Plain Sermons, by James Galloway Cowan

Every one who has thoughtfully read that description of the Samaritans in the second book of Kings—“they feared the Lord and served their own gods”—must have been struck with the mockery, the blasphemy, the absurdity of such a fear. Fear Him, who claims to be the only God, and yet regard many others as equally and independently gods! Worship Him, all whose service is pure, and innocent, and self-emptying, and righteous and yet worship Ashtaroth, the goddess of licentious pleasure—Moloch, the god of cruelty—Chemosh, and his abominations—Belial, and his worldliness! This, my brethren, we all see is not simply a forbidden but an impossible service. The commands, the sanctions, the promises, the service of Jehovah, and of any one of these others, are so thoroughly opposite, so condemnatory of each other, that the p. 2man who attempts to observe them both, is far more impious and more foolish than the benighted heathen who carves an idol out of a block of wood or piece of stone and bows down to it alone in homage, and looks up only to it for blessings. If, then, mammon means a false god—either a deified human being, or a personified vice or virtue, or an actual dumb, senseless idol,—we feel that Christ has rightly said, not ye “shall not,” but ye “cannot” serve it and God. There is no room for the question whether God will wink at a divided homage; whether, provided He is one of the objects of worship, He will not be over-severe with you for having other objects. The attempt to serve both is an attempt at what is impossible; not at what may not be, on account of certain commands and restrictions, but at what cannot be from the very nature of things. God altogether—or mammon altogether, if you will; but “ye cannot serve God and mammon.” You see this, you approve Christ’s teaching, you are ready to condemn, you do now condemn—the impiety, the folly of attempting to serve God and mammon.

But, my brethren, consider. Do you know what and whom you condemn? Are you quite sure that you do not yourselves attempt to serve mammon as well as God? Oh, yes! you are quite sure! Mammon, a false god—a name without a being like Jove and Mars, like fairies and genii—or a substance without life—like Bel of the p. 3Chaldeans, or Juggernaut of the Hindoos—you are not so senseless as to serve this!

Or, again, if mammon be, as some commentators tell us, only a personification of riches, and his service therefore be the immoderate pursuit of wealth and worldly aggrandisement, still you are free. You may sometimes make great efforts to be rich, you may often desire and covet wealth; but you are not sordid misers; you are not engrossed in the pursuit of wealth; you do not treat it as a god, and give to it the thought and homage due to Jehovah.

Dear brethren, it is not so certain that you could quite clear yourselves of the sin and folly of serving mammon, even if this were all that is meant. But it is not. Look to the text, “Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” What then? Why give up mammon! And what is mammon? The next verse tells you, “Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on.” So, then, taking thought for these things is serving mammon.

“But,” some are ready to exclaim, “taking thought for these things is a very law and necessity of my being. I came into this world needing food and clothing. Others had to take thought to feed and clothe me. They early impressed upon me as one of the clearest duties of my responsible life that I should take this thought for myself, and p. 4now I can only get these things for myself and my family by taking thought for them.” Ay, and the very Word of God enjoins the duty: “Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise”—learn, that is, from her forethought and provision; look about thee, be industrious, store up for future wants. Our Lord Himself set the example of such forethought, when He committed the care of a bag to one of His disciples, that food, and money to buy food, might be carried about with them; and the Apostle Paul plainly taught—“If any will not work, neither shall he eat.” “If any man provide not for his own, he has denied the faith and is worse than an infidel.”

My brethren, the law of nature has imposed, and the Word of God therefore approves, that we should look about and provide for our necessities. Wherever there is power to do this, the power must be exercised, or we must run the risk of want. The lilies of the field are fed by God’s own hand with nourishment, which they cannot seek. The unfledged bird has but to open its mouth to receive the food, which divinely implanted instinct has caused the parent to bring; but when it is grown it must itself make provision—it must search the trees for berries and the earth for worms, or it must die of starvation. God takes thought for sparrows, yet He requires, if I may so speak, that they should think for themselves; and thereby He teaches us, confirming this teaching by plain words of revelation, that it is incumbent upon us to make provision for our p. 5necessities, and so, of course, to think about them. But thinking is not taking thought. When our Bible was translated, to “take thought” meant (as the Greek word which it represents does) to be anxious, troubled, perplexed about a thing, and so to be drawn off by its consideration from other thoughts, and cares, and duties. The consistent, devoted servant of God, while intent upon his due and loved service, may and should use precaution and diligence to sustain in appointed ways the lower life and wants of himself and his; but if he takes thought about them, cares more or thinks more about temporal things than spiritual; if he leaves undone religious duties, or transgresses divine commands, or wears out his zeal, or consumes his time (of choice) in securing or seeking worldly provision, then does he attempt to serve mammon as well as God, and in so doing—attempting what cannot be—he actually foregoes the service of God and becomes an idolater.

My dear brethren, let us go into this matter, and pick out its plain and wholesome lessons, and ask God to engrave them deeply on our hearts. The text is especially addressed to such as we are. It is not mainly for the grossly covetous; for the would-be hoarders of great wealth; for the epicure, intent upon dainty dishes and costly wines; for the giddy votaries of fashion, ever meditating fresh extravagancies and greater absurdities, betraying by their silly, unchristian finery the emptiness of their minds and the callousness of their hearts, p. 6making themselves gazing-stocks to the thoughtless and objects of pity to the thoughtful. It is not, I say, chiefly for these (though it is indeed for them, and it behoves them to regard it very seriously), but it is for those who take thought for necessaries that our text was spoken and written; who are in concern not for a superabundance, but for a sufficiency of the things of this life. To them it says, Take no thought, be not anxious, perplexed. Let not these things engross your hearts, or cause you in any way to swerve from the pure and entire service of God, for—this is the first reason—to do so is to sin, it is to give up God and choose mammon. Ye who do it are idolaters. Make no plea of opposing difficulty or necessity, count upon no indulgence. If you serve mammon, you do not serve God. God will have no part of a divided heart, and will not be served at all by those who do not serve Him altogether.

Dear brethren, try to embrace this truth. God’s commands are not to be explained away, nor are excuses to be made for disregarding them. Obey them at all hazards—do not pare them down by pleas of expediency. Doubtless, the service is a very hard one. It is very difficult not to take thought for immediate and pressing wants. It is a great temptation to a very poor man to have an opportunity of making a few shillings by working or keeping his shop open on the Lord’s Day. It is a great temptation to one who is hard-worked during the week to have the power of turning the p. 7day of holy rest into one of worldly pleasure. It would be very convenient to the man of business to make up his ledger when he should be reading his Bible; to be thinking of his projects and prospects in this life rather than his coming eternity; to be pushing a bargain which is very advantageous, though it is a little unjust; to get what he can for his goods, rather than what he ought; to tell little untruths; to grind down his dependents; to withhold from charitable purposes the money which can be made useful for self; in short, to be ever taking thought for temporal things and not taking thought for spiritual, and so to miss opportunities of meditating, and reading, and praying, of worshipping, and communicating, and doing good, and preparing for heaven. The comparatively well-to-do man doubtless finds this worldly taking thought agreeable and in a sense advantageous; the poor man is hard pressed to give way to it; but still the command of God stands out—“Take no thought.”

“My wants,” says one, “must be relieved; my family must be fed and clothed; my work must be done; my interests must be looked after; my health must be preserved.” No, brethren, there is no must in any one of these. God must be served; all the others may be, if they can be included in His service, not otherwise.

And would you really come to want, if you were more religious? Would your family be left unprovided for? Would your health suffer? You do not p. 8seriously think it would. But what if it did? Welcome want, welcome sickness, welcome death—anything rather than worldly prosperity, if it can only be obtained by renunciation of God’s enjoined service and idolatrous devotion to mammon. The world will laugh at such preaching, brethren, and call it foolishness; but the world is nothing to us. It is doomed to pass away with all the things in it which lure us to take thought; but you and I must live on to eternity, and how we are to live shall be decided by the master we serve—God or mammon.

A second reason why we are not to take thought is—that doing so will not insure what we want. “Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature;” or, rather, such is the real meaning, can increase, even by a little measure, the length of his life. And, on the other hand, avoiding taking thought (from religious motives) will insure what we want. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you;” i.e., you shall not want (no more is promised here) food and raiment. At first thought, doubtless some of you fancy that your experience contradicts both these divine statements. You know many men who by taking thought have secured ample provision, have apparently even added to their lives, and you think you know some who have trusted in God’s promise and fulfilled its conditions and yet suffered grievous want. That some—yea, that many—by taking p. 9thought have secured what they wanted, is notorious; but that others, who have taken equal thought, have failed, is also notorious. Can you count the disappointed ambitious? the thwarted seekers of pleasure? the distressed hard-working? the bankrupts who have devoted every thought and effort, soul and body, to business? No! Well then taking thought does not insure what we want.

And, on the other hand, though a Lazarus is sometimes fed with crumbs only, if you knew the inner life of the seeming waiters on God who are in want, you would nearly always find that their necessity remains unrelieved, because they have not thoroughly performed the prescribed conditions; or that it was in some fit of independence, by some forbidden taking thought that they overreached themselves and fell. In proportion as any one has opportunity to investigate the causes of distress, he will surely be more and more ready to confirm the testimony of a great observer:—“I have been young and now am old, and yet saw I never the righteous forsaken or his seed begging their bread.”

And what, then, are we to infer from all this? That besides God’s general providence which rules over all, ordering, as from a distant throne, the being and motions of the universe, He exercises a particular providence, drawing nigh to individuals, stepping in between cause and effect, saving, helping, prospering, hindering, confounding, destroying, just in those very cases which natural laws would p. 10treat otherwise. Not that this is always done in the case of all men. The wicked are often and chiefly let alone; they are, it may be, in great prosperity for a time; they come perhaps to no present misfortune; they do violence and escape justice; their time of reward is not yet. Again, the righteous are not exempt from trials, and troubles, and privations—their time of reward is not yet (and if it were, their very trials, in the spiritual effects they produce, may be part of their blessedness); but they are never forsaken. The very hairs of their heads are all numbered. Nothing befalls them but by God’s permission—a permission which is only given when the event will work for their good. They may commit themselves unto Him as unto a faithful Creator and most merciful Saviour; they may put their trust in Him, assured that it will not miscarry; no evil shall approach to hurt them lastingly—He will keep them as the apple of His eye; none shall be able to pluck them out of His hand. In short, while they desire the things which He promises, and love and do the things which He commands, He will forward all their wise undertakings, and bless them in all their circumstances; and when their own ignorance, or want of forethought, or external so-called chances, or the machinations of evil men or spirits expose them to danger, He will interfere and ward off the consequences, save only when, like the trials of Job or Joseph, they can be made productive of greater excellence and so of greater reward. If this be so, p. 11then surely expediency approves what right demands, that we should forego the taking thought which is so uncertainly successful, and that we should repose in a care which never fails—“Casting all your care upon Him for He careth for you.”

Oh! my brethren, try to believe heartily this great doctrine of a particular Providence! Look not back to the creation of the world, and to the working out of men’s redemption in Judea, or forward to the Judgment Day, as though God were only working and manifesting Himself there and then. God is everywhere and is active everywhere; He is here now; He is marking how we conduct ourselves in this house; He is looking into the very depths of our hearts and minds, and noting whatsoever lurks there. This night He will be about our beds; to-morrow about our paths; always spying out all our ways. Of every thought, of every word, of every deed of ours, He will at once note the intent and the measure. Of all that is done in His fear and service, He will record that it is “righteous worship;” of all else that it is “idolatry,” the setting up of some person or some thing as more worthy to be loved or feared than He is. Every undertaking, every endurance, all safety and all danger, all wisdom and all folly, will be watched and allowed or overruled according as we deserve or deserve not to be dealt with in love by a present God.

Oh! if we felt this, how easy would it be to avoid taking thought for temporal things! how p. 12full would be our minds of God! how should we breathe as in His presence, and listen for His guidance, and trust in His providence! And then how determined would be our service of Him! We should not talk of expediency; we should not invent excuses; we should not do evil that good may come, or avoid good that we may escape unpleasant circumstances. No! God would be indeed God; religion would be the one thing needful; we should hope for what it promised, and fear what it threatened. The allurements of the world, the offers of pleasure, riches, power, honour, would be scorned as childish toys idly held out to sage and sober men. The scoffs, the sneers, the threats, the persecutions of the world would be nothing cared for—they would be as the impotent threats of chained madmen.

Serve God or mammon? Who would be in doubt which to do, who would shrink from or fail in the service, if God were only thus palpably present? Having thus set God before us, how zealously should we serve Him, how confidently should we rest on Him!

And, lastly, what men of prayer we should become. If we felt that God is indeed an interfering power in the world; that His superintendence is not general only but special also; that He may at any time avert a threatened danger, or confer an improbable blessing; that, in short, He may alter the whole face of things, and their working upon us and ours on them at any moment, and that our p. 13doings, our yearnings, our prayers may prompt His interference; then would not prayer cease to be regarded as a mere necessary religious exercise, to be gone through much as grace before and after meat is; would it not become a vivid recital of our wants and feelings, an earnest pleading, a very wrestling with God? Would not every event, every shadow of weal or wo bring us to our knees? Should we make any plans or enter upon any course, or indulge any thoughts, before we had laid all before Him? In all our efforts, all our fears, all our wishes, all our sufferings, should we not betake ourselves to Him not only as the Wise Counsellor but the Effectual Doer? And in all our blessings and averted dangers, as readily and as heartily should we offer the tribute of thanksgiving; asking from Him what we desired, ascribing to Him what we received throughout our life, and its every circumstance realizing that the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth, and that we are the subjects of His rule; in all our interests and all our duties resting and acting upon the tremendous truth that God is a God at hand and not a God afar off!

p. 14SERMON II.
RIGHT THOUGHTS OF CHRIST.

Jesus we know claimed to be the Christ. He was not wont, indeed, to manifest Himself plainly in that character to the multitude; He did not often so speak of Himself even to the chosen; but still, indirectly, by hint of speech and deed, He did—parabolically—propose Himself to mankind as the promised Messiah, the Son of God, the Son of David, the Saviour of the World. But He was not often so received. A Galilean fisherman was enabled by the Spirit to confess—“Thou art the Christ, the son of the Blessed.” A Samaritan asked in wondering faith—“Is not this the Christ?” But more frequently He was regarded as merely a prophet, as Elijah or Jeremiah, or as a wonderful man who came from God; who spake as no other had ever spoken; who could not do such works except God were with Him. This was among the well-disposed.

p. 15His enemies called Him “Beelzebub, the Prince of the Devils;” “The fellow that deceiveth the people;” “a Nazarene;” “a sinner;” “a winebibber;” “a Sabbath-breaker;” “a blasphemer;” “guilty, i.e., deserving, of death.” It mattered not that they were unable to resist the wisdom with which He spake; that He did all things well, making both the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak; that He was proved to be versed in Divine letters, without ever having learned (of men); that His appeals to God for vindication as a teacher of truth and a forgiver of sins were visibly answered. They saw no beauty or comeliness in Him, nor anything that should make them desire Him; they would not come unto Him that they might have life. He was despised and rejected.

It was when He had been exhibiting His credentials very openly and condescendingly, and when the witnesses, with marvellous obstinacy, had refused to believe what they saw, that drawing off their thoughts for the moment from Himself the fulfiller of prophecy, He bade them look back upon the prophecy itself and answer to themselves and to Him what it was they expected: “What think ye,” He demanded, “of Christ?” “Since you see not in me any resemblance to God’s portrait of His anointed One, tell me, tell yourselves what are the features for which you look. I am not the being whom you expect—what, then, do you expect? what think ye of the Christ?”

But the question was a wide one, and had they p. 16been willing, it might have perplexed them to know how to begin to answer it. Therefore as though dealing with them as children, and considerately attempting to lead them on step by step, He immediately limits the inquiry to one particular—First tell me “whose son is He?” Ye searchers and expounders of prophecy, what have you ascertained, what do you know of the descent of the Messiah? whose son is He? They say unto Him—“The son of David.”

Now, if any of us, my brethren, were catechising Sunday School children, and they so answered such a question, we should commend the answer as true though imperfect, and we should patiently and encouragingly continue—“True; but has He not besides another Father? an elder and superior birth? Who else in Holy Scripture is called His Father?” It might be that then some would answer—“He is the son of Abraham,” or perhaps even “the seed of the woman.” We should bear with this, we should approve it; we should become more hopeful of leading them to the perfect answer, and we should therefore gently proceed—“It is so; but now you have traced back His earthly being to its source, tell me whether he had not another and previous existence, and if so from whom He derived it.”

In this way should we question children; in this way from what we know of his forbearance and condescension do we believe that Jesus would have dealt—that indeed He did deal—with Galilean p. 17fishermen or Samaritan women; but not in this way did He deal with the Pharisees. He made an objection to their answer—He seemed to reject it as wrong. He asked how can that be. “How then doth David in spirit (by inspiration) call Him Lord?” If David call Him Lord, how is He his son? and He put them to silence, and turned away from them. He was not pleased that they were so far orthodox as to say the “son of David,” instead—as so many Jews would erroneously have done—of “the son of Ephraim.” He did not lead on, “What else? whose son besides? you have but in part traced His parentage. Consider, what are you taught more?” No! He seems to contradict them—to say, He is not David’s son; He is David’s Lord—and He leaves them in apparent perplexity.

Brethren, if you are in the habit of considering what you read, this passage of Scripture must at some time have occasioned you more or less difficulty. Why should Christ have apparently repudiated His true parentage? Why should He have darkened instead of enlightening these imperfect theologians? It was because they had knowledge, but perversely abused it; because they were partial in learning and teaching the Scriptures; because they contented themselves with low thoughts respecting Him. They were not uninformed heathen: they were not tyros in the school of divinity. They were teachers of the Word of God—they possessed His whole Word (as far as then p. 18written), and they were familiarly acquainted with all the contents of that Word. Theirs was the ignorance of men enabled to be wise, and responsible for wisdom: it was the corrupt misconception of what was palpable and easy to conceive aright. Human pride, false tradition of their own invention, self-interest, wilful short-sightedness, or, at the best, culpable contentedness with low and imperfect doctrine, had caused them to utter, perhaps to conceive, only half a truth, when it was in their power to know the whole truth. It was then in accordance with that teaching of His in parables—dark sayings hard to understand—it was on the principle that “he that hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he seemeth to have,” that He who hardened Pharaoh’s hard heart, and chose not Esau for not choosing Him, now darkened the understanding of the Pharisees, and made them blind because they would not see.

And His treatment of them utters a loud warning, brethren, to us. The question, “What think ye of Christ?” is not addressed with its full force to open heretics—to Gnostics, in whose philosophy Christ is but one of many æons emanating from the hidden god of the Pleroma; to Arians, who make Him but an inferior and created god; to Docetæ, who teach that He never was more than the shadow, the ghost of a man; to Eutychians, who make Him a compound of God and man, partaking of both, yet being neither; to Unitarians, who regard Him but as a perfect and pre-eminently godlike man; to p. 19Universalists, who say that every one, righteous or unrighteous, submissive or rebellious, must be saved by Him at the last; to particular Redemptionists, who suppose that only a chosen few, themselves that is, shall be saved, and they without regard or care for their holiness or iniquity—it is not, I say, to them that this question is mainly addressed—it is to us; the orthodox, the enlightened, the receivers of the whole Word of God, the maintainers of the Three Creeds, the theoretical believers, that Jesus is the Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham, the seed of the woman, the Son of God, the Saviour, the Prophet, the Priest, the Vine, the Shepherd, the Lord, the King, the Judge. It is to us that the question is addressed with all its force—with how much of its rebuke—“What think ye of Christ?”

