^JJ^tK^^i£if:vv '■■:: Srom f^e fet6rari? of gprofeafior nTiffiam (gXiffer (pajton, ®.®., fe&.®. ^eeenfe^ 6i? (Wire, ^axfon to f^e fetfirari? of (Princeton C^eofogicctf ^eminarg THE GOLDEN LECTURES. OFPflT SECOND SERIES. y%^.-.>» FEB 14 1! FORTY-SEVEN SERMONS DELIVERED AT ST. MARGARET'S CHURCH, LOTHBURY. ON TUESDAY MORNINGS, BY THE REV. DANIEL MOORE, M.A., FROM DECEMBER 30, 1856, TO DECEMBER 29, 1857. (Selected from the Penny Pulpit.) I LONDON : JAMES PAUL, 1, CHAPTER HOUSE COURT, NORTH SIDE ST. PAUL's, AND PATERNOSTER ROW. THE GOLDEN LECTURES, Delivered at St. Margaret's Church, Lothbury, during the Years 1850 to 1856, by Kev. H. Melvill, B.D., selected from the Penny Pulpit, and bound in 7 vols, cloth, £2. 2s. EXPOSITORY READINGS, Appropriate to Sundays, &c., throughout the Year, selected from the "Golden Lectures." In two handsome Volumes, 8vo. large type, fancy cloth, price 14s. CONTENTS. xo. 2,692 The gospel workman — 2 Timothy ii. 1-5 2,696 The bright and morning star — Revelation xxii. 16 2,700 The call of Matthew— Matthew ix. 9 2,702 A remedy for care — Philippians iv. 6 2,705 The one thing needful— Luke x. 41, 42 2,708 The .transfiguration— Luke ix. 30, 31 2,710 The devotions of the Saviour— Mark i. 35 2,714 The parable of the sower— Luke viii. 4, 5 2,718 Job's faith— Job xiii. 15 2,720 The school of suffering — Hebrews v. S 2,724 Precept, promise, and prayer — Ezekiel xviii. 21 2,727 The sons of Zebedee— Matthew xx. 21 2,732 A suffering world — Romans viii, 22, 23 2,734 Unchanging love — John xiii. 1 2,737 The sacrifice of the cross — Romans viii. 34 2,743 The resurrection of the body — 1 Corinthians xv. 35 2,746 The constraint of love — 2 Corinthians v. 14, 15 2,757 Indecision — 1 Kings xviii. 21 2,761 The hidden treasure — Matthew xiii. 44 2.764 The tares and the wheat— Matthew xiii, 24, 25 2.765 The necessity of moral obedience — Luke x. 28 2,771 The results of the ascension — Romans v. 10 ' 2,773 The renewing of the Holy Ghost— Titus iii, 5 2,779 The doctrine of the Trinity— 1 Peter i. 2 2,784 Faith and works — James ii, 18 2,788 Faith and works, No, 2 — Philippians iii. 9 2,792 The vision of dry bones — Ezekiel xxxvii, 1, 2 2,798 Who can be saved? — Matthew xix, 25 2,800 The unprofitable servant — Matthew xxv, 30 2,804 The Almighty weary with repenting— Jeremiah xv. 6 2,809 The revolutionary character of Christianity — Acts xvii, 6 2,815 The true cause of rejoicing — Luke x, 20 2,821 Christians reflecting mirrors of Christ — 2 Corinthians iii, 2, 3 2,841 The hindrances to acceptable prayer — Psalm Ixvi, 18 2,846 England's sins and chastisements — Ezekiel xiv. 22, 23 2,853 The rich fool— Luke xii, 20 2,856 God's judgments and repentance — Luke xiii. 4, 5 2,858 The agents and machinery of God's government — Ezekiel i. 1 2,863 The Almighty resting in his love — Zephaniah iii. 17 2,866 Christ's first miracle — John ii, 11 2,868 The perpetuating power of righteousness and sin — Proverbs xiii, 6 2,872 The branch out of the roots — Isaiah xi, 1 2,877 The love of monev— 1 Timothy vi. 10 2,882 The new earth— 2* Peter iii. 13 2,885 Christian violence— Matthew xi. 12 2,888 The forerunner's rebuke — Matthew iii, 7 2,900 A finished tale— Psalm xc, 8, 9. Works published by James Paul^ Chapterhouse-court , St. PauVs. THE PKEACHER. Fort5'-two Sermons delivered in the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, London. By Members of the Cathedral. Bound in cloth, price 5s. PARIS EXHIBITION SERMONS. A Volume of Sermons delivered to the English Visitors in the French Protestant Churches and Chapels, during the Great Exhibition of 1855, by eminent Ministers of all Denominations, selected from the Penny Pulpit, 6s. In neat case, price Sixpence, SACRED LEAFLETS FOR CHRISTIAN CORRESPONDENCE. "The words of the wise, like goads, quicken us to duty, and like nails take fast hold and make an abiding impression upon the mind." — Orton. Sold also in Packets, assorted or otherwise, price Sixpence ; may be had through all Booksellers, or Post free, on forwarding Seven Postage Stamps to the Publisher. THE GOLDEN LECTURES— SECOND SERIES. No. I. The Golden Lectuief— First Series. By Kcv. II. MelviU, B D., from Januaiy 1, 1650, lo December 23, 1856, may be had complete, in 7 Volumes, price £3. 2s. THE GOSPEL WORKMAN. ^ Pennon Delivered on Tuesday JIorning, Decebibeu 30, 1856, M THE REV. DANIEL MOORE, M.A., AT ST. Margaret's church, lothbury. " Slutly to shew thyself approved unto God, a v orkman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth."— 2 Timothy ii. 15. The position of Timothy as chief pastor over the church at Ephesus was one of no common difficulty, and to his own soul of no little peril. His difficulties lay in the peculiar mental and moral elements he had to deal with— in the mixed and dissimilar forms of opposition which he well knew his message would have to encounter, from the subtle cavils of the philosophers, from the sordid opposition of the shrine-makers, from the bigotry and something worse than bigotry of the resident Jews,— an assemblage of antagonist influences, agreeing in nothing but their antagonism to Christ and the spread of his gospel. And there was peril also in this position of Timothy— peril to the humility of his character, in being placed above many his equals both in years and natural acquirements— peril to the spirituality of his mind, in having to undertake the entire secular as well as religious ordering of the churches- peril to the very salvation of his soul, lest through his negligence or unfaith- fulness not the prosperity of the church at Ephesus only, but the interests of a yet struggling Christianity should be hindered and thrown back. Well was it for him, therefore, that there was one to speak to him of these things— one with wisdom to instruct, with experience to guide, with affection to sympa- thise, with authority to exhort and warn — one who, knowing that there were responsibilities in the ministerial office, solemn enough to make an angel tremble, would lay down for the newly-appointed pastor that safest of all rules to be observed by a watchman and steward of souls—" Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." The choice of such a subject, brethren, as you will suppose, is suggested by the circumstance under which I appear before you— my first entrance upon the duties of this Morning Lecture. Such an office, believe me, I have not accepted without a careful weighing of the attendant cost — without expecting it to make large demands upon my time, strength, labour, thought— all tlie powers which God hath given me ; without feeling the opportunity a great No. 2,692. 2 F THE GOSPEL WORKMAN. one, and the task a momentous one, and the call of God a solemn one, to stand up in the midst of this world within a world, in the thick of all its din, and strife, and stir and murmur, of multitudinous voices, in the hope that here and there one may be willing to turn aside from the roar of this deafening mill- stream, to listen to the tranquillities of the gospel message, and to hearken to the voice of God. And it seemed fitting, that he who in the ordering of pro- vidence has been entrusted with such a function, should indicate at the outset after what type and caste of theology his future ministry would be fashioned — what principles he should uphold, what tendencies he should denounce — in a word, by what use of gospel appliances he was hoping to bring the power of a living Christianity close home to the heart, to the conscience, to the life. And my desired model will be found in the words of the text — " Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." The passage may be considered as setting two things before us. First, what ought to be the great end of the Christian ministry ? Secondly, the means by which that end may be best attained. I. First, the end or object which the gospel teacher is here taught that he should propose to himself is, that from the mode of his discharging the duties of his oflBice he may not miss of the Divine approval, " Study to show thyself approved unto God." " Approved :" so approved as to abide the test, the image being taken from a process for trying the purity of metals, and thus intimating how completely in the fire of judgment, God will disengage and separate the base alloy of all negligence and deceit from his service, leaving nothing to stand but the fine gold of an unashamed work — truthful, hearty, honest towards God and man. And first, it should be a great care with the gospel workman to approve himself unto God for his faithfulness. " It is required in stewards that a man be found faithful," we are told. And again: "Who, then, is that faithful and wise steward, whom his Lord shall make ruler over his household, to give them their portion of meat in due season?" Now, this faithfulness in rela- tion to the stewardship of souls consists in doing a whole work — in believing the gospel to be " the power of God unto salvation," and using it to that end, as against all mutilations, all reserves, all forms of eclectic teaching, determining that no part of the spiritual household should be unprovided for and untaught. The apostle himself was a great master in this way ; he over- looked none. If he had " strong meat for them that are of full age," he could dispense *' milk" also for the unskilful and the babe. He had intellectual people, and he gave them argument ; he had imaginative people, and he gave them poetry ; he had learned people, and he reasoned with them out of the law and the prophets ; he had weak and prejudiced people, and he tried to lead them by easy steps up to " the first principles of the oracles of God." He poured forth out of his profound and varied stores whatever he knew would be useful " for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness ;" and whether to warn the unruly or to convince the gainsay- ing, to comfort the feeble-minded or to support the weak, seemed to be only concerned to be all things to all men, that he might by all means save some. And for this faithfulness must the gospel minister of this day be approved unto God also. We hear a good deal just now of the shortcomings of the pulpit, of its not vising to its ordained place and function among the 25S THE GOSPEL WORKMAN. great social and moral instrumentalities of the age, of its being content to appeal to certain feelings and experiences, assumed to be familiar enough vithin the sanctuary, but not sympathising enough with the thoughts and emotions of the great heart outside. So far as the charge is true, no doubt ■we fail in faithfulness ; we curtail of its fair power and proportions one of our mightiest efforts for good. Our preaching is to be not for the church only, but for the world. It is not enough that we speak comfortably to penitents, and devoutly to believers, and experimentally to the advanced and ripened saint, though this will we do, if God permit ; "we must strike further out ; we must aim to reach the hearts, and intellects, and consciences of those who live be- yond this eclectic circle. The gospel workman must put himself in harmony with the national mind ; and the direction of this we cannot fail to see is on- ward, steadily, resolutely, in every department, onward. The skilled artizan now will have the best reading from our parish libraries; the strong intellects in our factories are found to take pleasure in the profound subtleties of Butler, whilst the young men who are at this moment pursuing their laborious vocation at the counting-house or the desk, will in a few hours be found in the reading room or the lecture hall, digging for themselves into the newly-opened mines of scientific discovery, or traversing the most recent fields of literary research and thought. We cannot, therefore, as ministers overlook these things ; they are becoming, and will become more and more, a large element in the forma- tion of our national character ; and to keep a wise and observant outlook upon such indications is a part of our office. " Son of man, I have set thee as a watchman over the house of Israel." 'Be an observer of the times ; note carefully the strongest influences which are playing upon them, and be abreast of these influences, or in advance of them, or seek to give them a sanctified direction. Anything, rather than ignore or forget their existence.' " Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed." But again : a minister should be careful to approve himself unto God for his fearlessness — for his bold and unswerving testimony to the truth of the gospel, utterly regardless whether in so doing he irritate the prejudices of this man, or pronounce a censure on the known practices of that— whether he enunciate a principle which would convict more than half of his hearers of a moral dishonesty, or set up a test of spiritual Christianity which would seem to shut out three-fourths of its professors from the very hope of heaven. " Approved unto God" is the emphatic rule of obligation laid down for the gospel workman ; to be approved unto man might be matter of small diffi- culty. There will always be plenty of those who in their hearts, at all events, will say unto us, " Prophecy not unto us right things ; speak unto us smooth things ;" and if we do not give them these smooth things, we must not look to have a smooth course to our ministry. " The carnal mind" is still " enmity against God," and therefore against God's truth. Men have still the same indisposition to call things by their right names ; to subject to the arbitra- tions of Christian ethics, conventions which have been of world-wide and im- memorial practice ; to suppose that there could be anything so very wrong in habits which not only the most reputable of men give in to, but which have so grown to us and grown with us, that rather than renounce them we could cheerfully part with the best member that we have. And thus only let us^each the gospel of the grace of God, in all its power, and breadth, and 269 THE GOSPEL WORKMAN. simplicity, casting down imaginations, denouncing worldlinoss, demanding sacrifices, setting up close spiritual tests ; not only taking a man's false trusts from under him, but making inroads at the same time on what he loves most — his gains, his pleasures, his ease, his comforts — and we awake in the uncon- verted heart the identical spirit which nailed the Saviour to the cross, which bound martyrs to the stake, which drove the Waldenses from their homes, and which has again and again cast out godly ministers from the church and pulpit of their fathers. And hence it will be a characteristic of this fearless- ness in the gospel workman, that he will study great definiteness in the personal application of his message, instead of contenting himself with the announcement of those smooth and unchallenged generalities which would have produced neither uproar in the streets of Ephesus, nor mocking gibes on Mars' Hill. Before the word is brought home, before its doctrines are laid close to the conscience, nobody does more ready homage to the gospel of Christ than does the worldly man — to the sublimity of its precepts, to the glory of its promises, to the transparent clearness of its disclosures, to the elevated graces of its style. But show to him what it is which he thus deservedly extols ; take the 8th chapter to the Romans, for instance, and choose out this test, that of a man in Christ and a man out of Christ ; set forth in all their individuality, and point, and power ; those marks of true conversion to God — the repentance of a broken heart, the faith which excludes self-righte- ousness, the enlightening and renewing influences of the Holy Spirit, the life and walk of faith and love, the completeness of our subjugation to the law of Christ in all outward and inward holiness ; and the antipathies of the natural man are stirred up, and many will regard the unashamed workman as an enemy, because he tells them the truth. "Approved unto God" for his fearlessness. But withal for his judg- ment, for his discretion, for a large and tolerant and discerning charity, in relation to all diversities, whether of faith or practice in the Chris- tian world, not plainly and demonstrably vital to the truth of God. " For God hath not given us the spirit of fear," says the apostle, " but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." It is no proof of ministerial courage to make rude and rough onslaught on people's prejudices, and weak- nesses, and educational mistakes ; to rejoice in making the differences among members of the Christian body appear greater than they are — to delight in symbols, and Shibboleths, and the very narrowest grooves of theological thought and feeling, leaving nothing but a lost immortality for all that are one hair's breadth without the line. Brethren, there is neither policy nor philosophy in this course : not policy, for if the mistakes were mistakes, and nothing more, what so likely to induce obstinacy in retaining them as the angry mag- nifying of. them into deadly heresies? Not philosophy, for it is setting our- selves against a result which it is the very tendency of an age of religious ac- tivity to produce. Divisions and sect-makings are the invariable concomitants of revivals. We have an increase in the number of our religious thinkers, and as a natural consequence nicer shades and more diversities of religious thought. As, therefore, we cannot help these things, our great care should be not to exaggerate them, not to overrate them, not to be ever throwing adder's fork and blind worm's sting into the cauldron of religious bitterness, by charg- ing consequences upon a doctrine which its advocates neither see nor hope, but while preaching ourselves a full gospel, careful only to comply with the 260 THE GOSPEL WOUKMAK. injunction—" Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." 11. But I proceed to the other important question raised by our text ; or the means by which the gospel workman may thus approve himself unto God — namely, by " rightly dividing the word of truth." " Rightly dividing ;" literally, rightly cutting up — in allusion, as is supposed, to the action of the priest who had to cut up and appropriate the several parts of the Levitical sacrifice. Thus understood, the injunction goes to reprove all that mutilated or partial teaching in which, through an overfondness for particular aspects of theological truth, a man is betrayed into negligence, if not into culpable silence about all the rest. Something in his education, something in the con- stitution of his mental character and habits, something, it may be, of marked emphasis in the circumstances of his own religious history, has caused certain views of doctrine to take firmer hold of his mind than any other ; he draws all his studies that way, makes every subject to have some bearing upon it, dislocating and wrenching texts out of their most obvious connection, to make them say something in support of his favourite theme. Perhaps he belongs to a school which loves to exalt the grace of sacraments, and then so constantly are these dragged in, and so awful are the myth and mystery with which they are made to be invested, that it is no marvel if the vulgar mind, and some minds that are not vulgar too, come to regard these institutions not as what Hooker calls them, the moral instruments of our salvation, but rather as some material talismen for making that salvation sure. Or perhaps the teacher is one who loves to soar into the high regions of the Divine predestinations ; and then the Alpha and Omega of all gospel teaching is the believer's per- sonal election in Christ — not put forth as a great fact of our religious philo- sophy, which it is, nor yet proposed as a comfort to those who feel in them- selves the workings of the Spirit of Christ, which our article tells us it ought to be, but an announcement of God's secret purposes to individuals, so bold, bald and bare as at least to tempt men to argue from the fact of an eternal choice, to their sure participation of its promised blessings, rather than from the discovery of the inward witness to their own Christianity, first to deduce the fact of an eternal choice. Or again : the temper of the teacher's mind may lead him to the fascinating study of unfulfilled prophecy, and then he is for ever taking his hearers up into the clouds, into the third heavens of a nebulous and phrenzied rhapsody ; not seeing how much safer their footing would be in the plain way of faith and holiness — a way that has been made so plain by God that wayfaring men, though fools, should not err therein. Now, preferences of this kind, it is obvious, unless kept under very chastened and severe restraints, must lead to much of unequal and unfair dividing of the Word, to a good deal of garbling and ouesidedness in the presentment of truth, causing the gospel to be shorn of its exact and finely balanced proportions, and leaving those hearers who have no part in the teacher's idiosyncracies to to be sent home unfed. And yet, brethren, you will not suppose us from this to mean, that the gospel of Christ has no prominent and fundamental truths, or that a right dividing of the word consists in pressing with a routine and uniform frequency each separate doctrine of our Christianity. Recurring to the apostle's assumed Levitical illustration, we know that while portions of the sacrificial victim were commanded to be laid upon the altar, there were other portions which 261 TH£ OOSPBL WORKMAN. ■were to be burned without the camp. And in like manner, in dividing rightly the several parts of our revealed system, we cannot fail to see that there are some verities which must be kept before our congregations always — held lip not merely in the light of capital and distinguishing doctrines, but as great axioms of faith, lying at the very foundation of the gospel, and giving to all its parts their coherency, and strength, and life. Of these one is that central fact and mystery of our redemption, the offering of Christ upon the cross as the true, real, proper, alone propitiation for the sins of the whole world. " I determined not to know anything among you," says the apostle, " save Jesus Christ and him crucified." And apart from this, or inconsistently with this, or of which this does not form an implicit and integral part, we must know nothing. The doctrine of the atonement is the sinner's refuge, the church's hope, the believer's rock, the glorified saint's new and never-ending song. See how God has guarded it through all time, through all dispensations, through all the successions and fluctuations of man's moral history. The blindness of Israel may have obscured it, the traditions of Christianity may have overlaid it, the very heathen to this day may distort and darken it by the admission of names borrowed from their own wild and fanciful theologies ; but its normal type of the just suffering for the unjust has continued ever, outliving the attempts of enemies to obscure, defying the power of oblivion to destroy. Now, my brethren, will you expect " a workman that needeth not to be ashamed'' to be any other than very outspoken on this great truth, and careful that the trumpet give forth no uncertain sound ? We cannot forget that persons are to be found in our day, not professedly Socinians either, who demur to the doctrine of a substituted condemnation, who tell us plainly that we shall never understand the doctrine of Christ aright, until we get rid of this word " satisfaction" from our theology altogether, judging it more con- sonant with reason and more congruous to the perfections of an infinite na- ture that man's pardon should be unconditional, without its equivalent and without its price. What human reason can have to do with canvassing the fitness of any revealed arrangement — how a finite intelligence is to obtain cognizance of all the contingencies, conditions, and issues involved in an infi- nite scheme of moral uniformity, we are not told ; we are simply left to infer, that it were no dishonour to the Great Ruler of the universe to have the first principles of his moral administration set at nought — that it need not disparage the omniscient wisdom of a lawgiver to have annexed penalties to disobedi- ence which he knew the mercifulness of his nature would never permit him to carry out; in a word, that the perfections of an infinite God would be better vindicated and better sustained by a scheme which permits attribute to jar with attribute, and will to set its foot on right, than an arrangement in which, as we are taught at this holy season, " mercy and truth are met together, ri<^hteousness and peace have kissed each other." And as to the work of Christ for us, so to the work of the Holy Spirit in us, do we assign a standing pre-eminence. In all our divisions of the Avord of truth, the work of the Third Person of the ever -blessed Trinity on the human soul, whereby it is recovered from the dominion of sin, and renewed unto holiness, must be maintained by every one who would study to be approved unto God, as a reality, as a necessity, as a great fact of our religious philsophy, as a required and universal experience, before we can enter heaven. It is not to be explained away by the admitted tendency in the sacred writers to ex- 262 THB GOSPEL WORKMAN. press themselves in strong figurative language ; it is not to be robbed of all its precision and definiteness by the hazy speculations of an evangelical platonism. But against all the things which men make for it, or which for the purposes of salvation they suppose will do as well, such as the amiabilities of a blameless life, the strict decorum of an outward godliness, the sustaining and saving grace of sacraments, and the charmed life supposed to belong to the continu- ance of an apostolic church — against all these the truth is to be announced again and again — «' If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his." In a brief notice of one other expression of the apostle our portraiture of the gospel workman may be concluded. *' Rightly dividing the word of truth." Many take up the question, with little concern, it is to be feared, to know the answer — What is truth ? and where is it to be found ? Shall we with the Romanist say, " All truth is a development, shifting, altering, grow- ing, only to be had with certainty on the authority of the church ?" Or shall we say with the Neologian, " All truth is but a probability, the best sup- ported guess, and therefore not to be gathered with certainty even from the pages of the word of God?" And yet, brethren, to one or other of these ex- tremes will you find most of our moral heresies tend ; and their meeting point, the common ground on which the Herods and Pilates are willing to be made friends, is a denial of the absolute, paramount, over-riding autho- rity of the Word of God. Hence the secret attempts to invalidate that other statement of the apostle to Timothy — a statement which, as if in view of the heresies of these latter days, the Holy Spirit has expressed in terms of sun- beam and confounding clearness — that " all Scripture is given by inspiration of God ;" and we are asked to believe that inspiration, in the sense in which we have commonly received it, as an exerted influence of the Divine Spirit on the thinking and expressing faculties of the Sacred writers, is a myth, a fic- tion, an old wives' fable — that the only inspiration modern philosophy can admit of is the inspiration of goodness, of intellect, of large and noble minds, the same whether it enabled Plato with uncouth and ambiguous tracing to foreshadow certain facts of gospel history, or filled Isaiah with those rapt and glorious conceptions by which he foretold of the day of Christ — the same whether it set Paul on penning those magnificent compositions which from age to age have been the solace and the food of all the saints of God, or whether it sent Howard from prison to prison, to alleviate the wretchedness of the out- cast or to loosen the captive's chain. But shall we thus lightly part with the most precious gift of God to our race ? An uninspired Bible, brethren ! — a book in which God's words are not, God's breathings are not, God's mind may or may not be '. — a book to be canvassed and questioned, and subjected to the hired arbitrations of human science ! — oh ! this were Heaven's mockery of man's blindness ; it could neither be a light to his feet nor a lamp to his path, but a cruel mirage, to turn his steps out of the way, to make him stumble and fall. 263 THE GOSPEL WORKMAN. Therefore, brethren, in conclusion, pray for us, that in all our ministrations from this place we may preach the Word— the "Word, the whole Word, and in things vital to salvation nothing but the Word. Pray that we may drink deep of its spirit, and be filled with its light, and be mighty in its arguments, digging for you into its deepest mines of wealth, spreading a table for you, laden with its choicest stores. Pray for us, that having in this Divine trea- sury enough for all and something for each — of precepts to guide, arguments to persuade, promises to comfort, hopes of glory to bless — we may so wisely distribute the bread of life, that whilst the hands of the righteous are strengthened, the careless and the sinner may not be sent empty away. Pray for us, that in view of that solemn account we must one day render, as en- trusted with tlie watchmanship of souls, we may keep back nothing that is profitable for us, neither for confirmation of doctrine, nor for refutation of error, nor for advancement in godliness, nor for the discouragement and reproof of sin, but may in all things aim to come up to the standard — ♦' a minister approved of God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." 264 THE GOLDEN LECTURES— SECOND SERIES. No. II. THE BRIGHT AND MORNING SIAR. 91 Sermon Delivered on Tuesday Morning, January 6, 1856, BY THE REV, DANIEL MOORE, M.A. AT ST. Margaret's church, lothbury. " I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star."— Revelation xxii. IG. As against that liability of public teachers to which I adverted ia my last discourse,* of givin" a disproportionate promineuce to particular aspects of theological truth, often to the detriment of other doctrines, but not to their intended disparagement, no arrangement could be wiser than that prescribed by our Church, of associating with its special days and seasons, the leading moral facts of Christianity. For our whole theology is constructed upon those facts ; by means of them as by the steps of a visible ladder, we ascend to the highest mysteries of our holy faith, so that it would be hardly possible for a teacher who should duly shape his ministrations according to this ecclesiastical framework, either to keep back anything that is profitable or to fail in his purpose of declaring " the whole counsel of God." As a rule, I should not be sorry for these restraints upon individual choice, at least, so far as I should not deem it well to let any one of our marked festivals pass by without adverting to some aspect of its cognate and appropriate doc- trines. One such festival, as you are aware, is set apart for commemoration on this day, and the special topic to which our minds are led is the Epiphany, or the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles, the babe of Bethlehem de- spised and rejected of his own, yet receiving tokens of homage from distant na- tions, in gold, frankincense and myrrh. Ever since the middle of the fourth century it has been a custom of the church to observe this festival on the » See Penny Pulpit, No. 3,692. No. 2,G96. 2 I THE BRIGHT AND MORNING STAR. twelfth day after that on which we celebrate our Lord's nativity; although for reasons, which I may not stay to consider, there seems considerable doubt whether the event really took place at that time or even until after the pre- sentation in the temple. I have chosen this passage in Revelation, not only because it contains a striking and significant reference to the Epiphany of our Lord, but because it brings before us certain great truths connected with the mystery of the incarnation, and coming as it does at the close of the Sacred Volume, and bringing us words from Christ, now seated on the throne of his glory, it gives to our revealed scheme a beautiful and consistent harmony. For whether Matthew open for us the beginning of his gospel, or John shut up the inspired canon, whether it be the " Word made flesh" which speaks to us, or the word appearing again as the Ancient of Days, we are taught that on Christ in his twofold nature, and Christ, in his glorious perfections hang all the world's light and hope. " I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star." Let us take first the historical view of this designation, or Christ considered as " the root and offspring of David ;" and afterwards we will consider the words as they illustrate the mild glory of his Epiphany, in that he is " the bright and morning star." I. Our illustrations of the first part of the message to the churches will have respect to certain testimonies contained in it to the ineffable mystery of our Lord's twofold nature — testimonies more valuable on account of their being presented only in an indirect and implicit form. We must all feel that incidental confirmations of great truths cannot be estimated too highly. We would not disparage the formal, stately, majestic, enunciation of a doc- trine, as when the God of truth frowning objectors into silence and sophistry into shame, delivers himself oracularly of such declarations, as " without controversy great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh." But still there is a convincing power in unlooked for coincidences of state- ment, which like the concealed strength of some material fabric, yields when discovered a higher feeling of security and confidence than could be con- veyed by more palpable and direct supports. Our faith is led captive, as it were, by a pleased surprise, and the conviction of a truth takes further hold on the mind, because some effort of thought was required on our part to appre- hend the strength of its evidence. A thoughtful person, for ex.-imple, reading such a passage as, " Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed of serpents ;" and then finding, on consulting the Old Testament reference, that it is God himself who is spoken of as tempted, has an evidence of our Lord's true Divinity, which is much more likely to fasten upon his mind than even that which would be derived to him from such texts as " I and my Father are one." A like observation may, I tliink, be applied to the part of our text w(> are now considering. " I am the root aud the 286 THE BRIGHT AND MORNING STAR. offspring of David," is a phrase which, if the metaphor contained iu it have any fitness at all, involves an apparent contradiction ; for the terra " root," as interpreted of pedigree, has a manifest relation to an ancestor, whilst the term "offspring" as manifestly relates to posterity. So that here we have Christ declaring himself in the same sentence to be both the progenitor of David and the descendant of David. He is the Father and the Son to the same person. An effect is made antecedent to its own cause ; a shadow creates the substance. Yet no sooner do we embrace the doctrine of the twofold nature of our Lord, the divinity and the humanity co-existing in one person, than all that there is of paradox in our metaphor disappears, and our text is simply made to affirm, that in his Divine nature our Lord had an eternal existence before David, whilst the date of his assumed humanity was some hundred years afterwards. The phrase, then, " I am the root of David," we place among the incidental corroborations of our Lord's proper Divinity ; like the phrase, " Before Abraham was, I am," it is not true if undei-stood naturally of the visible form which was born of the Virgin Mary ; it plainly affirms a pre-existent condition of being. And if any, like the Arians of old, pretend to fix a limit or date to this condition of pre-existence, saying with them that Christ might have had a being before David and before Abraham, and yet not have been eternal, we press them yet more closely with the passage in the prayer of Passion Week : " Glorify me, O Father, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was." True, some in our day will not be satisfied with this, and will endorse a proposition put forth with much boldness by modern philosophy, denying that there ever was such a period, and affirm the eternity of the material universe as in- volved in some of the best established conclusions of physical science. Brethren, we always regret to hear of this tampering with revealed facts ; true science can stand in no need of it ; and no end seems to be answered but a general loosening of men's confidence in the infallibility of the "Word of God. In the present case, it is not the point of dogmatic theology only upon which our faith is thus rudely shaken j the hypothesis of the eternity of mat- ter goes, if I mistake not, to the very foundations of the principle of theism, pure, rational, unencumbered theism. For, since there can be nothing older than the Eternal, it would follow on this showing that creation must be co- eval with the Creator ; and, therefore, self-existent as he is self-existent, and therefore, a part of the Creator himself ; until we become like the wor- shippers of nature in the French Revolution, and by an unperceived leap get plunged into the abysmal folly of saying there is no God ! Holding firmly therefore, by revelation, we believe that before the worlds were made, in some form of profound, unbroken solitude, the infinite God lived, and that as one with him in the mystery of his triune existence Christ lived also. The reason why Bethlehem Ephrata could not be little among the thousands of Judah was declared plainly enough : From him was to come out a ruler 287 THE BRIGHT AND MORNING STAR. whose goings fortli had been from everlasting, even the root of David, the everlasting I am. Of Christ as the offspring of David, it is not needful that I should speak. That Messiah was to be so related, it is sufficient to quote the answer of the Pharisees when Jesus asked them, saying : " What think ye of Christ ? Whose son is he ? They say unto him, The son of David." The universal persua- sion among the Jews, and the admitted duty of refusing to receive any as the Ciirist who could not produce satisfactory proofs of his descent from David's line, led to the careful retaining of those genealogical tables which we have in the opening chapters of St. Matthew and St. Luke. And though there is a difference in the manner in which the two evangelists deduced the pedi- gree of our Lord, yet is this difference one which only entitles these inspired genealogies to yet greater confidence ; for Mary and Joseph being both descended of the royal line of David, it was thought well that the ancestries should be traced separately until they met in the espousal of Mary to Joseph, and Jesus could be said in a double sense to be the offspring of David. Still the point of the allusion here, I think, is not so much to vindicate the family claims of our Lord, thus terminating the long successions of Jewish pro- phecy, as it is to affirm his actual participation of a proper human nature, to show how David's Lord could also be David's Son, how the Mighty Sire of eternity could hide himself under the form of an infant of days, how the root and source of all existence could become a dependent upon the life himself had given. "I am the root and the offspring of David ; the bright and morning star." II. We come, therefore, to consider what is implied in this second title of the Saviour, regarding it in its connection with our present festival : " I am the bright and morning star." Thus we may consider the designation first as an emblem of the Saviour's low estate when he came to dwell among men. It suited not with the design of our Lord, with the moral ends to be ans%vered by his humiliation, to come among us clothed in majesty, to compel the world's notice by an appearance which should be like the sun shining in his strength, or the moon as she walks in her brightness; he chose rather to appear as a star, a shining point in the darkness, a beacon of hope and good- will, lighting up the spiritual firmament, the eye of heaven smiling again upon erring and alienated man. Accordingly he came as a servant of servants, without an inheritance and without a home, in infancy cast out in early life unknown, in manhood subsisting by a trade, or failing that, on the kindness of those who ministered to him of their substance ; he brought nothing into the world and acquired nothing during his stay. He ate at others tables, he lived under others roofs, he was embalmed with a stranger's spices, and he sojourned in a borrowed grave ; therefore, the world knew him not. They looked for majesty, but beheld weakness ; they were waiting for the conqueror, and they saw only one accused and mocked in 288 THE BRIGHT AND MORNING STAR. Herod's judgment hall. They had thought to see the heavens glittering with the signs of Messiah's glory, yet nothing can be discerned but the calm pale- ness of a feeble star. And the reason is one, as an old divine argues, which makes the star to be little thought of, and the Son of God to be lightly esteemed, namely the remoteness of the object, the weak sight of the be- holders, and all the vast region of mist and cloud between it and them. The star would appear a sun if we could get nearer to it ; and so with Christ. Brethren, if he appear small, and of no account, and unlovely, without any beauty that we should desire him, or any love that we should trust him, or any power that we should flee to him ; it must be that we have only regarded him afar oflF. Near views of the Saviour must commend him to the believer's admiration and love. When ,we feel to have been brought nigh to God by his blood, and permitted to pray to God through his merits, and to have fellowship with God through his Spirit ; when we feel that it is the applied power of the incarnation, Christ dwelling in us, a life within a life, that bridges over the otherwise infinite void between sin and holiness, frailty and omnipotence, the sacrifice of dust and ashes at the altar of the invisible and incorporeal God, iu so much that in view of our moral position before God we can say — " He is near that justifieth me," aud there is a Days- man to lay his hand upon us both — when, I say, we can see all this, and feel, that to Christ we owe all this ; then that pale point in the heavens magnifies ; we believe with the magi that the whole firmament hath no glory to compare with it ; we discover a world, a sun, a heaven of blessedness in " the bright and morning star." Consider the image, next, as it sets forth Christ as the harbinger of light and religion to a dark world. The term "morning star" we give, as you are aware, to one of the planets in our system, when it appears just before the sun, outshining and outliving all other stars, and seeming to have the entire vault of heaven to itself. It becomes, therefore, to one waiting for the morning, a pledge, or earnest, or first-fruits, of the light that is to fol- low ; an interregnum between the long dominion of darkness, and a diffu- sion, over all visible objects, of the beneficent rule of day. We can at once see with what fitness a descriptive title of this kind would be applied to the star of Bethlehem, Look at the darkness by which its appearance was pre- ceded — the darkness of heathenism — under cover of which every trace of the true God was lost. Nature, eloquent in her testimonies to the eternal power and Godhead, could not be heard ; providence, in its outspread pic- tures of an intelligent and all-ruling mind, was not understood. The foolish heart was darkened ; the light of reason was gone ; the conscience laid by its enfeebled functions ; and the grieved Spirit would strive no more. The whole Pagan world was given over to a reprobate mind. Look again at the darkness among God's ancient people, with a veil resting upon their Scrip- tures, with distorted interpretations of their prophecies, with the moral scope 288 THE BRIGHT AND MORNING STAR. and purpose of their beautiful ritual lost ; pretended Messiahs rising up to humour the national prejudices ; their entire worship a thing of ceremony and display. Such was the dominion of Judali in the time of her vexation, when God did, first lightly, and afterwards more grievously, afflict her by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the nations. But in the midst of this darkness, the star came out of Jacob : it was " the bright and morning star," and at its appearance the darkness fled ; yea, and the false lights also ; the star of the god Reraphan, and the worshipped hosts of heaven. "Tlie people that walked in darkness hath seen a great light; they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined ;" and, whether to the heathen or to the Jew, it was, wherever the mind would receive it, a refreshing, gladdening, soul-reviving light. The whole religion of the Jew had been a laborious going about to establish a righteousness for himself. In the light of the star, he found all this work was done for him ; so that he had nothing to do but to submit himself to the righteousness of God ; to submit his reason to its simplicity ; to sub- mit his faith to its promises ; to submit every thought and faculty of his moral nature to the rule of him by whom this righteousness was procured. Yet more will the dawn of this holy light comfort the oppressed spirit of the heathen. His darkness is not a dreary, undistinguishable void, merely ; it is peopled with spectral forms, strange spirits, untrusted and unloved divini- ties : and how refreshing to him to see the thick obscurity broken, and beginning to pass away ; to have yet an object of worship revealed to him, rich in mercy, beamiug in grace, glorious in holiness ; to have the way of salvation made plain to him, through the merits of the crucified ; to behold Christ, the light of the world, under the peaceful happy image of " the bright and morning star." A third aspect under which the image of our text would suggest that we should contemplate the Saviour, would be, as the source of all guiding and directing influences. The thouglit connects itself naturally with our present festival. The wise men seeking Jesus were in the right road only so long as they submitted themselves to the guiding conduct of the star. Their journeying first to Jerusalem was all lost time ; they were but following their own carnal reasonings then, and as a consequence the bright point in the heavens would be seen of them no longer. Directed, however, by the sure word of prophecy, they turned their faces towards Bethlehem, and instantly their lu- minous guide appeared again ; not now stationary, as at first, but making for itself a silvery track through heaven's highway; beckoning the stranger silently with its finger of light ; never tu2"ning, never resting, till it stood over the lowly dwelling where the young child was. And, in like manner, if we are ever permitted, brethren, to lay our ofi^erings at the feet of Jesus in heaven, it will be that our way thither has been made plain by tlie lead- ing of a star. Christ is the way to his own truth ; Christ is the light to his 290 THE BRIGHT AND MORKING STAR. own way. The Apostle Paul, you will remember, after exhibiting to us his glorious array of God's justified ones, forming a great cloud of witnesses to the tried and tempted saints, and showing how we must run in patience the race that is set before us— j'et is careful to remind us it is not to these we must look — not for example entirely, nor for help at all ; one there is who will suffice for both. " Looking unto Jesus, the Leader" — as the word is — " and Finisher of your faith" And the like promise have we in Isaiah, con- ditionally upon a holy and obedient walk. It is said to the believer—" Then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday ; and the Lord shall guide thee continually." Yes, he will go before ; he will be to you the pillar of fire, and cloud ; he will tell you when to journey, and when to rest ; in weakness, he will be your strength ; in temptation, he will be a sun and shield ; in the dubious and perplexing passages of life's journey, the voice of his Spirit shall be heard, saying to you, "This is the way ;" and in the dark night of distress, and fear, and accusing thoughts, and the hid- den face of God— a cloud upon the spirit, and a thicker cloud before the throne,— the Lord Jesus shall guide thee continually ; thy way shall be made plain before thee by " the bright and morning star." Ouce more ; the image of the text would seem to point to those secret and silent influences for good, which the shining of Christ's light operates upou the human soul. More than once, in Scripture, have we allusions to the metaphor of our text, in connection with the perfecting of the Christian character. To the victorious believers of Thyatira, in the second chapter of this book, we have Christ pi-omisiug — " He that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations : and he shall rule them with a rod iron ; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers : even as I received of my Father. And I will give him the morning star." And again, in St. Peter, we read, speaking of the light of Christ — " Whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the daystar arise in your hearts." In this latter passage, you observe, are two succeeding effects set forth, as belonging to the great mystery of our conversion — the taking heed to an external light, by which the blindness of the mind may be taken away, and the experience of an internal illumination, which should attract and fill the heart. In this view, the expression in our text suggests the con- straining, alluring, drawing influence of the love of Christ. We follow him, not only because we are blind, and need his guidance, but because we love him and desire his friendship. Our language is, " Draw us, and we will run after thee; go before us, and we will follow; command, and we will obey." Our thought is brought under the constraint of a sweet captivity. We are not our own ; we have yielded ourselves wholly to the will of the Divinity that dwells within us ; we are under the power of the morning star. The day has dawned upou the heart, which now rejoices in its holy and beneficent 291 TU£ BRIGHT AND MORNING STAR. and calm light — in the light of the word to teach, in the light of out- ward providences to guide, in the light of the eternal Spirit to sanctify, and in the light of the Saviour's presence to sustain and bless continually. Yet, my brethren, let us not forget, in conclusion, that, with all the light which the risen sun of revelation has thus shed upon us, — all we have yet experienced is but the first dawn of things. The daystar is just rising, and, compared with that light in which we shall see liglit, all our looking at spiritual objects is but seeing through a glass darkly. And it should be our rejoicing that it is so. We are content, and more than content, that we see in part ; that heaven has much — very much — for us to learn. If the dis- closures already made to us have shed hope, joy, and peace, over our daily path, the obscurity that remains should both endear and heighten the prospects of immortality. It is no subject of regret to us that within threescore and ten years we can comprehend but feebly the mysteries of redeeming love, the triumphs of a ransomed nature, and the pei'fections of an infinite God. We know and are sure that these will form our theme and song in those purer worlds where, like the morning mist upon the mountains, the shadows of time shall be chased away ; Avhere doubts, obscurities, mistakes, and blindness shall be no more — all dissipated and dispersed in the brightness of that final and yet more glorious Epiphany, in which the Lord " shall be unto thee an everlasting light, aud thy God thy glory." 292 THE GOLDEN LECTURES— SECOND SERIES. No. III. THE CALL OF JklATTIIEW. 