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 PASTOR'S VALEDICTORY 
 
 A SELECTION OF 
 
 EARLY SERMONS 
 
 FROM THE MANUSCRIPTS 
 OF THE 
 
 REV. JOSEPH B. STRATTON, D. D. 
 
 PASTOR OF THE 
 
 PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 
 
 FROM A. D. 1843 TO A. D. 1894, 
 NATCHEZ, MISS. 
 
 NATClIBii, MISS. 
 
 NATCHKZ PRINTING & STATIONEKY CO. 
 
 18 9 O. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preface 7 
 
 The Kingship of Christ 9 
 
 Holiness of God 25 
 
 The Heavenly Citizen 41 
 
 Jacob's Ladder 56 
 
 The SyRo-PH(ENiciAN Woman 70 
 
 The Lily of the Field 85 
 
 The Seat of Sin 102 
 
 The Penitent, Illustrated 117 
 
 Incomprehensible Things 133 
 
 The Shunammite's Reply 148 
 
 The Love op God 163 
 
 The Saved Malefactor 179 
 
 The Shepherds' Tents 193 
 
 The Walk to Emmaus 211 
 
 Martha, The Busy House-Keeper 227 
 
 The Denial of Moses' Prayer 242 
 
 The Deadness of the Pleasure-Seeker 254 
 
 Increase of Faith 270 
 
 Finding the Messias 286 
 
 Enduringness of God's Mercy 300 
 
 The Patriarch's Retrospect . . 315 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THE motive which lias led, in great part, to the publish- 
 ing of this volume, has been the repugnance of the 
 
 author to destroy the material of which it is composed. 
 Manuscript sermons are a most uncomfortable legacy to be 
 left to a minister's family. There is a sort of sacredness 
 about them which deters his discendants from l)urying them 
 in the waste-basket, or consigning them to the flames. 
 They cannot be set to work again, through another man's 
 lips; for that is literary larceny. The end of all discussion 
 over the disposal of them is that they are decentl}' wrapped 
 up in packages and laid away to shrivel in a garret or 
 moulder in a cellar. 
 
 The author, in making his preparation for his final 
 departure from his earthly home, had actually proceeded a 
 considerable length in this work of demolition, and heaps 
 upon heaps of notes, skeletons, scripture studies, and even 
 manuscripts of sermons, fully written out, had been reduced 
 to ashes, when his work was arrested by certain pangs of 
 compunction, and by the reflection that tho' the truth which 
 lay enshrined in those pages had grown dumb, it could 
 still be made to make itself heard, to a limited extent, 
 through a printed message. 
 
 There was still, a further thought which enforced the 
 putting of some of these sermons in print. It was that 
 they had been preached in the earlier years of the author's 
 protracted ministry. The grandfathers and grandmothers of 
 the extant generation had listened to them as they fell 
 
» A PASTOR S VALEDICTORY. 
 
 from the living voice. A tender fascination coupled itself 
 with the idea of preaching over again, through the press, 
 to the grandchildren of to-day, the identical discourses once 
 delivered to their ancestors. 
 
 In the selection of the subjects, the aim of the author 
 has been to secure as large a variety as the size of the 
 volume contemplated would allow, and to present such di- 
 versit}' of st3'le and method as might contribute to the 
 spiritual good of all classes of readers. 
 
 I call this book "A Pastors Valedictory," for it is, in 
 all human probability, the last act I shall perform under 
 my commission as a minister of Christ. The closing daj's 
 of ray eighty-fourth 3'ear, with the multiplied infirmities 
 which are sapping' stone after stone from the material 
 fabric, remind me that m}' active warfare is almost accom- 
 plished. 
 
 May He who gives the early and the latter rain bless 
 with His grace this Autumnal Sowing. 
 
 JOS. B. STRATTON. 
 
 "Sunset Lo(J(/e," 
 
 Natchez, Miss., December 1899. 
 
THE KINGSHIP OF CHRIST. 
 
 DECEMBER 27, 1857. 
 
 "He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest; 
 and the Lord God shall give him the throne of his father David; 
 and he shall reign over the house of David forever, and of his 
 kingdom there shall be no end." — Luke 1:32.33. 
 
 THIS cluster of promises, twined about the bead of the 
 as yet unborn child of Mary, ruarlied bim out as tbe 
 
 Messiah — tbe mysterious "Anointed one," who had 
 been pledged to Israel from tbe earliest periods of their 
 history, for tbe terms used by tbe Angel are identical with 
 those which bad been immemorially employed by tbe Jews 
 whenever they expressed their idea, or their expectation of 
 a Messiah. Tbe fact and state of Kingship were insepara- 
 ble from their conception of Christ. Recall that spontane- 
 ous outburst of conviction wbicb followed that miraculous 
 feeding of tbe five thousand men on tbe shore of tbe Sea 
 of Gralilee. Tbe multitude confessed with one voice "this 
 is of a truth that prophet that should come into the 
 world;" and as a token of their faith; and with a view to 
 realize consistently and fully, tbe fact wbicb their faith 
 bad embraced, they were about to take Jesus by violence, 
 and make bim a King — His Kingship, as they understood 
 it, was the verification of his Messiabship. 
 
 And they bad unquestionably tbe authority of their 
 Scriptures for thinking so. Jacob, their forefather, bad fore- 
 told that the Scepter of Judab should be perpetuated in tbe 
 
10 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 hands of Shiloh, and that unto liim should the gathenng 
 of the people be. David in Psalm II had recorded the 
 Divine decree, "I have set my King upon my holy hill of 
 Zion. " Isaiah had written, "unto us a child is born, unto 
 us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his 
 shoulder. Of the increase of his government and peace, 
 there shall be no end; upon the throne of David and upon 
 his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment, 
 and with justice from hence forth, even forever." Jeremiah 
 had written, "behold, the day shall come, saith the Lord, 
 that I will raise unto David a righteous branch, and a King 
 shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and 
 justice in the earth." Zachariah had written, "Rejoice 
 greatly daughter of Zion — shout daughter of Jerusalem 
 — behold thy King cometh unto thee; he is just and having 
 salvation;" and Micah had written, of Bethlehem, the City 
 of David, that though "little among the thousands of Israel, 
 yet out of her shall come forth he that was to be ruler in 
 Israel." These are only a part of the many intimations to 
 be found in the Old Testament Scriptures of the fact, that 
 the Messiah was to be a King; and the Jews were certainly 
 right in adopting the principle by which they tested our 
 Savior's claim to the Messiahship — "No King — no Messiah." 
 The correctness of this principle, our Lord himself ad- 
 mitted, as do his Apostles, in all their teachings concerning 
 him. In claiming to be the Messiah, he claimed to be a 
 King; and such a King as the Scriptures had said the Mes- 
 siah should be. At the beginning of his ministry we hear 
 Nathanael acknowledging him in such terms as these, "Rabbi 
 thou art the Son of God — thou art King of Israel;" and 
 Jesus evidently commends this profession of his faith, in the 
 form in which it was expressed. And so, near the close of 
 his ministry, when Jesus stood before the governor, and the 
 governor asked him, "Art thou the King of the Jews," he 
 
THE KINGSHIP OP CHRIST. 11 
 
 replies, "thou sayest it" — a distinct and public affirmation 
 of his claim to the office. "My KingJiom;" "my throne;" 
 "my servants," are phrases which occur repeatedly in his con- 
 versations and addresses; and when he hung upon the cross, 
 the taunt of his enemies (evidently in derision of that which 
 had been the foremost of his pretentions as they deemed 
 them) was "if he be the King of Israel, let him now come 
 down from the cross, and we will believe him." And so 
 after his ascension, his apostles in passages altogether too 
 numerous to be quoted, reiterate the same decutration, that 
 Jesus, as the Messiah, was a King. From the day of Pen- 
 tecost, when Peter declared to the Jews that David in the 
 sixteenth Psalm had foretold his resurrection "knowing that 
 God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his 
 loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit 
 on his throne," to the end of the inspired record in which 
 John represents him in the vision which he had of him in 
 Patmos as having on his vesture and on his thigh a name 
 written, "King of Kings and Lord of Lords;" there is no 
 variation in their testimony. As they everywhere preached 
 Jesus as the Messiah, so they everywhere proclaimed him as 
 a King. If the words of the Angel to the Virgin Mary 
 then were true words (and we cannot admit any other thought 
 concerning tkem), we must find in the Child, who in due 
 time appeared as her offspring, something which can be said 
 to sustain his title to the name and office of a King — 
 something which will correspond with and fulfill that very 
 extraordinary form of kingly rank and power which is por- 
 trayed in the Angel's words, "the Lord God shall give unto 
 him the throne of his father David, and he shall reign over 
 the house of Jacob forever — and of his kingdom there shall 
 be no end." 
 
 And yet, it must be confessed, that the last thing which 
 one would have suspected concerning the child born to Mary, 
 
12 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 or conceraiag the man, into whom that child grew, as he ap- 
 peared during his sojourn upon earth, was that he was a 
 King. You may look at him in any of the positions almost 
 in which he appears from his nativity to his crucifixion, and 
 you will say probably, "were such claims associated with 
 such circumstances in any other person, we should be con- 
 strained to smile at the childishness, or pity the insanity of 
 his pretentions." Is this a royal infant, you would ask, who 
 is opening his eyes to the light in a manger and is hushed 
 to his first slumber in a stable in Bethlehem? Surely noth- 
 ing less than an embassy of angels, such as visited the shep- 
 herds, or a sign as illustrious as the star that appeared to 
 the wise men of the East, could have convinced one of this. 
 And is that a royal youth, you would ask, who for long 
 years was so identified m condition with the family of a 
 poor mechanic of Nazareth, that the public, so far as they 
 were cognizant of his existence at all, knew him as only 
 "Joseph, the carpenter's son?" Or is this a monarch, a man 
 of royal rank, who during the time that he did draw the 
 attention of the public to him, was noticeable mainly for his 
 singular lack of everything which constitutes kingly state ; for 
 his lowliness of mind, his poverty, his privations, his toils, for 
 his sympathy with the humble and the weak, for his want of 
 popularity or political influence, and finally for the violent 
 and ignominous form of his death? Not under such aspects 
 does the royalty of this world appear, nor by such tokens 
 does it ordinarily hope to gain credit for its claims. But 
 still the highest testimony that we can appeal to in any 
 case, that which forbids all suspicion and all dissent, says of 
 this child, this youth, this man, that he was a King. How 
 shall we harmonize the apparently discordant elements in 
 this problem? What theory can arrange these seemingly dis- 
 orderly materials? 
 
 "We may begin the attempt to answer these questions by 
 
THE KINGSHIP OF CHRIST. 13 
 
 remarking that Christ as a King is not obliged to appear 
 under those outward forms in which the Kings of the earth 
 embody and exhibit their office. Though he sits upon the 
 throne of David, he does not owe his kingship to that throne. 
 It does not follow that unlikencss in form to the Kings of 
 the earth disproves the fact of his being a King. By 
 no means; tor what if we should find the reality of the 
 thmg called kingship, in Christ, rather than in these human 
 representatives of it? What if the caricature of the thing, 
 if caricature there be in either case, should be found in 
 them rather than in him? 
 
 These questions are not proposed at random. They 
 point to what I suppose to be a great truth enveloped in the- 
 mystery of the world's history; and that is, that Christ is 
 the only real King that the world has ever seen; and that 
 the institution of the kingship as it is found amongst men, 
 is only a dim and often a monstrous adumbration of the 
 fact of kingship as destined to be developed by Christ. 
 Earthly thrones and governments are similitudes or types; 
 showing first, man's need of something, and secondly, God's 
 purpose to give him something, which shall realize the bless- 
 ing sought for under the institution of the kingship. David, 
 as a King, we know, was a shadow of him who was to come, 
 that is, Christ; and so, I suppose, are all others who have 
 borne that royal office. David, to be a King, must array 
 himself in the appendages ot royalty; for men who judge the 
 substance by the symbol, the fact by the form, cannot dis- 
 cern royalty apart from its appendages. And other Kings 
 make good their claim to royalty by the same expedient. 
 But the King, after all, is something distinct from his re- 
 galia. He is the center and the soul, the depository and 
 the dispenser, of the organic life of the State. He is the 
 index and the regulator of its order; and the order of a 
 State is inseparable from the life of a State. It is the 
 
14 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 mode and condition under which its life sustains itself, and 
 acts itself forth. A State without order is a State in an- 
 archy — which is no State at all. The Kings of the earth are 
 the visible representatives of that order which the earth is 
 ever seeking after, as its greatest blessing; and the Kings 
 of the earth have been given to it by God, as a sign and 
 pledge that the blessing it wants is something which it is 
 his purpose to grant it. Thus says the apostle, '-the pow- 
 ers that be are ordained of God, whosoever therefore resist- 
 eth the power resisteth the ordinance of God." The impos- 
 ing appendages with which we are accustomed to invest 
 "the powers that be" are only designed to help us to recog- 
 nize them, and feel, so to speak, their presence and author- 
 ity. These things are not ordained of God; but the powers 
 themselves are. By whatever name distinguished, or in 
 whatever mould cast, the kingship, the governing soul or 
 center, the index and regulator of the order of the State is 
 ordained of God. 
 
 But is this human kingship the final, the perfect form 
 of the institution? Does it meet the need which called for 
 such an institution? Does it represent and realize fully, 
 that ideal which has ever floated before the minds of all who 
 have attempted to solve the problem, or demonstrate the 
 model of government? No, we answer — and it never will. 
 Christ, according to the Scriptures, is the world's King; 
 and the history of the Kings of the world, so called, has 
 been but another volum'i of prophecy, echoing the voice of 
 Scripture, and proclaiming to the groaning creation, that 
 Christ is its King. 
 
 The sovereigns of the earth are but toys, phantasms, 
 mimic monarchs; xroeping alive in the world the hope and 
 the expectation of a true kingship, but never gratifying that 
 hope and expectation; and constituting, as they are the or- 
 dinance of God, a token from God that the true kingship 
 
THE KINGSHIP OF CHRIST. 15 
 
 shall ultimately appear. They are the image ot a great real- 
 ity, in and bj' which, all the benefits which they seem to 
 promise and seem to create, shall be, in truth and in fact, 
 conferred upon the world. 
 
 Now, if there be any ground for the conception which 
 I have hinted at, we can see that there is no necessity 
 whatever for the true kingship copying after the model of 
 the kingship adopted amongst men. That is not the model, 
 not the true thing, but only a copy more or less accurate. 
 And if Christ be the introducer of. the true kingship, it is 
 no impeachment of his claim in any degree, that he does 
 not appear under the form of the world's kingship. Though 
 judging by the appendages ot royalt}', as it is exhibited 
 amongst men, he would not be pronounced a King, he may 
 be a King nevertheless; and these other examples of the 
 office with all their imposing insignia may be but poor imi- 
 tations of it; nay, they may be but a cariacature of the 
 thing called kingship. 
 
 Let us see, now, by what facts, if any there be, tliis 
 claim of Christ to the true kingship of the world can be sus- 
 tained. And in this inquiry it is obviously legitimate that 
 the whole history of Christ should be inspected so far as it 
 bears upon his relation to our world. With the Scriptures 
 in our hands, his personal ministry in the flesh is but a part 
 of this history. There are pages, or volumes of it, to be 
 read prior to his advent as the child of Mary; and there are 
 other pages or volumes ot it to be read subsequent to his 
 ascension. From all that we know of Christ's agency in and 
 upon our world, we are to look for the evidence which is to 
 determine his right to the title and office of King. 
 
 First then, we have the fact presented to us that he ap- 
 peared in our world, out of a pre-existent state, in virtue of 
 his appointment as Mediator between God and man. The 
 great work of peacemaker, reconciliator of our apostate race 
 
16 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 to their Divine Father and Supreme Liege, was what brought 
 him to this earth. And to effect this object, to be a com- 
 plete Mediator, we are taught that it was necessary that he 
 should unite in one person the nature of God and the nature 
 of man. And so, being the Son of God, in which character 
 he says, "I and the Father are one;" and it is said of him, 
 "he thought it not robbery to be equal with God," he be- 
 came the son of man, by being boi'n of the Virgin Mary, 
 in which character he could be said "to be touched with a 
 feeling of our infirmities^' being tempted in all points like as 
 we are, yet without sin;" so that in him, all the conditions of 
 humanity, which are sinless, even the most painful and hu- 
 miliating were fulfilled. He was therefore in the world as 
 the "Word" (which says the Evangelist John) was God 
 "made flesh." He was here as "Immanuel;" that is, "God 
 with us." In his person God is brought into communion, 
 association, fellowship with men, dwells with them, acts with 
 them in the same sphere. For, says the Evangelist again, 
 "the Word, made flesh, dxoelt among us, and we beheld his 
 glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of 
 grace and truth." Now, God manifest in the flesh, which is 
 the proper description of the Mediator, describes at once, 
 one, who, in reference to the flesh, the humanity, the species 
 of being, with which he had identified himself, is entitled 
 to take the position and assume the authority of a King. 
 His Divinity is by its nature a title to the office. God man- 
 ifest in the flesh is the manifestation of one amongst men, 
 who wherever he appears must be acknowledged as a King — 
 the great King, by whom mere human kings rule, who has 
 ordained "the powers that be" that they may be his minis- 
 ters, and that they, in their feeble measure of power and 
 glory, may image forth his own infinite kingship. In the 
 fact then, that Christ came into the world as Mediator, 
 and that in this character he carried with him, in union with 
 
THE KINGSHIP OF CHRIST. 17 
 
 his human nature, a Diviue nature, so chat in his person he 
 was truly God as well as man ; we see that the kingship of 
 the world necessarily devolved upon him. He as truly sub- 
 verted or absorbed, or overwhelmed all other forms of it by 
 his mere presence as the sun in the heavens extinguishes 
 the stars. No matter in what form of humanity, or under 
 what set of circumstances he appeared, so long as it could 
 be said of him "in him God is manifest in the flesh" he 
 was a King. And hence the prophet Isaiah employs the 
 gradation which is discernable in his prediction of him be- 
 fore quoted from his ninth chapter, speaking of him, first, 
 as the "child born," and then, as one upon whose shoulder 
 "the government should be laid," and then as one whose 
 name should be called "Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty 
 Grod, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace." Though 
 he was to appear as the first, 3'et he was the second, that 
 IS, a King, because he was still the third, that is, as being 
 entitled to bear the names by which Deity expresses its es- 
 sential and incommunicable perfections. 
 
 And now resting his claim to the kingship upon this 
 mysterious fact, which his history brings to light, the Scrip- 
 tures, I proceed to remark, give us further evidence of the 
 propriety of that claim, in the regal attributes or the quali- 
 fications for the kingship with which he is represented as 
 endowed. Indications of these he gave, again and again, 
 while he was upon earth. Could some philosophical philan- 
 thropist, whose soul was yearning for the appearance, on the 
 behalf of a misruled and groaning world, of his ideal King, 
 have followed Christ through his career, and intelligently 
 marked the shining array of virtues and talents which his 
 life evolved, and noticed how adequately they met every de- 
 mand and exigency; how steadily they maintained their lus- 
 tre and their power under all circumstances; how under an 
 endless variety of phases they ever exhibited the same ce- 
 
18 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 lestial purity, and the same glorious perfection; he would 
 have said "0 could these virtues and these talents but meet 
 in some occupant of a throne! O were Csesar but a Jesus, 
 my dream would be fulfilled, my ideal king would be no 
 more a vision of the imagination, but a living reality!" 
 When the Psalmist would describe the royal attributes of 
 God, he says, "justice and judgment are the habitation of 
 thy throne, mercy and truth shall go before thy face;" and 
 just these things, we may say, that is, integrity which even 
 his bitterest enemies could not convict of a single failure; 
 wisdom, which withstood the assaults of the wiliest tempt- 
 ers; truth, which was never marred by the shadow of decep- 
 tion in himself, and which never left deception in others 
 unrebuked; benevolence, which knew no self, and which of- 
 fered life itself as a sacrifice for the good of others; just 
 these things we should select as those which gave the char- 
 acter of Christ, its peculiar type and its unapproachable ex- 
 cellence. 
 
 But this is only the furniture of his kingship exhibited, 
 so to speak, through the medium of his humanity, and on 
 the partial scale, required by the condition of his residence 
 upon earth. These royal gifts have found the destination 
 which the philosophic philanthropist would, as I have con- 
 jectured, have desired to give them. They have been ex- 
 alted to a throne, for "him" says she apostle "hath God 
 exalted to be a Prince and a Saviour." The history of the 
 Mediator does not terminate with the history of his humili- 
 ation. He has gone up again to the heavens from which 
 he descended when he was made flesh and dwelt among us; 
 and now ever liveth at the right hand of the majesty on high, 
 clothed with the perfections, which while here graced his 
 humanity; but which there, unrestricted by the conditions 
 in which his humanity here appeared, can be exercised in 
 all the boundless scope, and in all the matchless efficiency, 
 
THE KINGSHIP OF CHRIST. 19 
 
 of the attributes of Grod. He who sits at the right hand of 
 the majesty on high, has all the kingly prerogatives and en- 
 dowments at his command which dwell in that right hand. 
 "In him," says the apostle, "dwelleth all the fulness of the 
 Godhead bodily. " What the kingship of the world demands 
 therefore in the person who claims it, in order that it may 
 be a reality and not a mockery, I say is completely found 
 and fulfilled in Christ. 
 
 And now in the third place, I remark that as he has 
 the title to the kingship, and the qualifications for it, so he 
 has a kingdom, a body of subjects over whom he exercises 
 his kingship. "He shall reign," said the angel to Mary, 
 "over the house of Jacob," but the house of Jacob, we 
 know from other passages of Scripture, means what the an- 
 cient Israel represented, the Church. Christ has a people in 
 the world who acknowledge him as King. No matter to 
 what earthly sovereign they profess allegiance, no matter 
 where, under the dynasties and governments of the world, 
 they may live, Christ's crown, in their view, is the crown 
 of crowns. No human king is king to them when his king- 
 ship comes in conflict with the kingship of Christ. As the 
 man plants the acorns, which in the slow lapse of years, 
 shall appear in the landscape as a forest of giant oaks, so 
 Christ during his mission as Mediator to our world intro- 
 duced into it the elements which in their operation upon the 
 souls of men have wrought a phenomenon quite as signal as 
 the rearing of the forest, where, before, was a vacant field. 
 He has made a body of men new creatures in himself; he 
 has made that which was flesh, spirit; he has converted the 
 children of the devil into the children of God; he has 
 raised up in the world and out of the world, a generation 
 of whom he can say, "ye are not of the world, even as I 
 am not of the world." In this kingdom he reigns supreme. 
 He is its Mediator — King, and the royalty which binds it to 
 
20 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 him is strong and deep as the life-strings of the heart in 
 which it resides. What we call the visible Church repre- 
 sents this kingdom, but it really consists of all, wheresoever 
 found, who in virtue of his mediation have been redeemed 
 to God and sanctified by his spirit; and in this true church, 
 Christ has recorded in the world's history, in all ages, the 
 fact that he is King. 
 
 But the Scriptures teach much more than that Christ 
 reigns in his church. He reigns also for the church. He 
 is King in regard to whatsoever concerns the church. He 
 commands and controls whatsoever can affect the church. 
 Thus he is said to be "head over all things to the church." 
 The world, out of which the church is gathered, and in which 
 it exists, is not independent of his dominion, and is under 
 his regimen, for the sake of the church. It does not tol- 
 erate the church, but it is tolerated on account of the church. 
 It was made for Christ's kingdom ; it is preserved in order 
 to the completion of his kingdom; and when it is needed 
 no more for his kingdom's sake, it will exist no more. 
 And while it stands, it has no power in an atom of it to 
 move against his consent, or his bidding, and is working 
 together in all its parts for the accomplishment of his me- 
 diatorial purposes, and for good to them that love God and 
 are the called according to his purpose. Hence his promise 
 in regard to the church "the gates of hell shall not prevail 
 against it." 
 
 And so he is king in regard to whatsoever is connected 
 with the mission end of the church; "I am with you al- 
 ways," he said to his apostles when he gave them the charge 
 to go and make disciples of all nations; and this word, "I 
 am with you always," dwelling as it does as an ever living 
 promise in the bosom of the church, is a security that his 
 kingship is ever co-operating with the church. He is reign- 
 ing over the world and in the world, for the furtherance of 
 
THE KINGSHIP OF CHRIST. 21 
 
 the work ot the church. Just as he is said to have been 
 in the church of okl "in the wilderness," and just as he 
 opened the sea, and made the rock gush with water, and 
 tiie heavens rain down manna, and the walls of hostile cities 
 fall to the ground, and the hearts of brave armies quail be- 
 fore the terror of his presence; for their deliverance and 
 their triumph, so still, he is in the midst of the Sacramen- 
 tal host of his elect. And though their wanderings may 
 seem long, and their victory and their inheritance seem to 
 tarry strangely in their coming, j^et, as surely as Israel 
 reached the promised land, Christ, the King, in the great- 
 ness of his strength will travel with his church, till he and 
 she together shall cross the last entrenchment of the ene- 
 my, and trample the ruins of the last stronghold of Satan 
 beneath their feet. Such then, is his kingdom, the church; 
 and the world so far as it is regarded as the scene and 
 the subject of the church's operation. 
 
 And now, there is one particular more, which I will 
 glance at as confirming and illustrating this kingship of 
 Christ — though it has been to some degree anticipated in 
 what I have just said — and that is, that he appears in the 
 world actually exercising the office and performing the acts 
 of a King. His agency as seen in the world is such, so to 
 speak, as indicates a kingly policy. For instance he is a 
 law-giver. He commands with absolute authority the con- 
 science of his subjects. To disobey hira is more than a 
 political crime, it is a moral offence, it is sin, it is wrong- 
 doing before God, which God will judge and punish. 
 You might make a blank of all the statute books promulgated 
 by human legislators, you might abolish your courts of jus- 
 tice, and pull down your prisons, and yet, there are men in 
 the world who would feel themselves as much under law as 
 ever — men who would turn away from certain practices and 
 indulgences with as much dread as if the interdict of Sinai's 
 
22 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 thunder were bidding tliem beware. They are the men of 
 Christ's kingdom; and they would do this because they re- 
 cognize the obligation and sanctity of his law, as something 
 apart from and above the enactments of human legislators. 
 So truly, so effectively, by this kingly law, this imperial 
 word, he governs his people. 
 
 And then further, while governing them, he defends 
 them. They follow him as his sheep, and he as their shep- 
 herd protects them against all their enemies. '-I give unto 
 them eternal life," he says, "and they shall never perish; 
 neither shall any pluck them out of my hands." "Who 
 shall separate us from the love of Christ," he has taught 
 them to say, "shall tribulation, or distress, or persecu- 
 tion, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Naj', 
 in all these things we are more than conquerors through 
 him that loved us." And so again, as a king he appears 
 prosecuting a scheme of conquest in the world. He has not 
 only a territory in which he reigns, but a territory which he 
 seeks to win. "The heathen shall be given to him for his 
 inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for a pos- 
 session" is a promise given to him as Mediator, which he is 
 engaged in bringing to its fulfillment. He is looking for- 
 ward to the hour when "every knee shall bow and every 
 tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the 
 Father." He proves his kingship thus by his kingly achieve- 
 ments. He conquers by his grace every soul that comes 
 into his kingdom. Every case of conversion is an illustra- 
 tion that he is prosecuting his victories in the world. And 
 the power that subdues one rebellious heart is proved, by 
 the fact, to be equal to the conquest of any other, and of 
 all others. And that power will ultimately lead into will- 
 ing captivity to his sway every soul that stands written in 
 the roll of his redeemed people, or in the book of life. 
 Christ is thus the true conquerer of the world, the reality, 
 
THE KINGSHIP OF CHRIST. 23 
 
 great and glorious, of which all the vaunted conquerors of 
 the world, the Alexanders and the Napoleons of human his- 
 tory, are the miserable caricatures; conquering not by fire and 
 sword — not by the sack of cities and slaughter of armies, 
 but by his word and spirit — and conquering not in the lust 
 of empire, but for the good of his subjects and for the 
 triumph of righteousness. Christ alone has shown the world 
 that kingly thing, a conqueror, and that kingly act of con- 
 quering, not by carnal weapons, but by force of truth and 
 in the spirit of love. 
 
 And then once more, he stands before us as a King, 
 because in the grand conception of what is his due, he does 
 all things for his own glory. This pursuit of glory in the 
 case of men, though it is the passion of kings, and called 
 noble, is mean and presumptious. It is again the caricature 
 of a good and great reality. For man's glory is but the 
 worship of self, rendered to an object unworthy of it in the 
 first instance, and tending only to sink him deeper in un- 
 worthiness as it is professed and enjoyed. But the glory of 
 Christ is the highest end that can be contemplated by any 
 intelligence, human, angelic or Divine. The pursuit of it by 
 him is that right thing, that kingly act of Deity, which men 
 in their pursuit of glory, vainly and wickedly try to imi- 
 tate. Of God, we are taught to say, "thine is the kingdom 
 and the power and the glory forever," 'iThou are worthy 
 Lord," the worshippers in heaven are represented as say- 
 ing, "to receive glory and honor and power, for thou hast 
 created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were 
 created." "I reign for myself," is language which is wrong 
 on the lips of human kings; and it always betrays the des- 
 pot; but it is language which becomes Christ; for his glory 
 is identical with the supremacy of right, and truth, and love; 
 and the pursuit of it is only another name for the exalta- 
 tion of all worthy objects, for the triumph of all good and 
 
24 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 noble principles, for the infinite experience of holy joy in 
 his own heart at the enthrownment of holiness in the hearts 
 of all his creatures. 
 
 Upon facts like these, we build our doctrine of the 
 Kingship of Christ. It is an actual verity, a supreme po- 
 tential factor in every man's life, and in the world's history, 
 not a dream of the poets, nor a figment of the schools. 
 The air, we know, is resounding with acclamations in favor 
 of other lordly powers which claim sovereignty over the 
 earth. The "Spirits" of the successive ages pass before the 
 eyes of men in a royal procession; and their heralds go be- 
 fore and cry, "bow the knee." They flaunt their standards 
 in the commercial exchange — in the political cabinet — in the 
 halls of science — in the arenas where avarice and ambition 
 marshal their forces and strive for lordship; and before 
 them the multitude bend their spirits in trust and worship. 
 But it is only the delusion of the madmen of Elijah's day, 
 crying vainly, "O Baal hear us." These are but mockeries 
 of the world's need. There is no King for it but Jesus. 
 
 And let this be my last remark; there is no religion 
 for men, but that which sincerely, intelligently and practi- 
 cally acknowledges the Kingship of Jesus; and the doom of 
 those who persist in rejecting him, has been foretold in his 
 own solemn words (Luke xix, 27) "those, mine enemies, 
 which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, 
 and slay them before me." 
 
HOLINESS OF GOD. 
 
 FEBRUARY 22, 18G3. 
 
 "And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, speak unto all the 
 congregation of the children of Israel, and say unto them. Ye 
 shall be holy: for I the Lord your God am holy." — Lev. 19:L3. 
 
 RELIGION IS a due recognition of God by a rational 
 being. To exist in a true form, it must be the out- 
 growth of an accurate, complete and profound con- 
 ception of what God is. It may be defined to be the giv- 
 ing to the fact that there is a God, the full eflfect to which 
 such a fact is entitled. To give full effect to such a fact, 
 the mind must be rightly informed and rightly affected in 
 regard to it. And if there is any one thing more neces- 
 sary than all others to be known and felt, in order that the 
 mind should be rightly informed and rightl}^ affected in re- 
 gard to God, it is, according to the Scriptures, that He is a ho- 
 ly being. This is evident from the special pains which the 
 sacred writers take, to impress this idea upon their readers. 
 The God whom they set before us, is described always and 
 conspicuously as the "Holy One." And that it is his own 
 purpose to be conceived of, as distinguished by this charac- 
 teristic above all others, is demonstrated by the fact that 
 he causes every thing which is particularly associated with 
 himself, to be regarded as bearing this quality. The mo- 
 ment he indicates that he has taken a thing into union with 
 himself or identified it in any way with himself, he denom- 
 inates it hoi}'. Incapable as it may be, in its own nature 
 
 25 
 
26 A pastor's VALEDICTORr. 
 
 of acquiring any moral property, in virtue of its relation to 
 him, as his representative or adjunct, it immediately as- 
 sumes a quality of holiness, not original or proper to it but 
 derived from its factitious position as a symbol or mdex of 
 himself. Thus when he institutes the Sabbath, as a day be- 
 longing to himself, he calls it his "holy day." When he 
 chose the Abrahamic race, as his peculiar people, he calls 
 them, a "holy nation/' When he directed the building of 
 a temple, he calls it his "holy house ;" and that part of it 
 which was more particularly signalized as his habitation by 
 a visible token of his presence; and which was veiled from 
 the eye of all but the High-priest, was designated still more 
 emphatically', "the Holy of Holies." The vessels, the uten- 
 sils, and the garments, used in the temple service, were all 
 pronounced holy, because used in the worship of God. The 
 ground upon which Moses stood, when the Lord appeared to 
 him in Horeb and spake to him out of the burning bush, 
 was declared to be "holy ground." Everything, in short, 
 which belongs to Grod, which he touches, or appropriates, 
 becomes by that fact, holy. The idea of God and the idea 
 of holiness are thus kept in close and immediate association 
 Whatever suggests the one, suggests the other. What he 
 put thus conspicuously forward, in every exhibition of him- 
 self must be taken as the badge or mark by which he ex- 
 pects to be distinguished in the apprehension of intelligent 
 creatures. God would be pre-eminently recognized as a 
 Holy God. Find him where you will, he demands of you 
 that 5'ou couple this idea with your conception of him. 
 
 I propose to inquire this morning, as particularly as we 
 may be able, into the meaning of the term the holiness of 
 God ; and to indicate the obligations which the possession 
 of such an attribute by the Creator lays upon the creature. 
 First, then, what are we to understand by the proposition 
 of the text, "I am holy ?" The usage of Scripture will fur- 
 
HOLINESS OF GOD. 27 
 
 nish us with the proper answer to this question; and will dis- 
 close a, wider range to the sense of the proposition, than in 
 our ordinary way of speaking, we are wont to allow to it. 
 The initial thought involved in the word, as applied to God 
 in the Bible, is that of separation. This is evident from 
 the fact that whenever it is applied to created things, it is 
 used as the opposite of common. By analogy therefore, as 
 appellative of the Deity, it must descrilje him as subsist- 
 ing in a state of uncommonness, if I may use such an 
 expression. It designates him as a being by himself, occu- 
 pying a position removed by an absolute and infinite inter- 
 val, from all others beings. It indicates the singularity of 
 his nature, the complete and unalterable disparity which 
 separates his essence from that of all creatures. He is God 
 alone, isolated in the inviolable and unattainable perfection 
 of his Divinity. Hence, in the song which Moses sang af- 
 ter the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea, he 
 asks, "who is like unto thee, Lord, among the gods who 
 is like thee glorious in holiness ?" ; and Isaiah in his 40tb 
 chapter, presents the challenge "to whom then will ye liken 
 me, or shall I be equal ? saith the Holy One " In both 
 which questions, there is a direct and express allusion to 
 the holiness of God, as coincident with that unlikeness to 
 him which is predicated of other beings. The Scriptures 
 abound with similar passages, classifying and defining God 
 as it were by this unlikeness to any thing else which exists. 
 Men and angels have their fellows — their similitudes — but 
 God has none. As wide a gap as lies between the infinite 
 and the finite, lies between him and the loftiest creature. 
 Comparison, in such a case is out of the question ; and any 
 thought of it, or attempt at it, is an affront to God. To 
 deify anything else is to perpetrate falsehood, on the grandest 
 scale, for Deity is an incommunicable tiling. It is the august 
 mysterious, awful specialty of God. It describes what be- 
 
28 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 longs to him and what by an absolute, eternal necessity can- 
 not belong to a creature. Hence the first statute of the law 
 which was pronounced on Sinai, declares, "thou shalt have 
 no other gods before me," establishing it as the fundament- 
 al truth of religion, that God is the sole being of his kind, 
 and that to give his name, or ascribe his attributes, to 
 another, is rebellion against him. He removes himself by 
 an immeasurable chasm from the whole universe, and allows 
 nothing within iis wide compass to claim affinity or equality 
 with himself. He requires all other intelligences to recog- 
 nize this essential and total diversity by which he is separ- 
 ated from them. He would have them remember, always, 
 that he is the invisible, the inaccessible, the incomprehensi- 
 ble God. As He said to Moses in the wilderness "set bounds 
 unto the people round about, saying take heed to your- 
 selves that ye go not up into the mount, or touch the bor- 
 der of it," so He says to the whole race of creatures. Be- 
 tween his habitation, between his person, and them, there 
 is a l)Ound set, which the}' can never pass over. To over- 
 leap it, even in thought, is an act of profane presumption. 
 "Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thy- 
 self," is one of the distinct offences charged against the 
 wicked in the 50th Psalm, which God declares that he will 
 punish. And here, in the apprehension of this absolute and 
 entire difference which divides the Deity from the creature, 
 is the first element which the Scriptures, propose to our 
 consideration in forming our idea of the holiness of God. 
 
 A second element is obtained by regarding this differ- 
 ence under the particular aspect of exalfafion. God is holy, 
 not merely because he is infinitely separated from other be- 
 ings, but because he is infinitely elevated above them. The 
 distance at which he places himself from them, is a distance 
 in respect to height. He is not only totally unlike them, 
 but immeasurably superior to them. That this idea of ex- 
 
HOLINESS OF GOD. 29 
 
 altation is included iu the idea of the Dlviue Holiness, is 
 evident from the passage in Isaiah LVIL, 15 v., "thus saith 
 the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name 
 is Holy ; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also 
 that is of a contrite and humble spirit." He whose name 
 is Holy, is here called the "high and lofty one," and the 
 holy place in which he dwells is also designated, "the high 
 place." This juxta-position of terms unquestionably indi- 
 cates a correspondence in the sense of them. God is pre- 
 sented to us, in the same view, when we are told in one 
 proposition that his name is holy, and in another that he is 
 the high and lofty One ; and the place of his residence is 
 presented to us in the same view, when it is described by 
 one epithet as high and by another as holy. We may con- 
 clude, therefore, that whenever God sets himself before us, 
 in the character of a holy being, he requires us to take in- 
 to our conception of him the idea that he is a being infin- 
 itely exalted above all creatures. He is in heaven, seated 
 upon his holy hill, enthroned in the unapproachable gran- 
 deur of his Divine pre-eminence. Other beings in beholding 
 him, must look not only away to a distant sphere but up to 
 a higher one. Other beings dwindle into insignificance in the 
 attributes of their nature, iu the circumstances of their state 
 and m the measure of their powers, when compared with 
 him. The degree of his diverseness from them is the de- 
 gree of his greatness over them. 
 
 And then to this thought of the boundless exaltation 
 of God, the Scriptures lead us to attach another, which 
 seems to define his holiness still more ; and that is, that of 
 majesty, or kingly supremacy. He is not only elevated in 
 nature, but in rank, in office. He is not only seated above 
 the heavens, but he doeth his will in the army of heaven, 
 and among the inhabitants of the earth." "I am God" he 
 says "and there is none else ; I am God, and there is none 
 
30 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 like me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from 
 ancient times the things that are not yet done; saying, my 
 counsel shall stand and 1 will do all my pleasure." That 
 is, as God, it is his absolute prerogative to exercise super- 
 intendence over all things, and to manage and direct all 
 things by his sole authority. The glorious solitude, in which 
 he dwells, is the seclusion of unshared and universal sover- 
 eignty In that vision of him which Isaiah describes in his 
 6th chapter, where the Seraphim appears crying one to 
 another, "holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts." "I saw 
 him," he says "sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, 
 and his train filled the temple." The cry of the Seraphim, ho- 
 ly, holy, holy, was the acknowledgment of the character in 
 which the Deity was manifesting himself at that moment, 
 when he sat upon his throne, high and lifted up resplendent 
 in the symbols of imperial state. The fact, that drew forth 
 their loyal acclamations, was the fact that made him holy. 
 He was not only a great being, elevated above all creatures 
 in eminence of nature, but a great kint^ transcendent in ma- 
 jesty, as well as in personal dignitj" and excellence. And 
 it was his majesty, not less tlian his exaltation above, and 
 his separateness from all other beings, which was referred 
 to in this triple ascription to him of the attributes of holi- 
 ness. His name was holy, because as the Psalmist says in 
 one place it was "reverend" that is entitled to veneration 
 and homage, as the representative of the Supreme power of 
 the universe ; just as in another place it is said to be holy, 
 because it is "great anl terrible," that is, invested with 
 that immense and boundless authority which was adapted to 
 fill the rational mind with pious awe and fear. 
 
 If now, we combine these three ideas, which we have 
 thus evolved from the sense of the term, holiness, as ap- 
 plied to God, that is to say, if we conceive of him as sub- 
 sisting in a state of infinite separateness or diverseness from 
 
HOLINESS OF GOD. 31 
 
 other beings, of infinite exaltation above them, and of infi- 
 nite dominion over tliem. we shall find that we have pro- 
 gressed so far into the import of our theme, as tp be con- 
 fronted with an object whose mysteriousness and awfulness 
 are well nigh overwhelming. How tremendously such a God 
 spreads and towers beyond those forms and proportions un- 
 der which we ordinarily think of him! Vast and stupendous 
 as are those magnitudes which are exhibited to us in the 
 works of God, how dwarfed they all seem when compared 
 with those which are comprehended in this one attribute, 
 the holiness of God, even as we have now explained it! 
 
 But far as we have gone, we have not yet explored 
 our high doctrine to its summit. The last and crowning- 
 elevation remains to be noticed. That, in which the holi- 
 ness of God culminates, we may say, is the essential and 
 perfect moral ■purity of his nature. His holiness is his in- 
 herent, original, total, and perpetual antagonism to sin. In 
 this fact, the other facts of which we have spoken, com- 
 plete themselves. Without this, the other conceptions of 
 God to which we have alluded, would not fully realize the 
 proper idea of God. Without this, his separateness from 
 creatures, his exaltation above and his dominion over them, 
 would all fail in establishing his claim to the name and 
 the honors of God. Even amongst men, goodness and 
 greatness are felt to be cognate and coincident attributes. 
 It is only by the application of a false standard that a bad 
 man can ever gain the credit and fame of being a great 
 one. In a pure and just society he never could be recog- 
 nized as a great one. The ambition which is now seen in 
 so many sinister forms, domineering in the human heart, is 
 only a corrupt and prostituted affection, which, in its right 
 shape, would appear in the earnest aspiration and endeavor 
 of the soul after eminence in goodness. The diverseness 
 from his fellows, the elevation above them, the mastership 
 
32 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 over them, which are to make a man really great, must be 
 a diverseness, an elevation, and a mastership, founded on 
 superiority in moral purity. And God when he requires us 
 to acknowledge those other facts concerning him, which, as 
 we have seen, are included in the sense of the proposition, 
 "I am holy," lays an ample ground for what he requires, 
 in the fact that he is infinite in goodness. The Scriptures 
 proclaim this of him with a scrupulousness and copiousness 
 of statement which must have struck every intelligent reader. 
 So prominent a feature is this in the inspired portraiture of 
 God, that it is the first and ordinarily the only idea of his 
 holiness which the mind carries away with it from the sa- 
 cred page; those other elements in the attribute at which 
 we have been glancing, being, in a degree, overshadowed 
 by the preponderating dimensions of this. Thus righteous- 
 ness, uprightness and truth are constantly used as equiva- 
 lents to the holiness of God. "He is of purer eyes," it is 
 said, "than to behold evil, and cannot look upon iniquity." 
 He is righteous in all ways, and holy in all his works. 
 He has no pleasure in wickedness, and evil shall not dwell 
 with him. All that do unrighteously are an abomination 
 unto the Lord. He is angi'y with the wicked every day. 
 His law is holy, just and good. Sin is everywhere the ob- 
 ject of his reprobation, his enmity, and his aversion. As 
 it is infinitely separated from his nature, so he judicially 
 separates it infinitely from his person and presence. He 
 drives it away — casts it out — he hides his face from it. By 
 fearful tokens he has pursued it, all through the world's his- 
 tory, with his wrath. "The whole creation groaneth and 
 traveleth in pain together" until now in consequence of the 
 curse which followed the first perpetration of it. Death, in- 
 cluding all manner of evil, temporal, spiritual, and eternal, 
 has been its wages from the beginning. By no means, on 
 no. account, in no instance, will God clear the guilty. The 
 
HOLINESS OF GOD. 33 
 
 angels which kept not their first estate were driven by one 
 fell stroke of vindictive power into the bottomless pit. 
 Apostate men can be saved from the same dark doom, only 
 by the intervention of a Redeemer, who in the person of 
 Deity, bears the punishment due to their sin; and so satis- 
 fies the demands of law, and exhausts the penal wrath to 
 wliich the\ were liable. The mercy that has opened the 
 gates of heaven, as well as the severity which has built the 
 dungeons of hell, is an everlasting witness to the holiness 
 of God. Providence, could we read its processes aright, is 
 one uniform demonstration of the operation of this principle; 
 and when its processes are all completed, and we shall be 
 able to read it aright, in its grand results, the mighty 
 scheme will stand, like a monument covering heaven, earth 
 and hell with its broad base, and illuminating eternity with 
 its radiant manifestation of the holiness of God. 
 
 With that conception of God, which this view of him 
 as a holy being, is adapted to give us, in our minds, we 
 are now prepared to understand the force and extent of that 
 obligation which, the text teaches, the fact that he is such 
 a being, lays upon his rational creatures. "Ye shall be holy, 
 for I the Lord 5'our God am holy." That is, man is re- 
 quired to be holy, because God is holy. That man, as 
 originally created, was holy, we know. He was made in the 
 image and likeness of God. It is not too much too say, he 
 could not have been created anything else. In giving a 
 moral nature to a creature it is inconsistent and improbable 
 to suppose that God would have made him anything but a 
 holy being. For man to unmake himself, to reverse his 
 character, to bring his nature under the dominion of sin, 
 instead of holiness — therefore, must be the most flagrant of 
 all breaches of duty towards his Maker. While the propo- 
 sition, "I the Lord your God am hoi}'," remains true, there- 
 fore, the o))ligation, "ye shall be holy," must continue in 
 
34 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 operation. It grows out of the very institution of things. 
 Itj grows equally out of the condition and laws of man's na- 
 ture. Holiness is the highest stage of development to which 
 he can attain. His highest distinction is that he is capable 
 of being holy. It is this which identifies him as the off- 
 spring of God. bearing to him in addition to the common 
 relation of a creature, the nearer and more specific one of a 
 spiritual child. Aud such a capability cannot be unim- 
 proved or thwarted without doing a grievous wrong to him- 
 self. 
 
 And still farther, his position as the subject of that 
 actual government which God maintains over the world, 
 obliges him, by all the risk of incurring the penalties of 
 violated law, to be holy. It is by this means only that he 
 can escape the terrible result of bringing down upon 
 him all the weight of the enmity and the hostile power of 
 the government of God. Hatred of sin in God, is only 
 another expression for a disposition and determination to 
 punish it. It is more than a sentiment; it is a statute and 
 a decree, ordaining that all unholiness in creatures shall be 
 treated as a crime. On a variety of grounds, therefore, the 
 consequence, that man is bound to be holy, follows from 
 the fact that the Lord his God, is holy. 
 
 What then, we are led to ask, as a question of vast 
 practical moment, is the extent and import of this obliga- 
 tion? What idea are we to form of that holiness which 
 man, in his sphere as a creature as true to God, is required 
 to possess and exhibit? Without entering into any analysis 
 of the subject, we shall find probably, a specific answer to 
 this question, in a remark of St. Paul, in which he states 
 in an actual case, the method by which this holiness had 
 been realized. Writing to the Roman Christians, he says 
 in the 6th chapter and 22nd verse of his Epistle "now be- 
 ing made free from sm and become servants to God, ye 
 
HOLINESS OF GOD. 35 
 
 have your fruit unto holiness." Holiness is here represent- 
 ed as the fruit or result of that change by which man is 
 delivered from the dominion of sin, and brought into sub- 
 jection to the will of God. The two expressions, "free 
 from, sin," and "servants to God," describe only parts of 
 the same process, and indicate together the condition of the 
 man, who is devoted solely and wholly to the work of ful- 
 filling or realizing the purposes of his Maker m bringing 
 him into being. We have the same idea presented to us, 
 in those passages, which speak of the angels and prophets 
 and apostles, which are God's special ministers, as holy; in 
 those which speak ot Christians as being holy, because un- 
 blameable in the sight of God; and more strikingly, if pos- 
 sible, still, in that one in which Jesus, whose distmction it 
 was to be holy, declares of those who do the will of God, 
 that they are his brother and sister and mother, that is, 
 affiliated or identified with him by a common nature, and 
 hence partaking with him in this specific attribute of holi- 
 ness. And how it is, that this devotion on the part ot the 
 creature, to the serving of God, authorizes the transfer of 
 the title, holy, which belongs to God, to the creature, a 
 little reflection will easily make apparent. 
 
 The holiness of God. as we have seen, is properly 
 something as special, as is the nature of God himself. 
 No other being can possess it, any m.ore than he can be 
 God. But this holiness of God expresses itself in every 
 declaration which he makes of his own will; and wherever 
 that will is executed, his holiness is realized — is carried out 
 into action. And in this view of it, his holiness can be 
 exemplified, by every being who is truly doing his will. To 
 give effect to that will, is to reproduce or re-enact, so to 
 speak, the holiness of God; for as I have said, his will, in 
 any case, is the expression of his holiness. It designates 
 in the creature to whom it is directed a certain condition 
 
36 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 in which his own holiness shall be embodied. Just so far 
 as that condition is attained by that creature, just so far 
 does he become an expositer of the holiness of God. He 
 becomes like the vessel into which the water from a foun- 
 tain has conveyed itself; or like the globe which the sun- 
 beam has pervaded with its light. The fruit or result of 
 holiness, therefore, as the apostle teaches, is re-enacted 
 whenever the man has been freed from sin, and become a 
 servant to God. And now this view of the method of its 
 production will help us still further to discover something 
 of the nature of holiness in man. 
 
 As it is a serving of God it must be founded, of 
 course, upon an intelligent apprehension of the will of God, 
 coupled with a conviction of its supreme authority. Ir- 
 rational creatures, may in a certain sense, be said to be 
 serving God, when without knowledge or design, they per- 
 form their offices in the economy of nature; but in no sense 
 can rational creatures claim to be serving him, when the 
 mind and spirit are not parties to the work. The will of 
 God may be done formally — without there being any quali- 
 ty of holiness in the fact. That quality can be ascribed to 
 an act only when the act can be said to be a reflection of 
 the holiness of God, or a response on the part of the crea- 
 ture to that holiness, as expressed in his will. In other 
 words, it can only be, when an act is performed, under a 
 sense of those motives and sanctions which spring from 
 God, regarded in that holiness, which, as we have seen, in- 
 vests him with his special pre-eminence as God — that it 
 can properly be pronounced holy. Then again, this holiness 
 must contain in it the element of a free and cordial appro- 
 bation of the Will of God in the heart of man. The ex- 
 pressions, "free from sin," and "servants to God," certainly 
 imply this. How can the man be free from sin, whose 
 heart is rebelling against the will of God? Or how can 
 
HOLINESS OF GOD. 37 
 
 God be served by the man who does his will only through 
 fear and coercion? Love to God must lie at the root of 
 all true serving of him. The affectionate accordance of the 
 mind of the creature with the mind of the Creator is the 
 very life and essence of holiness in the creature. And 
 then, once more, this holiness includes in it the idea of a 
 constant and a total application of the powers of man's na- 
 ture to the doing of the will of God. Freedom from sin, 
 describes a state — serving God is a business. And if these 
 things constitute holiness in a creature, then holiness must 
 be the state and business of that creature. Hence says the 
 Apostle Peter, "as he which hath called you is holy, so 
 be ye holy, in all manner of conversation;" and Paul prays 
 for the Thessalonian Christians that the very God of peace 
 may sanctify them wholly, and that their whole spirit and 
 soul and body," that is, their entire nature "may be pre- 
 sented blameless unto the coming of our Lord, Jesus Christ." 
 A holy being, is a being, consecrated, or devoted to the 
 service of God. He is a priest, charged in his particular 
 sphere with the office of ministering before the Lord, iust 
 as Aaron was in the sanctuary. Thus the body of believers, 
 which is composed theoretically, of holy persons, is called 
 "a holy priesthood." Adam in his original innocence, was 
 a priest, and the beautiful earth, over which he had been 
 set as head, was the temple in which he was ordained to 
 serve. And so, every one who has been newly created in 
 Christ Jesus, so as to be made free from sin, and to be- 
 come a servant to God, has been reinstated in the position 
 from which Adam was displaced. He "has his fruit unto 
 holiness" in this fact, that his life henceforth, by a full, 
 free and hearty dedication belongs to God, and is to be 
 sacredly appropriated to the execution of his will; as the 
 apostle evidently assumes, when he writes to his brethren 
 at Rome, "I beseech you therefore, that you present your 
 
38 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 bodies;" that is, yourselves, "a living sacrifice, boly, accept- 
 able unto Grod, which is your reasonable service, and be ye 
 not conformed to this world, but ye be transformed, by the 
 renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that 
 good and acceptable and perfect will of God." 
 
 And now, we have perhaps, sufficiently developed the 
 main heads of our theme. We have seen in an outlme, in 
 what the holiness of God consists. We have seen it ap- 
 pearing in its general form, in the essential and incommun- 
 icable oneness of his nature, by which, he is infinitely sep- 
 arate and diverse from all other beings. We have 
 seen this property taking more definite shape, in the idea 
 of an infinite exaltation above all other beings. We have 
 seen this again gathering to itself the august symbolism oi 
 an infinite supremacy over all other beings; and lastly we 
 have seen all these distinctions uniting and culminating in 
 his original and immaculate moral purity. From this glori- 
 ous perfection of the Deity, we have deduced the grounds 
 of an obligation to be holy, resting upon man, in his meas- 
 i ure and sphere, as the creature of God; and we have in 
 I the last place, indicated the method by which man is to 
 I meet this obligation, by consecrating his being to the do- 
 i ing of the will' of God, which will, is the expression of the 
 j holiness of God, in the form in which it is capable of be- 
 I ing realized and wrought out by such a creature. 
 I We have only time to refer to a conclusion or two, to 
 
 f which, these reflections are adapted to lead us. Is God a 
 God of holiness? Then whenever and wherever we ac- 
 knowledge him, we are bound to acknowledge his holiness. 
 We cannot separate the two. Is he an omniscient God? 
 Then, the eye with which he looks upon us in his omnis- 
 cience is a holy eye. Is he an omnipotent God? Then, 
 the hand by which he holds us, and controls us, is a holy 
 hand. Is he an omnipresent God? Then the presence with 
 
HOLINESS OF GOD. 39 
 
 which he surrounds us, is a holy presence. It is in con- 
 tact with his holiness that we live and move and have our 
 being. His holiness fills heaven, earth and hell. We can 
 never escape from its gaze, its touch, its power. It sets its 
 seal upon all God's acts and decrees. It attests the pass- 
 port of the saint to glory; it signs the death warrant of 
 the lost. It is that with which you and I are transacting 
 every moment, and that with which we shall have to trans- 
 act through all eternity. And is this the God of your 
 creed, my friend? Have you risen to the heights, have 
 you compassed the immensities of this holiness in your con- 
 ception of God? Is this the being whom you recognize as 
 your companion every day, every hour, every moment as 
 the invisible inspector of your thoughts, your motives, your 
 actions; and the inevitable judge who is to sit at your last 
 trial and to award you your eternal doom? Oh then, why 
 are so many of you content, as you seem to be, with such 
 a dubious claim to the favor of God, as you possess as 
 Christians? And why are so many of you content to live 
 on in such obstinate neglect of God, or such bold defiance 
 of him, as you are doing, as sinners? Surely our theo- 
 logy needs to go back again to its rudiments, and teach 
 us again what be the first principles of a Christian faith! 
 And let it be ever borne in mind, that the only proof of a 
 right belief in God is holiness in ourselves. We must 
 make good our assent to the doctrine, "there is a God," 
 by demonstrating our assent to the doctrine, "God is 
 Holy." And we assent to that doctrine, when we make it 
 operative; when we show the holiness of God actually re- 
 flected in ourselves, by making our lives an exemplification 
 of that holiness, by devoting them to the doing of his will. 
 Upon such terms alone, most obviously, can it be expected, 
 that God and man, can ever meet in peace. Upon such 
 terms alone, most obviously, can it be expected that God 
 
40 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 and man can ever dwell together in the same heaven. But 
 do the terms transcend your ability? Do you say, they 
 leave you no alternative, but despair? Then learn that God 
 is prepared to give what he requires, for says the apostle, 
 "It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do 
 his good pleasure." And this he does through the offices 
 of his holy Spirit. The holiness which you cannot attain 
 by your own power, is still attainable, for the means have 
 been provided in the great scheme of redeeming grace. 
 The mission of the Spirit is included in the mission of the 
 Son; and the soul which goes in penitence and faith to 
 Jesus for justification, will receive by a Divine ingrafting 
 that principle of holiness, which by a Divine culture, shall 
 develop itself through progressive stages, till at last, in the 
 immediate presence of God, it shall mature into the per- 
 fection and glory of his own image. 
 
THE HEAVENLY CITIZEN. 
 
 JUNE 10, 1866. 
 
 'For our Conversation is in Heaven." — Philippians, 3:20. 
 
 THE type of piety which the Bible recognizes is some- 
 thing which requires, for the adequate description of 
 
 it, a set of terms which are altogether out of place, 
 when applied to the mere moralist of the world, or the 
 mere formalist of the church. It is a type which indi- 
 cates so palpable and so wide a distinction between the 
 real Christian and these characters, that it is wonderful 
 that men, with the Scriptures in their hands, so often com- 
 found them; wonderful that so many persons, who have 
 been instructed in the doctrines of the Gospel, can fall into 
 the mistake of putting their virtuous disposition and habits, 
 or their assumption of the badges and usages of church 
 membership, for the piety which God requires of his children. 
 
 Let us open our eyes, this morning, to this great fun- 
 damental fact affirmed by the text, and confess that the 
 proper mark of the Christian is that he is one of whom it 
 can be said, he "has his conversation in heaven." Though 
 the application of such a text may stagger our confidence 
 in our own right to that name, though it may wither our 
 pretensions to the character of a child ot God, as the 
 Saviour's curse withered the leaves of the barren fig tree, 
 let us honestly make it, for, assuredly, it is just here, in 
 the fact which this text calls for, that the essence of re- 
 ligion, according to the Gospel, lies; and all the phenomena of 
 
 41 
 
42 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 religion which a man may conceivably exhibit, must prove 
 but illusory semblances, if they do not go the length of 
 proving that this fact has been verified in his case. What 
 then are we to understand by this declaration of the 
 Apostle, "for our conversation is in heaven?" 
 
 Look back a few verses in the chapter and you will 
 see that his precise object in making it was to enforce an 
 exhortation just addressed to the Christians of Philippi, to 
 differ in their walk, a manner of life, from another class 
 of persons whom he characterizes in a summary way, as 
 those who "mind earthly things." From such persons, he 
 argues. Christians must necessarily differ, for their conver- 
 sation is in heaven; and consequently, their walk must be 
 expected to show that they "mind heavenly things." This 
 antithesis, which he points out between the men who mind 
 earthly things and the men whose conversation is in 
 heaven, leads us at once to conclude, that for all practical 
 purposes, the sense of the expression, "our conversation is 
 in heaven," may be taken to be, simply, that we mind 
 heavenly things. This is the distinctive law or habit of 
 the Christian life, that the subject, minds heavenly things. 
 He can, therefore, have no fellowship with those of whose 
 lite the law, or distinctive habit is, that they mind earthly 
 things. 
 
 But the expression in the text does more than affirm 
 the fact that the Christian is required, under the peculiar 
 law or habit of his life, to mind heavenly things. It indi- 
 cates the, ground or reason ot that fact. It discloses the 
 philosophical principle out of which that fact grows. It 
 enforces the exhortation to differ from those who mind 
 earthly things, not merely by stating that the mindmg of 
 heavenly things is the appropriate rule of the Christian 
 life, but by revealing an order or state of things lying 
 back of that rule, from which that rule is naturally de- 
 
THE HEAVENLY CITIZEN. 43 
 
 duced. Tbis is apparent to the scholar who will look at 
 the language of the Apostle as it appears in the original 
 Greek. The word translated "conversation" in our English 
 version, will there be found to be a different word from 
 that ordinarily employed to signify, conversation, or mode 
 of life, or deportment. It is fair to conclude that had the 
 Apostle designed to do no more than stale the fact that 
 the Christian, normally, is one who is employed about 
 heavenly things, he would have used the ordinary word 
 signifying conversation. Nor if this were all that he had 
 designed to do, would he have been likely to make use of 
 the qualifying phrase, "in heaven," as he does. He would 
 have expressed in terms which should refer to things not 
 to place. He would have said, "our conversation is" (not 
 "in heaven,") but "about the things of heaven;" just as 
 he had said of those persons, between whom and the Chris- 
 tian he is drawing an antithesis, they "mind earthly 
 things." The conversation of a man, is his daily, habitual 
 manner of living; what he does, here and now; and it is 
 altogether incongruous, therefore, to say of a man on earth, 
 his conversation is "in heaven," when by heaven, you mean 
 a place, as St. Paul clearly does, in the text. 
 
 All this difficulty about the meaning of the expression 
 disappears when we give to the word, conversation, the ex- 
 act sense which it has in the original. It means precisely 
 the standing and the action of a citizen in his relation to 
 the State. It belongs technically to the vocabulary of pol- 
 itics. It contemplates, always, the party to whom it refers, 
 under the specific character of a member of a common- 
 wealth, or government. What it affirms of him, it affirms 
 of him, under this aspect. And when it is applied to the 
 Christian, therefore, it assumes of him that he has, in the 
 act of adopting Christianity, passed into the position of a 
 member of a commonwealth or government. He has under- 
 
44 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 gone a process aualagous to wliat we call naturalization; 
 the process by which an alien becomes invested with 
 the rights and privileges of a citizen, in a country in 
 which he was not born. You say of the subject of 
 any of the monarchs of the old world, when he comes to 
 these shores, and goes through the formalities connected 
 with the process of naturalization, he is now a citizen of 
 the American Republic; and upon this fact you ground an 
 obligation to pursue a certain course of conduct, corespond- 
 iug with this new political relationship. And so, the text 
 teaches us, you may say, of the Christian, "he has become 
 a citizen of heaven" and as such, lies under an obligation 
 to pursue a course of conduct, or exhibit a "conversation" 
 corresponding with this fact. And citizenship, you will ob- 
 serve, attaches to a man though he be not actually pres- 
 ent or resident in the country to which citizenship invites 
 him. Tens of thousands of persons may be found to-day 
 dwelling and transacting business in this land who are cit- 
 izens of lands beyond the sea. Here, notwithstanding their 
 personal association with the communities in which they 
 are sojourning, they are foreigners. The Christian, during 
 his actual abode on earth, is occupying a position auala- 
 gous to that of these persons. He is a citizen of heaven; 
 a citizen of that kingdom of which heaven (and heaven 
 viewed as that place "from whence" as the text expresses 
 it "we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ") is 
 the proper territory and seat of government. Resident as 
 he is in the world, and engaged in various forms and de- 
 grees with its business, he is, nevertheless, a foreigner in 
 it. The closest alliances he may have formed with his 
 neighbors do not alter this fact. Cemented to them by 
 all the ties of domestic love and social life, he still re- 
 members, and on all suitable occasions, requires them to 
 remember, that his citizenship is in heaven. He cannot 
 
THE HEAVENLY CITIZEN. 45 
 
 locate bis countiy, as the literal foreigner can, beyond the 
 seas. Tt is not discernable on any geographical chart 
 which his eye can explore. But somewhere in the vast un- 
 iverse it does exist; somewhere as a blessed and glorious 
 region it lies, realizing, literally, all that we dream of 
 when we try to body forth our idea of the kingdom of 
 God. He is a citizen of that heaven from which the 
 Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ is to come; and that 
 heaven, we know, is a place, as truly as was the earth 
 from which he ascended. If we never conceive of it as a 
 place, we shall make of no effect many precious and im- 
 portant things which are said of it in Scripture; and if it 
 be a place, it furnishes the scene and the platform for a 
 real kingdom of heaven. If we never conceive of it thus, 
 if we always interpret it (as we must unquestionably very 
 often do), as the power of the Gospel in the soul of a be- 
 liever, or in any part of the world; or as the visible 
 church we shall make of no effect another large body of 
 Scripture declarations. If we do not give to our ideas of 
 this kingdom, sometimes, a substantial form, how can we 
 understand such a passage as that of our Lord's, "many 
 shall come from the East and the West and sit down with 
 Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven"? 
 In claiming for this kingdom, a place and a reality as an 
 actual sphere where God is present in his royal person and 
 where he exercises his government by a direct administra- 
 tion, I am not teaching that this kingdom is fixed or limit- 
 ed in its dimensions. I am not teaching, that because it must 
 now be said of it, it is diverse and remote from this world, 
 so that a citizen of heaven, at present resident in this 
 world, has to be considered a foreigner, it is not capable 
 of extending its bound, so as to include and incorporate 
 with itself, ultimately, this world and perhaps, all other parts 
 ot the universe, except that region of utter darkness, where 
 
46 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 Satan and his followers are to have their part forever. As 
 literally as God's kingdom exists now in the place where 
 the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ is living, we have rea- 
 son to believe, it will exist here on this earth which is now 
 so generally as a foreign land in reference to this king- 
 dom; and for this we are taught to pray by our Lord, 
 when we say, "thy kingdom come, thy will be done on 
 earth, as in heaven!" Revolutions and purgations, moral, 
 economical and physical, may make, and probably will make 
 of this world, a part of heaven, where angelic tribes and 
 glorified men shall make up the population, and the sceptre 
 of God's immediate government shall extend over them. 
 Then, the dweller upon earth will have to be ranked no 
 longer as a foreigner in respect to the kingdom of heaven. 
 He will have no^ longer, like a traveler in a strange country, 
 to sigh after a fatherland far beyond the blue horizon, but 
 as he treads the soil beneath him and gazes upon the scene 
 around him, will be able to say, "here — here — my citizen- 
 ship is in heaven!" But this is not possible now. Heaven 
 must be thought of as separated from this world by a wide 
 interval, and the Christian when he claims citizenship in it 
 is personating the alien who is domiciled temporarily in one 
 land while the obligations of allegiance and the ties of 
 political kinship identify him with another. 
 
