with a price; be not ye the
+    servants of men. Brethren, let every man wherein he is called
+    therein abide with God."--1 Corinthians, vii. 18-24.
+
+ The whole of these seven chapters of the First Epistle of the Apostle
+ Paul to the Corinthians, is occupied with questions of Christian
+ casuistry. In the application of the principles of Christianity to the
+ varying circumstances of life, innumerable difficulties had arisen,
+ and the Corinthians upon these difficulties had put certain questions
+ to the Apostle Paul. This seventh chapter contains the apostle's
+ answer to many of these questions. There are however, two great
+ divisions into which these answers generally fall. St. Paul makes a
+ distinction between those things which he speaks by commandment and
+ those which he speaks only by permission; there is a distinction
+ between what he says as from the Lord, and what only from himself;
+ between that which he speaks to them as being taught of God, and that
+ which he speaks only as a servant, "called of the Lord and faithful."
+
+ It is manifestly plain that there are many questions in which _right_
+ and _wrong_ are not variable, but indissoluble and fixed; while there
+ are questions, on the other hand, where these terms are not fixed, but
+ variable, fluctuating, altering, dependent upon circumstances. As, for
+ instance, those in which the apostle teaches in the present chapter
+ the several duties and advantages of marriage and celibacy. There may
+ be circumstances in which it is the duty of a Christian man to be
+ married, there are others in which it may be his duty to remain
+ unmarried. For instance, in the case of a missionary it may be right
+ to be married rather than unmarried; on the other hand, in the case of
+ a pauper, not having the wherewithal to bring up and maintain a
+ family, it may be proper to remain unmarried. You will observe
+ however, that no fixed law can be laid down upon this subject. We
+ cannot say marriage is a Christian duty, nor celibacy is a Christian
+ duty; nor that it is in every case the duty of a missionary to be
+ married, or of a pauper to be unmarried. All these things must vary
+ according to circumstances, and the duty must be stated not
+ universally, but with reference to those circumstances.
+
+ These therefore, are questions of casuistry, which depend upon the
+ particular _case_: from which word the term "casuistry" is derived. On
+ these points the apostle speaks not by commandment, but by permission;
+ not as speaking by God's command, but as having the Spirit of God. A
+ distinction has sometimes been drawn with reference to this chapter
+ between that which the apostle speaks by inspiration, and what he
+ speaks as a man uninspired. The distinction, however, is an altogether
+ false one, and beside the question. For the real distinction is not
+ between inspired and uninspired, but between a _decision_ in matters
+ of Christian duty, and _advice_ in matters of Christian prudence. It
+ is abundantly evident that God cannot give advice; He can only issue a
+ command. God cannot say, "It is better to do this;" His perfections
+ demand something absolute: "Thou shalt _do_ this; thou shalt _not_ do
+ this." Whensoever therefore, we come to advice there is introduced
+ the human element rather than the divine. In all such cases therefore,
+ as are dependent upon circumstances the apostle speaks not as
+ inspired, but as uninspired; as one whose judgment we have no right to
+ find fault with or to cavil at, who lays down what is a matter of
+ Christian prudence, and not a bounden and universal duty. The matter
+ of the present discourse will take in various verses in this
+ chapter--from the tenth to the twenty-fourth verse--leaving part of
+ the commencement and the conclusion for our consideration, if God
+ permit, next Sunday.
+
+ There are three main questions on which the apostle here gives his
+ inspired decision. The first decision is concerning the sanctity of
+ the marriage-bond between two Christians. His verdict is given in the
+ tenth verse: "Unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let
+ not the wife depart from her husband." He lays down this principle,
+ that the union is an indissoluble one.
+
+ Upon such a subject, Christian brethren, before a mixed congregation,
+ it is manifestly evident that we can only speak in general terms. It
+ will be sufficient to say that marriage is of all earthly unions
+ almost the only one permitting of no change but that of death. It is
+ that engagement in which man exerts his most awful and solemn
+ power,--the power of responsibility which belongs to him as one that
+ shall give account,--the power of abnegating the right to change,--the
+ power of parting with his freedom,--the power of doing _that_ which in
+ this world can never be reversed. And yet it is perhaps that
+ relationship which is spoken of most frivolously, and entered into
+ most carelessly and most wantonly. It is not an union merely between
+ two creatures, it is an union between two spirits; and the intention
+ of that bond is to perfect the nature of both, by supplementing their
+ deficiencies with the force of contrast, giving to each sex those
+ excellencies in which it is naturally deficient; to the one strength
+ of character and firmness of moral will, to the other sympathy,
+ meekness, tenderness. And just so solemn, and just so glorious as
+ these ends are for which the union was contemplated and intended, just
+ so terrible are the consequences if it be perverted and abused. For
+ there is no earthly relationship which has so much power to ennoble
+ and to exalt. Very strong language does the apostle use in this
+ chapter respecting it: "What knoweth thou, O wife, whether thou shalt
+ _save_ thy husband? or how knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt
+ save thy wife?" The very power of _saving_ belongs to this
+ relationship. And on the other hand, there is no earthly relationship
+ which has so much power to wreck and ruin the soul. For there are two
+ rocks in this world of ours on which the soul must either anchor or be
+ wrecked. The one is God; the other is the sex opposite to itself. The
+ one is the "Rock of Ages," on which if the human soul anchors it lives
+ the blessed life of faith; against which if the soul be dashed and
+ broken, there ensues the wreck of Atheism--the worst ruin of the soul.
+ The other rock is of another character. Blessed is the man, blessed is
+ the woman whose life-experience has taught a confiding belief in the
+ excellencies of the sex opposite to their own--a blessedness second
+ only to the blessedness of salvation. And the ruin in the other case
+ is second only to the ruin of everlasting perdition--the same wreck
+ and ruin of the soul.
+
+ These then, are the two tremendous alternatives: on the one hand the
+ possibility of securing, in all sympathy and tenderness, the laying of
+ that step on which man rises towards his perfection; on the other hand
+ the blight of all sympathy, to be dragged down to earth, and forced to
+ become frivolous and common-place; to lose all zest and earnestness in
+ life, to have heart and life degraded by mean and
+ perpetually-recurring sources of disagreement; these are the two
+ alternatives, and it is the worst of these alternatives which the
+ young risk when they form an inconsiderate union, excusably
+ indeed--because through inexperience; and it is the worst of these
+ alternatives which parents risk--not excusably but inexcusably--when
+ they bring up their children with no higher view of what that tie is,
+ than the merely prudential one of a rich and honourable marriage.
+
+ The second decision which the apostle makes respecting another of the
+ questions proposed to him by the Corinthians, is as to the sanctity of
+ the marriage bond between a Christian and one who is a heathen. When
+ Christianity first entered into our world, and was little understood,
+ it seemed to threaten the dislocation and alteration of all existing
+ relationships. Many difficulties arose; such for instance, as the one
+ here started. When of two heathen parties only one was converted to
+ Christianity, the question arose, What in this case is the duty of the
+ Christian? Is not the duty separation? Is not the marriage in itself
+ null and void? as if it were an union between one dead and one living?
+ And that perpetual contact with a heathen, and therefore an enemy of
+ God, is not that in a relation so close and intimate, perpetual
+ defilement? The apostle decides this with his usual inspired wisdom.
+ He decides that the marriage-bond is sacred still. Diversities of
+ religious opinion, even the farthest and widest diversity, cannot
+ sanction separation. And so he decides in the 13th verse, "The woman
+ which hath an husband that believeth not, if he be pleased to dwell
+ with her, let her not leave him." And, "if any brother hath a wife
+ that believeth not, and she be pleased to dwell with him, let him not
+ put her away," v. 12.
+
+ Now for us in the present day, the decision on this point is not of so
+ much importance as the reason which is adduced in support of it. The
+ proof which the Apostle gives of the sanctity of the marriage is
+ exceedingly remarkable. Practically it amounts to this;--If this were
+ no marriage, but an unhallowed alliance, it would follow as a
+ necessary consequence that the offspring could not be reckoned in any
+ sense as the children of God; but, on the other hand, it is the
+ instinctive, unwavering conviction of every Christian parent, united
+ though he or she may be to a heathen, "My child is a child of God,"
+ or, in the Jewish form of expression, "My child is _clean_." So the
+ apostle says, "the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and
+ the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your
+ children unclean; but now they are holy," for it follows if the
+ children are holy in this sense of dedicated to God, and are capable
+ of Christian relationship, then the marriage relation was not
+ unhallowed, but sacred and indissoluble.
+
+ The value of this argument in the present day depends on its relation
+ to baptism. The great question we are deciding in the present day may
+ be reduced to a very few words. This question--the Baptismal
+ question--is this:--whether we are baptized because we _are_ the
+ children of God, or, whether we are the children of God because we are
+ _baptized_; whether in other words, when the Catechism of the Church
+ of England says that by baptism we are "made the children of God," we
+ are to understand thereby that we are made something which we were not
+ before--magically and mysteriously changed; or, whether we are to
+ understand that we are made the children of God by baptism in the same
+ sense that a sovereign is made a sovereign by coronation. Here the
+ apostle's argument is full, decisive, and unanswerable. He does not
+ say that these children were Christian, or clean, because they were
+ _baptized_, but they were the children of God because they were the
+ children of one Christian parent; nay more than that, such children
+ could scarcely ever have been baptized, because, if the rite met with
+ opposition from one of the parents, it would be an entire and perfect
+ veto to the possibility of baptism. You will observe that the very
+ fundamental idea out of which infant-baptism arises is, that the
+ impression produced upon the mind and character of the child by the
+ Christian parent, makes the child one of a Christian community; and,
+ therefore, as Peter argued that Cornelius had received the Holy Ghost,
+ and so was to be baptized, just in the same way, as they are adopted
+ into the Christian family and receive a Christian impression, the
+ children of Christian parents are also to be baptized.
+
+ Observe also the important truth which comes out collaterally from
+ this argument--namely, the sacredness of the impression, which arises
+ from the close connection between parent and child. Stronger far than
+ education--going on before education can commence, possibly from the
+ very first moments of consciousness, we begin to impress ourselves on
+ our children. Our character, voice, features, qualities--modified, no
+ doubt, by entering into a new human being, and into a different
+ organization--are impressed upon our children. Not the inculcation of
+ opinions, but much rather the formation of principles, and of the tone
+ of character, the derivation of qualities. Physiologists tell us of
+ the derivation of the mental qualities from the father, and of the
+ moral from the mother. But be this as it may, there is scarcely one
+ here who cannot trace back his present religious character to some
+ impression, in early life, from one or other of his parents--a tone, a
+ look, a word, a habit, or even, it may be, a bitter, miserable
+ exclamation of remorse.
+
+ The third decision which the apostle gives, the third principle which
+ he lays down, is but the development of the last. Christianity he
+ says, does not interfere with existing relationships. First he lays
+ down the principle, and then unfolds the principle in two ways,
+ ecclesiastically and civilly. The principle he lays down in almost
+ every variety of form. In the 17th verse, "As God hath distributed to
+ every man, as the Lord hath called every one, so let him walk." In the
+ 20th verse, "Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was
+ called." In the 24th verse, "Brethren, let every man wherein he is
+ called therein abide with God." This is the principle. Christianity
+ was not to interfere with existing relationships; Christian men were
+ to remain in those relationships in which they were, and in them to
+ develope the inward spirituality of the Christian life. Then he
+ applies this principle in two ways. First of all, ecclesiastically.
+ With respect to their church, or ecclesiastical affairs, he says--"Is
+ any man called being circumcised? Let him not become uncircumcised. Is
+ any man in uncircumcision? Let him not be circumcised." In other
+ words, the Jews, after their conversion, were to continue Jews, if
+ they would. Christianity required no change in these outward things,
+ for it was not in _these_ that the depth and reality of the kingdom of
+ Christ consisted. So the Apostle Paul took Timothy and circumcised
+ him; so, also, he used all the Jewish customs with which he was
+ familiar, and performed a vow, as related in the Acts of the Apostles,
+ "having shorn his head in Cenchrea; for he had a vow." It was not his
+ opinion that it was the duty of a Christian to overthrow the Jewish
+ system. He knew that the Jewish system could not last, but what he
+ wanted was to vitalize the system--to throw into it not a Jewish, but
+ a Christian feeling; and so doing, he might continue in it so long as
+ it would hold together. And so it was no doubt, with all the other
+ apostles. We have no evidence that before the destruction of the
+ Jewish polity, there was any attempt made by them to overthrow the
+ Jewish external religion. They kept the Jewish Sabbath, and observed
+ the Jewish ritual. One of them, James, the Christian Bishop of
+ Jerusalem, though a Christian, was even among the Jews remarkable and
+ honourable for the regularity with which he observed all his Jewish
+ duties. Now let us apply this to modern duties. The great desire among
+ men now, appears to be to alter institutions, to have perfect
+ institutions, as if _they_ would make perfect men. Mark the difference
+ between this feeling and that of the apostle, "Let every man abide in
+ the same calling wherein he was called." We are called to be members
+ of the Church of England--what is our duty now? What would Paul have
+ done? Is this our duty--to put such questions to ourselves as these?
+ "Is there any single, particular sentence in the service of my Church
+ with which I do not entirely agree? Is there any single ceremony with
+ which my whole soul does not go along? If so, then is it my duty to
+ leave it at once?" No, my brethren, all that we have to do is to say,
+ "All our existing institutions are those under which God has placed
+ us, under which we are to mould our lives according to His will." It
+ is our duty to vitalize our forms, to throw into them a holier, deeper
+ meaning. My Christian brethren, surely no man will get true rest, true
+ repose for his soul in these days of controversy, until he has learned
+ the wise significance of these wise words--"Let every man abide in the
+ same calling wherein he was called." He will but gain unrest, he will
+ but disquiet himself, if he says, "I am sinning by continuing in this
+ imperfect system," if he considers it his duty to change his calling
+ if his opinions do not agree in every particular and special point
+ with the system under which God has placed him.
+
+ Lastly, the apostle applies this principle civilly. And you will
+ observe he applies it to that civil relationship which of all others,
+ was the most difficult to harmonize with Christianity--slavery. "Art
+ thou called," he says, "being a servant? Care not for it." Now, in
+ considering this part of the subject we should carry along with us
+ these two recollections. First, we should recollect that Christianity
+ had made much way among this particular class, the class of slaves. No
+ wonder that men cursed with slavery embraced with joy a religion which
+ was perpetually teaching the worth and dignity of the human soul, and
+ declaring that rich and poor, peer and peasant, master and slave, were
+ equal in the sight of God. And yet, great as this growth was, it
+ contained within it elements of danger. It was to be feared, lest men,
+ hearing for ever of brotherhood and Christian equality, should be
+ tempted and excited to throw off the yoke by _force_, and compel their
+ masters and oppressors to do them right.
+
+ The other fact we are to keep in remembrance is this--that all this
+ occurred in an age in which slavery had reached its worst and most
+ fearful form, an age in which the emperors were accustomed, not
+ unfrequently, to feed their fish with living slaves; when captives
+ were led to fight in the amphitheatre with wild beasts or with each
+ other, to glut the Roman appetite for blood upon a Roman holiday. And
+ yet fearful as it was, the apostle says, "Care not for it." And
+ fearful as war was in those days, when the soldiers came to John to be
+ baptized, he did not recommend them to join some "Peace Association,"
+ to use the modern term; he simply exhorted them to be content with
+ their wages.
+
+ And hence we understand the way in which Christianity was to work. It
+ interferes indirectly and not directly with existing institutions. No
+ doubt it will at length abolish war and slavery, but there is not one
+ case where we find Christianity interfering with institutions, as
+ such. Even when Onesimus ran away and came to Paul, the apostle sent
+ him back to his master Philemon, not dissolving the connection between
+ them. And then, as a consolation to the servant, he told him of a
+ higher feeling--a feeling that would make him free, with the chain and
+ shackle upon his arm. And so it was possible for the Christian then,
+ as it is now, to be possessed of the highest liberty even under
+ tyranny. It many times occurred that Christian men found themselves
+ placed under an unjust and tyrannical government, and compelled to pay
+ unjust taxes. The Son of Man showed his freedom not by refusing, but
+ by paying them. His glorious liberty could do so without any feeling
+ of degradation; obeying the laws, not because they were right, but
+ because institutions are to be upheld with cordiality.
+
+ One thing in conclusion we have to observe. It is possible from all
+ this to draw a most inaccurate conclusion. Some men have spoken of
+ Christianity as if it was entirely indifferent about liberty and all
+ public questions--as if with such things as these Christianity did not
+ concern itself at all. This indifference is not to be found in the
+ Apostle Paul. While he asserts that inward liberty is the only true
+ liberty, he still goes on to say, "If thou mayst be free use it
+ rather." For he well knew that although it was possible for a man to
+ be a high and lofty Christian even though he were a slave, yet it was
+ not probable that he would be so. Outward institutions are necessary
+ partly to make a perfect Christian character; and thus Christianity
+ works from what is internal to what is external. It gave to the slave
+ the feeling of his dignity as a man, at the same time it gave to the
+ Christian master a new view of his relation to his slave, and taught
+ him to regard him "not now as a servant, but above a servant, a
+ brother beloved." And so by degrees slavery passed into freed
+ servitude, and freed servitude, under God's blessing, may pass into
+ something else.
+
+ There are two mistakes which are often made upon this subject; one is,
+ the error of supposing that outward institutions are unnecessary for
+ the formation of character, and the other, that of supposing that they
+ are _all_ that is required to form the human soul. If we understand
+ rightly the duty of a Christian man, it is this: to make his brethren
+ free inwardly and outwardly; first inwardly, so that they may become
+ masters of themselves, rulers of their passions, having the power of
+ self-rule and self-control; and then outwardly, so that there may be
+ every power and opportunity of developing the inward life; in the
+ language of the prophet, "To break the rod of the oppressor and let
+ the oppressed go free."
+
+
+
+
+ XIV.
+
+ _Preached January II, 1852._
+
+ MARRIAGE AND CELIBACY.
+
+
+   "But this I say, brethren, the time is short: it remaineth that
+    both they that have wives be as though they had none; and they
+    that weep as though they wept not; and they that rejoice as though
+    they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed
+    not; and they that use this world as not abusing it: for the
+    fashion of this world passeth away."--1 Corinthians vii. 29-31.
+
+ The subject of our exposition last Sunday was an essential portion of
+ this chapter. It is our duty to examine now the former and the latter
+ portions of it. These portions are occupied entirely with the inspired
+ apostolic decision upon this one question--the comparative advantages
+ and merits of celibacy and marriage. One preliminary question,
+ however, is to be discussed. How came it that such a question should
+ be put at all to the apostle?
+
+ In the church at Corinth there were two different sections of society;
+ first there were those who had been introduced into the church through
+ Judaism, and afterwards those who had been converted from different
+ forms of heathenism. Now it is well known, that it was the tendency of
+ Judaism highly to venerate the marriage state, and just in the same
+ proportion to disparage that of celibacy, and to place those who led a
+ single life under a stigma and disgrace. Those converts therefore,
+ entered into the Church of Christ carrying with them their old Jewish
+ prejudices. On the other hand, many who had entered into the Christian
+ Church had been converted to Christianity from different forms of
+ heathenism. Among these prevailed a tendency to the belief (which
+ originated primarily in the oriental schools of philosophy) that the
+ highest virtue consisted in the denial of all natural inclinations,
+ and the suppression of all natural desires; and looking upon marriage
+ on one side only, and that the lowest, they were tempted to consider
+ it as low, earthly, carnal, and sensual. It was at this time that
+ Christianity entered into the world, and while it added fresh dignity
+ and significance to the marriage relationship, it at the same time
+ shed a splendour and a glory upon the other state. The virginity of
+ the mother of Our Lord--the solitary life of John the Baptist--the
+ pure and solitary youth of Christ Himself--had thrown upon celibacy a
+ meaning and dignity which it did not possess before. No marvel
+ therefore, that to men so educated, and but half prepared for
+ Christianity, practices like these should have become exaggerations;
+ for it rarely happens that any right ideas can be given to the world
+ without suffering exaggeration. Human nature progresses, the human
+ mind goes on; but it is rarely in a straight line, almost always
+ through the medium of re-action, rebounding from extremes which
+ produce contrary extremes. So it was in the Church of Corinth. There
+ were two opposite parties holding views diametrically opposed to one
+ another--one honouring the married and depreciating the unmarried
+ life--the other attributing peculiar dignity and sanctity to celibacy,
+ and looking down with contempt upon the married Christian state.
+
+ It is scarcely necessary to remind ourselves that this diversity of
+ sentiment has existed in the Church of Christ in almost all ages. For
+ example in the early ages, in almost all the writings of the Fathers
+ we have exaggerated descriptions of the dignity and glory of the state
+ of celibacy. They speak as if the marriage state was low, carnal, and
+ worldly; and the other the only one in which it is possible to attain
+ to the higher spiritual life--the one the natural state, fit for man,
+ the other the angelic, fit for angels. But ordinarily among men in
+ general, in every age, the state of single life has been looked down
+ upon and contemned. And then there comes to the parties who are so
+ circumstanced a certain sense of shame, and along with this a
+ disposition towards calumny and slander. Let us endeavour to
+ understand the wise, inspired decision which the Apostle Paul
+ pronounced upon this subject. He does not decide, as we might have
+ been led to suppose he would, from his own peculiarity of disposition,
+ upon one side only; but raises into relief the advantages and
+ excellencies of both. He say that neither state has in itself any
+ _intrinsic_ merit--neither is in itself superior to the other. "I
+ suppose, then," he says, "that this is good for the present distress.
+ Art thou bound unto a wife? Seek not to be loosed. Art thou loosed
+ from a wife? Seek not a wife. But and if thou marry, thou hast not
+ sinned: and if a virgin marry, she hath not sinned. Nevertheless, such
+ shall have trouble in the flesh: but I spare you." That is, I will
+ spare you this trouble, in recommending a single, solitary life. You
+ will observe that in these words he attributes no intrinsic merit or
+ dignity to either celibacy or marriage. The comparative advantages of
+ these two states he decides with reference to two considerations;
+ first of all with respect to their comparative power in raising the
+ character of the individual, and afterwards with reference to the
+ opportunities which each respectively gives for the service of God.
+
+
+ I. With respect to the single life, he tells us that he had his own
+ proper gift from God; in other words, he was one of those rare
+ characters who have the power of living without personal sympathy. The
+ feelings and affections of the Apostle Paul were of a strange and rare
+ character--tending to expansiveness rather than concentration. Those
+ sympathies which ordinary men expend upon a few, he extended to many.
+ The members of the churches which he had founded at Corinth, and
+ Ephesus, and Colosse, and Philippi, were to him as children; and he
+ threw upon them all that sympathy and affection which other men throw
+ upon their own domestic circle. To a man so trained and educated, the
+ single life gave opportunities of serving God which the marriage state
+ could not give. St. Paul had risen at once to that philanthropy--that
+ expansive benevolence, which most other men only attain by slow
+ degrees, and this was made, by God's blessing, a means of serving his
+ cause. However we may sneer at the monastic system of the Church of
+ Rome, it is unquestionable that many great works have been done by the
+ monks which could not have been performed by men who had entered into
+ the marriage relationship. Such examples of heroic Christian effort as
+ are seen in the lives of St. Bernard, of Francis Xavier, and many
+ others, are scarcely ever to be found except in the single state. The
+ forlorn hope in battle, as well as in the cause of Christianity, must
+ consist of men who have no domestic relationships to divide their
+ devotion, who will leave no wife nor children to mourn over their
+ loss.
+
+ Let this great truth bring its improvement to those who, either of
+ their own choice, or by the force of circumstances, are destined
+ hereafter to live a single life on earth; and, instead of yielding to
+ that feeling so common among mankind--the feeling of envy at another's
+ happiness--instead of becoming gloomy, and bitter and censorious, let
+ them remember what the Bible has to tell of the deep significance of
+ the Virgin Mary's life--let them reflect upon the snares and
+ difficulties from which they are saved--let them consider how much
+ more time and money they can give to God--that they are called to the
+ great work of serving Causes, of entering into public questions, while
+ others spend their time and talents only upon themselves. The state of
+ single life, however we may be tempted to think lightly of it, is a
+ state that has peculiar opportunities of deep blessedness.
+
+ 2. On the other hand, the Apostle Paul brings forward, into strong
+ relief, the blessedness and advantages of the marriage state. He tells
+ us that it is a type of the union between the Redeemer and the Church.
+ But as this belongs to another part of the subject, we shall not enter
+ into it now. But we observe, that men in general, must have their
+ sympathies drawn out step by step, little by little. We do not rise to
+ philanthropy all at once. We begin with personal, domestic, particular
+ affections. And not only is it true that rarely can any man have the
+ whole of his love drawn out except through this domestic state, but,
+ also, it is to be borne in mind that those who have entered into this
+ relationship have also their own peculiar advantages. It is true that
+ in the marriage-life, interrupted as it is by daily cares and small
+ trifles, those works of Christian usefulness cannot be so continuously
+ carried on as in the other. But is there not a deep meaning to be
+ learned from the old expression--that celibacy is an _angelic_ state?
+ that it is preternatural, and not natural? that the goodness which is
+ induced by it is not, so to speak, the natural goodness of Humanity,
+ but such a goodness as God scarcely intended?
+
+ Who of us cannot recollect a period of his history when all his time
+ was devoted to the cause of Christ; when all his money was given to
+ the service of God; and when we were tempted to look down upon those
+ who were less ardent than ourselves, as if they were not Christians?
+ But now the difficulties of life have come upon us; we have become
+ involved in the trifles and the smallness of social domestic
+ existence; and these have made us less devoted perhaps, less
+ preternatural, less angelic--but more human, better fitted to enter
+ into the daily cares and small difficulties of our ordinary humanity.
+ And this has been represented to us by two great lives--one human, the
+ other divine--one, the life of John the Baptist, and the other, of
+ Jesus Christ. In both these cases is verified the saying, that "Wisdom
+ is justified of all her children." Those who are wisdom's
+ children--the truly wise--will recognise an even wisdom in both these
+ lives; they will see that there are cases in which a solitary life is
+ to be chosen for the sake of God; while there are other cases in which
+ a social life becomes our bounden duty. But it should be specially
+ observed here that _that_ Life which has been given to us as a
+ specimen of life for all, was a social, a human Life. Christ did not
+ refuse to mix with the common joys and common sorrows of Humanity. He
+ was present at the marriage-feast, and by the bier of the widow's son.
+ This of the two lives was the one which, because it was the most
+ human, was the most divine; the most rare, the most difficult, the
+ most natural--therefore, the most Christ-like.
+
+
+ II. Let us notice, in the second place, the principle upon which the
+ apostle founds this decision. It is given in the text--"This I say,
+ brethren, the time is short: it remaineth that both they that have
+ wives be as though they had none," "for the fashion of this world
+ passeth away." Now observe here, I pray you, the deep wisdom of this
+ apostolic decision. In point of fact it comes to this: Christianity is
+ a spirit, not a law; it is a set of principles, not a set of rules; it
+ is not a saying to us--You shall do this, you shall not do that--you
+ shall use this particular dress, you shall not use that--you _shall_
+ lead, you shall _not_ lead a married life--Christianity consists of
+ principles, but the application of those principles is left to every
+ man's individual conscience. With respect not only to this particular
+ case, but to all the questions which had been brought before him, the
+ apostle applies the same principle; the cases upon which he decided
+ were many and various, but the large, broad principle of his decision
+ remains the same in all. You may marry, and you have not sinned; you
+ may remain unmarried, and you do not sin; if you are invited to a
+ heathen feast, you may go, or you may abstain from going; you may
+ remain a slave, or you may become free; in _these things_ Christianity
+ does not consist. But what it does demand is this: that whether
+ married or unmarried, whether a slave or free, in sorrow or in joy,
+ you are to live in a spirit higher and loftier than that of the
+ world.
