DELIVERED BY
REV. THOMAS K. BEECHER,
(CONGREGATIONALIST,)
14t Elimira, JV. F., Jacnuary 9, 1870.
"LET ANOTHER MAN PRAISE THEE, NOT THINE OWN
MOUTH; A STRANGER, AND NOT THINE OWN LIPS."
Proverbs xxvii, 2.
If any man, however deserving, begin to boast and speak
often of his past record and public services, he makes himself offensive.
But when a general gives credit to his brother generals,,
and ascribes victory to their wisdom  and the valor of the
army, then all are pleased. Such words are twice usefulthey profit him that speaks, and them of whom they are
spoken.
In something the same way we are offended when we
hear or read the words which Churchmen speak in praise,
each of his own church or denomination. They seen conceited, arrogant, offensive. They promote vainglory at
home and ill will abroad.
But it has seemed to me that Christian pastors and prelates might be at least as courteous one to another as army




-2officers are!  And if we would note and praise the beauty
of our sister churches more, and silence our own boastfulness, there might come to pass among Christian people a
smiling charity and peaceful rejoicing.
I invite you, therefore, this evening, to view the beauty,
the uses, and the truth that belong to those Christians
among us who are popularly called
EPISCOPALIANS.
In this city there are four kinds of churches that have
Bishops, and therefore may call themselves Episcopal.
Roman Episcopal.
Protestant Episcopal.
Methodist Episcopal.
American Methodist Episcopal Zion.
But only one of these is generally known as the Episcopal Church, namely, the Protestant Episcopal Church, represented in this city by two parishes and a mission.
This Episcopal Church in America is, in fact, a continuation of the Church of England. As gardeners lay down a
branch of a vine and stake it fast and cover it till it takes
root, and then cut it off and leave it to grow by its own
roots, so the Episcopal Church in this land was a branch of
the Church of England, which was laid down and rooted,
and by our Revolutionary War was cut off to grow ever
after with roots of its own.
The Church in America differs from  the Church of
England in those matters chiefly that must needs have been
changed because these States ceased to be colojnies and
became a nation with differing political constitution. Instead of King, the Churchman in America says President;
for Parliament, Congress; he needs a prayer quite new for
his Legislature and Governor, for in England there were




-3none such. But he drops all mention of the Gunpowder
Plot, the martyrdom of Charles I., the accession and happy
reign of our sovereign lady, Queen Victoria, and all other
strictly English events.
The American Churchman omits, too, the Athanasian
Creed, which is long and true, but has a dry rattle in if that
makes irreverent people smile.
Of all Protestant churches, the Episcopal best deserves
the name REFORMesED.  She preserves so many of the
usages and excellencies of the Roman Church, and so few
of her errors, that it is quite easy to perceive that she is a
Reformed Church.  All other Protestant churches seem
revolutionary rather than reformed.
The Reformation in England was more than two hundred
years long. There were no volcanic convulsions: no one
brilliant Fourth of July day in which the great reform was
proclaimed. BNor was the Reformation purely and disinterestedly religious.
When the Pope (Urban V. 1365) demanded large sums
of money, in payment of tribute long in arrear, ParliaRment
gave willing ear to the reformer Wickliffe, who denied the
authority of Rome, and so excused the nation from paying
its debt. Afterwards (1380) this same great man finished
a translation of the Latin Bible into English!  lIe wrote
tracts for the people. He revived preaching to the people.
His disciples went diligently up and down the land, teaching and preaching the truth and the authority of Holy
Scripture.
Thus, one hundred and fifty years before Luther was
heard of as a revolutionary reformer (1518), the leaven of
Bible reading and private thinking was at work among the
English people.
But the Church in England was still Roman Catholic,
notwithstanding the work that was going on among the




-4people. The followers of Wickliffe, known in history as
Lollards, have furnished thousands of names to the Bishops'
list of heretics, elsewhere known as the noble army of
martyrs.
During the reign of Henry VIII. (1534) the Church in
England was declared independent of Rome. This was
perhaps the crisis of the English Reformation.
This curious king, having married his brother's widow
by special permission of the Church, by and by applied to
that same Church to declare the marriage unlawful; and
when the Bishop of Rome would not grant this required
divorce, Henry declared it himself, married again, laughed
at his own excommunication, caused himself to be proclaimed- Supreme Head of the Church of England, and to
prove that in all these steps he was quite right, he cut off
any man's head who should dispute or deny the same,-e. g.,
Sir Thomas More (1534).
Thus, then, we come to a Church independent of Rome,
but not yet reformed. The Bible was in many churches.
Yet men, not a few, were slain for reading it and talking it.
Among these, William Tyndale deserves our mention; for
he translated the New Testament into felicitous English,
and published much wise doctrine, in consequence of which
he was duly strangled and burned.
The king multiplied Bibles but cut off Bible-readers.
After Henry and his stormy ways came pious and gentle
Edward VI. to the throne, and at once the flower of reform
began to blossom, and the Church to show the features
which she wears to-day.
The English Bible was read by lessons at morning and
evening service as now. The Liturgy was translated and
said in English. The Creed of the Church was packed in
forty-two Articles, afterward reduced to the famous Thirtynine. Accordingly both the bread and wine were given to




-5the common people at the sacrament. And other reforms
and purifyings were set afoot.
Edward's reign was a short one (1547-53); long enough
to introduce these changes, yet short enough to keep the
Protestants from getting too much headway.
After him came the pious but gloomy and unhappy
Queen Mary, who strove to bring the realm of England
back to Rome. She caused persuasive fires to be kindled
for the good of dissenting souls. She did what she could,
but she could not undo the Reformation. Parliament and
the people were too much for her. But her opposition
kept the reformers from running into extravagance and
cruelty.
After Mary came Elizabeth, who caused Roman Catholics at one extreme and Puritans at the other to feel her
scorn, and suffer fines, imprisonment, and death.
Then came James I., of England, by whose order our
present Bible was prepared and printed and authorized.
And thus from reign to reign the Church of England
came down, acquiring little by little her present shape, and
laying off the corruption and unreason of the Roman
Church, as then existing and administered in that rude age.
The Prayer-book was substantially complete as we now
have it, in the seventeenth century (1661). Thus this
reformed Church of England filled up nearly three hundred
years in her work of purifying and simplifying. And of
all Protestant Churches, therefore, she best deserves the
name reformed.
In this country the first parish of this Church was probably that in Jamestown, Va., 1606-8.  Down to the
Revolutionary War, the Church in this land was under the
care of the Bishops of London.
Shortly after the Revolution an application was made to
Parliament to allow an American Bishop to be consecrated.
1*




6But the Puritans and Presbyterians opposed the proposition, and so Mr. Seabury, the candidate, had to put up with
a second-rate consecration at the hands of certain Scotch
Bishops. - But at last, in 1787, Parliament allowed the
Archbishop of Canterbury to consecrate three regular firstclass Bishops for New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia,
respectively.  Since then the holy unction has not been
allowed to fail. With pious care, it has been propagated.
And the Episcopal Church in these United States stands
to-day as truly and regularly in the line of Apostolic Succession as the Church of England herself.
After this mere outline of her history, it remains that I
note some of her excellent uses and beauties.
1. The Episcopal Church offers for our use the most
venerable liturgy in the English tongue. The devotional
treasures of the Roman Catholic Church are embalmed and
buried in Latin. But in English there are no lessons,
gospels, psalms, collects, confessions, thanksgivings, prayers
— in one word, no religious FORM BOOK that can stand a
moment in comparison with the Prayer-book of the Episcopal Church in the twofold quality of richness and age.
The proper name, because. truly descriptive, for this
Church, would be CHURCH OF THE PRAYER-BOOK. As is
the way with all other Churches, so here, the Church champions and leaders have many wise things to say about the
Church and her prerogative.  But the pious multitude that
frequent her courts are drawn thither mostly by love of the
prayers and praises, the litanies and lessons of the Prayerbook.
And, brethren of every name, I certify you that you
rarely hear in any church a prayer spoken in English, that
is not indebted to the Prayer-book for some of its choicest
periods.
And further, I doubt whether life has in store for any of
you an uplift so high, or downfall so deep, but that you can




-7
findcompany for your soul and fitting words for your lips
among the treasures of this Book of Common Prayer.
In all time of our tribulation; in all time of our prosperity; in the hour of death and in the Day of Judgment;
Good Lord deliver us.
As a consequence of the Prayer-book and its use I note:
2. The Episcopal Church preserves a very high grade
of dignity, decency, propriety, and permanence in all her
public offices.
In nearly every newspaper you may read some funny
story based upon the ignorance or eccentricity or blasphemous familiarity of some extemporizing prayer-maker. All
of you here present have been at some time shocked or
bored by public devotional performances. Nothing of this
sort ever occurs in the Episcopal Church. All things are
done and spoken decently and in order.
And so too of permanence and its accumulating worth of
holy association: —no transient observer can adequately
value this treasure of a birthright Churchman.
To be using to-day the self-same words that have through
the centuries declared the faith or made known the prayer
of that mighty multitude, who, being now delivered from the
burden of the flesh, are in joy and felicity:
To be baptized in infancy, and never to know a time
when we were not recognized and welcomed among the
millions whohave entered by the same door:
To be confirmed in due time, in a faith that has sustained
a noble army of confessors, approving its worth through
persecutions and prosperities, a strength to the tried and
a chastening to the worldly minded:
To be married, by an authority before which kings and
peasants bow alike, asking benediction upon the covenant,
that without respect of persons binds by the words of duty,
the highest and the lowest:




-8To bring our new-born children as we were brought, to
begin where we began, and to grow up to fill our places:
To die in the faith, and almost hear the Gospel words
soon to be spoken over one's own grave as over the thousand times ten thousand of them who have slept in Jesus:
In short, to be a devout and consistent Churchman,
brings a man through aisles fragrant with holy association,
and conmpanied by a long procession of the good, chanting
as they march a unison of piety and hope until they come
to the holy place where shining saints sing the new song of
the redeemed. And they sing with them.
Another excellence I note.
3. The Episcopal Church furnishes (to all who need such
comfort) the assurance of an organic and unbroken unity
and succession from Jesus Christ through the Apostles, by
a line of authentic bishops, down to the Bishop of this
Diocese.
King Henry VIII. and Queen Elizabeth, with their proclamations and Parliaments, are so conspicuous and fill so
much space in the merely political history of the English
Church, that many able writers deny that the river of apostolic succession so dammed by them, could ever get around
the dam and flow along again, pure and uncontaminated.
I cannot decide this question absolutely.
What I say is this: The Apostolic Succession in the
Episcopal Church can be traced back so many hundred
years into the dim past, that it is no shame to any man to say,
" I believe it to extend back to PETER, PAUL and JOHN;"
and he who verily believes that the ordaining or confirming
band of the Bishop of this Diocese is electric with the
spiritual life that proceeds from Jesus of Galilee, will find
it a hand of virtue and worth. He who doubts will find it
a hand of form and ceremony.
And so without stopping to decide the question whether
our Bishop is really a successor of Paul or John, I say that




the Episcopal Church affords so much evidence that she
has in her Episcopate the true succession, that it is no
shame to any common man to believe her. And if a man
BELIEVES in his Bishop, he will get from him all the
benefit that can come from bishops.
Brethren, many needy souls are not able to lay hold upon
God one by one. They cannot appropriate a gospel promise
to themselves. Like Job of old they say: If I had called
and He had answered me, yet would I not believe that He
had hearkened unto my voice.-viii. 16.
Such extreme and exemplary humility asks for and needs
a Church ark, and the humble place and privilege of a
private passenger. The ark of God that shall outride the
deluge. The Church of Christ, in which is found salvation.
I say then that the claims of the Episcopal Church to be
such an ark of God, or Church of Christ, endowed with
sacraments, absolutions and profitable authority, are for all
practical purposes valid.
I leave historians and ecclesiasts to their endless words,
and assert that the poor in spirit who seek comfort and
salvation through the offices of the Episcopal Church, are as
well off in her as they can be in any Church. And since
many are profoundly prejudiced against the Church of
Rome, I am happy to point all such, to a sure welcome in
the Episcopal Church, with sacraments, successions, and
authority as good as the best.
4. The Episcopal Church is excellent in her provisions
for Christian education and pious drill.
Churches that avowedly receive very young infants as
members, must necessarily provide education for these
accepted children. Accordingly, the Episcopal Church is
characteristically a church for the training of children, just
as some sister churches are  characteristically  revival
churches for the conversion of grown folk.
In the Prayer-book and Church Almanac you find the




- 10 -
Christian year divided into periods separated by high days
— monuments and memorials of Christian  story.  This
Christian calendar agrees very nearly with that of the
Roman Church. And he is an unusually well informined
Christian who can read over this catalogue of days, and in
few words tell the story that each day celebrates!  But a
birthright Churchman who has been quietly trained in a
Church home for fifteen years, will need very little teaching.
In connection with this calendar is a system of lessons,
in following which the reader is led through the entire Bible
each year, and through its more profitable parts, monthly or
oftener.
He who for years has been a Churchman, and yet remains
ill-grounded in Scripture, shows himself an unworthy son
of a very faithful mother.
By the Lessons, Gospels, Epistles, Psalms, and Collects
appointed for special fast or feast days, the events commemorated by that day are wrought into the memory of every
worshipper.  And by seasons, longer or shorter, of special
religious effort and observance, this Church satisfies the
want which other churches satisfy by weeks of prayer, protracted meetings, and long revivals.
A good school is a dull place' to any visitor who rushes in
to find sensation and excitement. He will call it dry and
stupid. In like manner, many religious sensation makers
and sensation seekers will promptly vote the Church calendar and all its smooth machinery of pious drill, a very dull
substitute for a regular, rousing revival.  But, in the long
run, the Church that steadily trains and teaches will outlive
the Church that only arouses and startles. s' If ye continue
in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed."
5. This Church makes a distinction between her Creed
as a Church, which all her officers must subscribe, and that
much shorter declaration of faith which she expects fiom
her children.




This Church never vexes her converts with profound
questions in theology. Of those who would receive the
Lord's Supper she requires that they repent them truly of
their former sins: steadfastly purposing to lead a new life.
That they have a lively faith in God's mercy through
Christ, and a thankful remembrance of his death, and they
be in charity with all men.
To any and to all such, asking no further questions, this
catholic and most generous Church approaches, and by the
hand of her priest gives the consecrated bread with benediction.  "The body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was
given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting
life. Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died
for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith, with
thanksgiving."  And with like words the consecrated wine:
"Drink this in remembrance that Christ's blood was shed
for thee-and be thankful."
Citizens and Christians, all:  Because this Episcopal
Church is a reformed Church and not revolutionary; because her Book of Prayer is rich and venerable above all
in the English tongue; because her ritual promises decency,
dignity, prosperity, and permanence; because her historic
union through the Apostles with Christ comforts and satisfies so many souls; because she adopts her infant children,
and provides for them education and drill; and because,
with large hospitality, she proffers her sacrament to all true
believers of every name; therefore from her own Psalter
let us take the Words wherewith to bless her: c "They shall
prosper that love thee. Peace be within thy walls, and
plenteousness within thy palaces. For my brethren and
companions' sakes I will, wish  thee  prosperity. Yea,
because of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek to
do thee good."








A SERMON
ON THE
BY
ISAAC E' UR.ETT.
C I N C I    N  R AR   I:
CINCINNATI:
R. W. CARROLL & CO., PUBLISHERS,
I I5 AND I I7 WEST FOURTH STREET,
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VIEWNVS OF LIFE:
ON THE SOCIAL AND RELIGIOU$ qUIESTIONS OF THE AGE.
BY NA,. T. T. MOORE.
T HE Publishers desire to call especial attention to this new and valuable work, which has met with s
T generous reception by thle reading public, and has been commended by the entire Eastern and Westens Press, somue of whose notices we give below.
Tl'he work has been careflily prepared, and contains, besides those Addresses which have attained such
popularity as to be demanded in book form, several now printed for the first time.
COTE 0 ITT    
Woman's Sphere and Responsibilities.                  The Present Age and its Greatest Need.
Our Utilitarianism  and the Remedy.                   Our Strength and Our Weakness.
The Present Age, a New  Era.                          Our Creed-Is it Evangelical?
Success, What it is, atd How to Secure it.            Our Practice-is it Evangelical?
Radicalism  and Conservatism.                         The Gospel and  lhe Poor.
Woman-What She is, and how She should                 Christ, Disturbing and Harmonizing Human
be Educated.                                          Society.
i'-OTICE8  OF T —=:PESS_
The author of this voiule  has attracted a good    The auihclr has selected theimes that have a dee)
deal of attention tle past twelve months. on account:t present iterest and significance.  In his handling
of his earnest appeals for religious tolerance, and his  of these themes, he shiows that he is a thougithtti ohcaustic criticisms of the position taiken by tahe Asso-: server of,ha. is taking place in the wnorld in 5which
ciation of Evangelical LMIinisters of this city, ecquir-  he lives.  His thougtl s are those of a receptive actint" all members of the Association to conrfor!mi to a  ie iniii; his culture thlat of' a good general scholar,
Procrustean rule.  Mr. Moore held that the only  all set fo rtoh in strong and earnest language.  The
proper test was thle Word of God.  Ie is ant original   Addlresses can hairdly  have failed to stimulate those
thiinker, and expresses himsetlf -ith a good deal of  to -woilns they -ere oisiginally  delivered to miental
vigor.  He is clear and ]ogical, and his style is per- activity and moral seriousness.  They will be avelsuasively eloquent anid attractive.  lThe volume em-  colned bh a wide circle of readers.-C/zi —z'sanzs S'navbraces views on a wide rain-e of sutbects.-Cz>.cizz- jZ-, 1Z_, 18, I869.
zrztts 5z.'essit,', C/iio ce  his,  tSc'y  4,c I             I869s.
The literary refinerlent and originality of thought
IThese Addresses do not discuss qurestions invtolv- in these addresses are miarked features, and at once
i!fa  recotdite theology, althoughl tley evince a deep t piace the writer in the literary  galaxy of the best
insight into thle doctrine of differences  now  agi- lagazine composers of the pr-esent age.  T'lhe Adtating the world firoin Rotne to Berlin. They   are i dresses are preeninently practical; and the very
chiefly devotel to the consideration of the questions! tact that siMr. M oore grapples woitl the living issues
v.:hich, in an ethical point of viet, are iahmportant to  of tihe preset day, and boldly inivestigates evelr
all. —Cisscisse'Zi s'Eos,, irer,,l'lay 222 I869.      questiol r elating to the amlelioration  of the human' amily, plroves that he reaches far beyond the mere
Mr. tMoore awrites in an easy and popular stle, 1 isoor of a lterary faltle.  Theli dominant prevailing
and his book wsill be very acceptable to his Imanyil'  thought in all these addresses is to correct the,wrongs
fi-iends and admirers.  The volumne is issued in a  of societ, to discover the religious, and moral, and
stole that does credit to American typography.  In 1 educational disorders of tihe living world, and to prefact, a neater volurne rarely comes to us with a Lon- scribe the retmedyv  and on this accosnt, if from  no
don ilnprint. —Csziscrzta/i Gazete, ifcy 20, I869.    other, this frag-ant offering should be patronized by
A religious feeling truns sthrorugh tlese Addresses  all lovers of good order and a high state of mllorals.
w~ithout~ flooding thelm-.-Pi/tzte/s.ii c     Press.  I 1 The author is a radical reformler, and ailtas at the exI tirpation of every social and religious wrong.-A mserThle author is anl independent thinker, and ex- j ictaz C/trisiazte Reviewa,        4,tze 4, s869,
presses himself forcibly, without ambiguity or undue
prolixity.  His themes involve many of the great   These Ad-dresses will weill repay a readingi.  While
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treated wvithout reference to party', sect, or caste.  It is  circulation.  The style is excellent, and the subjects
wvorthy of a place in every yaoung man's or young wo- are discussed  with tmore than  ordinaryr ability.man's library. —Gospe  Ecr/io,                         C/zristicatz P/oieeiThe work is elegantly printed, on tinted paper, and bound in English cloth, making a handsome s6mo
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THE PLAN OF SALVATION.*
BY ISAAC ERRETT.
" For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, erring, serving divers lusts and
pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another.  But when
the goodness and love (philanthropia, love of God to man as man) of God our
Saviour appeared, not on account of works of righteousness which we did, bu, t in
virtue of his mercy he saved us, by the washing (laver) of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our
Saviour; that being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the
hope of eternal life. This is a trustworthy saying, and this I will that thou affirm
constantly (strongly), that (in order that) they who have believed in God may be
careful to maintain good works." —TITus iii: 3-9.
UST now, when an unusual religious interest pervades
the community, and hundreds are inquiring the way to
Zion, with  their faces  thitherward, it is important to
furnish clear and ample instruction to inquirers, such as
may lead them into'an acquaintance with "the whole
counsel of God." Then their faith will stand, "not irn the
wisdom of men, but in the power of God," and they will
receive the message of salvation "not as the word of men,
but, as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually
worketh  in believers."
" This Sermon was delivered December Igth, x869, in the Christian Chapel,
Corner of Eighth and Walnut Streets, Cincinnati, Ohio, in view of an unusual religious interest prevailing at the time in the city.  This will explain one or two
local allusions in the discourse.
(I)