 Now, let us take the Apostle's word, "conversation." 
 in the text in this sense as signifying not so much a mode 
 of conduct, as a certain condition ot citizenship subsisting 
 between the Christian and kingdom of God m heaven, out 
 of which condition a very definite mode of conduct may be 
 expected to issue, and see in what particulars it may be 
 verified in the experience and practice of the Christian. 
 You cannot, evidently, make this declaration of yourself, 
 "my conversation is in heaven," without first afBrming of 
 yourself that you have consecrated yourself supremely, both 
 
THE HEAVENLY CITIZEN. 47 
 
 in the way of character, and in the way of service, to God. 
 You must have renounced every form of disaffection and re- 
 belliousness toward God. The attachment to and service of 
 other lords in which you have been implicated, originally, 
 j^ou must have repudiated, and in good faith, and from a 
 free and cordial choice, accepted the terms of reconciliation 
 proposed to you in the Gospel; and engaged in a personal 
 covenant with God to render to Him all loyal love and 
 duty. How aptly this change is described by the Apostle, 
 when reminding the Ephesian Christians how they came to 
 have their conversation in heaven! "At that time," he says 
 (that is, in 3-our original, natural state), "ye were without 
 Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and 
 strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and 
 without God in the world. But now, in Christ Jesus, ye who 
 sometime were far oft', are made nigh by the blood of Christ. 
 Wherefore, ye are now, no more, strangers and foreigners, 
 but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of 
 God. " As nations are truly said to be but families am- 
 plified, the nation of God's people are called here his house- 
 hold. Part of it are actually dwelling upon the paternal do- 
 main, have actual habitation and possession within the terri- 
 tory of heaven. But a part are sojourners and pilgrims in 
 a strange country. They are none the less citizens of heaven, 
 none the less members of the household of God. The 
 great principle which identifies them with the community of 
 God's people, is precisely the same as that which binds to- 
 gether the actual population of heaven. "Sometime," that 
 is, once, they were far off, but now, by the blood of Christ, 
 the medium of reconciliation, they are "brought nigh," in- 
 corporated with the heavenly commonwealth, so as to be 
 made foreigners in the world where they were once accredit- 
 ed citizens; and citizens in the kingdom of heaven, in re- 
 spect to which, they were once, aliens and enemies. This 
 
48 A pastor's valeuictoey. 
 
 transfer of allegiance from other sovereigns to God, this 
 extinguishment of other affinities in order to the engrafting 
 of himself as a vital and organized member, upon the body 
 of Christ's people, this change is assumed, clearly, in the 
 case of every man who says of himself, "my conversation is 
 in heaven." And it is a change which implies a conversion, 
 extending to the very foundation of his nature; a change 
 which amounts to an entire surrender of the heart to God; 
 a change which the Apostle does not hesitate to say consti- 
 tutes Ihe subject of it, "a new creature," a new man; be- 
 cause his whole life, internal and external, passes under the 
 dominion of a new principle or law. What a process of 
 naturalization does in changing the political condition and re- 
 lation of the subject of it, a process of regeneration does for 
 the man who becomes a citizen of heaven. "Old things 
 are passed away — behold all things are become new!" 
 There has been a transition from one state of being into 
 another as marked as that which a man raised from the 
 dead would have undergone. As the Apostle affirms in so 
 many words when he says to the Romans, "know ye not, 
 that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ, 
 were baptized into his death? Therefore, we are buried 
 with him by baptism, into death, that like as Christ was 
 raised up from the dead, by the glory of the Father, even 
 so we also should walk in newness of life." 
 
 As a counterpart to this fact of a sepreme consecration 
 to God, we may notice now, the posture in which the man 
 whose conversation is in heaven, stands towards the world 
 in which he is actually resident. As already several times 
 remarked, that posture will be that of a foreigner. It 
 will make him different from the citizen of the world, first, in 
 respect to the acknowledgement of the world's authority. 
 This, in the case of the citizen of the world, is absolute. 
 It was expressed boldly in Pharaoh's question, "who is the 
 
THE HEAVENLY CITIZEN. 49 
 
 Lord, that I should obey him?" In the Christian it is 
 expressed in modified terms — terms so carefull}^ modified 
 that they alwaj's maintain intact the supremacy of God 
 over the conscience and the life. And where a collision 
 occurs between the authority of God and the authority of 
 the world, the Christian will reverse the question of Pha- 
 raoh as boldly as he uttered it, and ask, "what is the world ' 
 that I should obey it?" Only in so far as the world's be- 
 hests and customs run parallel with duty to God, will he 
 regard them. "My allegiance is due to Him," is his sim- 
 ple principle; and if the behests and customs of the world 
 make me violate that, I must withdraw myself from their 
 operation ; or if this be impossible, I must defy them and 
 take the consequences." 
 
 And so, secondly, his posture as a citizen of heaven 
 will include a difference between him and the man of the 
 world in respect to the degree in. which his affections are given 
 up to the things of the world. The traveler passes through 
 a foreign land, says habitually of the things he sees, "they 
 are not mine. They belong to a race with whom I have 
 no part, nor inheritance." He does not suffer his heart, 
 therefore, to. linger among them, to fasten upon them. 
 What is admirable in them he admires; what is innocent 
 in them he is free to enjoy; what he is obliged to ask from 
 them in the way of refreshment, he takes; but all in the 
 temper of the stranger whose intercourse with them is casual 
 and transient, and who feels, perpetually, the force of a 
 law upon his soul forbidding it to ally itself with them. 
 An inward monitor sits within his breast, to check the act, 
 whenever the outgoings of his heart would seek inordinately 
 a union with the world, with the words, "if ye, then, be risen 
 with Christ, seek those things which be above, where Christ 
 sitteth, on the right hand of God!" "Set your affection on 
 
50 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 things above, not on things on the earth, for ye are dead, 
 and your life is hid with Christ, in God!" 
 
 Such a posture maintained towards the world, includes 
 in it, of course, that precise mode of living which the 
 Apostle had in his eye when he used the word, conversa- 
 tion, in the text. Being a citizen of heaven, the man's 
 conversation, or mode of living will correspond with that 
 fact. He will mind heavenly things, just as the citizen of 
 the world minds earthly things. His deportment and policy 
 in life will be such as accords with his citizenship, and will 
 reveal, unmistakably, that citizenship. The Jewish council 
 had no difficulty, after a few minutes' interview, in deter- 
 mining of Peter and John, that they had been with Jesus. 
 They inferred it from their manner, their language, their 
 ideas and plans. They saw the spirit of Jesus so palpably 
 transfused into them, that they could not doubt they were 
 countrymen and kinsmen of his; that they were one with 
 him in spiritual lineage and confederation. You do not 
 find any difficulty in recognizing the foreigner who may have 
 been thrown with your company. You notice in him a cast 
 of character, a national individuality which betrays, after a 
 little observation perhaps, his origin. In what he thinks, 
 what he relishes, what he does, in his tastes, habits, pur- 
 suits, his peculiarities of mind and demeanor, you will have 
 a clue which can hardly fail to guide you to the quarter 
 whence his citizenship has been derived. So, the Christian 
 will evince, by his habitual walk, and the form and bent of 
 his mindings, his likings, his choosings, his strivings and 
 seekings, his schemings and behavings, that his citizenship 
 is in heaven, that his relation to the present world is that 
 of a foreigner who feels that his connection with the things 
 around him is brief and superficial, and that the objects 
 which are entitled to his chief regard are located in a dis. 
 tant sphere. And so, his conversation is in heaven, because 
 
THE HEAVENLY CITIZEN. 51 
 
 it is a consistent and practical exposition of the fact that 
 he is a pilgrim and a stranger on the earth, and a citizen 
 of heaven. He acts his part in the world in such a cautious 
 manner, with such moderation ot spirit, and such a conscien- 
 tious reserve, with such a subordination of all his works 
 and endeavors to the end of maintaining a good name, a 
 good estate, and a good hope, as a member of the kingdom 
 of Christ, that no one can fail to take knowledge of him 
 that his citizenship is in that kingdom. The prominence 
 which the x\postle gives to this feature of the Christian 
 life, shows us, my brethren, what deep significance he was 
 accustomed to attach to it; and commends it, very particu- 
 larly, to our consideration. Your conversation determines 
 the order or type of your citizenship. Your minding and 
 your walking will indicate the plane in which your living 
 lies. If these are occupied supremely about earthly things, 
 then your living is identified with the earth, and your citi- 
 zenship must be in the earth. You cannot, surely, expect 
 your claim to be a citizen of heaven to be allowed, when 
 your conduct is giving an unequivocal testimony to the fact 
 that your attachments and your interests are all on the side 
 of the world. If you were to exhibit such a recreancy to 
 your nationality as a member of an}^ human government, 
 you would be called a traitor. Remember, then, that the 
 proof of that citizenship in heaven which can entitle you to 
 be called a Christian, is a conversation corresponding with 
 that citizenship, a conversation in heaven! 
 
 A further evidence of this citizenship, I may now re- 
 mark, is to be found in the disposition of a person to en- 
 trust his hopes and interests to such securities as are fur- 
 nished by the kingdom of God. You invest your property 
 where you suppose it to be safest. You lodge your goods 
 in the custody of those in whom you put credit. The for- 
 eign trader makes good his claim to citizenship under the 
 
52 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 government from which he has come, by converting the 
 profits of his trading into the currency of that country; and 
 conveying them to the fiscal agencies which it employs for 
 safekeeeping. In other words, he goes abroad to get his 
 earnings, but sends them home for deposit. You will make 
 good your claim to the character of a Christian by devoting 
 the labors of the present life to the acquisition of treasure 
 in heaven. There is a meat which perisheth, the Saviour 
 tells us, and there is a meat which endureth unto everlast- 
 ing life. The one is the gratification which the world gives 
 its votaries here; the other is the enjoyment consequent up- 
 on a life spent in the service of Christ, to be experienced 
 hereafter. According as one's citizenship is located in the 
 here, or the hereafter, will he be disposed to seek a return for 
 his means and resources in the gratifications of the world, 
 or in the enjoyments of a future state. You will naturally 
 aim to have your wealth placed under the same shelter to 
 which you have committed yourself; identified, so to speak, 
 with the same region and government with which you have 
 identified yourself. Are you a citizen of heaven, occupying 
 the position of a foreigner here on the earth? Then you 
 may, fairly, be challenged to verify your character by show- 
 ing in your scheme of life, that you are laboring for a 
 treasure which is to be possessed in that locality with which 
 you are permanently connected, and not in that in which 
 you have only a wayfarer's interest. The Christian's thrift 
 is a thrift governed by his citizenship, and hence directed 
 to the accumulation of a property which may serve him 
 in heaven, rather than tliat whose use is confined to this 
 world. This was the thrift recommended by the Saviour in 
 his parable of the unjust steward, when he subjoined the 
 counsel to his disciples, "I say unto you, make to yourselves 
 friends of the mammon of unrighteousness" (or earthly 
 riches) "that when ye fail," (or are dislodged from your 
 
THE HEAVENLY CITIZEN. 53 
 
 present abode) "they may receive you into everlasting hab- 
 itations!" And this was the thrift which Paul desires Tim- 
 othy, so urgently, to inculcate, when he writes, "charge 
 them that are rich in this world, that they be not high- 
 minded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God 
 who giveth us richly all things to enjoy; that they do 
 good, that they be rich in good works, ready to distribute, 
 willing to commmnicate; laying up in store for themselves 
 a good foundation against the time to come, that they may 
 lay hold on eternal life." 
 
 And to this, add now, as the last point in the exposi- 
 tion of this citizenship which I shall have time to notice, 
 that the person claiming it may be expected to exhibit a 
 certain harmony of character with heaven, and a certain 
 outlooking or tendency of the soul towards heaven, as the 
 ultimate goal of his desires. Surely, the foreigner, by the 
 mere act of confessing himself a foreigner, is avowing a 
 personal and sensible interest in his own land, and is giv- 
 ing evidence of a certain abiding sympathy with it in his 
 heart. You have heard of the Swiss soldiers thrown into 
 fever, and dying even, under the effect of the hearing of 
 one of their national songs, when far from their Alpine 
 home. Some such species of association, some such vital 
 chord, must intervene between the Christian and his home 
 in heaven; and through that as a medium, plastic and at- 
 tractive forces from heaven must be perpetually moving 
 and acting upon heart, as the breathings of the air touch 
 and vocalize the strings of the ^olian harp. And the 
 effect appears in what I have described as a certain har- 
 mony of character with, and a certain tendency of soul to- 
 wards heaven. The presence of such a harmony and such 
 a tendency is clearly alluded to by the Apostle when he 
 speaks of Christians becoming "meet to be partakers of the 
 the inheritance of the Saints in light," and being made 
 
54 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 "partakers of the Divine nature;" and when he represents 
 the ancient believers as "desiring a better country, even a 
 heavenly," and as "looliing for a city which hath founda- 
 tions, whose builder and maker is God." Such results so 
 naturally follow the sense of citizenship in heaven, in the 
 heart, that we are warranted in concluding that when they 
 do not appear in some form or degree, the claim to such 
 citizenship must be, at least, equivocal. Can the foreigner 
 be honest in continuing to bear that character, unless he is 
 careful to cherish the distinctive traits of the national fam- 
 ily to which he belongs? And unless he keeps warm and 
 vigorous the tie of kinship which invites him to it? Are 
 you. Christian, really a stranger and a pilgrim here in your 
 present place of sojourn, and is there no effort of the soul 
 to shape itself after the dear ideal of the actual citizen of 
 that heaven which you call your country? And no yearn- 
 ings of the soul going out towards that country, and grasp- 
 ing it by anticipation as 3'our own? This cannot be. And 
 if 3'ou are conscious of no such effort and no such yearn- 
 ing, there is reason to fear you are a foreigner in the 
 world only in name, and are so really identified with the 
 world that you have no model to aspire after, and no home 
 to desire better than what the world affords you. 
 
 And now, dear brethren, let me close this review of 
 the features which mark the citizen of the heavenly king- 
 dom with this admonition: Remember that if the portrait 
 we have drawn is to be verified in you, you must stand on 
 higher ground than that occupied by the man of natural or 
 acquired morality, or of the man who fulfills the letter of 
 the law in the matter of outward religious observances. A 
 citizen of heaven! That is the grand attribute, the essen- 
 tial privilege and glory of the Christian. To be in the 
 world, and yet not of the world; to bear about with one 
 the loneliness of the stranger's lot, and yet, carry in one's 
 
THE HEAVENLY CITIZEN. 55 
 
 own hand the royal patent which attests him as the kins- 
 man of the popuhation of the skies; to walk amidst earthly 
 pomps and potencies, and smile as one thinks how insignifi- 
 cant this pageant compared with the Fatherland of God's 
 children; to go through scenes of lowly toil or pining grief 
 and be able to reflect, this is the sowing of tears which 
 will yield me a harvest of joy, and the refiring of the 
 flame which will make the gold brighter in my crown, this 
 IS the high distinction which enobles God's saints m their 
 present pilgrim state! It is a distinction which Jesus, in 
 the Gospel, offers to all. The heirs of sin and death may 
 all be enrolled in the Book of Life! Think of this, ye 
 weary and heavy-laden serv^ants of the world! The registry 
 of heaven's citizenship is lying open before you, ready to 
 admit your names! "Whosoever will let him come." Be- 
 hold, yet there is room," is the invitation. my uncon- 
 verted friends, once more listen to these overtures of 
 
 mercy ! 
 
 Seize the kind promise while it wait.*-, 
 And march to Zion's heavenly gates! 
 Believe, and take the promised rest! 
 Obey, and be forever blest! 
 
JACOB'S LADDER, 
 
 AUGUST. 10, 1851. 
 
 "And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, 
 and the top of it reached to heaven ; and behold the angels of 
 God ascending and descending on it." — Genesis 38:12. 
 
 THIS dream which Jacob bad on his way to Padan-aram 
 was an extraordinary method of intimating to him va- 
 rious things, which God saw fit at that juncture to 
 make known to him. Revelations were thus frequently 
 granted to the patriarchs and holy men of old in the night- 
 visions. A dream, which is ordinarily the least substantial 
 and authentic of all things, was made the vehicle of com- 
 municating to their minds the most important messages from 
 heaven ; their minds in such cases having been prepared, 
 doubtless to apprehend the Divine source and credible na- 
 ture of the communication. The point of time, at which 
 God appeared to Jacob, as recorded in the text, is a matter 
 that needs to be kept in view in interpreting the vision 
 which he saw in his dream. At this point, Isaac, we may 
 say, retires from the page of sacred history. We have no 
 further mention of him, except the brief passage at the 
 close of the 35th chapter, which tells of his death and 
 burial. His agency in the field of events, with which the 
 church was connected, and the scheme of human redemption 
 involved, terminated here ; Jacob now takes his place. He 
 passes now from his position as a private personage into 
 that of a public or official one. The great promise of a 
 
 66 
 
JACOB' S LADDER. 57 
 
 Messuih wbicli was the hope of the world, here attaches it- 
 self to him, as a new link in the chain of instruments by 
 means of which God was bringing about its fulfillment. 
 There was therefore, we can see, a special fitness in his be- 
 ing recognized just here in his new chai'acter, and inaugu- 
 rated, as it were, with his new office. At the same time 
 there were many things in his situation, viewed merely as a 
 private individual at this juncture, which furnished a very 
 adequate occasion for the interposition of God. He was 
 standing at the threshhold of active and independent life, 
 though his years must have been far in advance of those 
 which now mark the line between youth and manhood. His 
 worldly fortunes were now for the first time suspended upon 
 his own single arm. He was a wanderer too, fleeing from 
 his home and compelled to endure the hardships of a soli- 
 tary journey, and an exile of unknown length from his kin- 
 dred, in order to escape the vengeance of his infuriated 
 brother If he had repented of the wrong he had done, in 
 deceiving his father, as we may resonably suppose, and if 
 God were pleased to manifest to him, again, the tokens of 
 his favor; now evidently was the time, when he needed all 
 the comfort and assurance which a communication from heav- 
 en might impart. The revelation which was made to him, 
 was designed and adapted to meet his case in all these par- 
 ticulars. 
 
 In the course of his journey to Padan-aran ; probably 
 at the end of his first day's progress, he lighted upon a 
 certain place, and tarried there all night ; making the ground 
 his bed, and a heap of stones his pillow. Outwardly, his 
 condition at this moment indicated anything else, but the 
 fact that he was an object of the peculiar favor of heaven. 
 But while he slept, his soul was rapt into a scene widely 
 different from that which his waking eyes would have be- 
 held. He saw the heavens above him opening, and an ob- 
 
58 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 jeet (which fioin its use, probably, rather than its appear- 
 ance) is called in the sacred narrative, a ladder, descending 
 until its foot rested upon the earth beside him. Along this 
 radiant track iustantlj' appeared a company of celestial 
 travelers, the angels of God, ascending and descending. 
 Their glorious forms passing downward and upward in a con- 
 tinuous column, seemed doubtless, to the patriarch's sight 
 to be weaving a girdle of living light between earth and 
 heaven. They filled up the interval which naturally seems 
 to lie between those two worlds, bridging over as it were, 
 with their shining ranks the chasm that before had divided 
 the abode of man from the home of God, and thus bring- 
 ing the two localities into conjunction and harmony. What 
 wei'e the impressions made upon Jacob's mind by this won- 
 derful vision, we can only partially determine, but with the 
 aid of scripture we can perhaps, decipher a few of the 
 meanings it was intended to .convey. It has been common 
 to regard it as a s3'mbolical representation of the Providence 
 of God, and of the peculiar share which Jacob had in the 
 care and supervision of that providence. And this it did 
 no doubt indicate. But it seems to me, that the use of 
 the vision is only half explained by making it thus a sj'm- 
 bol of divine Providence merel}'. There was something ly- 
 ing back of Providence, and upon which the peculiar agen- 
 cy of Providence toward Jacob was based, which was also 
 meant to be illustrated, and which ought to be considered 
 as the primary object of the vision. Jacob, let it be re- 
 membered, was now the representative of a line of persons 
 and of a chosen people, with whom God had been pleased 
 to enter into covenant. That covenant contemplated as its re- 
 sult, not only the making this line of persons, or this cho- 
 sen people, the objects of his favor ; but the making them 
 the channel and outward apparatus, so to speak, by which his 
 favor should be manifested toward the whole apostate family 
 
JACOBS LADDER. 59 
 
 of man. The covenant vvliicli God made with the Patri- 
 arclis contained as its great capital blessing the promise of 
 a Redeemer. In that point all its rays of mercy converged. 
 This the New Testament writers clearly show. They affirm 
 over and over again, that just those identical benefits, which 
 it was the bnsmess of the gospel, which they preached, to 
 offer to the world (benefits which were all based upon the 
 redemption effected by Christ) were what had been pointed 
 out and intended in all tliose declarations of God to Abra- 
 sam, Isaac and Jacob, that "in them and their seed should 
 all the families of the earth be blessed " The result, there- 
 fore to which the covenant made with these ancient ser- 
 vants of God always had reference, was the benefits which 
 should accrue to the world, through this Redemption. These 
 benefits are summed up in reconciliation to God. -'God was 
 in Christ" says the apostle, explaining Redemption in a sin- 
 gle sentence, "reconciling the world unto himself." Reconcil- 
 iation operates to unite parties, who have formerly been sepa- 
 rated. In the case before us, it operates to change the at- 
 titude and character of men as a race in rebellion against 
 God, and to remove the causes which made it proper and 
 necessar}' in God to with-draw his favor from men. Its ef- 
 fect is to open a channel of friendly mtercourse between 
 earth and heaven, to fasten a girdle as it were, around these 
 two severed territories, and to join them again in relations 
 of amity and concord. Now the vision which appeared to 
 Jacob in his dream ma}^ I think without any stretch of fan- 
 cy, be taken as a symbolic representation of the grand com- 
 prehensive result, which was to be eflfected through Christ, 
 that is, the reconciliation of the world to God, the re-es- 
 tablishing of harmony between man and the throne of his 
 sovereign from which he had been separated by revolt. The 
 vision thus illustrates fitly what was signified by that prom- 
 ise which God in immediate connection with it proceeded to 
 
60 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 make to .lucob, "in thee and in thy seed shall all the fam- 
 ilies ot the earth be blessed." And in this view of it, too, 
 we see a ground for that reference to this vision of Jacob's 
 and that comparison of himself to the ladder, which the 
 Saviour obviously intended to make, when he said to his 
 disciples, "hereafter ye shall see heaven open and the 
 angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son 
 of man." What Jacob saw symbolized in his vision of the 
 ladder and the attending incidents, Christ says his diciples 
 should see realized, actually fulfilled, in the effect of his 
 personal appearance upon earth. The son of man, like that 
 ladder, should bridge the chasm that had previously divided 
 the abode of fallen man from the home of a holy God. He 
 should remove the wall of partition, the causes of separa- 
 tion, between them. He should draw down the beneficient 
 powers of heaven to cheer the darkness of earth with their 
 glory, and he should open a new and living way of access 
 into the presence chamber of a propitiated Divinity. 
 
 What Jacob had presented to his mind therefore in this 
 vision, if this view of it be correct, was a type or figure of 
 the blessings which was designed for him and ultimately for 
 all the world, in the covenant which God had made with his 
 father, .and which he was now about to renew with himself. 
 Like Abraham, he may be said here, to have seen the day 
 of Christ. He heard in anticipation the song of "peace on 
 earth and good will toward man," sung by the angels of 
 God. He beheld a ladder to the skies planting itself beside 
 the spot where humanity lay, passive and helpless in its 
 fall. We may say therefore, that the first design of his 
 vision was to set before him a striking representation of the 
 blessings of the new covenant which God had established 
 with man, in Christ, who was to be his seed according to 
 the flesh. 
 
Jacob's ladder. 61 
 
 And this symbolical revelation to liim, of the ground 
 upon which God's favor was to be bestowed upon man, ex- 
 hibited a ground, too, for other blessings, which were em- 
 braced in the signification of his vision. The God who 
 had thus appeared entering into covenant with him, in Christ 
 and opening heaven as it were, to shed upon him the light 
 of his reconciled countenance ; might well be expected to 
 appear as his helper, and protector, and comforter, in his 
 seasons of present distress. And here comes in the bearing 
 of the vision upon what we call the Providence of God. 
 Jacob, first, is exhibited as being taken into covenanted re- 
 lation to God, so as to be made an object of that peculiar 
 favor which is founded upon the redemption of Christ, and 
 the reconciliation effected by it ; and then, he appears as 
 taken under the care of Providence and made an object of 
 Divine favor, so far as that fav<jr is connected with benefits 
 in this life. God says to him, not only "in thee and in 
 thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed,'' but 
 "I am with thee and will keep thee in all places whither 
 thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land, for I 
 will not leave thee until I have done that which I have 
 spoken to thee of." Now, all the temporal blessings involved 
 in these promises (and which followed reasonably upon 
 the covenanted relation in which he now stood toward God) 
 were meant, 1 suppose, to be confirmed and symbolized, al- 
 so, in his vision. God was thereby shown to him as a God 
 near at hand and not afar off ; and the angels of God par- 
 ticularly exhibited to him as an emblem of the strength and 
 power which were engaged to serve him. The fitness of the 
 emblem appears from the way in which these exalted be- 
 ings are always spoken of in Scripture. Thus they are de- 
 scribed by the Psalmist as "they that excel in strength." 
 God often does not deem it unworthy of himself to associ- 
 ate them with him in order to make a more imposing show 
 
62 A pastor's valedictouy. 
 
 of his omnipotence and greatness, and calls himself, "the 
 Lord, or Jehovah of liosts, " The angels are again said to 
 be his "ministers that do his pleasnre" and to be "all min- 
 istering spirits sent forth to minister for them who shall be 
 heirs of salvation.'" Their presence on this occasion, was 
 therefore an exhibition made to Jacob for his comfort and 
 assurance, of the energies of God that were ready to be em- 
 ployed in fulfilling his promises. Strength, vigilance, sym- 
 pathy, friendly guardian-ship ; in a word, the combined re- 
 sources and powers of an angelic army prepared to tly from 
 heaven to earth, and earth to heaven to execute their sov- 
 ereign's command ; are here set before him, as a security 
 for all that God had engaged to do for him. 
 
 And what a strange contrast such a pectacle spresented 
 to the position which he would have seemed to an observer 
 at that moment to have been in ! On the one side lay the 
 patriarch, a solitary wanderer, without a human face to smile 
 upon him, or an arm on earth upon which he could lean. But 
 on the other side were bright winged messengers from (he 
 skies, hovering about his resting place, and furnishing him 
 with , a band of attendants such as outshone the retinue 
 of Kings. On the one side was weakness, on the other 
 was the- might of i)rincipalities and powers in heavenly 
 places. On the one side was poverty, on the other, the 
 voice of God declaring "the land whereon thou best to 
 thee will I give it and to thy seed;" and the mystic ladder 
 pointing up to a better land on high On the one side, in 
 a word, was the world of sense, desolate, perilous and dark; 
 on the other, was the world of faith, glowing with the pre- 
 sence of a smiling God, peopled with the bright forms of 
 angel friends, and stretching away in dazzling perspective, 
 into the glory of heaven. 
 
 Here then briefly developed we may say, are a few tan- 
 gible points, which we may discover in this vision of Jacob's. 
 
Jacob's ladder. 63 
 
 God appears ia it, meeting huii at an important juncture 
 in his life, and enters into covenant with him ; and in 
 order to prepare him for the new relation and position, re- 
 veals to him first, the grand blessing to which the covenant 
 had reference, which was the reconciliation of the world to 
 himself, and then holds out to \i\m a pledge and type of 
 the providential blessings, which, as a consequence of his 
 own interest in the covenant, were engaged to him. With- 
 out dwelling longer upon the import of the vision, as it con- 
 cerned Jacob, let me now, take this incident in his history, 
 explained as it has been, as an illustration of a few things 
 in God's dealings with men in general. 
 
 I see in it, much that resembles his way of approacii- 
 ing and addressing those, who, like Jacob are standing at 
 the starting point of their active life, with the world all lie- 
 fore them, inviting them to chose their path and win their 
 prizes. Cutting loose the ties of puuilage and dependence, 
 which have hitherto held him in salutaiy restraint, I see 
 the youth going forth alone, to meet and make his fortune. 
 Whither shall he turn his steps ? What goal shall be set 
 before him ? What clue shall he find to direct him through 
 the labyrinthine scene before him, to the spot where happi- 
 ness shall reward his search ? His heart is full of airy 
 images. Schemes, and conjectures ; and hopes crowd uinm 
 his mind at every pause in his eager march. And then it 
 is, that a vision like that of the text, breaks in ui)Ou his 
 dreams. God plants as it were, right across his path, a 
 ladder, whose top reaches to heaven, and upon it the angels 
 seem to come down to win him back with them to the skies. 
 Such a vision may be said to come to him in every means 
 and method which God employs to make him sacrifice earth- 
 ly good for heavenly, and choose the way of piety instead 
 of those of worldliness and sin. The Gospel, wherever it is 
 known, is accustomed thus to meet the young ; and to seize 
 
64 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 some season of silence and rest to propose to them the cov- 
 enant in which God offers them his favor freely in Christ, 
 and engages to give them support, and protection, and 
 comfort, as the}' need them on earth. "Seek first, the king. 
 dom of God and his righteousness" it says to them, "and 
 all these things shall be added unto you." Choose Christ, 
 as your way, your ladder ; and heaven as your destination, 
 and all that the angels represented to Jacob, will be yours. 
 The strength, the love, the care, the sympathy of the Lord 
 of hosts, will be secured to you All things shall work to- 
 gether for your good. Many a young person, who feels, 
 day by day, that he is getting more and more immersed in 
 the world ; advancuig farther and farther into its business 
 and excitement and cares, has seen in his dreams, or the 
 serious thoughts that have visited him upon his pillow; this 
 vision of the ladder standing in his path, has heard in his 
 heart this call of God to him, to make his peace with him 
 to secure his favor as the only true security for happiness 
 and prosperity ; and has marked, perhaps, among the angels 
 hovering about the ladder, the forms of sainted parents and 
 friends beckoning him to join them in their heavenly home. 
 Such visions do recur continually in the experience of the 
 young ; and never finally leave them, till they have driven 
 them away by willful and protracted resistance. And it in- 
 dicates an alarming maturity in guilt, and a long departure 
 from the way of happiness when these images of the Sav- 
 iour, the true ladder that would lead them to heaven, meet 
 them in their dreams no mor •. The world may seem to 
 smile upon them, and what they call fortune to favor them 
 and a temporary prosperity reward their efforts, but there is 
 nothing of God's favor in all this; and without that there 
 is no stable, no real happiness. Happiness, aside from the 
 covenant which binds God to us as a friend, happiness 
 which has not its basis and spring in those resources of Di- 
 
Jacob's ladder. 65 
 
 vine power and wisdom and love and care which the cove- 
 nant secures to us, is an illusion, which may charm for 
 a seasoo, but must be dissipated at last. It is a cup of 
 sweet poison ; and though it may intoxicate for a while, 
 there is bitterness and pain and death in it in the end. I 
 charge you, therefore, my hearers, those of you who are 
 still young, hot to let the happiness which an irreligious 
 life ofl'ers you, begile you beyond the spot where the ladder 
 and the angels, where the favor and the blessings of the 
 covenant, are standing before you, and inviting you to the 
 arras of a reconciled God, and to the glories of heaven. 
 
 I see, too, in this vision of Jacob an illustration of 
 the condition of the child of God in a season of trial and 
 affliction. From the sweet home, where his heart had nes- 
 tled, he has been driven out by some invading sorrow, and 
 he wanders now in solitude, and sleeps on the stony couch 
 which grief had spread for him. His heart too is full of 
 dreams ; dreams of the past and the lost, dreams of want 
 and suffering in a cheerless future. But behold in the midst 
 of his dream, God brings to view the ladder; and on the 
 dark eartli, -its radiant foot is set, and in the bright heav- 
 ens its lofty top is lost , and upward and downwards along 
 its shining track the angels, symbols all of God's strength, 
 and love, and care, and sympathy, and pledged to him in 
 the covenant, and ministers all, of hope, and peace, and 
 consolation, are gliding in noiseless procession. The sight 
 tranquilizes his spirit, and charms it out of its gloom. It 
 shows him that God is his, reconciled in Christ. It tells 
 him what divine resources are his. It animates him with 
 a courage, a force, and sustains him with a power which 
 nature knew nothing of. Nothing has ever so taught him 
 nothing can CA^er so teach us, what a refuge and support we 
 have in God, as affliction does. Christ then in reality be- 
 comes our ladder, through whom our sorrowing spirits escape 
 
66 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 from the cares and the woes of earth, to shelter themselves 
 in the bosom of our Father, God. And the promises, come 
 down to us like descending angels, and leave the • heavens 
 open as they come ; till over the scene of sanctified sorrow, 
 we can exclaim with Jacob, "surely the Lord is in this 
 place, and I knew it not. This is none other but the house 
 of God, and this is the gate of heaven." It must be a hard 
 thing to have to wander in the solitudes of bereavement, or 
 feleep on the stony pillow of care and want, without this 
 vision ot the ladder and the angels, without the provision 
 of the covenant, and the love and faithfulness of a recon- 
 ciled God, to rest upon. But this is what God never means 
 his children to do. It is a part of his covenant to smite 
 and chasten them when they need it ; but it is equally a 
 part of his covenant to keep the floods from overflowing 
 them, and the flame from kindling upon them ; and no part 
 of his covenant will ever fail through any fault of his. "In 
 the world ye shall have tribulations," said Christ "but be 
 of good cheer, *I have overcome the world." I have plant- 
 ed a ladder, upon which, the angels come down, and over 
 which the heavenly glory shines in every path of sorrow, 
 and my people have but to oi)en their eyes to behold the 
 cheering vision." 
 
 I may now go further and lind an analogy between the 
 vision of Jacob, and the condition of the believer at his dy- 
 ing hour. He then lies down, after the weary day's jour- 
 ney of life is over. His bed is a hard one, a comfortless 
 one in the eye of nature; for nature does not love to die. 
 And there are anxious dreams, which are apt to trouble the 
 soul ot one just sinking into this last repose ; dreams of du- 
 ties left undone, and sins committed at every step of his 
 journey, dreams of what shall be for the loved ones to be 
 left on earth, and dreams of what shall be for himself, in 
 the dread eternity before him. But, behold, upon the very 
 
Jacob's ladder. 67 
 
 o;rave, Gotl shows the hxdder resting its foot ; and its out- 
 line rises through tlie gloom, u clear bright pathway to the 
 skies ; :uk1 the angels are there to meet the departing spirit 
 and lead it i\[> triumphant to the heavenly mansions The 
 dying believer rests upon Christ, according to the covenant, 
 and sees God reconciled. Sin he has, but the blood of 
 Christ cleanses from all sin. The law would condemn him, 
 but Christ has died to satisfy the law. He must wander 
 from his home in the body, but to be absent from the body 
 is to be present with the Lord. His flesh must go down to 
 the tomb, but Christ is the resurrection and the life, and 
 of the very dust which entombs him. God seems to say, as 
 he did of the soil upon which Jacob slept "the land where- 
 on thou liest, to thee will I give it," for the grave belongs 
 to the saint, whose body it must keep for the hour of res- 
 titution, rather than he to it. 
 
 But still another analogy it may be useful to notice, is 
 one which may be traced between the case of Jacob and 
 that of any sincere devoted philanthropic labor in the work 
 of rescuing the world from the dominion of error and sin. 
 I might instance particularly the case of the missionary, 
 who goes out, literally from home into the desolate wastes 
 of the earth ; and most generally perhaps closes his daily 
 toil with a heavy heart, and lies down to dream of scenes 
 of wickedness around him, and of his own batHed ett'orts to 
 draw the heathen to the feet of Christ. But we need not 
 particularize. As I have said, any true hearted, earnest, 
 devoted laborer for the cause of Christ and of human sal- 
 vation will furnish the analogy to the case of Jacob which 
 I wish to point out. It is a long and weary way, that 
 such a person is called to travel. Day by day, he must 
 tread the path of self-denial ; and disappointed hopes, and 
 unrequited toil, must spread his painful couch at night. 
 His heart, too, is full of dreams, and they are sad ones. 
 
68 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 They are occupied with reflections upon his own weaknesses 
 and infirmities, upon the gigantic wickedness that prevails in 
 the world;' upon the injustice and ingratitude of those whom 
 his heart yearns to bless and save ; upon the countless ob- 
 stacles that oppose the spread of the Gospel , upon the lit- 
 tle impression that the truth seems to make in the world, 
 and upon the boldness and confidence of the enemies of 
 Christ ; and his spirit almost sinks within him ; and he 
 would fain fly from the field and desert the hopeless war- 
 fare. But in the midst of these dreams, behold, God shows 
 him the ladder, and the angels ascending and descending 
 upon it. That is the symbol of the covenant, which de- 
 clares that the world for which Christ died belongs to him, 
 and shall be given to him ; and it cheers the despondent 
 dreamer like a charm. It repeats to him the words of 
 promise, "in thee and thy seed, shall all the families of 
 the world be blessed," and ''thou shall spread abroad to 
 the west and to the east and to the north and to the 
 south." It shows him, too, that Divine resources are en- 
 listed in the cause he is laboring to promote, that it is not 
 in his own strength that he labors, but that Christ has said 
 "I am with you to the end of the world ;" and angelic war- 
 riors are his allies and supporters. He sees heaven plant- 
 ing its ladder upon the apostate earth in token of possession 
 and the vision reassures his faith, and encourages him with 
 fresh ardor to rise from his dreams and finish the work his 
 master has given him to do. 
 
 And finally let me say, in a general way, as a truth 
 which concerns us all, that life itself is a dream. Viewed 
 in reference to the things which occupy it here, it is fitly 
 called a dream. How often we look back upon the past, 
 and say of its varied scenes and events, they seem to us a 
 dream. And years hence, if we live so long, and if we 
 have lived only for this world, we shall have to say from 
 
Jacob's ladder. 69 
 
 our dying bed, "life has been but a dream." Its joys have 
 come and gone, and tiiey are now nothing more to us than 
 the joys of a dream. Wealth, genius, beauty, the triumphs 
 of ambition, the pleasures of society, the struggles for of- 
 fice and power ; the delights of home ; the love of husband 
 or wife ; all, all, were dreams. And having so lived the 
 life of a dreamer, we must begin the life of a waking 
 man in that eternity for which we are all unprepared. 
 Oh what a vain show we are walkmg in, who are thus 
 dreaming awa}- the life God gave us for a real use, and a 
 real end. Let the vision of Jacob remind us of the direc- 
 tion this life-dream ought to take in order to conform to 
 the will of God in giving us lite. Behold the ladder, 
 mounting from earth to heaven. There is no right plan of 
 life, dear friends, which does not terminate upon that ob- 
 ject. God and all pure beings are calling our souls upward. 
 It is only devils and the passions that link us to the brutes, 
 that would keep them groveling here upon the earth. God 
 bids you live for immortality ; live so that you can always 
 be said, like Jacob, to be encamped at the gate of heaven ! 
 You are never living right, till the vision of that ladder, 
 and its angels has become as familiar to you, and as con- 
 stant an object of your perception, as the beating of your 
 own heart ; till, in other words, you are living by faith up- 
 on Jesus Christ, and the eternal covenant confirmed in him, 
 and living so, that at whatever spot the death slumbers 
 may overtake you, the angel of the covenant may be there, 
 and the ladder all set ; and God prepared to welcome you 
 to the glories of his kingdom. 
 
THE SYRO-PHOENICIAN WOMAN, 
 
 AUGUST lil, ISCl. 
 
 "Then Jesiis ansvveied and said unto her: 'O Avoman, great 
 IS thy faith. Be it unto thee even as thou wilt.' And her daugh- 
 ter was made whole from that very hour." — Matthew 15 38. 
 
 TII^] narrative of this Syro-TlKenician woman's interview 
 with our Lord, and of the miracle lo whi«h it was ia- 
 
 troductory, presents us with a phase of our Savior's 
 ministry, entirely unique; and records some incidents which 
 entitle his conduct or the occasion, to particular attention. 
 
 Fir?t, it is to be noticed that the scene of action was 
 different from that to which our Lord's labors were ordi- 
 narily restricted. For the first and only time, he appears 
 here carrying his healing office into the domain of the 
 Gentile world. He had been for some time traversing the 
 province of Galilee, when, without assigning any reason for 
 the movement, the history tells us, he departed thence into 
 the coast or borders of Tyre and Sidon. This took him 
 into Phoenicia, which was a distinct country from Palestine, 
 but like it, comprehended within the larger kingdom of 
 Syria. When the Saviour, therefore, passed into the bor- 
 ders of Phoenicia, he had stepped upon Pagan soil, and 
 had put himself in contact with an accursed heathen race. 
 This was a digression from his ordinary course, and the 
 only one of the kind which occurs in his history. There 
 was doubtless a reason for so exceptional a procedure. In 
 a work so . very definite as that which our Lord came to 
 
 70 
 
THE SYROI'IIffiNIClAN WOMAN. 71 
 
 perform on earth, there could have been nothing done at 
 random; there could have been no incoherencies, or casual- 
 ties, such ns appear in the lives of common men. The 
 journe}' into Pha^nicia, we may l)e sure, had a design at 
 the bottom of it; and this design, we may conjecture, to 
 have been twofold. First, our Saviour wished by this act 
 to give an illustrative notice of the ultimate destination of 
 the benefits of his Messiahship to the Gentile nations. 
 Whde in compliance with the policy of the Old Dispensa- 
 tion under which he appeared he ncted ordinarily upon the 
 principle that "Salvation was of the Jews," and confined 
 his ministr}' to the chosen seed, he saw fit, once during his 
 earthly sojourn, to make a display of his saving power 
 within the domain of heathendom. Pie would send one ra\' 
 of light into the realms of darkness, to show that the lioht 
 could penetrate even that gloomy region, and that the 
 scope of redemption was only temporarily confined to the 
 limits of the literal Israel. Before he left the world, he 
 would make one visit of mercy into the territory that had 
 a{)parently been abandoned to Satan, to give token of the 
 coming overthrow of his empire. He would make one 
 breach in the wall of partition between the circumcision and 
 uncircumcision as an earnest of the total demolition of that 
 wall, which was to be effected through the Gospel. He 
 would for a single moment open the dungeon-door of the 
 fettered bondsman, and send through his long palsied heart 
 the thrill of the hope of liberty. 
 
 In this view of it this excursion into Phcencia was an 
 act of magnificent import. 
 
 But beyond this general design, I supi)ose, there wag 
 another object of a more private kind contemplated by the 
 Saviour in this excursion. There wns a poor, wandering 
 sheep, there in the mountams, whom the good Shepherd 
 was eager to save. There was a soul there who had been, 
 
72 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 in a measure, prepared by the providence of God to ac- 
 knowledge liim as the Messiah, whom he would seek and 
 lead into his fold. It looks to us like an accident that he 
 and the Canaanitish woman were brought together, but I 
 do not believe there was any accident about it. Her con- 
 dition was known to Jesus before he started from Galilee; 
 and he made the long journey (for the journey was a long 
 one) that he might minister to her necessities. Slie had a 
 heavy grief upon her heart in the miserable calamity which 
 had befallen her daughter; and this he proposed to relieve. 
 But I imagine this was only a subordinate object with our 
 Saviour. The mother herself, was to be made a miracle of 
 grace — to be translated from the kingdom of Satan into the 
 kingdom of God. The state of mind which she evinced 
 when she came to Christ, 1 think, indicates that she was 
 prepared to be the subject of such a process; and the 
 whole procedure of Christ towards her, 1 regard, as hav- 
 ing been determiued by his view of her spiritual condition, 
 and his knowledge of the treatment which was necessary 
 to consummate her conversion; and it is, certainly, a con- 
 clusion which the mind can hardly refrain from adopting, 
 after witnessing such an interview, that this woman ever 
 after, must have been a devout and sincere believer in 
 Jesus. We cannot doubt that when the Saviour returned 
 from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, there had been a new 
 name recorded on the roll of the heirs of glory. And 
 this view of it, gives to the affair of his excursion into 
 Pluienicia a significance hardly less imposing, than that con- 
 tained in the former view of it. The grace that could de- 
 scend so far, in order to deliver a single soul from sin and 
 hell, appears in a form hardly less grand, and if possible, 
 even more tender than when it disclosed itself as embrac- 
 ing the Gentile as well as the Jewish nations in the scope 
 of its merciful purpose. I do not know that our blessed 
 
THE SYRO-l'Il(ENlClAN WOMAN. 73 
 
 Lord ever made a more affecting exhibition of his benevolence 
 — ever threw out into bohler relief the Divine attribute of 
 Love which was the animating element of his character, 
 than just here, in this incident, in the light in which I 
 have now been contemplating it. 
 
 And now, a second feature to be noticed in this nar- 
 rative, is the manner of our Saviour's action in his inter- 
 view with the Canaanitish woman. For once his customary 
 benignity seems to forsake him. (3n no other occasion did 
 the sufferer fail to meet with a kind reception at his hands. 
 Here, and only here, he appears turning a deaf ear to the 
 cry of distress, closing his heart against the eloquence of 
 tears, and sharpening rather than soothing the pangs that 
 wrung a torn and bleetliug breast. It is a strange position 
 to find the merciful Jesus in; and yet, as the end of the 
 transaction demonstrated, one that was ejitirely consistent 
 with the spirit he came to express, and the ends he habit- 
 ually consulted in his ministr}-. 
 
 To see this .we must look a little in detail at the facts 
 of the case. Upon our Lord's arrival within the borders of 
 Tyre and Sidon, a woman (hastening from the interior of 
 the country, probably,) presented herself before him. You 
 have already heard who this woman was as to national 
 character; she was a native of the country— a heathen, 
 therefore, and most likely, had been an idolatress; one who 
 had not onl}' denied the God of Israel, but had worshipped 
 false gods. But she had a woman's heart; and under the 
 arrangement of Providence, she had been made to feel in 
 the keenest form the bitterest anguish of a woman's heart 
 — the pain of witnessing incurable suffering in a beloved 
 child. Her daughter (Mark tells us she was young,) was 
 "grievously vexed with a devil." Probably no Avorse alllic- 
 tion could have befallen her. The nature of the disorder 
 so often spoken of in the New Testament as a demoniacal 
 
74 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 possession, is inexplicable by us. No such phenomenon is 
 witnessed in our day, at least in the degree in which it 
 was witnessed in our Saviour's day. It seems to have been 
 a species of SataniL^ agency which was allowed l)y God to 
 take its place amongst the ills to which humanity was lia- 
 ble, at the precise period of Christ's sojourn on earth, as a 
 special index, both of the malignity with which the seed 
 of the "serpent" was disposed to persecute the fallen race 
 of man, and of the triumphant power with which Christ, 
 the "seed of the woman" was armed in order to defeat 
 iiim. The allusions to it in the Scriptures, show clearly 
 the presence and agency in the subject of it, of a per- 
 sonal tormentor. Body and mind were both subjected to 
 the evil power. The suti'erer was more than a sick man ; 
 he was a man tortured by a fiend — harassed by the cruel 
 arts of an irresistible enemy, always present with him. Of 
 course, medicine could do no good in such a case. The 
 cause lay above the range of human science and skill, in 
 the regions of superhuman essences and infl^-iences. Enough 
 may be conceived, therefore, of the condition of the de- 
 moniac girl to enable us to comprehend something of her 
 own misery, and something of the despair and woe of the 
 helpless mother. 
 
 And now, she hears, through the rumors probably, 
 which were blown around and in advance of him, that Jesus 
 had crossed from Galilee into the borders of Phamicia. She 
 had heard of him before; her conduct shows this. Indeed, 
 his fame had spread everywhere, and accordingly he never 
 went anywhere without being besieged immediately by a 
 crowd of supplicants, asking for themselves or their friends, 
 some exercise of his miraculous powers. The woman of 
 Canaan seems to have informed herself pretty accurately 
 concerning his claims, and the objects of his mission. It 
 would even appear that she recognized him as the Messiah 
 
THE SYR0-1M1(ENICIAN WOMAN. 75 
 
 vvlioui Ihe Jews li:i(l lono; liecn expecting, and tliat lier idea 
 as to who and what the Messiah was, was to a great de- 
 gree, correct. This accounts for the propriety of the title 
 which slie applied to him: -'0 Jjord, thou Son of David." 
 These terms were derived from the prophecies of the Jew- 
 isii Scriptures; and when applied to Jesus, they expressed 
 the conviction, on the part of the person using them, that 
 he was all that ttiese terms used by the prophets indicated. 
 Ill other words, he was tlie Messiah of God. Who, and 
 what this Mcs.siaii was, wns a question which was answered 
 with greater or less accuracy by different indivichials. 
 Some, in their conception of him, doubtless entertained the 
 complete truth; others rose only i)art of the way towards a 
 perfect conception of his character. Some regarded him as 
 the "Son ot God," in the sense of a divine being, and as 
 a redeemer, in the sense of a deliverer from the dominion 
 of sin and Satan. Others looked upon him as a prophet or 
 messenger from God, commissioned to make an important 
 moral and religious revolution in the Jewish State. Others 
 anticipated in him a j)olitical reformer, and supposed that 
 his work would be to emancipate his people from the joke 
 of foreign bondage, and establish in its ancient glory the 
 throne of David. What the precise views of this Gentile 
 woman were, we cannot tell, but I am disposed to believe, 
 as I have said before, they were to a great degree correct. 
 Whatever they were, they brought her to the Saviour with 
 a desire so intense, and a confidence so strong, that the 
 possibility of a failure in her suit, does not seem to have 
 been admitted by her mind. With an interest in her er- 
 rand, which amounted to a passion, she throws herself at 
 his feet, crying out in tones which we maj- well imagine 
 might have melted a heart of stone, '-have mercy on me, 
 O Lord, thou Son of David! My daughter is grievously 
 vexed with a devil. " There were a hundred arguments con- 
 
7t) A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 tained in this short appeal. To tlie mind of the speaker 
 they were irresistible. She could not doubt the answer 
 wliich would be returned to them. She watched for the 
 lips to move in response. She panted for the gracious 
 words which should assure her that her daughter was healed. 
 But, strange to say, the countenance of Jesus remained as 
 rigid as iron. The lips were sealed; "he answered her not 
 a word. " She waited — moments which are like ages; but 
 no cheering tones greet her ear. There is mercy in the 
 face, there is strength in the arm; are they not forth- 
 coming for her relief? Possibly her cry has been misunder- 
 stood. She repeats it. She follows Jesus as he walks, 
 with her imi)ortunity, till his disciples, at last, with their 
 sympathies wrought to the highest pitch, interpose, and 
 veutnrc lo join their entreaties to hers. "Send her awa}*," 
 they say, "for she crieth after us!" That is, "grant her 
 request, and relieve her distress, and let her cease to pur- 
 sue us, with these heart-rending appeals!" 
 
 And now the lips open. Jesus speaks; but it is only 
 to discourage still more the poor mother's hope. "I am 
 not sent," iie says, "but to the lost sheep of the house of 
 Israel;" as much as to say, "my commission gives this 
 stranger no claim to the benefit of my miraculous power. 
 She is not a daughter of Abraham. She has no part in 
 the covenant of promise. The testimony of my Messiahship 
 is to be laid before the Jew, not the Gentile!" The woman 
 heard these words — saw the barrier they seemed to throw 
 in tlie way of her object; but the heart, quickened by ma- 
 ternal love, may have suggested to her mind a thought that 
 still kept her from despair. "He is .sent to the lost sheep 
 of the house of Israel." But has he not all power as the 
 son of God? May he not in virtue of his own prerogative 
 still decree to work this act ot mercy? If not as the mes- 
 senger to the house of Israel, still as the incarnate Deity, 
 
THE SYRO-PII(ENICIAN WOMAN. 77 
 
 may he uot, cau he not iu sovereign clemency grant to a 
 suffering creature this little boon? Aud so she prosecutes 
 her suit; she offers no such argument as this to Jesus, 
 but in the strength which it administered to her own soul, 
 she comes to him again and "worships him" — that is pros- 
 trates lierself before him — saying, "Lord help me!" But 
 still in vaiii! llis look is still c(jld — cold as ice. There is 
 another heart-crushing uiessnge evidently on his tongue. 
 And now it comes. Turning to her as she lay at his feet, 
 with h,er eager eye fixed upon him, he says: "It is not 
 meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to 
 dogs." Harsh words, these, to come from those lips! to be 
 spoken by any lips! and in the presence of sorrow so 
 sacred as that of a mother pleading for a suffeiing child! 
 They seem to us to carry a tone of insult vvitli them, as if 
 the Saviour were adding reproach to his refusal of aid. 
 Severely painful the words were undoubtedly, and designed- 
 ly humiliating; and yet not insulting — not contemptuous. 
 I cannot so understand any words that Jesus would speak. 
 He only means to remind the woman again, that as a Gen- 
 tile, her case was not contemplated in his mission in its 
 present stage, and that, therefore, the benefits he had to 
 dispense, belonged to the "children," the Jews, and not to 
 her alien race. The term, "dogs," has to our ears an of- 
 fensive sound, to which it probably is not entitled. In the 
 original it is a diminutive, which may imply insignificance 
 or unworthiuess, but, I think, not contemptibleness. It 
 means literally, "little dogs;" and seems to refer to these 
 animals as attached to the family, so that, while the chil- 
 dren sit at the table, they are permitted to come under it. 
 Their position is one of inferiority; and though their wants 
 demand attention, it is meet that the children should be 
 provided for first, and that the food which is intended for 
 the sustenance of their children, should not be taken from 
 
78 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 them to be wasted upon mere brutes. In this view of his 
 language, the Saviour, without insulting her, seems to have 
 merely designed to represent to the woman in a stronger 
 way, perhaps, than he had done before, the absence of all 
 ground upon which she could chiim the favor she asked. 
 Still, what a disheartening view of her forlorn condition it 
 must have given her! She saw tbe ehiklren's portion, and 
 yet was forbidden to partake of it. With wants as keen as 
 hers, and the means of relief m sight, she must lie, as it 
 were, like the dogs under the table, and ask no share in the 
 provision upon it Attainted heathen — unclean idolatress 
 that she was, what right had she to expect that the mer- 
 cies granted to God's covenanted people should be diverted 
 from their use to gratify her? And yet, dog though she 
 seemed in her place in the household of God, she could 
 ask a dog's portion, 'for, -in their place, the dogs even 
 were not overlooked in the disbursements of the household- 
 er. She takes the place assigned her, and there, from that 
 lowliest of all lowly attitudes, she makes another appeal to 
 the Saviour. "Truth Lord," she sa^^s, "yet the dogs eat 
 of the crumbs which fall from the master's table," as 
 if she had said, "I admit it! I cannot ask the children's 
 bread. I am but a dog in comparison with them; it is not 
 meet that I should intrude into their place, or claim their 
 privilege; but a dog's l)Oon may 1 not claim? In the over- 
 flowing bounty of God towards Israel, manifested in the gift 
 of his sou for their redemption, is there not a crumb which 
 can be spared for a poor Gentile woman, groaning under 
 the pressure of Satan's power?" This was enough. Nothing 
 more, apparently, could be asked; no further proof of the 
 existence in the woman of the spirit which Jesus loves to 
 bless could be given. And now, with that look of kindness 
 on his countenance which had been so strangely absent be- 
 fore, he answered and said to her: "0 woman, great is 
 
THE SYRO-PHCENICIAN WOMAN, 79 
 
 thy faith! Be it uulo thee, even as thou wilt!' And her 
 daughter was made whole from that very hour. 
 
 The event of course att'ords the solution of this very 
 extraordinary course of treatment which our Lord had pur- 
 sued towards this Canaanitish woman. There had not been 
 from the fiist any lack of sensibility or kindly sympathy in 
 his heart; he had not been cold or cruel, nor had he trifled 
 idly with her feelings, nor practiced artifice in his deport- 
 ment towards her. He had acted as a wise physician, who 
 knew his patient's case, and who had intelligently and seri- 
 ously adjusted his remedies to the attainment of all the 
 ends embraced in a thorough cure of it. It was necessary, no 
 doubt, for her own good, as her case was apprehended by 
 Jesus, that she should be subjected to precisely this course 
 of trial. Every pang that she underwent, every emotion in 
 the complicated tissue of feeling in which her heart was 
 involved, every struggling step' downward in the way of 
 humiliation, or upward in the way of faith, was needed, in 
 order that the healing of her daughter should possess its 
 full value in her eyes, and that other and perhaps greater 
 objects to be effected in connection with this, should be 
 successfully achieved. 
 
 And then there were uses to be subserved by her case 
 which had rpspect to the church of Christ at large. The 
 Saviour was preparing the statute book and the directory of 
 his people in all he did when he was upon earth. He 
 meant this incident witli the Canaanitish woman to fill a 
 place in the scriptures which could not have been filled by 
 any incident occurring under other circumstances. The 
 whole transaction happened for your benefit, my brethren, 
 no less than for the family immediately concerned; and it 
 was recorded in the Gospel for the instruction and encour- 
 agement of the tried and tempted believer, and the peni- 
 tent sinner in all generations. We may well thank God, 
 
80 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 all of us, I am sure, that it pleased the Lord Jesus thus 
 to go from Galilee into the coasts of Tyre aud Sidon, and 
 there under such peculiar conditions exercise his healing 
 power upon a Canaanitish woman's daughter. Let me 
 devote the remainder of my time to an exposition of the 
 way in which the trutlis illustrated by this incident may he 
 applied to the cases of men generally. 
 
 For instance, has it never seemed to you as if God were 
 dealing with you very much as the Saviour dealt with this 
 woman? Has he never seemed to wear an averted face 
 when you have gone to him in the expectation of obtaining 
 some blessing? Is it not true that God sometimes appears 
 to you a different God from what you expected to find 
 him? Does not his policy in certain junctures disappoint 
 3'ou, and sorely put your faith to tlie test? Li your private 
 experience is not the course of his providential and spiritual 
 operations, in some particulars, quite the reverse of what 
 you had been led to expect? And in the history of the 
 church is there not often a strange holding back of the 
 Saviour's hand in cases where you had confidently expected 
 to see it put forth? Have you not sometimes, when you 
 have gone to Christ with a burden on your heart like this 
 woman's, and with a confidence in his willingness to relieve 
 it, like hers, been met apparently with the same coldness, 
 reluctance and severity which she encountered? I know it is 
 so. I suppose it was to prepare you for the temptations and 
 difficulties of just such an exigency that this woman's sfory 
 has been preserved in the scriptures; and I would say to 
 you, whenever events under God's governmment are not 
 turning out as you had hoped and expected, whenever 
 labour fails to effect its anticipated issue, or prayer to re- 
 ceive its appointed reward, rcmeml)er the Saviour's dealings 
 with the Canaanitish woman, liemember first that God has 
 thus forewarned you that occasions may arise in which he 
 
THE SYRO-PIKENICIAN WOMAN. 81 
 
 sliall see fit lo repulse his people, to contend with thein, 
 and to throw discouragement upon their spirits. The mere 
 occurrence of such occasions is not to be considered a phe- 
 nomenon at variance with his character or policy. It is one 
 for whicli a precedent may l)c found here in his own word. 
 Our God is the God of the Bible. As such our faith ac- 
 knowledges him and conlitles in him; and our faith must ac- 
 knowledge him and confide in him just so far as the Bible 
 teaches u.s to do so. Now the Bible shows us this, God 
 sometimes maintaining an attitude of reserve, and assuming 
 an air of harshness in his treatment of his children. It shov/s 
 us this in the case of the woman before us. It shows us 
 the same in the absence and tardiness of Jesus when his 
 friend Lazarus was sick. It shows the same where Abra- 
 ham was suddenly required to sacrifice his son Isaac. Tem- 
 porary or apparent severity is a thing which may occur in 
 the dealings of God with us. We must not be confounded, 
 nor driven to unbelief when it does occur. Jesus had not 
 changed his character, though his manner towards this poor 
 Gentile was so disheartening. He never does change his 
 character. He may exhdjit it under forms which are at 
 times inexplicable to us, but the seeming digression will in 
 the end infallibly be found to be in harmony with the law 
 of his life, and the economy of his kingdom. The Canaan- 
 itish woman would not be convinced that Jesus was not 
 the Jesus of whom she had heard. Her heart had emljraced 
 the contrary conviction too deeply for an3'thing U) shake it. 
 Such confidence in him we ought all to entertain; and after 
 her example and the encouragement contained in her story 
 there ought to be no great difficult}' in any circumstances 
 iu entertaining it. 
 
 Then again, remember that such painful procedures on 
 the part of God may inclose within themselves all the 
 while a purpose to do you the good you seek. You may 
 
82 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 seem to be thrust back iigain and again, while really the 
 design of the hand that strikes you is to bring you nigh 
 and embrace you. Delay in granting a boon, though it 
 may be attended with aggravations which almost break the 
 heart and (quench hope, is nevertheless no certain proof of 
 an adverse determination in God. Think of this poor 
 heathen mother, ye mothers, ye parents, who have been 
 long calling apparently upon a deaf ear, and clamoring at 
 a closed gate in jour prayers for your otispring! Abraham 
 even under the knife had his sou restored to him. Martha 
 and Mary, even from the grave, had their brother returned 
 to their arms. Tiiis woman, even after Jesus himself had 
 seemed to rear a triple wall between her and her hope, 
 gained the precious answer — "be it unto thee as thou wilt!" 
 Remember again, when Jesus hesitates thus with you, 
 shuts the door thus upon your application, it is an indica- 
 tion to you probably that there are arguments rec^uired by 
 him at your hands. There is a way in which your case 
 must be set before him, before he can permit it to prevail. 
 His silence, his immobilit}' may be pregnant with suggestions 
 and reflections upon yourself, and may be meant to drive 
 you to deep and honest self-examin;ition, to see whether 
 there may not be some condition to the answering of your 
 prayer yet unfulfilled by you; or some "accursed thing" 
 from which God's blessing is necessarily repelled, cherished 
 by you. Christ may be conferring with you, as an inquisi- 
 tor, in these bitter moments of suspense, in order to lead 
 you to know yourself, and to acknowledge your delinquen- 
 cies; to repair your errors, and so to put out of the way 
 things which, while they remain, prevent the access of his 
 mercy. The woman's argument had reference, we should 
 say, to misfortunes rather than faults; but you may have 
 to concern yourself about faults You must disprove these, 
 and you must do this by the best of arguments, a reform- 
 
THE SYRO-PIICENICIAN WOMAN. 83 
 
 ed conduct. You must level the mountains, and raise the 
 valleys, and puige out tlie thorns and thistles, and so in- 
 vite the approach of Christ by the openness and the integ- 
 rity of your heart. 
 
 Remember again, Jesus giveth grace to the humble. 
 And what a lesson upon humility does the conduct of this 
 Gentile mother teach! How Christ rings the changes, so to 
 speak, upon her ulter want of merit, and right to claim the 
 benefit she sought! How he probes her pride and self- 
 esteem to the quick! And yet how meekly she takes it all! 
 Blast after blast of the rude hurricane strikes upon the 
 frail, bending willow, and lower and lower, at every stroke, 
 it bows, tdl it lies at last prone upon the earth. She con- 
 sents to rest her plea upon such a title as the dog under 
 the table might present to his master. She sees the chil- 
 dren's privileges set before her without envy or complaint. 
 She asks only the crumbs which are scattered from their su- 
 perabundance. This is a type, not an exaggerated one, of 
 the spirit and posture which every guilty and attainted 
 child of Adam ought to maintain before God. Till you 
 come to have such humility you are not in a condition to 
 receive the largesses of heaven. The unfallen angels are the 
 children feasting at the table, yonder in the father's house. 
 Sinners on earth are but the dogs under it; and in a temper 
 becoming their place they must ask for the blessing. Jesus 
 may keep them fasting till they are thankful for crumbs; 
 and then he may oi)en to them stores of grace transcending 
 the feast of angels. 
 
 And once more, remember, that God requires faith in 
 those whom he receives. Faith will be evinced by the 
 eatnestness of the pursuit. The prayer of faith must be an 
 earnest prayer; it will grow out of the reality of a want; 
 and the magnitude of a want. Are our prayers for our 
 children's salvation, i)rayers of faith think you? Ah, are 
 
84 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 they like the poor woman's for her demoniac daughter? 
 Have yon ever felt as she did for the demoniac child for 
 whom you profess to pray to God? Have you ever exhib- 
 ited such earnestness in seeking the conversion of that 
 worldly-minded daughter, or that protligate son, whom 
 Satan has taken captive? Alas! yon have not faith; you 
 do not believe in the danger of your child; you do not see 
 ils misery as she did, and you do not believe in the neces- 
 sity and the availibility of Christ's ollice as she did; and 
 so you are not in earnest in your prayer; and Clirist waits 
 till you come to him in faith. He waits to make you 
 evince your faith by an importunity which shall tell him 
 that the necessity is desperate, and that your want is such, 
 that like Jacob wrestling all night with the angel, you can- 
 not—will not let him go except he bless you. Alas, for 
 us, near Christian friends, we may all learn a lesson from 
 the conduct of this Syro-Pha?nician woman, and get a re- 
 buke from her too! She ganietl her daughter, and not im- 
 probably gained eternal life at the same time. O had we 
 more of her sincerity and earnestness, her single-minded, 
 practical honesty in seeking the blessings she desired, her 
 humility of spirit, her faith in Jesus, her patience and im- 
 portunity in prayer, I cannot doubt that more frequently 
 the cold look that now seems to sit upon the Saviour's face 
 would relax into loving smiles, and his voice bear to us too 
 the joyful message, "be it unto thee even as thou wilt." 
 
THE LILY OF THE FIELD. 
 
 > 
 
 MAY 2, 1852. 
 
 "Consider the lilies of tiie field, how they grow, they toil 
 not neither do they spin : And yet 1 say unto you tliat even Sol- 
 omon in all his glory wa.' not arrayed like one of tliese."' — 
 Mattukw. 0:28.29. 
 
 THE particuhxr purpose lor which the Saviour alludes to 
 the lily of the field, in the cjise before us, was to 
 make men recognize the beneficent agency of God as 
 something to be taken into account and depended upon Ijy 
 them, as a means of bodily subsistence and support. He 
 holds up the little flower before them as a witness, and in- 
 terrogates it, as it were, of the source of its vigorous health 
 and fairy-like comeliness. And the answer that he receives 
 is, that there is an intelligent power external to itself which 
 has made it what it is. It did not toil nor spin. By no 
 skill or industry of its own, it wove its draper}' of white 
 and green. But God clothed it. God r.aised its graceful 
 stem from the soil, and hnng over its queenly form a 
 mantle that surpasses the apparel of Solomon in all his "lo- 
 ry. Now, the Saviour's argument is, that a power which is 
 seen expending itself in such a way and td such a degree 
 in the case of a flower, ought to be looked to and trusted 
 in by men, as a source from which they too may expect 
 even greater aid. Allowing for ail proper difl'erences be- 
 tween the man and the plant, the fact still remains as true 
 in the case of the one as the other, that God can exert an 
 
86 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 agency whicli may materially assist in promoting their secu- 
 rity and well-being. The power that decks the lily can give 
 food and raiment to man. And man is as unreasonable, as 
 he is unkind to himself, in throwing out of view this pow- 
 er, when he is estimating the means upon which his hope 
 of having his wants supplied, may rcist. His expectation of 
 obtaining aid from God must, of course, refognize the con- 
 ditions of his nature, as a being possessed of animal and 
 rational life. The plant has everthing done for it, we may 
 say, by its beneficent Creator. Care, and forethought, and 
 labor of its own, are out of the question. But man is so 
 constituted that he can do much for himself. He can ex- 
 ercise intelligent care and prudent forethought, and skilltul 
 labor in his own behalf; and it is only in the exercise of 
 all these that he can hope for aid from God. But all these 
 exercised to their utmost, do not alter the fact, nor his in- 
 terest in the fact, that there is a power external to him, 
 which is able to give him aid. The power that clothes the 
 lilies of the field, is still pi-esented to him as another agen- 
 cy, adequate, just as well, to supply all his wants. And 
 shall he take no note of that power in summing up and col- 
 lecting together his resources ? Because he can do much 
 for liimself, shall he deny that God can do anything for 
 him ? Shall he make all his faith and hope and trust ter- 
 minate upon himself, and act as if he had no need of 
 God's aid, while his own faculties can act, or as if no cases 
 could occur in which God's aid could serve him, when his 
 own energies had proved insufficient ? Shall he thus make 
 a God of himself, by never looking out of himself, or high- 
 er than himself? "Oh, thou of little faith," and of folly 
 as great as thy faith is little, to see this wondrous power 
 all around thee in the world, and beneficently exercised too, 
 and yet refuse to betake thyself to it ? To see God cloth- 
 ing the grass of the field without toiling or spinning, and 
 
THE LILY OF THE FIELD. 87 
 
 yet refuse Lo beleive that He can and will aid tliec in thy 
 toiling and spinning ? Consider the lilies how they grow ; 
 and then consider whether it is not a blind and thriftless 
 policy which keeps thee ever trusting to thine own arm and 
 never to the power which makes them grow! The very 
 shrubs and blossoms which thy busy feet are crushing in 
 their restless quest of the things thou shalt eat and drink 
 and put on, condemn thee for thy misspent care and mis- 
 directed trust. This useful rebuke of man's atheistical for- 
 gotfulness of God, as an agent able and willing to help 
 him, the Saviour draws from a growing flower. Passing on 
 from this lesson, I would find in the some object a type of 
 much else which belongs to the condition and history of 
 man. 
 
