THE 
 
 1
 
 THE 
 
 HIGHWAY OF HOLINESS.
 
 THE 
 
 HIGHWAY OF HOLINESS. 
 
 ielps ia % Spiritual gftfe. 
 
 BY 
 
 W. HA Y M. H. AITKEN, M.A., 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 "THE SCHOOL OF GRACE"; "THE GLORY OF THE GOSPEL' 
 "NEWNESS OF LIFE," ETC. 
 
 3XTE-W 
 
 LONDON: 
 JOHN F. SHAW AND CO., 
 
 48, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.G.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THIS second volume of the series of Sermons bearing the 
 general designation of The Mission Pulpit differs from 
 its predecessor in that none of the discourses which it contains 
 are of an evangelizing character. They are addressed to those 
 who have already received the gospel in the obedience of 
 faith, and are designed to lead such onward in the spiritual 
 life. It may perhaps be suggested that sermons of this class are 
 not Mission Sermons, and therefore are out of place in such a 
 series as The Mission Pulpit: but we answer that missions have 
 a double object; the.y are designed to reach the careless and 
 the worldly, but theyp are also intended to benefit those in 
 whom the new life has begun by leading them on to a fuller 
 consecration of themselves to God, and a more practical 
 apprehension of their spiritual rights and privileges. This 
 secondary object is usually present to the mission preacher's 
 mind in his morning services, when he has reason to believe 
 that his congregation is, to a very great extent, composed of 
 the more earnest and spiritually-minded members of the flock. 
 Hence no true idea of a mission and of mission teaching can 
 be given in such a series unless sermons of both classes are 
 published. I have thought it well, however, not to mingle 
 sermons of these two classes indiscriminately, but rather to 
 aim at a definite object in each volume, by selecting and
 
 iv Preface. 
 
 putting together in each severally those addresses which are 
 adapted specially for one or other of the two classes with 
 which in mission work we have to do. The advantages of 
 adopting this course are obvious the reader is by this arrange- 
 ment enabled to select the volume most likely to be suitable 
 to his own case, or most likely to be of service to others in 
 whom he is interested, and it is also possible for the author to 
 observe something like order and method in his arrangement 
 of the contents of each book. 
 
 It will be observed that the sermons of this volume, although 
 preached at different times and places, have been arranged so as 
 to exhibit a certain sequence of ideas. Thus the first deals with 
 the general subject of holiness as the special end and aim, sub- 
 jectively speaking, of our probation ; the second indicates the 
 only source of true holiness Christ in us the hope of glory; the 
 third presents us with the criterion of holiness the character 
 of God exhibited for our imitation in the human form and in 
 the life of Christ; while the fourth sketches that process of 
 growth and development in holiness which should characterize 
 Christian experience. Passing, then, to the region of ex- 
 perience, we consider, first, the true attitude of the believer 
 starting on his career, as illustrated by the triumphant anticipa- 
 tions of the Israelite on crossing the Red Sea ; and next, in sad 
 and humiliating contrast, the line of conduct too often pursued 
 still by those who come out of the spiritual Egypt, as by their 
 Israelitish prototypes of old; and then we go on to consider 
 that new start which Israel made on the death of Moses, as 
 illustrating the passage of humbled and penitent souls to a 
 higher level of Christian experience and to the triumph of the 
 life of faith. The next two sermons are companions, and so 
 are those that immediately follow them. The first two deal 
 with the subject of following Christ, as illustrated in the history
 
 Preface. v 
 
 of Simon Peter ; and here are shown, first, the hindrances to a 
 life of close fellowship with the Master, and then the conditions 
 under which we may rise to such an experience. In the next 
 two sermons we consider the spiritual life in its active and 
 contemplative phases, as illustrated respectively by what is 
 recorded of the two sisters, Martha and Mary. Then follow 
 in the next three discourses words of warning against certain 
 common forms of danger to which the spiritual life is exposed; 
 and then the volume closes with a sermon on the Christian life, 
 considered as a perennial feast of good things, in which special 
 reference is made to that Holy Banquet of Love in which this 
 aspect of our experience is so eloquently set forth, and 
 another on the Christian armour, which in this volume, as in 
 the epistle to the Ephesians, is our "Finally" 
 