+
+ The apostle gives us in the text two motives for this Christian
+ unworldliness. The first motive which he lays down is this--"The time
+ is short." You will observe how frequently, in the course of his
+ remarks upon the questions proposed to him, the apostle turns, as it
+ were entirely away from the subject, as if worn-out and wearied by the
+ comparatively trivial character of the questions--as if this balancing
+ of one earthly condition or advantage with another, were but a solemn
+ trifling compared with eternal things. And so here, he seems to turn
+ away from the question before him, and speaks of the shortness of
+ time. "The time is short!"
+
+ Time is short in reference to two things. First, it is short in
+ reference to the person who regards it. That mysterious thing _Time_
+ is a matter of sensation, and not a reality; a modification merely of
+ our own consciousness, and not actual existence; depending upon the
+ flight of ideas--long to one, short to another. The span granted to
+ the butterfly, the child of a single summer, may be long; that which
+ is given to the cedar of Lebanon may be short. The shortness of time,
+ therefore is entirely relative--belonging to us not to God. Time is
+ short in reference to _existence_, whether you look at it before or
+ after. Time past seems nothing; time to come always seems long. We say
+ this chiefly for the sake of the young. To them fifty or sixty years
+ seem a treasure inexhaustible. But, my young brethren, ask the old
+ man, trembling on the verge of the grave, what he thinks of Time and
+ Life. He will tell you that the three-score years and ten, or even
+ the hundred-and-twenty years of Jacob, are but "few and evil." And,
+ therefore, if you are tempted to unbelief in respect to this question,
+ we appeal to experience--experience alone can judge of its truth.
+
+ Once more, time is short with reference to its _opportunities_. For
+ this is the emphatic meaning in the original--literally, "the
+ opportunity is compressed, or shut in." Brethren, time may be long,
+ and yet the opportunity may be very short. The sun in autumn may be
+ bright and clear, but the seed which has not been sown until then will
+ not vegetate. A man may have vigour and energy in manhood and
+ maturity, but the work which ought to have been done in childhood and
+ youth cannot be done in old age. A chance once gone in this world can
+ never be recovered.
+
+ Brother men--have you learned the meaning of yesterday? Do you rightly
+ estimate the importance of to-day? That there are duties to be done
+ to-day which cannot be done to-morrow? This it is that throws so
+ solemn a significance into your work. The time for working is short,
+ therefore begin to-day; "for the night is coming when no man can
+ work." Time is short in reference to _eternity_. It was especially
+ with this reference that the text was written. In those days, and even
+ by the apostles themselves, the day of the Lord's appearance and
+ second advent seemed much nearer than it was. They believed that it
+ would occur during their own lives. And with this belief came the
+ feeling which comes sometimes to all. "Oh, in comparison with that
+ vast Hereafter, this little life shrivels into nothing! What is to-day
+ worth, or its duties or its cares?" All deep minds have thought that.
+ The thought of Time is solemn and awful to all minds in proportion to
+ their depth--and in proportion as the mind is superficial, the thought
+ has appeared little, and has been treated with levity. Brethren, let
+ but a man possess himself of that thought--the deep thought of the
+ brevity of time; this thought--that time is short, and that eternity
+ is long--and he has learned the first great secret of unworldliness.
+
+ 2. The second motive which the apostle gives us is the changing
+ character of the external world. "The fashion of this world passeth
+ away"--literally "the _scenery_ of this world," a dramatic expression,
+ drawn from the Grecian stage. One of the deepest of modern thinkers
+ has told us in words often quoted, "All the world's a stage." And a
+ deeper thinker than he, because inspired, had said long before in the
+ similar words of the text, "the _scenery_ of this world passeth away."
+
+ There are two ways in which this is true. First, it is true with
+ respect to all the things by which we are surrounded. It is only in
+ poetry--the poetry of the Psalms for example--that the hills are
+ called "everlasting." Go to the side of the ocean which bounds our
+ country, and watch the tide going out, bearing with it the sand which
+ it has worn from the cliffs; the very boundaries of our land are
+ changing; they are not the same as they were when these words were
+ written. Every day new relationships are forming around us; new
+ circumstances are calling upon us to act--to act manfully, firmly,
+ decisively, and up to the occasion, remembering that an opportunity
+ once gone is gone for ever. Indulge not in vain regrets for the past,
+ in vainer resolves for the future--act, act in the present.
+
+ Again, this is true with respect to ourselves. "The fashion of this
+ world passeth away" in us. The feelings we have now are not those
+ which we had in childhood. There has passed away a glory from the
+ earth--the stars, the sun, the moon, the green fields have lost their
+ beauty and significance--nothing remains as it was, except their
+ repeated impressions on the mind, the impressions of time, space,
+ eternity, colour, form; these cannot alter, but all besides has
+ changed. Our very minds alter. There is no bereavement so painful, no
+ shock so terrible, but time will remove or alleviate. The keenest
+ feeling in this world time wears out at last, and our minds become
+ like old monumental tablets which have lost the inscription once
+ graven deeply upon them.
+
+ In conclusion, we have to examine the nature of this Christian
+ unworldliness which is taught us in the text. The principle of
+ unworldliness is stated in the latter portion of the text; in the
+ former part the apostle makes an application of the principle to four
+ cases of life. First, to cases of domestic relationship--"it remaineth
+ that they that have wives be as though they had none." Secondly, to
+ cases of sorrow--"and they that weep as though they wept not."
+ Thirdly, to cases of joy--"and they that rejoice as though they
+ rejoiced not." And, finally to cases of the acquisition of worldly
+ property, "and they that buy as though they possessed not." Time will
+ not allow us to go into these applications; we must confine ourselves
+ to a brief consideration of the principle. The principle of Christian
+ unworldliness, then is this, to "use this world as not abusing it."
+ Here Christianity takes its stand, in opposition to two contrary
+ principles. The spirit of the world says, "Time is short, therefore
+ use it while you have it; take your fill of pleasure while you may." A
+ narrow religion says, "Time is short, therefore temporal things should
+ receive no attention: do not weep, do not rejoice; it is beneath a
+ Christian." In opposition to the narrow spirit of religion,
+ Christianity says, "_Use_ this world;"--in opposition to the spirit of
+ the world Christianity says, "Do not _abuse_ it." A distinct duty
+ arises from this principle to use the world. While in the world we are
+ citizens of the world: it is our _duty_ to share its joys, to take our
+ part in its sorrows, not to shrink from its difficulties, but to mix
+ ourselves with its infinite opportunities. So that if time be short,
+ so far from that fact lessening their dignity or importance, it
+ infinitely increases them; since upon these depend the destinies of
+ our eternal being. Unworldliness is this--to hold things from God in
+ the perpetual conviction that they will not last; to have the world,
+ and not to let the world have us; to be the world's masters, and not
+ the world's slaves.
+
+
+
+
+ XV.
+
+ _Preached January 11, 1852._
+
+ THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH A FAMILY.
+
+
+   "Our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and
+    earth is named."--Ephesians iii. 14, 15.
+
+ In the verses immediately before the text the Apostle Paul has been
+ speaking of what he calls a mystery--that is, a revealed secret. And
+ the secret was this, that the Gentiles would be "fellow-heirs and of
+ the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ by the gospel."
+ It had been kept secret from the former ages and generations; it was a
+ secret which the Jew had not suspected, had not even dreamt of. It
+ appeared to him to be his duty to keep as far as possible from the
+ Gentile. Circumcision, which taught him the duty of separation from
+ the Gentile spirit, and Gentile practices, seemed to him to teach
+ hatred towards Gentile _persons_, until at length, in the good
+ pleasure and providence of God, in the fulness of time, through the
+ instrumentality of men whose _hearts_ rather than whose intellects
+ were inspired by God, the truth came out distinct and clear, that God
+ was the Father of the Gentiles as well as of the Jews, "for the same
+ Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon Him."
+
+ In the progress of the months, my Christian brethren, we have arrived
+ again at that period of the year in which our Church calls upon us to
+ commemorate the Epiphany, or manifestation of Jesus Christ to the
+ Gentiles, and we know not that in the whole range of Scripture we
+ could find a passage which more distinctly and definitely than this,
+ brings before us the spirit in which it is incumbent upon us to enter
+ upon this duty. In considering this passage we shall divide it into
+ these two branches:--1st, the definition which the Apostle Paul here
+ gives of the Church of Christ; and, 2ndly, the Name by which this
+ Church is named.
+
+
+ I. In the first place, let us consider the definition given by the
+ Apostle Paul of the Christian Church, taken in its entirety. It is
+ this, "the whole family in heaven and earth." But in order to
+ understand this fully, it will be necessary for us to break it up into
+ its different terms.
+
+ 1. First of all it is taught by this definition that the Church of
+ Christ is a society founded upon natural affinities--a "family." A
+ family is built on affinities which are natural, not artificial; it is
+ not a combination, but a society. In ancient times an association of
+ interest combined men in one guild or corporation for protecting the
+ common persons in that corporation from oppression. In modern times
+ identity of political creed or opinion has bound men together in one
+ league, in order to establish those political principles which
+ appeared to them of importance. Similarity of taste has united men
+ together in what is called an association, or a society, in order by
+ this means to attain more completely the ends of that science to which
+ they had devoted themselves. But as these have been raised
+ artificially, so their end is inevitably, dissolution. Society passes
+ on, and guilds and corporations die; principles are established, and
+ leagues become dissolved; tastes change, and then the association or
+ society breaks up and comes to nothing.
+
+ It is upon another principle altogether that that which we call a
+ family, or true society, is formed. It is not built upon similarity of
+ taste, nor identity of opinion, but upon affinities of nature. You do
+ not _choose_ who shall be your brother; you cannot exclude your mother
+ or your sister; it does not depend upon choice or arbitrary opinion at
+ all, but is founded upon the eternal nature of things. And precisely
+ in the same way is the Christian Church formed--upon natural affinity,
+ and not upon artificial combination. "The family, the whole family in
+ heaven and earth;" not made up of those who _call_ themselves
+ brethren, but of those who _are_ brethren; not founded merely upon the
+ principles of combination, but upon the principles of affinity. That
+ is not a church, or a family, or a society which is made up by men's
+ choice, as when in the upper classes of life, men of fashion unite
+ together, selecting their associates from their own _class_, and form
+ what is technically called a society; it is a combination if you will,
+ but a society it is not--a family it is not--a Church of Christ it
+ cannot be.
+
+ And, again, when the Baptists or the Independents, or any other
+ sectarians, unite themselves with men holding the same faith and
+ entertaining the same opinions, there may be a _sect_, a
+ _combination_, a _persuasion_, but a _Church_ there cannot be. And so
+ again, when the Jew in time past linked himself with the Jew, with
+ those of the same nation, there you have what in ancient times was
+ called Judaism, and in modern times is called Hebraicism--a system, a
+ combination, but not a Church. The Church rises ever out of the
+ family. First of all in the good providence of God, there is the
+ family, then the tribe, then the nation; and then the nation merges
+ itself into Humanity. And the nation which refuses to merge its
+ nationality in Humanity, to lose itself in the general interests of
+ mankind, is left behind, and loses almost its religious
+ nationality--like the Jewish people.
+
+ Such is the first principle. A man is born of the same family, and is
+ not made such by an appointment, or by arbitrary choice.
+
+ 2. Another thing which is taught by this definition is this, that the
+ Church of Christ is a whole made up of manifold diversities. We are
+ told here it is "the _whole_ family," taking into it the great and
+ good of ages past, now in heaven; and also the struggling, the
+ humble, and the weak now existing upon earth. Here again, the analogy
+ holds good between the Church and the family. Never more than in the
+ family is the true entirety of our nature seen. Observe how all the
+ diversities of human condition and character manifest themselves in
+ the family.
+
+ First of all, there are the two opposite poles of masculine and
+ feminine, which contain within them the entire of our Humanity--which
+ together, not separately, make up the whole of man. Then there are the
+ diversities in the degrees and kinds of affection. For when we speak
+ of family affection, we must remember that it is made up of many
+ diversities. There is nothing more different than the love which the
+ sister bears towards the brother, compared with that which the brother
+ bears towards the sister. The affection which a man bears towards his
+ father is quite distinct from that which he feels towards his mother;
+ it is something quite different towards his sister; totally diverse
+ again, towards his brother.
+
+ And then there are diversities of character. First the mature wisdom
+ and stern integrity of the father; then the exuberant tenderness of
+ the mother. And then one is brave and enthusiastic, another
+ thoughtful, and another tender. One is remarkable for being full of
+ rich humour, another is sad, mournful, even melancholy. Again, besides
+ these, there are diversities of condition in life. First, there is the
+ heir, sustaining the name and honour of the family; then perchance the
+ soldier, in whose career all the anxiety and solicitude of the family
+ is centred; then the man of business, to whom they look up, trusting
+ his advice, expecting his counsel; lastly perhaps, there is the
+ invalid, from the very cradle trembling between life and death,
+ drawing out all the sympathies and anxieties of each member of the
+ family, and so uniting them all more closely, from their having one
+ common point of sympathy and solicitude. Now, you will observe that
+ these are not accidental, but absolutely essential to the idea of a
+ family; for so far as any one of them is lost, so far the family is
+ incomplete. A family made up of one sex alone, all brothers and no
+ sisters; or in which all are devoted to one pursuit; or in which there
+ is no diversity of temper and dispositions--the same monotonous
+ repeated identity--a sameness in the type of character--this is not a
+ family, it is only the fragment of a family.
+
+ And precisely in the same way all these diversities of character and
+ condition are necessary to constitute and complete the idea of a
+ Christian Church. For as in ages past it was the delight of the Church
+ to canonize one particular class of virtues--as for instance, purity
+ or martyrdom--so now, in every age, and in every individual bosom,
+ there is a tendency to canonize, or honour, or reckon as Christian,
+ only one or two classes of Christian qualities. For example, if you
+ were to ask in the present day where you should find a type of the
+ Christian character, many in all probability would point you to the
+ man who keeps the Sabbath-day, is regular in his attendance upon the
+ services of the Church, who loves to hear the Christian sermon. This
+ is a phase of Christian character--that which is essentially and
+ peculiarly the _feminine_ type of religion. But is there in God's
+ Church to be found no place for that type which is rather masculine
+ than feminine?--which, not in litanies or in psalm-singing does the
+ will of God, but by struggling for principles, and contending for the
+ truth--_that_ life, whose prayer is action, whose aspiration is
+ continual effort?
+
+ Or again, in every age, amongst all men, in the history of almost
+ every individual, at one time or another, there has been a tendency
+ towards that which has been emphatically named in modern times
+ _hero-worship_--leading us to an admiration of the more singular,
+ powerful, noble qualities of humanity. And wherever this tendency to
+ hero-worship exists there will be found side by side with it a
+ tendency to undervalue and depreciate excellences of an opposite
+ character--the humble, meek, retiring qualities. But it is precisely
+ for these that the Church of Christ finds place. "Blessed are the
+ meek, blessed are the merciful, blessed are they that hunger and
+ thirst after righteousness, blessed are the poor in spirit." In God's
+ world there is a place for the wren and the violet, just as truly as
+ there is for the eagle and the rose. In the Church of God there is a
+ place--and that the noblest--for Dorcas making garments for the poor,
+ and for Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus, just as truly as there is
+ for Elijah confounding a false religion by his noble opposition; for
+ John the Baptist making a king tremble on his throne; or for the
+ Apostle Paul "compassing sea and land" by his wisdom and his heroic
+ deeds.
+
+ Once more, there are ages, as well as times in our own individual
+ experience, when we set up charity as if it were the one only
+ Christian character. And wherever this tendency is found there will be
+ found at the same time, and side by side with it, a tendency to admire
+ the spurious form of charity, which is a sentiment and not a virtue;
+ which can sympathize with crime, but not with law; which can be tender
+ to savages, but has no respect, no care for national honour. And
+ therefore, does this principle of the Apostle Paul call upon us to
+ esteem also another form or type of character, and the opposite one;
+ that which is remarkable for--in which predominates--not so much
+ charity as _justice_; that which was seen in the warriors and prophets
+ of old; who perchance, had a more strong recoil from vice than
+ sympathy with virtue; whose indignation towards that which is wrong
+ and hypocritical was more intense than their love for that which is
+ good: the material, the character, out of which the reformer and the
+ prophet, those who are called to do great works on earth, are made.
+
+ The Church of Christ takes not in one individual form of goodness
+ merely, but every form of excellence that can adorn Humanity. Nor is
+ this wonderful when we remember Who He was from whom this Church was
+ named. It was He in whom centred all excellence--a righteousness
+ which was entire and perfect. But when we speak of the perfection of
+ righteousness, let us remember that it is made not of one exaggerated
+ character, but of a true harmony, a due proportion of all virtues
+ united. In Him were found therefore, that tenderness towards sinners
+ which had no sympathy with sin; that humility which could be
+ dignified, and was yet united with self-respect; that simplicity which
+ is ever to be met with, side by side with true majesty; that love
+ which could weep over Jerusalem at the very moment when He was
+ pronouncing its doom, that truth and justice which appeared to stand
+ as a protection to those who had been oppressed, at the same time that
+ He scathed with indignant invective the Pharisees of the then existing
+ Jews.
+
+ There are two, only two, _perfect_ Humanities. One has existed already
+ in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, the other is to be found only
+ in the collective Church. Once, only once, has God given a perfect
+ representation of Himself, "the brightness of the Father's glory, and
+ the express image of His person." And if we ask again for a perfect
+ Humanity, the answer is, it is not in this Church or in that Church,
+ or in this man or in that man, in this age or in that age, but in the
+ collective blended graces and beauties, and humanities, which are
+ found in every age, in all churches, but not in every separate man.
+ So, at least, Paul has taught us, "Till we _all_ come"--_collectively_
+ not separately--"in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of
+ the Son of God, unto a perfect man"--in other words, to a perfect
+ _Humanity_--"unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of
+ Christ."
+
+ 3. The last thing which is taught us by this definition is, that the
+ Church of Christ is a society which is for ever shifting its locality,
+ and altering its forms. It is the _whole_ church, "the _whole_ family
+ in heaven and earth." So then, those who were on earth, and are now in
+ heaven, are yet members of the same family still. Those who had their
+ home here, now have it there.
+
+ Let us see what it is that we should learn from this doctrine. It is
+ this, that the dead are not lost to us. There is a sense in which the
+ departed are ours more than they were before. There is a sense in
+ which the Apostles Paul, or John, the good and great of ages past,
+ belong to this age more than to that in which they lived, but in which
+ they were not understood; in which the common-place and every-day part
+ of their lives hindered the brightness and glory and beauty of their
+ character from shining forth. So it is in the family. It is possible
+ for men to live in the same house, and partake of the same meal from
+ day to day, and from year to year, and yet remain strangers to each
+ other, mistaking each other's feelings, not comprehending each other's
+ character; and it is only when the Atlantic rolls between, and half a
+ hemisphere is interposed, that we learn how dear they are to us, how
+ all our life is bound up in deep anxiety with their existence.
+ Therefore it is the Christian feels that the family is not broken.
+ Think you that family can break or end?--that because the chair is
+ empty, therefore he, your child, is no more? It may be so with the
+ coarse, the selfish, the unbelieving, the superstitious; but the eye
+ of faith sees there only a transformation. He is not there, he is
+ risen. You see the place where he was, but he has passed to heaven. So
+ at least the parental heart of David felt of old, "by faith and not by
+ sight," when speaking of his infant child. "I shall go to him, but he
+ shall not return to me."
+
+ Once more, the Church of Christ is a society ever altering and
+ changing its external forms. "The _whole_ family"--the Church of the
+ Patriarchs, and of ages before them; and yet the same family.
+ Remember, I pray you, the diversities of form through which, in so
+ many ages and generations, this Church has passed. Consider the
+ difference there was between the patriarchal Church of the time of
+ Abraham and Isaac, and its condition under David; or the difference
+ between the Church so existing and its state in the days of the
+ apostles; and the marvellous difference between that and the same
+ Church four or five centuries later; or, once again, the difference
+ between that, externally one, and the Church as it exists in the
+ present day, broken into so many fragments. Yet diversified as these
+ states may be, they are not more so than the various stages of a
+ family.
+
+ There is a time when the children are all in one room, around their
+ mother's knee. Then comes a time, still further on, when the first
+ separation takes place, and some are leaving their home to prepare for
+ after life. Afterwards, when all in their different professions,
+ trades, or occupations, are separate. At last comes the time when some
+ are gone. And, perchance, the two survivors meet at last--an old,
+ gray-haired man, and a weak, worn-out woman--to mourn over the last
+ graves of a household. Christian brethren, which of these is the right
+ form--the true, external pattern of a family? Say we not truly, it
+ remains the same under all outward mutations? We must think of this,
+ or else we may lose heart in our work. Conceive for instance, the
+ feelings of a pious Jew, when Christianity entered this world; when
+ all his religious system was broken up--the Temple service brought to
+ a violent end; when that polity which he thought was to redeem and
+ ennoble the world was cast aside as a broken and useless thing. Must
+ they not have been as gloomy and as dreary as those of the disciples,
+ when He was dead who they "trusted should have redeemed Israel?" In
+ both cases the body was gone or was altered--the spirit had arisen.
+
+ And precisely so it is with our fears and unbelieving apprehensions
+ now. Institutions pass--churches alter--old forms change--and
+ high-minded and good men cling to these as if _they_ were the only
+ things by which God could regenerate the world. Christianity appears
+ to some men to be effete and worn out. Men who can look back upon the
+ times of Venn, and Newton, and Scott--comparing the degeneracy of
+ their descendants with the men of those days--lose heart, as if all
+ things were going wrong. "Things are not," they say, "as they were in
+ our younger days." No my Christian brethren, things are not as they
+ then were; but the Christian cause lives on--not in the successors of
+ such men as those; the outward form is altered, but the spirit is
+ elsewhere, is risen--risen just as truly as the spirit of the highest
+ Judaism rose again in Christianity. And to mourn over old
+ superstitions and effete creeds, is just as unwise as is the grief of
+ the mother mourning over the form which was once her child. She cannot
+ separate her affection from that form--those hands, those limbs, those
+ features--are they not her child? The true answer is, her child is not
+ there. It is only the form of her child. And it is as unwise to mourn
+ over the decay of those institutions--the change of human forms--as it
+ was unwise in Jonah to mourn with that passionate sorrow over the
+ decay of the gourd which had sheltered him from the heat of the
+ noontide sun. A worm had eaten the root of the gourd, and it was gone.
+ But he who made the gourd the shelter to the weary--the shadow of
+ those who are oppressed by the noontide heat of life--lived on:
+ Jonah's God. And so brethren, all things change--all things outward
+ change and alter; but the God of the Church lives on. The Church of
+ God remains under fresh forms--the one, holy, entire family in heaven
+ and earth.
+
+
+ II. Pass we on now, in the second place, to consider the name by which
+ this Church is named. "Our Lord Jesus Christ," the Apostle says, "of
+ whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named."
+
+ Now, every one familiar with the Jewish modes of thought and
+ expression, will allow here, that _name_ is but another word to
+ express being, actuality, and existence. So when Jacob desired to
+ know the character and nature of Jehovah, he said--"Tell me now, I
+ beseech thee, thy _name_". When the Apostle here says, "Our Lord Jesus
+ Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is _named_," it
+ is but another way of saying that it is He on Whom the Church
+ depends--Who has given it substantive existence--without Whom it could
+ not be at all. It is but another way of saying what he has expressed
+ elsewhere--"that there is none other name under heaven given among
+ men, whereby we may be saved." Let us not lose ourselves in vague
+ generalities. Separate from Christ, there is no salvation; there can
+ be no Christianity. Let us understand what we mean by this. Let us
+ clearly define and enter into the meaning of the words we use. When we
+ say that our Lord Jesus Christ is He "of whom the whole family in
+ heaven and earth is named," we mean that the very being of the Church
+ depends on Christ--that it could not be without Him. Now, the Church
+ of Christ depends upon these three things--first, the recognition of a
+ common Father; secondly, of a common Humanity; and thirdly, of a
+ common Sacrifice.
+
+ 1. First, the recognition of a common Father. That is the sacred truth
+ proclaimed by the Epiphany. God revealed in Christ--not the Father of
+ the Jew only, but also of the Gentile. The Father of a "whole family."
+ Not the partial Father, loving one alone--the elder--but the younger
+ son besides: the outcast prodigal who had spent his living with
+ harlots and sinners, but the child still, and the child of a Father's
+ love. Our Lord taught this in His own blessed prayer--"_Our_ Father;"
+ and as we lose the meaning of that single word _our_, as we say _my_
+ Father--the Father of _me_ and of _my_ faction--of _me_ and _my_
+ fellow believers--_my_ Anglicanism or _my_ Judaism--be it what it
+ may--instead of _our_ Father--the Father of the outcast, the
+ profligate, of all who choose to claim a Father's love; _so_ we lose
+ the meaning of the lesson which the Epiphany was designed to teach,
+ and the possibility of building up a family to God.
+
+ 2. The recognition of a common Humanity. He from whom the Church is
+ named, took upon Him not the nature merely of the noble, of kings, or
+ of the intellectual philosopher--but of the beggar, the slave, the
+ outcast, the infidel, the sinner, and the nature of every one
+ struggling in various ways. Let us learn then brother men, that we
+ shall have no family in God, unless we learn the deep truth of our
+ common Humanity, shared in by the servant and the sinner, as well as
+ the sovereign. Without this we shall have no Church--no family in God.
+
+ 3. Lastly, the Church of Christ proceeds out of, and rests upon, the
+ belief in a common Sacrifice.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+ There are three ways in which the human race hitherto has endeavoured
+ to construct itself into a family; first, by the sword; secondly, by
+ an ecclesiastical system; and thirdly, by trade or commerce. First, by
+ the sword. The Assyrian, the Persian, the Greek, and the Roman, have
+ done their work--in itself a most valuable and important one; but so
+ far as the formation of mankind into a family was the object aimed at,
+ the work of the sword has done almost nothing. Then there was the
+ ecclesiastical system--the grand attempt of the Church of Rome to
+ organize all men into one family, with one ecclesiastical, visible,
+ earthly head. Being Protestants, it is not necessary for us to state
+ our conviction that this attempt has been a signal and complete
+ failure. We now come to the system of commerce and trade. We are told
+ that that which chivalry and honour could not do--which an
+ ecclesiastical system could not do--personal interest _will_ do. Trade
+ is to bind men together into one family. When they feel it their
+ _interest_ to be one, they will be brothers. Brethren, that which is
+ built on selfishness cannot stand. The system of personal interest
+ must be shivered into atoms. Therefore, we, who have observed the ways
+ of God in the past, are waiting in quiet but awful expectation until
+ he shall confound this system as he has confounded those which have
+ gone before. And it may be effected by convulsions more terrible and
+ more bloody than the world has yet seen. While men are talking of
+ peace, and of the great progress of civilization, there is heard in
+ the distance the noise of armies gathering rank on rank: east and
+ west, north and south, are rolling towards us the crushing thunders of
+ universal war.
+
+ Therefore there is but one other system to be tried, and that is the
+ Cross of Christ--a system that is not to be built upon selfishness,
+ nor upon blood, nor upon personal interest, but upon Love. Love, not
+ self--the Cross of Christ, and not the mere working-out of the ideas
+ of individual humanity.