 Nature ought to l>c scanned far more than it is by the 
 Christian, with the eye of faith which can see in things 
 earthly, patterns of things heavenly. The visible world is a 
 book of parables ; and, he who will carry with him the key 
 of knowledge which Scripture gives, may find it full of the 
 mysteries of the kingdom of God. Its forms and figures, 
 as has been beautifully said, are "a sacred writing," the 
 hieroglyphics of God; and the evolutions of beaut}^ and 
 grandeur which are everywhere occuring in it, are the un- 
 folding of his gloiy, — the rolling out upon the temple floor, 
 or the skirts of his train, whose person sits enthi'oned in 
 the light inaccessable of heaven. As God is one, unity is to 
 be looked for in his works; and, consequently, agreement and 
 likeness in all his different revelations of himself. And 
 when, therefore, we find the type of some spiritual truth 
 presented to us, in a fact or process of the material world 
 we have presented to us a new ground for confidence in 
 that spiritual truth. The analogies between nature and the 
 doctrines of the Scripture, as we have them in the Bible, 
 do more, therefore, than gratify our intellect, or please our 
 
OO A PASTOR S VALEDICTOKY. 
 
 fancy. Tliey minister to our growth in grace, and in the 
 knowledge of our Lord, they edify us ' in our most holy 
 faith; tiiey widen and deepen the foundation of our reli- 
 gion; they elevaie the soul by di closing amidst all things, 
 even the petty and familiar things of life, tlie beautiful and 
 majestic harmonies of God; and tluiy lift ns by the ladder 
 of earthly things to a higher, nearer communication with 
 heaven. 
 
 Let us question, then, the lily of its hidden signifi- 
 cance, and see what intimations of higher things we may 
 find in the whispers of the grass of the field. And this, 
 not with tluit vain curiosity which hunts for surprising co- 
 incidences, or that more poetic taste which delights in the 
 ai)tness of a simile, but with a reverent docility that seeks 
 for truth everywhere, and rejoices to find new arguments for 
 its heaven- taught faith, in the manifold imagery of earth. 
 
 The growing flower is the product of a seed, buried 
 darkly in the soil. The beginning of all this diversified ar- 
 ray of vegetable beauty which now a lorns your gardens , and 
 all this wide waving garniture of green which now covers 
 your hills and your vallies, was a germ propelled into mo- 
 tion under ground. Out of that obscure and unsightly bed 
 it has arisen, and erected itself into the plant, the leaf, and 
 the l>lossom. But in this growth, when we come to trace it 
 through its successive stages, there has been called into ac- 
 tion a complicated system of laws, and a wondrous con- 
 course of forces. The various kinds of operation, the immense 
 exercise of power, and the extensive range of plan and 
 method, which are employed in the causing of the germina- 
 tion of the tiniest plant, is a matter which is fitted to fill 
 the mind with amazement; and (did not the fact forbid all 
 doubt) might well excite the incredulous inquiry "is not 
 this a delnsion ?" This mighty machinery could never have 
 been constructed for such a result. There is an apparatus 
 
THE LILV op TIIK FIKI.D. SO 
 
 here which iniulit hav*^ liecii used U) fiainc a worhl. Was 
 it all directed to the pioductioti of a lily ? But ju'>t tiiis, 
 and all tliis, is lu'vertheless true; and scepticism is effcc- 
 tiially silenced by the iineiiiiig disclosures of science. Out of 
 the many facts which these have developed, let me instance 
 one or two, for it is only a scattered paragraph or two out 
 of the beautiful history of vegetable life, which the occasion 
 will allow me to give, T borrow theui from "McCosh's Di- 
 vine rjovernment, Physical and Moral." Consider this then 
 that the aiinu:il revolution of the earth aI)out the sun has 
 l)een arranged so :is to aid the growth of ever}- little flower 
 that is lilooming at your feet. The seed as it lies in the 
 soil is a dull inert object, which, without the conjiinctio)i 
 ol certain conditions, has no more power to change than a 
 stone. Heat must first reach it in its hidden bed, and heat 
 in just the right propotion, so that in connection with the 
 moisture of the soil, it may expand and soften the outer 
 coats of the grain, and so prepare the way for the chemical 
 agents which are to quicken and nourish the embr\o within. 
 A temperature above or below a specific point wo»dd defeat 
 nil vital action. Now the course of the earth around the 
 gun has been adjusted with such nice reference to this con- 
 dition of the vegetable economy that just the ray of the re- 
 quisite intensity strikes the s[)ot, where the seed is deposit- 
 ed though that spot has been determined by a thing so fit- 
 ful as the gust of wind, or the flight of the insect l)y which 
 the seed was borne to the ground. A different ray would 
 liave failed to produce the efl'ect. That which is emitted by 
 a Septem))er sun, for instance, would strive in vain to wak- 
 en into life, an AjumI flower. The earth would have gone 
 too far in its orl>it for the condition of temperature required 
 by such a flower, to be fulfilled. . Tint God has ordered 
 the mechanism of nature so that no such irregularit}' ever 
 occurs. The right ray finds the right seed. The revolving 
 
90 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 earth brings the spot where it lies, into a position where it 
 will draw from the great centre of heat just the measure of 
 warmth that it needs. And still further, we are told, that 
 in the progress of the seasons there is a peculiar adaptation 
 in the character or quality of the sun's rays, to the wants 
 of the vegetable world. The kind of ray that suits the 
 plant in the spring will not perform the functions that it 
 needs in summer, nor will either of those which suited it in 
 the spring and summer, perform the functions that it needs 
 in the autumn. Accordingly, the ray undergoes a change in 
 precise accommodation to the wants of the plant. At the 
 season of germination, it contain in a predominant de-- 
 gree, what is called the chemical power, just that power 
 which is required to develop and propel the embryo of the 
 seed. When the tender stalk is rearing itself from the 
 ground, and' needs nutriment to hel[) it grow, the solar ray 
 is distinguished by a predominance of the light-giving pow- 
 er, lio-ht being the agent which most directly assists the 
 plant in secreting from the atmosphere the carbon, with 
 which its woody fibre is formed. And when the autumn 
 approaches, and the fruit is to be matured, the chemical 
 and luminous principles diminish, and the heat giving power 
 becomes predominant in the ray, heat being that which is 
 most needed to mature and ripen the product of the plant. 
 And, did not exactly such an order as this exist, in the 
 mechanism (so to call it) of the sun, or were this order dis- 
 turbed, vegetable life would become abortive! 
 
 Now what contrivance is here; and what grandeur of 
 contrivance ? And all (for the machinery is complete in 
 the case of each individual) for the growth of the little 
 flower, which you may crush with your foot. Tbe sun, the 
 strong man of the skies, is thus made the minister of the 
 plant. Its functions have been adjusted to the wants of the 
 minutest herb, and it is its mission as much to nurse the 
 
TIIK LII.V OP THE FIELD. 91 
 
 liuinl)le lily with its beams as it is to kindle with them the 
 disc of the mightiest i)lanct. Consider now, another fact, 
 ill illustration of God's care of the grass of the field. The 
 proportions of the great earth itself have been determined 
 so as to c >!iform pi-ecise'y to the conditions which are re- 
 quired in order to the production of the smallest plant that 
 grows upon its surface. Any material change in its bulk 
 would be fatal to the whole vegetable world. It is a famil- 
 iar fact that the plant derives its sustenance, very much, 
 from the moisture which by some internal force is forced up 
 from the earth, and distributed through every limb and leaf. 
 But the attraction, or what ever else this internal force may 
 be, must naturally be counteracted by the gravit}' of the 
 earth. If the force of this gravity be unduly great it must 
 prevent the rising and dispersing of the sap through the 
 tubes of the plant. If it be unduly small the sap must rise 
 too rapidly and violently for the purpose of affording health}' 
 support. And in either case, from inanition or repletion 
 the plant must sicken and perish, unless some change should 
 take place in its organization. Now the mass of the 
 earth, and the height and capacity of eadli plant that grows 
 upon it, are so adjusted to each other, that the precise re- 
 sult always occurs; that the moisture absorbed by the root 
 rises just as far, and is distributed just as widely as there 
 are organs to receive it. The force of gravity is graduated 
 exactly so as to allow the internal power of the plant to 
 perform successfully its functions, of supplying it with nu- 
 triment. But let this nice balance be destroyed, as it would 
 be the moment the bulk of the earth, and consequently the 
 force of gravity were increased or diminished, (supposing al- 
 ways the plant to remain unchanged) and the whole process 
 of vegetation must cease. The veiy same power and wis- 
 dom then, which were concerned in weighing and shaping 
 the mighty globe, were concerned in providing for the growth 
 
92 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 of the humblest tiower. frod made the earth for the lily as 
 ranch as the 111}' for the earth. The same thing is illustra- 
 ted by another well known fact. In plants which hang their 
 heads when in bloom, the pistils (upon which the dust which 
 fertilizes the blossom mnst be deposited) are longer and 
 hence lower, then the stamens which snpply this dust. The 
 gravity of the earth is the power which causes the dust to 
 drop to its appointed receptacle.. And it is so adjusted that 
 it produces just that etl'ect. Now, says a learned writer on 
 physical science, "an earth, greater or smaller, denser or 
 rarer than the one on which we live would require a change 
 in the structure and strength of the footstalks of all the lit- 
 tle flowers that hang their heads under our hedges. And 
 is there not something curious, lie adds, in an arrangement 
 by which the great globe, from pole to pole and from cir- 
 cumference to centre, is employed in keeping a snow- drop 
 in the position most suited to the i)roinotion of its vegeta. 
 ble health ?" I might go on to speak of the mathematical 
 principles which are applied to the formation of the texture 
 of plants and show with what artistical regularity these fab- 
 rics have been ela'borated. And I might follow the various 
 changes which the chemical elements furnished by the at- 
 mosphere, produce and show how nicel}' the law of definite 
 proportions is observed in them all. But what I have said 
 is enough to illustrate my point, that the life of a flower is 
 something upon which God has expended an amount of care 
 and contrivance and power, which is fitted to overwhelm us 
 with astonishment. He has made the lily grow, by the 
 same stupendous apparatus l)y which He lit the fires of the 
 sun, and shaped the mass of the earth, and ordered the rol- 
 ling of the seasons, and compounded the constituents of the 
 atmosphere, and underlaid the universe with general laws of 
 order, and proportions, and sequence. All this he has done 
 for what we call an insignificant plant ; and all this we are 
 
THE LILY OF THE FIELD. 93 
 
 called upon to notice when we are directed to consider the 
 lilies how they grow. 
 
 And now I argue that in all tbis wbich he has done for 
 the plant, we have a type of what he may be expected to 
 do for creatures of a higher class. I draw from all this 
 the inference, that arrangements more wonderful, and plans 
 of far higher import, may be expected to appear in God's 
 economy, in reference to moral beings. The soul is a olant 
 of immortal nature. A flower of Paradise and with what 
 care may not He who provides for the lily, provide for it ? 
 And what strange ministries may not He employ for its pre- 
 servation and growth? Look at the soul as sin has made it; 
 cleaving to the dust, encrusted in worldliuess, passive and 
 dead as to spiritual things. Left to itself it is helpless, it 
 will never germinate into its true life, it will never expand 
 and aspire in the direction of its true destiny. That which 
 is born of the flesh, is flesh. The soul naturally is in liond- 
 age to carnel appetites, and encumbered with earthly inter- 
 ests, like tbe seed imprisoned in the soil. Now, shall God 
 raise the seed from its grave, and give it health and beau- 
 ty, and yet sufl'er tbe soul to lie neglected in its corruption, 
 and perish forever ? Will he so clothe the grass of the field 
 and not much more clothe that nobler creature ? Will he 
 notice the little grain in the earth, and give it a body as 
 it pleaseth him, and not mark man in his fallen state, and 
 reanimate the spirit, dead in trespasses and sins? There is 
 a ground laid, therefore in the existence of a beneficent 
 vegetable economy, for the expectation tbat a higher econ- 
 omy, suited to the exigencies of moral beings and adapted 
 to recover them from the ruin, in which sin has involved 
 them, will be devised. And hence we are not surprised to 
 learn from a revelation, that God has no pleasure in the 
 death of tbe sinner ; and tbat He lias provided a way, a 
 system of means, for the salvation of the guilty. The tru- 
 
94 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 ly penitent man who has felt sin to be a bondage, and a 
 burden, and a power, that is ever working death in hnu, and 
 who is sighing for deliverance from it, and panting for the 
 light and life of God's love, may be en(;onraged, therefore, 
 by the growing lily. The sweet tlower will tell him there is 
 hope for him; and will preach to him from its lowly pul- 
 pit the gospel of the grace of God. 
 
 And something too, of what mysteries that gospel may 
 be exepected to contain, it will suggest to him. For, 
 after all wLiat wonderful arrangement of means and dis- 
 tribution of agents and forces which we iiave seen employ- 
 ed in the vegetation of a plant, we are not surprised 
 to learn from the Revelation, tliat man's salvation has been 
 wrought out by marvelous processes, and contrivances stu- 
 pendously great. Men sometimes denounce the doctrines of 
 Christianity as unreasonable, because they represent God as 
 doing so much for the salvation of man, because the meas- 
 ures he is said to have adopted are so extraordinary, and 
 so (as they judge) disproportionately vast and costly. The 
 incarnation and the atonement of a Divine Redeemer, the 
 gracious offices of the Holy Spirit, and the existence of a 
 previous purpose in the mind of God contemplating the sal- 
 vation of the particular soul fi-om eternity, tliese seem 
 incredible ; and incredible because (to the person in ques- 
 tion) they seem too grand and elaborate an apparatus for 
 the object proposed. If such thoughts trouble any of you, 
 consider what measures (liod has adopted for the growing 
 of the grass, which to-day is and to-morrow is cast into 
 the oven. See the humble lily, throwing its relations around 
 the sunbeam, and the path of a planet, and the bulk of 
 the earth, and the elements of the atmosphere, and the 
 great laws of proportion and combination which spread their 
 network through creation ; and cease to wonder that there 
 are great things brought to light in a plan which aims at the 
 
THE LILY OF THE FIELD. 95 
 
 redemption of a soul. What way God shall take for de- 
 veloping and maturing the life of a plant, we cannot 
 (apart from the fact, forcast or divine, nor what way he 
 shall take to redeem and sanctify a fallen man. That he 
 should exceed our thoughts in his plans is probable. That 
 He has done so in the production of the plant, we can eas- 
 ily see. Why should we be so reluctant to hear, then, 
 from the Bible that He has done so also, in the salvation 
 of man ? (), dear friends, the history of the flower re- 
 bukes you for your slowness to believe the stupendous 
 truths of Christianity! With all its strange revelations be. 
 fore us, what commends itself to us as more likely, than 
 that God should so love the world as to give His only be- 
 gotten sou, that whosoever believeth in him should not per- 
 ish but have everlasting life ? Or that the mercy that par- 
 dons sin should shine upon us through a mediator, who 
 was God manifest in the flesh ? Or that the energy which 
 quickens the passive soul into spiritual life, should be the 
 power of the Holy Ghost ? Or that the change which such 
 a soul undergoes in being delivered from sin, should be a 
 new birth ? Indefinite wonders we are undoubtedly 
 taught to expect in any economy of grace which God should 
 devise; from the wonders which we find characterizing the 
 economy of nature, and why stagger at those which Chris- 
 tianity reveals, any more than at any others ? 
 
 But to return to the emblem of the text, we may con- 
 sider the Illy not inaptly, as the type of much that belongs 
 to the development of the spiritual principle in the life of 
 the convertect man. For what was the grain, lying in the 
 soil, we have at length, the growing plant — a thing whose 
 proper home is the quiet, secluded, cultivated field. There 
 is no aflSnity between the flower and the battle-plain, ploughed 
 bj' the war-horse's hoof, or the crowded street, worn hard 
 by the tramp of busy men, or the rocky-reef swept by 
 
96 A PASTORS VALEDICTORY. 
 
 the wave and tbe storm. The flower loves the habitations 
 of peace. It twines its tendrils around ^our door-posts, 
 nestles under the ledges of your windows, expands within 
 the enclosure of your gardens, or shelters itself in the 
 lonely glen and valley. The flower is not the nurseling of 
 the jostling, struggling, Qgiiting world. It vegetates in the 
 tranquil nooks and corners of ground where the sunshine 
 and the dew, anil the hand that teiuls it, the eye that loves 
 it, are its only visitors. And piety in the soul is not the 
 nurseling of the strifes, and exciteujents, and cares, and pas- 
 sions, of the world. It must grow as the lily grows, where 
 heaven can look down upon it, and it can look uj) to heaven. 
 It wants its hedge of domestic sanctities, and its consecrated 
 closet, and its quiet solitude, in which to meditate, and its 
 cloisters in the breast where holy thoughts and spiritual af- 
 fections, may shelter their purity from outward pollution. 
 Show me a languid, sickly Christian, and I shall explain 
 the secret of his unhappy condition, [)robably by saying, 
 "he is growing wliere he ought not to be." He has become 
 entangled with the allairs of this life; and the dust of 
 worldliness is blighting his spiritual frame, and earthly 
 schemes and cares have separated him from fellowship with 
 God, and his Son. He has left that fenced garden, that spot 
 "out of the world" where the Saviour placed him, and 
 where the "beloved' (as the Song of Solomon expresses 
 Christ's art'ectionate intercourse with his saints), "goes down 
 to wander amidst tiie beds of spices, and to gather lilies." 
 Yet, let it not be supposed, that man is to cease to be 
 man, and sever his heart from all human sympathies and 
 interests, by becoming a Christian. Though there is noth- 
 ing more distinctly ati3rmed in the (Jospel than "that if any 
 man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him," 
 yet in a certain sense, the controlling sentiment of the 
 Saviour in coming from heaven, was his love for the world; 
 
THE LILY OF THE FIELD. 97 
 
 and i\8 he loved men, and sympathized with them, and 
 shared in their interests, and honored the relationships that 
 bound them tc^gether — in a word, made himself one with 
 them, so must we do. And this kindly identity with our 
 race, is one ot" the conditions of spiritual health. Our hearts 
 need to be knit with others, in the ties that God has or- 
 dained, and made the web that holds society together, in 
 order that grace may thoroughly pervade and sanctif}' them. 
 The religion that makes man a stone, rootless and flower- 
 less, lying upon the surface of the earth like rubbish, 
 rather than blending with its mould as a vital part of its 
 organism, is not the religion of the gospel. That takes 
 the lily, the growing plant as its type, with its radicle 
 penetrating the soil beneath, while its vigorous plume lifts 
 itself heaven war<l above. God made the family and the 
 many relationships to which it gives birth. God made 
 the love of our neighbor to stand parallel with our love 
 to ourselves. God gave the heart as many flbres, with 
 which* to clasp its loved ones, as he gives to the starting 
 germ with which to fasten itself to the soil. And piety 
 will suffer, just as nature is mutilated, by wresting it from 
 these laws and ordinances of its Creator. The hermit and 
 misanthrope, the monk and the nun, are not the true pro- 
 ducts of the Gospel; and never have given, and never will 
 give to the world, the kind of holiness which Christ came to 
 introduce amongst men. lie took upon himself the nature 
 of Abraham, we read, and not that of angels, and we are 
 not to throw otf nature in becoming his disciples. It is not 
 a petrified, but a sanctifled nature, that constitutes piety, 
 a nature that intertwines itself with all the relationships of 
 society, and refines and purifies them all, and so, through 
 them all, draws nutriment to its own spirituality, and ex- 
 hibits in new forms the manifold grace of God. 
 
98 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 And so too, I may add, piety is something which em- 
 bellishes life. It is a flower upon the earth, and an odor 
 in the atmosphere. Its influence, whenever its functions are 
 in healthy exercise, is pleasant and beneficent. It is absent 
 from the heart, or languishing there whenever, as the Pro- 
 verb has it, it is not "an ornament of grace to the head," 
 that is, whenever it is not found investing an individual 
 with amenity of manner, and amiability of disposition. It 
 was made to be a blessing to the world; to be a softness 
 and a beauty amidst its asperities and deformities. It was 
 made to gladden the eye of the jaded traveler by the 
 roadside, to adorn the drawing-room and the sick chamber, 
 to wreathe roses upon the brow of the child, and to deck 
 with it snowy purity, the breast of the bride. Consider the 
 lily, ye followers of the Saviour, and learn like it and learn 
 like him to be beneficent and attractive, making others bet- 
 ter and happier for the seeing of you, and through the love 
 you win to yourselves, persuading them to love the religion 
 which you represent. 
 
 But the plant, I observe once more, is to be regarded 
 as a type for the Christian, in the fact, that it does grow. 
 It is not a stationary thing. There is an idea of the Divine 
 Architect, so to speak, involved in the embryo, and the 
 history of the plant after its germination is the development 
 of that idea. The vegetable world is in perpetual progress, 
 tending always to its destined end; ami elaborating always 
 its appointed results. It is a growing world, fulfilling im- 
 portant offices in the present, and providing for others which 
 are to be needed in the future. No plant lives and dies 
 naturally without accomplishing something. It embellishes 
 one season, and it leaves behind it the means of embellish- 
 ing another. It manifests a benevolence, if I may call it so, 
 which serves the generation of which it is a part, and then 
 projects itself on to the following one. It throws itself 
 
THE LILY OF THE FIELD. 99 
 
 thus into the universal eunent of vegetable life; and helps 
 to keep it llowing on, through the track of foreseen ages. 
 In the graphic lines of the poet — 
 
 "The piil|).y acorn, e'er it swells, I'outains 
 The oak's vast branches in its uiilky veins; 
 Each ravelled bud, line tilni, and fibre line, 
 Tracetl with nice pencil on the small design. 
 The j'oung Narcissus, in its bulb compres.-ed, 
 Cradles a second nestling on its breast, 
 In whose fine arms a younger embryo lies. 
 Folds Its thin leaves, and shuts its tloret-eyes; 
 Grain within giain, succe.ssive harvests dwell. 
 And boundless forests slumbers in a shell." 
 
 And so, the Christian is taught that his life ought to 
 l»e a growth, a development, and execution of the purposes 
 entertained by his Creator in giving him being, and espe- 
 cially, in making him the subject of his quickening grace. 
 His piety ought to be prolific. In his soul, upon its tablets, 
 there was mapped a plan, coincident with the germination 
 of his spiritual life, which God intended him to fulfill, in 
 what he should thereafter be and do; a plan which contem- 
 plated many results for himself, and for others contemporary 
 with him, and for generations to come after him. And 
 piety is the fulfilling of this plan. The kingdom of God is 
 a growing kingdom, a prolific power in the heart and in the 
 world. It is like the grain of mustard seed, small perhaps 
 in the beginning, but spreading and rising until it becomes 
 the greatest of all herbs. Its effect in the individual, as 
 the Psalmist describes it, is to make him "like a tree plant- 
 ed by the rivers of water, that brought forth its fruit in its 
 season, and whose leaf never withers," and its effect upon 
 the race of mankind, when its consummation shall have 
 been attained, as Isaiah foretells it, will be to "make the 
 wilderness and the solitary place glad, and the desert to re- 
 joice and blossom as the rose." 
 
100 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 Now, Christian, cousider the lily here; and ask your- 
 self if you ure growing, so as to fulfill the purposes of your 
 Master, in giving you a place in his kingdom. He wants 
 no stationary member there He wants no one to live and 
 die there, leaving the world no better than if he had never 
 been in it. You have something to do; something which 
 the present and the future are both expecting at your 
 hands. And if you have the true spiritual life in your 
 soul, you will not be willing to go out of the world with- 
 out leaving an impression upon it somewhere which shall 
 go to swell the influences that are to etfect the world's re- 
 generation. 
 
 VVitli one thought more, I will conclude. Consider the 
 growing plant. It is growing, because, it was good ground 
 into which the seed, from which it sprung, had fallen. 
 Some seed, shaken from the parent stalk at the same time, 
 fell upon the hard wayside, and the fowls have devoured 
 it up. Some fell upon stony ground, and the scorching 
 sun has withered its feeble blade. Some fell among thorns, 
 and the thorns have sprung up and choked it. And from 
 these seeds, there are uo graceful blossoms, no promising har- 
 vests, blessing the world to-day. My friends, the seed of spir- 
 itual and eternal life, is the word of God — the Gospel which 
 we preach in Christ's name unto you. And its legitimate ef- 
 fect is to lead men to repentance towards God, and faith in 
 the Lord Jesus Christ, and holiness of heart and conduct. If 
 it has not produced this elfect upon you, it is because there 
 has been in you no good ground upon which to receive it. 
 Your souls have been kept in unbelief, by the artifices of 
 the Devil, or the fear of some temporal loss or reproach, 
 or by the cares or pleasures of the world. And yet this 
 seed of the word must have its effect, or you can have 
 no hope, none which God sanctions, of salvation. How 
 long do you intend to continue unfruitful hearers of the 
 
THE LILY OF THE FIELD. 101 
 
 word? Are your raincls made up never to believe and obej- 
 the Gospel? Alas, then I can tell you what is to be the 
 result. These spring flowers will soon be blooming over 
 3'our graves. And sweet witnesses of the love of God, as 
 they are, in their blindness, they will still l>e whispering of 
 his love above the spot where your bodies are reposing. 
 But there will be nothing to speak to your lost souls, of 
 that love. There will be no tokens of mercy to meet you 
 in that cheerless world where your spirits will have gone, 
 and the onl}' voice that can come to you there, will be 
 that wail of hopeless sorrow in which 3'our own tongues will 
 have to take part, "the harvest is past, the summer is 
 ended, and we are not saved." 
 
THE SEAT OF SIN 
 
 OCTOBEll 25, 18(>8. 
 
 "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and lenew a rljjlit spirit 
 within me."— Psalm 51:10. 
 
 DAVTD, at the time he composed this prayer, was ab- 
 sorbed with the contemplation of that particular sin, 
 or course of sin, to which yon will tind a reference 
 made in the title of the Psalm. While under the influence 
 of the unwholesome passion by which he had been decoyed 
 into this sin, or course of sin, he had been like a man in- 
 toxicated, or in a delirium. With an infatuation which 
 made him a totally different being from his proper self, he 
 rushed persistently down the declivity of transgression, till 
 in the end, he found himself in a perfect slouch of crime 
 and infamy. Then the bandage dropped from his eyes, the 
 paralysis lelt his soul. He awoke, as it were, to a sudden 
 discovery of what he had done, and what he had become. 
 We will not stop to explain the phenomenon of his apos 
 tacy. It is confessedly a mysterious one. It belongs, how- 
 ever, to a class of phenomena, frequent enough in their oc- 
 currence to be familiar to us all. You may see persons, 
 almost any day, deploring some act or procedure in which 
 they have been engaged, wondering that they could have 
 been foolish and wicked enough to engage m it, and pro- 
 testing that could they get back again to the point where 
 they stood before consenting to engage in it, nothing could 
 
 102 
 
THE SEAT OF SIN. 103 
 
 induce them to engage in it. Tbey liave all been thrown b}' 
 some irregular action ot the mind into a state of temporary 
 intoxication or delirium. David's case was an extreme one 
 of this class; but extreme eases do now and then occur, in 
 all the departments of mental life. 
 
 But what I propose that we shall look at is the form 
 and direction which David's desire for a recovery from his 
 fall took. He had committed a complicated and aggravated 
 sin against God and man. It left him with remorse in his 
 heart, with a stain upon his character, with guilt on his 
 soul, and with the torture of apprehended retribution in his 
 conscience. He was not content, as he might have been, to 
 remain with desperate self-abandonment, in such a condi- 
 tion. From this abyss into which he had sunk, he evident- 
 ly sought to escape. He would regain, as far as such a 
 thing was practicable, the ground he had lost. The direct 
 and obvious way to do this would be to get himself back 
 again, as nearly as possible, into the relations with God 
 and man, in which he had been placed before; to have his 
 account with the injured parties set right; to do what was 
 requisite in order to the canceling of his sin; and the 
 avoiding of the consequences of it; in other words, to ob- 
 tain forgiveness for it from God, and to make reparation 
 for the wrong involved in it, to man. An evil deed once 
 done is, of course, done forever. It is fixed in the unal 
 terable, inaccessible past, and can never, as an actual fact, 
 be undone. As an effectual fact, though, that is, as a 
 fact, viewed in its bearing and operation, it may, to a 
 greater or less extent, be undone. If you have inflicted a 
 wrong upon a neighbor, you may, in the first place, by a 
 compliance with certain conditions, receive a full and hearty 
 pardon from him, which will put you riglit in respect to 
 his feeling toward you. You may, in the second place, 
 make amends to him for any damage he may have sustain- 
 
104 A pastor's vai.edictorv. 
 
 cd tliroiigli 3'our ill conduct, which will put you right in 
 respect to his outward estate. And then, you may, in the 
 third i)lace, by an entire and permanent reformation in your 
 deportment, regain yonr character, which will put you light 
 in respect to the community at large. And by these means 
 you may be said to have retraced your way, almost if not 
 qui'.e, to the spot from whicli you had diverged. Gcnerall}- 
 it is in this way that men seek to elTect a return from 
 those aberrations by which they have declined from r(!cti- 
 tude; and when they have successfully pursued it, and have 
 achieved the result it aims at, they are satisfied. They con- 
 sider themselves virtually reinstated in the ))osition they had 
 originally occupied. David might have ad(^>i)ted this way in 
 proposing to himself an escape from his condition of apos- 
 tacy. And indeed he did adopt it, for these steps belong, 
 fundamentally, to any process by which *a transgressor 
 undertakes to restore himself from a state of sin to one 
 of rectitude. That he sought pardon from God for his 
 grievous offences we know from various declarations in this 
 Psalm. That he made what reparation lay in his power to 
 parties affected by his wrong doing; and that he, during his 
 subsequent life, put a check upon his appetites and main- 
 tained a purity of character, we know, or may accept as an 
 indubitable inference from his history. But, you will ob- 
 serve, he does not stop with these steps. He is not s.atis- 
 fied with a result which usually satisfies men in their di- 
 gressions from rectitude. In getting out of his condition 
 of guilt and infamy, he feels that something more is need- 
 ed, than putting himself right towards the parties upon 
 whom he had inflicted wrong. He wants to be put right in 
 himself. He argues that the act of sin, committed by a 
 man, demonstrates the existence of something more than 
 tiie fact created by the commission of that act; that it 
 demonstrates a prior, inherent depravity in the man himself 
 
THE SEAT OF SIN. 105 
 
 — au unclean heart and a corrupt spirit — l)y which he has 
 been prompted to commit that act. He finds, after look- 
 ing at such an act. that if it were possible to undo it, ab- 
 solutely and literally, so that every trace of its existence 
 should be obliterated, and the man who committed it should 
 appear as blameless as though he had never committed it, 
 still there would be the evil element, the sinister principle 
 in him, which had been revealed b}' the commission of it, 
 to be noticed and reckoned with. "Though I comfort my- 
 self with the thought," he may be supposed to have reflect- 
 ed, "that my sin is no longer, in any way, charged to my 
 account, that God and man look upon me as though 1 had 
 never committed it, still there is the fact — that I could and 
 did commit it — remaining to be estimated, and dealt with. 
 How could I have committed it? Why did I commit it? 
 The only explanation of such a fact is, that I have in me 
 an unclean heart and corrupt spirit; and though my sin has 
 ceased to exist as a fact to be laid to my charge, the un- 
 clean heart and corrupt spirit survive, and make me in na- 
 ture and disposition, a sinner still." And therefore, we find 
 David's desire for recovery from his fallen estate, taking 
 the form and direction it does in the text, and going the 
 length it does, when it expresses itself in the prayer, 
 "create in me a clean heart, God, and renew a right 
 spirit within me." 
 
 The idea which thus underlies the prayer of David is 
 an important one, and one, which it is to be feared, is too 
 generally overlooked. Our conception of sin,* as a quality 
 in ourselves or others, is very apt to be identical, and 
 therefore coextensive only with, our perception of sin as a 
 fact in ourselves or others. Our judgments of men, are 
 determined by our view, and our estimate of, their acts. 
 And if by any process we can expunge these acts from 
 their record — if we can cover them over with apologies — or 
 
106 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 neutralize their weight by baUmchig against them certain 
 good acts, we are ready to conclude that they can be, only 
 in a mitigated or partial degree, reckoned sinners. "I have 
 never injured any one," "I have led an honest and virtuous 
 life," "m}' conscience is at rest, and L am not afraid to 
 meet God," is language which the minister of religion not 
 unfrequently hears from the lips of the dying man. And 
 yet, I do not know that the dying man was ever yet seen, 
 who would not confess tliat in some things he had done 
 wrong. When reminded that in appearing before God it 
 will be inciiml)ent on him to satisfy Him that he is free 
 from sin, to make good his claim to rectitude before his 
 bar, to maint.'iin his case at the tribunal of a judge, who 
 knows everything, who forgets nothing, and who, from the 
 knowledge of the heart, couples always the act with the dis- 
 position and motive from which it sprung, the dying man 
 is rarely, perhaps never, found, wlio is hardened enough or 
 blind enough to adhere to his plea of innocence. Though 
 he may have persuaded himself, while looking at the rules 
 and methods of adjudication current in the world, that Ihe 
 plea is valid, you have only to get him to apprehend, in- 
 telligently, that it has now to be tried by such rules and 
 methods as pertain to the adjudications of God, to make 
 him see that it will not stand. He may say to the human 
 inquisitor, "you cannot find a flaw in my life," because he 
 is thinking, when he says this, of the low stand-point from 
 which the human inquisitor must inspect him, and the low 
 standard by which he must estimate him; but when he 
 thinks of God, the Divine inquisitor, inspecting him from 
 his stand-point and estimating him by his standard, he will 
 say no more, "you cannot find a flaw in my life." He 
 will say rather with the Psalmist, "in th}^ sight shall no 
 man living be justified." He will know that there are 
 obliquities and deficiencies in his life, such as God in the 
 
THE SEAT OF SIN. 107 
 
 application of iiis law to it, must notice and condemn, as 
 sins. And if lie continues to say, "I am not afraid to 
 meet God," it will not be in connection witli such asser- 
 tions as "I have injured noljody, I have led an honest and 
 a virtuous life, my conscience is at rest," but in virtue of 
 a trust he has reposed, rightly or wrongly, in something 
 which assures him that (Jotl can and will be gracious to sin- 
 ners. Sin, as a fact, ])eyond all dispute, lies at every 
 man's door; is charged against every man in that account 
 which he has to settle with God. In some of its various 
 forms, it insinuates itself into, and it vitiates the acts of 
 every man. 
 
 But now, the question which David seems to have 
 asked arises, why is it that this sin appears in the acts of 
 every man? How can this universal consent to the com- 
 mission of sin be accounted for? The answer to this ques- 
 tion will lead us to the same conclusion which David 
 reached — the heart in man is an unclean heart; the spirit 
 in man is a disordered and corfupt spirit. The moment 
 that 30U have proved that every man is chargeable with 
 the commission of sin as a crime, you have proved that 
 every man is chargeable with the entertaining of sin, as a 
 vice. You have shown that there is in him, a disposition, 
 which when it has vent and expression, produces the fact 
 of sin. You may look upon the devastation caused by the 
 eruption of a volcano, upon the dismantled dwellings, and 
 scorched fields, and half-buried villages, and say, "here is 
 a stupendous catastrophe — an appalling prodigy of evil-do- 
 iog;" but you would say also, "yonder in the bosom of 
 that mountain, lies the energy, the agent, which has 
 wrought the mischief." And though you should see , the ef- 
 fect of the eruption in time removed, and the scene resum- 
 ing its former look of comfort and security, you would 
 never cease to remember, and remember with a shudder 
 
108 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 too, that in the bosom of 3'onder mountiiin, though sleep- 
 ing now, and giving no sign of its existence, there lies the 
 energy, the agent, which is capable of l)ursting ont ngain 
 at any moment in another explosion, and repeating the ter- 
 rible drama of ruin. So, I say, the sinful act, which you 
 behold in the life of man, is the demonstration of the 
 presence of the baleful fire of sin in the breast of man; 
 and though, you could undo the sinful act, and put things 
 back again, so to speak, in the state in which they were 
 before the sinful act was committed, you would still have 
 to remember, that the baleful fire of sin, was living in the 
 breast of the person who had committed it. You would 
 have to take account of this latter fact, and give it its 
 value and weight, in forming your judgment of that per- 
 son, though you had found some method by which you 
 could legitimately ignore the existence ot the other fact of 
 the commission by him of the sinful act, and cancel it, as 
 an element in his account. The volcanic force would be in 
 him, and you must give him credit for it, and estimate 
 him at. what its significance imports, though no token of its 
 fatal working in the past be visible, and no menace of 
 forthcoming convulsion can be detected in its present 
 quietude. Our conception of sin, therefore, is not com- 
 plete unless from a contemplation of our actual transgres- 
 sions, we have drawn the inference and recognized the fact, 
 that we are in ourselves sinful beings — that we have in 
 our nature, a disposition which makes us capable of sin- 
 ning. Our idea of a sinner must represent him, not merely 
 as one who perpetrates acts of sin, but as one, who in his 
 heart and spirit, harbors the inclination and the propensity 
 to perpetrate acts of sin. You have told but half the 
 truth, when you have said of this or that criminal thing, 
 "I have done wrong in doing it." You must go farther, 
 
THE SEAT OF ^IN. 109 
 
 and say, ' 'I nin inj'self wrong, I am in ray very s))ccies 
 and temper wrong, or I could not have consented to do it." 
 Tliis idea I liave said is an important one. It is im- 
 portant, Iteeanse it transfers tlic seat of sin from the facts 
 outside of a man to liie soul -the essential element within 
 him. It assigns to it, a place, not merely in his history, 
 but in liis character. It makes it not merely, attach to his 
 conduct, l)ut inhere in his constitution. It requires us to 
 make the induction, aiid admit the conclusion, that in the 
 sinner, subjectively, apart from his acts of wrongdoing, and 
 even prior to ihem, there exists a wrongful bias, or apti- 
 tude, which makes him, personally a wrong thing, irrespec- 
 tive of the wrong things he may do, or may have done, 
 just as we make the induction and admit the conclusion 
 that the tree which has been found to bring forth evil 
 fruit, is in itself an evil tree. As the object in all the 
 universe which man is most concerned in understanding 
 (next to God), is man himself, and as the first and most 
 vital need of man, is to be sound and right, in his own 
 nature, nothing can be more important to him, than the 
 knowledge of such a fact as this, for it is a fact, which 
 perhaps more directly than all others, determines his grade 
 and value in the judgment of God. Clearh', the heart, the 
 spirit, is the index which an infallible intelligence would 
 look at before all others, in the attempt to ascertain the 
 exact standing and worth of a man. What he actually is, 
 is the fundamental point in such a problem; and what he 
 does, is a subordinate point, interesting, merely by reason of 
 the light which it throws upon the former one. Eveiything 
 in the world is ranked and disposed of, ultimately, by an 
 estimate of what it actuall}' is. When you know this, you 
 know where to place it, how to think of it, what treatment 
 to appl}' to it. And so, man, must ultimately, be ranked 
 and disposed of. If the heart in him be an unclean heart, 
 
110 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 and the spirit in him be a false and depraved spirit, he 
 must inevitably be pronounced an unclean, a false, and a 
 depraved being. Now, accepting this as a true representa- 
 tion of man's moral state, admitting that he is, in his 
 heart and spirit, thus morally distempered, so that he is 
 indisposed often to do what he knows to be right, and dis- 
 posed to do often what he knows to be wrong, we may 
 notice two or three other things, in connection with sin, 
 which are deducible from this fact. 
 
 First, it ought not to surprise us that men are, to a 
 large extent, blind to their real condition and character as 
 sinners. If an organ is unsound, you do not wonder that 
 it does not perform the functions of a healthy one. You 
 do not wonder, that the percei)tions which are gotten 
 through it, are more or less false. Have you never observed 
 how frequently, sick persons are deceived as to the course 
 their diseases are taking? Have you never heard them say, 
 day by day, "I am better," when you can see that day by 
 day they are dying? Is it not a fact that a physician 
 rarely undertakes to prescribe for himself, because he 
 knows that he is incompetent to form a . correct judgment 
 of his own case? And is it not originally probable, there- 
 fore, that the man affected with uncleanness of heart and 
 corruptness of spirit, would be liable to err in his concep. 
 tion of his character and condition? It is only, in fact, a 
 different way of stating the same thing, to say of a man, 
 that he is unclean in his Jieart and corrupt in his spirit, 
 and to say of him, that he takes false views of himself, that 
 he misinterprets his symptoms, that he gives credit to illu- 
 sions, and misconstrues real things? For it is just by such 
 irregular action of the heart and spirit, that the inherent 
 unsoundness of the heart and spirit would naturally be in- 
 dicated. "If the light that is in thee be darkness," says 
 our Saviour, "how great is that darkness." The internal 
 
THE SEAT OF SIN. Ill 
 
 light extinguisbed, the lantern of the soul fulflUing its 
 office of revealing and apprehending the truth no longer, 
 what can there be in the man but darkness, ignorance, mis- 
 conception and error? Men notoriously do not like this 
 doctrine, that the}' are in heart and spirit sinful beings; 
 and generally protest against it, when the charge it contains 
 is directed against them ))ersonall3'; or at least listen to it 
 with an apathy which shows that it is making no intelli- 
 gent impressions upon their mi'ids. They call the theology 
 which teaches it, a harsh and odious one, a caricature and 
 a libel. Pert writers tax their imagination to prove in the 
 philosophic essay, or illustrate in fiction and drama, that 
 human nature is yet in its normal state, working right 
 where accident does not disturb it; and leaning "e'en in its 
 failings to virtue's side." The goodness of the heart, is 
 constantly set up, as a counter-poise to whatever of bad- 
 ness may appear in a man's act; and the vague assertion, 
 "his spirit was a pure one, he meant no evil," is a mantle 
 broad en«jugli to cover all the wrongdoing of his lifetime. 
 Such utterances may be made with perfect honesty, by 
 those who use them (although this seems hardly credible), 
 and yet prove nothing more than an incapacity in these 
 persons' minds to entertain the idea that the heart is un- 
 clean and the spirit depraved — which may be, after all, a 
 corroboration of the main fact affirmed, since upon the as- 
 sumption that the main fact is, as is affirmed, such an in- 
 capacity to see it, would be one of the results which would 
 be expected to follow. It is the patient disabled by the 
 disturbance of his faculties consequent on his morbid state, 
 from giving a diagnosis of his case. The general outcry, 
 with which the promulgation of this idea is met, and the 
 hard terms which are frequently resorted to, to denounce 
 it, ought not, therefore, to surprise ns. The Scriptures, 
 with a wonderful consistency in their theory, have repre- 
 
112 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 sented just this incapacity to see the distempered condition 
 of his heart and spirit — as a feature in the sinner's case, 
 concurring witli tl>at distempered condition. While they 
 aflirrn tliat the heart and spirit witliin liim are unclean and 
 depraved, they affirm also, that the reasonings and judgings 
 carried on b}' means of them may be and often are diametri- 
 call}' at variance with the truth. "A deceived heart has 
 turned him aside," is the remarkable language in which, in 
 one place, they make this affirmation; "woe unto them that 
 call evil good and good evil; th:i,t put darkness for light and 
 light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet and sweet for 
 bitter," is the way in which they make it in another; and 
 "thou sayest I am rich and increased with good, and have 
 need of nothing, and knowest not that thou art wretched and 
 miserable, and poor and blind and naked," is the way in 
 which the}' make it in another. 
 
 But a second remark may now be made, which is, that 
 we have in this doctrine, a perfectly adequate occasion for that 
 exercise of Divine power, which, according to the Scriptures, 
 is needed in order to effect a recovery of man from his condi- 
 tion as a sinner. The individual, who like David, has been led 
 to see that the act of sin, being outside of him, in his conduct 
 — is the product of an unclean heart and a corrupt spirit 
 within him, will see that the process by which his condition is 
 to 1)6 made right, will be something more than an undoing of 
 the act of sin. It will have to reach and operate upcMi him- 
 self; it will have to accomplish the result of creating in liim 
 a clean heart and renewing within him a right spirit. The 
 Scripture theory is consistent with itself again, in this partic- 
 ular. It proposes a remedy exactly suited to the view it 
 gives of the malady to be healed. If the case of the sinner 
 be as it represents it, then the doctrine which it announces, 
 of a supervening of a Divine power upon his heart and spix*it, 
 in order to the cleansing and renewing of them, is entitled to 
 
THE SEAT OF SIN. 113 
 
 credit by reason of its correspond inji, first, witU the known 
 exigencies of Liis case, second, witli the precise direction 
 which the mercy of God must take upon the supposition tliat 
 that mercy should undertake to restore him from his fallen 
 estate. I^et us not 1)C surprised then, when we are told that 
 religion, in tlie Bible view ot it, coniprHheuds within it, and 
 is based upon a change in the subject of it, which is called, 
 "the washing of legener ition and the renewing of the H0I3' 
 Ghost." What less than this would serve the purpose, if sin 
 be a fault which attaches to the nature of man, as well as to 
 his acts, and if the remed}' for it is the putting a clean heart 
 and a right spirit within him? This is evidently a work 
 which calls for an exercise of Divine power. A man may 
 possibl}', in a certain sense, undo an act. It is impossible 
 tor him to unmake or remake himself. When it comes to 
 the work of creating a clean heart and renewing, or new- 
 making, a right spirit within him, he must look up to the 
 gracious energy of God as David did, and cry, "create thou 
 a clean heart in me, God, and renew thou, a right spirit 
 within me," Men who can see no fault in human nature, 
 who have no conception- of sin as an infection of the soul, 
 as a thing which utterly' forbids the idea of a goodness of 
 heart and a purity of spirit in the being of whom it is predi- 
 cated, cannot be expected to see any reason for, or proba1)il- 
 ity in, this doctrine of a new birth and a vital change in 
 the recovered sinner. And hence, the religions which are 
 fabricated by man, know nothing of such a doctrine, and 
 preach only their Gospels of Love, or Honesty, or Self-de- 
 velopment and Self-purification. The Religion of God con- 
 tained in the Bible, substantiates its right to be considered 
 such, by the profouuder conception which it requires us to 
 take of sin, and by the revelations of a process by which 
 a clean heart is created and a right spirit renewed within 
 the sinner. 
 
114 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 A third remark which suggests itself is, that repent- 
 ance IS a state of mind which includes in it a sense of 
 personal unworthiuess in the transgressor, as well as a 
 sense of blame-worthiness on account of his acts of wrong- 
 doing. Though, it may begin with a discovery of this 
 blame-worthiness, as was the case with David, who in liis 
 anger at his own sin, as portrayed to him in the prophet's 
 parable, exclaimed, "As the Lord liveth, the man that hath 
 done this thing shall surely die," it must not stop with it. 
 It must pass from the contemplation of the unclean act, to 
 the unclean heart which generated the act; from the 
 wrong deed to the wrong spirit, which prompted and con- 
 sented to the deed. It must make the man stand ashamed 
 and saddened and appalled at what he is in himself, as 
 well as what he has done. It will measure the breach be- 
 tween him and God which it confesses, more by the contra- 
 riety which lies between himself personally and God, than 
 by that which appears between his acts and God, These 
 acts, in themselves perhaps, may not excite any great emo- 
 tion. They may not be of the class of flagrant sins which 
 shock the conscience and draw upon the perpetrator the 
 remonstrances and execration of his fellow-men. But when 
 looked at as indications of nature opposed to God, as ex- 
 pressions of a love of sin predominating in the soul, as the 
 outflowing of a fountain of wickedness, which lies within 
 him, which fountain is his own heart and spirit — they will 
 furnish an adequate ground and motive for shame and sor- 
 row, and alarm, In this view of them, no man can fail to 
 find cause enough for repentance, in his sins; and with- 
 out this view, his repentance will not be a genuine exercise, 
 belonging, as all true repentance does, to the gracious work 
 of God, by which the unclean heart is cleansed, and the 
 corrupt spirit renewed. For till the heart and the spirit 
 are brought to God for cleansing and renewing, the remedy 
 
THE SEAT OP SIN. 115 
 
 fof sin proposed tlirough his gracious work is not applied 
 for; aud wliile tlie remed}^ is not applied for, the malady, 
 it undertakes to relieve, sin itself, is not really apprehended 
 and felt. You never can truly repent of your sins till you 
 repent of yourself, as a sinner; till your sense of the un- 
 cleanness of your heart and the depravity of your spirit, 
 constrain you to appeal to the mercy of (lod for the remov- 
 ing of the vileaess within you. And this ma}' be the rea- 
 son why the exercises of repentance, through which some 
 of you have pas.sed, have not been attended by that radical 
 and vital change which the Gospel promises in the case of 
 the penitent. You have repented of the acts of injustice, 
 or unkindness, or deception, or licentiousness you have com- 
 mitted; that is, you have been sorry for them; you have 
 felt humbled on account of them, and you have been 
 troubled at the prospect of the punishment they have ex- 
 posed you to, but you have not repented of the heart aud 
 the spirit which led you to commit those acts. You have 
 been sick of yonr sins, as hateful and pernicious things, 
 and wished they could )je undone, and sought, perhaps, as 
 well as you could, to undo them; but 3'ou have never been 
 sick of 3'ourself — as the hateful and pernicious author of 
 those sins; and so you have not gone to the remedy of the 
 Gospel — for that is for you, not your sins; and so you 
 have not experienced the healing promised to the penitent. 
 The prayer you must use before you can experience this, 
 is the one before us. "Create in me a clean heart, O God, 
 and renew a right spirit within me." 
 
 One brief remark more is this: The Christian, the man, 
 who has experienced this healing process, will prove the 
 fact by the assiduity and carefulness with which he main- 
 tains the cleannes.s of his heart and the purity of his spirit. 
 Acts, outward works of decorum and duty, devotional rites, 
 and rules of religious order, will not be neglected, but, 
 
IIG 
 
 A pastor's VALEDICTORV. 
 
 brethren, if the great change which makes the Christian, 
 has been wrought in you, it began in the heart, and the 
 spirit, and it will attest its presence and reality, by a [)ro 
 gressive work there. Hcnien}l>er you were called and chosen, 
 grafted into Christ, and scaled by his Spirit, not merely 
 that your sins might l)e pardoned, and your souls ultimately 
 translated to heaven, but that you might bo holy, that you 
 might be distinguished in the world as "i)arlakers of the 
 Divine nature," men * 'known and read of all" as men with 
 clean hearts and right spirits. Your badge, your work, the 
 proof of your conversion, and your security for final salva- 
 tion, are to be found in your identifying this piayer with 
 your life: "Create in me a clean heart, O God. and renew 
 a right spirit within me!" 
 
THE PENITENT, ILLUSTRATED. 
 
 DECKMUEIi 10, 1855. 
 
 "I will arise and go to my Father and will say unto him, 
 'Father I have sinned against heaven and before thee and am no 
 more worthy to be called thy son, make me as one of thy hired 
 i-ervants.'" — Luke 15:18.15). 
 
 THE charge which the speaker here brings against him- 
 self, and the judgment whicli he passes upon liis con- 
 duct, do not surprise us. He is right in all that he 
 thinks, and in all that he says of himself. Just such pen- 
 itential reflections and resolutions became bira in the posi- 
 tion in which be bad placed himself. Between that posi- 
 tion and bis father's presence and favor there was a great 
 chasm interposed, which required, for the crossing of it, 
 just such a bridge as was constituted by bis present state 
 of mind. Just sucb a bridge is required in order to the 
 establishment of friendly relations between the parties in 
 every case, where sin has interposed its chasm between man 
 and God. Until be rejients the sinner retains a posture of 
 deliberate and flagrant opposition to God; and God can re- 
 gard him and deal with him, only in the character of a sin- 
 ner. The unholy disposition, or wicked practice, which be 
 will not repent of, be still cherishes and clings to; and if" 
 sucb unholy disposition or wicked practice created, at the 
 inception of it, a breach between him and God, it will per- 
 petuate that breach just as long as it is cherished and 
 clung to. Hence in any overture wbicb God might be 
 
 117 
 
118 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 pleased to make towards the establisbineut of friendly rela- 
 tions between himself and a sinner, it is to l)e expeeted 
 that the exhibition of a penitential spirit on the part of 
 the latter, would be one of the first and most positive con- 
 ditions. In any Gospel, emanating from God, and propos- 
 ing terms of I'eeonciliation to guilty men, it is to l)e ex- 
 pected that tin injunction to repent wonld be included as a 
 primary stipulation. Accordingly in the Gospel of our I.iOrd 
 Jesus Christ, we do find this injunction, in one form or 
 another, stated upon almost every page. Side by side with 
 the fact of sin in man, it lavs the obligation to repent. 
 Argument, precedent, precept and illustration, are all em- 
 ployed to enforce it, and to explain the manner of exe- 
 cuting it. As the physician, in attempting to restore his 
 patient to health, prescribes with all the precision of which 
 he is master, the means to be used, and the way in which 
 they are to be used, so Christ and liis Apostles have left, 
 as it were, no expedient untried, to impress upon the sin- 
 ner the necessity of repentance, and to enlighten him as to 
 the nature of it. Beyond a doubt this was one ot the de- 
 signs of our Lord in delivering the parable from which our 
 text is taken. The Prodigal, with these words upon his 
 lips, "Father I have sinned against heaven and before 
 thee, and am "no more woiihy to l)e called thy son; make 
 me as one of thy hired servants," is meant to stand before 
 the world as a type of what every wandering child of God 
 must become, before he can be restored to the presence and 
 favor of his Father in heaven. Wandering children of God, 
 we have only too much reason to believe, are present here, 
 this morning, in this congregation; men and women who, in 
 the manner of their lives, are separating the gifts and 
 bounties of God from God himself, nay, who are substi- 
 tuting these gifts and bounties for God, and it may be, in 
 some cases, violently using them for purposes which he has 
 
THE PENITENT, ILLUSTRATED. 119 
 
 prohibited, and which he regards as per^onall}' offensive to 
 himself. The liberal prodigal — the profligate child of a hu- 
 man parent — the youth found at any stage of a course of 
 folly and vice, like that which the subject of the Saviour's 
 story had entered upon, we should feel like pitying. We 
 should feel like going to him and saying, "You are rush- 
 ing into destruction. This riotous living: will bring you 
 inevital>ly to shame and misery. Be honest with 3'ourselt, 
 and confess tiie truth. Look where you are going; and be 
 persuaded, while the opportunity is left to you, to retrace 
 your steps, and go home to your Father's house." And 
 with our entreaties, we should couple such counsels and di- 
 rections as we might be able to give, as to the steps to bo 
 taken, and the temper and demeanor to be assumed, in 
 starting upon this return. Oh, could we but see it, there 
 is. infinitely greater cause for the enterlainment of pity to- 
 wards these spiritual truants, these wandering children of 
 God, than there would be, in the case of such a literal 
 prodigal! There is no form of profligacy so desperate as 
 that of squandering life in the service of sin; no adventure 
 so reckless as that of trying to make ourselves independent 
 of God; no delusion so wdd and so fatal as that of fancy- 
 ing that a state of separation from God can prove a better 
 state than one of harmony and friendship with him! 
 
 This Jesus saw; and in a i)ity, as wise as it was pro- 
 found, he made it his business, while he was on earth, and 
 he has employed his Word, his Providence and his Spirit, 
 ever since his ascension to heaven, to seek out the sinner 
 everywhere, and to conjure and command him to repent. 
 He has taken pains to make the manner- of performing this 
 duty as plain as the ol)ligation to perform it. To formal 
 and didactic expositions on the point, he has added a prac- 
 tical example, an illustrative specimen of the process of re- 
 penting, in the parable before us. He has opened to us in 
 
120 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 the Prodigal, a human heart, acted upon and exercised in 
 the process; and he has given us, in his utterances, the 
 formulas by which a heart so acted upon and exercised, 
 must express itself; so that not a vestige of uncertaiuty 
 may remain in the sinner's mind, as to what he is required 
 to do, when he is called upon to repent. I propose to set 
 before you, in further remarks, some of those intimations 
 which the text throws out, as to the nature of true evan- 
 gelical repentance. 
 
 And first, I would call your attention to the import of 
 the phrase, "I have sinned." It is an expression which 
 may signify little or much, according to the spirit in which 
 it is uttered. We must, here, give it all the force and ex- 
 tent which honesty and intelligence in the speaker could 
 throw into it. It is an explicit, positive, categorical, affir- 
 mation. There are no restrictions, no (lualificatioDs, nt) 
 reservations in it. It means what it professes to .say dis- 
 tinctly and fully. It differs altogether from tLiose weak and 
 frivolous confessions, which are often heard, which while 
 they use the words, "I have siuned," have so many ex- 
 cuses and palliations for sin, covered up in the sense, that 
 they amount really to a declaration of the penitent's inno- 
 cence rather than of his guilt. Nothing was farther from 
 the Prodigal's thoughts than to take advantage of any of 
 those devices for neutralizing or cancelling the wrongdoing, 
 which conscience shows in its account against them, which 
 self-deceived or presumptuous men adopt. He does not say 
 "I have sinned, but I meant no harm by it." "I have 
 sinned, but no worse than my neighbor " "I have sinned, 
 but I was forced to do so in order to maintain my respec- 
 tability or escape detriment to my worldly interests." "I 
 have sinned, but I have, at the same time, been doing so 
 much good, that m}' merits more than balance my trans- 
 gressions." You discover no trace of this undercurrent of 
 
THE PENITENT, ILLUSTRATED. 121 
 
 this exculpatory reasoning in his heart. You detect no 
 whisper aside, by which tbe mind unsays what the lips say. 
 "I have sinned'" with him is a plain, unequivocal unadul- 
 terated proposition. It is the testimony of an honest wit- 
 ness, meaning to conve}' exactly the impression which his 
 words legitimately convey; and meaning therefore, to take 
 upon himself simply and absoluiel}', without prevarication 
 or apology, the character of a sinner. And in the same 
 open and unambiguous way every genuine penitent will ut- 
 ter his confession, "1 have sinned.'' He will not attempt 
 secretl}', to prove tliat he is no criminal, while he is for- 
 mally affirming that he is one. He is too ingenuous to 
 make use of that trickery, by which the soul seeks to evade 
 a confession of its guilty character to itself. He has no 
 disposition to resort to those adroit rejoinders to the accu- 
 sation of conscience, by which the sense of sin may be 
 parried, or countervailed; rejoinders, I may remark, by 
 which thousands of persons falsify their so-called repent- 
 ance, and keep themselves implicated in a state of sin, like 
 the fluttering bird entangling itself more and more in the 
 toils of the net. "I have sinned," as he uses the phrase, 
 will utter honestly and categorically what he believes and 
 what he feels. 
 
 And, then, further, it will indicate, as it did in the 
 case of the Prodigal, that beyond the conviction of the 
 mere fact of his sinfulness, his mind is affected with a clear 
 and intelligent impression of the evil nature of sin. No 
 one can doubt that the Prodigal was profoundly in earnest 
 when he uttered that phrase. He not only meant what he 
 said, but he meant much by what he said. His language 
 is unquestionably the language of strong emotion. And 
 strong emotion is the result of some clear conception, some 
 vivid conviction in the mind. You do not cry, "I am 
 lost," when you do not think you are in danger; or when 
 
122 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 3^ou do but diml}- appreliead the danger to which you 
 are exposed. It is the sight of the danger, and the per- 
 suasion of the magnitude of the danger, which must rouse 
 within you the emotion of which the cry, "I am lost," is 
 the expression. This other cry, "I have sinned," uttered 
 in the tone and temper whicli the Prodigal employs, must 
 be interpreted as the expression of an emotion, excited in 
 his mind by a powerful manifestation to him, of the guilti- 
 ness, and hurtfulness of sin. The same view must lie at 
 the basis of repentance in every case. The party must see 
 something in the fact which he confesses Avhen he says "I 
 have sinned" which awakens within him the emotions of 
 sorrow and shame and alarm. He must have some clear 
 appi'eheusion, some affecting recognition of the criminal and 
 ruinous nature of sin. To some extent, he must have 
 sounded its depth, measured its proportions, analyzed its 
 elements, determined its properties, and traced out its ten- 
 dencies. If men fail frequently to realize the character of 
 the true penitent, as I have just said, for want of honesty 
 in confessing the fact of their sinfulness, they fail to do 
 so with still more frequency,, it is probable, for want of a 
 definite and adequate knowledge of what the fact of their 
 sinfulness amounts to. They have not deliberated upon its 
 import. They have not informed themselves, they have not 
 reflected, so as to have an intelligent idea of its meaning 
 and scope. Is it a grave matter, calling for grave thought, 
 grave feeling, grave treatment? Or is it an inconsiderable 
 trifle, a subject which one may rationally decline to trouble 
 himself about, or the existence of which he may ignore 
 altogether with safety? In regard to the majority of men, 
 if we may judge from their conduct, we are bound to con- 
 clude that if they have raised the question at all, they 
 have responded to it in the latter way. They have pro- 
 nounced sin to be so insignificant, or so venial an affair. 
 
THE PENITENT, ILLUSTRATED. 123 
 
 tliat the}' may plead guilty to it in tbe past, without re- 
 morse, and continue the practice of it in the future, with- 
 out compunctiou or hesitation. You may hear them say, 
 "I have sinned," perhaps, when going through the forms 
 of public worship, or when forced into the expression of an 
 opinion by your interrogatories in a private interview; but 
 the confession will fall from their lips as heartlessly and as 
 mechanically, as if they were assenting to your remark 
 about the weather or replying to your question about the 
 health of their families. In vain you look for a sign of 
 an emotion akin to that which lay at the bottom of 
 the Prodigal's declai'ation. In vain you look for a 
 symptom of pained or alarmed sensibility, to show that 
 with the words they are repeating, the idea of sin, as the 
 word of God represents it —the idea of sin as a crime, as a 
 thing abominable in the eyes of God, and laying the per- 
 petrator of it, under the ban and curse of his throne — has 
 at all presented itself to their minds. Everything in their 
 manner proclaims that their conceptions of sin are so vague 
 and dark, that they are incapable of communicating to 
 their hearts, a sense either of its hatefulness or its harm- 
 fulness. And hence they do not repent, for they do not 
 understand tbe reasons, they do not entertain the motives, 
 which lead to repentance. The penitent must have been 
 endowed with that which they do not possess, that is, an 
 insight into the true nature of sin. He must have bad his 
 eyes opened to that to which they are blind. He must 
 have made the discovery, that in confessing himself to be 
 a sinner be is acknowledging a fact of tremendous magni- 
 tude in its bearings upon his character and interests; a fact 
 which aiTa3'S against him the attributes and government of 
 God, and which brands him with the stain of the greatest 
 crime a creature can commit. The question, what is a 
 proper view of the nature of siu is, therefore, an important 
 
124 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 one in connection with this subject of repentance. And the 
 answer to it has not been overlooked by the Saviour in the 
 form he has given to this parable. 
 
 This will appear if we look now at the phrases which 
 follow after and which precede the Prodigal's confession, 
 "I have sinned." First, take that which follows after it, 
 "I have sinned, against heaven and before thee." He ex- 
 poses here the central element, the essence of the idea of 
 sin, which his mind was entertaining. The wrong done 
 to his parent, the disowning of the sacred ties which bound 
 him to him, the violation of the obligations he was under 
 to him, the cruel and complicated wound he had inflicted 
 upon his heart — this it was that stood out before him as 
 the chief feature in the spectacle of malignity which he 
 recognized in his conduct. Could the emotion which was 
 agitating his breast have been analyzetl, it would have been 
 found to contain, unquestionably, a large proportion of sor- 
 row for the disgrace and misery he had brought upon him- 
 self. And possibly along with this, there would have been 
 a considerable intermixture of that pain of exasperation 
 which follows upon the discovery that one has been betrayed 
 by those in whom he had confided; and farther still, there 
 might have been something of that soreness — that torment- 
 ing disquietude which attends the conviction that one has 
 played the fool, and brought upon himself the contempt 
 and reprobation of the community around him. But, up- 
 permost among all the feelings which were struggling in his 
 heart, and, asserting itself with such commanding prece- 
 dence of tone, that all others were for the moment thrown 
 into the back-ground, was this of remorse and grief at the 
 fact that his sin had been the transgression of the law of 
 nature, and religion which required him to love, honor and 
 obey his father. The aspect under which sin must appear to 
 the soul, in repentance towards (iod, is analogous to this. 
 
THE PENITENT, ILLUSTRATED. 125 
 
 Its thought must place God just where the parent stood in 
 the Prodigal's thought. The emotion which expresses itself 
 in the confession, "I have sinned," must revolve around that 
 grand demonstration of grief, contained in the clause, 
 "Against heaven and before thee." Strike where it may 
 upon earthly objects, upon the sinner's self, or his kindred, 
 or soeiet}^ it is refracted, as it strikes its object, like a 
 ray of light, and takes its direction towards God, as its 
 ultimate mark. It reaches heaven, and reports itself there 
 to God, as an arrow does to the heart which it pierces. 
 This is what David affirms, when -in the fifty-tirst Psalm he 
 says, "against thee, thee only, have I sinned."' Not against 
 God only, in one sense, for his sin swept over a large cir- 
 cle of objects in its course; and yet against (iod only, in 
 that sense in which his mind was now apprehending it; 
 since the various forms of wrongdoing to his fellowmen 
 which had been included in it, were seen by him now, to 
 have passed beyond them, and to have converged their sep- 
 arate shafts into one great volley of wrongdoing, hurled 
 against God. It is this same thought or conviction which 
 gives its tone to the sorrow of the penitent man. It is 
 this which makes it definite and specific — which distin- 
 guishes it from a numerous brood of other sorrows to which 
 the sinner is almost invaria))ly subject. You will find him 
 sometimes bewailing his evil practices, when their wasting 
 or corroding effect upon his bodily constitution, in tokens 
 too patent to be denied, begins to show itself. You will see 
 him weep, sometimes, as he reflects upon the anguish he 
 has poured into the hearts of those who have loved him 
 and yearned over him, in all his wanderings, with tender 
 constancy and patient hope. You will hear him sometimes 
 cursing the vices which have enslaved him, when he thinks 
 of the heights of fortune and respectability from which 
 they have dragged him, and the disappointment and woe 
 
126 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 into which they have decoyed him You will mark, some- 
 times, the quenching of all the inner light of life in his 
 soul, and the gathering of a cloud about his heart, which 
 wraps him in habitual melancholy, and makes his world a 
 scene of disgust — a sick-bed on which the patient tosses 
 restlessly, from morn to night and from night to morn, or 
 a wintry landscape blasted by frost and draped in mist; 
 until in the desolation of his spirit, he sighs, like poor 
 Byron, "the worm, the canker, and the grief, are mine 
 alone." But in none of these phases of sorrow in sin (in 
 themselves) can you detect the quality of that sorrow for 
 sin, which constitutes repentance. Because in all the bit- 
 terness of soul with which the party is now contemplating 
 the fact that he has sinned, the source of the bitterness, 
 does not lie in that other fact that he has ' 'sinned against 
 heaven and before Uod.'' It is not that fact which weighs 
 upon his spirit and occasions his brokenness of heart. It 
 is his view of the damage which sin has wrought in the 
 direction of self, and not the wrong it has been doing to 
 God, which has led him to deplore and condemn it. And 
 the real nature of sin, therefore, he has not discovered. 
 That which gives it its real malignity, its real turpitude 
 and criminality, he has failed to take account of. 0, what 
 a waking up of the soul from these low, natural concep- 
 tions of sin, there is when it has been brought to see it, 
 in the simple and awful light of a direct warfare upon the 
 rights and the person of God! And what a different esti- 
 mate is then put upon its character! And how unlike all 
 other sorrows is the sorrow which the conviction of it pro- 
 duces in the heart! "Against heaven and before thee" — 
 that and no other is the connection in which he will get 
 his idea of the nature of sin. 
 