Christians! what think ye of Christ? Ask and answer this question with all earnestness, as in the presence of Him who first put it, Who is true, and demands the truth, and the whole truth—and ask it, not of your minds, which it may be supposed are ready to assent to all that Holy Scripture sets forth respecting Him, but of your hearts, your heart of hearts, the seat of your affections, out of which are the issues of life—“What think ye of Christ?” And stay for a moment, pause at the threshold of the inquiry, and honestly consider whether you think of Him at all. Do you ever feel that there was and is such a Being? Do you ever meditate on what He is, and what He has p. 20done, and is doing, and is yet to do for you? Do your affections twine themselves around what they can reach of Him, and yearn for a more perfect hold? Do your spiritual appetites crave food of Him? your spiritual understandings beg for light? In your sin, is He grasped as your Saviour? in your sorrow as your Sympathiser? in your troubles as your Helper? in your comforts as your Benefactor? in your hopes as your All? in your life, passive and active, as your Lord? Do you feel any of this about Christ, or do you only think of Him as of some historical person long since passed away, or as of some distant lord, who knows nothing, for the time, of his vineyard—some future judge, whom you need not trouble yourselves about now, and yet whom you will not have to fear then? Is it only on Sundays, at church, by your bedside, that you think of Christ? Is it only as some ideal being, some vague, distant, indifferent, easy person of the past, the present, or the future, that you think of Him; or is He more real and perceptible to you than the men and women around you—more in your thoughts than any one else—more feared than your earthly masters and rulers—more implicitly obeyed than your most revered earthly superior—more looked to than your most substantial earthly benefactor—more loved than the dearest earthly object of your affections? Is Christ in you the worship of your heart, the motive of your life, the centre and summit of your hopes? If He stood visibly before you now, and asked, “Do you p. 21think of Me;” and if your hearts, your thoughts, your lives, rather than your lips, had to answer, would you be able to say honestly, “Yea, Lord, Thou knowest that I do think of Thee?”

It is well, brethren, to put this preliminary question, and try to reply to it. It is well to consider whether you do think at all of Christ, before you are further asked what you think of Him; because, if you are led to feel that you do not think of Him, you will be ready to administer reproof to yourselves, and that, by God’s grace, calling you to a better mind may spare you the rebuke of Christ; because, too, if you do think of Him righteously, though imperfectly and partially, you will be enabled to look up with humble hope of indulgent consideration from Him who was the Instructor of the simple and the unwise; and because, feeling your thought, you will be anxious to enlarge, and deepen, and direct it, and so will strive to provide yourselves with a right and full answer to the question, What think ye of Christ? To do this fully, is not the work of a mere half hour. You must take out of God’s Word, each description, each title of Christ; you must ask for the Holy Spirit’s special aid in its examination; you must survey it and search it, and survey and search yourselves, and then with earnest desire to know Him, and to know yourselves, with long meditation and much pains, you must find out your heart’s, your life’s answer to the question, What think I of this view, this title of Christ? Then, p. 22after profiting by this answer, enlarging what is right, correcting what is wrong, filling up what is wanting, you must go on to another and another description and title, keeping in mind all the while those that have been already received.

Thus, and thus only, will you come to know Christ rightly, and so to think rightly of Him, advancing step by step, growing day by day, till you reach His actual presence, and see Him as He is, and are audibly approved by Him as of the perfect stature and fulness of a man in Christ Jesus.

To help you in this most profitable, spiritual exercise, let me suggest to you how to pursue some few of its particulars.

What think you then of Christ as the son of Abraham, the seed of the woman, i.e., as the promised Saviour, in Whom whosoever would was to be blessed? Do you really appreciate the salvation which He has wrought out for you? Do you duly consider the misery of the “not saved?” and are you heartily thankful for the proffered knowledge of the saved? Do you remember that He is a Saviour from sin, that there is no hope whatever of deriving any benefit from His sacrifice, so long as you willingly yield to the temptations of the devil, or indulge the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, or the pride of life? Do you therefore resolutely come out, and become separate from sin and sinners? Do you further consider how His salvation is to be laid hold on? Do you avail yourselves very largely and eagerly of the means of p. 23salvation, wrestling in prayer, searching the Scriptures, using diligently all ordinances of grace? Is each sin carried to Him to be effaced, and laid before Him, bedewed with the tears of repentance? In every weakness and doubt do you apply to Him (in holy communion, for instance), for strength and guidance? Is it your desire, your labour, to be joined to Him, to derive grace from Him, to grow in His image, because of your duty, because of your interest, because, above all, of your grateful love? The amount of your gratitude and devotion to Him; of your abhorrence and renunciation of sin; of your attendance on means of grace; of your growth in holiness; of your joy in salvation, will furnish you with a faithful answer to the question, “What think ye of Christ as a Saviour?”

Again, what think ye of Christ as the son of David, the promised Lord and King who should sit on the throne of the true Israel, and own and rule all God’s chosen people? Do you feel that He is indeed your Lord and Master; that He has purchased you wholly to Himself; that you are pledged and bound to His entire service; that every precept which He has delivered, must be implicitly obeyed; that there must be no doing of what He has forbidden, no omitting of what He has commanded, no self-seeking, no mammon-worship; that all your faculties and talents must be laid out, and all your work done for Him; that there must be no empty profession, “Lord, Lord,” while you do not the things that He bids—no p. 24wasting of His goods, no neglecting of His service? As your Lord, He claims you wholly, body, soul, and spirit, thoughts, words, and deeds. As your King, He has prescribed the service you are to render. By and by, sitting on His throne, He will bring you to account, and deal with you according to your merits. What think ye of Him as your Owner, your Ruler, your Judge?

Again, what think ye of Christ as the son of Mary, the perfect human being; partaking of all the properties and qualities, the infirmities and sufferings and sympathies, the desires, the wants, the hopes and fears of man, as far as they are separate from sin? Do you contemplate His life on earth, to ascertain what you can and ought to be, and to follow His example? Are you encouraged in every aim, every resolute resistance of evil, every patient submission to suffering, every fulfilment of duty, every pursuit of righteousness by the thought “Man has done it, the Man Whom I am required to imitate.” Do you think of Him as still retaining His manhood with all its experience, and acquired wisdom, and perfected obedience? Do you rejoice in such a Sympathizer, such a Mediator, such a Helper, such a Judge? One who can feel for you in your trials, can describe faithfully to His Father, from His own experience, your condition and necessities, through His knowledge can supply exactly what you need, and make due allowance for your shortcomings and offences?

Once more, what think ye of Christ as the Son of p. 25God? very and eternal God, with all the Divine attributes, power, knowledge, justice, holiness, and exaction of obedience, abhorrence of evil, wrath against sin, love of righteousness? Do you feel that He is mighty to save? Do you live as under His all-searching eye? Are you convinced that He is impartially just, alike to approve and disapprove, to reward and punish, in His present and future dealings with all the partakers of His covenant? Do you realise the utter impossibility of being loved by Him, of being allowed to draw nigh to Him, of deriving any benefit from Him now or hereafter, if you are impure, worldly, unloving, indifferent? Are you impressed with the guilt of disobedience to Him, a twice revealed, a doubly jealous God, binding you to Himself by the mercies and responsibility of redemption, as well as creation, and by the threats and forebodings of a particular and most righteous judgment? Is it thus you think of Christ as God?

Dear brethren, make use, I beseech you, of these brief and plain suggestions, to ascertain your past thoughts of Christ, to rebuke them, if they have been low and partial, to lead you on to perfection. Beware of separating what God has joined together, of recognising in Him who is the Son of God, only the son of David. Never allow yourselves to joy over salvation without remembering judgment. Dwell not on the Deliverer apart from the Purchaser; appropriate not promises, if you do not observe commands; count not on human sympathy, p. 26if you do not deserve Divine compassion; expect not heavenly blessings, without using appointed means. You do not think of the Christ of the Bible, unless every phase of His character there represented, has its due place in your thoughts. And so your thoughts are unacceptable to Him, and unprofitable to you; they are neither worship, nor helps to salvation; they do not recognise Him at all, because they do not recognise Him altogether; they prompt to no service, because they prompt not to all. An imperfect Christ is no Christ. A Christian who regards Him as imperfect, is no Christian.

Oh, may He who has given Christ to be our All in all, enable us to recognise and incline us to serve, and love, and depend on Him, as indeed our All in all!

p. 27SERMON III.
THE CHURCHMAN’S THOUGHTS ABOUT DISSENTERS.

The people known as Samaritans had their origin from certain Gentile tribes sent into the country of Samaria early in the Babylonish captivity. They were of course idolaters, and they continued to be mere idolaters, until, being troubled with lions, which had become very numerous in Samaria, and understanding that these were let loose among them by the god of the country (for various countries in their creed had various gods) to punish them for neglect of his worship, they applied to King Shalmanezer for one of the captive priests to teach them the Levitical law. Then they began to combine with their own superstition the acknowledgment and ceremonial service of Jehovah. “They feared the Lord,” we read, “and served their own gods.”

On the return of the Jews, these Samaritans, who, it would appear, had now relinquished much p. 28of their idolatry, sought permission to take part in the rebuilding of the temple; but being properly rejected, they in revenge hindered and harassed the builders, and at length, by false representations to the Syrian King, procured a decree which suspended the continuance of the devout work. This naturally made the Jews bitterly hostile to the Samaritans: and the building of a rival temple on Mount Gerizim—the rejection of all the inspired Books, excepting those of Moses—the encouragement given to Jewish criminals and outlaws to seek refuge among them, and many other provocations, had so sustained and deepened the feeling against them, that, in our Lord’s time, the Jews would have no dealings with the Samaritans; and in any want or danger, would much rather have suffered death, than receive succour at their hands.

Thus were the Samaritans despised and shunned; and that there was at least some measure of justice in their treatment, we may safely infer from our Lord’s rebuke of them—“Ye worship ye know not what;” and from His charge to the apostles, “Into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not.” Their creed was heretical, their worship schismatic. They belonged not to the covenanted people of God. And yet the only one out of ten miraculously healed lepers, who discharged the religious obligation of rendering thanks and glorifying God, and who received spiritual benefit from Christ, was a Samaritan. The model neighbour to the man who had fallen among thieves, was a Samaritan. They p. 29were Samaritans who so early and so openly professed, “We have heard Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.” And when the Jews persecuted the disciples, and thrust them out of Jerusalem, Samaria readily and largely received the Word of God at their mouths. Thankful and acceptable adoration of God, exemplary brotherly love, enlightened faith, prompt renunciation of error, and acceptance of truth—these were graces which shone conspicuously in heretical and schismatic Samaritans, and won for them from the Saviour of Israel approbation, and love, and blessing.

Remarkable as these things are in themselves, they become much more so by contrast with the several cases of the Jews mentioned in their respective contexts. Thus nine Jewish lepers were unthankful; a priest and a Levite passed by on the other side; the Prophet returning from Samaria, where He had been confessed, was not respected in His own country; Jerusalem had but lately rejected the Word which Samaria received. How was this? How came heterodoxy to be productive of acceptable fruit, while orthodoxy in the same circumstances was barren and unfruitful? The pursuit of this inquiry would doubtless be very interesting, but it would necessarily occupy much time, and lead us into the regions of speculation. I prefer, therefore, just now, to deal with the history of our text as a fact, and to endeavour to deduce from that fact three or four plain and profitable p. 30lessons. Nine professors of the true religion, members of the covenanted people of God, to whom pertained all the privileges, and gifts, and evidences, and responsibilities of a manifested Divine rule, were undutiful and unblessed in the very circumstances in which a stranger, an alien, belonging to a sect unsound in doctrine, and schismatic in practice, volunteered to God most acceptable service, and received from Him the highest spiritual benediction.

Now, what does this teach us—us, the members of the Church of England? First, with respect to ourselves, it teaches us not to pride ourselves in, or to rest satisfied with, a mere profession of the true faith. There is indeed but one true faith—that, namely, which God has delivered to us in His Word, and maintained by the testimony of His Church. To accept this faith in its integrity, is to set one’s seal to the testimony that God is true; to reject deliberately one article of it, no matter how small, how apparently unimportant, is to make God a liar, inasmuch as it is to refuse as false what He has offered us as true. Common duty then, and ordinary fear lest we should become blasphemers, render it imperative that we should most anxiously inquire what is the true faith, and then most implicitly receive its every article. We may not choose (heresy means choice) what we will believe, and what reject. To alter, or accept less than what God has propounded, is to act in defiance of Him, and to cast a slur upon His infallible p. 31truth. Is it reason to suppose that we can do this with impunity? Besides, remember, what God reveals to us as articles of faith, are no mere abstract truths for the philosopher to muse upon, and no more. They are the impelling force, the germ and embodiment of principles and ways of life, on the observance of which our very salvation depends. “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?” Whosoever says, “I do not choose to believe that He can in any way,” does not, as he imagines, merely deny a subtle dogma, he gives up a vital principle of godliness, without which of course he will not seek to eat Christ’s flesh; and so, if Christ be true, can have no spiritual life in Him.

For these two reasons, then—because they are revealed by God as verities, and because they are the foundations of godliness—it is essentially important to receive every article of the faith: and we, who find ourselves members of a communion in which the faith is thus received, which is apostolic in doctrine, and primitive in practice, have therefore much indeed to be thankful for, and may harmlessly, so as it be humbly, rejoice in the possession of such great privileges. But let us not be high-minded. “Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall.” The Jews were a highly privileged people; they received the whole inspired Word; their priests were all called of God, as was Aaron; they worshipped in the appointed place, and observed all the enjoined times and ceremonies; yet with many of them God was not well pleased. p. 32They were unreal, hollow, formal, hypocritical; their service was listless and unmeaning; and so, notwithstanding all their privileges and all their orthodoxy, a Samaritan, a dog of the Gentiles, a publican, a harlot was often nearer to the kingdom of heaven than they were, and met Christ, when they missed Him.

Is not this a warning to us? What though we possess the pure and entire faith, though we have an appointed ministry, and continue in the apostles’ fellowship, though the spirit of Christ be present in our ordinances, and all our forms and ceremonies be after an approved pattern, yet may we not any of us be unreal in our use of these things, hollow, formal, listless, and so go away unaccepted and unblessed, while the less privileged Romanist or Dissenter is receiving the sweet assurance, “Thy faith hath made thee whole?” Depend upon it this may be, and often is the case. God would have us intellectually wise, but He would also have us heartily good. A good heart and a right mind united, form the being who is most blessed; with whom the covenant is surest, and in whom God takes most delight; but better, far better, a good heart alone, than a right mind alone.

Christ, as He walked on earth the messenger of peace and love to all men, had a special interest in the Jews (His own people), but it was in Jews whose practice corresponded with their profession, whose heart and life illustrated what their understanding received. On such as these, His highest p. 33favours would have been most readily bestowed; but wanting these qualities, He estimated their orthodoxy at nothing; and, on the other hand, finding these qualities among strangers and aliens, He allowed not their heterodoxy to prove an obstacle to their blessing. In many cases uncircumcision was counted for circumcision, and circumcision for uncircumcision.

My dear brethren, value ordinances greatly, but rest not, I charge you, in them. Boast not that you are Anglo-Catholics; that your ministers have an Apostolic succession; that you were regenerated in baptism; that you are regular communicants and worshippers at the daily service. These are, indeed, great privileges; but connected with them are great responsibilities. Is your pure faith illustrated by a pure life? Do you make the best use of an Apostolic ministry? Are you growing in the spirit of which you were born again? Do you feel and sustain the communicated presence of Christ within you? When you go down from the sanctuary, does your life shine, as Moses’s face did, with the reflected glory of God? If not, talk not of your high privileges—your case would be better without them. When God ceased to wink at the errors and ungodliness of mankind, He began by punishing, and with much severity, the errors and ungodliness of the privileged Jews. Yes, and whenever He takes account, and passes judgment, it is on the principle that to whom much has been given, of him shall much be required. “You only p. 34have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.” “To him that knoweth, to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin.”

The second thought which the fact of our text suggests, is one of great comfort to the benevolent heart. It is, that God will make a way through a bad system, to the disciple of that system who has been trying to reach Him. When one reflects on the grave and blinding errors of modern Romanism; on the awful denial of our blessed Lord’s Divinity by the Unitarians; on the capricious choice, what to believe, what to deny, which each Protestant sect ventures to make and maintain; on the disuse of a ministry, the ignoring of sacraments, and other holy ordinances by the Society of Friends, what a comfort is there in our text, “And he was a Samaritan;” in feeling that God condescends to get through all this, to the yearning, would-be faithful heart; ay, that He even accepts the purblind visions and stammering utterances of such an one as faith. “Thy faith hath made thee whole”! Most of us know some members of such sects with whom we should wish to dwell together in heaven, for whom our heart is rejoiced to feel that there are such prospects, in whose sanctified lives we have the present proof, that (however originators of heresy and schism may be regarded) in every nation and every sect, he that heareth God, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him.

p. 35But, thirdly, are we therefore to make no difference between orthodoxy and heterodoxy? Are we to be indifferent to truth and error? Are we to frequent Romish chapels or Dissenting conventicles with as little compunction as though they were our proper sanctuaries? Are we to promote the schemes of other communions, by contributing to them out of our substance, or by lending our names or presence to them? No, brethren, we are not to confound Jew and Samaritan, nor to regard the schismatic building on Gerizim, as equally an approved sanctuary with the temple at Jerusalem. We are not to gather professors of different sects together; by concessions and suppressions to produce an outward conforming, and then to proclaim, “This is what Christians should be. This is an Evangelical alliance.” Evangelical alliance! alliance, i.e., according to the Gospel! Christ, indeed, willed us to be one; but it was by all receiving the whole truth, not by paring and cropping it each one as he will, and then calling the hacked and deformed thing of our own shaping His glorious Gospel. Judge for yourselves:—one man believes that the Blessed Virgin and other saints are his mediators with God; another, that Christ alone is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, but that Christ must be sought in His own appointed sacraments, or not found at all; a third completely ignores all sacraments. Shall these three stand side by side, and say, “We are allied according to the Gospel—we all believe alike”? Surely such a thing is a mockery of p. 36common sense, and an act of treason against their respective communions.

Yes, and it is worse. For, first of all, as I have already said, there is but one faith propounded in Holy Scripture. Men may differ in their perception of that faith—the Romanist regards it in one light, the Anglican in another, the “Friend” in a third. But each of these believes himself to be right, and he must therefore regard the others as wrong. Now, if they are wrong, then by slurring over their error, he makes it his own; he joins in the choosing of a creed other than that God has framed, and so insults the Infallible Truth. Again, there are no sins more strictly forbidden, more severely denounced in the Bible than those of heresy, choosing what to believe, instead of adopting the Apostolic faith, without increase or diminution, and schism, separating oneself, that is, without most strong reason from worship in appointed places, conducted by appointed officers, according to the prescribed form. These sins are classed by St. Paul with the grossest works of the flesh, and it is said of those that cause them, that they shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

It is evident, then, that patronising or encouraging in any way a religious community from which we personally honestly differ, is disobeying a positive command of God, and incurring awful risk of His displeasure. And there is another argument against seeming recognition of heresy or schism: namely, that we thereby often cause the weak brother p. 37to offend, and hinder the anxious inquirer after truth from renouncing error. If those who look up to us for guidance—and there are very few of us but are accepted as guides by some—see us once among the Samaritans, they will take license and encouragement from us to be there frequently; and so, if those who are in doubt between remaining aloof from the Church and joining it, see Churchmen in their assemblies, they will assuredly gather that there is no difference of importance between them and us, and will remain where they are. For all these reasons, it is of the utmost importance that the Churchman, while entertaining the most benevolent feelings towards those who differ from him, while gratefully acknowledging the good they do, while inwardly rejoicing that wandering sinners should be proselytised by them, and have a faith of some kind rather than none at all; while, too, hoping and praying that our blessed Lord’s prayer may yet be realised, and that all who call upon His name may ultimately be of one heart and one mind, and with one mouth glorify God; should still most strictly abstain in presence, in deed, in speech, and in look, from the remotest encouragement, or sanction of erroneous doctrine, or religious disunion and division. Meet these men in business you often must; meet them in friendship, in secular consultation, in practical benevolence, you may; but meet them in their religious capacity, frequent their places of worship, forward the objects of their sect you must not, unless you are prepared p. 38to go over to them altogether; to maintain that theirs is the faith, and the fellowship; and that all not in communion with them are heretics or schismatics. Give no uncertain sound. Halt not between two opinions. “He that is not with Me is against Me.”