9[ Sermon Delivered on Tuesday Morking, January 13, 1S57, BY THE REV, DANIEL MOORE, M.A. AT ST. Margaret's church, lothbury. "And as Jesus passedforth from thence, he saw a man, named Matthew, sitting' at the receipt of custom : and he salth unto him, Follow me. And he arose, and followed him." — Matt. ix. 9. We must distinguish between the ordering of the twelve apostles to go forth and preach the gospel, and the calling of them to be partakers of its blessings themselves. The one was a formal commission given to the twelve altogether ; the other was a private invitation made to them one by one. In the former case we observe all the marks of stately and solemn prepa- ration. The Saviour withdraws from the scene of his benevolent activities, the mountain receives him in its noiseless solitude, and prayers of a whole night long tells of weighty matters for the morrow, which lie very near to his heart. " And when it was day he called unto him his disciples, and of them he chose twelve, whom also he named apostles." The private or personal call of the apostles, however, was far otherwise. It was, on any historical showing, purely accidental, growing out of the casualties of the day, and con- tingent on meetings, and conversations, and circumstances which only au Omniscient mind could have made subservient to its own purposes. Such was the calling of Andrew, and Peter, and James, and Bartholomew. They are mending nets, or sitting still in the house, or meditating thoughtfully under the fig-tree, when the Lord intimates that he hath need of them. For what purpose he sought them as yet they knew not : they were just so many stones brought together, ready, when the time should corae, to be laid as a foundation for the Church of God. Seven of these living stones, hewn out of the rough quarry of our degraded humanity, had been gathered in, before it came to the turn of him, perhaps the rudest and most unpromising of them all, whose call is repeated in the verses I have just read. lie who No. 2,700. 2 N THE CALL OP MATTHEW. had selected his first disciples from the fishing-boat will now have one from the toll-booth. When the Great Potter would make a vessel unto honour, any soil may be made to yield the clay. " And as Jesus passed from thence, he saw a man, named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom : and he saith unto him, Follow me. And he arose, and followed him." Let us proceed to consider this Scripture, bretliren, under three aspects : as a fact of gospel history, as illustrative of some important doctrines, as sug- gestive of lessons for our individual profit and improvement. I. Our inquiries will be first directed to the facts of the incident. In fulfilment of the emphatic prophecies which had gone before with respect to Galilee, our Lord gave to that land of darkness and spiritual death no inconsiderable part of his public ministrations ; he especially favoured the country which lay about the lake of Genesaveth, and hence, as was very natural, came in the course of one of his missionary journies very near to the toll-booth of ]Matthew — these toll-booths being like our own custom- houses, planted at the mouths of rivers, or on the sea coast, with a view to get in impost on foreign commodities imported into the country. Of course, if these taxes had been collected with anything of fairness, whatever the political wisdom of such restrictions, there could have been no reason or justice in visiting reproach upon the collecting officer. But the dues were not collected fairly ; for knowing the odiousness of the office of gathering tribute for a foreign and hated power, the real and authorised publicans of the Roman government, who were often men of high standing and character, ■were rarely to be seen at the seats of custom themselves. They sent their slaves, or their freed men, or any class of men they could get, who would either be ready to do a work of oppression for their employers, or who, having farmed the produce of any particular station, would practice ex- tortion for their own advantage. We hardly wonder at the hatred in which these men were held by the Jews. An odious tax, imposed by a conquering nation, collected with systematic unfairness, and then to be paid over into the hands of heathen men and idolaters, would hardly fail to make the xmhappy official employed in it an object of univer- sal dislike. The very hatred with which he was regarded would almost tempt him to do something to deserve it ; and he would liardly care to be honest in a calling which was a received synonym for oppression and fraud. " Publican and sinner" were but two names for the same thing in Jewish estimation ; and being called the one, it would cost him notliing in the way of reputation to act the part of the other. Like all charges against collective bodies, however, the imputation of dishonesty in regard to the publicans was often unjust. Zaccheus was a man of unquestioned probity before his con- version, and there is nothing to forbid a like charitable supposition with re- gard to Matthew. It is not because grace may abound towards the chief of sinners that we must try to make a man the chief of sinners, in order to 318 THE CALL OP MATTHEW. magnify grace. Besides, grace does not need such magnifying ; its real triumphs consist in overcoming man's inborn antipathies to God and good- ness, changing and even forcing contrariwise the fixed bias of his affections, in causing Christ to have the throne of his heart, and heaven the first place in his hopes ; and the difference between effecting such a change in the case of one who has been an open and notorious sinner, and in one who, like JMatthew, has been merely covetous and worldly, is in the great spiritual calculation a barely appreciable difference. The power of Divine influence — that, in fact, which proves it to be Divine — is to be seen not in what it con- verts us from, so much as in that which it converts us to. The worship of mammon may be more refined than the worship of Moloch, and it may ap- pear a hard saying to affirm, that between these two divinities there may be not much to choose. But so it is. To unmake an idolater is not necessarily to make a Christian. By might or by power, by argument or by reason, men maybe made to "turn from dumb idols;" only by the Spirit of the Lord of hosts can they be brought " to serve the living God." Be it, however, that Matthew was publican and open sinner too : we see, he waited no second bidding from the Saviour. On hearing the words " Fol- low me," his resolution was prompt, decisive, without a single annexed con- dition. Unlike some others whom the Saviour had called, Matthew had no father to bury, no relatives to embrace, no flesh and blood to confer with, before his mind was made up. He was seated at the table of his gains ; his coffers were filling with the extorted tribute-money; when, beyond the group waiting to give him their grudged coin and hating looks, is one who invites him to forsake table, gains, and all. What is to be his equivalent he asks not ; where he is to go he knows not ; yet he obeys : an impulse he knows not whence has taken possession of him, taking all his prudence away, and lulling into a deep sleep all his activities and ambitious desires, and instantly on hear- ing the words of Jesus "he arose and followed him." Such are his own simple words. We can hardly think it was accidental that he left it to another Evangelist to add, that in thus following Christ, " he left all ;" rather is this one of those graceful touches of christian humility which make the gospel grateful as transparently genuine. Matthew will tell us nothing about his own sacrifices ; whilst, if you would see the shame of Peter depicted in its exceeding shamefulness, you must consult the gospel dictated by himself. Into the further conduct of Matthew it is not necessary that we should carry our inquiries. The verse following the text informs us, in that studiedly unostentatious phrase which a Christian would use when speaking of himself, that " as Jesus sat at meat in the house, behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down with him ;" no mention being made as to whose house it was, or at whose bidding the multitudes came. This information, so creditable to Matthew, is left to be supplied by another Evangelist. Ac- cordingly, Luke tells us, that all this gathering was in the house and at the 31» THE CALL OF MATTHEW. bidding of this newly converted publican. Grateful for the mercy which had called him out of darkness, anxious to witness boldly and before the world a good confession, inflamed with a holy and loving zeal for the souls he had left behind in blindness still, in misery still, at the receipt of custom or in bondage to the world, he would try, as every spiritually converted man will try, to bring thera to Christ, to draw them on gently within the reach of gospel influences, leading them to the field where he had found the pearl of great price, and secretly ofiFering up a prayer that they might find it too. " And Levi made him a great feast in his own house, and there was a great company of publicans and others that sat down with them." II. But I must observe, secondly, on the light this incident throws on some important doctrines— the truths it discovers in connection with the Divine methods of a sinner's conversion. Thus we cannot fail to discern in the narrative before us the absolute free- dom of God's electing grace. When will the world have done with system- making— trying to simplify what God has designedly left in mystery, sacri- ficing everything to a false theological symmetry, and bending into agree- ment with some schoolmen's syllabus every part of the whole counsel of God ? That God's truth never can conflict with itself, that all the disclosures of his will under any dispensation constitute an ever-developing and expand- ing unity — that where successive revelations deal with exactly coinciding truths, there is an identity of moral plan to be traced the further our inqui- ries are carried, is -an axiom of our Christian philosophy which I hope to sustain every time any of the higher mysteries of our faith have to be brought before you. But I see not how this is to be done, if we allow ourselves to be hampered by the technicalities either of Arminian or Calviuistic theology. The characteristic of most of these scholastic systems is, that arising, as for the most part they do, out of some one controverted point of doctrine, the chief design of the system is to secure a prominent place for that one> hurtful often to others, and destructive of those finely-adjusted harmonies which, whether in nature or in revelation, mark the work of God. Leaving men, therefore, to their theories, let us keep close to God's facts. His elec- tion of some men to be the subjects of a gospel call, Avhilst others are passed by, is one of those facts. " He sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden," it is said in the parable of the marriage supper ; therefore some were not bidden ; whilst in the case before us it was from a frnwd of men, many of wliom the world would have pronounced more worthy of such a distinction, that he singled out Matthew for a disciple, for an apostle, ay, for one of heaven's secretaries, to take down the words of life from his lips. Now, had this publican been, like the Ethiopian eunuch, reading " through a glass darkly" the writings of Isaiah, or like Lydia waitiug at the river side, where prayer was wont to bo made, or like Cornelius, humbling his soul with fasting, in the hope that heaveu would give him some better food, we had not wondered at the purpose of the Divine election fastening on one wliose mental eye seemed turned that way already. But IMatthew was at his gains : we are not told that he even looked up from his counter, to see ■what multitude it was that passed by ; yet no sooner did the voice of Jesus enter into his ears than his heart caught the sound, and he obeyed. Brethren, how are we interested in this fact I Why, by knowing tliat God may awaken us in many ways besides a sermon, and in many places besides 320 THE CALL OP MATTHEW. a church. I speak not disparagingly of the use of prepat^atory means ; the purpose of God's election quite consists with a regard to spiritual proba- bilities, and these justify a rational expectation that as a rule a Cornelius, a Lydia, or an inquiring student of God's Word will be called before a Slatthcw. But still it is well for us to bear in mind, that though ordinarily God does call us in the use of his stated ordinances, he may call us when we are at the receipt of custom. We all know how metaphysicians have per- plexed themselves about the laws of thought — as to what suggests a given train to the mind, what connects it, and how far voluntary efforts may avail either to help it on or to scatter it away ; but of the birth of many of our thoughts they can tell us nothing. Job's question could be answered by them quite as soon — "Out of whose womb came the ice, or who hath begot- ten the drops of dew ?" No ; even to unconverted men God sometimes sends thoughts, as of old he sent angels, in the field, or while on a journey, or at the cool of the day, or on their beds, when they are waking. No connec- tion can be traced with any of their immediately preceding reflections. These were light, and frivolous, and worldly, like those of Matthew, all about the things the heart loved most ; but this thought that has come into the mind so suddenly is quite serious, and unusual, and stands by itself; nothing led to it, nothing called for it ; it is a thing dropped down from some other world, demanding pre ent audience, and requiring that any, the most urgent business we have on hand should be put aside. Brethren, if ever you feel this unaccountable inrush of strange thoughts, be sure you give to them all prayerful heed ; entertain them acceptably, and you will find them to be angels come to you unawares. And their speech bewrayeth them. They will speak to you of God, and heaven, and eternity, and the worth of the soul, and the love of Christ, the death that is near, and the judgment that is to follow— subjects that you do not often dwell upon, least of all, when you are at the receipt of custom. Wherefore doubt not the source of these suggested thoughts, nor their mission ; they are from above, and are sent to draw you thither, being the spiritual and invisible servants of him who said to the world-loving and covetous Matthew, " Follow me." Observe next, however, the overcoming power of Christ's Word, when he wills that it shall become eiFectual. The classification of the Divine offers to the sinner into ordinary and effectual calls, as found in some religious systems, is one full of difficulty. It is liard, bald, impracticable, and under cover of it men theorise away all their accountableness. Nothing which respects a Divine intention, or what is the same thing, God's unknown and final issues, can ever be a rule of action for us. Eecurring to our illustra- tion from the marriage feast, God knew that they which were bidden to the Gospel Supper would make light of it, would prefer their farm and their merchandize ; but who would therefore say, that when he sent his servants to bid these guests to the wedding he intended that they should not come ? No distinctions, therefore, based upon a Divine purpose, are needed in this matter. Christ said to the young ruler, the same as he did to Matthew, "Follow me ;" and in such accommodated sense as we can speak of a Divine intention at all he meant him to follow him. The calls were not different only in the one case the call was yielded to, and therefore God gave more grace in the other it was resisted, and therefore that which the man had already was taken away. And thus we arrive at this general conclusion : no call 321 THE CALL OF MATTHEW. can become eflfectual without the coueurring grace of God, and every call would be effectual, were it not for some voluntary sin in ourselves, " Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden" was the invitation we had just now ; and every revelation of the Divine character is in har- mony with this spirit of loving earnestness. Every doctrine of the gospel says " come ;" every gracious promise, " come ;" every threatening of God's anger, "come;" every picture of an undying death, "come;" — and there- fore we can come. God never calls without giving moral ability to em- brace the call ; and without that help we never could embrace it. Left to himself, Matthew could not have stirred a step from his toll-booth, or even have lifted his eyes from the glittering coins upon the table : at the words of Christ, " Follow me," he would have drawn his chair closer, and clutched his gold more firmly, and cast on his soul's idol an intenser and more loving look. But the God of all grace must be obeyed. Matthew felt drawn with " the cords of a man and with bands of love," and a voice potent as that which sliaketh the wilderness drew him away from his tables, from his gold, from his soul's enemy and snare. And that voice is as potent now, though it may encounter hindrances, cherished, indulged, consciously encouraged liindrances, some no doubt based on its own omnipotence and the dishonest pretext of human powerlessness to take even the first step. But, brethren, " be not deceived ; God is not mocked." The question of how much you are able to do in the matter of your own salvation will be better en- tertained when you are in a position honestly and before God to say that you liave done all that you can — that you have praj'ed as much as you can, studied the Word as much as you can, struggled with besetting sins as much as you can, separated yourselves from all known hindrances as much as you can. Till then your metaphysics are an awful impertinence, and you ap- pear before God with a lie in your right hand. But this voice may meet with opposition from a cause on which God will look more kindly. It may be that on our first awakening we feel hemmed in by many dark thoughts ; the leprosy of sin cleaves, and the claims of the world abound ; the law in the members crosses, conflicts with, all but wars against the law of our minds. "Who shall deliver us from the body of this death ?" we exclaim. But oh ! brethren, what unbelief is all this ! what trusting to self, and looking to self, instead of leaning simply, entirelyand trust- fully on the Lord Jehovah our everlasting strength ! As the darkness flees, when the Lord God says, " Let there be light," must not the oppressor yield, when the Lord says, " Let my people go ?" How, then, can resistance avail, when the Saviour says, "Young man, I say unto thee, arise;" or, "I will, be thou clean ;" or, " Come, take up thy cross and follow me ?" All we have to do is to cast away our doubts and presumed impossibilities. If the mes- sage is to stretch forth our hand, we must stretch it forth, though at the moment we feel it to be withered. If he bid us go, show ourselves unto the priests, as cleansed persons, we must go, though we feel there is not a spot of our leprosy gone. When Christ calls, there are none so lame as not to be able to run after him, and there is not a covetous man who could not re- nounce his gold, if by the voice of the all-powerful Spirit, Christ would only say to him, " Follow me,"j III. And now let me conclude with some hints for oiu' individual improve- ment which the incident before us furnishes. 322 THE CALL OF MATTHEW. Matthew was a case of true spiritual conversion ; there is no doubt of that. What were the signs of it in his case ? and can you and I find the like in our- selves ? Well, combining his own account of the call with that of Luke, we seem to discover several marks of the workings of true grace ; namely, prompt obedience to a command, a cheerful taking up of the cross, a public and grateful witnessing for Christ, combined with a solicitude for the souls of those around us. Thus, mark the promptness of this publican's obedience. " Follow me," said the Saviour. Now on first hearing the invitation, what room was there for the exercise of Matthew's human prudences, for calling expediency to his counsels, for asking time to count cost and consult friends, and cast about in his mind for life's future ways and means ; but the word and the act came together. Ciirist said, " Follow," and Matthew arose. Brethren, I believe the soul's life of that publican hung upon that act. In estimating the exact concurrence of our moral powers with God's grace, nothing is more difficult than to define the precise point at which something involving our own account- ableness comes in to turn the scale either one way or the other ; but we know there must be such a point, and in such cases as that before us, where could we fix it more naturally than just at that instant of time when the soul feels itself called, as it were, by name, and has an accompanying conscious- ness that the voice is the voice of God? This was Matthew's persuasion, when these few short words broke in upon the din and debate of the tax- house ; and it left him no option. He flung his cold cautions to the wind. ' Be amazed, ye tax-payers ! Say I am beside myself, ye Pharisees ! Who will wrestle with a burning Divinity within him ? Who sit still, when called audibly by a message from heaven 2' Oh 1 brethren, has it never happened to you — no matter where — to have received one of these heaven-sent calls, to have been impressed by it, to have risen up to obey it, and yet to have sat still, after all? The difficulty was in the first step— the wrench and sever- ance needed for getting away from that seat of custom ; and though the destinies of two worlds hung upon it you could not move — at least not yet. To-morrow ! To-morrow the call will be more easy to obey, and you will follow then. The resolution is fatal ; you have made your feet fast in the stocks. Satan has no firmer hold upon a soul, than despised convictions, resisted calls. Divine impulses reasoned and resolved away ; for the calls wax feebler every time, and the lethargy of the soul becomes more confirmed. Observe one simple rule, therefore, whenever a holy impulse is upon your spirit, whenever something has touched you which you cannot doubt to be a message from God. Do something : renounce a habit, make a sacrifice, make some efifort for your soul's good, which before you had not done. Only take one first step heavenwards. Arise ! Then how have we here a sign of the publican's true conversion — a cheer- ful taking up of the cross, a laying his account with hardness, and cost, and difficulty, and sacrifice ? " He left all," says St. Luke. Why left ? Why not take his gains and his comforts with him ? Ay, this is what Satan would have said, if Matthew had only allowed himself a few moment's considering time at the money-table. And, it may be, he has said the same thing to you often. He sees you disposed to arise, disposed to follow Christ, disposed to be no longer joined to the world ; and it is Satan's policy to let you give an appa- rent hearkening to such impulse, only suggesting that whilst you follow 323 THE CALL OP MATTHEW. Christ you should take as much as you can of the world with you. The thought mi({ht have occurred to Matthew—* Why may I not obey the strong impulse to embrace a new religion, and yet continue to practice all the under- stood irregularities of my calling — extort and oppress as before, connive at delinquencies as before, defraud the revenue as before ? But no ; he found that to follow Christ he must follow after righteousness, integrity, goodness, truth. And in like manner now a true Christian profession will endure no compromises. To follow Christ is to allow Christ, in all the sanctity of his perfect law, to follow you — to be beside you at the place of custom, to declare the rule of right to you in all your acquisitions and gains, to be witness to your readiness to eschew everything and to forswear everything which the eye of heaven could not endure to look upon, and the door of heaven could not open to receive. Matthew " left all." Then see his pity for perishing souls, prompting to active efforts for their deliverance. Matthew " left all," his friends as well as his gains; but to the former he returned, and made a feast for them. He hoped he might do them good ; he might speak to them of Christ, he might turn his hospitalities into a means of blessing, and, whilst inviting them to eat meat at his table, set before them the bread of life. Brethren, do you know anything of this feeling ? Have you ever felt a deep anxiety about another person's soul, causing his name to linger on your prayers, making you to step out of the way, and deliberate, and ask counsel of God, that then and there you might be an honoured in- strument for that friend's spiritual good ? The sign was hopeful ; there was something of the IVIatthew spirit in this. We may well hope that the light must be the true light, which would not be satisfied without shining, and that the fire must be of God's kindling which would have others partakers in its warmth. Wherefore, brethren, partakers of Matthew's calling, see to it that you are partakers of jNIatthew's choice, IMatthew's decision, Matthew's prompt and obedient compliance with the leadings of the Spirit and the dis- cerned voice of God. In nothing more truly than in the surrender of the heart to him does that proverb hold — "He gives twice who gives soon" — who has no expediences to debate with, no interests to consider, but who, in the full persuasion that in having God for his portion he can want nothing, obeys the bidding of the Saviour, and obeys at once ; whilst, on the other hand, we double the insult to God, when we make the promise of our obedi- ence date from some coming future, when we ask time to consider whether the service of our IMaker be worth our embracing or no, when, although almost persuaded to be a Christian, we ask to spend a few more years at the receipt of custom, before we become Christians quite. Such delays can be viewed by heaven only as an act of the highest offending. It is as if we wished to give God the worst of our days, and to spend on self and the world the best — to reserve a lamb of the first year for our business, and to bring to the Lord only of the maimed and tiie blind — to offer at the shrine of mammon our manhood, our vigour, our freshness, our strength, leaving us nothing to lay on the altar of our God and Saviour but an offering of de- caved worthlessness, and old age, and mental feebleness. God grant that we may bring no such vain oblations, but that having, like Matthew, been called upon to forsake ail worldly liindrances, we may learn on earth to follow the Saviour, even as in heaven we shall " follow the Lamb," without delay, without wavering, with a zeal that shall know no weariness, and with a cheerfulness wliicli siiall be its own reward ! 324 THE GOLDEN LECTURES— SECOND SERIES. No. IV. A REMEDY FOR CARE. 91 Sermon Delivered on Tuesday Mouning, Januarst 20, 1857, BY THE REV. DANIEL MOORE, M.A., AT ST. Margaret's church, lothbury. " Be careful for nothing ; but in everything- by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God." — Philippians iv. 6. A belief in the duty of prayer is almost co-extensive with a belief in the being of a God ; indeed the one seems to spring naturally and necessarily out of the very reasons -which lead to a knowledge of the other ; for what, among other things, makes us acknowledge the existence of a God, but that we feel our dependance, that we are conscious of not being our own ; not our own to live, not our own to die, not our own to choose what our state shall be after death ? All this suggests a persuasion that our whole destinies, present, future, eternal, if such there be, must be under the control of some superior power ; and hence it becomes a very instinct of our nature to try to propitiate this power, to believe that he will either grant or withhold the things that we desire of him, according as we do propitiate him ; and further, to have a persuasion that he will become propitious on our sueing in humble and earnest prayer. Reason itself, I think, has always taught us thus much. The nature of the connection existing between prayer and blessing, or the diflBculty of conceiv- ing any such connection, while all the Divine plans must be foreseen or fixed, are considerations which belong to a more advanced condition of human thought — not that we ever get such questions satisfactorily solved, or ever feel that the obligation to pray is lessened because the speculative difhculty is admitted to remain. For the life and comfort of true devotion it seems un- necessary that we should know more than this — that it is quite possible for us to obtain by praying that which it is equally possible for us to lose through not praying. He whose moral government is professedly carried on by cer- tain foreseen agencies may, it is obvious, make our prayers a part of those agencies. If the falling of a rock, which is a physical accident, may be in- wrought into the texture of Divine providences, the offering of prayer, which is a moral accident, may be nuidc to concur with those providences also. To No. 2,702. 2 p A REMEDY FOR CARE. arrive at the true solution of the difficulty, such as it is, we must ascend yet higher, and inquire not with regard to prayers only, but with regard to any secondary agencies whatever, how the general, and the fixed, and the irre- versible in moral government, are made to combine with the particular and the uncertain, and the contingent ; how the web of destiny preserves its per- fect evenness, not dragged at all, or ravelled at all by so many crossing, con- flicting, independent threads — in a word, how God keeps up a uniform ad- ministration of the affairs of this world, without being entangled in the multi- tude of liberties and choices which he has left in the hands of moral agents. And yet we both believe these things and act upon them, without even finding therein any compromise of the claims of a rational faith, or any practical ob- struction to our own happiness. At all events, as far as prayer is concerned, there is one thing we must all feel, namely, that if we had not a firm persua- sion that some connection exists between our prayers and God's after dealings with us, every incentive to devotion would be taken away. I think we could not go on to pray upon a mere command to pray ; we must believe that there is a chain of unseen influences to connect the prayer and the desired result. The intervening links may be many, and unsuspected, and much twisted, and far apart ; but faith must see the two extremes of the chain, and believe that the one will infallibly lead to the other. A saint pleading with holy impor- tunity must feel that he shakes not the earth only but the heavens — that he both moves God to compassion and moves himself to patient waiting until the compassion comes. He cannot lift up his hands with perpetual doubting ; he cannot continue in his heart to say, "The Lord will not hear me," and at the same time follow the counsel here given by the apostle — " Be careful for nothing ; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God." Two things call for notice here: the first a prohibition — "Be careful for nothing;" and the second an injunction— Be prayerful for everything; and the last is the very reason for the first. A God to go to always should take from you all your anxieties, and prayer should be the death of care. I. Consider, first, the prohibition — " Be careful for nothing." We have a like expression in the Corinthians — "But I would have you without careful- ness;" and again in that reproof of our Lord to Martha — "Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things." I suppose we all know something of the infirmity here pointed out, — that restless, anxious, wearing, self- troubling, self-tormenting spirit, which sees everything going wrong, and yet perversely neglects the best means for making them go right — which takes always the darkest view of things, and is half angry with anybody who should suggest that the picture may have a brighter side— which makes us delight to turn all our hopes into a pile of ruins, and invite every friend we meet to come and look at the desolation. Brethren, have you never experienced something of this ; a strange gloominess of feeling, which for days together made every road rough, and every sight sad, and every taste bitter, and every- thing that happened a presage of coming evil — something which soured you, grated upon you, spoiled you for all real usefulness, robbed you of all peace in prayer ? Well, this was carefulness ; and it is not only a sin in itself, but what is worse, it is very likely to lead to much greater sin, namely, to discon- tent, and murmuring, and fretting against God, a sullen rebellion, a cast off comfort, and all those forms of disaffection and infidclitv which commonlv issue 334 A REMEDY FOR CARE. in thorough atheism of the heart. " Fret not thyself," says the Psalmist, in our Psalter version, " else shall thou be moved to do evil." The first ques- tion, therefore, for a man to put to himself in such a case should be — Is there not a cause f Is there some secret thing in me ? Can my affections be set on right objects, that they meet with this continual thwarting? God, we are sure, has no delight in seeing his children unhappy, carrying loads, oppressed ■with cares, mourning all the day long. Indeed, if the burden be any of his own imposing, he has told us of a way by which its pressure may be always lightened. " Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee." But, then, suppose the burden be one which God never laid upon you at all, but one which you made for yourself and took up for yourself, and have ever since persisted in carrying for yourself: why, then it is clear you can neither cast it upon God nor carry it any longer yourselves, but must even throw it away altogether. The apostle gives like advice, when he says — " Wherefore, let us lay aside every weight, that we may run with patience the race that is set before us." Weights are bad things for running with; and therefore, Avhenever they are of such a nature that we cannot ask God to carry them for us, we must let them fall, and leave them behind. Por see what will happen if we do not, as we have it plainly exemplified in Scripture, in the case of some careful men, makers of their own burdens. One, though given in pa- rable, is very striking. There is a man whose grounds bring forth plentifully, and whose barns are full to overfloAving ; but he is in great trouble. He has some sore debatings within himself, and he cries out, " What shall I do, be- cause I have no room where to bestow my fruits i" Well, this was a care of his own making ; he could not cast it upon God, he could not throw it away, he must therefore bear it as he best could ; and he soon lighted upon a way — a way not to ease the burden or to remove it from him, but to bind it on his own neck with the weight of an everlasting mill-stone. Scripture tells us also of some other careful men. Look at Ahab in the matter of Naboth. His king- dom flourishes, his enemies are smitten down : why lies so uneasily the head that wears a crown ? Oh ! he has a sore care gnawing at his heart ; it sleeps with him, it wakes with him, it goes about with him ; he cannot rest, or speak, or eat bread. And what is ailing him all this timer Why, vexation that he cannot take in a neighbour's vineyard, to add to his palace garden. Nay, this carefulness may have, if possible, a yet more worthless origin. A man may be, as Haman was, rich and honourable, and have the rule of an empire, and eat at the king's tables, and go in and out as one of the princes, and yet his bed be hard, and his meat wormwood, and his life a burden, because there is one who knows him too well to do homage to his usurped pre-eminence. " Yet all this availeth me nothing, so long as I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king's gate." These, it is true, are somewhat extreme cases ; but I am aiming to show the wisdom and practicability of the Apostle's counsel, to "be careful for nothing." And this I do by showing, that all things about which we ever are or can be careful may be proved to belong to one of two classes— that is, either lawful anxieties which God has permitted to come upon us, or unlawful ones which we have brought upon ourselves ; and I say we have no business to keep either of them, because God will take the burden of the one, and the other we have but to throw away as soon as we can. Now, ami quite sure that the Scripture illustrations just referred to are not so very wide of the mark of many of our common carefulnessscs. I believe we often fret and disquiet 335 A REMEDY FOR CAKET. and make ourselves miserable about matters quite as frivolous and as weak as the not getting a piece added to our garden, or the not meeting -with a pro- per salutation from a supposed inferior at our gate. For indeed it is a very fiettting and troublous thing, this dignity of ours, and to keep it up, and to let no hurt come to it, and to prevent people thinking of us worse than we wish them to think, as that we are not so rich, or not so gifted, or not so in- fluential as report has made us out to be, there is nothing we will not do for this ; and so it is that more sleepless nights are spent by the rich, and power- ful, and vain, and self-important, in contriving to get food for their pride, than are spent by the poor, in considering how they shall get food to live. And this advice of the apostle is of further value, in that, taken in con- nection with the reason why we are not to be careful, it affords us an easy means of proving whether the things which do trouble us are matters which we ought to be careful about. You are to " be careful for nothing," because you may take everything to God ; leaving the inference to be drawn, that the care which you cannot or daie not take to God you ought never to have had at all. Apply this rule to the last thing which fretted and vexed your spirit. Some Mordecai omitted to pay you proper respect : could you go to God with that care? Some neighbour that you have long been running a race with in •wealth, or honour, or social position, has clearly got the advance of you : could you go to God with that care ? Brethren, there is nothing like this ordeal of prayer for trying the righteousness of human solicitudes. Imagine a reckless speculator going to God, complaining of the fluctuations of the share-market, or a disappointed politician asking Heaven to sympathize with his vexation, because some deep laid party scheme had failed ; or the Indian opium grower complaining of the blight of heaven upon his poppies, when he knew the male- diction of heaven was already resting upon his trade ! Imagine an envious person casting on God the burden of his uneasiness, because he had been obliged to hear another's praises, or a vain person complaining of sickness at heart because in the company he had left his right of precedence had been dis- allowed, and the place of honour given to another instead I Such things, as mat- ters of prayer, shock us in the very thought. Disquieting, and vexatious, and destructive of all present happiness as the persons giving way to such thoughts feel their distresses to be, they feel also that they are of such a kind that they must bear them unhelped, and silently, and alone. Take them to God, except as infirmities to be bewailed and as sins to be striven against, they dare not ; their crosses come not within the limits of the promise. " Cast thy care upon the Lord" does not mean cast thy sin upon him, but cast thy lawful solicitudes, cast thy timid fears, cast thy heaven-sent and permitted burdens, whereby God would try the faith and patience of his children — would see who anion" them would trust to the sufficiency of an unseen grace for support, and the power of an unseen hand to save. " Be careful for nothing." II. The expression thus guarded, and the course referred to thus limited to such unavoidable anxieties as our heavenly Father may see fit to send us, we pass on to consider the reason why we should be no more sad, namely, the gracious permission vouchsafed to us. " Be careful for nothing ; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God." Now, observe, first, the Apostle says, " in every thing." "\Ve cannot fail to be struck, brethren, with Paul's love of a comprehensive phrase, when he has 33G A REMEDY FOR CARE. any great principle to enunciate. He seems to wage inspired war against all exceptional cases. Unbelief says, ' Surely it is permitted me to be cast down sometimes.' 'Ono,' says the Apostle, 'you must rejoice in the Lord always.' ' But is it not enough that under some visitations I attain to an uncomplaining submission?' 'No,' says the infallible Word, "In everything give thanks." ' May I not believe that the course of my spiritual life fluctuates, one event adverse and another prosperous, one helping me forward and another throw- ing me back ?' ' No,' it is added again, ' There are no retarding influences in the economy of grace at all ; the great wheel and the little wheel, the quick movement and the slow, they both incline one way.' "All things work together for good to them that love God." And so it is in the text. ' I ask not,' says the Apostle, ' what your care is, a sickness, or a sorrow, or a per- plexity, or a doubt— a disappointed hope, a feared adversity, a wrong course taken by one of your family, or a cloud upon your good name ; I inquire not whether that which is wearing your spirit day by day be some long pending litigation, making you month after month to go on venting your abortive wrath against the law's delay, or whether you find yourself drawn into some business entanglement, where the skein seems to get more ravelled every day, and it seems as if you would never be able to extricate yourself, or whether you are awaiting in torturing suspense the arrival of a vessel which, charged with tidings for your establishment or your utter ruin, you know must ere this have left some distant shore, or whether you are nearing some crisis in 3'our afi'airs at which you must do something, and night after night are pon- dering upon your beds to know which will be for the best. My remedy will be the same, be your case what it may. It is the universal heart's ease. " In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God." Well, it is hard to conceive with what delighted gratitude we should receive this intimation from above, if we now heard it for the first time. It plainly meets a beautiful peculiarity in our social nature ; I mean, our love of getting an interested listener, when we have a full and overcharged heart. We know he cannot help us, perhaps from the nature of the case cannot even advise us, and yet he has relieved us by hearing us out ; and if he is kind and gentle, and seems to love us, and shows he would help us if he could, why, then he does help us ; he has taken away a part of our burden, and sympathy lightens care. Still, we put our practical limits to these human confidences. Kind as our friend is, we do not tell him everything ; we cannot, must not ; and no man, not even the deluded votary of the Romish confessional, ever did tell another man aW his heart. 'But here is a friend,' says the apostle, 'to whom you may and should tell everything. To attempt to hide anything would be folly, because he " searcheth the heart and trietli the reins."' But there is nothing you wish to hide ; it is the perfect unbosoming of the heart, the lay- ing the soul naked under the eye of God, just as Hezekiah did the in- sulting letter of Sennacherib. God would have us speak out ; he abhors all reserve, and covering over, and keeping back. " If I be a Father, where is mine honour? If I be a Master, where is my fear?" Now, the honour of a father is in the affection, the trust, the open-hearted and generous confidence of his children. Disobedience robs him not so much as concealment; and to break his laws hurts him less than to doubt his love. Here, then, is the first part of the apostle's remedy for cares — perfect openness with God, a habit of 337 A REMEDY FOR CARE. magnifying his pity as much as his power — a cherished persuasion that there is no sin too great for his compassions, and no want too minute for his regards. We veil no infirmities when talking to God, as we do when speaking with an earthly friend ; because we know that he can see what the earthly friend can- not see ; that trifles, however insignificant in themselves, may yet have a direct bearing on our spiritual happiness. With God's people especially, I believe, Satan's strength lies in little things. For great occasions they are ready ; at the sight of mustering forces they gird on their armour ; but the little vexations, annoyances, and perversenesses, and things that will not be remembered even next week, these, without great watchfulness, will for a time cntirelj' throw the soul ofi" its balance. Use j'our privilege, then, brethren ; make God the depository of these little cares. Were you to go and make a set call on some friend to disclose them, he would hardly restrain from a smile, to see you discontented with such little things ; but with God nothing is little which concerns the happiness and peace of your soul. With regard to the expressions " prayer and supplication," if we take them to describe a less and more fervid form of petition, we suppose the prayer to have respect to our temporal, and the supplication to our spiritual wants. They must evidently be the less importunate prayers which we put up for any form of good for the present life. There are two consecutive petitions in our Lord's Divine form, which seem to set forth the necessary condition, as well as the proper measure of such prayers : the condition, " Thy will be done ;" the measure, " Give us this day our daily bread." " Bread," if not obtained in ways agreeable to God's will, would in the eating prove worse than a stone ; and bread, if anxiously and needlessly laid up beyond our prudent daily ne- cessities, will, like the hoarded manna of the wilderness, prove nothing but a curse to its possessor. In the matter of temporal supplies, therefore, whether as regards kind or measure, we must leave a large latitude with our heavenly Father. The dangers of adversity may be great, " lest we become poor and steal ;" but those of prosperity are far greater, " lest we become full, and for- get God." But the apostle speaks of supplication also. And this I have supposed to refer to those more fervent outpourings of the spirit, where we may form a re- solution to take no denial, where we have come for a definite purpose, and have resolved not to lose our errand, where we are allowed to wrestle, weep, and wear out flesh and blood, crying out even till break of day, saying, " I will not let thee go except thou bless me." Thus we ask God generally for a more enlarged measure of spiritual gifts and feelings — for a more softened heart, a more heavenly mind, a more obedient will. We ask that for our mer- cies we may have a more unafi'ected thankfulness, and in the service of God may feel a purer and more abiding joy. We may ask as if we expected to receive, not, I think, as having any warrant to insist upon, an assured and lively sense of our adoption ; but praying our Divine Lord, if so it consist with our sanctification, to show us that cancelled bond which, once against us, he has now nailed to his cross — to let us see the blood of sprinkling with whicli he has cleansed our guilty consciences — to show us, as it were, the very page where strong faith may read its own name in the book of life. But these are general topics. Connected as the advice is with carefulness, I think the apostle rather means, that among our subjects of supplication there should not be any of those blemishes and deficiencies, whether in heart :33s A REMEDY FOU CARB. or service, which so much injure the consistency, and when discovered bo much disquiet the spirits of good men. Now, these are only discerned, even to ourselves, by a holy and searching particularity. We might go through general confessions as often as the Romanist utters prayers by his rosary, and not find out our besetting failure. Be minute, then, in your supplications. Mention everything. In more lengthened devotions you might find it conve- nient to take one by one St. Paul's nine fruits of the Spirit, or St. Peter's eight elements of Christian fruitfulness, or the Ephesians' six pieces of gospel armour, or those nine evidences of spiritual conversion of which the Great Preacher on the Mount said, all that have them shall be called blessed, and wherein ye find yourselves most lacking, "make your requests known unto God." Tell him, in sorrow and in deep shame, that you are prone to be fretful under crosses, impatient under rebukes, angered at injuries, selfish in your comforts, ambitious in your desires, inconstant in your devotions, and in all the duties you owe to him disposed to become weary and faint in your minds. True, God knows all this ; but he would rather hear it from you. The father might have known that the prodigal was wearied and worn out, and wished to come back again ; but he must not comfort him till the son has uttered the words, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee." Be very open with your heavenly Father ; and very full. "In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God." "With thanksgiving." What an unfulfilled errand to a throne of grace would ours be, if this last were left out! I know the apostle is supposing our chief mission there to be the obtaining relief from some pressing griefs ; yet these can never be such as not still to leave us with much to be thankful for. God always allows us to retain a great deal more than he takes away ; and in our sad hours, and in seasons of much carefulness, is the best time for counting our remaining mercies up ; and then, as we kneel down to ask for more, we shall think gratefully of those we have — of the blessings bestowed upon us in Providence, of the dealings of God with us in grace, of the refreshments ex- perienced in holy ordinances, when sorrow, or the world, or.sin, threaten to take away all comfort from our hearts. We shall call to mind our last vic- tory gained, our last temptation spared, our last token of God's favour given, our last danger turned away ; and some very obvious comparisons with some of our fellow Christians around us may help us in this grateful feeling. We are in health perhaps ; to how many of them is life a burden, through sick- ness and protracted pain ! We are in comfort ; how many of them, once as affluent as ourselves, are struggling on in meek and unrepining silence ! Mercy, greater mercy still, is always to be lifted up as a standard, whenever these threatening and wearying cares would rob us of our peace. We are awake ; we once slept. We are light ; we were once darkness. We that were dead are alive again ; we that were lost are found. "In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God." The great lesson of our subject, brethren, is, that prayer is not only the highest privilege of our being, but the true peace of the heart, the only rest of the soul, the first solace we should turn to under all life's changes, whether •we want a trusted friend to counsel, or a strong hand to deliver ; and it is observable that the relief to be expected is by the apostle emphatically con- 339 A REMEDY FOR CARE. nected with our making known tho request, and not with any pledge or pro- mise that the request itself shall be granted. " Make your requests known unto God ; and the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." As if he had said, " I do not promise that in answer to your prayers your child shall be raised up from a bed of sickness ; only that while it lies there you shall have peace. I do not promise that that black cloud which is now gathering over you and around you with such thick and disastrous gloom, shall dissipate, but that in it and through it, and even while there seems no way out of it, you shall have peace." You have " made your requests known unto God." They may be wise, or they may be unwise ; they may be soon, or too late ; whether of the twain you know not, and must not be careful to know. The matter is out of your hands now. Grief, trouble, disappointment, it is in the ordering of him who upholds the world. The cares which you take to God you must be willing to leave with God. Let the wise and paternal rule he has taught you be a shelter both for them and you, and he will take care of both. " Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee." 340 THE GOLDEN LECTURES— SECOND SERIES. No. V. THE ONE THING NEEDFUL. Delivered on Tuesday Morning, January 27, 1857, Bl? THE REV. DANIEL MOORE, M.A., AT ST. Margaret's church, lothdury. "And Jesus ansM'ered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things ; but one thing is needful : and Mary hath chosen that g'ood part, wliich shall not be taken away from her." — Luke x. 41, 42. Some reflections which will be suggestei\ by this incident, will lend to illus- trate yet further the subject of our last lecture.