 But the full compass of this idea is not embraced un- 
 til we take into view, the other phrase which the Prodigal 
 
THE PENITENT, ILLUSTRATED. 127 
 
 uses, as introductory to liifs declarutiou, "I have sinned." 
 That pbrase is a single word, but one of tbe most express- 
 ive ones to be found in human language. It is "Father" 
 — the name given to a parent — the -author and conservator 
 of our being. "Father, 1 iiave sinned, against heaven and 
 before tliee." What force is communicated to this last ex- 
 pression, "before thee," when we look back to the person 
 referred to by the "thee," and find him called "Father!" 
 "I have sinned" is the language of conscious guilt; "Before 
 thee, " indicates that guilt, in the speaker's view, consists 
 of the direct wronging of a particular party. And, 
 "Father," shows that that party is the last one whom it 
 could be expected, that malevolence or violence could be 
 aimed at — the wrongdoer's parent! By tracing the Prodi- 
 gal's thought up to this climax, we may see in its broad 
 features, the idea which was present to his mind. By con- 
 ducting the sinner's mind through a similar order of thought, 
 and up to a similar climax, we shall introduce him to something 
 like a correct impression of his guilt in reference to God. 
 Let him sa}^ in good faith and with an informed under- 
 standing, "I have sinned" — and then let liiui consider the 
 sin which he confesses as an oft'ence terminating directly 
 upon God, and say with God in his eye, "against heaven 
 and before thee, I have sinned" — and then, let him conceive 
 of God, in the simple character of a "Father," till the 
 spirit of the child awakes in his heart, and speaks out in 
 complete expression, "Father, I have sinned against heaven 
 and before thee," and he will have attained to the concep- 
 tion of sin, and will have begun to feel that emotion in 
 view of sin, w'hich will demonstrate him a true penitent. 
 It is because men invest God with a false character, and 
 put him in a false relation to them — because they think of 
 him as a mere philosophical force, necessary to be assumed 
 in order to account for the existence of other things — or 
 
128 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 as a vague melaphysical abstraction— or sort of universal 
 idea of being and perfection — or as the sum and embodi- 
 ment of the laws of nature — or as an arbitrary monarcb, 
 exercising bis power witb tbe stern inflexibility ot a nia- 
 cbine — or as a keen-eyed judge searching out tbe faults of 
 bis creatures, and brandishing over them the merciless lash 
 of retribution, it is because they think of him in these, or 
 other equally illegitimate ways, that their hearts are so slow 
 to admit a right impression of sin, or to entertain right 
 affections towards it. Were they to get that idea of him 
 (which is the only true one) which represents him as a 
 Father — a Father of whom the human father is only a 
 feeble type, a Father divine; and infinite in this office, as 
 in all others which he holds or exercises, it would not be 
 so hard a thing to make them sensible of the guilt of sin, 
 nor so rare a thing to find them repenting on account of 
 it. Were they to get this idea ot God, they would see 
 that sin in them is the spectacle of a spirit, having the 
 high lineage of the offspring of God, dishonoring its nativ- 
 ity, denying its parentage, and perverting its being to ends 
 the very opposite of those which its production contempla- 
 ted. They would see that sin in them, is revolt from the 
 most just and sacred authority that could conceivably be 
 set over them. They would see that it is weakness and 
 ignorance, presumptuously rejecting the aids of the highest 
 power and wisdom — the child tottering on its tiny limbs 
 and not knowing its right hand from its left, thrusting 
 back the supporting arm, and rejecting the kindly counsels 
 of a father, and that Father — such a one as God. They 
 would see that it is ingratitude, persistently exhibited, for 
 the most lavish bounty. They would see that it is insult 
 returned for the most affecting offices of love. They would 
 see that it is a perpetual discrediting of the truthfulness of 
 him, who gave them the idea of truth, of the justness of 
 
THE PENITENT, ILLUSTRATED. 129 
 
 him, who gave them their sense of the obligation of Law, 
 of the rectitude of him who gave them conscience, and of 
 the government of liim who taught them to inaugurate the 
 magistrate and erect the tribunal. The penitent sees all 
 this in his sin, because he sees that in sinning against God 
 he is sinning agamst a Father, possessed, in a degree be- 
 coming God, of all a father's affections, and attributes, and 
 prerogatives towards him. 
 
 And now, having reached this stage in his experience, 
 we may notice a remaining one, represented in the Prodi- 
 gal's closing declaration, "and am no more worthy to be 
 called thy son, make me as one of thy hired servants." 
 This is the judgment to which his apprehension of the fact 
 of his sin, and of the nature of that sin, had brought him. 
 Where he had been originally he could claim to be no 
 more. The thought of the relation and position in which 
 he had stood to his Father, as a child, he could entertain, 
 now, only as an aggravation of his own criminality. The 
 thought of returning into any such relation and position he 
 did not dare to invoke as an agent in brightening and 
 sweetening his anticipation of his future lot. In what he 
 meant to be an extreme expression of his sense of his own 
 demerit he says, "I am no more worthy to be called thy 
 son, make me as one of thy hired servants." This was an 
 appeal to mercy, couched in terms of the lowliest humility. 
 I take this absolute persuasion of his entire forfeiture of 
 right and favor at the hands of his parent, and the neces- 
 sity of casting himself upon simple mercy, in his return to 
 him, as an illustration of another feature in the repentance 
 which the sinner is required to exercise towards God. 
 What he has discovered himself to be, as indicated in the 
 expression we have already discussed, "Father, I have sin- 
 ned against heaven and before thee,"- is all he can present 
 to God when lie proposes to seek restoration to his 
 
130 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 favor. He can bring with him no Pharisaical parade of his 
 own righteousness, he can only come lifting the Publican's 
 cry, "God be merciful unto me a sinner." He can only 
 come bringing with him such a conviction of his personal 
 unworlhiness, as seems effectually to shut up the way of 
 his return, and preclude all hope of a reception. But 
 mercy may open the door. Mercy may suffer the disfran- 
 chised child to occup3' an ignominious corner in the lodg- 
 ings of the servants. And deserving nothing, the Prodigal 
 came, asking no more than this — the least, as he intended 
 it, that mercy could bestow. And in such humility, in 
 such consciousness of his own guiltiness, in such honest 
 and entire renunciation of all ground in himself, to demand 
 a favorable acceptance from God, the penitent must come 
 back from iiis wanderings. The assurance that mercy would 
 respond to his appeal, the Prodigal could not possess, till 
 the experiment had been made, and had terminated accord- 
 ing to his hopes. The sinner is happier in this respect 
 than he. The Gospel which summons him to this duty of 
 repentance, proclaims to him before hand that mercy is en- 
 gaged, to be extended to him, upon his due compliance 
 with this duty. The Gospel tells him that mercy has al- 
 ready opened the way for his admission to his Father's 
 house, not through any potency emanating from his repent- 
 ance, or in consideration of any merit acknowledged in 
 that, but on the ground of the potency and the merit of 
 the sacrifice which the Son of God offered up for the sin 
 of the world. 
 
 Out of this fact there grows, necessarily, this further 
 doctrine, that the mercj' which the penitent soul will feel 
 impelled to look to, must be sought for, expectantly and 
 believingly, on this ground of the work of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ. The repentance of the Gospel is never a despairing, 
 
THE PENITENT, ILLUSTRATED. 131 
 
 or even a doubting exercise. It must be coupled with 
 faith. "He that repenteth and believeth, shall be saved," 
 is the Divine command and promise on this subject. '-He 
 that coraeth to the father (and none can come who do not 
 come in the way of repentance) and in the name of Jesus, 
 shall in no wise be cast out." To these wandering children 
 of God. who may be before me, to-day, I may, then, address 
 a closing invitation to return to the Father. The way I 
 have pointed out. The alternative is set before you, to re- 
 main in your estrangement from God, or to take this way. 
 I would fain hope, that there are some whose minds are 
 not yet so blinded and stupefied as to be incapable of feel- 
 ing any solicitude in regard to their standing in the sight 
 of God, or their destiny in that eternity to which they are 
 passing. If there is one single longing in your hearts af- 
 ter peace with God, one single palpitation of fear as to the 
 result involved in your present course of sin, one whisper 
 of assent in your hearts to that view of the necessity of 
 repentance and the manner of it 'which I have been pre- 
 senting, I would seize hold of it, as the angel in Sodom 
 seized hold of the hands of Lot and his party, and draw 
 you, by means of it, into the way of life. I would urge 
 you to enter at once. No enterprise in which you are en- 
 gaged, of a worldly sort, demands such prompt and imme- 
 diate attention. And I would urge you to make no mis- 
 take as to the nature and condition of it. In no other un- 
 dertaking can a mistake or failure involve you in such fa- 
 tal damage. Poor Prodigal, be exhorted to arise and go to 
 3'our Father! Your husks may be exchanged for the fatted 
 calf! God may be secured as your present and eternal 
 friend, and heaven as your heritance and home, if you will 
 only — with your eye resting upon Jesus as the way of ac- 
 cess, and the ground of acceptance — lay at the throne of 
 
132 
 
 A PASTOR S VALEDICTORY. 
 
 Divine mercy, a heart breathing this confession, "Father, I 
 have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no 
 more worthy to be called thy son, make me as one of thy 
 hired servants!" 
 
NCOMPREHENSIBLE THINGS. 
 
 NOVEMBEK 22, 1868. 
 
 "Jesus answered and said tmto liini what I do thou knowest 
 not now, but thou shalt know hereafter." — John 13:7. 
 
 THESE words of our Lord contain a rebuke called forth 
 by the restiveness or forwardness of Peter in refusing 
 to allow his Master to wash his feet. The conduct 
 of Peter was characteristic, and on this account does not 
 surprise us. Perhaps we ma_y go further and say it was 
 natural, just what we would have expected from any one in 
 the circumstances; and on this account also, it does not 
 surprise us. The wonder is, that all the disciples did not 
 do as Peter did, and recoil with a sort ol pious indignation 
 from receiving from the hands of Jesus, a service which 
 seemed so derogatory to his office and character. The mind 
 in us will form judgments of the things which pass before 
 our eyes. According to those rules of justice and propriety 
 which we recognize as pertinent to the case, we will frame 
 a decision, and very generally utter it, in regard to the 
 right or the wrong of any thing we see our fellow men do- 
 ing. Peter did this in the case before him; and with his 
 usual impetuosity of temper, let his Lord know that the de- 
 cision his mind had come to, in regard to the thing he was 
 proposing to do, was entirely adverse to the doing of it. 
 And so he gets the rebuke contained in our text. Perhaps 
 we may all find a hint in the manner in which the Saviour 
 replied to Peter, as to the manner in which our minds ought 
 
 133 
 
134 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 to act in view of those doings of God which seem to 
 us, contrary to justice and propriety. So long as we can 
 assign reasons for the doings of God, so h)ng as we can ac- 
 count for them by any of those rules or tests which we are 
 accustomed to make use of in our judgments of tilings, the 
 religious mind at least, will always be glad to stand by the 
 policy of God; and to maintain that it can be made to co- 
 here with the principle of rectitude and benevolence But 
 sometimes it happens, as Peter thought it had happened in 
 the case before him, that the policy of God, as developed 
 in his providence, cannot be vindicated tc^ our minds, by 
 any of the rules or tests which we are accustomed to make 
 use of. Sometimes, ins doings battle us utterly. Sometimes 
 they seem to contradict diametrically our ideas of rectitude 
 and benevolence. Sometimes we are disposed to start back 
 in amazement as we see them evolving themselves to view 
 in the facts of life, and we are ready to put forth the hand 
 to arrest them; and to do this as we suppose, under the 
 promptings of the same jealousy for the honor of God which 
 made Peter protest against what seemed to him the unbe- 
 coming procedure of his Master. Events which thus come 
 athwart the line of expediency as human judgment draws it, 
 are continually occurring. Our faith in God, or at least, 
 in the doctrine which teaches that his agency is concerned 
 in the ordering of our lot; is continually tried to tlie utmost 
 by the turns in our affairs which perplex and confound us. 
 What is it, that God is doing, we are constrained to ask in 
 profound bewilderment, as we see one thing after another 
 coming to pass in the world which, to our view, has no 
 place in and no congruity with any wise or raei'ciful scheme 
 of life! We have only to recall circumstances which have 
 occurred within the recollection of us all to find illustrations 
 of the way in which the course of Providence staggers our 
 minds, by its anomalous developments. What are we to do. 
 
INCOMPREHENSIBLE THINGS. 135 
 
 when confronted with these? Are we to deal with them in 
 the same positive tone, in wliich we deal with those doings 
 of God, which we can demonstrate to be right and benefi- 
 cent, and therefore adjudge to be so; and adjudge those to 
 be wrong and injurious? Are we to give sentence against 
 the policj' of God, on the one hand, in just the same cate- 
 gorical way in which we are accustomed to give sentence in 
 favor of it, on the other? What are we to do with these 
 cases, in which the operation of God's Providence is so 
 much at variance with our ideas of justice and propriety, 
 that we cannot vindicate it to our minds by any of those 
 rules or tests, which we are accustomed to make use of? 
 The text seems to afford an explicit answer to these ques- 
 tions. It says to us, "check the judgment which your 
 mind is ready to pronounce! Hush the word which is ready 
 to give it form and substance! Wait, wait diffidently, wait 
 patientl}', wait long, before you venture to declare anythino- 
 which you see God doing, wrong and injurious!" This is 
 evidently the import of our Lord's address to Peter, "what 
 I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter." 
 It was meant to la}' a curb upon the boldness of his spirit, 
 to remind him that he was going entirel}' ahead of his in- 
 telligence, in the conclusions he was forming; that his mind 
 was rushing presumptuously to a judgment, in a case where 
 it was his duty to suspend his judgement, and wait till his 
 intelligence should enable him to think and speak safely. 
 
 This duty it may be fairlj' argued, applies to us all, in 
 those cases where the disposition to condemn and re 
 verse the doings of God is asserting itself in our breast, 
 from the fact that the reason assigned by our Lord for en- 
 joining it upon Peter, applies equally to us in those cases. 
 It ma}' help us, perhaps, to acknowledge this duty, and to 
 be more willing to endure patiently those procedures of 
 Providence which we cannot comprehend, if we consider a 
 
136 A PASTORS VALEDICTORY. 
 
 little these reasons. The first we may find m the expression 
 "what I do thou knowest not.'" Emphasize the two pronouns 
 in this expression, "I" and "thou," and then reflect upon 
 the characters in which the two parties represented by them 
 stand to eacli other, and yon wdl see the force of this rea- 
 son- The "I," as the Saviour uses tlie word, means God; 
 and the "I" who is showing to you his doings, in all these 
 mysterious developments of Providence, is the same being. 
 And the "thou," in the Saviour's remarlv, and tlie thou ad- 
 dressed in all these doings, is man. "What I, God, do, 
 thou, man, knowest not." You liave but to look at this 
 proposition, to see that it contains a self-evident truth. The 
 moment you take account of the distinction which lies 
 necessarily between God and man, yon must confess that the 
 acts of God, and the policy which executes itself through 
 those acts, must be expected to transcend the intellectual 
 discernment and the judical sagacity of man. Would not 
 that distinction be obliterated entirely, if it were required of 
 God to say always to man, "what I do, thou knowest;" or 
 if it were permitted to man to say always to God. "what 
 thou doest, I know?" Would not God in such a case, ap- 
 pear descending to the level of man, or man appear rising 
 to that of God? But God and man are infinitely separated 
 and separated by the infinite superiority of God to man- 
 Mans knowledge of God, is in fact, little more than a 
 knowledge of his ignorance of him. His searches after him 
 only convince him that none by searching can find him out. 
 Now this theoretic difference between God and man must ex- 
 press itself in the works of God If God himself is some- 
 thing to be wondered at by man, his workings may be ex- 
 pected to be wonderful in the eyes of man. "What I do, 
 thou knowest not," we may expect to hear him continually 
 saying to man, in the methods of his Providence, concerning 
 man. And accordmgly this is just what we do hear him 
 
INCOMPREHENSIBLE THINGS. 137 
 
 sayiug iu tliose procedures over which we stand in such per- 
 plexity, and against which we are disposed to protest with 
 such iuipatience. Such perplexity and such impatience ought 
 to find their cure in the very cause which excites them. To 
 complani of these procedures, because we do not know 
 them, because we cannot explain them and justify them to 
 our minds, is to insist that God's doing shall contract itself 
 to the scale of man's knowing Is not this an abandonment 
 of our theory altogether? If our conception of God, as a 
 bemg who is infinitely different from us and infinitely superior 
 to us, is right, ought we not to be surprised, nay, more than 
 surprised confounded and thrown utterly adrift in our faith, 
 if there were found nothing surprising in the manner of God's 
 acting, in his providence? Be not surprised then at the most 
 surprising things, which appear in his acting. He gives you 
 the explanation of them all, at least he gives you the ra- 
 tionale by which you may consent to them all, when he says 
 in connection with each one of them, "it is I, God, who 
 am doing this, and it is thou, man, who art trying to un- 
 derstand it." 
 
 The recollection of this essential difference between God 
 and man will lead us to go further, however, than to accept 
 without surprise, the appearance of anomalies in his manner 
 of acting. It will require us to admit that it lies with God 
 entirely, to determine upon what occasion and in what ways 
 his policy shall differ from that which we are disposed to 
 lay down for him. Assuming it as a conceded postulate, 
 that God's doings must to an indefinite extent, vary from 
 the scheme or plan which man's judgment has prescribed 
 for them, the question ma}' still be raised, "who shall de- 
 cide as to the forms and seasons in which these variations 
 in his doings from the scheme or plan which man's judg- 
 ment had prescribed for them, shall take place?" Is it the 
 prerogative of God to do this? Or may man put forth a 
 
138 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 claim of this kind, "T know that what thou doest, I must 
 expect often times, uot to know, l)ut, I claim the right of 
 choosing the time and the methods in which these incom- 
 prehensible things shall be done by thee?" Does not the 
 mere propounding of such a question solve it? "Of course," 
 you say. "if I am to look for differences in the manner of 
 God's acting, from what I would have desired or recom- 
 mended, it devolves upon him to determine when and how 
 those differences shall be manifested. For if the right be- 
 longs to me, to fix the time and methods, in which they 
 shall be manifested, am I not, after all, inhibiting him from 
 differing from me at all, and insisting upon his doing what 
 I desire and recommend?" But the question, which is thus 
 so easily answered, when we look at it in the face, is never- 
 theless treated by us practically as an open question. An<l 
 hence it continually happens, that men who are accustomed 
 to say "we know that what God does must oftentimes be 
 imcomprehensible to us," when some particular incomprehen- 
 sible thing occurs in the doings of God concerning them, 
 cry out in petulent surprise, "we did not expect this! We 
 cannot consent to this! We admit that our knowing cannot 
 be the measure of God's doing, we are prepared to see va- 
 riations between his manner of acting, and that which we 
 had prescribed for him; but, this particular doing of his we 
 were not prepared for; or at least, not at this particular 
 time. This thing, in just this way and at just this epoch 
 he ought not to have done;" and so in their hearts, the}' 
 protest against it. What is this, but to treat the question 
 as to who shall decide in what respect God's policy shall 
 differ from man's, as an open question, or rather as a ques- 
 tion which has been settled by assigning to man the right 
 of deciding in the. case? But, as we have seen, this is a 
 false conclusion. If God must be allowed to differ from us, 
 he must be allowed to differ from us just in such ways, and 
 
INCOMPREHENSIBLE THINGS. " 139 
 
 just at such times as he pleases; and when we consent to 
 the proposition, "that man knoweth not what God doeth,'' 
 we must consent to all the incomprehensibleness which may 
 attach to the time and the manner of his doing each partic 
 ular thing that he does. ''What I do thou knowest not," 
 means this, that over all that is inscrutable in the seasons 
 and the methods he selects for doing the strange works of 
 his Providence, we must stand reverently still, and stay the 
 precipitate motions of the spirit which would rise up and 
 pronounce judgment against him. 
 
 And now, it ought to be noticed that this requisition 
 is not laid upon us as a mere edict of authority. Whilst 
 the thing doue by God, may be something which we do not 
 know, and whilst it may be argued of anything done by 
 God, that man is not authorized to condemn it, though he 
 does not know it, there is a certain species of evidence 
 presented to the mind, in the fact that God has done an}'- 
 thing, that must operate powerfully to persuade it that the 
 thing must be right. No matter how wrong it may look in 
 itself w^e feel that we are warranted in believing it to be 
 right on the simple ground that God has done it. There is 
 what we call, the credit of personal character, a reason for 
 trusting in him, residing in an individual himself. We act 
 under the influence of this credit continually in our judg- 
 ments of things done by our fellowmen. We say of a state- 
 ment which has in it an air of improbability, "we believe 
 it, unlikely as it sounds; because it is reported to us by a man 
 who is noted for his veracity." We say of some act, which 
 seems, as it strikes our eyes to be in violation of the laws 
 of fair dealing, "we should pronounce this a dishonest act. 
 if it had not been done by a man proverbial for his hon. 
 esty. " As it is, we are sure there must be reasons which 
 would justify the doing of it if we knew them." Now 
 the demand which is made upon us, for a suspension of 
 
140 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 judgment, for a patient reserve in the entertaining of sus- 
 picion as to the rectitude and propriety of those doings of 
 God which we cannot understand, is commended to us pre- 
 eminently, by the character which belongs to God. All the 
 credit which is due to that, appeals to us to believe that 
 whatever he does, however sinister may be the aspect of it, 
 is right and kind. "What I do thou knowest not," contains 
 an attirmation as well as a negation. The thing done may 
 not V)e capable of being known, but the person doing it may 
 be known, and known in such a way, as to communicate a 
 certain amount of perspicuity to the thing done. When God 
 says of a thing "that is what I do," though it lies before 
 you wrapped in mystery, the dark object gathers around it 
 a sort of corona of light, in virtue of that mere saying. 
 "Thou knowest it not," he may add; and the echo of the 
 words may sound in reverberations of pain, from all the 
 chambers of your heart. "Yes" you may sigh back again, 
 "I kuow it not! I cannot understand it! My mind can 
 find no intelligible point in it, upon which to rest, no lines 
 or feature in it, with which to associate it with its ideas of 
 rectitude or kindness. I can only gaze at it in blank be- 
 wilderment as one awakens from the stunning shock of a 
 fall into a dark cavern." There it may lie before you, a 
 horrid blot upon the fair page of your life, like the smoulder- 
 ing ash-heap, telling where the sweet home of yesterday 
 stood; like the sulphurous fissures ploughed by the earth- 
 quake through the squares of the populous city ; and you can 
 only look at it with the stifled feeling of a heart full of 
 thought which cannot take shape, or find vent in language, 
 and murmur blindly "I know it not." But as amidst these 
 echoes m the breast, you catch ever and anon the cadence 
 of the other saying, "that is what I do," does not the 
 pressure upon 3^our spirit grow lighter? Does not the gloom 
 begin to break? Does not the void seem to take the firm- 
 
INCOMPREHENSIBLE THINGS. 141 
 
 ness of standing ground beneath your feet? Can you not 
 change your tone to a higher key, though it be still one of 
 sadness, and say, "Yes, I know it not; but I know him who 
 did it. I know that he does all things well. And with my 
 faith resting on him, I will try henceforth to judge his act 
 by himself," and to say, "I was dumb and opened not my 
 mouth, because thou didst it?" Ah, there is an infinite re- 
 lief to the soul sometimes in getting to this point, where 
 it can look out upon its sorrow, not upon the cheerless side 
 represented by the exclamation, "i know it not," but upon 
 the brighter and more definite one represented by the excla- 
 mation "it was God who did it." For there is something 
 tangible here, upon which, the trust, repelled b}' the for. 
 bidding aspect of the former side, can safely repose itself. 
 We can consent to anything, as martyrs have done to the 
 torture of the rack and stake, when we can extend to it, 
 and cover it with the same faith, which we know God is 
 entitled to receive at our hands. 
 
 But a second reason for exercising a reticent and wait- 
 ing spirit under these anomalous developments of Providence 
 is given us by the text: "What I do thou knowest not now, 
 but tbou shall know hereafter. ' Emphasize in this instance, 
 the two adverbs of time, "now" and "hereafter" and you 
 will find in this remark of our Saviour's several facts indi- 
 cated, which, go to make a conclusive argument in favor of 
 exercising that spirit which he enjoined upon Peter, and 
 through him upon us all. First, there is a reference to that 
 relation which subsists between the now and the hereafter by 
 which the events which belong to the now are very gener- 
 ally made to depend upon a light which the hereafter 
 throws upon them, for the manifestation of their true char- 
 acter. The thing done in the now, almost always projects 
 itself in the hereafter. As it appears in the now, it is the 
 seed deposited in the ground. The observer who from the 
 
142 A PASTORS VALEDICTORY. 
 
 inspection of that process should undertake to give a de- 
 scription of tlie act of the farmer would represent that act 
 in a most incomplete and insignificant form. He must wait 
 till the hereafter discloses the results of the plautiug of 
 that seed, before he can adequately describe the farmer's 
 act. It is a common remark that history needs to be writ- 
 ten by one who lives at a .day posterior to the period of 
 which he writes. To see things truthfully, on many ac- 
 counts we must look back, we must have changed our point 
 of view from the now to the hereafter. This rule holds good 
 in an especial sense of the doings of God, with whom a 
 thousand years are as one day; and who sees the end from 
 the beginning. To judge of these as they appear in the now 
 IS to judge of them through an imperfect medium. We 
 must wait till they have gone through their process of ger- 
 mination; till the sowing time has matured into the harvest 
 time. "What I do thou knowest not now," he says, be- 
 cause the indications of the now are unable to convey an 
 accurate impression of the real nature and bearings, not 
 merely because God's doings necessarily transcend our know- 
 ing, but because, at the moment when they are first thrown 
 before our eyes, they are not perfect. They have to grow 
 and branch themselves out in the future, and show their 
 fruitage after many days. God takes time if I may so ex- 
 press it; waits through a series of seasons in the execution 
 of his plans. And he who would judge of them intelli 
 gently, must take time too, and wait till he can connect 
 the issues of the future with the phenomena of the present. 
 But beyond the reminder that these phenomena of the 
 present give us an imperfect basis upon which to found a 
 judgment concerning the doings of God, the text contains in 
 it, a promise, or an assurance that the questions of the 
 mind which cannot be answered now. will be answered here- 
 after. "Though thou knowest not now, what I do, thou 
 
INCOMPREHENSIBLE THINGS. 143 
 
 shalt know hereafter." It is implied here that the thing 
 can be exphiined. It has a meaning and a use. It fills 
 an orderl}' place in the policy of Grod, and can be made to 
 appear just as wise and just as right as that policy must 
 be assumed to be. Though at present it looks incoherent 
 and chaotic, and we can only say hopelessly "we cannot un- 
 derstand it," we can comfort ourselves with the thought 
 "there is nevertheless, a sense in it," and the obstruction 
 which prevents us from seeing it, belongs to the fact of 
 the period at which we look at it, and may pass away with 
 that period. The antiquarian gazing upon the inscriptions 
 and hieroglyphics preserved on the walls of the exhumed 
 palaces of Nineveh, is unable to explain them. But he is 
 satisfied that there is significance in them. There is a key 
 which can unlock the mysteries they enclose, and he waits 
 for the disclosure of that key. It is hidden somewhere, and 
 he expects it to come to light. To-day does not possess 
 it, but to-morrow may. This generation may not find it, but 
 the next one may. He is sure the world will have the ben- 
 efit yet of the history which lies locked up in those legends 
 of a forgotten tongue. So God's doings may appear to us 
 illegible inscriptions, insolvabie hieroglyphics; but as they 
 come from his hand, we know they are products of mind, 
 and of a mind that never utters anything unworthy of it- 
 self; and we may be sure the key to them is hidden some- 
 where, is held, in fact, in the same hand which traced the 
 record. And should we, who have to gaze in blind ignor- 
 ance at that record, never get the key, we can encourage 
 our hearts to be patient in their ignorance, by the reflection 
 that the key exists. But as I have intimated, we are 
 allowed to entertain the hope, the assurance indeed, that the 
 key will not alwa3's be wanting. The revelations of the 
 hereafter may strip the book of God's Providence of that 
 cryptic character, which it bears, as seen through the limi- 
 
144 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 tations and obliquities of the now. Nay, our Saviour's 
 words, if we may take them as enunciations of a general 
 truth, affirm that they will. "Hereafter thou shalt know 
 what now thou dost not and cannot know." We might 
 almost have affirmed this to ourselves, in advance of the 
 Saviour's words; for reason teaches us that every act of a 
 rational agent has a meaning in it, and that its value de- 
 pends upon its meaning being manifested. The concealment 
 of its meaning cannot be the ultimate design of the doer 
 of it, for in that case, he would aim virtually to undo what 
 he was doing, to make of none effect the thing he was 
 effecting. Concealment must necessaril}' he subordinate to 
 something else, and must be expected therefore, to present 
 only a temporary phase of the thing done. The thing which 
 God does, which I do not know, I may confidently promise 
 myself, I shall know hereafter, on this ground. 
 
 But a better ground for the same conclusions may be 
 found in the definite teachings of Scripture. The probability 
 is, that our Saviour meant to affirm it in the remark he 
 made to Peter. The apostle Paul certainly affirms it, when 
 he says in his first epistle to the Corinthians "we know in 
 part, and we prophesy in part; but when that which is per- 
 fect is come, that is in a future state of perfect being and 
 development, then that which is in part shall be done away. 
 For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to 
 face; now I know in part but then I shall know even as 
 also I am known." The hereafter which lies before God 
 and us, in which he may open to our understanding the 
 dark things of his providence, is a long one, my friends, 
 and if the opportunity for doing this, is not found on this 
 side the grave, there is ample space for it to present itself 
 in, on the other. Sometime and somewhere, the result is 
 to be demonstrated, that "all things work together, for good 
 to them that love God;" all things, these things which, now 
 
INCOMPREHENSIBLE THINGS. 145 
 
 we know not, as well as others, and when that time and 
 place are reached whether on earth or in heaven, there is no 
 doubt, that the problems which have distressed, and perhaps 
 exasperated us, at the moment or throughout life, will all 
 be made clear, and the hard ways of God will be found to 
 have been always soft and kind. 
 
 And now if anything further is needed, in order to per- 
 suade the tried and tempted sufferer to with-hold the judgment 
 which would impugn the wisdom or goodness of God, it 
 may be found perhaps in these few supplementary thoughts. 
 Consider I would say to him, that this attitude of waiting 
 upon God, of holding on to him in trust, where you cannot 
 follow him in intelligence, is capable of serving a most im- 
 portant purpose as a part of your spiritual tuition. Your 
 soul has probably never got into such near contact and 
 communion with God, as it reaches when standing in that 
 attitude. You are cleaving to God, then personally and for 
 his own sake. Y^ou have clasped him then in the em- 
 brace of your spirit, directly, not through the medium 
 of signs and symbols, not by the aid of things, through 
 which you have apprehended him, but rather, in spite of 
 things, for things here have been throwing obstacles be- 
 tween you and him, were not giving you knowledge, but 
 plunging you into doubt and confusion. Not through their 
 help then, but in the face of them, and by an effort which 
 overleaps them, you have found your way to the great 
 centre and support of all stability and order in the world, 
 or in the human soul. You have pressed through the ranks 
 of ordinary interpreters, through whom you have been wont 
 to be introduced to God, for these interpreters in the pre- 
 sent juncture have grown dumb, and thrown yourself right 
 at the footstool of God, crying out, "be Thou the interpre- 
 ter of Thyself to me. As such I acknowledge, I adopt thee." 
 The intercourse with him, to which you are admitted at such 
 
146 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 moments, is as precious as that eujoyed by Moses on the 
 mount, and as the result, though darkness may still lie over 
 the providence 3'ou cannot solve; there will be a light left 
 upon your soul, and perhaps upon your face too, which 
 others may take cognizance of, which will attest you have 
 gained largely in grace, though you have gained nothing in 
 knowledge. And considering that such may be the result 
 of the occasions for such intercourse, it may be well for 
 God to send them, and well for you to avail yourself of 
 them. The darkness which has been the effect to make us 
 lean directly and simply upon (jod, may be after all the 
 best sort of light to us. 
 
 Consider again, that in consenting to this ignorance in 
 which you find yourself, in respect to the doings of God, 
 you are not required abjectly to accept the degradation which 
 accompanies ignorance. You do not have to take the place 
 of the man without eyes. It is that only of the man who 
 has eyes, but is for the time being in the dark. The dif- 
 ference between the two conditions is immense. It would 
 be a monstrous outrage to ask you to consent to undergo 
 the mutilation of having your eyes put out. It is often the 
 proposition of kindness that requires you to consent to re- 
 main temporarily in a darkened chamber. Your very re- 
 tention of the powers of seeing may depend upon your com- 
 pliance with the proposition. Your abiding in your ignor- 
 ance under God's dealings with you, is only thus a tempo- 
 rary confinement in a dark chamber. You endure it in hope. 
 "A few days or weeks," you may say to yourself, "have 
 only to pass, and then I shall see; and have perhaps an eye 
 all the healthier for the brief deprivation of sight to which 
 I have submitted. 
 
 And then once more, consider, that knowledge when it 
 does come will have a value and a sweetness infinitely en- 
 hanced by its contrast with that ignorance of which you 
 
INCOMPREHENSIBLE THINGS. 147 
 
 have bad such a bitter experience. You liave often in life 
 had occasion to feel how pleasant it is to say "I know after 
 being obliged for a long time to say " I do not know," in 
 regard to something which interests you. Especially if there 
 has been a misunderstanding between you and a friend; if 
 some act of his looks to vou enexplicable upon any ground 
 appropriate to the footing upon which you have stood to 
 each other; and you have had to feel coldly and distrust- 
 fully towards him; and the mystery has been cleared uj), 
 until you could say, •'! know it now, I understand, I ap- 
 prove of it entirely," what a thrill of joy has followed the 
 discovery. Our conception of the blessedness of heaven is 
 founded very much upon the contrasts we can see, it must 
 present to our condition on earth. And if in heaven you 
 are permitted to say, as beyond a doubt you will be, if not 
 before, of the dark and trying doings of God which have 
 obtruded themselves into your history, "I know them all 
 now, all is clear, all has been right and wise and good." 
 will not the brightness of that bright world grow immeas- 
 urably brighter by the vanishing of the cloud which 3'our 
 previous ignorance had wrapped about your spirit? Oh, 
 blessed contrast to the mist and haze which envelopes us 
 here, which blind our eyes with tears and choke our hearts 
 with doubts, as we grope along our way. Will it not be 
 much of heaven's joy to realize it? Be patient, then beloved 
 and wait for the manifestation of the sons of God, the mani- 
 festation which God will make of himself as a Father to 
 the children of his love! Endure the weeping of the night 
 for joy cometh in the morning! You will praise God yet, for 
 all that he has done that you know not! Praise him then 
 now, l)ecause jou know this! And so the hereafter may 
 give something of its light to cheer the darkness of the now, 
 and to enable you to say to God "thy will be done" when 
 that will is saying to you, "what I do thou knowest not." 
 
THE SHUNAMMITE'S REPLY. 
 
 AUGUST 13, 1865. 
 
 "And he said to Gehazi, his servant. Call the Shunammite. And 
 when he had called her, she stood before him. And he said unto 
 him, Say now unto her, Behold thou hast been careful for us 
 with all this care: what is to be done for thee? wouldst thou be 
 spoken for to the king, or to the captain of the host? And she 
 answered, I dwell among mine own people." — II. Kings 4:13.13. 
 
 THIS reply of the woman of Shunem to the prophet 
 Elisha's proposition, was as wise as it was beautiful. 
 It is worthy to stand side by side with the best 
 apolhegras of the Grecian philosophers. Diogenes has made 
 himself famous by that curt rejoinder, "Get out of my 
 sunshine, " made to Alexander the Great, when he asked 
 him if there was anything in which he could gratify or 
 oblige him ; but it is questionable whether this reply of the 
 woman of Shunem is not an intellectual gem of finer quali- 
 ty than that. If it has not so much of brilliant sparkle, it 
 has more of solid lustre. It has less of pretension to de- 
 form it, and more of truthfulness to commend it. Coming 
 from the source from which it does, it proves that there 
 are more philosophers in the world than the world ac- 
 knowledges; that the village matron, obeying her pure in- 
 stincts, taught by her sober common sense, and above all 
 guided in discernment and discrimination by a truly re- 
 ligious faith, can act under the inspiration of a wisdom as 
 genuine and as profound as that which wears the academic 
 gown, or dogmatizes in learned halls. There are philoso- 
 
 148 
 
THE SIIUNAMMITE's REPLY. 149 
 
 pliers in the world who know nothing of philosophy, in the 
 technical sense of the term; teachers all untaught them- 
 selves iu the mysteries of dialectic art; uttering their ora- 
 cles and establishing their canons without the prestige of a 
 diploma; and yet, in their noiseless and unnoticed way, 
 carrying the elements of life and health through society as 
 the blood does through tlie physical frame. These philoso- 
 phers and teachers are found perhaps, most frequently, 
 among the female sex, of whom it has been said, they dis- 
 cover truth by intuition, rather than by argumentation. 
 The probability is, that their simpler, more tranquil and 
 more confidiog nature leads them to eschew those heats of 
 controversy and those entanglements of disputation, in which 
 men are apt to be involved, so that their minds more hon- 
 estly seek for truth, more directly march up to it, and 
 more resolutely grasp it, when they have reached it. How- 
 ever, this may be, it will occur to everyone, I presume, 
 that the reply made by the woman of Shunem, to the 
 prophet, was one eminently fitted to come from a woman's 
 lips. The matter of it, and the style of it, both, have a 
 subtle quality about them, which seems to accord with such 
 a course. A man in her position would hardly have made 
 such a reply; or if he did, would almost certainly have put 
 it iu a different form. It required a woman's tact to make 
 an argument without using a single logical step to unlock 
 a problem, without going through the process of turning the 
 key. "What is to be done for thee?" said the prophet. 
 "Wouldcst thou be spoken for to the king, or to the cap- 
 tain of the host?" "I dwell among mine own people,"' is 
 her answer. Perhaps if she had been required to explain 
 philosophically why such a fact constituted a pertinent and 
 final answer to the prophet's proposition; why it demon- 
 strated that she had no need of the favors he had to be- 
 stow, and no occasion to be introduced to the patronage of 
 
150 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 the king or the captain of the liost, she couhl not have 
 done it. But the fact, nevertheless, to her own mind did 
 seem to involve just these results, and apparently, it seem- 
 ed so to the prophet too, for we licar no more of his 
 proposition. "t dwell among mine own people," he accepts 
 as a conclusive intimation that it lay not within the power 
 of any service he had to perform for her, to make her lot 
 in life, a more satisfactor}' one. The philosophical connec- 
 tion between the fact so allirmed and the results i)redicated 
 upon it, it would be interesting to develop, but that is not 
 my object on the present occasion. I wish rather to found 
 a train of religious reflection upon the single principle, 
 which, this fact, viewed in connection with these results, 
 obviously and prominently illustrates, namely, that na- 
 ture, in whatever system of life man has chosen to adopt, 
 has made association with one's own people a main condi- 
 tion of development and perfection. Evidently, isolation 
 and seclusion are not the normal states of man. He is not 
 placed in the world, like the icicle, to hang cold and rigid 
 under the eaves of a house; but comes into it, like the 
 raindrop falling from the cloud, which is destined to blend 
 with and melt into its fellows. The Shunammite dwelt not 
 alone; otherwise, Elisha's question, "what shall be done for 
 thee," would have suggested a definite request. "Give me 
 the light of loving faces; give me communion with sympa- 
 thizing hearts; give me an outlet to this pent-up and stag- 
 nant life, by letting it go forth and mingle in the currents 
 of the general life of a people whom I call my own," 
 would have been her reply. For the want of these consti- 
 tutes a fundamental defect in the condition of any person 
 and precludes the possibility of contentment in any well 
 organized mind. The association, contemplated by this 
 principle of which I am speaking, it needs to be observed, 
 is something different from, and more specific than a mere 
 
THE SHUNAMMITE'S REPLY. 151 
 
 herding witb ones kind; it is a dwelling witlf ones owr 
 people, a permanent, homelike, identification with those who 
 belong to you. It is in this feature of it, that the whole 
 emphasis of the Shunainmite's declaration resides. She might 
 have dwelt in a comnumit}' from which, it would have been 
 infinite relief to be separatetl. A simple conjunction of 
 bodies does not make the association which nature requires. 
 External juxtaposition may have brought you in contact 
 with those between whom and yourself, there is no internal 
 accordance, and then, association becomes the worst sort of 
 segregation, or severance; because, it is one. of wbich you 
 are always made conscious; one which, by postive signs, is 
 always pressing upon your notice. Never are you more 
 trul}"^ and painfully alone than when in perpetual intercourse 
 with those with whom you are not at one. Hence the law 
 of nature, which forbids man to be a solitary being, not 
 only requires him to associate himself with his fellow, but 
 requires him to associate with his like. Even our common 
 language indicates this, by making the verb "like," to a great 
 extent synonymous with the verb "love." Our loving and our 
 liking are one and the same thing. And as we can truly 
 associate only where we love, we associate where we like, 
 or where we harmonize with and resemble that with which 
 we associate Between unlikes there can be no association; 
 because between unlikes, there can be no liking. Liking, 
 or a standing towards one another in the relation of likes, 
 is essential to all true association amongst men. When 
 the}^ dwell together, this will always be found as the bond 
 of that union. Not that there might not be differences of 
 manifold kinds, distinguishing individuals in these united 
 bodies from each other, but broader than these ditferences, 
 and overlapping them all, we may say, there will be great 
 features of correspondence, great sympathies and harmonies, 
 which hold them together as with bands and cords. And 
 
152 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 ia such a case, differences, in fact only serve to make the 
 association more clear and striking. The meiuViers of a 
 faaii]}^ for instance, may be different from one another in 
 many respects, and yet there will be certain capital points 
 in which their likeness to, and their liking for, one another 
 will appear; and the fact of the maintaining a union, 
 amidst all their personal differences will only demonstrate 
 more positively the existence of these points. 
 
 And now we may see how aptly the nature of a genu- 
 ine association amongst men is expressed in the Shunammite's 
 declaration, "I dwell among mine own people." Tlie proper 
 idea of association is realized when the parties to it, can 
 say reciprocally, "we dwell among our own people." Those 
 with whom they dw'ell are theirs; they belong to them; 
 the}' are identified with them; because of this liking which 
 binds them together. Each individual finds himself repro- 
 duced, as it were, in his neighbor; sees himself multiplied, 
 as it were, in the whole brotherhood with which he is as- 
 sociated. No one can be less a stranger, or an enemy to 
 himself, than himself. But the like of himself, will be no 
 more a stranger, or an enemy to him, than himself. The 
 like of himself, he may be assured, will be as truly allied 
 to his interests as he is himself. Hence as he would say 
 of himself, "I am mine own," so he may say of him. "he 
 is mine own." And hence, it will follow, that the securi- 
 ties for his well being will be extended in proportion to 
 the extent in which he is associated with these — his likes. 
 A common danger threatening a company on board a ship, 
 makes them for the time being, a company of likes; they 
 are animated by one spirit, occupied with one intent, de- 
 voted to one object; and what is the result? Association 
 adds to the security of each by giving to each the benefit 
 of the thought and the effort of the whole. While any one 
 of the company, single-handed, might be helpless in the 
 
THE SHUNAMJIITE'S REPLY. 153 
 
 presence of danger, encircled and identified, as be feels 
 himself witli the power of the whole band, he may be able 
 to assure himself confidently of a triumph and deliverance. 
 So this Slumummite, taking in with a glance of her mind, 
 the possible vicissitudes which might be comprehended in 
 her life, satisfies herself that the best guaranty she can 
 have for her well-being, the best ground for security and 
 contentment, lies in the fact, that she is dwelling among 
 her own people. So thoroughly furnished and fortified, 
 does she feel, by this association, that under the shelter of 
 it, she can safely forego the advantages proposed to her in 
 the tempting prospect of being introduced to the favor of 
 royalty and enjoying the patronage of a court. Entrenched 
 within this kindly citadel, which nature's wise hand had 
 built and equipped for her protection, what need had she 
 of the largesses of nobles or ot kings? 
 
 Now the first special reflection which I wish to make 
 is, that a principle which is found to possess such a value 
 and potency in the economy of man's worldly life, may be 
 expected to be introduced and put in service, in the econ- 
 omy of his spiritual life. The same expression, "I dwell 
 among mine own people," which signified so much, as used 
 by the Shunammite, will signify as mucji, perhaps much 
 more, when used by the Christian. When uttered honestly 
 and heartily, by him, it will go far towards proving that 
 he is living spiritually, as a consistent, orderly, and con- 
 tented man; or, in other words, that his religion is giving 
 him actually that satisfaction and independence which in 
 theor}' it undertakes to bestow. To show this, it will only 
 be necessary to point out in a few particulars what is in- 
 cluded in the sense of the expression, "I dwell among 
 mine own people," as it may be used by the Christian. 
 
 First, the existence in the world of a people who are 
 the likes of himself, in those points which distinguish him 
 
154 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 as a Cliristian, is, of course, affirmed by it. We find this 
 people referred to perpetually, and in a variety of terms in 
 the Scripture. God recognizes their existence in the world. 
 He calls them specifically, his people, his church, as those 
 whom he has separated from the world and convoked or 
 called together into an organic unity. They are character- 
 ized by a set of well marked peculiarities. They come 
 from no special stock, have sprung from no particular lo- 
 cality, get their individuality from no merely outward in- 
 cidence or condition. Their classification rests upon purely 
 spiritual grounds. They have become a people, by reason 
 of a common faith which they entertain; a common ingraft- 
 ing into Christ, which they have experienced, and a com- 
 mon transformation of character and life, consequent there- 
 upon. Tn these respects they are likes; and so are fitted 
 for, and actually brought into association. This people are 
 the "mine own people"' of the Christian. And when he 
 calls them so, honestly and heartily, he declares, in the 
 next place, his identity with them in their unlikeness to 
 the world, The necessity of being wholly on the Lord's 
 side — of forsaking all to follow Christ, is recognized by 
 him. Religion, with him, means the giving up of the 
 heart to God, and the giving it up without compromise or 
 limitation. It makes his relation to God, paramount to all 
 other relations, domestic, social, or political. It leads him 
 to adopt Christ's definition of loyalty in his kingdom, '-he 
 that loveth father or mother, houses or lands, home or 
 country, more than me, is not worth}' of me." And the 
 general tenor of his life will show that his adoption of it 
 is sincere. God's people are practically his people; and he 
 is, practically one of them. He draws the same line of 
 separation around himself that God has drawn around them. 
 Then in the third place, his affections are among them. 
 His likings unite him to them. Spite of the personal 
 
THE SIIfrNAMMITES REPLY. 155 
 
 differences which may, in particular cases, sunder him 
 from them, there are great vital bonds of concord which 
 keep him in alliance with them. They and he, meet and 
 harmonize, in Christ, their common head. In proportion as 
 the\' are severally Hive him, he and they like one another. 
 The differences are minor; their harmony is essential. He 
 could not associate with those who have no faith in and no 
 love for Christ, thouoh agreeing with them in all other 
 points. He could never say of them, "ihese are my peo- 
 ple." There is a gap here between him and them, which is 
 fundamental. He can and he must associate with those 
 who do have faith in and love to Christ, whatever superficial 
 differences may oppose their fellowship. They are Christ's, 
 and that is the master tie, which binds him to them, and 
 forces him to say, "after all they are my people." 
 
 And bieng thus associated, it follows in the next place, 
 that his life assimilates itself to that common life by which 
 the body specifically is distinguished. He is exposed to the 
 same forces; surrounded b}' the same influences which give 
 them their individuality. He breathes their atmosphere, 
 subsists in their element. Nations, it is well known, have 
 their characters, as well as persons. Certain causes pro- 
 duce them, and produce them so regularly, that the for- 
 eigner who comes to reside among a strange people, invari- 
 ably catches their character. So the dweller among God's 
 people will catch their character. Their memories, their 
 traditions, their usages, their beliefs, their sentiments, their 
 hopes, will all have a plastic power to mould and develop 
 him into the type of being, which is special to them. Holy 
 inspirations from the past, with its sainted dead speaking 
 to him 3'et from their tombs; from the present, with 
 its living examjiles of Christ-like purity and devotiou, and 
 its ever recurring tasks and tests of Christian principles and 
 affections; and from the future, with its prospects of celes- 
 
156 A pastor's VALE1)ICT0RY. 
 
 tijil glory opening to the eye of the soul, invest him, and 
 penetrate him, and circulate tlirough him like life currents, 
 transmuting by their blessed alchemy the carnal that is in 
 him into the Spiritual, and evolving into more and more 
 distinctness of lineament and expression out of the earthly 
 that is in him, the image of the heavenly. 
 
 And then to dwell among them, is to make com- 
 mon cause with this people in their labors; their 
 enterprises; their occupations. It is thus, to get the 
 exercise, by which the nature of the Christian man is 
 trained and matured. Home has its toils which it exacts 
 of its members. Country has its services, sometimes 
 to the extent of periling life in the fighting of its bat- 
 tles, to deman'd of it citizens. And the performing of 
 these toils, and the rendering of these services, gives in- 
 tensity to those relationships, which identify the individual 
 with his home and his country. So the Christian becomes 
 more of a Christian, by the Christian work in which he en- 
 gages. His character is rusted out by sloth and inaction. 
 Hence he needs to be stimulated and borne along by the 
 movements, in which the vital energy of the mass to which 
 he IS attached, employs itself. He needs to be a co-worker 
 with those whose business it is to work for God. So be 
 will on the one hand escape those torments of conscience 
 and those suspicions as to the genuineness of his religion, 
 by which, his mind must be thrown into perpetual dis- 
 quietude; and on the other, gain that glow and fullness of 
 spiritual health, which is both peace to the soul, and a 
 proof of the soundness of that peace. 
 
 And then, to these, add this further thought, that the 
 Christian dwelling among his own people, is dwelling among 
 the means and agencies through which God has proposed 
 most directly to communicate with him. He is dwelling on 
 the very ground where God himself dwells. "Ye are the 
 
THE SHUNAMMITE's REPLY. 157 
 
 temple of the living God," says the apostle, "as Goil hatli 
 said, 1 will dwell in them aud walk in them, and I will be 
 their God, and they shall be my people.'" Like the Bethel, 
 where Jacob slept and where in his dream he lay at the 
 foot of a ladder whose top entered heaven. The Christian's 
 dwelling place, is a common ground where God aud the 
 soul meet and have mtercourse. There God's presence con- 
 tinually enfolds the soul. There God lives and moves, in 
 the soul's thought. There God speaks to the soul, by mak- 
 iug his word articulate and eft'ective truth. There God 
 ministers to the soul in ordinances. There he lifts the soul 
 to himself in worship. There he infuses the light of his 
 love into cloudy providences, making the dark look clear to 
 the soul, as he did to Asaph, when amidst. the disclosures 
 of the Sauctuar}', he studied the problem of the prosperity 
 of the wicked. There, by purpose and by promise, by 
 memorial aud by symbol, by consolation and b}' counsel, 
 by the incidents of redemption, and b}' the procedures of 
 his Spirit, he embraces the soul in the arms of his grace; 
 draws it, as it were, to his bosom; imprints upon it the 
 seal of sonship and heirship, and fastens upon it the im- 
 pression of his own character, as he left the reflection of 
 his own glory, upon the face of Moses. 
 
 Now, let these particulars, without enumerating more, 
 be duly considered, and the inference may be safely drawn, 
 that where they are found existing, there will be found as 
 their result, a state of spiritual satisfaction and independence. 
 The Christian of whom they can be affirmed, may be pro- 
 nounced a consistent, an orderly and a contented man. In 
 saying of himself, "I dwell among mine own people," he 
 will be making a statement, which if true, will demonstrate 
 bis condition to be one which leaves little or nothing to be 
 asked as a source of, or security for his well being. That 
 principle of nature then, which the Shunammite's reply 
 
158 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 enunciates, that association with one's own people, is a 
 main condition of development and perfection in man, has 
 been well taken notice of and put into service by God in 
 shaping his economy of the spiritual life amongst men. 
 Wisely he has gathered the sul)jects of this spiritual life 
 together as a people; and wisely he has enjoined it upon 
 them, to be united and to dwell together as brethren As- 
 sociation is as necessary and as efficient in religion as in 
 any other sphere in which man is called to act. His 
 nature demands it, as a help to his spiritual as well as his 
 temporal well being. As a Christian he wants his own 
 people to dwell among; he wants the society of his likes; 
 to make for him a home. The segregation, in any form, 
 of themselves into classes by men, is apt to be odius in 
 the eyes of the outside beholder. He is apt to see in it, 
 only pretension or presumption. Segregation in religion is 
 especially apt to be scrutinized unkindly, and to be ascribed 
 to illiberality. And in a sort of generous scorn, as is sup. 
 posed, for an exclusiveness founded on such base motives, 
 the remark is not unfrequently made, "I want no church; 
 I can act the (Christian as well out of it as in it." Such 
 cavils, to say the least of them, are made in ignorance. 
 Those who make them overlook the fact that the church 
 grows out of the law — as deep and broad as nature. Tho 
 Christian, as a particular type of man, like man in every 
 other type of him, wants a people among whom to dwell; 
 needs them in order to his well being; that is, his comfort 
 and perfection as a Christian. The principle of association 
 applies to him as well as other men; and as his enterprise 
 exceeds in importance all others in which men can engage, 
 above all other men he needs to avail himself of its aid. 
 This God knew, when he instituted a church in the world; 
 when he gathered his children together under a family or- 
 ganization. And every sincere and earnest Christian knows 
 
THE SHUNAMMITE'S REPLY. 159 
 
 it; knows it, as be kuows those new and profound likings 
 by which he is made a Christian; knows it, as he knows 
 the defects and the desires; the infirmities and the aspira- 
 tions of his own sonl. The philosophy of the Shuuammite 
 will be carried into his religion; and he will know that he 
 is assuring himself, that all is right in that religion, when 
 he can say most truly and most fervently, "I dwell among 
 mine own people. "' 
 
 And now, I wish to take this expression of the woman 
 in the text in a somewhat ditfereut sense from that of a 
 law under which I have thus far considered it. I wish to 
 take it as the utterance of a prophecy, or the statement of 
 an event, which is not fully realized in the present, but is 
 to be in the future. If it be a law, that like must associ- 
 ate with its like; and if such association between certain 
 given parties, is found to be only proximate, at any given 
 stage, the conclusion seems to be required, that at some future 
 stage, the association will be witnessed in a complete form; 
 and thus a law, with little modification, is converted into a 
 prophecy. On this ground, the expression, "I dwell among 
 mine own people, ' as uttered by the Christian, carries with 
 it the force of a prophecy. The Christian utters it under 
 a deep conviction that in connection with such an associa- 
 tion only, will the condition requisite to the perfection of 
 his being, be found. A vital want of his nature is enunciated 
 in that expression. All through life, men are acting under the 
 pressure of a similar want. They are trying to find. the com- 
 munity where their liking shall be satisfied. They are 
 looking for their own people — for that homogeneous race; 
 that congenial fraternity, in which their life may embosom 
 itself in the universal life. Hence we have the common 
 attachment to home, to neighborhood, and to our native 
 land. Hence the cosmopolite, the man without a dwelling 
 place, is looked upon as a melancholy prodigy. Still it 
 
160 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 must be confessed, that this quest is never entirely successful. 
 The associations to which men atttain are only proximate — 
 never complete. The dwellers together, are not sufficient 
 likes to satisfy the demands of nature; or extraneous causes 
 disturb their harmony; or the precariousness of the tie 
 which unites them, mars the contentment which association, 
 if known to be permanent, might afford them. "Pilgrims 
 and strangers, on the earth," after all the environments 
 of home and neighborly society and country, is what they 
 have to call themselves. Even the Christian, in his higher 
 sphere, where there is so much that is deep and sacred in 
 the relationships that enter into his peculiar association, has 
 to feel that the association is proximate, rather than per- 
 fect. His own people as he finds them here, fall short of 
 that ideal of a community of likes, in intercourse with 
 which his soul shall find absolute harmony — to which his 
 cravings look. His dwelling place too, is more or less a 
 scene of unrest. His likings are not fully met by the pro- 
 visions it ofl'ers him. The law which drives him to a peo- 
 ple of his own, for perfect satisfaction, drives lam farther 
 than any region he can occupy in his present state. 
 And is not that law then, a premonition and a pledge, that 
 there is a region in a future state, where he shall at last 
 find and dwell among his own people? Will not the Chris- 
 tian at last, be perfect, and be the companion of a race of 
 perfect Christians? Will not likes, all made complete, in 
 their complete likeness to Christ, all meet at last in some 
 blessed home? The law which tells us, that in associations 
 men are to look for the perfection of cheir being, assures 
 us that they will; and safer still, we have the word of God 
 for it that they will. The Christian as he emerges at last 
 into the fullness of a spiritual being, will emerge into a 
 community where all are of the same stature, and mould, 
 and essence, as himself. Perfected himself, he will behold 
 
THE SHUNAMMITES REPLY. 161 
 
 the conditions of his perfection fulfilled in the perfection 
 of all witb whom he is associated. And when this occurs 
 he will be in heaven, for where it occurs will l)e heaven. 
 "At last, T dwell among mine own people," wdl be perhaps 
 one of the first expressions, by which the full heart of the 
 glorified saint will try to utter forth its satisfaction when 
 it reaches heaven. Yes; at last, believer, you shall know 
 what it is to dwell among your own people! You could 
 hardly call your staying with them on earth, a dwelling 
 among them, for every breeze that blew by and shook the 
 folds of your tent, reminded you that you were a way- 
 farer camping on his march, and not a dweller abiding in 
 his home; and these your people were not all you desired 
 in your people. Harmonies were interrupted too frequently 
 b}' discords in your intercourse with them to let 3'our heart 
 be entirely content. Association with them left you still 
 much to long for. And so it must ever be now. Y^ou 
 must say, • 'I dwell among mine own people," in a miti- 
 gated sense. But you will know what it is to say this in 
 a full and perfect sense hereafter; and your saying it now, 
 if honestly and heartily said — if here, amidst present imper- 
 fections, God's people are adopted as your- people, and you 
 truly dwell among them, you may draw from your own 
 consciousness of these facts as assurance, that hereafter 
 and forever, in a heavenly home, with Christ and his per- 
 fected household, you will be permitted in a full and per- 
 fect sense to say, "I dwell among mine own people." 
 
 And now there is a converse to this picture, which 
 fidelity requires me to notice. Like seeks its like we have 
 seen. Like tends always to dwell with its like. Character 
 calls for the aid of association to complete its development. 
 You may know a man's character from that of the associ- 
 ates with whom you find him. You may know his associates 
 from the character you see him exhibiting. Like finds its 
 
162 A PASTORS VALEDICTORY. 
 
 way to like. This is true of the evil as well as of the good; 
 true of the deiiiers of Jesus, as of the followers of Jesus. 
 All beings as character classifies them, go to their own 
 place— to their own people. This is the result of a law, 
 which is working in all the worlds with which man is con- 
 versant or connected. It is the result of a law, as definite 
 and as strong, as that which rolls the avalanche from the 
 mountain's brow to tiie plain, or that which ties the planet 
 to the 8un. As you are associating yourselves now, dear 
 friends, God, for it is Him we mean, when we speak of 
 law here — God will associate you forever. What you like, 
 and what you are like, you will dwell with forever, when 
 the consummation of all things shall have come. Associa- 
 tion, with a cord as irresistible as omnipotence, is drawing 
 you to the final abode of the enemies of God, if you are 
 not now fhe friends of God; and there, sometime and 
 somewhere, you must find your level and your doom; and 
 there, amidst that dismal companionship, the lament must be- 
 gin which is never to end, "I dwell among mine own peo- 
 ple. " 
 
THE LOVE OF GOD. 
 
 Al'UlL 5, 1S55. 
 
 "■He that loveth not, ktioweth not God; for God is Love." — 
 I. John 4:8 
 
 THE Apostle makes use of tliis expression twice in tliis 
 cliapter, once here in tlie text, and again in the IGth 
 verse; and in both instances his object is not so mucli 
 to affirm a truth concerning (lod, as to sustain an exhorta- 
 tion addressed to the people of God. He is teaching the 
 duty of mutual love amongst Cliristians, and he enforces 
 his doctrine by this argument, that between God and his 
 people there subsists a communion so intimate, that it leads 
 to an assimilation in character and conduct between the 
 parties. "God dwells in them," he says, "and they in 
 him." so that what he is, they, in the nature of the case, 
 must be. Now, he reasons, "God is love;" and as a con- 
 sequence his people must be love too. Were I to make just 
 that use of the text, therefore, which its place in the sa- 
 cred canon indicates, I should treat it as one of the terms 
 of syllogism — or as one of the links in a chain of argu- 
 ment; and its meaning and nature would have to be de- 
 termined by its bearings upon the practical duty proposed 
 in the conclusion, which it was designed to aid in enforcing. 
 This is not the use, however, which I purpose to make of 
 it. It has that about it which makes it well worthy of be- 
 ing made a subject of study by itself, apart from its con- 
 nection with anything else. It is a proposition which is so 
 suggestive and so interesting — it is a link which has so 
 
 1G3 
 
164 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 much of the golden ore of theological truth in it, and so 
 much of the polish and garnishment of heaven's grace upon 
 it, that it is almost impossible for the mind to resist the 
 inclination to forget for a moment the ulterior docti'ine, for 
 the sake of which it is introduced, in order to explore the 
 deep and precious signiticance which is embodied in itself. 
 And this is what I propose to do. I shall separate the 
 expression, "God is love," from the context and scrutinize 
 it, with reference to its own proper worth and import, as 
 an independent dogma of inspiration. 
 
 We hnve then, God set before us as om subject, and 
 the thing affirmed of him is, that he is love- -a most im- 
 portant afllrmation of a most important subject. It is 
 not an affirmation, it will be observed, which undertakes 
 to aid us in answering any of the questions which a bold 
 or a curious philosophy is accustomed to ask as to the 
 essence of God, or as to what kind of a being he is. On 
 this point Scripture goes but a little way towards meet- 
 ing our inquiries. It tells us, indeed, that "God is a 
 spirit,'' and it requires us to describe him as an infinite 
 spirit, an unchangeable spirit, and so on ; l)ut when it 
 has put all these phrases in our mouths, and given all 
 these formulas to our faith, we are constrained to con- 
 fess that it is rather a knowledge of what God is not, than 
 of what he is, that we profess. But of' the character of 
 God, which it much more concerns us to understand, the 
 text does give us an intelligible and a satisfactory intima- 
 tion. It puts the expression, "God is love," alongside of 
 that other expression, "God is a spirit," and so relieves our 
 ignorance as to his essence by the simplicity of the con- 
 ception we are permitted to entertain as to his character. 
 We may not be able to tell what God a spirit is, but we 
 are able to tell what the spirit of that Spirit is, for we 
 have it indicated to us by a word so easy of comprehen- 
 
THE LOVE OP GOD. 165 
 
 sion, so familiar and so grateful, as Love. Whatever God 
 is that we cannot understand, he is one thing that we can 
 understand, and tliat is Love. 
 
 The form of tlie expression, "God is love," requires us 
 to carry our theory concerning him to this length, that he 
 is always and everywhere, Love. It is impossible that he 
 should ever be found in any position where it cannot be 
 affirmed of him, lie is Love; for what he is, is what you 
 must find wherever you find God, and God is love. 
 There can never be in him, therefore, anything which is 
 inconsistent with, or adverse to, love. Just as when it is 
 said by the apostle in the first chapter of this Epistle, that 
 "God is light," it is added, "in him is no darkness at all," 
 because darkness in the nature of things cannot co-exist 
 with light. So, nothing that cannot co-exist with love, can 
 ever be affirmed ot God. Otherwise it would cease to be 
 said of him, that he is love, as it would cease to be true 
 of him that he is light if it could ever be affirmed of him, 
 that in him was any darkness at all. Any theory or opin- 
 ion, therefore, that contravenes in any particular, the idea 
 that God, as to his character, is love, must be false. And 
 any theory or opinion that comes short of making him, in 
 every office that he exercises and every act that he per- 
 forms, love, must be defective. It is not enough to say of 
 him, he can love; he does sometimes love; or he has some- 
 times loved; for all these things might be said of him 
 without there being any necessity for concluding that he is 
 love. All these things can be said of almost any man; 
 and yet it cannot be said of any man, he is love. God 
 differs from man in this — that his nature is such that he 
 does and can do nothing which cannot be reconciled with 
 love, while man's nature is such that he can and does do 
 many things which cannot be reconciled with love. Under 
 all the forms in which God can be contemplated, the 
 
166 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 ground-work of every picture is tlie same, tli.at is, Love. 
 We may discriminate amongst his attributes and speak of 
 him, properly enough, as now a God of wisdom; now a 
 God of power; now a God of justice; as a God of good- 
 ness; but it is love that is manifesting itself in every exhi- 
 bition of his wisdom, power, justice and goodness. We 
 may distribute his works into many chapters, but it is still 
 love that operates in every particular one of his works. 
 Find God where you will, it is love that yoi; are bound to 
 recognize — Love that you are bound to adore. 
 
 This is the doctrine of the text. And now, my first 
 remark concerning it is, that it is a doctrine so vital, so 
 radical, tliat we may say, all true religion in the world 
 stands or falls with it For true religion consists of such 
 affections and such acts, entertained and performed by man 
 towards God, as can only be called forth by a being who 
 is Love. Let the terms of the Bible be so changed as to 
 read everywhere, "God is cruelty;" "God is malevolence;" 
 "God is hatred," and then let men be required to enter- 
 tain such affections and perform such acts toward him as 
 are implied in true religion, and they would resent the de- 
 mand as an insult to their feelings, and an outrage upon 
 their understanding. True religion requires men to love 
 God, to honor God, to trust in God, to obey God, and to 
 worship God; things which assume that God is a being who 
 is worthy of being loved, honored, trusted in, obeyed and 
 worshiped by men — things which are put in the category 
 of moral impossibilities, the moment you give credit to 
 such an idea as that God is cruelty, malevolence or hatred. 
 Such an idea would inevitably be followed by a set of con- 
 sequences which are the very antipodes of those which are 
 the product of true religion. It would make men fear, and 
 detest, and rage against God; not love, and honor, and 
 trust in, and obey, and worship him. This has been the 
 
THE LOVE OF GOD. 167 
 
 effect of it universally in the heathen world; and the onl}' 
 religion which can be said to exist there (if religion it can 
 be called), is therefore an oppressive and degrading bondage 
 to superstition. The minds that cannot consent to this 
 have no alternative but to fly for refuge to infidelity, and 
 have no religion at all. It is the blessed mission of Chris- 
 tianity to reveal to the world a God who is love; and thus 
 to lay the foundation of a true religion; and the onl}' true 
 religion on earth, has accordingly always been found follow- 
 ing in the train of Christianity; because Christianit}' and 
 only Christianity presents to men a God towards whom 
 they can entertain the affection and perform the acts re- 
 quired by a true religion. The truth of the doctrine, con- 
 tained in the text, might therefore be argued by the neces- 
 sit}' of it, in order to the existence of religion. The truth 
 of some things may be proved by the fact that the mind 
 cannot admit the truth of the consequences which must fol- 
 low if those things are admitted to be false. The conse- 
 quences we sa}- are false. They involve a violation of rea- 
 son, or conscience, or the order of nature. They create a 
 state in which it is not right, or not safe, for men to be 
 found. They cannot, therefore, be submitted to. But it 
 they are not submitted to, the principle or theory, out of 
 which they have issued, cannot be retained. That must 
 have been false which produced them. Thus a principle or 
 theory which would lead to the result of expelling the only 
 true religion from the world, would on this ground, be 
 demonstrated to be false. It must be false unless the 
 state of things, which we behold in heathen nations, is 
 more consistent with reason and conscience and the order 
 of nature, than that which we behold in Christian nations. 
 But to exclude from our theology this doctrine, that God 
 is love, would lead to this result. It would put the Chris- 
 tian nation where the heathen one now stands. It would 
 
168 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 substitute for the relijrion which tlie believer in the Bible 
 holds, the superstition which the ignorunt Pagan, or the in- 
 fidelity which the philosophic one, now holds. Surely tinth, 
 we argue, cannot lie in the direction of such consequences. 
 It must be in the opposite direction. It must be on the 
 side of that doctrine which upholds the true religion; it 
 mnst incorporate itself indissolubly with the principle or 
 theory that God is love. If men, then, would not have in 
 the world such a state of things as would follow the ab- 
 sence of all religion, or downright irreligiou, they must 
 gather about and cling to this great central doctrine of the 
 true religion. 
 