One more lesson to guard against misinterpretation of the last. I have used some strong words in speaking of those that differ. Do not, pray, suppose that I would have you regard them with any but kind feelings, much less that I would teach you to cry out against their errors, in railing or contemptuous tones. The Christian minister intent upon laying down clearly the line of right thought and practice, has occasion to speak plainly, and for his hearers’ sake to call things by their right names, however grating they may sound; but with the private individual it is otherwise. In his ordinary course, he has no need to speak of these things, or to think of them, further than to prompt his earnest prayers for the decay of error and dissension, and the establishment of truth and union. And if at any time it becomes his duty or desire to stay a soul from error, or to convert him from it, let him remember, and be sure it is true, that one ounce of love will do more good than many pounds of controversy. [38]

Loud cries of “No popery,” invectives against High Church or Low Church, sneers against “cant,” imputations of unworthy motives to those p. 39who differ, contemptuous pity of their ignorance or inferiority, are all carnal. They will unspiritualise yourselves; they will retard, rather than advance the good work on others; they will drive away from you the only power in which you can hope to prevail, that of the Spirit of holiness, and love, and peace.

While then as Churchmen, it is your bounden duty to regard other systems of religion as inferior, perhaps erroneous; be sure that in dealing with the individual disciples of those systems, you remember the history of the thankful Samaritan, and consider that like him, they may be approved and sanctified followers of your common Lord.

Resolve to put away all animosity, and strife, and captiousness; to take the best rather than the worst view of what you dislike, or do not understand; in short, while maintaining as far as possible the orthodoxy of Him who was a true Israelite; like Him, and for His sake, endeavour to love men for themselves, if you cannot love their system; and to rejoice in the opportunity of treating the Samaritan as a brother, and of bringing him within nearer reach of abiding blessedness.

p. 40SERMON IV.
ETERNAL ABODE WITH GOD.—(A FUNERAL SERMON.)

We read in the third chapter of Genesis of the introduction of death into our world—how sin alienated God from man and man from God, how those who had been endowed with the best faculties of enjoying bliss, who were surrounded by all desirable blessings, who dwelt beneath the bright sun of God’s favour, were by an act of unbelief and wilfulness, suggested by the evil one, driven angrily into the outer world, where toil, and pain, and manifold misery were thenceforth to be their lot.

We are sometimes tempted to think, that the actual punishment of our first parents was less than that they had been threatened with. “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,” was God’s assurance; but when they ate they did not die,—as we account dying; they were but banished from the Garden of Eden, and prevented from returning, by cherubims who kept the entrance, and a flaming sword which turned p. 41every way. It was indeed a sad reverse—a wilderness instead of a garden—sorrow instead of joy—toil instead of rest—curses instead of blessings: but it was not the threatened death. They did not die.

So we are wont to think: but we err therein; they did die, brethren. This reverse was death. Death (what God means by death) is not annihilation—not ceasing to be; it is protracted existence apart from God, and the blessings of His right hand, and the light of His countenance. More truly did they die when they entered upon this state of existence, than when, hundreds of years afterwards, their bodies stiffened, and their breath ceased, and their flesh turned to corruption in the grave. It is a misconception—a practical unbelief of immortality, which makes us think otherwise. The soul does not perish—does not slumber; living once, it lives ever, and ever knows and feels its existence. The separation of it from the body alters its circumstances, uncasing it—depriving it of one of its appendages—breaking off its connexion with a material and natural world; but not destroying it. No; it lives on, and lives on (in its spiritual relations) as it did before, save that the withdrawal of bodily senses enables and obliges the spiritual senses to exercise themselves to the full, and so intensifies the feelings, and completes the realisation of the spiritual state.

Suppose that in the moment that Adam was driven out of Paradise, he had actually died, that his soul had been immediately separated from the p. 42body; what would have been the state of that soul? The same, really, as it was while he lived—banishment from the presence of God, with the consequent absence of what was desirable, and presence of what was hateful. He would have felt it more. Having nothing else to gaze on, the blankness of the spiritual world around him, save where evil spirits stood revealed, would have been more terrible. The desires would have been more intolerable when there was nothing to divert attention from them, and the constrained employments more distasteful. Hopelessness, too, of remedy in that fixed state, which is to have no change but that of increase throughout eternity, would have caused his death to appear a greater reality, but it would not have made it a greater reality. The continuance of bodily existence palliated death; a natural world spread before his eyes diverted his gaze from the spiritual “void”; natural pain even, and sorrow, and toil, beguiled his thoughts and feelings, in a measure, from spiritual miseries; but still he was dead, though he knew it not fully. His state was like to that of the child who sleeps calmly in the dark; but when it wakes, cries and starts in terror. There was darkness all along; but only when the eyes were opened was it fully perceived—felt.

Now, natural death is like this waking; it does not so much transfer us to another state, as show us clearly in what state we are; whether in the presence of God, or banished from Him. To be in outer darkness, where hope never comes, p. 43where the sun of heaven sends forth no rays; to be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power, this is death completed. Surely, then, to be without God in the world; to be removed from His favouring, and comforting, and guiding presence; to live only in such unconscious dependence on Him as the beasts that perish; to have but the good things of our own finding; this is death begun: this is to have a name to live, and yet be dead, to be as really dead as are the spirits of the doomed-departed, except that we know not fully (which is part of death) the misery of our condition; and (blessed be God!) that we may as yet live again, and be restored to His presence, because Christ has opened the gates of Paradise, and bids His angels gently drive us in, if we will; yea, calls to us Himself, and entreats us to enter; to have again the condition—spiritualised, exalted, perfected—of unfallen Adam.

My brethren, thus think of death, and of life. Do not make so much of the heaving of the last sigh; the drawing of the last breath; as though the battle of life were fought, and the victory achieved on a death-bed; as though the soul began its banishment when it quits the body. Many, whose flesh has long since mouldered into dust, have never really died; and many, who still walk the earth, full of energy, and vigour, and what man calls life, are really dead. To live, is to be with God: to live for ever, is to be with God for p. 44ever. To die, is to be without God: to die for ever, is to be without God for ever. “If,” says Christ, “a man keep my sayings, he shall never see death.” “Whosoever liveth and believeth on me, shall never die.” “He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.”

I have said thus much to suggest to your consideration a very important, life-directing truth, viz.: that the heavenly life and the second death, both have their beginning on this side the grave; that God, for Christ’s sake, vouchsafes His presence, to those who seek and honour it, to guide, and comfort, and strengthen, and sanctify them; and where He is there is real life: on the other hand, that God withdraws Himself from those who disregard, or slight Him; and where He is not, there is death, the second death—capable, as yet, of being overcome, and put to an end; but more likely to prevail permanently in proportion as it is not felt; and even now working many of its miserable effects on all, not excepting the most hardened and apathetic who are subject to it. Try, dear brethren, to impress yourselves with this truth. Do not merely hope for eternal life, or fear the second death beyond the grave, after you die. Try to secure the one (the actual possession of it, I mean), and to avoid the other, in this life, by earnestly seeking and sustaining the real, the proffered presence with you, and in you, of the life-giving and upholding God.

p. 45But, there is a better presence, a more perfect life, spoken of in the text. To this I would refer, as furnishing truest consolation, exciting liveliest hopes, and stimulating to holiest exertions,—“eternal abode with God in heaven.” When the minister of Christ would comfort the mourning relatives of a departed saint, and, as the phrase is, improve the occasion to their good, he does not forbid them to feel and express sorrow, for he remembers that Christ wept at the tomb of Lazarus, but only charges them to set bounds to their sorrow, and prepare to stay it presently; because, it is merely a natural, and not a Christian feeling; because, if continued, it becomes a selfish, inconsiderate bemoaning of their personal loss; a virtual denial that the departed is at rest, and in bliss; a rejection of the hope that they shall meet again, in a better and abiding home. “So shall we ever be with the Lord.” What mean these words? We know in theory (many of us, let me hope, experimentally), what it is to be with God, or to have Him with us here. It is not simply to dwell in the same world with Him, near Him, close to Him, by His permission, under His observance and government, as the omnipresent God. No! it is not the necessary, but a special presence which we mean. A presence like that which accompanied the Israelites through the wilderness; which actually went with them, guided them, fed them, helped them in difficulties, reproved them in transgressions, interested Itself specially in their circumstances, p. 46and manifested that interest, not only by its doings, but by a sight of Itself in a pillar of fire, or a pillar of a cloud.

Again, like that presence, it is not constant; the pillar is sometimes withdrawn. There is, occasionally, no answer given by Urim and Thummim; we are left to fight, now and then, in our own strength only, and then we fail; we hunger, we thirst, and no Divine supply comes; we mourn, and there is no spiritual comfort; we murmur, and there is no reproof; we sin, and there is no chastisement: God, for the time, is absent from our camp.

Again, like that presence, it does not secure us from trials. We have long marches, and powerful adversaries; we journey on in perils in the wilderness, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of our own countrymen (our fellow Christians), in perils by the heathen; in weariness and painfulness; in watchings often; in hunger and thirst; in fastings often; in cold and nakedness; in deaths oft. God, peradventure, is with us all the while; but it is through the world of tribulation He leads us, not by a miraculously smooth and safe path. His presence is manifested in occasional glimpses. His voice is heard in disjoined words. His arm is felt in intermittent upholdings. I cannot well picture this presence to those who have no experience of it; I need not do so to those who have realised it: but all may see that, in this lower world, we are not ever with the Lord in the fullest manifestation of His presence; in the constant p. 47upholding of His arm; in entire exemption from trials; in perfect fruition of blessings. That may not be on earth. The sun may lighten up our dark hovel; but it is a hovel still. Divine help may lessen our labour; but we must labour still. Divine consolation may soothe us in our losses; but we are to suffer losses still. Howsoever God be with us; whatsoever He does for us; the wilderness is still a wilderness.

But the wilderness has a limit; its limit is what we call death. To the faithful, that bourne is like the Jordan,—when they have crossed it, they shall be in the promised land, the land that floweth with milk and honey, where God’s abiding, glorious temple is set up; wherein there remaineth rest and joy for the people of God. Whoso entereth that land, shall be ever with the Lord, enjoying His most complete and satisfying presence. “Father, I will that those whom thou hast given me may be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory.” This prayer shall then be realised. They shall see the King in His beauty, and the land that is now afar off. There shall be no more curse; but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in their dwelling: they shall serve Him, and they shall see His face: with what feelings and emotions, at present we can form no adequate conceptions; but we know that it shall be with joy: that they shall love and praise Him; that it shall be their untiring, unalloyed delight to p. 48gaze upon His glory, to sing His praises, to share His love.

And they shall be like Him. As, in this world, they have borne the image of the earthly Adam, so, in that, they shall bear the image of the heavenly. That image, lost in the fall, must indeed begin to be resumed here in regeneration, and be more and more put on in life-long conversion to God. By contemplating Christ, and watching His countenance, as we are allowed to see it here, we must gradually assume His features, and be changed into His image. But we must see Him, not in faint resemblances, and bare outline, but as He is, before we can be wholly like Him. Then, but not before, shall we be transfigured, and glorified, and changed from glory to glory; body and spirit advancing in excellence, and intelligence, and love, and bliss, till they become what and as Christ is,—reaching unto the full stature of a man in Christ Jesus, satisfied with the perfect assumption of His likeness.

Yes, and as they gaze ever on Him, so shall He on them. No sin shall cause the Lord to hide His face from them; no discipline shall require His occasional withdrawal; no cloud shall obscure heaven’s sky; no frown shall be seen; no reproof heard. He shall not try them. Evil shall not approach to tempt them. A Saviour’s love shall surround them; not to carry them through a wilderness, not to keep them in tribulations, but to lead them beside the clear fountains of peace; to p. 49plant them all around His throne, where with eyes wiped of all tears, they shall feast on His presence, and, with adoring souls and bodies, rest in His love.

And shall not the sharing of this presence with others augment their bliss? We (they and us) shall be ever with the Lord. All the sons of God shall there meet together, and dwell with the Lord. Man, I need not tell you, is a social being: he is formed for company; he cannot be fully happy alone. It is by sharing his good things that he comes to enjoy them; it is by speaking of them, that he comes to feel them. (Would that Christians could be brought to act on this admitted truth, as Christians!) In this world there is no greater enjoyment than to associate with a band of fellow-countrymen, journeying towards the same place, with kindred tastes, and tempers, and hopes. Oh! what then shall be the blessedness of association in heaven with the whole body of the saints? Think of being associated in the presence, and favour, and adoration of God, with holy angels; with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob; with David, and Daniel, and Mary, and John, and Paul; and all the others whose praise is in the Gospel! Think of meeting, in heaven, with all the primitive Christians and martyrs; with all the perfected saints who once walked on earth with us; with our relatives, our parents, our brothers and sisters, our children, our bosom friends: to be re-united with them in bonds that p. 50shall never be broken; where all are happy; where every eye looks to Jesus, where every heart leaps to Him; each mouth is opened in His praise; each knee is bent in His adoration; where God is the centre and the circumference, and heaven the roof and the floor! And all this for ever—uninterrupted, unending, growing fresher, intensified, better appreciated by the rolling on of eternity. So shall we ever be with the Lord.

Bereaved Christian, as you gaze upon the vacant place of one who is in Paradise, advancing to this heaven, will you dare to sigh that the old armchair, or the little cradle, is unoccupied? Would you prefer for your loved one, as a better condition, that he or she should come back and share your sorrows, and difficulties, and perplexities, and be exposed to toil and contamination? Will your ingratitude think lightly of what God has done, and is doing, for the removed one? Will your selfishness (oh, if the dead should know of this!) demand—“Let me have my loved one’s company, though thereby that loved one lose God’s?” Oh! there is no religion, there is no human love, in the mourner who does not smile away the tears of worldly sorrow with the joy of this blessed consolation; who does not turn each thought of the righteous dead into a theme of praise for their deliverance; into a prayer, that he, too, may soon be added to the number of those who are ever with the Lord!

Christian pilgrim, journeying through the wilderness, p. 51footsore, beleaguered, stumbling, smitten, losing sight ever and anon of the guiding pillar, wandering out of the path, too often unsustained, uncomforted, do you fear death? Do you shudder at and flee from the sight of the Jordan through which angels wait to guide you; whose other bank is in heaven? Oh! how little do you think of God’s abiding presence! What a mere name is your love of Christ! How unreal was your professed affection for those who have gone before! How foolishly blind are you to your own best interests! What a sham is your so-called pilgrimage, your journey to a shrine which you fear to reach! What shall I say to those who wilfully linger in the wilderness, while the host passes on, and the night, with all its howling terrors, is at hand; to those who would turn back, and would cross again the Red Sea into Egypt, while the waves are prepared to overwhelm the Egyptians—in plain terms, to those who live not in God’s presence here, and seek not to have it hereafter? Shall I describe to you the positive horrors of hell; its gnawing worms, its devouring flames, its malignant frenzied spirits? No; I will but warn you, that you are fast approaching an outer darkness, where there is no enjoyment, no hope, no heaven, no Saviour, no God. Ye shall be for ever without the Lord.

Brethren, one and all, what shall we do to inherit the glorious, abiding presence of God? Oh! let us make much of the partial presence which is p. 52now within our reach. “Abide in me, and I in you,” says Christ. Let us live near to Him; let us live much in Him; let us live as He tells us. Contemplate we Him in His holy Word; pore over it day after day, till we see Him as in a glass; till His glory is reflected on us, and we shine with the glorious light. Watch we for Him in all our ways, listen for His voice, lean on His arm, fight in His strength. Feed we our desires with heavenly food; not the quails of our own lust, but the manna from heaven, and the water out of the rock; the bread and wine, which are meat indeed and drink indeed. Having this hope—desiring, that is, to be ever with Him—let us purify ourselves, even as He is pure, and study day by day to conform ourselves more and more to His pattern.

Yes; believe in heaven, desire heaven, live for heaven. As St. Peter says, “Add to your faith, virtue; and to virtue, knowledge; and to knowledge, temperance; and to temperance, patience; and to patience, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, charity. For if these things be in you and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ; and so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly, into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.”

p. 53SERMON V.
MAN’S KNOWLEDGE LIMITED.

In one sense, the words of our text have been ever true, and ever shall be. Even in the Garden of Eden, when man possessed knowledge of such a kind, and to such a degree, as to be a feature of the moral likeness of God, there were still many things which he could not grasp, nor fathom, nor measure, and there were many others which the Divine will purposely kept unrevealed from him. And so too, hereafter, in heaven itself, the perfected finite being must necessarily fail to comprehend and scrutinize thoroughly the great infinite, and doubtless will be left uninformed of much that he could grasp, because the knowledge thereof will not concern his duty or his interest.

But, in another sense, man did once know, and shall again know, perfectly. In his unfallen state, God talked to him plainly, made His presence to be realised, in a way showed Himself as He is, that is, as He is in His relation to obedient and holy man, taught clearly the duty, and revealed the p. 54destiny and hopes of His creature. And, again, in heaven, though still dwelling in light which no one can approach to, though still the Invisible, Whom no man hath seen or can see, God shall yet be plainly reflected in His Son, the visible Deity with Whom the redeemed shall stand face to face, Whom they shall see and know even as now they are known by Him. And man, too, though still not omniscient, shall know thoroughly with whom he has to do; shall trace with easy clearness the path along which he has been led; shall realise his position and appropriate his privileges, and see even to the utmost his eternal future. This has been already, in a measure. This shall be hereafter entirely; but this is not now. “We know in part.”

When man sinned, the lamp of knowledge grew dim, and well nigh went out. God put a thick cloud between Him and His creature, and between that creature and the future; and around him and above him, for light He gave obscurity. But yet straightway of His compassion and love in Christ, He began to give back as with a slow hand, what He had suddenly withdrawn with a swift hand. A tiny spark was kindled, which was very gradually to be fanned into a little flame, and finally to burst out into a blaze, which should make all visible again. Yea, and more visible than at the first. You know how the grace of God—which made man at the first innocent, upright, and happy, with great power of understanding and free will—having been forfeited, was withdrawn, but yet began at p. 55once to be recommunicated—not immediately in its former perfection, but by little and little, and at slow paces; first, externally by the Spirit in the world; then, internally, by the Spirit of regeneration planted as a seed in each Christian’s heart, to be gradually developed into the blade, the ear, and, finally, the ripe corn in the ear, at the resurrection, the restoration to the full favour and realised presence of God.

This may explain to you how knowledge was reimparted. At first it was but a spark for the whole world; then it became a tiny flame, by which those near at hand might dimly see. Then a spark from it was struck into each Christian mind, which may be, and is to be gradually fanned up in him, revealing more and more what is in him, and about him, and before him, till in heaven it bursts out into a full flame, showing all things clearly. Into each of us this spark has been struck; in each of us it is to be fostered, and fed, and developed; to exhibit more and more what God is, and does; what we are, and have, and hope for, till we come unto perfect knowledge, and see all clearly. Men of the patriarchal age had but the one spark among them. The Jews had this spark become a little flame; and some of them, as David, Solomon, and Daniel, had each a torch lighted from it, and held near at hand to them, as by a guardian angel. We Christians, I say, have each in us a spark kindled. If we feed and fan it, it becomes a flame; and according as we feed and fan it, grows p. 56brighter and larger, and extends nearer and nearer to that point, where it shall unite with others, and light up heaven with an eternal blaze. Thus do we know, all of us in part, but not all equally, some less, some more, according to our measure, and according as we guard and tend it, and all imperfectly, because the time and place of perfection are not yet.