* True, tlie carefulness there spoken of was of a more urgent and, perhaps, more directly selfish kind than that here attributed to Martha, but the feeling itself is the same in both cases, the danger to the person's religious happiness is the same. From what was before advanced, it should seem that there are but two kinds of carefulnesses which can give us any trouble, namely, those which being lawful we may take to God, and leave with him; and those which being unlawful we have but to shake off and discard. Martha's was plainly of the latter kind, and, there- fore, she is reproved for it. It was no excuse that her carefulness was not ostensibly about herself, that it arose from a wish to do honour to Christ; to show love to him, to do homage to him, to lay at his feet her costliest and her best. It was still a self made care, and therefore out of the pale of the Divine sympathies. The burdens which God sends he will always help us to carry, but those of our taking up, we are left to fret under, and that to our soul's hurt. " Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things : but one thing is needful : and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her." Let us consider the incident here related, first, as it exhibits the dangers of immoderate worldly anxiety, as seen in the contrasted characters of Mary and Martha ; and secondly, as it enforces the paramount claims of personal reli- gion. I. Our attention is to be directed first to the history. Our Lord travelling from Mount Olivet to Jericho, entered into a certain village, Bethany, where abode a united Christian family, consisting of Martha the elder, and probably a widow, Mary her sister, and their brother Lazarus. Martha, as hostess, is spoken of as receiving Jesus into her house, and it is * See I'cnny Tuliiit, No. 2.702. Nos 2,705. 2 s THB ONE THING NEEDFUL. in the discharge of the duties belonging to this relation that we get an insight into her character. She is a bustling, over anxious, and therefore easily dis- concerted housewife. Thus we cannot doubt her hospitality, her wish to be behind in no mark of affection and respect to one who had " not where to lay his head." Her house, it would seem, was always open to him when his journey lay that way; and often during Passover weeks, after having been engaged the whole day in the city or in the temple, he would retire to this quiet village and spend his evening hours with the family at Bethany. And on these occasions, at all events on this, the kind hostess was full of fretting, wearing, distracting anxieties for fear something should go wrong; for fear a guest, whom she loved and delighted to honour, should have something to find fault with. She could not conceive it possible that she should sustain the parts of housewife and a disciple too; and as she was very jealous of her reputation in the former capacity, she chose rather to serve than to listen. And if matters had ended here, our censures of Martha must have been uttered very sparingly ; we should have spoken more in sorrow than in re- proach — sorrow that she should have been at such pains to make herself miserable; sorrow that such laborious attention was thrown away; sorrow that she should have drowned in the noise and bustle of these supper prepara- tions blessed words that she might never hear again. But, unhappily, in the case of Martha, this over anxiety led, as it is almost sure to lead, to peevishness and fretfulness and fault finding with others. "But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said. Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me." Now, here we see two or three faults which detract from our estimate of Martha's conduct. Thus her complaint is very selfish. Mary had not blamed Martha for leaving the doctrine of Christ to serve tables, for being anxious to get the reputation of a generous and pains-taking hostess. And why should not the younger sister in her way be allowed to get a reputation of another kind, that of being an attentive disciple? If Martha chose to attend on the sup- posed wants of our Lord, and Mary to hear his words, why should not each have her reward? But the complaint was very unkind also. There is an evident attempt in it to expose and humiliate Mary in the presence of the very Being whom far above all others she reverenced and adored. That Blessed Saviour, whose one displeased look would have crushed her utterly, shall hear her accused of an indolent and selfish disregard of an elder sister, and, by im- plication, of deficient courtesy towards the Lord Jesus himself. But even this was not the worst feature of Martha's ill-timed and petulant complaint: it veiled, scarcely veiled, an angry and presumptuous charge against the guest whom she was professing to honour — " Lord, dost thou not care ? Are my laborious hospitalities of such small amount with thee that it matters not to thee whether I am helped in them or not, that all my zeal in thy service is not to have a word of encouragement, whilst a sister who will not raise a hand to set on bread can engage thine undivided attention and seem to absorb all thy regards." Thus, brethren, you see — and I entreat you to mark it, — for I be- lieve it to be among the lessons for which the history has been preserved to us, as well as a reason for that emphatic prohibition we were considering last 358 THE ONE THING NEEDFUL. Tuesday — you see what a tendency there is in a careful, cumbered, over- anxious state of mind not only to make us unconcerned about the " one thing needful," but also to sour the spirit, to betray us into a sinful petulance, to lead us on to an angry fretting against God. From the consequences which might have followed from such a temper of mind Martha was preserved, because the Divine Saviour had sethis love upon her, as we read, "Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus." But she is set up as a warning to us, the cum- bered, and the careful, and the busy, and the distracted of both sexes ; to toiling fathers intent on worldly gains, to anxious mothers not knowing whether to look this way or that; to the young filling up every interval of time with airy schemes and dreams, to the old wearing life out with vain disquietudes as "a moth fretteth the garment;" to the rich racking his tired thought to know where he shall bestow his goods, to the poor troubled far more to know where he shall get goods to bestow ; and the warning is that we cannot allow our- selves, in this feverish and restless spirit, this continued tension of the mind and its powers on any earthly object, without the utmost peril to the immortal part, and spreading a cloud before the face of God. Brethren, let not the lesson be lost upon us. Human life, we know, is and was always intended to be a life of toil and activity. By the sweat of his brow man is to eat bread ; and in an artificial and advancing state of society, where competition is keen, and the prize of success inviting, men feel that whatsoever their hands find to do, they must do it with their might, or they may as well not do it at all. And this is a truth which there is no gainsaying, and against the perverted application of which our Christian ethics can furnish us with no law. Every man must be fully persuaded in his own mind. We know that in this great city people are sometimes so incessantly coming and going that, like the disciples on one occasion, they have not leisure so much as to eat; and if the poor body fares thus hardly, what must we expect will become of the soul ? Why, we rush through the busy and unending round of gains and losses, mis- lakes and failures, this man's folly and that man's wickedness ; then, carried like a dove over the agitated waters of human speculation, finding neither place of rest, nor yet a way of return to the forsaken ark of God. See to it, then, brethren, that ye have a limit to those harassing solicitudes and engagements, to the time they should occupy, to the energy they should consume, to the wear and tear of spirit which you permit them to take out of you. And the place for seeing whether you are habitually transgressing this limit will be the closet. When there is no life in your evening sacrifice, and no freshness in your morning prayer — when you have no wish, yourselves, to sit calmly at the feet of Jesus, perhaps, can hardly refrain from complaining at those who do, it is plain you are careful and troubled about many things, and the "one thing needful" has but a second place in your hearts. Indeed so inevitable is this tendency of multiplied and absorbing anxieties to impair spirituality of mind, that we should infer from the example before us the danger is the same even when the occupations are not of a mercenary or selfish kind at all, but may be connected with objects and purposes designed to honour Christ and his gospel. In the case of Martha, we should have said, that to testify love to the Redeemer, to show how she felt her house honoured by so 359 THE 0N£ TH1N« MESDFUL. sacred a presence, and to prove to a scornful deriding world tViat Bethany would open a glad asylum to the " despised and rejected of men," was a pure and laudable ambition. Yes, but even such ambitions may be pursued too eagerly, and if they be, if the mind is allowed to be harassed, and distracted, and stretched on the tender hooks of busy hopes and fears, the lamp of the inner life will go out, and our love for the things of God will languish and fade away. No mistake can be more dangerous than that of thinking that if we be employed for Christ, or for the things of Christ, we may be as busy as we will and do no hurl to our souls. Zeal, activity, holy labours, of any kind carried beyond permitted bounds, suffered to encroach on the sanctities of the closet, so ab- sorbing all the faculties of the mind, that God can be served only by its waste and weariness, will eat the life of a man's religion away, and leave him nothing for his comfort, nothing for his hope but the dry shell of a worn out piety. The re- mark, it will be seen, applies to many persons — to those who for example serve on the committees of religious institutions, to persons who give their time to visit the poor, to teachers at schools, to all in fact who give themselves much to works of faith and labours of love; to all so employed we say, your work is good, holy, honoured and acceptable as was that of Martha when she received Jesus into her house. But, remember, he does not want you to be ever on the move for him, to be constantly running hither and thither with your busy, persevering, officious zeal ; he loves the staid and quiet service. There is a time to sit and listen, as well as a time to be active and serve ; and when Christ is speaking patient attention is the best service. The reproof of our Loid, gentle as it was, was full of meaning — • Martha, Martha, thou art careful about many things ; things which because done for me you think important, but except in due place and subordination I value none of them; I value nothing which stands in the way of the paramount claims of God and your own soul : one thing is needful, Mary hath chosen that good part.' And this leads us to say something of the history, as it bears upon the character of Mary. We cannot doubt that there were between the two sisters constitutional differences which would have shown themselves somehow, even if Martha had been the more advanced Christian of the two. There is an eager impulsiveness about the elder sister which somewhat reminds us of Peter, whilst the calm tenderness of Mary suggests a comparison with John. This distinctiveness of original temperament comes out very strikingly on the occasion of the death of Lazarus. Thus Martha, after that event, as soon as she heard Jesus was coming, eagerly ran forth to meet him ; but Mary sat still in the house. Again, after the brother was raised, we find, while Martha was busied in serving the supper, Mary was engaged in that kind of calm solemnity which was to be the type of the master's burying and an enduring memorial of a disciple's love. Still, whatever nature had done for Mary, there can be no doubt that grace had done far more. It was evident that the Saviour, at whose feet she was sitting, whose words were to her " sweeter than honey and the honeycomb" had given her that ornament of a meek and quiet spirit which is in the sight of God of great price. It was not an indolent in- difference about the honours of hospitality, not a dull constitutional insensibility 360 THE ONE THIKG NEEDFUL. to the greatness of the occasion, that made Mary go and take her seat so calmly by her Saviour; it was the quietude of religious thoughtfuliiess, the repose of a mind nobly regardless about household anxieties that she might hear Christ, the peaceful blessedness of being alone with God, of having, as it were the Divine Saviour to herself. And this is a form of inward tranquillity which no mere temperament can bestow, it is the gift of God, it is the gracious bequest of Jesus to his brethren that are in the world ; it is the peace of one who is careful for nothing, because he knows he may be prayerful for everything, it is the Spirit of God dove-like and gentle dwelling in the believer's heart, witness- ing that all is peace now, and giving him a pledge of the eternal calm of heaven. This was the good part which Mary had chosen, good if for nothing else, for its beautiful and divine simplicity, for it restricted all her anxieties to one care, limited all her choices to one object, drew all her thoughts one way ; it enabled her to distinguish between the desirable and the needful, be- tween the many things which we might desire to possess, and the one thing which we must not rest till we do possess — between a possession which, with all our trouble and carefulness, we shall never be able to retain, and that good part which, if we be found faithful, shall never be taken away. II. But I propose to consider our text, in the second place, as it enforces by some emphatic considerations the paramount claims of personal religion. " Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things ; but one thing is needful :" or rather, for one thing there is a necessity. What this one thing is, we can be at no loss to determine : it must refer to salvation as the end, and to a godly life as the means of its attainment. Indeed the words which follow affirm as much ; for it is Mary's attendance on the concerns of her soul that our Lord commends as a wise choice; and salvation is the only good which we know shall not be taken away. Let us investigate the chief arguments by which the wisdom of this holy choice is vindicated. Of these, the first is the relative inferiority of all human pursuits, however honourable or lavvful when put into competition with the salvation of the soul. "Thou art careful and troubled about many things; but one thing is needful." The plain inference is, that the many things are not needful, that their worth is only secondary and relative; that what with the difficulty of their acquisition, the precariousness of their tenure, and the certainty of their speedy privation and loss, the things we most trouble ourselves about do but ill requite our pains, while they may keep a greater and needful good away. Apply this rule to the things that men are seen lawfully and properly to toil for. Take for instance the acquisition of knowledge, an acquaintance with the secrets of nature, with the facts of history, with the statistics of government, with the laws of science — all useful surely, and under due subordination all desirable; but are they attainments worth making a trouble about ? Will the pleasure they aff'ord minister consolation on a bed of sickness ? Will the light they give keep us in the way to heaven ? Have not many ignorant and unlearned men enjoyed a more tranquil peace of conscience, and acquired a greater knowledge of the truth too, by meekly sitting at the feet of Jesus, than they could ever have obtained from any amount of proficiency in human science? Then it is plain that the acquisition of knowledge can have only a secondary THE ONE THING NEEDFUL. place in human solicitudes. Make it as important as you will, you cannot make a necessity of it. Assume that ere it must give way all the interests of salva- tion must give way, and you cannot be at a loss to determine which. The cultivation of the mind is not the "one thing needful ;" it is a part which may be taken away. Take another desirable thing. May I not be troubled about my reputa- tion, my character for uprightness in dealing, fidelity in trusts, blamelessness, ?nd virtue in all the relations of personal and domestic life? Are we not taught that a "good name is more precious than ointment," one of our ordained instrumentalities for moral usefulness, and that with an unremoved cloud or blot upon it we are deprived of more than half our power of doing good ? This may be true ; but on the other hand it is to be remembered that the desire of a good name among men often brings with it temptation and a snare, to have our good evil spoken of, may be among the intended correctives to our pride. If we should search the records of saints in light, we should find that for one who had been brought nearer to God by the praises of the world, thousands by its censures, and neglects, and unkindness have been led to seek the honour that proceedeth from God only. As our Lord has taught us in another place, " Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you!" Why? Because there is a danger that it should make you think well of yourselves. Now the good opinion of men can never take rank among things absolutely needful. We know that " wisdom shall be justified of her children ;" David shall rise above Shimei's curse, Joseph's virtue shall pierce the obscurity of his dungeon, and the tyrant shall bear testimony to the maligned and insulted Baptist ; and at the very moment when perjury has cast its base accusation into the martyr's teeth, the judges who are to pronounce sentence against him shall read heaven's verdict in his countenance, lighted up with a glow of sanctity, " as it had been the face of an angel." Do not, then, be careful or troubled about man's judgment. What matters it that the world witnesseth many things against you, if God witnesseth the one thing for you ! To be under a cloud may be hard to bear, but surely a good conscience can afford to wait till the sun comes out. " Commit thy way unto the Lord, and wait patiently for him ;" " he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday." The same characteristic of relative insignificance or unneedfulness compared with " the one thing that is needful" will be found to mark many other things, about which people wear out their peevish and fretful days — such as disap- pointments in friendship, unkindness from relations, hasty conduct from supe- riors, unfaithfulness in servants, favourite views thwarted ; plans to yield gratification for a year, peihaps, if they succeed, and if they fail to be for- gotten quite as soon. But leaving these, take the two things, to which, if anything on this earth may be called needful, we should be first to give the name ; I mean our daily subsistence and our bodily health. For these we must allow there is a comparative need ; we have even given them the name " neces- saries of life," without them, in moderate measure, we see not how we are to fol- low our calling, or adorn our doctrine, or serve our God, or help to bless and do good to those around us, in a word, how we are either to fulfil our work on earth 362 THE ONE THING NEEDFUL. or to prepare for our work in heaven. Now, this would unquestionably pre- sent a difficulty, would show good cause why we might not sometimes be careful and troubled about many things, if God had not framed specific promises to relieve us of this anxiety, and, as it were, to make it his own. But that scripture "your heavenly Father knoweth that je have need of these things," seals all complaining lips ; it intimates that in all classes of human anxieties which relate to our daily subsistence, God will have a care to, and has under- taken to provide for you. And this is never said of other earthly solicitudes; it is never said of knowledge, of reputation, and outward comforts, or even of robust bodily health — "your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of these things." God recognizes but two needful things in the whole world ; the support of life and the soul's salvation ; the one he will give, the other you must seek for — " Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." But, besides the trivial worth of other things for which our Marthas of both sexes are constantly troubling themselves, our Lord founds an argument in favour of the choice of Mary, in that the good it respects is paramount, su- preme, and indispensable. Of the many things which engage human anxieties, the most you can say is, they are expedient, or pleasant, or desirable ; but, for the one thing, says our Lord, there is a necessity ; it is the " one thing need- ful, absolutely, incomparably, everlastingly needful." The things of this life we cannot want long; because we are hastening to a world where there will be no room for them ; but holiness and salvation we shall find needful always, needful under the calamities of life, needful in the agonies of death, needful in the world of spirits, needful when time shall be no more. Now, this es- sential difference between the good part and any other which we could choose, puts an end to all further comparison, separates them by a distance which is no longer measurable. Thus I can do without expertness in human sciences, but how can I do without the science of salvation? Of what avail to me would be an entrance on the imperishable scroll of earthly fame, if there were no mention of my name on the record of the book of life ? Who would have human friendship, solid, indissoluble, to be disowned by the "friend that sticketh closer than a brother?" Or who would be freed from all further anxiety about everything else to have doubts of his interest in that good part which shall not be taken away ? To seek an interest in Christ therefore, to prove the worth of grace in your souls, to escape from everlasting misery, and lay up a good foundation for the time to come, for the death which is to come, for the great assize which is to come, for the long eternity which is to come, we have no stronger plea with which to urge these things upon you than this one of our Lord, " that it is the one thing for which there is a necessity." But this plea of necessity, heartily embraced and realised, is the most com- manding incentive to human action. A man once persuaded of the necessity of a thing, feels that nothing can be impossible to him ; it is a divinity that acknowledges no law, disregards all prudence, bears before it all that comes in its way, and sets at work all the powers of invention to accomplish and secure its end. Necessity will make the slothful rouse, the careless think, the proud stoop, the stubborn give way. Persuade a man that an avalanche is 363 THE ONE THING NEEDFUL. loosening about him, or that he is within range of volcanic fires, that a pesti- lence is carrying off thousands at his side, or that a famine is coming daily nearer to his door, and what a sudden development will there be of thought and energy, of dormant and unsuspected power, all created for and rising to the pressure of so perilous an emergency ! And this form of anxiety it is our Lord argues which should urge men to seek the salvation of their souls. There is a perilous woe hanging over them ; without loss of time they are urged to flee, not from eruptive fires, not from famine's terror, not from the fever's pestilent and malignant breath, but from a doom which to the impenitent is nearer and more certain far, even that we should " flee from the wrath to come," the wrath of God and of the Lamb. Yes, this is an anxiety, pressing, urgent, inevitable, with only one escape, only one open door, only one name or plea by which the imperilled soul can be saved ; only one, but that one is infallible, made over by promise, and within reach of all ; and this should be very helpful to a right determination, for we thus see that life's business, life's joys, life's decision is between the one thing which we can make sure of and the many things which, fret and trouble ourselves as we will, we may not obtain after all. Take your stand at the confluent point of some of our crowded thoroughfares, and watch the thousands who pass you by with hurried step and anxious look, and all the signs of absorbing and concentered pur- pose. Well, sad enough is it to think that many of these are bartering their hopes of heaven for some prize or position in this present life, but how many of them never obtain even the poor prize they run for ! Our Lord, in indig- nant astonishment, we remember, says, "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" But what if he should not gain the whole world but lose that too? A like recompence seems to be the fate of all half-hearted endeavours, of wavering undecided choice in the matter of salva- tion ; men lose two worlds and all their labour too. Their labour for earth is lost, for they do not get their reward; their labour for heaven is thrown away because it was made one of their many things, and not the one thing ; they have prayed they have read Scripture, they have attended ordinances, they have imposed some restraint on besetting sins, they have done some kind offices to their neighbours and to mankind, but they never got beyond being almost Christians. Religion was a desirable thing if it could be retained with other things; life's duty, but not life's necessity, not the imperious demand of God upon every human spirit, not the " one thing needful." Chose ye, then, brethren, your position this day, only see to it that you understand the things between which your option lies : it is between the wished for and the indis- pensable, between the doubtful good, and the certain ; between the prize, which, at best you must run a hard race for, and a crown which you can only miss of through your own fault; between joys that are short lived and unsatisfying, and which must be given up at last, and those which are always full, unabating, which shall live and abide for ever. " Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her." 364 THE GOLDEN LECTURES— SECOND SERIES. No, VI. THE TRANSFIGURATION. 9i Sermon Delivered on Tuesday Morning, February 3, 1857, BY THE REV, DANIEL MOORE, M.A. AT ST. Margaret's church, lothbuhy. " And, behold, there talked with him two men, which were Moses and Elias : who appeared in glory, and spake of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem." — Luke ix, 30, 31. It is an attribute of the human intelligence, perhaps an infirmity of it, that it receives truth most readily through the medium of sensible representations. Parables not in speech, but in figure, seem to have been the universal lesson- book of mankind. The trees of Paradise were silent ordinances; the types of the law were prophetic facts ; the visions which passed before the minds of patriarclis and holy men were all sermons to the eye ; whilst in every action of our Lord's life there is set forth, as it were, in shadow some doctrine, some duty, some consolation, or some hope, for the edification and instruction of the Church of God. The Great Teacher was teaching always, — in the humiliations of Bethany, in the obscurity of Nazareth, in the solitudes of the wilderness, in the mental darkness of the cross; all his sufferings were homi- lies, and all his miracles a gospel which they that run might read. And hence it is that in the outsvard history of our Lord we have the best commen- tary upon, as well as the clearest witness to, the great mystery of his two-fold nature. As we read on in the narrative we see that two whole and perfect natures there must have been, acting in and through that one visible im- personation ; and our minds get possessed of the fact, before seeing how such a resulting conclusion is to be expressed in theology. " Without controversy great is the mystery of godliness;" but equally without controversy is it that " God was manifest in the flesh." He hungered who could feed the multi- tudes ; he slept who could hush the storm ; he received strength from an angel at whose feet all angels bow, and he who stood on the holy mount, with a countenance radiant as the sun, and with raiment white as the light, not long after appeared on another mount, lifted up between heaven and earih, No. 2,708. 2 w THE THANSTIGURATION. "a spectacle to angels and to men," fulfilling all that Moses and the prophets had foretold of " the decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem." The transfiguration of our Lord was an event to which the sacred writers evidently attached great importance, no less than three of the four evan- gelists having preserved an account of it. Let us consider for our profit, first, some of the more noticeable features of the transaction ; and, secondly, the lessons it was intended to convey. I. Our attention is first called to the leading features of the transfiguration itself. The place of its occurrence is commonly fixed at Mount Tabor; but this is a tradition only, and the order of the narrative would certainly have suggested some place nearer to Cacsarea Philippi. The more important point for our notice, however, is the solemn act of devotion by which the vision was preceded. "And it came to pass that about eight days after these sayings, he took Peter and John and James, and went up into a mountain to pray." The prayers of Christ, brethren, we must always remember, were no mere formal acts; they were deep realities of his spiritual being, the spontaneous outgoings of his proper humanity, and instrumental, as our prayers are assumed to be, to some desired and expected end ; and hence the more frequent mention of these devotional exercises is in connection with some important passage in his history. At his baptism he prayed; before ordaining his disciples he prayed ; at the grave of Lazarus he prayed ; he prayed when he saw the tide of popu- larity taking a strange turn in his favour, and when men would make him a king ; with prayer he entered upon the mysterious scenes of his passion, and breathed out his soul in prayer. Must not this be especially one of those instances where Christ is a pattern to us ? In needing a help for great emer- gency, can the disciple be above his Master, or the servant above his Lord ? Stated prayers, it may be presumed, we have all of us, many, we will hope, after the example of the Psalmist, at evening, in the morning, and at noon- day ; but when we have some great work before us, when some momentous choice is to be made ; when in that mixture of motives which influence human conduct we are afraid that the bad, and the selfish, and the earthly should get the upper hand ; when the principles are about to be tried, and the associa- tions of the place we are going to will be like sparks falling on the very stubble of our besetting sin ; when we are being led by adversity into the wilder- ness, and to escape from difficulties we are tempted to turn stones into bread ; or when we are carried by prosperity to an exceeding high mountain to find that by one act of treason to God and conscience the world and all its glory might be ours; at any and all such times, I say, do we, like our Divine Master on all his great occasions, seek opportunity for special retirement ? Do we, before any resolution is made, first take God into our counsels? "If thy presence go up with us, then will we go." The wildernesses of temptation will not be dangerous, if we go through them only when led of the Spirit ; and mountains of prosperity will not be dangerous, if we pray before we climb. But who were the witnesses of the Transfiguration? Three only. A less num- ber had hardly satisfied the conditions of the law for establishing the credibility of the fact; a greater would perhaps have attracted more attention than con- 382 THE TRANSFIGURATION. sisted with our Lord's utter retiredness and studied humiliation. Some things in his life were public enough ; the ignominy, the cross, the shame, the bowed head, the smitten side, the fainting, the desolateness, the cup of mysterious wrath — no matter how many saw these; but the glory, the honour, the witness- ing voice from heaven, the chiefs of the saintly hierarchies waiting humbly upon him, the fashion of his humanity all changed and glistering with the beams of Godhead peering through — these must be seen only of witnesses chosen beforehand. Who so fitted for this honour as Peter, who held the keys of his kingdom — James, the first apostle who should be baptized with his baptism — John, described by a title which, if it were possible, might excite an archangel's envy, even " the disciple whom Jesus loved?" Moreover, for them the lesson might be good, and for us too. The visions of God, testi- monies and tokens from heaven, glimpses of saints and saints' happiness before the time, are not things for the multitude, are not things to be talked about. Let the world see our works, our zeal, our unreproached and consistent walk ; but our soul's secret is with Christ; our communings with him are in private and on the mount ; no stranger should intermeddle with these joys. « Our life is hid with Christ in God." We come next to the manner of the Transfiguration. All the evangelists describe it differently, and yet all apparently with one end, that of magnifying the appearance itself. The controlling influence exerted by inspiration on the minds of the sacred writers left them perfectly free in all their natural habits of thought, as well as in their acquired characteristics of style; and here each writer appears to be straining after some illustration worthy of the incident he had to record. Luke, speaking of the raiment, says it was "white and glistering ;" Mark, that it was " exceeding white as snow ;" Matthew, describ- ing the whole in one vigorous sentence, says, " His face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light." All agree that the Transfiguration was sudden, unearthly, glorious; every vestige of humiliation was for the moment laid aside and lost ; the Star of Bethlehem eclipsed the sun in his strength ; the " root out of a dry ground" towered above the cedars of Lebanon ; " the form of a servant" was superseded by the assumed dignity of the heir of all things ; and the outcast and scorned of man appeared in all the effulgence and light of God. How this change was efiected we inquire not, wisely. That there was no change in the bodily substance of our Lord, no destruction of the proper attributes of humanity, we are sure, because he lived some time after in the flesh, and in the fiesh had still to die. We can regard the manifestation, therefore, only as an upper garment of divinity thrown over the fleshly tabernacle, causing his entire visible form to be so suffused and charged with glory that Godhead beamed upon his countenance, and his very raiment had the power of transmitting light. The whole scene was a faint and broken type of this same Jesus in a glorified state, as he was seen of one of those chosen witnesses in the glorious visions of Patmos after- wards — as the eye of faith, and love, and holy fear can behold him now, " walking in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks," flashing the fire of his all-consuming eye upon the worship of the dissembler and the false-hearted, .383 THB TRANSFIGURATION. but laying his right hand upon the penitent, and the loaded, and the trembling', saying, " Fear not." "And, behold, there talked with him two men, which were Moses and Elias, who appeared in glory." Apart from the relation in which these eminent saints stood, the one to the law and the other to the prophets, we see a fitness in their selection on other accounts. Their earthly course had in many respects resembled that of the Saviour. With him they had fasted forty days and forty nights in the wilderness; with him they had encountered shame and scorn in delivering their respective messages to the world, and with him, at least in a way which excepted them from the common lot of all men, did each pass to the mansions of immortality ; and to be first chosen for this honour out of the co\inlless populations of the redeemed, was, doubt- less, an intended reward of their faithfulness. The preference of the reproach of Christ to all the treasures of Egypt, exhibited by one of these holy men — the lofty independence of the otlier, when he stood, a solitary prophet, against Ahab, against priestcraft, against all the world — be witness, heaven and earth, to God's approval of this. " Them that honour me I will honour." But Moses and Elias talked with Jesus about — what? Was the subject joyous, cheering, hopeful, bright as the bright scene around them? No, "they spake of his decease," his exodus, " which he should accomplish at Jeru- salem." Was this meant to suggest to us, brethren, what should be our sub- jects of meditation in prosperity — to show to us that when all is sunny, and calm, and without a cloud in our prosperity, then we should think of our latter end ? There need be no gloom in such thoughts ; but it may assist us to bear ■with more humility the brightness of Tabor to think of the dark scenes we must ere long pass through at Jerusalem. But why of his decease did these holy saints discourse ? Was it of the method of it they spake — so different from their own — the one by a gentle falling asleep, the other in beatific rapture passing to the world unseen, whilst to Jesus the only way thither was through the furnace of affliction, the baptism of blood, the lonely treading of the wine-press of the fierceness and wrath of God ? Yes, of this they might speak; but not of this only. They spake of the deatli of Christ as a thing that must be — a fore-ordained effect of moral government. It was the fault of the Jews — a fault from which Peter, and James, and John at this moment were not exempt — that they understood not their own Scriptures, understood not that the central fact of the whole prophetic dispensation was Christ cut off from the land of the living, " making his soul an offering for sin," having " his grave with the wicked and the rich in his death." Moses and Elias were in that world of light where they see light, and they discoursed of a theme not only most precious to them, but one vast enough to task their glorified and immortal powers. They spake of the decease of Christ, as the world's hope, the world's salvation, the world's life ; they spake of it as the great fact in view of which God had from all eternity arranged to restore and pardon man. In it stood and by it was to be sealed their own immortality, the immortality of the faithful before the flood, ay, it may be, the immortality of angels, of myriads of unfallen creatures, of all the intelligent populations that may be 384 THE TRANSFIGURATION. gathered together in unknown worlds. We tremble to place a limit to the blood of the cross, to its necessity, to its reach, to its actuating and pervading iufluence on all the moral arrangements of heaven. " That in the dispensation of the fulness of time he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth." For aught we know, the recovery of our world may be no more than the first fruits of the great sacrifice; whilst it is certain that the mind's employment for eternity, tiie depths for angels to look into, the one theme on which glorified intellects will ponder, and for which glorified tongues shall utter endless praise, will be the decease which the Lord Jesus accomplished at Jerusalem. But observe, next, that while this heavenly discourse was going on, " Peter and they that were with him were heavy with sleep." It is to be presumed that they had fallen asleep during the preceding prayer, and before the trans- figuration began ; for " when they were awaked," says the narrative, " they saw his glory." Humbling picture this, brethren, of our nature's weakness. In this, the time of the Saviour's highest earthly exaltation, as well as in the hour of his deepest agony and abasement, were these same disciples overtaken by the like infirmity ! Blessed thought is it, that though the flock may sleep the Shepherd of Israel never sleepeth. We, too, are prone to sleep in holy duties — on the mount with God, in the retirement of the closet, in the reading or hearing of the word. But if this spiritual lethargy be a weakness of the flesh only — come not of indulged or unresisted sloth — be not that worst form of sleep, the sleep of open eyes, of a pre-engaged and worldly heart, we may rest assured the Spirit will wake us out of this sleep in time. Like Peter, and James, and John we may lose much which it had been profitable for us to hear; but we shall not go down from tlie mount without a blessing, without a token, without some glimpse of an approving Saviour, before the glory has passed away. II. Not, however, to dwell on the remaining points of the narrative, let us proceed to a consideration of some of the uses of the Transfiguration, as well as of the moral instruction it was intended to convey. The chief design, we may consider, was to accredit the Divine mission of our Lord, to put the seal of infallible truth on his message, to proclaim him, as it were, by an act of solemn investiture, the Lawgiver, the Prophet, the only Saviour of mankind. The designation of prophets to their sacred office under the old dispensation was often accompanied by circumstances peculiarly impressive and sublime. Moses received his commission^ from the midst of the burning but uncon- sumed bush ; Isaiah was separated to the work by the vision of the Holy One in his temple encircled by veiled and adoring seraphim ; Ezekiel received his anointing in the midst of the whirlwind, and the cloud, and the unfolding brightness, the wheels of the divine chariot turning, and the living creatures letting down their wings ; but the awful splendour of the Transfiguration rises above these scenes. Moses, as a servant, only showed the brightness of the Father's glory ; Christ, as the Son. was that brightness. The sublimities of Horeb came upon Moses by surprise, and at sight of them he did exceedingly fear and quake ; Christ goes up prepared for a beatific vision, in calm and 355 THE TRANSFIGURATION. conscious majesty puts on his robe of light, gives high audience to two glori- fied spirits, till the voice from heaven, testifying to the greater beauty of the Son, sends the servants to their rest again. The entire scene must have been encouraging to the disciples, and to their faith most assuring. To him gave revered prophets witness; him had God the Father sealed; by him had been put on for an instant as much as mortal faculties could bear to see of the image of the infinite and invisible God. And memory treasured up the testi- mony among its living things ; it made delusion or deceit as to their Master's mission impossible. "We have not followed cunningly devised fables," said Peter, many years afterwards, " when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount." But a further use, if not design of the Transfiguration, is to connect the different dispensations of revealed truth together, to give an authorized sanction to Old Testament announcements, to affix the signet of heaven to all the ancient types and prophecies, and to show that Christ was the glory, the substance, the terminating object of them all. God may speak through many voices, but he never speaks more than one language. His truth is an in- destructible and unchanging unity throughout all ages. It was no new theme which was discoursed of by this founder of the law and this head of the goodly fellowship of the prophets, when they spake of the decease which Christ should accomplish at Jerusalem. Moses had acted it in parable, and Elijah had exhibited it in sacrifice, whilst the Psalmist had sung of it, and prophets had pictured it with all the graphic minuteness of historic fact. " Search the Scriptures," said our Lord to the Jews — the writings of Moses and the record of the prophets — " for these are they which testify of me." * I was the life of that lifted serpent; I was the water from that smitten rock ; I was the sweetness of that falling manna; I was the substance of that Paschal Lamb. All the faithful of old time knew me ; I was their pillar of cloud, I was their delivering angel. I was the enshrined presence of their sanctuary; I was in the ark, when it gave them victory over their enemies; I was the Shekinah, whose brightness gave testimony to an approving God.' And thus we see with what propriety the representatives of the two great sections of the ancient church appear with Christ upon the mount — ay, still more, with what pro- priety they depart and leave him alone. As when they were on earth, so now in their glorified state they would do homage to Jesus. They had spoken of his decease ; but this done, they will intimate by their departure that their dispensation has had its day — that in the great concern of salvation we must look to Jesus only. The rod of Moses is laid up ; the moth hath consumed the prophetic mantle of Elijah; the Saviour of all the ends of the earth is come, and Christ must be " all in all." " And when the voice was passed Jesus was found alone." Once more : we must all acknowledge a great value of the Transfiguration, for the practical demonstration it affords of man's immortality, as well as for 386 THE TRANSFIOUR/ITION. the light it throws on the nature of the eternal state. Thus we are glad to have the fact of a separate state established on such testimony. Moses had not spoken of it, neitlier as the object of religious hope is it found in the ex- hortations of Elijah. Implicitly, of course, the doctrine is contained in the teachings of both, as we learn from those words addressed to the rich man in torment: "They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them." But here in this vision is the blessed truth brought out — a living, patent, sub- stantive reality. Evidence which their eyes can see and their ears verify is given to Peter, and James, and John, that all true believers in Christ, after being removed from this visible scene, whether borne away by a whirlwind in a chariot of fire, or laid by angel's hands in some undiscovered sepulchre, do in very deed live on — live in glory, live in blessedness — live to take an in- terest in the concerns of that world where they have toiled and fought, live to discourse with the blessed Jesus, and to see him as he is. " Let us not be igno- rant, then, brethren, concerning them which are asleep in Christ, neither let us sorrow as those that have no hope." Moses and Elias were but the Easter first fruits of their respective dispensations; a great company which no man can number shall come after, all talking with Jesus on the Tabor that is above, and waiting to be clothed in their transfigured glory at " the manifestation of the sons of God." So also of the resurrection of the body. How much does the scene we have contemplated aid our conceptions of this! With many people this is a dead letter of the creed : they have an almost Athenian contempt for the doc- trine, they have no idea of a risen body, except as a gross thing, as a perish- able thing, as a thing fettered by the conditions of that animal economy which, while we are in the flesh, is the source to us of so much disquietude and so much sin. But here, after an interval of a thousand years, Moses appears, and with a body; Elias appears, and with a body. In that unknown grave over and against Baal-peor all that was mortal of the great Lawgiver had de- veloped and quickened into a new organization — an organization which no worm could feed on, nor corruption waste; and it must have been in that brief transition from earth to heaven, at the instant of setting foot into his gorgeous equipage of fire, that the body of Elijah became fashioned into a glorious materialism, causing all that was corruptible, and earthly and un- lovely to drop off, even as his mantle fell from him to the ground. And " such honour," brethren, "have all his saints." " Who shall change our vile body," says St, Paul : " change it" — not destroy it, not annihilate it, not absorb it into a pure spiritualism, but refine it, sublimate it, recast it into some new mould of being, which, while not above the conditions of a ma- terial economy, shall leave us with a nature equal unto the angel's, and a form like that of the glorified Son of God. Then, lastly, in this vision on the mount we seem to be assured that in the life of the world to come we shall know each other. Peter, James, and John did not see two unknown messengers from the spirit land ; they saw Moses as Moses, and Elias as Elias. And what is this but an assurance, that there shall be blessed recognitions in heaven? Yes, brethren, when we awake 387 THE TRANSPlGCnATION. from the deep slumbers of the grave, and are caught up with Jesus to the mount of uncreated glory, not only shall we behold patriarchs on their thrones, and the prophets by the altar, and the elders as they bow, and the apostles as they cry aloud ; but we shall see those whom we knew on earth, shall be per- mitted to embrace our children and our friends again, with all the fervour of a pure, and spiritual, and sanctified, and everlasting love. The relation we prayed for will be there : the erring sinner whom we rescued will be there ; the attached flock shall behold there the face of their faithful minister, whilst the minister shall there see his joy and crowns of rejoicing, double crowns to him then, on finding how much he owed to his people's prayers. Without recognitions in the heavenly state there would be no friendly ties, no love of saints one to another. But " God is love ;" heaven is love. " Charity never faileth." Our earthly attachments, like our earthly bodies, will not be de- stroyed, but purified ; all in them that is unfit for heaven will be taken away ; the rest will remain. We shall have our friendships there, deep without pas- sion, fond without infirmity, tranquil because undisturbed by rival regards, happy because they can be dissolved no more. And then, as we have seen, we shall have speech in that world. Moses and Elias talked with Jesus. The tongue is the glory of man. What should we be without it? The thought is insupportable of a silent world, and the idea of a glorious place where praise only breaks the silence, where nothing jars with the melody of the eternal chime, where the roll of the pealing hallelujahs is like the voice of many waters, where every one hath a song, every one a story of deliverance, every one hath a tribute of thanksgiving to free, sovereign, unmerited grace, and yet in which every one refers his blessing to the decease which Christ accomplished at Jerusalem. 3S8 THE GOLDEN LECTURES— SECOND SERIES. No. VII. THE DEVOTIONS OF THE SAVIOUR. 91 Sermon Delivered on Tuesday Morning, Februarv 10, 1857, BY THE REV. DANIEL MOORE, M.A. AT ST. Margaret's church, lothbury. " And in the morninj^, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed," — Mark i. 35, The facts of the Gospel are not only the best exponents of its theology, but they tend far more than any formal statements could do to prove its doctrinal conclusions true. Take as an example of this the Christ of history and the Christ of any of our received church formularies. The latter might have pro- pounded no article touching our Lord's participation of a twofold nature, and yet the fact would have met us in every chapter of the gospel narrative, that in this one Indivisible Person two natures there must have been. And the proofs of this often appear in the closest possible juxtaposition. Thus in the chapter before us the characteristics of the God and of the man start up, as it were, in alternate paragraphs. The voice of prophecy hails him as the Messenger of the covenant ; the opening heavens witness that he is God's beloved Son ; unclean spirits, amazed, terrified, yet intelligent, cry out, " I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God." And yet. interspersed with, and threaded into the narrative of a Being thus awfully and incon- trovertibly Divine, are intimations equally manifest and unquestioned of his true and unmutilated humanity ; for in the same chapter we read of him spending forty lonely days in the solitudes of the wilderness, and partaking of a spare meal in a fisherman's house, recruiting his wasted and over- tasked humanity by a short night's rest, and preparing himself for the day's duties, as any of us might prepare, by setting aside its earliest hours and its best for an exercise of private devotion. "And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed." A passing allusion to this habit of our Lord's private life was called for by our subject of last Tuesday ;* but the fact is worthy of more extended notice. To think of Christ as a Great Pleader in heaven, as ever living to * See Penny Pulpit, No. 2,708. No. 2,710. 