 Hoping that the consecutive character of the teaching it 
 contains may add to the interest of this little volume, I have 
 ventured thus to call the reader's attention to it. I now com- 
 mit the book into his hands, hoping and praying that it may 
 contribute, in some small way at any rate, to the perfecting of 
 the saints and the edifying of the body of Christ.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 * 
 
 PAG 
 
 THE HIGHWAY OF HOLINESS . ... I 
 
 "TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST" . . 17 
 
 IMITATORS OF GOD . . . 31 
 
 GROWTH AND HARVEST . . ... 47 
 
 ANTICIPATIONS OF FAITH . . . . . 63 
 
 THE DISAPPOINTMENTS OF UNBELIEF . '. -79 
 
 THE CROSSING OF THE JORDAN . . 95 
 
 "WHY CANNOT I FOLLOW THEE NOW?" . . .Ill 
 
 "FOLLOW THOU ME" . . . . . 126 
 MARTHA; OR, THOUGHTS ON THE ACTIVE LIFE . . 141 
 
 MARY; OR, THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE . . .157 
 
 THE PERIL OF LEGALITY . . . . 172 
 
 THE PERIL OF ANTINOMIANISM . . . 1 83 
 
 THE PERIL OF WORLDLINESS . ... 204 
 
 "LET us KEEP THE FEAST" . ... 220 
 
 THE WHOLE ARMOUR OF GOD . ... 236
 
 Cije !>tg!)toap of 
 
 " And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The 
 way of holiness ; the unclean shall not pass over it ; but it shall be for 
 those " (or ' He shall be with them,' if you look in your margins) : 
 "the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein. No lion 
 shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon, it shall not 
 be found there ; but the redeemed shall walk there : and the ransomed 
 of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting 
 joy upon their heads : they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow 
 and sighing shall flee away." Isaiah xxxv. 8-10. 
 
 WE can hardly make a greater mistake in our theology 
 than to suppose that the gospel dispensation has been 
 designed by God in order to bring down the standard of the 
 divine claims to the level of human infirmity. So far from this 
 being the case the gospel dispensation has been inaugurated 
 and designed specially in order that human infirmity may be 
 raised to the level of the divine claims. However great 
 this error may be, I am afraid it is a common one. As we 
 contemplate the claims of God on the heart of man, ex- 
 tending as they do to the region of motive as well as that 
 of conduct embracing in fact the whole substance of our 
 lives, we are ready to ask, "Who is sufficient for these things?" 
 Impressed with this feeling, it is perhaps not surprising if we 
 should feel disposed to regard the gospel as a kind of revela- 
 tion of indulgence on the part of God. We are apt to con- 
 ceive of Him as though He intended to say to us through 
 the gospel, " I have found that you cannot rise to the claims I 
 have already made upon you, therefore I will reduce my claims 
 and be satisfied with something less than what I originally 
 designed. Henceforth under the gospel the demands of the 
 law are no longer to be rigidly enforced ; nor the threatened 
 penalty, in case of failure and disobedience, to be incurred." 
 It is easy to see that if this were the true character of the 
 gospel dispensation, we should have little occasion to glory in 
 the cross, nor could such a gospel fail to exert a deteriorating 
 influence on mankind. 
 
 n. i it
 
 The Highway of Holiness. 
 
 Evangelical truth would very soon prove what it is even now 
 by some slanderously affirmed to be, demoralizing, and Christ 
 Himself become a minister of sin to us ! Let us rather 
 believe that through the gospel new sources of spiritual 
 power are opened up to us new objects set before us, aye, 
 and brought within reach of our hearts' contemplation and 
 comprehension. And this being so, God is in a position to 
 expect of us greater things than could be realized under the 
 law. And those who surrender themselves fully to Christ in 
 the gospel dispensation stand upon a vantage ground such as 
 did not belong to those who lived in the earlier periods of the 
 world's history. 
 