“We know in part.” Now, one of the most important thoughts which this text suggests is, that we Christians all have to some extent the privilege of spiritual knowledge, and consequently, we all have resting upon us, the responsibility of maintaining and increasing knowledge. You all, brethren, know in part. I do not mean merely that you have the instinct and intelligence which certain sagacious animals of the lower creation have, nor yet that by natural conscience, the embers of the primeval spiritual fire, you are enabled dimly to discern between right and wrong, to perceive that there is a power above you, and an immortal future before you: I mean, that you all as Christians are partakers of a new gift of knowledge—that you have within you, as one of the ordinary graces of the Spirit of regeneration in Christ, that Spirit which was given to guide men unto all truth, to convince of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment; the faculty of knowing spiritual things—a faculty to be sustained in appointed ways, and to be exercised upon the revelations of knowledge contained in the Word of God.

p. 57I shall not stay to prove this; you know that since in Christ all is quickened, which died in Adam, knowledge must be revived. You know that the Spirit of Christ is frequently spoken of as the Imparter of light to all whom He visits; that the coming of Christ to men, externally even, as a teacher, took away all cloak and excuse for ignorance and sin; that to sin after receiving the Spirit, is to sin against the knowledge of the truth, knowledge attainable, if not attained; that under the Gospel dispensation, the servant who knows not his Master’s will, is nevertheless to be beaten if he transgresses it, because he might and should have known it; that to remain ignorant is to bring upon us judicial ignorance; that from him that hath not (that acts, i.e., as though he had not), from him shall be taken away even that he hath; that the light within us, if treated as darkness, will become the greatest and most terrible darkness. You know, too, that we are commanded to increase and improve this gift, to grow in knowledge, to walk in the light; and you know how to do it, by asking wisdom of God, by heeding what the Spirit says, and by searching the Scriptures, the source of spiritual knowledge. We all know—that is, we all have the power of knowing—we all are required to know, we shall all be judged as those who know, and we shall all be rewarded according to our use or abuse, our growth, or falling off in knowledge.

Now, is not this a solemn thought? Does not it exhibit to us a great responsibility? Does not p. 58it speak stern reproof to our frequent and willing ignorance? How little are many of us acquainted with God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. What little knowledge have we, and do we seek to have, of Providence, of grace, of moral discipline, of duty, of prospects, hopes and fears, of spiritual succour and spiritual assaults of time and eternity, of probation and judgment, of heaven and hell. Is there any other subject of which the vast majority of us are so ignorant, and so contentedly or carelessly ignorant, as of that which God has made so easy to learn, and has so imperatively required us to learn, the knowledge of Him, of ourselves, and of His dealings with us, revealed to us in the Bible, to be discerned by the Spirit within us?

Year after year passes away, and we realise no more, and feel no more what God is, what we are, what we have to do, and why, and what awaits us. Chapter after chapter of the Bible is read, or heard again and again, and what we did not understand at first, we still do not understand; what we did not feel at first, we still do not feel. Sermon after sermon is preached, and our stock of knowledge after all is just as much (is it always this?) as was forced upon us at school, or in preparation for confirmation and first communion. Restless and ever on the move in all other respects, we are content to stand still here; ay, and if the preacher strives to lead us on, by unfolding some great spiritual truth as far as he can, by exhibiting and explaining some difficult doctrine more fully than usual, too often p. 59we withhold the attention which we usually give him, and after he has done, not unfrequently condemn his pains, and exclaim against his learned and abstruse sermon.

Is not it so? Are not there many who cannot recollect a time when they had less spiritual perception than they have now, and who therefore are witnesses to themselves that they have not grown in knowledge? Are not there many who are less acquainted with the Bible than with any other book that has come into their hands? Are not there many who, while they may have familiarised themselves with the history, the geography, the anecdotes so to speak of Holy Scripture, and the fanciful, often daring, interpretations of unfulfilled prophecy, yet know comparatively nothing of what God is to them, what they are to God, what is required of them, and what is promised or threatened?

Oh! brethren, how and why is this? How is it that the Object of supreme love and fear is to us but a shadowy and unintelligible name? How is it that we have no perception of the ever-present, ever-speaking, ever-acting, all-important Spirit? How is it that we have no intelligent or inquiring thought of the heaven which we are bidden to seek, and of the hell which we have to avoid; of the Master we are bound to serve; of the business to which life is an apprenticeship; of the race in which we are runners; of the warfare which we are enlisted to wage; the weapons to be used; the p. 60mode of fighting; the field of battle; the foes we are opposed to; the punishment of desertion: the reward of constancy; the prospects of victory; the perils of defeat? Is not it that we are not impressed with the responsibility of having this gift of knowledge? with the peril of folding up in a napkin a precious talent given us to use and improve? Is not it that we do not think seriously of the existence of God, of the possession of His Spirit, of the reality of heaven and hell, of the obligations of Christian service, of spiritual helps, and difficulties, and perils? Is not it that we have not (which means that we do not seek) that faith which is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen, enabling us to realise and grasp, as though it were a substance, that which is as yet but future; and to behold plainly, with the eye of faith, that which to natural sense is not perceptible?

Have but this faith, and you will soon add to it knowledge. Concern yourselves about God only as much as you would about the man with whom you have most to do in life, and from whom you have most to expect or fear; treat religion as you would the business by which you are to sustain natural life, and to make or mar your temporal fortune; and then interest and desire (as much and more than duty) will impel you to use every effort to acquaint yourselves thoroughly with God; to understand the working and unravel the mysteries of religion; to ascertain all particulars about p. 61what you have to hope for or fear—heaven and hell—angels and demons—the Holy Ghost—and the spirit of evil. Deeper and deeper will you drink of the well of knowledge; and each deep and frequent draught will but quicken your thirst and impel you to drink again.

But take care not to err in the other extreme: we know in part, and are always to know in part only. Our knowledge of allowed and enjoined things, though ever increasing, shall never be perfect on this side of the grave. We are to augment it as much as we can, but we must stand really face to face with Christ, before we see Him as He is. Our grossness must be refined, our souls and minds wholly transformed, and our bodies glorified, before we can fully perceive and appreciate the Holy Spirit. We must be in heaven to know thoroughly what heaven is. We must have Christ for our audible teacher, and angels for our prompting fellow scholars, and the eternal records for our books, and all time spread out before us as a map, before we can learn perfectly, what we are to spend this life and exercise the Spirit of knowledge in acquiring in part. And even then, as I said before, there are things which we shall not be able to grasp, or fathom, or perceive thoroughly. We shall never see God the Father visibly; we shall never comprehend altogether a Being without beginning or end; we shall never be omniscient or omnipresent. God will treat us as trusty and privileged friends, and reveal to us much that is not revealed here, p. 62and give us new powers of understanding it. But He will not open to us all the workings of the Divine mind. He will not transform us into gods, nor even into angels. We shall still be finite human beings, of limited understanding and limited knowledge. The things which concern us we shall know fully; the things which concern us not, we shall not know; just as the angels desired once to look into, but were not able, the mysteries (which did not concern them) of our redemption.

Well, then, if there is to be holy ground in heaven, which we must not tread on with the shoes of idle curiosity; if there is to be there a bush behind which we must not look; if even then there shall be secret things which belong only to God, and which we must not pry into; how much more so here and now! How necessary to remember that we are to know only in part; that we are not to seek to be wise above what is written; that, respecting mysteries which concern not us, it is distinctly charged: “Draw not nigh hither”!

When God puts forth and reveals His arm, He proves to us, indeed, that there is more of Him that is not revealed; but it is profane to demand that it should be revealed. When He tells us, that the world was created so many thousand years ago, He proves that it was not before then; but He does not permit us to inquire, what was then? When He tells us, that He made all good, and that the devil introduced evil, He does it not that we should inquire subtilly into the origin of evil. We p. 63are to study what is revealed, and not what is hidden. Where did God exist before the worlds were made? What is existence without beginning? How was matter produced out of nothing—evil out of good? How is it possible for God to have His will, and man his? Why did not God prevent evil? Why does He now tolerate it? Why were fallen angels not redeemed? Why is man not perfected without trial? How can finite beings be infinitely rewarded or punished? These, and the thousand other curious questions, which perverse man is ever asking, are inquiries which He forbids and baffles—which we may be sure provoke His displeasure.

Check we, then, brethren, our wandering fancies, by the thought that we are to know only in part; and that the only part which we are to know is, that which concerns our duty, and hopes, and fears; and our intelligent service and worship of Him. There is no better sacrifice to God than that of curbed idle curiosity. There is no better discipline than that which requires us to trust in what we can only imperfectly comprehend. There is no surer test of our earnestness about salvation, than the ready renunciation of unnecessary inquiry, and the steady, concentrated effort to understand that which was revealed to be understood.

p. 64SERMON VI.
CONFESSION.

Sin unconfessed is sin unforgiven. He who has not brought himself to the approved publican’s mind, and with that publican’s deep, heartfelt humiliation and self-abhorrence, poured out the contrite entreaty, “God be merciful to me a sinner;” he who, as he stands or kneels before the throne of grace, is not emptied of self-justification—is not convinced that mercy alone can save him—is not eager to embrace the only proffered propitiation of rebels and outcasts (that afforded by the Son of obedience and love), is still in the depths of iniquity—still under the condemnation of the law: “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” Nor even if he has this general sense (and confesses it) of sinfulness and unworthiness, is he much nearer to pardon and justification unless, besides, by diligent self-searching he has found out wherein he is a sinner and unworthy, and, like penitent David, makes mention before God of every ascertained act, and word, and thought of offence; every omission, p. 65every transgression, and prays for power to know himself better, that he may confess himself the more fully.

I need not stay to prove to you that all this is required. There are many precepts and many examples in the Bible, which set forth clearly the necessity of both general acknowledgment of sinfulness, and also special confession of particular sins to God, as preliminary to pardon.

And we may easily see why it is so. All things are indeed naked and open unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do; and He, therefore, needs no informing of our circumstances, our wants and feelings, our griefs and burthens. But, by a rule of His own establishing, He does not bless us in providence or grace, unless we ask for the blessing, and assure Him that we should appreciate it. When of His free love He had designed to bestow great things on the Israelites, and had even commissioned His prophets to make known the intention, He, nevertheless, restrained the flow of His bounty by the condition, “I will yet for this be inquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for them.” [65] He would have men realise that they wanted the blessing; and He would have them acknowledge their dependence on Him for the bestowal of it.

And if this feeling, this acknowledgment and supplication were required even when, if I may so speak, He longed to confer the gift, and was standing p. 66with it ready in His stretched out hand, how much more requisite must they be when His face is averted, and His heart displeased; when it is His wrath, rather than His love, which is made ready to reveal itself, and will presently reveal itself, unless it is deprecated and propitiated, and His love won back? Yes, surely, in such a case, we must arise and go to Him, like the prodigal, acknowledging that we are not worthy to be called His children. We must smite upon our breasts, like the publican, and cry out of our distress, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” We must win His general sympathy by the manifestation of our contrition; we must tell Him, one by one, of the items of offence which, of His mercy in Christ, we would have Him blot out of the great book of His remembrance; and not visit with His threatened vengeance.

We can have little fear of His offended justice, if we do not thus guard against every particular exercise of it. We can have but little appreciation of His pardoning grace, if we will not be at the trouble of telling Him when and for what we want it. And we can have but little sense of His awful holiness, if—all unclean, and able only to be cleansed by Him in answer to our entreaty, and on the showing of our stains—we yet approach Him, and expect to be tolerated in His presence, unconcernedly defiled, and in filthy rags. “Ask, and ye shall have.” “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper.” “When I kept silence, my bones p. 67waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night Thy hand was heavy upon me. . . . I acknowledged my sin unto Thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. For this shall every one that is godly pray unto Thee in a time when Thou mayest be found.” [67]

And there is a gracious purpose, a merciful regard for the sinner’s best interests, in this imposed law of general and particular confession. The offering of frequent confession will keep a man mindful of his state before God. It will lead him to consider what he has to confess; and so, through self-searching, he will come to self-knowledge: and the act of describing each sin to God will operate in representing that sin faithfully to the sinner; so that the very ordinance, which is properly the acknowledgment before God of sins realised, regretted, and forsaken, will often serve to show the sinner, for the first time, the sin which he has to repent of and forsake.

And one other benefit will surely arise from this exercise, namely, that the sinner will be deterred from a fresh commission of that confessed sin; that, having ascertained what are his evil propensities, what are the weak points in which Satan successfully assails him, he will be more on his guard against lapses, and wanderings, and defeats. He will nerve himself, and fight more certainly; “not p. 68as one that beateth the air.” He will seek to be better covered with the armour of God, and grasp more resolutely the sword of the Spirit. He will go forth conquering and to conquer.

To obtain pardon, then, for past sins, it is necessary (in accordance with God’s law) to confess them. To know ourselves, our difficulties, failures, trials from within and without; to shame ourselves out of sin, and to guide and encourage us to victory over it, it is expedient (and God has mercifully required it) that we should tell out before Him, ever and anon, all that we can rake up against ourselves; and not present even that as a total, but beg Him to add to it the secret things, in which we offend without knowing it. “Who can tell how oft he offendeth? O, cleanse Thou me from my secret faults.”

Alas! my brethren, how high is the standard! How far do many of us fall short of it! Where, among the frequenters of the temple, are the abashed, and humbled, and contrite penitents, proclaiming their sinfulness, and imploring pardon: “God be merciful to me a sinner”? Where, among professed Christians, are the imitators of David, communing with, searching out their spirit in the night season, rising early, to tell out with sighs and pangs each sin that they can discover; each renewal of it; each thought of it? But an hour since, we all joined, or professed to join, in words of general confession. Who felt and abashed themselves as sinners? Who really confessed any sin to God? Presently, some of us will take part p. 69in a more solemn form, and draw nearer still to a present God, seeking most intimate communion with Him. What sins are we going to confess, and pray to be relieved from? How much of self-abasement and contrition shall we take with us to the foot of the altar? No further back than yesterday each one of us sinned in thought, in word, or in deed; perhaps, in all three, How many of us brought those sins to remembrance, last night or this morning, by self-examination, and confessed them, and with contrition sought pardon of them? Which of us has done this, and is wont to do it, whenever wrong has been done, or right omitted? Remember, there is no forgiveness, there is no favour with God, nor hope of heaven without it. There is no knowledge of self, no perception of danger from without, no spiritual progress. He that covereth his sin shall not and cannot prosper. He walketh independently, ungratefully, rebelliously—in his own way; and the end of that way is death.

My brethren, think of these things; think of your imperative duty, and your sovereign interest; and let close self-examination, honest, heartfelt, contrite confession, be your frequent and diligent exercise. Every morning settle what you have to do and avoid; every evening consider what you have done and omitted, and lay the account religiously before God. Daily dress and undress your souls. Cleanse yourselves of what is amiss by confession and repentance. Prepare yourselves for p. 70future success, by the examination of past failures. You cannot approach God: He will not approach you (but for judgment), unless you have thus purified yourselves, and put off the things that defile holy ground.

Thus much by way of reminder and entreaty respecting confession to God, general and particular. But the question is asked in these days, and being asked should not be left unanswered, whether, in any case, and if so, in what, confession should also be made to any other than God?—whether it is ever needful, or expedient, to uncover our sins, and make known our spiritual burthens to our fellow man?

Now, any mindful reader of the Bible must be ready at once to answer that, on Divine authority, it is sometimes necessary, and often expedient. When we have injured another, by word or deed; when we have defrauded him, misled him, maligned him; provoked him to anger or displeasure, or only in some secret way harmed him; we must, as a foremost duty, go and acknowledge our fault, and obtain his forgiveness, or at least leave nothing undone to obtain it. The rash striker, the undutiful child, the dishonest tradesman, the unfaithful servant, the seducer into any sin, the scandalmonger, the slanderer, the base supplanter, the peacebreaker, may not atone for their offences, may not have remission from God, but by the consent, or at least after the sought consent, of the person offended against (which, of course, implies previous acknowledgment p. 71and confession of the offence). “If thou bring thy gift to the altar,”—i.e., if thou approachest God in any way, to serve Him, or to seek His blessing—“and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee; Leave there thy gift before the altar,”—stop at the threshold of God’s presence—“and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.” [71] And if the offence has been a public one, to the scandal, or detriment, or provocation of a community, the confession, too, must be public; so that St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, commands that such an offender should be publicly censured, and put away from among them; and implies, that he is not to be considered restored to the privileges of a Christian, until the community, satisfied that he is penitent, shall pronounce his forgiveness, and confirm their love towards him.

In obedience to this Scripture rule, the ministers of our Church are ordered to admit no notorious evil liver, nor any that has done wrong to his neighbour in word or deed, to holy communion; until, if he be an open offender, he has openly declared himself to have truly repented (in some such form as that of the Commination Service); or, if he be a private injurer, until he has recompensed the parties to whom he has done wrong. This discipline is not indeed enforced (as it should be) by man. Sinners and saints mingle together in the Lord’s house, and alike partake outwardly of the p. 72tokens of spiritual approval and blessing: but, assuredly, God, who is true, maintains jealously what man neglects; and refuses with displeasure the offerings of the violators and despisers of His law. Ay, and moreover places a firm and impassable barrier of excommunication between Him and them, which shall not be removed till the appointed reconciliation with man has been made. In such cases, then, confession to man, to the injured or offended, is necessary by the ordinance of God.

In many other cases it is expedient, we might even say enjoined, since inspired precepts recommend it. When, for instance, the burthened conscience needs the sympathy, the advice, the prayers of others to lighten it. “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed.” [72a] Or when, again, the present consequences of a past sin can only be removed by the active assistance of others, as when Achan was bidden by Joshua—“My son, give, I pray thee, glory to the Lord God of Israel, and make confession unto Him; and tell me now what thou hast done; hide it not from me.” [72b] In this latter case, God had signified that Achan was the offender who had provoked His wrath against Israel; and Joshua, the ruler of Israel, rightly demanded what was the offence, that he might know how to do away with it.

Whenever, then, you feel spiritual perplexity, p. 73heaviness of soul which you cannot relieve, faintness of heart, need of consolation or help in prayer, you may and should make known your circumstances to some pious and wise Christian or Christians, able and willing to advise, to succour, to intercede for you. And whenever you cannot undo the consequences of your sin without the active assistance of others, you are bound to take to you partners in the work, and to communicate freely to them what you have done, and wish undone.

It is not easy for me to say—your own feelings will guide you best in such a matter—what confessor you should choose. In some cases a parent would be the most fitting, or a bosom friend; in others, a stranger, or slight acquaintance; in some cases, again, a person of your own age and circumstances; in others, a senior, or a superior. But if these fail to serve and relieve you, then, in all cases, should you avail yourselves of the ordinance of God, and choose out your spiritual guide from among those whom He has specially appointed to teach, and to console, and to intercede. First, be sure that you cannot help yourselves, because God has imposed upon you an individual responsibility, and entrusted to you powers of soul and mind which you may not neglect to exercise. Then, if you fail, go, call to yourselves that aid which seems best in itself, and can be secured with least violence to your natural feelings, and least injury to your social character and position. If that p. 74does not avail, then betake yourselves to the ministers of religion, in the hope, nay, with the assurance, that even if their learning, their habitual examination of human nature’s wants and failings, their experience and interest in soul-work, should, after all, leave them insufficient guides and helpers, still God, to Whom in the person of His representatives you have thus come, will not let you depart without a blessing, but will send down from heaven itself His light, and comfort, and effectual strength.

One of two objections to this teaching may present itself to some of those who hear me. Some of you, my brethren, may be ready to assert, that human aid is not wanted in such circumstances; and others, that to seek it of the clergy is to draw near to the error and corrupt superstition of the Romanists.