2 V THE DEVOTIONS OF THE SAVIOUR. make intercesssion for his church, we find a delightful theme of contem- platioa always ; but Christ withdrawing himself to sacred retirement, Christ refreshing his spirit by secret prayer, Clirist shortening the hours of repose for the sake of his own private devotions — ^of this we tliink less frequently, though as a fact it is full of comfort to our religious faith, and full of sugges- tions to our religious practice. We may arrange our reflections upon the subject under two general heads — namely, Clirist as having occasion for prayer, and Christ as setting us an example of prayer. I. Our thoughts are to be directed, first, to the remarkable fact that he, the Infinite, the ever Blessed and the Holy, he who for himself could fear nothing, and want nothing, he who knew neither sin nor defect, nor what it was to combat with unholy desires, or to have to struggle with weariness, and faintings of mind, and infirm purposes, did in very deed spend no in- considerable part of every day he was here upon earth in secret prayer. The text, as we know, does not stand alone ; every evangelist has made a note of the fact. Thus one tells us — " When he had sent the multitudes away he went up into a mountain apart to pray ; and when evening was come he was there alone." Another relates, that after closing his beneficent labours " He withdrew himself into the wilderness, and there prayed." And again : "And it came to pass in those days, that he went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God." Now, to what purpose were these seasons of habitual and long-protracted retirement? is the first question forced upon our thoughts. The general answer, that it was that he might be a pattern to us in all the varieties of actions of godliness, though most true as far as it goes, and most profitable, as I shall show you presently, to keep constantly in mind, yet if made the only reason for these long private devotions, does not, I think, quite satisfy us. If the prayers offered up by our Lord upon earth were not real prayers^ that is, if they were not, as other prayers are assumed to be, interwoven with the texture of the eternal designs and purposes, or proceeded not, as other prayers are assumed to do, from a persuasion in him that offers them that they shall be instrumental to the end desired — if the secrecy of the wilderness were sought, and the bleak cold of midnight were encoun- tered, and rest was abridged, and holy labour suspended, just that Christ might spend so many hours in endless and effectless utterances, and so the countenance of his perfect example be given to the duty of prayer, — if this were all, I say, not only should we be much perplexed hereabout, as a strange expenditure of time so costly, but we could hardly help demurring to the perfectness of the example itself. For prayer is not a thing to be measured by hours or words, but is the going up of strong desires towards heaven, the wings that bear them being faith in the promises of God that he will send a kind answer back. Hence such things as earnestness, persever- ance, fervour, trust, endurance of contradictions, calm waiting for results, hoping against hope, must in a degree have entered into the devotions of our Divine Master, or they could have been no example to us. And these feel- ings, we have reason to know, did enter into them. No prayer used only as a practical admonition to his Church that such a duty was not to be neglected would be described in such language as this — " Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayer and supplications, with strong crying and tears, unto him that was able to save him from death, and was licard in that he feared." This must be the prayer of one who had a real suit to prefer, 39S THE DEVOTIONS OF THE SAVIOUU. and who felt that the deepest intensity of devotional earnestness was need- ful to make his petitions speed. Our Lord's devotions then, were not exemplary only, not official only, not mere outward acts submitted to, as his circumcision or his baptism may be said to have been, just that he might complete the pattern of a holy life and fulfil all righteousness, but, as observed last Tuesday, they were the deep realities of his spiritual being. His prayers, we are to believe, were natural and necessary — as much the expression of his heart's desire as any prayer of yours or mine, ay, and would have been offered up, it is fair to presume, even if there had been no end of moral example to subserve at all. Let me proceed with some reasons why this should be so. As, first, prayer was an original and appropriate tribute to the nature which Christ had condescended to assume. That man is a religious animal is admitted by the infidel Hume. The devotional instinct, the tendency to seek communion with a superior power, is as much a fact of our moral nature as the instinct to love, or to be angry, or to provide against danger. Now, the identity of our Lord's human nature with our own, sin only excepted, is taken by the apostle as the great starting point of his theology. " Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren." This being so, it follows that Christ has assumed a nature formed with an aptitude for prayer, disposed to seek its relief in prayer, expecting and deriving daily strength from the exercise of prayer, and maintaining thereby its converse with the Heavenly, and the Infinite, and the Invisible. Fallen as we are, there remain in us yet the rudiments of a praying nature ; and if we have to mourn now that devotion is too much of a task with us, and that we often enter upon it grudgingly and of necessity, and with a cold heart, without any faith that has wings, or any hopes that have breath in them, yet this, we are to remem- ber, is our infirmity, our sinful infirmity ; and of this our Blessed Lord was in no degree partaker. The type of his devotions is to be looked for rather in the pure fresh sanctities of Eden, where prayer was delight, and meditation was repose, and nearness to God was meat and drink, and the heart-strings beat responsively to the grateful minstrelsies of heaven. He needed not any more than Adam a temple enclosed or made with hands ; he had his temple in the garden, in the wilderness, or the mountain side — sanc- tuaries where he could lay up strength for his soul before the busy world was astir, and where he could enjoy what has somewhere been called the holiness of silence. The devotional habit of Christ, then, I say, was necessary in order to his absolute and perfect manhood. Religious emotions were equally as much a part of the nature he had assumed as were those of love, and pity, and joy, and pain ; and as he could not help weeping at the grave, or feeling love for faithful friends, or sighing in spirit at unbelief, or compassionating the multi- tudes in their hunger, and the bereaved in their distress, so neither could he help the welling up of those pious affections which seek their gratification in retirement, and only find their rest in God. That he had no need of that which is the chief errand in retirement — mercy the Alpha, and mercy the Omega of our soul's cry — would not supersede the desire of our Lord to pray, so long as he was in the flesh ; for prayer is the ordained channel of com- munication between earth and heaven, between the spirit of man and the Father of spirits. All holy desires are fed and strengthened at the spring ; the more deeply the soul drinks of it the more spiritualized it is, and pure, and 399 THB TEVOTIONS OF THE SAVIOUR. happy, and disengaged from earth, and near to God. So that without sup- posing these long devotions to have been necessary either to sustain or advance the manhood of Jesus in moral perfectness, we can easily see how gladly his pure and holy soul would betake itself to an exercise which for a time carried him back to the bosom of his Father, a shelter from the world's unkindness, and as " the shadow of a great rock in a weary land." But to have recourse to prayer, and to find his refreshment in it would be one of the proper accessories of our Lord's humanity. His practice may be shown to have a yet closer assimilation to the devotions of mere men, in that his prayers were instrumentally, and according to the instituted order of the Divine appointments, effectual to the attainment of the blessing sought. I say nothing about what this instituted order is, and can tell nothing — how a fore-ordained purpose can be suspended on a prayer, or on any other con- tingency, for its fulfilment. I mean only that in the same sense in which we attribute effectual virtue to Elijah's prayer, when we say that " he prayed earnestly that it might not rain, and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months," in the same sense do we attribute effectual virtue to our Lord's prayers, when we say that because he prayed for his dis- ciples, " Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me," therefore those for whom he prayed were kept from the evil. The difl&culty, such as it is, of harmonizing our notions of foreknowledge and con- tingency belongs no more to Christ's prayers than to ours, nor indeed than it does to the use of any and all voluntary agencies whatever. The agencies are a foreseen part of the purpose ; and if it appear that the prayers of Christ were necessary to the successful carrying out of the plan of redemption, then were those prayers as much a part of the pre-ordination of the eternal mind as the midnight conspiracies of the priests, or Judas's thirty pieces of silver. The prayers of our Lord, then, were real supplications — were things needed. He who in the strength of his Divinity could move the mountains, and lay the storm, hold nature's laws in obedient suspense, and bind the rebel spirit of man in a loving chain, yet had to pray that Peter's strength might not fail him — to pray that the sin of his crucifiers might be blotted out — to pray at the grave of Lazarus, that God would make his glory known. The very occasions on which he appears to have given himself most earnestly to these holy exercises, such as his baptism, his transfiguration, at the ordi- nation of the apostles, and before his betrayal, would suggest that to the private devotional life of the Saviour, scarcely less than to his public acts and ministry, we are indebted for our hopes of salvation. If the shedding of his blood were necessary, that he might buy us with a price, the praying of his prayers were necessary to make us willing to be bought. Why in the text do we find Christ going out at that early hour, beforehand with the sun in his course, and awaking the dawn from its stillness by the voice of prayer i Oh ! as we read the^ chapter through we find that Christ had great works before him. He was going into the next villages to break up new grounds, to preach, to work miracles, to make disciples. And they were not dead stones for whom he was to do these things, for then they would have obeyed him ; but they were living, rational, responsible men, and therefore those in whom, by all the laws of a moral economy, there must be the putting forth of a concurrent and obedient faith. And hence his prayers might be, that those whom he should meet with in the course of that day might have this faith ; that his grace might be effectual in them, and 400 THE DEVOTIONS OP THE SAVIOUR. that those dispositions might be wrought in them without which even hia arm would be shortened, and his Omnipotence become a finite thing ; for it is emphatically noted in the 6th chapter of this Gospel, that on coming among his own countrymen he could do no mighty works there, and that " because of their unbelief." And thus, brethren, I think it is made to appear to you, that the private devotions of our Lord were no formal acts, no mere exemplary countenance given to a holy practice, no accommodation to his state of humiliation, but were the spontaneous outgoings of his true, proper humanity, and instru- mental, as other prayers are, to some desired and expected ends. What those ends were we know. The concerns of a world lay upon his spirit : not only had he its sins to bear, its peace to make, its curse to roll away, its righteousness to work out, but he had more than that, for he had its unbe- lief to cure, its antipathies to overcome, to change its perverse unwilling- ness to enter the ark he had provided, or to accept the ransom he had paid, and thus, as for one part of the great work he died, so for the other part he prayed. He prayed for his ministers, that they might teach ; for the people, that they might hear ; for his countrymen, that the veil of blindness might be removed ; for his persecutors, that grace might turn their hearts. He began his office of intercessor here, " in the days of his flesh," and the sloth, and the pride, and the unwatchfulness, and the carnal views, and the mistaken zeal of those about his person would all, we may suppose, enter largely into his daily prayers. Oh ! we owe it to them, it may be, that in this little band of disciples there were not found two traitors, instead of one. Neither, brethren, as evidence of the awful and mysterious reality of our Lord's devotions, are we to keep back the fact that they seem to have been needful to qualify himself — I mean, to fit his pure human spirit to go through its mighty part in the redemption of mankind. His language at the be- ginning of Passion Week, " Father, save me from this hour," and again in his agony in the garden, ♦' If it be possible let this cup pass from me," both suppose an intenseness of mental conflict which he felt it was in the power of prayer to mitigate, or at least to give him strength to endure. " And there appeared unto him an angel from heaven, strengthening him." Wo trench upon high mysteries here, brethren : let us pursue them no further. The text would be a great sermon, were it only for these two lessons which hang upon it. First, what a potent weapon must prayer be, which could make Christ himself stronger than he was ; and secondly, what a momentous necessity of the spiritual life must that be, which even Christ himself could not do without f " And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed." II. But let us endeavour to deduce from the text some instructive lessons on our second topic, or Christ as setting us an example of prayer. The other reasons assigned for the devotional habits of our Lord should not the less but the more incline us to give earnest heed to this. He who would in all things be made like unto his brethren would have his brethren in all things made like unto him. " Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus." Now, of the imitable characteristics of our Lord's devotions I observe, first, that his prayers were very early. " And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out." We are at no loss for one reason for 401 THE DEVOTIONS OF THE SAVIOUR. this. Tlie early morning was the only time which was his own, and even this men gave him unwillingly ; and, as we learn from the next words after the text, before his holy soul could breathe out all its fulness, he was inter- rupted. The people iu the house followed after him, saying, " All men seek thee." And, brethren, is there not a great lesson here for us ? Let your early hour for devotion pass, let sleep or some worldly call thrust itself be- tween you and it, and how hard you find that hour is to recover ! Indeed, with the majority of mankind, we know such recovery is simply and abso- lutely impossible. They have engagements, fixed, imperative, which would no more wait on passing conveniences than would time or tide ; so that with them the customary opportunity for devotion, lost for that day, is lost for ever. But does it fare much better with those who are less slaves to this hard driving necessity, whose time, as they say, is their own, when they permit sleep, or some worldly interruption to break in upon the time they ought to give to God ? No ; for on that first interruption hangs another, and another, and another. It is Gad ; "a troop cometh." You no sooner take up your Bible than you have to lay it down again, and the mind's freshness is all gone, gone utterly ; to try to recover it then were like trying io give back its bloom to the handled grape, or to restore the dew- bead which the sun's heat had melted away. Be early, then, brethren, with your devotions. Let nothing hinder you from giving to God the day's strength, and prime, and best. Everything favours you at that season. It is the Sabbath of the day. The first hour of the day is the Lord's hour, even as the first day of the week is the Lord's day ; and the understanding is clear at that time, and the heart unruflSed, and the spirit buoyant, whilst the sweet silence which pervades all outward things is as if heaven and earth were holding in their breath, just to hear God's children pray. But, secondly, the devotional example of our Lord points to frequency and length, and much time to be given to these holy employments. He went out " a great while before day," and yet continued his sacred exercises, till the waked up world had begun their inquiries after him at Simon's house. At other times, we know, his prayers spread over a much longer space even than this, and the weary eyelids were obliged to forego their slumbers, that prayer might consecrate the midnight hours. Now, there is an admitted difficulty — impossibility, if you will— in laying down any rules as to the amount of time we ought to give to our private devotions, and on account of this difficulty I believe it is that the question is seldom met by us as boldly and straightforwardly as its obvious importance demands. Jlany seem afraid to admit that time could be any element of devotional acccptableness at all, or could even be a subsidiary means towards acquiring the devotional habit. We no sooner moot the question of how much out of every day a person should give to God than we are met by the danger of men resting in the time as the time. We have the truism announced, that five minutes of earnest, heartfelt prayer would be more pleasing to God than as many hours 402 THE DEVOTIONS OP THE SAVIOUR. of measured, cold, taskwork formality, and we are driven from the enter- tainment of a plain practical question by visions of Pharisees, Bomanists, anchorites, beads, breviaries, and paternosters. Well, the vision is alarming enough, to be sure ; but the question, let us come back to that. Prayer may be considered either as an emotion expressing love, or as a habit requiring experience and skill. In which of these senses can proficiency be looked for, whilst we are content with offering God some five or ten minutes at the beginning or end of the day ? Taking the first sense, that of love, is there anything else where the time we give to an object is not allowed to be a fair index of the delight we have in it ? Would a man be thought to be fond of business, who went to it as seldom as he could ? Would a friend think much of the love we bore him, if at the end of a quarter of an hour we grew tired of his company ? Our Lord, while allowing the fatigues of the previous day to be an excuse for his disciples, yet plainly implies that their short prayers argued a blameworthy infirmity, " What ! could ye not watch with me one hour V Oh, brethren, be assured that as love to Christ grows, love of prayer will grow — grow not in intensity only, but in length, in frequency, in unweariedness, in approximation to the example of him who, to commune with the Everlasting Father, "rose up a great while before day," Yet more unreasonable does this professed indifference about the quantity of time spent in devotion appear, when prayer is viewed as an acquired faculty or power of the spiritual life. Here, to shut out time as an element of proficiency, were to contravene every law of our moral and in- tellectual being. That God may pour out upon a man the spii'it of gi-ace and of supplication in an instant, just as he may pour out the spirit of repent- ance, and spiritual knowledge, and sanctified affections in an instant, is to be conceded ; but we are not to live on the calculation of miracles, but on the observed conditions of the gospel economy ; and by these we are taught to expect that God's grace, in all communications after the first, will only concur with our moral endeavours, and therefore that the sloth, and the reluctance, and the mechanicalness, and the wandering thought, and worldly distrac- tion, which we feel to be such obstacles to our advancement in the science of devotion, can be overcome just as obstacles to success in any other science are to be overcome, namely, by patient continuance in the effort, until practice has given such dexterity in the use of the weapons, that at times, like our Divine Master, we shall rise up " a great while before day," that we may get into some solitary place, and there pray. To conclude, then, brethren. The text to which your attention has been directed will tend to raise a question in the conscience of every one of us, which, like a nail in a sure place, we shall feel to hold us fast. Do we spend as much time in prayer as we might, as we ought — as, if there were in ITS either the mind of Christ or the love of heaven, we unquestionably should ? If prayer be the soul's strength, the heart's repose, the world's antidote, the devil's dread — if the flesh is mortified by it, and the cross is endured 403 THE DEVOTIONS OF THE SAVIOUR. through it, and sanctification is advanced by it — if the Spirit of God speak through its voice, and if heaven is to be entered as its last breath dies away, — ■why is it that we pray not only so languidly, but so little ! Brethren, it is therefore languidly, because little. We bring not practiced hands to the work ; we do not tarry long enough in the exercise to realize that without which prayer is no prayer— mental communion with the Infinite, conscious fellowship with the invisible, something in our heart felt to be reciprocated and returned by the heart of prayer ; and though this feeling of realised intercourse with heaven come not at once, the time spent in waiting for it is not lost time. " "While I was musing, the fire burned," saith the Psalmist. The vision will come, if we wait for it ; that is, if we expect while we wait ; but if we are weary, and if we are faithless, and if on the first feeling of fainting or dulness we begin to say, " What profit is it that we should serve the Lord ?" the feeling will grow upon us, and the life of prayer will die in a sickly and lifeless formalism. No, brethren, the praying Christian must be a striving Christian, a laborious Christian, a persevering Christian. " Praying always," says the apostle, " with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance." We must not without dis- cipline and without toil expect to attain to the saint's perfectness ; and if we are weary of praying with our Master for one hour in the garden, how can we be fitted for never ending service with those who stand before the throne ? 404 THE GOLDEN LECTURES— SECOND SERIES, No. VIII. THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. ^ Sermon Delivered ox TueJsday Morning, Februarv 17, 1857, BY THE REV. DANIEL MOORE, M.A. AT ST. Margaret's church, lothbury. " And when much people were gathered together, and were come to him out of every city, he spake by a parable; A sower went out to sow his seed." — Lake viii. 4, 5. To the chosen few who were in constant attendance upon his ministry our Lord gave an exposition of this parable privately ; not on account of any peculiar difficulties attending the interpretation of the parable itself, and not certainly to give any countenance to the principle of reserve in the communi- cation of religious knowledge, but because the parable set forth certain facts connected with the progress of the gospel kingdom which it was of the utmost importance that they, the first preachers of that kingdom, should be plainly apprised of beforehand. " Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God :" to know why its mysteries bewilder, why its truths ofiFend, why its success is partial, why its victory is delayed. ' I would not send you forth,' he seems to say, ' on the great work of preaching to sinners, without forewarning you of all your discouragements. I have prepared you for a course of poverty and scorn, for the hatred of the oppressor and the contumely of the proud, for a life without honour, for labour without recom- pense, for suffering without sympathy, for a death without one earthly presence to comfort or to sustain. And all this I might believe you willing to encounter, so that only among those who do receive me, who do cast in their lot with you, who do to all outward seeming embrace the faith of the gospel, you might see abundant fruit of your labour, and tokens that it had not been in vain in the Lord. But herein shall you find your daily cross also. Of many that are called you will find " few are chojen ;" of four classes who shall seem to bo willing hearers of the word one shall be taken, and three shall be left ; one shall receive it to profit, and three only to be a witness against their souls ; one shall rejoice in that word as "a savour of life unto life" — to three it shall be as the testifying fragrance of a despised immortality, "a savour of death unto death." " A sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some No. 2,714, 3 b ^. THE PAUAULE OF THE SOWER. ploughshare, might break up the cloaded path, and the seed, having life in itself, might in the end bring forth fruit unto God. The enemy must pre- vent this, therefore ; first, on finding that the word of exhortation ha8 pricked you to the heart, and that there has arisen in consequence a feeling of apprehension for your spiritual safety, his care, in the words of the parable, is to get this seed trodden down, overlaid — to have its life crushed out of it. This he can prevail with you to do before you leave church, by encouraging one train of idle thought after another to pass through the mind, until the fresh fallen seed of seriousness has been pretty well got under your feet. This done, of agents to devour it when you get into the world again there will be no lack. Business, pleasure, duty, ease, can all be pressed into Satan's service. He knows that what we did not come to seek we shall be at no pains to preserve. It is way-side ground. It may be his, our neighbour's — any body's. " Then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved." I come to the next division of the parable. " And some fell upon a rock ; and as soon as it was sprung iip, it withered away, because it lacked mois- ture." The expression " rock" guards us against any misapprehension unto which the stony places, as given in the other gospel, might have given rise, as if the seed had penetrated between the interstices of the stones, until they reached the earth below. Had it been so, there is nothing in the law of vegetable productions to make it necessary that the plant should wither. But Luke's version leads us to suppose, that though there was soil, yet, lying as it did on the outer surface of the rock, it could not yield the quan- tity of nourishment necessary to the growth and perfect ripening of the seed. " It withered away, because it lacked moisture." As St. Matthew renders it, " because they had no deepness of root." Concerning the persons intended by this description, we are informed — " They on the rock are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy ; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away." On this account we easily recognize a class of hearers whom we may call the impulsive, the superficial, the unstable hearers — people whose religion is not a principle, but a sentiment — not a life, but a succession of fitful emotions and impres- sions — easily made Christians, and as easily unmade. Let us see how this appears in some of their noticed characteristics. Thus it is said that they "hear the word with joy." This would indicate a quickness of natural sensibility, a pre- disposition to spiritual emotion, hardly to be looked for, we should have thought, in a heart likened in the parable to stony ground. But the things are perfectly compatible : warm temperaments in relation to Christianity may be found in connection with very cold hearts towards Christ. The tears shed at the reciting of a reli- gious narrative may be very different things from religious tears. It is no proof that you have been pricked to the heart by a preacher's message, be- cause you were ravished by his words as by the strain of some lovely song, and many who have never yet received the truth in love have nearly all their lifetime been receiving the word with joy. Brethren, let the thought be distinctly realised by us, that it is quite possible for a person to take de- light in reading religious books, in being employed upon religious objects, in mixing with religious society, and even in attending punctually upon reli- gious ordinances, and yet to have as unbroken, iis unchanged, as unrenewed a heart as ever lay under the wrath of God. 428 THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. But what is the cause of this self-practiced imposture, and what cfrcum- stances may be expected to arise, compelling us to throw off the mask ? Both these questions are answered in the words, " These have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away." Observe, they have no root ; that is, they are destitute of that unseen element of strength on which the soul is as much dependant for its spiritual life as a tree is de- pendant for fruitfulness on the vigour and deep striking of its roots. What this grounding, settling, life-maintaining principle in the believer is we learn plainly from other Scriptures. It is love to Christ, union to Christ, incor- poration of our soul's being into his being, so that we are made " members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones." " That ye, being rooted and grounded in love," writes the apostle to the Ephesians ; and again to the Colossians, "rooted and built up in him." It supposes that we have em- braced the religion of the gospel, not because we are satisfied of its truth, or approve of its doctrines, or are attracted by its promises, neither because we love the simplicity of its worship, or have seen its tendency to elevate and bless mankind, but because we have felt that it is the only religion which answers to the deepest needs of the human heart, have experienced in our- selves and for ourselves that sin is the only burden, the displeasure of God the only dread, the blood of the atonement the only righteousness, the doing good the only happiness, the grace of Christ the only strength, that heaven is the only resting place for an immortal spirit, and its only worthy aspira^ tion to be made like Christ and to " see him as he is ;" and thus Christ be- comes to us "all and in all." Blind as we are, he is "wisdom j" giiilty as we are, he is "righteousness;" corrupt as we are, he is "sanctification ;" enslaved as we are, he brings with him a full and free " redemption ;" and from this, and from a consciousness of our undone state without this, the grateful soul cleaves to him, the heart twines its very roots about him, every fibre transmitting nourishment to the plant above, whilst itself strikes further and further down into the deep earth of unfathomable love. But when shall it be seen that this radical principle is wanting — that there is no deepness of earth — that all the goodness is morning cloud goodness, and " as the early dew which passeth away ?" " In the time of temptation," answers the parable. Temptations are various ; but their design is always one, namely, to try our moral stedfastness, to prove the genuineness of our love, to see if we have been truly grafted into Christ ; and just as the hot winds of the desert are said to have a deadly effect upon all plants that go not deep into the earth, so will the purging fires of heaven shrivel up a shallow and superficial Christianity. No root ; no fruit ! How long the out- ward show of life may last is a mere question of occasion or of time. " And when the sun was up they were scorched." God will send affliction to you, and you will repine ; or disappointments will come, and you will murmur. Tempted by the fear of man, you will compromise your princples ; assaulted by the struggles of Satan and an evil world, you will fall away ; and to your- self and to all men it will soon appear that you are no tree of the Lord's planting, but only a short-lived seedling of the rock, a branch that has no connection with the vine, a plant that in the morning is green and growing up, but languishes under the mid-day heat, and long before the night of death approaches is cut down, dried up, and withered. But I come to a third class of unproductive hearers, represented in the parable by seed sown among thorns. And the cause of failure here is de? 420 THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. clared to be, that " the cares of this world and the deceitfuliiess of riches clioke the word, and it becoraeth unfruitful." Here, you observe, the charge is not made so much upon the quality of the soil as upon the deficient and imcareful husbandry which did not keep the ground clear of other and per- uicious growths, but allowed bad seed to grow up side by side with the good, impoverishing the supply of moisture, and, as WyckliflFe's translation ren- ders it, "strangling the good seed before it could bring forth its fruit." Here, you observe, the seed is not wholly ineffectual, as in the case of the thoughtless hearer ; it does not expend itself in a few starts of religious emotion, as in the instance of the impulsive hearer ; but there is a continu- ance to the last of the appearance and form of godliness, whilst certain rival and destructive influences are permitted to sap the first sources of its life and power. And the two influences most commonly tending to this dis- astrous result are specified to be cares aud riclies— the too little of life's comforts and the too much. Each of these extremes in the social condition has its dangers ; each can be employed by Satan for taking off the heart from its watchfulness, for burdening the mind with anxieties, for making us expend the soul's strength and vigour on earthly things, so that we should have nothing but the refuse, and feebleness, and waste to give to God. What is the prosperous man, dividing his brief closet solitudes between heaven and his gains, between prayer that God would not lead him into temptation and schemes for being led thither of himself— or what is the poor man, with a heart full to overflowing of to-morrow's difiiculties, and fretting about the hardships of the times up to the very church door — but an instance of the noxious weed drawing up into itself all the best of the moisture, overtopping the feeble and neglected growth at its side, checking the good seed of the word, that it becometh unfruitful ? And yet, my brethren, while the expression " bring no fruit to perfection'* forbids the classification of this class with the advanced Christian, or even with the finally saved, yet as these hearers are evidently supposed to be much in advance of those who receive the seed on the stony ground, and that seem to have roots in themselves, I caunot help thinking that our Lord intended the warnings of this last illustration to be applied to true be- lievers, to admonish them of the danger of overmuch carefulness, to warn them of the allurements and flatteries of this present world, to show them how soon a heart cumbered with many things will come to lose its interest in the one thing needful, and how, far more than from any persecutions of men, far ftiore than from the heavy chastisements of God, their souls are in danger from the turbulent restlessness, the ceaseless distraction, the night and day solicitudes of a busy and active life. Oh ! what stealthy inroads does the world make on us ! We go on as usual, perhaps, not consciously giving less time to prayer, not consciously negligent of reading the word ; no definite worldly habit has been contracted by us, and no customary duty of the religious life has been intermitted or laid aside ; and yet we feel, it is not with us as it was in months that are past ; there is less of inward peace, less of devotional comfort, less mindfulness of the presence of God, less compunction for little faults and failings, less sense of our infinite debt to Christ, less care to show love to the brethren, — in a word, less thought about our souls, or wiiat is to become of them. Now, brethren, let us be assured that all this comes of the Divine ordinations being overturned ; the* earth is imperceptibly encroaching upon the domaiu of heaven ; there is some 430 THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. root of bitterness springing up to trouble you ; and unless the ground be cleared of it, unless you set yourself vigorously to extirpate this choking weed, even though, through the infinite grace of tlie Saviour, you should not finally be as the ground that beareth thorns and briars, and is rejected, yet neither shall it be as that which receiveth the blessing of God, and bringeth forth fruit to perfection. In brief, and only in conclusion, can I touch upon the fourth description of hearers. Thus emphatically does the Great Teacher describe them. " But that on the good ground are they, which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience." The expres- sion " honest and good heart" is to be understood relatively and in some con- ventional human sense ; for Scripturally speaking hearts can be approximately good only by the operation of the grace of God, and until that grace comes cannot be good at all ; but we may take the words in a lower sense, and by receiving the seed into " a good and honest heart" suppose our Lord to be describing a man who listens to religious instruction in a spirit of moral (sincerity, who tries to be honest with himself and with his teacher, who be- yond the original waywardness of our nature has no sinister prejudices to warp his judgment, but is diligently, and, as far as he knows himself, sin- cerely seeking a practical answer to the question, " What shall I do to be saved ?" And, brethren, I confess, I have always the best hopes of such a man. He may object, he may urge difficulties, he may find fault with our statements ; but never mind that ; if God has given him grace to mean right, he will give him more grace, until he come to think right. Only let us see that the man is in earnest, that ho is not trifling with God and his own conscience, that he is not bargaining for permission to continue in any known sin, that he is simply desirous to be saved by Christ's salvation, and, if he can find out, to be saved in Christ's way, then, I am persuaded, in that man there is the root of the matter ; slowly but surely the appliances of the heavenly husbandry are telling upon him ; there may be a good deal of hard ground to break up, a good many troublesome weeds to eradicate, and much of fertilizing influence will have to be sent down ; but means for all these are provided. Having sown in righteousness, he shall reap in mercy ; having sought the Lord, the Lord will rain righteousness upon him ; he has heard the word, he has kept the word— he shall " bring forth fruit with patience." I close with the Great Teacher's own application of the whole parable. •'Take heed how ye hear." Beware of a vagrant, indolent, inattentive habit 431 THE parablt: op the sower. of listcuing to the preached word. Do not say, on hearing the subject an- nouuced, ' This is not a kind of sermon to suit me,' and so compose yourself into a posture of listlessness till the discourse is ended ; but realise every sermon as God's message to your soul for that day, and expect a blessing therein. If you have a desire to receive the good seed into the heart, en- deavour to have the ground cleared of all noxious obstructions. Let there be a shaking off of all worldly anxieties : you cannot hear with any profit with these about you ; they suffocate all pious resolutions, and would strangle your good thoughts at birth. Lastly, before hearing, while hearing, and after you have heard, invoke the aid of the Holy Spirit, beseeching him that he would make the word of God very precious to you, that he would cause it to be as " light to your eyes," as " honey to your taste," as " music to your ears," as " the wine of gladness to your heart ;" beseeching that Spirit that he would lead you into all truth, that he would show you the things of Christ, that he would fix " the truth as it is in Jesus" firmly and lastingly in your mind, that he would cause your hearts to be as the thirsting earth which waits for the early and the latter rains, that he would enable you to "receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls." 432 THE GOLDEN LECTURES— SECOND SERIES. No. IX. JOB'S FAITH. 9i ^ermciu Delivered on Tuesday Morning, Februars- 24, 1857, BY THE REV. DANIEL MOORE, M.A. AT ST. Margaret's church, lothbury. " Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him."— Job xiii. 15. We all feel that the man must have had strong faith who could say this. The hand of the Lord hath touched him, touched him everywhere — in his children, in his friendships, in his fortune, in his cattle. God hath broken him with breach upon breach. What shall come next? No matter; his mind is made up ; he knows the thoughts God thinks towards him — the only thoughts he can think ; and therefore says this man of strong heart, * Let the worst come ; though I see the sword raised, I will trust ; though I feel it pierce to the joints, I will trust ; though I perceive my spirit going from me, in this will I be confident, that all is begun and all will end in love.* *• Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." Sublime picture this ! But was it always thus with Job ? Did his faith rise uniformly to a height so towering, so heavenward, so majestical,— a bold rock on the sea of adversity, defiant either of wind or wave ? Let us turn a few chapters back, and we shall see. " Job spake, and said. Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said. There is a man child conceived." And again : "O that I had given up the ghost, and no eye had seen me !" And once more : " Oh ! that I might have my request ; and that God would grant me the thing that I long for ! Even that it would please God to destroy me ; that he would let loose his hand, and cut me off." And yet in reading these latter quotations we are to remember that we are dealing just as much as in the text with the case of a spiritually converted man. The first verse in the book is conclusive on that point, declaring that before his afflictions came upon him, Job " was a perfect man and upright, and one that feared No. 2,718. 3 F JOB S FAITH. God, and eschewed evil." And so we get at this fact before we go any further, namely, that a man's spiritual feelings are not the same at all times — that he may be strong in faith one day, and of a fearful heart another — now lifting himself above the ruin of house and home, and saying, " Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him," and now lying on his face, a wreck among wrecks, and fainting in the day of adversity, because his strength is small. And if this be true, then another thing is true also, — that a man may be of weak faith, and of fearful heart, and have his life, and what he values more than life, his acceptance with God, hanging in doubt before him, and yet for all this have his soul as safe in Christ's keeping as Paul's was, when he said, " I know in whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him against that day." I shall be thankful, brethren, if through the power of the Holy Ghost the Comforter I am able to make a profitable application of these truths. The text, when taken in connection with what we know of Job's personal and religious history, will supply us both with arguments for endeavour after the strongest faith, and with considerations to encourage us even under the weakest. I. And, first, let us look at Job as giving an encouragement to strong faith, by seeing what faith wrought in him, and by what arguments its vigorous life was maintained and fed. He is answering his so called friends, who had reproached him among other things for the impassioned and uncontrolled violence of his grief; and he asks — " Wherefore do I" — or, as some prefer to render it, " Wherefore should I take my flesh in my teeth, and put my life in mine hand !" ' What think you has come upon me, that with the maniac's wildness and the coward's courage I should lay violent hands on myself, and shorten the days of my appointed time ? No ! Such a thought be far from me. I may have borne much, but I am ready to bear far more.' " Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." " Though he slay me." Let us note the words iu passing, brethren, as a testimonial to Job's faith in a blessed immortality. Writers like Gibbon and Byron will tell you that the Scriptures will be sought in vain for any allusion to a future state in the patriarchal ages. By men whose minds are blinded, no doubt, they will be sought iu vain for it, perhaps, but by no other. Job knew well that if the tree were cut down it would sprout again. The hope of a joyful resurrection sustained him in weakness, nerved him for conflict, made him fearless at death, and shed a calm light over the entrance to the invisible world. " For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth : and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God." And so here. * Matters do indeed look,' he seems to say, * as if God meant to make an end of me ; my strength is gone, my children are gone, my flocks and herds are gone. Well, what if it shall soon be said that I am gone too, and 453 job's faith. that the place which kuew me shall know me no more? Yet think you that there will nothing remain of me after that ? House, fields, substance, breath ; must Job die because these die ? No ; I have something to commit to God beyond these, better than these, after these. It is a sacred deposit which death hath no power over.' "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." Note another attribute of strong faitli. It dares to look the worst in the face; it braces itself up for enduring something more than it has to endure now. It never allows itself to suppose that the wisdom and power of God have spent themselves on former salvations, but that fresh trials will but be preparatory to fresh deliverances, and that as its day is so its strength will be. Thus, although fearfulness and faith both deal with future trials, yet the one does it tremblingly, as if sure that the calamity must happen ; the other does it providentially, just to be ready for it if it should. David always likes to put tlie case against himself as bad as it can be — if his yoke be heavy, to consider how he could bear it if it were heavier — if he had been chastised with whips, to consider how he could bear the scorpions ; and he finds that he has faith for the worst. An invading foe were a dreadful evil for a monarch (o contemplate ; but "though an host should encamp against me," he declares, " yet will I not fear ; though wars should rise against me, in this will I be confident." All nature in confusion would be a thing to shake a stout heart, and a man's faith need not be weak to give way at a Strang? mingling of earth and sea ; but it is better to look at the thing as possible. " Therefore will we not fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea." Brethren, true faith loves to gird on its armour against these imaginary possibilities ; it gets to itself new strength from turning round in all ways that little word " tliough." " Though the Lord hide himself from me, and call me as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit." " Though the fig-tree should not blossom, and there should be no fruit on the vines." " Though the earthly house of this taber- nacle were dissolved, and the outward man perish day by day," yet " the inward man shall be renewed," yet " we have a building of God," yet " we will rejoice in the Lord," yet " with everlasting mercies will I gather thee." To the believer every " though" has its " yet." " Though I fall, yet I shall not be cast down ; though I be persecuted, yet am I not destroyed ; though I sit in darkness, yet will the Lord be a light unto me." " Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." But let us look at this attribute of the Christian character a little more closely, and see on what it rests. " Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." By trust we mean that lofty exercise of faith whereby, seeing him that is invisible in the strong light of the promise, and through the tempered glory of the incarnation, we fear no evil, and never doubt the supply of all needful good. Thus, while it is one of the happiest emotions to him who 459 JOB S FAITH. experiences it, it is, in regard of the being who is the object of such a feel- ing, the highest honour that can be paid. Hope longs for a thing because its attainment is possible ; expectation waits for it when the event is not un- lilcely ; but trust knows nothing either of possible or probable ; it is faith realising certainty ; love, unhampered by any speculations about the human likelihood, casting its all into the lap of God, assured of a right disposal of its lot, and of a safe conduct to the end. Hence to trust God supposes that we cannot see him, and cannot trace out the reason of his ways. Like the newly converted Paul, we are content to be led by the hand. " I will bring the blind by a way that they know not"^ — a way which, if they did know, per- haps they would be little inclined to take ; but they do not know, and must not ask. " My sheep hear my voice, and they follow me." Trust, the true trust, the child's trust, the disciple's trust, never stipulates for conditions, and never asks a pledge. With a token, without a token, ay, with that which, on the most obvious reading of providential signs, might be construed as a token the other way, it holds on and holds fast. Faith's proper field of exer- cise is the cross, under it, near to it — it may even be upon it ; for death, which might kill Job's body, yet could not kill his faith, nay, like some ruling passion, his faith would be strongest then. " Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." And what is at the foundation of this trust ? What bears it up against frowns, and dangers, and threatening scowls 2 Doubtless, the chief thing i$ a simple affiance in the Father's love and the unerring wisdom of its object* Especially I must believe that God loves me. Trust, there can be none ■without that. Paul saw before him trials great, dangers many, deaths oft, persecution, famine, the sword, principalities, angels, powers ; he| might be hurled from the heights or engulphed in the depths ; and yet one chain there was which knit his soul to God, which could no more be broken than the girdle which binds the universe. " Neither height nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate me from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." In like manner, Abraham was put upon a hard task, when told to slay his son ; and if he had thought that the Lord did not love him, that the task set him was designed rather to put him upon a trial whether he would love God afterwards, he could not have done it, and hard thoughts of God would have made the uplifted knife fall from his hand. But lie had the persuasion that God did love him already, and had loved him all along. The command itself might conflict with precepts be- fore given ; but there was love in it. It might tear up by the roots the very instincts of the parental nature ; but there was love in it. It might seem to put a veto on the fulfilment of a Divine promise and the expectations of all the people of God ; but there was love in it. This thought nerved that otlierwise faltering arm. 