 But in order to do this, I proceed to remark, they will 
 be obliged to gather about and cling to the Bible as an in- 
 fallible guide and a supreme arbiter in the matter of re- 
 ligion. We need the Bible to proclaim to us with authori- 
 ty that God is love. We need a voice as commanding and 
 as trustworthy as that of the parent is to the little child — 
 a voice that carries with it in its very tone a demonstra- 
 tion which stills the questionings of the mind, and the 
 tremblings of the heart, to fix our faith firmly upon this 
 truth. For without the Bible, men could not assure them- 
 selves beyond a doubt (so as to have the full benefit of 
 the conviction), that God is love. The nations who have 
 not had the Bible to give thesm their theology, as I have 
 said, have universally failed to apprehend and embrace this 
 doctrine. Deriving their idea of the Deity from other 
 sources they have in the exercise of a futile and ingenious 
 superstition invented lords man}^ and Gods many; but in all 
 their Pantheon there is not one of whom it can be said, 
 this being is love. And in Christian lands those who deny 
 the authority of the Bible, who will not let their faith go 
 beyond the point where the light of nature leads it, are 
 found, generally at least, at some time or other question- 
 
THE LOVE OP GOD. 169 
 
 injj;, not to say denying, the truth of the doctrine. Abso- 
 lute confidence in it can rest only on the platform afforded 
 by the Bible. For there are, beyond all controversj', things 
 to be met witli in the world, and things occurring m the 
 experience of every individual, which seem to indicate that 
 God is not love. There are difficulties, and great ones, too, 
 which any mind must overleap before it can reach comfort- 
 ably and secure!}' the conclusion that God is love. It is 
 easy for men with certain facts before them to believe that 
 he can love, that he has loved, that he does love, but as I 
 have remarked, these propositions do not express all that 
 is meant by the formula, God is love; and there are other 
 facts wdiich men must look at, which seem to put an im- 
 passable barrier in the way of the mind that would go on 
 to the extreme point of the truth presented by this for- 
 mula. If God is love, the querulous and sceptical may 
 ask, why are such and such things to be found in a world 
 which he created and which he governs? Why was sin 
 ever permitted to defile and curse the earth? Why is suf- 
 fering allowed to exist? Why is the human heart strung 
 with chords of sadness as liberall}' as with those of joy? 
 Why is there a time to weep and a time to die, linked in- 
 dissolubly to the time to laugh and the time to be born, in 
 a man's history? Why does the shadow chase the sunbeam 
 so constantly through every scene of life? Why does the 
 fear of loss mar forever the enjoyment of possession? Wh}^ 
 do the words, "till death shall you part," utter that sad 
 prophecy of separation and bereavement in the ears of hus- 
 band and wife, even as the vow of love binds them heart 
 to heart at the altar? And why does the image of a hun- 
 dred little hillocks in the grave yard break across the 
 mother's vision as she presses her first born to her bosom, 
 and clieck the gush of her rapture with the thought, "my 
 child, too, may have to fill an infant's tomb?" These 
 
170 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 questions point to facts, whicli will be bard to reconcile 
 witb tbe doctrine, God is love, by any process whicb does 
 not call in the aid of tbe positive authority of the Bible. 
 And this, I am sure, will be the testimony of all who have 
 been placed in circumstatnces where they have had to test 
 the matter by personal experience. Perhaps you have tried 
 in your moments of pain and grief to rest your soul, as 
 your religion teaches you to do. upon the consoling convic- 
 tion that God who sent you your pain and grief, is Love. 
 And you have searched out arguments, and you have con- 
 structed theories, and you have multiplied conjectures, and 
 you have reasoned and reasoned, till in the endless mazes 
 of your reasonings you have felt yourself lost; and the re- 
 sult of all has been that your mind has been perplexed and 
 aggravated, rather than satisfied and comforted by the 
 effort. And then you have let the Bible speak. You have 
 let its authority come to your assistance. You have con- 
 sented to believe that God is what he is revealed to be 
 without limiting your faith to what you can pi'ove him to 
 be; you become the little chdd and you have received the 
 word of inspiration as the parent's voice, and you have 
 recognized in its tone a right to teach you, and a compe- 
 tency to teach you, and you have given credit to its decla- 
 rations, because of its own character, and not because of 
 any process of demonstration by which your mind had 
 brought itself to adopt its declaration; and then, doubt has 
 subsided, and conviction has been established, and you 
 have felt sure that God is love. And knowing that the 
 author of your pain and grief was such a God, you could 
 be still patient, resigned, and tranquil, under his loving 
 hand. Now, in claiming an authority for the Bible in this 
 matter, T am only claiming for it what legitimately belongs 
 to it as a supernatural source of knowledge, and what it 
 always claims clearly for itself. It never refers to anything 
 
THE LOVE OP GOD. ] 71 
 
 outside of itself a,s a standard by which its communications 
 are to be tried and estimated. What it says of God, in 
 any particular, is fixed as truth by its mere saying it. It 
 does not ask the superscription, the endorsement of the 
 person to whom it speaks before it demands his belief. 
 He is not the umpire before whom it must plead and argue, 
 and whose judgment is needed to sustain and authenticate 
 its communications, but he is the scholar to whom it is im- 
 parting information, and whose business it is to take the 
 information given with a confidence proportioned to the 
 merits of his teacher. The information may often be of a 
 kind so abstruse or so complicated that his mind has no 
 capacity to exercise judgment upon it; and in such cases he 
 must deter his own judgment to that of his teacher — he 
 must let his mind follow the m nd of his teacher — he must 
 take as truth what he cannot demonstrate to be truth — be- 
 cause he is sure that in the judgment of his teacher's 
 mind, it can be and has been demonstrated to be truth. 
 Speaking thus authoritatively then, the Bible tells us 
 God is love; and the weight of its authoritative declaration 
 comes to turn the scale and decide the controversy when- 
 ever our minds are disposed to waver between the evidences 
 for and those against the doctrine. We take its decision, 
 as that which we ought to form, and which our minds 
 would be constrained to form were they in the position of 
 that mind which speaks in the Bible. 
 
 But let me not be misunderstood in what I am sajing. 
 In referring thus to the authority of the Bible, as that 
 which is necessary in order to assure our minds of the 
 truth of the doctrine that God is love, I am not holding 
 that the authority of the Bible is all the support we can 
 find for the doctrine. Were this so, that is, were the pos- 
 itive dictum of the Bible all the evidence we had of the 
 truth of the doctrine, or were there nothing in what we can 
 
172 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 see and leiini of God from other quarters to correspond 
 with and confirm it, we should be obliged to reject tlie tes- 
 timony' of tlie Bible, not on the ground that it liad not 
 autliority as the word of (lod to command our faitli, but 
 on t!)e ground tlsat it could not be the word of God. If 
 in all the circle of his actions God never appeared as Love, 
 but alwa3S as the contrary, we should pronounce the dic- 
 tum of the Bible, that he is Love, a falsehood; and then 
 with a falsehood proved upon it, it could not challenge our 
 confidence as an infallil)le guide and supreme arbiter in the 
 matter of religion; and there would be no room left for a 
 question as to its authority over our faith. But the Bible 
 has no such issue as this to fear. It stands on safe ground 
 here. What it alfirms of God, though its aflirmation be 
 not ottered as argument, it always represents God as exem- 
 plifying in his actions. It shows the fruit cohering with 
 the tree. AVhen it says, (Jod is love, it admits and en- 
 courages the appeal to facts. It tells us we shall find God 
 actually loving, and loving under such circumstances as 
 make it necessary to conclude that he is love; and it aids 
 us in tracing out and comprehending the exhibitions of his 
 love. It sets these before us in such abundance and varie- 
 ty that an examination of them would furnish matter for a 
 volume rather than a sermon. It draws the veil, for in- 
 stance, from that scene of being which in the language of 
 man, we call the eternity of God prior to creation. Before 
 the appearance of the angels, those eldest born of his chil- 
 dren, to be objects of his love, we have a glimpse or two, 
 an out-shining ray or two, of the life of God. And if we 
 may presume to interpret these, they indicate as their 
 prominent truth, that God was then Love. The doctrine 
 of the Trinity — the three-fold personality of the Deity, 
 mysterious, inexplicable as it is in most of its aspects, ob- 
 tains at least a sort of coherence with familiar and intelli- 
 
THE LOVE OP GOD. 173 
 
 gihle things, if we think of it in connection with this 
 truth, that Deity is Love. For the conditions of love, the 
 circumstances required for its exercise, to some extent, are 
 presented to our view in the union of the three persons in 
 the Godhead. A Deity who is love, is revealed in a fitting 
 form, a form adapted to the fact at least, when he appears, 
 not in the awful solitude of unmitigated unity, but in the 
 fellowship of a co-essential Trinity. Such a form of sub- 
 sistence makes it possible to say of God from all eternity 
 he was Love. It gives occasion for the exercise of love, 
 of which we read, when the Son, in the days ot his incarna- 
 tion, declared, "thou Father Lovedst me before the founda- 
 tion of the world;" and it suggests a key to that expression of 
 loving concord between coincident agents, contained in the 
 saying of the Creator, "let us make man in our image, 
 after our likeness." Not to dwell upon this unfathomable 
 theme, however, we may pass on to those manifestations 
 of God which have reference to the objects of time. And 
 here, the existence of these objects fall in with the doctrine 
 that God is love. For love is a productive principle. Cre- 
 ation is its proper work. Life radiating itself out into other 
 forms of kindred life is the ver}^ exercise, by which it 
 proves its existence. A God who is love is just the God 
 who might be expected sometime to api)ear as God the 
 Creator. All the acts of creative power he may have put 
 forth we know not. All the beings whom in his love he 
 has made we cannot enumerate; but we read ot the angels 
 who dwell in his presence, and we know of the existence of 
 that lower race, for whose occupation, the world in its Par- 
 adisaical state was forrOed, and who still hold it, though 
 under conditions so sadly changed. Spite of all in man's 
 present position what seems inconsistent with love in God, 
 man's original creation, is an act which can be reconcded 
 with no other principle. And then look at innumerable 
 
174 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 things, which even subsequent to the falling of the curse 
 upon our race, continue in the system of nature and under 
 the administration of Providence to attest the fact that 
 God is love. Do we not see the tender parent yet. in the 
 Being who is presiding in our world? Do we not find that 
 sweet, that hallowed phrase, "our Father which art in 
 heaven," in use amongst men, and does it not daily ascend 
 from thousands and tens of thousands who feel in their 
 deepest hearts, that there is a Reality to correspond with 
 the phrase? And the loving kindnesses of the Lord, are 
 there not those who still make mention of these, as the 
 Prophet and the Psalmist were accustomed to do? Would 
 hatred or cruelty or malevolence have contrived such mani- 
 fold arrangements for the preservation and support of their 
 victims, or granted them such an affluence of enjoyment as 
 yet lies within the reach of fallen man? Would they have 
 hung out this blue sky above him, or decorated the green 
 earth beneath him? Would they have put music and beauty 
 and knowledge and friendship in the world? Would they 
 have provided food for hunger, and medicine for disease, 
 and consolation for sorrow? Would they have kept hope 
 alive in the human heart, and flung the rainbow over the 
 cloud, promising a day of emancipation to the sin-burdened 
 earth, a resurrection in glory to the dying body, and an 
 eternal heaven to the sainted soul? Oh no. The Bible has 
 facts to sustain it, patent and unimpeachable as the day- 
 light, when it says God is love. But the great fact which 
 it always puts in the foreground when discoursing upon 
 this theme, and which most effectively demonstrates the 
 love of God, is the scheme which has been devised and 
 executed for the redemption of mankind. This fact the 
 apostle couples immediately with his declaration in the text. 
 "In this was manifest the love of God towards us," he 
 says, "because that God sent his only begotten Son into 
 
THE LOVE OP GOD. 175 
 
 the world that we might live through hiiu. • Herein is love, 
 not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his 
 Son to be the propitiation for our sins." The Bible is full 
 of such passages, I need not multiply them. I have said 
 the Bible does not argue with men, when it speaks to them 
 of God. It does not admit that there can be any doubt in 
 regard to what it communicates. And surely I may say it 
 takes ground infinitely above all necessity for arguing when 
 it records such a fact as that which these passages indi- 
 cate. With that fact on its pages argument would be su- 
 perfluous — almost derogatory to its cause. The Bible leaves 
 God's acts to confirm all it says of his character. It tells 
 you that God is love. You may question or deny the 
 dogma. It holds no debate with you. It does not want 
 your assent. It calmly proceeds with its scroll of revela- 
 tion, unrolling vision after vision, until, lo! the Son of God 
 appears, descending to the earth and taking man's nature, 
 that he may die for man's sin. This is the way the Bible 
 speaks of God; and this is the way God confirms by his 
 acts what it says of him. And who can doubt longer after 
 such a confirmation? Could an3'thing less than the expres- 
 sion God is love, describe a Being who has so loved the 
 world? Could redemption through the death of the Son of 
 God for a race of sinners ever have emanated from the 
 heart of a being of whom it could be said, he i§ cruelty, 
 hatred or malevolence? With the cross of Christ before us, 
 -can we do otherwise, brethren, than rise in our conception 
 of God to that sublime altitude to which the text would 
 carry us, and say, of his very nature, he is Love? 
 
 But it is to the practical hearing ot this important 
 truth that I wish now to direct your attention. I have 
 said that this doctrine, God is Love, lies at the basis of 
 all true religion, meaning theoretical religion. I would now 
 say it lies at the base of all true personal religion. If 
 
176 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 God is love, he deserves from men, as bis reasonable tri- 
 bute, all the love they can possibly exhibit towards him. 
 "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and 
 all thy mind, and all thy soul, and all thy strength," is 
 therefore the first and greatest commandment — the funda- 
 mental law of piety. And if men have not observed it, 
 they are sinners. They have Avronged God. Now, tried by 
 this text, there is no man who can escape conviction and 
 condemnation as a sinner — a wrongdoer against God. And 
 the question arises, what course of treatment is a person iu 
 such a position to expect at the hands of a God who is 
 love? I answer, the love that can consist with a hatred of 
 sin, and that frames statutes against sin, will proceed to 
 the punishment of sin. And this is the meaning of those 
 passages of Scripture which speak of God's anger^ and ven- 
 geance and wrath. These are terms borrowed from human 
 language; but they describe only God's love going forth to 
 the punishment of sin. A God who did not punish sin 
 could not claim the title of love. The whole universe 
 would soon call him haired, and malevolence and cruelty. 
 They fall into a grievous error therefore, who persuade them- 
 selves that because God is love the}' may sin with impuni- 
 ty; or who use such declarations as the text as a [)Yoot of 
 the doctrine of universal and indiscriminate salvation. And 
 this is almost the fearfullcst view we can take of the miser}' 
 of the wicked in their final state, that they will have forced 
 the love of God to turn their executioner, and kindle the 
 flames of that consuming fire with which they are to be 
 destroyed. But while the doctrine of the text gives no en- 
 couragement to the incorrigible sinner to hope for escape 
 from punishment, it does lay a ground for the hope of 
 mercy in the case of the sinner who repents. It is just 
 because God is love, that the man who feels his need of 
 mercy and wishes for it, is authorized to expect it. He 
 
THE LOYE OF GOD. 177 
 
 has no remedy for his evil eoiulition in himself, no re- 
 sources to which he can iipply lor relief tmd deliverance 
 independently of (iod. But when, with the look of help- 
 less want he turos to God, he finds him a God of love; 
 a God who has no pleasure in the death of the sinner, but 
 wouUl have all men come unto him and live. A view of 
 the love of God, therefore, stands connected wilh that first 
 step in personal relioion — repentance. If God is not seen 
 to be love, there can be no repentance, there can be no 
 'turning of the heart from sin to God, which is necessaay 
 to constitute repentance; and the bitterest pang in repent- 
 ance — that which sends the iron of contrition deepest in 
 the soul, is the thought that sin is seen now to have been 
 committed against a God who is love, and who says in his 
 tenderness to the sinner, "30U may repent." 
 
 And then, the doctrine of the text lays a foundation 
 for the justification of the sinner, through the righteousness 
 of Christ imputed to him. A Saviour is the unspeakable 
 gift of God's love. That allows a propitiation for sin, the 
 inteiveution of a mediator, salvation by faith where there 
 could be none by the works of the principal. When the 
 sinner goes to Christ, he is placing himself within the pale 
 of God's love, where there is no more condemnation to him, 
 and from which nothing can separate him. His security 
 that he will not be counted and treated as a sinner, is that 
 God is love; and that in his love, he has reconciled him to 
 himself through Christ who was made sin for him." 
 
 And then, lastly, this doctrine secures to the believer 
 all the control, and discipline, and assistance, which are 
 reciuired to carry him successfully through a course of re- 
 ligious living. Love is provident, and beneficent towards 
 its objects. What they need for their safet}' or welfare it 
 delights to bestow. Christian, this is your encouragement 
 and your security — God is love. If he were not, you would 
 
178 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 never have been standing where you are to-day; you would 
 never have made such progress as you already have done 
 towards heaven. He who has begun a good work in you 
 means to carry it on unto the end. You have large re- 
 sources in God, though you have none in yourself. Love 
 is your guide; Love is your guardian; Love will chasten 
 you when you need it; Love will raise you when you fall; 
 Love will strengthen your weakness; Love will soothe your 
 sorrows; Love will hear your prayers; Love will stand by 
 your dying beds; and Love will present you at last fault- 
 less and complete before your Father's face. The begin- 
 ning and the ending of your religion, the foundation and 
 the top-stone of your salvation, are comprised in this pre- 
 cious truth — "God is love." 
 
THE SAVED MALEFACTOR. 
 
 JUNE 3, ISGO. 
 
 "And Jesus said unto hira, verily 1 say unto thee to-d.ay 
 slialt tliou be with me in Paradise." — Luke 23:48. 
 
 THE occurrence described here directs our attention in a 
 very interesting way, first, to the source froru which 
 the divine mercy which is concerned in the salvation 
 of man, proceeds, and secondly, to the extent to which its 
 efficacy is applied, These will be tbe topics which I shall 
 endeavor to illustrate in my remarks upon the text. Jesus 
 upon the cross to the dying malefactor at his side says, 
 "to-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." These words 
 in any proper sense which can be put upon them, must 
 mean that this man should be saved; that in that eternal 
 world into which he was passing, he should find safety and 
 rest. Without insisting that the word paradise is precisely 
 equivalent to heaven, admitting that it cannot mean that 
 state of perfect blessedness into which the righteous are to 
 be introduced, after the resurrection of the body, and for 
 which this resurrection is a necessary preparation, tbere can 
 be no doubt that the word describes a state that is heav- 
 enly in its kind. This, the import of the term indicates, 
 and various other allusions in Scripture plainly signify. No 
 one, upon a dying bed, could desire to have a better assur- 
 ance of salvation, than to be informed upon divine author- 
 ity that after death he was to be with Christ in Paradise. 
 We should be perverting language, therefore, in a most ar- 
 bitrary way, not to admit that this malefactor was a saved 
 
 179 
 
180 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 man. Now consider tbe Saviour. Look at the person by 
 whom the hope of life was given, and the word of life 
 spoken, in this interesting transaction. Setting other cir- 
 cumstances aside for the present, observe: 
 
 First, that Jesus in speaking these words, is announcing 
 to the man tiie forgiveness of his sins. Admission to Par- 
 adise is a privilige altogether inconsistent with the existence 
 of guilt in the party admitted. The wnges, the due reconj- 
 pense of sin, is death. So long as it is reckoned against 
 any one, it can only expose him to condemnation. 80 long 
 as it appears in a creature, and must be dealt with by (Jod 
 it must be treated by him as an abominal>le thing which he 
 hates, and which he cannot therefore, receive into his pres- 
 ence. Salvation, therefore, always implies the remission of 
 the sin of the person saved. Pardon is, iiuleed, a part of 
 salvation. 80 that when our Lord said to this man "this 
 day slialt thou be with me in Paradise," he was saying to 
 him as plainly as if he had used the identical words, "this 
 day or this moment th}- sins be forgiven thee.'" And the 
 question arises immediately in view of this fact, who is this 
 that forgiveth sins? This question the Jews had asked 
 more than once in reference to our Saviour, and they had 
 coupled with it the charge of blasphemy; for they had rea- 
 soned rightly enough that none can forgive sins but God 
 only. They understood that the right to remit sin was ex- 
 clusively a divine right; that it is one of the preroga- 
 tives of the author of the moral law and the administra- 
 tor of the moral government of the universe; and that the 
 exercise of this right in any case, was an act which desig- 
 nated the agent as a divine personage. As they were not will- 
 ing to allow this character to Christ, they protested against his 
 claiming the right to forgive sin, and called him a blas- 
 phemer, a profaner of sacred things. But nevertheless, in 
 full view of the construction which thej^ put upon the act 
 
THE SAVED MALEFACTOR. ISl 
 
 (wliicli be evidently admits to be correct) he proclaimed the 
 fact, "the Son of man has power on earth to forgive sin." 
 And here on the cross, amongst the things which he does 
 in the very article of death, we may say, we see him re- 
 voking the gnilt of this malefactor, and declaring to him 
 that he shall enter eternity a pardoned man. Who is this 
 that forgiveth sin? Again we ask. Who, but God himself? 
 Who, but one wlio conld have described himself in the lan- 
 guage of Jehovah, "I, even I, am he that blotteth out th}' 
 trangressions?" And who could say of himself, "I and 
 the Father ai'e one?'' 
 
 Observe again tliat in using these words "this day shalt 
 thou be with me in Paradise," our Lord is predicating of 
 this man an inward personal change b}' which he was qual- 
 ified for the state into which he was to be introduced. 
 That some qualification was necessary is evident. "With- 
 out holiness no man shall see the Lord." "Except a man 
 be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." "The 
 unclean cannot enter Paradise" for, "There shall in no 
 wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither wdiatsoever 
 worketli abomination or maketh a lie." Christ can have no 
 fellowship with Belial. If this malefactor was to be that 
 day with Christ in Paradise, obviously he must become a 
 renewed being. The old man and corrupt nature must be 
 put off; the tlesh must become spirit; the Kthiopian must 
 change his skin; the child of the Devil must be traiiformed 
 into the child of God. And just such an internal change 
 must have been implied in the event which the Saviors's 
 words made certain, that he was to be admitted to 
 Paradise. You see then in this trantaction another exercise 
 of divine power. Who can know the heart, who can cleanse 
 it, who can convert it; but God? This changing of the nature 
 by which men are prepared for heaven is represented in 
 Scripture as a creative act, so that the subject of it is said 
 
182 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 to be a new creature. It is the province of God alone to 
 effect it; and wliea Clirist appears definitely determining the 
 destiny of this dying thief, as an heir of Paradise, he ap- 
 pears in the exercise of a power, which no one but (Jod 
 could claim to possess. 
 
 Then once more observe that he speaks in the language 
 of one who holds the keys of the eternal world, and de- 
 cides with imperial authority upon the doom of man. "This 
 day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." Who can claim 
 jurisdiction over the realm of the disembodied spirits, who 
 can open the chambers of heaven and hell, who can give 
 the title that admits to the one, or issue the warrant that 
 confines in the other, but God? Just here perhaps, lies the 
 most sacred function and right of the divine majesty. Just 
 here is the spot where encroachment or ursurpation could 
 be least tolerated. The administration of justice, the appli- 
 cation of law, the decision of questions touching the stand- 
 ing, the desert, the destiny of the subject under the 
 government of his Maker, these things are acts which God 
 cannot put out of his own hands. The balance of judg- 
 ment, equally with the sceptre of sovereignty, is something 
 which he must keep inviolable. The award that assigns 
 heaven to any departing soul must be the decree of his own 
 tribunal, and the utterances of his own lips. Who then but 
 God could have pronounced these words "this day shalt thou 
 be with me in Paradise." 
 
 Now the conclusion to which we are brought by these 
 considerations drawn from the nature of the act is that the 
 agent, in the transaction before us, was a divine being. The 
 Savior, concerning whom we are inquiring, was God. But 
 there are other features in the incident to be noticed. In 
 connection with all these facts, which demonstrate that the 
 Savior of the malefactor was God, there are other facts 
 which demonstrate, no less conclusively, that he was man. 
 
THE SAVED MALEFACTOR. 183 
 
 What do your senses tell you of him? That he is a suf- 
 ferer; that he has a body which can feel pain; that he is 
 now enduring the agony of the cross; that human blood is 
 trickling from the brow which the thorns have pierced; and 
 from the hands which the nails have torn; that he thirsts, 
 languishes and dies. And what does history tell you of 
 him? That for many years he had been undergoing the vi 
 cissitudes of human experience; subiect to want and infir- 
 mity like other men; panting in weariness by the waj'side; 
 asking food and shelter in the homes of his friends; shed- 
 ding tears in sympathy with the mourner; acknowledging 
 the force of domestic ties, and submitting to the burdens 
 laid upon the citizen. It is a true man who now looks up- 
 on the pleading penitent at his side, and says "this day 
 slialt thou be with me in Paradise." Our conception of the 
 Savior must therefore recognize in him this character. In 
 the one person of Jesus, we must with equal distinctness 
 behold a divine and a human nature. The Savior will not 
 have been defined as the evidence requires him to be, un- 
 less we affirm of him both propositions, he is God, and he 
 is man. Had it been a mere man, nothing but a fellow 
 mortal who had spoken to the poor malefactor those gracious 
 words, they would only have mocked his woe. If they 
 cheered his fainting spirit with hope, if they threw a Hood 
 of light over the dark path to eternity which he was tread- 
 ing (as we may well believe,) it was only because he heard 
 in them the voice of God, because he recognized in Jesus 
 one who was the express image of the Father and who 
 spoke with all the authority of Jehovah. It was of course 
 a very extraordinary faith which led him to do this; but 
 any one can see, who will reflect a moment upon the cir- 
 cumstances of the case, that an extraordinary faith lay at 
 the bottom of every incident in the tranaction. Nothing 
 but an extraordinary faith could have made him look upon 
 
184 A pastor's yaledictorv. 
 
 Jesus, as he appeared at such a momeut, as al)]e Lo render 
 him any service; and when that faith couUl go the length 
 of saying, "Lord remember me when thou cometh into thy 
 kingdom," we may be sure it had reached that elevated 
 point of view which made him see in Jesus the very person 
 and nature of God. 
 
 But while we acknowledge the legitimac}' of the idea 
 that he who pardons sin and promises eternal life to this 
 dying thief, is truly God, we are constrained to conclude 
 that his humanity, also, has an important part to take in 
 the procedure; and that the result, the salvation of man, 
 is due as much to what the Savior does as man, as to 
 what he does as God. You feel at once that the mercy of 
 God would not have spoken itself forth, so to speak, from 
 such a spectacle of suffering, unless that suffering had had 
 an intimate and neccessary connection with the exercise of 
 mercy. And this is the great doctrine, I conceive set be- 
 fore ns, in this transaction, that it is through the suffering 
 of the cross that the mercy of God is communicated to sin- 
 ful man. This thief was assured!}' to be saved; and his 
 salvation was made certain by the fact that it was God 
 who had determined the event by his authoritive decree. 
 But upon what ground, or consideration was the decree of 
 God determining the event, based? The answer to this 
 question is found in the sufferings of Christ. His death 
 was the procuring cause of the mercy which exhibits itself 
 in the gift of pardon and eternal life. The waters of sal- 
 vation flow from a smitten rock. The sacrifice of Jesus 
 was a propitiation, a sin offering, a ransom, a transaction 
 in which the victim appears as the substitute for the offen- 
 der, and undergoes in his stead, the penalty due to his sins. 
 so making satisfaction to that justice which having annexed 
 death to sin as its rightful I'eward, can never forego or re- 
 lax its stern demands. You may search the Scriptures through 
 
THE SAVED MALEFACTOR. 185 
 
 and tills is the explanation wliicli yon will tind eveiyvvliere 
 recorded of the hnraanity and the hnman experience of our 
 Lord Jesns Christ. He came into the world to save sin- 
 ners. These glad tidings men are willing enough to credit. 
 But how did he come? What is implied in his taking our 
 nature, and sojourning in our world? O, how few minds 
 seem to understand ami realize this! Just what you see upon 
 the cross, this fearful spectacle of woe, and this culmination 
 of a long and diversified career of woe; this is what is 
 meant by Christ coming to save sinners. You could have no 
 Savior without the cross; no vision of a compassionate God 
 without the vision of the sutl'ering man, Christ Jesus. Mercy 
 to every pardoned soul, flows from precisely the same source, 
 as that from which it flowed to this penitent malefactor. 
 Precisely what he saw when he uttered that believing prayer, 
 "Lord remember me," every sinner upon whose heart the 
 light of a sound scripture hope of salvation has dawned 
 must have seen; must have looked at by the eye of faith, 
 Jesus, the Lamb of God, expiating upon the altar the sin 
 of the world; Jesus enduring the curse of the law that he 
 might redeem those who were under the curse; Jesus giving 
 himself, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to 
 God. Just as distinctly as the serpent, lifted up in the wilder- 
 ness, was looked upon by the poisoned Israelites, and hailed 
 as the source of healing and life, Christ crucified is held up 
 in the Gospel as the object of the sinner's trust; and is re- 
 ceived and depended upon by every true penitent as the 
 source of pardon and salvation. That same voice, tremulous 
 with the death pang, which said to the thief, "this day shalt 
 thou be with me in Paradise," speaks still to the sin-burdened 
 soul, and assures it of the grace that saves it. The key-note 
 in the anthem of mercy, is still the wail of Calvary. The 
 balm that restores the dying malefactor to life is still the 
 blood of Jesus. And thus, Deity and humanity wondrously 
 
186 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 combine in the Savior wbo delivers the sinner from death. It 
 is the God who proclaims the decree of pardon and gives the 
 title to heaven; but it is the sutfering of the man which 
 furnishes the foundation of the decree; and then again, it 
 is the dignity of the deity which makes the sacrifice of 
 humanity effectual to its end, and invests it with that pecu- 
 liar value which makes it able to atone for the sins of the 
 world. And what a source of hope and comfort it is — 
 which is thus presented to the view of the anxious, de- 
 sponding sinner! How complete, how sure, how simple, 
 and yet how divinely wise! What mind would even have 
 conceived of it — and yet what mind that intelligently looks 
 at it can fail to see its perfect propriety and its infinite 
 efficacy? With such a Saviour, made hiso wn by that ap- 
 propriating faith which is described as the only condition 
 of enjoying the benefit of his offices, who can doubt that 
 his salvation is secure? And who, my friends, dare hope 
 for salvation in any other name, or from any other source, 
 while this Saviour is thoughtlessly neglected or arrogantly 
 despised? Can such a vision as this of Christ crucified 
 ever l)e forgotten by the soul which has once intelligent!}' 
 apprehended it? Can the eye that has once fastened its gaze 
 upon the cross, suffer anything to interrupt its view? Must 
 it not linger about such an object with a reverence and de- 
 light that familiarity, instead of abating, only makes more 
 intense, until in the great catastrophe when all other ob- 
 jects shrink into nothingness in the fell eclipse of death — 
 this shall be to the departing believer like a pillar of fire, 
 filling the horizon with its lustre, and flooding the dark 
 valley with its celestial glory? Just that then which the 
 Christian's heart, if not direlect to all its renewed instincts, 
 will see, and love to remember, God by the ordinances 
 of his house has made it its duty to remember. The Lord's 
 supper is a festival of Remembrance, enjoined upon all who 
 
THE SAVED MALEFACTOR. 187 
 
 have been led to utter the cry, "Lord remember me;' and 
 as often as the believer participates in it, he deepens his 
 impressions of the reality and the significance of that event. 
 He studies anew the story of his i-edemption — he discerns 
 the Lord's body or gazes upon the person of his divine 
 Saviour, and throngli tlie eml:)lems which lie receives, he 
 embraces and appropritites the blessings of pardon and sal- 
 vation otf'ered to him as the purchase of his death. We 
 cannot wonder that God instituted such a sacrament in his 
 church, and we cannot wonder that all spiritunl Christians 
 have loved it and have been wont to connect with it some 
 of the deepest and hai)piest experiences, and we cannot but 
 think that those men are chargeable with great inconsistency 
 or great insensibility, who profess to believe in Christ and 
 to depend upon him for salvation, and yet deny the obliga- 
 tion they are under, to remember and honor him in this 
 ceremonial of his own appointment. 
 
 With this glance at the source of the divine mercy, as 
 exercised in the salvation of men, let us now look for a 
 moment or two, at the other topic — the extent to which 
 this mercy is applied. This too is well illustrated in the in- 
 cident referred to in the text. From the person of the 
 Saviour we now turn to the pei'son saved, and inquire who 
 is he? The facts concerning him are few; but they are 
 sufficient to warrant us in taking him as a representative of 
 two extremes, one of guilt, and the other of helplessness. 
 
 First, he was a criminal. Matthew calls him a thief — 
 by which he means a bandit- a highwa}' robber. His crimes 
 had ijeen such that the}' had exposed him to the heaviest 
 penalty human laws could inflict; and bj' his own confession 
 the punishment was just — for he says to his companion in 
 suffering, "we are receiving the due rewards of our deeds." 
 He was no doubt a monster in wickedness. According to 
 the narrative of other evangelists, it would seem that he in 
 
188 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 common with the other malefactor, had at one time joined 
 with the crowd in mocking and deriding Jesus. If so, this 
 was another evidence of the reclilessness and brutality to 
 which he had been reduced. Probably no eye pitied him 
 in all that raullitude. The country felt relieved in seeing 
 him consigned to vengeance, as if a tiger had been cast out 
 of its fold. He liad made war upon his race; and every 
 one was glad to know that the universal foe had been 
 at last overtaken with judgment. But during the protracted 
 period of his sud'erings, a better spirit awoke in his heart. 
 All things are possible with God; and the nature even of such 
 a man was not too depraved for omnipotent grace to change 
 it. There are many waj's in which we may suppose the 
 truth which is unto salvation had been lodged in his mind, 
 and many ways in which the power of God can make the 
 smallest germ of truth work — and work rapidly too — like 
 leaven in the lump, till it issues in the radical conversion of 
 the sul>ject. Certain it is that this bold and flagrant sinner 
 became an humble suppliant for mercy, and recognized 
 in Jesus the source from which this mercj' was to come. 
 
 But now observe the other feature in his condition, his 
 helplessness. What could he, poor impotent wretch, do to 
 make himself just in the sight of God? The last hours of 
 his miserable life had been reached; his pulse was growing 
 feebler every moment; keen pains were racking his body; 
 be was fastened motionless to a cross. Labors and offer- 
 ings — alms, deeds and penances (could such have availed 
 to propitiate the Deity into whose presence he was passing) 
 — were now all out of the question with him. It was too 
 late to gain salvation by any meritorious work, had such a 
 thing been possible, at any time. His burden of guilt was 
 pressing consciously upon him, and eternity with its retri- 
 butions was just before him; and nothing within the com- 
 pass of his power could take the burden from his soul, or 
 
THE SAVED MALEFACTOR. 189 
 
 keep it from weigliing him down to the pit of Hell: What 
 ti picture of utter helplessness the man presents! What is 
 there for him to do, but to groan out his few lingering 
 moments in horror, and then die in despair. There was one 
 thing, which by some blessed intimation of the spirit of 
 God it was revealed to him, he could do, notwithstanding 
 all his guilt and helplessness — and that was to cast himself 
 upon the simple mercy of God, and to invoke the otHces of 
 Jesus as the channel through which this mercy might be 
 bestowed. This method was pursued. With a penitent and 
 contrite spirit, overwhelmed with his sense of sin, and mak- 
 ing no attempt to present the shadow of a righteousness of 
 his own before God, he turns his eye to the Saviour. He 
 directs his prayer to him. With a faith that surmounted 
 all the obstacles which the present condition of the Re- 
 deemer presented, he recognized him as the Son of God 
 and the King of Israel — as one who in the character of 
 judge and sovereign had power to grant him remission of 
 sin, and deliverance from eternal death ; and he ventures to 
 pour forth the petition, "Lord remember me when thou 
 comest into thy kingdom." And, O, miracle of mercy, that 
 petition brought the boon he sought! All that he had dared 
 to hope for in that wild effort of his soul, springing from 
 the very verge of perdition to seize, if it might be with the 
 violence of desperation, the prize of eternal life, all that 
 he gained; for like the voice that once stilled the noise of 
 the tempest and the tumult of the sea, the accents of 
 Jesus fell sweetly upon his soul, announcing the wonderful 
 result, "this day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." Be- 
 hold here the extent to which the mercy of God, which 
 has its source in Christ crucified, can be applied! Much 
 as the Gospel tells us of the efficacy and the freeness of 
 divine grace, this illustration, me-thinks, has been given 
 us as the crowninor demonstration of these slorious truths. 
 
190 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 This is the monument erected upon the field of revelation, 
 designed to show ii world of sinners that there is no other 
 limit to God's readiness to save them, than that which 
 grows out of the depravity of their own hearts^ their own 
 wilful, persistent and infatuated love of sin. There is no 
 ambiguity in testimony like this. There is no mistaking 
 the import of such a procedure. You can all recall with little 
 difficulty the scene described in the text. The parties and 
 words and transactions are all real. Whatever doctrine is 
 taught here is taught under the form of fact. That sinner 
 was pardoned and saved; and he was saved by one who 
 acted in the name and with the authority of God; and 
 whose action was based upon all those extraordinary cir- 
 cumstances which characterized the sacrifice upon Calvary. 
 In many respects the position of this malefactor is a 
 type of that of evei'y Ijelieving child of God, First of all, 
 it was from a similar condition of danger that every one 
 of you who are this day rejoicing in hope of the glory of 
 God, has been delivered. Conversion in every case is a 
 passing fi'om death into life. You were bound by the same 
 responsibilities as those which were drawing that criminal 
 to the bar of Grod. You were in your state of unbelief, 
 condemned already. The wrath of God was abiding on you. 
 Though you had not committed the precise sins of the thief 
 in the text, you know from a revelaticm that has been 
 made to you of your heart and your life, that there was 
 sin enough in you to have classed you with the enemies of 
 God, and to have made it impossible for you ever to have 
 passed successfully the trial of the last day, or to have es- 
 caped the curse which is pronounced upon all who continue 
 not in all things written in the book of the law to do 
 them. And then, in his helplessness as I have depicted it, 
 the malefactor is a type of every believer. You were never 
 placed in a position of such literal impotency as that in 
 
THE SAVED MALEFACTOR. 191 
 
 which he is exhibited to us. And yet so far as concerns 
 anything you could do to compensate for the wrong done 
 to God by your sin, to satisfy the cUiims of justice, to ac- 
 quire a righteousness which would fulfill the demands of 
 the law, or to renovate and make worthy your nature for 
 companionship with God, 3'ou were just as impotent as he; 
 you were just as strictly shut up to an appeal to the di- 
 vine mercy of every hope of salvation, as he was. This is 
 the view of your case, as it is plainly described in the 
 Scriptures, and as it has been revealed to you a thousand 
 times over by your own experience. You have felt that 
 heaven was just as inaccessible to you, on the ground of 
 any work of your own, as it was to the thief fastened to 
 his cross. These are convictions which have been as clearly 
 revealed to your minds as they were to his. 
 
 And then, you may learn from the malefactor's case, 
 to, what you are indebted, for your hope of salvation. A 
 pitying God has spoken to you, you trust, the words of 
 pardon; but, ah, how has he spoken them? Through whose 
 lips? Through those of that sinless man, who suffered and 
 died on the cross. The accents that gave you peace, that 
 this day assure you of God's favor and of his purpose to 
 save you, came from those lips which were parched and 
 blanched, which groaned and prayed on Calvary. The death 
 of Jesus stands as directly connected with your salvation as 
 it did with that of the thief. From out that mortal agony 
 that wrung the life from Jesus, Hows tiie joy that cheers 
 your heart. From the bosom of that dark cloud that fell 
 upon his soul, when he complained that the Father had for- 
 saken him, comes the ray that has kindled the light of life 
 in yours. The death of Christ was endured for you. It 
 was the expiation of your sins; and upon the ground of 
 that alone, it is that the mercy of God has found a way 
 to reach you and embrace you in its gracious promises. 
 
192 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 Without those sutferings of Jesus you never could have 
 been saved. 
 
 And then in the last place, what shall I say of the 
 extent to which the mercy of God in Christ is represented 
 iiere, as reaching? What but this, tliat the chief of sin- 
 ners may trust it. You Christians may trust it, for unbe- 
 lief and doubt sometimes shake even your coniidence. If 
 you are troubled with misgivings and fears, to-day, behold 
 the abounding grace of God. llemember that it is by grace 
 that you are saved ; and behold here, what that grace has 
 done, and learn from this what it can do. Just credit it. 
 Let every vestige of self-righteousness, which keeps 3'ou 
 trembling and alarmed on th« score of your own unworthiness, 
 be swept out of view to-day; and let the grace of God, for 
 once, in all its i)lenitude, encompass you, and lift you al)Ove 
 all fear into the calm empyrean where the pure sunshine of 
 divine love floats around the ver}' porttds of heaven. And 
 you, who are not Christians, what can 1 say to you on this 
 topic, but that if you are not saved it is not because there is 
 not mercy enough in God or because he has not given you 
 encouragement enough to seek that mercy. Through mercy, 
 and through mercy as it is ottered to you in the Gospel, 
 you must be saved, if you are ever saved; but with this 
 spectacle of this thief saved through that mercy, who of 
 you need despair of finding it? It can reach to every one 
 of you, who will seek it. Nothing stands in the way of 
 your own salvation but your own unwillingness to be saved. 
 Only take such an attitude before God, as this malefactor 
 did; only have his penitence, his faith, and his earnestness; 
 only press your suit for mercy as honestly and intelligently, 
 as he did; only make Jesus your mediator, and fix your 
 trust upon him, as he did, and to every one of you the 
 same blessings that he found, and the same assurance of 
 being with Christ in Paradise which cheered his heart, shall 
 infallibly be given. 
 
THE SHEPHERDS' TENTS. 
 
 JANUARY 15, 1S71. 
 
 "Oh, thou fairest auioua; women, go thy way foilh by the 
 footsteps of the tioek, atui feeil thy kkis besides the .Shepherds' 
 tents." — Song of Sol. 1:1^. 
 
 IN the symbolism of the poem from which this passage 
 is taken, two parties, Clirist and the believer, are por- 
 trayed under the form of a royal Bridegroom and his 
 Bride. This Bride, iu coming into the new relationship to 
 which she has been elevated, is oppressed with that feeling 
 of diffidence, which a remembrance of her lowly origin, 
 and her previous unworthy associations, naturally inspires. 
 Instead of asserting her fitness to occupy the distinguished 
 position to which she has been called, she seems to shrink 
 from it, as one who distrusts her own capacity to bear her- 
 self becomingly witii the great grace bestowed upon her; 
 and who fears lest by her weakness or inadvertance she 
 may forfeit that grace In language which bears a notice- 
 able similarity to that of the Prodigal in the Savior's Par- 
 able, who cries, "Father, I am not worthy to be called thy 
 son, make me as one of thy hired servants," she confesses, 
 "Bride, though I am, and permitted to sit by the side of 
 the King, I feel that my proper place is at his feet. I 
 feel that the form in which my necessities make his favor 
 towards me most requisite and grateful, is, that, of pro- 
 tection, support and guidance." And so at the same mo- 
 ment in which she avails herself of her privilege to call 
 him "0, thou whom my soul loveth," she is moved to ask 
 
 193 
 
194 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 from him the further privilege of becoming a sheep of his 
 flock. This is the import of her inquiry, "where feeclest 
 thou? where makest thou thy flock to rest at iroon?" an in- 
 quiry which has ia it all the force of a petition that she 
 might be fed aud takea under his charge, as a member of 
 his flock Every Christian who hears me will be- able, I 
 imagine, to recall as a part of his early experience, a feel- 
 ing analogous to this diffidence of the Bride. The great 
 event of his conversion, when Faith wedded his soul to 
 Christ and Christ appeared taking his soul into union with 
 himself, is called in Scripture the act of his espousals to 
 God. You who have been parties to such an act will re- 
 member how overpowering was the impression of the change 
 which it wrought in you. You felt yourselves translated 
 from darkness into light. You were conscious of a trans- 
 formation like that of one who had been raised from the 
 dead. You could say things of yourself which 3'ou were 
 sure were true, which previously you could -neither have 
 believed possible, nor understood. Old things had passed 
 away, behold, all things had become new. A new language 
 was on your tongue, A new spirit had been put into your 
 heart. A new and living way of access to God had been 
 opened to you. You were sitting, indeed, in heavenly 
 places, in Christ Jesus. But just as overpowering as was 
 the impression of the marvelous change you had undergone, 
 was the conviction of your own inadecjuacy to personate and 
 realize the character in which you now appeared. Bearing 
 a name as exalted as that of the Bride of Christ, you felt 
 that the place which it became you to fill, was rather that 
 of a sheep of his fold. Presumption, and complacency 
 and self confidence were the last feelings that you would 
 have thought of entertaining. You never were more hum- 
 ble than in that moment when your investiture with all the 
 privileges of the sons of God was made known to you. 
 
THE shepherds' TENTS. 195 
 
 The greatness of tlic grace coiiferre<l upon you made you 
 see bow completely you were thrown upon grace, for the 
 ability to meet the obligations which the grace already be- 
 stowed had created. The good work begun in you was so 
 good that only he who had begun it, could be depended on 
 to carry it on to perfection. And the desire which was 
 uppermost in your hearts, was that Christ, who had re- 
 vealed himself to you as the Divnie Bridegroom, would 
 condescend to perform to you the ottices of a Divine Shep- 
 herd. 
 
 The counsel contained in 'our text is simply his re- 
 sponse to this desire. Stripping the passage of its tiu-ura- 
 tive guise, it is the direction given by Christ to the be- 
 liever, askuig to be placed in a position most favorable for 
 the attaining of that security in his walk, and that develop- 
 ment in his character which his new affection as a believer 
 constrains him to seek. I propose to make it my business 
 this morning to unfold the meaning of the last clause of 
 it — "and feed thy kids beside the Shepherds' tents. ' 
 
 This expression, you will observe, consists of two 
 specifications — one of the work to be done, "feed thy kids," 
 and another of the place wherein that work is to be done, 
 "beside the Shepherds' tents." And beginning our exami- 
 nation with this latter particular, we notice this feature in the 
 field or territory occupied by the Sheep of Christ, that it 
 is sub-divided into a number of departments. The spectacle 
 presented to us is not that of a uniform and unbroken 
 plain, but that of a plain dotted all over with shepherds 
 tents, which shepherds' tents become central points in the 
 scene and mark off" a whole area into minor circles. As 
 many as are these shepherds' tents, are the bands or com- 
 panies into which the sheep are gathered; for it is beside 
 these, you notice, that they are directed to feed. Each 
 tent becomes, therefore, a nucleus around which a separate 
 
196 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 community is coacentiated. Now somethiDg of that order 
 which the Lord has instituted among his followers, seems 
 to be indicated by this fact. If the typology of our text 
 gives us any light upon this subject, as I think it does, it 
 teaches us these three things: 
 
 First, that the idea of a unity in the Church of Christ 
 is verified or realized in the common relation of all the 
 members to Christ, as his followers, and in the character 
 which is implied in this relation. Every believer belongs 
 to Christ. Every Christian is Christ's- man. Every be- 
 liever or Christian, therefore, in this respect, stands upon 
 the same ground. He is like, or he agrees with every other 
 believer or Christian. You may go from land to land, 
 from population to population and from family to family, 
 and wherever you find a true believer or Christian, you will 
 find an individual sustaining the same relation to Christ, 
 and as a consequence, exhibiting the same type of character. 
 This is enough to warrant us in saying of the Churcii, it 
 is a Catholic body; and of the sheep of Christ, they are 
 "one fold." The true ground and the adequate ground 
 upon which the unity of the Church stands, is the Head- 
 ship and the Proprietorshij) of Christ. Over the whole as- 
 semblage of his Hock, gathered as they are in their parts 
 around the various shepherds' tents which have been erected 
 among them, and stretching away in their ramifications to 
 every quarter of the horizon. He looks down from His 
 throne in Heaven and recognizes them all as his own. "I 
 know my sheep," he says, "and I am known of mine." 
 And so in the fact that they are all his, he beholds the 
 fulfillment of his prayer tor them recorded by St. John, 
 "that they all may be one, as thou Father art in me, and 
 I in Thee, that they also may be one in us." 
 
 Secondly, while unity in this sense, is undoubtedly, a 
 feature essential to the Church, it is maintained in it, under 
 
THE shepherds' tents. 107 
 
 a great variety of outward forms. Wbile the flock of 
 Cbrist is constituted into one homogeneous mass by the 
 bond which attaches every member to liim, it is sep;irated 
 into an indefinite number of sections by the presence of a 
 l)liiralit3' of shepherds' tents interspersed through it, and 
 the bond which attaches a i)ortion of the memliers to each 
 one of these tents. As ^on look at the picture set before 
 you, in the text, you see evidently one object, the flock of 
 Christ. But you see just as clear)}', every here and there, 
 lifting their tapering outlines above the surface of the mov- 
 ing mass of sheep, these shepherds' tents. And each one 
 is the centre of a special flock, which feeds beside it. 
 Each one marks a distinction so far, at least, as locality 
 and organization are concerned, between the flock contigu- 
 ous to it, and the other flocks which are similarly congre- 
 gated around other tents. If this picture represents the 
 Church, we must look for a corresponding distinction in 
 the Church. We are to expect to see the one body of 
 Christian followers cut up into minor bodies, by certain 
 great lines of demarcation. And this arrangement will accord 
 exactly with that economy under which the human race has 
 been placed. The earth which men inhabit like a building 
 divided into a number of apartments, shows that it was in- 
 tended to be occupied by a number of families. The natu- 
 ral barriers which over-run it and fence it in, such as 
 mountains, deserts and seas, have forced its inhabitants to 
 crystalize into separate nations. Then diversity of language 
 has mysteriously supervened to make their severance more 
 complete. And lastly the conflicts of interest, and the ca- 
 prices of taste, and temperament have operated to widen 
 and perpetuate the breaches which sunder them. The world 
 presents us evidently and necessarily, we may say, with the 
 spectacle of a vast congeries of flocks, clustering, each one, 
 about a shepherd's tent, or a centre of union, of its own. 
 
198 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 It, is not likelv that the plan upon which the Church is 
 constructed, would over-ride this econonay which we see es- 
 tablished in tlie world. An ecclesiastical union which would 
 extinguish those distinctions which parcel out the human 
 race, into nations and tongues, would seem to be fatal to 
 the very intentions of Providence. It is far more reasona- 
 ble, therefore, and I may add, it is far more scriptural, to 
 conclude that while the Church is one body in virtue of the 
 relations of all its parts to Christ, it is constituted of parts, 
 or divided into sections, just as the population of the world 
 is; and upon the same grounds of expediency which have 
 led to the partition of ihe population of the world. We 
 are no more to look for a visible universal empire in the 
 (/hurch than we are in the world, and that captivating ar- 
 gument b}' which the advocates of the Romanish Church 
 sustain its pretensions, that in it, this idea of a visible un- 
 iversal empire is realized, is nothing more, therefore, than 
 a splendid sophism, because the promises upon which it is 
 built, are unsound. The ends for which the kingdom of 
 God were instituted, do not require such an empire. Its ex- 
 istence would really be subversive of the ends of Provi- 
 dence, while on the other hand these ends and their analo- 
 gy with the ends of Providence, do require that the mem- 
 bership of this kingdom, like the membership of the human 
 race, should be separated into a multiplicity of flocks, each 
 one concentrated about its shepherd's tent. 
 
 Then thirdly, we notice an absolute parity among the 
 shepherds' tents, exhibited to us in the picture of the text. 
 Amongst the many revealed to us, there is no particular 
 one which overtops the rest; no one which stands up in 
 royal pre-eminence over its fellows, as Joseph's sheaf did, 
 in his dream, over the sheaves of his brethren. Each tent 
 is a centre to the special flock which clusters around it, 
 and feeds under the shadow of it, but no tent is a centre 
 
THE shepherds' TENTS. 199 
 
 to all other tents. There is no one over whicli flouts the 
 symbol of supremacy, and which has the right to say: "I 
 am the Mother of you all;" no one whose occupant is en- 
 titled to claim the rank and office of a chief shepherd or 
 bishop. No, my friends, 3'ou find nothing which symbolizes 
 a Iiuman Headship in the Church of Christ, in the specta- 
 cle of it which you see here, nothing which gives a particle 
 of countenance to the idea that there is a Primacy, or an 
 Apostolical Hierarchy, in the House of God, by maintain- 
 ing a connection with which onl}', you can make good your 
 claim to be numbered among the sheep of Christ. Such 
 language as comes to us ever}' now and then, from certain 
 quarters, finds no parallel in that which the Bridegroom 
 here addresses to his. Bride. "Feed," he says, "beside the 
 Shepherds' tents," not beside this one, or that one^not be- 
 side Rome, or Oxford, or Geneva, but anywhere, where the 
 pasture 3'ou get, is the pure doctrine of Christ, and the 
 regimen you are subjected to, keeps you in fellowship with 
 the rest of his flock, and in union with Him, the common 
 Head of all. The fact that he shows us thus in the terri- 
 tory occupied by his Church, a number of shepherds' tents, 
 and that no one of these bears any sign of precedence over 
 the residue, is a clear intimation that the inmates of these 
 tents, or sheplierds, whom he has set over his flock, are 
 equal in authority; and that the parity which prevailed 
 among the Apostles, whom he originally sent forth, was in- 
 tended to be perpetual among those who were to succeed 
 them, as the Pastors or Bishops of his Church. "Call no 
 man your Father upon earth," he said to these Apostles, 
 "for one is your Father which is in Heaven. Neither be 
 ye called Masters, for one is your Master even Christ;" 
 and in precise accordance with this injunction, by the simili- 
 tude employed by the Holy Ghost in the text, we are 
 taught as a permanent ordinance in his kingdom, his min- 
 
200 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 isters are bretliicn, installed as peers in their separate 
 shepherds' tents, with no Fathers or Masters among them. 
 But not to dwell too long upon these ineidental matters, 
 what it concerns us more to notice in the counsel, "feed 
 beside the shepherds' tents," is that the welfare nnd ad 
 vancement of the sheep of ChriKt, are here represented, as 
 depending upon the use they make of the ministrations of 
 the shepherds, whom the Lord has appointed over his flock. 
 There is something significant in tiie turn which is given in 
 the Bridegroom's answer to the thought which had been ex- 
 pressed in the request of the Bride. She had asked, 
 "where feedest thou?" that is, where dost tbou administer 
 food to thy sheep? She was thinking only of him, and the 
 aim of her inquiry was to learn how the benefits of his 
 personal culture could be obtained. He replies by pointing 
 her to the shepherds' tents; and directing her to feed be- 
 side them. As much as to tell her, "I execute my office 
 as gunrdian of my flock through the agency of a set of 
 under-shepherds. What you seek from me I give you 
 through their hands. I have commissioned them to be the 
 feeders of my sheep; and lo, I am with them alway, even 
 unto the end of the world." This interpretation of the 
 Bridegroom's response, leads us to the conclusion that the 
 existence of a pastoral office, or of a body of men devoted 
 to the work of teaching and ruling in the Church, is a di- 
 vine institution, and is to be taken as an index of the 
 grace and bounty of the great head of the Church. It is 
 his method of providing for the safety, comfort and the 
 edification of his people. The Christian ministry is more 
 than a learned or philanthropic profession. It is almost a 
 profane misnomer, to speak of it as a business, by which 
 men undertake to achieve renown or win a livelihood. It 
 is an ordinance of God, in the same sense in which the 
 Church is. "No man taketh this honor unto himself but 
 
THE shepherds' TENTS. 201 
 
 he tluit is called of God, as was Aaron." As your eye 
 looks over this tract of ground occupied by this concourse 
 of sheep, presented to you in the imagery of the text, and 
 notices the sliepherds' tents stationed at convenient points 
 all over the field, you do not have a doubt that it was by 
 the special order of the proprietor of the tiock, that these 
 tents were placed there; and that it is by his special ap- 
 pointment that the inmates of them are discharging their 
 otlice. x\nd no more can you have a doubt that the minis- 
 try which you find allied to the Church has been created 
 and put in exercise in the Church, b}' the same authorit}' 
 as" that which has instituted the Church. The ministry is 
 a phenomenon of tlie same character with the Church. If 
 that is God's building, so is this. Hence the Apostles 
 speak of being "Ambassadors of Christ," and "workers to- 
 gether with God." Hence St. Paul writes to the Ephesian 
 Christians, that the Lord had given to the Church, "some 
 Apostles, some Prophets, some Evangelists, some Pastors 
 and Teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, for the 
 work of the ministry, for the deifying of the body Christ,"' 
 and in the same way he reminds the Bishops of these same 
 Ephesian Christians in his interview with them at Miletus, 
 of their dot}- to "take heed unto themselves, and to all 
 the flock over which the Holy Ghost had made them over- 
 seers, to feed the Church, of God, which he had purchased 
 with his own blood." From the origin of the flock, we 
 have no difficulty in determining the origin of the shep- 
 herds, whose work it is to oversee and feed it. The same 
 supernatural power which we have reason to believe is 
 engaged in gathering out of the generations of men, a 
 peculiar people, known as the "household of faith," is en- 
 gaged equally in calling, and furnishing, and commission- 
 ing a set of men to whom the supervision of that house- 
 hold is ministerially entrusted. That Paul was one of 
 
202 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 sucli a set of ineu, nobody can question. That he regarded 
 Timothy as another, is just as certain; and that he expected 
 others after Timothy to belong to it we know from his pos- 
 itive injunction in 2nd Ephesians to liim, "and the things 
 that tliou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the 
 same commit thou to faithful men who shall be able to 
 teach others also." In regard to the validity of the grounds 
 upon which any particular individual would authenticate his 
 claim to belong, to that set of men, there may be a diversi- 
 ty of opinion; but in regard to the ordinance by which the 
 existence of such a set of men has been made an organic 
 element in the Church, there can be none. And, hence, 
 to them is delegated the otlice which primarily and essen- 
 tially belongs to Christ, himself, of providing for the nur- 
 ture and protection of the sheep. And hence, you hear 
 (Uirist saying to the follower who is looking up to him for 
 such nurture and protection, "feed beside the shepherds' 
 tents." 
 
 And now the residue of our time must be devoted to 
 an exposition of this work of feeding, which is devolved 
 upon his flock, by the Mastei-'s charge. These shepherds' 
 tents, these oflices in the house of God, these ordinances 
 of teaching and ruling, all looking to the spiritual training 
 and edification of the Church as the end, obviously lay 
 upon the memljership of the Church, an obligation to use 
 them for the end for which they were appointed. The Pas- 
 toral function is limited, so to speak, to the indicating and 
 the opening of the ground, where the sheep of Christ may 
 safely and profltably feed. It is not meant to supersede 
 effort on their part. It is rather meant, to stimulate and 
 facilitate effort. It has no power to confer upon the soul 
 of the believer, those graces which it needs to have, in or- 
 der to verify its high relationship as the Bride of Christ; 
 it can only help it to acquire those graces. It can only 
 
THE shepherds' tents. 203 
 
 oft'er it Liu; means siiid and methods by which those graces 
 are to be obtained. The sheep tliat will not feed beside 
 the shepherd's tent, will get no benefit from its contiguity 
 to that object. It will starve and die beside the shepherd's 
 tent. The provisions for 3'our growth in Itnowledge and 
 advancement in holiness which are included in the economy 
 of the Church, will do yon no good, ray friends, unless 
 with an honest craving for such growth and advancement 
 you make a proper use of these provisions. The injunc- 
 tion, "feed beside the shepherds' tents," means just this, 
 that you should make a proper use of these provisions. 
 The Lord Jesus has so ordered it, perhaps, that the enjoy- 
 ment of his own gracious interest in and care for his peo- 
 ple should be conditioned upon their making a proper use 
 of these provisions, in order that the genuineness of the 
 new principle in their hearts by which they call him, "Him 
 whom the souls love,"' should have an opportunity of attest- 
 ing itself by their diligence and fidelity in this respect. 
 The sheep who are found feeding most faithfully beside 
 those shepherds' tents, which he has establised among 
 them, are undoubtedly the types of the souls who do most 
 truly love him, and who are most sensibly favored with the 
 evidences of his love. And the true explanation of the 
 fact that Christians anywhere are seen to be in a dull, 
 morbid and lifeless condition, would proba])ly be that they 
 have grown indifferent to the value, and lax in the use, of 
 those provisions for their spiritual health and growth, which 
 have been set before them, in the ordinances and ministra- 
 tions of the Church. And as the spectacle of Christians in 
 this state is not a rare one, it may not be amiss for me to 
 sum up the practical bearings of our text in a few coun- 
 sels, enforcing this duty of using those gifts and helps 
 which the Lord has ordained for the edification of his 
 people. 
 
204 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 And with this aim. let me remind you first, that the 
 real character of the Christian is indicated by the term, 
 "Bride of Christ" — not by the term, "sheep of Christ." 
 The effort of every truly regenerated soul, therefore, is to 
 realize this character; to develop and ripen into the sort of 
 person it ought to be, in order to fill the place of a Bride 
 of Christ. You will have observed how in the text, the 
 party speaking, drops down, as it were, from this level to 
 that designated by the term, "sheep" of Christ; and this 
 only, that she may rise again, in a worthier guise, and 
 with a more assured confidence, to that level. The believer 
 should always remember the high calling he has received 
 from God The most sacred, the most honorable forms of 
 human kinship are used to describe the relation to his 
 Savior into which he has been introduced. The Apostle 
 seems to exhaust the power of language in this direction, 
 when he says to the Corinthians, "1 have espoused you to 
 one husband that I may present you as a chaste virgin to 
 Christ;" and when he says to the P]phesians, "we are mem- 
 bers of his body, of his flesh and of his bones." Such 
 nearness to the Jjord, as is proposed to us in these terms, 
 seems to bewilder us. The splendor of the elevation to 
 which they lift us is dazzling; and with blinded eyes we 
 turn away from it. The foot of faith trembles to mount 
 to this altitude of grace. And though somehow the heart 
 admits and feels the bridal bond which unites us to Christ, 
 the lip fears to claim the bridal name; and with an over- 
 powering sense of unworthiness and timidity, we ask to be 
 ranked among his "slieep. " It befits us better, we feel, to 
 be tended and fed by Jesus, the shepherd, than crowned 
 and feasted by Jesus, the Bridegroom. And so it does, 
 brethren. We need, as the speaker in the text does, to 
 drop down from this level to which we have been raised 
 by our union with Christ, by our "acceptance in the Be- 
 
THE shepherds' tents. 205 
 
 loved," to the lower one of an object of Christ's pustoriil 
 guardianship and nurtnre. Our infirmities admonish us, 
 that in our present state the place of the sheep is safer 
 for us than the place of the Bride. But then, and this is 
 what I would have you bear in mind, your relation to 
 Christ is not changed by this change of place. You are 
 his Bride, all the time, that you are acting in the humbler 
 capacity of his sheep. The offices he bestows upon you in • 
 this latter character are only in order to ([ualify you to as- 
 sume and exemplify the better, the former one. The idea 
 which lay in the mind of God, in givmg you to his Son, 
 requires tha^ you should be his Bride — not his sheep. The 
 sheep holds the position of the property of its owner, and 
 excites on the part of the owner such a regard as belongs 
 to property. The sheep by force of an instinctive sense of 
 helplessness clings to the Shepherd and mechanically fol- 
 lows him. The believer occupies immeasurably higher 
 ground than this in his relation to Christ. He belongs to 
 Christ it is true, for he has been "bought with a price" — 
 but not as property. He has been bought with an outlay 
 of which the prompting motive was Love. "Greater love 
 hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his 
 friends." And the regard he receives from the Redeemer, 
 is that which the Bridegroom bestows upon his Bride; and 
 the attachment and the service which this Redeemer expects 
 from his followers, is not the irrational submission and de- 
 pendence of an animal, but the free and joyful consecra- 
 tion of a loving Bride. I say it becomes you to have this 
 fact always in remembrance. Because you stand now in the 
 position of a sheep of Christ, and are embraced by that 
 economy which has been instituted over his flock, do not 
 forget that this condition of things is only subordinate to 
 the forming and perfecting within you of the elements of 
 that higher character which is described by the term the 
 
206 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 Bride of Clirist. You must follow Jesus in your religion, 
 not in that blind and formal way in wLiicLi the sheep con- 
 fides in the Mastership of the Shepherd; but in the way 
 the true wife blends her own being with that of the hus- 
 band whom she loves. O, these sheep that are so com- 
 posedly ranging about the pasture grounds and treading 
 the pathways of Church systems and formulas, without even 
 feeling the pulsations of a life which weds them to Christ, 
 and keeps the soul growing into tenderer and closer union 
 with him every day and every hour, I fear they are entitled 
 to bear the name neither of sheep nor of Bride! For 
 Christ, I am sure recognizes no one as his shpep, who is 
 not drawn to him and drawn after him, by the force of an 
 atlectiou as direct and personal as that which leads the 
 Bride to forsake father and mother and cleave unto the 
 Bridegroom ! 
 
 It follows in the next [)lace from this fact that the re- 
 sult aimed at in every believer's calling is the realizing of 
 this character of the Bride of Christ; that the predominant 
 desire in such a believer's heart ought to be that of acquir- 
 ing the graces of which this character is composed. Such 
 a desire is often alluded to in the scripture as a character- 
 istic of the spiritual or regenerated man. It is spoken of 
 as something as well-defined as a bodily appetite; as when 
 our Savior says, "blessed are they which do hunger and 
 thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled;" or St. 
 Peter writes, "as new born babes desire the sincere milk 
 of the word that ye may grow thereby." This desire is 
 recognized in the direction given in our text, "feed beside 
 the shepherds' tents." It lies at the bottom, of course, of 
 a compliance with this direction. There will be no feeding 
 where there is no desire for food. The right-minded Chris- 
 tian will feel, as a part of his new nature, the working of 
 a force analagous to that of a bodily appetite, impelling 
 
THE SIIEl'HERDS' TENTS. 207 
 
 h;iu to seek those things wLiich luinister uourishment to his 
 spiritual life, or as the Apostle expresses it, which have a 
 tendency to form and mould him "into a perfect man, into 
 the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ." As 
 the Bride adorneth herself with her jewels, so will the sacred 
 instincts of his heart prompt him to the use of those means 
 by which he shall accjuire the comeliness befitting the Bride 
 of Christ. The command which assigns to him the work 
 of feeding will have been anticipated by a desire for food 
 already lodged in his own soul; for, as the consciousness 
 of the relation he sustains to his divine Bridegroom must 
 evince itself by a disposition to grow into a fitness for this 
 relation, and as growing is dependent upon feeding as its 
 condition, it is as impossible for him to intermit the work 
 of feeding, as it is to repudiate his relation to Christ. It 
 is a good way of testing, therefore, brethren the temper 
 and the drift of any believer's heart, to mark the vigor of 
 this desire in his heart after the food which Christ has pro- 
 vided for his flock; and to note the measure of his alacrity 
 in feeding beside the shepherds' tents. 
 
 My second counsel to you, therefore, is to be careful 
 to maintain in your hearts a healthful ajipetite and relish 
 for those ordinances and aids by which the ideal set before 
 you in your calling to be tlie Bride of Christ, is to be 
 realized. If those be wanting, the best outward provision 
 in the world cannot keep 3'ou from leanness and sickness. 
 