+
+ One word only in conclusion. Upon this, the great truth of the
+ Epiphany, the Apostle founds a prayer. He prays, "For this cause I bow
+ my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole
+ family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you,
+ according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by
+ His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by
+ faith." This manifestation of joy and good to the Gentiles was,
+ according to him, the great mystery of Love. A Love, brighter, deeper,
+ wider, higher than the largest human heart had ever yet dreamed of.
+ But the Apostle tells us it is after all, but a glimpse of the love of
+ God. How should we learn it more? How should we comprehend the whole
+ meaning of the Epiphany? By sitting down to read works of theology?
+ The Apostle Paul tells us--No. You must love, in order to understand
+ love. "That ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to
+ comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length, and depth
+ and height; and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge."
+ Brother men, one act of charity will teach us more of the love of God
+ than a thousand sermons--one act of unselfishness, of real
+ self-denial, the putting forth of one loving feeling to the outcast
+ and "those who are out of the way," will tell us more of the meaning
+ of the Epiphany than whole volumes of the wisest writers on theology.
+
+
+
+
+ XVI.
+
+ _Preached January 25, 1852._
+
+ THE LAW OF CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE.
+
+
+   "Howbeit there is not in every man that knowledge: for some, with
+    conscience of the idol, unto this hour, eat it as a thing offered
+    unto an idol; and their conscience being weak is denied. But meat
+    commendeth us not to God: for neither if we eat are we the better;
+    neither if we eat not are we the worse. But take heed lest by any
+    means this liberty of yours become a stumbling-block to them that
+    are weak. For if any man see thee which hast knowledge, sit at
+    meat in the idol's temple, shall not the conscience of him which
+    is weak be emboldened to eat those things which are offered to
+    idols; and through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish for
+    whom Christ died? But when ye sin so against the brethren and
+    wound their weak conscience ye sin against Christ. Wherefore if
+    meat make my brother to offend I will eat no flesh while the world
+    standeth, lest I make my brother to offend."--1 Corinthians viii.
+    7-13.
+
+ We have already divided this chapter into two branches--the former
+ portion of it containing the difference between Christian knowledge
+ and secular knowledge, and the second portion containing the apostolic
+ exposition of the law of Christian conscience. The first of these we
+ endeavoured to expound last Sunday, but it may be well briefly to
+ recapitulate the principles of that discourse in a somewhat different
+ form.
+
+ Corinth as we all know and remember, was a city built on the sea
+ coast, having a large and free communication with all foreign nations;
+ and there was also within it, and going on amongst its inhabitants, a
+ free interchange of thought, and a vivid power of communicating the
+ philosophy and truths of those days to each other. Now it is plain,
+ that to a society in such a state, and to minds so educated, the
+ gospel of Christ must have presented a peculiar attraction, presenting
+ itself to them as it did, as a law of Christian liberty. And so, in
+ Corinth the gospel had "free course and was glorified," and was
+ received with great joy by almost all men, and by minds of all classes
+ and all sects; and a large number of these attached themselves to the
+ teaching of the Apostle Paul as the most accredited expounder of
+ Christianity--the "royal law of liberty." But it seems, from what we
+ read in this epistle, that a large number of these men received
+ Christianity as a thing intellectual, and that alone--and not as a
+ thing which touched the conscience, and swayed and purified the
+ affections. Thus this liberty became to them almost _all_--they ran
+ into sin or went to extravagance--they rejoiced in their freedom from
+ the superstitions, the ignorances, and the scruples which bound their
+ weaker brethren; but had no charity--none of that intense charity
+ which characterized the Apostle Paul, for those still struggling in
+ the delusions and darkness from which they themselves were free.
+
+ More than that, they demanded their right, their Christian liberty of
+ expressing their opinions in the church, merely for the sake of
+ _exhibiting_ the Christian graces and spiritual gifts which had been
+ showered upon them so largely; until by degrees those very assemblies
+ became a lamentable exhibition of their own depravity, and led to
+ numerous irregularities which we find severely rebuked by the Apostle
+ Paul. Their women, rejoicing in the emancipation which had been given
+ to the Christian community, laid aside the old habits of attire which
+ had been consecrated so long by Grecian and Jewish custom, and
+ appeared with their heads uncovered in the Christian community. Still
+ further than that, the Lord's Supper exhibited an absence of all
+ solemnity, and seemed more a meeting for licentious gratification,
+ where "one was hungry, and another was drunken"--a place in which
+ earthly drunkenness, the mere enjoyment of the appetites, had taken
+ the place of Christian charity towards each other.
+
+ And the same feeling--this love of mere liberty--liberty in
+ itself--manifested itself in many other directions. Holding by this
+ freedom, their philosophy taught that the body, that is the flesh, was
+ the only cause of sin; that the soul was holy and pure; and that
+ therefore, to be free from the body would be entire, perfect,
+ Christian emancipation. And so came in that strange, wrong doctrine,
+ exhibited in Corinth, where immortality was taught separate from, and
+ in opposition to, the doctrine of the resurrection. And afterwards
+ they went on with their conclusions about liberty, to maintain that
+ the body, justified by the sacrifice of Christ, was no longer capable
+ of sin; and that in the evil which was done by the body, the soul had
+ taken no part. And therefore sin was to them but as a name, from which
+ a Christian conscience was to be freed altogether. So that when one of
+ their number had fallen into grievous sin, and had committed
+ fornication, "such as was not so much as named among the Gentiles," so
+ far from being humbled by it, they were "puffed up," as if they were
+ exhibiting to the world an enlightened, true, perfect
+ Christianity--separate from all prejudices.
+
+ To such a society and to such a state of mind, the Apostle Paul
+ preached in all its length, breadth, and fulness, the humbling
+ doctrines of the Cross of Christ. He taught that knowledge was one
+ thing--that charity was _another_ thing; that "knowledge puffeth up,
+ but charity buildeth up." He reminded them that love was the
+ perfection of knowledge. In other words, his teaching came to this:
+ there are two kinds of knowledge; the one the knowledge of the
+ intellect, the other the knowledge of the heart. Intellectually, God
+ never can be known. He must be known by Love--for, "if any man love
+ God, the same is known of Him." Here then, we have arrived in another
+ way, at precisely the same conclusion at which we arrived last Sunday.
+ Here are two kinds of knowledge, secular knowledge and Christian
+ knowledge; and Christian knowledge is this--to know by Love.
+
+ Let us now consider the remainder of the chapter, which treats of the
+ law of Christian conscience. You will observe that it divides itself
+ into two branches--the first containing an exposition of the law
+ itself, and the second the Christian applications which flow out of
+ this exposition.
+
+ I. The way in which the apostle expounds the law of Christian
+ conscience is this:--Guilt is contracted by the soul, in so far as it
+ sins against and transgresses the law of God by doing that which it
+ believes to be wrong: not so much what _is_ wrong as what _appears_ to
+ _it_ to be wrong. This is the doctrine distinctly laid down in the 7th
+ and 8th verses. The apostle tells the Corinthians--these strong-minded
+ Corinthians--that the superstitions of their weaker brethren were
+ unquestionably wrong. "Meat," he says, "commendeth us not to God; for
+ neither if we eat are we the better, neither if we eat not are we the
+ worse." He then tells them further, that "there is not in every man
+ that knowledge; for some with conscience of the idol, eat it as a
+ thing offered unto an idol." Here then, is an ignorant, mistaken,
+ ill-informed conscience; and yet he goes on to tell them that this
+ conscience, so ill-informed, yet binds the possessor of it: "and their
+ conscience being weak, is defiled." For example,--there could be no
+ harm in eating the flesh of an animal that had been offered to an idol
+ or false god; for a false god is nothing, and it is impossible for it
+ to have contracted positive defilement by being offered to that which
+ is a positive and absolute negation. And yet if any man thought it
+ wrong to eat such flesh, to him it _was_ wrong; for in that act there
+ would be a deliberate act of transgression--a deliberate preference of
+ that which was mere enjoyment, to that which was apparently, though it
+ may be only apparently, sanctioned by the law of God. And so it would
+ carry with it all the disobedience, all the guilt, and all the misery
+ which belongs to the doing of an act altogether wrong; or as St. Paul
+ expresses it, the conscience would become denied.
+
+ Here then, we arrive at the first distinction--the distinction between
+ absolute and relative right and wrong. Absolute right and absolute
+ wrong, like absolute truth, can each be but _one_ and unalterable in
+ the sight of God. The one absolute _right_--the charity of God and the
+ sacrifice of Christ--this, from eternity to eternity must be the sole
+ measure of eternal right. But human right or human wrong, that is the
+ merit or demerit, of any action done by any particular man, must be
+ measured, not by that absolute standard, but as a matter relative to
+ his particular circumstances, the state of the age in which he lives,
+ and his own knowledge of right and wrong. For we come into this world
+ with a moral sense; or to speak more Christianly, with a conscience.
+ And yet that will tell us but very little distinctly. It tells us
+ broadly that which is right and that which is wrong, so that every
+ child can understand this. That charity and self-denial are
+ right--this we see recognised in almost every nation. But the
+ boundaries of these two--when and how far self-denial is right--what
+ are the bounds of charity--this it is for different circumstances yet
+ to bring out and determine.
+
+ And so, it will be found that there is a different standard among
+ different nations and in different ages. That for example, which was
+ the standard among the Israelites in the earlier ages, and before
+ their settlement in Canaan, was very different from the higher and
+ truer standard of right and wrong recognised by the later prophets.
+ And the standard in the third and fourth centuries after Christ, was
+ truly and unquestionably an entirely different one from that
+ recognised in the nineteenth century among ourselves.
+
+ Let me not be mistaken. I do not say that right and wrong are merely
+ conventional, or merely chronological or geographical, or that they
+ vary with latitude and longitude. I do not say that there ever was or
+ ever can be a nation so utterly blinded and perverted in its moral
+ sense as to acknowledge that which is wrong--seen and known to be
+ wrong--as right; or on the other hand, to profess that which is seen
+ and understood as right, to be wrong. But what I do say is this: that
+ the form and aspect in which different deeds appear, so vary, that
+ there will be for ever a change and alteration in men's opinions, and
+ that which is really most generous may seem most base, and that which
+ is really most base may appear most generous. So for example, as I
+ have already said, there are two things universally
+ recognised--recognised as right by every man whose conscience is not
+ absolutely perverted--charity and self-denial. The charity of God, the
+ sacrifice of Christ--these are the two grand, leading principles of
+ the Gospel; and in some form or other you will find these lying at the
+ roots of every profession and state of feeling in almost every age.
+ But the form in which these appear, will vary with all the gradations
+ which are to be found between the lowest savage state and the highest
+ and most enlightened Christianity.
+
+ For example, in ancient Israel the law of love was expounded
+ thus:--"Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy." Among
+ the American Indians and at the Cape, the only homage perchance given
+ to self-denial, was the strange admiration given to that prisoner of
+ war who bore with unflinching fortitude the torture of his country's
+ enemies. In ancient India the same principle was exhibited, but in a
+ more strange and perverted manner. The homage there given to
+ self-denial, self-sacrifice, was this--that the highest form of
+ religion was considered to be that exhibited by the devotee who sat in
+ a tree until the birds had built their nests in his hair--until his
+ nails, like those of the King of Babylon, had grown like birds'
+ talons--until they had grown into his hands--and he became absorbed
+ into the Divinity.
+
+ We will take another instance, and one better known. In ancient Sparta
+ it was the custom to teach children to steal. And here there would
+ seem to be a contradiction to our proposition--here it would seem as
+ if right and wrong were matters merely conventional; for surely
+ stealing can never be anything but wrong. But if we look deeper we
+ shall see that there is no contradiction here. It was not stealing
+ which was admired; the child was punished if the theft was discovered;
+ but it was the dexterity which was admired, and that because it was a
+ warlike virtue, necessary it may be to a people in continual rivalry
+ with their neighbours. It was not that honesty was despised and
+ dishonesty esteemed, but that honesty and dishonesty were made
+ subordinate to that which appeared to them of higher importance,
+ namely, the duty of concealment. And so we come back to the principle
+ which we laid down at first. In every age, among all nations, the same
+ broad principle remains; but the application of it varies. The
+ conscience may be ill-informed, and in this sense only are right and
+ wrong conventional--varying with latitude and longitude, depending
+ upon chronology and geography.
+
+ The principle laid down by the Apostle Paul is this:--A man will be
+ judged, not by the abstract law of God, not by the rule of absolute
+ right, but much rather by the relative law of conscience. This he
+ states most distinctly--looking at the question on both sides. That
+ which seems to a man to be right is, in a certain sense, right to him;
+ and that which seems to a man to be wrong, in a certain sense _is_
+ wrong to him. For example: he says in his Epistle to the Romans (v.
+ 14.) that, "sin is not imputed when there is no law," in other words,
+ if a man does not really know a thing to be wrong there is a sense in
+ which, if not right to him, it ceases to be so wrong as it would
+ otherwise be. With respect to the other of these sides however, the
+ case is still more distinct and plain. Here, in the judgment which the
+ apostle delivers in the parallel chapter of the Epistle to the Romans
+ (the 14th), he says, "I know, and am persuaded of the Lord Jesus, that
+ there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth anything
+ to be unclean, to him it is unclean." In other words, whatever may be
+ the abstract merits of the question--however in God's jurisprudence
+ any particular act may stand--to you, thinking it to be wrong, it
+ manifestly _is_ wrong, and your conscience will gather round it a
+ stain of guilt if you do it.
+
+ In order to understand this more fully, let us take a few instances.
+ There is a difference between _truth_ and _veracity_. Veracity--mere
+ veracity--is a small, poor thing. Truth is something greater and
+ higher. Veracity is merely the correspondence between some particular
+ statement and facts--truth is the correspondence between a man's whole
+ soul and reality. It is possible for a man to say that which, unknown
+ to him is false; and yet he may be true: because if deprived of truth
+ he is deprived of it unwillingly. It is possible, on the other hand,
+ for a man to utter veracities, and yet at the very time that he is
+ uttering those veracities to be false to himself, to his brother, and
+ to his God. One of the most signal instances of this is to be seen in
+ the Book of Job. Most of what Job's friends said to him were veracious
+ statements. Much of what Job said for himself was unveracious and
+ mistaken. And yet those veracities of theirs were so torn from all
+ connection with fact and truth, that they became falsehoods; and they
+ were, as has been said, nothing more than "orthodox liars" in the
+ sight of God. On the other hand, Job, blundering perpetually, and
+ falling into false doctrine, was yet a true man--searching for and
+ striving after the truth; and if deprived of it for a time, deprived
+ of it with all his heart and soul unwillingly. And therefore it was
+ that at last the Lord appeared out of the whirlwind, to confound the
+ men of mere veracity, and to stand by and support the honour of the
+ heartily true.
+
+ Let us apply the principle further. It is a matter of less importance
+ that a man should state true views, than that he should state views
+ truly. We will put this in its strongest form. Unitarianism is
+ false--Trinitarianism is true. But yet in the sight of God, and with
+ respect to a man's eternal destinies hereafter, it would surely be
+ better for him earnestly, honestly, truly, to hold the doctrines of
+ Unitarianism, than in a cowardly or indifferent spirit, or influenced
+ by authority, or from considerations of interest, or for the sake of
+ lucre, to hold the doctrines of Trinitarianism.
+
+ For instance:--Not many years ago the Church of Scotland was severed
+ into two great divisions, and gave to this age a marvellous proof that
+ there is still amongst us the power of living faith--when five hundred
+ ministers gave up all that earth holds dear--position in the church
+ they had loved; friendships and affections formed, and consecrated by
+ long fellowship, in its communion; and almost their hopes of gaining a
+ livelihood--rather than assert a principle which seemed to them to be
+ a false one. Now my brethren, surely the question in such a case for
+ us to consider is not this, merely--whether of the two sections held
+ the abstract _right_--held the principle in its integrity--but surely
+ far rather, this: who on either side was true to the light within,
+ true to God, true to the truth as God had revealed it to his soul.
+
+ Now it is precisely upon this principle that we are enabled to indulge
+ a Christian hope that many of those who in ancient times were
+ persecutors, for example, may yet be justified at the bar of Christ.
+ Nothing can make persecution right--it is wrong, essentially,
+ eternally wrong in the sight of God. And yet, if a man sincerely and
+ assuredly thinks that Christ has laid upon him a command to persecute
+ with fire and sword, it is surely better that he should, in spite of
+ all feelings of tenderness and compassion, cast aside the dearest
+ affections at the command of his Redeemer, than that he should, in
+ mere laxity and tenderness, turn aside from what seemed to him to be
+ his duty. At least, this appears to be the opinion of the Apostle
+ Paul. He tells us that he was "a blasphemer and a persecutor and
+ injurious," that "he did many things contrary to the name of Jesus of
+ Nazareth," that "being exceedingly mad against the disciples, he
+ persecuted them even unto strange cities." But he tells us further
+ that, "for this cause he obtained mercy, because he did it ignorantly
+ in unbelief."
+
+ Now take a case precisely opposite. In ancient times the Jews did that
+ by which it appeared to them that they would contract defilement and
+ guilt--they spared the lives of the enemies which they had taken in
+ battle. Brethren the eternal law is, that charity is right: and that
+ law is eternally right which says, "Thou shalt love thine enemy." And
+ had the Jews acted upon this principle they would have done well to
+ spare their enemies: but they did it thinking it to be wrong,
+ transgressing that law which commanded them to slay their idolatrous
+ enemies--not from generosity, but in cupidity--not from charity, but
+ from lax zeal. And so doing, the act was altogether wrong.
+
+
+ II. Such is the apostle's exposition of the law of Christian
+ conscience. Let us now, in the second place, consider the applications
+ both of a personal and of a public nature, which arise out of it.
+
+ 1. The first application is a personal one. It is this:--Do what
+ _seems_ to _you_ to be right: it is only so that you will at last
+ learn by the grace of God to see clearly what _is_ right. A man thinks
+ within himself that it is God's law and God's will that he should act
+ thus and thus. There is nothing possible for us to say--there is no
+ advice for us to give, but this--"You _must_ so act." He is
+ responsible for the opinions he holds, and still more for the way in
+ which he arrived at them--whether in a slothful and selfish, or in an
+ honest and truth-seeking manner; but being now his soul's convictions,
+ you can give no other law than this--"You must obey your conscience."
+ For no man's conscience gets so seared by doing what is wrong
+ unknowingly, as by doing that which appears to be wrong to his
+ conscience. The Jews' consciences did not get seared by their slaying
+ the Canaanites, but they did become seared by their failing to do what
+ appeared to them to be right. Therefore, woe to you if you do what
+ others think right, instead of obeying the dictates of your own
+ conscience; woe to you if you allow authority, or prescription, or
+ fashion, or influence, or any other human thing, to interfere with
+ that awful and sacred thing--responsibility. "Every man," said the
+ apostle, "must give an account of himself to God."
+
+ 2. The second application of this principle has reference to others.
+ No doubt to the large, free, enlightened mind of the Apostle Paul, all
+ these scruples and superstitions must have seemed mean, trivial, and
+ small indeed. It was a matter to him of far less importance that truth
+ should be _established_ than that it should be arrived at truly--a
+ matter of far less importance even, that right should be done, than
+ that right should be done rightly. Conscience was far more sacred to
+ him than even liberty--it was to him a prerogative far more precious
+ to assert the rights of Christian conscience, than to magnify the
+ privileges of Christian liberty. The scruple may be small and foolish,
+ but it may be impossible to uproot the scruple without tearing up the
+ feeling of the sanctity of conscience, and of reverence to the law of
+ God, associated with this scruple. And therefore the Apostle Paul
+ counsels these men to abridge their Christian liberty, and not to eat
+ of those things which had been sacrificed to idols, but to have
+ compassion upon the scruples of their weaker brethren.
+
+ And this, for two reasons. The first of these is a mere reason of
+ Christian feeling. It might cause exquisite pain to sensitive minds to
+ see those things which appeared to them to be wrong, done by Christian
+ brethren. Now you may take a parallel case. It may be, if you will,
+ mere superstition to bow at the name of Jesus. It may be, and no doubt
+ is, founded upon a mistaken interpretation of that passage in the
+ Epistle to the Philippians (ii. 10), which says that "at the name of
+ Jesus every knee shall bow." But there are many congregations in which
+ this has been the long-established rule, and there are many Christians
+ who would feel pained to see such a practice discontinued--as if it
+ implied a declension from the reverence due to "that name which is
+ above every name." Now what in this case is the Christian duty? Is it
+ this--to stand upon our Christian liberty? Or is it not rather
+ this--to comply with a prejudice which is manifestly a harmless one,
+ rather than give pain to a Christian brother?
+
+ Take another case. It may be a mistaken scruple; but there is no doubt
+ that it causes much pain to many Christians to see a carriage used on
+ the Lord's day. But you, with higher views of the spirit of
+ Christianity, who know that "the Sabbath was made for man, and not man
+ for the Sabbath"--who can enter more deeply into the truth taught by
+ our blessed Lord, that every day is to be dedicated to Him and
+ consecrated to His service--upon the high principle of Christian
+ liberty you can use your carriage--you can exercise your liberty. But
+ if there are Christian brethren to whom this would give pain--then I
+ humbly ask you, but most earnestly--What is the duty here? Is it not
+ this--to abridge your Christian liberty--and to go through rain, and
+ mud, and snow, rather than give pain to one Christian conscience?
+
+ To give one more instance. The words, and garb, and customs of that
+ sect of Christians called Quakers may be formal enough; founded, no
+ doubt, as in the former case, upon a mistaken interpretation of a
+ passage in the Bible. But they are at least harmless; and have long
+ been associated with the simplicity, and benevolence, and Christian
+ humbleness of this body of Christians--the followers of one who, three
+ hundred years ago, set out upon the glorious enterprise of making all
+ men friends. Now would it be Christian, or would it not rather be
+ something more than unchristian--would it not be gross rudeness and
+ coarse unfeelingness to treat such words, and habits, and customs,
+ with anything but respect and reverence?
+
+ Further: the apostle enjoined this duty upon the Corinthian converts,
+ of abridging their Christian liberty, not merely because it might give
+ pain to indulge it, but also because it might even lead their brethren
+ into sin. For, if any man should eat of the flesh offered to an idol,
+ feeling himself justified by his conscience, it were well: but if any
+ man, overborne by authority or interest, were to do this, not
+ according to conscience, but against it, there would be a distinct and
+ direct act of disobedience--a conflict between his sense of right and
+ the gratification of his appetites, or the power of influence; and
+ then his compliance would as much damage his conscience and moral
+ sense as if the act had been wrong in itself.
+
+ In the personal application of these remarks, there are three things
+ which we have to say. The first is this:--Distinguish I pray you,
+ between this tenderness for a brother's conscience and mere
+ time-serving. This same apostle whom we here see so gracefully giving
+ way upon the ground of expediency when Christian principles were left
+ entire, was the same who stood firm and strong as a rock when any
+ thing was demanded which trenched upon Christian principle. When some
+ required as a matter of necessity for salvation, that these converts
+ should be circumcised, the apostle says--"To whom we gave place by
+ subjection, no, not for an hour!" It was not indifference--it was not
+ cowardice--it was not the mere love of peace, purchased by the
+ sacrifice of principle, that prompted this counsel--but it was
+ Christian love--that delicate and Christian love which dreads to
+ tamper with the sanctities of a brother's conscience.
+
+ 2. The second thing we have to say is this--that this abridgement of
+ their liberty is a duty more especially incumbent upon all who are
+ possessed of influence. There are some men, happily for themselves we
+ may say, who are so insignificant that they can take their course
+ quietly in the valleys of life, and who can exercise the fullest
+ Christian liberty without giving pain to others. But it is the price
+ which all who are possessed of influence must pay--that their acts
+ must be measured, not in themselves, but according to their influence
+ on others. So, my Christian brethren, to bring this matter home to
+ every-day experience and common life, if the landlord uses his
+ authority and influence to induce his tenant to vote against his
+ conscience, it may be he has secured one voice to the principle which
+ is right, or at all events, to that which seemed to him to be right:
+ but he has gained that single voice at the sacrifice and expense of a
+ brother's soul. Or again--if for the sake of ensuring personal
+ politeness and attention, the rich man puts a gratuity into the hand
+ of a servant of some company which has forbidden him to receive it, he
+ gains the attention, he ensures the politeness, but he gains it at the
+ sacrifice and expense of a man and a Christian brother.
+
+ 3. The last remark which we have to make is this:--How possible it is
+ to mix together the vigour of a masculine and manly intellect with the
+ tenderness and charity which is taught by the gospel of Christ! No man
+ ever breathed so freely when on earth the air and atmosphere of heaven
+ as the Apostle Paul--no man ever soared so high above all prejudices,
+ narrowness, littlenesses, scruples, as he: and yet no man ever bound
+ himself as Paul bound himself to the ignorance, the scruples, the
+ prejudices of his brethren. So that what in other cases was infirmity,
+ imbecility, and superstition, gathered round it in his case the pure
+ high spirit of Christian charity and Christian delicacy.
+
+ And now, out of the writings, and sayings, and deeds of those who
+ loudly proclaim "the rights of man" and the "rights of liberty," match
+ us if you can with one sentence so sublime, so noble, one that will so
+ stand at the bar of God hereafter, as this single, glorious sentence
+ of his, in which he asserts the rights of Christian conscience above
+ the claims of Christian liberty--"Wherefore if meat make my brother to
+ offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my
+ brother to offend."
+
+
+
+
+ XVII.
+
+ _Preached May 16, 1852._
+
+ VICTORY OVER DEATH.
+
+
+   "The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law.
+    But thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through our Lord
+    Jesus Christ."--1 Cor. xv. 56, 57.
+
+ On Sunday last I endeavoured to bring before you the subject of that
+ which Scripture calls the glorious liberty of the Sons of God. The two
+ points on which we were trying to get clear notions were these: what
+ is meant by being under the law, and what is meant by being free from
+ the law? When the Bible says that a man led by the Spirit is not under
+ the law, it does not mean that he is free because he may sin without
+ being punished for it, but it means that he is free because being
+ taught by God's Spirit to love what His law commands he is no longer
+ conscious of acting from restraint. The law does not drive him,
+ because the Spirit leads him.
+
+ There is a state brethren, when we recognize God, but do not love God
+ in Christ. It is that state when we admire what is excellent, but are
+ not able to perform it. It is a state when the love of good comes to
+ nothing, dying away in a mere desire. That is the state of nature,
+ when we are under the law, and not converted to the love of Christ.
+ And then there is another state, when God writes His law upon our
+ hearts by love instead of fear. The one state is this, "I cannot do
+ the things that I would"--the other state is this, "I will walk at
+ liberty; for I seek Thy commandments."
+
+ Just so far therefore, as a Christian is led by the Spirit, he is a
+ conqueror. A Christian in full possession of his privileges is a man
+ whose very step ought to have in it all the elasticity of triumph, and
+ whose very look ought to have in it all the brightness of victory. And
+ just so far as a Christian suffers sin to struggle in him and overcome
+ his resolutions, just so far he is under the law. And that is the key
+ to the whole doctrine of the New Testament. From first to last the
+ great truth put forward is--The law can neither save you nor sanctify
+ you. The gospel can do both; for it is rightly and emphatically called
+ the perfect law of liberty.