'Thougli he slay niy hopes, my sun, 1 will yet trust in him.' job's faith. And agaiit, it would be likely to uphold him in Uiis spirit of resolved and unshaken trust to reflect, that if this conduct did not conciliate the fatherly regards of God towards him, nothing else would. Suppose he should despair, instead of trust, what could despair do for him ? Allowing for the sake of argument that the probabilities were only equal of God slaying him in anger or slaying him in love, and therefore that the balance of choice was equal, whether he should go on trusting, or whether he should at once resign him- self to despair ; yet what a manifest preponderance on the side of continued trust would arise from the consideration, that thereby he 7nay gain some- thing, whilst by despair he mmt lose all ! Job saw the sword in the hand of the Lord ; to all human seeming it was bared for his destruction ; and the cold relief might be suggested to him of Satan, as it had been suggested already, * What further use can there be in trusting now I Curse God and die.' But Job's faith would make answer — "Whether there be a better alterna- tive than this or not, one thing is certain, a worse there cannot be. Die I may, and to die I deserve ; bat at least this shall be one of the things I die for, that I have hoped against hope, that I thought the name of the Lord was a stronger tower than it is, that I attributed too much virtue to the hem of the Saviour's garment, that I stayed myself too absolutely upon God. My accusation at the judgment seat shall be — let God visit me for it there, if he will — that, sinner as I was, and dying as I was, I had faith in him, held on to the provided atonement as the wrecked mariner to the jutting rock, believed his grace omnipotent, believed his power boundless, believed his wisdom infinite, believed that higher than the heavens were his mercies, and deeper than the sea his love — in a word, that against doubts, against dark- ness, against devils, against despair, I continued crying, whilst I had breath to cry at all, " Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." II. But we know one who has said, "All men have not faith," and cer- tainly not such faith as this. We come, therefore, to consider, in the second place, what encouragements can be found for those whose faith, though true, is of less manly and vigorous growth. The trust of Job, as we have seen, was not so robust a plant always. There were times when it bent and bowed to the storm, and when, if it had not been rooted and grounded on the rock, Christ, it would have been torn up, and laid waste, and withered j but the feeblest sapling will thrive on that rock. It may feel as yet perhaps that it could not bear the blast. Well, then, as yet God will spare the blast. "Hestayeth his rough wind in the day of the east wind." He will never "despise the day of small things." There is a gospel provided for bruised reeds. " Say to them that are of a fearful heart. Be strong : fear not." " Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith I" " Of little faith ;" for it must not be supposed that we have any encouragements to ofiFer for those who have no faith at all, who arc neither looking to Christ, nor conscious of danger, nor careful about their souls, whether they fare well or ill. We 461 job's faith. suppose ourselves to be dealinpf with those who are looking to Jesus, but not stedfastly enough, who are "fleeing from the wrath to come," but who can- not be sure that they are fleeing aright, who have faith in God while their lot is cast in a land of peace, but who cannot, when encompassed with the swellings of Jordan, say, " Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." And our first word of comfort to persons in this state of mind is, that weak faith is as much the gift of God as strong faith is, and therefore as precious in the Divine esteem. A star is not less a star, because it diff"ers from another star in glory ; and so faith is not less faith, because in strength and fulness it differs from that of Job or Abraham. The sisters of Lazarus had not strong faith in Christ, but they had some ; the father of the demoniac child did not believe absolutely, but he believed enough to pray that his unbelief might be taken away. The disciples in the storm had faith enough to say, "Save, ]\Iaster, we perish," if they had not faith enough to say, ' Though he suffer us to be engulphed in the depths of the sea, yet will we trust in him.' Still, in all such cases we are to remember that we are in the hands of one who knows what was in man, and who heeds not that he sees in us little faith, if that little be but true. Let Christ but see in us a renouncing of all other hopes, an utter disdain of all other confidence, an humble reliance upon the efficacy of his blood to cleanse, and on the power of his arm to save, and then, though the faith which prompts to these things be but as the last spark in the expiring flax, or as the last drop of new wine found in the cluster, he will say, ' Destroy it not, for a blessing is in it ; the earnest of the Spirit is in it, the breath of heaven is in it.' That one looking unto me, and looking unto me only, would save from death, even if there were nothing else. " He that liveth and believeth in me, shall never die." Another word of comfort to those who are bewailing the weakness of their faith, and are unhappy that they cannot stand erect in the day of trial, as Job or Abraham did, is to be found in the fact, that if their faith were not of the true, heaven-born, soul-justifying, soul-saving kind, they would never mourn about it at all. Men do not miss what they never had ; and so you may be sure that if God had not given you some faith you would not have been so earnest in your desire to obtain more. The faith of desire is the faith of victory. He mmt overcome who, while asking the way to Zion, turns his face thitherward. He may not be able to walk quite so fast as others; but the Good Shepherd is always careful not to over-drive such. They are the tender among flocks, the bruised among reeds, the timid among disciples, the weak, and the tempted, and the buffetted, and the Satan-sifted, on whose behalf the Lord Jesus delights to show himself strong. His strength is per- fected in weakness. " Most gladly," declares the Apostle, " will I glory in iny infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me." See in this very chapter the weakness of the sinner, and the indwelling strength of the Saviour, the infirmity of Job and the power of Christ resting upon Job. Job, ^2 job's faith. speaking of himself, says, in tlie 24th verse, " Wherefore hidest thou thy face, and holdest me for thine enemy ?" But Christ, speaking in Job, says, " Wherefore should I take my flesh in my teeth, and put my life in mine hand ?" " Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." And lastly, to those who should say of this faith of Job, " It is high, I cannot attain unto it ; I have no personal assurance of my salvation ; I may liave a part in Christ, but I do not know that I have ; and if I saw his hand as it were lifted up to slay me, my trust would be gone ;" — to such I say, it should be a comfort to reply, all this may be, and yet you may be just as much a child of God as ever Job was. Assurance is no necessary element of saving faith j for faith does but save instrumentally — that is, as it enables us to lay hold on Christ's righteousness. How we lay hold of it, for the practical purposes of salvation, is no matter. It would be to our comfort doubtless, that the grasp should be firm ; but the safety is in the contact, in having the hold at all. And this the weakest faith can do as effectually as the strongest. "A child can hold a staff as well as a man," says some old writer ; and, in like manner, a weak faith can lay hold ou a strong Christ. Let all timid believers take the comfort of this. There are no two truths between which theologically it is more necessary to distinguish, and yet which practically we are more prone to identify and confound, than faith and the knowledge of faith, forgiveness and the feeling of forgiveness, a title to the privileges of the kingdom and a sight of that title for ourselves, with all its witnessing signatures and seals. But the things are distinguishable enough as definitions, and ought not to be confounded as facts. Many a man's salva- tion is certain, without his being certain that it is certain. The cordial reception of the returning prodigal at home was sure, but the prodigal him- self did not know that it was sure. Wherefore, brethren, strive after the faith of assurance ; but do not be cast down if you have but the faith of desire. They are both trees of the Lord's planting, though the one be as the tall cedar of Lebanon, and the other but as the drooping hyssop upon the ■wall. The lowest degree of faith can please Christ, and that is all you want : you may be faithful in weakness, even when weak in faith ; and by keeping near to Christ, and feeling your constant need of him, and bearing the whole ■weight of your souls upon his promised grace, your faith will grow before you are aware of it. If Christ does not seem to take you up, you may be sure of one thing — he will never cast you off, will never let your enemies triumph over you ; and should he see fit to let the adversary come as near to you as he did to Job, he will give you grace to say, as Job said — " Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." The practical lesson of our subject, brethren, is, that in all our troubles and adversities, whensoever they oppress us, absolute trust in the Divine power, and love, and goodness is to God the most acceptable service, and to ourselves the truest happiness. God is honoured by it. "Though he slay 463 JOB S FAITH. me, yet will I tru8t in him." In /»»m, and not in any other ; for we may not have two trusts. God is not trusted at all, if he be not trusted for himself. We may get help from man, but to join human trust with the Divine is to lose to ourselves all benefit from either. If we "rejoice in Christ Jesus," we should " have no confidence in the flesh.'' But it is the kindest thing to our- selves also to cherish this feeling. Faith deals with the unseen. We believe that we have deliverance, and we have it. He that believes is saved already. Trust takes present possession of that which is to be, causes things that are not to be as though they were. Trust God in temptations, and you are de- livered from them ; trust God in weakness, and you are already made strong ; trust God in darkness, and lo, '*at eventide there is light." God gives to faith what he denies to sense. "Who is among you that feareth the Lord, and obeyeth the voice of his servant, and walketh in darkness, and hath no light I Let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay himself npon bis God." 464 THE GOLDEN LECTURES— SECOND SERIES. No. X. THE SCHOOL OF SUFFERING. ^ Sermon Delivered on Tuesday Morning, March 3, 1857, BY THE REV. DANIEL MOORE, M.A. AT ST. Margaret's church, lothbury. " Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he sufTered."— Hebrews v. 8. We have just entered upon one of those church commemorations which, as already intimated, I should not deem it well in these lectures to pass by with- out notice. The custom of observing Lent is one which we can clearly trace close up to the apostolic times, and accompanied too with such exhortations and devout and penitential exercises as we should address to Christians now, even in our own church ; for, as you will bear in mind, it is a mere artifice in the Romanist to assume that as a church we had no distinctive existence before the Reformation. We had one before Rome's arrogant pretensions were ever thought of; and as early as the year 800 directions were issued to the people of this island, setting forth, under the authority of one of our Saxon monarchs, how the people were to observe Lent. The subsidiary value of these observances of course is, that they contribute a standing yearly witness to some great doctrine of the faith, founded for the most part on some fact in the personal history of the Saviour. Our commemorations seem always to bear one of two aspects : either they tend to exalt Christ, as made unto us a sacrifice for sin, or they hold him up for the imitation of his Church, as a pattern of godly life. Lent, or the commemoration of the Saviour's forty days fasting in the wilderness, falls obviously under the latter class ; and the one broad lesson of Christian practice which we graft on this incident is, that a life of godliness must be a severe life — that the cross is not only the badge of disciples, but the ordained means for their spiritual proficiency. And in sup- port of this we point to what the apostle liere declares of the Divine Master himself — that suffering was the very school in which he learned obedience ; No. 2,720. 3 H THE SCHOOL OP SUFFEUING. for, as you see, from beginning to end, the path trodden by him was no easy path. Look along it, and you will see everywhere marks of distress, and toil, and conflict, and endured hardness, of sharp temptings, and of wounds received in the house of his friends. All the marked things of that history were sad- nesses, weary recitals of home poverty and family estrangement, of coldness, neglect and hate, of wilderness struggles, and garden weepings, and mountain prayers, of weariness by the way side, and tired slumbers on the sea. It seemed as if the Saviour's whole life were a discipline, a dying daily, a rehearsal morning by morning of the sacred mystery of his passion, a bearing of his cross before his time ; and though we may admit that one end of all this was, that he might be a pattern to them that hereafter should believe on him, that he suffered for us, " leaving us an example that we should follow his steps," yet was this all for which he suffered ? Had a life of varied and incessant trial nothing to do with himself — with the acquiring of a more per- fect knowledge of the human spirit, and a deepened moral fitness for his own work ? Our text implies that some such ends were in contemplation ; for having recited some of the pains he underwent in the days of his flesh, pains which caused him to offer up prayer and supplication, with " strong crying and tears," for deliverance, the apostle proceeds in the remarkable words I am to discourse upon — "Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered." Our text, therefore, will suggest a suitable meditation for the present season, if we consider, from the words I have read, the connection here aflSrmed to subsist between suffering and obedience, and that even in relation to our Divine Lord. How much more the inference will be forced upon us — Must the two things go together in a system of moral discipline for ourselves ? I. Consider the words, then, in their application to our Divine Master. " Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered." " Though he were a Son." The form of the expression implies, that his being a Son would have suggested quite a contrary expectation — would have led to the supposition, that suffering could have taught him nothing which as a Son he did not know already. All along had the apostle been holding up the filial relation of our Lord to the Everlasting Father as evidence of his pre-eminent dignity ; he had contrasted with it the lower claims of prophets, of priests under the law, or even of the holy angels. " God, who at sundry times and in divers manneis spake in time past unto the fathers by the pro- phets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son." " The law maketh men high priests which have infirmity ; but the word of the oath maketh the Son." " Of angels he saith. Who maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire. But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever : a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom." He had thus been working up his whole argument to put Christ at some lofty remove 47-1 THE SCHOOL OF SUFFEKING. from the conditions of our humanity — to show his essential participation of the infinite, the unchangeable, and the Divine ; when all at once, with the bold abruptness of one strong in truth, the apostle proceeds to exhibit this ex- alted Being, clothed with all the attributes and feeblenesses of a mortal nature, crying as helpless men cry, smitten of God as a rebellious child is smitten, disciplined by trials, and taught obedience by the voice of the rod. In doin" this the apostle appears to feel, that what he is saying will be thought a strange thing. For a servant in a house to suffer, for holy men to oflFer up prayers, ay, even for angels to fill up their immortal hours in learning to obey, this would be no hard saying ; but he argues, ' I must illustrate this discipline of obedience by a yet higher example ; I must show the Incarnate Son of God in his state of warfare, in his struggle with his tempted human will, open to the disobedient suggestions of a self-pleasing nature, and by resistance and long endurance and the hard discipline of a daily cross moulding his pure human spirit into perfect oneness with the mind of God.' " Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suflfered." *' Learned obedience." Here, again, must a holy discernment be used by us in trying things that differ. A wise carefulness, lest, in our interpretation of the acts of one having a twofold nature, we either destroy the perfectness of the human or disparage the dignity of the Divine. To say that Christ had to learn the science of obedience — that his will, like our fallen will, was resisting and uncompliant and hard of persuasion to follow God's will — that it seemed to be inclined, and bent, and coerced by a succession of fatherly chastise- ments into a renunciation of its own selfish preferences, were a supposition at variance as well with all the essential unities of Godhead as with the prophetic words put into the mouth of Messiah himself — " Then said I, Lo I come ; in the volume of the book it is written of me, to do thy will, O God." Equally unsafe were it to say, that Christ had to learn the duties of obedience — that it was by the teaching of the rod he became instructed in what things he ought to do, even as David records it of his own experience— "Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now have I learned thy commandments ;" for affliction could teach the holy Saviour nothing in relation to the will of God. He knew from the very first what the righteous demands of heaven were, as well as the un- utterable pain and cost required for their fulfilment ; nay, a large element of that cost it "was, that all the darker passages of his life's close, the smitings, and the mockery, and the rude scorn, the disciple's faithlessness, and the traitor's kiss, the crushed spirit, and the hidden face of God, were naked and open to his mental eye continually. We must look, therefore, for some other interpre- tation of the -words before us, which, while supposing that through or by means of suffering our Lord did gain some accession to his proper human knowledge, shall yet leave questionless and entire his title to the possession of an Omniscient mind. And this we get by understanding the apostle to mean, that our Lord learned the nature and practical difficulties of obedience by 475 THE SCHOOL OP SUFFEIllNG. the things that he suffered, — learned them so as in no other -way he ever could, by experience, by actual participation, by going down himself into the deep springs of the human spirit, seeing how a poor creature in nature would act, and feel, and desire, when distress lay upon it, when fear overwhelmed it, when temptation threw in its way hard and bitter choices, when it seemed as if disobedience would relieve hunger, attract admiration, secure the kingdoms of this world and the glory of them, whilst righteousness had no earthly reward for its followers but obscurity, oppression, want, a life of suffering, and an end of shame. Christ, then, learned obedience relatively to us— relatively to our powers of endurance when exposed to trial, in order that by fathoming the depths of our human consciousness he might be able to apportion to his followers afterwards strength for their day, grace for their needs — might determine how often they must repeat their cries for the departure of the grieving thorn, and how many days they should pass in the wilderness with the tempter, before ministering angels should be sent to the rescue, "For in that he himself suffered, being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted." "Is able to succour," you observe, it is said again. It is implied that expo- sure to temptation gave the Divine Saviour something which before he had not — a power of experimental sympathy with our fallen state which it must be in some sense above the reach of an infinite nature to com- pass. We seem at no liberty to take the words in an accommodated sense, as if the reference were to some great mystery reduced to the stunted dimen- sions of human thought. The meaning must be, that Christ did by the things which he suffered acquire something, learn something, become more per- fect in something, which in mere virtue of his Godhead he had not and perhaps could not have. This is a great mystery. We seem to be adding on to the Infinite, to be making Omniscience extend the boundaries of its own know- ledge. And yet, looking at the facts, how can it be otherwise ? For example, must not the tasting of death for every man be an advance upon any, even the most perfect abstract knowledge of what death is ? And in like manner, is there no sense in which it could be said that a being, having a boundless understanding of the great mystery of evil, could yet attain to a deeper prac- tical acquaintance with its subtlety, by assuming a nature in which the suggestions of evil would be constantly presented to him, and all the energies of his holy and undefiled soul be required to repel its malevolence and power ? Yes, brethren, Christ did acquire a kind of knowledge, while here upon earth, by suffering, and injustice, and privation, and neglect — by experiencing the misery of temptation, even when there was no danger of yielding to it — by familiarity with our nature's feebleness, wishing to be saved from its hour of trial, and fainting at the sight of the cup and cross. He came to know, know in such manner as Godhead of itself could not know, what was in man— what it costs our weak nature to yield compliance with the Divine will. He knew 476 THB SCHOOL OF SUFFERING. this difficulty as God ; but as man he felt it. "Though he weic a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered." But the words of our text may be viewed in another light. " Christ learned obedience," we are told, " by the things which he suffered," Now, obedience has respect not only to the active duties of zeal, and diligence, and self- sacrifice, and devoted service, but to those passive and too lightly esteemed graces of character, humility and meekness, self-denial and patience — the cultivation of devout tempers and cherished fellowship with God ; and for a course of holy training in those higher exercises there is no school like that of suffering — a condition of abasement and cruel wrong, the servant's estate, and the being rejected of men : and in this school Christ learned obedience. His life began with it, and his life closed with it. Those eight-and-twenty years at Nazareth, spent, as far as we know, without a miracle, without a sign, . without a conversion, without a result, seem, on any other supposition than that of an obediential discipline, destitute of moral object, a great waste of the mysterious resources of the Incarnation, the hiding in village solitudes of a light which might have saved the world. But Christ was learning all this time, learning practically and in the deep inner experiences of our nature, the holy sense of abasement, and self-annihilation, and contented forbearance from the stirring activities of his mission till his time should come. Oh, what a rebuke to those among us who are prone to complain of the world's dulness, or the world's unkindness, in not finding our merit out, and who think, ' How much good we should do, if we were but placed in this situation or in that,' to see the Holy Jesus for all these years buried and lost to the sight of men ! But he was not buried ; he was disciplining his pure humanity for its highest exercises ; he was illustrating the beauty of that best obedience, the obedience they render in heaven, which consists in waiting, in willingness to be forgotten, watching for the eye of God, never speaking till we have a message given to us, never rising till he bids us go. Nazareth may be our best school for Jerusalem. Christ, " though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered." And in the wilderness, he was learning there also. To the immediate object of his mission the time thus spent seems not necessary. There were none to hear his doctrine, none to admire his life ; no addition was made to the proofs of his Divine authority, none to the power of his sacrifice to take all repented guilt away, yet there, day after day, and night after night, he hungered, chastened his soul as a penitent, inflicted holy revenges upon the flesh, as if even to him the body could oppose a barrier to perfectnese, or overcloud his spirit in its near communion to God. We may put among the ends to be answered by this protracted fasting the benefit of his Divine example — the lesson to all time, that there is to be a religious partaking of food, and that he affects a humanity purer than that of the Incarnation, who disdains any restraint upon the appetite as helpful to a holy life. Or we may put further 477 THE SCHOOL OP SUFFERING. among these ends a power of sanctified sympathy with the distressed and suf- fering members of his body — with the cries of pinching hunger in the day of famine, or with the scant fare of the poor man's board. Yet hardly, I think, do such explanations satisfy us as to the moral intendment of our Savioiir's abstinence ; we look rather to see some aspect it should have towards himself, towards the elevating and perfecting of his lower nature, towards drawing the •will into such absolute and entire consent to the designs of the Godhead, that almost as soon as under the pressure of keenest agony it could be brought to say, "Father, save me from this liour," the words of self-remonstrance should be heard to follow — "Yet for this cause came I unto this hour." Yes, brethren, I believe it was in some sense a discipline, this fasting of our Lord, a schooling of his spotless soul in the lessons of a high and mysterious sancti- fication, a learning obedience by the things that he suffered. And like things we must affirm of his temptation, explain it as we will. , This must always be one of the deep things of our faith. We may call it a necessary part of his humiliation — a result that must follow, if he were to be subjected completely to the conditions and liabilities of our manhood — an accident to his human nature, as much as hunger, or pain, or weariness could be. But it is plain from Scripture, that this experience had to do directly with his work of mediation — that his very submission to be tempted was itself an obediential act. He was " led of the Spirit into the wilder- ness"— led to be tempted, led to a real and palpable encounter with the wicked spirit of evil. How sin can address itself to the purest mind, calling up rebellious and impatient thoughts, suggesting base expedients and forbidden outlets from trial, making shadows of defilement to pass over the face of the soul, and distressing where it is powerless to destroy. Utterly inconceivable by us must have been the anguish of this to the Holy Saviour. We do know perhaps how afflicting temptation has sometimes been to ourselves. Without consent of the will, nay, with intense loathing, and hate, and deep shame, we have had objected before the mind strange visions of evil ; we have turned away and fled, fallen down before God and wept ; but the spirit kept on tear- ing, and for a long time there came to us neither angel to help, nor the Holy One of God to expel. Oh! the awful mystery of such haunting thoughts, pursuing for forty days the unsullied and unspotted soul of J.esus ; and that of design, of purpose — as much a contrivance of the Eternal Spirit as that by which he ofl'ered himself without spot to God. For what end could such things have been intended ? Was it to brace up the energies of that strong will for another and more tremendous onset — for that great crisis in the annals of spiritual encounter, of which, when almost like one vanquished in the lists, he himself said, " This is your hour and the power of darkness ?" We know not, brethren ; but we see the result. The tempter leaving for a season ; the loyalty of the Son of God unshaken ; the will gathering itself into the sternest atti- tude of might and majesty, just as flesh and strength were failing him. And 478 THE SCHOOL OF SUFFERING. the thought carries us back to that long wilderness conflict ; and we say, " Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suflfered." Our subject might be illustrated, further, by a reference to those prolonged acts of devotion which, following as they did days of unresting toil, continued through the live-long night, in the poor shelter of the garden and on the bleak mountain side, might well be counted as among the things that he suffered. That these prayers of our Lord were no mere formal acts, no official counte- nance given to a holy practice, but were deep realities of his human life I endeavoured to show you a few weeks ago.* We cannot escape the admis- sion, that Christ prayed for himself, that he had recourse to the exercise as a means for enabling him to go through the mighty task he had undertaken, either by a mitigated severity of conflict or by the communication of Divine energy to endure. "Father,- if thou be willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done. And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him." Here, again, have we the unre- luctant will of Jesus disciplined into yet higher forms of compliance. He is instructing himself in the hidden strength of unfainting and unwearied prayer, saying again, and again, and again, the same words, and yet, though sweating " as it were great drops of blood," still " learning obedience by the things that he suffered." And now let us gather from our subject one or two practical lessons for ourselves. One is, that the art of holy obedience is not to be learned without labour and cost. To obey is the highest attainment of created natures. Heaven is not too pure a place for learning it, nor will eternity be too long for becoming perfect in it. Having assumed, therefore, a finite form, Christ made this one great object of his earthly sojourn— to be in subjection, to be the servant of all, to fulfil all righteousness. And he counted the cost of this. Poverty, neglect, shame, faintings, fastings, tears, the sharp sword of ingrati- tude and the rending pang of death, this was his portion. In degree it must be ours. We cannot escape the discipline which was necessary to make the Captain of our salvation perfect. We shall never learn obedience, unless we are willing to endure hardness, prepared to forego much of our self-sparing and self-pleasing; for even Chiist pleased not himself— that is, not the self of our nature, which could not choose suffering for its own sake, any more than could ours, and like ours, if no adequate object had been set before it, would have shrunk from the obscurity, and the solitude, and the agony, and the midnight prayer. But he knew suffering was his school, and to that school we must go, if we would learn obedience. Many think they can learn it without this — without wilderness or garden or midnight watchings, or daily cross ; but it is that they have not tried. Would they do so, they would find that to obey is not easy. To subdue pride, to restrain temper, to expel the evil spirit of hate * See Golden Lectures, Second Series, No. 6, Penny Pulpit, No. 2,708. 479 THE SCHOOL OP SUFFERING. and envy, to keep down the surmisings and suspicions of an uncharitable na- ture, to have under absolute control the power of the tongue — to discipline the thoughts of the heart, to stay with us if they are good, and if they are bad to fly — to have all the demands and claims of our lower nature kept in sanctified subordination to the great purposes of our spiritual being— to be willing to be anything or nothing, admired or forgotten, so only that we can please God — to make a conscience of our friendship, and recreations, and time, and gains — to be ready to cast off our softnesses, and self-seeking, and purple, and sump- tuous fare — to train the heart to love prayer, to thirst after holiness, to wish only to be like Christ, to pant for the society of heaven and a sight of the living God, to bear the cross and to love it, to see the spoiling of our goods and to take it joyfully — in one word, to follow Christ ; men may call all this easy, but the words of Christ, the life of Christ, the sufferings of Christ, are a great enigma if it be. No, rather let that Scripture frown into shame our cheap and effortless Christianity — *' Strive to enter in at the strait gate ; for many, I say unto you, shall seek to enter in, and shall not be able." Then learn once more from our subject, that afflictions are our great teachers —the schoolmasters charged by our heavenly Father with'the instruction of his dear children. " Though he were a son," Christ had to learn by suffering : we learn by it, because we are sons ; and things we learn in this school which we should never have learned in any other, — our pride, our impatience, our irritability, our selfishness, our little love for Christ or his saints, our worldli- ness of spirit and our low thoughts of heaven. What lessons did Job learn, as he looked on the ruin of his home ; or Jonah, as he sat down by his dry and shrivelled gourd ; or David, as he saw the hope and strength of Israel smitten of God for his sin ! No, my brethren, prosperity, bright, continuous, and un- broken, would leave you ignorant of the very rudiments of one great science, the one of all others most important for you to know — your guilt, your curse, your corrupt nature, your need of a Saviour, your helpless condemnation without a changed heart and the being renewed in the spirit of your minds. And if ye know these things now, it is because the Lord has had a favour unto you. He taught you like the men of Succoth, with thorns and briars ; and higher and higher as each affliction came did you advance in heaven's school. A.y, and if you are to be perfect, you will have more trials yet. Nearer, nearer, nearer to Christ will you be willing to get every day, — to his cross, to his likeness, to his heart, to his throne ; and tribulation is the way thereto. He will thus be proved " a friend born for adversity," and you will have learned obedience by the things which you suffer. 480 THE GOLDEN LECTURES— SECOND SERIES. No. XI. PRECEPT, PROMISE, AND PRAYER. Delivered on Tuesday Morning, March 10, 1857, m THE REV. DANIEL MOORE, M.A. AT ST. Margaret's church, lothbury. "Make you a new heart and a new spirit." — Ezekiel xviii. 31, In direct terms, at least, Ezekiel is the only one of the prophets who en- forces a doctrine which, as lying at the foundation of our practical theology, we are commanded to recognize every day throughout Lent, namely, the doctrine of a new creation in man, the necessity of a reconstruction, a readjustment of his moral and spiritual faculties— the great fact that in order to salvation the heart of stone must be taken away, and that God must give him a heart of flesh. "Create and make in us new and contrite hearts." But if Ezekiel be the chief Old Testament writer who insists upon this great topic, he is also the most complete and direct, and, so to speak, philosophical in his treatment of it. There are three principal passages in this book, referring to the subject, which ought never to be considered inde- pendently of each other : namely, in the text, where this inward change is made the subject of a precept ; in the 11th chapter where it is made the object of a promise ; and in the 36th chapter where it is enjoined upon us as matter for prayer. " Make you a new heart and a new spirit" is manifestly a precept, or command ; how I am to make it, why I should make it, whether I am to make it of myself, or an influence from without is to make it for me, are questions with which, so far as relates to my personal obligations, I have nothing to do. A Divine command must be a possibility — we are sure of that ; and so, if I had nothing but the precept to guide me, Tshould learn thus much, — that in the matter of my salvation I must do something. But as I read on in the pages of this prophet I come to another passage — " A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you : and No. 2,724. 3 L PRECEPT, PROMISE, AND PRAYHR. I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh." Here is a promise— a promise that God would do the very thinjj for us which he had just before commanded us to do for ourselves. Here, therefore, is suggested the idea of co-operation. But who are we that we should be in any way helpful to the Infinite iu the accomplishment of his purposes? How should anything we can do be supplemental to the work of God ? Aaron's rod did not more entirely swallow up the magician's rod, than does this promise seem to absolve into itself the cognate precept. How are the respective promises to be kept apart, or what agency is that which shall connect yet uot confound the two ? And this problem, such as it is, Ezekiel solves for us a little further on. " I the Lord will do all that I have said." " I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes." And yet, though the work is to be mine, "for all this I will be en- quired of by the house of Israel, to do for them." Iu the further discussion of our subject I shall try to keep each of these passages in view, not only as they seem to exhibit the proper relation in which the precepts of God and the promises of God stand to each other, but also as they vindicate in a striking manner man's proper accountableuess in the use of means, and that in entire consistency with the sovereignty of moral government. It is manifest that the precept must be read in the light of the promise, and that tlie promise is the only ground of encouragement for prayer ; whilst the three in com- bination make good that gospel paradox by which the conviction of our own helplessness becomes the strongest motive to exertion ; and we are only enabled to *' work out our own salvation with fear and trembling" by know- ing that " it is God that worketh in us to will and to do of his own good pleasure." I propose, therefore, to consider, first, how the great ends of conversion are subserved by such precepts as the text, when taken by themselves ; se- condly, the added force they have when viewed in connection with some correlative or corresponding promise ; and thirdly, the combined tendency of precept and promise to supply us with the most powerful inducements to prayer. I. We are first to inquire, what place in the Divine arrangements for our conversion such precepts as those contained in the text properly occupy ; what they mean, what they assume, what practical efl^ect they have or can have upon our moral conduct and conviction. "Make you a new heart and a new spirit." "Hepent and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out." "Turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy upon you, and to our God for he will abundantly pardon." Now, all tliis would be very intelligible, if we laboured under no moral inability to do the things commanded ; that is, if we could make ourselves a new heart, or could repent and turn xmto the Lord, or could effect such a change in our moral organization as to be able to convert ourselves. But 502 PRECEPT, PROMISE, AND PRAYBR. how is this to be done ! Who is to bring the clean thing out of an unclean ! " In me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing," says the apostle ; • "What power in myself can put any good thing there ?' Who would set a man blind from his birth on the task of discerning colours i How can the carnal mind "acquaint itself with God and be at peace," while retaining as its in- separable adjunct feelings of enmity against his name and law 1 These difficulties, arising as they do out of the most incontrovertible Scripture de- clarations, seem to limit the office of the precept when taken by itself to something preliminary, and preparative, and antecedent. The command given in the text would not enable me to make myself a new heart ; it could only excite those dispositions and feelings within me which are essential to the new heart being made — that is, make me feel how lost I am, how dead, and hopeless, and beyond the reach of human cure. This was precisely tha effect which the whole structure of the moral law, when once rightly appre- hended by him, had on the Apostle Paul. For "I was alive," he says, " without the law once j but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died." While shut up to the conventionalities of the Pharisaic system, reading the law as those around him read it, he could live, and live at ease j but when the commandment came, when it was presented to the eyes of his understanding, in all its spirituality, and breadth, and strictness — when it was seen to claim jurisdiction over every thought, and motive, and desire, and feeling, condemning him everlastingly, if he failed in one jot or tittle of its lofty requirements, — then was forced upon him the conviction of his own unutterable sinfulness, inevitable condemnation, hopeless death. " Sin revived, and I died." And it is as leading to a result somewhat analagous to this that we get to see the use of such precepts as are contained in the text. In themselves they appear to enjoin impossibilities ; but, for all that, they are far from being without their use ; for they awake us to a conviction of our helpless- ness ; they reveal to us the extent of our soul's danger ; they show to us the deep-seatedness of our depravity ; they break in upon the slumbers of the natural conscience ; they set us upon doing something. The effort may be very blind and very groping ; but still an effort it is, a feeling after salvation, if haply we may find it. Thus see what thoughts are called up by some of these precepts. "Make you a new heart and a new spirit." Then what must the old heart be ! What a wreck and ruin of God's work must have taken place, seeing that no remedial measures will avail anything — that no partial reforms would do any good — that, in the judgment of him who first formed our moral image, the old and shattered fragments could never be put together again, but that, casting off utterly the shell of the old man, we must " put on the new man, which after God is created in righteouiness and true holiness !" Again : " Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead." Sleep — death — resurrection j what means all this startling imagery ? 503 PRECEPT, PROMISE, AND PRAYER. •what vital truth lies under words of such mysterious significance? Does the call mean that I am in a trance — that a deadly stupor has passed ove» my whole spiritual being — that it is not in the power of human appeals to move me to consciousness, and that it is only in a state of half life, half death, that I am made sensible of the authoritative call of God ? Or take another: "Turn ye, turn ye; why will ye die?" But you cannot turn; every disposition in you towards spiritual good is destroyed. As the needle to tlie pole so turns the heart to the love of evil ; and if you force it to think of God, and heaven, and eternity for a season, like a bow strained beyond its curvature, it only returns to its original position with a more violent rebound. And yet, after all, will you say that these impracticable commands are of no use to you ? Why, they must be of use, if only to show to you that they are impracticable — to set you upon thinking how the need they have dis- covered to you may be supplied, and the disorders of your moral condition may be corrected, and the ruin, and the death, and the helplessness, and the condemnation may be turned from you or taken away. Strictly speaking, that was an impossible precept given to St. Paul — " Thou shalt not covet ;" but still he did not find it a useless precept, for it was the first thing to open his eyes to the fact, how often his heart had yielded to the impulses of for- bidden desires. Thus as "by the law is the knowledge of sin," so by the precept is the knowledge of deficiencies ; and such knowledge, if it afifect the heart as it ought, must bring us to him whose grace will provide for the de- ficiencies, even as his righteousness has atoned for the sin. Neither is the knowledge of sin, and our own helplessness under it, the only benefit we get from such injunctions as are contained in the text. If it were, the deceived heart would in that very helplessness take bold and defiant shelter ; it would put in its claims to the compassions and sympathies of heaven, instead of lying under apprehension of its chastisements and wrath. Who would blame the blind man for not looking up, or the paralytic for not rising to take up his bed and walk ? I answer, my brethren, God would blame them both, if he had told the one to look up, or had told the other to rise ; for in that act of telling, and concurrently with the utterance, there went forth an impulse upon the soul of the sufferers to attempt the things which were commanded, but which impulse being resisted, the malady would most righte- ously have been suffered to continue. And it is precisely under this aspect that we are to view the command — •' Tilake you a new heart and a new spirit." You say you cannot make it : I say there is a sense in Avhich you can, just as much as at the bidding of Christ the man was able to stretch forth his withered hand. A command from God, be it ever understood, must be a plea of human accountableness ; it forecloses all excuses, it denies the possibility of any ground of exemption, it assumes that there is in every one of us a certain power of compliance, and there- fore convicts of obstinacy and disobedience the man who does not put the 50-i PRECEPT, PROMISE, AND PEAYER. power forth. It was some such view as this which at an early stage of his religious experience weighed so powerfully on that ornament of a sister church, the gifted Chalmers. His acute mind, if ray memory serve me rightly, had been sorely tried by the prominence given to faith in the gospel system, which, appearing as at the time it did, a thing mainly depending cm intellectual accidents, seemed hardly a suitable test of man's subjection to Divine authority ; when all at once, as he records it, his mind recurred to the passage — " Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." What provision for accidents was here ! he would naturally reason. What provision for the evidence being strong or weak, or the power of perceiving it great or small ! God has given me the commandment to believe, and there- fore I can believe, I must believe, and believe I will. The reasoning mani- festly applies to the precept of the text and all its like. If they suppose a lapsed and lowered condition of the human faculties, they also suppose in us a large remaining responsibility — assume the right of the Father of our spirits to command us, and therewith, either existing or obtainable, a certain capacity in us to obey. " I said not to the seed of Jacob, Seek ye me in vain ;" neither is it in vain that I say to one of the fallen seed of Adam, " Make you a new heart and a new spirit." II. But we need not rest in these vindications of Bible precepts, as in- junctions standing alone ; and so we may proceed to consider their added force and obligation, when viewed in connection with some corresponding promise. For this same Ezekiel, who is instructed to call to the house of Israel, " INIake you a new heart and a new spirit," also has it in charge to deliver, as God's kind assurance to his people — " A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you." And I think it worth your while to notice, brethren, that if there be any class of promises which more than others are conveyed to us in terms all but identical with the kindred precept, they are just those where our natural helplessness in regard of the command most comes in, and where, therefore, our disobedience would be most likely to make excuse. Thus does the gospel commission open every- where with the command, " Repent ye," and, "Except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish." How answerable to such announcements is the as- surance — " Him hath God exalted to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins." Or is it declared to us that " without faith it is impossible to please God," that " this is his command- ment, that we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ ?" How are any sophisms we could urge about the involuutariness of our belief antici- pated by that word, " By grace are ye saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God." Is it said to us, " Let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me," and " This is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent ?" How exactly responsive is the promise — " I will 505 PRECEPT, PROMISE, AND PRAYER. give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord ; and they Bhall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying. Know the Lord ; for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them !" Or once more : are we taught to " continue instant in prayer," to " pray without ceasing," " that men ought always to pray and not to faint!" "What a comfort, under the sense of our own negligence and coldness and reluctance to this work, is it to read—" And I will pour upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and supplications," and to feel that though " we know not what to pray for as we ought," yet " the Spirit itself helpeth our infirmities, and maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered !" Thus precept and promise, duty and succour, helplessness appealed to and assured help from God, run side by side, twin belts of light along our path, and to him that walketh by them " shining more and more unto the perfect day." Everything God does, whether in the material or moral world, is charac- terized by harmony, proportion, order, law. As our day, so our strength ; as the command to run, so the promised grace to draw ; as the exhortation, •* Make you a new heart and a new spirit," so the mould, the skill, the fashioning hand by which this new creation is to be made. Here, then, we must pause for a moment, to see what advance we have made upon our former position, by adding the precept to the promise — what deepened obligation to moral effort arises from seeing the two in combination, and, generally, how it assists or predisposes you to become the subjects of effectual conversion to find, that when God exhorts you to turn every one from his iniquities, he accompanies it with a declaration that he will turn your iniquities away from you. And, first, the combination alluded to, rids us at once of a whole host of speculative difiiculties and objections which might have attached to the precept, if it had stood alone. " Slake you a new heart." ' Change the hue of the Ethiop's skin ; turn back the whole current of your likes and dislikes, and bid the tide set with equal vehemence the contrary way.' This is a hard saying. If such a transforming in the renewing of our mind be necessary, " who, then, can be saved 2" And the answer is, " With man this is im- possible, but with God all things are possible j" and from the moment I can claim a promise for any desired good, I am relieved from the conditions of human infirmity altogether. Whatever my part may be in the work, it is as- sumed that in order to success I have infinite resources at my disposal. In the case of material miracles we know that the recipient of the benefit was com- monly required to do something; as when the blind man was sent to the pool of Siloam, or Naaman was commanded to dip seven times in the Jordan ; but still what they did had nothing to do with the achieved result, further than as testifying to their own obedience of faith, and connecting the miracle itself with the mighty power of God. And precisely the same rule obtains iu 506 PRECEPT, PROMISE, AND PRAYER. relation to that which is truly a moral miracle, the forming .within us of a new heart and a new spirit. The precept may enjoin an endeavour, and the promise may ensure that such endeavour shall be effectual ; but still the endeavour itself is only a sign. There is no appreciable relation between our work and God's work. Like Moses, wo do but stretch our hand over the sea ; it is God that makes the Avaters part. Secondly, the superadding of the promise confirms our afiiance in the ex- ceeding great love of God. He was not bound to tell us all his heart — to show to us how the impossibilities of the precept were to be overcome — to assure US of his willingness to take a thousand steps to help us, if we, moved by his grace, would take but one step to help ourselves. The precept had convicted us of helpless, hopeless impotency ; we were " not suificient of ourselves even to think anything as of ourselves ;" we were " wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked ;" and yet we could make no effort to get out of this state, because we did not even know that we were in it. Who shall wake the sleeper ? Who shall quicken the dead ? Who shall gladden with tidings of freedom the willing and unconscious slave ? All that the precept could do was to say, " Awake ! Arise ! Be free !" But the promise is with power ; it discovers the need and supplies it, proclaims the refuge and con- ducts to it, enables us to know the truth and causes the truth to make us free. And once more ; this union of precept and promise assists us to clearer views of the Divine sovereignty, in connection with the free moral agency of man. The precept has established two things — our abstract subjection to law, and our utter inability to keep law — the inalienable prerogative of God to command, and the entire powerlessness of man to obey. Thus while the sub- jection bends to effort, the inability will make us give God the glory, and that from first to last. There are two great truths, their authority alike over the human conscience and their claims alike to a rational belief ; and these are, first, that the origin, as well as the effective agency in the work of our salva- tion, is to be traced to God only, and the other, that in connection with that work, and as morally furthering it, much has to be done by the sinner him- self. " Make you a new heart and a new spirit," will awaken the thought of responsibility and incite to active endeavour; yet " not unto us, not unto us, O Lord," will be the soul's grateful language, if ever that new heart be made. III. And now for a few words, in conclusion, on the third point we were to advert to ; or, the tendency of precept and promise to supply us with the most encouraging motives to prayer. Ezekiel had been commissioned to give the injunction, '• Make you a new heart," and a little after he is told to add that word of consolation, "A new heart also will I give you." Yet lest the promise should inspire presumption, or the precept should lead to despair, he adds — for the words clearly apply to the whole promise of spiritual influ- ence contained in the chapter, and therefore to that of a new heart — "I will for all this be enquired of by the house of Israel to do it for them, saith the Lord." Here, then, brethren, we have the method of the Divine dealings perfected ; for the precept wakes to a sense of need, the promise directs to the only source of supply, and prayer, like the desired Daysman of the patriarch, seems to lay its hand upon both. The precept speaks of death ; the promise points to life ; 507 PRECEPT, PROMISE, AND PRAYER. the prayer is the permitted signal for resurrection, when, challenging the power of the Eternal Spirit, the soul exclaims, " Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live." The precept shows us that we have work to do ; the promise evidences that we have not the power to do it ; the prayer suggests the use of certain instituted means, in order that God may do it for us. The precept is the will of God command- ing ; the promise is the goodness of God deliberating ; and prayer is helpless- ness pleading at his footstool with eyes fastened on the mercy-seat, because afraid to look upon the throne. In a word, they form in combination a holy blessed, and glorious Trinity ; for the precept is the Sovereign Father of the universe enjoining obedience ; the promise is the Son of God entreating that the offender may be spared ; and prayer is the indwelling Spirit within us, waking up the heart to devotion, and showing ua both how to wrestle and prevail with God. Wherefore, brethren, that ye may be able to keep the precept, pray that ye may have part in the promise ; pray that ye may have the spirit of effectual fervent prayer ; pray, keeping the end of all in view, •' a new heart and a new spirit," a changed judgment and restored affections, a submitted will and a heavenly mind. Do not perplex yourselves — still more, I charge you, do not excuse yourselves by saying, the question has so many difficulties arising out of our own moral powerlessness to take the first step. If you deal honestly with yourselves, you must make some such admissions as these — ' Whatever I may have done for my soul's salvation, I might have done more. If I could not of myself turn to God, I could at least have placed a stronger guard against the sins which caused God to turn from me. In a word, if I could not ♦' make the new heart and the new spirit," I might by persevering prayer have cherished those dispositions which would have led to " the new heart and the new spirit" being made.' Put, then, these three passages in Ezekiel together, and ask, Have you urged the prayer ? Have you applied the pro- mise ? If not, can it be less than mockery to complain that the precept is beyond your inability to keep ? There must be a relation between the precept and the promise, and there must be something to connect the two ; and that connecting bond is prayer, calling to its aid such outward means 'as are either prescribed for us in the Word of God, or fall within the compass of our voluntary powers to employ. How the means and the end are connected together we know not. That they are not connected in the sense of cause and effect, so that in the order of moral sequences because we pray " the new heart" must follow, we are sure ; that they are not connected in the sense of merit, so that if we pray the equities of the Divine government would require that " the new heart" should follow, of this we are sure also, because either of these suppositions would be robbing grace of its sovereignty, and would touch with unhallowed hand the sacred prerogative of heaven ; and yet that, if we continue praying, and seeking, and using means, "the new heart" assuredly will follow, is a truth transparent as the light of heaven, and immovable as the pillars which bear up its throne, seeing that " Thus saith the Lord God, I will yet for all this be enquired of by them, to do it for them." 603 THE GOLDEN LECTURES— SECOND SERIES. No. XII. THE SONS OF ZEBEDEE.