 In this passage the prophet was looking forward, as it would 
 seem, to the glories of the Christian dispensation, and this was 
 the characteristic of this new era that he contemplated with the 
 most complete satisfaction, " An highway shall be there, and a 
 way, and it shall be called The way of holiness." But it may 
 occur to some of us to ask, " Had there been no knowledge 
 of the ' way of holiness ' under previous dispensations ? Does 
 holiness of life belong only to the gospel age?" I reply, Un- 
 doubtedly there were holy and humble men of heart before the 
 Incarnation men who lived in advance of their age. These 
 were the bold pioneers of spiritual progress, who made their 
 way through the pathless forest and the trackless wastes ere the 
 King's great highway was opened for our feet. It was with 
 them as with the pioneers of civilization in our own days. 
 Hardy travellers have made their way right across the conti- 
 nent of Central Africa, exploring in almost all directions the 
 vast and unknown region ; but there is no highway across the 
 continent of Africa : and those, therefore, who have crossed 
 it, or attempted to do so, have had to face great and untold 
 difficulties, and endure a vast amount of hardship and privation. 
 By-and-by, if the world lasts long enough, and civilization pro- 
 gresses, there may be a grand trunk road right across that 
 continent, and by-and-by perhaps railways may be laid, and 
 easy communication established, with that remote and bar- 
 barous region. 
 
 My friends, it is even so, as it seems to me, with regard 
 to the highway of holiness. Before the Christian dispensa- 
 tion earnest and devoted men attained to various degrees 
 of holiness, but the King's highway to holiness was not yet 
 open. It was not yet revealed to the world what true and 
 
 2
 
 The Highway of Holiness, 
 
 perfect holiness was, nor how we are to rise to it. Right- 
 eousness rather than holiness was set forth in the law. It 
 needed the Incarnation of the Son of God to reveal it to man. 
 And not until the Word of the Father was clothed in human 
 form, and lived among His fellow-men in fashion as a man, did 
 human eyes contemplate the true ideal of holiness, the 
 standard and type of absolute perfection. In the life and 
 conduct of Christ that standard was embodied and revealed ; 
 by the death and resurrection of Christ the spiritual power was 
 secured to us by which it becomes possible for us to rise to the 
 level of conduct so indicated. The highway of holiness was 
 thus opened ; and, my dear brethren, it now becomes possible 
 for " the wayfaring men, though fools," to walk therein. 
 
 There are two thoughts then specially suggested to dur 
 minds in this connexion. The first is, that in order to open 
 the highway of holiness it was necessary that a perfect example 
 should be given to mankind, so that men could understand 
 what perfect holiness means ; and that has been presented to 
 us in the human life of Jesus. And this is no small matter, 
 my dear brethren ; for till some such revelation had been made 
 we might have groped after holiness in vain ; nay, we might 
 have mistaken something else for it, a mistake by no means 
 uncommon amongst the fanatical devotees of the East. 
 
 But there is another thought. Not only does Christ stand 
 before us as a perfect example, but He also imparts to us the 
 secret of all true spiritual power by bringing us, the wandering 
 children of men, into close and blessed connection with God. 
 The same power which rendered it possible for Jesus Christ as 
 a man to be perfectly holy is thus brought within our reach by 
 the Incarnation, and death and resurrection, of Jesus Christ. All 
 obstacles, all barriers and impediments, between us and our God 
 have been by Him removed; and hence it is possible for us to find 
 in God all those resources of spiritual power by which we may be 
 able to run and not grow weary, and to walk and not faint. Thus, i 
 we may say, not only have we the map and the chart of the I 
 highway of holiness placed in our hands, but also the highway \ 
 itself opened up to us by the communication of a spiritual I 
 ability to tread therein. 
 
 But if those advantages are real, they carry with them en- 
 hanced responsibilities. Where more is given more must needs 
 be required. So long as we were ignorant of the power of 
 steam, we thought it a very great thing if we could journey 
 
 3
 
 The Highway of Holiness. 
 
 from one end of the country to another in our stage-coaches 
 at a rate of ten miles an hour. But as soon as the discoveries 
 of Stephenson placed steam at our disposal for locomotive 
 purposes, we ceased to be satisfied with that rate of speed, 
 and now unless our trains cover a distance of thirty or forty 
 or even fifty miles an hour we are by no means satisfied with 
 them. Indeed our patience would be sorely tried by that 
 which we should have commended before as an excellent rate 
 of speed. Even so while the dispensation of the law existed, 
 and there was no other revelation, a lower standard of holiness 
 of life was all that could be looked for, The deep spiritual 
 import, and the wide scope of the law, was not apprehended 
 by those who were under the law, and in the lives of ancient 
 worthies we see in how many respects as to their very ideas of 
 holiness they seem to come short of the gospel standard. 
 