 And then, a third CQunsel, obliviously will be to attend 
 actually to this work of feeding. The shepherds' tents are 
 before you, indicating, not as some Christians seem to sup- 
 pose, that these tents are a guaranty that everything which 
 Is implied in your salvation is secured to 3'ou, and that the 
 shepherds' work absolves you from all obligations to work; 
 no, not this, but indicating simply these quite ditl'erent 
 facts, that here is a vital work to be done by you; and 
 
208 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 here, a phice where without dehiy or iutermission, it may 
 be done. Beside these shepherds' tents you are to feed. 
 Tlie facilities for your growth and edification are as numer- 
 ous, and as near to you as these sanctuaries and their min- 
 istrations, these Sabbaths and their privileges, tliese social 
 assemblies of the week with their prayers, and tiieir in- 
 structions, these living teachings of the pulpit, and these 
 legacies of wisdom and piety bequeathed to you in the wit- 
 ness of the good men of former ages, these pages of inspi- 
 ration which God's own hand has prepared for you. and 
 these closets which Jesus has commended to you as store- 
 houses of all those blessings contained in the promises to 
 prayer; and you feed beside them when you are living in 
 the constant and faithful use of them. And the amount of 
 your feeding will be in proi)ortion to the use you make of 
 them. Your feeding will stop when you cease to make use 
 of them. It is just here, in this locality that Christ has com- 
 manded his sheep to feed; and you forfeit your right to be 
 called his sheep, and you divorce yourselves from the ben- 
 efit of that nurture which he bestows upon his sheep, when- 
 ever you are not found feeding in this pasture-ground. 
 And it is just here, from these fields, which encircle the 
 shepherds' tents, that he is gathering the materinl of that 
 Church which he is to crown in Heaven as the "Bride, the 
 Lambs wife." And if you are not known as the tenant of 
 these fields on earth, 0, my friends, it is not likely that 
 over you the nuptial song of Heaven will ever be sung, 
 "let us be glad and rejoice, for the marriage of the Lamb 
 is come and his wife hath made herself ready." 
 
 And then one counsel more, must not be overlooked. 
 I have thus far spoken of this feeding by Christ's sheep as 
 a work having reference to their own nourishment only. This 
 sense I consider clearly implied in the expression of the text. 
 But you will notice that that expression, in the form of it. 
 
THE SHEPHERDS TENTS. 2Ui) 
 
 represents this ieeding as a work whicb teiminates tilso upon 
 others. "Feed thy kids," is the precise term of the charge 
 delivered by the Bridegroom to the IJride, "feed thy kids be- 
 side the shepherds' tents." That is, "couple with the effort to 
 secure spiritual nurture for your own soul, an effort to sup- 
 ply with this nurture the souls of others. When thou feed- 
 est see to it, that the 'kids' and lambs, and young ones 
 over whom God has made thee the household overseer, feed 
 also." It would seem from this very extraordinary form in 
 which the answer to the Bride's request for the privilege of 
 -'jeing placed under her Lord's supervision and care, is pre- 
 sented, that the Holy Spirit meant to teach that the direct 
 way to promote piety, and ac({uire the advantages of re- 
 ligion in ourselves, is to be engaged in trying to qualify 
 others, especially our own oft'spring, to become members of 
 the tlock of Christ. It is too late for me to say much 
 upon the important subject which this view of our text 
 opens to us, the fact that the bestowing of labor upon the 
 religious culture of our children, operates as a means of 
 grace to the parent. But I may briefly say, that such a 
 fact accords with the general Scripture principle, that it is 
 he who watereth, who may expect to be watered, and he 
 who occupies himself with giving who may expect to re- 
 ceive. And I may propound the question to you, brethren, 
 whether the explanation of the fact that the stock of bridal 
 graces which every believing soul is assumed to be accum- 
 lating, is in the case of many of us, so small to-day, may 
 not be just this, that whatever feeding we may have done 
 ourselves, we have neglected too much to become feeders 
 of the little flocks whom we preside over in our homes? 
 The priesthood of the parent and the evangelism of the 
 fireside, these are the very truths wrapped up in the sig- 
 nificance of infant baptism; and if they are dropped it had 
 better be abandoned. It is to be feared that these modern 
 
210 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 generations are losing tbeir sense of the obligation and tlie 
 value of the ordinances; and I shall probably make a con- 
 fession, to wliich many of you will subscribe when I say, 
 that if our Fathers and Mothers, in their day, had not 
 been more dutiful in feeding their kids beside the shep- 
 herds' tents, than we have been in feeding ours, we should 
 have been as barren of the faith of a Christian, and as far 
 from the kingdom of God, in our grown-up manhood, as 
 our children so generally seem to be in their youth. 1 am 
 sure there is a great fault in the Church everywhere, in 
 this respect. Religion is dying out in our homes; and if it 
 dies out there, it is hardly too much to say it will die out 
 everywhere. Brethren, the soul that Christ espouses to 
 Himself ought to be a soul consumed with love to him; a 
 soul that can look up to him and say as Peter did, "Lord 
 thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I love Thee." 
 And now, mark the evidence of this love, this Bride's troth 
 which Christ demanded of Peter — "feed my sheep, feed 
 my lambs." And remember that he demands the same of 
 you! 
 
THE WALK TO EMMAUS. 
 
 (SACRAMENTAL.) 
 
 DECKIMJ5EK 23, 1855. 
 
 '•And they .said one to anotluT, Did not our lieai t burn within 
 us, wliile he taliietl with us by the way, and while he openetl to us 
 the Seiiptures?"— Luke 34:32. 
 
 WK have here presented to us first the stntemeut of au 
 effect, and second the statement of its cause. The 
 effect was the burning of the hearts of the disci- 
 ples, the cause was the discourse of Jesus by the way, in 
 which he opened to them the Scriptures. The language 
 employed to descriije the effect is metaphorical; but very 
 intelligible and very expressive. The heart is said to burn 
 when a person is excited by any strong emotion or passion. 
 A word uiay effect the hearer as the coal of fire does the 
 wood; and even sometimes as the spark does the magazine 
 of powder to which it is applied. It may change his con- 
 dition from one of apathy to one of intense sensibility. It 
 may rouse him from a posture of passive repose to one of 
 violent or explosive activity. Some such effect as this the 
 language of Jesus had, on this occasion, upon the minds 
 of the disciples. They were dull and cold, dejected and 
 stupefied before, as is apt to be the case after the experi- 
 ence of any sudden shock or any severe calamity. They 
 became conscious, under the power of their companions' 
 conversation, of a revival of feeling and interest. Their 
 torpid faculties were warmed into motion. Tender memo- 
 
 211 
 
212 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 ries, inspiring hopes, vivid convictions, ardent desires, 
 cheering consolations were infused into them until they 
 glowed and sparkled, so to speak, with the blaze of fervid 
 thoughts and sentiments, which liad been kindled within 
 them. The cause, which produced this effect, is made en- 
 tirely evident to us by connecting the statement of the text 
 with the 27th verse of the Chapter. The text says it was 
 what Jesus said, while he talked witli them by the way, 
 and while he opened to them the Scriptures. The 27th 
 verse says, that "beginning at Moses and all the prophets 
 he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures their things 
 concerning himself. " The theme of that discourse which 
 made their hearts so burn within them, therefore, was the 
 portrait and history which revelation had given of himself. 
 This was the .subject about which he talked with them; this 
 the point, in reference to which he opened to them the 
 Scriptures. Turning their minds away from the impressions 
 and conceptions which the scenes they had recently wit- 
 nessed had created, he directed them to those which the 
 predictions of the inspired books suggested. He made 
 them look at Christ through the telescope of faith instead 
 of the organs of sense, and the speculation of reason. He 
 changed their point of view. He took them, in a figure, 
 as he had once taken literally, three of their companions to 
 a high mountain apart and there was transfigured before 
 them. He showed himself to them by a demonstration of 
 the Spirit, and not through the perceptions of the flesh. 
 They saw from the view of him, which they had now ob- 
 tained, what the true olHce and the true glory of the Mes- 
 siah were; and they saw how all the humiliations to which 
 their Master had been subjected — how even the cross and 
 the tomb, consisted with, and fulfilled that office and that 
 glory. They felt, under the luminous exposition of the Di- 
 vine oracles which He gave them, how justly their previous 
 
THE AVALK TO EMMAUS. 213 
 
 dullness had merited the rebuke, "0, fools, and slow of 
 heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken," and 
 they assented with a joyful conviction to the conclusion, 
 couched in the ques-tion, "ought not Christ to have suffered 
 these things and to enter into his glory?" 
 
 The cause of that peculiar excitement of mind of which 
 they were conscious may be said, therefore, to have been, 
 the believing apprehension of the character and work of 
 their Lord; and the fact recorded in the text may be taken 
 as an illustration of the kind of feeling which every Chris- 
 tian ought to experience, when engaged in the contempla- 
 tion of his Savior. The same cause may be expected to 
 produce the same effect. In the same situation, every dis- 
 ciple may be expected to feel as these ancient disciples 
 did. And here in the connection between such a position 
 as this and such mental exercise as this, I lay the founda- 
 tion of that series of reflections which I propose to offer to 
 you, this morning. The Christian contemplating his Savior 
 — what is that, brethren, but the very act and spectacle, 
 exemplified by the business in which each of you ai'e en- 
 gaged in your visit to the house of God to-day? The ordi- 
 nance we have met to celebrate, is specificall}', an exhibi- 
 tion and a commemoration of Christ. The same mysterious 
 treasure, the same inspiring secret which Jesus exposed 
 when he unlocked the Scriptures by his interpretation, is 
 enfolded in the significance of these sacramental rites which 
 we have come to observe. They are expositors of the same 
 great truths of which Moses and the prophets wrote. As 
 we penetrate their design and look through them to the 
 end, we shall find our minds in contact with the very image 
 which so transported and fired the hearts of the disciples. 
 For they are meant, pre-eminently, to show us Christ — to 
 set him forth evidently as crucified amongst us — to make us 
 think of him, and to give us strong and affecting concep- 
 
214 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 tions of his cliaractei" and work. "Do this in remembrance 
 of me," was his own command; and "as often as ye eat 
 this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death, 
 till he come," is the declaration of an 'Apostle. Your par- 
 ticipation in this ordinance then would fail entirely of its 
 object if it did not lead yon into a peculiarly intimate con- 
 templation of your Savior. It will be an empt}' ceremonial 
 if it does not introduce you to the same vision, as that 
 which met the disciples on their way to Emmaus. Here by 
 the way, in which you are going — here stepping calmly 
 athwart your life's track — here breaking in upon the crowd 
 and the tumult of your ordinary thoughts and engage- 
 ments, comes an expounder to arrest your steps and claim 
 your ear. It is not Jesus, but it is a witness sent by 
 Jesus; a minister appearing in his name, and commissioned 
 by his authority; and its errand is the same as that which 
 brought Jesus to the disciples on their way to Emmaus. 
 It has come to open to you the Scriptures; to unfold to 
 you the mysteries of Redemption; and to paint before your 
 minds in a living picture, the grace and glor}- of the great 
 Redeemer. The same story exactly, as that which Jesus 
 told to his rapt listeners and which made them exclaim, 
 "did not our hearts burn within us while he talked with 
 us," this expounder will tell you; and if you listen to its 
 revelations and catch the import of its wondrous recital, 
 the same result will follow, and your hearts will burn with- 
 in you too. 
 
 The Christ of the Scriptures, brethren, is my text, and 
 the proper theme of your meditations to-day. And the first 
 feature in it which I shall propose for your consideration is 
 his person. Who is it that the Scriptures introduce to you 
 under the name of Christ? This name let it be remembered 
 is the name of an office. It is something, or it describes 
 something, which he who hears it has assumed or under- 
 
THE WALK TO EjMMAUS. 215 
 
 taken. It does not properly inform us who the person is 
 who hears it. It leaves the way open for an inquiry into 
 this point; and it suggests the inquiry as a natural and a 
 pertinent one. There is a liistory eoncerning Christ which 
 lies apart from the history of his oflice as the Messiali. 
 We may ask who it was that assumed that oflice just as we 
 may ask who Aaron was, that assumed the oflice of priest, 
 or David was, that assumed the office of king, or Samuel was, 
 that assumed the otlice of prophet. Aaron and David and 
 Samuel, each had a history as a person apart from his his- 
 tory as an official character; and so, he who is presented to 
 us in the Scriptures, as the Christ, has a history, as a person 
 which may be considered apart from his history, in the 
 character which he bore as the Christ. This history, the 
 believer contemplating his Savior, cannot fail to notice, 
 and he may find in it enough to excite within his breast 
 the warmest fervors of delight and devotion. For he will 
 have pursued his inquiries but a little way, before he will 
 find himself gazing upon all that is sublime, and all that 
 is adorable in Divinity. All that is comprised in the idea 
 of God, will be found to be represented in Scripture, as 
 contained in the personality of Christ. As line after line 
 and feature after feature of the portrait evolves itself to 
 his view upon the page of inspiration, he will have (unless 
 his eye yields to the distorting violence of prejudice, or he 
 arbitrarily refuses to put confidence in the organs and func- 
 tions of his nature), to confess, 'this is the very God," 
 "this is the identical brightness of the Father's glory, and 
 the express image of his person. " Thus Christ appears to 
 us, invested with the eternity of God. He existed before 
 he was born into the world, he existed from everlastinir. 
 Thus he says he came into the world, he came down from 
 Heaven, he was sent forth by the Father. "Before Abra- 
 ham was" he says "I am." "In the beginning," writes St. 
 
216 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 John, "was the word," already existing, that is, when cre- 
 ation began, or prior to the existence of all creatures lie 
 had a being, a being that was uncreated, and hence the be- 
 ing of the self-existent and eternal essence, which is God. 
 And hence, when about closing his residence on earth, he 
 prays, "that the Father would glorify him with his own 
 self with the glory which he had with him before the world 
 was." Before the world was, away back in the dim forever 
 that preceded the dawn of time, lie appears, living and re- 
 joicing in the fellowship of Jehovah's glory. According to 
 the Scriptures there is no period when it could have said 
 of him, he was not, or he began to be. And so he pos- 
 sesses the omnipotence of God. "All things were made by 
 him," and without him was not anything made that was 
 made." "By him all things consist.'" "Re is able to sub- 
 due all things unto himself." "As the Father raiseth up the 
 dead and quickeneth even so the son quickeneth whom he 
 will." "All power is given unto me in heaven and in 
 earth." Now who is he I ask, of whom such things are 
 affirmed, but the Almighty God? Further he has the om- 
 nipotence of God. Nathanael, hidden in his I'ctreat under 
 the fig tree, and the disciples, in the middle of the sea, in 
 the darkness of a stormy night, were present to his eye. 
 "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, 
 there am I in the midst of them," and "I am with j^ou 
 always even unto the end of the world," are his promises 
 And in the same way the Scriptures ascribe to him the 
 omniscience of God. He knows the thoughts of the hearts 
 of men, he needeth not that any should testify of man, for he 
 knew what was in man. "In him are hid all the treasures, 
 and wisdom, and knowledge. " "Lord thou knowest all 
 things," was Peter's confession concerning him. And in 
 virtue of this knowledge alone it is, that he is qualified to 
 perform that office of judging the world at the last day, 
 
THE WALK TO EiMMAUS. 217 
 
 which it is again and again affirmed, has lieen entrusted to 
 liim. Tn connei'tion with these attributes, which establish 
 his divinity, tiie Scriptures ascribe to him acts and works 
 which require divinit}' in the operator. The creation of the 
 universe is said to have been his act. The administration 
 of providence is repeatedly said to be his work. He makes 
 angels his ministers, he hears the prayers of those who call 
 on his name, he is to raise the dead and try every man 
 according to the deeds done in the body, and to separate 
 infallibly between the righteous and the wicked, at his 
 second coming. And then as conclusive evidence on the 
 point, we find him in repeated instances, bearing the titles 
 and claiming, and receiving, the honor and worship which 
 are due only to God. "The word," says St. John, "was with 
 God, and the word was God, ' and again in his first Epistles 
 "this is the true God and eternal life." "Of whom" — that 
 is the fathers— writes St. Paul, "as concerning the fiesh, 
 Christ came who is over all, God blessed forever." "I am 
 Alpha and Omega, the first and the last," he said of him- 
 self, and, "I and mj^ Father are one." "All men should 
 honor the Son even as they honor the Father." Who being 
 in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with 
 God. "That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, 
 of things in heaven, and things in earth and things under 
 the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus 
 Christ is Lord to the g\oTy of God the Father." Such is 
 the testimony which the Scriptures give us, of the person 
 of Christ. This is the vision that the opened volume of 
 inspiration presents to the mind of the believer, contempla- 
 ting his Savior; and if it had not the vision of God, I 
 know not where that vision is to be found. Christ must be 
 divine; or profane hands have been laid upon the regalia 
 of heaven's majesty to deck a creature in; and heaven's 
 own ambassadors have pla3'ed the trick to steal from their 
 
218 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 raiglity liege the homage of his subjects, and lay it at the 
 feet of a presuming and sacriligious rival. The Scriptures 
 surely never meant to do us such a wrong — to beguile us 
 into such a fearful error. 0, no! They would never, never, 
 have made Christ to look so like God, if they had not in- 
 tended to make us acknowledge him as God. Tliis is the 
 first truth which demands our attention as we contemplate 
 him. 
 
 And now, the next presents him to us, as assuming in 
 connection with his Divinity, the nature of man. This was 
 in order to qualify him for that office and work which he 
 performs in his character as the Christ. God, to become 
 our SaA'ior, became man. Thus he is represented as saying 
 when he came into the world, "a body hast thou prepared 
 me." Thus the prophet Isaiah declares in anticipation of 
 his advent, "unto us a child is born, unto us a son is 
 given," and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and 
 his name shall be called wonderful counsellor and mighty 
 God, and everlasting Father, the prince of peace." Thus 
 his apostles write, "the word was made flesh and dwelt 
 among us." "God was manifest in the flesh." "He made 
 himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a 
 servant, and was made in the likeness of men." "When 
 the fullness of time was come God sent forth his Son, made 
 of a woman, made under the law, to redeem * them which 
 were under the law." These expressions teach most un- 
 equivocally the fact that this divine person, adopted into 
 union with his divinity, a perfect human nature, and did 
 so, that he might be qualified to perform such acts, as 
 were implied in the work he had undertaken to execute as 
 the Christ. He became one with man, that he might in 
 man's behalf do those things which man was required to 
 do, in order to be one with God. Such an assimilation of 
 himself to those, for whose benefit he assumed the ofl3ce of 
 
THE WALK TO EMMAUS. 219 
 
 Christ, was fit and necessar}' according to the scheme, under 
 which his mission had been created. So the Scripture often 
 affirms, "For as much as the children are partakers of 
 flesh and blood," they say, "he also himself took part of 
 the same, that through death he might destroy him that 
 had the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver them 
 who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject 
 to bondage," and again, "wherefore in all things it be- 
 hooved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he 
 might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things per- 
 taining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the 
 people." These are the developments of Scripture, concern- 
 ing the person of Christ. They are confessedly startling 
 and astounding. They show us in the man a God, and in 
 the God, a man. We see the facts. They are verities, 
 made certain by revelation; and set before us with a pre- 
 cision and fullness of language which forbid all reasonable 
 doubt as to their character. We can receive them as facts, 
 but they ai-e m3'steries, which as to the mode of subsist- 
 ence or process of construction must ever baffle our con- 
 ceptions. They are like palaces of glistening marble, lift- 
 ing themselves clear and gorgeous in the morning sunlight 
 upon the peaks of a mountain, around whose broad bulk 
 the mists of the valley are wreathing their impervious veil. 
 We see the palaces, but that which supports them we do 
 not see. We know they are standing there, but how they 
 stand is concealed from view. They seem to us to be 
 hanging in the clouds, or floating in the azure heaven. But 
 we are sure they are real palaces, and we never doubt that 
 they have a real and an adequate basis, though a temporary 
 obstruction has made us incapable of discovering it. And 
 so we can believe these mysterious disclosures of Scripture 
 concerning the person of Christ, to be truths, having in 
 them every condition and element of verity, and harmoniz- 
 
220 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 ing legitimately with all other truths, although we cannot 
 travel up, so to speak, to the height of them, by any visi- 
 ble path of philosophical demonstrations, or trace out pal- 
 pably the lines and points by which their connection with 
 the order of things, or the universe of truth, is established. 
 And Christians do believe them everywhere; and And them, 
 notwithstanding all their mysteriousness, so potent in their 
 influence over them that their hearts maj' be said often to 
 burn within them, while they contemplate them. 
 
 We come now to the next feature in the exhibition of 
 Christ presented in the Scriptures, and that • is the work 
 which he performed after his assumption of humanity. This 
 we have described to us in the narrative of his ministry 
 upon earth. He speaks of it often himself in such phrases 
 as these, "the Son of man is come to seek and to save 
 that which was lost." "The Son of man came not to be 
 ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ran- 
 som for many." "I am the good shepherd, the good shep- 
 herd giveth his life for the sheep." The prophet foretold 
 it, when he wrote of him such things as these, "He was 
 wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our in- 
 iquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and 
 with his stripes we are healed." "All we like sheep have 
 gone astray, we have turned ever}' one to his own way, and 
 the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." "He 
 hath poured out his soul unto death, and he was numbered 
 with the transgressors; and he bore the sin of many, and 
 made intercession for the transgressors." His apostles rep- 
 resented it in such passages as these, "It is a faithful say- 
 ing and worthy of all acceptation, that Jesus Christ came 
 into the world to save sinners." "Herein is love, not that 
 we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be 
 the propitiation for our sins." "Who his own self bore 
 our sins in his own body on the tree, that we being dead 
 
THE WALK TO EMMAUS. 221 
 
 to sins should live unto righteousness; by whose stripes ye 
 were healed." "God was in Christ reconciling the world 
 unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them," 
 "for he hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin 
 that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." 
 From these Scriptural quotations, which might be multiplied 
 to almost any extent, we may learn what was the character 
 and what the object of Christ's work on earth. It was to 
 redeem those who were under the curse of the law, and it 
 was to endure suffering and death, as the means of their 
 redemption. The believer contemplating his Savior, sees 
 him undergoing this fearful process for this benevolent 
 end. From those heights of glory, where he caught his 
 first glimpse of Christ, he must come down to those lowly 
 scenes, where Jesus, "the man of sorrows," appears, tread- 
 ing his pathway of pain and poverty and scorn. It is a 
 sad story, that he has to read here; a story written in tears 
 and in blood. Bethlehem, where he lay in his manger- 
 cradle, Nazareth, where the infuriated crowd sought to cast 
 him headlong from the brow of a hill, Sychar, where he sat 
 at noontide on Jacob's Well, wearied with his journey, 
 Bethany, where he wept at the grave of Lazareth, Gethse- 
 mane, where he endured that strange agony which wrung 
 the crimson sweat from his frame, Jerusalem, where he was 
 condemned, and mocked, and scourged, and crowned with 
 thorns, and Calvary, where, amidst the tortures of a cross, 
 the companion of thieves, and the object of the scoff's and 
 anathemas of a fiendish mob, he bowed his head and died — 
 must all pass in review before him. The history of Christ's 
 sojourn on earth is a protracted exhibition of suffering and 
 humiliation. It is a history which,* without aiming at 
 pathos in a single paragraph or word, is superlatively pa- 
 thetic in every part. It is a history which draws the warm 
 tear-drops from the eye of childhood, and kindles the flame 
 
222 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 of sensibility in the cold breast of palsied age. It is a his- 
 tory, which no honest or thoughtful believer can explore 
 without feeling his heart burn within him as intensely as 
 the disciples' did when Jesus expounded to them the things 
 of the Scriptures concerning himself. This history is the 
 inspired description of the work of redemption. It is God's 
 record of what was done, in order to redeem each particu- 
 lar soul of man. As Paul does not hesitate to entitle it, 
 it is the narrative of God's purchasing his church, with his 
 own blood. It shows us a preparatory work which the 
 Christ had to perform, in undertaking to become the Savior 
 of sinners; and it enters largely into that field of observa- 
 tion which the believer has to survey, when he would con- 
 template his Savior. It is what you, my brethren, must 
 look at to-day. That plaintive voice which summons you 
 to the Sacramental table with the words, "do this in re- 
 membrance of me," assumes a yet deeper plaintiveness as 
 it says to you over the elements of the feast, "this is my 
 body broken for you." "this is my blood of the New Testa- 
 ment, which is shed for many, for the remission of sins." 
 What the body and the blood represent, the concentrated 
 woes of the cross in which the lifelong sorrow of Christ at- 
 tained its culmination, must all be present to your minds, 
 as you perform your part in the ceremonial of this ordi- 
 nance, and if you see but the half of what these symbols 
 are adapted to exhibit, your hearts must be harder than 
 the nether millstone, if they do not melt into gushing ten- 
 derness, and rise into transports of wonder and gratitude. 
 But this work of Christ, upon earth, as I have said, is 
 a preparatory work. It lays the foundation for a super- 
 structure to be built upon it. It is in itself but the foun- 
 dation. It involves in its design, we may say, the super- 
 structure which is to be built upon it, but it does not pre- 
 sent us with that superstructure in fact. That appears in 
 
THE WALK TO EMMAUS. 223 
 
 the fruits of redemption, as tliey are developed iu the itc 
 tuai salvation of those to whom the work of Christ's re- 
 demption is applied. The application of his work of re- 
 demption, to the actual salvation of men, is another part of 
 his office which needs to be taken into view by the believer 
 iu his contemplation of his Savior. "He shall see of the 
 travail of his soul," says the prophet, "and shall be satis- 
 fied." That is, it is in the birth, the issue of his sacrifice 
 those to whom by his death he gives life, that the Messiah 
 is to find his satisfaction, or to see his work reach its per- 
 fect consummation. The foundation which he has laid 
 must complete itself in the superstructure that rises upon 
 it; and this it does as often as any soul, by coming to 
 Christ for the benefits of redemption, becomes engrafted in- 
 to him, and so is constituted an heir of eternal life. For 
 the accomplishment of this result, he is represented iu 
 Scripture, as now prosecuting his ministry in heaven. Thus 
 says the Apostle Peter, "him hath God exalted with his 
 right hand to be a Prince and a Savior for to give repent- 
 ance unto Israel, and forgiveness of sins," and to the same 
 etfect Paul declares, "Christ is not entered into the holy 
 places made with hands, which are the figures of the true, 
 but unto Heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of 
 God for us." When the believer would contemplate him, 
 therefore, he must follow him to his state of exaltation in 
 heaven, tmd must recognize his agency iu appearing for 
 each one of his followers and in granting to them repent- 
 ance and the foi'giveness of sins. It is thus that he makes 
 in the case of each one of them, the work of redemption 
 which he performed on earth, reach its appropriate and its 
 predestinated issue. His Spirit, his Word, and his Provi- 
 dence, are the instruments which he employs in this minis- 
 try, the divine apparatus, so to speak, with which he rears 
 
224 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 the superstructuie upon the foundation he had phinted in 
 the Sacrifice of himself. 
 
 And here, at this point, the history of Christ begins 
 to blend with the history of the individual believer. Here 
 the circle of Christ's agency passes into the circle of the 
 Christian's experience. In contemplating the Savior, he 
 now finds himself contemplating his Savior, or contemplating 
 Christ engaged in the special work of saving him. In the 
 process by which he has been brought into a state of sal- 
 vation, he traces the work of Christ, he sees a chapter of 
 his acts, as distinctly as he does in any part of the narra- 
 tive of what he did when he was upon earth. Just as he 
 sees Christ in the atonement of Calvary, he sees him in the 
 order of events and the series of appliances, by which the 
 benfits of redemption have been brought home to him. 
 Could Paul, think you, have set his mind to a contempla- 
 tion of the Savior, without seeing him as concerned in 
 bringing about his journey to Damascus, or Cornelius, with- 
 out seeing him as concerned in bringing about his interview 
 with Peter? or Lydia, without seeing him as concerned in 
 bringing about the meeting by the riverside, at Philippi, 
 where Paul preached to the women? The history of Christ 
 in the case of each one of these persons, ran into, or iden- 
 tified itself with the history of their conversion. It could 
 not be followed out completely, without connecting itself 
 with that. And so Christ is manifested in every believer's 
 conversion. When he would contemplate his Savior, he 
 must, if he does not shut his eyes to a very important and 
 a very interesting department of his subject, contemplate 
 him as present and acting in the history of his own con- 
 version. In this respect he has a vision of Christ which is 
 peculiar to himself. In all that concerns the person of 
 Christ, and his work while on earth, all believers may be 
 said to stand on the same platform, and be engaged in 
 
THE WALK TO EMMAUS. 225 
 
 contemplatiug tlie same spectacle. But the rnoment they 
 come to look at Christ as concerned in the ajjplication of 
 redemption, the picture varies, with each separate eye, and 
 each beholder has his own spectacle to consider. Each has 
 been called by Christ and brought to Christ, in his own 
 way. Each has his own answer to give to the question, 
 "why am I what I am," and "how have I been led into 
 the favored position I occupy? ' Each has his Savior to 
 contemplate, and it is one and the same Savior with them 
 all; but in the special aspect under which each is called to 
 contemplate his Savior in his dealings with his own soul, 
 each may be said to have a Savior of his own to contem- 
 plate. In other words, the history of what Christ has done, 
 for each believer in bringing him into his kingdom and in 
 preparing him for his glory, will constitute a revelation of 
 the Savior, which will be peculiar to him, and which he 
 may contemplate as something belonging exclusively to him. 
 The story of his own spiritual birth and experience, the 
 means and the circumstances connected with his conversion, 
 and his progressive steps in his discovery of truth, the 
 stages in his translation from darkness to light, his trials 
 and his helps, his victories a.nd his defeats, his wanderings 
 and bis recoveries, all the struggles and vicissitudes en- 
 countered in his way to the refuge which he found at last, 
 in believing in Jesus — will come to be inwoven with the 
 annals of Christ, so that the one cannot be read apart from 
 the other. And in the same way, all the history of the 
 child of God, subsequent to the time of his spiritual birth, 
 all the incidents of his Christian "course, all that has be- 
 fallen him b}' the way, whether pleasant or painful, whether 
 in the form of indulgence or of chastisement, all that has 
 helped him forward, or kept him from falling back, all 
 that has corrected his errors, or mortified his corruptions, 
 or developed his graces, all come to be resolved into a part 
 
226 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 of the manifestation of Christ to his soul. He may see or 
 ought to see his Savior in them all, for they all show 
 the operations of his hand in the completion of the good 
 work he has begun in him. They are all the footprints of 
 the Captain of his salvation, leading him onward to the 
 perfection of his final state. 
 
 With this suggestive thought, brethren, I must close 
 my remarks. You can pursue it for yourselves, and noth- 
 ing can give you a better theme for your reflections. I 
 have pointed out to you a wide range which your media- 
 tions upon the Savior may take. It embraces his person, 
 his work on earth in effecting redemption, and his ministry 
 in heaven in applying his redemption to the souls of his 
 people. There are features in it to be looked at by you all 
 in common, so that your hearts may burn together, while 
 you gaze. One Savior, seen by all and the same to all, 
 surely ought to make you realize, in your fraternal sympa- 
 thy, the communion of the Saints, and produce that proof 
 of 3'our discii)leship which your Master demands, "that ye 
 love one another." And there are features in it to be 
 noticed by each one of you separately. Christ has been 
 making a special revelation of himself to each one of you, 
 in all his dealings with you as individuals. Fail not to see 
 him in this! Recognize your Savior's hand in every event! 
 Behold him walking side by side with you in every scene! 
 Hear his voice saying, "it is I," m the wrath of the temp- 
 est, no less than in the balmy sunshine! And with hearts 
 burning at the tokens he has given you, of his mercy and 
 his faithfulness, put on record your grateful testimony, with 
 the Psalmist to-day, "Come, and hear, all ye that fear 
 God, and I will declare what he has done for my soul!" 
 
MARTHA, THE BUSY HOUSEKEEPER. 
 
 JUNE 25, 1&53. 
 
 "And Jesus answered and snid unto her, 'Martha, Martlia, 
 thou art careful antl troubled about many tilings; but one thing 
 is needful, and Mary has chosen that good part, which shall not 
 be taken away from her.' ''—Luke 10:41.43. 
 
 THE Bible here takes us into the retreats of domestic 
 life. Humble, every-day characters are introduced to 
 our view. The faults and the virtues of two lowly 
 village women are allowed a place in the book of God. 
 This is quite in accordance with the object for which that 
 book professedly was given ; a feature in it that belongs 
 necessarily to that office which it undertakes to exercise, as 
 a complete and sufficient guide" to man. This is indeed one 
 of the marks of wisdom that prove it to be the offspring 
 of a Divine mind — that it loses sight of none of the cir- 
 cumstances and conditions in which man is called to act; 
 and in which, consequently, he may need instruction. It 
 has something for everybody in every position and relation. 
 It is no book of poetry, dealing with imaginary personages; 
 no book of speculation, legislating for a Utopian world. It 
 was written for men and women, just as we see them 
 every day and everywhere. It is adapted to the case of 
 the housekeeper no less than that of the monarch. It gives 
 rules for regulating the economy of the lireside, no less 
 than the policy of cabinets and courts. Jesus visited the 
 home of Martha and Mary, and from what he saw and said 
 
 227 
 
228 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 there, as recorded in the sacred narrative, we may gather 
 several hints, which may be applioaljle to all homes. It 
 becomes us to be diffident in ascribing motives to the Deity; 
 but seeing the use which has been actuall}' made of this 
 incident by introducing it into the Bible, we shall probably 
 be safe in saying that in paying this visit to the sisters of 
 Bethany (or at least in having it recorded), our Lord de- 
 signed to furnish a general intimation of the faults and 
 dangers and duties which attend domestic life everywhere. 
 
 Let us turn aside with him to the humble Judean cot- 
 tage where he has stopped on his way to Jerusalem, to be 
 refreshed by the hospitality of the pious and affectionate in- 
 mates; and guided by his own judgment in the case, let us 
 inquire what there was to be condemned and what approved 
 in the conduct of the two sisters. "Martha, Martha," says 
 Christ to the one, "thou art careful and troubled about 
 many things." This was a mild, but decided rebuke. The 
 Lord saw something — perhaps much — in the disposition 
 which led Martha to be careful and troubled, which he 
 deemed repi'ehensible. All we know or can divine of this 
 disposition, we must infer from the two simple tacts stated 
 in the narrative — that while Jesus sat in her house she was 
 cumbered about much serving — and that in an impatient 
 spirit she came to the Lord complaining of her sister that 
 she had left her to serve alone, and asking him to bid her 
 come and help her. These two simple facts, however, lay 
 the ground for a very fair conjecture that the offence which 
 is rebuked in the text was one, or all of several things 
 which I will proceed to mention. 
 
 And first, may not Martha have been influenced on this 
 occasion by a worldly pride — by the ambition of a carnal 
 mind? Christ was her guest, and she seems to have re- 
 solved that the very best she could do, the very utmost 
 her skill and means could furnish, should be provided. 
 
>rARTHA, THE BUSY HOUSEKEEPER. 220 
 
 Sbe did not stop to inquire what was naost agreeable to him 
 — what was most consonant with his tastes and habits and 
 witli his purposes in visiting her house. She seized the 
 opportunit}' afforded liy his coming for wiiat, according to 
 her mode of life, would be called a great entertainment. 
 It mattered not that something less would have sufficed for 
 Christ; nothing less would suffice for herself. A little care 
 and trouble might have done for him; it wonld not do for 
 herself. A few things might have abundantlv satisfied his 
 desires; many things must be got ready before she could be 
 satisfied herself. In all this labor and liberalit}" therefore, 
 she was consulting her own pleasure, rather than that of 
 her Lord. She was serving Martha, the lordly mistress, 
 rather than Jesus, the lowly guest. She was aiming at 
 saving herself from mortification, and not her master from 
 disappointment. It was pride — ambition — all the while, 
 that was keeping her so cumbered with serving, and so 
 careful and troubled about many things, though she doubt- 
 less thought it was nothing but love for the Lord. And 
 hence it was, probably, that the Lord rebuked her. Sup- 
 posing this to have been one of the faults at which the 
 Savior aimed his condemnation, we maj^ interpret his lan- 
 guage as conveying, to all who are in Martha's situation, a 
 hint as to their danger of falling into the same fault; and 
 a caution to be watchful against it. It is not by any 
 means to the high state and broad spheres that the self- 
 seeking, self-exalting propensities of human nature limit 
 themselves. It is not only in parliamentary halls and upon 
 battlefields that triumphs are sought and trophies gath- 
 ered. There are more Ca'sars, a thousand-fold, in the 
 world, than those that wear the purple and sit upon a 
 throne. The cottage of a Martha may contain the soul of 
 an Emperor. The domain of domestic life ma}' be, and 
 very often is, invaded by a spirit of ambition, and the lust 
 
230 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 for ostentation and distinction. You may go into many a 
 dwelling and find tLie master or the mistress "cumbered 
 about much serving,'' and "careful and troubled about 
 many things," and when you ask why, the answer will be, 
 not because the comfort of the family demands it — not be- 
 cause any real interests of mind or body require it — not 
 because good taste demands it, or is to be gratified by it — 
 but simply because of the desires of the parties to eclipse 
 or outshine their neighbors — simply because a luxurious 
 imagination or a fondness for display or a craving for pre- 
 eminence have led them to adopt a splendid ideal, accord- 
 nic to whicli tlie style and method of their establishment 
 must be adjusted. There is an uneasy, discontented strain- 
 ing after something superlative in all tlieir arrangements. 
 Pride is the real housekeeper in such dwellings; and pride 
 is a fastidious and unreasonable and extravagant thing — a 
 manager that has no standard to follow or aim at in its 
 administration, but this single one — to go beyond and get 
 above everybody else's standard. 
 
 Now in all such dwellings the Savior would find some- 
 thing to condemn. Not that Christianity is opposed to the 
 exercise of a refined taste, or the employment . of the arts 
 of embellishment, in the construction and furnishing of our 
 homes; not that it pi'ohibits the exhibition of a generous 
 liijerality towards our neighbors and friends; this would be 
 to set itself against the God ot nature who has enriched 
 the whole structure and economy of the physical world with 
 forms of beauty and bountifulness. Christianity' rather en- 
 courages these things. Its tendenc}^ is to purify and soften 
 mankind, to promote neatness, courteousness, and even ele- 
 gance in domestic life, to favor every method and device 
 by which innocent enjoyment can be obtained for ourselves, 
 or created for others, to make the myrtle tree supplant the 
 briar, and the desert rejoice and blossom as the rose; but 
 
MARTHA, THE nUSV nOUSEKEEPER. 231 
 
 a,ll that is selfish aud aspiring, all that serves only to pam- 
 per the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, aud the 
 pride of life, all strife for pre-eminence, all vain-glorious 
 parade, all anxiety and care engendered b}' the spirit of 
 competition, or envy, or arrogance, all extravagance and 
 pretension — Christianity does forbid. IL curbs and chastens 
 the inordinate desires of the natural heart. It commauds 
 men to take with thankfulness whatever good God has al- 
 lotted to them, instead of restlessly grasping after the most 
 and the best, which by any possibility they may get. It 
 bids them be kindly affectioned one toward another, in 
 honor preferring one another, instead of being unkindly 
 emulous, one of another. It says, "he that humbleth him- 
 self shall be exalted." "He that is greatest among j-ou let 
 him be as the younger and he that is chief as he that 
 doth serve." "Let your conversation be without covetous- 
 ness, and be contented with such things as you have." It 
 rebukes Martha, wherever it finds her, not because she is 
 hospitable, not because she is industrious, not because she 
 would have her home neat and comfortable and pleasant, 
 but because craving the admiration of her neighbors, intent 
 upon the exhibition of her own skill and liberality, rather 
 than a wise and decent management of her household, 
 striving after a state and style suggested by j^ride rather 
 than a regard for the real convenience of her family or 
 guest, she has cumbered herself with superfluous services, 
 and abandoned herself to expensive and immoderate cares 
 and troubles. The spirit of the Lord is a spirit ot libertj', 
 because, amongst other things, it sets men free from bond- 
 age to that ambition, which is naturally predominant in the 
 human heart; which makes men, everywhere, the slaves of 
 selfish appetites and passions, of extravagant whims and 
 fashions, and as a consecinencc, of unwholesome anxieties, 
 and excessive and misdirected etforts and labors. 
 
232 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 Leaving this point, I suppose we may detect in the 
 conduct of Martha, indications of another error, which is 
 peculiar!}- incident to domestic life; and that is the setting 
 an undue value upon the means of earthly comfort, and 
 upon a well-furnished and well-regulated home as the source 
 and condition of happiness. We study such questions as 
 "what shall we eat" and "what shall we drink" and "where 
 withal shall we be clothed," with an earnestness and pain- 
 fulness which is altogether disproportioned to their real 
 merits. Could you have seen Martha, on the day of 
 the Savior's visit, you might have thought from her 
 anxious face and hurried steps, that she was engaged in 
 the most important business of life; that if she succeeded 
 in accomplishing the object she had in hand, she would 
 have attained a satisfaction and a reward which were suffi- 
 cient to compensate her fully for the employment of all her 
 faculties of mind and body, taxed to the utmost stretch of 
 their capacities. And so we might sa}" of many another 
 head of a household, "he or she is toiling for the food 
 and raiment, for the comfort and adornment, for the en- 
 riching and aggrandizing of their household, as if these 
 constituted the great end ot life; as if these things being 
 secured, happiness complete and permanent would be the 
 certain result." Men do not labor for heaven as they labor 
 to furnish and decorate their homes. Even Christian men, 
 often, do not, if appearances tell the truth. And what is 
 the inference? Clearly that they expect to find in these 
 homes — their earthly inheritance — a satisfaction and a re- 
 ward which outweigh all the advantages and pleasures which 
 they are taught to associate with the enjo3'ment of heaven. 
 I do not sa}' they deliberatel}" make such a comparison and 
 decision; but, I mean to say, the}' devote themselves to the 
 acquisition of the things which promise them happiness in 
 this world, with a zeal and assiduity, which the}' do not 
 
MARTHA, THE BUSY HOUSEKEEPER. 233 
 
 show ill tbe pursuit of an}' other tiling; and hence, that 
 they treat these things as being primary in importance and 
 supreme in value. Now all this is as unwise and useless, 
 as it would be for a traveler, who was on a hast}^ march 
 through a desert, to give himself up to the exclusion of 
 all concern respecting the place where he was going, and 
 the arrangements which were requisite for his well-being 
 there — in order to the embellishing of his tent, to the 
 drapery and the fringe which sliould ornament his bed, and the 
 the deli(nicies which should load his table. You would laugh 
 at the childishness, if you di<l not more seriously condemn 
 the improvidences and folly of such a man. Aiid so, Christ 
 rebuked Martha when he saw her toiling to prepare and ac- 
 cumulate the good things of this life, with an anxiety and 
 eagerness, which he knew, their instrinsic worth and their 
 power to bestow happiness, did not justify. And so, he 
 says to men everywhere, as he sees them tasking hand and 
 brain in the effort to gather around them the conveniences 
 and luxuries and elegances of this world, "labor not lor 
 the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth 
 unto everlasting life!" "Lay not up for yourselves treas- 
 ures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt and 
 where thieves break through and steal, i)ut lay up for 
 yourselves treasures in heaven!" "As pilgrims and strangers 
 abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul!" 
 "Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteous- 
 ness" (that is worldly possessions of any kind), "do not 
 regard them and depend upon them as an ultimate portion, 
 since they cannot satisfy you and will not remain with you 
 long, but make of them friends and helpers, use them as 
 subordinate to a higher good, for which they may pre- 
 pare you, that when ye fail they may receive you (or open 
 the way for 3'ou), into everlasting habitations. ' In all 
 such counsels tbe Lord is saying to these busj', mis- 
 
234 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 guided experimenters, "why cumber yourselves with such 
 hard serving? Why be so careful and troubled about 
 many things? Your toil will never be repaid. Your ac- 
 quisitions, when possessed, will not meet your expecta- 
 tions. The fashion of this world passeth away. The time 
 is short, it remaineth that they that have wives be as 
 though they had none, and they that weep as though the}' 
 wept not, and they that rejoice as though they rejoiced not, 
 and they that buy as though they possessed not. Tt is la- 
 boring for naught — for that which satisfieth not— to spend 
 life in building your houses and adorning your grounds and 
 rearing your -families, if you have nothing more and noth- 
 ing better to depend upon, as your security for happiness 
 for these things; for they may disappoint you, and they 
 must leave you; and just in proportion to the value you 
 have set upon them, and the trust you have reposed in 
 them, will be the loss you will suffer when they do disap- 
 point or leave you. Think of the rich man, who in the 
 excess of his prosperity had to pull down his old barns and 
 build greater that he might find store-room for his fruits 
 and goods, as that sudden message came checking his pros- 
 perity and disappointing his anticipated enjoyment — "thou 
 fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee, then 
 whose shall those things be which thou hast provided!" 
 Estimate, if you can, the blankness, the distress, the despair, 
 with which his mind must have been overwhelmed! Oh, 
 fool, indeed, to have staked his all upon a thing so unsub- 
 stantial as earthly goods, and a thing so frail as human 
 life! He had striven hard to add field to field, he had wet 
 his land with the sweat of his brow, he had spent years 
 of weary toiling and scheming to get to his present acme of 
 success; and now the bubble bursts! Why did he cumber 
 himself, so? Whj^ allow himself to be so careful and 
 troubled about a bubble which was soon to burst? And 
 
1* 
 
 MARTHA, THE BUSY . HOUSEKEEPER. 235 
 
 what are those doing araoug us who are working for the 
 accumulation of riches, for the increase of their means of 
 pleasure, for the gratification of their affections and appe- 
 tites, entwining their heart strings closer and close;r about 
 their loved ones and friends, inventing new charms and new 
 ties to bind them to their homes, harvesting the fruits of 
 their daily toil and laying out broad schemes and picturing 
 long vistas of happiness for the future — what are the}' do- 
 ing if they are seeking for themselves no better portion 
 than this, but cumbering themselves and allowing them- 
 selves to be careful and troubled about a bubble which is 
 sure to burst? This world, I know, has no claims so 
 strong, no interests so dear, no joys so sweet, as those 
 which appertain to the family; but these claims are not 
 paramount, these interests are not ultimate, these joj^s are 
 not superlative. The favor of God and the blessedness of 
 heaven are things which are better and more important and 
 more needful than they. 
 
 But the error of Martha may have been something 
 more serious, even, than this. At least there is an error 
 more serious than this, which those in Martha's situation 
 may commit. It is that of making fidelity to the duties of 
 domestic life equivalent to, or identical with, the religion 
 of the (jospel. Nothing is more certain, judging from the 
 common expressions of the people, than that multitudes are 
 depending upon the anxious and diligent attention the}' 
 have paid to the wants and interests of their families as 
 the ground upon which they expect to be saved. If you 
 were to go to this hard-working, never-resting father, or 
 this careworn, painstaking mother, and say to each of them, 
 "yOu are too much burdened with worldly engagements, 
 your minds are too much absorbed with your household 
 affairs, we fear you are neglecting the one thing needful, 
 that you are putting out of view the great business of life. 
 
236 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 the prepa,ration of the soul for heaven," you would very 
 likely be told in reply, '-why is not this piety? Am I not 
 doing my duty? Am I not a good parent? Am I not do- 
 ing my duty in watching over my children, in providing 
 for them, in fitting them for respectable posts in the world? 
 Is not this what the Bible requires?" Yes, my friend, this 
 is what the Bible requires. It is right. It is your duty, 
 provided it is all done as the result of your regard for the 
 will and the glory of God, provided it has been coupled 
 always with a filial love and subjection to (lod, and with 
 an humble dependence upon the Lord Jesus Christ, as the 
 only savior of sinners; but is it so witii you? Your very 
 devotion to your families may have been the means of 
 keeping you from honoring God and believing in his Son. 
 You may be amiable, affectionate, benevolent and yet not 
 pious. Martha may be wearing herself out, she may be 
 bringing furrows into her cheeks, and gi'ay hairs upon her 
 brow, by her untiring labor and self- torturing solicitude for 
 her household. Her kindred may not liave words strong 
 enough to express their gratitude for her service and sacri- 
 fice, and yet God, all the while, may be uttering the com- 
 plaint, "My daughter thou hast never given me thine 
 heart." And Christ may be all the while bringing against 
 her the fatal charge, "thou hast loved father and mother, 
 son and daughter more than me, and thou canst not be m}' 
 disciple." To him who knows the heart, our Lord has said, 
 a thing may be an abomination which among men is highl}' 
 esteemed; and on the ground of which men are accustomed 
 to justify themselves. It may be so with these much-lauded 
 domestic virtues. Estimable, lowly, useful as they are, 
 the}' may be tainted and defiled with the sin of idolatlry, 
 and so become offensive in the sight of God rather than 
 meritorious. They may give occasion for the greatest 
 wrong which can be infHicted upon him — that of rejecting 
 
MARTHA, THE HUSY HOUSEKEEPER. 237 
 
 him aiul degmdiiig him for the suke of serving tuul pleas- 
 ing a creature — that of thrusting him from the heart, be- 
 cause that heart has lavished all its love and devotion upon 
 earthly relatives and friends. 
 
 And still another error indicated by Martha's case, and 
 especially lial)le to occur in domestic life, is the surrendering 
 of the mind to secular duties to such a degree, that re- 
 ligious duties are slighted or omitted altogether. On this 
 point those who have the charge of families need to be 
 solemnly warned. There is many another house besides 
 that one in Bethany, where the Savior's voice fails to get 
 a hearing; many another person hinders this busy, bustling 
 woman of whom I am speaking, who has been too much 
 cumbered with serving and too full of cares and troubles, 
 to stop to listen to the counsels and instructions of Jesus. 
 It is really hard amidst the multiplied anil varied claims of 
 household engagements, to find the time and the heart to 
 attend to the duties of religion. I know this will be the 
 testimony of many who hear me. You say you are driven 
 from morning till night by the perpetual demands upon 
 your thought aud attention, which grow out of the occur- 
 rences, ordinary and extraordinary, of your domestic life. 
 You have no composure, no opportunity for retirement, no 
 leisure, no tranquility. Hence, you have given up secret 
 prayer. Perhaps, you no more commune with your God in 
 your closet. You have given up reading the Scripture, and 
 meditating upon its truths. Your mind is tossed about and 
 swept onward by a tide of unholy influences, so that it 
 cannot even on the Sabbath acquire serenity and seriousness 
 enough to apply itself comfortably to spiritual things. This 
 is all very deplorable, and, let me say, very wrong; and 
 very dangerous too. Martha must surely renounce the 
 name of a disciple of Christ, if Christ comes within her 
 doors, and she consents to lose all the precious words he 
 
238 A pastor's valeuictoey. 
 
 may have to say. Martha surely is most unwisely cum- 
 bered with serving, she surely is allowing her cares and 
 troubles to engross her too much, when, as a consequence, 
 she must be divorced day after day from the Savior and 
 the Holy Spirit. My Christian friends, do not excuse your- 
 selves too readily in this matter! Your engagements and 
 interruptions may be, and no doubt are many. Every home 
 abounds with them, petty often, perhaps, but none the less 
 urgent and harrassing. To be good masters and mistresses, 
 good parents and neighbors, you must submit to many an- 
 noyances and distractions, but nothing can relieve you from 
 3'our obligation to be good servants of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ. And in order to do this you must attend to the 
 duties of private, personal religion. You must maintain 
 the disposition and find the opportunity to wait upon God 
 daily. You must keep up prayer and the study of the 
 Bible, and devout reading and meditation, and self-exami- 
 nation, and attendance upon the public worship of God. 
 Otherwise your religion will decline and dwindle away, till 
 every evidence of it is gone, or only enough of it remains 
 to keep your conscience uneasy and your heart miserable, 
 amidst the cares and troubles to which you have abandoned 
 yourselves. Oh, brethren, keep Christ in your dwellings! 
 Court the presence of the Holy Spirit there! Endeavor to 
 have the blessing of your Heavenly Father abiding there! 
 You will be doing more for yourself and your families by 
 these means, depend upon it, than you can ever do by all 
 your eflforts and pains and sacrifices. 
 
 And now, I might instance as another fault apparent 
 in Martha, a fretful and impatient temper. Hurrying to 
 and fro as she was in her haste and eagerness, she wished 
 to drive everything and everybody else along with her. She 
 could not bear, therefore, to see her sister differently em- 
 ployed. She was ready to condemn her because her tastes 
 
MARTHA, THE BUSY HOUSEKEEPER. 239 
 
 and feelings did not coincide with her own; and she ac- 
 cordingly (with very questionable propriety) complained of 
 her to Christ and requested him to rebuke her. Is not this 
 incident true to nature? And are we not pointed here, to 
 one of the inlirmilies and sins which is peculiarly liable to be 
 developed in domestic life? What confession do you more 
 frequently make than that the cares and troubles of your 
 household irritate and vex you? That they try your temper 
 and exhaust your patience? What fault do you so often 
 have to reproach yourselves for, as the exhibition of a 
 petulant, hasty, irascible spirit? Then, here, is a reproof 
 and an admonition of very extensive applicability presented 
 to you in the text. Guard against the temptations to fret- 
 fulness and impatience which will be continually springmg 
 up in your domestic life! And let it be an argument why 
 you should not sutler your minds to fall too much, under 
 the influence of your cares and troubles, that these are 
 very likely to foster a fretful and impatient disposition; 
 Try not to multiply your cares and troubles, needlessly; 
 And invent no unreal ones. Learn to meet those which 
 are real and unavoidable, cheerfully. Nothing is well done 
 that is done in a heat and passion. Reprove a servant or 
 punish a child, in a rage, and your reproof or punishment 
 will do little or no good; for to reprove or punish to good 
 purpose you need to be respected and loved by the person 
 reproved or punished. And no one can be respected or 
 loved while in a rage. And besides, you are setting an 
 example of one fault all the while you are reproving or 
 punishing another. "She openeth her mouth with wisdom," 
 says Solomon of the virtuous woman, "and in her tongue 
 is the law of kindness." If you will have families, you 
 must just make up your mind to have cares and troubles; 
 and you ought therefore to anticipate them, and prepare 
 
240 A PASTORS VALEDICTORY. 
 
 yourselves for them. You ought to gird yourselves with 
 patience and meekness, you ought to be slow to wrath, to 
 be prudent and deliberate, to be gentle even in firmness, 
 and tender even in severity. And to be and do all this, 
 you ought to cry to God for daily grace as you do for 
 daily bread. 
 
 And one point more is suggested by the case of 
 Martha, to which I shall allude in closing. Her sister 
 was anxious to sit as a learner at the feet of Jesus. The 
 opportunity was a rare one, to become acquainted with the 
 Gospel — to gain a spiritual blessing. Martha would have 
 prevented this improvement, that she wished to make of 
 this opportunity. The Savior evidently condemned her for 
 interfering with so reasonable and pious a design. The bus- 
 iness of the household might even have been more pressing 
 than it was, and yet the business of saving a soul was 
 something which would have been more pressmg still ; and 
 it was a profane hand that Martha would have laid upon 
 her sister when she would have thrust her back fi'om the 
 wells of salvation. The pressure of domestic duties must 
 not make us indifferent to the spiritual interests of our de- 
 pendents. We must take care that nothing in our regimen 
 or method in our homes shall puc an obstacle in the way 
 of the piety of our families. Christ will judge us strictly, 
 we may be assured, for every rule or custom that has a 
 tendency to keep our children or servants from his feet. 
 Let us rather by our example and precept and influence en- 
 deavor to bring them all to the knowledge of the Savior! 
 Let us open to them freely the advantages of the Sabbath, 
 encouraging them to make the best use of the time that 
 God has given them for gaining the preparation they need 
 for his heavenly kingdom! Let us see to it that when our 
 households meet us at the judgment-bar, they shall have no 
 
MARTHA, THE BUST HOUSEKEEPER. 
 
 241 
 
 occasion for saying tliat tbrougU the much serving ancl 
 many cares and troubles with which we cumbered ourselves 
 and them, they were denied the privilege of learning from 
 Jesus the tidings of his great salvation! 
 
THE DENIAL OE MOSES' PRAYER. 
 
 .SEPXEMBEK 25, 1852. 
 
 "I pray thee, let me go over, and see the good land that is 
 beyond Jonhm, that goodly luountain, and Lebanon. Bnt the Lord 
 was wroth with me for your saiies, and would not hear me: 
 and the Lord said unto me. Let it suffice thee; speak no more 
 unto me of this matter. — Deutekonomv 3:25:20. 
 
 THE desire which Moses expressed in this prayer was 
 oue whicli lay very near to his heart, ami it was most 
 natural that it should. Canaan was the land of prom- 
 ise which had been hovering before the eye of the Tsraelitish 
 race like some isle of beauty on the ocean's distant verge, 
 ever since the covenant which God had made with Abraham. 
 It has been the laud of expectation to wanderers through 
 the wilderness, attracting to it their most anxious thoughts, 
 and eager hopes, every day and hour since the exodus from 
 Egypt. It was hard to die without touching its soil; hard 
 after the weariness and sutt'eriug of so long a race to die 
 without grasping the goal. And especially hard to one like 
 Moses who had almost carried his people as a father would 
 a child in his arms, and whose heart had learned to throb 
 with hat v)t<' tvish to see his charge deposited and secured 
 in a country, and a home. And it seems to us alniost un- 
 just to deny him so natural a wish. We feel almost as if 
 the boon he sought was but the due reward of his long con- 
 tinued and arduous labor. The husbandman's toil we are 
 apt to think, is but receiving its fair recompense when he 
 
 242 
 
THE DENIAL OF MOSES' PRAYER. 243 
 
 reaps bis crop. But Moses after all his protracted and com- 
 plicated toil, and when the fruit and ripened grain was just 
 ready to be gathei'ed, must quit the field, and leave to 
 other hands the work of harvesting the golden sheaves. 
 God had said it; and adhered irrevoealtly to his decree, 
 "thou shalt not go in thither to the good land; let it suffice 
 thee, speak no more unto me of the matter." 
 
 We see here an instance of the denial of jirayer; and 
 the denial of it though the circumstances were such as 
 seems to us, to have made the granting of it reasonable and 
 probable, and though the person ottering it was one who 
 had enjoyed in an unusual measure the favors of God, and 
 who had prevailed in many a suit before where it would 
 have seemed to us less likely that he would have prevailed. 
 The peculiarties of this case are such as commend it to us 
 as a subject for study; and I will make it my aim this 
 morning to develop a few of the lessons and truths which 
 may be embodied in it. 
 
 We at once learn from it the fact that the pray- 
 ers of a good man, urgently and repeatedly expressed, 
 may be denied. The assurance that God has given us 
 that he will hear and answer prayer, are sufficient to 
 encourage us on the largest scale, to practice it, and suf- 
 ficient to make us depend upon it far more than we do, as 
 a means of obtaining the blessings we need. So strong are 
 these assurances that it has become an aphorism on this 
 subject, that "man by prayer can move the lever that moves 
 the world," as if prayer could command the very omnipo- 
 tence of God. The aphorism may with due caution, be 
 adopted as true. Ami yet, we see Moses, with whom it has 
 been no uncommon occurrence to move the arm of the Almighty 
 in the working of miracles, baffled completely in trying 
 to move it upon the occasion before us, by prayer. God 
 who by his power had opened a path for him through the 
 
244 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 Red Sea, now by the same power hedges up his way across 
 Jordan, and bars hnu from the promised land. Now, how 
 shall we liarmonize these apparently condictiug facts? 1 
 answer by recognizing this obvious principle that prayer, or 
 anything else, can never move the arm of God to do wrong. 
 His omnipotence never diverges from the track of his rec- 
 titude. It is always exercised so as to maintain the order, 
 and suljserve the ends of his moral government. And prayer 
 will seek in vain to touch the springs of his omnipotence, 
 if the direction it would give to that omnipotence would be 
 counter, in any way to his rectitude, or to the order and 
 ends of his moral goveriuneut. This principle Abraham 
 recognized when he was interceding for Sodom. "Shall not 
 the Judge of all the earth do right?" he asks; and it was 
 because he supposed it would not be right that the good 
 should be punished with the wicked, that he prayed that if 
 tifty righteous men should be found in the city it might escape. 
 As Abraham here intimates, God always retains his office of 
 Judge and Ruler of the earth; and knows nothing of any 
 other office, or exercise of any other power, which opposes 
 or obstructs this. 
 
 When it is wrong to grant prayer he does not grant it. 
 It is our happiness as needy and dependent creatures to 
 know that as our kind benefactor, he hears and answers 
 prayer. It is our safety as ignorant and erring ones, to 
 know that as the moral Governor of the universe he never 
 hears or answer prayer when it is not right to do so. Were 
 he merely the answerer of prayer, did he like some weak 
 human parent, allow himself to be persuaded and controlled 
 merely by the wishes of his children, he would grant us 
 every prayer, however much we or others might have occa- 
 sion to regret his unwise indulgence afterwards. But as he 
 is a judge too, in the earth, as his policy towards men is 
 shaped and conducted so as to uphold the principles and 
 
THE DENIAL OF MOSES' PRAYER. 245 
 
 secure the results wliicli as a righteous sovereign he is bound 
 to regard, he must, la accordance with this policy disap- 
 point his children in all their unwise and improper requests. 
 And it is really as much for their good as for his own 
 honor that he does so. 
 
 As an illustration of this let me use the allegory, em- 
 ployed in one place hy au apostle, of the body and its 
 members. The foot for instance, impatient under the hard 
 labor to which it is subjected, as the servant of the whole 
 body, might ask to be released from its uncomfortable bond- 
 age, and separated from the body. But would he who made 
 the body as it is, who has inwoven his laws with its very 
 texture; and made important purposes to be dependent up- 
 on its actual organization, listen to such a request? And if 
 he should would it not be to mutilate and destro}' the mem- 
 ber which was foolishly hoping for benefit from the favor 
 for which it had petitioned? Or the arm, tortured by some 
 painful sore, might beg to be relieved from its sufferings 
 by having the cause ot it at once removed? But God mioht 
 see that the immediate healing of the sore would throw dis- 
 ease back upon the whole body, an event which would in- 
 flict its calamitous conse(iuences upon the arm as well as 
 the other members of the body, while in the ultimate health 
 which its temporary sulfej-ing was to be the means of givino- 
 to the whole body, the arm would share in common with 
 every other part. Would he then grant its request? Man's 
 best security for happiness, we may be sure, is found in 
 the permanence of the moral government which God exer- 
 cises over us, and over the world with which we are so 
 lai-gely identified, and it would be a thousand times better 
 that like the arm and the foot of which I have spoken, we 
 should be kept in a position which is uncomfortable for us 
 or refused deliverance from some grievance which distresses 
 us, than that one principle essential to that government 
 
246 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 should be invaded, or one end contemplated by it should 
 be defeated. If ever there was a case in which out of 
 partiality for an individual, God might have been expected 
 to wave CA'ery otiier office in order to appear in that if the 
 answerer of prayer it was this, which is referred to in our 
 text. Moses surely would have been indulged here if it 
 were even possible for (lod to grant the request of a creat- 
 ure, without regard to the right or wrong of it. lUit Moses 
 was denied; and it was doubtless for the upholding of some 
 principle, or the accomplishment of some result which God, 
 as the administrator of a moral government in the earth 
 could not abandon that he was denied. 
 
 Consider further that God is the immutable eneni}', and 
 the inflexible punisher of sin. It was on account of the sin 
 which Moses had committed at the water of Meribah, (an 
 account of which you will find in the 20th chapter of Num- 
 bers,) that God had declared that Moses should not enter 
 the land of Canaan. This sin was not one which we should 
 have called flagrant. It was merely a distrust of God, and 
 an impatience of temper toward the people excited by their 
 complaint at their want of water in the wilderness. As the 
 Psalmist describes it, "they the people provoked his spirit 
 so that he spoke unadvisedly with his lips." 
 
 This, according to the con^jiion estimate of men, 
 would have been regarded as a very venial ofl'ence; and be- 
 sides, it had been followed by a considerable period of 
 active and unwavering obedience to God; so that if a man's 
 good deeds can atone for his l)ad ones, here was an ample 
 compensation rendered by Moses to God for his faults. If 
 ever sin could be supposed to l)e forgotten by God, it surel}' 
 could be so in a case like this. If ever anj^ circumstances 
 could justify the presumption that sin would be overlooked 
 by God, it was such circumstances as may be found in the 
 life of Moses, subsequently to the occurrence at Meribah. 
 
THE DENIAL OF llOSES' PRAYER. 247 
 
 But his sill was not overlooked. In God's memory it lived. 
 It clung to its author and followed him, drawing its dark 
 trail along the track of his lite, till at last when the Jor 
 dan had been reached the execution could no longer be 
 delayed, it appeared before him to claim the threatened pen- 
 alty, and threw its stern barrier between him and the goodly 
 land which he so longed to tread. And his earnest and oft 
 repeated prayers were unable to set the barrier aside. Now 
 in all this, Moses is made to us the expositor of three 
 truths connected with sin, which it is of the highest import- 
 ance that men sliould know. 
 
 One is that God marks sin, and that he remembers it. 
 The evil passion of the heart, and the angry words upon 
 the lips, does not escape his notice; and the record of it 
 lives ineffacably before his sleepless eye. Another is that a 
 threat ot punishment follows imraediatel}' upon the commis- 
 sion of sin. The transgression and the curse, the guilt and 
 the penal evil, have been linked together from the beginning. 
 If they were not separated in Moses, case, in whose case 
 can we hope to see them separated? And the third truih 
 is that nothing but a special warrant or revocation from <Tod 
 can authorize a hope on the part of the sinner that his of- 
 fence will be passed over without punishment. All pre- 
 sumption, or conjecture, or hj'pothesis, in* such a case is 
 worthless. Nothing but a positive assurance from God that 
 the sentence has been canceled, and the sinner absolved, 
 can give a good hope of escape from punishment. And the 
 penalty accordingly in Moses case was executed. The wages 
 of sin were demanded, even of this good man. Now when 
 we see judgment thus "beginning at the house of God," 
 and taking effect upon one who stood so eminent in (Jod's 
 house, may we not ask with the apostle Peter, "what shall 
 the end be of them which obey not the Gospel of God?" 
 Sin and its penalty like the fruit and the tree are iusepar- 
 
248 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 alile facts. Wbat is the condition of that man against 
 whom the threat of a just punishment has gone forth, and 
 who is yet refusing to comply with the recpiirements of that 
 Gospel which ofi'ers to men the only warrant tiiey can have 
 that God has revoked the sentence and absolved them from 
 their liability to death? You may argue and speculate as 
 much, as 3'ou please about the matter but when you have 
 done all, you will not have put yourself in a position in 
 which 3'ou can have any better reason for l)elieving that 
 you will escape from the threatened penalty of sin than 
 Moses had. You cannot do more or repent more, or, pra)' 
 more than he did; and yet the edict of revocation never was 
 issued in his case, and his sentence stood, therefore was inflex- 
 ibly executed. And God has taught us that it is in the Gospel 
 alone that the sinner is ever to find a warrant or assurance 
 that his sentence has ))een revoked. lie may persuade him- 
 self that he will not be punished, but he has no other evi- 
 dence of his safety than his own gratuitous assumpfions. 
 
 He has no pledge from God, and without such a pledge 
 his condition (to say the most of it) cannot be better than 
 that of Moses; and in regard to him we have seen the threat 
 going on steadily to its fulfdlment. And what other pros- 
 pects can the sinner ever have? 
 
 But in the Gospel we have offered to us the pledge 
 which we need. We have God's seal, his sign manual, so 
 to speak, put to the promise, "he that believeth shall be 
 saved." There is a warrant here, assuring him that the 
 sentence pronounced against him is revoked, he can depend 
 upon it, and go forth from his prison house rejoicing like 
 an acquitted criminal. But in the absence of this warrant, 
 if the man cannot lay his hand upon the Gospel and say, 
 "I have got m}'^ acquittance here," the sentence stands 
 against him in all its entireness and force, it will infallibly 
 go forward in due time to execution. 
 