To the first, I would simply answer, that they cannot really know much of spiritual life, if they suppose that he who would lead such a life can always get on without external help, and that they are little acquainted with God’s mysterious ways, if they do not know that He ever works by agents, in the religious and the moral, as well as in the physical world. For their enlightenment, let them inquire of the eminently spiritual, or the marvellously reformed, and they will assuredly find, that human helps and sympathies have formed many steps of the ladder by which these have climbed so high towards heaven.

p. 75The other objectors merit a longer answer, because the charge they make is a serious one; not only affecting individuals, but casting a blot upon the good fame of our Church itself, which unmistakeably teaches and recommends, in special cases, the use of human and clerical confessors.

My dear brethren, let me ask you to bear with me patiently. I have no party motives to serve, nor party prejudices to indulge; God is my witness I reluctantly speak to you on this subject. I am only induced to do so by the consideration that, when a religious question is agitated out of doors, it is the minister of God’s bounden duty to take it up in the pulpit, and exhibit it, as far as he can, in scriptural light, keeping aloof alike from prejudging approval, and from capricious and worldly condemnation of the thing maintained. “The priest’s lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth.” [75]

What, then, first, is the Romish use of confession? Every lay member of the Church of Rome is obliged, at stated times, to make a full and particular confession to a priest, of every sin, of every kind, that he or she can call to remembrance. No matter, that they are repented of and confessed to God; no matter, that the way of escape from them is plain; that they have been escaped from; out they must come, with all their preceding, accompanying, and following circumstances; without reserve of any kind. If but a thought of sin be p. 76kept back; if the priest but fancy that something is kept back; excommunication is pronounced, and the offender, or supposed offender, is cut off from all means of grace. [76] And the doctrine which guides this practice is, that no sin is ever forgiven by God, unless it has first been confessed to a priest; and that, even then, though its eternal punishment is remitted by their giving of absolution, works of penance must be performed on its account, or a longer or shorter period of suffering in purgatory will have to be endured.

Such is Rome’s course. I need scarcely tell you, that our Church, in condemning the “sacrament” of penance, and denying the existence of a purgatory, has swept away the only pretences on which such a prying, unscriptural, and most mischievous confessional could be maintained.

But, still, the Church of England has a doctrine and a practice of confession. In the exhortation to holy communion, it is enjoined, “If there be any of you, who by this means,” (self-examination) “cannot quiet his own conscience herein, but requireth further comfort or counsel, let him come to me, or to some other discreet and learned minister of God’s word, and open his grief, that by the ministry of God’s holy word, he may receive the benefit of absolution, together with ghostly counsel and advice, to the quieting of his conscience, p. 77and avoiding of all scruple and doubtfulness.” And in the Order of the Visitation of the Sick it is directed: “Here shall the sick person be moved to make a special confession of his sins, if he feel his conscience troubled with any weighty matter.” And let it not be said, that these are Romish elements in a “tesselated ritual.” The exhortation is a Protestant composition; and the words that make it imperative on us to move every sick person we visit to a special confession, if he needs it, were added at the last review of the Prayer-Book.

What, then, is the sum of Church teaching? Men are to confess their sins to God alone, with a view to pardon and religious homage. (In certain cases, they are advised to seek assurance of absolution from the clergy. I dwell not on this now, because I purpose, God willing, to give the subject full consideration on an early occasion. [77]) When they find this confession sufficient to procure spiritual peace and amendment of life, they need not, and ought not, to make known their faults to others. They are not to make their ministers partakers of the thoughts and secrets of their breasts; they are not to look to them for pardon; they are not to get rid of their responsibility to God, by accepting penance at man’s hand; they are not to seek direction from a priest, in the ordinary ways of life; they are not to submit themselves to close catechisings, and prying investigations. But they are, when in doubt, in difficulty, in overwhelming p. 78grief, in all circumstances of spiritual helplessness, so to reveal their lives and open their thoughts to a spiritual officer, that he may, out of the treasure of his knowledge and experience, and by virtue of his commission as a minister of holy things, direct, and comfort, and strengthen them, more really and effectually than he can in public sermons, from mere guessing at their condition. When the public ministry suffices for them, let them seek no more; when they need, likewise, private ministry, by all means let them demand it: the Church binds us to render what they ask.

This kind of confession has the hearty approval of spiritual men of all ages, and all shades of theological opinion. All our reformers urged it. Luther said he would rather lose a thousand worlds than suffer private confession to be thrust out of the Church. Calvin exhorted all who thought they would be benefitted by it, to use it readily, and showed them, by precise rules, how to do so. Puritans of old, so-called evangelical ministers of our day—presbyterians, anabaptists, wesleyans, independents, all maintain and practise it now, though sometimes under other names—“consultation,” “history of conversion,” “detailing of experiences.” Richard Baxter’s characteristic words, exhibiting the true spirit of Church teaching, and showing how nonconformists cling to it in this case, are specially worthy of full recital.

One more quotation: it will be heard with respect when I tell you it is from the Bishop of Lincoln’s sermons on repentance: “As ministers should be, by their profession, usually the best advisers in cases of conscience, and are, or ought to be, every penitent’s ready and sympathising friends, so to them the stricken or perplexed soul will often have recourse. And thus, there is a sense in which those dreaded words, ‘confession to the priest,’ (in one sense, justly dreaded, for the iniquity of ages is upon them) may express an edifying practice, and even at times a duty.” [80]

Thus, my brethren, have I endeavoured to set before you, the true merits of the question, “Ought man to confess to man?” to remind you what is required, what is allowed and recommended, what is forbidden by Scripture, and the Witness and Keeper of Scripture, the Church. Endeavour, all of you, to learn from the subject, charity and wisdom. If you feel that you need not this use of confession, thank God for your easy circumstances; but, blame not, and, above all, dare not to ridicule, those who have need. If you want it, by all means seek it; we may not refuse it. To all of you, I would say, at all times regard your clergyman as indeed an appointed spiritual friend and adviser, and so make use of him; but, especially p. 81in sickness, when you call him to your bedside, so far, at least, admit him to your confidence, and enlighten him with respect to your spiritual state, that his instruction may be pointed, and his prayers appropriate; and so his visits blessed. Oh! look not upon us as mere Sunday lecturers, or mechanical readers of prayers, in whom you have no week-day interest, and from whom no benefit is to be derived, but what may be had in church. Degrade not our office, nor ignore our authority, nor slight our willingness to use both for your temporal and eternal good. Nor, on the other hand, exalt us to the false position of spiritual despots—lords of men’s consciences; idols occupying the place of God. Ministers we are; servants of Christ; and your servants for His sake. Make use of our ministry as a ministry, and doubt not but God will then make it profitable to you, and accomplish by it, all the ends for which He appointed it.

p. 82SERMON VII.
FORGIVENESS.

We all know what forgiveness of sin means, namely, remission of the punishment due to it by Divine sentence, and restoration of the offender to the position and privileges of the righteous. We all know, too, our individual need, our ever fresh recurring need of this forgiveness; and we also know, all of us, that forgiveness is granted only for the sake and merits of the Lord Jesus Christ, and on fixed conditions.

Alas! my brethren, how little do we feel what we know. With what vain speculations, what idle dreams, what perverse errors do we too often darken knowledge!

Forgiveness, ransom from eternal death, deliverance from the terrible inflictions of Almighty wrath, gracious reception into God’s own family, and full participation of His inexhaustible love and benediction, how can sinners consent not to value this when given or offered, not to desire and seek it when needed? Yet so it is. There is many an p. 83one of our poorest possessions which we cherish more fondly; there is many an unobtained bauble which we would make more real effort to obtain.

Ask yourselves, seriously, and answer to yourselves, honestly, my fellow-sinners, whether it is not so. All of you believe that you have been forgiven some thing, nay, many things. You do not suppose that you are carrying about, each one of you, the unmitigated condemnation of original sin; the full burthen of every transgression and omission of your whole lives, from the first exercise of your self-will in childhood, to that in which you offended but an hour since. You know, indeed, that much remains written against you; but you believe that much more has been blotted out; that God has been propitiated and reconciled to fallen man by the sacrifice and intercession of His Son; that wrath has been displaced by love; that the way of return is open; that the ears of mercy are unclosed; that the arms of grace are stretched out to unfold all those, who by birth inherited banishment, and were kept in exile by the fiery sword which turned every way and allowed none to pass to the paradise of bliss and the tree of life. What Adam lost, that and much more has Christ won. In Him you already have regained much; through Him you may have all and abound.

This you know. How much of it do you feel? Where is your joy of deliverance? where your heart-leapings of praise? where your homage of gratitude for what has been forgiven? And where p. 84are your yearnings, your wrestling prayers, your strenuous efforts after the forgiveness yet needed? the cries and struggles of drowning men, grasping in your fresh peril the again stretched out rope of deliverance; imploring to be taken up once more into the ark of salvation; to be landed yet again on the shore of hope? Alas! where? Is not forgiveness obtained, unheeded; forgiveness not obtained, unsought? Not altogether, God be praised! There are some who never forget their deliverance; who have learnt from it gratitude for the past, and hope and direction for the future. There are some who are wont to gaze upon the book of the Divine account of them (that is, so much of it as is revealed), and as they gaze, to keep moist with the tears of humble penitence and love, the red stain of Christ’s blood, which hides, nay, has obliterated so many of the black items against them; and who, seeing how much is cancelled, cannot bear that aught should remain uncancelled, and therefore rest not, nor cease from pleading and entreating, while one single black figure is uncovered by the crimson mark of remission.

Some of you, my brethren, surely there are, who, looking back, perhaps upon a youth of wild and wicked folly, or a manhood of worldliness, or much of an old age of dull, spiritual indifference, from the thraldom of which, by God’s grace, you have been delivered, whose fearful guilt, you have reason to believe, has been remitted; some of you, p. 85I say, surely there are, who so appreciate the obtained mercy as to think nothing comparable to it, no gratitude enough for it; and who, therefore, when need of more forgiveness arises (as, of course, it constantly does), betake yourselves early, with the first fruits of your desires, and the quick steps of urgent, craving want, to the fountain that ever floweth, by whose waters alone you can be cleansed and refreshed. Yes, there are such; a few of them; and they do value, they do seek forgiveness.

But, do the many? Judge for yourselves, brethren. Trace back, all of you, as far as you can, the course of your respective lives; review your old habits, your former careers of transgression or omission; or pick out some single sin, if you will of recent date; some one of those many offences against which God’s wrath is pronounced, and on account of which it must descend, unless forgiveness is secured. Is it a lie, a filthy jest, a profane speech, a word of slander? Is it a thought of malice, an encouraged lust, a meditated misdeed? Is it an act of fraud? Did you use false balances, or adulterate your wares, or drive an unfair bargain, exacting more, or giving less than was right? Did you pilfer from your employer, or rob him of your bought service, or betray his interest? Is it direct ungodliness? Did you act in defiance of God’s known commandment? Did you profane His holy day? Did you disregard His fear? Did you withhold aught that He claims of service, of p. 86prayer, of praise, of money, time, talents, influence, of example?

Brethren, most of you follow, or have followed, some bad habit; at least, each of you has committed, and can now bring to quick remembrance, some one evident, wilful sin. Now God forbade that sin, and warned you of condemnation if you did it. God witnessed its commission. His displeasure arose; He registered it in heaven; He wrote down death, eternal death, against it; and angels, beholding what He did, prepared themselves to fly with the lightning’s speed and execute that sentence, at the first motion of His commanding will. The sentence is not executed. The sin has, or has not, brought you inconvenience, perplexity, contempt, pain, sickness, loss. But, at any rate, it has not brought you death. Brethren, why not? Do you know? do you imagine? do you care? Is the sentence still impending, or has it been reversed? Are you forgiven? or have you yet to seek forgiveness? Do you concern yourselves at all about the matter? If you have forgiveness, do you really value it? If you have it not, do you really seek it? Oh! judge yourselves, brethren, that ye be not judged of the Lord.

I can imagine the comparatively religious ready to urge, “Thus saying, you reproach us also; you bring all in guilty; you do not allow that any are in the right.” Even so, brethren, for there is none clear in this matter. The standard of right is so high, that all come short of it. Infirmity p. 87checks the accomplishment of our best purposes. Sin defiles even our holy things. The flesh ever resists the spirit, and too often blinds and deadens it. And so our warmest desires are often all but cold; our greatest industry is but little removed from sloth. We cannot do the things, nor think the thoughts that we would, in perfection. Let us gather consolation from the fact, that this is a law even of our regenerate being, when we fall short of what we desire and aim at; but let us not thereby justify ourselves in spiritual indifference, nor suppose that a general culpability exonerates the individual. Much will always be amiss, through the opposition of the flesh, and through the difficulty of discerning spiritual things; and much allowance we may hope will be made for us: but, much that is amiss, might be corrected, and ought to be; nay, unless it is, we shall be without excuse. It is so, be assured, in this matter of forgiveness. At the best, we shall never, in this world, appreciate it fully, when bestowed; nor seek it with sufficient earnestness, when needed. But, if we concern ourselves to think right thoughts about it; if we ascertain more clearly what it is, and how obtained, we shall speedily become more grateful for it, more eager to obtain it, more sure partakers of it. Let me throw out a few suggestions, which, by God’s blessing, may help to bring us nearer to this better state.

First, consider what Divine forgiveness is. It is not capricious reversal of the sentence, “The p. 88soul that sinneth it shall die.” Divine justice does not give up its claim. Divine truth does not belie itself; Divine resoluteness become fickle. God is not a man, that He should repent, or that He should say and not do, or that He should come to love what once He hated. God might have been freely reconciled to the transgressor, if He had not made transgression sin. He might, even then, have left the sinner alone, imposing no other punishment than exile from His presence, if He had not solemnly declared, “In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.” But now, His holiness, His justice, and His truth are irrevocably pledged to banish and destroy transgressors. It can never be otherwise. Holiness cannot tolerate near unholiness: like Satan from heaven, like Adam and Eve from paradise, it must be cast out. Justice cannot acquit the guilty. Truth can never say, “Thou shalt not die,” to him to whom it has already said, “Thou shalt die.” There is no such forgiveness. If you transgress, you are a sinner; if you sin, you are condemned; if you are condemned, you must die. God has said it, and there is no variableness, or shadow of turning, in Him.

We are wont to think otherwise. We fancy that sin, though wrong, is not destructive: we wrap ourselves in false security, and flatter and mislead others, by a perverse assurance that God will not be extreme to mark what is done amiss. Yea, we think we have Scripture warrant for so doing. We read of Divine promises which were p. 89never realised, and Divine threats which were never executed; and we gather from them that, like our poor fickle selves, God easily goes back from His resolution of favour or wrath.

But let us look again at those promises and threats, and we shall see that, if they were not fulfilled, it was not because God changed, but because the objects changed on whom He had resolved to operate, for good or evil. Jerusalem (bound to God by a covenant of allegiance) was promised perpetual preservation. Jerusalem forsook the allegiance, and therefore was destroyed. Nineveh’s cry of wickedness provoked the Lord to threaten it with destruction within forty days; but when those forty days were expired there was no cry of wickedness to be answered; but a cry of repentance, a pledge of amendment, a nation’s voice and posture of worship. God did not change, but Nineveh did. The judgment was ready to fall; but there was no object for it to fall upon, and so it fell not. If the righteous ceases to be righteous, the promises made to his righteousness cannot be fulfilled; if the sinner becomes sinless, the sentence of sin cannot be executed upon him. “At what instant,” says God, by Jeremiah, “I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, to pull down, and to destroy it; If that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a p. 90kingdom, to build and to plant it; If it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them.” [90] And the like is elsewhere declared of individuals.

Thus only does God change His word; thus only is there forgiveness with Him. The sinner must change his sin, for sinlessness; and then for wrath he shall have favour. But this change he cannot make. He cannot wipe out or undo the past; he cannot bring a clean thing out of an unclean; he cannot repair the breaches in his soul; he cannot strengthen the things that are ready to perish. Vain, then, is his idle trust in the non-fulfilment of a published threat; and vain are all his efforts to avert that threat. While he is a sinner, God will not forgive him; and a sinner he can never cease to be.

But, what man cannot do himself, Christ has done for him. Having in His own person satisfied the Divine law, and stood sinless and accepted before the Father, He has made Himself the human source of faculties and graces, by which other men, joined to Him, may partake of the infinite merits of His atonement, His tasting of death for every man; and may also be cleansed, and restored, and strengthened, and become again sinless; escaping the guilt, and putting away the corruption of sin. There is such forgiveness. Mark, it is not an indulgent Father’s concession to the mere request p. 91of His loved Son. It is not, again, such a substitution of the innocent for the guilty, that no more account of sinners is taken; nor is it a compromise by which one death is accepted instead of many. It is a merited power, vested in the God-Man, to be the source of absolution and sanctification. It is a purchased right to apply that power to all who will observe prescribed conditions. Christ holds and exercises that power. It is in Him to save whom He will; it is in Him to desire to save all.

But still, He has not handed over the forgiveness to all. Nay, let it be said with all reverence, He cannot so hand it over. Men must come to Him for it; they must be joined to Him to derive it; they must become like Him to be saved by Him. On conditions He received the power of salvation, and on conditions He imparts it. Those who do not observe these conditions, so far from escaping condemnation through what He has done, and what He has attained unto, do thereby become subject to surer and worse condemnation. The same work, the same authority, which made Him the Saviour of all men, made Him also the Judge of all; and imposed the inflexible law, that every one that would not be saved by Him must be destroyed by Him.

Now, in this day of grace, He is labouring to save: and He will save to the uttermost all who seek His salvation. But, by and by, He must come to judge; and then, whosoever has not been already saved, must be utterly destroyed. Are p. 92you forgiven? Christ has forgiven you. Are you seeking forgiveness? If you seek it aright, Christ will bestow it. Are you not forgiven? Will you not seek forgiveness? Then, rely upon it, you must be condemned; and that not only or chiefly by the law, but by the Gospel, the dispensation on the one hand of unspeakable goodness, on the other of unpardonable severity. If Christ is not made your Saviour, He will be your destroyer. There is forgiveness with Him. There is no forgiveness elsewhere.

Let me press this upon you, dear brethren, even though in so doing I repeat what I have already said. There is no forgiveness with God, the Father, apart from Christ, the Saviour. There is no forgiveness, for the Saviour’s sake, to those who do not belong to the Saviour. You must not go to the Father and plead, while you continue in your sin, that, since One has died for sins, there is no longer any such thing as sin. You must not suppose that holiness, and justice, and truth are set at nought in all other cases, because they have been maintained in one. You must not expect that He who once refused forgiveness, now freely grants it to the same persons in the same state; that He is changed, and, therefore, you need not be. No! to find any comfort in the assurance, “There is forgiveness with Thee,” and to verify it in your own case, you must have observed, and be still observing, the prescribed conditions. You must have become Christ’s, and Christ have become p. 93yours. You must have obtained the pardon from Him, and you must hold it through Him; and He must testify thereof, and plead for you, ere the Father will pronounce His absolution: “The Lord hath put away thy sins: thou shalt not die.”

But how is all this to be done? Not by idly assenting to the truth, that it ought to be done. Not by mere thinking and talking of Christ. Not by working upon your feelings, and warming your affections, by the contemplation of Him as a historical character; not even by making mention of Him in your prayers, and pleading His merits, and asking to be wrapped in His imputed righteousness; but by intelligently, and heartily, and actively observing the conditions and using the means of salvation, which Christ has proposed to you, and put within your reach.