 But when Jesus Christ entered the world, and exhibited to 
 us what true moral beauty is, and what godliness and spiritual 
 holiness really are when He reflected upon the creature 
 all the glories of the Creator in His own blessed Person the 
 case was changed. Further, when by His great work He 
 bound heaven and earth together, constituting Himself the 
 Jacob's ladder upon which the angels of God ascend and 
 descend, taking up the story of our needs and bringing down 
 the riches of God's supply, He took away our last excuse for 
 a life of failure and inconsistency, and we cannot plead either 
 ignorance or inability. The standard of holiness is there, and 
 the power ; and the fault is ours, if we do not imitate the one 
 and avail ourselves of the other. 
 
 Having thus realised our responsibility, then let us proceed 
 to consider some of the characteristics of the life of holiness 
 to. which the prophet here calls our attention, and the condi- 
 tions which are attached to the right of way. The first thing 
 stated about it is this, " The unclean shall not pass over it ; " 
 and I wish for a moment to lay stress upon this consideration, 
 that until we are washed and cleansed from our " old sins " we 
 are not in a position to pass over the King's highway of holiness. 
 
 A large number of persons start wrong here. As" soon as 
 they come under religious influences, they become conscious 
 of devout aspiration and earnest longings after holiness, and so 
 they set to work to try and make themselves holy. They lay 
 down rules for their conduct, and endeavour to shape their 
 lives as Christians should. They become very methodical and
 
 
 The Highway of Holiness. 
 
 regular in their religious habits, and sometimes very zealous 
 in their religious work, and thus they hope that they will 
 gradually grow into a condition of holiness. But all the time 
 the unforgiven past stands between them and holiness, and 
 till that past is blotted out, and its record obliterated from the 
 archives of eternity, they must needs be precluded from 
 attaining the holiness that their hearts are set upon. Oh, my 
 dear friends, are there any of you who, desiring to be holy, 
 have not begun by seeking purification ? Let me press upon 
 your minds that cleansing must come first, holiness afterwards. 
 First, the heart needs to be delivered from its unfriendly 
 burthen of sins ; and this once having been done, it is then 
 possible for us to go on to walk in holiness and righteousness 
 before God all the days of our life ; but purification first. 
 
 Hence it is that some people who desire to lead holy lives 
 are no better than legalists. They cannot love much, because 
 they have not had much forgiven them ; thus they lose the true 
 motive of a Christian life, while they are crippled in their efforts 
 ^ to attain to the proper standard of holiness, both by the weight 
 of unforgiven sin and by absence of that spiritual power which/ 
 flows to us through reconciliation. We must pass through the/ 
 gate before we can pass along the way, and that gate is the 
 cross, where the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanse 
 from all sin. 
 
 Nor is it difficult to find a reason for this necessity. Indeed, 
 this passage gives us a sufficient reason if we are to accept the 
 marginal rendering " For He shall be with them." It is quite 
 true that Jesus Christ was the Friend of publicans and sinners ; 
 but He was their Friend because He saved them from their sins. 
 It would have been an unseemly thing if Jesus Christ had 
 lived in companionship with them while they pursued their 
 sinful courses. If He had chosen a band of brigands as His 
 disciples, and carried them about with Him wherever He 
 went through Galilee and Judaea, his reputation would de- 
 servedly have suffered. The sinners that He drew towards 
 Himself were men who wished to have done with their sins, 
 and who came to Him for deliverance from their sins. And it is 
 so now; those only who hate their sins, and who come to Christ 
 to be delivered from their sins, can walk along the highway of 
 holiness, because He is sojourning with those who sojourn 
 there, and He cannot walk with the unclean. 
 