+
+ We proceed to-day to a further illustration of this subject--of
+ Christian victory. In the verses which I have read out, the Apostle
+ has evidently the same subject in his mind: slavery through the law:
+ victory through the gospel. "The strength of sin," he says, "is the
+ law." God giveth us the victory through Christ. And when we are
+ familiar with St. Paul's trains of thinking, we find this idea coming
+ in perpetually. It runs like a coloured thread through embroidery,
+ appearing on the upper surface every now and then in a different
+ shape--a leaf, it may be, or a flower; but the same thread still, if
+ you only trace it back with your finger. And this was the golden
+ recurring thread in the mind of Paul. Restraint and law cannot check
+ sin; they only gall it and make it struggle and rebel. The love of God
+ in Christ, that, and only that can give man the victory.
+
+ But in this passage the idea of victory is brought to bear upon the
+ most terrible of all a Christian's enemies. It is faith here
+ conquering in death. And the apostle brings together all the
+ believer's antagonists--the law's power, sin, and death the chief
+ antagonist of all; and then, as it were on a conqueror's battle field,
+ shouts over them the hymn of triumph--"Thanks be to God, which giveth
+ us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ." We shall take up these
+ two points to dwell upon.
+
+    I. The awfulness which hangs round the dying hour.
+   II. Faith conquering in death.
+
+ That which makes it peculiarly terrible to die is asserted in this
+ passage to be, guilt. We lay a stress upon this expression--the sting.
+ It is not said that sin is the only bitterness, but it is the sting
+ which contains in it the venom of a most exquisite torture. And in
+ truth brethren, it is no mark of courage to speak lightly of human
+ dying. We may do it in bravado, or in wantonness; but no man who
+ thinks can call it a trifling thing to die. True thoughtfulness must
+ shrink from death without Christ. There is a world of untold
+ sensations crowded into that moment, when a man puts his hand to his
+ forehead and feels the damp upon it which tells him his hour is come.
+ He has been waiting for death all his life, and now it is come. It is
+ all over--his chance is past, and his eternity is settled. None of us
+ know, except by guess, what that sensation is. Myriads of human beings
+ have felt it to whom life was dear; but they never spoke out their
+ feelings, for such things are untold. And to every individual man
+ throughout all eternity that sensation in its fulness can come but
+ once. It is mockery brethren, for a man to speak lightly of that which
+ he cannot know till it comes.
+
+ Now the first cause which makes it a solemn thing to die, is the
+ instinctive cleaving of every thing that lives to its own existence.
+ That unutterable thing which we call our being--the idea of parting
+ with it is agony. It is the first and the intensest desire of living
+ things, to be. Enjoyment, blessedness, everything we long for, is
+ wrapped up in being. Darkness and all that the spirit recoils from, is
+ contained in this idea, not to be. It is in virtue of this
+ unquenchable impulse that the world, in spite of all the misery that
+ is in it, continues to struggle on. What are war, and trade, and
+ labour, and professions? Are they all the result of struggling to be
+ great? No, my brethren, they are the result of struggling _to be_. The
+ first thing that men and nations labour for is existence. Reduce the
+ nation or the man to their last resources, and only see what
+ marvellous energy of contrivance the love of being arms them with.
+ Read back the pauper's history at the end of seventy years--his
+ strange sad history, in which scarcely a single day could ensure
+ subsistence for the morrow--and yet learn what he has done these long
+ years in the stern struggle with impossibility to hold his being where
+ everything is against him, and to keep an existence, whose only
+ conceivable charm is this, that it _is_ existence.
+
+ Now it is with this intense passion for being, that the idea of death
+ clashes. Let us search why it is we shrink from death. This reason
+ brethren, we shall find, that it presents to us the idea of _not
+ being_. Talk as we will of immortality, there is an obstinate feeling
+ that we cannot master, that we end in death; and _that_ may be felt
+ together with the firmest belief of a resurrection. Brethren, our
+ faith tells us one thing, and our sensations tell us another. When we
+ die, we are surrendering in truth all that with which we have
+ associated existence. All that we know of life is connected with a
+ shape, a form, a body of materialism; and now that that is palpably
+ melting away into nothingness, the boldest heart may be excused a
+ shudder, when there is forced upon it, in spite of itself, the idea of
+ ceasing for ever.
+
+ The second reason is not one of imagination at all, but most sober
+ reality. It is a solemn thing to die, because it is the parting with
+ all round which the heart's best affections have twined themselves.
+ There are some men who have not the capacity for keen enjoyment. Their
+ affections have nothing in them of intensity, and so they pass through
+ life without ever so uniting themselves with what they meet, that
+ there would be anything of pain in the severance. Of course, with them
+ the bitterness of death does not attach so much to the idea of
+ parting. But my brethren, how is it with human nature generally? Our
+ feelings do not weaken as we go on in life; emotions are less shown,
+ and we get a command over our features and our expressions; but the
+ man's feelings are deeper than the boy's. It is length of time that
+ makes attachment. We become wedded to the sights and sounds of this
+ lovely world more closely as years go on.
+
+ Young men, with nothing rooted deep, are prodigal of life. It is an
+ adventure to them, rather than a misfortune, to leave their country
+ for ever. With the old man it is like tearing his own heart from him.
+ And so it was that when Lot quitted Sodom, the younger members of his
+ family went on gladly. It is a touching truth; it was the aged one who
+ looked behind to the home which had so many recollections connected
+ with it. And therefore it is, that when men approach that period of
+ existence when they must go, there is an instinctive lingering over
+ things which they shall never see again. Every time the sun sets,
+ every time the old man sees his children gathering round him, there is
+ a filling of the eye with an emotion that we can understand. There is
+ upon his soul the thought of parting, that strange wrench from all we
+ love which makes death (say what moralists will of it) a bitter thing.
+
+ Another pang which belongs to death, we find in the sensation of
+ loneliness which attaches to it. Have we ever seen a ship preparing to
+ sail with its load of pauper emigrants to a distant colony? If we have
+ we know what that desolation is which comes from feeling unfriended on
+ a new and untried excursion. All beyond the seas, to the ignorant poor
+ man, is a strange land. They are going away from the helps and the
+ friendships and the companionships of life, scarcely knowing what is
+ before them. And it is in such a moment, when a man stands upon a
+ deck, taking his last look of his fatherland, that there comes upon
+ him a sensation new, strange, and inexpressibly miserable--the feeling
+ of being alone in the world.
+
+ Brethren, with all the bitterness of such a moment, it is but a feeble
+ image when placed by the side of the loneliness of death. We die
+ alone. We go on our dark mysterious journey for the first time in all
+ our existence, without one to accompany us. Friends are beside our
+ bed, they must stay behind. Grant that a Christian has something like
+ familiarity with the Most High, _that_ breaks this solitary feeling;
+ but what is it with the mass of men? It is a question full of
+ loneliness to them. What is it they are to see? What are they to meet?
+ Is it not true, that, to the larger number of this congregation, there
+ is no one point in all eternity on which the eye can fix distinctly
+ and rest gladly--nothing beyond the grave, except a dark space into
+ which they must plunge alone?
+
+ And yet my brethren, with all these ideas no doubt vividly before his
+ mind, it was none of them that the apostle selected as the crowning
+ bitterness of dying. It was not the thought of surrendering existence.
+ It was not the parting from all bright and lovely things. It was not
+ the shudder of sinking into the sepulchre alone. "The sting of death
+ is _sin_."
+
+ Now there are two ways in which this deep truth applies itself. There
+ is something that appals in death when there are distinct separate
+ acts of guilt resting on the memory; and there is something too in the
+ possession of a guilty heart, which is quite another thing from acts
+ of sin, that makes it an awful thing to die. There are some who carry
+ about with them the dreadful secret of sin that has been done; guilt
+ that has a name. A man has injured some one; he has made money, or got
+ on by unfair means; he has been unchaste; he has done some of those
+ thousand things of life which leave upon the heart the dark spot that
+ will not come out. All these are sins which you can count up and
+ number. And the recollection of things like these is that agony which
+ we call remorse. Many of us have remembrances of this kind which are
+ fatal to serenity. We shut them out, but it will not do. They bide
+ their time, and then suddenly present themselves, together with the
+ thought of a judgment-seat. When a guilty man begins to think of
+ dying, it is like a vision of the Son of Man presenting itself and
+ calling out the voices of all the unclean spirits in the man--"Art
+ thou come to torment us before the time?"
+
+ But my brethren, it is a mistake if we suppose that is the common way
+ in which sin stings at the thought of death. Men who have lived the
+ career of passionate life have distinct and accumulated acts of guilt
+ before their eyes. But with most men it is not guilty acts, but
+ guiltiness of heart that weighs the heaviest. Only take yesterday as a
+ specimen of life. What was it with most of us? A day of sin. Was it
+ sin palpable and dark, such as we shall remember painfully this day
+ year? Nay my brethren, unkindness, petulance, wasted time,
+ opportunities lost, frivolous conversation, _that_ was our chief
+ guilt. And yet with all that trifling as it may be, when it comes to
+ be the history of life, does it not leave behind a restless
+ undefinable sense of fault, a vague idea of debt, but to what extent
+ we know not, perhaps the more wretched just because it is uncertain?
+
+ My Christian brethren, this is the sting of sinfulness, the wretched
+ consciousness of an unclean heart. It is just this feeling, "God is
+ not my friend; I am going on to the grave, and no _man_ can say aught
+ against me, but my heart is not right; I want a river like that which
+ the ancients fabled--the river of forgetfulness--that I might go down
+ into it and bathe, and come up a new man. It is not so much what I
+ have done; it is what I am. Who shall save me from myself?" Oh, it is
+ a desolate thing to think of the coffin when that thought is in all
+ its misery before the soul. It is the sting of death.
+
+ And now let us bear one thing in mind, the sting of sin is not a
+ constant pressure. It may be that we live many years in the world
+ before a death in our own family forces the thought personally home.
+ Many years before all those sensations which are so often the
+ precursors of the tomb--the quick short cough, lassitude, emaciation,
+ pain--come in startling suddenness upon us in our young vigour, and
+ make us feel what it is to be here with death inevitable to ourselves.
+ And when those things become habitual, habit makes delicacy the same
+ forgetful thing as health, so that neither in sickness, nor in health,
+ is the thought of death a constant pressure. It is only now and then;
+ but so often as death is a reality, the sting of death is sin.
+
+ Once more we remark, that all this power of sin to agonize, is traced
+ by the Apostle to the law--"the strength of sin is the law;" by which
+ he means to say that sin would not be so violent if it were not for
+ the attempt of God's law to restrain it. It is the law which makes sin
+ strong. And he does not mean particularly the law of Moses. He means
+ any law, and all law. Law is what forbids and threatens; law bears
+ gallingly on those who want to break it. And St. Paul declares this,
+ that no law, not even God's law, can make men righteous in heart,
+ unless the Spirit has taught men's hearts to acquiesce in the law. It
+ can only force out into rebellion the sin that is in them.
+
+ It is so, brethren, with a nation's law. The voice of the nation must
+ go along with it. It must be the expression of their own feeling, and
+ then they will have it obeyed. But if it is only the law of a
+ government, a law which is against the whole spirit of the people,
+ there is first the murmur of a nation's disapprobation, and then there
+ is transgression, and then, if the law be vindicated with a high hand,
+ the next step is the bursting that law asunder in national revolution.
+ And so it is with God's law. It will never control a man long who does
+ not from his heart love it. First comes a sensation of restraint, and
+ then comes a murmuring of the heart; and last, there comes the rising
+ of passion in its giant might, made desperate by restraint. That is
+ the law giving strength to sin.
+
+ And therefore brethren, if all we know of God be this, that He has
+ made laws, and that it is terrible to break them; if all our idea of
+ religion be this, that it is a thing of commands and hindrances--Thou
+ shalt, and thou shalt not; we are under the law, and there is no help
+ for it. We _must_ shrink from the encounter with death.
+
+
+ We pass to our second subject--Faith conquering in death.
+
+ And, before we enter upon this topic, there are two general remarks
+ that we have to make. The first is, The elevating power of faith.
+ There is nothing in all this world that ever led man on to real
+ victory but faith. Faith is that looking forward to a future with
+ something like certainty, that raises man above the narrow feelings of
+ the present. Even in this life he is a greater man, a man of more
+ elevated character, who is steadily pursuing a plan that requires some
+ years to accomplish, than he who is living by the day. Look forward
+ but ten years, and plan for it, live for it; there is something of
+ manhood, something of courage required to conquer the thousand things
+ that stand in your way. And therefore it is, that faith, and nothing
+ but faith, gives victory in death. It is that elevation of character
+ which we get from looking steadily and for ever forward, till eternity
+ becomes a real home to us, that enables us to look down upon the last
+ struggle, and the funeral, and the grave, not as the great end of all,
+ but only as something that stands between us and the end. We are
+ conquerors of death when we are able to look beyond it.
+
+ Our second remark is for the purpose of fixing special attention upon
+ this, that ours is not merely to be victory, it is to be victory
+ through Christ "Thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through
+ our Lord Jesus Christ." Victory brethren, mere victory over death is
+ no unearthly thing. You may get it by infidelity. Only let a man sin
+ long enough, and desperately enough to shut judgment altogether out of
+ his creed, and then you have a man who can bid defiance to the grave.
+ It was so that our country's greatest infidel historian met death. He
+ quitted the world without parade and without display. If we want a
+ specimen of victory apart from Christ, we have it on his death-bed. He
+ left all this strange world of restlessness, calmly, like an unreal
+ show that must go to pieces, and he himself an unreality departing
+ from it. A sceptic can be a conqueror in death.
+
+ Or again, mere manhood may give us a victory. He who has only learned
+ not to be afraid to die, has not learned much. We have steel and nerve
+ enough in our hearts to dare anything. And after all, it is a triumph
+ so common as scarcely to deserve the name. Felons die on the scaffold
+ like men; soldiers can be hired by tens of thousands, for a few pence
+ a day, to front death in its worst form. Every minute that we live
+ sixty of the human race are passing away, and the greater part with
+ courage--the weak, and the timid, as well as the resolute. Courage is
+ a very different thing from the Christian's victory.
+
+ Once more brethren, necessity can make man conqueror over death. We
+ can make up our minds to anything when it once becomes inevitable. It
+ is the agony of suspense that makes danger dreadful. History can tell
+ us that men can look with desperate calmness upon hell itself when
+ once it has become a certainty. And it is this after all, that
+ commonly makes the dying hour so quiet a thing. It is more dreadful in
+ the distance than in the reality. When a man feels that there is no
+ help, and he must go, he lays him down to die, as quietly as a tired
+ traveller wraps himself in his cloak to sleep. It is quite another
+ thing from all this that Paul meant by victory.
+
+ In the first place, it is the prerogative of a Christian to be
+ conqueror over Doubt. Brethren, do we all know what doubt means?
+ Perchance not. There are some men who have never believed enough to
+ doubt. There are some who have never thrown their hopes with such
+ earnestness on the world to come, as to feel anxiety for fear it
+ should not all be true. But every one who knows what Faith is, knows
+ too, what is the desolation of Doubt. We pray till we begin to ask, Is
+ there one who hears, or am I whispering to myself?--We hear the
+ consolation administered to the bereaved, and we see the coffin
+ lowered into the grave, and the thought comes, What if all this
+ doctrine of a life to come be but the dream of man's imaginative mind,
+ carried on from age to age, and so believed, because it is a venerable
+ superstition? Mow Christ gives us victory over that terrible suspicion
+ in two ways--first, He does it by His own resurrection. We have got a
+ fact there that all the metaphysics about impossibility cannot rob us
+ of. In moments of perplexity we look back to this. The grave has once,
+ and more than once, at the Redeemer's bidding, given up its dead. It
+ is a world fact. It tells us what the Bible means by our
+ resurrection--not a spiritual rising into new holiness merely--that,
+ but also something more. It means that in our own proper identity, we
+ shall live again. Make that thought real, and God has given you, so
+ far, victory over the grave through Christ.
+
+ There is another way in which we get the victory over doubt, and that
+ is by living in Christ. All doubt comes from living out of habits of
+ affectionate obedience to God. By idleness, by neglected prayer, we
+ lose our power of realizing things not seen. Let a man be religious
+ and irreligious at intervals--irregular, inconsistent, without some
+ distinct thing to live for--it is a matter of impossibility that he
+ can be free from doubts. He must make up his mind for a dark life.
+ Doubts can only be dispelled by that kind of active life that realizes
+ Christ. And there is no faith that gives a victory so steadily
+ triumphant as that. When such a man comes near the opening of the
+ vault, it is no world of sorrows he is entering upon. He is only going
+ to see things that he has felt, for he has been living in heaven. He
+ has his grasp on things that other men are only groping after and
+ touching now and then. Live above this world, Brethren, and then the
+ powers of the world to come are so upon you that there is no room for
+ doubt.
+
+ Besides all this, it is a Christian's privilege to have victory over
+ the fear of death. And here it is exceedingly easy to paint what after
+ all is only the image-picture of a dying hour. It is the easiest thing
+ to represent the dying Christian as a man who always sinks into the
+ grave full of hope, full of triumph, in the certain hope of a blessed
+ resurrection. Brethren, we must paint things in the sober colours of
+ truth; not as they might be supposed to be, but as they are. Often
+ that is only a picture. Either very few death-beds are Christian ones,
+ or else triumph is a very different thing from what the word generally
+ implies. Solemn, subdued, full of awe and full of solemnity, is the
+ dying hour generally of the holiest men: sometimes almost
+ darkness.--Rapture is a rare thing, except in books and scenes.
+
+ Let us understand what really is the victory over fear. It may be
+ rapture or it may not. All that depends very much on temperament; and
+ after all, the broken words of a dying man are a very poor index of
+ his real state before God. Rapturous hope has been granted to martyrs
+ in peculiar moments. It is on record of a minister of our own Church,
+ that his expectation of seeing God in Christ became so intense as his
+ last hour drew near, that his physician was compelled to bid him calm
+ his transports, because in so excited a state he could not die. A
+ strange unnatural energy was imparted to his muscular frame by his
+ nerves overstrung with triumph. But brethren, it fosters a dangerous
+ feeling to take cases like those as precedents. It leads to that most
+ terrible of all unrealities--the acting of a death-bed scene. A
+ Christian conqueror dies calmly. Brave men in battle do not boast that
+ they are not afraid. Courage is so natural to them that they are not
+ conscious they are doing anything out of the common way--Christian
+ bravery is a deep, calm thing, unconscious of itself. There are more
+ triumphant death-beds than we count, if we only remember this--true
+ fearlessness makes no parade.
+
+ Oh, it is not only in those passionate effusions in which the ancient
+ martyrs spoke sometimes of panting for the crushing of their limbs by
+ the lions in the amphitheatre, or of holding out their arms to embrace
+ the flames that were to curl round them--it is not then only that
+ Christ has stood by His servants, and made them more than
+ conquerors:--there may be something of earthly excitement in all that.
+ Every day His servants are dying modestly and peacefully--not a word
+ of victory on their lips; but Christ's deep triumph in their
+ hearts--watching the slow progress of their own decay, and yet so far
+ emancipated from personal anxiety that they are still able to think
+ and to plan for others, not knowing that they are doing any great
+ thing. They die, and the world hears nothing of them; and yet theirs
+ was the completest victory. They came to the battle field, the field
+ to which they had been looking forward all their lives, and the enemy
+ was not to be found. There was no Foe to fight with.
+
+ The last form in which a Christian gets the victory over death is by
+ means of his resurrection. It seems to have been this which was
+ chiefly alluded to by the Apostle here; for he says, "when this
+ corruptible shall have put on incorruption ... _then_ shall come to
+ pass the saying which is written, Death is swallowed up in victory."
+ And to say the truth, brethren, it is a rhetorical expression rather
+ than a sober truth when we call anything, except the resurrection,
+ victory over death. We may conquer doubt and fear when we are dying,
+ but that is not conquering death. It is like a warrior crushed to
+ death by a superior antagonist refusing to yield a groan, and bearing
+ the glance of defiance to the last. You feel that he is an
+ unconquerable spirit, but he is not the conqueror. And when you see
+ flesh melting away, and mental power becoming infantine in its
+ feebleness, and lips scarcely able to articulate, is there left one
+ moment a doubt upon the mind, as to _who_ is the conqueror in spite of
+ all the unshaken fortitude there may be? The victory is on the side of
+ Death, not on the side of the dying.
+
+ And my brethren, if we would enter into the full feeling of triumph
+ contained in this verse, we must just try to bear in mind what this
+ world would be without the thought of a resurrection. If we could
+ conceive an unselfish man looking upon this world of desolation with
+ that infinite compassion which all the brave and good feel, what
+ conception could he have but that of defeat, and failure, and
+ sadness--the sons of man mounting into a bright existence, and one
+ after another falling back into darkness and nothingness, like
+ soldiers trying to mount an impracticable breach, and falling back
+ crushed and mangled into the ditch before the bayonets and the
+ rattling fire of their conquerors. Misery and guilt, look which way
+ you will, till the heart gets sick with looking at it.
+
+ Brethren, until a man looks on evil till it seems to him almost like a
+ real personal enemy rejoicing over the destruction that it has made,
+ he can scarcely conceive the deep rapture which rushed into the mind
+ of the Apostle Paul when he remembered that a day was coming when all
+ this was to be reversed. A day was coming, and it was the day of
+ reality for which he lived, ever present and ever certain, when this
+ sad world was to put _off for ever_ its changefulness and its misery,
+ and the grave was to be robbed of its victory, and the bodies were to
+ come forth purified by their long sleep. He called all this a victory,
+ because he felt that it was a real battle that has to be fought and
+ won before that can be secured. One battle has been fought by Christ,
+ and another battle, most real and difficult, but yet a conquering one,
+ is to be fought by us. He hath imparted to us the virtue of His
+ wrestlings, and the strength of His victory. So that, when the body
+ shall rise again, the power of the law to condemn is gone, because we
+ have learned to love the law.
+
+ And now to conclude all this, there are but two things which remain to
+ say. In the first place, brethren, if we would be conquerors, we must
+ realize God's love in Christ. Take care not to be under the law.
+ Constraint never yet made a conqueror: the utmost it can do is to make
+ either a rebel or a slave. Believe that God loves you. He gave a
+ triumphant demonstration of it in the Cross. Never shall we conquer
+ self till we have learned _to love_. My Christian brethren, let us
+ remember our high privilege. Christian life, so far as it deserves the
+ name, is victory. We are not going forth to mere battle--we are going
+ forth to conquer. To gain mastery over self, and sin, and doubt, and
+ fear: till the last coldness, coming across the brow, tells us that
+ all is over, and our warfare accomplished--that we are safe, the
+ everlasting arms beneath us--_that_ is our calling. Brethren beloved,
+ do not be content with a slothful, dreamy, uncertain struggle. You are
+ to conquer, and the banner under which we are to win is not Fear, but
+ Love. "The strength of sin is the law;" the victory is by keeping
+ before us God in Christ.
+
+ Lastly, there is need of encouragement for those of us whose faith is
+ not of the conquering, but the timid kind. There are some whose hearts
+ will reply to all this, Surely victory is not always a Christian's
+ portion. Is there no cold dark watching in Christian life--no struggle
+ when victory seems a mockery to speak of--no times when light and life
+ seem feeble, and Christ is to us but a name, and death a reality?
+ "Perfect love casteth out fear," but who has it? Victory is by faith,
+ but, oh God, who will tell us what this faith _is_ that men speak of
+ as a thing so easy; and how we are to get it! You tell us to pray for
+ faith, but how shall we pray in earnest unless we first have the very
+ faith we pray for?
+
+ My Christian brethren, it is just to this deepest cry of the human
+ heart that it is impossible to return a full answer. All that is
+ true. To feel Faith is the grand difficulty of life. Faith is a deep
+ impression of God and God's love, and personal trust in it. It is easy
+ to say "Believe and thou shalt be saved," but well we know it is
+ easier said than done. We cannot say how men are to _get_ faith. It is
+ God's gift, almost in the same way that genius is. You cannot work
+ _for_ faith; you must have it first, and then work _from_ it.
+
+ But brethren beloved, we can say, Look up, though we know not how the
+ mechanism of the will which directs the eye is to be put in motion; we
+ can say, Look to God in Christ, though we know not how men are to
+ obtain faith to do it. Let us be in earnest. Our polar star is the
+ love of the Cross. Take the eye off that, and you are in darkness and
+ bewilderment at once. Let us not mind what is past. Perhaps it is all
+ failure, and useless struggle, and broken resolves. What then? Settle
+ this first, brethren, Are you in earnest? If so, though your faith be
+ weak and your struggles unsatisfactory, you may begin the hymn of
+ triumph _now_, for victory is pledged. "Thanks be to God, which" not
+ _shall_ give, but "_giveth_ us the victory through our Lord Jesus
+ Christ."
+
+
+
+
+ XVIII.
+
+ _Preached June 20, 1852._
+
+ MAN'S GREATNESS AND GOD'S GREATNESS.
+
+
+   "For thus saith the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth Eternity,
+    whose Name is Holy. I dwell in the high and holy place--with him
+    also that is of a contrite and humble spirit."--Isaiah lvii. 15.
+
+ The origin of this announcement seems to have been the state of
+ contempt in which religion found itself in the days of Isaiah. One of
+ the most profligate monarchs that ever disgraced the page of sacred
+ history, sat upon the throne of Judah. His court was filled with men
+ who recommended themselves chiefly by their licentiousness. The altar
+ was forsaken. Sacrilegious hands had placed the abominations of
+ heathenism in the Holy Place; and Piety, banished from the State, the
+ Church, and the Royal court, was once more as she had been before, and
+ will be again, a wanderer on the face of the earth.
+
+ Now, however easy it may be to contemplate such a state of things at a
+ distance, it never takes place in a man's own day and time, without
+ suggesting painful perplexities of a twofold nature. In the first
+ place suspicions respecting God's character; and, in the second place,
+ misgivings as to his own duty. For a faithless heart whispers, Is it
+ worth while to suffer for a sinking cause? Honour, preferment,
+ grandeur, follow in the train of unscrupulous conduct. To be strict in
+ goodness, is to be pointed at and shunned. To be no better than one's
+ neighbours is the only way of being at peace. It seems to have been to
+ such a state as this that Isaiah was commissioned to bring light. He
+ vindicated God's character by saying that He is "the High and Lofty
+ One that inhabiteth Eternity." He encouraged those who were trodden
+ down, to perseverance, by reminding them that real dignity is
+ something very different from present success. God dwells with him,
+ "that is of a contrite and humble spirit" We consider
+
+    I. That in which the greatness of God consists.
+   II. That in which man's greatness consists.
+
+ The first measurement, so to speak, which is given us of God's
+ greatness, is in respect of Time. He inhabiteth Eternity. There are
+ some subjects on which it would be good to dwell, if it were only for
+ the sake of that enlargement of mind which is produced by their
+ contemplation. And eternity is one of these, so that you cannot
+ steadily fix the thoughts upon it without being sensible of a peculiar
+ kind of elevation, at the same time that you are humbled by a personal
+ feeling of utter insignificance. You have come in contact with
+ something so immeasurable--beyond the narrow range of our common
+ speculations--that you are exalted by the very conception of it. Now
+ the only way we have of forming any idea of eternity is by going, step
+ by step, up to the largest measures of time we know of, and so
+ ascending, on and on, till we are lost in wonder. We cannot grasp
+ eternity, but we can learn something of it by perceiving, that, rise
+ to what portion of time we will, eternity is vaster than the vastest.
+
+ We take up for instance, the history of our own country, and then,
+ when we have spent months in mastering the mere outline of those great
+ events which, in the slow course of revolving centuries, have made
+ England what she is, her earlier ages seem so far removed from our own
+ times that they appear to belong to a hoary and most remote antiquity.