As soon as Christ had accomplished His work on earth, and had been exalted to be the new head of the human race, the source of pardon and grace, calling in the powers of His Godhead, He established supernatural means whereby other men might be actually joined, and kept joined, to Him, and might derive from Him the properties and privileges of a renewed and perfected nature. The Holy Spirit, the third Person of the blessed Trinity, became the wonderful agent to effect and maintain this union and communication, providing mysteriously for the gradual subjugation and destruction of the old nature, with its guilt and proneness to sin, and for the development and establishment of p. 94spiritual excellence in all those who become objects of His operations. To become such objects, it is necessary that men should be prequalified (and He gives them the power, if they ask it), by realising the misery and condemnation of their natural state, by sorrowing over and renouncing their sins, by desiring pardon and grace, and by believing that Christ had them to bestow; and, then, after becoming thus prequalified, it is further necessary, that they should make appointed use of certain outward ordinances, in the due observance of which He pledges Himself to meet them, and to apply to them the merits and the graces, in the possession of which they shall be accounted dead with Christ unto sin, and alive with Him unto righteousness. On none but those thus qualified will the Spirit operate; and on these only, when they come to Him and invite His operation in appointed ways. Such, my brethren, is the doctrine of forgiveness; such is the law of its bestowal. There is forgiveness with God of this kind, and on these terms; but there is no other forgiveness.

It is because we are not fully persuaded of this truth, that we are so indifferent, so apathetic, so unthankful, so unrighteous. We do not appreciate forgiveness, through not understanding it; we do not duly seek it, through not considering how only it is to be obtained.

Dear brethren, let us strive to be wiser and better. First, let us qualify ourselves for the application to us of forgiveness, by realising the guilt p. 95and condemnation of sin; by convincing ourselves that we are sinners, and by ascertaining in what we sin; by sorrowing for sin, loathing it, and desiring to get free of it; by giving up its work, forsaking its haunts, and restoring, as far as may be, its plunder (i.e., by labouring to undo what we have done amiss). Then let us meditate on pardon, and holiness; on the happy freedom and glorious privileges of those who are forgiven and sanctified in Christ, till our reason and affections unite in demanding that our lips and lives should seek forgiveness and sanctification. We have already learned where and how to seek. Let us hasten to use our knowledge. Let us seek the Spirit where He is to be found; let us submit ourselves to Him, and ask His blessing in the prescribed ways; the ways revealed to us in the Bible, and made accessible to us through the Church of Christ: baptism once, for death and burial with Christ unto sin, and new birth unto righteousness; holy communion frequently, for the sustenance of the new life, the meat and drink of the Spirit; and the ministry of reconciliation ever, as the constant salve for the soul’s constant wounds.

Commending to your full and serious consideration the great importance of all the Gospel-ordinances, and bidding you remember (and profit by the remembrance) the sin and danger of neglecting any one of them, let me now confine your attention, for a few minutes, to the application of forgiveness by the authorised ministers of reconciliation, p. 96in what is called ministerial absolution. Whenever you draw near to God in the sanctuary, and make a public confession of your sins, whether in the ordinary daily service, or in the office for the holy communion, immediately after such confession, the priest is directed to stand up and pronounce what is called an absolution; in the one case declaring, that “God pardoneth and absolveth,” in the other, praying that He may do so. Whenever private scruples and peculiar spiritual difficulties keep you from the holy communion, you are exhorted to go to some discreet and learned minister, that you may receive the benefit of absolution; and whenever you are laid on a bed of sickness, and the clergyman is summoned to your side, he is directed to move you to a special confession, if you feel your conscience troubled by any weighty matter, and if you humbly and heartily desire it, to absolve you from all your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. All of you know that such things are to be found in the Prayer-Book. Some of you treat them with perfect indifference, caring not that they are there, neither assenting to them or opposing them. Others accept the poor explanation, that they are mere kind, comfortable delusions for weak minds. Others kick against them, and denounce them as relics of Popery and instruments of priestcraft, indignantly repelling the notion, that there is any such forgiveness promised or allowed by the Word of God.

p. 97Hear me dispassionately, dear brethren, while in few words (and, God knows, without any party bias) I endeavour to vindicate the Church’s teaching; and to guard it against both superstitious misuse and profane contempt. You know, of course, that Christ, in His life-time on earth, before His passion, commissioned certain disciples to go before Him into every city whither He Himself would come, and when they entered into any house, to pronounce peace upon its tenants, with the assurance that His peace should, in such case, always rest upon them, if they were worthy. You know, too, that just before His ascension, He invested the apostles with the power of remitting and retaining sins; and that they both exercised that power themselves, by absolving and excommunicating, and also handed it on to others—so that St. Paul tells the Corinthian presbyters, that to whomsoever they forgive anything, He forgives also, and that his forgiveness is the forgiveness of Christ. And you likewise know (if you are conversant with Church history) that the doctrine of ministerial absolution, and the practice of administering it, have been steadily maintained in all parts of the Church, from the apostolic age to the present.

In one place, or time, the doctrine has been distorted; in another, the practice has been abused: but everywhere, and at all times, by Greeks and Romanists, by high-Churchmen, and by not a few low-Churchmen, it has been, and is asserted, that p. 98Christ gave by commission, and continues by His promise to be always present with His Church, power and command to use ministerial absolution. The Church of England claims that delegated power, and obeys that positive command. She does not blasphemously exalt her clergy, and plant them on the throne of God, to usurp His prerogative—to be judges between good and evil, and awarders of favour or wrath; nor, on the other hand, does she degrade them to mere voluntary reporters, such as any of yourselves might be, of statements contained in a published revelation: she sends them forth to minister, as in other respects, so in this, the grace which Christ would communicate through them for the good of the fold, whereof they are under-shepherds. It is nothing of their own that they minister; they can claim no honour, nor thanks, for ministering it, and woe to them if they withhold it when rightly sought; but to them it is intrusted to minister, and through their ministry it is to be sought. God, the Father, the primary Giver of every good thing, is nowhere directly approachable. Christ, the second Adam, to Whom all that pertains to man’s salvation is committed, sits at the right hand of God, the Father, and operates upon man only through the agency of the Holy Spirit. God, the Holy Spirit, does not convey Himself spontaneously and independently of means into every heart, but connects the gifts of His presence and working power, with certain outward ordinances, p. 99administered by appointed agents, and promised to be efficacious in all faithful recipients. We sprinkle with water in baptism, and, if there be no unworthiness in the person we sprinkle, the Holy Spirit then and there regenerates. We administer blessed bread and wine, and, on like conditions, God’s Spirit conveys into the recipient’s heart the spiritual food of Christ’s body and blood. We say to those who have confessed their sins, “He pardoneth and absolveth;” or, “Almighty God pardon and deliver you from all your sins;” or, “By virtue of His authority, I absolve thee from all thy sins:” and in the case of every real penitent, there is then, there, and thereby forgiveness from God. We do not bid you look to us for pardon; we tell you plainly that we cannot pardon you; but we distinctly maintain, that if you want pardon, you must seek it in appointed ways; that this is an appointed way; that none have due recourse to it, and fail of spiritual blessing; that those who despise it despise not men, but God.

Brethren, thus soberly and scripturally regard the Church’s ordinance of absolution. On the one hand, do not superstitiously look upon it as an inherent power, which any priest can give to whom he will, and withhold from whom he will; or as an indemnity, to be bestowed without conditions, to operate as a charm in absolving those who have not desired, nor prepared themselves for forgiveness; and, on the other hand, do not make p. 100light of its true exercise, and forego opportunities of having it applied to yourselves, according to Christ’s appointment, and your several needs. Prepare yourselves duly for it, and heartily accept the ministry of it, and give God the glory. Yes! be sure you give God the glory. Use the means, and reverence them, because God has instituted them; but let the gift be more thought of, and let the Giver be adored. When, with penitent hearts and humble lips, you have made your open confession, and the herald’s consequent proclamation of pardon is ringing in your ears, bethink you that it is God’s forgiveness which is being offered to your acceptance. Bless Him for the ordinance; but look through it to the Spirit who is present in it, to the Saviour who sent the Spirit, to the Father who provided the Saviour, and let the vision both convince you of the sinfulness and condemnation of sin (which could only be put away by such a wonderful contrivance, and such continued operation of the Blessed Trinity), and also prompt you to value the forgiveness which God has so much at heart, and so labours to bestow. “There is forgiveness with thee.” Take to yourselves the unspeakable comfort of so sweet an assurance when it is offered; but be sure that you always respond to it, out of grateful and resolute hearts: “Therefore, O God, shalt Thou be feared, and served, and loved.”

p. 101SERMON VIII.
THE PRINCIPLE OF OFFERINGS TO GOD.

It was a thrice enforced precept of the law that none should appear before God empty; that when men drew near to Him to celebrate His past mercies and deliverances, to ask for blessings, to deprecate wrath, to render thanks, to acknowledge dependence on His providence, they should at the same time present unto Him some offering of their substance. And this, be it observed, was not a mere temporary ordinance. It was not, like the sacrifices of bulls and goats, a ceremonious shadowing forth and pleading of the one sacrifice by which alone God could be approached and propitiated. It was a free-will offering, an acknowledgment that all things come of God, and that all things, though intrusted to them, belonged still to God. It was a confession of His Lordship, an act of homage, an exhibition of gratitude, a pledge of readiness to yield all that He might require. As such, it was p. 102to be offered whenever man perceived God to be operating upon, or for him, or whenever he would have God to be thus operating; it was to be presented at prescribed places, and under prescribed circumstances, which rendered pains and exertion necessary in the offerer; and it was to be of a kind and in a measure which should make it a real sacrifice—the giving up of something valuable and valued. “Every man shall give as he is able,” says Moses. “I will not offer unto the Lord my God,” exclaims David, “of that which doth cost me nothing.”

Under the Gospel, this duty is not only continued, but, like all the other moral sanctions of the law, enlarged and spiritualised. We Christians are to present ourselves, our souls and bodies, continually, as a reasonable sacrifice unto God. We are to give up our wills, our powers, our affections, our time, our substance, our lives to Him. Our prayer is to be instant; our praise continual; our sacrifice perpetual; our offering all that we are and have. He who withholds anything from God, gives Him nothing. He who does not deny himself, denies God; he who loves any one or anything more than God, hates God; he who bestows more thought and pains, and spends more of his substance on any other object than on religion, takes no thought, bestows no pains, spends none of his substance on God. Lip-service, stinted service, careless or partial service is no service; easy religion, cheap religion, intermittent religion is no p. 103religion. Religion, to be worthy of the name, must cost something; yea, and much—much thought, much feeling, much affection, much labour, much self-denial, much submission, much renunciation, much cheerful sacrifice of self and substance. The only limit to our offering is to be our capability; the only time when we may forbear to offer it, is when God gives us no opportunity. Hence it was, that the young man who would not sell all that he had, and give to the poor, and follow Christ whithersoever He went, could not be His disciple. Hence it is, that selfishness, and worldliness, and pride, and self-glorying, and covetousness, are such grievous sins. Hence it is, that life must not be counted dear, when to be faithful to religion would endanger it. Hence it is, that not only directly spiritual acts are to be frequent, and spiritual offerings to be many and large, but that everything we have is to be held for religion, and everything we do, to be done for religion; our daily tasks, our rest and labour, our very eating and drinking. Christ has purchased us entirely soul and body, talents and possessions, to glorify Him by perpetually offering to Him the sacrifice of love; and there is no love in that offering which is formal, indolent, unwilling, self-saving; which is restrained from thought, and effort, and hazard, and bountifulness, by the consideration, how much it will cost. “I will not offer unto the Lord my God,” and the Lord my God will not accept “of that which doth cost me nothing.’”

p. 104This is the principle and measure of Christian offering to God. Would we offer affection? it must be all affection. “My Son, give me Thy heart.” Submission? Deny Thyself in all things. Time? Let it be all time—instant, continual, day and night. Substance? Be ready to part with all that thou hast. Work? It must be all work; every labour, and every occupation. Whatsoever thou doest, do all to the glory of God, that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ. We, and all that we are and have, are claimed as whole sacrifices to God. The duration of the offering is to be the length of our life. The altars upon which we are to be offered, are all the places and all the circumstances in which God puts us, or we put ourselves; and we are to be continually laying ourselves upon these altars, without fear or grudging of the cost, yea, rather with cheerful incurring of it.

It is a great and difficult service. The very best of our fallen race, the Abrahams and the Pauls, who have most realised this service, and loved it, and laid themselves out to render it, have yet fallen short, very far short of the perfect offering. Many a time have they reluctantly laid the costly sacrifice on the altar; many a time, alas! have they substituted the lame, the halt, the lean, the blemished, for the firstling of the flock; many a due sacred journey has not been undertaken; many a holy service has been unperformed, or performed amiss; many an altar has been bare, without an offering. Yes, the most godly, the p. 105saints that excel, have fallen far short of God’s standard, and have withheld or offered amiss what God required. But yet through infirmity, not through wilfulness or selfishness, have they done it, and speedily and deeply have they repented of it, and then have they straightway laid upon the nearest altar the sacrifice of a broken and a contrite heart, in whose fragrance the ill savour of the other has been lost, with whose costliness God has been well pleased. Such a sacrifice He never despises. Those who offer it shall be forgiven all that is past. They shall be dealt with by the after, not the former life. But, my brethren, if such as these fall short of God’s standard, what of us, who, alas! can lay no claim to attempted perfection, or to grief and contrition for shortcomings? What of our service of God? What do we offer Him? What does religion cost us?

It should cost us much thought—more thought than anything else. Does it? Is it the most frequent and most encouraged employment of our minds to meditate on God, our Creator and Preserver, our Redeemer, our Sanctifier, our Lord and Judge, on heaven, on holiness, on trial and reward, duties and hopes? We all of us have some favourite subject of thought and meditation, something which we ponder chiefly, and lay most plans about, and zealously occupy our mental faculties upon. Is it religion? Does that cost us more thought than anything else? or does business or pleasure, or politics or philosophy, or worldly prospects or p. 106cares? If so—no matter how innocent the object, how laudable in some respects its concern—in making it a chief consideration, we leave nought to offer God but that which costs us nothing, and which is therefore nothing accounted of, yea, rather is rejected by Him.

Again, religion should cost us much affection. Our affections should be chiefly set on it, and only on other things when they can be lawfully considered the adjuncts of religion. Is it so? Do we love God more than anything else? Do we desire heaven’s treasures more than earth’s; eternal glories more than temporal? Do we delight above all things in spiritual pursuits? If any other person, any other thing presents itself as a candidate for our best affections, is it rejected because the place is already filled? Is it disliked, if opposed to religion? Is it but moderately esteemed and distantly entertained, when though not opposed to it, is not religion itself? If otherwise, then religion costs us not our best affections, and so of our hearts we offer unto God of that which doth cost us nothing.

Again, religion should cost us much labour, much self-denial, much zeal and patience, more than anything else. Does it? Is there nothing for which we toil more, and endure more, and encounter more; nothing which we pursue more constantly and zealously? Do we take more pains to please God than man? Do we make more strenuous endeavours to become good Christians than to become p. 107apt scholars, profound philosophers, able and respected politicians, successful tradesmen, accomplished members of society? Would we, and do we rather rise early, and late take rest, go without our usual meals, undertake fatiguing journeys, contend with difficulties, suffer reproaches for religion than for anything else? Do we bear the inconvenience of a warm church more cheerfully than that of a close shop, a crowded hall of business or pleasure? Do we venture forth on religious errands, in cold, and wet, and forbidding weather, more readily than we do for anything else? In what do we wear out our strength and energies, run our greatest risks, and consume our time? Is it, directly or indirectly, in religion; or is it in business or in pleasure? For what do we renounce all needless occupations, for what do we get through as speedily as may be our necessary work? Is it to have time and strength for religion, or for what? The answer, my brethren, which your consciences honestly give to these questions, and many like them that might be asked, will help to determine what religion costs you in this respect, and whether or no, you offer unto God only of that which doth cost you nothing.

Again, religion should cost much of our substance. In one sense, it should cost us all our substance, i.e. we should never spend one mite on a sinful or doubtful pleasure or business, or in contributing to an unhallowed end. Much, indeed, we must lay out in the sustenance of our natural p. 108life, in the prosecution of our worldly calling, in the support and advancement of our families, in the maintenance of our social position. Something, too, we are allowed to spend on our innocent recreations and those of others. But that which is to cost us most, on which we are to spend all that we can, and to yearn to be able to spend more, is on God; directly, by spreading the knowledge of His name, by promoting His service, by building fit temples for His worship, and adorning them suitably to our devotion and His glory; indirectly, by ministering to His representatives, the poor, and afflicted, and helpless, and ignorant.

What, my brethren, let me ask in all plainness, for I speak for God, and God’s representatives—the poor—what does religion cost you in this respect? Are you sure that you have left no Lazaruses to perish of hunger? no pining sick to die for want of the nutriment or attention which you could have afforded? no children to grow up in ignorance and blasphemy whom you could have maintained at school, and helped to make enlightened, serious, holy men and women? Have you looked to these things, yourselves? or have you ungrudgingly, liberally supported those who do? Have you ascertained that the sick and visiting funds of your parish are able to meet the many demands upon them? that there is no difficulty in maintaining the necessary staff of the poor’s best guardians, the clergy? that the alms-boxes will hold no more, or that there is no demand on their p. 109contents? Have you done all this before you have laden your tables with rich viands and costly wines, and bought expensive toys and ornaments, and gone on unnecessary excursions, and paid much for amusements? Or have you consulted self first, and fed, and decked, and petted, and amused self, and then been ready (not, perhaps, even then, forward, but waiting to be asked) to give up something of what self could conveniently spare, for crying, grievous necessities—sparing God your leavings, that which you did not want, or, at least, could easily do without? Remember, brethren, I lay no charge against any one of you. I only, in faithfulness, put to you plain questions, which it is your duty to consider; and bid you speedily discover, from their consideration, what your religion costs you; whether, in your succour, temporal and spiritual, of those worse off than yourselves, you deny and inconvenience yourselves, giving what you cannot part with without feeling its loss and curtailing from other things on account of it (as you all ought to do); or whether you offer unto God, in this way, of that which doth cost you nothing.

Once more, religion should cost you much in the direct service of God; in providing amply for His wide and becoming worship. I pass by now, as duties which there are other opportunities of enforcing, the maintenance of missions, at home and abroad; the building and endowing of schools and churches, and many like things, that I may dwell p. 110for a few moments upon the costliness of the materials of our churches, and their furniture, and, let me add, their ornaments; for all which, if I understand the Bible, we Christians are bound to provide. In the descriptions given us in the Bible, of heaven and heavenly things, there is frequent mention and great display, as it were, of gold, and precious stones, and musical instruments, and beautiful robes, and the like. There are some who understand these descriptions literally, and who suppose that, being raised in material, though glorified bodies, the redeemed will inhabit a material heaven—either this earth transformed, or some other planet—and will be surrounded with glorious material objects, the most beautiful and precious of nature’s productions, fashioned like to art’s best accomplishments. If this is to be so, then it is urged, earth’s tabernacles, as the type of heaven, should be as nearly assimilated to heaven as possible; we should improve and furnish our plainer and barer churches as much as we can; we should build our new churches in the best, the handsomest style of art; and decorate and furnish them in the most substantially costly manner.

Without subscribing to this view (though there is really much to be said for it), I would humbly suggest that, since God, when He designed an earthly tabernacle, prescribed that it, and all in it, should be costly and ornamental; and that when He speaks of heaven He does so under the image of all that is accounted splendid and costly on p. 111earth, He either must have meant to require that we should erect and adorn our churches after this description, or He must have taken for granted that we should best understand spiritual beauties and excellencies by their comparison with what we account earthly beauties and excellencies, and that we should naturally honour and worship Him with the best of these within our reach. It seems, then, to be our duty, nay, to be natural to us, if we are in earnest, whichever view we take, to make our churches and their contents beauteous and costly, either as images of the future church in heaven, or as the nearest representations to it which we can furnish, and the best copies of God’s own pattern.