 But having called attention to this statement as a reason for 
 
 5
 
 The Highway of Holiness. 
 
 the necessity of cleansing, let us now dwell upon it for a few 
 moments as a characteristic of the way of holiness, and of the 
 experience of those who pass along it. The highway of holi- 
 ness is the path of fellowship with the divine. When Christ 
 was here on earth He ever moved along this way, and He is 
 still to be found there by those who pass along it. Indeed, so 
 closely is His presence and our fellowship with Him connected 
 with true spiritual holiness, that we can scarcely say whether 
 the holiness is the fruit of the fellowship, or the fellowship the 
 /effect of the holiness. We may put it thus : Fellowship with 
 / Christ is the privilege of those who are wholly consecrated to 
 I the Lord, whose supreme desire is to be holy as He is holy ; 
 \ and just in so far as this privilege is actually realized, the soul 
 \ is more and more completely sanctified by contact with the 
 divine. Thus, to consecrate ourselves to Him, turning our 
 backs on all that is opposed to His will, is to be in such a 
 position as to be able to enjoy fellowship with Him, and to 
 enjoy fellowship with Him is to become assimilated to Him ; 
 and thus it is that sanctification becomes actual and positive, 
 instead of being mainly negative in its nature, and expressing 
 itself chiefly in the region of the desires or intentions. 
 
 Hence, if we would make progress in holiness, we cannot 
 speak too strongly of the importance of asserting our privilege 
 in this respect, and endeavouring to maintain unbroken fellow- 
 ship with God in Christ, for only thus can we advance. To 
 lose fellowship is to stand still, and make no progress in the 
 way ; nay, even to lose ground or backslide. To walk with 
 God is to gain ground steadily, while we behold His glory, 
 and are changed into the same image as by the Spirit of God. 
 On the other hand, it is not less true that if a man is careless 
 about holiness, and if his whole heart's desire is not bent upon 
 attaining to it, he must soon forfeit the privilege of fellowship. 
 It is only while we walk in the light, as He is in the light, that 
 we have fellowship with the Father and the Son through the 
 Holy Spirit. These two elements in our experience act and 
 react upon each other. The warmer and closer our fellowship, 
 the deeper our love of holiness ; and the more careful we are 
 in our pursuit of holiness, the more shall we enjoy the blessed- 
 ness of Christ's fellowship. 
 
 Now are there any amongst us who know little of this life 
 of fellowship with God? Have we to confess that we do not 
 take Him about with us wherever we go, nor feel His presence 
 
 6
 
 The Highway of Holiness. 
 
 sanctifying all we do ? Alas ! that so many of us Christians 
 should have to make such confessions. May not the reason 
 be, dear Christian brother, that you are not walking along the 
 way of holiness? You have reason to believe that you have 
 been saved from condemnation and death by faith in Christ ; 
 but, alas ! you are satisfied with this, instead of pressing 
 towards the mark for the prize of your high calling in Christ 
 Jesus. Ah, my friend, you are out of harmony with the 
 mind of Jesus ; for His will is your sanctification, and your 
 will is only your salvation, and can two walk together except 
 they be agreed ? " Are your minds set upon right, O ye con- / 
 gregation?" David enquires of his contemporaries, and we) 
 need to press the same question on our fellow-Christians. 
 Many of us have our minds set upon escaping hell, and; 
 getting, somehow or other, safe into heaven ; but this is not the 
 highway of holiness, and Jesus is not there. " Follow holiness,"\ 
 exclaims St. Paul, " without which no man shall see God." 
 Ah, how many lose the vision of God, in this life at any rate, 
 because they do not take this advice ; and if we lose that 
 vision now, what right have we to hope for it hereafter ? 
 
 Dear brethren, let us not by negligence and carelessness, or 
 by being contented with a low and unworthy level of conduct 
 and experience, forfeit this which is the crowning blessedness 
 of life, " He shall be with them." Surely every step is lost 
 which is not taken in the society of Jesus, and only brings us 
 farther and farther from our journey's proper end. 
 