+ But then, when you compare those times with even the existing works of
+ man, and when you remember that, when England was yet young in
+ civilization, the pyramids of Egypt were already grey with 1500 years,
+ you have got another step which impresses you with a doubled amount of
+ vastness. Double that period, and you come to the far distant moment
+ when the present aspect of this world was called, by creation, out of
+ the formless void in which it was before.
+
+ Modern science has raised us to a pinnacle of thought beyond even
+ this. It has commanded us to think of countless ages in which that
+ formless void existed before it put on the aspect of its present
+ creation. Millions of years before God called the light day, and the
+ darkness night, there was, if science speaks true, creation after
+ creation called into existence, and buried in its own ruins upon the
+ surface of this earth. And then, there was a time beyond even
+ this--there was a moment when this earth itself, with all its
+ countless creations and innumerable ages, did not exist. And, again,
+ in that far back distance it is more than conceivable, it seems by the
+ analogy of God's dealings next to certain, that ten thousand worlds
+ may have been called into existence, and lasted their unnumbered ages,
+ and then perished in succession. Compared with these stupendous
+ figures, 6,000 years of _our_ planet sink into nothingness. The mind
+ is lost in dwelling on such thoughts as these. When you have
+ penetrated far, far back, by successive approximations, and still see
+ the illimitable distance receding before you as distant as before,
+ imagination absolutely gives way, and you feel dizzy and bewildered
+ with new strange thoughts, that have not a name.
+
+ But this is only one aspect of the case. It looks only to time past.
+ The same overpowering calculations wait us when we bend our eyes on
+ that which is to come. Time stretches back immeasurably, but it also
+ stretches on and on for ever. Now it is by such a conception as this
+ that the inspired prophet attempts to measure the immeasurable of God.
+ All that eternity, magnificent as it is, never was without an
+ Inhabitant. Eternity means nothing by itself. It merely expresses the
+ existence of the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth it. We make a
+ fanciful distinction between eternity and time--there is no real
+ distinction. We are in eternity at this moment. That has begun to be
+ with us which never began with God. Our only measure of time is by the
+ succession of ideas. If ideas flow fast, and many sights and many
+ thoughts pass by us, time seems lengthened. If we have the simple
+ routine of a few engagements, the same every day, with little variety,
+ the years roll by us so fast that we cannot mark them. It is not so
+ with God. There is no succession of ideas with Him. Every possible
+ idea is present with Him now. It was present with Him ten thousand
+ years ago. God's dwelling-place is that eternity which has neither
+ past nor future, but one vast, immeasurable present.
+
+ There is a second measure given us of God in this verse. It is in
+ respect of Space. He dwelleth in the High and Lofty place. He dwelleth
+ moreover, in the most insignificant place--even the heart of man. And
+ the idea by which the prophet would here exhibit to us the greatness
+ of God is that of His eternal Omnipresence. It is difficult to say
+ which conception carries with it the greatest exaltation--that of
+ boundless space or that of unbounded time. When we pass from the tame
+ and narrow scenery of our own country, and stand on those spots of
+ earth in which nature puts on her wilder and more awful forms, we are
+ conscious of something of the grandeur which belongs to the thought of
+ space. Go where the strong foundations of the earth lie around you in
+ their massive majesty, and mountain after mountain rears its snow to
+ heaven in a giant chain, and then, when this bursts upon you for the
+ first time in life, there is that peculiar feeling which we call, in
+ common language, an enlargement of ideas. But when we are told that
+ the sublimity of those dizzy heights is but a nameless speck in
+ comparison with the globe of which they form the girdle; and when we
+ pass on to think of that globe itself as a minute spot in the mighty
+ system to which it belongs, so that our world might be annihilated,
+ and its loss would not be felt; and when we are told that eighty
+ millions of such systems roll in the world of space, to which our own
+ system again is as nothing; and when we are again pressed with the
+ recollection that beyond those furthest limits creative power is
+ exerted immeasurably further than eye can reach, or thought can
+ penetrate; then, brethren, the awe which comes upon the heart is only,
+ after all, a tribute to a _portion_ of God's greatness.
+
+ Yet we need not science to teach us this. It is the thought which
+ oppresses very childhood--the overpowering thought of space. A child
+ can put his head upon his hands, and think and think till it reaches
+ in imagination some far distant barrier of the universe, and still the
+ difficulty presents itself to his young mind, "And what is beyond that
+ barrier?" and the only answer is "The high and lofty place." And this
+ brethren, is the inward seal with which God has stamped Himself upon
+ man's heart. If every other trace of Deity has been expunged by the
+ fall, these two at least defy destruction--the thought of Eternal
+ Time, and the thought of Immeasurable Space.
+
+ The third measure which is given us of God respects His character.
+ His name is Holy. The chief idea which this would convey to us is
+ separation from evil. Brethren, there is perhaps a time drawing near
+ when those of us who shall stand at His right hand, purified from all
+ evil taint, shall be able to comprehend absolutely what is meant by
+ the Holiness of God. At present, with hearts cleaving down to earth,
+ and tossed by a thousand gusts of unholy passion, we can only form a
+ dim conception _relatively_ of that which it implies. None but the
+ pure can understand purity. The chief knowledge which we have of God's
+ holiness comes from our acquaintance with unholiness. We know what
+ impurity is--God is _not_ that. We know what injustice is--God is
+ _not_ that. We know what restlessness, and guilt, and passion are, and
+ deceitfulness, and pride, and waywardness--all these we know. God is
+ none of these. And this is our chief acquaintance with His character.
+ We know what God is _not_. We scarcely can be rightly said to know,
+ that is to feel, what God _is_. And therefore, this is implied in the
+ very name of holiness. Holiness in the Jewish sense means simply
+ separateness. From all that is wrong, and mean, and base, our God is
+ for ever separate.
+
+ There is another way in which God gives to us a conception of what
+ this holiness implies. Tell us of His justice, His truth, His
+ loving-kindness. All these are cold abstractions. They convey no
+ distinct idea of themselves to our hearts. What we wanted was, that
+ these should be exhibited to us in tangible reality. And it is just
+ this which God has done. He has exhibited all these attributes, not in
+ the light of _speculation_, but in the light of _facts_. He has given
+ us His own character in all its delicacy of colouring in the history
+ of Christ. Love, Mercy, Tenderness, Purity--these are no mere names
+ when we see them brought out in the human actions of our Master.
+ Holiness is only a shadow to our minds, till it receives shape and
+ substance in the life of Christ. All this character of holiness is
+ intelligible to us in Christ. "No man hath seen God at any time, the
+ only begotten of the Father He hath declared Him."
+
+ There is a third light in which God's holiness is shown to us, and
+ that is in the sternness with which He recoils from guilt. When Christ
+ died for man, I know what God's love means; and when Jesus wept human
+ tears over Jerusalem, I know what God's compassion means; and when the
+ stern denunciations of Jesus rung in the Pharisees' ears, I can
+ comprehend what God's indignation is; and when Jesus stood calm before
+ His murderers, I have a conception of what serenity is. Brethren,
+ revelation opens to us a scene beyond the grave, when this shall be
+ exhibited in full operation. There will be an everlasting banishment
+ from God's presence of that impurity on which the last efforts have
+ been tried in vain. It will be a carrying out of this sentence by a
+ law that cannot be reversed--"Depart from me, ye cursed." But it is
+ quite a mistake to suppose that this is only a matter of revelation.
+ Traces of it we have now on this side the sepulchre. Human life is
+ full of God's recoil from sin. In the writhings of a heart which has
+ been made to possess its own iniquities--in the dark spot which guilt
+ leaves upon the conscience, rising up at times in a man's gayest
+ moments, as if it will not come out--in the restlessness and the
+ feverishness which follow the efforts of the man who has indulged
+ habits of sin too long,--in all these there is a law repelling
+ wickedness from the presence of the Most High,--which proclaims that
+ God is holy.
+
+ Brethren, it is in these that the greatness of God consists--Eternal
+ in Time--Unlimited in Space--Unchangeable--Pure in character--His
+ serenity and His vastness arise from His own perfections.
+
+
+ We are to consider, in the second place, the greatness of man.
+
+   1. The nature of that greatness.
+   2. The persons who are great.
+
+ Now, this is brought before us in the text in this one fact, that man
+ has been made a habitation of the Deity--"I dwell with him that is of
+ a contrite and humble spirit." There is in the very outset this
+ distinction between what is great in God and what is great in man. To
+ be independent of everything in the universe is God's glory, and to be
+ independent is man's shame. All that God has, He has from Himself--all
+ that man has, He has from God. And the moment man cuts himself off
+ from God, that moment he cuts himself off from all true grandeur.
+
+ There are two things implied in Scripture, when it is said that God
+ dwells with man. The first is that peculiar presence which He has
+ conferred upon the members of His church. Brethren, we presume not to
+ define what that Presence is, and how it dwells within us--we are
+ content to leave it as a mystery. But this we know, that something of
+ a very peculiar and supernatural character takes place in the heart of
+ every man upon whom the gospel has been brought to bear with power.
+ "Know ye not," says the Apostle, "that your bodies are the temples of
+ the Holy Ghost." And again in the Epistle to the Ephesians--"In Christ
+ ye are builded for an habitation of God through the Spirit." There is
+ something in these expressions which refuses to be explained away.
+ They leave us but one conclusion, and that is--that in all those who
+ have become Christ's by faith, God personally and locally has taken up
+ His dwelling-place.
+
+ There is a second meaning attached in Scripture to the expression God
+ dwells in man. According to the first meaning, we understand it in the
+ most plain and literal sense the words are capable of conveying.
+ According to the second, we understand His dwelling in a figurative
+ sense, implying this--that He gives an acquaintance with Himself to
+ man. So, for instance, when Judas asked, "Lord, how is it, that Thou
+ wilt manifest Thyself to us and not to the world?" Our Redeemer's
+ reply was this--"If a man love me, he will keep my words, and my
+ Father will love him, and We will come unto him and make Our abode
+ with him." In the question it was asked _how_ God would manifest
+ Himself to His servants. In the answer it was shown _how_ He would
+ make His abode with them. And if the answer be any reply to the
+ question at all, what follows is this--that God making His abode or
+ dwelling in the heart is the same thing exactly as God's manifesting
+ himself to the heart.
+
+ Brethren, in these two things the greatness of man consists. One is to
+ have God so dwelling in us as to impart His character to us; and the
+ other is to have God so dwelling in us that we recognise His presence,
+ and know that we are His and He is ours. They are two things perfectly
+ distinct To _have_ God in us, this is salvation; to _know_ that God is
+ in us, this is assurance.
+
+ Lastly, we inquire as to the persons who are truly great. And these
+ the Holy Scripture has divided into two classes--those who are humble
+ and those who are contrite in heart. Or rather, it will be observed
+ that it is the same class of character under different circumstances.
+ Humbleness is the frame of mind of those who are in a state of
+ innocence, contrition of those who are in a state of repentant guilt.
+ Brethren, let not the expression innocence be misunderstood. Innocence
+ in its true and highest sense never existed but once upon this earth.
+ Innocence cannot be the religion of man now. But yet there are those
+ who have walked with God from youth, not quenching the spirit which He
+ gave them, and who are therefore _comparatively_ innocent beings. All
+ they have to do is to go on, whereas the guilty man has to stop and
+ turn back before he can go on. Repentance with them is the gentle work
+ of every day, not the work of one distinct and miserable part of life.
+ They are those whom the Lord calls just men which need no repentance,
+ and of whom He says, "He that is clean needeth not save to wash his
+ feet."
+
+ Now they are described here as the humble in heart. Two things are
+ required for this state of mind. One is that a man should have a true
+ estimate of God, and the other is that he should have a true estimate
+ of himself.
+
+ Vain, blind man, places himself on a little corner of this planet, a
+ speck upon a speck of the universe, and begins to form conclusions
+ from the small fraction of God's government which he can see from
+ thence. The astronomer looks at the laws of motion and forgets that
+ there must have been a First Cause to commence that motion. The
+ surgeon looks at the materialism of his own frame and forgets that
+ matter cannot organise itself into exquisite beauty. The metaphysician
+ buries himself in the laws of mind and forgets that there may be
+ spiritual influences producing all those laws. And this brethren, is
+ the unhumbled spirit of philosophy--intellectual pride. Men look at
+ Nature, but they do not look through it up to Nature's God. There is
+ awful ignorance of God, arising from indulged sin, which produces an
+ unhumbled heart. God may be shut out from the soul by pride of
+ intellect, or by pride of heart.
+
+ Pharaoh is placed before us in Scripture almost as a type of pride.
+ His pride arose from ignorance of God. "Who is the Lord that I should
+ obey His voice? I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go."
+ And this was not intellectual pride; it was pride in a matter of duty.
+ Pharaoh had been immersing his whole heart in the narrow politics of
+ Egypt. The great problem of his day was to aggrandise his own people
+ and prevent an insurrection of the Israelites; and that small kingdom
+ of Egypt had been his universe. He shut his heart to the voice of
+ justice and the voice of humanity; in other words, great in the pride
+ of human majesty, small in the sight of the High and Lofty One, he
+ shut himself out from the knowledge of God.
+
+ The next ingredient of humbleness is, that a man must have a right
+ estimate of himself. There is a vast amount of self-deception on this
+ point. We say of ourselves that which we could not bear others to say
+ of us. A man truly humbled would take it only as his due when others
+ treated him in the way that he says that he deserves. But my brethren,
+ we kneel in our closets in shame for what we are, and we tell our God
+ that the lowest place is too good for us; and then we go into the
+ world, and if we meet with slight or disrespect, or if our opinion be
+ not attended to, or if another be preferred before us, there is all
+ the anguish of a galled and jealous spirit, and half the bitterness of
+ our lives comes from this, that we are smarting from what we call the
+ wrongs and the neglect of men. My beloved brethren, if we saw
+ ourselves as God sees us, we should be willing to be anywhere, to be
+ silent when others speak, to be passed by in the world's crowd, and
+ thrust aside to make way for others. We should be willing to put
+ others in the way of doing that which we might have got reputation for
+ by doing ourselves. This was the temper of our Master--this is the
+ meek and the quiet spirit, and this is the temper of the humble with
+ whom the High and Lofty One dwells.
+
+ The other class of those who are truly great are the contrite in
+ spirit. At first sight it might be supposed that there must ever be a
+ vast distinction between the innocent and the penitent. It was so that
+ the elder son in the parable thought when he saw his brother restored
+ to his father's favour. He was surprised and hurt. He had served his
+ father these many years--his brother had wasted his substance in
+ riotous living. But in this passage God makes no distinction. He
+ places the humble consistent follower and the broken-hearted sinner on
+ a level. He dwells with both, with Him that is contrite, _and_ with
+ him that is humble. He sheds around them both the grandeur of His own
+ presence, and the annals of Church history are full of
+ exemplifications of this marvel of God's grace. By the transforming
+ grace of Christ men, who have done the very work of Satan, have become
+ as conspicuous in the service of heaven, as they were once conspicuous
+ in the career of guilt.
+
+ So indisputably has this been so, that men have drawn from such
+ instances the perverted conclusion, that if a man is ever to be a
+ great saint, he must first be a great sinner. God forbid brethren,
+ that we should ever make such an inference. But this we infer for our
+ own encouragement, that past sin does not necessarily preclude from
+ high attainments. We must "forget the things that are behind." We
+ must not mourn over past years of folly as if they made saintliness
+ impossible. Deep as we may have been once in earthliness, so deep we
+ may also be in penitence, and so high we may become in spirituality.
+
+ We have so many years the fewer to do our work in. Well brethren, let
+ us try to do it so much the faster. Christ can crowd the work of years
+ into hours. He did it with the dying thief. If the man who has set out
+ early may take his time, it certainly cannot be so with _us_ who have
+ lost our time. If we have lost God's bright and happy presence by our
+ wilfulness, what then? Unrelieved sadness? Nay, brethren, calmness,
+ purity, may have gone from our heart; but _all_ is not gone yet. Just
+ as sweetness comes from the bark of the cinnamon when it is bruised,
+ so can the spirit of the Cross of Christ bring beauty and holiness and
+ peace out of the bruised and broken heart. God dwells with the
+ contrite as much as with the humble.
+
+ And now brethren, to conclude, the first inference we collect from
+ this subject, is the danger of coming into collision with such a God
+ as our God. Day by day we commit sins of thought and word of which the
+ dull eye of man takes no cognisance. He whose name is Holy cannot pass
+ them by. We may elude the vigilance of a human enemy and place
+ ourselves beyond his reach. God fills all space--there is not a spot
+ in which His piercing eye is not on us, and His uplifted hand cannot
+ find us out. Man must strike soon if he would strike at all; for
+ opportunities pass away from him, and his victim may escape his
+ vengeance by death. There is no passing of opportunity with God, and
+ it is this which makes His long suffering a solemn thing. God can
+ wait, for He has a whole eternity before Him in which He may strike.
+ "All things are open, and naked to Him with whom we have to do."
+
+ In the next place we are taught the heavenly character of
+ condescension. It is not from the insignificance of man that God's
+ dwelling with him is so strange. It is as much the glory of God to
+ bend His attention on an atom as to uphold the universe. But the
+ marvel is that the habitation which He has chosen for Himself is an
+ impure one. And when He came down from His magnificence to make this
+ world His home, still the same character of condescension was shown
+ through all the life of Christ. Our God selected the society of the
+ outcasts of earth, those whom none else would speak to.
+
+ Brethren, if we would be Godlike, we must follow in the same steps.
+ Our temptation is to do exactly the reverse. We are for ever wishing
+ to obtain the friendship and the intimacy of those above us in the
+ world. To win over men of influence to truth--to associate with men of
+ talent and station, and title. This is the world-chase, and this,
+ brethren, is too much the religious man's chase. But if you look
+ simply to the question of resemblance to God, then the man who makes
+ it a habit to select that one in life to do good to, and that one in
+ a room to speak with, whom others pass by because there is nothing
+ either of intellect, or power, or name, to recommend him, but only
+ humbleness, _that_ man has stamped upon his heart more of heavenly
+ similitude by condescension, than the man who has made it his business
+ to win this world's great ones, even for the sake of truth.
+
+ Lastly, we learn the guilt of two things of which this world is
+ full--vanity and pride. There is a distinction between these two. But
+ the distinction consists in this, that the vain man looks for the
+ admiration of others--the proud man requires nothing but his own. Now,
+ it is this distinction which makes vanity despicable to us all. We can
+ easily find out the vain man--we soon discover what it is he wants to
+ be observed, whether it be a gift of person, or a gift of mind, or a
+ gift of character. If he be vain of his person, his attitudes will
+ tell the tale. If he be vain of his judgment, or his memory, or his
+ honesty, he cannot help an unnecessary parade. The world finds him
+ out, and this is why vanity is ever looked on with contempt. So soon
+ as we let men see that we are suppliants for their admiration, we are
+ at their mercy. We have given them the privilege of feeling that they
+ are above us. We have invited them to spurn us. And therefore vanity
+ is but a thing for scorn. But it is very different with pride. No man
+ can look down on him that is proud, for he has asked no man for
+ anything. They are forced to feel respect for pride, because it is
+ thoroughly independent of them. It wraps itself up in the consequence
+ of its own excellences, and scorns to care whether others take note
+ of them or not.
+
+ It is just here that the danger lies. We have exalted a sin into a
+ virtue. No man will acknowledge that he is vain, but almost any man
+ will acknowledge that he is proud. But tried by the balance of the
+ sanctuary, there is little to choose between the two. If a man look
+ for greatness out of God, it matters little whether he seek it in his
+ own applause, or in the applause of others. The _proud_ Pharisee, who
+ trusted in himself that he was righteous, was condemned by Christ as
+ severely, and even more, than the _vain_ Jews who "could not believe
+ because they sought honour from one another, and not that honour which
+ cometh from God only." It may be a more dazzling, and a more splendid
+ sin to be proud. It is not less hateful in God's sight. Let us speak
+ God's word to our own unquiet, swelling, burning hearts. Pride may
+ disguise itself as it will in its own majesty, but in the presence of
+ the High and Lofty One, it is but littleness after all.
+
+
+
+
+ XIX.
+
+ _Preached June 27, 1852._
+
+ THE LAWFUL AND UNLAWFUL USE OF LAW.
+
+ (A FRAGMENT.)
+
+
+   "But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully."--1
+    Tim. i. 8.
+
+ It is scarcely ever possible to understand a passage without some
+ acquaintance with the history of the circumstances under which it was
+ written.
+
+ At Ephesus, over which Timothy was bishop, people had been bewildered
+ by the teaching of converted Jews, who mixed the old leaven of Judaism
+ with the new spirituality of Christianity. They maintained the
+ perpetual obligation of the Jewish law.--v. 7. They desired to be
+ teachers of the law. They required strict performance of a number of
+ severe observances. They talked mysteriously of angels and powers
+ intermediate between God and the human soul.--v. 4. The result was an
+ interminable discussion at Ephesus. The Church was filled with
+ disputations and controversies.
+
+ Now there is something always refreshing to see the Apostle Paul
+ descending upon an arena of controversy, where minds have been
+ bewildered; and so much is to be said on both sides, that people are
+ uncertain which to take. You know at once that he will pour light upon
+ the question, and illuminate all the dark corners. You know that he
+ will not trim, and balance, and hang doubtful, or become a partisan;
+ but that he will seize some great principle which lies at the root of
+ the whole controversy, and make its true bearings clear at once.
+
+ This he always does, and this he does on the present occasion.--v. 5
+ and 6. He does not, like a vehement polemic, say Jewish ceremonies and
+ rules are all worthless, nor some ceremonies are worthless, and others
+ essential; but he says, the root of the whole matter is charity. If
+ you turn aside from this, all is lost; here at once the controversy
+ closes. So far as any rule fosters the spirit of love, that is, is
+ used lawfully, it is wise, and has a use. So far as it does not, it is
+ chaff. So far as it hinders it, it is poison.
+
+ Now observe how different this method is from that which is called the
+ sober, moderate way--the _via media_. Some would have said, the great
+ thing is to avoid extremes. If the question respects
+ fasting--fast--only in _moderation_. If the observance of the Sabbath
+ day, observe it on the Jewish principle, only _not so strictly_.
+
+ St. Paul, on the contrary, went down to the root; he said, the true
+ question is not whether the law is good or bad, but on what principle;
+ he said, you are both wrong--_you_, in saying that the observance of
+ the law is essential, for the end of it is charity, and if _that_ be
+ got what matter _how_--_you_, in saying rules may be dispensed with
+ entirely and always, "for we know that the law is good."
+
+    I. The unlawful use, and
+   II. The lawful use of law.
+
+
+ I. The unlawful use.
+
+ Define law.--By law, Paul almost always means not the Mosaic law, but
+ law in its essence and principle, that is, constraint. This chiefly in
+ two forms expresses itself--1st, a custom; 2nd, a maxim. As examples
+ of custom, we might give Circumcision, or the Sabbath, or Sacrifice,
+ or Fasting.
+
+ Law said, thou shalt _do_ these things; and law, as mere law,
+ constrained them. Or again, law may express itself in maxims and
+ rules.
+
+ In rules, as when law said, "Thou shalt not steal"--not saying a word
+ about secret dishonesty of heart, but simply taking cognizance of
+ _acts_.
+
+ In maxims, as when it admonished that man ought to give a tenth to
+ God, leaving the principle of the matter untouched. Principle is one
+ thing, and maxim is another. A principle requires liberality, a maxim
+ says one-tenth. A principle says, "A merciful man is merciful to his
+ beast," leaves mercy to the heart, and does not define how; a maxim
+ says, thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out thy corn. A
+ principle says, Forgive; a maxim defines "seven times;" and thus the
+ whole law falls into two divisions.
+
+   The ceremonial law, which constrains life by customs.
+   The moral law, which guides life by rules and maxims.
+
+ Now it is an illegitimate use of law. First. To expect by obedience to
+ it to make out a title to salvation.
+
+ By the deeds of the law, shall no man living be justified. Salvation
+ is by faith: a state of heart right with God; faith is the spring of
+ holiness--a well of life. Salvation is not the having committed a
+ certain number of good acts. Destruction is not the having committed a
+ certain number of crimes. Salvation is God's Spirit in us, leading to
+ good. Destruction is the selfish spirit in us, leading to wrong.
+
+ For a plain reason then, obedience to law cannot save, because it is
+ merely the performance of a certain number of acts which may be done
+ by habit, from fear, from compulsion. Obedience remains still
+ imperfect. A man may have obeyed the rule, and kept the maxim, and yet
+ not be perfect. "All these commandments have I kept from my youth up."
+ "Yet lackest thou one thing." The law he had kept. The spirit of
+ obedience in its high form of sacrifice he had not.
+
+ Secondly. To use it superstitiously.
+
+ It is plain that this was the use made of it by the Ephesian
+ teachers.--v. 4. It seemed to them that _law_ was pleasing to God as
+ restraint. Then unnatural restraints came to be imposed--on the
+ appetites, fasting; on the affections, celibacy. This is what Paul
+ condemns.--ch. iv., v. 8. "Bodily exercise profiteth little."
+
+ And again, this superstition showed itself in a false
+ reverence--wondrous stories respecting angels--respecting the eternal
+ genealogy of Christ--awful thoughts about spirits. The Apostle calls
+ all these, very unceremoniously, "endless genealogies," v. 4, and "old
+ wives' fables."--ch. iv., v. 7.
+
+ The question at issue is, wherein true reverence consists: according
+ to them, in the multiplicity of the objects of reverence; according to
+ St. Paul, in the character of the object revered ... God and Right the
+ true object.
+
+ But you are not a whit the better for solemn and reverential feelings
+ about a mysterious, invisible world. To tremble before a consecrated
+ wafer is spurious reverence. To bend before the Majesty of Right is
+ Christian reverence.
+
+ Thirdly. To use it as if the letter of it were sacred. The law
+ commanded none to eat the shewbread except the priests. David ate it
+ in hunger. If Abimelech had scrupled to give it, he would have used
+ the law unlawfully.
+
+ The law commanded no manner of work. The apostles in hunger rubbed the
+ ears of corn. The Pharisees used the law unlawfully, in forbidding
+ that.
+
+
+ II. The lawful use of law.
+
+ 1. As a restraint to keep outward evil in check ... "The law was made
+ for sinners and profane." ... Illustrate this by reference to capital
+ punishment. No sane man believes that punishment by death will make a
+ nation's heart right, or that the sight of an execution can soften or
+ ameliorate. Punishment does not work in that way. It is not meant for
+ that purpose. It is meant to guard society.
+
+ The law commanding a blasphemer to be stoned, could not teach one
+ Israelite love to God, but it could save the streets of Israel from
+ scandalous ribaldry.
+
+ And therefore clearly understand, law is a mere check to bad men: it
+ does not improve them; it often makes them worse; it cannot sanctify
+ them. God never intended that it should. It saves society from the
+ open transgression; it does not contemplate the amelioration of the
+ offender.
+
+ Hence we see for what reason the apostle insisted on the use of the
+ law for Christians. Law never can be abrogated. Strict rules are
+ needed exactly in proportion as we want the power or the will to rule
+ ourselves. It is not because the Gospel has come that we are free from
+ the law, but because, and only so far, as we are in a Gospel state.
+ "It is for a righteous man" that the law is not made, and thus we see
+ the true nature of Christian liberty. The liberty to which we are
+ called in Christ, is not the liberty of devils, the liberty of doing
+ what we will, but the blessed liberty of being on the side of the law,
+ and therefore unrestrained by it in doing right.
+
+ Illustrate from laws of coining, housebreaking, &c. We are not under
+ them.--Because we may break them as we like? Nay--the moment we
+ desire, the law is alive again to us.