To this it has been objected, firstly, that the primitive Christians afford us no such example; and, secondly, that it seems unfitting, trifling, unseemly, to decorate the spiritual palace as we would an earthly mansion. The first objection falls to the ground, when we remember, that the early Christians were very poor, and, moreover, were obliged to hide themselves, and, therefore, to refrain from all that would attract attention; and that, as soon as they had the means and liberty, they made their churches very splendid, and furnished them very gorgeously. And the second objection is as soon disposed of. What is unfitting, trifling, unseemly, for the Master, is surely as much, and more so, for the disciple. If God is to dwell in tents, we ought not to dwell in ceiled houses; if gold, and precious stones, and beautiful p. 112arts are unfit for Him, then they are pre-eminently unfit for us. If we may not furnish His house with rich furniture, and put into it, for instance, the best musical instrument, we must not do so in our own houses. It is enough for us, that we should be as our Lord. We must not be above Him, or different from Him. We must not glory in what is unfit for Him. Be then our own abodes rude; let everything in them be homely, unadorned, inferior; banish from them all traces of the artist’s skill; or give all, and use all, more exceedingly upon and in the house of God.

One more argument for adorning and furnishing to the utmost, the house of God:—We must not offer unto God of that which doth cost us nothing of our substance. Now, all that we offer indirectly, no matter how much, how frequently, may yet cost us nothing—that is, it may be only the laying out of that for which we get an immediate equivalent. When you relieve the sick, rescue the tempted, raise the fallen, by the contribution of your substance, if you have not the reward of their gratitude, there is at least the felt human satisfaction of the act; and that would and has remunerated many an infidel. The sacrifice, therefore, in this case, ceases to be a sacrifice; it is a laying out for those who pay you again. But when you expend your substance largely on the direct service of God, hoping for nothing again, perhaps getting nothing, then you offer of that which costs you something; something for which you do not expect an equivalent. p. 113The exercise is a good one, and the duty is imperative. If you got your money’s worth, and your human satisfaction, for its outlay, then you would be offering to God of that which doth cost you nothing.

Let this consideration urge you, then, first, indeed to provide what is necessary for the service of God by yourselves; afterwards, what may help others in like manner to serve Him; and then, not by mulcting them, but by denying yourselves, to give some true gift, some free-will offering, which is costly in itself, and promises no present equivalent. Thus shall you overcome selfish and mere human feelings, and render dutiful, and grateful, and costly sacrifice unto the Lord your God.

My brethren, depart not with the notion that you have heard nothing of Christ this morning. It is a deep-rooted error that, under the law men were commanded to do, but under the Gospel they are forbidden; that then salvation was a work, but now it is only a contemplation. The contrary is the truth. Men might contemplate and wait idly and dreamily before their Redeemer came; they must be up and doing now that He has laid His hand upon them, and given them a lifelong, arduous, self-sacrificing work to do.

It is because Christ has purchased you wholly, body, and soul, and spirit, thoughts, words, and deeds, talents and substance, to be an entire and constant sacrifice unto Him; it is because He is watching over you, and working for and in you, p. 114to make you that sacrifice; it is because presently He will judge and deal with you, according as you have been, or have not been what He required, that I have enforced on you the pre-eminently Christian lesson of taking solemn, anxious heed, that you offer not unto the Lord your God of that which doth cost you nothing.

p. 115SERMON IX.
SPIRITUAL PROGRESS.

To have apprehended; to have attained unto the perfection of the knowledge of Christ; to have gone through the Christian’s appointed course of discipline and duties; to have acquired the acceptable and approved character; to have laid such a hold on salvation as could not be shaken off—this even Paul did not claim to have done. Divinely enlightened as he was, greatly zealous, blamelessly righteous, the chosen vessel of the Lord, he could not be satisfied with the past, he could not rest in the present, he could not calculate on the future. “If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead”—be made one of those who shall be raised in Christ to glory—“not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect. . . . I count not myself to have apprehended.”

p. 116Brethren, if Paul, with all his light, all his labours, all his holiness, all his love, felt that heaven, was, after all, not his sure inheritance, how can any among us count themselves to have secured it, to have become perfect? And yet, not a few do! I am not alluding now to those who are called Calvinists, to those who believe that salvation will infallibly be conferred on a few, chosen without regard to their former, or care for their after life; and that they who believe this doctrine are certainly of the chosen few (every Calvinist, according to his own creed, is sure of salvation)—to those who fancy that a peculiar flutter of strange feelings in the breast which they felt at a certain moment of some day or night, perhaps long past, was the impression of God’s seal upon them; a seal which cannot be broken, which has marked them God’s for ever; and that all they have to do in anticipation, in preparation for glory, is to talk and think about man’s depravity, and God’s electing grace. No! I am alluding to such as are most of you, brethren; who have probably never concerned yourselves about supposed absolute decrees, and irresistible grace, and final perseverance; who do not claim to be objects of any signal conversion; who have felt, and feel no ecstacy and rapture which betoken sure acceptance; and of you, I say, that many of you count yourselves to have apprehended, to know as much, to have done as much, to feel as much, to be as perfect, as you need, and to have a sure hope of salvation. None p. 117of you have a definite theory of this kind; none of you, if I took you apart and said, “Are you sure of heaven?” would dare to answer, “yes,” or to feel that you might answer, “yes;” but many of you, nevertheless, do persuade yourselves, that it is even so; many of you so spend your lives as though you had already apprehended, as though there were nothing which you had yet to attain.

Listen! You believe that there is another life after this. You believe that it may be one of glory, or one of shame and destruction. You believe that there are necessary qualifications for glory, without which it will not be conferred. You hope and expect to partake of the glory. You all know that the change from this life to the next may come at any moment, to any one of you. Still, the greater part of you make no effort to prepare farther for that change; but go on, day after day, year after year, doing the same deeds, thinking the same thoughts, feeling the same feelings, in the same way and measure as heretofore. Is it not so? And if it is, do you not justify yourselves—do you not at least compose yourselves in your present state—by asserting, or at any rate by not actively denying, that you have attained as much faith, and holiness and love, as you need to fit you for heaven. You have apprehended: at least you think so. Otherwise, how could you be contented? Believing in your heart of hearts that there is a heaven, how could you be satisfied if you did not think you would go to it; if you conceived p. 118it possible that the want of something which you have not yet, might shut you out from glory? As I speak to you thus, you feel disposed to protest against my words. You know you are not perfect. You frequently sigh over your lamentable imperfections. You feel that it is only unspeakable mercy which can make any allowance for you. You are not fit for heaven. You are not satisfied with yourselves. You have not attained. You have much to do. You intend to do much. Yes! this is your protest, and it is an honest one; you mean it, you feel it. But, brethren, I am not talking of what you mean and feel now; of the momentary stir of right feeling which takes place occasionally, in church when the minister of Christ rouses you; or at home or abroad, when God calls loudly to you by some unusual act of Providence; or on a sick bed, when physicians speak doubtfully, and friends wear ominously troubled looks; or at the grave-side, when one of your own age and circumstances of life, and like constitution, is being hidden out of sight. No! I am speaking of your usual feelings, and your every-day life; and I say, on their clear testimony, that many of you count yourselves to have apprehended.

You are at ease about heaven; you do not strive, you do not press forward as though it were yet to gain; you do not imagine that any striving, any pressing forward, is needed. What are the religious exercises of the many? A few words of private prayer, morning and evening; an attendance once on the Lord’s day at church; and p. 119now and then, perhaps, a participation of the holy communion. These are the chief, often the only, efforts for grace to attain and apprehend. No perpetual upraising of the soul in prayer; no delight in public worship; no frequent yearning for the communication of Christ through His appointed ordinances; no eager searching of His Word for light, and guidance, and comfort, and encouragement! What, again, are the strivings of the many to attain a heavenly character; to do the work which God has given them to do; to put aside the old man, with his affections and lusts; to walk in holy obedience? Alas! they are merely negative; forbearing to offend against the letter of the great commandments. No literal idolatry, no profane swearing, no Sabbath-breaking, no stealing, no deed of lust, no deliberate slander. This is their righteousness; and if, besides, they occasionally sigh, or utter a self-condemnation, on account of the frequently reiterated, uncurbed outbreaks and indulgences of what they call “infirmities,” they seem to themselves to have attained to exemplary excellence. No matter that all their usual feelings are earth-born, and earth-directed; that their affections are set on worldly things; that they continue, year after year, every whit as spiritually indolent, impatient, bad-tempered, sensual in thought, jealous, faithless, unloving, unholy. They might, indeed, be better in these respects; perhaps they ought to be; but it is not actually necessary. They have already attained what is absolutely p. 120needed. If not quite perfect (no man is) they are perfect enough; better than many others; as good as God will require.

Oh, if men do not think this, do they not act it and testify it in their lives? Does not their religion seem to be a mere occasional pastime? something to be taken up only in the intervals of life’s earnest work; a matter of no real moment; which does not demand more than ceremonious observance, leaving the thoughts, the affections, the energy free; offering nothing (worth the while) to be pursued with zeal, and industry, and self-denial; to progress and grow perfect in; having no claims upon us which are not sufficiently discharged in the way of mere routine?

I should wrong many of you, dear brethren, if I meant this charge to be universal. Of not a few of you, “we are persuaded better things, and things that accompany salvation, though we thus speak.” But, in a degree, even you answer to this description, or part of it; coming nearer, now and then, to contentment about your spiritual state than you should; forbearing, frequently, to press forward enough for what is not yet attained.

Well, then, we are all reproved by the apostle’s lowly estimation of his own past and present: “I count not myself to have apprehended.” Let us now seek to be instructed by his proposals for the future: “Forgetting the things that are behind, I reach forth.” First, then, we are to forget the things that are behind. In the figure which the p. 121apostle uses, that of a runner in a race, to forget what is behind is, not to pride ourselves upon, not to think of the progress we have already made. Paradox though it seem, the Christian religion often bids us both remember and forget the same thing; and it does so in this case. We are to remember the success which has attended us hitherto in the attempt to serve God, both to prompt our gratitude for the past, and to encourage us to persevere, as having hope that we may prevail. We are to forget it, so as not to presume on our goodness; not to rest satisfied with aught we have done, or to count ourselves as having in any measure attained to what God requires of us. There is much temptation to such self-satisfaction, and there is much danger in it. Few, if any of us, who have been earnestly endeavouring to work out our salvation, can fail to observe that we have accomplished something. We have come to feel an interest in spiritual things. Prayer, instead of being altogether a wearisome task, or a mere matter of routine, has begun to be an enjoyable exercise. The pursuit of godliness, instead of being altogether a hard task, requiring us to forego all that is pleasant, to encounter much that is trying, to do that for which we have no taste, has begun to bestow on us its reward, in fulfilling its promise of making glad the life that now is, in elevating us, though, perhaps, but little, towards the hope of the life which is to come. We like now (that is, we dislike less) the exercises of devotion. We p. 122more readily give up what once we clung to as the chiefest good. We begin to realise, that there is something worth striving for beyond; and we make efforts, though they may be feeble, to reach it, and lay hold on it. But, perceiving this change, this improvement in ourselves, we run the risk of coming to think, that we are not like other men; that we have come out, and are separate; that we are in the right way; that God approves us. And the natural effect of this perception, or rather the effect which Satan causes it to produce, is spiritual pride and spiritual indolence. “I love prayer, I cultivate holiness: what lack I yet? I have attained; I have apprehended Christ; knowing and loving Him, and laying fast hold on His salvation.”

Such a feeling once harboured in the breast, and thus interpreted, soon begins to deaden our spiritual energies. We cease to be holy as soon as we fancy ourselves holy. We relinquish effort as soon as we find that we have been using it. In the remembrance of the past, in the spiritual pride which it produces, we forget the future and unlearn humility. Therefore we are to forget the past of progress.

But, besides this, we are to forget what is behind of failure and trial, and former superiority. There is nothing so apt to beget despondency, to discourage further effort, as the review of unsuccess: “I have tried this before, and failed; it is of no use to try it again. Destiny, or innate corruption seems to thwart me and bind me down; it is vain to contend against it.” Thus it is that p. 123men persuade themselves to yield unresistingly to evil. When bidden to forsake it, when desiring to forsake it, instead of making the effort as though it were a first one, the beginning of a right course, in which, if they persevere, they may hope by God’s grace to do well, they recall to memory how they have failed before, and persuade themselves, from their remembrance, that in like manner they should surely fail again: and so they refuse to try. And so, too, the remembrance of former superiority discourages. “How pure, how temperate, how steady, how comparatively good was I once. Alas! that cannot be again. I cannot undo what I have done. I cannot recover what is lost. The past can never be the present.” No, it cannot, brethren, and therefore forget it. Do not seek to undo, to recover. Since that cannot be, aim at something else; and, that you may aim the more steadily, do not let your eye wander elsewhere. If you have left your father’s house, and wasted your substance in riotous living, it is too late to prevent you from being a prodigal; but it is not too late to become a returning prodigal. Forget your former independence; forget the going away into the far country. Remember, that your Father still lives; that He is a merciful, a pardoning Father; that His arms are spread out to enfold you; that there is still room, and welcome room, for you in His house. Forget what you have abandoned, and seek what you may yet have: not former innocence, not the inheritance of uninterrupted dutifulness, but reformed p. 124life, and fresh favour, a new place as a new character.

Once more, forget the things that are behind, as you start, as you run along the course from the world to heaven. Do not delay in considering what you have to give up; do not grudge the effort; do not turn aside your eyes to behold what you are leaving behind, what you are passing by the way. Temporal things, though so infinitely inferior to eternal, are near and palpable; while the spiritual are distant and indistinctly seen. If you ponder and weigh, if you count over too frequently the cost, your own carnal judgment, and Satan’s blinding influence, will check you at starting, or lure you aside. To look back, to gaze about you, to stand still for a moment, is perhaps to lose the race. “See,” says Satan, “what you are leaving, what you are passing. Here are riches, honour, friends, pleasure, ease.” You look, and the look leads you back, or makes you stumble, perhaps fall. “Onward, onward!” be this your cry; this your aim. Stay not in all the plain; look not behind you; look on; behold the goal; remember the prize. Think not of the past; regard not the present; aim at the future. Forgetting the things that are behind, reach forth unto those that are before.

I have anticipated the other lesson of wisdom; that of reaching forth; of concentrating all your thoughts, and all your energies, on what is held out to you by God in Christ. You are not to measure p. 125the distance you have come; you are not to brood over stumblings, and falls, and past slowness; you are not to recall the things that you have left, nor to look at those you are passing. You are to run on, as if the race were all before you; as if the course were an untrodden one; as if there were good hope of reaching the goal. And you are to look steadfastly at the goal, and run eagerly towards it. This is your position; this your course; these your hopes.

Gird up your loins then, lay aside every weight, the weight of worldly temptation, the weight of experienced failure, the weight of difficulties and troubles. Assured that the race may be run, assay to run it. Knowing that the prize is still proffered, attempt to gain it. Gather experience from the past, what to do, what to avoid. Redouble your efforts, quicken your pace, because the time is short, and much of it has been trifled away. Take hope from the future, because the lists are still open, because you are accepted candidates for the prize, because the king waits to crown you.

What does all this mean in plain language? Sinners! repent, cry for mercy, pray for grace, aim at godliness. Lovers of the world! unloose your affections from what is worthless and perishable; fix them upon what is above value and everlasting; let go what you have, cast it behind you, and seek what you have not. Loiterers! move on. Crawlers! rise upon your feet and run. There is no time for delay, for tardy pace. The Lord waits to crown p. 126you, but He will not wait long. Racers! race on, faster, more intent. Let your desires outstrip your feet. Quicken your feet, to come up to your desires. But a little, and the trial of your speed will be over, and the conquerors will be crowned, and all others be rejected.

Brethren, one and all, consider the prize of your high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Enlist heartily in its pursuit; shake off everything that hinders; shut your eyes against all that allures; seek guidance, strength, and perseverance, in prayer, study of God’s Word, and other holy ordinances. Use those graces in daily instant increasing efforts; animate yourselves more and more by anticipations of what is held out, by nearer and more constant beholding of it. Stay not, and pause not till the arms of acceptance enfold you, the Voice of approval greets you, “Well done,” and grateful, realised joy enables you to exclaim, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness.”

p. 127SERMON X.
SPIRITUAL THINGS NOT REVEALED TO THE NATURAL MAN.

All of you, my brethren, to some extent profess, and to some extent desire, to be religious. All of you assent to the truth, that religion is the “one thing needful,” and yet many of you, if you knew your hearts, and examined your ways, would be constrained to admit that religion is not the ruling power of your life. You are indeed religious according to the standard of the age, i.e., you come to church on Sunday, perhaps occasionally to holy communion, you say your prayers morning and evening, you read the Bible now and then, you do not grossly offend against any one of the ten commandments, you sigh over your frailties and infirmities, you give something to the poor. All this entitles you, in the estimation of others, to be classed among what are called religious people; and suggests to yourselves the comfortable p. 128thought, that, at least, you are not worse than other men; that, in fact, you are much better than many. Still, if you are careful readers of your Bible, if you are observant of the world within and around you, if you are given to self-searching, you must often feel that your religion is but a sorry counterfeit of what God has taught and saints have reflected; that you are scarcely half in earnest about it; that you experience very little advantage from it; that you render very empty homage to it. For instance, you read the Sermon on the Mount, or the reiteration of many parts of it here and there, in the epistles; you put together the several characteristics of true religion there displayed; and then, turning an eye upon yourselves, looking back upon the path you have trodden, surveying the ground upon which you now stand, testing your practice, scanning your motives, asking yourselves, “By what am I mainly influenced? whither tend my chief desires? what are my feelings?” “Alas!” you exclaim, “where, in all these, are the influences and operations of the religion taught by Christ and His apostles?”

Or, again, you read of Joseph, stoutly refusing the safe indulgence of a forbidden pleasure, under a heartfelt conviction of required sanctity, and present accountability, which found its vent in those memorable words, “How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” And then you find him, after shining thus brilliantly as a saint, patiently, religiously bearing the treatment of a p. 129sinner. Or you read of Abraham, giving up at a word’s bidding the comforts of home, the ties of kindred, and the means of support; wandering henceforth throughout his life in a strange land, apparently coming no nearer to the promised rest and blessedness, yet cheerfully, hopefully, thankfully, admitting and feeling that all was, and would be right and well for him. Or you read of Moses, refusing the honours, the pleasures, the riches of a court life, and choosing to be a wanderer, to endure all kinds of hardships and reproaches, that he might avoid sin and serve God. Or you read of Job, subjected to concentrated miseries and undeserved chastisements and rebukes, and blessing the Hand which had imposed them, or at least had not interfered to ward them off. Or you read of David, weeping over a forgiven sin, setting it always before him, making frequent mention of it in his prayers, accepting often reverses as the due chastisement of it, and thanking God for them. Or you read of Stephen, cruelly maligned, savagely beaten to death, and yet spending his dying breath, not in protesting, not in invoking vengeance, but in praying, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.” Or, once more, you read of Paul, testifying that to die is gain, and, in the least adverse circumstances of his converted life, coveting to depart.

You read, I say, of these things; you consider under what feelings and hopes they were borne and encountered, and you sadly exclaim, “Where, in me, in deed or feeling, in aim or restraint, in perseverance p. 130or patience, is the religion of Joseph, of Abraham, of Moses, of Job, of David, of Stephen, of Paul? Do I thus resist temptations to unlawful pleasures? Do I set loose my natural affections, give up my worldly goods, go forth into unknown and unguessed-at circumstances at Divine bidding? Do I refuse proffered honours, riches, pleasures, not because they are in themselves sinful, but because they may possibly lead me into sin? Do I patiently and thankfully endure even merited chastisements? Do I struggle with myself and with God to prevent past sins from escaping out of my remembrance? Do I seek to bless those who revile or injure me? Do I feel that to die is gain; and do I covet to depart?”