2              The P/an of Salvation.
We design, therefore, to present as filly as it can be done
within the limits of a sermon of reasonable length, an outline of the plan of salvation. In order to do this, let us
consider
I. WHAT GOD HAS DONE TO SAVE SINNERS.
II. WHAT MEN MAY DO FOR THEIR FELLOWS IN THE
MATTER OF SALVATION.
III. WHAT EVERY SINNER IS REQUIRED TO DO FOR HIMSELF, IN ORDER TO BE SAVED.
IV. WHAT GOD PROPOSES YET TO DO, IN US AND FOR US.
We assume, in these inquiries, that man is sinful, and
needs salvation; that his spiritual nature is lost, and needs
recovery; that the soul is inharmonious in its relations to
the spiritual universe, and must be reconciled to its eternal
and immutable order. We attempt not to prove this. We
speak, to-day, for such as know it and feel it. We merely
remark, in passing, that the religious history of our race
groans under the weight of evidence that man is, and ever
has been, bewildered in strange labyrinths, and sighs with
great and eloquent anguish, and almost despair, over his
great guilt, confusion, and helplessness. The first verse of
our text presents a moral portrait with which the experience of the present generation so entirely accords, that
the verisimilitude will be acknowledged by general consent.
We accept the sad, stern facts, and desire to turn our eyes
to the "everlasting hills, whence cometh all our help," for
succor and deliverance.
I. WHAT HAS GOD DONE TO SAVE SINNERS?
Our text assures us that no works of ours can procure
salvation, but points us to the "kindness," "philanthropy,"
and "mercy" of God, as the fountain of salvation: "good-.




The Plan of Salvation.              3
ness"- that goodness which "openeth its hand and satisfieth the desire of every living thing," gives us some ground
to hope that the soul's desires will not be disregarded by
Him who hears the young ravens when they cry; but the
"philanthropy"- the love of God to man because he is
mnan —which the Gospel reveals, is a sweeter, richer,
brighter light; while the "mercy," whose unsearchable
riches are offered in the Gospel, carries us beyond all
doubt, and lifts us to a rapturous view of the saving grace
of God. We are saved, then, if saved at all, by gracebecause God is good, and compassionates us in our sin and
wretchedness, and out of his own infinite delight in goodness has given us "the knowledge of salvation in the remission of sins," "that we, being delivered out of the
hands of our enemies, might serve him, without fear, inl
righteousness and holiness before him, all the days of our
life."
Were we indulging in a minute view of the details of
this plan of salvation, we should traverse the Old Testament history, and show how an Invisible Hand guided all
the events of the ages, for four thousand years, to a grand
consummation in the advent of the Messiah; how heaven
and earth —men and angels-were laid under tribute to
forward this divine scheme, and how the very sins and
apostasies of our race were made subservient to the gracious purposes of divine philanthropy. But, passing this,
we observe:
I. That the grace of God was revealed in giving' his SonIMMANUEL, GOD WITH us-to develop this salvation to us.
"God so loved the world, that he gave his onl -begotten
Son, that whosoever believeth in him might not perish, but
have eternal life." The sighs of the ages were answered
in an incarnation of Deity that brings to man, on the plane
of his own weak and sorrowful existence, the knowledge,




4               The Plaz of Salvation.
the mercy, and the strength which he needs. "God is in
Christ, reconciling the world unto himself." It is the culmination of God's gracious purposes-the grandest climax
of divine philanthropy-the exhaustion of heaven's munificence; so that, when the work of the Son of God is done,
the sublime utterance of his breaking heart on the cross"It is finished "-announces that the dying sufferer has
gained the deepest depth of woe, and the highest summit of
goodness, that can ever illustrate the power of God to save.
2. The life, death, and resurrection of Desus, render this
grace of God accessible to us.
It is not the grace of God, hidden in the depth of his
eternal counsels, that saves us; nor yet a grace secretly
distilling its power on the human heart, in ways inscrutable. It is the grace of God "appearing to all men"grace revealed in the life, teachings, conflicts, sorrows, death,
and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. "Grace and truth
came by Jesus Christ."  We learn from his lips what we
need to know about sin and redemption; about life, death,
and resurrection; about the feelings of God toward his
sinful creatures, and his designs in their behalf; about the
connection between character and destiny; about the terms
on which God will receive us-and the kind of life we must
live so as to please Him: all these things, in reference to
which we were groping in thick darkness, he has made
plain to us, so that "the common people" may " hear him
gladly," and learn the way of life. Morever, his own life,
under the heaviest pressure of human woe, was so perfect
and triumphant an exemplification of obedience to the will
of God, that the helpless soul, touched by it, springs into
new life, and learns how, by God's help, to overcome the
world.
But not only is there light in the darkness, but a rock in
the waves. The things most desired, but most uncertain,




The Plain of Salvation.            5
are demonstrated in this wonderful mission of Jesus. He
did not theorize-he demonstrated.  He did not speculate
on the possibility of God's love —he loved; he wrought out
the most amazing mercy for men, before their eyes. He
unfolded no psychological theory as to the capacity of the
soul for virtue and truth-he took our weak and weary nature into the thickest of the fight with powers of darkness,
and led it, over perilous paths, along the brink of fearful
precipices, and through the heat of bitterest contests, to
perfect victory, and taught men that human nature could
be made triumphant over hell. He gave no philosophy of
atonement; but, taking our guilt-laden and shame-burdened
nature, he hesitated not to bear it to God, though on the
way he met the angel of Justice, with flaming sword, and
it cost him bloody sweat, and awful agony, and bitter cries,
and untold shame, and ignominious death, to maintain this
fellowship with our dishonored race, and bear his plea for
their restoration to completion; and he came out from the
toils and sufferings of this ministry, covered with scars,
with pierced hands and feet and side, a "man of sorrows "
as none had ever been before; but he came out with a shout
of triumph on his lips-still holding our imperiled nature
in his covenant grasp, with its chains broken, its guilt expiated, its curse removed. He "bore our sins in his own
body on the tree, that we, being dead to sin, might live
unto righteousness." He broached no doctrine of immortality; but he died and went down to the grave, and fought
his last battle in the depths of that fearful empire, and
broke the power of death, and led captive captivity, and
demonstrated his power to redeem from death. He told but
little of the world beyond, but he took our ransomed nature
into the chariot of God, and ascended with it "far above all
might, and dominion, and principalities, and powers," and
placed it on the mediatorial throne, in immortal partnership




6              The Plai of Salvatio.n.
with Deity. In his ascension he completed the line of
communication between the stormy Atlantic of human sin
and strife, and the Pacific ocean of God's redeeming love;
and when he lifted the silver hammer, and drove the golden
spike that fastened the last rail in this grand highway, the
bells rung round all worlds, and the universe thrilled with
unusual joy.
It is said, that on one occasion a gentleman came to
London to obtain a loan. He was a stranger; and, although
offering ample securities, he could not succeed. In his
despair, he called on one of the Rothschilds, and laid his
case before him. "I am not in that line of business," said
Mr. R., "or I would accommodate you. But, come, I will
walk down street with you." They went arm in arm along
the great thoroughfares, and when it was known that Rothschild was his friend, the loan was instantly secured. And
when God and man go arm in arm along the highways of
the universe, every angel-crown is lifted to do honor to the
friend of God, and our bankrupt nature steps at once into
wealth and grandeur. So we build on a rock. No mere
dreams, or wishes, or fancies beguile us; nor does any deceitful philosophy bewilder us. We build on facts, we walk
by faith, we find peace in resting on a perfected work of
redemption. Through this blessed ministry of Jesus, God
takes us by the hand and leads us out of ignorance, and
wickedness, and doubt, and despair, into a delightful knowledge of his goodness, holiness, and mercy, into blessed forgiveness of sin, into firm reliance on his love, and a cheerful
hope of eternal life; and all the way, as he leads us, he
looks on us through human eyes, distills his compassion on
us in human tears, fights our battles in a human form,
speaks to us in a human voice, and shows us the imprint
of human footsteps in all the strange pathway from our
lowest weakness to heaven's highest glory. Well may we