 This characteristic of this highway of holiness on which 
 we have just been dwelling prepares us for the next. What 
 wonder if we walk in fellowship with Christ that we should 
 never lack the needed guidance and direction, and so the Seer 
 goes on to say, " Wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err 
 therein." This highway is, first, the way of the purified; and, 
 next, the way of fellowship with God; and in the third place, 
 it is the way of right direction. Here is a promise that may 
 well comfort us in the perplexities of life. How often in life it 
 seems as if we scarcely know which way to turn ; we want 
 to do*the right thing, but we hardly know which is the right - 
 thing 'to do. The questions of what I must call religious 
 casuistry from time to time suggested to us are sometimes 
 most bewildering. But here is the promise if we are on the 
 King's highway of holiness, " Though we are fools we shall 
 not err." The reason why we make such great mistakes as we 
 
 7
 
 TJte Highway of Holiness. 
 
 sometimes do is surely that we get off the King's highway of 
 holiness. We allow ourselves to aim at some other object, 
 and to be guided by some lo\ver desire. We begin to pursue 
 our own pleasure, or to gratify our ambition, or perhaps we 
 seek to please other people, and to avoid the cross. So we come 
 down from the highway to seek a smoother path in some by- 
 way, and soon we miss our course and wander wearily, as in a 
 labyrinth of error, from which afterwards it may be difficult 
 to extricate ourselves. Qh_for_a " single eye ! " " If thine eye 
 be single thine whole body shall ^ejull of light." 
 
 But when the wayfaring man is on the highway of holiness 
 this promise will be fulfilled. He may seem to make mistakes, 
 but the apparent mistake will not be a real error. God will 
 overrule what appears to be a blunder to His own glory. In- 
 deed, I believe that we may have to thank God for life's 
 perplexities, just because they teach us to feel so conscious of 
 our dependence on our Guide, and to commit ourselves fear- 
 lessly and continuously to Him who will lead us by the right 
 way, though it may seem a strange way, for " His way is in 
 the sea, and His path in the great waters, and His footsteps 
 are not known, yet He leads His people like a flock." 
 
 There is yet another thought suggested by this clause 
 which may serve to explain some of our errors, for real 
 Christians unquestionably do sometimes err. The prophet 
 here speaks of those who are fools as being assured of right 
 /doctrines. May not one cause of mistakes sometimes be that 
 \ we are., not content to take the place of fools. We feel too 
 much confidence in our own sound judgment and common- 
 sense, and ,o_we scarcely regard it as necessary to enquire of 
 tjae Lord. I do not mean to say that we ought not to use our 
 natural faculties. They are a trust from God, and we are 
 bound to use them. But we are warned not to lean on our 
 own understanding, and he who gives us this advice would 
 have been a much happier man and made much fewer practical 
 mistakes if he had only taken it himself. Most humbling it is, 
 surely, to think of a man possessed of such intellectual gifts as 
 belonged to Solomon making such grave and such foolish 
 errors as he was guilty of, and we may be sure that we shall 
 fare no better. What is the proper attitude of the child of 
 God who feels his own ignorance and folly? David shall ex- 
 press it for us ; for David practised what his more gifted son 
 only preached : " Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto 
 
 8
 
 The Highway of Holiness. 
 
 the hand of their masters, and as the eyes of a maiden unto 
 the hand of her mistress, so our eyes wait upon the Lord our 
 God." That is the attitude of the wayfaring fools on the 
 highway of holiness, and such are more infallible than ever 
 Roman Pontiff claimed to be. 
 
 But there is yet another reason why we sometimes err, sug- 
 gested to us by this clause. And this other reason brings 
 before our minds the fourth characteristic of the way of holi- 
 ness. It is " the way of right direction," but it is only the way 
 of right direction to those who are wayfaring men. "The 
 
 wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein." Do we % ^ 
 
 not sometimes err because we have so little of the wayfaring 
 man about us ? Living as we do in a luxurious age, how many 
 of us surround ourselves with luxury, and lajM>urselves jputjbr 
 selfindjalgence ! Carefully do we feather our nests," "anH 
 deeply do we strike our roots into the earth, as if this were 
 indeed our continuing city, and the Jerusalem above only a 
 sentimental dream. Like Moab, we are settled on our lees, 
 and shrink from the painful process of being emptied from 
 vessel to vessel, and our dull ears scarce hear the voice that 
 ever sounds through a world that God hath cursed, "Arise ye, 
 and depart, for this is not your rest ; because it is polluted it 
 shall destroy you with a sore destruction." And while we thus 
 take our ease and allow ourselves to act as if all around were 
 permanent, the spirit of the world soon begins to enthrall us, 
 and the vision of the New Jerusalem fades from the dimming 
 eye of our hope, and we become citizens of this country, like 
 those " enemies of the cross of Christ " of whom St. Paul says, 
 " They mind earthly things." Ah, my dear friends, if we 
 decline to recognize our own privileges as citizens of heaven, 
 if we do not obey the call, " Set your minds on the things 
 that are above, not on the earth," can we wonder that we 
 err? Indeed, how can we do otherwise? We have lost sight 
 of our proper landmark. 
 