THE DENIAL OF MOSES' TRAYER. 240 
 
 Oil, is it not a fearful thought to go into eternity, to 
 stand before the bar of jour judge, without your warrant 
 authenticated by himself, absolving you from the penalty of 
 those sins which are to be arrayed against you there? 
 You ma}' have arguments innumerable; speculations and 
 theories innumerable; good deeds and prayers innumer- 
 able, but if you have not your warrant, your Gospel 
 warrant, the only one which bears the signature of God, 
 your sentence stands unrevoked, and as surely as Moses was 
 compelled to meet his, and die out of Canaan, so you will 
 be compelled to meet yours, and be banished from the king- 
 dom of God. 
 
 "He that belie veth on the Son," it is written, "hath 
 eternal life, and he that belieyeth not the Son shall not see 
 life, but the wrath of God abideth on him." Now in view 
 of all that I have said, must we not receive the denial of 
 Moses' prayer as a testimony of the strongest possible kind 
 in favor of the immutable enmity of God toward sin, and 
 of his inflexible determination to punish it? And do we not 
 see how it was thus made to uphold the principles and sub- 
 serve the ends of God's moral government of the world? 
 
 But still another lesson taught us by that event is 
 this, that God is jealous, (to use a scriptural form of speech) 
 of his own glor}', and so orders his policy as to check and 
 rebuke the disposition which is naturally inherent in man to 
 claim for himself, or a fellow being, the honor which be- 
 longs to God. The human instrument is very apt to expand 
 and exalt itself so as to eclipse the Divine hand which has 
 used and moved it. This cannot be tolerated consistently 
 with the moral government which God exercises amongst 
 men, and so he puts down the ambitious instrument, and 
 by its abasement forces the world to see the Divine hand 
 which had been acting through the instrument. Hero-wor- 
 ship is generally idolatry, generally an act of treason toward 
 
250 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 the sovereign who has said, "thou shalt have no other Gods 
 before me." If ever there was a mortal who occupied a 
 position likely to attract to himself this hero-worship, which 
 men are so ready to pa}-,' it was Moses. .For to whom 
 did God ever delegate so much of his authority and power 
 as to him? Who ever was admitted to such measures of 
 intercourse? Who ever climbed such dizzy heights of inti- 
 macy with God as he? And if ever, in after days of de- 
 generacy, the truant heart of the Israelite should wander like 
 those of the people around them into idolatry, what so 
 likel)' as that national pride should deify the great hero who 
 had led them from the house of bondage, and that altars 
 should be raised to Moses, and the shout go up, "this is 
 thy God Israel? Whether this should be so or not it was 
 important for the world that the instrument more signally 
 honored by God, than all others, should be shown to be 
 after all, but an instrument, in itself weak and worthless. 
 And so Moses was made sulTer, a dark eclipse when the star 
 of his glory might be said to be just at the point of cul- 
 mination. Higher and higher it had risen, till it was about 
 to plant itself in full orbed splendor in the zenith when the 
 shadow passes over it and its radiant track loses itself in 
 ine^xtricable gloom. Moses, who had lived so like a god, 
 must die an infirm, erring, accountable man. He must die 
 with the rebuke of Jehovah upon him; die humbled by being 
 denied so natural a request, as that he might touch with 
 his feet the land which for forty years he had been toiling 
 to reach, die with the hand of God which had lifted him 
 up to so high a pitch of glory thrusting him down to disap- 
 pointment, and disgrace, .and a solitary and unknown 
 grave. 
 
 "He that glorieth let him glory in the Lord" seems to 
 be the lesson taught to the world by this closing of his 
 career. The human agent must perform his part in the 
 
THE DENIAL OK MOSES' PRAYER. 251 
 
 drixma of affairs, so that the government of God shall be 
 maintained and advanced, not weakened and undermined by 
 his agency. "TInto Him belongeth the kingdom and the 
 power and the glory forever." and no more emphatic enun- 
 ciation of this fact can be found perhaps than we have in 
 the refusal of God to grant to Moses the long cherished 
 desire of his heart. 
 
 And one truth more involved in the signification of the 
 text, is that labor for God is its own recompense, or that 
 men ought to serve God from the inherent propriety and 
 goodness of the thing, and not merely out of regard for 
 an extrinsic and tangible reward. Whether we are to see 
 the fruit to which our labors tend or not, those 
 lal)ors ought to be diligently and perseveringly pros- 
 ecuted. The spirit of the true child of God is 
 not a mercenary one. It is a spirit which acts willingly 
 and spontaneousl}', in harmony with his will. It says "thy 
 will be done,"' by a law of nature, because it is the will of 
 God which is to be done, that will which all creatures when 
 fulfilling the proper business of their being, ought to be 
 uniting to do. It is natural for us to ask a reward for our 
 services, and we are apt to make the obligation to render 
 them depend upon the assurance we have that the reward 
 will be paid in the form and measure which we prescribe. 
 In other words it is for our own sake, and not God's sake 
 that we propose to serve him. He would have a better 
 spirit in us. He would have us serve him as the angels in 
 heaven do, not as hired servants, but as loving children. 
 So Moses wrought and wrought long and well, and yet died 
 without the price his natural feelings so anxiously craved. 
 So many another Moses has risen up as a champion of the 
 church to lead her out of bondage; has fought her battles, 
 and traveled with her through the wilderness and then died 
 without seeing the promised land. So the Pastor labors 
 
252 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 for bis llock autl the parent for his children, prays that he 
 may see the fruit of his toil in the salvation of those for 
 whom his soul is yearning, and dies without the sight. But 
 all have had an ample reward in being permitted to labor 
 for God, and usually this is the only reward which it is safe 
 for us to have, while liable as we always are, in the flesh, 
 to be betrayed into infirmity and sin. Great and good men 
 have appeared from time to time in the world, and have 
 gone through it spending their strength as faithful workers 
 for God, and then died, perhaps in reproach and obscurity, 
 but flinging a.s they died a radiance over coming centuries 
 which has guided to God, and to heaven thousands who 
 were born after their names had been forgotten; and others 
 too; bold and energetic workers whose reward has come in 
 their own time, and to whom success has been as poison, 
 intoxicating the brain, and deranging the heart, till the}' 
 have toppled from their giddy heights and died, leaving the 
 world to mourn that such blasted genius had ever been born. 
 •It is best for us, ray friends that it should be as God or- 
 dinarily arranges it, that the privilege of laboring should 
 be taken by man, as his true and proper reward, leaving to 
 God himself to appropriate the gain and the glory of his 
 labor. And any different policy, I believe a little reflection 
 will convince us would be altogether inconsistent with the 
 moral government which God maintains over men. May we 
 not see then why on this account the prayer of Moses was 
 denied? But perhaps in connection with these remarks up- 
 on the denial of Moses' prayer, 1 should introduce before 
 closing, another fact in his history, which the Scriptures 
 record, which after all looks very much like an answer to 
 his prayer. In the form in which he wished to be per- 
 mitted to enter the land of Canaan, his request was denied 
 but in a difl'erent form he was indulged with the very 
 privilege which he sought. Years had passed on since he 
 
THE DENIAL OP MOSES' PRAYER. 253 
 
 died on the louely top of Mount Nebo, centuries with all 
 their usual vicissitudes had rolled over the land, when on a 
 certain day on another mountain top; within the borders of 
 ancient Canaan, a wondrous group was gathered. A glory 
 brighter than the magnificence of earth enveloped them, 
 and of one of the group, it is said, "his face did shine as 
 the sun and his raiment was white as the light." This one 
 was the Sou of God, the Divine Messiah, come to set up 
 the true kingdom of God, and to enact the work of the 
 world's redemption, upon the soil of Canaan. The end for 
 which the Israelites had been chosen and preserved in fjgypt 
 and led thence into the country which God had promised to 
 their fathers, was now to be accomplished. The true result 
 for which Moses had labored was now to be realized. And 
 now Moses' feet do touch that soil, he stands where he had 
 once prayed to stand, when God denied his prayer, for it 
 is Moses who is here, conversing with Christ on the Mount 
 of Transfiguration. God had granted him that which was 
 better than the boon his prayer had asked. And we may 
 well believe that he will not do less for us. Let us pray 
 and labor on,' and though now it may be his policy to 
 disappoint our prayers, and leave our laliors witliout the de- 
 sired reward, the time will come when we shall stand with 
 Christ, at his second appearing, and learn as the fruits of 
 His redempti<m are gathered home, how God has more 
 than answered our prayers, and more than recompensed our 
 labors, which seemed to us all unanswered and unrewarded 
 when we went to our graves on earth. 
 
THE DEADNESS OF THE PLEASURE- 
 SEEKER. 
 
 NOVEMBEK 15, 1857. 
 
 "But she that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth."- 
 I. Timothy 5:6. 
 
 THE feminine pronoun is used in this proposition, only 
 because it is connected with a passage in which tlie 
 Apostle had been speaking of a particular class of 
 females. The proposition itself is general. For any one to 
 live in pleasure, is to be dead while he lives, is the doc- 
 trine enunciated. It is a doctrine which will no doubt 
 sound verj' paradoxical to some; for in the phraseology of 
 a large portion of mankind, to live in pleasure, is the 
 formula by which they describe the very climax and per- 
 fection of living. To live in pleasure, in their view, is not 
 only not to be dead, but it is to realize life in its highest 
 form and degree. It is, in the language current amongst 
 them, to "enjoy life," to "be making the most of life," 
 and to show that one "knows how to live." Now across 
 the track of this common notion, the text appears throwing 
 itself in direct antagonism, making the bold declaration 
 that the individual, no matter who he may be, who lives 
 in pleasure, is dead while he lives. And is not then, that 
 popular reproach, that the Bible is the enemy of pleasure, 
 true? me-thinks I hear some objector exclaiming. Is it not 
 manifest that religion does lay an interdict upon human en- 
 joyment? that those who would lead a life of piety, accord- 
 
 254 
 
THE DEADNESS OF THE PLEASURE-SEEKER. 255 
 
 ing to the requirements of Christianity, must put on the 
 mould's cowl or the nun's veil, and turn the home into a 
 cloister, and the world into a wilderness, and spend their 
 days in the exercise of penance and mortification? And is 
 there not good ground for that effort which certain men of 
 literary and political celebrity are making, in our day, to 
 rid society of the yoke of evangelical austerity, by turning 
 the Sabbath into a holiday, and substituting the pleasure- 
 garden and the playhouse for the Sanctuar}^, and the dance 
 for the prayer-meeting, and the fairy-tale and the novel for 
 the catechism and tract? No, m}' friends, to all these in- 
 terrogatories, I return an emphatic no! Religion does not 
 merit this unamiable character j'ou would give it, nor do 
 those who practice it need your pity. Most true it is that 
 our supreme oracle, on the subject, says, that he that liveth 
 in pleasure is dead while he liveth; but at the same time 
 we hear it giving forth to the world such an utterance as 
 this, "rejoice evei'more, " calling on men, not only to be 
 happy, but to be so in that full and intense form which is 
 expressed by "rejoicing," and not only to be so occasion- 
 ally, but perpetually — "evermore." We find David praying 
 under the direction of the Holy Spirit, "satisfy us early 
 with thy mercy, that we may rejoice and be glad all our 
 days." We find Christ saying to his disciples, "your heart 
 shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you." And 
 we find Paul describing Christians as those who "worship 
 God and rejoice in Christ Jesus." Now, it is very evident, 
 that if there is anything to be found in the experience of 
 Christians, corresponding to the import of these terms, the 
 life of those who obey the Gospel is the farthest thing 
 possible from that state of dreariness and gloom which the 
 objector insinuates it to be. "Ah, but," says the objector, 
 "I do not call this joj', which the Bible represents the 
 Christian as possessing. Pleasure, I see no pleasure in it. 
 
256 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 My pleasure, the Bible does forbid, does take away from 
 me." And here, the objector betrays the real shape and 
 substance of his charge against the Bible. It amounts to 
 this, and no more, that the Bible does not adopt his defini- 
 tion of pleasure; and the fair and honest way of stating 
 his charge against the Bible would be, not that it is the 
 enemy of pleasure, absolutely, but that it is the enemy of 
 pleasure according to his idea of it, can be urged against 
 it as a reproach, and can be justly construed into an 
 offence, he must show that his idea of pleasure is a right 
 one — one that will bear the test of the legitimate criteria 
 of pleasure, as a thing to be enjoyed by man. The Biljle, 
 if his idea of pleasure is a wrong one, is really proving it- 
 self, in the best way possible, the friend of man and the 
 patron of his pleasures, by opposing it; since to combat an 
 error or to extricate man from a wrong idea, is always to 
 benefit him, and to improve, so far, his prospects of happi- 
 ness. Nothing is clearer than that there are man}' ideas of 
 pleasure, entertained by men, which are wrong. The be- 
 sotted opium-eater realizes his idea of pleasure in the sen- 
 sations produced by the use of that poisonous drug. No 
 one in his senses, would call his idea of pleasure a right 
 one. The ideas of pleasure current in the world are end- 
 lessly various. They vary with the character, the tastes, 
 the appetites of the individual. Things diametrically oppo- 
 site, may be the sources of pleasure to two different per- 
 sons. One man's meat may be another man's poison. 
 What is one man's delight is another man's abomina- 
 tion. All the ideas of pleasure entertained b}' men cannot 
 be right, therefore, unless we maintain that all men, what- 
 ever may be the diversity in men's character, tastes and 
 appetites, are equally right. And if we maintain this, what 
 becomes of the distinction between the good man and the 
 bad man, the virtuous man and the vicious man? Here is 
 
THE DEADNESS OF THE Pl.EASURE-SEEKER. ZO i 
 
 a druukai'd reeling throiigb your streets, a disgrace to him- 
 self, and au otl'enee to tlie communily; scjuandering the 
 money that should have bought his wife and children 
 bread, at the dram sliop, and finding liis pleasure in the ex- 
 citement of strong-drink, and the gross ribaldry of pot- 
 house companionship. Anon, tlirough the operation of some 
 blessed power, you see that drunkard become a reformed 
 man. He has taken his place amongst you as a decent, 
 sober, respectable member of society. He pursues industri- 
 ously his trade or profession. He earns a comfortable sup- 
 port for his family. He has a home, and in the bosom of 
 that home, surrounded by domestic endearments and sympa- 
 thies, he tastes a joy which brings with it no satiety, and 
 leaves behind it no remorse. He is a totally different man, 
 now, from what he was before. H' he is right in what he 
 is now, he could not have been right in what he was be- 
 fore. It would be the height of absurdity to say, that he 
 was ecpially right, as a drunkard and as a sober man. He 
 knows better and everybody else knows better. There is 
 a distinction which must be recognized between these two 
 characters. And just the same distinction must be drawn 
 between the idea of pleasure, which belonged to him as a 
 drunkard, and that which belongs to him as a sober man. 
 If the latter is right the former must have been wrong. 
 They cannot iwssibl}' be equally right. The idea of pleas- 
 ure which he entertained as a drunkard was wrong, because 
 as a drunkard he was wrong himself. It was only one of 
 the types and symptoms, by which the wrouguess of the 
 man himself expressed itself. Change the man — make him 
 a sober man, and you change his idea of pleasure. In 
 other words convert him from a wrong man to a right one, 
 and you will convert his idea of pleasure from a wrong one 
 to a right one. It will not do, therefore, to bring the 
 charge of being the enemy of pleasure against the Bible, 
 
258 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 because it is found opposing some, or even many, of the 
 things, which are regarded by men as pleasure. Because 
 we know, that the idea of ple^isure entertained by some and 
 even many men is a wrong one. You must first demon- 
 strate tliat the idea of pleasure which tiie Bible opposes is 
 a right one, before you can make such a charge good; for 
 you are only establishing its claim to be regarded as the 
 guardian and promoter of human happiness, when you 
 affirm that it is the enemy of the wrong ideas of pleasure 
 which men have adopted. 
 
 Now, what is the right idea of pleasure? Or what is 
 required lo make pleasure real and true? To answer this 
 question, it is evident from wliat I have said, that we must 
 first determine what it is that constitutes a man's right, in 
 his character, tastes and appetites; since his idea of pleas- 
 ure, or his pleasure itself will correspond in every case, 
 with wliat he is himself, in his character, tastes and appe- 
 tites. The Bible determines this point by saying that re- 
 ligion, and religion alone, constitutes a man's right in his 
 character, tastes and appetites. And by this declaration, it 
 means that religion, and religion alone, brings a man into 
 conformity with the laws of reason, of nature, and of God. 
 A man without religion must violate some of these laws. 
 He generally violates them all. And his idea of pleasure, 
 or his pleasure itself, will be, like himself, at variance with 
 some or all of tliese laws. And therefore, it cannot be 
 right. It is a wrong idea, it is a false thing. Take the 
 man who is pursuing a form of pleasure, which is contrary 
 to the laws of reason. As he must be always, more or less 
 cognizant of the judgment of his reason, he must be always, 
 more or less conscious of the fact that his pleasure is un- 
 reasonable. He must cai-ry" in his mind the conviction that 
 he is a fool, in pursuing it. And I say therefore, tbat it 
 cannot be real pleasure, for chat can never be real or true 
 
THE DEADNESS OF THE PLEASURE-SEEKER. 259 
 
 pleasure to a man, wliicli is all the while demonstrating to 
 Lis own consciousness that he is a fool. 
 
 Or take the man who is pursuing a form of pleasure, 
 which is contrary to the laws of nature. Contrariety to 
 nature, or violence done to nature, will infallibly bring dis- 
 order and suffering into the mind, or body, or both. Na- 
 ture is the sternest of all masters. You might as well ask 
 fire not to burn you, or water not to drown you, as to ask 
 her to relax or change her ordinances to accommodate you. 
 Trespass against her rules in any material point, and the 
 avenging distemper or mutilation, the retributive fever, or 
 sore, or bruise, or fracture, will follow, as surely as the 
 rifle- ball follows the flash of the gunpowder, or the stroke 
 of the serpent's fang, tiie pressure of the foot that treads 
 upon him. That form of pleasure then that men seek from 
 courses of conduct that thwart or violate the laws of nature, 
 cannot be true or real pleasure; because it sooner or later 
 ends in pain. It is no more true or real pleasure, than 
 that sensation would be, which you would experience in 
 swallowing the sugared drug, which you knew would be no 
 sooner swallowed, than it would rack your body with tor- 
 ment, and taint your system with a deadly venom. Or take 
 the man, who is pursuing a form of pleasure, which is con- 
 trary to the law of God. The price of his pleasure, here, 
 must be the forfeiture of the favor of God, which must 
 ever stand as the fundamental condition of happiness to 
 man. God and the man who transgresses his laws, must 
 stand as enemies. There is in the nature of the case, a 
 strife between them. God's will and the man's will are set 
 in direct variance. In order that the man's will should be 
 iatlulged, God's will must be overthrown. And if this can 
 be done with impunity, if man can so triumph over God, 
 God's will is nugatory. It is nothing, a cobweb, a rope of 
 sand. He might as well have no will. He might as well 
 
200 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 lay aside his crown, nay, be bad better do so, for be wears 
 it only to bave it dishonored. I bold it tben, self-evident, 
 that a man wbo seeks bis pleasure in ways tbat contravene 
 tbe law of God, is putting bimself in a position, where be 
 must expect to feel, sometime, in some form, tbe opposi- 
 tion of God, which is only another name for bis wrath. 
 And what can the wrath of God be but a consuming fire? 
 Is tbat, I ask, true or real pleasure, which has such an is- 
 sue as this? Which is kindling all the while against the 
 person, who indulges in it, tbe flames of Almigbt}' ven- 
 geance? Now, the Bible teaches, as I have said before, 
 tbat religion, and religion only, constitutes a man such in 
 his character, tastes and appetites, that he is conformed to 
 these laws of reason, nature and God. And as a corollary 
 to this, it teaches that the man who has religion, or tbe 
 Christian, is tbe only person whose idea of pleasure is 
 right, or who, in the pursuit of pleasure, is seeking an ob- 
 ject which is really and truly entitled to that name. If 
 this teaching of the Bible be correct, then it has this an- 
 swer to make to the objector, "You charge me with being 
 the enemy of all pleasure, because, perchance, I am opposed 
 to what you think to be pleasure. What you think to be 
 pleasure is not necessarily pleasure. Tbe idea of pleasure 
 entertained by many persons is manifestly wrong. If yours 
 is like this, it is the part of benevolence in me, towards 
 you and towards all men, to forbid and condemn your 
 pleasure. Keligion, I hold, to be absolutely indispensable, 
 to give to man such a character, such tastes and such ap- 
 petites, as shall fit him to entertain a right idea of pleas- 
 ure, or to enjoy true and real pleasure. I enjoin religion 
 upon men, as the necessary means to their happiness; and 
 I promise to all who truly possess it, and faithfully prac- 
 tice it, pleasure, as the certain result. If I am found op- 
 posing your pleasure, it is only because j^our pleasure is 
 
THE -DEADNESS OP THE PLEASURE-SEEKER. 2G1 
 
 something which religion did not originate, and does not 
 approve, and something therefore, which is not legitimate 
 pleasure. I am not the enemy of 3'our pleasure, except as 
 I am the enemy of your irreligion, and except as I see 
 your pleasure, which is the product of your irreligion, vi- 
 tally at war with your true happiness. Only open 3'Our 
 heart to the influences of tiiat religion which I teach! 
 Put olf the old man, with his corru[)t affections, and put 
 on the new man, which is created in Christ Jesus after the 
 image of (jlod! Become a heart}', intelligent Christian, and 
 with your new character, tastes and appetites, you will gain 
 a new idea of pleasure, and a new enjoyment, which 3'ou 
 will no more consent to exchange for the old, than the 
 drunkard, reformed, would exchange his present decency 
 and comfort for his former brutality and wretchedness! 
 
 These observations, designed to repel the charge, some- 
 times made against the Bible, that it is opposed to human 
 enjoyment, will serve to show what the Bible means, when 
 on the one hand it exhorts men to be happy, and on the 
 other, it says of the man who lives in pleasure, he is dead 
 while he liveth. There is a pleasure, which is the offspring 
 of religion. That pleasure the Bil)le approves and recom- 
 mends. There is a pleasure, which grows out of a state of 
 irreligion, which is itself the mark and proof, that the 
 heart that seeks it is opposed to religion, and that pleasure 
 the Bible opposes and condemns. It is this latter kind of 
 pleasure which is referred to by the Apostle in the text. 
 The word translated, living in pleasure, means living luxu- 
 riously or voluptuously. It is derived from a noun which 
 signifies rich or delicious fare, food which is partaken of, 
 not to allay hunger, but to please the palate; and we shall 
 have the precise idea conveyed by it, properly, if we take 
 it as describing those, who in their whole system of life, 
 act in the spirit of a man, who sits down to a sumptuous 
 
262 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 antl delicate feast. Tliere are persons whose whole system 
 of life may be said to be informed or pervaded by such a 
 spirit; persons whose whole existence is an Epicurean enter- 
 tainment, or an attendance upon an Epicurean entertain- 
 ment. They are found, of course, in many grades, and in 
 many forms, from the highest type of extravMgauce and 
 dissipation, to the most parsimonious and unobstrusive forms 
 of self-indulgence. The seeking of pleasure, of private, 
 personal gratification, as the supreme end of life — the com- 
 mon mark of them all. They may be likened to the 
 guests at a bantjuet, with each his separate dish before 
 him. The viands are endlessly various, but each individual 
 has what his taste calls for, and though on ditl'erent fare 
 they all eat with the same relish, and are all intent upon 
 tlie same object, the pampering of the appetite And when 
 the banquet is over each could describe the act in which 
 he had been engaged, by the same terms, "I have indulged 
 myself." So, of these persons, who live in pleasure, what- 
 ever be the mode of life or the species of pleasure, you 
 will have a description which fits the case of each one of 
 them, if you say as the sum of what each one has done, 
 "he has indulged himself, nothing else, nothing more." 
 From morning to night, from year to year, to indulge him- 
 self has been his business. The world for him may be 
 said to have contained but two objects, the one is himself, 
 and the other the means, which subserve his pleasure. 
 Imagine him in the world without tlie power of indulging 
 himself, and you must imagine a forlorn bankrupt — a starv- 
 ing beggar — a crippled cast-away, flung by the sea upon a 
 barren beach. Now, to live in pleasure, thus, is to give 
 the strongest evidence, that one well can give, that he is 
 living under the dominion of a selfish, a carnal, a worldly, 
 a sensual mind, that he is enslaved by what the Scriptures 
 call "evil concupiscence;" or flesh}' lusts; that his character, 
 
THE DEADNESS OP THE PLEASURE- SEEKER. 203 
 
 tastes, and appetites, are all in eonHict with the recjuiie- 
 meuts of religion. 
 
 And, so, the Bible condemns him, and says of him, 
 "he is dead while he liveth." He is dead while he liveth, 
 because in the first place, his life is barren of all those 
 fruits, those results, which the life of such a being as man, 
 is required b}' his constitution, to produce. The fig-tree, 
 that was found without fruit, in the Savior's parable, was 
 at length, directed b}^ the proprietor, to be cut down. 
 Why? because the object for which it was planted was, that 
 it might bear fruit, and after an abundant experiment of the 
 likelihood of its accomplishing its object, it was found with- 
 out fruit, so that all the reasons for its continuing in exist- 
 ence had ceased, and to sutt'er it to remain was only to cumber 
 the ground. While it lived it was no better than a dead tree. 
 Put a man in the position of that tree, and it would be right 
 to say of him, he is no better than a dead man. He was 
 made and organized to serve certain purposes in the world. 
 He is not serving those purposes. His existence, so far as 
 they are concerned, is a blank, and his existence therefore 
 is not to be taken account of. He is as good as dead. 
 Suppose you asked for a stream of water to be introduced 
 into your farm, that, as it wandered here and there in its 
 channels, it might irrigate your fields, and bathe the roots 
 of your orchards, and infuse fertility into your meadows. 
 And suppose in the place of what you asked, you should 
 see a fountain springiug up somewhere in your lands, cleav- 
 ing the air with its sparkling column, glittering, dancing in 
 the sunbeams, as it rose to its elevation, and then dissolv- 
 ing into drops and falling back again, in a shower, into the 
 basin from which it issued, absorbing, so to speak, in its 
 own bosom, all the energy, all the vitality, it had sent 
 forth. You would say, "I asked not for this." For the 
 purposes I had in view, this thing, pretty, graceful to be 
 
264 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 seen, but utterl}' useless, this tli'mg is not wortli the space 
 it occupies. Away with it. I do not want it.'. Now man 
 was made to be the stream, not the fountain, in this world 
 of ours. His life is intended to flow outward, not inward. 
 He has no right to expend upon himself the forces with 
 which he has been endowed. He has no right to take 
 counsel only of his own inclinations and passions, as to the 
 manner in which he sliall employ his existence. He has no 
 right to say, "such and such things will give me pleasure, 
 and such and such things, therefore, I will do."' There are 
 many other questions he ought to ask about these things, 
 besides the one, whether in his opinion, they will give him 
 pleasure, before he can feel authorized to do them. Are 
 they a part of that work, which by the laws of reason, 
 nature and God, it was indicated to him that he was made 
 and placed in the world to do? Will he by doing these 
 things be qualifying himself to give u^) that account which 
 he is bound to render to his Maker, of his stewardsiiip? 
 Will he be able, if he spends his life in such occupations, 
 to show upon the review of it, that it was not given to 
 him in vain? For God, we may be sure, makes nothing in 
 vain, and least of all did he make such a being as man in 
 vain. He !iad a purpose in making him, and that purpose 
 it is man's great duty to realize and fulfill. You do not 
 cut and polish and set your pearls, to cast them before 
 swine. You use them as the adornments of human beauty 
 and grandeur. Neither did God cut and polish and set in 
 your nature, those pearls that stud, so to speak, every de- 
 partment of your soul and body, that they might be cast 
 before swine, or be trampled in the mire of swinish pursuits 
 and indulgences. He meant them to be used for the de- 
 veloping and perfecting of the being to whom the}' had been 
 entrusted, and ultimately, for the magnifying of his own 
 glory. And before 3'ou ask of any occupation whether it is 
 
THE DEADNESS OF THE PLEASURE-SEEKER. 2G5 
 
 going to give you pleasure, 3'ou must ask whetbei- it is go- 
 ing to produce such results as tiiese, whether it is going to 
 put the pearl under the swine's foot, or light with it a 
 man's l)row and the crown of (4od. If it does not do this 
 latter, you had better abandon the occupation and do with- 
 out the pleasure, for to be living in such pleasure, is as- 
 suredly, to be dead while yon live. The pursuit of pleas- 
 ure, in ever}' case where it diverts men from the great 
 objects of life — the advancement of their nature; the im- 
 provement of the world, of the organism of which, every 
 individual is an active and responsible part; and the illustra- 
 tion of the glory of God — in every case where it has the 
 effect of diverting men from these, the pursuit of pleasure 
 is making their lives 1)arren of the fruits, which they ought 
 to produce, and so, is demonstrating that as to all the pur- 
 poses contemplated in their creation, they are dead. 
 
 And then, in the next place, he that liveth in pleasure 
 is dead while he liveth, because his mode of life involves 
 in it, a perpetual consummation and waste of what may be 
 called, the true vital power of his nature. You all know 
 the effect of mortification, when it sets in, in - any part of 
 the diseased human bod_y. It is corruption — anticipating 
 the departure of life. It is a token that the subject is 
 dead, while he is yet living. It may be a startling remark 
 to make, and yet there is a wonderful degree of similarity 
 in the cases, that seems to warrant the remark, that the 
 lust of pleasure in the heart (selfish, sensual, world}' pleas- 
 ure, of course, I mean,) is just like this mortification in 
 the body. It is corruption begun, a disorganizing element 
 at work upon the moral system of the subject, a fearful 
 sign that he is in a moril)und state, an incipient stage of 
 death. There are men to lie found, the wretched, shame- 
 less, hopeless drunkard, for instance, who have spent their 
 lives in what they have thought, pleasure, who are nothing 
 
2G6 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 better than living corpses, and corpses that have progressed 
 even to putrefaction. This horrible result reached in 
 some cases shows how terribl}' the words of the text may 
 be verified. There is danger that they may be similarly- 
 verified in all cases, where men live in pleasure. For living 
 in pleasure is not only a wrong mode of living, but it is 
 certain, if pursued long enough, to put it out of the power 
 of the individual ever to adopt a right mode of living. 
 There is such a consumption, or waste of vital power, in- 
 volved in indulgence in pleasure, that the person ultimately 
 1)ecomes incapable of returning to that true life that con- 
 sists of the practice of virtue and piety. The gratification 
 of an evil lust, uniformly gives intensity and strength to that 
 lust, so that, by and by, it comes to hold the nature of 
 the man with the tenacity of a death-grip. It is in his 
 heart like the element of mortification, ineradicable, incura- 
 ble, expelling completely the vital power, as far as it has 
 progressed. A life of pleasure is a life given up to the 
 domination of such evil lusts, and if their tendency is al- 
 ways opposed to the development and perfection of the 
 true life of such a being as man, whenever they have gain- 
 ed that degree of power over him, as assuredly they may, 
 which shall render him incapable of escaping from their 
 domination, that he shall be incapable of correct perceptions 
 and volitions and of self-denial and self-control, then, it 
 will be necessary to write his epitaph, as it were, and say 
 of him, "he is dead while he liveth." 
 
 And then, in the third place, he that liveth in pleasure 
 is dead while he liveth, because his life, as it is a life of 
 sin against God, is only a prelude and a preparation for 
 eternal death. It is death in the seed, sprouting up, shoot- 
 ing forth, maturing, ripening steadily, into death in the 
 fruit. That kind of life which, at every step, is separating 
 the individual farther and farther from God, is certainly 
 
THE DEADNESS OF THE PLEASURE-SEEfvER. 2(57 
 
 fabricating, as plainly as cause ever fabricated, effect, its 
 issue in his eternal separation from God, And when, like 
 the rich man we read about, who, after living in pleasure, 
 "died and lifted up his eyes in hell, being in torment." he 
 from the world of woe, shall measure the awful chasm 
 which separates him from God, he will have to confess, "it 
 is just here mj own steps have brought me. I stretched 
 the line, with my own hand, which now measures the ex- 
 tent of m\' banishment from God." The first step and the 
 last step, the starting point and the termination of an evil 
 course, are elementary parts of one progress. They are 
 united in the unity of the result, so that if the ending is 
 death, the beginning was death; and so, if a life of pleas- 
 ure must end in death, it begins in death, it goes on iu 
 death; and the person wbo is leading it, may be said at 
 anj- stage in bis career to be in deathf He is still dead 
 even while he liveth. That such a life persevered in, must 
 end in death is the plain and constant declaration of the 
 Scriptures. "The wages of sin," it says, "is death." "Sin, 
 when it is finished," that is when it comes to its issue, 
 "bringeth forth death." And anticipating this result, and 
 applying the terms, which describe its final stages, to the 
 earlier stages of the sinner's course, it says again, "to be 
 carnally-minded is death;" and again, "he that sinneth 
 against me," that is the wisdom or the religion of which 
 Christ was the expositor and revealer, "wrongeth his own 
 soul; all they that hate me love death." Destined to death 
 in its ending, to eternal separation from God, whose favor 
 is the fountain of the soul's life, what can a life of sinfu 
 pleasure be, but a perpetual dying? a continual advance 
 into the darkness and horror of the tomb? a treasuring up 
 unto one's self, da}' by day. and hour by hour, of wrath 
 against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous 
 judgment of God? 
 
2f)8 • A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 And now. do yon tell me that this is a harsh doctrine? 
 That it is unjust and intolerable, to be told that to be liv- 
 ing in pleasure is to be dead in such senses as these? And 
 is it harsh, and unjust, and intolerable in God not to per- 
 mit you to set up your will above his, to gratify' yourselves 
 at the expense of his rights, his authority, his honor? 
 Harsh, and unjust, and intolerable in him to tell you, that 
 if you will turn away fi'om tlie object, the pure })leasiire he 
 offers you, the pleasure which religion gives, and which 
 in its nature is allied to his own infinite blessedness, and 
 spend your lives pursuing a pleasure which perverts every 
 gift of 30ur nature from its proper use and design, and 
 too often, sinks that nature into fellowship with the brute 
 or the devil, he will be angry with you, and lay his rod 
 upon you in holy severity? No, ray friends, no. You may 
 pursuade yourselves '^so, now, but you will think differently 
 sometime, when removed from the temptation and fascina- 
 tion of your pleasures, in the honest reflections of the 
 eternal world, or perhaps, in the often equally honest ones 
 of a dying hour, you estimate the worth of these pleasures 
 aright, and discover all the fearful wrong you have done by 
 them to your own soul and to God. 
 
 But why wait for these forlorn occasions to teach you 
 the truth? Believe God's word now! Take that solemn 
 declaration, "he that liveth in pleasure is dead while he 
 liveth. " and gaze at it and study its meaning, as Belshaz- 
 zar did the fiery writing on his palace walls, and be warned 
 by it, to escape, while you can, the doom of those it de- 
 scribes! You may have already advanced far in the way of 
 guilty pleasure. Then, turn, now, before you have taken 
 the last step, and retreat becomes impossible! You may be 
 just meditating an adventure into the way. Then hear 
 God's voice and turn from it, as j^ou would from the de- 
 scent to hell! "Surely in vain," says the wise man, "the 
 
THE DEADNESS OF THE PLEASURE- SEEKER. 2G1) 
 
 net is spread iu tlie sight of any bird." God to-day, has 
 opened your eyes and directed your sight, to see the net 
 spread for your souls. That net is the net of pleasure. 
 Oh, surely you will not, with your eyes open, walk into it! 
 Surely for this mess of pottage, you will not, deliberately, 
 sell your birthright of immortality! This is God's warning, 
 and this is God's hope, concerning you. And now, let me 
 sa}" to you, if you disregard God's warning, and disappoint 
 his hope, if you persist in following your courses of wicked 
 pleasure, you will perish in your sins and your blood will 
 be forever on your own heads. 
 
INCREASE OF FAITH 
 
 JULY 20, 1856. 
 
 "And the Apostles said unto the Lord, increase our Faith." 
 -Luke 17:5. 
 
 THE excellency aud desirableness of Faitli as an attribute 
 of character, or grace of the heart, is one of the 
 
 topics prominently suggested to us by this text. In 
 praying, "increase our faith," it is implied that the Apos- 
 tles were in possession, to some extent, of that which they 
 wished to possess in larger measure. 
 
 They had made some attainments in Faith, and desired 
 now to advance to higher degrees in the experience and 
 practice of it. It must have been their conviction then, 
 that Faith was good and profitable. Their prayer was the 
 strongest possible expression of such a conviction. 
 
 For it is only that which men believe to be a genuine 
 and positive benefit, that they are found anxious (after ex- 
 periment is made) to retain in their possession, or to pos- 
 sess in an augmented quantity. We are naturally led, in 
 view of such a decided testimony by the Apostles, as to 
 the excellency and desirableness of Faith, to inquire into 
 the grounds upon which their estimate of it is foundetl, 
 and the extent to which the qualities aMirmed of it by them 
 are true. And in order to do this, it will be necessary to 
 go back and inquire, first, what is P'aith? The radical idea 
 contained in the meaning of the term is, trusting and be- 
 lieving. We have faith, whenever we trust or believe in a 
 thing so as to treat it as though it were actually what it 
 
 270 
 
INCREASE OF FAITH. 271 
 
 professes to be; tmd as though it were actually about to 
 do what it has promised, or threatened to do. Perhaps we 
 shall (.lehiie it as correctly and as tersely as may be, by 
 saying, it is that which makes facts of things which are 
 not present and cognizable to ns as facts. For instance, 
 the flood was not a fact, present and cognizable prior to 
 the time of its actual coming. When it did actually come, 
 it became such a fact. It became a matter of sense. There 
 was no occasion for the exercise of faith in regard to it 
 then. But, before it came, it was a fact to Noah — a fact 
 which he took into consideration, and estimated and con- 
 sulted as carefully as he did any other fact, or he would 
 not have spent the time and labor which we know he did 
 spend, upon the building of the ark. Now it was faith 
 which thus made a fact of the flood, before it became ac- 
 tually a fact to Noah. Then further, as faith is concerned 
 thus about things not present antl cognizable as facts, it 
 must of course receive its information concerning the things 
 which it makes facts, from some external source. It must 
 take the testimony of some witness, and give credit to 
 that, and upon the ground of that, proceed to act in refer- 
 ence to the things proposed to it. Noah's faith was found- 
 ed upon a revelation made to him by God of his purpose 
 to send a flood upon the earth. Faith in all cases has a 
 similar foundation. It is confidence exercised in obedience 
 to evidence. It is treating a thing as being what it pro- 
 fesses to be, in consequence of a pursuasion produced by 
 some kind of proof that it is what it professes to be. 
 Faith, therefore, presupposes testimony, as that upon which 
 its existence depends. And it finds its field of action in 
 giving the force of facts to the things (not present and 
 cognizable as facts) which the testimony reveals. But it is 
 of the faith which is allied to religion that we are particu- 
 larly to speak. 
 
272 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 And applying the remarks I have now made, we may 
 define Ihis faith as being a trusting or believing in the 
 things communicated to us by the testimony of the Scrip- 
 tures, so as to treat these things as facts though they are 
 not present nor cognizable to us as facts. I say communi- 
 cated to us by the Scriptures, because these are our main 
 source of information in regard to the things which consti- 
 tute and form religion. Other witnesses there arc such as 
 nature and reason, but the testimony of these is coincident 
 with and embraced in that of the Scriptures. It is all 
 gathered up and repeated in their enunciations, so that if 
 we receive the Scriptures we have the benefit of whatever 
 has been communicated by other sources. Now, the value 
 of faith, is to be measured by the value of those things 
 communicated by Scriptures, which it makes facts. If these 
 are important, and if the possession of them is an advan- 
 tage, and if they cannot be dispensed with without loss and 
 harm, then faith is important; and the possession of it is 
 an advantage; and it cannot be dispensed with without loss 
 and harm. Faith, for example, makes God a fact. If it 
 is of benefit to a man to have God for a fact, it is of 
 benefit to him to have faith. Faith is excellent and desir- 
 able, just as the belief in a God, and a reverential ac- 
 knowledgment of Him are excellent and desirable. Faith 
 is excellent and desirable just in proportion as Atheism 
 is pernicious and deplorable. So we maj^ take all of the 
 other things included in the revelation of the Scriptures, 
 and assuming as we now do, that they are true, w^e 
 may saj^ that just in proportion to the magnitude and im- 
 portance of these things, is the value of the faith by which 
 they are made to have the effect of facts upon us. Let 
 these things be blotted out from the world — let the 
 doctrines, for instance, of the immortality of the soul, of 
 the accountability of man, of Heaven and hell, of redemp- 
 
INCREASE OF FAITH. 273 
 
 tion and sauctilication, be dropped into oblivion and wliat 
 a fearful extinction of man's dearest interests and highest 
 hopes would be the consecjuenee! How would the sun be 
 darkened, and the stars fall to the earth, and chaos rush in 
 again to welter in the abyss which their removal had made! 
 Yet this is what must occuj-, if faith cease to act; if 
 faith cease to make facts of these things. You have the al- 
 ternative always set before you, faith, or the absence from 
 the world, and the soul of man, of all those benelicent 
 agencies, those elevating, purifying, sweetening influences 
 which emanate from the truths of the Christian Scriptures. 
 Religion itself becomes but a shadow of a shade, without 
 faith; for faith gives it its foundation and its substance. 
 Conscience derives its vitality and energy from faith. A 
 want of faith in any man is at once evidence that the moral 
 sense of the man is disordered, and corrupted. Au eye 
 that does not see beauty where beauty is, or that takes 
 light for darkness, is not a sound eye. It is au evil eye. 
 So, a soul that has no faith, that is, that does not receive 
 and relish and use as facts, the things which the Scriptures 
 make known to us, must be in a disordered condition. It 
 is a subject of moral corruption. It is not in a right state. 
 To say in one's heart, for instance, "there is no God," is to 
 prove one's self, in the language of the Bible, a fool. It 
 is more than to exhibit ignorance of a fact; it is to exhib- 
 it a perverse disposition of mind — a repugnance and con- 
 trariety of taste and sentiment to a thing embodied in a 
 fact. It is to be so degraded in the scale of our moral 
 conception, propensities, and sympathies, as to be willing to 
 have God annihilated, and to live without such a Being. 
 Hence unbelief and sin are always classed together in the 
 Scriptures. A heart of unbelief is an evil heart. Faith and 
 a sound moral sense must go together. In illustration of 
 this, we have onl}- to look at the connection in which the 
 
274 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 prayer of the Apostles in our text occurs. In the two pre- 
 cedin*^ verses, the Savior bad been teaching them the duty 
 of forgiving a trespassing brother. This duty is a hard 
 one at all times; but when urged to the degree, and with 
 the latitude He gave it — when put in such form as this — 
 "if he trespass against thee seven times in a day and seven 
 times in a day turn again to thee saying, I repent, thou 
 shalt forgiv.e him," it seemed tenfold more hard than usual. 
 
 It seemed as if a deeper sense of the authority of 
 God, a more commanding tone and attitude on the part of 
 conscience, would be re<|uired than in ordinary circumstances 
 to enable them to obey. And in order that they might get 
 these and that they might be animated and strengthened to 
 perform this hard duty — what do they do? They pray for 
 an increase of faith! More faith would bring with it, they 
 seem to argue, moral conviction and determination, and the 
 capacity to see the rectitude of the Divine law, and the pow- 
 er to carry into execution its requirements which were de- 
 manded by the difficult injunction imposed upon them by 
 their Master. To enable them to perform the act of for- 
 giveness under peculiarly trying circumstances, they betake 
 themselves to prayer for an increase of faith; and with 
 good reason. 
 
 Faith is the principle of obedience to a Divine law. 
 For faith brings the authority of the Divine law to bear on 
 the mind, and it opens the apprehensions of the mind, at 
 the same time, to the demands of the Divine law. Joseph 
 is tempted to transgress, but repels successfully the tempta- 
 tion, and how? By reasoning thus: How can I do this 
 great wickedness and "sin against God?" Conscience kept 
 him from the snare that had been laid for him ; and con- 
 science did it because faith told him that the indulgence in 
 the act proposed would be regarded as an offence against 
 himself by God. Faith keeps thus always that terrible 
 
INCREASE OF FAITH. 275 
 
 phrase — "Sin against God" — written, so to si>eak, before 
 tlie eyes of the world; and so, keeps conscience before the 
 eyes of the world ; and so, keeps conscience at work, and 
 informed, and active, in pointing the eyes of the world to 
 it. It is its otHce peculiarly to make the Divine law saying: 
 "thou shall," or "thou shalt not do this thing," a fact. 
 And then, it sustains a similarly important relation to the 
 intellect. It acts as a purveyor of material upon which 
 that department of our nature depends, mainly, for its health 
 and vigor, as well as for its efficiency and enjoyment. 
 
 Faith opens the avenues of knowledge. It ushers the 
 soul into the contemplation of a new world — a vast and 
 glorious universe lying beyond and above the regions of 
 matter and sense. It feeds and stimulates the mind; it en- 
 riches and adorns it by imparting to it information of the 
 most interesting and salutary sort, and in the largest meas- 
 ure, and such as can be derived from no other source. It 
 is the telescope bringing to light orbs and systems such 
 as were never dreamed of by the mind, under the teach- 
 ings of the natural organs of observation. And it cor- 
 rects the apprehensions and judgments of the intellect in 
 other cases where it does not communicate knowledge of 
 something new. Many an object seen through the medium 
 of faith, puts on a different aspect entirely from that which 
 it wore when looked at through the medium of sense and rea- 
 son. Tribulation and temi)tation, for instance, what repulsive 
 ideas these words excite. Who would consent to them; who 
 would tolerate them, in the guise in which they appear to 
 an ordinary observer? And yet, we hear the Scriptures 
 speak of glorying in tribulation, and "counting all joy to 
 fall into temptation." This paradoxical state of mind as it 
 seems at first view, is the result of the demonstration which 
 faith makes, by which tribulation and temptation are seen 
 to be instruments of moral discipline, and purgation, which, 
 
276 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 tiltboush puinfnl in their operalion, and often abhorrent in 
 their outward incidents, are still most useful in their effects; 
 and are connected with issues so delightful and precious, 
 that the mind looks be3ond the means to the end, and can 
 be said even to glory in the one and to count all joy to 
 fall into the other. 
 
 And faith again acts as a prominent and potent guide 
 to the affections. They follow its attractions, or are forced 
 into exercise by its propulsion. "With the heart" (and the 
 heart is the seat of the atfections) "man believeth" is a 
 scriptural expression; and although it is not to be taken as 
 a metaphysical canon (for it was not given as such), yet 
 it states a truth which is almost universal, and invariable, 
 and so entitled to be called a metaphysical canon. Faith 
 and love in the common notions of mankind are so inter- 
 mingled that they seem to be but different sides of one 
 and the same sentiment. Where love is, faith is at the 
 bottom of it; and when faith is lost, love departs with 
 it. The diiection which any man's atfections will take, the 
 force and temperature of them, the class of objects upon 
 which they will fix themselves, will be determined by his faith. 
 The Bible says, "love not the world, nor the things of the 
 world." Again, "set your affections upon things above." 
 Here are two ditferent spheres and modes in which the 
 affections may be employed. None shall decide in which of 
 the two, in any particular case, they shall be employed. 
 It will be the individual's faith. According as the world 
 and things of the world, on the one side, and the things 
 above, on the other side, are looked at and estimated by 
 him as the facts which they are represented as being in 
 the Scriptures, will the result be whether he shall choose 
 and pursue the one or the other; that is, whether his affec- 
 tions shall be given to the one or the other. It is evident, 
 therefore, that we must assign to faith a very conspicuous 
 
INCREASE OF FAITII. 277 
 
 and a very influential position in the economy of rational 
 life. We may say of it that it holds the helm of the soul, 
 and acts as the arbiter of destiny. Its agency touches any 
 faculty, and covers any department of mans complicated 
 organism. It establishes tlie condition upon which the con- 
 science, the intellect, and the affections generally, perform 
 parts, and take their courses and characters. It, In fact, their 
 determines in such cases what the man is, and wliat he is 
 to be; for the conduct and its fruits are, after all, with 
 every man, but the expression ot what he really has believed. 
 The right kind of faith — that which the faith of religion 
 must be — such a faith as the Apostles prayed for in the 
 text, is, therefore, a matter to be desired, and to be counted 
 as superlatively excellent. Now, this is the first thought 
 brought to our attention by the text; and the second, seems 
 to be this, that faith, desirable and excellent as it is, es- 
 sential to religion, both in its inception and growth, as it 
 is, is not always possessed in an adequate measure by religi- 
 ous persons. The Apostles pray, "increase our faith.'' The}' 
 wanted more of it; not merely because it was in its nature 
 good and proficable, but because they needed more of it to 
 enable them to cany out the obligations which their religion 
 imposed upon them. They had not all the faith which the 
 exigencies of their position demanded. Some, they had, but 
 not enough; they come therefore with the petition, "increase 
 our faith." To the same effect, we hear the Savior sav to 
 them on another occasion, "O! ye of little faith," and 
 we read in the Scriptures of a "weak" faith, a "failing" 
 faith, a faith that is lacking, and a faith that is growino-; 
 expressions which all indicate the possibility and the fre- 
 quency of the fact of faith being possessed by men (who 
 professedl}' have it) in an imperfect degree. It is no un- 
 common thing, I suspect, for an increase of faith to be 
 needed by the followers of the Lord Jesus. 
 
278 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 The prayer of tlie disciples, presented when he was on 
 earth, is a prayer which his disciples, ever since his ascent 
 to heaven, have probably had just as much occasion to use. 
 A most impressive prediction that this would be the case, 
 he has left upon record, in that place in Luke's gospel, 
 where he asks the question, "When the son of man cometh, 
 shall he find faith on the earth? " If the works, according 
 to the rule laid down by St. James, are the proof of faith, 
 and the measure of faith,, then the works of Christians be- 
 ing taken into view at an}^ period, or at any spot, the con- 
 clusion would be adopted, it is to be feared, without a 
 moment's hesitation, that a defective faith was a fault 
 patent among them universally. Their works are not in all 
 points what faith would make them. More faith would 
 make better works — better both in quality and quantity. 
 And you have rightly explained the defects and incon- 
 sistencies, the blemishes and deformities, which you have 
 detected as you have cast your eye over the church, when 
 you have said, "there is too little faith in the church." 
 Take, for instance, those social duties which grow out 
 of the relations of man to his neighbor (of which an ex- 
 ample is given us in the context in the forgiving of the 
 trespasses of a brother), and how differently should we see 
 them discharged, if Christians had the faith which they 
 ought to have! "If thy brother trespass against thee in a 
 day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, 
 I repent, thou shalt forgive him." Is tins the rule which 
 we ordinarily see religious persons follow? 
 
 Are they as free from resentment and malice, and as full 
 of kindness and forbearance as this kind of conduct would 
 imply? Alas, no! Christians are seen to quarrel, to har- 
 bor anger, to indulge in revenge, to go to law, to chafe 
 passionately under a wrong, and contend fiercely for a right, 
 just like those persons who make no pretensions to being 
 
INCREASE OF FAITH. 279 
 
 Christians. Not all of tlieni of course; nor often perhaps to 
 the same extent, as these latter persons, hut still, too many of 
 them and to too great a degree, to be at all consistent with 
 the ditference which the Uospel teaches, there is between 
 the spirit of Christ and the spirit of the world. Faith has 
 failed to act here, or has lost its power, or these things 
 would not be so. Tiie rule of the Scriptures is plain; 
 and conscience adopts and applies the rule of Scripture 
 when it is perceived. If the rule had been permitted to 
 reach and inform the conscience, in other words, if it had 
 been seen and acknowledged intelligently to be the law of 
 God the conduct of the party would have been different. It 
 would have been what the Gospel requires. An increase of 
 faith would have made a bolder and a more enlightened 
 conscience. It would have brought the authority of God to 
 sustain more distinctly these social duties, and they would 
 have been performed. It would have given the force and 
 weight of a fact to the law of God, and it would have 
 had to be recognized by such treatment as is due to a fact. 
 It would not have been evaded or ignored. It would not 
 have been set aside or overlooked any more than a fact in 
 nature would. 
 
 Again we shall conclude that an imperfect faith exists 
 amongst Christians if we look at the extreme interest they 
 seem to take in the things of this world, and the faint im- 
 pression they seem to carry with them, of a future one, for 
 which this is designed to be preparatory. The Scriptures 
 draw a map, so to speak, of life which is peculiar to them- 
 selves. It contains a region, nay, the greater part of it, by 
 far, is occupied by a region which has no place at all in 
 the maps of life which uninspired authors have made. This 
 region is the eternity which stretches away beyond the hori- 
 zon of time. The Christian professes to see this eternity in 
 the map by which he is guided in his march through life as 
 
280 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 clearly as he does the countries which are present to him, 
 and through which he is actually passing. If this is the 
 fact, he Avill of course, compare the future with tiie present 
 as one fuct is compared with another, and he will assign 
 the due importance and value to each; and not act towards 
 either so as to contradict the existenr-e of the other. He 
 will not become such a spiritualist as to deny his relations 
 to the present w'orld, nor will he on the other hand, he- 
 come such a sensualist (if I may use the term) as to deny 
 his relations to an invisible eternity, and disregard the obli- 
 o-ations of looking after his well-being in the future world. 
 If eternity is nothing to him practically, if his course in 
 the present world is not in any degree modified or controlled 
 by it, it is because he really does not believe in any eterni- 
 tv. He has no faith in such a world. If he had, it would 
 tell upon his polic}', and treatment towards the present 
 world. Where Christians are seen absorbed with temporal 
 matters, with their whole heart filled with the things of 
 this life, its cares, its pleasures, its gains and its honors, it 
 is evidence, that their faith is defective. 
 
 The same thing is indicated by a want of zeal and 
 effort, on the part of religious people, for the diffusion of 
 religion, or what we ordinarily call the conversion of men. 
 The Scriptures affirm things of men in their natural condi- 
 tion which, if they be facts, are adapted to fill every 
 benevolent mind with solicitude for them; and to lead to a 
 most earnest endeavor to bring them out of their natural con 
 dition, into a better one. Now, faith makes these things 
 facts to those who possess it. They are credited by such 
 persons — received as true — -and they must have an effect 
 upon the feelings and actions of these persons. They must 
 make them sympathize with those whom their faith leads 
 them to regard as in the extreme of peril and misery, and 
 yearn over them with affectionate longing for their salva- 
 
INCREASE OF FAITH. 281 
 
 tion. And where such indications of true Christian phihin- 
 throphy are wanting the inference is reasonal)le and uu- 
 av()idal)le, that these persons are lacking; in faith. And 
 the same defect is made apparent again by the conduct of 
 religious parents in reference to their children. A very im- 
 portant branch of the stewardship with which God has en- 
 trusted his people consists in the nurture and tutelage of 
 children. A wide field of Christian duty lies in this direc- 
 tion. The education of a child is something with w^iich 
 faith necessarily has much to do. Faith will make many 
 things facts in regard to the child which will have an im- 
 portant bearing upon the system of training to which it is 
 subjected by the parent or teacher. It cannot be educated 
 for the world merely, when faith has demonstrated that it 
 was made principally for another one. It cannot be taught 
 that any selfish end is the object for which it is to strug- 
 gle and labor, when faith has made known the obligation 
 which binds it to live to the glory of God. And, when 
 persons professing to be believers in the Gospel are seen 
 rearing their families for this world, adjusting their educa- 
 tion exclusively to conditions and results connected with the 
 present state, as if they had no interest in any state be- 
 yond, we are forced to conclude that faith must have be- 
 come very weak, or ceased to act at all, in reference to 
 this great department of Christian duty. Now these signs 
 indicating an inadequate measure of faith in those who ex- 
 hibit them are common enough, to make us confess that 
 the occasion for the prayer of the text is one which is b}' 
 no means of rare occurrence. The disciples eveiy where may 
 come as the twelve did of old, and beg their Master to in- 
 crease their faith; for there is no question that there is a 
 demand for a vastly larger amount than exists in the church. 
 And this leads me to the third topic suggested by the 
 text; and this is that Faith is something which is bestowed 
 
2S2 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 by God in answer to prayer. It is one of those spiritual 
 gifts wbicli He, the sovereign author of grace, dispenses. 
 Wlien we have proved the excellency and desirableness of 
 it, and then have shown that, in point of fact, there is 
 a great want, or a great iusufliciency of faith existing in 
 the religious world, we have demonstrated the necessity of 
 a resort to some measures for an immediate increase of 
 faith. And here, the text tells ns what we must do, 
 and where we must look. Not denying the importance and 
 utility of all those efforts for the revival and invigoration 
 ol" faith which man himself can employ, we are taught that 
 it is from God absolutely, that we are still to expect and 
 seek the blessing. "Faith is the gift of God," distinctly 
 sajs the Apostle in his Epistle to the Ephesians, and in a 
 hundred other places in the New Testament it is spoken of 
 in the same way. Spite of all that man can do, without 
 the agency of the Holy Spirit, true faith can never be gen- 
 erated in the soul, for it is one of the fruits of the spirit 
 expressly named. There must be the same kind of applica- 
 tion made, and to the same source, as there was in the 
 case of the Apostles. The priiyer of the earnest heart long- 
 ing for the benefit, must bear the petition to the throne of 
 grace. "Lord increase our faith. "" This is a point of great 
 importance. God will be honored in the dispensation of 
 spiritual blessings. Man can have nothing which he does 
 not receive and for which he does not give God glory. 
 And he who strives to make the acquisition of any grace 
 independently of his aid will be disappointed. He opened 
 the heart of Lydia, that she believed the things reported to 
 her; and so, he must do with every other heart; not to the 
 exclusion of natural rational efforts on the part of the indi- 
 vidual; but in connection with such efforts put forth in the 
 spirit of humble self-distrust, which looks all the while 
 away from the effort, and relies upon the agency of Him 
 
INCREASE OF FAITH. 283 
 
 wbom prayer can reacli, and who has said "My grace is 
 suflicient for you." 
 
 And now let me sa}' in conclusion, no serious-minded 
 person among yon, who has gone far into the world, or 
 been associated long with it, can have failed to be painfully 
 impressed with the conviction, that there is a great and 
 general lack of faith amongst this generation. The age 
 through which we have been passing, has been emphatically 
 a carnal age. A bold, inquisitive, and irreverent age. It 
 has little docility or meekness. It is conceited and arro- 
 gant. It is secular and sordid. It is materialistic and 
 utilitarian. It is a busy age, one that is making the most 
 poss'ible of the present. So much indeed that it hardly 
 cares to hold on to the past at all; and has hardly leisure 
 to glance, even cursoril}' at the future. God's word is in 
 great danger of being laid aside, as an obsolete statute- 
 book in such an age. Eternity is liable to be classed with 
 the dreams of poets. Motives drawn from a future life, 
 from relations to God, from principles of abstract morality 
 and truth, are likely to be discarded as wire-drawn subtil- 
 lies, too intangible to be heeded by practical men. And 
 religion is likely to congeal into a frigid formalism, or evapo- 
 rate into an airy sentimcntalism, under the operation of the 
 sinister influences to which it is, on these accounts, exposed. 
 Our age wants faith; such faith as our ancestors had-^the 
 faith that makes little children of men, and so produces 
 candidates for the kingdom of God. We have all been liv- 
 ing too much under the sway of sense, under the power of 
 the flesh, and too little under the guidance of faith, and 
 under the control of the spirit. Look into your religious 
 condition, my Christian friends, and see if this is not so! 
 You want more faith, or else, let me tell you, you have far 
 too much. If 3^our faith is right, then j'ou want more of 
 it. For if the things it makes facts, are verities, then you 
 
284 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 do not realize, or believe them half enough. They are not 
 having half the influence over your characters and lives 
 that they are entitled to have. But if they are not veri- 
 ties, if your faith is a delusion, then I say, you have far 
 too much. It is a pity to suffer the tbraldom to error 
 (partial though it may be), which you are now enduring. 
 But this YOU do not admit. Your faith is not vain. The 
 Scriptures are the infallible word of God. They are the 
 world's great Ararat of Truth, where the soul reposes in 
 the only harbor which offers it anchorage, in which is 
 all else a fathomless ocean ; and they cannot be relinquished. 
 Your only wise course, your obvious duty, then, is to get 
 more faith, or to let the faith you nominally hold, become 
 an active, living principle, so that the fruit shall correspond 
 with the tree, or the man shall be the fit exemplar of his 
 creed. If your faith is worth having at all, you want more 
 of it. You want it for 3'onr own soul's sake, for the sake 
 of the generation whose convei'sion you are appointed to 
 seek, for the sake of your Father in Heaven, who has com- 
 manded you to let your light so shine in the world, that 
 others seeing your good works may be lead to glorify Him. 
 If the doctrines and precepts of your religion do not de- 
 serve to be embraced completely and lived up to, to the 
 letter, they had better be abandoned altogether, for they 
 are only a yoke upon your necks, to gall 3'ou at every mo- 
 tion you make. A Christian ever condemned by half his 
 creed is the most miserable of men; finding rest no where; 
 drawing confidence and satisfaction from neither world. 
 You want a faith that shall leave no article of your creed 
 to condemn you; which shall show that you are treating 
 everything which the creed contains as a fact, and giving 
 to it the attention and value which such a fact deserves. 
 And this faith, as the Apostle John says, will be your victory. 
 It will make you free and triumphant; rejoicing in the liber- 
 
INCREASE OP FAITH. 285 
 
 t}' of the Spirit of God. Let rue exhort you, lu}' Christian 
 frieuds, to uiake this prayer of the Apostles, your owu. 
 An increase of faith, a clearer sense of eternal and divine 
 things, a deeper feeling of God's presence, and the Savior's 
 love, a living light and power imparted to the Scriptures, 
 aud a conviction of the truth of the revelation shining in 
 the soul with the vividness and glory of sunlight; these are 
 benefits comprised in the blessings; and these are what we 
 must have, if we would not forfeit, like the slothful ser- 
 vant who buried his talent (the grace already bestowed), and 
 put ourselves in peril of sharing at last, the portion of 
 hypocrites and unbelievers. 
 
FINDING THE MESSIAS. 
 
 (SACRAMENTAL.) 
 
 JUNE 5, 185,2. 
 
 "He tirst lindeth his own brother, Simon, and saith unto 
 him, we have found the Messias, which is, beinu; interpreted, tlie 
 Christ."— John 1:41 
 
 IT is evident from this remark of Andrew to liis brother, 
 that it was a matter of common faith amongst the 
 Jews, that a personage whom they were accustomed to 
 conceive of under the title of the Messias, or "Anointed 
 one," was sometime to appear amongst them. From the 
 highest to the lowest, from the High Priest at Jerusalem to 
 the woman of Samaria, and the fishermen of Galilee, the 
 expectation of such a personage pervaded the nation. And 
 the coming of this Messias, they regarded as possible at 
 any time. Especially, we have reason to believe, about the 
 period of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, they were led to 
 look for him. Many, like Simeon, were "waiting for the 
 consolation of Israel," and were entertaining the confident 
 persuasion that "they should not see death before they had 
 seen the Lord Jesus Christ." Hence Andrew's positive an- 
 nouncement "we have found the Messias" does not seem to 
 have struck Peter's mind as anything strange or improbable. 
 The ideas which prevailed amongst the people as to who 
 this expected personage was to be, and what offices 
 he was to perform, were probably very various. They 
 all agreed in one point, however, that he was to be 
 a deliverer, or one who should redeem Israel from some 
 
 286 
 
FINDING THE MESSIAS. 287 
 
 or all of the evils, under wliicli tbey were sufi'ering. Amidst 
 the manifold wrongs anil miseries with which his na- 
 ture was burdened no Jew could fail to see something 
 which seemed to demand the presence of the Messias, and 
 which made his coming an object of eager anticipation. 
 Now, in a certain sense — and not a very equivocal one, 
 either — this i)08ture of the Jewish nation, in reference to 
 an expected Messias, was only the type of that in which 
 the whole world was standing. For, what does history teach 
 us but that the world has since been filled and agitated with 
 some great hope and expectation of a Redeemer who should 
 raise it out of all actual disorder and wretchedness into an 
 ideal state of blessedness and security? A mighty travail, 
 we may say, has been always going on in the earth, the 
 fruit of Avhich has been waited for as the earths Savior. 
 The Jews, taught and guided by the Scriptures, knew what 
 it was for which they were yearning, but tlu; (J entile nations, 
 unaided by such a light, j'earued in darkness, Un' a good 
 which they could not define. But, nevertheless, they did 
 yearn; and have always yearned. They have always been 
 dreaming amidst their burdens and chains, of a Divine Re- 
 deemer who should yet be given to them ; and they have 
 been ready to give uttei'ance to their faith whenever some 
 eminent benefactor has appeared amongst them, as the peo- 
 ple of Lystra did when they cried out when they saw a 
 cripple miraculously healed by Paul, "the Gods are come 
 down to us in the likeness of men." The vision of a 
 golden age to come, when the earth, relieved of its woes, 
 shall mirror in its happiness the beauty and bliss of heaven, 
 has never ceased to float before "their minds. And as sage 
 after sage, and hero after hero has arisen, they have gath- 
 ered around him, expecting that under his potent ministry 
 the auspcious f-poch would begin. "Men," says an emi- 
 nent English wri;ei', "have nowhere acquiesced in the world's 
 
Z»8 A PASTOR S VALEDICTORY. 
 
 evil or the world's law. Everywhere they have had a tra- 
 dition of a time when thej' were nearer to God than now, 
 — a confident hope of a time when they should be brought 
 nearer again. Through all the world's history has run the 
 hope of a redemption from the evil which oppresses it; and 
 this hope has continually linked itself on to some siugle 
 man. Weak and helpless in themselves, the generations of 
 men have evermore been looking after one in whom they 
 may find all which they seek vainly in themselves and in 
 those around them — redemption of the world's wrong — de- 
 livery from the world's yoke — vindication of the honor of 
 the race — souls of heroic stature, in whom all the features 
 that are imparted with a niggard hand unto others shall be 
 found gloriously and prodigally combined. Such, in almost 
 every religion, men have learned to look back to as having 
 already come — such we find that they are everywhere ex- 
 pecting as yet to appear." In a word, the world has 
 always been hoping and waiting for its Messias. And to 
 come down to man, as an individual, might not these same 
 terms and expressions be used,' truly, to describe his condi- 
 tion everywhere? Is he not always watching and long- 
 ing for something which shall give him what he needs and 
 make him what he ought to be? Is not his inquiry all his 
 life-long, "who will show us any good?" Who will be our 
 Messias? Our Prophet to teach us what our minds want to 
 know? Our Priest to deliver our conscience from their 
 sense of guilt and their fears? Our King to support us 
 and protect us from our enemies? There is no man who 
 takes an intelligent survey of his state naturally but is con- 
 scious of evils in it for which he needs relief. And the 
 soul, when its movements are rightly interpreted, is ever 
 struggling through one channel or one device or another, to 
 find this relief. Crippled and embarrassed and knowing it- 
 self to be wrong, and yet not knowing how to get right, 
 
FINDING THE MESSIAS. 289 
 
 feeling itself to be really fumishiug and yet not knowing 
 what will fully satisfy it — it is forever out of its ruin, 
 more or less, articulately lifting up its cry for a helper. 
 Like the sick man conscious that a mortal disorder is lurk- 
 ing and spreading in bis system — it ceaselessly implores the 
 presence of a physician, or spends the little strength it can 
 command in searching for the charm, or the herb, or the 
 spring by whose potent virtue it may expel its maladies and 
 gain health ami life. Now the explanation of this dissatis- 
 faction which keeps mankind struggling and aspiring after 
 a better state than that which they find themselves in, when we 
 come to the bottom of the matter is that they are estranged 
 from God. Their proper relations with him are interrupted; 
 and heuce they have lost the true centre of rest. The 
 world is out of order; and the soul out of order, just be- 
 cause it is standing out of its proper position and bearing 
 in regard to God — its bead, and source and support and 
 end. A wicked world must be a distrusted and unhappy 
 world; and a wicked soul must be aii uneasy, dissatisfied 
 soul. "There is no peace to the wicked," is the utterance 
 of Eternal Wisdom, and it has been written as a law upon 
 the pillars of the universe. For any world or an}^ soul to 
 be independent of God and yet be complete in itself and 
 in its condition, so as to be conscious of no want and no 
 loss, would be for God to admit another kingdom into bis 
 own, or to tolerate in his dominion a power that would be 
 foreign to himself. Loyalty to him, in his creatures, would 
 cease to be of any value since the rebel would stand on the 
 same ground as the faithful subject. Evil and good would 
 lose the distinction that ought to separate them. And thus 
 he who should say to evil, "be thou very good," would 
 find himself as wise in his choice and as sure of his happi- 
 ness, as the pure spirit who should keep himself as spotless 
 as Gabriel in bis virtue. The connection then between the 
 
290 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 apostticy of a world or soul from God, or in other words, 
 between sin in the world or soul, and dissatisfaction and 
 want and misery, is a fixed matter, an ordinance of God, 
 as certain and unchangeable, as his own sovereignty, or Ins 
 own holiness. And it is because of the rupture which 
 apostacy or sin has made between our world and each indi- 
 vidual man of our race and God — that this spectacle of 
 ceaseless unrest and dissatisfaction — and this cry for a de- 
 liverer, a helper to come and relieve what is disorderly 
 and heal what is diseased and suppl}' what is wanting is 
 eveirmore going up. The demand is for one who shall bind 
 together again the broken tie, who shall restore the severed 
 harmony between heaven and earth, — who shall upon the 
 basis of a new covenant bring God and man into fellowship 
 asain, so that the relations which at first subsisted between 
 them, when man was the godlike tenant of an Eden-world 
 and the Lord walked with him as friend with friend, shall 
 be re-established. And to do this work and meet this de- 
 mand, must be the office of the world's Messias. The per- 
 sonage, therefore, must be more than a sage, or hero; more 
 than a founder of a school of philosophy; more than a 
 reformer. lie must be one who can stand as a peacemaker 
 between God and man. He must Ijc one who comes from 
 God (for with God must originate the overtures of peace), 
 and who leads man to God; and he must be able to lay a 
 foundation by himself and in himself, upon which all the 
 conditions necessary to peace between God and man shall 
 appear fulfilled, and all the relations implied in a state of 
 peace between them shall be constituted and perpetuated. 
 He must be, in short, just what the term, Messias, signi- 
 fies — one anointed, or commissioned by God — and he must 
 be the world's prophet, to teach man his real condition and 
 need, and reveal to him the Divine methods by which it is 
 proposed to save him; and the world's priest, to remove 
 
FINDING THE MESSIAS. 291 
 
 man's guilt b}' an atonement of infinite value and so har- 
 monize justice with mercy in the work of salvation; and the 
 world's king, to control and govern all things for the suc- 
 cessful accomplishment of man's redemption and for the 
 complete assurance of the laboring and heavy-laden ones, 
 who go to him for rest. 
 