The Plait of Salvation.            7
say, in depositing our destiny in the hands of this Saviour,
" I know in whom I have believed, and am persuaded that
he is able to keep what I have committed to him against
the last day."
I am aware that to many thoughtful minds many troublesome questions arise as to this mission. They are dazzled
by its brightness. They find it difficult to believe that
God so loves this sinful race inhabiting this insignificant world; and they can not understand why Jesus
should have to go down to death, nor how his death can
be an atonement for sin. No doubt there are perplexities here,-as every-where.  There are unsolved mysteries
in our own being, and in the conditions of our existence;
and in any path of psychological investigation we can push
our inquiries into the unknown, until our wh/ys echo through
the darkness and bring back no reply. We can not, of
course, discuss such questions now. We only suggest
briefly a few reflections for this class.
(I) Spirit is infinitely more valuable than matter; and
the value of souls is not to be counterpoised by the weight
of material worlds. Otherwise a pound of pig-metal would
outweigh the genius of Shakespeare, and a block of marble or a roll of canvas have more value than the immortal
forms which the genius of an Angelo, a Canova, or a Rubens has wrought on them.
(2) All worlds and universes may be learning lessons
from God's dealings' with our race. This world of ours
may be only a blackboard in God's great school-house,
and through the problems wrought on it of human nature,
good and evil, life and death, may be made known "to the
principalities and powers in the heavenly places the manifold wisdom of God."
(3) Love, in its essential nature, prompts to vicarious
suffering. It can not exist in behalf of suffering objects,




8               The Plan of Salvation.
and not seek to assume their suffering and carry their
woe. Nothing so glorifies human nature as unselfish suffering for others. It is utterly incredible that God could
love us and not seek to descend into the depth of our sorrow and helplessness in just that way that would bring
him home to our hearts most tenderly and demonstratively. Say what we will in the way of theoretical justice,
Love, intuitively grasping the extent and depth of our calamity, silences all our syllogisms, overrides all our narrow
reasonings, and puts to shame all our heartless speculations,
by a heroic self-sacrifice which gains the end, and is its
own best vindication.  Melted hearts, quickened souls,
ransomed natures, transformed lives, are the unanswerable
vindication of the doctrine of the cross.
3. Thze Holy Spirit carries forward this work of grace.
It was expedient that the personal Saviour should be
withdrawn from human sight, and carry on his mediatorial
work away from human gaze. It was needful, therefore,
that another divine agency should be employed to make
this salvation available to man. "If I go not away, the
Comforter will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send
him unto you; and when he is come, he will convince the
world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment" (John
xvi: 7, 8).
The Holy Spirit is the great Revealer-putting into
words all that is needful to be known of the redemptionwork of Christ, and confirming it by miraculous attestations.
As this is to be a salvation for all nations and all ages,
this Spirit has a perpetual mission; and is in the word
and in the Church, a living, enlightening, quickening, regenerating potency; so that we are saved by " the renewing of the Holy Spirit."
We have, then,




The Plan of Salvation.            9
(I) The grace of God.
(2) The redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
(3) The renewing of the Holy Spirit.
Such is a brief, but we trust definite, view of what God
has done to save us. We inquire
II. WHAT MAY MAN DO FOR HIS FELLOWS IN THIS MATTER OF SALVATION?
This may seem to some a strange inquiry, since they
have been accustomed to regard man as entirely passive
in regeneration. But it is worthy of note that this grace
of God flows through human channels, or it flows not at
all.
When God came to save man, he came in the form
of a man, and put forth his grace through a human organism.
When the Holy Spirit came to convict the world of sin,
righteousness, and judgment, he came to the Apostles, and
put forth his converting power through their ministry. "I
will send him unto you; and when he is come to you, he
will convince the world," etc. (John xvi: 7, 8).
When the Spirit would instruct the Ethiopian eunuch,
he said unto Philip, " Go and join thyself to this chariot."
And Philip converted him (Acts viii: 29-40).
When the angel came to Cornelius, he would not tell
him of the salvation of God, but said, "Send for Peter;
he shall tell thee what thou oughtest to do " (Acts x: 5, 6);
and Peter taught him the way of life.
When our Lord appeared to Saul of Tarsus, he would
not reveal to him the way of salvation, but told him to go
to Damascus, and there it should be made known to him.
Ananias was sent to acquaint him with the will of God
(Acts xxii: Io-I6).




10             The Plan of Salvation.
It is not the grace of God in His heart, but in the sinier's heart, that saves.  It is not the love of God in the
suffering Jesus at Calvary that subdues the heart; but
that love and that suffering understood and appreciated
by the sinner. It is not the Holy Spirit, invisible, inaudible, and intangible, that regenerates; but the truth which
that Spirit reveals; so that we are " born again by the word
of God, which liveth and abideth forever."
Now between that heart of God-that cross of Christthat invisible Spirit, and our alienated hearts, some ministry must come in to carry to us the knowledge and the
grace, and to plead with us to be reconciled to God.  That
ministry is always a human ministry.  So entirely true is
this, that where there is no human ministry, as in heathen
lands, there is no knowledge of Jesus, the cross has no
power, and the Holy Spirit accomplishes no mission of
conviction.
Here, then, is what a man may do for his fellows.  He
may
"Tell to dying sinners round,
What a blest Saviour he has found."
He may instruct, persuade, entreat, until he prevails, in
writing on their hearts the covenant of God's love. It
may be the ministry of the parent, the Sunday-school
teacher, the preacher, the friend, the neighbor, the citizen;
it'may be performed by reading, by conversation, indorsed
by deeds of kindness and a holy life, or by public preaching;
but through whatever direct or indirect means, it is the duty
of every Christian to perform this ministry to the full extent of his or her ability, and bring the ignorant, and sinful, and careless into contact with the truth and grace of
God. Hence, while conversion is a divine work, it is also
(instrumentally) a human work (James v: I9, 20. Acts
xxvi: i(-i8. I Cor. iv: I5).




Thze Plan of Salvation.              I I
While, therefore, we pray for all men, we must also work
to bring them to Christ.
We inquire
III. WHAT MUST THE SINNER DO TO BE SAVED?
I am aware of a prevalent impression that salvation is
something wrought in us that we are passive recipients
of converting grace-that we can only watch and wait for
the tokens of God's presence and power, and the inner
revelation of his forgiving mercy. Let me quote from the
Westminster Coonfession of Faith, chapter x:
All those whom God hath predestinated unto life, and those
only, he is pleased, in his appointed and accepted time, effeclually to call by his word and Spirit, out of that state of sin and
death in which they are by nature, to grace and salvation by
Jesus Christ; enlightening their minds spiritually and savingly to
understand the things of God; taking away their heart of stone,
and giving unto them a heart of flesh; renewing their wills, and
by his almighty power determining them to that which is good,
and effectually drawidng them to Jesus Christ; yet so as they come
most freely, being made willing by his grace.
This effectual call is of God's free and special grace alone,
not from any thing at all foreseen in man; who is altogether
passive therein, until, being renewed by the Holy Spirit, he is
thereby enabled to answer this call, and to embrace the grace
offered and conveyed in it.
And in Fisher's Catechism  (Part II, pp. 141-2), under
question 89 of the Shorter Catechism, we have the following statement of doctrine:
Ques. 40. Is there any difference between conversion and regeneration?
Ans. They are as inseparably conjoined as the. effect is to its
cause. Regeneration, or the formation of the new creature (in




12              The Plan of Salvation.
which we are wholly passive), is the cause; and conversion, or
the motion of the soul to God, is the effect which infallibly
follows.
Q. 41. Can not man be the author of his own conversion?
A. No: He can neither prepare himself for it, nor co-operale
wit/ God in it.
Q. 42. Why can he not prepare himself for it?
A. Because "the carnal mind is enmity against God," and
remains so until regenerating grace takes place in the soul.
Q. 43. Why can not man co-operate with God in this work?
A. Because there can be no acting without a principle of
action. Regeneration being the infusing of spiritual life into
the soul, it is impossible the creature can co-operate or concur
with God in it, any more than L azarus in his grave could concult
in his own resurrection, till the powerful voice of Christ infused
life and strength into him.
This is the stumbling block in the path of thousands of
honest inquirers. If they are literally dead, and as passive
and helpless as Lazarus in the grave, what can they do?
And what is the use of preaching or expostulation?
Preach to Lazarus in the sepulcher! Call on him  to
awake and arise! Threaten him with eternal ruin if he
does not arise!  Hold protracted meetings to advance
his resurrection! The absurdity of this is at once apparent.
Let me say, that a man may be dead in one sense and
alive in another.  "Let the dead bury their dead."  The
dead first mentioned were in that sense alive that they
could bury their dead. "She that liveth in pleasure is
dead while she liveth."  A man "dead in trespasses and
sins," is in this sense alive, that he can sin; and in sinning
he exercises the very sauze faculties and powers that are exercised in spiritual hfe; only it is a perverted exercise of
these powers. Death, then, is used figuratively, to describe




The Plan of Salvation.               I3
the alienation of the soul from God-its separation from
the true joys of divine fellowship. But, though dead in
sin, man has a brain, a heart, a conscience, a will, loves
and hates, hopes and fears; only they are perverted. He is
able to see, hear, understand, believe, feel, and act; and it
is through the natural channels to the soul that God proposes
to convey his regenerating grace.  Thus said Jesus: "This
people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of
hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest at any time
they should see with their eyes, hear with their ears. understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should
heal them" (Matthew xiii: I5). Do you say it is a divine
work to open their eyes and ears? I answer, it is a human
work likewise. "I send thee to the Gentiles," said the Lord
to Saul, "to open their eyes, to turn them  from darkness
to light, and from the power of Satan to God" (Acts xxvi:
17, I8). It is, therefore, an unauthorized straining of a figure of speech, for the sake of logical consistency in a theological system, that leads to this false and most mischievous conclusion.
There is a passive form given, in our common version,
to an active verb, which seems to strengthen this error.
We read be converted where we ought to read convert or
turn.  For instance, in a text already quoted (Matthew
xiii: 15), lest they should understand with their heart and
be converted, ought to read and turn. And in Acts iii: 19:
"Repent ye, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may
be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come
from the presence of the Lord," ought to read: " Repent,
therefore, and turn, that your sins may be blotted out, and
that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the
Lord." As I am stating what is now universally conceded
by all competent scholars, it is not necessary to go into
an argument to prove it. The difference between the