 Remember, I beseech you, my dear brethren, that the 
 purest affections of earth and its most innocent pleasures 
 may come to be barriers across the road to heaven. We are 
 called to use the world as not abusing it ; surely it is the abuse 
 of the world when we allow it to take the place of heaven. 
 When our hopes are of earth, and the plan and purpose of our 
 life of earth, and our joys and pleasures of earth, and our 
 trials and sorrows of earth, and our love, and perhaps our en- 
 
 9
 
 The Highway of Holiness. 
 
 mities, of earth ; when our treasure is for the most part on 
 earth, and our employment on earth, our home an earthly 
 home, our life an earthly life, oh, do you wonder that we maks 
 (poor progress on the highway of holiness! Are we pilgrims 
 / and strangers, dear friends ? or are we_settjed residents ? Do 
 we feel at home on earth? or are our dwellings, tents as it 
 were, pitched by the wayside, while we hasten on to the city 
 that hath foundations ? Are we greatly concerned about our 
 comforts and luxuries, or do we treat those with indifference 
 while we press forward? Are we eager to avoid the un- 
 pleasant, and to court the pleasurable as if this were our 
 paradise, or are we comparatively careless about these if only 
 we may please the Master? 
 
 It is a very easy thing for us to get up at our meetings and 
 sing sentimental hymns about being "pilgrims and sojourners" 
 travelling to our home ; but what next ? Do we then go 
 down to our offices and make as much money as ever we can, 
 so that we may better our position, or be able to surround our- 
 selves with as many carnal gratifications as our purse will bring 
 within our reach without committing actual sin ? Do we dole 
 out our money with an unholy prudence to charitable objects, 
 while we spend the superfluity of our means upon ourselves 
 and our creature comforts 1 You are too heavy-laden, my 
 brother ; you can't push on along the King's highway. You 
 carry too much luggage for a pilgrim ; and it not only weighs 
 you down, but it causes you an immense amount of care and 
 anxiety. You can't take all that with you to heaven ; hadn't 
 you better send some of it on in advance, as the Master has 
 told you to do ? " Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven." 
 
 There is a quaint old Latin proverb which tells us, "The penni- 
 less travellers shall sing before the robbers." No wonder; for 
 what can the robbers take from them ? And many a Christian 
 might sing defiance of all enemies even of the great robber 
 himself, if only we made over our all to its proper Owner, and 
 regarded it as a sacred trust to be used for Him. But no. How 
 many of us content ourselves with offering a slender portion of 
 our all to God ? The rest we have to drag along with us in 
 mortal fear of the robbers, who are always on the look-out for 
 affluent travellers who turn aside a little from the King's high- 
 way. And many of us are grievously robbed ; for we find we 
 have put our money into bags full of holes, or by some strange 
 transmutation process of a moral character our silver is become
 
 The Highway of Holiness. 
 
 dross base coin, that will not purchase the satisfaction and 
 the joy that once was ours at a gift, when, with a light heart 
 and only a pilgrim's wallet, we pressed onward and upward 
 along the highway of holiness. Oh, rise, ye children of the 
 resurrection, rise above the sordid world; rise from a self- 
 indulgent life ! Gird up your loins as those who are on a 
 journey; take your staff in your hand and press forward; and 
 then it will be said of you one day as it was said of those 
 ancient pilgrim fathers, " They went forth to go into the land 
 of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan they came" 
 