+
+ 2. As a primer is used by a child to acquire by degrees, principles
+ and a spirit.
+
+ This is the use attributed to it in verse 5. "The end of the
+ commandment is charity."
+
+ Compare with this, two other passages--"Christ is the end of the law
+ for righteousness," and "love is the fulfilling of the law." "Perfect
+ love casteth out fear."
+
+ In every law there is a spirit; in every maxim a principle; and the
+ law and the maxim are laid down for the sake of conserving the spirit
+ and the principle which they enshrine.
+
+ St. Paul compares God's dealing with man to a wise parent's
+ instruction of his child.--See the Epistle to the Galatians. Boyhood
+ is under law; you appeal not to the boy's reason, but his will, by
+ rewards and punishments: Do this, and I will reward you; do it not,
+ and you will be punished. So long as a man is under law, this is
+ salutary and necessary, but only while under law. He is free when he
+ discerns principles, and at the same time has got, by habit, the will
+ to obey. So that rules have done for him a double work, taught him the
+ principle and facilitated obedience to it.
+
+ Distinguish however.--In point of time, law is first--in point of
+ importance, the Spirit.
+
+ In point of _time_, Charity is the "end" of the commandment--in point
+ of _importance_, first and foremost.
+
+ The first thing a boy has to do, is to learn implicit obedience to
+ rules. The first thing in importance for a man to learn is, to sever
+ himself from maxims, rules, laws. Why? That he may become an
+ Antinomian, or a Latitudinarian? No. He is severed from submission to
+ the _maxim_ because he has got allegiance to the _principle_. He is
+ free from the rule and the law because he has got the Spirit written
+ in his heart.
+
+ This is the Gospel. A man is redeemed by Christ so far as he is not
+ under the law; he is free from the law so far as he is free from the
+ evil which the law restrains; he progresses so far as there is no evil
+ in him which it is an effort to keep down; and perfect salvation and
+ liberty are--when we,--who though having the first fruits of the
+ Spirit, yet groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, "to wit,
+ the redemption of our body"--shall have been freed in body, soul, and
+ spirit, from the last traces of the evil which can only be kept down
+ by force. In other words, so far as Christ's statement is true of
+ _us_, "The Prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me."
+
+
+
+
+ XX.
+
+ _Preached February 21, 1853._
+
+ THE PRODIGAL AND HIS BROTHER.
+
+
+   "And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I
+    have is thine. It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad:
+    for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; was lost, and
+    is found."--Luke xv. 31, 32.
+
+ There are two classes of sins. There are some sins by which man
+ crushes, wounds, malevolently injures his brother man: those sins
+ which speak of a bad, tyrannical, and selfish heart. Christ met those
+ with denunciation. There are other sins by which a man injures
+ himself. There is a life of reckless indulgence; there is a career of
+ yielding to ungovernable propensities, which most surely conducts to
+ wretchedness and ruin, but makes a man an object of compassion rather
+ than of condemnation.
+
+ The reception which sinners of this class met from Christ was marked
+ by strange and pitying mercy. There was no maudlin sentiment on his
+ lips. He called sin sin, and guilt guilt. But yet there were sins
+ which His lips scourged, and others over which, containing in
+ themselves their own scourge, His heart bled. That which was
+ melancholy, and marred, and miserable in this world, was more
+ congenial to the heart of Christ than that which was proudly happy. It
+ was in the midst of a triumph, and all the pride of a procession, that
+ He paused to weep over ruined Jerusalem. And if we ask the reason why
+ the character of Christ was marked by this melancholy condescension it
+ is that he was in the midst of a world of ruins, and there was nothing
+ there to gladden, but very much to touch with grief. He was here to
+ restore that which was broken down and crumbling into decay. An
+ enthusiastic antiquarian, standing amidst the fragments of an ancient
+ temple surrounded by dust and moss, broken pillar, and defaced
+ architrave, with magnificent projects in his mind of restoring all
+ this to _former_ majesty, to draw out to light from mere rubbish the
+ ruined glories, and therefore stooping down amongst the dank ivy and
+ the rank nettles; such was Christ amidst the wreck of human nature. He
+ was striving to lift it out of its degradation. He was searching out
+ in revolting places that which had fallen down, that He might build it
+ up again in fair proportions a holy temple to the Lord.
+
+ Therefore He laboured among the guilty; therefore He was the companion
+ of outcasts; therefore He spoke tenderly and lovingly to those whom
+ society counted undone; therefore He loved to bind up the bruised and
+ the broken-hearted; therefore His breath fanned the spark which seemed
+ dying out in the wick of the expiring taper, when men thought that it
+ was too late, and that the hour of _hopeless_ profligacy was come. It
+ was that feature in His character, that tender, hoping, encouraging
+ spirit of His which the prophet Isaiah fixed upon as characteristic.
+ "A bruised reed will He not break."
+
+ It was an illustration of this spirit which He gave in the parable
+ which forms the subject of our consideration to-day. We find the
+ occasion which drew it from Him in the commencement of this chapter,
+ "Then drew near unto Him all the publicans and sinners for to hear
+ Him. And the Pharisees and Scribes murmured, saying, This man
+ receiveth sinners, and eateth with them." It was then that Christ
+ condescended to offer an excuse or an explanation of His conduct. And
+ His excuse was this: It is natural, humanly natural, to rejoice more
+ over that which has been recovered than over that which has been never
+ lost. He proved that by three illustrations taken from human life. The
+ first illustration intended to show the feelings of Christ in winning
+ back a sinner, was the joy which the shepherd feels in the recovery of
+ a sheep from the mountain wilderness. The second was the satisfaction
+ which a person feels for a recovered coin. The last was the gladness
+ which attends the restoration of an erring son.
+
+ Now the three parables are alike in this, that they all describe more
+ or less vividly the feelings of the Redeemer on the recovery of the
+ lost. But the third parable differs from the other two in this, that
+ besides the feelings of the Saviour, it gives us a multitude of
+ particulars respecting the feelings, the steps, and the motives of the
+ penitent who is reclaimed back to goodness. In the two first the thing
+ lost is a coin or a sheep. It would not be possible to find any
+ picture of remorse or gladness there. But in the third parable the
+ thing lost is not a lifeless thing, nor a mute thing, but a being, the
+ workings of whose human heart are all described. So that the subject
+ opened out to us is a more extensive one--not merely the feelings of
+ the finder, God in Christ, but besides that, the sensations of the
+ wanderer himself.
+
+ In dealing with this parable, this is the line which we shall adopt.
+ We shall look at the picture which it draws of--1. God's treatment of
+ the penitent. 2. God's expostulation with the saint. God's treatment
+ of the penitent divides itself in this parable into three distinct
+ epochs. The period of alienation, the period of repentance, and the
+ circumstances of a penitent reception. We shall consider all these in
+ turn.
+
+ The first truth exhibited in this parable is the alienation of man's
+ heart from God. Homelessness, distance from our Father--that is man's
+ state by nature in this world. The youngest son gathered all together
+ and took his journey into a _far_ country. Brethren, this is the
+ history of worldliness. It is a state far from God; in other words, it
+ is a state of homelessness. And now let us ask what that means. To
+ English hearts it is not necessary to expound elaborately the infinite
+ meanings which cluster round that blessed expression "home." Home is
+ the one place in all this world where hearts are sure of each other.
+ It is the place of confidence. It is the place where we tear off that
+ mask of guarded and suspicious coldness which the world forces us to
+ wear in self-defence, and where we pour out the unreserved
+ communications of full and confiding hearts. It is the spot where
+ expressions of tenderness gush out without any sensation of
+ awkwardness and without any dread of ridicule. Let a man travel where
+ he will, home is the place to which "his heart untravelled fondly
+ turns." He is to double all pleasure there. He is there to divide all
+ pain. A _happy home_ is the single spot of rest which a man has upon
+ this earth for the cultivation of his noblest sensibilities.
+
+ And now my brethren, if that be the description of home, is God's
+ place of rest your home? Walk abroad and alone by night. That awful
+ other world in the stillness and the solemn deep of the eternities
+ above, is it your home? Those graves that lie beneath you, holding in
+ them the infinite secret, and stamping upon all earthly loveliness the
+ mark of frailty and change and fleetingness--are those graves the
+ prospect to which in bright days and dark days you can turn without
+ dismay? God in his splendours,--dare we feel with Him affectionate and
+ familiar, so that trial comes softened by this feeling--it is my
+ Father, and enjoyment can be taken with a frank feeling; my Father has
+ given it me, without grudging, to make me happy? All that is having a
+ home in God. Are we at home there? Why there is demonstration in our
+ very childhood that we are not at home with that other world of God's.
+ An infant fears to be alone, because he feels he is not alone. He
+ trembles in the dark, because he is conscious of the presence of the
+ world of spirits. Long before he has been told tales of terror, there
+ is an instinctive dread of the supernatural in the infant mind. It is
+ the instinct which we have from childhood that gives us the feeling of
+ another world. And mark, brethren, if the child is not at home in the
+ thought of that world of God's, the deep of darkness and eternity is,
+ around him--God's home, but not his home, for his flesh creeps. And
+ that feeling grows through life; not the fear--when the child becomes
+ a man he gets over fear--but the dislike. The man feels as much
+ aversion as the child for the world of spirits.
+
+ Sunday comes. It breaks across the current of his worldliness. It
+ suggests thoughts of death and judgment and everlasting existence. Is
+ that home? Can the worldly man feel Sunday like a foretaste of his
+ Father's mansion? If we could but know how many have come here to-day,
+ not to have their souls lifted up heavenwards, but from curiosity, or
+ idleness, or criticism, it would give us an appalling estimate of the
+ number who are living in a far country, "having no hope and without
+ God in the world."
+
+ The second truth conveyed to us in this parable is the unsatisfying
+ nature of worldly happiness. The outcast son tried to satiate his
+ appetite with husks. A husk is an empty thing; it is a thing which
+ looks extremely like food, and promises as much as food; but it is not
+ food. It is a thing which when chewed will stay the appetite, but
+ leaves the emaciated body without nourishment. Earthly happiness is a
+ husk. We say not that there is no satisfaction in the pleasures of a
+ worldly life. That would be an overstatement of the truth. Something
+ there is, or else why should men persist in living for them? The
+ cravings of man's appetite may be stayed by things which cannot
+ satisfy him. Every new pursuit contains in it a new hope; and it is
+ long before hope is bankrupt. But my brethren, it is strange if a man
+ has not found out long before he has reached the age of thirty, that
+ everything here is empty and disappointing. The nobler his heart and
+ the more unquenchable his hunger for the high and the good, the sooner
+ will he find that out. Bubble after bubble bursts, each bubble tinted
+ with the celestial colours of the rainbow, and each leaving in the
+ hand which crushes it a cold damp drop of disappointment. All that is
+ described in Scripture by the emphatic metaphor of "sowing the wind
+ and reaping the whirlwind," the whirlwind of blighted hopes and
+ unreturned feelings and crushed expectations--that is the harvest
+ which the world gives you to reap.
+
+ And now is the question asked, Why is this world unsatisfying?
+ Brethren, it is the grandeur of the soul which God has given us, which
+ makes it insatiable in its desires--with an infinite void which cannot
+ be filled up. A soul which was made for God, how can the world fill
+ it? If the ocean can be still with miles of unstable waters beneath
+ it, then the soul of man, rocking itself upon its own deep longings,
+ with the Infinite beneath it, may rest. We were created once in
+ majesty, to find enjoyment in God, and if our hearts are empty now,
+ there is nothing for it but to fill up the hollowness of the soul with
+ God.
+
+ Let not that expression--filling the soul with God--pass away without
+ a distinct meaning. God is Love and Goodness. Fill the soul with
+ goodness, and fill the soul with love, _that_ is the filling it with
+ God. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us. There is nothing else
+ that can satisfy. So that when we hear men of this world acknowledge,
+ as they sometimes will do, when they are wearied with this phantom
+ chase of life, sick of gaieties and tired of toil, that it is not in
+ their pursuits that they can drink the fount of blessedness; and when
+ we see them, instead of turning aside either broken-hearted or else
+ made wise, still persisting to trust to expectations--at fifty, sixty,
+ or seventy years still feverish about some new plan of ambition--what
+ we see is this: we see a soul formed with a capacity for high and
+ noble things, fit for the banquet table of God Himself, trying to fill
+ its infinite hollowness with husks.
+
+ Once more, there is degradation in the life of irreligion. The things
+ which the wanderer tried to live on were not husks only. They were
+ husks which the swine did eat. Degradation means the application of a
+ thing to purposes lower than that for which it was intended. It is
+ degradation to a man to live on husks, because these are not his true
+ food. We call it degradation when we see the members of an ancient
+ family, decayed by extravagance, working for their bread. It is not
+ degradation for a born labourer to work for an honest livelihood. It
+ is degradation for them, for they are not what they might have been.
+ And therefore, for a man to be degraded, it is not necessary that he
+ should have given himself up to low and mean practices. It is quite
+ enough that he is living for purposes lower than those for which God
+ intended him. He may be a man of unblemished reputation, and yet
+ debased in the truest meaning of the word. We were sent into this
+ world to love God and to love man; to do good--to fill up life with
+ deeds of generosity and usefulness. And he that refuses to work out
+ that high destiny is a degraded man. He may turn away revolted from
+ everything that is gross. His sensuous indulgences may be all marked
+ by refinement and taste. His house may be filled with elegance. His
+ library may be adorned with books. There may be the sounds in his
+ mansion which can regale the ear, the delicacies which can stimulate
+ the palate, and the forms of beauty which can please the eye. There
+ may be nothing in his whole life to offend the most chastened and
+ fastidious delicacy; and yet, if the history of all this be, powers
+ which were meant for eternity frittered upon time, the man is
+ degraded--if the spirit which was created to find its enjoyment in the
+ love of God has settled down satisfied with the love of the world,
+ then, just as surely as the sensualist of this parable, that man has
+ turned aside from a celestial feast to prey on garbage.
+
+ We pass on to the second period of the history of God's treatment of a
+ sinner. It is the period of his coming to himself, or what we call
+ repentance. The first fact of religious experience which this parable
+ suggests to us is that common truth--men desert the world when the
+ world deserts them. The renegade came to himself when there were no
+ more husks to eat. He would have remained away if he could have got
+ them, but it is written, "no man gave unto him." And this, brethren,
+ is the record of our shame. Invitation is not enough; we must be
+ driven to God. And the famine comes not by chance. God sends the
+ famine into the soul--the hunger, and thirst, and the
+ disappointment--to bring back his erring child again.
+
+ Now the world fastens upon that truth, and gets out of it a triumphant
+ sarcasm against religion. They tell us that just as the caterpillar
+ passes into the chrysalis, and the chrysalis into the butterfly, so
+ profligacy passes into disgust, and disgust passes into religion. To
+ use their own phraseology, when people become disappointed with the
+ world, it is the last resource they say, to turn saint. So the men of
+ the world speak, and they think they are profoundly philosophical and
+ concise in the account they give. The world is welcome to its very
+ small sneer. It is the glory of our Master's gospel that it _is_ the
+ refuge of the broken-hearted. It is the strange mercy of our God that
+ he does not reject the writhings of a jaded heart. Let the world curl
+ its lip if it will, when it sees through the causes of the prodigal's
+ return. And if the sinner does not come to God taught by this
+ disappointment, what then? If affections crushed in early life have
+ driven one man to God; if wrecked and ruined hopes have made another
+ man religious; if want of success in a profession has broken the
+ spirit; if the human life lived out too passionately, has left a
+ surfeit and a craving behind which end in seriousness; if one is
+ brought by the sadness of widowed life, and another by the forced
+ desolation of involuntary single life; if when the mighty famine comes
+ into the heart, and not a husk is left, not a pleasure untried, then,
+ and not till then, the remorseful resolve is made, "I will arise and
+ go to my Father:"--Well, brethren, what then? Why this, that the
+ history of penitence, produced as it so often is by mere
+ disappointment, sheds only a brighter lustre round the Love of Christ,
+ who rejoices to receive such wanderers, worthless as they are, back
+ into His bosom. Thank God the world's sneer is true. It _is_ the last
+ resource to turn saint. Thanks to our God that when this gaudy world
+ has ceased to charm, when the heart begins to feel its hollowness, and
+ the world has lost its satisfying power, still all is not yet lost if
+ penitence and Christ remain, to still, to humble, and to soothe a
+ heart which sin has fevered.
+
+ There is another truth contained in this section of the parable. After
+ a life of wild sinfulness religion is servitude at first, not freedom.
+ Observe, he went back to duty with the feelings of a slave: "I am no
+ more worthy to be called thy son, make me as one of thy hired
+ servants." Any one who has lived in the excitement of the world, and
+ then tried to settle down at once to quiet duty, knows how true that
+ is. To borrow a metaphor from Israel's desert life, it is a tasteless
+ thing to live on manna after you have been feasting upon quails. It is
+ a dull cold drudgery to find pleasure in simple occupation when life
+ has been a succession of strong emotions. Sonship it is not; it is
+ slavery. A son obeys in love, entering heartily into his father's
+ meaning. A servant obeys mechanically, rising early because he must;
+ doing it may be, his duty well, but feeling in all its force the
+ irksomeness of the service. Sonship does not come all at once. The
+ yoke of Christ is easy, the burden of Christ is light; but it is not
+ light to everybody. It is light when you love it, and no man who has
+ sinned much can love it all at once.
+
+ Therefore, if I speak to any one who is trying to be religious, and
+ heavy in heart because his duty is done too formally,--my Christian
+ brother, fear not. You are returning, like the prodigal, with the
+ feelings of a servant. Still it is a real return. The spirit of
+ adoption will come afterwards. You will often have to do duties which
+ you cannot relish, and in which you see no meaning. So it was with
+ Naaman at the prophet's command. He bathed, not knowing why he was
+ bidden to bathe in Jordan. When you bend to prayer, often and often
+ you will have to kneel with wandering thoughts, and constraining lips
+ to repeat words into which your heart scarcely enters. You will have
+ to perform duties when the heart is cold, and without a spark of
+ enthusiasm to warm you. But my Christian brother, onwards still.
+ Struggle to the Cross, even though it be struggling as in chains. Just
+ as on a day of clouds, when you have watched the distant hills, dark
+ and gray with mist, suddenly a gleam of sunshine passing over reveals
+ to you, in that flat surface, valleys and dells and spots of sunny
+ happiness, which slept before unsuspected in the fog, so in the gloom
+ of penitential life there will be times when God's deep peace and love
+ will be felt shining into the soul with supernatural refreshment. Let
+ the penitent be content with the servant's lot at first. Liberty and
+ peace, and the bounding sensations of a Father's arms around you, come
+ afterwards.
+
+ The last circumstance in this division of our subject is the reception
+ which a sinner meets with on his return to God. "Bring forth the best
+ robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his
+ feet, and bring hither the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and
+ be merry." This banquet represents to us two things. It tells of the
+ father's gladness on his son's return. That represents God's joy on
+ the reformation of a sinner. It tells of a banquet and a dance given
+ to the long lost son. That represents the sinner's gladness when he
+ first understood that God was reconciled to him in Christ. There is a
+ strange, almost wild, rapture, a strong gush of love and happiness in
+ those days which are called the days of first conversion. When a man
+ who has sinned much--a profligate--turns to God, and it becomes first
+ clear to his apprehension that there is love instead of spurning for
+ him, there is a luxury of emotion--a banquet of tumultuous blessedness
+ in the moment of first love to God, which stands alone in life,
+ nothing before and nothing after like it. And brethren, let us
+ observe:--This forgiveness is a thing granted while a man is yet afar
+ off. We are not to wait for the right of being happy till we are good:
+ we might wait for ever. Joy is not delayed till we deserve it. Just so
+ soon as a sinful man trusts that the mercy of God in Christ has done
+ away with his transgression, the ring, and the robe, and the shoes are
+ his, the banquet and the light of a Father's countenance.
+
+ Lastly, we have to consider very briefly God's expostulation with a
+ saint. There is another brother mentioned in this parable, who
+ expressed something like indignation at the treatment which his
+ brother met with. There are commentators who have imagined that this
+ personage represents the Pharisees who complained that Jesus was
+ receiving sinners. But this is manifestly impossible, because his
+ father expostulates with him in this language, "Son, thou, art ever
+ with me;" not for one moment could that be true of the Pharisees. The
+ true interpretation seems to be that this elder brother represents a
+ real Christian perplexed with God's mysterious dealings. We have
+ before us the description of one of those happy persons who have been
+ filled with the Holy Ghost from their mother's womb, and on the whole
+ (with imperfections of course) remained God's servant all his life.
+ For this is his own account of himself, which the father does not
+ contradict. "Lo! these many years do I serve thee."
+
+ We observe then: The objection made to the reception of a notorious
+ sinner: "Thou never gavest me a kid." Now, in this we have a fact true
+ to Christian experience. Joy seems to be felt more vividly and more
+ exuberantly by men who have sinned much, than by men who have grown up
+ consistently from childhood with religious education. Rapture belongs
+ to him whose sins, which are forgiven, are many. In the perplexity
+ which this fact occasions, there is a feeling which is partly right
+ and partly wrong. There is a surprise which is natural. There is a
+ resentful jealousy which is to be rebuked.
+
+ There is first of all a natural surprise. It was natural that the
+ elder brother should feel perplexed and hurt. When a sinner seems to
+ be rewarded with more happiness than a saint, it appears as if good
+ and evil were alike undistinguished in God's dealings. It seems like
+ putting a reconciled enemy over the head of a tried servant. It looks
+ as if it were a kind of encouragement held out to sin, and a man
+ begins to feel, Well if this is to be the caprice of my father's
+ dealing; if this rich feast of gladness be the reward of a licentious
+ life, "Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in
+ innocency." This is natural surprise.
+
+ But besides this there is a jealousy in these sensations of ours which
+ God sees fit to rebuke. You have been trying to serve God all your
+ life, and find it struggle, and heaviness, and dulness still. You see
+ another who has outraged every obligation of life, and he is not tried
+ by the deep prostration you think he ought to have, but bright with
+ happiness at once. You have been making sacrifices all your life, and
+ your worst trials come out of your most generous sacrifices. Your
+ errors in judgment have been followed by sufferings sharper than those
+ which crime itself could have brought. And you see men who never made
+ a sacrifice unexposed to trial--men whose life has been rapture
+ purchased by the ruin of others' innocence--tasting first the
+ pleasures of sin, and then the banquet of religion. You have been a
+ moral man from childhood, and yet with all your efforts you feel the
+ crushing conviction that it has never once been granted you to win a
+ soul to God. And you see another man marked by inconsistency and
+ impetuosity, banqueting every day upon the blest success of impressing
+ and saving souls. All that is startling. And then comes sadness and
+ despondency; then come all those feelings which are so graphically
+ depicted here: irritation--"he was angry;" swelling pride--"he would
+ not go in;" jealousy, which required soothing--"his father went out
+ and entreated him."
+
+ And now brethren, mark the father's answer. It does not account for
+ this strange dealing by God's sovereignty. It does not cut the knot of
+ the difficulty, instead of untying it, by saying, God has a _right_ to
+ do what He will. He does not urge, God has a right to act on
+ favouritism if He please. But it assigns two reasons. The first reason
+ is, "It was _meet_, right that we should make merry." It is meet that
+ God should be glad on the reclamation of a sinner. It is meet that
+ that sinner, looking down into the dreadful chasm over which he had
+ been tottering, should feel a shudder of delight through all his frame
+ on thinking of his escape. And it is meet that religious men should
+ not feel jealous of one another, but freely and generously join in
+ thanking God that others have got happiness, even if _they_ have not.
+ The spirit of religious exclusiveness, which looks down contemptuously
+ instead of tenderly on worldly men, and banishes a man for ever from
+ the circle of its joys because he has sinned notoriously, is a bad
+ spirit.
+
+ Lastly the reason given for this dealing is, "Son, thou art always
+ with Me, and all that I have is thine." By which Christ seems to tell
+ us that the disproportion between man and man is much less than we
+ suppose. The profligate had had one hour of ecstasy--the other had
+ had a whole life of peace. A consistent Christian may not have
+ rapture; but he has that which is much better than rapture:
+ calmness--God's serene and perpetual presence. And after all brethren,
+ that is the best. One to whom much is forgiven, has much joy. He must
+ have it, if it were only to support him through those fearful trials
+ which are to come--those haunting reminiscences of a polluted
+ heart--those frailties--those inconsistencies to which the habit of
+ past indulgence have made him liable. A terrible struggle is in store
+ for him yet. Grudge him not one hour of unclouded exultation. But
+ religion's best gift--rest, serenity--the quiet daily love of one who
+ lives perpetually with his Father's family--uninterrupted
+ usefulness--_that_ belongs to him who has lived steadily, and walked
+ with duty, neither grieving nor insulting the Holy Spirit of his God.
+ The man who serves God early has the best of it; joy is well in its
+ way, but a few flashes of joy are trifles in comparison with a life of
+ peace. Which is best: the flash of joy lighting up the whole heart,
+ and then darkness till the next flash comes--or the steady calm
+ sunlight of day in which men work?
+
+ And now, one word to those who are living this young man's
+ life--thinking to become religious as he did, when they have got tired
+ of the world. I speak to those who are leading what, in the world's
+ softened language of concealment, is called a gay life. Young
+ brethren, let two motives be urged earnestly upon your attention. The
+ first is the motive of mere honourable feeling. We will say nothing
+ about the uncertainty of life. We will not dwell upon this fact, that
+ impressions resisted now, may never come back again. We will not
+ appeal to terror. That is not the weapon which a Christian minister
+ loves to use. If our lips were clothed with thunder, it is not
+ denunciation which makes men Christians; let the appeal be made to
+ every high and generous feeling in a young man's bosom.
+
+ Deliberately and calmly you are going to do _this_: to spend the best
+ and most vigorous portion of your days in idleness--in uselessness--in
+ the gratification of self--in the contamination of others. And then
+ weakness, the relics, and the miserable dregs of life;--you are going
+ to give _that_ sorry offering to God, because His mercy endureth for
+ ever! Shame--shame upon the heart which can let such a plan rest in it
+ one moment. If it be there, crush it like a man. It is a degrading
+ thing to enjoy husks till there is no man to give them. It is a base
+ thing to resolve to give to God as little as possible, and not to
+ serve Him till you must.
+
+ Young brethren, I speak principally to you. You have health for God
+ now. You have strength of mind and body. You have powers which may fit
+ you for real usefulness. You have appetites for enjoyment which can be
+ consecrated to God. You acknowledge the law of honour. Well then, by
+ every feeling of manliness and generosity remember this: now, and not
+ later, is your time to learn what religion means.
+
+ There is another motive, and a very solemn one, to be urged upon those
+ who are delaying. Every moment of delay adds bitterness to after
+ struggles. The moment of a feeling of hired servitude must come. If a
+ man will not obey God with a warm heart, he may hereafter have to do
+ it with a cold one. To be holy is the work of a long life. The
+ experience of ten thousand lessons teaches only a little of it; and
+ all this, the work of becoming like God, the man who delays is
+ crowding into the space of a few years, or a few months. When we have
+ lived long a life of sin, do we think that repentance and forgiveness
+ will obliterate all the traces of sin upon the character? Be sure that
+ every sin pays its price: "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also
+ reap."
+
+ Oh! there are recollections of past sin which come crowding up to the
+ brain, with temptation in them. There are old habits which refuse to
+ be mastered by a few enthusiastic sensations. There is so much of the
+ old man clinging to the penitent who has waited long--he is so much as
+ a religious man, like what he was when he was a worldly man--that it
+ is doubtful whether he ever reaches in this world the full stature of
+ Christian manhood. Much warm earnestness, but strange inconsistencies,
+ that is the character of one who is an old man and a young Christian.