^ SI Pennon Delivered on Tuesday Morning, March 17, 1S67, BY THE REV. DANIEL MOORE, M.A. AT ST. Margaret's church, lothburv. "Then came to him the mother of Zebedee's children wiOi her sous, 'worshipping liim, and desiring a certain thing of him. And he said unto her, What -wilt thou ? She saith unto him. Grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand, and the other on the left, in thy kingdom."— Matthew xx. 20, 21. Bemarkable as this i-equest appears in itself, it becomes yet more remark- able from the conversation by which it was preceded and the circumstances under which it was preferred. Our Lord was going up to Jerusalem for the last time ; and although he had often before warned his followers of the things that should befal him there, his language now in reference to this subject becomes more than ever plain, and graphic, and circumstantial. For " taking the twelve disciples apart in the way, he said unto them. Behold, we go up to Jerusalem : and the Son of man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn him to death, and shall deliver him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify him : and the third day he shall rise again. Then came to him the mother of Zebedee's children," preferring for them this strange request for posts of honour in the gospel kingdom. Now, this was the sixth occasion on which our Lord had foretold his ap- proaching death, the fifth on which he had spoken also of his resurrection ; and as the whole was now declared to be within a few days of complete fulfil- ment, we must suppose that in the belief of James and John all these things must come to pass before there could be any setting up of Messiah's king- dom in the world. Their mistakes as to the nature of that kingdom, as we know, remained uncleared up even to the day of their Lord's ascension into No. 2,727. 3 N THE SONS OF ZEBEDEE. heaven ; still, a persuasion they plainly had that thrones, crowns, spoils, dig- nities, would soon be at the disposal of the despised prophet of Galilee, and they determined to be foremost in suing for the richest and the best. The answer of the Saviour to this request will be considered as we go on. It contains reproof, exhortation, admonition, doctrine ; it tells us of the steps by which heaven's thrones are reached, the foes to be overcome before we can be made conquerors, the baptismal deeps to be forded, before we gain the eternal shore. " And he saith unto them, Ye shall drink indeed of my cup, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with : but to sit on my right hand, ana on my left, is not mine to give, but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared of my Father." Let us consider some things in the request itself, and then look at the man- ner in which we find it was entertained. I. Now, in the request here preferred we find some good things and some evil. Thus, there was faith in it. Followers of a Master without purse or scrip, without friends or home — of one hated by many and despised by more — with the sky of gospel destiny getting blacker and more threatening every day, and while the crisis of shame, and separation, and ruin seemed close at hand, yet had the sons of Zebedee thoughts of a quickly ensuing triumph. Somehow or other there would a kingdom arise out of that wreck. Let the things just repeated by their Divine Master come to pass, yet what should be the end thereof I What could be the meaning of that rising again he had so often referred to ? Why, that if the things spoken of should literally happen, the scourge would become a sceptre, the cross a throne, the grave a vestibule of eternal light, and the shouts of mockery and scorn become changed into the songs and hosannahs of the redeemed. Now, Christ is ever honoured by this strong faith ; it is akin to that on account of which he wrought his greatest spiritual miracle— that, I mean, when he called, justi- fied, sanctified, made a man a perfect saint in an instant of time. *' Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom," said the dying male- factor. As if he would say — * As yet thou art made like one of us. The people gaze ; the rulers mock ; the soldiers torture ; the heavens that were made of thee look on silently ; spent nature cries without ; and for thee, as for us, death watches with impatient triumph : but not these, nor ten thou- sand indignities more, could weave a cloud thick enough to hide Divinity. I see it ; I own it ; I worship it. On the cross or on the throne, it is all one.' " Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom," Brethren, a large venture on the power of Christ, especially when he is hiding himself, is always well-pleasing to him. He is twice faithful who trusts God behind a cloud. When God is hanging back, we ought to suppose lie is but waiting' for his opportunity ; and what is that ? When things come to the worst — the last door closed, the last human hope gone, conjecture at its wit's end, likelihood dying away into despair. This makes the occasion 52G THE SONS OF ZEBEDEE. worthy for heaven's interference. Faith honours God when it supposes that he can, and believes that he will, get life out of death, glory out of shame, throues and kingdoms out of decay and ruin. It is a grace which is always to be measured by an inverse standard. It increases with the distance of the succours ; it rises with the depth of the waters ; it brightens with the darkness of the cloud : " Though he slay me, yet will I trust him." Though he be betrayed, suffer, die, and lie in the grave, and that not many days hence, he whom we serve has a kingdom. Lord, " Grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand, and the other on the left." And as there was faith in this request, so there was some love. Zebedee was among the more wealthy of our Lord's followers ; for we learn that he not only was the proprietor of the boat he traded with, but that he had also hired servants. It is probable that he was now dead, Salome, the wife, being spoken of independently in another passage as ministering to the necessities of theSaviour in his journies. The idea that she might have more influence on our Lord on this account probably dictated to the sons of Zebedee the choice of their mother as mediator on this occasion ; and with whatever of defect their joint suit might be mingled, yet there was love in it — a deliberate choice of a suffering Saviour to have the rule over them, a persuasion that, though not seen as yet, a treasure there was in the gospel of Christ, and that for joy thereof they were ready to sell all that they had, in order to buy that field. And this is an element in the request before us, which he who could separate the chaff from the wheat, the ambition from the love, would be sure not to overlook. If Salome asked for high things for her sous, they were at least the high things of the kingdom. She desired not for them either the honours that men give or the wealth that men toil for ; neither the perilous glitter of talent, nor the cushioned softness of luxury and ease. Are the wishes of all parents for their children cast in this mould. In form- ing friendships for them, in placing them out in life, in directing them to right preferences for holy matrimony, has the first prayer of the heart been, * Lord, only grant that these my children may sit on this thy right hand, and then let all other honours, other advantages, other gains, come or go as they may V Brethren, the question is important. We deal with a jealous God — a God jealous for his priority, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness." It must needs happen, in the choice of a path for our children, that of two desirable things we can secure but one. An interest in Christ must be that one, though the price of securing it be the loss of some advantageous opening, and, as the world calls it, throwing a great chance away. We cannot always have the best of both worlds ; and parents who seek only good things for their children, and are willing to leave the rest, shall never be sent empty away. But then, with all this good in the request of Salome and her sons, there was mingled much that was reprehensible and evil. Thus no view of the words we can take will acquit these disciples of ambition — ambition which was 527 THE SONS OF ZfBEDBE. in large measure of the earth earthy. Their views of the gospel kingdom were, as we have seen, of the most confused and indistinct kind. They appear to have pictured to themselves a monarchy partly of this world and partly of another — a series of triumphs neither wholly secular nor wholly spiritual— a condition in which, while their natural appetencies should be gratified by the substantial rewards of material conquests, their higher faculties should be ex- ercised in new displays of moral glory, and the victories of Messiah over disobedience and sin. Accordingly, it was compatible with their view of the new kingdom that there might be in it a large admixture of this-world-ism — that is, all the keen competitions of human cleverness and tact, all the contentions and jostlings for the best places, all the making of a pedestal for oneself on another's infirmity and depression, which characterize the strifes and ambitions of this lower world. And the instance in the text is not the only one in which we see among the disciples of the meek and lowly .Jesus an outbreak of this miserable infirmity. Once, on arriving at Capernaum, our Lord had to say to them—" What was it that ye disputed among your- selves by the way ? But they held their peace ;" for by the way they had disputed among themselves which should be the greatest. And so it was here. Had the ambition of James and John been purely and only spiritual, their request would have been not for the rewards of the kingdom, but for a sanctified meetness for its enjoyment — not for high dignities, but for a holy cha- racter — not for a local nearness to the throne of their INIaster, but for a moral nearness to the purity and the perfections of his nature. Their care seems to have been, not " How may I be best qualified for the seat which God shall appoint for me ?" but " How many seats lower down shall my brethren be ?" Brethren, the thought may be useful to us to try our own spirits by. Which are our desires most upon — heaven, or amoral fitness for heaven — the rewards of the righteous, or the holiness that leads thereto ? The glorified state, we must remember, is the carrying on, the expansion, the infinite enlargement of aspirations begun and cherished here, and therefore we cannot be longing for the consummation of that of which there has been no beginning. Let us not deceive ourselves. To be told that in our hearts we had no love for the rewards of eternal life, we should think argued us to be in a fearful state; but it is the state of all who are not striving after spiritual likeness to Christ. "Whoso hath this hope in him," it is declared, "purifieth himself, even as he is pure." Tlie possession of a hope, you perceive, is here deter- mined absolutely by some incohate preparations for that which we hope for. Hope there can be none, if we are not beginning the life of heaven now — getting ready for the garments we are to wear, getting ready for the presence we are to behold, getting ready for the fellowship we shall consort with, and the worship in which we shall bear our part. He cannot be a saint who does not desire sanctity, and who does not strive after it. We may be for- ward enough to say in words, " Lord, grant that I may sit on thy right hand in thy kingdom ;" but the man who has no longings, no strivings after greater moral purity, has not even a wish to go to heaven. But, further, there was in this petition of the sons of Zebedee a good deal of ofiFending and guilty presumption. They " came desiring a certain thing of him ;" not saying what it was, but, as it were, wishing to pledge the Master to a granted suit beforehand. This is put still more strikingly in the narrative of St. Mark, who writes—" And James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came unto him, saying, Master, we would that thou shouldest do for us &2S THE SONS OF ZEBl'DEE. whatsoever we shall desire." " Whatsoever we shall desire." ' IIow it shall affect the welfare of others no matter ; how affect the Diviue plaus and purposes no matter.' " Whatsoever we shall desire." Brethren, did ever self-reliance take a more infatuated and suicidal form ? A worm of the earth seeking to be entrusted with the reins of providential government, to be allowed to have the choice of his own lot, the ordering of his own destinies, the determination of that place in the scheme of the everlasting purposes which he is best adapted to fill. How suitable was that question of Elihu to Job — " Should it be according to thy mind V ' Should every thing bend and give way to theories of good sketched out by thee ? Art thou the one created unit for whose pleasure the universe has been evoked into being— the ultimate arbiter of all that is wise, the sure counsellor for all that is beneficent and good ? Why, even the heathen were instructed to pray that the gods would refuse an ill-chosen or hurtful suit. They felt that they knew not what was good for themselves, and therefore to the wise revisions of heaveu they would submit their erring choice. " Whatsoever we shall desire" was the petition of these sons of Zebedee. Would it ever have been the desire of one of them that he should fall beneath the sword of Herod ? or would the other have desired for his habitation an abode in the deep soli- tudes of Patmos ? Yet who sees not that by means of these they compassed the real object of their ambition, finding their profit in the losing of their prayers, and on the wings of crossed desire soaring to the right hand of God ? And every saint in heaven would bear like witness. Could they tell us their experience they would all say, ' Not only have we found God's denials his greatest mercies, but we never went so far wrong, our souls were never in so great peril, as when, after being over-urgent with God, he punished us by lettiug us have our own way.' Oh ! learn we, brethren, to watch against these set, these determined, these unqualified and peremptory askings — this desir- ing to impose our weak rules upon God, leaving him no latitude in the grant- ing of our prayer, and practically forbidding him to substitute an equivalent or perhaps greater good. We kuow that there are successes on which we feel we could not congratulate their possessors. W^hen a covetous man finds a new source of gain, or one whom we knew to be vain has risen to a distinction which can only feed his pride — when we hear that the malicious man has found out his occasion for revenge, or that the lover of pleasui-e has come un- expectedly into more ample means for its gratification. We do not call any of these a happy man ; we say rather, this is the Lord answering him ac- cording to his idols, hearing him in a certain thing which he asks for, grant- ing that most pitiable of all human requests, " Master, we would that thou shouldest do for us whatsoever we shall desire." II. But let us pass on to consider, in the second place, the manner in which this petition was entertained. . It is not a little remarkable, that though this conversation occurred after that on which the Romanists chiefly rest their dream of Peter's supremacy, no such construction of the words, " Thou art the rock," ever occurred to the sons of Zebedee, or indeed, as appears from their subsequent conten- tions for priority, to any of the rest of the apostolic body. Neither does our Lord remind them, as on the Papal hypothesis we should have thought he would, that the precedence they were seeking for was already disposed of but on the contrary, tells them there is to be no pre-eminence at all, and proceeds to denounce as an utter offence to him, and as alien to the entire spirit of 529 THE SOKS OF ZEBGDEB. his gospel, all assumption of superiority by one apostle over the rest. 'Such thinfjs may exist, he says, among secular bodies,' " but it shall not be so among you ; but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister, and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant." But to come to our Lord's reply. First, you will observe, he administers to these ill-advised petitioners a mild rebuke for their ignorance. " Ye know not what ye ask." You are utterly ignorant of what ray kingdom is, the laws it shall acknowledge, the subjects it shall embrace, the powers it shall possess, or the recompences it shall bestow ; and yet you ask for a chief place in the administration of its affairs.' Well might the Saviour ad- minister this rebuke ; for one proof of what the sons of Zebedee would do, if placed at the helm of affairs, had been afforded already. Some poor Samaritan villagers had denied him the welcome he was entitled to, and these sons of Zebedee, with all the indiscriminateness of a wild and coarse retribution, asked if they might command fire to come down from heaven, to sweep the offenders away. And, brethren, this answer of the Saviour we may all take to ourselves, when we are getting impatient of our providential position, whenever we are wishing to be something other than we are, reach- ing after a prize which God, kinder to us than we should be to ourselves, has purposely placed beyond our reach. " Ye know not what ye ask." All hands are not steady enough to carry a full cup, nor are all heads strong enough to taste the intoxicating draught of power. The infirmity of noble minds, as it is sometimes called, is generally neither more nor less than a disguised selfishness. The thought of what we would do, if we were pos- sessed of such an income, .or were advanced to such an office, or were en- trusted with such a responsibility — what abuses we would remedy, what misery we would relieve, what beneficent plans we would originate, would, on any honest examination of our own hearts, turn out to be a mere dream of self-love. It is not so much that we want to do good as that we want to be admired for what we do. And this self worship is Satan worship. " AH these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me." This is the price of success. For your restless and ambitious spirits cannot worship God : they have a divinity of their own — one who is in all their thoughts, and all their purposes, served with matins, vespers, offerings, all the day long. And hereupon in rapid succession follow many other evils. Self- reliance, a paying court to human chances, a casting God out of our reckon- ing, an unscrupulous entrance of any door which either standaopen or Avhich we can force open ; and all these tendencies growing and gathering strength the nearer the object of ambition seems to be within the grasp. This has been the history of all that unprincipled scheming by which our gentleman robbers have at length tampered with all the sacredness of moral confidence, have made sport with their neighbour's property and happiness, tossing as a ball one to another the orphan's pittance and the widow's all. It was Satan's prize of a high place. They hoped to have stopped before. * One more ven- ture, and the prize is mine ; one more fraud, and I will be honest ; one more cast of the die, and I will never throw again.' " All this will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me." " Seekest thou high things for thy- self ? Seek them not." The servant who is impatient to become a principal, the respectable citizen who aspires to a seat by the side of the merchant princes, the person in obscure position who is fretting to become more talked about and known, the man of talent who is angry at having such a bounded 330 THE SONS OF ZEBEDEE. field for his powers, beating himself for vexation like a bird against the wires of his cage — each of these may be said to be climbing a wall without knowing what dangers there may be on the other side. Could they hear God's merciful reason for a refused petition, they would find it expressed iu the words, " Ye know not what ye ask." But observe, the second part of our Lord's answer consists of an admoni- tion to these disciples not to expect the rewards of the kingdom at too cheap a rate. "Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with ?" To drink of the same cup is a common Eastern expression for sharing a common fortune witli another; and a peculiar fitness belongs to that allusion here, because it was esteemed one of the highest distinctions a prince could confer, that after drinking himself he should pass the cup to some great favourite at table. The phrase, " the baptism tiiat I am baptized with" belongs more peculiarly to the Jews, who, as we learn repeatedly from the Psalms, were accustomed to speak of all extraordinary suffering as an immersion in the deep waters, the waves and billows of Divine indignation going over the afflicted soul, and God vexing it with all his storms. Assuming, tiierefore, that these dis- ciples had a real desire for the dignities of his kingdom, our Lord would re- mind them at how large a cost of suffering, and peril, and toil tliese high offices were to be secured. Only a few verses before he had promised to those who for his sake had left houses, and brethren, and laud, and worldly hopes to follow him, that they should " sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel," and too hastily the disciples had drawn the conclusion, that the forsaking of all comprehended their whole warfare both of service and suffering, and that there remained for them nothing now but crowns, and garlands, and bright recompences. 'But,' reasons the Great Teacher, 'the thrones are for tliose who follow me — follow me not only in what I give up, but follow me also in what I have yet to bear. I indeed have left thrones of light, mansions of bliss, the bosom of the Father, the society of blessed spirits, and the homage of pure and unfallen worlds ; but beside all this, *' I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished ?" — a baptism of tears, and sweat, and blood — of anguish over- whelming me like a flood, and heaven's wrath covering me, as it were, with a great deep ; and I ask, will you wade with me through this river also to get at the thrones you seek ? You have left all for my sake ; but will you^bear all for my sake also ? You have given up your own cup ; but are you able to drink of mine V Thus, brethren, it would seem as if our Lord's remark pointed to that danger we are all liable to — of fainting in our course, while as yet we have not followed it more than half way — of thinking, because we have made some sacrifices for Christ, therefore we shall not be called upon to make more — boasting that we may put off our harness when we ought to be more earnestly girding it on, and thinking that the early trials of the religious life are to release us from all after participation in the baptism and the cup. But our Lord would here teach us, that if we would sit on thrones, if we would fill the high places in his kingdom, we must expect our sorrows to multiply,'oui' foes to increase, our strivings against sin to deepen, tiiat from running with footmen we may have to contend with horsemen, and that at the time when we trust we are in the land of peace we may find we may have to breast the swellings of Jordan. No, brethren, there is to be no rest from our warfare 531 THE SONS OF ZEBEDEE. here ; we must write after our copy, set our steps in the very footprints of him who hath gone before. He beckons us to the throne ; but the way thither must be the way trod by him. We must go to the wilderness to hunger, to tho mount to pray, to the garden to weep, to the cross to deny ; we must neither stand trembling at the margin of the flood, nor put the un- tasted drauglit away. No cup, no kingdom ; no baptism, no throne. Are ye equal to all this, ye sons of Zebedee ? " They say unto him, We are. If, therefore, it was said of these disciples, " Ye know not what ye ask," well might it be said of them now, ' Ye know not what ye answer.' Here were men wishing to be the prime administrators in Messiah's world ; and yet so little did they know of their own hearts that they could not answer for their own stedfastuess for ten days to come. "We are able to drink of this cup," they said ; and yet, as we know, at the very eight of that cup they were among the very first to shrink. " Then all the disciples forsook him and fled." Oil ! brethren, how great is the strength of a felt and feared weak- ness ! IIow surely does that man walk, who at every step has a holy dread lest he fall, who of all securities for stedfastuess feels self-reliance to be the feeblest, and knows no torture so dangerous to his peace as his own deceived and deceiving heart ! " Be not high minded, but tear." Yet in and through this rash self-confidence of his apostles our Lord saw au element of deep moral sincerity. Love him they did, and therefore in a way they little thought of, baptism, cup and throne should all be theirs. " To sit on my right hand, and on my left, is not mine to give, but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared of my Father." The words are not meant to intimate, that to sit on the right hand and on the left is in no sense Christ's to give, but only that in giving it he is governed in his awards by the provisions of the everlasting covenant, the mutually agreed stipulations by which as Mediator he undertook to redeem the Avorld. Yes, pardons, recompenses, thrones, dignities, a seat at his right hand, or a place at his footstool are disposed of absolutely by the glorified Man of sori'ows. "To him that over- cometh will I give to sit down with me on my throne, even as I overcame, and am set down with my Father on his throne." Rise ye, then, brethren, to the better spirit and ambition of the sons of Zebedee ; not as when, with bated and faltering breath, they " came to Christ, desiring a certain thing of him," but as when, having had their eyes opened, and the Holy Spirit poured out, and their views of an earthly kingdom purged away, and their hopes fixed immoveably on the immortal, and the infinite, and the eternal, and the unseen, they made it their daily prayer, " Lord, Grant that we thy servants may sit near thee in thy kingdom ! Make us as stars that excel in glory ; give us a place in the great cloud of witnesses ; renew our moral image, that we may be made like unto the Son of God ; and whether near our Master's throne, or afar off, in the place prepared for us of the Father, may see him as he is !" For, my brethren, we know this is no privilege re- stricted to James and John. " Such honour have all his saints." Let them be baptized into the death of sin ; let them take the cup of communion to penitent and believing lips ; let them forsake, deny, strive, endure to the end, and their prayer for a kingdom shall be granted. He who caused them to drink of the brook by the way shall in the end lift up their head ; and he who made them partakers of his baptism and his cup shall say, " Come, ye blessed children of m.y Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the founda- tion of the world.'.' 532 THE GOLDEN LECTURES— SECOND SERIES. No. XIII. A SUFFERING WORLD. ^ Sermon Dehvered on Tuesday Mornikg, MAKcn 24, 1857, BY THE REV. DANIEL MOORE, M.A. AT ST, Margaret's church, lothburv. " For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travailetb in pain together until no^v. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we our- selves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body." — Komaus viii. 22, 23. That the world we live in has, from some cause or other, become grievously disordered, that its various moral organizations have sustained some material shock or injury, is in nothing more apparent than in the efforts which we seem to be always making to set this ill-going machine to rights. Legislation is never standing still; the philanthropist never finds his occupation gone ; every- body talks about the great cause of amelioration, and reform, and social pro- gress ; as if Bo question could be raised whether the institutions of society did not require a good deal of mending, or whether some great change were not called for in the general habits and sentiments of mankind. All this is taken for granted. The world ought to be, and may be made, a great deal better than it is : how this amendment is to be accomplished, whether religion is to do it, or the diffusion of knowledge is to do it, or more intercommunion between the different nations of the earth is to do it, men may not be agreed. The noticeable thing that must occur to a man who desires to estimate things reli- giously, who tries to take a large outlook on God's settled ways, and man's uncertain enterprizes, is the attitude of universal expectancy which the world is taking just now — the crisis of fancied perfectibility to which it i» supposed all human institutions are tending, everybody clinging to the hope of some on-coming millennium, when all our moral disorders shall be rectified, and the great wheel of human destinies shall err in its course no more. This feeling, however, of anticipating some great and beneficent future, although it may have taken in our day more active and restless forms, is evidently only the No. 2,732. 3 R A SUFFERING WORLD. expression of one of our earnest and most universal instincts. It is not con- nected with any particular theology, nor even with any theories of social or political science. It is a natural aspiration of man's soul towards some un- attained and undefined excellence — the soaring of his spirit to some loftier and purer region ; the mind essaying to put forth its ancient strength, as if, like Samson, it wist not that the Lord was departed from it. It is, in fact, what the apostle describes, two verses before our text, an earnest expectation of the creature ; the reaching forward of the untaught human intelligence, after what it knows not, only, that it is sure to be something which will be a mighty advance upon our present condition ; opening up, it may be, new and exalted relations to the Great Parent of the universe, and issuing in the final manifestation of the sons of God. And the whole of that portion of Scripture from which our text is taken, is an appeal to this universal expecta- tion of mankind, and shows for what end such a sentiment was planted in man's bosom. Man is not satisfied either with himself or with his condition; God never intended that he should be. And all that craving after Utopian perfectness — the new heavens and the new earth of the social philosopher, has its spring in something deeper than in any desire for earthly reforms; testifying, as it does, to the greatness of an awaiting immortality, as well as to the great- ness of the soul's departure from happiness and from God. " For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body." There are three points, brethren, to which our attention seems to be called in these words. First, that the whole world is suffering from the effects of Adam's transgression ; Secondly, that there is nothing in the condition of be- lievers to exempt them from their proper share in these sufferings ; Thirdly, that though the Christian must participate in the common lot and trials of all men, he has what others have not, a pledge of final and complete deliverance. I. The text first reminds us that the whole world is suffering on account of sin. " For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." In the margin, you observe, for " whole creation," there is suggested the equally lawful rendering, "every creature;" and the insertion of the word " they" in the clause " and not only they" would indicate the purpose in our translators to restrict the groaning spoken of to responsible and intelligent agents only. But it seems better to give the apostle's words their widest scope ; to suppose that his heaven-taught mind is expatiating over the vast outspread of living or moving things, and that he sees the entire creation of God in labour and distress; heaving agitated, restless, proclaiming throughout all its borders, that some great woe had fallen upon it, and yet travailing in pain for a deliverance soon to come. We know how common it is with the sacred writers io assume this sympathy of the material creation, with all that relates to the actings of God ; how the visible heavens arc chal- lenged to become umpires in tlie Lord's controversy ; how to shame thankless man into gratitude, the valleys are made to sing, and the little hills to rejoice 562 & SUFFERING WORLD. on every side ; how, at the announcement of the Messiah's day, the mountains are heard to break fortli into singing, and all the trees of the field to clap their hands. And we should all feel that there was great propriety in the allusion if nothing more than a bold personification were here intended ; and that when the apostle said, "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now," he meant no more than that the harsher aspects of material nature, the tempest and the earthquake, the volcano and the blight, were all so many risible types of a world in suffering, because of a world in sin. But are we sure that he did not mean more than this? May not the physical creation be itself a sufierer in consequence of man's sin ? That is, may not the elements have become subject to new conditions and liabilities, just that they might be put in harmony with a suffering and fallen world; and even be themselves the occa- sion of suffering to its guilty inhabitants ? Such an inference seems deducible from the terms of the primal curse, which plainly assumed that over the vegetable kingdom, at all events, a great change was to pass, in consequence of the fall; and a change, too, exactly answering to the apostle's description of groaning and travailing in pain. " And unto Adam he said, cursed be the ground for thy sake ; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee, and in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." Here is a plain intimation that, owing to the sin of Adam, there were to be certain properties in the soil which it did not possess before; that, instead of bringing forth fruH abundantly of itself, it would yield no fruit at all, but at the price of toil and weariness : that, for beauty, man should henceforth look on barrenness, and that where he once beheld the myrtle-tree he should see only the briar and the thorn. Now, the principle once admitted, that the curse of the transgression was really vested on the material parts of creation, no one can say how far the influence of it extended. It may be, that if there had been no sin, tints of a more delicate hue would have enriched the landscape, and scents of a more balmy fragrance would have filled the air; that the light of the moon should have been as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun should have been sevenfold. But, even, if this had not been, who can believe that this fair and beautiful world, pronounced of its Maker as very good, came forth from his hand with all those rugged and forbidding features that we now behold? The arid desert, the frowning solitudes, the summits of unapproached and eternal snow, the meteor dealing death in its flash, the hurricane in its wildness sweep- ing human habitations away. Do we not see in all this signs of nature in great affliction, proclaiming to man how she suffers and sympathizes with his ruin ; testifying that the Lord hath smitten the earth with a curse, and that " the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now ?" But there is, of course, in this language of the apostle, an allusion to the groanings of the moral creation, to that agony, and oppression, and pain which have come upon the spirits of all flesh; to that unchanging law of our being, which has decreed that man should be as surely born to trouble as that sparks go upward from the flame; that original curse of our being, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread," what marks of its fulfilment do we 563 A SUFFERING WORLD. see now in every department of human society ! In the heated enterprize and fierce emulation, and keen strife of employers; in the late hours, and wasted strength, and shortened days of the employed ; in the sempstress, like her own midnight taper, dying away by little and little in the garret ; and in the miner, perishing more happily, because more suddenly in the suffocating and sulphure- ous shaft — all urged on to this wasting and wearying toil, as if, without taking the bread from one's neighbour's mouth, we could hardly hope to obtain it at all. And some cannot obtain it, or at least, upon the terms they would like, and to which they think they are entitled ; and so they hold meetings, and form monster processions, and besiege workhouses, and demand to be conveyed in masses far away from their native shores. Or, at another time, they will try to take the law into their own hands, and they organize and combine, and stop commerce, and starve their families, and threaten the peace of society, and have recourse to all that rude and rough legislation, which thinks by strikes and combinations to set the inequalities of providence aright ; or to alter that, its eternal law, " The poor shall never cease out of the land." Foolish con- flicts these, and ruinous both to the employer and the employed ; and it is a righteous retribution that it should be so, to teach the one the responsibilities of capital, and the other the right use of labour ; to show the workman the sin of always complaining, and to remind the master that he should not give him cause; and so, in these unhappy disputes, whichever sustains a defeat, the other is little a gainer by his victory. The discontented will always find that they had much better bear the ills they have. All labour quarrels are quarrels with the appointments of heaven — bootless fightings against the curse of paradise — attempts to root up all the thorns and thistles, and to make the earth once more bring forth fruit of herself. Masters and men should alike remember that if the Lord reigneth, yet he reigns over a dislocated and dis- ordered world, over a creation groaning with sin and travailing with the male- diction of never-ending toil. And so in other aspects of creation. Look at the effect of sin upon the human body. " We that are in this tabernacle do groan, groan being burdened," says the apostle — burdened with pain, with weariness, with hunger, with the consequences of irregular living, with the inroads of age and approaching decay. More than half our science, our investigations of the properties of plants and minerals, our inquiries into man's curious anatomy, and other accidents of his physical being, are parts of an ever- gtraining effort to hush or soften the voice of creation's groaning. Look yet more at sin's work on men's minds, how it has brought them under bondage to corruption, how it has filled them with undisciplined appetites and passions, how it has disabled them from those higher and purer aspirations for which these minds were plainly formed. Why is it any labour to love the best of beinos ? Why is diligence required to keep the heart? How comes it that restraints are needed to preserve us from running away from our happiness? What has made it a toil, an irksome task to pray? Oh! we cannot do the things that we would. "To will is present with us, but how to perform that which is good we tind not." There is not tlje man who, 564 A SUFFERING WORLD. if he knows his own heart, must not often bewail his deficiencies. " The whole creation groaneth." Yes, the whole creation ; for the sorrowful sigh- ings of the prisoner come up from every condition of life, whether in the church or in the world. Believers in this respect have no separate Goshen to dwell in. "Lord," it was said just now, "behold he whom thou lovest is sick ;" and even if sickness and sorrow press unequally, yet mortality is a law which comes alike to all. Kings fall at their thrones, warriors die at the head of their armies ; the voice that could command the obedience of millions is silent, and the skill that had restored health to many a dwelling cannot keep the stroke of death from its own. The creation is made subject to vanity. That is the law of its operatiou ; it sports with every interest, every feeling, every relation, and every hope; like a scythe it cuts down grass and flower, tares and grain, the good and bad. Now the child is taken — the life, the joy, the one bright thing in a house ; and now the parent is taken — the stay, tlie prop, that without which the house itself gives way. The world is like a great Egypt on the night of the Passover : there is not a home where for long together there is not one wailing and one sorrowing. The family of Bethany escapes not : Lazarus is dead. " The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." II. But all this groaning has respect to certain providential ends — to ends which are common to the children of the world and the children of God alike. The apostle proceeds to notice emphatically, in the second place, that believers in Christ Jesus, far from having any exemption from the lot of suf- fering, have some trials peculiarly their own. " And not only they, but our- selves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves." Here, brethren, we must not overlook the apostle's dis- tinctive mark of a vital Christianity. Throughout his writings generally, but nowhere perhaps so much as in this chapter, does he assume that without the work of the Divine Spirit upon the heart no man can be a Christian at all. He does not speak of this realised influence as a privilege which we may have, or as an assistance which we should seek to have, but as a necessity which we must have. The participation of the Spirit is not an element of conversion it is conversion. We ourselves which have the firstfruits of the Spirit identifies with the expression, "We ourselves who have believed in Christ;" whilst with more of peremptoriness still we have it announced in the 9th verse • " Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his." A Chris- tian man is one who has the Spirit, who has had the tendencies of his corrupt nature brought under control by an antagonist influence, who, with whatever of mingling infirmity, looks to the Holy Spirit of God as the strengthening and directing principle of his daily life, the comfort of his heart, the guide of his actions, the inspiring energy of his prayers. Then observe, he has only " the firstfruits" of this Spirit — a mere handful of Eschol grapes, as a sample of the wealth of Canaan. There never was but one to whom the Spirit was not given by measure; all others must be content with an earnest, a seal, a pledge of the spiritual glory that awaits them at "the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body." And hence the 565 A SUFFERING WOKLD. conflict, and distress, and sore labour of the renewed mind, " groaning and travailing in pain." Tl>e lower nature is only partially subdued ; there has been an entrance of the Spirit and a gaining of some victories; but the Canaanites are still in the land — enough to harass, enough to fatigue, enough to show to us this is not our rest, and that whilst we are in the body the extermination will not be complete. Thus " even we that have the firstfruitsof the Spirit do groan within ourselves." There is not a single form of spiritual enjoyment that has not its let and drawback. What if through grace we have attained to a peaceful sense of reconciliation with God ? Yet how soon may a cloud pass over the spirit, and darken all hope ! There is acute pain per- haps, and we cannot think — a listless languor, and we cannot pray. " The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak ;" and yet it is as imperious as it is weak ; for this flesh absorbs all our powers of attention ; it is ever clamor- ous, and whether it ask for good, or ease, or rest, will give us no peace if it be not satisfied. Again : how manifold are our impediments and dis- tractions, after we have, as we think, resolutely torn ourselves from the attractions of the world, that we may live for God and for him only ! For a time we may hold on our way ; our sensible joys are continued to us; we feel to be getting higher up the ladder of spiritual light and knowledge; the world gets less and less, and we wonder how we could ever have been led captive by its joys. But we come down from these heights ; the business of life has to be done; God meant it to be done, and in the midst of our raptures we en- counter " a thorn in the flesh." And now the third heavens are closed again ; we beseech the Lord thrice, but there comes no answer— at least not the answer we wished. He who knows us better than we know ourselves thinks it better that the body should groan and travail in pain, " that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." Brethren, I admit the mystery of spiritual trials; admit that in inexplicable- ness and depth they surpass all others; that a truly converted man shall have so much of the old nature left in him as that his nightly reckonings with God in his closet should often bring bad feelings and passions to his remem- brance, discover struggles with temper that he fears he shall never be able to subdue; that thoughts which from his very soul he hates should for days together sleep and rise with him, till he is obliged to exclaim, almost in an agony of despair, " O wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me from the body of this death ?" And all this at a time when his wish is to be near God, and to be more like his Saviour, and to bring into captivity every thought, every interest, every desire, to the obedience of Christ. This, I say, is one of God's hard things : it is too high for us ; we must be still, and con- tent to learn lessons— lessons of thankfulness, to bless God if our own 566 A SUFFETIING WOULD. spirkual course have been ordered more evenly, lessons of humility, to see who alone has made us to differ from another, lessons of watchfulness lest, sleeping over our untrimmed lamps, the oil of grace should be spent ; ay, more than all, lessons of self-searching, lest our inexperience of the Christian's struggles with sin be owing to the fact that in us sin finds nothing to struggle with. For, brethren, let .it not be forgotten, when you hear or read of God's children groaning and travailing in pain even to the last, on account of re- maining sinfulness, how much of it is referable to an advanced condition of moral sensitiveness, to the keen eyed and jealous activity of an awakened con- science. Gur perceptions of objects vary with the condition of the perceiving organ ; and the Christian and the man of the world do not look at sin-spots with the same eyes. The Christian sees defects in his obedience, mixed motives in his soul, unworthiness in his duties, and sin in his prayers. There is present to his mind constantly the struggle of two natures. The old man lives, even if the new man reigns. " We ourselves groan within ourselves." But then observe, brethren, as the last lesson of our text, that in the midst of all this groaning and travailing in pain — in the Christian's lot, perhaps even more than in the lot of others — there is to him a calm and assured hope of complete deliverance. " We ourselves," though groaning within ourselves, are yet "waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body." Here note, first, the believer is waiting — looking to receive something which as yet he has not — bending forward in the attitude of one who knows that there is a great blessing on its way towards him. He is " waiting." The word implies an unsettledness and unconcernedness, a sort of let alone feeling in regard to our present state, because it must change so soon. Gn so short a voyage, and so near port, why trouble ourselves about the inconveniences of the vessel now ? Wait a little longer, and in calm and silent trust tarry the Lord's leisure. He is " wailing." The word implies assurance also. The watchman waiteth for the morning, with no fears about its coming, however thick the darkness be. There is a streak upon the clouds already, which tells assuredly of the dawning of the day. So waits the believer. He knows that " the night is far spent, the day is at hand ;" and on the face of a dark and polluted world, shall the sun of glory arise with redemption in his wings. Yes, redemption; for it is for this the believer waits. In the verse before our text his condition is described as being " the bondage of corruption.'' "Looking for the glorious liberty of the children of God." Here the blessing is assumed to follow on our being glorified children, just as in the text perfect adoption is made to be all one with the redemption of our body. We wait, then, for the adoption : that is, for full admission to the privileges of the redeemed — for an open recognition of us as belonging to 567 A SUFFERING WORLD. the family of God— for a seat, however low, at the marriage supper of the Lamb— for a place, be it but as door-keeper, in ** the general assembly and church of the first-bom, which are written in heaven.'' But this will only be at the redemption of the body: that is, when this hindering, clogging, defiling materialism shall have been brought back from the land of its captivity— when its corruption shall have become changed to incor- ruption, its dishonour shall be put off for glory, its weakness shall be raised to power, all that in it is earthly, and impure, and disordered, and vile shall be cast out, and new powers and endowments given to it, that it may be furnished and prepared for the services of eternity. " Loose hira and let him go," it was said of Lazarus. " Loose him :" unbind all that drapery of death ; divest him of those hampering equipments of the grave ; as a living thing among living men let him go forth free. Yes, we wait for a redemption, for emancipation, for complete deliverance; we ask to be freed from the en- cumbrances of a fleshly nature, freed from the tormenting presence of moral evil, freed from infirmities, that we may no more sin. " The whole creation groans and travails ;" and we groan and travail with it. But we wait for a time when we shall put off all this — when we shall be " clothed with light asr with a garment" — when we shall put on righteousness as a diadem — when nothing that disquieteth shall break the eternal calm, and when not a sigh or a groan shall be heard throughout the redeemed universe of God. 568 THE GOLDEN LECTURES— SECOND SERIES. No. XIV. UNCHANGING LOVE. ^ Sermon Delivehed on Tuesday Morning, ]\Iarch HI, 1857, B^ THE REV. DANIEL MOORE, M.A. AT ST. Margaret's church, lothbury. " Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end."