14             The Plan of Salvatio1n.
readings is apparent at a glance. According to one, sinners are exhorted to passive submission in order to conversion when it shall please God to visit them. According to the other, they are commanded at once to turn to
God, that the promised blessing may be theirs. One represents God's delay as the cause of the delay of the sinner's conversion; the other represents the sinner's delay
in turning, as the cause of the delay of God's blessing.
The latter is, beyond all controversy, the true idea.
But without entering into any elaborate argument on
this point, I remark (I), that sinners are commanded to
save thzemselves (Acts ii: 40); and (2), that when sinners
cried out to know what they must do to be saved, they
were always told of something to be done on their part,
and were never encouraged to think that they could wait
in passivity for the salvation of God. God deals with us
in harmony with the laws of our rational nature. IHe respects the constitutional guaranties of that nature. He
stands at the door and knocks (Rev. iii: 20).  He will not
go in another way, nor will he break open the door. "If
any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come
in." That God deals with us in accordance with the faculties and rights of our rational nature, throws on us the
responsibility of acting a part worthy of that nature. If
God speaks, we are under obligations to hear; if he testifies, we must attend to the testimony submitted; if
he shows to us great mercy, it is ours to receive it into
our hearts; if he commands, it belongs to us to obey.
What, then, we ask, does God command the sinner to
do?
I. He?ust hear. "Incline your ear and come unto me;
hear, and your soul shall live."  "He that hath ears to
hear, let him hear." We must give attention-honest attention-to God's message. Unless we consent to bring




The Plan of Salvation.             15
an honest heart to the consideration of God's truth, not
one step can be taken toward conversion; and we dare to
say, that no grace of God or power of his Spirit, will ever
visit a heart that abandons itself to dishonest motives.
" How can you believe who receive honor one of another,
and seek not the honor that cometh from God only?" It
is in the power of every man to shut out God from his
soul forever. It is also in the power of every man, to
whom the Gospel comes, to receive God, in saving power,
into his soul, and share the blessedness of divine life.
Grace may provide food for a starving man, but hle must
eat it or starve. It is not vengeance that warns him:
" He that eateth not shall die." Nor is it vengeance that
says: " He that believeth not shall be damned." It is not
too much to ask that, in order to be saved, the sinner shall
give honest and earnest heed to the message of salvation,
and even part with all else, that he may secure this " pearl
of great price."
2. He must believe on the Lord fesus Christ. "Believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." This
is the first answer to a sinner who has as yet taken no step
toward conversion, other than to be alarmed at his condition. As the diseased man, ignorant and helpless, puts
his life into the hands of a physician, and trusts it there,
ready to hear his counsels, and do his bidding, so the
diseased soul is required to trust the Great Physician, acknowledging his power to save, and ready to obey his
voice.
Here, again, we are met with a serious difficulty. Faith,
we are told, is the gift of God-a special product of the
work of the Holy Spirit in the heart; and can not, therefore, be a duty on the part of the sinner, since he is entirely incapable of believing. The Westminster Confession
of Faith (chapter xiv) says:




&6               The Plan of Salvation.
The grace of faith, whereby the elect are enabled to believe
to the saving of their souls, is the work of the Spirit of Christ in
their hearts, and is ordinarily wrought by the ministry of the
word; by which, also, and by the administration of the sacraments and prayer, it is increased and strengthened.
Fisher's Catechism (Part II, p. I25) says:
Ques. io. Why is this faith, described in the answer, called a
grace?
Ans. Because it is the gift of God, freely bestowed upon the
sinner (Eph. ii: 8), who has no antecedent worth, value, or good
qualification, of which he can boast (I Cor. iv: 7).
If this be taken as true doctrine, it is impossible to
escape the conclusion that no man can believe until it
pleases God to make him believe; and the responsibility of
the sinner for continuing in a state of unbelief, can not be
fairly charged to his account. Who can defend, in this
view, the justice of the declaration, " Ie that believeth
not, shall be damned"? Let us look carefully at the passage referred to:
For by grace are ye saved, through faith; and that not of
yourselves, it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man
should boast (Eph. ii: 8, 9).
Does Paul refer to faith, or to salvation, as the gift of
God? We can scarcely suspect him to be guilty of so idle
an utterance as that faith is " not of works;" but he loses
none of his gravity or his dignity in affirming that salvation is not of works, but of faith.  Now, whatever it is
that is not of works, that is "the gift of God." The grammatical construction of the sentence forbids us to understand touto (that) as, standing for pistis (faith), since touto
is inl the neuter gender, and pistis is feminine. The rela



The Plan of Salvatizon.             17
tive, as Chandler observes, has the whole sentence that
goes before it for its antecedent. The meaning, therefore,
is clear: this salvation by grace is the gift of God, and is
realized through faith, and not through works, so that there
is no occasion of boasting.
The other text referred to in the quotation we have given,
is still less satisfactory:
For who maketh thee to differ? And what hast thou that
thou didst not receive? Now, if thou didst receive it, why
dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received it? (I Cor. iv: 7.)
Paul, in speaking of the apostles as stewzards, intrusted
with the treasures of heavenly wisdom for the benefit of
others, argues that men in such stewardshipz  have no right
to aspire to leadership, forgetting their subordinate position and perverting their trust into an occasion of gratifying ambition. But what has this to do with the faith which
the sinner is required to exercise?
The Apostle says, indeed, to the Philippians: "To you
it is given, in behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him,
but also to suffer for his name" (i: 29); but surely no one
will contend that sufferings were the direct gift of God.
The opportunity to believe, and the opportunity to suffer,
were given to the Philippians.
But, apart from the criticism of particular texts, let us
look at the general teaching of the Scriptures as to the
means by which sinners were led to believe.
Of John the Baptist it is said: "The same came for a
witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through
him might believe" (John i: 7).  Here faith was to be produced by the testimony of John, heard, understood, and
accepted.
In the case of the Samaritan woman, who brought her
neighbors to Christ, we read: " And many of the Samari



I 8; Thie Plant of Salvatior.
tans of that city believed on him for the saying of the
woman, who testified, He told me all that ever I did. So
when the Samaritans were come to him, they besought him
that he would tarry with them: and he abode there two
days. And many more believed because of his own word;
and said unto the woman, Now we believe, not because of
thy saying: for we have heard him ourselves, and know
that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world"'
(John iv: 39-42). Here it is evident that faith was created
by the evidence presented.
"And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence
of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But
these are written, that ye mziht believe that Jesus is the
Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye might have
life through his name" (John xx: 30, 3 I). It is vain to submit these evidences, if there is no capacity on the part of
the sinner to believe the testimony when it is furnished.
Of the Bereans it is said: " These were more noble than
those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with
all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily,
whether those things were so. Therefore many of them
believed" (Acts xvii: I I). "Many of the Corinthians
hearing, believed, and were baptized" (Acts xviii: 8). "For
whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be
saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they
have not believed? anid how shall t/zey believe iin him of whom
they have izot heard? and how shall they hear without a
preacher?.... But they have not all obeyed the Gospel.
For Isaiah saith, Lord, who hath believed our report?  So
thenz, faith comet/h by hearinzg, and hearizg by the word of
God" (Rom. x: 13-17).
Faith, then, can not be the gift of God in any sense that
can justify the sinner in waiting, in mere passivity, for a
divine work to be wrought in his soul by a special visita



T/e Plaitz -of Szatvation.           19
tion of the Holy Spirit. If faith comes by hearing, by
searching the Scriptures, by an honest examination of the
claims of Jesus, then this attentive hearing must be given.
Let us not be understood as affirming, that a mere intellectual assent to the teachings of the Bible is to be accepted
as faith. Faith in the Lord Jesus is not like faith in a
mere historical statement concerning Hannibal or Napoleon, or an assent to a fact of ordinary occurrence. The
difference, however, is not in the method of believing, but
in the nature of the things believed. Faith in a historical
statement that does not personally concern us, is merely a
question of evidence; and the moral nature has nothing,
perhaps, to do with it. But faith in Jesus involves grave
moral consequences. It involves a disruption of the ties
that bind us to evil; a renunciation of the sins that have
enslaved us; a crucifixion of the flesh with its desires and
lusts; a forsaking of all other lordships, for the lordship
over conscience and life of this Son of God. An unwillingness to accept these legitimate results of faith in the Christ,
may lead us to deal dishonestly with the evidence he brings
us, to refuse attention to his claims, to quench our best
convictions of truth. It is a moral struggle. He who believes in Jesus, therefore, believes zvith2 thke heart; accepts,
in his moral nature, the honest results of the truth concerning the Saviour.  His deliberate acceptance of the
truth concerning the Christ, is a triumph over the evil
that is in him; a subjugation of his rebellious nature to
the power of the truth of God. It is in view, of this vzoral
aspect of faith that it is said, " He that believeth not shall
be damned."
There is no more conscious act of selfhood, therefore,
than this of believing on the Lord Jesus Christ, as the result of honest attention to the truth of the Gospel. In the
very nature of things it is essential to the enjoyment of




20             zThe Plan of Salvatioll.
the blessings of salvation, not only because it alone can
connect us with the unseen, and enable us to realize the
power of an invisible Saviour, but because, until we come
into such an honest fellowship with truth as to accept all
the consequences of faith in Christ, it is impossible that
the soul can be prepared to accept the spiritual treasures
of the grace of God. Hence, "without faith it is impossible to please God."
3. He must repent. "God now commandeth all men,
every-where, to repent" (Acts xvii: 30). "Repent, and
turn, that your sins may be blotted out" (Acts iii: I9.)
Sin must be put away. Wrongs must be righted. The
affections and sympathies must be withdrawn from all that
is evil. We must deny ungodliness and worldly lusts.
The will must own the sovereignty of the will of God. It
is no difference what it costs. We must pluck out the
right eye, if need be, or cut off the right hand, and enter
into life halt and maimed, rather than, having two eyes
and two hands, to be cast into hell fire. The puling, cowardly soul, that will not wrestle with its sins, and uncoil
the serpents of evil that are crushing out its life, can not
be saved. The demand of the Gospel is uncompromising.
4. He must confess Christ before men. " If thou shalt
confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thy
heart that God raised him from the dead, thou shalt be
saved; for with the heart man believeth into righteousness,
and with the mouth confession is made into salvation"
(Romans x: 9, io). In the mighty controversy going on
between heaven and hell, we are not allowed to proclaim
neutrality, nor to withhold our suffrages from Him to
whom we look for redemption.
5. He must be baptized, in the name of the Lord yesus
Christ, for the remission of sins. " Repent, and be baptized,
every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remis