+ Brethren, do we wish to risk all this? Do we want to learn holiness
+ with terrible struggles, and sore affliction, and the plague of much
+ remaining evil? Then _wait_ before you turn to God.
+
+
+
+
+ XXI.
+
+ _Preached May 15, 1853._
+
+ JOHN'S REBUKE OF HEROD.
+
+
+   "But Herod the tetrarch, being reproved by him for Herodias, his
+    brother Philip's wife, and for all the evils which Herod had done,
+    added yet this above all, that he shut up John in prison,"--Luke
+    iii. 19, 20.
+
+ The life of John the Baptist divides itself into three distinct
+ periods. Of the first we are told almost nothing, but we may
+ conjecture much. We are told that he was in the deserts till his
+ showing unto Israel. It was a period probably, in which, saddened by
+ the hollowness of all life in Israel, and perplexed with the
+ controversies of Jerusalem, the controversies of Sadducee with
+ Pharisee, of formalist with mystic, of the disciples of one infallible
+ Rabbi with the disciples of another infallible Rabbi, he fled for
+ refuge to the wilderness, to see whether God could not be found there
+ by the heart that sought Him, without the aid of churches, rituals,
+ creeds, and forms. This period lasted thirty years.
+
+ The second period is a shorter one. It comprises the few months of his
+ public ministry. His difficulties were over; he had reached conviction
+ enough to live and die on. He knew not all, but he knew something. He
+ could not baptize with the Spirit, but he could at least baptize with
+ water. It was not given to him to build up, but it was given to him
+ to pull down all false foundations. He knew that the highest truth of
+ spiritual life was to be given by One that should come after. What he
+ had learned in the desert was contained in a few words--Reality lies
+ at the root of religious life. Ye must be real, said John. "Bring
+ forth fruits meet for repentance." Let each man do his own duty; let
+ the rich impart to those who are not rich; let the publican accuse no
+ man falsely; let the soldier be content with his wages. The coming
+ kingdom is not a mere piece of machinery which will make you all good
+ and happy without effort of your own. Change yourselves, or you will
+ have no kingdom at all. Personal reformation, personal reality, _that_
+ was John's message to the world.
+
+ It was an incomplete one; but he delivered it as his all, manfully;
+ and his success was signal, astonishing even to himself. Successful it
+ was, because it appealed to all the deepest wants of the human heart.
+ It told of peace to those who had been agitated by tempestuous
+ passion. It promised forgetfulness of past transgression to those
+ whose consciences smarted with self-accusing recollections. It spoke
+ of refuge from the wrath to come to those who had felt it a fearful
+ expectation to fall into the hands of an angry God. And the result of
+ that message, conveyed by the symbol of baptism, was that the desert
+ swarmed with crowds who owned the attractive spell of the power of a
+ new life made possible. Warriors, paupers, profligates--some admiring
+ the nobleness of religious life, others needing it to fill up the
+ empty hollow of an unsatisfied heart; the penitent, the heart-broken,
+ the worldly, and the disappointed, all came. And with them there came
+ two other classes of men, whose approach roused the Baptist to
+ astonishment.
+
+ The formalist, not satisfied with his formality, and the infidel,
+ unable to rest on his infidelity--they came too--startled, for one
+ hour at least, to the real significance of life, and shaken out of
+ unreality. The Baptist's message wrung the confession from their
+ souls. "Yes, our system will not do. We are not happy after all; we
+ are miserable. Prophet, whose solitary life, far away there in the
+ desert, has been making to itself a home in the mysterious and the
+ invisible, what hast thou got to tell us from that awful other world?
+ What are we to do?"
+
+ These things belong to a period of John's life anterior to the text.
+ The prophet has been hitherto in a self-selected solitude, the free
+ wild desert, opening his heart to the strange sights and sounds
+ through which the grand voice of oriental nature speaks of God to the
+ soul, in a way that books cannot speak.
+
+ We have arrived at the third period of his history. We are now to
+ consider him as the tenant of a _compelled_ solitude, in the dungeon
+ of a capricious tyrant. Hitherto, by that rugged energy with which he
+ battled with the temptations of this world, he has been shedding a
+ glory round human life. We are now to look at him equally alone;
+ equally majestic, shedding by martyrdom, almost a brighter glory round
+ human death. He has hitherto been receiving the homage of almost
+ unequalled popularity. We are now to observe him reft of every
+ admirer, every soother, every friend. He has been hitherto overcoming
+ the temptations of existence by entire seclusion from them all. We are
+ now to ask how he will stem those seductions when he is brought into
+ the very midst of them, and the whole outward aspect of his life has
+ laid aside its distinctive and peculiar character; when he has ceased
+ to be the anchorite, and has become the idol of a court.
+
+ Much instruction, brethren, there ought to be in all this, if we only
+ knew rightly how to bring it out, or even to paint in anything like
+ intelligible colours the picture which our own minds have formed.
+ Instructive, because human life must ever be instructive. How a human
+ spirit contrived to get its life accomplished in this confused world:
+ what a man like us, and yet no common man, felt, did, suffered; how he
+ fought, and how he conquered; if we could only get a clear possession
+ and firm grasp of _that_, we should have got almost all that is worth
+ having in truth, with the technicalities stripped off, for what is the
+ use of truth except to teach man how to live? There is a vast value in
+ genuine biography. It is good to have real views of what Life is, and
+ what Christian Life may be. It is good to familiarize ourselves with
+ the history of those whom God has pronounced the salt of the earth. We
+ cannot help contracting good from such association.
+
+ And just one thing respecting this man whom we are to follow for some
+ time to-day. Let us not be afraid of seeming to rise into a mere
+ enthusiastic panegyric of a man. It is a rare man we have to deal
+ with, one of God's heroic ones, a true conqueror; one whose life and
+ motives it is hard to understand without feeling warmly and
+ enthusiastically about them. One of the very highest characters,
+ rightly understood, of all the Bible. Panegyric such as we can give,
+ what is it after he has been stamped by his Master's eulogy, "A
+ prophet? Yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet. Among them that
+ are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the
+ Baptist." In the verse which is to serve us for our guidance on this
+ subject there are two branches which will afford us fruit of
+ contemplation. It is written, "Herod being _reproved_ by John for
+ Herodias."
+
+ Here is our first subject of thought. The truthfulness of Christian
+ character.
+
+ And then next, he "shut up John in prison."
+
+ Here is our second topic. The apparent failure of religious life.
+
+ The point which we have to look at in this section of the Baptist's
+ life is the truthfulness of religious character. For the prophet was
+ now in a sphere of life altogether new. He had got to the third act of
+ his history. The first was performed right manfully in the
+ desert--that is past. He has now become a known man, celebrated
+ through the country, brought into the world, great men listening to
+ him, and in the way, if he chooses it, to become familiar with the
+ polished life of Herod's court. For this we read: Herod observed John,
+ that is, cultivated his acquaintance, paid him marked attention, heard
+ him, did many things at his bidding, and heard him gladly.
+
+ For thirty long years John had lived in that far-off desert, filling
+ his soul with the grandeur of solitude, content to be unknown, not
+ conscious, most likely, that there was anything supernatural in
+ him--living with the mysterious God in silence. And then came the day
+ when the qualities, so secretly nursed, became known in the great
+ world: men felt that there was a greater than themselves before them,
+ and then came the trial of admiration, when the crowds congregated
+ round to listen. And all that trial John bore uninjured, for when
+ those vast crowds dispersed at night, he was left alone with God and
+ the universe once more. That prevented his being spoilt by flattery.
+ But now comes the great trial. John is transplanted from the desert to
+ the town: he has quitted simple life: he has come to artificial life.
+ John has won a king's attention, and now the question is, Will the
+ diamond of the mine bear polishing without breaking into shivers? Is
+ the iron prophet melting into voluptuous softness? Is he getting the
+ world's manners and the world's courtly insincerity? Is he becoming
+ artificial through his change of life? My Christian brethren, we find
+ nothing of the kind. There he stands in Herod's voluptuous court the
+ prophet of the desert still, unseduced by blandishment from his high
+ loyalty, and fronting his patron and his prince with the stern
+ unpalatable truth of God.
+
+ It is refreshing to look on such a scene as this--the highest, the
+ very highest moment, I think, in all John's history; higher than his
+ ascetic life. For after all, ascetic life such as he had led before,
+ when he fed on locusts and wild honey, is hard only in the first
+ resolve. When you have once made up your mind to that, it becomes a
+ habit to live alone. To lecture the poor about religion is not hard.
+ To speak of unworldliness to men with whom we do not associate, and
+ who do not see _our_ daily inconsistencies, _that_ is not hard. To
+ speak contemptuously of the world when we have no power of commanding
+ its admiration, _that_ is not difficult. But when God has given a man
+ accomplishments, or powers, which would enable him to shine in
+ society, and he can still be firm, and steady, and uncompromisingly
+ true; when he can be as undaunted before the rich as before the poor;
+ when rank and fashion cannot subdue him into silence: when he hates
+ moral evil as sternly in a great man as he would in a peasant, there
+ is truth in that man. This was the test to which the Baptist was
+ submitted.
+
+ And now contemplate him for a moment; forget that he is an historical
+ personage, and remember that he was a man like us. Then comes the
+ trial. All the habits and rules of polite life would be whispering
+ such advice as this: "Only keep your remarks within the limits of
+ politeness. If you cannot approve, be silent; you can do no good by
+ finding fault with the great." We know how the whole spirit of a man
+ like John would have revolted at that. Imprisonment? Yes. Death? Well,
+ a man can die but once,--anything but not cowardice,--not
+ meanness,--not pretending what I do not feel, and disguising what I do
+ feel. Brethren, death is not the worst thing in this life; it is not
+ difficult to die--five minutes and the sharpest agony is past. The
+ worst thing in this life is cowardly untruthfulness. Let men be rough
+ if they will, let them be unpolished, but let Christian men in all
+ they say be sincere. No flattery, no speaking smoothly to a man before
+ his face, while all the time there is a disapproval of his conduct in
+ the heart. The thing we want in Christianity is not politeness, it is
+ sincerity.
+
+ There are three things which we remark in this truthfulness of John.
+ The first is its straightforwardness, the second is its
+ unconsciousness, and the last its unselfishness. The
+ straightforwardness is remarkable in this circumstance, that there is
+ no indirect coming to the point. At once, without circumlocution, the
+ true man speaks. "It is not lawful for thee to have her." There are
+ some men whom God has gifted with a rare simplicity of heart, which
+ make them utterly incapable of pursuing the subtle excuses which can
+ be made for evil. There is in John no morbid sympathy for the
+ offender: "It is not lawful." He does not say, "It is _best_ to do
+ otherwise; it is unprofitable for your own happiness to live in this
+ way." He says plainly, "It is wrong for you to do this evil."
+
+ Earnest men in this world have no time for subtleties and casuistry.
+ Sin is detestable, horrible, in God's sight, and when once it has been
+ made clear that it is not lawful, a Christian has nothing to do with
+ toleration of it. If we dare not tell our patron of his sin we must
+ give up his patronage. In the next place there was unconsciousness in
+ John's rebuke. We remark, brethren, that he was utterly ignorant that
+ he was doing a fine thing. There was no sidelong glance, as in a
+ mirror, of admiration for himself. He was not feeling, This is brave.
+ He never stopped to feel that after-ages would stand by, and look at
+ that deed of his, and say, "Well done." His reproof comes out as the
+ natural impulse of an earnest heart. John was the last of all men to
+ feel that he had done anything extraordinary. And this we hold to be
+ an inseparable mark of truth. No true man is conscious that he is
+ true; he is rather conscious of insincerity. No brave man is conscious
+ of his courage; bravery is _natural_ to him. The skin of Moses' face
+ shone after he had been with God, but Moses wist not of it.
+
+ There are many of us who would have prefaced that rebuke with a long
+ speech. We should have begun by observing how difficult it was to
+ speak to a monarch, how delicate the subject, how much proof we were
+ giving of our friendship. We should have asked the great man to accept
+ it as a proof of our devotion. John does nothing of this. Prefaces
+ betray anxiety about self; John was not thinking of himself. He was
+ thinking of God's offended law, and the guilty king's soul. Brethren,
+ it is a lovely and a graceful thing to see men natural. It is
+ beautiful to see men sincere without being haunted with the
+ consciousness of their sincerity. There is a sickly habit that men get
+ of looking into themselves, and thinking how they are appearing. We
+ are always unnatural when we do that. The very tread of one who is
+ thinking how he appears to others, becomes dizzy with affectation. He
+ is too conscious of what he is doing, and self-consciousness is
+ affectation. Let us aim at being natural. And we can only become
+ natural by thinking of God and duty, instead of the way in which we
+ are serving God and duty.
+
+ There was lastly, something exceedingly unselfish in John's
+ truthfulness. We do not build much on a man's being merely true. It
+ costs some men nothing to be true, for they have none of those
+ sensibilities which shrink from inflicting pain. There is a surly
+ bitter way of speaking truth which says little for a man's heart. Some
+ men have not delicacy enough to feel that it is an awkward and a
+ painful thing to rebuke a brother: they are in their element when they
+ can become censors of the great. John's truthfulness was not like
+ that. It was the earnest loving nature of the man which made him say
+ sharp things. Was it to gratify spleen that he reproved Herod for all
+ the evils he had done? Was it to minister to a diseased and
+ disappointed misanthropy? Little do we understand the depth of
+ tenderness which there is in a rugged, true nature, if we think that.
+ John's whole life was an iron determination to crush self in
+ everything.
+
+ Take a single instance. John's ministry was gradually superseded by
+ the ministry of Christ. It was the moon waning before the Sun. They
+ came and told him that, "Rabbi, He to whom thou barest witness beyond
+ Jordan baptizeth, and all men come unto Him." Two of his own personal
+ friends, apparently some of the last he had left, deserted him, and
+ went to the new teacher.
+
+ And now let us estimate the keenness of that trial. Remember John was
+ a man: he had tasted the sweets of influence; that influence was dying
+ away, and just in the prime of life he was to become _nothing_. Who
+ cannot conceive the keenness of that trial? Bearing that in mind--what
+ is the prophet's answer? One of the most touching sentences in all
+ Scripture--calmly, meekly, the hero recognises his destiny--"He must
+ increase, but I must decrease." He does more than recognise it--he
+ rejoices in it, rejoices to be nothing, to be forgotten, despised, so
+ as only Christ can be everything. "The friend of the bridegroom
+ rejoiceth because he heareth the bridegroom's voice, this my joy is
+ fulfilled." And it is _this_ man, with self so thoroughly crushed--the
+ outward self by bodily austerities, the inward self by Christian
+ humbleness--it is this man who speaks so sternly to his sovereign. "It
+ is not lawful." Was there any gratification of human feeling there? Or
+ was not the rebuke unselfish? Meant for God's honour, dictated by the
+ uncontrollable hatred of all evil, careless altogether of personal
+ consequences?
+
+ Now it is this, my brethren, that _we_ want. The world-spirit can
+ rebuke as sharply as the Spirit which was in John; the world-spirit
+ can be severe upon the great when it is jealous. The worldly man
+ cannot bear to hear of another's success, he cannot endure to hear
+ another praised for accomplishments, or another succeeding in a
+ profession, and the world can fasten very bitterly upon a neighbour's
+ faults, and say, "It is not lawful." We expect that in the world. But
+ that this should creep among religious men, that _we_ should be
+ bitter--that we, _Christians_, should suffer jealousy to enthrone
+ itself in our hearts--that we should find fault from spleen, and not
+ from love--that we should not be able to be calm and gentle, and
+ sweet-tempered, when we decrease, when our powers fail--_that_ is the
+ shame. The love of Christ is intended to make such men as John, such
+ high and heavenly characters. What is our Christianity worth if it
+ cannot teach us a truthfulness, an unselfishness, and a generosity
+ beyond the world's?
+
+ We are to say something in the second place of the apparent failure of
+ Christian life.
+
+ The concluding sentence of this verse informs us that John was shut up
+ in prison. And the first thought which suggests itself is, that a
+ magnificent career is cut short too soon. At the very outset of ripe
+ and experienced manhood the whole thing ends in failure. John's day of
+ active usefulness is over; at thirty years of age his work is done;
+ and what permanent effect have all his labours left? The crowds that
+ listened to his voice, awed into silence by Jordan's side, we hear of
+ them no more. Herod heard John gladly, did much good by reason of his
+ influence. What was all that worth? The prophet comes to himself in a
+ dungeon, and wakes to the bitter conviction, that his influence had
+ told much in the way of commanding attention, and even winning
+ reverence, but very little in the way of gaining souls; the bitterest,
+ the most crushing discovery in the whole circle of ministerial
+ experience. All this was seeming failure.
+
+ And this, brethren, is the picture of almost all human life. To some
+ moods, and under some aspects, it seems, as it seemed to the psalmist,
+ "Man walketh in a vain shadow and disquieteth himself in vain." Go to
+ any churchyard, and stand ten minutes among the grave-stones; read
+ inscription after inscription recording the date of birth, and the
+ date of death, of him who lies below, all the trace which myriads have
+ left behind, of their having done their day's work on God's
+ earth,--that is failure or--seems so. Cast the eye down the columns of
+ any commander's despatch after a general action. The men fell by
+ thousands; the officers by hundreds. Courage, high hope,
+ self-devotion, ended in smoke--forgotten by the time of the next list
+ of slain: that is the failure of life once more. Cast your eye over
+ the shelves of a public library--there is the hard toil of years, the
+ product of a life of thought; all that remains of it is there in a
+ worm-eaten folio, taken down once in a century. Failure of human life
+ again. Stand by the most enduring of all human labours, the pyramids
+ of Egypt. One hundred thousand men, year by year, raised those
+ enormous piles to protect the corpses of the buried from rude
+ inspection. The spoiler's hand has been there, and the bodies have
+ been rifled from their mausoleum, and three thousand years have
+ written "failure" upon that. In all that, my Christian brethren, if we
+ look no deeper than the surface, we read the grave of human hope, the
+ apparent nothingness of human labour.
+
+ And then look at this history once more. In the isolation of John's
+ dying hour, there appears failure again. When a great man dies we
+ listen to hear what he has to say, we turn to the last page of his
+ biography first, to see what he had to bequeath to the world as his
+ experience of life. We expect that the wisdom, which he has been
+ hiving up for years, will distil in honeyed sweetness then. It is
+ generally not so. There is stupor and silence at the last. "How dieth
+ the wise man?" asks Solomon: and he answers bitterly, "As the fool."
+ The martyr of truth dies privately in Herod's dungeon. We have no
+ record of his last words. There were no crowds to look on. We cannot
+ describe how he received his sentence. Was he calm? Was he agitated?
+ Did he bless his murderer? Did he give utterance to any deep
+ reflections on human life? All that is shrouded in silence. He bowed
+ his head, and the sharp stroke fell flashing down. We know that, we
+ know no more--apparently a noble life abortive.
+
+ And now let us ask the question distinctly, Was all this indeed
+ failure? No, my Christian brethren, it was sublimest victory. John's
+ work was no failure; he left behind him no sect to which he had given
+ his name, but his disciples passed into the service of Christ, and
+ were absorbed in the Christian church. Words from John had made
+ impressions, and men forgot in after years _where_ the impressions
+ first came from, but the day of judgment will not forget. John laid
+ the foundations of a temple, and others built upon it He laid it in
+ struggle, in martyrdom. It was covered up like the rough masonry below
+ ground, but when we look round on the vast Christian Church, we are
+ looking at the superstructure of John's toil.
+
+ There is a lesson for us in all that, if we will learn it. Work, true
+ work, done honestly and manfully for Christ, _never_ can be a failure.
+ Your own work, my brethren, which God has given you to do, whatever
+ that is, let it be done truly. Leave eternity to show that it has not
+ been in vain in the Lord. Let it but be work, it will tell. True
+ Christian life is like the march of a conquering army into a fortress
+ which has been breached; men fall by hundreds in the ditch. Was their
+ fall a failure? Nay, for their bodies bridge over the hollow, and over
+ them the rest pass on to victory. The quiet religious worship that we
+ have this day--how comes it to be ours? It was purchased for us by the
+ constancy of such men as John, who freely gave their lives. We are
+ treading upon a bridge of martyrs. The suffering was theirs--the
+ victory is ours. John's career was no failure.
+
+ Yet we have one more circumstance which _seems_ to tell of failure. In
+ John's prison, solitude, misgiving, black doubt, seem for a time to
+ have taken possession of the prophet's soul. All that we know of those
+ feelings is this:--John while in confinement sent two of his disciples
+ to Christ, to say to Him, "Art thou He that should come, or do we look
+ for another?" Here is the language of painful uncertainty. We shall
+ not marvel at this, if we look steadily at the circumstances. Let us
+ conceive John's feelings. The enthusiastic child of Nature, who had
+ roved in the desert, free as the air he breathed, is now suddenly
+ arrested, and his strong restless heart limited to the four walls of a
+ narrow dungeon. And there he lay startled. An eagle cleaving the air
+ with motionless wing, and in the midst of his career brought from the
+ black cloud by an arrow to the ground, and looking round with his
+ wild, large eye, stunned, and startled there; just such was the free
+ prophet of the wilderness, when Herod's guards had curbed his noble
+ flight, and left him alone in his dungeon.
+
+ Now there is apparent failure here, brethren; it is not the thing
+ which we should have expected. We should have expected that a man who
+ had lived so close to God all his life, would have no misgivings in
+ his last hours. But, my brethren, it is not so. It is the strange
+ truth that some of the highest of God's servants are tried with
+ darkness on the dying bed. Theory would say, when a religious man is
+ laid up for his last struggles, now he is alone for deep communion
+ with his God. Fact very often says, "No--now he is alone, as his
+ Master was before him, in the wilderness to be tempted of the devil."
+ Look at John in imagination, and you would say, "Now his rough
+ pilgrimage is done. He is quiet, out of the world, with the rapt
+ foretaste of heaven in his soul." Look at John in fact. He is
+ agitated, sending to Christ, not able to rest, grim doubt wrestling
+ with his soul, misgiving for one last black hour whether all his hope
+ has not been delusion.
+
+ There is one thing we remark here by the way. Doubt often comes from
+ inactivity. We cannot give the philosophy of it, but this is the fact,
+ Christians who have nothing to do but to sit thinking of themselves,
+ meditating, sentimentalising, are almost sure to become the prey of
+ dark, black misgivings. John struggling in the desert needs no proof
+ that Jesus is the Christ. John shut up became morbid and doubtful
+ immediately. Brethren all this is very marvellous. The history of a
+ human soul _is_ marvellous. We are mysteries, but here is the
+ practical lesson of it all. For sadness, for suffering, for misgiving,
+ there is no remedy but stirring and doing.
+
+ Now look once more at these doubts of John's. All his life long John
+ had been wishing and expecting that the kingdom of God would come. The
+ kingdom of God is Right triumphant over Wrong, moral evil crushed,
+ goodness set up in its place, the true man recognised, the false man
+ put down and forgotten. All his life long John had panted for that;
+ his hope was to make men better. He tried to make the soldiers
+ merciful, and the publicans honest, and the Pharisees sincere. His
+ complaint was, Why is the world the thing it is? All his life long he
+ had been appealing to the invisible justice of Heaven against the
+ visible brute force which he saw around him. Christ had appeared, and
+ his hopes were straining to the utmost. "Here is the Man!" And now
+ behold, here is no Kingdom of Heaven at all, but one of darkness
+ still, oppression and cruelty triumphant, Herod putting God's prophet
+ in prison, and the Messiah quietly letting things take their course.
+ Can that be indeed Messiah? All this was exceedingly startling. And it
+ seems that then John began to feel the horrible doubt whether the
+ whole thing were not a mistake, and whether all that which he had
+ taken for inspiration were not, after all, only the excited hopes of
+ an enthusiastic temperament. Brethren, the prophet was well nigh on
+ the brink of failure.
+
+ But let us mark--that a man has doubts--_that_ is not the evil; all
+ earnest men must expect to be tried with doubts. All men who feel,
+ with their whole souls, the value of the truth which is at stake,
+ cannot be satisfied with a "perhaps." Why, when all that is true and
+ excellent in this world, all that is worth living for, is in that
+ question of questions, it is no marvel if we sometimes wish, like
+ Thomas, to see the prints of the nails, to know whether Christ be
+ indeed our Lord or not. Cold hearts are not anxious enough to doubt.
+ Men who love will have their misgivings at times; that is not the
+ evil. But the evil is, when men go on in that languid, doubting way,
+ content to doubt, proud of their doubts, morbidly glad to talk about
+ them, liking the romantic gloom of twilight, without the manliness to
+ say--I must and will know the truth. That did not John. Brethren, John
+ appealed to Christ. He did exactly what we do when we pray--and he got
+ his answer. Our Master said to his disciples, Go to my suffering
+ servant, and give him proof. Tell John the things ye see and
+ hear--"The blind see, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor
+ the Gospel is preached." There is a deep lesson wrapped up in this. We
+ get a firm grasp of truth by prayer. Communion with Christ is the best
+ proof of Christ's existence and Christ's love. It is so even in human
+ life. Misgivings gather darkly round our heart about our friend in his
+ absence; but we seek his frank smile, we feel his affectionate grasp:
+ our suspicions go to sleep again. It is just so in religion. No man is
+ in the habit of praying to God in Christ, and then doubts whether
+ Christ is He "that should come." It is in the power of prayer to
+ realize Christ, to bring him near, to make you feel His life stirring
+ like a pulse within you. Jacob could not doubt whether he had been
+ with God when his sinew shrunk. John could not doubt whether Jesus was
+ the Christ when the things He had done were pictured out so vividly in
+ answer to his prayer. Let but a man live with Christ anxious to have
+ his own life destroyed, and Christ's life established in its place,
+ losing himself in Christ, that man will have all his misgivings
+ silenced. These are the two remedies for doubt--Activity and Prayer.
+ He who works, and _feels_ he works--he who prays, and _knows_ he
+ prays, has got the secret of transforming life-failure into
+ life-victory.
+
+ In conclusion brethren, we make three remarks which could not be
+ introduced into the body of this subject. The first is--Let young and
+ ardent minds, under the first impressions of religion, beware how they
+ pledge themselves by any open profession to more than they can
+ perform. Herod warmly took up religion at first, courted the prophet
+ of religion, and then when the hot fit of enthusiasm had passed away,
+ he found that he had a clog round his life from which he could only
+ disengage himself by a rough, rude effort. Brethren whom God has
+ touched, it is good to count the cost before you begin. If you give up
+ present pursuits _impetuously_, are you sure that present impulses
+ will last? Are you quite certain that a day will not come when you
+ will curse the hour in which you broke altogether with the world? Are
+ you quite sure that the revulsion back again, will not be as impetuous
+ as Herod's, and your hatred of the religion which has become a clog,
+ as intense as it is now ardent?
+
+ Many things doubtless there are to be given up--amusements that are
+ dangerous, society that is questionable. What we give up, let us give
+ up, not from quick feeling, but from principle. Enthusiasm is a lovely
+ thing, but let us be calm in what we do. In that solemn, grand
+ thing--Christian life--one step backward is religious death.
+
+ Once more we get from this subject the doctrine of a resurrection.
+ John's life was hardness, his end was agony. That is frequently
+ Christian life. Therefore, says the apostle, if there be no
+ resurrection the Christian's choice is wrong; "If in this life only we
+ have hope in Christ, then are we of all men most miserable." Christian
+ life is not visible success--very often it is the apparent opposite of
+ success. It is the resurrection of Christ working itself out _in_ us;
+ but it is very often the Cross of Christ imprinting itself on us very
+ sharply. The highest prize which God has to give here is martyrdom.