— John xiii. 1. Yes, " unto the end." Through all their faults, and weaknesses, and mis- carriages, and sins ; through the unwatchfulness of some that slept, througli the cowardice of one that denied, through the inconstancy of those who for- sook him at his bitter cross, through the faithlessness of those who treated as an idle tale the report that he had risen from the grave ; — through all this, and a great deal more, Jesus loved his disciples — never ceased from loving them. It might be that at times their unbelief and infirmity opposed an apparent check to this love ; it seemed not to flow towards them so evenly and so kindly as usual ; but this was only momentary, like a casual obstruc- tion opposing the course of some majestic stream. In a moment all is calm, onward, resistless as before. Nothing shall effectually divert the eternal, un- changing love of Christ. " Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end." The connection of these words you will remember, brethren. The occasion of uttering them was the eve of our Lord's last Passover, and they form the preface to the five succeeding chapters, which are dedicated, as you will notice, to the recital of the Master's last words. It was fitting that the apostle of love should be the historian of these precious sayings ; for they breathe love throughout. For our comfort and good hope we would desire nothing better than that Christ's heart in heaven should be just such a heart as that which speaks out here. His condescending acts, in the 13th chapter, his coml'ortino- promises, in the I4th, his blessed counsels, in the two succeeding chapters, and the model of his heavenly intercession, in the last, all conspire to inve.st No. 2,734. 3 T UNCHANGING LOVE. the record of our Lord's last days with peculiar interest. We see what he was, and how he felt, when the dark scenes of his approaching passion were bursting full upon his view — when the night was come on whicli he sliould break bread with his disciples for the last time, and when the traitor, impelled by passions which had now become his master, should skulk stealthily and silently away, that he might finish his deadly work, and from God, and hope, and heaven cut off his apostate soul eternally. But the love of Jesus deepens as he feels that his hour is come. He loved our sinful race, when he first undertook for us, when he threw himself upon our gratitude as a voluntary Deliverer, when he offered pardon to us for one penitent and believing look, assuring us that as many as would only receive him, and not put his gracious offers aside, to them he would give power to become the sons of God. But when, not content with refusing his claims, with putting him to shame, when ■we " hid as it were our faces from him," when " he was despised, and we esteemed him not" — then it seemed as if his love towards us gushed out at a new spring. With every fresh act of derision, and unkindness, and scorn, there was a fresh welling up of beneficent compassions towards those who had offered the indignity. If he loved us for the distress which sin had brought upon us, he loved us yet more for the pains we had put him to, to take that distress away. There was never any repenting of his mission ; he clung to it the more, the more it cost him of shame, and suffering, and toil. "Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end." The words will fall in with the tone of our thoughts, as we draw nearer to the commemoration of the Saviour's passion, and will lead us to dwell, first, on the description of the persons concerning whom this encouraging assurance is made ; and secondly, on our grounds for confidence that such assurance will be fulfilled. I. And, first, as to the characteristics of the persons here spoken of as having an interest in Christ's love. " Having loved his own which were in the world." Here the expression " his own" must be understood in some pe- culiar and restricted sense. They may be his own by original right, by mutual compact, by lawful acquisition ; but we must keep to the idea of a property, binding him who possesses us to take an interest in us which he does not take in others. Thus when Christ is said to have "come to his own, and his own received him not," the propriety spoken of is that of national designation, the covenant with a peculiar people ; and when it is said, "Let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband," the propriety spoken of is that of mutual compact. And both these relations, we know, are often cited in Scripture as types of that which unites the one Head of the Church with a certain exceptive number of the human family, these being at one time called " a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a peculiar people," and at another time an elect society, " prepared as a bride adorned for her husband." And a reference to this covenant selection is plainly intended in 578 UNCHANGING LOVE. our text, and is expressed in other words in subsequent chapters. Thus in the 1.5th chapter it is said— "If ye were of the world, the world would love his own : but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you." And again in the 17th chapter : •' I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me ; for they are thine. A«d all mine are thine, and thine are mine." And again : " As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him." These, with many kindred passages, form the basis of our 17th Article, which rules that before the foundations of the world were laid God had decreed by his counsel, secret to us, to deliver from curse and condemnation those whom he had chosen in Christ, and who, as being so chosen, would, with the full concurrence of their voluntary power, yield to the various beneficent agencies which God had set on foot for their sanctification ; that so they would obey the calling of his Spirit, they would be justified freely by his grace, they would be made the sons of God by adop- tion, they would be conformed to the image of his dear Son, they would walk religiously in all good works, and at length by his mercy attain to everlasting felicity. Here, as you perceive, is the notion of propriety acquired by Christ over a portion of our race, in virtue of certain moral stipulations entered into with the everlasting Father. It is not said that God was moved to decree the salvation of a portion of mankind, in consequence of the mediation of Christ, but that such mediation was a part of the decree itself, the ordained channel through which they that were called, and whom his grace inclined to accept the call, should be taken into covenant with God, and have a direct propriety in Christ. Of little avail, however, would it be to tell us, that there were people whom Christ regarded as his own, if no light were thrown upon the great practical question who "his own" were. The doctrine of Divine election is a necessity of our theology, is an involved part of our conceptions of a moral government, whether we stay to draw the inference or not : so that our personal concern lies rather with the moral characteristics of the elect state, the state to which Scripture confines the promises. I say to a state, because it is clear that acceptance before God is not to be traced to a series of acts in themselves, nor even to certain dispositions in themselves, but only as such acts or such dispositions argue an antecedent condition of reconciliation through a Mediator, producing those acts and dispositions as their realising fruit. We are accepted not because we are devout in spirit, meek in temper, holy in heart or righteous in life, but because we belong to Christ. " All things are yours," says the apostle ; the world, with its influence— life, with its joys— death, with its hopes— all that is worthy in things present, and all that is glorious in things to come ; all are yours, because ye are Christ's. And again, speaking of social and national distinctions, he says — ' It is not a question of Jew or Gentile, barbarian, Scythian, bond or free ; but if ye are Christ's, then ye are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.' 579 UKCHAKGING LOVE. Who, then, are Christ's? "We must let Scripture interpret itself. Thus it is said — " And they that ore Christ's have crucified the flesh, with its affec- tions and lusts." Here it is assumed that there is something of analogy be- tween the work of Christ and the work of them that are Christ's — between the death for sin, undergone by the Master, and the mortifying of the power of sin, undergone by the faithful disciple. There is a meaning, however much in these days of smooth and compliant professorship we may lose sight of it — there is a meaning in the words — "If any man Avill be my disciple, let him take up his cross and follow mc." We cannot be Christ's, if we are not pre- pared to follow him in his steps of holy warfare— if we cannot submit to have not our flesh, but the inordinate desires of the flesh, nailed to the cross of sacrifice — if Ave are not dying daily to the power of that master sin which retards the forming of Christ's image within us, and threatens to drive his grieved Spirit away. And hence it is another mark of Christ's spiritual ownership of his people, that they have the Spirit. "If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his." This, too, belongs "to the covenant of propriety or purchase. Of this the stipulations were, that Christ should yield in oiir stead a per- fect obedience to the law of God, should sufTer in our stead all the penalties attached to the violation of that law ; but, this done, the covenant on the other side stipulated that he should have the power of sanctifying whomsoever he saved — that agencies and appliances should be set up for sub- duing the power of sin, in all cases where his sacrifice had availed to pardon the sinner. Thus our renewal unto holiness and virtue is a part of " the travail of his soul"— as much a part of his reward as our deliverance from wrath. We have the uniformity of the operation set forth sacramentally, and ^s a figure, a few verses afterwards. " If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me." For the Saviour must renew and sanctify all those whom he redeems and saves. Wherever the penalty is taken away from the person, there is a purifying influence imparted to the character. " Whom he justi- fied them he also glorified" — that is, fitted for the state of glory, by giving them both a relish and a preparedness for its employments. Christ, then, " loved his own ;" and they are those upon whom by his Spirit he has stamped the impress of resembling character. For the visitation of his Spirit upon the soul, indispensable as it is to our very hope of heaven, can be ascertained in no other way. The tree, by its fruits, the wind by its effects, the Spirit by its manifested influence on the temper and on the life ; we have no certain law of discernment o ther than this. If, from a deep conviction of our sin and misery, we have from the heart received the atonement, and while depending upon Christ's righteousness for salvation we are as " zealous of good works" as if we were obliged to depend upOn our own ; if, under all the helplessness wc feel, and under all the deficiencies we mourn over, the honest aspiration of our souls is that we may be visited by a more copious descent 580 UNCHANGING LOVE. of the Spirit's influences, in order that we may follow the example of our Saviour Christ, and be made like unto him ; then has the Master put upon us the marks of true ownership. The word has gone forth with regard to us — " They shall be mine in the day when I make up my jewels." " I am God, I change not ;" 'having loved my own, I will love them unto the end.' But observe, secondly, in this description of those whom Christ regards as his own, their exposure to worldly influences. " Having loved his own which were in the world." That the phrase is designedly chosen to express some form of moral hazard is apparent from an allusion in the intercessory prayer which comes afterwards. " And now I am no more in the world ; but these are in the world. Holy Father, keep them through thine own name." And the passage is one of many which assumes that all things about us, and that we have to deal with, are fraught with some measure of evil and danger. No lines can be drawn round the infected quarters ; no examination can be set up in favour of any providential lot. Admit that you can say, in choosing your path in life, ' Here I shall not be in danger of falling into some of the evil and corrupt usages of commerce ; here I will never be liable to enrich myself by means of oppres- sion and extortion ; here I shall not have the temptation to impose on igno- rance or confidence by unrighteous exactions. I will choose a calling where I shall never be tempted to take advantage of other's inexperience, or misin- formation, or embarassment, where I shall not be tempted to incur liabilities which I know I shall not be able to cover, where I could practice no frauds, connive at no delinquencies, falsify or distort no official returns, carry on no fraudulent system of exchanges, to bolster up fictitious or fallen credit :' admit that you can avoid all this ; yet contact with an evil world will meet you, place yourselves in what situation you will. Nobody can choose a pro- fession, and say, ' In this, at least, I shall be in no danger ;' and the solitude has not been found, of which he who fled to it could say, • The world shall not follow me here.' No ; to avoid companionship with evil things and evil men, as the apostle argues, we must needs go out of the world altogether. There is no other way. The religious recluse thinks to escape the difficulty, but so far from it, he finds a worse world in his solitude than the one he has left behind ; whilst the false security so likely to be engendered by his fancied isolation from evil influences only leaves him the more exposed to their power. Besides, it is abundantly evident, that these allusions to Christ's people, as being in the world, are never meant to counsel an impracticable flight from the evil, but only to make us sensible of its constant and near presence. Our Lord had hardly uttered the words about the danger in which he should have to leave his disciples, than he followed on to say — " I pray not that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil." The reasons for such a choice for us are obvious. The world's work must be done, and every body has his proper part in it. We have no 581 UNCHANGING LOVE. rif;ht to leave our niche in the great edifice empty, or to introduce disorder into the arrangements of God's providence by leaving others to do God's work. But besides this, it is clear that separation from the world, even if we could accomplish it, would be a very bad thing for us. It would make us think that our safety from moral contamination stood in certain social or geographical separations, rather than in cultivating the inward graces of watchfulness and purity of heart. Open intercourse with the world, even with a sight of its evil, so that it cross our path unsought and in the way of duty, will give a healthiness and vigour to the character, which by a restrained and artificial submission it would never attain. Perhaps, indeed, this may ex- plain in a measure why the cliildren of pious parents sometimes turn out so badly. They have been brought up with a sickly, morbid, hot-house tender- ness, allowed to see and hear none of the world's moral uglinesses, nor to have any of its rough winds to blow upon them ; and the consequence is, a general feebleness of character— the want of a well-disciplined and practised will when temptation does come. Evil then confounds them by its strange and novel boldness, and the weapons of resistance drop powerless from their hands. The remark will not. I trust, be misunderstood, still less, perverted. I mean no more than is implied in the text — that they that are Christ's are in the world, must to a certain extent mix with the world. If they mix with it needlessly, inordinately, and with the worst parts of it, they are without excuse. God will keep us from the evil, if we try to keep ourselves. He has given us a spiritual sense, by which to discern the danger, even when it is afar off. Societies which we cannot go into without a fear that we should do no good, and with a certainty that we should get none— occupa- tions which, after we have quitted them, leave a disquietude upon the spirit, and throw wild confusedness over the thoughts, and make images of vanity to flit before us in our prayers, these can never be the Christian's proper world • and it is a world he is becoming conformed to, if he ever come to take delight in its joys. But the limit observed carefully of what- ever becomes a snare to us, and the habit maintained watchfully of expecting evil wherever we go, the rest may be left to the guardian sympathies of a once tempted Master. He lived in the world ; his work lay in it, among the crafty and the false, and the sinful and the vile ; and so far as our work lies there, he expects us to go among them too. It is not said that he " loved his own " which were in some high-walled enclosure of artificial sanctity ; but « having loved his own which were in the world." II. But we are to consider, in the next place, the encouraging assurance which our text makes over to them that are Christ's. " Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end." Here care is to be taken, that we distinguish the love spoken of. Our Lord was possessor of a proper human nature, and therewith of proper hu- man affections. Of these love is one ; meaning tliereby, that more creature fondness, which will often draw our hearts towards another, even though 582 UNCHANGING LOVE. the hij^her forms of spiritufxl qualification be entirely wantinjj in Jiini. Hence of our Lord's affection towards the young ruler it is said — " Then Jesus, be- holding him, loved him ;" that is, loved him just as we may do one of those amiable characters in society whom, after death has parted us, we shall honour and love no more. But the love spoken of in the text was no affec- tion of our Lord's humanity ; it was the deep, settled, immutable love of his Divine nature ; it was the distinguishing choice of sovereign and electing grace ; it was the setting of the heart of his Divinity upon men chosen out of the world, men whom his blood should purchase, his grace should sanctify, and his Omnipotence should save. Well, this love towards his own Christ will have to the end. His higher nature is pledged to it. Change of pur- pose is not in him ; and if he only put forth grace to prevent any change iu them, the perfections of infinite being make it impossible there should be any change in him. And this it is which, as you will see, makes our salva- tion to stand, as it were, upon two immutable things — the one that the grace of God shall not be withdrawn from us, the other that we shall not fall from the grace of God. Thus our text miglit seem to be incapable of any stronger confirmation than such a passage as this : "The mountains shall depart, and the hills shall be removed ; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy upon thee," But this only pledges God's fidelity to us: what if we should be wanting in fidelity to him ? Impossible ! is the other answer of Scripture. The covenant of grace is of two tables ; and if on the one it is written, "My kindness shall not depart from thee," on the other it is de- clared, " 1 will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me." This of a surety is strong consolation ; for instead of saying that God will not take his loving kindness away, so long as we continue iu the fear of the Lord, the covenant rules that he will keep us in the fear of the Lord, in order that he may not take his loving kindness away. To be Christ's is to have a succession of preserving agencies to keep us Christ's. " Having loved his own which Mere in the world, he loved them unto the end." The great comfort of our doctrine, brethren, is, that it takes us more and more out of ourselves — that it shifts the work, the glory, and, so to speak, almost the responsibility of our salvation upon Christ; that it refers our final success to an influence v/hich is at infinite remove from us, which is too far off to feel the fluctuations and jars of this lower region, but which works out its silent and eternal results in its own calm world, with a steadiness that knows no pause, and a love that shall see no end. If Jesus have set his love upon us, if he have deigned to call us his own, if he have given us de- sires wliich he only excites in his own, ciosses which he only lays upon his own, and peace in believing which is never felt but by his own, we have in our hands a golden thread of destiny, winding in and out through all life's changes, but held on with immortal strength to the throne of God. Our 583 UNCHANGING LOVE. way lies in a sunlit path, and though now and then a cold shadow will come across it, yet we know the sun is shining on ; what we want is to come up higher. Jesus loves his own ; but his own for a time must be iu the world. Let us look to Jesus, then, not as the Author only, but as the Finisher of our faith. We may have waters of a full cup wrung out to us, so bitter, that we cannot help praying that if possible the cup may be taken away ; but our sustaining thought must be — • I know Jesus loves me throu<;h this, perhaps loves me more because of this. The golden thread may be hidden for a time, but broken it can never be. He loveth to the end.' Or again : spiritual trials may be appointed us. Day after day of cold, blank, dreary deadness, without a sight of God, without a prayer that we feel to be worthy of the name, and though too distressed not to continue longer than usual at the exercise, yet letting him go without a blessing, after all. Oh ! brethren, what can comfort us at such seasons, but the thought that Christ loves, and loves on all this time — that he continues praying when we in very faithlessness have left off— thatwe are only walking across a chilly shadow, to enjoy the brightness more when we reach the otlier end. Nay, only on this unchanging love can we build, when we have been overtaken by sin, when we have gone back, when we have inflicted a wound upon the conscience of which, even though God should forgive the guilt, in life we shall never lose the scar. He loved David through this ; he loved Peter through this j he loved Paul through this. I can find no other reason for the recovery of these chosen ones ; for others have sighed, and cried, and wept bitterly, and yet t!ie grace of God did not incline them to a godly sor- row. They were not his own ; they had not the marks of his Spirit ; any favours he had shown to them were but providential favours, things that come and go ; he loved them not unto the end. But more than all, brethren, shall we feel the preciousness of these words, " He loved them unto the end," when that end comes — an end which is no end, but only the beginning — when for the first time we shall see what the love of Christ is, comprehend it in all its length, and breadth, and depth, and height, see it as it reaches far back to our election in the eternal ages, and lose ourselves in its infinite contemplation, as we become absorbed into the life of God. Yes, that which to us, as responsible beings, will be the end of everything — the end of effort, the end of probation, the end of re- pentance, the end of prayer — will show us more than ever the enduring love of Christ, will cause the obscured and hidden parts of the heavenly chain to re-appear, and will make us see that through sorrow, through temptation, through the darkness and througli the niglit, the love of Christ has flowed on in one calm and unbroken stream, and tliat " neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature," ever has been able, or ever shall be able, " to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ J csus our Lord." 584 THE GOLDEN LECTURES— SECOND SERIES. No. XY. THE SACKIFICE OF THE CllOSS. Delivered ov Tuesday Morning, April 7, IS.";?, BY THE REV. DANIEL MOORE, M.A. AT ST. Margaret's church, lothbury. " Who is he that coudemiu'th ? It is Clirist that died."— Romans viii. 34. In the verse before our text the apostle had proposed the question — " Wlio shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect ?" — answering it in the wurds, " It is God that justifieth." In both cases it is plain, he is using an illlustra- tion taken from the proceedings of courts of justice. He supposes the moral position of man in relation to the Divine Being to be that of an offend( r. He assumes that in lieu of the penalties due to such a relation a certa-n satisfaction has been tendered, and that God ia satisfied therewith. Yet this will not silence the malignant tongue of him who is specially designated " the accuser of the brethren," and whose never ceasing work it is to plead on the side of the sinner's condemnation, fur he knows what a strong case he can make out against us. In the purity of God, in the inflexibility of law, in the hatefuliiess of sin, in the endangered integrity of the Divine perfection?, in the number and greatness of our offences, and in our yet remaining bias towards a'l that is evil, the adversary feels that he has pleadings to put in, which he knows nothing but a full grasp of the atonement and its infinite issues will enable the affrighted conscience to answei-. Let the propitiation offered for man's transgression encounter at any stage of the work detects, or infirmity, or failing power of application, let there be any limit to its efficacy whatever, and I should not have wherewith to answer Satan, if he should allege my sins have carried me just on the other side of that limit. I must see infinite worth in the oblation made for my sins, and hear the voice of infinite justice declare that such oblation is sufficient. The passage be- No. -2,737, 3 V THE SACRIFICE OF THE CROSS. fore us meets both my requirements — " Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect ? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that conderaneth ? It is Christ that died." Brethren, the week in which we meet is dedicated to the coniniemoratiou of that great fact in the world's history, which has nothing second to it, and nothing like. Imagination loses itself in trying to follow out the bound- less and everlasting issues suspended on the death of Christ. How many worlds may be influenced by it ! What orders of beings may be saved by it ! How high up it ascends into the ages of an unchronicled and unknown l^ast ! How far forward it penetrates within the veil of an ever-receding futurity ! This no finite intelligence can tell. Enough for us, that upon this great work hang the world's life and all our hope. " Who is he that con- demneth !" demands the apostle. Why, in strict truth every thing con- demneth. The testimony of our own heart condemneth. The Holy Word of God condemneth. The witnessing voice of the Eternal Spirit condemneth. And one answer alone have we to make to these charges ; one by one as the accusers rise up against us, they must find us taking refuge in the same words — " It is Christ that died ?" We have a somewhat narrowed margin for public teaching to-day, but we may find time to consider the great sacri- fice of the cross under a threefold aspect, namely, as a doctrine to be ex- plained, as a righteous procedure to be vindicated, as a vital truth to be realized and applied. I. The sacrificial death of Christ is to be viewed by us, first, as a revealed doctrine of Holy Scripture. This may be expressed generally in the lan- guage of our Thirty-first Article, entitled, " Of the one oblation of Christ finished upon the cross." It declares, that " the ofiFering of Christ once made is that perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction, for all the sms of the whole world, both original and actual ; and there is none other satisfac- tion for sin, but that alone." Here an assumption is made, which all obser- vation and all testimony, the dictate of revelation and the voice of reason, conspire together in verifying, namely, that " all have sinned and come short of the glory of God ;" that Scripture concludes all men under sin, and de- clares, the whole world to be guilty before God. Now, what we mean by sin is the transgression of a revealed law, the infringement of some precept which had been laid down for our guidance by the Moral Ruler of the uni- verse. But, then, all law supposes the existence of certain attached penalties which the law-breaker is under an obligation to bear, and which both law and law-giver would be dishonoured, if he either by himself or by another did not bear. Guilt is not a thing which can be removed by tears, by prayers, or by subsequent good conduct. The stain it leaves is not upon us only, but upon the Divine government, and God, who might remit the punish- ment, as far as we were concerned, yet could not x-eniit it as far as concerned himself. Now, the gift of Christ in the gospel is the revealed scheme for 602 THE SACRIFICE OF THE CROSS. meetiiifi^ this difficulty, for saving the majesty of law by means of an ade- quate moral equivalent. Let us see how Scripture sets this forth. The de- clared satisfaction to infinite justice for human offences was the blood of sacrifice. An eternal axiom of Divine jurisprudence had ruled, that "with- out shedding of blood there is no remission." And this blood, it is obvious' must be the blood of one who had no sins of his own to suffer for, but who, being "holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners," might take all the moral engagements upon himself, and so set the sinner free. These condi- tions are fulfilled in that sacrifice which we are to commemorate this week, in him who suffered on the cross, and "who made there by his one oblation of himself once offered, a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world." For, consider the things which meet in this offering of Christ. It was free : " he laid down his life of himself." It was full : " The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin." It was perfect : " Christ also once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God." It was avowedly substitutional : " He was wounded for our transgressions ; he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed." And, lastly, it was and had been antecedently accepted of God : " Whom God had set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past." Such are the scriptural characteristics of this oblation. Nor is it apparent how any fair objections can lie against it, as a means for taking away sin. Faith should embrace the terms with humble gladness. Reason can only be silent and adore. The doctrine of the atonement, if it create one mystery, has removed many. It has solved that wonder of the intelligent universe, how a just God can pardon ; and solved it, too, by one of those ultimate facts in the Divine arrangements which forbids any inquiry beyond itself. Enough that we look with amazed gratitude at the results. The law is magnified, while the offender escapes ; mercy is honoured, though the victim dies ; the anger of the father is propitiated towards a still rebellious child ; and though the sinner has nothing to pay, justice remits or forgives the debt. Remits or for- gives : are the two terms convertible ? Or can the lawgiver, who insists upon a righteous equivalent, be said with any theological accuracy to forgive ? This question raises an inquiry, to which the Socinians and their like attach great importance. They allege, that in many passages of Scripture, the expression " forgiveness of sins" is used as if it were the free act of God, unencum- bered with stipulations of any kind. In the Lord's Prayer, for example, they say the word is used in connection with " debts ;" a use of the word which it is alleged, proceeds upon an obvious resemblance between the act of the Supreme Lawgiver in forgiving sin, and the act of a creditor remitting a just debt, and since in the one case we should not call it remission of a debt, if payment were made by a friend, so, in the other, we should not call it for- 603 THE SACRIFICE OF THE CROSS. giveness of sin, if the penalty were endured by a substitute. Now, apart from tlic confessed unfairness of pressing to the utmost all the adjuncts and accidents of a scriptural simile, it is remarkable that the two ideas thus allep;ed to conflict, and to be incompatible with each other, namely, forgive- ness and the payment of a price, are often combined by the sacred writers in the same sentence, as integral parts of one dogmatic statement. " In whom we have remission through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins." " Being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." " This is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many, for the remission of sins." In each of these passages, as you perceive, though the word remission or forgiveness is used, the act is declared, to be not gratuitous, in the strict sense of the term, as when a creditor just crosses a debt out of his book, but to be, according to a certain fixed rule of moral government, which made it necessary that a given price should be paid. Such, then, is the scriptural doctrine of the great sacrifice we are about to commemorate. The pervading idea is that of suretyship, vicariousness, sub- stituted penalty. Christ declares, ' Let tlie acts of the children of men be put down to my account ; I will pay all, I will satisfy for all ; their griefs I will bear, their sorrows I will carry, and their claims I will discharge, their curse I will endure, their death I will die. From the grave I will redeem their dust, and with glory receive their \indying spirits. On me be all their debts and all their charges. Make me to be sin for them who knew no sin that they may be made the righteousness of God in me.' Thus i? Jesus made the surety of a better testament ; he has " made atonement for sin, and brought in an everlasting righteousness." " God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them." " Not im- puting," you observe it is said. The debt, as from us, was still due ; but in tlie pomp and pageantry of the sublime oblation we are about to celebrate there was proclaimed an everlasting jubilee. Every charge that " the accuser of the brethren" could bring against us is nailed to that all-atoning cross. *' Who is he that condemneth ? It is Christ that died." II. But I wish to say a word or two on the Christian sacrifice, as it is a righteous procedure to be vindicated. You are aware, that the doctrine of an atonement for sin, perhaps even more than tliat of our Lord's essential Deity, is the great stumbling-block to Unitarians— would that I were not obliged to add, of some others besides Unitarians. The sect alluded to, how- ever, commonly reject the doctrine, on grounds quite independent of revela- tion, thinking they can discover other ends to be answered by the death of 604 THE SACRIFICE OF THE CUOSS, Christ, as M'ell as other ways by which to secure the salvation of man. The following are the words of their great authority, Dr. Priestley : — " The great object, and mission, and death of Christ was to give the fullest proof of a state of retribution, in order to supply the strongest motives to virtue ; for, although there are some texts in which the pardon of sin seems to be dispensed in consideration of the sufferings, the merits, the resurrection, the life, or the obedience of Christ, we cannot but conclude, upon a careful examination, that all these views of it are partial representations, and that, according to the plain general tenour of Scripture, the pardon of sin is iu reality always dispensed by the free mercy of God upon account of man's personal virtue, a penitent, upright heart, and a reformed exemplary life, without regard to the sufferings or merits of any being whatever." 1 cannot stay to point out what a melancholy distortion there is here of the plaiuest Bible statements as well as Bible facts. I canuot help thinking how much more honest it would be for the holders of such sentiments to repudiate the authority of the Sacred Volume altogether. I wish only to advert to one assumption in the statement which receives countenance from a large class having no definite theology at all — I mean the assumption that a propitiatory sacrifice could hardly be necessary because God must have the power to absolve the sinner by a declaration of forgiveness. The ground taken for this is the analogy furnished by the method of administering justice among mankind. Human rulers, it is alleged, are invested with a power to mitigate the rigour of established laws, to remit the exactions of justice at their pleasure, and exercise a prerogative of mercy in behalf of the guilty and condemned ; and can the mercy of the Almighty, it is asked, be subject to neither condition or qualification ? Is he so fettered in his moral omnipotence that he cannot even show mercy, the most glorious attri- bute of his nature, without an equivalent, without a sacrifice, without an atonement ! Now the lurking fallacy of all this reasoning is, that the prero- gative of mercy, the power of dispensing with incurred penalties, here claimed for human governments as a virtue, is in fact neither more nor less than an admission of their imperfection and weakness. Human laws, how- ever accurately or comprehensively framed, cannot provide for multitudinous circumstances of extenuation, which, nevertheless would completely alter the complexion of the offence ; and it is to meet these in each case as they arise that a discretionary power is vested in the executive to abate the rigour of the penalty. It is untrue, therefore, to say, that human justice, any more than Divine justice, ever allows a remission of its own penalties. If a Sove- 605 TilE SACUIFICE OF THE CUOSS. reign pardon a Criminal, or remit a portion of his sentence, it is on the supposition, or the doubtful possibility that the law in its unavoidable indis- crirainateness may have erred on the side of severity, and that at all events it is safer to incline to the side of clemency. But surely all this implies imperfection in the ruling power, and interruption to the course of justice is only so far approved by us as we, being imperfect also, think there were real grounds for hesitating in the matter. Take these grounds away ; let the justice, the equity, the moral desert of the case be clear and beyond question, and so far from our accounting the clomency shown a virtue in the executive power, all our moral instincts rise against the act as an offence against the majesty of the law. The application of this to a Divine law will be obvious. Here imperfect knowledge, possible error in the application of the rule, circumstances not known or not allowed for, are out of the question. The remitted penalty, if remitted it be, is insulted justice ; and the Sociniau or Unitarian, or broad theologian of any school, is expecting God to forego the deserved penalties of man's offending on the mere plea of his penitence or reformed life, and in so doing is requiring that which, if done by an enlightened human potentate, would lay his judgment open to the charge of Aveakness, and expose his government to contempt. It is in harmony, then, with the original principles of our moral nature, with what we feel the Judge of all the earth should and must do, that we are taught by our great Christian sacrifice that the law of the Most High God must take its course ; that angels, worlds, principalities, and powers, must see that law magnified and honoured j that holy blood must be shed ; that a blessed life must be sacrificed ,• that a meritorious obedience must be brought ; in a word, that the Son of God should die. Yes, hard as the alternative might seem, die he or justice must ; he must stoop from his throne, or man can never rise from his degradation. ]\Ian was dead ; the curse of God, like a great stone, lay at the door of his sepxilchre ; no angel could roll that stone away ; yet has it disappeared, for " Who is he that condemneth 1 It is Christ that died." III. Let me conclude by one or two remarks on our last point, or the Christian sacrifice, a vital truth to be realized and applied. In the adminis- tration of human justice, the surety once bound has all to pay and all to bear. There may be neither concurrence nor gratitude on the part of the man who is to be benefitted. The claims of law are satisfied ; the debtor is set free. In the heavenly administration it is far otherwise. There must be certain concurrent performances on the part of the liberated debtor, re- quired not indeed as part of the payment, but as a humble acknowlcdg- 606 THE SACRIFICE OF THE CROSS. ment of the debt. If Christ give the right to become the sons of God, it is accompanied with the limitation, " To as many as receive ;" and though able to save sinnera to the uttermost, it is required that they " come unto God by him." Christ has found the ransom, but we must plead what he hath found. He has purchased a great release for us — a release from the payment of our debts, from the penalties which should have been their re- compense, but not a release from the shame of confessed unworthiness, not a release from the labour of an appropriated and pleaded ransom, not a release from a solemn and undissembled pledge that we will go and sin no more. No ! Both Jesus on becoming our Surety, and the Eternal Father in accept- ing such suretyship, prescribed certain moral conditions on which alone, in the case of any one of us, this propitiatory sacrifice should be made efi^ectual. These conditions were the laying hold of this sacrifice by the power of a living faith, the pleading of this sacrifice in exercises of worship and prayer, the showing gratitude for this sacrifice by a life of holy obedience, and de- pending upon this sacrifice as our alone justification and the only ground of hope. The ceasing of the quarrel, the removal of the condemnation, tho answer to all charges is made to turn upon this : " Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Take comfort, then, brethren, from the mysterious transaction of this our com- memorative week. The more you think of this wondrous method of salva- tion, through the blood of Christ, the more your faith will increase, and the higher your gratitude will rise. '* Who is he that condemneth ?" What is that which condemneth ? Will the Divine perfections themselves condemn a believer in Christ ? W^hich of these will condemn ? Does the holiness of God condemn us ? We answer, " It is Christ that died." W^hen or where did this attribute receive such a sublime illustration as on the cross of Jesus ? When was hatred of sin seen to be so intense, or purity set forth so divinely pure ? Does the justice of God condemn us ? " It is Christ that died," we answer again. Show us the law he has not kept ; the penalty he has not borne ; the part of his righteousness in which there could be found a flaw. Does the truth of God condemn us? Again our one answer stands, "It is Christ that died." There has not been a jot or tittle of the Divine faithful- ness compromised ; not a word that God hath spoken hath fallen to the ground. He said that man should die for disobedience ; and one has died. He said that the empire of Satan should be overthrown, and it is overthrown. He said that he would magnify the law and make it honourable, and it has been magnified even to the uttermost. He said the just should live by faith, G07 THE SACRIFICE OP THE CROSS. and myriads of worshippers of every kindred, and people, and nation, and tongue are now prostrating themselves heart and knee before the cross of Jesus, saying, as they cast their fears and pray their doubts away, " "Who is he that condemneth ! It is Christ that died." The great lesson of our subject, as it is that of this holy week, is that to one who truly repents and turns to Christ, there is no more room for fear. You may have sinned away your best opportunities ; the sun may seem to be going down upon your day of visitation ; you may have been putting off the concerns of religion for many years, and the space which remains to you may appear too brief for the greatness of life's work. You may be conscious of having your heart hardened, become insensible to religious impressions to a degree beyond the power of repentance to quicken or of restoring grace to take away; but here comes the question, "Who is he that condemneth ! It is Christ that died ;" Christ the infinite, the priceless, the never-to-be-ex- hausted ransom for all human guilt ; Christ the enthroned vindicator of the Divine name and government— Christ ever living to make intercession for his people, and consecrating to their use and benefit all the powers of an endless life. Oh yes ; as the closing words of the verse before us intimate, it is the application of this death of Christ, the pleading it, the exhibiting it, claiming recompense for it, which is to assure the believer of his ever- lasting safety. Christ appears before the throne a Lamb as it had been slain, the marks of his dying uiiremoved from his glorified humanity, and the voice of his blood crying afresh as fresh pardons are needed for our sins. And thus, if Christ's ability to save appear not in the propitiation of his cross, in the victory over the grave, in the dread magnificence of his return to the right hand of power, the apostle bids you accompany him in thought to the heaven of heavens, bids you hear what is going on there ; how pleas are urged and accusers are flung back, and fears are dissipated, and peace is restored, as faith is able to lay hold on the great atonement and to obtain a victory over all its foes by the one thought, " It is Christ that died." 608 THE GOLDEN LECTURES— SECOND SERIES. No. XVI. THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY. 9[ Pennon Delivered on Tuesday Mounino, April 14, 1857, BY THE REV. DANIEL MOORE, M.A. AT ST. Margaret's church, lotiibury. '* But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?" 