The Rlan of Salvation.             2I
sion of sins" (Acts ii: 38). "Arise and be baptized, and
wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord" (Acts
xxii: I6). "Go, teach all nations, baptizing them into the
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Spirit" (Matthew xxviii: I9). We are saved, according
to our text, "by the washing of regeneration, and the renewing of the Holy Spirit." " Baptism doth now save us,"
says Peter, "through the resurrection of Jesus Christ;"
and this salvation he declares to be, " the answer of a good
conscience toward God" (I Peter iii: 2 ). As we have
bodies as well as spirits, we must have ordinances as well
as principles. As the body is to share in the service and
in the salvation, so it must share in the consecration. And
as, in the consecration, the whole spiritual nature is given
up to be immersed in the love of God, so the whole physical man is given up to be immersed in water, that thus,
through faith, repentance, and baptism, the whole internal
and external man may be made over to God in an everlasting covenant.
To guard against erroneous representations on this point,
it may be well to say that the Scriptures attach no miraculous, regenerating efficacy to the waters of baptism. No
one has a right to come to baptism who is not already a
believer and a penitent. It has no value, except as an act
of faith, and derives its efficacy from the faith of the subject in the promises of God, and the honesty of his purpose to forsake sin and walk in obedience to the Lord. It
does not procure pardon. Our reliance for pardon is in
" the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world;"
in his death for our sins, and his resurrection for our justification. There is, there can be, no merit either in the
faith or the obedience which we render. But it has pleased
our gracious God to appoint conditions of salvation, by accepting which, we may personally appropriate the blessings




22              Thze Plan of Salvation.
which the mercy of God offers to all. These conditions
are wisely and mercifully adapted to our nature and our
condition. Faith and repentance subdue the spirit to the
will of God; baptism is adapted to our material nature,
and enables us, in a sensible and evident submission to
divine authority, to testify to others our conversion, and to
appropriate to ourselves the promises which have been connected with "the obedience of faith." Read again the passages which we have quoted concerning baptism, and you
will see how, as we come, step by step, to accept the Gospel
conditions of faith, repentance, confession, baptism, we are
permitted to take the promises which are coupled with
these conditions and call them ours. Thus our assurance
of pardon and adoption rests on no mere emotion, or dream,
or imagination, which, departing, leaves us again in darkness; but on the unchanging promise of God, and our
consciousness of having complied with the conditions to
which the promise is annexed. The obedient subject of
the Gospel says, I have believed; I have repented; I
have confessed the Lord Jesus; I have been buried with
him by immersion into death, and have risen with him to
a new life: his promise is mine; " He that believeth and is
baptized shall be saved."
6. He must conztinue to walk in thle commandments of
yesus. As our inquiries to-day relate mainly to a present
salvation from sin, we can say but little on this last point,
important as it is. But we are careful to say, that, however complete our present salvation, it must yield fruit in
a persevering obedience to the will of God-in a new life
of righteousness and holiness-or we fail of the grace of
God, and, like the Israelites, though saved out of Egypt,
reach not the promised land. " Be thou faithful unto death
and I will give thee a crown of life."




The Plan of Sahlation.            23
IV. WHAT DOES GOD PROPOSE YET TO DO, IN US AND
FOR US?
i. " I will be merciful to your unrighteousness, and your
sins and iniquities I will remember no more" (Heb. viii: I2).
2. " I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a
people" (Heb. viii: Io). "I will be a Father to you, and
you shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty" (I Cor. vii: I8).
3. "You shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit"
(Acts ii: 38). "Because you are sons, God hath sent forth
the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba,
Father" (Gal. iv: 6). "The Spirit itself beareth witness
with our spirit, that we are children of God" (Rom.
viii: I6). "Strengthened with might by his Spirit in the
inner man" (Eph. iii: I6). " It is God that worketh in you
to will and to work of his own good pleasure " (Phil. ii: I3).
4. " If children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs
with Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. viii: I7). So says our
text: "That being justified freely by his grace, we might
be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life." " He
that keepeth my sayings shall never see death."
Do you still tremble in doubt? Then remember that
this is the only sure r-efluge. Should Atheism  prove true,
the Christian is not the loser. He goes by the pleasantest
route to the land of darkness, and sinks in the abyss of
nothingness without knowing it. Should Deism  prove
true, and all men reach immortality through the operation
of natural laws, he is saved with the rest. Universalism
does not imperil his hopes.  Spiritualism will admit him,
as a true Christian, to the highest sphere of light. Calvinism will not shut out any man of pure heart and holy life.
If " faith alone" justifies, surely faith and its fruits will not
condemn. Why, then, risk the soul on uncertainties, which,
at best, bring no gain, which, at worst, involve eternal loss?




24               The Plan of Salvation.
Why seek to cross the fearful chasm on a single rope, even
with the best balance-pole that any system can furnish,
and take one chance in a thousand of safety, when there is
in reach a suspension-bridge-a highway of faith and holiness-over which you may certainly pass to the land of
eternal blessedness? " Our rock is not as their rock, our
enemies themselves being judges."
Can heaven grant more? Pardon, peace, sonship, divine guidance and strength, victory over the world, victory
over death, immortality, eternal riches and honors, sweet
peace and rest, and boundless love and joy; the loftiest
dignities and delights to which created intelligences can
aspire! How poor is earth! How fleeting its joys and
its honors! What baubles are its greatest treasures! What
conflict, and pain, and grief, and anguish are here! How
earth's beauty fades, and its pleasures vanish, and its loves
and hopes perish! "What shadows we are, and what
shadows we pursue!"
" Born, living, dying,
Leaving the still shore for the troubled wave;
Battling with storm-clouds, over shipwrecks flying,
And casting anchor in the silent grave."
But there is an endless life; and there is a path that
leads to it, and a hand to guide us in the way, and a fountain of mercy at its entrance, where every sin-sick soul
may wash and be cleansed in the blood of the Lamb, and
be robed in a clean white pilgrim-robe for the journey; and
a covenant-keeping God to protect and to strengthen us
on the way; and a divine light-a pillar of cloud and fireto go before us; and waters in the desert; and manna from
heaven; and, now and then, bunches of grapes from the
land of promise; and a high-priest at Jordan to divide the
waters; and bright throngs of ransomed ones waiting for
us over the river.  Will you go? " Whoever will, let him
come."




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NAJTURE A PLEDGE OF GRACE.
A SERFMON
SUGGESTED BY THE
Transit of Venus,
DECEMBEF, 6TH, 1882,








ComplimentS of the AuIthoro








Nature a Pledge of Grace.
A SERMON
SUGGESTED BY THE
TRRNSIT OF IENUS, DECEMBER 6TH, 1882.
DELIVERED IN THE MEETING HOUSE OF THE
FIRST BAPTIST CHUR@H, PHILADELPHIA,
ON THE EVENING OF THE SAME DAY.
By GEORGE DANA BOARDMAN,
Pastor.
PUBLISHED BY FREQUEST.




PRINTED BY
ALLEN, LANE & SCOTT,
Nos. 229-231 SOUTH FIFTn STIEET,
PHILADELPHIA.




NATURE A PLEDGE OF GRACEI
Thus saith the Lord, If ye can break Ml3y covenant of the day, and Mly
covenant of the night, and that there should not be day and night in their
season; then may also flly covenant be broken wvith David liy servant, that he
should not have a son to reign upon his throne.-Jeremiah xxxiii. 20, 21.
TO-DAY has occurred an event of rare
The TansitofVenus. spectacular interest; it was the transit of
Venus. It was an event of great importance in the astronomical world: for transit observations have for their
object the more accurate determination of the sun's horizontal parallax, and hence the earth's distance from the
sun, and from  that the respective distances from  the sun
of all the other planets; in other words, the dimensions
of the solar system. The transit will not occur again till
June 7th, 2004; an interval of one hundred and twentyone years and a half. No wonder that countless eyes in
various parts of the world have been gazing to-day with
intense interest on the rare and important phenomlellon.
But it is not my purpose to deliver an astronomical
lecture. My purpose is even loftier; namely, to unfold and
apply a great moral lesson which the transit of Venus
suggests and confirms.