+ The highest style of life is the Baptist's--heroic, enduring, manly
+ love. The noblest coronet which any son of man can wear is a crown of
+ thorns. Christian, _this_ is not your rest. Be content to feel that
+ this world is not your home. Homeless upon earth, try more and more to
+ make your home in heaven, above with Christ.
+
+ Lastly we have to learn from this, that devotedness to Christ is our
+ only blessedness. It is surely a strange thing to see the way in which
+ men crowded round the austere prophet, all saying, "Guide us, we
+ cannot guide ourselves." Publicans, Pharisees, Sadducees, Herod,
+ whenever John appears, all bend before him, offering him homage and
+ leadership. How do we account for this? The truth is, the spirit of
+ man groans beneath the weight of its own freedom. When a man has no
+ guide, no master but himself, he is miserable; we want guidance, and
+ if we find a man nobler, wiser than ourselves, it is almost our
+ instinct to prostrate our affections before that man, as the crowds
+ did by Jordan, and say, "Be my example, my guide, my soul's
+ sovereign." That passionate need of worship--hero-worship it has been
+ called--is a primal, universal instinct of the heart. Christ is the
+ answer to it. Men will not do; we try to find men to reverence
+ thoroughly, and we cannot do it. We go through life, finding guides,
+ rejecting them one after another, expecting nobleness and finding
+ meanness; and we turn away with a recoil of disappointment.
+
+ There is no disappointment in Christ. Christ can be our souls'
+ sovereign. Christ can be our guide. Christ can absorb all the
+ admiration which our hearts long to give. We want to worship men.
+ These Jews wanted to worship man. They were right--man is the rightful
+ object of our worship; but in the roll of ages there has been but one
+ man whom we can adore without idolatry,--the Man Christ Jesus.
+
+
+ THE END.
+
+ _Spottiswoode & Co., Printers, New-street Square, London_
+
+
+
+
+                     A SELECTION FROM THE NOTICES
+
+                                  OF
+
+                       MR. ROBERTSON'S SERMONS,
+
+                              AND OF THE
+
+                 LIFE AND LETTERS OF F.W. ROBERTSON.
+
+                 BY THE REV. STOPFORD A. BROOKE, M.A.
+
+
+
+
+ [BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, August, 1862.]
+
+   "For while hapless Englishmen complain in the papers, and in
+    private, in many a varied wail, over the sermons they have to
+    listen to, it is very apparent that the work of the preacher has
+    not fallen in any respect out of estimation. Here is a book which
+    has gone through as great a number of editions as the most popular
+    novel. It bears Mudie's stamp upon its dingy boards, and has all
+    those marks of arduous service which are only to be seen in books
+    which belong to great public libraries. It is thumbed,
+    dog's-eared, pencil-marked, worn by much perusal. Is it then a
+    novel? On the contrary, it is a volume of sermons. A fine, tender,
+    and lofty mind, full of thoughtfulness, full of devotion, has
+    herein left his legacy to his country. It is not rhetoric or any
+    vulgar excitement of eloquence that charms so many readers to the
+    book, so many hearers to this preacher's feet. It is not with the
+    action of a Demosthenes, with outstretched arms and countenance of
+    flame, that he presses his gospel upon his audience. On the
+    contrary, when we read those calm and lofty utterances, this
+    preacher seems seated, like his Master, with the multitude
+    palpitating round, but no agitation or passion in his own
+    thoughtful, contemplative breast. The Sermons of Robertson, of
+    Brighton, have few of the exciting qualities of oratory. Save for
+    the charm of a singularly pure and lucid style, their almost sole
+    attraction consists in their power of instruction, in their
+    faculty of opening up the mysteries of life and truth. It is pure
+    teaching, so far as that ever can be administered to a popular
+    audience, which is offered to us in these volumes."
+
+
+ [EDINBURGH CHRISTIAN MAGAZINE.]
+
+   "They are Sermons of a bold, uncompromising thinker--of a man
+    resolute for the truth of God, and determined in the strength of
+    God's grace to make that truth clear, to brush away all the
+    fine-spun sophistries and half-truths by which the cunning sins of
+    men have hidden it.... There must be a great and true heart, where
+    there is a great and true preacher. And in that, beyond everything
+    else, lay the secret of Mr. Robertson's influence. His Sermons
+    show evidence enough of acute logical power. His analysis is
+    exquisite in its subtleness and delicacy.... With Mr. Robertson
+    style is but the vehicle, not the substitute for thought.
+    Eloquence, poetry, scholarship, originality--his Sermons show
+    proof enough of these to put him on a level with the foremost men
+    of his time. But, after all, their charm lies in the warm, loving,
+    sympathetic heart, in the well-disciplined mind of the true
+    Christian, in his noble scorn of all lies, of all things mean and
+    crooked, in his brave battling for right, even when wrong seems
+    crowned with success, in his honest simplicity and singleness of
+    purpose, in the high and holy tone--as if, amid the discord of
+    earth, he heard clear, though far off, the perfect harmony of
+    heaven; in the fiery earnestness of his love for Christ, the
+    devotion of his whole being to the goodness and truth revealed in
+    him."
+
+
+ [CHURCH OF ENGLAND MONTHLY REVIEW.]
+
+   "It is hardly too much to say, that had the Church of England
+    produced no other fruit in the present century, this work alone
+    would be amply sufficient to acquit her of the charge of
+    barrenness.... The reputation of Mr. Robertson's Sermons is now so
+    wide-spread, that any commendation of ours may seem superfluous.
+    We will therefore simply, in conclusion, recommend such of our
+    readers as have not yet made their acquaintance, to read them
+    carefully and thoughtfully, and they will find in them more deeply
+    suggestive matter than in almost any book published in the present
+    century."
+
+
+ [MORNING POST.]
+
+   "They are distinguished by masterly exposition of Scriptural
+    truths and the true spirit of Christian charity."
+
+
+ [BRITISH QUARTERLY.]
+
+   "These Sermons are full of thought and beauty, and admirable
+    illustrations of the ease with which a gifted and disciplined mind
+    can make the obscure transparent, the difficult plain. There is
+    not a Sermon that does not furnish evidence of originality without
+    extravagance, of discrimination without tediousness, and of piety
+    without cant or conventionalism."
+
+
+ [ECLECTIC REVIEW.]
+
+   "We hail with unaffected delight the appearance of these volumes.
+    The Sermons are altogether out of the common style. They are
+    strong, free, and beautiful utterances of a gifted and cultivated
+    mind. Occasionally, the expression of theological sentiment fails
+    fully to represent our own thought, and we sometimes detect
+    tendencies with which we cannot sympathize: but, taken as a whole,
+    the discourses are fine specimens of a high order of preaching."
+
+
+ [GUARDIAN.]
+
+   "Very beautiful in feeling, and occasionally striking and forcible
+    in conception to a remarkable degree.... Even in the imperfect
+    shape in which their deceased author left them, they are very
+    remarkable compositions."
+
+
+ [CHRISTIAN REMEMBRANCER.]
+
+   "We should be glad if all preachers more united with ourselves,
+    preached such Sermons as these."
+
+
+ [WESTMINSTER REVIEW.]
+
+   "To those who affectionately remember the author, they will
+    recall, though imperfectly, his living eloquence and his living
+    truthfulness."
+
+
+ [GLOBE.]
+
+   "Mr. Robertson, of Brighton, is a name familiar to most of us, and
+    honoured by all to whom it is familiar. A true servant of Christ,
+    a bold and heart-stirring preacher of the Gospel, his teaching was
+    unlike the teaching of most clergymen, for it was beautified and
+    intensified by genius. New truth, new light, streamed from each
+    well-worn text when he handled it."
+
+
+ [BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.]
+
+   "When teaching of this description keeps the popular ear and
+    secures the general attention, it is unquestionable proof that the
+    office of the preacher has, in no way, lost its hold on the mind
+    of the people. The acceptance of a voice so unimpassioned and
+    thoughtful, so independent of all vulgar auxiliaries, so intent
+    upon bringing every theme it touches to the illustration and
+    sanctifying of the living life of the hour, that which alone can
+    be mended, and purified, and sanctified, is a better tribute to
+    the undying office of the preacher than the success of a hundred
+    Spurgeons. Attention and interest are as eager as ever where there
+    is in reality any instruction to bestow."
+
+
+ [LITERARY GAZETTE.]
+
+   "In earnestness of practical appeal, and in eloquent and graceful
+    diction, Mr. Robertson has few rivals, and these characteristics
+    are sufficient to account for his unusual popularity."
+
+
+ [NATIONAL REVIEW.]
+
+   "A volume of very fine Sermons, quite equal to the previous
+    series."
+
+
+ [BRIGHTON EXAMINER.]
+
+   "There is in the Sermons in this volume the same freshness, vigour
+    of thought and felicity of expression, as characterised whatever
+    Mr. Robertson said."
+
+
+ [ECONOMIST.]
+
+   "Mr. Robertson's Sermons have the great and rare merit of
+    neutralising by a more charitable and affectionate spirit, and by
+    a wider intelligence, all that may appear rigid and _doctrinaire_
+    in the Church of England. The result seems to have been his
+    special mission: it most fully explains the mind of the man.... We
+    recommend the Sermons to the perusal of our readers. They will
+    find in them thought of so rare and beautiful a description, an
+    earnestness of mind so steadfast in the search of truth, and a
+    charity so pure and all-embracing, that we cannot venture to offer
+    praise, which would be, in this case, almost as presumptuous as
+    criticism."
+
+
+ [SATURDAY REVIEW.]
+
+   "When Mr. Robertson died, his name was scarcely known beyond the
+    circle of his own private friends, and of those among whom he had
+    laboured in his calling. Now, every word he wrote is eagerly
+    sought for and affectionately treasured up, and meets with the
+    most reverent and admiring welcome from men of all parties and all
+    shades of opinion.... To those that find in his writings what they
+    themselves want, he is a teacher quite beyond comparison--his
+    words having a meaning, his thoughts a truth and depth, which they
+    cannot find elsewhere. And they never look to him in vain.... He
+    fixes himself upon the recollection as a most original and
+    profound thinker, and as a man in whom excellence puts on a new
+    form.... There are many persons, and the number increases every
+    year, to whom Robertson's writings are the most stable,
+    satisfactory, and exhaustless form of religious teaching which the
+    nineteenth century has given--the most wise, suggestive, and
+    practical."
+
+
+ [BRIGHTON HERALD.]
+
+   "To our thinking, no compositions of the same class, at least
+    since the days of Jeremy Taylor, can be compared with these
+    Sermons delivered to the congregation of Trinity Chapel, Brighton,
+    by their late minister. They have that power over the mind which
+    belongs only to the highest works of genius: they stir the soul to
+    its inmost depths: they move the affections, raise the
+    imagination, bring out the higher and spiritual part of our nature
+    by the continual appeal that is made to it, and tend to make us,
+    at the same time, humble and aspiring--merciful to others and
+    doubtful of ourselves."
+
+
+ [From a SERMON preached at the CONSECRATION of the BISHOP of NORWICH,
+ by the REV. J.H. GURNEY, late of MARYLEBONE.]
+
+   "I do not commit myself to all his theology; I may differ from the
+    preacher in some things, and listen doubtfully to others. But I
+    know of no modern sermons at once so suggestive and so
+    inspiriting, with reference to the whole range of Christian duty.
+    He is fresh and original without being recondite: plain-spoken
+    without severity; and discusses some of the exciting topics of the
+    day without provoking strife or lowering his tone as a Christian
+    teacher. He delivers his message, in fact, like one who is
+    commissioned to call men off from trifles and squabbles, and
+    conventional sins and follies, to something higher and nobler than
+    their common life: like a man in earnest, too, avoiding
+    technicalities, speaking his honest mind in phrases that are his
+    own, and with a directness from which there is no escape. O that a
+    hundred like him were given us by God, and placed in prominent
+    stations throughout our land!"
+
+
+ [GUARDIAN.]
+
+   "Without anything of that artificial symmetry which the
+    traditional division into heads was apt to display, they present
+    each reflection in a distinct method of statement, clearly and
+    briefly worked out; the sentences are short and terse, as in all
+    popular addresses they should be; the thoughts are often very
+    striking, and entirely out of the track of ordinary sermonising.
+    In matters of doctrine such novelty is sometimes unsafe; but the
+    language is that of one who tries earnestly to penetrate into the
+    very centre of the truth he has to expound, and differs as widely
+    as possible from the sceptic's doubt or the controversialist's
+    mistake. More frequently Mr. Robertson deals with questions of
+    practical life, of public opinion, and of what we may call social
+    casuistry--turning the light of Christian ethics upon this
+    unnoticed though familiar ground. The use of a carriage on Sunday,
+    the morality of feeing a railway porter against his employers'
+    rules, are topics not too small for illustration or application of
+    his lessons in divine truth."
+
+
+ [BRIGHTON GAZETTE.]
+
+   "As an author, Mr. Robertson was, in his lifetime, unknown; for
+    with the exception of one or two addresses, he never published,
+    having a singular disinclination to bring his thoughts before the
+    public in the form of published sermons. As a minister, he was
+    beloved and esteemed for his unswerving fidelity to his principles
+    and his fearless propagation of his religious views. As a
+    townsman, he was held in the highest estimation; his hand and
+    voice being ever ready to do all in his power to advance the moral
+    and social position of the working man. It was not till after his
+    decease, which event created a sensation and demonstration such as
+    Brighton never before or since witnessed, that his works were
+    subjected to public criticism. It was then found that in the
+    comparatively retired minister of Trinity Chapel there had existed
+    a man possessed of consummate ability and intellect of the highest
+    order; that the sermons laid before his congregation were replete
+    with the subtleties of intellect, and bore evidence of the keenest
+    perception and most exalted catholicity. His teaching was of an
+    extremely liberal character, and if fair to assign a man possessed
+    of such a universality of sympathy to any party, we should say
+    that he belonged to what is denominated the 'Broad Church.' We,
+    with many others, cannot agree in the fullest extent of his
+    teaching, but, at the same time, feel bound to accord the tribute
+    due to his genius."
+
+
+ [MORNING CHRONICLE.]
+
+   "A volume of very excellent Sermons, by the late lamented
+    Incumbent of Trinity Chapel, Brighton."
+
+
+ [TITAN.]
+
+   "But the Sermons now under notice are, we venture to say, taking
+    all the circumstances into consideration, the most remarkable
+    discourses of the age.... They are throughout vital with the
+    rarest force, burning with an earnestness perhaps never surpassed,
+    and luminous with the light of genius.... We suspect that even
+    Brighton little knew what a man Providence had placed in its
+    midst."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+ On the "_Analysis of Mr. Tennyson's In Memoriam_:"--
+
+ [GUARDIAN.]
+
+   "An endeavour to give, in a few weighty words, the key-note (so to
+    speak) of each poem in the series. Those will best appreciate the
+    amount of success attained by Mr. Robertson who try to do the same
+    work better."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+ From a few of the Notices on Mr. Robertson's "_Lecture on the Epistles
+ to the Corinthians_:"--
+
+
+ [MORNING POST.]
+
+   "It was Mr. Robertson's custom every Sunday afternoon, instead of
+    preaching from one text, to expound an entire chapter of some book
+    in the Scriptures. The present volume is made up from notes of
+    fifty-six discourses of this kind. 'Some people were startled by
+    the introduction of what they called secular subjects into the
+    pulpit. But the lecturer in all his ministrations refused to
+    recognize the distinction so drawn. He said that the whole life of
+    a Christian was sacred--that common every-day doings, whether of a
+    trade, or of a profession, or the minuter details of a woman's
+    household life, were the arenas in which trial and temptation
+    arose; and that therefore it became the Christian minister's duty
+    to enter into this family working life with his people, and help
+    them to understand its meaning, its trials, and its
+    compensations.' It is enough to add that the lectures now given to
+    the public are written in this spirit."
+
+
+ [CRITIC.]
+
+   "Such discourses as these before us, so different from the shallow
+    rhapsodies or tedious hair-splitting which are now so much in
+    vogue, may well make us regret that Mr. Robertson can never be
+    heard again in the pulpit. This single volume would in itself
+    establish a reputation for its writer."
+
+
+ [BRIGHTON HERALD.]
+
+   "... Were there no name on the title-page, the spirit which,
+    shines forth in these lectures could but be recognized as that of
+    the earnest, true-hearted man, the deep thinker, the sympathizer
+    with all kinds of human trouble, the aspirant for all things holy,
+    and one who joined to these rare gifts, the faculty of speaking to
+    his fellow-men in such a manner as to fix their attention and win
+    their love.... In whatever spirit the volume is read--of doubt, of
+    criticism, or of full belief in the truths it teaches--it can but
+    do good; it can but leave behind the conviction that here was a
+    genuine, true-hearted man, gifted with the highest intellect,
+    inspired by the most disinterested motives and the purest love for
+    his fellow-men, and that the fountain at which he warmed his heart
+    and kindled his eloquence was that which flows from Christ."
+
+
+ [BRITISH QUARTERLY REVIEW.]
+
+   "This volume will be a welcome gift to many an intelligent and
+    devout mind. There are few of our modern questions, theological or
+    ecclesiastical, that do not come up for discussion in the course
+    of these Epistles to the Christians at Corinth."
+
+
+ [MORNING HERALD.]
+
+   "No one can read these lectures without being charmed by their
+    singular freshness and originality of thought, their earnest,
+    simple eloquence, and their manly piety. There is no mawkish
+    sentiment, no lukewarm, semi-religious twaddle, smacking of the
+    _Record_; no proclamation of party views or party opinions, but a
+    broad, healthy, living, and fervent exposition of one of the most
+    difficult books in the Bible. Every page is full of personal
+    earnestness and depth of feeling; but every page is also free from
+    the slightest trace of vanity and egotism. The words come home to
+    the reader's heart as the utterance of a sincere man who felt
+    every sentence which flowed from his lips."
+
+
+ [PRESS.]
+
+   "One of the most marked features of these lectures is the deep
+    feeling which the preacher had of the emptiness and hollowness of
+    the conventional religionism of the day. The clap-trap of popular
+    ministers, the pride and uncharitableness of exclusive
+    Evangelicalism, the pomp and pretension of ritualism and priestly
+    affectation--the miserable Pharisaism which is lurking underneath
+    them all--form the subject of many strikingly true and often
+    cutting remarks. He has no patience with the unrealities of
+    sectarian purism and pedantic orthodoxy. His constant cry, the
+    constant struggle of his soul is for reality. Hence while his
+    views of objective truth are at times deficient, or, at least,
+    very imperfectly stated, he leaves a deep impress of subjective
+    religion upon the mind, by a style of teaching which, far from
+    uninstructive, is yet more eminently suggestive."
+
+
+ [THE SPECTATOR.]
+
+   "The _Notes on Genesis_--sketches more or less full of lectures on
+    Genesis, delivered by Mr. Robertson--will be welcomed by the many
+    who have read, with a profound interest, those writings of his
+    which have already been given to the world.... Few will be able to
+    read this volume without having brought before them certain
+    passages out of their own lives, which they will be compelled to
+    reconsider from a fresh point of view. As an interpreter of
+    Scripture also, Mr. Robertson nowhere appears to greater
+    advantage. While not ignoring difficult points, he is always
+    looking for, and never fails to find, that which is profitable and
+    edifying."
+
+ From a few of the Notices on Mr. Robertson's "_The Human Race and
+ other Sermons_."
+
+
+ [THE ACADEMY.]
+
+   "It need not be said that there is here much that is beautiful and
+    happily expressed."
+
+
+ [THE BRITISH QUARTERLY REVIEW.]
+
+   "The volume is as fresh and striking and suggestive as any of its
+    predecessors. For unconventional and spiritual conceptions of
+    Bible teachings; for unexpected, penetrating, and practical
+    applications of them, and for general spiritual truth and force,
+    these Sermons and Notes of Sermons are as noble as their
+    predecessors."
+
+
+ [THE ENGLISH CHURCHMAN.]
+
+   "We are glad to see the publication of the eloquent Sermons now
+    before us, especially those of a devout and practical character,
+    such as those on the human race and education."
+
+
+ [THE CHRISTIAN WORLD.]
+
+   "These Sermons exhibit many of those features of unsurpassable
+    excellence which have gained for the preacher a reputation which
+    has had no equal in our time. They are full of thought and
+    suggestiveness, and are marked by that rare beauty of style which
+    Mr. Robertson's readers have learned to associate with all his
+    Sermons. His devoted admirers--and how numerous they are--will be
+    sure to place this new volume upon their shelves."
+
+
+
+
+                         A SELECTION FROM THE
+
+                       NOTICES BY THE PRESS OF
+
+                  "THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF THE LATE
+
+                        REV. F.W. ROBERTSON."
+
+
+
+
+ [THE SPECTATOR.]
+
+   "No book published since the 'Life of Dr. Arnold' has produced so
+    strong an impression on the moral imagination and spiritual
+    theology of England as we may expect from these volumes. Even for
+    those who knew Mr. Robertson well, and for many who knew _him_, as
+    they thought, better than his Sermons, the free and full
+    discussion of the highest subjects in the familiar letters so
+    admirably selected by the Editor of Mr. Robertson's _Life_, will
+    give a far clearer insight into his remarkable character and
+    inspire a deeper respect for his clear and manly intellect. Mr.
+    Brooke has done his work as Dr. Stanley did his in writing the
+    'Life of Arnold,' and it is not possible to give higher praise....
+    Everyone will talk of Mr. Robertson, and no one of Mr. Brooke,
+    because Mr. Brooke has thought much of his subject, nothing of
+    himself, and hence the figure which he wished to present comes out
+    quite clear and keen, without any interposing haze of literary
+    vapour."
+
+
+ [THE CHRISTIAN WORLD.]
+
+   "The Life of Robertson of Brighton supplies a very unique
+    illustration of the way in which a man may attain his highest fame
+    after he has passed away from earth. There are few who make any
+    pretension to an acquaintance with modern literature who do not
+    know something of Mr. Robertson's works. His sermons are
+    indisputably ranked with the highest sacred classics.... The
+    publication of his 'Life and Letters' helps us to some information
+    which is very precious, and explains much mystery that hangs
+    around the name of the great Brighton preacher. It will be
+    generally admitted that these two volumes will furnish means for
+    estimating the character of Mr. Robertson which are not supplied
+    in any or all of his published works.... There was no
+    artificiality or show about the pulpit production, no
+    half-utterances or whispers of solemn belief; but there was the
+    natural restraint which would be imposed by a true gentleman upon
+    his words when speaking to mixed congregations. Many of us wanted
+    to know how he talked and wrote when the restraint was removed.
+    This privilege is granted to us in these volumes.... There was no
+    romance of scene and circumstance in the life of Frederick
+    Robertson; but there was more than romance about the real life of
+    the man. In some respects it was like the life of a new Elijah....
+    A more thoughtful, suggestive, and beautiful preacher never
+    entered a pulpit; a simpler and braver man never lived; a truer
+    Christian never adorned any religious community. His life and
+    death were _vicarious_, as he himself might have put it. He lived
+    and died for others, for us all. The sorrows and agonies of his
+    heart pressed rare music out of it, and the experience of a
+    terribly bitter life leaves a wealth of thought and reflection
+    never more than equalled in the history of men."
+
+
+ [THE GUARDIAN.]
+
+   "With all drawbacks of what seem to us imperfect taste, an
+    imperfect standard of character, and an imperfect appreciation of
+    what there is in the world beyond a given circle of interest, the
+    book does what a biography ought to do--it shows us a remarkable
+    man, and it gives us the means of forming our own judgment about
+    him. It is not a tame panegyric or a fancy picture. The main
+    portion of the book consists of Mr. Robertson's own letters, and
+    his own account of himself, and we are allowed to see him, in a
+    great degree at least, as he really was.... It is the record of a
+    genuine spontaneous character, seeking its way, its duty, its
+    perfection, with much sincerity and elevation of purpose, many
+    anxieties and sorrows, and not, we doubt not, without much of the
+    fruits that come with real self-devotion; a record disclosing a
+    man with great faults and conspicuous blanks in his nature."
+
+
+ [THE MORNING POST.]
+
+   "Mr. Brooke has done good service in giving to the world so
+    faithful a sketch of so worthy a man. It would have been a
+    reproach to the Church if this enduring and appropriate memorial
+    had not been erected to one who was so entirely devoted to its
+    service; and the labour of love, for such it evidently was, was
+    committed to no unskilful hands.... Mr. Robertson's epistolary
+    writings--gathered in these valuable volumes--often unstudied,
+    always necessarily from their nature free and unrestrained, but
+    evidencing depth and vigour of thought, clear perception, varied
+    knowledge, sound judgment, earnest piety, are doubtless destined
+    to become as widely known and as largely beneficial as his
+    published Sermons. It is impossible to peruse them without
+    receiving impressions for good, and being persuaded that they are
+    the offspring of no ordinary mind."
+
+
+ [THE MORNING HERALD.]
+
+   "Mr. Brooke has done his own work as a biographer with good sense,
+    feeling, and taste.... These volumes are of real value to all
+    thoughtful readers. For many a year we have had no such picture of
+    a pure and noble and well spent life."
+
+
+ [THE ATHENAEUM.]
+
+   "There is something here for all kinds of readers, but the higher
+    a man's mind and the more general his sympathies, the keener will
+    be his interest in the 'Life of Robertson.'"
+
+
+ [THE NONCONFORMIST.]
+
+   "As no English sermons of the century have been so widely read,
+    and as few leaders of religious thought have exerted (especially
+    by works in so much of an unperfected and fragmentary character)
+    so penetrating and powerful an influence on the spiritual
+    tendencies of the times, we can well believe that no biography
+    since Arnold's will presently be possible to be compared with
+    this, for the interest excited by it in the minds of readers who
+    consciously live in the presence of the invisible and eternal, who
+    feel the pressure of difficult questions and painful experiences,
+    and who seek reality and depth, and freedom in the life and
+    activity of the Church of Christ.... Mr. Brooke has produced a
+    'Life of Robertson' which will not unworthily compare with Dean
+    Stanley's 'Life of Arnold,' and which, with that, and Ryland's
+    'Life of Foster,' and the 'Life of Channing,' is likely to be
+    prized as one of the most precious records of genuine manly and
+    godly excellence."
+
+
+ [THE MORNING STAR.]
+
+   "The beautiful work which Mr. Brooke has written contains few, if
+    any, romantic episodes. It is the life of a man who worked hard
+    and died early.... Mr. Brooke has acted wisely in allowing Mr.
+    Robertson to speak so fully for himself, and in blending his
+    letters with his narrative, and arranging them in chronological
+    order. These letters are in themselves a mine of intellectual
+    wealth. They contain little of table-talk or parlour gossip: but
+    they abound with many of his best and most ripened thoughts on
+    multitudes of subjects, political, literary, and scientific, as
+    well as theological. We wish we could present our readers with
+    extracts from them; but even if we had space, it would be unfair
+    to the writer to quote disjointed fragments from a correspondence
+    which now belongs to the literature of the country.... Mr. Brooke
+    has performed his responsible task as a biographer and an editor
+    in a spirit of just and discriminating appreciation, and with
+    admirable ability."
+
+
+
+                          LONDON: PRINTED BY
+               SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
+                        AND PARLIAMENT STREET
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sermons Preached at Brighton
+by Frederick W. Robertson
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SERMONS PREACHED AT BRIGHTON ***
+
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