1 Corinthians xv. 35. The apostle, after supposing this question to be put, tells us that the man is not to be considered very wise for asking it. Yet not against inquiry, as such, are we to regard his censures as directed, however mysterious the subject be; but against inquiry which takes the form of cavilling objection — inquiry which overlooks the limits of the human intelligence — inquiry which insists upon having the high, and the secret, and the occult things of God brought within the contracted range of earthly sciences; just as one would resolve physical forces by means of a mathematical formula, or subject material substances to a chemical analysis. ' And,' says the apostle, ' if you expect from me an expla- nation of the mystery of the resurrection, such as this, I must use very plain language with you. Distant and imperfect analogies are the most that I could pretend to offer on such subjects, and it were very folly to expect more.' "Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die." Still, the very fact that analogies are given, and very significant and expressive analogies too, is evidence that, if conducted in a reverent and humble spirit, God did in- tend the resurrection of the body to be a subject of serious investigation. And tliere are two views of it on which, in connection with the present festival of the Church, our minds may be profitably exercised ; I mean the theoretical view, as deduced from various scriptural similes of the resurrection, and tlie No. 2,743. 4 A THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY. practical view, as illustrated by the risen appearances and acts of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. I. In illustration of the theoretical view, we will consider, first, that image of the resurrection which is compared to the waking from a condition of sleep, as in the passage, " Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earlh shall awake;" and, again, in one of the first passages we recite on Easter-day, " Christ is risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept." This, perhaps, is little more than an illustrative simile. The comparison of death to sleep is one found in all languages and in all creeds; and, there- fore, as the rousing from sleep is called waking, the same word is applied to the resurrection of the body from the dead. The resurrection of the body, you observe, because there is no sleep of the soul after death, nor anything answering to such a state. The simile is restricted to the material part, and therefore implies, that at the resurrection there will be a resuming by the body, though doubtless in some glorified and refined form, of all its vital energies and powers; just as a man waking out of a protracted sleep would feel all his active faculties return to him in a healthy condition and form, fit for use and service. There is something joyous and happy in this act of re- vival, which may be another reason with the sacied writers for choosing this type of the resurrection act, as if to express the joy of the risen righteous when their eyes open to meet their Lord in the air, and their ears are gladdened with the first echo of the trump of God. Still, we shall, perhaps, learn a litlle more by examining another simile, chiefly insisted on in the present chapter; I mean the analogy of the seed and the flower. The apostle's method of introducing this you will not over- look. He supposes an objector to take exception to the doctrine of the resur- rection, on account of the utter dissolution and breaking up of the bodily paits which takes place at death. ' Why,' argues the apostle, * if you will only look at the ordinary processes of vegetation, you will find that the disso- lution of organised substances is the very condition and means of their re- appearance under other and more beautiful forms. You put a seed into the ground, in itself nothing very attractive or promising ; could you see it in its state of decay and waste under the earlh, you would consider it less attractive still. And yet all this unsightliness, and mouldering, and shedding of its parts, is just the means by which it becomes developeJ, and preparecf for its higher uses of gladdening the eye with beautiful forms, or satisfying the heart with bread. Now, in this analogy, we certainly do get an idea of the resur- rection, which goes beyond mere resuscitation, or the rousing of a dormant body from a state of trance. For here the resurrection becomes a process of 650 THB RESURRECTION OF THB BODY. development, a transition through death into a higher state of existence. And in this process, it is assumed that the body drops or casts off some pro- perties which it had when put into the ground, and, at the same time acquires, some other attributes or properties fitting it for that new condition of being for which it is thenceforth designed. It is no longer the same body as when a person is waked out of sleep, but one wholly different and changed in its materialism. " But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body." But there is a third analogy used to describe the resurrection in Scripture of very frequent occurrence ; I mean that which compares it to the pro- cesses of natural birth. In the Epistle to the Colossians, you will remember, the risen Saviour is described as liie " first-born from the dead.'' John, in the book of Revelations, is made to speak of him as " the first-begotten from the dead." In our first Easter Psalm, and which we have the authority of the apostle for applying to the resurrection, we read, "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee;" whilst in the chapter which has sup- plied our text, we have, " The first Adam was made a living soul ; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit." Reasoning from this last illustration let us see what further light is thrown upon our subject. In virtue of our descent from Adam, we are all possessed of a living soul, a proper animal organisation, subject to all the liabilities of such a condition, and therefore of " the earth, earthy ;" but by our participation of the nature of the last Adam, we become possessed of " a quickening spirit ;" of a spirit that has life in itself, and communicating to all that partake of it the endowment of immortality. It is for this reason, as several of the Fathers argue, that the act of raising our mortal bodies is attributed directly to the Holy Spirit. " The fact imports," says one, "that there will be in the resurrection-body the whole energy and communion of the Spirit :" a sentiment agreeing well with that verse in the Epistle to the Romans, " If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you." The attribute of the resurrection body, which is here suggested over and above those which we have derived from our various analogies, is that there is superadded to the de- veloped material perfectness of the risen body, the endowment or gift of spirituality. Of course, when we use the terms material and spiritual in re- lation to such a subject, we are not to be tied down to our severe human de- finitions. " It may be questioned," says a great metaphysical authority — and some of the ancients held the same opinion — " whether spirit in its strict sense be not an attribute of the Divine Being alone;" and, therefore, with re- gard to all finite existences, hovvever reflnod and even humnnly invisible 6&1 THE RESURRECTION Of THE BODY. llieir forms may be, it is probable that they are allied to some forms of material organisation. Of the possibility of such a thing we cannot doubt, from the example of the common atmosphere, which, though not seen, is proved to be a material substance. This supposition made, then we advance, on the resurrection condition suggested by the image of the seed and the flower, and which supposed only the casting off of certain material adjuncts to the body in the dissolu- tion process, and the replacing of them by other and more perfect material forms suited to the resurrection state ; we advance on this, I s,ay, by our natural birth analogy, to the impregnation of this perfected material organisa- tion with a new spiritual principle. The former illustration had gone to prove only that, "sown in dishonour, we should be raised in glory;" the latter is to prove that, "though sown with the natural body," we should be raised with " a spiritual body." We are carried back, by the apostle's analogy, to the case of the first Adam, who, from being mere organized substance at first, was made a living soul. And the answering condition to this in the case of the second Adam, and therefore of all who have part in his resurrection, is, that the risen body has superadded to its pure, glorified materialism, what the apostle calls a " quickening spirit," thereby making it a spiritual body. All that may be comprehended in this distinction we may not be able to under- stand now ; but a distinction we all feel there must be between the vital es- sence of the present life, or the first Adam's living soul, and the vital essence of the resurrection-life, or the last Adam's quickening spirit : in other words, between a vitality which depends upon the keeping up of certain animal functions for its continuance, and a vitality which is maintained by direct communication with the source of all quickening power. Such, brethren, is a theoretical view of the resurrection, as deduced from our most common Scripture analogies. It is not the re-animation of the old natural body, as we might have inferred, if there had been no image but the awaking out of sleep. Neither is it the loss and destruction of the material element altogether, as we might have concluded if the only immortality we had read of in the gospel had been that of the " spirits of the just men made perfect," standing before the throne ; but it is the actual material body we now have, fashioned and developed by the process of dissolution into some glorious body, and by means of a quickening together with Christ, and by a proper and essential inhabitation of the eternal Spirit, fitted for the enjoyment of the higher or resurrection life. II. I pass on to consider, in the second place, the practical view afforded of this doctrinf", as founded in the risen appearances and acts of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. I say, in this example, because it is obvious we 652 THE RESURRECTION OP THE BODY. can reason from no other. The raising of Lazarus and others was not a resur- rection strictly, but only the resuscitation of the animal body, with all the liabilities and properties which it had before. Now, arguing from the beau- tiful harmony and consistency which characterize the sacred writings, our first expectation would be, that the theoretical view of the resurrection, constructed upon analogies, would coincide exactly with the practical view, as based upon facts. In other words, the doctrinal answer to the question, " How are the dead raised up, and with what body do they come ?" we should expect would agree with the narrative answer to the same question, showing how Christ was raised up, and with what body he did come. Is this so? and if not, why not ? These questions seem to require an answer. First, then, does the risen body in which Christ so often manifested himself to his disciples during the forty days, appear to have those characteristics which we have set forth as proper to the resurrection body, namely, beauti- fully glorious in form, freed from the conditions of animal existence, allied to a spiritual, though not necessarily immaterial organisation ? To appearance, certainly not. Let us prove this by some examples. For instance, the risen body of the Saviour, as we have just heard, was subject to the touch, as well as presented to the eye of his disciples. "Handle me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh, and bones as ye see me have." Now, although our previous argument has not supposed that our risen bodies will be unallied to matter, yet we have supposed it to be matter in such a subtilised and altered form as to be apprehended only by faculties in the same glorified condition as itself. The insect before its chrysalis state cannot see the glowing colours on the wings of the butterfly; to say nothing that our Lord speaks of the body he appeared in as being flesh — a subject that must be liable, unless miracu- lously preserved, to the decays of animal life. Take another example : the fact of our Lord partaking of food after his resurrection. " Have ye here any meat?" we had him saying to the disciples just now; "And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, and of a honeycomb. And he took it, and did eat before them." Now this, it must be confessed, seems quite opposed to those properties which all our analogies, as well as Scripture statements generally, would lead us to associate with the glorified body. Christ actually ate of this broiled fish, and therefore in the body into which such food was received must have been organs for its reception. And yet a release from these animal necessities is one of the most obvious characteristics we look for under an economy purely spiritual, insomuch that in one passage, as you remember, the apostle throws the most utter contempt on this creaturely weakness, as a thing soon to be put an end to. "Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats; but God shall destroy both it and them." Other examples might be cited, 653 THE RESUUnBCTION OF THE BODY. such as the appearance of tlie stigmata, or wourids, on the sacred person of the Saviour; but these instances appear conclusive to the fact, that the risen body of our Lord, as it appeared to the corporeal eyes of his disciples, was not in all respects identical with what our resurrection-body will be, or what his own resurrection-body was. Let us see whether any satisfactory reason can be given for this difference. Now, first, we are to remember, it was of the utmost importance to the establishment of Christianity that the fact of our Lord's resurrection should stand on a basis of evidence never to be shaken. It was the keystone of the whole fabric, and any doubts about it would have made the entire system give way. Hence the care used in supplying the place of Judas, that his suc- cessor should be one who with the apostles had been a witness of the resur- rection ; and hence that language of the apostle, " If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain." But how obvious is the question — If Christ had appeared in a body, such as Scripture represents the glorified body will be, a body as unlike the body he had before death, as the expanded flower is to the dead seed, or as the winged moth is to the torpid chrysalis, how could he ever have been recognised by the disciples, or how could evidence have been transmitted to us that he had in very deed risen from the dead ? Is it not clear that the very things in our Lord's risen acts which we take exception to, as incompatible with the conditions of a resurrec- tion-body, I mean, his being touched, his eating food, his showing the sacred scars, were the very things which placed far beyond all controversy or ques- tion the precious, the inestimable, to us the life or death truth of his proper personal identity. And we find Peter himself urging this very argument at the house of Cornelius, saying, " We are witnesses of these things,'' that is of Christ being raised from the dead. " We" — not those five hundred who saw him at once, at the great meeting in Galilee, and which, you might allege, was, perhaps, only an optical illusion, but — " we are witnesses," who had this most incontrovertible of all proofs, "who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead." And now I think we are in a position to explain any discrepancy there may be between our Lord's risen body, as it appeared, and that which in other parts of Scripture the resurrection body is declared to be. Only let it be granted that the very existence of Christianity was involved in the established fact of our Lord's proper risen identity ; let it be further granted that the pro- perties of the risen body are of that refined and spiritualized form as not to be subject to the recognitions of mortal sense or the laws of an animal economy at all ; and it is manifest that in one of two ways only could the desired end be accomplished — namely, either the senses of the witnesses must be enlarged 654 THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY. miraculously, to enable ihem to apprehend the risen body of Christ, or the risen body must become modified miraculously, to bring itself down to the apprehending faculties of the witnesses. Which were the more likely or fitting way is no question for us. The latter seems to have been the way chosen of the Lord himself — tliat is to say, instead of appearing during the forty days in his perfect glorified body, which to the disciples would probably have been no appearance, certainly no evidential appearance, he miraculously assumed a form that, while evidencing some of the constituents of a spiritual body, should yet be sufficiently animalised, so to speak, as to make him discern- ible by the ordinary senses, and so enable them to place upon a basis of irrefragable evidence that truth which puts a crown on the work of redemp- tion, and has opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers. For, brethren, I am afraid we could not have trusted in a crucified Saviour only, could not have borne to think that all our hopes lay buried in Joseph's grave. Our whole life would have been to us what that long, dark, dreadful Saturday was to the disciples, an Easter-eve without an Easter, a mourning one to another as they who journeyed to Emmaus mourned — " We trusted that it had been he who should have redeemed Israel" from death, who should have burst the bands of the grave, and cast away its cords from him. But in the great fact we commemorate at this season, we see that Christ has cast these bands away. Our victory over the enemies of our salvation is as triumphant as the satisfaction to the Divine justice is complete. Great as our privilege is to have fellowship in his sufferings, the assurance to our faith is even greater to know the power of his resurrection. It was the language of defiant exulta- tion we were enabled to use last Tuesday, when we were taugiit to ask, " Who is he that condemneth ? It is Christ that died."* But to-day we take up a loftier strain, and say, " Yea, rather, that is risen again, who is even at llie right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us." More should have been said, if lime had permitted, on the moral lessons con- veyed by the doctrine of a bodily resurrection, as well as on the benefits assured and sealed to us by the resurrection of our Divine Lord himself. The thought is surely a very solemn one, that this body of ours hath immortality — that perish utterly it never can. The tongue that speaketh proud things shall never be silent ; the hand that graspelh unrighteous things shall have the power of touch again the eyes that have delighted to look on vanity shall open again upon an ever- lasting existence; and members which we have dishonoured, debased, pressed into the service of every unsanctified and lawless passion, shall have to resume some never-ending task in the employments of the world to come. It was • See Golden Lectures, Second Series, No. 15, Penny Tulplt, No. 2,737. 655 THE RESURRBCTION OP THE BODY. Celsus who declared that the hope of the resurrection of the flesh was the hope of worms — a filthy, and abominable, and impossible thing, which God neither can do nor will do. But let infidels say what they will, a body in which Christ has condescended to dwell must be an imperishable, and should be a sacred thing. The great lessons of Easter-tide are two — the cultivation of spiritual affections, and, as helpful thereto, the maintenance of bodily sanctity. " If ye be then risen with Christ," says the apostle, " Set your affections on things above." But this you can never do without taking heed to another direc- tion — " Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth." Of the benefits secured to us by our Lord's personal resurrection, it must suffice to say that they consist generally in the confirmation thus given to every promise and truth of the gospel ; in the demonstration thus afforded that God has accepted the glorious work of a sinner's redemption ; and in the evi- dence thus supplied of the justification and safety of all who in life confide, and in death shall sleep, in Jesus. Yes, brethren, in the resurrection of Christ we see the seal set to our brightest hopes of immortality; we behold the first step of the Saviour's ascent to the throne of spiritual and universal dominion; we have the earnest and pledge given that the great enemy hath no more dominion over us ; but that through the grave and gate of death we shall pass with Jesus to our joyful resurrection — a resurrection of purity, and light, and love. Would you, then, have one consoling thought on which your soul might anchor in life's rudest storms; which, under the burden of affliction, the pressure of years, the decays of nature, the gradual and certain approaches of death, might bear up the fainting spirit? Think of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Remember that this your Redeemer liveth — livelh, that you may never die; liveth, tiiat you may never be afraid to die; liveth, that all you should know or taste of death should be as of some dark shadow casting its transient gloom over your passage to an eternal world ; but through the darkness of which one shall be seen going before you, to show you the path of life, to lead you to him "in whose presence is fulness of joy, and at whose right hand there are pleasures for evermore." 656 THE GOLDEN LECTURES— SECOND SERIES. No. XVII. THE CONSTRAINT OF LOVE. 9[ Merino u Delivered ok Tuesday Morning, April 21, 1S57, BY THE REV, DANIEL MOORE, M.A. AT ST. Margaret's church, lothbury. " For the love of Christ constraineth us because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead : and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again." — 3 Corinthians v. 14 — 15. Il is time that vye begun to gather up our Easter thoughts; to see what are those lessons of life and practice which, like the odour of the funeral spices, have left a fragrance about the Saviour's grave. It is plain that after the resurrection the disciples became as new men. Other hopes animated them ; fresh courage was breathed into them ; and though, until the day of Pentecost, their dreams of a temporal kingdom did not entirely pass away, yet they soon began to experience something of the workings of that new affection, by which it was the purpose of God to elevate and convert the world. The love of Christ was constraining them. The inci- dents of the three years during which he had gone in and out among them were crowding upon their grateful hearts ; and, now, that the sublime scene had been crowned by victory over death and the grave, putting on every hope and promise the seal of eternal faithfulness, and on the dark parts of a former dispensation flinging the bright rays of resurrection light, they felt themselves pledged to a new existence. There seemed to be lying and resting upon them all the consecrations and sanctities of redeemed men. The Godhead, the cross, the grave, the ascending of their Lord to his Father and to their Father, to his God and to their God, would not leave the disciples as they were before, even in the motives which should henceforth actuate them, or in the ends they should henceforth see. They felt with the apostle in our text — "The love of Christ No. 2,746. 4 D THE CONSTRAINT OP LOVE. constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead : and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again." This passage, brethren, may be considered, generally, as setting before us two important subjects of reflection ; viz., the Christian's motive, and the Christian's life. I. Let us begin by considering the Christian's motive, or what is the proper incentive to moral duty. "The love of Christ constraineth us." The context will throw some light upon the words. The apostle is vindicating himself from some censures, either expressed or insinuated, against the manner in which he was discharging the duties of his office; against the earnest and im- passioned zeal with which he was urging upon a dying world the claims and responsibilities of the gospel. His conduct was to many a great practical mystery. There was nothing in the ordinary compass of human seeking and human ambition to explain it; for the characteristic of all these is, that what- ever form they take, self shines through, somehow. But here was a man whose every act tended to lose sight of self, to abase self, to thrust self far back into the recesses of its own insignificance. And the inquiry is raised, if this man be not beside himself, what is this new discovery in the law of motives which disturbs all our settled ideas of moral inducement, and sets up a new govern- ing principle of human conduct ? The whole passage upon which the text turns contains the key to the apostle's act : — " For whether we be beside ourselves, it is to God ; or whether we be sober, it is for your cause," Our conduct has no mystery in it, if you only get the right clue. Whatever our transports, our excesses, our labours, our sacrifices, there is a running thread of consistency passing through them all. The madness you attribute to us is full of method ; the sobrieties you observe in us are all planned; the simple fact being, that we are the slaves of an influence, the conscious, willing, self-dedicated slaves. We are prepared to follow it everywhere; its most stren- uous impulses would lead us captives to the ends of the earth: — "The love of Christ constraineth us." Here, then, is the clue to which he refers us. You ask, why I exhort, and testify, and labour night and day ? Why I seem to be borne above all human prudences on the wings of an unchastened and wild enthusiasm ? Why I can endure hardness, despise reproach, tear myself from sacred ties, encounter persecution on the land, and peril on the sea? And I answer, there is one master-affection in my renewed heart, which exercises lordship over all the rest; every faculty in my nature bows to it, as the sheep of his brethren bowed to Joseph's sheep ; and this regent passion is love to Christ — a love which originated in his first loving me, which was confirmed by a sight of my soul's former danger, which has been deepening ever since by fresh remembrance of his grace and tenderness, and which now makes me G74 THE CONSTRAINT OF LOVE. burn with an unresting desire to see him in his kingdom and glory. How, with such a fire in my bones, can I be inactive ? How can I see his name dishonoured, and not speak; his gospel unknown, and not labour; his people afflicted, and not suffer; his triumphs retarded, and not pray? Surely, a dull inaction would be sin in such a case. "The love of Christ con- straineth us." But let us try to educe a thought or two from this word, "constrain." It is one of marked and expressive significance. Thus, collating other scriptural uses of the word with our text — as for instance, the multitude are said to throng and press round Christ — we get, first, the idea of an influence which hedges the mind in on all sides, ties it up to one definite and exclusive course of action ; not depriving it of its power of moral choice, yet enclosing and surrounding it with such gentle inducements, that it feels it could but choose one way. This is a significant description of the grand incentive to Christian action. The heart of man is prone to a thousand hurtful and mis- taken preferences. Restless, inconstant, deceived easily with fictitious good, and with real good soon disgusted or soon wearied, it requires some central object on which to fix its ever vagrant choice, and in which the spirit may find repose. But when Christ has taken possession of the heart, there is no further looking for this object. His love meets us everywhere. The heart, like a besieged city, is walled round with claims upon its gratitude, constrain- ing us to love him, and none else. We see here one mercy, and there another ; here more grace given, and there a way of escape provided ; here a danger averted, and there an affliction blessed; above, around, without, within, all is mercy. There is a bow of promise on every cloud , light appearing in the darkest eventide. The soul walks amid the monuments of the risen Saviour's presence, surrounded and hedged in by love. Another use of the original word, and which is retained in the Vulgate, is that of goading or urging forward. Hence, in the first printed edition of our English Bibles we have the passage rendered, "The love of Christ driveth us." Here is a view of the word which we can all, perhaps, comprehend more easily. It suggests the thought of what we commonly understand by a man's ruling passion ; that which is first to live, hardest to restrain, last to die : that which sleeps with him, rises with him, attends him with the constancy of his own shadow ; and, only, for a few grudged and broken intervals, allows for anything else a place in his thoughts. This is the property of strong passions, which we must often have observed. They bind; they hold fast; they en- gross; they absorb; and throw everything into their own vortex. They form the character and shape the life. Hence, that declaration in the Scripture, " No man can serve two masters ;" that is, no man can be a slave to two dominant passions at the same time. One must wait on the other; and in the 675 THE CONSTRAINT OF LOVE. first conflict of interests the weaker will be obliged to give way. Now, says the apostle, that which answers exactly to tins paramount affection in my case is the love of Christ. It carries me away with it ; it makes all the other pas- sions of my moral nature its helps and serving men; it makes of one com- plexion and one aim all my purposes and plans in life. Liberty, I have none ; I am sold unto love. A chain of surpassing potency ties up my hands from all sin and selfishness, and restrains my excursive spirit from running after indiscriminate attachments, keeping me near to him who is the sun and centre of all my affections, even to him " who died for me and rose again." " The love of Christ constraineth us." Brethren, this thought should prompt to a trial of our affections. The love of something constrains all of us. Be it wealth, ease, or pleasure, or worldly advancement, or family aggrandisement, or the higher spiritual ambitions of the children of God, whatever it be, it is the inspiring principle of our daily life; it is the inner Divinity which presides over the world of motive, which shapes our course here, and when we go hence will rule for us what we shall think about, and what we shall do. How important the question, whether this indwelling potentate, this self within a self, be the love of Christ? Love for his service is happy; love for his word is precious; love for his approving smile is heaven's life begun on earth ; love for his appearing and his kingdom is our exceeding great reward. The apostle is not dealing in an idle figure of speech when he thus personifies a reigning affection. There is an in- habitation by holy powers as real as any possession by the powers of evil. "I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." Thus is the regenerated being expanded, energised, developed into action ; the son of the bond-woman cast out by the son of the free ; Christ having, not a place in the heart only, but a throne — not a throne only, but all the throne; the soul occupied and filled with a great passion — " The love of Christ constraineth us." II. But I pass to our second topic, or the great end we are to contemplate in all the parts of the Christian life. " Because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead : and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again." " Then were all dead," or, as it appears in some versions, " Then are all dead." We may gather instruction from either interpretation. As the word stands, we add the passage to the many testimonies of the bound- less nature of the Saviour's sacrifice. The "all" for whom Christ died, are the "all" who, under a sentence of condemnation, were before dead. The remedy is declared to be co-extensive with the disease. If there be any freed from the taint of a transmitted depravity, discharged from the obligations of a broken law, without a hand-writing against them, and without a curse, for any such our text supposes Christ did not die. But for all otliers he did. 676 THE CONSTRAINT OF LOVE. Tlie two members of the sentence are correlative, each to each — " If one died for all," then must "all" have been dead. But the other reading, "Then, are all dead," is instructive also. It corresponds exactly with the order of the apostle's thoughts in the 6th chapter to the Romans — " Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord." So here, " We thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead : and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto tl)emselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again." Hence, brethren, we have another appropriate Easter thought ! To what end has Christ died? Why, that we also may die with him. Christ is as certainly the author of one death as he is the destroyer of another. " Know ye not that so many of us as were baptised into Jesus Christ were baptised into his death." It is no more true that Christ died for us, than that, in a sense, we must die for Christ; that is, our corruptions must die; our love for self must die; our worldly preferences must die; all that opposes the reign of grace in our souls must die. As sin crucified the whole body of Jesus, so we must crucify the whole body of sin ; and until we have mortified our members wliich are upon earth, we can never be spiritually united to the head which is in heaven. It is no straining of the text — the Saviour left us an example that we should follow his steps — to say that we must follow Christ, even to those mysterious scenes and solitudes whose deep transactions no eye but that of Heaven saw. Those scenes were a type of our life. Wilderness groans, garden tears, bleak mountain prayers, stripes laid on unjustly, and the finger of scorn pointed, are experiences from which we shall never be altogether free. But, then, we are also to have our part in belter experiences than these, for we look with Christ to stand on the Mount Olivet. We would be climbing its heights, even now, with wings of faith, and hope, and Easter gladness. Yet, surely not, till we have passed through the trials both of the cross and the grave, nor ask to be relieved from one drop of our Master's full and bitter cup — to please not ourselves ; to have right hand lusts cut ofT; to see hopes, dear as one's life, rent, torn, and nailed as it were to the cross of the crucified ; to have the head bow down and droop under the world's cold indifference and neglect. Nature may weep at this; flesh and blood will complain of this; but we stand in our lot. " If one died for all, then were all dead." Aye, more than dead; they must be buried, too. The grave is the gate both to the life spiritual and the life eternal. " Therefore, we are buried witli him by baptism unto death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also shall walk in the newness of life." Let us not overlook, tiieti, the connection between Clnist's death and the 677 THE CONSTRAINT OP LOVE. destruction of our old inner life. We think of Christ much as the Saviour. But do we think enough of him as the Destroyer ? the Destroyer of sin and selfishness, and all those unclean birds which settle on the soul's altar, and drive the Spirit of God away ? And, in order to this, a new creation was ne- cessary. We were too far gone from original righteousness for any partial re- storation. There must be a dissolution process: "That which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die;" and if we are not planted together in the likeness of Christ's death, we would never be in the likeness of his resurrection. Brethren, there is a custom you may have heard of in the monastic life of the Romanists, which, for its spiritual poetry, may be worth remembering. Im- mediately after the person who enters the order has pronounced his vows- vowed that he will dedicate the remainder of his days to monkery and misery — the brethren of the order spread a funeral pall over his entire person ; a solemn dirge is chanted, such as would be used at an interment; relations stand by, wailing and weeping ; while a procession marches jound the living bier in token that the unrenewed part is dead, and that the new man is about to be given up to God. Leaving to Rome the empty sign, let us be, prac- tically, the thing signified. Without forsaking society, without fleeing from providential duties, without giving Satan the advantage which would accrue to him from our idleness and solitude, and unhealthy seclusion from the world, we, too, may spread a pall over the old man ; we may chant anthems about renouncing a forsaken world ; we may bid friends not weep with us, but re- joice that "we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead." Then, if we lay down one life, our text teaches us that we take up another — " That they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him who died for them, and rose again." In this passage we have a charac- teristic of the man of unrenewed mind. He is one who liveth to himself; one who has no compassion for the moral wretchedness of his kind ; one who dwells in distant, unsyrapathising loneliness; a cumberer of the earth while he lives, and taking no blessing with him when he goes away. The man may give his money, his influence, his patronage — as it is absurdly called — to good works ; but the love which makes a man feel for a dying soul, which is distressed at the reproaches resting on the gospel cause, which is fired with sacred jealousy for the honour of him " who died for us and rose again" — of these he knows nothing. Self, in some of its forms, is both the centre and the circumference of all he does. The entire sweep and range of all his charities, affections, his anxieties, are all narrowed to a single point ; either, how he may advance his own interests, or gratify his own pleasures, or attract to himself greater notice; or, in some way or other, minister to the appetites of a vain and unappeasable self-love. But the first indication of a man being in a stale of spiritual transition is, that he has begun to enlarge 67S THE CONSTRAINT OP LOVE. the range and sphere of his affections. " We know that we have passed from deatii unto life, because we love the brethren." Instead of regarding himself as an insulated being, he comes to feel that there is a place in God's world which it is his to till, that his whole life is bound up with great moral pur- poses. Indeed, it could not be otherwise. That a star should shine in this part of the hemisphere, and not in that — that one plant should contain a hidden poison, and another bear healing on its leaves, comes not of blind chance. A sesecret to us it may be. Each has its use, and each its end. What man is he who is born without either, with no place to fill, no work to do, no evil to mitigate, no soul to benefit or bless? Nay, all analogies are against the ex- istence of such beings; they would constitute the moral grotesque in creation. And, hence, it becomes the first inquiry of an awakened and reflective intel- ligence — by whom was I placed here, and what for? Am I not my brother's keeper? Am I not steward of my Lord's vineyard? Am I not charged with a lofty commission, to glorify, in all I do, " Him who died for me and rose again?" And, if so, can I be, indeed, indifferent to the progress of his gospel and his kingdom ? Have I no hand to help, no talent to instruct or to lay out, no voice to pray ? Can I be guide to none, comfort to none, eyes to no de- luded blind, feet to no erring and out of the way ? Such questions, brethren, seem to give life an object, take us out of our contracted and narrow aims, show how we should live to " Him who died for us and rose again." And this suggests the last point I should insist upon ; viz., that all Christian devotedness must stand in an experienced personal participation of what Christ has done for our own souls. Gratitude is, perhaps, the purest and best thing left to us in this fallen world. It is the most deep-seated of our religious affec- tions, the most active principle of our moral nature. There are some things which we do for one we fear; hut how many more and greater things ought we to do for one whom we love, to whom we are bound by a gratitude which only deepens as years roll on ! Now, this feeling is often set forth by the apostle as the loving spring of all his devotedness and zeal in the service of Christ. In the other Epistle to this church, he speaks of what he does for Christ as a necessity laid upon him. He could not help it; he was a re- deemed man ; he was not his own ; there was one to whom he owed liberty, happiness, hope, and life itself. What a boast was his ! Misguided passion, relentless bigotry, self-sufficient pride, in these he had lived ; but for the sove- reign grace of Christ he had died. Oh, he asks, can I be a free agent after this? Can I have had my eyes opened, my fetters broken, my heart changed, my guilt pardoned, and yet live to myself? Can I think of him whom I per- secuted, and not remember that through what he has done for me I can feel now a sweet sense of forgiveness, read my name in the book, see my mansion in heaven, behold the crown glittering in the hands of my righteous Judge, 679 THE CONSTRAINT OP LOVE. and say, that with such tokens of his love upon me, I must not live to '-Him who died for me and rose again V And this kind of force acting upon the religious activities of converted men, you will see always, brethren. It takes their choice, and their prudences, and their self-calculations away ; it flings them away on the tide of a holy, and generous, and beneficent impulse. "Whether it be right in the sight of God," said Peter and John, " to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye ;" we are not free ; our tongues are our Master's ; we cannot but speak of the things which we have seen and heard ; were we to be silent, the very earth beneath our feet would usurp our office, the stones would cry out of the wall, and the beams out of the timber would answer us; " If it be true that Christ died for you, how comes it to pass that you will uot live for Christ ?" See then, brethren, what is your calling. It is both a death and a life; and the one is an ordained means to the other. There must be a death, set forth as it is in your baptism when the prayer was put up for you, that you might crucify the old man, and utterly abolish the whole body of sin. Yes, the wliole body, for the death must be complete. You must die to sin, and to all sin ; to the pride that elates ; to the covetousness tliat hardens ; to the love of pleasure that beguiles ; to the evil tempers that inflame; to the envy which poisons the heart ; to the censoriousness that fouls the tongue. You must die to fretfulness, and discontent, and doubting care; to an ab- sorbing eagerness about the things of this world ; and to weariness, and neglect, and sloth about the things of God. You must spare sin only as the crucifier spared Christ — member after member be pierced till a sated revenge can hurt no more. And on this death supervenes a life also — a life of righteousness, a life of holiness, a life to the glory of God, and a hallowing of his great name in the world. To raise Christ, and to depress sloth, for this we live. May it please the Master to appoint us to some honoured service — to teach, to warn, to wean, to bless ; may it seem good, on the other hand, that in obscurity and silence he should leave us to adorn his gospel, and to make the sick room to bound our visioned field ; yet, so he be glorified we are content, and we are blessed. All we ask is, that we may show gratitude. Have we found peace? Have we known the Lord? Have we been taught to pray? Can we say, ''Abba, Father?" Are there within us the earnest of the Spirit, and above us kind looks from heaven, and before us bright openings of life, and bliss, and glory ? Then, leave to him to procure us such things. "The love of Christ" must " constrain us;" all the powers of our being are pledged to a holy consecration ; we can no longer live to ourselves, but to " Him who died for us, and rose again." 6S0 THE GOLDEN LECTURES— SECOND SERIES. No. XVIII. INDECISION. ^ Sermon Delivered on Tuesday Morning, April 28, 1857, BY THE REV. DANIEL MOORE, M.A. AT ST. Margaret's church, lothbury. .. And Elijah came unto all the people, and said. How long halt yc between two opinions? if the Lord be God, foUow him : but if Baal, then foUow him."-l Kings xviu. 31. « How long halt ve?" like a lame man, whose legs are not equal ; like a man ignorant of his path, doubting within himself whether to go this way or that; Uke a fri-htened man, running first on one side and then on the other, sure to run into°the jaws of death at last. " How long halt ye ?" What brings you thus to a stand? Are the balances into which ye have thrown the relative claims of light and darkness, holiness and sin, the truth of God and a great human lie, poised so evenly that ye cannot make a choice? " Why, even of Your own selves, judge ye not what is right?" and having judged, act boldly upon your convictions. "If the Lord be God, follow him; if Baal, then follow him." . Such was the remonstrance of the great prophet of Israel to a nation whom even one of God's four sore judgments had failed to bring to a right mind- who continued unstable as water-who were always going on right for a little while, and then starting aside like a deceitful bow. I Let us devote a short time, first, to the circumstances of the history. They occurred in the reign of Ahab, a king who had sold himself to do evil in the si«ht of the Lord, and who had now arrived at such a daring height of impiety, °hat he not only tolerated the worship of Baal, but publicly esta- blished It; enforced its observance by penal laws; and, by the hands of his wife Jezebel, had proceeded further to slay all he could find of the true pro- phets of the Lord. The generality of the people soon began to fall in, as we No. 2,757. 4 I- INDECISION. know tliey commonly will, with the prevailing religious tendencies of ihe times. They kept up the traditional worship of Jehovah, it is true; and the long and severe famine with which they had been visited, had caused a revival of some of their older and better thoughts ; but as yet court bribes and court fears had proved too strong for their virtue. Fashion, their many-headed master, held them as in a chain, and tliough they had not openly cast in their lot with the followers of Baal, yet they worshipped not where their fathers worshipped, and were ashamed of their fathers' God. This, I say, seems to have been the condition of the great mass of the popula- tion. A portion, doubtless, had gone over to idolatry absolutely; had "bowed the knee to Baal ;" but seven thousand there were who, even in heart, had not done this — faithful men whom God had reserved to himself — kept in better custody than even in Obadiah's cave, to cheer a prophet's heart at a time, when, as he thought, he stood alone — the one light in the midst of a dark world, and that just going out. Brethren, how like is human nature to itself in all ages! Wherein does this threefold division of all Israel differ from tliat into which we might classify our population now ? We have our few open Baal worshippers — the infidel, and the blasphemer, and the profane — men who have a morbid delight in unsettling creeds, in loosening everything that binds or keeps together the elements of social happiness — in falling headlong into a pit themselves, and dragging otheis after them. Or, as no better than these, we have men who " serve the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of their god Remphan" — worshippers of deities who will be propitiated only by unscru- pulous gains and vicious pleasures, and things which, whether in their more refined or grosser forms, alike blot out God's image from the soul, and leave nothing of man but the name. Whilst in direct contrast with these we have our reserved and faithful ones — our " seven thousand who have not bowed the knee" — holy and humble men of heart, whom no prophet knows of, and yet each in his narrower sphere of love and blessedness, emitting as pure and divine a flame as any the most burning and shining light. But then, between these upper and lower edges of our social system, there lies a great middle population — worshippers neither of the false god nor of the true — men of halting and uncertain walk, assembling one day with the congregations on the sacred hill of Zion, and going on the next to be present at the idolatrous rites at Carmel. And this strangely mixed and vacillating religion has become their habit of life. They can scarcely be said to be halting, because they never expect to come any nearer to a decision ; and though they would not, perhaps, say as much, it is next to certain that they look for a condition of immortality answering to their middle or neutral state upon earth — a great limbo of medi- ocrity — a painless purgatory that shall last for ever — an eternal isthmus be- tween the place where Dives was and the repose of Abraham's bosom. 746 tNDECISION. But to return. While the masses of Israel are in this hesitating and irresolute temper of mind, Elijah is called forth from his obscurity. All the misery of the three years' famine he knew had been laid at his door, and, therefore, with- out express warrant from God, he must not quit the place of his seclusion, only to expose himself to fresh persecution. Brethren, we may all do much of God's work in retirement. We learn submission there. W^e can hear "still small voices" there. Faith can take there a more extended outlook on Heaven's silently evolving plans. It was so with Elijah. Whilst he lay close in the sheltered obscurity of Sarepta — the prophets of Baal, four hundred and fifty, eating bread at Jezebel's table, and himself living day by day upon the barrel and the cruse — he was learning high lessons, training for single-handed en- counter with the proud foe that had sought his life, acquiring that power of effectual fervent prayer by which the heavens should become obedient to him, whether to send down fire to consume his sacrifice, or to open the full charged cloud to take the drought of the land away. Of tlie prophet's meeting with the king, and of the mighty issue tried on the heights of Carmel, we need Jiot speak particularly. It is one of those scenes which is fresh always, which we never weary of, and never forget. But that enraged monarch — he who for three years had been " breathing out threat- enings and slaughter" against the Tishbite — how comes it that he dares not lift up iiis finger against him, now that he is within his reach? how is it that all his fury evaporates in that bated, whispering, feeble expostulation, " Art thou he that troubleth Israel?" nay, that with all the submission with which wicked- ness the greatest, and rank the highest, will sometimes succumb to a great moral presence, he proceeds, at Elijah's bidding, to gather all Israel to the mount. How, but that "the king's heart is in the hand of the Lord, who tuineth it whithersoever he will ?" And now that the mighty company are col- lected — the priests of Baal, and the prophets of the grove, together with all Israel's wavering and undecided thousands — Elijah proceeds to suspend on a manifested sign from heaven the entire credit of his mission, and the vindica- tion of the truth of God. And for whose sake did he do this? Not for Allah's, for he had sold himself; Satan had given him his price to work wicked- ness. Nor yet for the conviction of the prophets of Baal; for God was about to make a full end of them. They may slay their bullock, they may cry aloud, they may leap upon their altar as if to fetch the fire of heaven down, they raay make their own blood gush out, even as the victim's blood, and till the time of the evening sacrifice assail the ears of their deaf and dumb divinity; but before he wakes, or have left off from pursuit, or have returned from his journey, the wrath of God shall have swallowed them up, "the river of Kishon swept them away, that ancient river, the river Kishon." No; the great demonstra tion we read of, was designed for those double-minded, fickle, and unstable 747 INDECISION. Isratliles, who in another chapter are described with seeming paradox as " fearing the Lord, and serving their graven images ;" and the prophet is adjuring