4             NATURE A PLEDGE OF GRACE.
First of all, then, let me call your parThe Transit an instance of Nature'sticular attention to this great fact: The
Stability,
ability to predict the transit of Venus was
based on the stability of natural law. The transit was not
an: accident. Science knows no accidents.  The transit was
a natural event, occurring in due order of nature. For
nature has its order, and that order is inexorable.  Completely learn that order, and you shall completely recite
nature's past, and completely foretell nature's future. Hence
the favorite saying of Auguste Comte: " Science; whence
prescience," that is, pre-science.
In fact, so universal and inflexible is
FoDistinguishLawan natural law  felt to be, that many  of the
votaries of science actually worship it, knowing no God but nature.  They make the profound mistake of failing to distinguish between law and force. A
law of nature in and by itself is not a force, it is only a
statement of the way in -which force works. For example: The law of gravity is not the same as the force
of gravity: the law of gravity is simply a brief and comprehensive phrase, declaring the mode and rule according to which the gravitating force invariably works. The
phrase does not answer such questions as the following:




NATURE A PLEDGE OF GRACE.               5
"Why does the gravitating force invariably work according
to this invariable rule? Why does every particle of matter in the universe inexorably tend to every other particle, mutually  attracting and being mutually attracted
with a force proportional directly to the quantity of their
matter, and inversely to the squares of their distances?
How comes it that what we call the gravitating force invariably works according to a definite, unalterable rule,
which rule we call the law of gravity?" The atheist can
not answer these questions. The Christian can. He believes that every atom in the universe inexorably tends
to every other atom, because God, when He created these
atoms, intended that they should always thus tend to
each other.  He believes that this invariable tendency
of every atom to every other atom is as much the result
of God's will as was the original creation of these atoms.
All matter has this tendency, because this tendency is a
part of God's settled plan, being one of His original and
continued purposes. And because this tendency is invariable, universal, and ceaseless, men have discovered it,
and they call it the law of gravity. I do 1not object to
the phrase, provided it is not used as, alas! it too often
is, to exalt law into force and to shut out a personal
and ruling God from all connection with matter. The




6            NATURE A PLEDGE OF GRACE.
truth is, this phrase, law of gravitation, means something
more than that every atom in the universe tends to every other atom  in a definite, invariable way; it also
means the original and continued intention of Almighty
God that it should be so. And what we affirm  of the
law of gravity, we affirm of all the laws of nature.
They are not self-moving, self-determining forces; they
are but certain invariable rules which Deity has chosen
to prescribe to Himself, according to which He from the
beginning determined that He would govern every atom of
matter in the universe. The laws of nature are but the
rules which Almighty God, as King of His own realm of
matter, has devised and laid down for His own procedure.
The Laws of Nature  Or, to put the matter in another way,
are God's Covenant
with Man.      and in accordance with our text, the laws
of nature are God's covenant with man: "If ye can
break My covenant of the day, and My covenant of
the night." According to Holy Scripture, then, the ordinances of matter, the appointments and arrangements
of the material universe, the laws of nature, are not
only God's self-prescribed method of procedure; they are
also actually His covenant.  What we call the law of
day and night is really God's promise to give us in




NATURE A PLEDGE OF GRACE.                   7
regular succession day and night, God's gracious engagement with man to alternate regularly light and darkness.
This, in fact, as He had declared to the patriarch Noah,
was what the rainbow  should signify:This is the token of the covenant which I make
Gen. ix. 12-17.
between Mle and you, and every living creature
that is with you, for perpetual generations: My bow I do set in the
cloud; and it shall be for a token of a covenant between Me and the
earth; and it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the
earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud; and I will remember
My covenant which is between Me and you and every living being
of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all
flesh; and the bow shall be seen in the cloud; and I will look upon
it, to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every
living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.
Not that the rainbow itself was God's covenant that He
would never again flood the earth; it was but His appointed token of such a covenant; "My bow I set in the
cloud; and it shall be for a covenant-sign between Me
and the earth." Accordingly, every time we see it arching the horizon, the God of the rainbow bids us to accept it
as His personal pledge that while the earth
Gen. viii. 22.
remaineth, seed-time and harvest, cold and
heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.
The laws of nature, then, are God's covenant with man.




8            NATURE A PLEDGE OF GRACE.
And just because the laws of nature are
Secret of the Ability
to PredicttheAstrono- God's covenant —in other words, God's selfmical Future.
prescribed rules of procedure-the laws of
nature are stable, to be depended on absolutely. Hence
the ability to predict, for example, the astronomical future.
Precisely because the laws of nature are stable, the
astronomer was able to predict that there would be a
transit of Venus on December Gth, 1882. Precisely because
the laws of nature are stable, the astronomer is able to
predict that there will not be another transit of Venus
till after an interval of one hundred and twenty-one years
and a half.  Precisely because the laws of nature are
stable, the astronomer is able to predict that, after the
next transit of Venus on June 7th, 2004, there will be
another transit eight years afterwards, namely, June 5th,
2012.  Every one of these predictions is based on the
absolute stability of natural law. So supreme was the confidence of the astronomers in the unchangeableness of the
laws of nature, so absolute their conviction that Venus
would apparently begin to cross the sun's disc at 9 h.
2 m. 45 s. A. M. Philadelphia time, December 6th, 1882,
that in order to witness the phenomenon they have not
hesitated to make large personal sacrifices, involving
months of laborious and costly preparations and long




NATURE A PLEDGE OF GRACE.                 9
and perilous journeys to remote and savage spots of earth;
and this, too, in utter ignorance of what the weather
would be when the critical moment should arrive.  So
morally certain were they that the transit would take
place at the moment predicted that they hesitated not to
risk the elaborate and costly preparations of years and
of continents on  the chance of a few minutes of fair
weather at certain hours on the sixth day of December,
1882. It was a sublime instance of men's faith in nature.
And the issue has justified the faith. The transit of Venus
has taken place precisely as it had been predicted it would;
and so another august witness took the stand to-day to
testify to the unchangeableness of nature's laws, that is to
say, to the veracity of God's covenant of nature.
And now to our text.  Our prophet repMeaning of our Text
for the Jews.  resents God as using the stability of His
administration of nature as the pledge of the stability of
His administration of grace:Thus saith the Lord:If ye can break My covenant of the day and My covenant of the
night,
So that there should not be day and night in their season:
Then also My covenant with David My servant shall be broken,
That he shall not have a Son to reign upon his throne.




10            NATURE A PLEDGE OF GRACE.
These  words were spoken in the  darkest period  of
Hebrew history.  The disobedience and obduracy of generations was just issuing in the shamel and despair of the
Babylonian captivity. But amid this terrible downfall,
this apparently hopeless wreck of the Jewish nationality,
one blessed memory survived; it was the remembrance
of God's covenant with David.  More than four centuries before Jeremiah, God, through the mouth of His
prophet Nathan, had said to the man  after His own
heart
When thy days shall be fulfilled, and thou shalt
II. Samuel vii. 12, 13,
Acts ii. 30, 31.    sleep with thy fathers, I will set up thy Seed after
thee, who shall proceed from thy loins, and I will establish His kingdom; He shall build a house for My name; and I will establish the
throne of His kingdom forever.
And now, amid the horrors and despair of the Babylonian siege, God would comfort His servant Jeremiah, and
the few who, like Jeremiah, had remained loyal, by assuring them that His covenant with David was as inviolable
as His covenanted laws of nature:Thus saith the Lord:Jer. xxxi. 35-37;
xxxiii. 14-26.  Who appointed the sun for light by day,
And the ordinances of the moon and the stars for light by night;




NATURE A PLEDGE OF GRACE.                 11
Who stirreth up the sea, and its waves roar;
The LORD of hosts is His name;
If My covenant be not with day and night,
If I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth;
If these ordinances depart from before Me, saith the Lord,
If ye can break My covenant of the day and of the night,
So that there should not be day and night in their season:
Then also shall My covenant with David be broken,
That no son of his shall reign on his throne.
Thus the God of nature bids His servant Jeremiah accept
His inviolable covenant of day and night, of sun and
moon and stars-in other words, the stability of nature's
law-as the resistless argument for, and the infallible sign
and pledge of the stability of His covenant with David.
And the issue proved that the covenant of the promised Messiah was as inviolable as the covenant of day and night.
Jesus the Christ was born from  the loins of David.  And
as the transit of Venus, after many a year of prediction,
proves the  inviolability of God's covenant of nature,
so the birth of Jesus Christ, of the house and lineage
of David, six hundred years after Jeremiah's prophecy,
and a thousand years after the original covenant with
David, proves the inviolability of God's covenant of grace.
And so was fulfilled the blessed Maschil of Ethan the
Ezrahite:




12            NATURE A PLEDGE OF GRACE.
Psalm lxxxix. 34-37. My covenant will I not break,
Nor alter what hath gone forth from My lips.
Once have I sworn by My holiness:
I will not lie unto David.
His Seed shall be forever,
And His throne as the sun before Me;
As the moon shall it stand fast forever,
And as the witness in the skies is faithful.
eaningof our Text  Having  thus explained  the  prophet's
for Ourselves.  words in their bearing on his own countrymen and generation, we are prepared for the general
lesson which they teach all lands and all times-it is this:
The stability of natural law an argument for and a pledge
of the stability of moral law.
No one doubts the stability of natural
Stability of MoralLaw. law.  WTe talk indeed of breaking the laws
of nature, violating the laws of health, and the like. But
the language is manifestly loose. By no manner of possibility can we break a single law of nature.  It is the
laws of nature which, if we do not obey them, break us.
For example; a man lives a life of sensuous excesses
and dies.  WThy does he die?   Because he has broken
the laws of health?   No; he dies because the laws of




NATURE A PLEDGE OF GRACE.            13
health would not be broken, they insisted on having
their own way, they broke him. The laws of nature are
absolutely inviolable. Think you that the laws of morals
are any less inviolable?  Shall the God who rules the
natural world with a sceptre so sovereign and changeless, rule the spiritual world with a feeble and vacillating wand? While the world of matter is under the
reign of law and order, is the world of spirit under
the reign of chance and caprice? No; when you can
break God's covenant with matter, then, it may be, you
can break God's covenant with spirit.
Think not, then, that sin will ever go unTrue of Sin.
punished. You can no more break God's
law of righteousness than you can break God's law of gravitation. Hurl yourself against the law of gravitation by
leaping from a pinnacle; do you break the law of gravitation? No; the law of gravitation breaks you, for there you
lie, a crushed, dead body. Hurl yourself against the law of
righteousness by leaping from the pinnacle of sonship to
the eternal Father; do you break the law of righteousness?
No; the law of righteousness breaks you, for there you lie a
crushed, dead soul.  Sin and punishment are as indissoluble as cause and effect. True, you may not in every