If not, why not? It is so that God willed men to do; it is so they have in many cases done; and it is so that many still do. Yes, there are still such saints; men and women who steadfastly resist wrong pleasures, under the heart-conviction of required sanctity, and of accountability to a present God; who give up, even while they hold them, all worldly possessions, and go forth, in feeling, in desire, in deed if need be, without distrust, with happy, thankful, confidence, when and whithersoever God bids them; who forego proffered advantages, and content themselves with a low seat when they might, perhaps, have the highest, because it is safer for them as servants of God; who weep and abhor themselves, and desire to be chastened for their sins; who love to do good to their enemies; p. 131who holily yearn to die. There are men and women who do make religion the one thing needful; who hold themselves in check by its restraints; who urge themselves on by its promises; who bask in its sunshine, and reflect its glorious image in their lives. There are men and women whose business is religion; who kneel long and often in prayer; who meditate day and night on the Bible; whose hearts ever leap to God; who grieve to forego an opportunity of holy communion; who never stop away from church because there are only prayers, or because their favourite preacher will not be in the pulpit, or because it is hot or cold. Good citizens they are, attentive to their callings, provident parents, dutiful children, affectionate husbands and wives, cheerful companions, most useful in their generation, and yet truly religious, bent upon religion; regarding this life as an apprenticeship to it, and striving so to use their apprenticeship as to be perfect in their calling, ere they are summoned to exercise it (their ardent expectation) as partners with angels, and patriarchs, and apostles, and perfected saints, under the rule of the Lord of Glory, in the city of the New Jerusalem.

My brethren, if God has prescribed such religion as this; if saints of old, ay, and men and women of our own times too, have been thus religious; it must be important, and, I would fain hope, acceptable, for you who profess and desire to be religious, but are not, to learn wherein you differ, why you fail. The text tells you: “The p. 132natural 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.” “The things of the Spirit of God” (the matters, that is, of revelation) are foolishness to the natural man, and he cannot know or appreciate them. My brethren, are the things of the Spirit of God ever regarded by you as foolishness? Start not, nor be offended at the question. You would, doubtless, deem it very blasphemy to say, “it is folly,” of anything God has revealed. You would rush from the bare thought. Still, you may practically allow what you thus shudder at when exhibited in its plainness. Let us see. Do you ever deliberately do what religion forbids? Do you ever deliberately omit what religion requires? Do you never weigh the things of the world against the things of the Spirit, and then choose the former? Do you never prefer pleasure to duty? staying away from church, or curtailing your religious worship, to take your leisure, to enjoy a friend’s company, to go for a pleasant walk, to read an interesting book, to see some unusual sight, to frequent some place of secular entertainment, to forward some worldly end? Do you not, at least, excuse yourselves from acts of religion, by pleas that you would not admit in these other cases? Do you not find time for earthly things, that you do not find for spiritual? Do you not make exertions for worldly ends, that you do not make for heavenly? Do you not curb, and restrain, and deny yourselves, in the one case, and use no such discipline p. 133in the other? Well, of course you do this through some appreciation of the thing sought; because it interests you, is pleasant, or expedient, or profitable. You do not deliberately choose “folly,” you pursue it as the wise course, i.e., you treat the opposite as though it were unwise, not realising it to be wisdom, you put it aside as foolishness. Then, again, of restraints, and sanctions, and hopes. Would you not forbear to do in the presence of a fellow-being what you unhesitatingly do under the eye of God? Do you not fear a parent, a husband, a wife, a master, a friend, a customer, more than God? Does the thought of eternal punishment concern you as much as the prospect of chastisement at the hand of man? of failure in business? of serious illness? of bodily disfigurement? Do you act chiefly with regard to the praise of God, or the admiration of your fellow-beings? Do you feast on the expectation of heaven, or on that of some worldly joy or honour? Do you like, above all things, the thought of dwelling for ever where there will be no money-getting, no earthly indulgences, no flattery, no vain glory, no frivolity, no unseemliness, no rest from the praising of God, and the company of saints? If a message came to you now, that within an hour you should be removed to paradise, would you not shrink from the announcement? would you not cling to earth? would you not wish your removal to be deferred? Then do you not appreciate something more than the things of the Spirit of God? p. 134Do not your desires, and hopes, and fears, deal with them as though they were comparatively foolishness?

Remember, brethren, I am not now inveighing against sin; I am not attempting to make a catalogue of your offences, that I may reproach you on account of its length. My object is simply to lead you to ascertain how you regard the things of the Spirit of God; and so to help you to answer for yourselves the important questions, why you are not more truly religious, why religion is not with you the one thing needful. Murmur not, then, at home-thrusts. Plead not excuses for what is felt to be amiss. Simply answer to yourselves whether or no your life approves the things of the Spirit as wisdom; and, if not, be anxious to learn (that you may profit by the knowledge) why it treats them as foolishness.

Now, St. Paul tells us, that it is the natural man to whom these things are foolishness; and the spiritual by whom they are discerned to be wisdom. In proportion, then, as you receive them not, or undervalue them, you are natural in contradistinction to spiritual. And what is it to be thus natural? It is to regard the things of religion as one doth other things, from a mere human point of view; and with the faculties and feelings that belong to our human nature, independently of the operation on it of the enlightening and persuading and strengthening influences of the Holy Spirit. It is to attempt to acquaint ourselves with them by natural observation and scrutiny; to expect to understand them p. 135through natural instruction received into natural ears; to try to picture them by the exercise of natural imagination. This is to be natural; and this is what we too frequently are. We get our religious notions as we do our acquaintance with natural science, or with secular history: from observation, or reading, or hearing. We strive to be religious (simply mechanically) by obeying certain laws, and following certain prescribed courses, just as we become peaceful subjects or approved servants; aiming to do what is bidden, to avoid what is prohibited: not from appreciating the sanction or restriction; not from loving what is ordered; but simply from following it as appointed and obligatory obedience. And we get our conception of heaven, of eternal bliss, of God Himself (just as we form ideas about countries afar off, or men who lived before us), by putting together for ourselves, and making to assume a shape of fancy, what we have read or heard about them. It is the mere man—the brain, the mind, the human soul, the natural affections, the unassisted innate energy—which conceives and aims at the observance of the things of the Spirit of God. Hence the failure. The natural powers, which alone we use, cannot grasp spiritual things. “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the mind of man to conceive the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him:” and yet it is the eye, the ear, or the mind, which alone we use to discern them. We have indeed a theory which contradicts our p. 136practice. We know of an external power—the Holy Spirit, which alone can take of the things of God and show them unto us, and influence us to love, and enable us to follow them. We know how that power is to be appropriated, and sustained, and made effectual. We talk of its imparted gift, and we use certain words of prayer for its continuance and efficacious working, but still we go on thinking our own thoughts and doing our own deeds, as though there were no such power; and we wonder and grieve that we are not religious; that we do not heartily approve and follow what God has enjoined and promised.

Believe me, my brethren, or, rather, believe the apostle, it will never be otherwise till you are thoroughly convinced of the utter inability of the natural man to discern the things of the Spirit of God; till your religion consists of earnest entreaties for Divine instruction and impulse, of ready, eager use of all appointed means of securing and vivifying within you the operation of Divine grace, of entire submission to the Spirit’s rule, of watchfulness for His motions, of zealous co-operation with Him. You may spend your life in trying to learn and practise religion, and yet be irreligious after all; unless you renounce all the independent thoughts and efforts of the natural man; unless you give yourselves, actively and passively, in all things, to the special illumination and direction of the Holy Spirit of God. Trust not to the eye, to the ear, or to the mind: they cannot inform or influence p. 137you. Trust not, I say, to the eye. People talk of finding out God from the contemplation of His works; of looking from nature up to nature’s God; of examining the evidences of religion, and becoming religious. But who ever found out the God of the Bible from the works of nature; by the traces of power, and wisdom, and skill, and adaptation, which it is true are marked upon every part of creation; by theorising about a first cause; by investigating Scriptural coincidences, and establishing the authenticity of sacred history? One of the ablest naturalists that ever lived ascribed the various forms and functions of animals to chance, to the operations of winds and streams, to shaping in natural moulds. One of the profoundest astronomers saw no necessity for a first cause; and the man who penned perhaps the sublimest description of our blessed Lord’s character and career, and the most cogent argument for accepting Him as the Messiah, concluded all by saying: “And yet I cannot believe in Him.”

No! brethren; nature is the handmaid of religion. It will corroborate what is already revealed; but it is no ladder to heaven; it is no telescope, to bring near what is afar off. Look at yourselves, and at all around you, by natural light only. You perceive Providence, but not love; sin, but not its remedy; mortality, but not immortality. Read history, ponder probabilities, accredit testimony. Your mind will be instructed; your heart, perhaps, touched; but your spirit will not be quickened.

p. 138It is for this reason that the advocates of religion protest so stoutly against harmless, intellectual recreation as a compromise between godliness and ungodliness; and maintain, on Scripture grounds, that however sobered, however civilised, however naturally elevated, the man is not one inch nearer to heaven and spiritual discernment who spends his Sunday in a crystal palace, or a museum of nature, than he who riots in a den of infamy. “Eye hath not seen.” The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God.

Neither, again, hath ear heard them. Others, that is, cannot describe them to us. It was this which made Paul’s preaching foolishness to the Corinthians. Judges of beauty, lovers of philosophy, fertile imaginers they were, but they had no spiritual ear; they were not enabled by the Holy Spirit; and so the preaching of Christianity sounded to them as some unknown tongue would to us; as unintelligible, unmeaning jargon. Ask an unlearned man to give you an account of some abstruse lecture he has heard; and he will be able to tell you as much as the natural man can tell you of the religious instruction he has received. He will have caught certain names and definitions; he will have remembered, that something was to be thought about this, and something to be done about that; and, if he is enthusiastic, he will, perhaps, attempt the thinking and the doing. But he will not have grasped the subject; he will have no soul to receive it; for the necessary qualification is p. 139wanting—learning, and love of learning. And so, when the Bible, or the preacher, sets forth the things of the Spirit, the natural reader, or hearer, receives them not, and cannot know them. When Christ was on earth, and spoke in simplest words, the men who heard Him, even His own disciples, knew not what He said; and if He were now to come down from heaven and preach to us, all His instruction, all his loving remonstrances, all His precepts and promises, all his glowing pictures of bliss, all His threats of wrath, would be heard by the mere natural man (by those who are not spiritually fitted for spiritual instruction) without influence, and all but without comprehension.

It is most important, brethren, to be convinced of this. We are all of us too apt to make our religion consist of hearing sermons; to suppose, that if we listen patiently, and grasp the intellectual meaning, and feel a little emotion about what is pathetic and alarming, and have a desire to do something that the preacher recommended, or to give up something that he denounced, then that we are receiving the things of the Spirit. Whereas preaching cannot, under any circumstances, do the least spiritual good, or at all enlarge spiritual comprehension, unless the hearers are spiritually prepared. We discourse on heaven or hell: we put together all that the Bible says or hints about it; we form a kind of natural picture of a spiritual thing, and we bid you look at it and consider it. Wherefore? If you are spiritual, to quicken your spirit; if you p. 140are natural, to speak to you a kind of parable, the meaning whereof you may be prompted to ask of Him who alone can reveal it, the Holy Spirit of God. And so of all preaching; it is an important means to an end. It talks to men of God, of redemption, of probation, of the Holy Spirit, of heaven and hell: not with any hope of thereby revealing to them these things; but only to convince their eyes, their ears, their hearts, that there is a kind of knowledge which ought to be had, but which they cannot take in; and so to stir them up to the inquiring how it is to be had, and to enlist them in the right effort to obtain it. Through the ear we arrest the natural man, as the voice of thunder did Saul on his road to Damascus; we do not sanctify him; we do not show him the things of God; we only convince him that there is something which he has not rightly received, or taken into account, and we bid him go elsewhere, to the Spirit, for instruction and salvation. The only possible good that a sermon can do, is, by working on the feelings, or appealing to the understanding, or cross-questioning the conscience, to stir men up to say: “I will know more of this matter.” And the work of grace is only then beginning, when the hearer of the sermon becomes a learner of the Spirit. Ear hath not heard.

“Neither hath entered into the mind of man to conceive” spiritual things. I need not enlarge on this. We know, indeed, that the imagination has great powers; that it forms a very tangible idea of p. 141what neither eye nor ear has had opportunity to discern; that sometimes it surpasses eye and ear, and succeeds in grasping what they have but touched. Hence such sayings as, “It is easier to imagine than describe;” and such practices as shutting the eyes, when we want to realise an idea. But still, in spiritual things, if actual observation and study, if faithful descriptions by qualified persons, a prophet, an apostle, the Bible, the Spirit, utterly fail to inform the natural man, surely he cannot expect illumination from the fancies of his unassisted imagination. Religious ideas come into the mind through the eye and the ear; if, then, these have all along been closed, it must, of course, be empty.

And now, dear brethren, does not all this show you why you are so little religious? Have you not, all along, been dealing with the things of the Spirit too much as though they were things which you could perceive by observation, by investigating their evidence, by intellectually studying them? Have not you tried to learn religion as you would a human language, or a physical science? And have not your highest religious exercises, your searchings into the deep things of God, been the hearing of sermons; or the indulging of your reason, or your imagination? What do you know of religion, which you did not in some of these ways acquire? How much has the Spirit of God taught you? that Spirit who alone knows the things of God, and who alone can reveal them; p. 142that Spirit which comes not first into the eye, or the ear, or the mind of man, but into his spirit. How often do you pray for the Holy Spirit, and strive to prepare yourselves for Him? What dependence do you place on Him for guidance? What means do you use to bring Him near; and how much have you Him in mind while using them? What homage do you render Him? How do you serve Him? When do you commune with Him? When you regard nature, is it by the light of the Spirit? When you read the Bible, is it to learn what the Spirit will say to you, the Spirit invoked to speak? When you hear a sermon, do you pray the Spirit, “Lord, declare unto me, unto my spirit, this parable?” When you meditate, is your supplication, “Open thou mine eyes;” “Except Thy presence go with me, carry me not up hence?” Is your life—thoughts, words, and deeds—directed by the consideration, “If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God”? If not, this is why you are not really religious; and the remedy is in seeking to be and do what I have now described.

Only use your spirit as you have hitherto used your eye, your ear, or your mind. Only put yourselves under the tutorship of the Spirit of God. Only seek to meet Him in appointed places; at public worship, at holy communion, over the Bible, on your knees. Only seek instruction from Him, and refer to Him for interpretations and explanations; p. 143and only ask His help to be spiritually used; and order your life, as far as you can, in accordance with your prayers. And soon you will be, not smatterers, but apt scholars of Divine learning; soon you will walk as seeing Him who is invisible; soon will you know the reality of spiritual things; and, knowing them, love them and seek for them. They will cease to be foolishness to you. You will choose them in every circumstance, as wisdom; you will feel religion to be the one thing needful; you will make it the business and the pleasure of your lives. The life of a Joseph, an Abraham, a Moses, a Job, a David, a Stephen, a Paul, will be found to be not simply possible, but desirable; the only life worthy of the name. Obedience will be easy; trust will expel care; love will cast out fear; selfishness will pass away; temptations will lose their power. No matter will it be to you, where or what you are. Prosperity, adversity, honour, shame, power, weakness, life, and death, will be indifferent to you. If you live, you will live to the Lord; if you die, you will die to the Lord: living and dying, in endurance and desire, thought and deed, you will be the Lord’s.

Brethren, this is what the Spirit of God would make you. That Spirit is pledged to all of you who ask for Him; He waits to reveal to you the things of God.

p. 1Published by
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[76] In theory, the penitent may reserve the confession of venial sins; but, as he cannot rightly judge what are venial sins, in practice he has to confess all.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PLAIN SERMONS, PREACHED AT ARCHBISHOP TENISON'S CHAPEL, REGENT STREET ***

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Plain Sermons, Preached at Archbishop Tenison's Chapel, Regent Street

PLAIN SERMONS

p. iiiCONTENTS.

p. 1SERMON I.
TAKING THOUGHT FOR TEMPORAL THINGS.

p. 14SERMON II.
RIGHT THOUGHTS OF CHRIST.

p. 27SERMON III.
THE CHURCHMAN’S THOUGHTS ABOUT DISSENTERS.

p. 40SERMON IV.
ETERNAL ABODE WITH GOD.—(A FUNERAL SERMON.)

p. 53SERMON V.
MAN’S KNOWLEDGE LIMITED.

p. 64SERMON VI.
CONFESSION.

p. 82SERMON VII.
FORGIVENESS.

p. 101SERMON VIII.
THE PRINCIPLE OF OFFERINGS TO GOD.

p. 115SERMON IX.
SPIRITUAL PROGRESS.

p. 127SERMON X.
SPIRITUAL THINGS NOT REVEALED TO THE NATURAL MAN.

p. 1Published by
WILLIAM SKEFFINGTON, 163 PICCADILLY.

FOOTNOTES.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

	PAGE
SERMON I. TAKING THOUGHT FOR TEMPORAL THINGS.
St. Matthew, vi., 24, 25. . . . Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on . . .	1
SERMON II. RIGHT THOUGHTS OF CHRIST.
St. Matthew, xxii., 42. What think ye of Christ?	14
SERMON III. THE CHURCHMAN’S THOUGHTS ABOUT DISSENTERS.
St. Luke, xvii., 16. And he was a Samaritan	27
SERMON IV. ETERNAL ABODE WITH GOD.—A FUNERAL SERMON.
1 Thessalonians, iv, 17. So shall we ever be with the Lord	40
SERMON V. MAN’S KNOWLEDGE LIMITED.
1 Corinthians, xiii., 9. We know in part	53
p. ivSERMON VI. CONFESSION.
Proverbs, xxviii, 13. He that covereth his sins shall not prosper	64
SERMON VII. FORGIVENESS.
Psalm cxxx., 4. There is forgiveness with Thee	82
SERMON VIII. THE PRINCIPLE OF OFFERINGS TO GOD.
II. Samuel, xxiv., 24. Neither will I offer . . . unto the Lord my God of that which doth cost me nothing	101
SERMON IX. SPIRITUAL PROGRESS.
Philippians, iii., 13, 14. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus	115
SERMON X. SPIRITUAL THINGS NOT REVEALED TO THE NATURAL MAN.
I. Corinthians, ii., 14. 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	127

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Plain Sermons, Preached at Archbishop Tenison's Chapel, Regent Street

PLAIN SERMONS

p. iiiCONTENTS.

p. 1SERMON I. TAKING THOUGHT FOR TEMPORAL THINGS.

p. 14SERMON II. RIGHT THOUGHTS OF CHRIST.

p. 27SERMON III. THE CHURCHMAN’S THOUGHTS ABOUT DISSENTERS.

p. 40SERMON IV. ETERNAL ABODE WITH GOD.—(A FUNERAL SERMON.)

p. 53SERMON V. MAN’S KNOWLEDGE LIMITED.

p. 64SERMON VI. CONFESSION.

p. 82SERMON VII. FORGIVENESS.

p. 101SERMON VIII. THE PRINCIPLE OF OFFERINGS TO GOD.

p. 115SERMON IX. SPIRITUAL PROGRESS.

p. 127SERMON X. SPIRITUAL THINGS NOT REVEALED TO THE NATURAL MAN.

p. 1Published by WILLIAM SKEFFINGTON, 163 PICCADILLY.

FOOTNOTES.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

p. 1SERMON I.
TAKING THOUGHT FOR TEMPORAL THINGS.

p. 14SERMON II.
RIGHT THOUGHTS OF CHRIST.

p. 27SERMON III.
THE CHURCHMAN’S THOUGHTS ABOUT DISSENTERS.

p. 40SERMON IV.
ETERNAL ABODE WITH GOD.—(A FUNERAL SERMON.)

p. 53SERMON V.
MAN’S KNOWLEDGE LIMITED.

p. 64SERMON VI.
CONFESSION.

p. 82SERMON VII.
FORGIVENESS.

p. 101SERMON VIII.
THE PRINCIPLE OF OFFERINGS TO GOD.

p. 115SERMON IX.
SPIRITUAL PROGRESS.

p. 127SERMON X.
SPIRITUAL THINGS NOT REVEALED TO THE NATURAL MAN.

p. 1Published by
WILLIAM SKEFFINGTON, 163 PICCADILLY.