 And such a Mcssias, Andrew declared to Peter, had at 
 last api)eared in the world, in the person of Jesus. In him 
 he recognized tlie long needed and expected Deliverer, "the 
 desire of all nations" and all souls. And m^- friends, 
 what has he expressed in his confession but the language 
 and the faith of all God's people, since his day? The very 
 mark of the church, which gives it its peculiarity, and the 
 very central article of its creed and testimony is this, "we 
 have found the Messias. " Our wants have met the object 
 which relieves and satisfies them. Him, for whom man has 
 so long waited and prayed; him for whom the blind world 
 is yet crying with piteous lament, we have found. And 
 over the wide sighing of desire, "O that T knew where I 
 might find him," which comes up, almost like a wail, from 
 the burdened earth, we fling our joyful shout to "he has 
 come, we have found the Messias!" Yes, my Christian 
 brethren, in Jesus of Nazareth, we have found a Savior for 
 the world, and for that which, to each one of us, is the 
 most important thing in the world — our own souls. To us 
 deliverance from all the evils of sin presents itself, not as 
 a thing to be desired and hoped for, not as a poet's fancy 
 or a dreamer's dream, but as a veritable fact, an actual ad- 
 vent of a Redeemer, in whom all that men have imagined 
 or desired is more than fulfilled. To us Jesus is the 
 Savior. This man who we know (just as we know anything 
 else that depends upon testimony,) has come into and lived 
 upon our earth, we believe, was the Ijord's anointed, sent to 
 bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim libert}' to the cap- 
 
292 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 tives, and the opening of the prison doors to them that are 
 bound. In the work which be performed we see an ample 
 foundation laid for the restoration of harmony between God 
 and man; and around him, as a nucleus, we see the mate- 
 rial gathered which shall make a new creation of this dis- 
 ordered world, and construct out of the chaos that now 
 welters around us a new heaven and a new earth, wherein 
 shall dwell righteousness. There is no evil which sin has 
 introduced into man's nature or state for which we do not 
 see the remed}' in Christ. There needs but that a soul 
 should come fidly under the operation of the powers he has 
 brought into the world to make of it a redeemed soul, and 
 there needs but that a nation should do the same to make 
 of it a redeemed nation. We want, therefore, no better 
 Messias, and we are deaf to every preacher that announces 
 to us another Savior. While the cry, "to here, "or "to there," 
 is ever and anon ringing through the credulous crowds, as 
 some new pretender rises up and promises to heal the 
 world's woes — we calmly look back to Bethlehem and Cal- 
 vary and say, "the true Messias has been found — he was 
 born, and died and rose again and lives and reigns in 
 Jesus." And this, brethren, is our distinction as Christians, 
 that whilst others are still, through their unbelief, groping 
 in the dark and chasing the phantoms that cheat them with 
 vain promises of relief, we have been enabled to see and 
 know the Messias. He came to his own, but they received 
 him not. He is still in the world, but the world will uot 
 believe in him. And here is the most amazing and mourn- 
 ful demonstration of the wretchedness in which mankind 
 are involved, that they are so stupified and perverted by 
 sin, that they do not know the helper when he comes to 
 them. The Son of God is among them, and the evil spirits 
 flee before him everywhere, forsaking, at his command, the 
 poor victims of their cruelty; but the infatuated onlookers 
 
FINDIN(i THE MESSIAS. 293 
 
 refuse to believe it is the Son of God, and seem to sa}- 
 in their folly, "he hath Beelzebub, and by the prince of 
 the devils casteth he out devils." But we, with happier 
 visions, can discern in him, the tokens of a lieavenly birth. 
 To us he is full of grace and truth, the very brightness of 
 the Father's glory and the express image of his person. 
 And we receive him as the Divine Messias — the God in 
 Christ reconciling the world unto himself. And thus it is in 
 a general way, that we have found him. But to understand 
 properl}' the precious significance there is in this finding the 
 Messias, let me trace the fact out briefly into a few of its 
 details. 
 
 There are times in which our views of Jesus, the 
 Savior, have been peculiarly distinct epochs in our history, 
 when, in some new revelation, we have seemed to find him. 
 Such a tiiue is that when a sense of its sins has been 
 awakened in the soul, when the man has come to see him- 
 self in the hands of God's law, and to know himself to be 
 condemned b}' it in every article, and to feel something of 
 the terribleness Jhere is in the curse which it pronounces 
 upon the guilty. You have all substantially passed through 
 such a time, my lu'ethreu After slumbering, perhaps, for 
 long years, in strange blindness as to spiritual things, in- 
 sensible to the rights of God, and to your own obligations 
 as his creatures, you have, from some cause, been roused 
 to an intelligent apprehension of your character and condi- 
 tion. And the truth has flashed upon your mind, "I am 
 perishing as surely as there is a God and a judge!" The 
 foundations of 3'our former peace are broken up. Your sat- 
 isfaction with yourself is gone. Your relish for worldl}- 
 things is gone. Your ability to beguile yourself of your 
 inward distress by attention to outward business and 
 pleasure is gone. You have become conscious of a want, 
 a need which the world cannot supply, and of a deadly dis- 
 
294 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 ease which no creature's skill or power can cure. To re- 
 main as you are you know is to be lost, but what shall you 
 do to I)C saved? How g-et discliarged from tlie condennia- 
 tion which your own conscience and the law of (loil are 
 perpetually thundering in your eai's? Perhaps you try 
 3'ourself to heal up the breach between you and God, labor- 
 ing by something you can say, as excuse, or do, as merit, 
 to raise a footing upon which you may be able to stand 
 before God. But this is merely to deceive yourself, and 
 you are now too much awake, too sincere and earnest, to 
 consent to be deceived. You feel that every plea you 
 make is a nullity, and every struggle throws you back into 
 despair. At this juncture, when ever}' device of your own 
 has failed, and your darkness has reached its climax, cer- 
 tain passages in the Scriptures, which you have read a 
 thousand times, [)crhaps, and which, as matters of doctrine, 
 are as familiar to you as your alphabet, begin to come out 
 from the sacred page with unwonted distinctness, and to 
 glimmer with a light, and to fasten themselves with a new 
 power upon your heart. One sa3's, "there» is now no con- 
 demnation to them who are in Christ Jesus,"' and another, 
 "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotton 
 Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but 
 have everlasting life;" and another and another follow, pre- 
 senting different terms and the same truth, till* the Bible 
 seems to be all full of it, and a bright blazing revelation 
 of a Savior shines before you. The doctrine taught in 
 these passages, as I have said, is familiar, and has been 
 understood by you intellectually, all your lives, but now 
 you see something in it which does more than address the 
 intellect — something which invites the hope and trust and 
 love of the heart. You see in it a life and a power and a 
 mighty personality, capable of being an active helper to 
 you. Emerging from the doctrine as from a dissolving en- 
 
FINDING THE MESSIAS. 295 
 
 velope, Jesus stands before you. You see him now, not as 
 an abstraction, an idea, but as a real, present Deliverer, and 
 he speaks to you, and touches you, and takes your guilt 
 from you, and lifts you from the despair, into which you had 
 sunk, and says, "be of good cheer, I have redeemed thee. 
 Believe only, and thou shalt live forever." And you 
 do believe. Your whole soul goes out in trust, in this liv- 
 ing Savior. And as you trust your sense of danger de- 
 parts, and in Christ Jesus you rest, as securely as the in- 
 fant in its mother's arms. And thus you have found the 
 Messias! The Scriptures have been the field and he has 
 been the treasure hid within it, and you have found him, 
 by faith. You have found him, as "the Lamb of God," 
 to take away your sins, and as "the Lord your righteousness," 
 to procure your justification at the bar of heaven. Such a 
 discovery all true Christians, sometime and somehow, have 
 made. It may not have been a sudden discovery; they 
 ma}' not be able to say when, precisely, it has been made, 
 so gradually has the object opened upon the sight — but 
 without exception, the fact has occurred, that such a dis- 
 covery has been made. And it is a discovery which in- 
 volves in it a change from death to life. 
 
 This may be said to l)e the first finding of the Mes- 
 sias which occurs in the Christian history, but there are 
 others which follow it. You have sometimes felt your- 
 selves, my brethren, on the point of surrendering your fidel- 
 ity to God. Temptations have beset your soul with unusual 
 violence, and through carelessness or sloth, they have found 
 you oft' your guard. And while you parley with them, the 
 arguments which conscience urges to keep you from yield- 
 ing, grow weaker and weaker, and the sinful thing pro- 
 posed to you, presses its claims, with more and more 
 plausibility, until the result seems inevitai^le, that your 
 feet must slide. Or your minds, through a neglect of 
 
296 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 the proper precautions, have been suffered to fall into a 
 distrustful and disaffected state towai'ds God, so that 3'ou 
 question his faithfulness to his promises. You doubt his 
 love; you say it is a vain thing to serve hiiu, and you are 
 almost ready to throw yourself into the labyrinth of scepti- 
 cism or the abyss of unbelief. Or you have found that 
 the law of Christian consistency has imposed upon you 
 duties which have intimidated your weak spirit. This cross 
 is too heavy, or this mountain too higli, or this barrier too 
 strong, you have said, and you have stood trembling in the 
 way, where the}' have met you, until you have almost con- 
 cluded that the terms of discipleship were too severe, and 
 your treacherous heart has half entertained the thought 
 of quitting the self-denying road to heaven. You have, in 
 all such cases, felt yourself quivering on the verge of apos- 
 tacy. You are like the man who has thoughtlessly suffered 
 himself to be caught by a current that tlows over a cata- 
 ract. Roused suddenly to an intelligent apprehension of his 
 position, he finds himself plunging towards the brink, and, 
 paralyzed by the discover}', he feels himself powerless in 
 himself and infallibl}' doomed to destruction unless a helper 
 shall come to his relief. A moment's delay may seal his 
 ruin. Just such is your condition, and in just such a crisis, 
 planting himself in the midst of this on-rushing army of 
 temptations and doubts and discouragements, Jesus appears 
 to you, as he once appeared amidst the tumult of the 
 winds and waves when the disciples wei'e about to perish 
 on the sea of Galilee, and at his presence an instant re-ac- 
 tion in your mind occurs. There is a spontaneous cleaving 
 of the soul to him, and the heart that was just meditating 
 the fatal step that w'ould have separated it from God, 
 now kindles with all its first love, and breaks from the 
 grasp of its betrayers to find safety and assurance and 
 strength in reposing upon Christ. \"ou found the Deliverer 
 
FINDING TFIE MESSIAS. 297 
 
 wbom you needed in that hour of danger. His timel}' in- 
 terposition brongbt witli it the light and demonstration and 
 love, that exposed your tempters in their true guise and 
 dissipated your doubts and filled you with power and 
 courage to brave your hardest duties and keenest trials. 
 And so you were saved, and you have again to record how, 
 in a moment of peril, you found the Messias. 
 
 And akin to these, are those seasons of sorrow through 
 which you have passed. It has not been these traitorous 
 tendencies to renounce your loj'alty to God which you have 
 been exposed to at such seasons, so much as it has been the 
 disposition to sink down into a mute, motionless apathy; a 
 blank imbecility; a deathlike oblivion of all in the present 
 life that could engage your interest or incite you to exer- 
 tion or divert 3^ou from your woe. You have, most of you, 
 known times, w^ien such a disposition has been the predom- 
 inant one in your hearts. When the charm of life had 
 fled; when all beauty had faded from the sky; when exist- 
 ence had become a burden, and but one spot drew to it a 
 plea.sant longing, and that spot was, the grave. You were 
 a mourner, bereaved of one whose presence had been the 
 joy of your being, or weeping like Rachel for the children 
 that were not, and you walked through a desolate world, 
 with your form robed in sackcloth and with ashes on your 
 head. Human friends poured their consolations into your ears, 
 but the heart within you was stone, and their words could 
 not (juicken it. Your soul was with the lost one, and hu- 
 man friends had no power to draw it from the sepulchre. 
 But in this dreary wilderness where you were wandering, 
 Jesus met 3-ou, and like Martha and Mary, when they heard 
 that the Master had come, j-ou rushed instinctively to his 
 feet, and his kind voice broke the gloomy spell 1)y which 
 you were bound; and when he said to you, "beloved think 
 it not strange concerning this fiery trial that has tried 
 
298 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 you," you saw that it was no strange thing that had 
 happened unto yon, and when he reminded you, "the 
 cup that my Father gave me did I not drink it," you 
 found that it was possible even for 3'ou to drink a bitter 
 cup from your Father's hand ; and when he bade you — cease 
 mourning for the dead's sake, and go and be cheerful and 
 useful and hoi}' for his sake, you could not deny him, but 
 wiped away your tears, and came back with a tranquilized 
 spirit to the scene of your duties. And as often as in 
 after years, you have recalled those days of sorrow, you 
 have had to confess, "there I found the Messias!" 
 
 These illustrations may suffice to explain how it is that 
 this fact, which I have alleged to be the peculiar privilege 
 of Christians, exhibits itself and repeats itself, continually, 
 through the course of his historj'. And we know that this 
 same fact will characterize his experience to the end. In 
 that great crisis even when everything else, which man 
 values, must be resigned and lost, I mean death, only, a 
 new and perhaps, the best and truest discovery of the Mes- 
 sias will be made. It was so with Stephen when he died, 
 for the very heavens were opened to show him Jesus, stand- 
 ing at the right hand of God ; and David anticipated that 
 it would be so when he should die, for he declared, 
 "though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, 
 I will fear no evil, for thou art with me, thy rod and thy 
 staff they comfort me. " 
 
 But how imperfect must be all prior discoveries of this 
 kind, to that which awaits the Saint, as he enters heaven! 
 There "we shall see him as he is," writes the Apostle, and 
 in the assurance of this, he declares it to be his desire to 
 depart and be with Christ. Here, it is by faith after all, 
 and through a glass, darkly, that we get our interviews 
 with the Lord; but in heaven, it will be face to face. And 
 then, when every impediment and film that clouds our vis- 
 
FINDING THE MESSIAS. 299 
 
 ion uow, is gone forever, then, as never before, we shall 
 know the precious meaning of the phrase, we have found 
 the Mossias. 
 
 But, while we await this final discovery, let us gladly 
 avail ourselves, brethren, of every means by which we may 
 be brought into communion with Christ. As he has com- 
 manded us to "abide in him," it becomes us to seek him 
 by a continual process. And so manifold are our needs 
 and so all-sufficient his ability to supply them, that we may 
 be sure we shall never find him without finding a blessing. 
 Some of his disciples found him once, in the breaking of 
 bread, and so we want to find him to day, to know him 
 and see him and to appropriate him as our Messias, in the 
 materials of that sacramental feast, which we are to cele- 
 brate in remembrance of him. I trust we shall not be dis- 
 appointed. If we seek, we have his promise that we shall 
 find; and if, with hearts prepared by faith and love, we 
 come to his table and study anew through the teachings of 
 its simple emblems the great mystery of our redemption, it 
 may be the privilege of us all to record as our happ}^ ex- 
 perience that "we have found the Messias!'' 
 
ENDURINGNESS OF GOD'S MERCY, 
 
 JANUARY 6, 1861. 
 
 'For His luercv eudureth forever." — Psalm 130:1. 
 
 THIS inspiring refrain, which closes each verse of this 
 Psahu, may be regarded, from this fact, and from its 
 
 recurrence frequently in other places in the Old Testa- 
 ment, as a sort of national motto among the Israelites. It 
 was a legend emblazoned on their banners,- expressive, at 
 the same time, of the faith and the gratitude of the pious 
 Jew. It enunciates one of the precious truths of revelation, 
 which had been placed in the custody of God's ancient peo- 
 ple, and which still forms a part of the heritage of his 
 church. It includes the twofold idea of Mercy, as an at- 
 tribute of God, and of his possessing it in an inexhaustible 
 degree. This latter fact is to be emphasized. It consti- 
 tutes the completing element in all good thhigs. It is the 
 golden clasp or circlet which holds in their place a cluster 
 of gems. It assures us, not only that mere}' belongs to 
 God, but that it belongs to him inseparabl}', and without 
 variableness or exhaustion. 
 
 The everlasting enduringness of God's mercy is, there- 
 fore, the theme which is set before us Other attributes of 
 God are said to possess the same quality (as his righteous- 
 ness, and truth), but the nature of the (quality, as it exists 
 in these other attributes, is altogether different, so far as 
 man is concerned, from that which belongs to it, in the 
 case of mercy. For mercy is the part or side of Deity, so 
 
 300 
 
ENDURING NESS OF OOD's MERCY. 301 
 
 to speak, through which alone man can hold contact and 
 comiuunicalion with God. Mercy is the only point at whicli 
 man can gain access to Him, and draw benefit from all his 
 other attributes. Take aw.oy his mercy and the nature of 
 God, .so far as man is concerned, becomes a high and 
 an unapproachable castle, entrenched in impregnable ram- 
 parts, and barred at every portal. But let mercy be re- 
 vealed, and that castle becomes an open refuge, to which 
 man may resort, and within whose walls he maj' find safety; 
 and let that mercy be proclaimed, as in the text, to be an 
 everlasting mercy, and then this castle becomes not only an 
 open and a safe, but an imperishaV)le and indestructable, 
 refuge— a dwelling-place for the people of God in all gen- 
 erations — a shelter that shall never fail, being destined to 
 survive both the waste of ages and the dissolution of 
 nature. This grand and inspiring truth I propose for your 
 consideration to-day. There is infinite comfort in it. It 
 comes to us like the angels' song, to the shepherds at Beth- 
 lehem; or like the notes of a silver bell ringing out sweetly 
 over the clang and tumult of the world. 
 
 The watcher of the heavens at night will soon have 
 discovered that the vast concourse of stars that stud the 
 firmament, are in motion. One after another of these shin- 
 ing points, and clusters, will drop towards the Western 
 horizon, and disappear from view, while others climbing 
 their wslj up the concave from the East, will follow their 
 predecessors in their ceaseless revolution. But in this gen- 
 eral change, one tranquil orb will retain its position. The 
 pole-star knows no variation. There it stands forever, the 
 immovable sentinel, guarding the spot, where the axis of 
 the celestial globe is forever turning. And like this in its 
 imraobilitv, is the mysterious little instrument which, at 
 whatever spot on earth you place it, points to the pole-star. 
 Guided by the uiierring indications of the magnetic needle. 
 
302 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 the pilot will track his way over the world, treading its 
 channels and its seas, and touching at its harbors with the 
 precision with which he would have gone through the 
 streets and allies of his native town, and called at the 
 doors of his familiar friends. Amidst the ever-varying in- 
 cidents of a voyage, in calm or in storm, in darkness or in 
 .light, in every change of climate or atmosphere, under 
 every parallel of latitude and longitude — there stands the 
 faithful monitor, forever instinct with its strange intelli- 
 gence, unwavering, unceasing in its ministry; and there it 
 will stand, true to its trust, till the last plank is torn from 
 beneath it, and it goes down with the foundering hulk to 
 the caverns of the deep. Like these everlasting things is 
 the mercy of God, in this changeful world of ours. The 
 affairs of the world are ever shifting, and ever moving, like 
 the ever rolling orbs of the sky; and the incidents in the 
 life of each individual, are undergoing perpetual mutations, 
 like those which attend the ship at sea; but, amidst all 
 these revolutions and vicissitudes, the mercy of God, firm as 
 the pole-star, and steady as the mariner's needle, "endureth 
 forever." How pleased to find perpetuity just here! The 
 language of human history is that all things are subject to 
 change and decay. The clouds above us are not more in- 
 constant than the scenes and objects around us. No year 
 leaves us, at its close, in the position in which it found us, 
 at its opening. Childhood is springing up into manhood, 
 manhood is striding on to old age, and old age is creeping 
 downward to the tomb. The wheel of fortune, as we call 
 it, or the cycle of Providence, as it would be better named, 
 is forever rolling round, and, in its restless rotation chang- 
 ing the place and the condition of everything. The high 
 of to-day are the low of to-morrow; and the low of to-day, 
 the high of to-morrow. The strong become the weak, and 
 the weak the strong. The poor grow rich, and the rich 
 
ENDURINGNESS OP GOD'S MERCY. 303 
 
 lapse into poverty. Friends wax cold towards each other. 
 The ivy on the grave stone succeeds the garland on the 
 nuptial altar. Love, that yearned in rapture over the first 
 horn's cradle, is turned into heart-broken anguish as it lays 
 its treasure in the infant's grave. The track of time is 
 crowded with sepulchral monuments. It is like the passage 
 through which the traveler enters Pompeii, the city of the 
 dead, a street of tombs. Nations become extinct, and 
 strangers, after a thousand years, dig up their relics. Dy- 
 nasties rise and fall. Customs, languages, religions, waste 
 away and disappear. The present is built upon the ruins 
 of the past; and the future shall be built upon the ruins 
 of the present. Now, in contrast with these dirge-like notes 
 of history, how pleasant to hear the jubilant tones of reve- 
 lation proclaiming, "the mei'cy of God endureth forever!" 
 Amidst these tablets in the great cemetery of time, carved 
 each with a broken rose-branch, or the reversed torch — 
 emblems of decay and extinction — how pleasant to see this 
 heaven-wrought column rearing itself, radiant in its purity, 
 bearing all over it the tracery of the immortal amaranth, 
 and lifting from its top the image of an undying flame! 
 This object shall be my theme to-day; and the few thoughts 
 that we can give to it, and lessons we may learn from it, 
 will not be, I trust, without solace and profit to some of 
 you. 
 
 "His mercy endureth forever."' We will take the word 
 mercy, in its widest and most obvious sense, as meaning 
 the Divine good-will, or benevolence in every form ; and the 
 thing affirmed of it, is, that it is never suspended, never 
 interrupted, never exhausted. Then, we are authorized to 
 say, it has attended us through life, thus far, and will at- 
 tend us to the end. The forever, of the text, includes in 
 it, of course, th: t portion of t'mc which has been occupied 
 with the existence of each one of us. It involves the idea, 
 
304 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 that the mere}' of God has been concerned in ordering our 
 lot, thus far, in the progress of life. The mercy of God 
 did not cease when you and I were born. It smiled upon 
 us when we first opened our eyes lo the light, and it has 
 continued to smile upon us from that hour to this. Our 
 existence is evidence of this fact. Let any one of you, 
 from the youngest to the oldest, take into view his age, 
 and then consider the countless conditions of every kind, 
 that have had to be provided for, and satisfied in all his 
 previous lifetime, in order that such a result as this, that 
 he should be found seated in such circumstances as you 
 are in, in this house of Gfod this morning, should be 
 brought about, and then say, if anything but the care, the 
 supervision and the power of a Divine Benefactor could 
 have brought about such a result? Who can say that you 
 will be here, as comfortable and as happ}' as you ai'e to- 
 day, a year hence? No one dare answer. And why? Ah, 
 we know that that event depends upon a thousand contin- 
 gencies, which we can neither foresee nor control. If this 
 event does happen, it will be because someone, wiser and 
 more efficient than we, has directed our steps. It will be 
 because the mere}' of God has continued to spread over us 
 its guardian wing, and lend to us its helping hand. And 
 what will be needed to bring us to any point which we 
 may set before us in the future, has been needed to bring 
 us to any point that we have reached in the past, or present. 
 You are here to-day, because, the mere}" of God, which angel- 
 like led 3'ou to your mother's knee, to bend in childhood's 
 prayer, has followed you through all the intervening space, 
 and brought you, this morning, a man or a woman it may be 
 of forty or fifty or three score years, to bend as a worshipper 
 in Jehovah's sanctuary. In the chain of Providential blessings, 
 which has run parallel with the chain of your life, and 
 which is proved to be in existence still by the shining 
 
ENDURINGNESS OF GOD's MERCY. 305 
 
 liuks, tthich tliis very day's privileges exhibit, I would tiud 
 one token of the enduringness of the mercy of God. 
 
 But this may be regarded as a too limited view of the 
 matter, as an argument drawn from facts, which might be 
 exceptional in the case of the favored few, aud not univer- 
 sal. Consider, then, these features in Providence which do 
 certainly belong to the genend spirit and administration of 
 it. First, that the nature of man is such, and the relation 
 of external things to this nature is such, that enjoyment is 
 capable of being found under almost all conceivable circum- 
 stances. You may change the position of an individual, to 
 an indefinite degree, and it may be found upon a fair ex- 
 amination that you have not altered the amount of his hap- 
 piness one iota. Kich men have been plunged into a state 
 of poverty, and have found, to their surprise, after the 
 confusion of the first shock was over, that there was as 
 much peace ami serenity in their hearts, as they have ever 
 known in the days of their abundance. I have seen an in- 
 valid, or a cripple, manifest a degree of cheerfulness, in 
 the chamber to which he was hopelessly confined, to which 
 few healthy persons on the street could lay claim. The ex- 
 planation of such facts is that happiness is not so much 
 the result of outward circumstances as we suppose. The 
 mechanism which produces it, the alchemy which makes the 
 gold of life, lies within the man himself, not in the world 
 outside of him. One man will draw i)leasure, from a pur- 
 suit or an object, which would be a perfect eye-sore and 
 torture to another. Nay, the same man will learn to en- 
 joy, that which at a former period of his life he would have 
 loathed. The reason is, that the taste and capacity for en- 
 joyment is different in different individuals, or different at 
 different times, in the same individual. Now, this is an 
 arrangement of God, the architect of the soul, and of the 
 scene in which the soul is at present called to act, and the 
 
306 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 effect of it, is obviously, if men will not wilfully prevent 
 it, to make happiness independent of external circumstances, 
 to keep the current of Divine Mere}' running along the 
 track of a man's life, without material change or diminu- 
 tion, no matter whether that track leads through the dark 
 places or the bright ones, the high grounds or the low ones, 
 of earth. The thirsty spirit, if it will only look within and 
 not without for the fountain, may fill its cup and quaff the 
 water of joy, in every possible position. I know that it 
 takes the rod of Christian faith sometimes, to bring the 
 supply, as it did in the case of the Israelites, for the desert 
 contains no springs, and the rock will not open its treas- 
 ures, of its own accord; but if men will not use the rod of 
 Christian faith, which can bring the water from the rock, 
 this is their folly and their fault. It does not alter the 
 fact that the water is there, and that God has made it ac- 
 cessible to all right-minded seekers. His mercy endures, 
 though men in their infatuation refuse to apply to it, and 
 choose to suffer where they might rejoice. 
 
 Then, another feature to be noticed in Providence is 
 that forms of pleasure are to be found in the world, adapted 
 to the wants of man's nature, in all the successive phases 
 of its development. No stage of life can be found, that 
 does not have its appropriate allotment of joys. Childhood, 
 youth, manhood and old age have reached their peculiar 
 sources of happmess. The opening tlower and the swelling 
 bud, the hum of the bee and the song of the bird, which 
 make the springtime so beautiful, disappear, as the sum- 
 mer's heat comes on. But nature replaces them with other 
 gifts. x\nd so when these are exhausted, the autumn has 
 its harvests to be garnered; and, when these are all reaped, 
 and the wmter's frost has chilled the air and blighted the 
 earth, there is still the warmth of the fireside, and the 
 glow of family intercourse, to make the sunshine of the in- 
 
ENDURINGNESS OF GOD'S MERCY. 307 
 
 door world counteract tlie gloom of the outdoor one. And 
 so in life, God's mercy has provided for the old man as 
 well as the child, and, the purest, serenest pictures of hap- 
 piness I have ever seen on earth, I think, have been found 
 amongst the aged. Outlasting their generation, it may be, 
 and almost everything else familiar in the world, there they 
 stand, like the last solitary column of some spacious tem- 
 ple, which time and violence have crumbled to dust; and, 
 it might be thought, that their sense of loneliness, as the 
 crowd of strangers that know them not, rushes by them, 
 would be absolutely overwhelming; but, no, they are not 
 alone; one thing endures which belonged to other days, 
 one thing, which has gone with them through their long 
 pilgrimage, one thing which has survived the death of kin- 
 dred, the changes of fortune and the revolutions of society, 
 one friend stands by them yet, and that is the mercy of 
 God. Inexhaustible in its resources, that can keep the coal 
 glowing in the embers of life, that can make the fountain 
 bubble up on the strand of time, that can make the tree 
 bring forth fruit in old age, that can make the solitude of 
 night bright with stars and vocal with melodies of heaven. 
 Adapting its provisions, thus, to the wants of man, under 
 all stages of his experience, the mercy of the Lord ma}^ be 
 said to endure forever. These features in the providence 
 of God, I conceive, warrant the Psalmist fully, in announcing 
 the doctrine of the text. 
 
 And now, as a second view of the subject, I remark, 
 that 'this enduringncss of the Divine Mercy appears in the 
 perpetual recurrence of the tokens of it, after temporary 
 and occasional seasons of suspension or obscuration. It 
 sometimes does, to our eyes, seem to disappear. There are 
 periods in life so dark, that the poor oppressed spirit loses 
 the power, and even the disposition, to look for light; and 
 the grave, probably, presents itself as the only place of es- 
 
308 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 cape from the crusbing incubus of sorrow. Many of you 
 have passed through such periods. When you "were in them, 
 you saw no end to them. But there was an end to them. 
 The morning broke again, upon the horror of the night. 
 Like the stream that has wandered into the cavern's mouth 
 and fallen into a subterranean channel, and so flows on un- 
 seen for miles until some change in the level of the soil, 
 and some o[)ening in the rocks, lets it out to daylight 
 again, the mercy of God, that for a small moment forsook, 
 or seemed to forsake you, has leaped up again from the 
 ground, beside your path, and niade the scene all verdant 
 and cheerful again. You thought it had vanished like 
 ever3'thing else, in which you had confided; but you were 
 mistaken. It endureth forever. One of the peculiarities 
 of that grandest of all mountain-peaks, Mt. Blanc, "the 
 monarch of the Ali)s," is that from its altitude, and from 
 the whiteness of its eternal draper}' of snow, it may be 
 seen, on a clear day, from almost any point of the compass 
 within a radius of fifty miles, and when seen it always ap- 
 pears near. When the visitor leaves it, it seems as if it 
 pursues him. It will not consent to be left behind. You 
 may ride for a day, putting league upon league between 
 you and it, au<l yet, look back when you will, there, prob- 
 ably, it will stand, with its vestal bosom upon the sky, 
 looking as if it were bending over you. You pass around 
 some rock}^ ridge, and you miss it, and say to yourself, 
 "now, at last, it has gone;" but, anon, you make another 
 turn, and gazing out upon the scene, there it stands again, 
 in all its glory, with its fleecy slopes all defined, and its 
 snow- crowned summit piercing the clouds. And that is like 
 the mercy of God. It will not leave you. It disappears 
 only to reappear. You say farewell to it, and droop your 
 head in sorrow^, but you lift your eyes, and there it is 
 again as bright and beneficent as ever. Y^'ou lose it as the 
 
ENDURINGNESS OF GOD'S MERCY. 309 
 
 tall cliff shoots up along your roadside, or the close ravine 
 hides yon in its gorge; but be patient, till your winding 
 path mounts over the cliff or through the ravine, and you 
 shall see it again hovering over you with its earthly beaut}', 
 and breathing its benedictions upon your onward way. So 
 it came back to Jacob, so it came back to Job, so it came 
 back to Elijah, so it has come back to God's children, 
 great and small, in every age, all the world over, for it 
 endureth forever. 
 
 But, be3-ond this fact, that the mercy of God exhibits 
 this law of Incurrence, it deserves to be noticed that even 
 in those passages of life, where the continuity of it seems 
 to be broken, the interruption is apparent, rather than real. 
 If God afflicts, he himself tells us that he does not do so 
 willingly. The motive that constrains him to do so, is that 
 he may do good, and the importance of the end more than, 
 compensates for the painfulness of the means. The suffer- 
 ing which has overtaken 3'ou, may be the instrument, and 
 the onl}' effectual one, of keeping you from a worse and an 
 incurable form of suffering, towards which you are hasten- 
 ing. Or, the chastisement that has arrested and humbled 
 you, may teach you the depravity of your heart, and the 
 waywardness of your conduct, and bring you out of your 
 bondage to sin and convert you into a loyal servant of 
 God. Or, your troubles and sorrows may be the means of 
 helping others to virtue and happiness. l*iety, upholding 
 the saint under calamities, and showing its divine origin by 
 the superhuman grace it imparts to him, may strengthen 
 the faith of other weak-hearted believers, or ma}' force the 
 the distrust of unbelievers to give way before its convincing 
 demonstrations. Or, vice, suffering its retributive pains, if 
 it do not have the effect to reform the subject of them, is 
 nevertheless a spectacle which may insure the salvation of 
 others. The wreck on the rocks may warn other vessels of 
 
310 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 the dangerous place. The transgressor, in his degredation 
 and misery, may cause the minds of others, liable to the 
 same sins, to learn with tirael}' wisdom, that the way of 
 the transgressor is hard. In short, admitting the impossi- 
 bility of showing how the silver thread of mercy runs 
 through every particular case of human sorrow, we may 
 safely affirm the general proposition, that the effect of sor- 
 row in the world is largely to subserve the best interests of 
 the world; and that constituted as man is, were it not for 
 the offices of sorrow, his lot on earth would exhibit far 
 fewer traces of the Divine Mercy than it now does, so that 
 in the very face of those things which seem to contradict 
 it, we may still proclaim the doctrine, "his mercy endureth 
 forever."' 
 
 A third point, intimated in the text, is that the mercy 
 of God is maintained in exercise, notwithstanding numerous 
 obstructions to its exercise, which are erected by man him- 
 self. In no sense does the enduringness of it come out to 
 view more strikingly, probably, than in this, that in spite 
 of all man's abuses of God's mercy, in spite of his pride 
 and willfulness, his I'ecklessness and presumption, his im- 
 penitence and unbelief, God is merciful to him still. The 
 current must be very deep, and the tide very strong, where 
 the stream can continue to flow on, over such accumulated 
 and powerful barriers. And yet it does flow on, year after 
 year, over the sins of youth, and middle age, and even, 
 sometimes, over those of extreme old age; for sometimes the 
 mercy of God is seen bearing even the hoary headed sinner 
 into the arms of Jesus, and landing him as a trophy of 
 grace in the kingdom of heaven. The Apostle Paul makes 
 use of this view of the mercy of God to expostulate with 
 the Romans. "Despisest thou," he says, "the riches of 
 his goodness and forbearance and long suffering, not know- 
 ing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?" and 
 
ENDURINGNESS OF OOT>'S iMERCY. 311 
 
 the Apostle Peter sets it before his readers in tlie same 
 light. "The Lord is not slack concerning his promises," 
 he says, "as some men count slackness, but is long-suffer- 
 ing to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that 
 all should come to repentance." Here is an inspired com- 
 mentary upon the text — God waiting to be gracious to care- 
 less, trifling, contemptuous sinners; God exhibiting forbear- 
 ance and long-sufl'ering towards hardened, arrogant, wicked 
 men. 0, surely if all other proof were wanting, this ought 
 to be enough, to put it above all doubt or dispute, that 
 "the mercy of God endnreth forever." 
 
 But the scope of the text may lead us to still higher 
 ground. We ma}-^ take the word forever as embracing the 
 lifetime of nations, and the world itself. With the history 
 of the ages that have passed over our earth, and the 
 prophetic programme of those which are yet to pass over it, 
 we may say, giving this large latitude to the extent of it, 
 his mercy endureth forever. Disasters innumerable we 
 grant have attended the world's progress. Battlefields have 
 drenched it with human blood. The car of time has sone 
 crushing along its way, demolishing cities, governments and 
 nations in its march, but the effect of this fact, ought to 
 be to convince us, that there are deadly elements enough 
 in the world, to have destroyed it a thousand times over, 
 had there not been such an agent as the mercy of God at 
 work in it, restraining and guiding these elements and 
 overruling their operations for the conservation of the spe- 
 cies, and the accomplishment of the ends for which the 
 world was made. The mercy of God, the Bible tells us, 
 had a verj' special work to do in this world of ours. It 
 was to restore a revolted race to loyalty to their Lord. 
 The scheme of redemption is the map of human history. 
 The tissue of events which furnishes the matter of human 
 history is attached in every part of it to this scheme, and 
 
312 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 is but the development of the design conceived in that 
 scheme. This is the testimon}' of Revelation on the sub- 
 ject. This is the clue which it gives us to the labyrinth of 
 human history. All things from the beginning have been 
 under Divine direction, and have been moving on towards 
 the consummation contemplated in the scheme of redeeming 
 mercy. The great tide in the affairs of men to whose sway 
 all minor forces have been obedient is that power of gravi- 
 tation by which the world is to be drawn to the kingdom 
 of Christ. Mercy set that power to work, and has kept it 
 working through all the confusion of the ages; and is keep- 
 ing it working still. In God's own way, very differently, 
 certainly, from man's way (which is just what reason would 
 lead us to expect), the world has been rolling on towards 
 the point set before it, in the scheme of redemption. Polit- 
 ical events have been the slow but mighty machinery em- 
 ployed in clearing a highway for our God. Kings, who 
 knew it not, were the agents of Inimanuel, in planting the 
 foundation of his throne. Philosophers, legislators and 
 warriors have been blindly breaking up the ground that was 
 to receive the seed, and bear the harvests of Christianit3^ 
 True civilization, the offspring of true religion, has been 
 extending its domain over the earth, embodying in its be- 
 nign institutions the spirit of Divine Mercy. And its 
 domain is destined to spread as the outgrowth of Christ's 
 spiritual kingdom, until, like that kingdom, it achieves its 
 perfect triumph in the spectacle of a world redeemed to 
 God. The purpose of God to redeem the world to himself 
 is the staple of all human history. It has never been for- 
 gotten or abandoned; and it never will be, for his merey 
 endureth forever. 
 
 And now, one thought more, is all that we shall have 
 time to glance at. The forever of the text, including all 
 time, stretches itself beyond the bounds of time. When 
 
EXDURIiVGNESS OF OOD's MERCY. 313 
 
 we are done with time it teacbes us we are not done with 
 the mere}' of God. No migbt}' angel, like that one St. 
 John saw in the Apocalypse announcing the end of time, 
 shall ever come to make the doleful proclamation, "the 
 mere}' of the Lord shall be no longer." These years which 
 have so mercifully spared us, have been the messengers of 
 doom to others. All over the world they dot the earth 
 with new-made graves, as they pass. . They are even whis- 
 pering to us as they glide by, "the fashion of this world 
 passeth away."' They show us the rich man leaving his 
 wealtii, the king resigning his crown, the wife parting from 
 her husband, the child severed from its parents. The}' re- 
 mind us, that all that we now love we hold by a transient 
 tic, and that soon, stripped of all, we must lie down in the 
 grave naked as we were born into the world. But blessed 
 be God, there is one thing of which death cannot rob us, 
 one thing which we can carry with us when we launch 
 from the shores of time, and that is, the mercy of God. 
 That will go with us over the dark abyss, and that will 
 find for us a home in the fair city, the bright land far 
 away, where we shall behold the King in his beauty. The 
 mercy that has never forsaken the poor wanderer on earth, 
 will not forsake him when he leaves this realm of vault}' 
 and sin, but has prepared for him a heaven of endless joy. 
 And there its blessed work is to be completed and crowned. 
 "Vessels of mercy" is the term which the Apostle uses to 
 describe the redeemed children of God, while on earth, 
 "vessels of mercy, prepared unto glory;" and God will set 
 them at last amidst his glory, as ornaments in his royal 
 palace, for his mercy endureth forever. Its ministry is to 
 last as long as God himself lasts, and eternity will be em- 
 ployed in unfolding the results of the work of mercy begun 
 on earth, in the regeneration and sanctification of the be- 
 lieving soul. For mercy, be it ever remembered, has no 
 
314 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 place prepared in heaven for any soul that has not been 
 l)orn into the kingdom of God, here on earth. Mercy woukl 
 cease to be mercy, were she to cease to make a distinction 
 between the friends and the enemies of God. Mercy would 
 forget herself did she not bar the gates of glory against 
 those who have used life in rejecting Christ, and refusing 
 to have liim reign over them. Mercy can only say of them, 
 "let them go to their own place." The filthy must be 
 filthy still, and mercy with a flaming sword guards the por- 
 tals of the holy cit}' from the pollution of their presence; 
 for is it not written b}' mercj's own hand, "there shall in 
 nO wise enter there anything that defileth, neither whatso- 
 ever worketh abomination or maketh a lie, but they which 
 are written in the Lamb's book of life." And so even in 
 the doom of the lost, no less than in the eternal blessed- 
 ness of the righteous, it will be true that merey endureth 
 forever. 
 
 And now, my friends, I propose this text to you, as a 
 sort of motto, for 3'ou to take with you into the unknown 
 sequel of your lives. It presents to j'ou a guide and com- 
 forter, which I know you will need. The mercy of the 
 Lord, unwasted by the lapse of time, u^l;minished by the 
 drafts which have been made upon it in the past, oflfers to 
 you in all their efficacy its offices and its blessings. Ah, 
 what a poor boon would life be without them! And yet 
 how terrible an alternative would death be without them. To 
 enjoy those offices and blessings in their true sense you must 
 seek the mercy of God. as it is offered to you through Jesus 
 Christ. It is the mercy of the covenant that you need, the 
 mercy which flows from Calvary's cross, that annuls guilt, 
 and renews the heart, and reconciles to God, and gives a 
 title to heaven. That mercy, may you all find! May it be 
 your support in life, your comfort in death, and your sal- 
 vation in eternity. 
 
THE PATRIARCH'S RETROSPECT. 
 
 NOVEMBER 4, 1849. 
 
 "The (tIocI which fed me all my life long unto this day, the 
 Angel which redeemed me from all evil." — Genesis 4H:15.1(). 
 
 THERE is something about the sayings of men, when 
 death is near, which always commends them with sol- 
 emn force to the minds of the hearers; and in the case 
 liefore us, this source of interest is heightened by the fact 
 that the speaker is one of those Scripture worthies, 
 whom we call the Patriarchs. Away back in the olden time 
 — a time so old that the farthest antiquity of profane his- 
 tory is young in comparison— these grey fathers of the 
 world come forth before us, to act, to speak, to die. All 
 the witchery ol^Eld, that poets feel, floats around their 
 names; and yet nothing can be more simply true to nature, 
 and more replete with sober, practical piety, than the images 
 of them which we contemplate in the Bible. God seems to 
 have been always near to them. They literally w^alked with 
 him. The complicated apparatus of second causes, of 
 natural laws and agents which, in our view, now, so gener. 
 ally stands between the Creator and Governor of the uni- 
 verse and the creatures whom he has made, is absent in 
 this case, and every event with them comes directly from 
 the hand of God, and every step they take is in obedience 
 to a mandate from Ins lips. These things invest their bio- 
 graphies with a peculiar interest. 
 
 315 
 
316 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 But there is another and a different reason that I would 
 assign why the words of Jacob, and the testimony given by 
 him in the text, are entitled to our attention. It is that 
 he was in all respects, though a Patriarch, an ordinary 
 man. In nothing does he seem to have been remarkable. 
 He was gifted apparently with no talents that elevated him 
 above the common level of humanity. lie had just the 
 usual measure, and just the usual mixture of good and bad 
 qualities in his character; and his life was the fair type of the 
 life of men generally. In his youth (from his own misconduct 
 too), he was obliged to leave his father's house and emi- 
 grate to a distant region. He was poor, for as he says in 
 one place, his staff was his only possession, when he passed 
 over the Jordan on his way to Padan-aram. There, after 
 many years of hard labor, in the capacity of a shepherd, 
 after many disappointments and many contests with subtle 
 and mercenary relatives, he amassed a fortune. There he mar- 
 ried and reared a family. In his domestic experience he 
 had probably about the usual allotment of joy and sorrow. 
 With many blessings, he liad many trials — such trials as 
 are the natural fruit of the corrupt passions which dwell 
 originally in the heart of every child of J.dam. He wept 
 over the disgrace of a daughter, and over the violence and 
 cruelty of his sous. Like other men he tasted the bitter 
 cup of bereavement. His favorite child was, as he sup- 
 posed, torn to pieces by wild beasts, and in the depth of 
 his grief, he felt that he should go mourning to his grave. 
 Rachel, the idol of his early love, died suddenly while he 
 was on a journey; and with a heavy heart he left her sleep- 
 ing in a land of strangers. And in his last days, too, as 
 not unfrequently happens, he had troubles. For seven suc- 
 cessive years the land refused to yield its increase, till 
 famine stalked abroad in all its horrors, and the Patriarch 
 and his children were in danger of perishing for want of 
 
THE PATRIARCHS RETROSPECT. 317 
 
 breiid. Aiul even when relief presented itself to bim iii 
 Egypt, the strange conduct of the ruler there towards his 
 sons, filled him with alurm and gave him good cause to 
 fear that every expedition they made to buy corn would 
 end in tiieir captivity or death. And then after the dis- 
 covery of Joseph, he was obliged, at -the age of a hundred 
 and twenty years, to become a wanderer again and move 
 from the country of his birth and the graves of his kindred, 
 to a distant and idolatrous land. There, at last, a tranquil 
 evening closed his life's changeful day; and with his chil- 
 dren and his children's children around him, he yielded up 
 the ghost and was gathered unto his people. 
 
 The troubh'S which Jacob experienced make him a 
 sufferer; but nc-t a sufferer in any extraordinar}' degree. 
 They were such troubles as almost all persons are called up- 
 on more or less to undergo, in this world of vicissitude. 
 Poverty, labor, injustice from evil-minded men, disappoint- 
 ment and sulfering from the misconduct of children, be- 
 reavement, privation, failure of plans and unexpected and 
 trying changes — these are things that enter into the lot of 
 mankind everj'where. And this it is — this similarit}' in the 
 experience of Jacob to that which men ordinaril}' meet with, 
 that makes the testimony of the dying Patriarch worthy of 
 particular attention from us all. "What he was, we are, or 
 may expect to be. He stands at the terminaton of the 
 great highway along which we are all traveling; and is it 
 not cheering to us to have his voice borne back to us in 
 such tones as it breathes in the text? The God who had 
 presided over his history and had ordered all his steps 
 (and who is doing the same for us), he calls a "God who 
 had fed him all his life long, and the Angel who had re- 
 deemed him from all evil." Such testimony, such an ex- 
 pression of his views of God's conduct towards him is 
 cheering to us, because it encourages us to hope, that 
 
318 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 changeful as may be the phases of our experience in pass- 
 ing through life, the closing view — the revelations of the 
 sunset hour — will enable us, too, to see the all-einbraciug 
 goodness of the Providence that has presided over oar career. 
 
 There had been times in the course of Jacob's life 
 when his testimony seems to have been of a different char- 
 acter; when under the pressure of some present distress, his 
 heart was filled with despondency and his lips with com- 
 plaints. When Joseph's coat, stained wit^^h blood, was sliown 
 to him, so keen and overwhelming was his grief, that he 
 refused to be comforted. He refused even to allow that 
 there could be any comfort or joy remaining to him this 
 side of the grave. And when after the lirst visit of his 
 sons to Egypt, he learned that Simeon had been detained 
 as a prisoner and that Benjamin must go down with his 
 brethren when they next returned, he exclaimed, '-Me have 
 ye bereaved of my children. Joseph is not, and Simeon is 
 not, and ye will take Benjamin away. All these things are 
 against me." When he looked back from his death bed, 
 however, he saw that all these things had not been against 
 him. He could include in his view all those trying emer- 
 gencies that seemed at the moment of their occurrence, not 
 only to blast his joys, but even to deny him the solace of 
 hope, and say of all the course of God's dispensation with 
 him, "He is the God who hath fed me all my life long, 
 the Angel who hath redeemed me from all evil." 
 
 And this suggests the first lesson I would draw from 
 this text, which is, that the proper standpoint at which 
 men should place themselves when they survey and judge 
 of the conduct of God's Providence towards them, is 
 the terminating point of their career — that point which a 
 Christian occupies, who calmly, intelligentl}^, and hopefully, 
 lies down to die. I say, "a Christian," for no one but a 
 Christian is able to understand or estimate fairly the bear- 
 
THE PATRIARCHS RETROSPECT. 319 
 
 ing of the policy which God in his providence has pursued 
 towards him. To one who is not a Christian, there are 
 man}' departments of this policy which must always be un- 
 intelligible. As the Apostle says of the things of the Spirit 
 of God, so it may be said to a great degree, of the things 
 of the Providence of God. The natural man "receiveth 
 them not, ' for they are foolishness unto him, neither can 
 he know them, because the}' are "spiritually discerned." 
 But the dying hour which religion illumines and tranquil- 
 izes, when that hour is permitted to be one in which the 
 mind can act rationally, furnishes the point of view, from 
 which men may with propriety and safety, examine and 
 pronounce upon the ways of God concerning them in this 
 life. When the shadows are gathering over the world and 
 the clock is telling the last minute of departing day, 
 men may sit down to write the history of the day. Then 
 they may atHrm something definite of its character; then 
 they may make a fair estimate of its incidents and results. 
 When the storm spirit was abroad and the sun was bid 
 behind the rolling cloud, and the winds were rioting through 
 the earth, and the heavens were pouring out their beating 
 rain-floods, it would have been premature to draw the pic- 
 ture of the day. The evening hour, perhaps, will disclose 
 a spectacle of brightness and beauty which owed its exist- 
 ence entirely to the temporary fury of the raid-day storm. 
 A deeper blue will be found in the sky, a richer green up- 
 on the field, a gladder warble in the throat of the bird, and 
 a keener sense of joy in the heart of every living thing, 
 than would have been seen or heard or felt, had no cloud 
 veiled the sun, and no convulsion agitated the atmosphere. 
 We are all too hasty, too arbitrary, brethren, in our judg- 
 ments of God. We do not trust our Father far enough, nor 
 long enough. "\\ e spring to a conclusioi .>s to the character 
 of his dealings with iis from every thorn or flower, from 
 
320 ' A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 every spot of gloom or sunshine, that meets us in the way 
 in which be is leading us; rather than suspend our opinions 
 and patiently possess our souls, till we have reached the 
 end of our way, and have gained a point where we may 
 see all the results of the way, and the bearing upon these 
 results of the thorns and the (lowers, the gloom and the 
 sunshine, that may have met us as we trod the way. Let 
 us place ourselves as far as we can in the position of the 
 dying servant of God, or rather, if we are Christians, let 
 us endeavor to occupy in imagination the position in which 
 we ourselves are to stand in a little while, when our dying 
 hour has arrived. The testimony that we, standing there, 
 would give of God and his providential dealings towards us, 
 would be expressed, I doubt not correctly, in the words of 
 the Patriarch, "The God who hath fed us, all our lives 
 long, the Angel who hath redeemed us from all evil." 
 
 First, from that point the Christian will appreciate 
 fully and in their continuity, these acts of providential 
 goodness by which God had manifested his care for him 
 during his life. "He hath fed me all my life long," said 
 Jacob. So simple a thing as the daily supply of food, 
 comes to his remembrance now. In the heat and hurry of 
 healthy life, when our desires and appetites are all in exer- 
 cise, when our thoughts are continually bounding from the 
 present to the future, and our craving natures are turned 
 away from the things possessed to something better hoped 
 for aud yet to come, we forget, we are insensible to, the 
 crowd of blessings with which God is surrounding us. 
 While life itself is held, so to speak, as a palpable posses- 
 sion in our hands, and a possession which we are striving 
 to turn to various selfish accounts, we lose sight of the 
 thousand arrangements which Providence is making for 
 the comfort and support of life. But when we feel that 
 we are done with life — when desire fails, and the future 
 
THE PATRIARCHS RETROSPECT. 321 
 
 rises no more before us, fascinating us with its visions of 
 possible good — wc can see witli a calm, clear eye the munifi-. 
 cent and unwasting bounty that has ministered from day to 
 day and from hour to hour to our happiness. The bless- 
 ings that escaped our notice while we were engaged in 
 the fervid prosecution of our worldly schemes, will then 
 all come out distinctly to view. The wear}' traveler 
 arrived at the end of his journey, will see the things that 
 contributed to his enjoyment by the way; and will wonder 
 at the variety and multitude of them. How many have 
 been his wants, and yet how constantly have they been 
 supplied! When did his bread fail, or his spring dry up? 
 In every place where he has been, his kind, thoughtful 
 Benefactor has been with him, spreading his table and his 
 couch, and crowning him with tokens of his goodness. He 
 can trace back every year, he can go through the history 
 of his childhood and youth and maturer life, and every 
 where he sees the same stream of mercy flowing along and 
 refreshing him with its grateful tide. He is amazed that 
 God has never forgotten him ; that he has never grown 
 weary in attending upon his interests; that under so many 
 and such various circumstances, and in such a succession 
 of exigencies, his bounty has always come promptly and 
 freely to his relief. Oh, my friends, how blind are we now 
 to the manifold goodness of God! How little we reflect 
 upon the countless conditions that must be harmonized, in 
 order to the attainment of success in any one of the most 
 trivial enterprises that we undertake! And yet how con- 
 stantly God is producing happiness for us all! And how 
 constantly' he is permitting us to succeed in our plans! If 
 we could bring more of the calmness and trutlifuluess of 
 death unto life, we should see these things better. We 
 should see what is implied in the continuance and continued 
 pleasantness of life. We should see, in every ray of light, 
 
322 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 in every breath of the wind, in every pulsation of our 
 hearts, in every article of food that pleases our palates or 
 nourishes our body, a demonstration of the Almighty's love; 
 and we should feel like turning to God every hour of every 
 day with all the dying Patriarch's sincerity, and devoutly ac- 
 knowledging him as "the God who has fed us all our lives 
 long." But men are so absorbed in the exercise of living, 
 so engaged in applying life to ends of their own, that such 
 revelations are genei'ally delayed till a dying hour. Then, 
 the children of God are almost universally found bearing 
 testiuKjny, with wondering gratitude, to his goodness. Like 
 a disinterested spectator, standing apart from the scene he 
 surveys, they can then look over all the way, in which God 
 has led them; and they can mark all the varied and elabo- 
 rate machinery of benevolence, which he has constructed 
 along the path. 
 
 And more than this; there is a quality of sweetness 
 which they can detect in the blessings, which they have 
 enjoyed, from the fact that it is God who has given them. 
 Food is pleasant in itself. It is a boon for which exhausted 
 nature feels bound to be thankful; but food from the hand 
 of one who loves us, and who has been the benefactor of 
 our fathers before us, is doubly pleasant because of the 
 source from which it comes. Jacob's grateful acknowledg- 
 ment does not relate to the bare fact that his wants had been 
 supplied through, life. It relates chiefly to the fact that it 
 was God who had supplied them; and the same God who 
 had been the guide and the friend of his fathers Isaac and 
 x\braham. The daily enjoyments which I experience are 
 valuable to me from their intrinsic tendency to make me 
 happy. And did they come to me from a mere mechanical 
 laboratory, such as some men make Nature to be — where 
 there was no intelligence, no design, or ati'ection, still as they 
 came to me they would be valuable. But how inexpressibly 
 
THE patriarch's RETROSPECT. 323 
 
 sweeter they are to me, vvlien I know that no blind machine 
 has fabricated them, and scattered them in heartless munifi- 
 cence abroad; but that all have come direct from the band 
 of God — the same God that sustained and helped the 
 prophets and patriarchs of old. This thought twines a 
 famii^'-bond around my heart, and makes me feel that 1 
 am a brother to all the beings whom God loves. Abraham's 
 cup lias passed down to me; and the merciful parent who 
 filled it for him is filling it for me. I am not a homeless 
 wanderer, gathering chance-fruit along the highway to keep 
 me from starving; but one of a household group, sitting at 
 a father's board, and enlivened by his kindly- looks, while 
 I am fed by his bounty. But this fact, that our comforts 
 and blessings are directly connected with the hand of God 
 as their source, is one which we are slow to realize, while 
 the}' are pressing in their abundance upon us. We are so 
 prone to be so much engaged with the gift, as to forget 
 the Giver. From this point of view, however, where a dying 
 hour will place us, we shall see this connection. The gift 
 then will not be so large an object as the hand that be- 
 stows it. The fact that we have been fed will not so 
 much occupy our thoughts, as the other fact that it was 
 God who fed us. The pleasantness of our reminiscences 
 will not arise from the fact that they present to our view 
 so many enjoyments possessed in life, so much as from the 
 fact, which they will show us, that it was the God of 
 Abraham and Isaac, who deigned to follow us with his lov- 
 ing kindness and tender mercy, just as he followed them. 
 But the text speaks farther of deliverances — "the Angel 
 which redeemed me from all evil," said Jacob. And noth- 
 ing, I suppose, can seem to the child of God, in tiie review 
 which he makes of life from its closing point, more won- 
 derful, more worthy of his gratitude than these deliverances, 
 which have been wrought for him. When they actually 
 
324 A PASTORS VALEDICTORY. 
 
 occurred, perhaps he did not notice them. He did not see 
 the evil, and hence did not know of his escape; or because 
 iiis attention was so divided, and his thoughts were so 
 soon called away by other things, he has not full}' estimated 
 the greatness of his deliverances. He will see them better 
 when he comes to die. He will see then how thickly be- 
 set with perils bis path through life has been; and how 
 often an unseen hand has hedged up his path, or bridged 
 it over, or screened it, or turned it about, to keep his feet 
 from stumbling into ruin, or to shield him from the arrows 
 or the snares of enemies. An Angel has been with him, 
 hovering with tireless wings about l^is path, and ministering 
 in ways and at times that he little dreamed of, to his wel- 
 fare. To this cause he sees it now to be owing, that he 
 escaped the temptations that enticed him in his youth, and 
 the influence of an ungodly public example and opinions 
 which met him when he entered upon the scenes of the 
 busy world. Others by his side fell into vicious practices 
 or iiito infidelit}', or a seared stupidity of heart on the sub- 
 ject of religion, and so have died. But from all these he 
 was redeemed. And from a throng of natural evils, too, he 
 has been delivered — evils which were permitted to harrass 
 and afflict thousands upon his right hand and his left, but 
 which came not nigh him. 
 
 But, as in the case of Jacob, tliere have been evils in 
 his lot from which no deliverance has been afforded. 
 Though he has escaped much that he might have suffered, 
 he has still had his furnace and his flood to pass through. 
 He has scars upon his heart which tell of days when that 
 heart agonized and bled. Far back in the track of his 
 journey, he sees the scenes of past trial, here a blasted 
 spot where the frost fell upon some early joy; here a 
 scathed relic, where some towering hope had been prostrated 
 by the bolts of heaven; here a huge chasm, where bereave- 
 
THE patriarch's RETROSPECT. 325 
 
 meut had buried in a moment the clustering pleasures of a 
 domestic Edeu; here a rough hilltop, over which with self- 
 denying constancy he had to bear the cross of persecution 
 or reproach; aud here a wide, cheerless waste where pover- 
 ty or sickness have scattered their flowerless sands. As he 
 passed along, and these trials met him, his heart of flesh 
 failed. Oh, how hard to bear, they seemed! Any form of 
 affliction Init tiie one set before him, he thought, would be 
 tolerable. Any other sacrifice but the one demanded of 
 him, he could make. Any other arrow from the Almighty's 
 quiver, he could bare his lieari to, but the one that was 
 aimed at it. Oh, "if it be possible," he had cried, "let 
 this cup pass from me," for to drink seemed to doom him- 
 self to hopeless woe. 13ut, it could not be. He must go 
 on through the trial. And now it lies yonder far behind 
 him; and the mellow sunset ray is gilding it with its soft 
 light. The Angel was with him in the dark hour, and has 
 brought him through it. The Angel has redeemed him 
 from all evil. Perhaps he can now see that not one of 
 those dark hours could have been spared; and that without 
 them, his journey would have failed to reach its present 
 peaceful termination. 
 
 There is another feature in the view which the believer 
 may take of God's dealings with him, from his death-bed, 
 which is shadowed, at least, by the text. When Jacob 
 speaks of the Angel as a person, interchangeable with God, 
 he is supposed, upon very good grounds (reasoning from 
 the analogy of other passages of the Old Testament) to re- 
 fer to the second person of the Trinity, to him who is often 
 called "the Angel of Jehovah," and "the Angel of the 
 presence," as being the agent through whom, in various 
 ways from the beginning, and ultimately by actual incarna- 
 tion, the invisible Deity has revealed himself to man. It 
 was Christ, to whom the Patriarch's dying thoughts are 
 
326 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 supposed to have so gratefiill}' turned. It was the mercy 
 of God in Christ — mercy that had its origin in the cove- 
 nant made witli Christ, in order to the salvation of his 
 people, that liad sent him his blessings and meted out lo 
 him his trials. This fact, this relation of all his bless- 
 ings and trials to the covenant of redemption (whether 
 Jacob really alluded to it in the text or not) is something 
 which is now clearly revealed to tlie cliild of God. And 
 it throws a peculiar light upon all the course of his experi- 
 ence in the present life. He has been a redeemed man in 
 all this course of experience. God has been treating him 
 as such in all his dealings with him. Everything that he 
 has enjoyed, and everything that he has suffered, may be 
 explained by a reference to the Covenant of Redemption. 
 Everything has been ordained in accordance with the terras 
 of the Covenant. Everything has had some connection with 
 the purpose of God to call him, and justify, and sanctif}^ 
 and glorify him in Christ. The joys he has known although 
 in outward form like those which have been allotted to un- 
 believers, have had in them something better than the com- 
 mon blessings of Providence, for they are meant to form 
 the refreshment by the way, for a soul for whom Christ had 
 died, and whom the Father was leading to glory. His 
 sorrows, too, have not been common calamities, nor the 
 angry judgment of God. They, also, have had in them a 
 savor of redeeming mercy. They are the chastisements of 
 love; the pruning that makes the tree fair and fruitful; the 
 polishing that fits the jewel for its place in the monarch's 
 crown. Thus it is that the Angel has been redeeming him 
 continually, and has been making all things bear upon 
 the successful accomplishment of that great work of re- 
 demption, which he effected when he died for his salvation. 
 There are other features akin to this, which distinguish 
 the aspect that God's Providences assume to his children's 
 
THE patriarch's RETROSPECT. H2~ 
 
 eyes when they look back upon them from a dying bed, 
 upon which I might enhirge, but to which I can only make 
 a passing allusion, now. Along with all these providences 
 it will then be seen, for instance, that that Divine influence 
 which we call grace has been communicated; fitting the in- 
 dividual to receive and use them for the purposes for which 
 they were sent. Ic is this grace, or those dispositions, 
 views, purposes, and efforts, which God has inspired within 
 him which have kept him from being ruined by his bless- 
 ings, and hardened by his afflictions. By this grace it is 
 that he has been guided, supported and saved. By grace 
 he has been aided in attaining all that he has of good, and 
 restrained from falling into all that he might have con- 
 tracted of evil. Heaven has breathed this life-giving atmos- 
 phere around him, to keep him from inhaling death from 
 the corruption that is in the world. And grace, thus, has 
 made him not of the world, though in the w'orld, and 
 though apparently, in most of the phases of his experience, 
 like tbe world. Another feature in the dealings of God, 
 which he will see at last, is that all tbings work together 
 for good to them that love God, and are called according 
 to his purpose. Jacob doubtless saw this when he uttered 
 the text. It is hard to see it sometimes, now; but it is un- 
 questionably true, and the dying believer will in all proba- 
 bility, be enabled to see that it has been true in his own 
 case. He will see that spiritually (which is the only sense 
 in which he will regard anything as of importance, when 
 death is at hand), spiritually, he is better for all the ar- 
 rangements and all the discipline that God has adopted 
 concerning hira, than he could have been without them. 
 No threads in the nicely woven tissue of Providence, be it 
 dark or light, will appear superfluous. All were needed to 
 array him in the garment of holiness, in which he is about 
 to see the Lord. And, lastly, all these dealings of God 
 
328 A pastor's valedictory. 
 
 interpreted in the various ways that I have already men- 
 tioned, will (as a consequence) wear one aspect more to the 
 believer's dying eye, and that is, that of precursors and 
 earnests of heaven. The little rill, whether dancing in the 
 sunbeam, or swollen with the shower, is rushing on still to 
 the ocean; and the testimony of every murmuring wave, 
 could we read it, is, that there is an ocean, towards which 
 it is hastening. So the Christian's history here, whatever 
 be the aspect of it at any particular moment, is all a 
 prophecy of heaven. His jo3's and his sorrows, his strug- 
 gles and his conquests, all point towards heaven. All tell 
 him now, that God loves him, and that his purposes to- 
 wards him are full of mercy; and this love and mercy are 
 pledges to him of heaven. The oath and the promise of 
 God, which secure eternal life to all who believe in Jesus 
 Christ, have been written over and over again, on every 
 page of his daily experience; and though in his dullness and 
 heedlessness, he may have failed to see them at the moment 
 when they were written, he will see them all in the light 
 of his dying hour. And they will make his dying hour the 
 dawn of heaven. They will rise before his failing e3'es like 
 the morning-star, and while he gazes at them, time will 
 glide into eternity, the mortal will put on immortality, the 
 star-beam will melt away, and lo, the heavens will grow 
 strangely bright around him, for his soul will have passed 
 into glory. 
 
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