14            NATURE A PLEDGE OF GRACE.
instance see the punishment: for the consequences of sin,
though always inevitable, are not always apparent.  As
force in nature, although indestructible, is capable of assuming different guises of motion, as, for instance, heat,
light, electricity, so the consequences of sin may appear in
various forms, either in this world or in the next, either in
remorse or in penitence, either in your own person or in
the person of Him who Himself bare our
I. Peter ii. 24.
sins in His own body on the tree.  But
whatever the form of the consequence, the law of sin and
punishment is as inexorable as the law of cause and effect.
True of Righteous-   And as it is with sin, so it is with righteousness.  That every true service for God,
the very tiniest as well as the very grandest, shall sooner or
later receive its full reward, is as absolutely certain as that
God exists. And this for two reasons: First, it is of the
very nature of righteousness that it should issue in reward,
even as it is of the very nature of cause that it should issue
in effect. And, secondly, in addition to the inherent, inviolable nature of righteousness, God has solemnly given
His own personal promise in this direction, and this in
many an explicit Scripture.  Take, for example, the promise of our text.  While God's covenant with David, taken in




NATURE A PLEDGE OF GRACE.              15
its literal, technical sense, was a personal, and, so to
speak, physiological covenant, meaning the Davidic progenitorship of the promised Messiah or Christ; yet the
covenant, taken in its moral, essential sense, was a spiritual covenant, meaning the setting up of a spiritual kingdom  along' the line of David's Son and
iatt. xxii. 41-45.
Lord; a kingdom which should be universal and lasting, because spiritual. Thus interpreted, God's
covenant with David was a universal covenant, offered to
you and to me as well as to the son of Jesse, and
involving all God's promises, even every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus; for it is in Him who was of the house
and lineage of David that God's promises
II. Cor. i. 20.
are the yea and the amen.  And as it
was in the days of Jeremiah, so it is in ours: God still
points to His inflexible ordinances of heaven and earth,
His unchangeable appointments of sun and moon and
stars, His irreversible covenant of day and night, as the
pledges of the eternal inviolability of His promises in
Jesus Christ. Yes, as certainly as there is a gravitating force
which works according to an unchanging law, so certainly
will Jesus Christ and whoever is Jesus Christ's yet win a limitless and reverseless triumph; for to this Almighty God has
solemnly pledged the very inexorableness of the laws of the




16            NATURE A PLEDGE OF GRACE.
nature He Himself has ordained.  Ay, God's covenant of
grace is even more certain than God's covenant of nature.
Heaven and earth shall yet pass away, but never God's word.
The very elements themselves shall melt
II. Peter iii. 10-13.
with fervent heat; but out of the ashes of
the wrecked globe shall rise in immortal resurrection
the new heavens and the new  earth, wherein dwelleth
righteousness. Less hopeless, then, is it to attempt to reverse the laws of nature than the laws of grace; less absurd
to fight against gravitation than against Christianity; less
idiotic to undertake to annihilate matter than to avert the
coming coronation of the covenanted Son of David.
The great Lesson of  This then is the great lesson of the transit
the Transit.   of Venus-the stability of natural law, the
symbol and the pledge of the stability of moral law; or,
more briefly, nature a pledge of grace.
Let me conclude with an inference and with a word of
cheer.
The Spirit of Proph-  And, first, the inference.  We can not,
ecy the Testimony to
Jesus.        in the light of our subject, fail to be impressed with the conviction that the prophets of the Old
Testament must have been inspired. For, while astronomers base their predictions on ascertained facts and stable




NATURE A PLEDGE OF GRACE.              17
laws, prophets hazarded their predictions on countless unforeseen contingencies. It is evident that a problem is
difficult in proportion to the number of elements it involves. Thus, while it is comparatively easy to solve
an astronomical problem in which only two mutually attracting bodies are considered, the problem of determining the motions of three mutually attracting masses, or
the problem of Three Bodies, as it is called, was one from
which even the genius of a Newton recoiled. Amazing as
was his analytic power, even Newton was baffled in his
attempts to reduce the perturbations of the planets to
formulas, pronouncing the problem insoluble, and expressing the apprehension that these, as he supposed, uncalculable perturbations might some day plunge creation into
chaos.  Nevertheless the genius of subsequent mnathematicians has solved this problem of Three Bodies; and this
solution was possible, because the laws of the heavenly
bodies are stable, and only need to be discovered, in order
to our being able to predict the planetary future. In fact,
these perturbations themselves are such splendid instances
of the stability of natural law that it was on the basis of
them that the existence and place of the planet Neptune
were predicted before it was discovered by the telescope.
On the other hand, man, in distinction from sun and




18          NATURE A PLEDGE OF GRACE.
planet, atom and gravitation, is a living conscious power,
endowed with freedom of choice and capacity of will and
self-motion.  This introduces into the problem of the
prophet an element of infinite complexity and uncertainty; it is that most inconstant, capricious, uncalculable
of things-human free will. Accordingly, how countless the
number, how complicated the unforeseen relations, which a
single human will introduces into any single Messianic
prophecy, or prediction of the Christ! Doubtless mind
has its laws not less than matter. And these laws may
be discovered, as indeed many of them have been. But
no discovery of the laws of mind, no reduction of them
to formulas, no combination of these formulas, can help
me as a prophet of a far-off future. I may discover the
laws or modes according to which the human will moves;
but I can not predict far in advance the direction of the
movements of a single human will.  That depends on
untold myriads of absolutely unforeseen contingencies. No
humanly devised theory of probabilities is broad enough
to solve, no human calculus is searching enough to analyze the perpetually variant fluxions of human motives,
choices, and caprices. And if the solution of the famous
problem of Three Bodies, in a department of investigation
where everything proceeds according to definite, invariable,




NATURE A PLEDGE OF GRACE.             19
clearly ascertained laws, was achieved only after the most
laborious and protracted mathematical calculations by men
endowed with marvelous analytic power, what shall we
say of the infinite intricacy of the problems which lay
before the Old Testament prophets, when they foretold,
ages in advance, minute details touching the career of the
coming Christ, and hazarded their minute predictions on
the perfectly uncalculable movements of man's free will;nay, more, on the infinitely varying thoughts and emotions and volitions of millions of men and women and
children during hundreds of years?
Oh! brethren and friends, the argument, as I know you
must feel, is absolutely overwhelming!  If the transit of
Venus on December 6th, 1882, in precise answer to the
predictions of astronomers as based on the stable, inviolable, demonstrated laws of the natural universe, proves
that God administers His material creation with an even,
unwavering, inexorable hand; then the birth of Jesus
Christ, in exact accordance with the predictions of the
prophets-predictions hinged on the ever fluctuating volitions, and the sudden, uncalculable caprices of millions
of men, and this during hundreds of years,-proves that
Almighty God has had from the beginning an irreversible
plan, and that the prophets of the Old Testament, in pre



20            NATURE A PLEDGE OF GRACE.
dicting  as they  did, were moved by His  inspiration.
Psalm lxxxix. 3, 4; When, for example, I read in the Old TesIsaiah vii. 14; Micah v.
2.            tament that Immnanuel was to be born of a
virgin, and of the line of David, and in the town of
Bethlehem; and when I read in the New Testament that
Matt. i. 18, 23; Luke centuries after these predictions Immanuel
ii. 1-6.      was born of a virgin, of the line of David, in
the town of Bethlehem; when I remember that these minute, precise predictions were hazarded on the capricious
impulses and secret plans of millions of unborn men,
scattered through Asia, Africa, and Europe, on the rise
and fall of coming empires, the edicts of kings, the intrigues of politicians, the schemes of merchants, the tears
of widows, the prayers of saints, the curses of reprobates,
and all these for hundreds of years; when I remember
that the resultant of these inconceivably numerous and
complex forces was at last made to converge into one
Person, out of unnumbered millions, and in one little,
obscure spot of Palestine, out of the whole wide earthwhen I remember all this, I feel a resistless force laid
on me which compels me to confess that God  is infinitely wise and strong, foreseeing from the beginning
all things, and predetermining all things, because He had
foreseen them. Verily, the spirit of prophRev. xix. 10.
ecy is the testimony to Jesus. And if the




NATURE A PLEDGE OF GRACE.               21
transit of Venus, in exact answer to the predictions
of astronomers, proves that astronomy is true, and that
you can not resist the God of nature, does not the
birth of Jesus Christ, in exact answer to the predictions
of prophets, prove, and for an unspeakably stronger
reason, that Christianity is true, and that you can not
resist the God of Scripture?
Lastly: The issue of all that has been
Trust God absolutely.
said to-night is in a word of cheer to all
who love God; and the word of cheer is this: Trust your
heavenly Father absolutely. All nature is pledged to the
inviolability of God's promises, and therefore all nature is
pledged to give you good cheer. You can not be loyal to
infinite God in vain. As neither man nor Satan can break
God's covenant of nature, so neither man nor Satan can
break God's covenant of grace.  Let the wise men of
science convene in congress; let the high priests of
nature gather in solemn conclave; let them deliberate and
decree, saying: "Venus, cross not the sun's disk; light,
slacken thy speed; earth, cease to roll; gravitation, lay
down thy force." But lo, Venus does cross the sun's disk;
light does throb as swiftly as ever; earth does continue to
roll; gravitation does still balance creation. You can not




22            NATURE A PLEDGE OF GRACE.
break God's ordinances of heaven and earth, God's covenant of day and night, God's laws of nature.  These He
has solemnly pledged as the guarantee of His own personal
veracity, bidding us accept the constitution of the physical
universe as the very oath and sacrament of the inviolability of His promises in Jesus Christ; and
Heb. vi. 18.
so, by these two immutable things, in which
it is impossible for God to lie, we have strong consolation
who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set
before us. Strong as that oath and sacrament was in the
prophet's day, how much stronger it is in ours, when the
telescope daily brings us fresh instances of the inviolability
of natural law! Every fulfillment of an astronomical prediction is a fresh witness to the veracity of God's promises.
He is in very truth the covenant-keeping God. Let not,,
then, the transit of Venus to-day speak to you in vain.
Let its celestial eloquence cheer and inspire you. Go forth,
iny brother, in the strengthened conviction that your Father
in heaven is to be supremely trusted. Ay, blessed are all
they who put their trust in Him.
Collect.    OQGod, who by the leading of a star didst manifest.
Thy only-begotten Son to the Gentiles, mercifully
grant that we, who know Thee now by faith, may after this life have the
fruition of Thy glorious Godhead, through Jesus Christ our Lord..
Amen.