 Now for another feature of this highway of holiness. It is 
 not only the way of right direction to the wayfaring man, but 
 is also " the way of safety." " No lion shall be there, nor any 
 ravenous beast shall go up thereon. It shall not be found 
 there." If we are therefore bona fide pilgrims not merely 
 pilgrims in name and journeying to the land of which the 
 Lord has said. " I will give it to you," we are assured that the 
 highway of holiness shall be a way of safety to us. " No lion 
 shall be there." What ! Is Satan then really to lose his 
 power to do us harm ? We tremble at the thought of what his 
 power is, and at the ruthless deeds he has done among human 
 kind ; and when we hear of the principalities and powers of 
 darkness that are arrayed against us our hearts are ready to 
 sink. But cheer up ; here is good news for us ; for " no 
 lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall come up 
 thereon." He may come to the hedge which fences in the 
 highway from the rest of the world ; he may growl and roar, 
 and do his best to terrify you, but so long as your eye is, 
 single, and you are moving on the King's great highway of/ 
 holiness, the lion cannot lay a paw upon you or inflict a single ; 
 wound. " No lio^sJTaTlJje tr^ggfe^" 
 
 Can we get a little comfort in thinking about our relations with 
 our great foe? " Out of the strong came forth meat, and out of the 
 eater came forth sweetness." You remember Samson's riddle; let 
 us give it a novel application. Simon Peter says, "Your adversary 
 the devil goeth about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may 
 devour." That sounds very terrible : going about as a roaring 
 lion. If one of those lions in your Zoological Gardens were 
 to break loose, and news were brought to this congregation 
 that there was a roaring lion going about in our streets seeking 
 whom he might devour, we should not be very eager to leave 
 the safe precincts of this church. But if we were assured that
 
 The Highway of Holiness. 
 
 the savage beast was so strangely constituted that there were 
 only half a dozen persons in this town that he could devour, and 
 if we had good reason to know that we were not one of those, 
 then our confidence would soon be restored. Now let us con- 
 sider what is implied in these alarming words. First, we are 
 told he "goeth about." That is something very startling. 
 He and his emissaries are everywhere, always present, ready to 
 do their fatal work. And further, he "goeth about like a 
 roaring lion." More terrible still, giving us some idea of his 
 appalling strength and malignant hostility. Is there any com- 
 fort to be derived from all this ? Look at it again. He is 
 described as "going about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he 
 may devour." Surely he need not go far. Why seek when 
 there are plenty of those whom he desires to destroy ap- 
 parently within his reach ? Why should he not seize hold of 
 the first Christian he meets and make a meal of him? Nay, 
 but he cannot do so ; he must " seek whom he may devour." 
 It is not every Christian that he meets that he can " devour." 
 No ; he must go about and seek " whom he may devour." 
 
 There are some people he cannot devour. Here is encourage- 
 ment for the children of God. The power of the enemy is 
 limited. He can only go so far, and no further. The lion's 
 roar means terror to those out of the highway of holiness, but 
 it means assurance and security to you who are in it. When 
 does the lion roar ? The Psalmist tells us that the lions roar 
 and suffer hunger. The roar is the sign of their hunger ; they 
 are silent when they have just been well fed. So the thought 
 suggested to our mind is that Satan is presented to us in the 
 form of a roaring lion, because he is hungry. He cannot get 
 what he wants, cannot satisfy the appetite of his malignity as 
 he desires. There are many people whom he seeks to get hold 
 of but cannot. And why? Because of the Divine Presence 
 between them and him. The angel of the Lord, who closed 
 the mouths of the lions in Daniel's den, has still plenty of 
 similar occupation. And we needn't fear " the lions' den, or 
 the mountains of the leopards," so long as the high way of 
 holiness lies there. 
 
 Fear not, the lions are chained. Admit no timorous, un- 
 believing thoughts. " Who is he that can harm you, if ye be 
 followers of the good One?" Only keep to the highway of 
 holiness, and you are safe, and the attacks of your foe shall 
 only deepen your sense of security. And if you ask for an
 
 TJie Highway of Holiness. 
 
 explanation of this mysterious safety, I point you to the 
 words which follow. It is the way of the redeemed. "The 
 redeemed shall walk there." Why has Satan no power to do 
 us harm ? Because we have been redeemed out of his power. 
 Jesus Christ gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from ) 
 all iniquity. And now that He has redeemed us, we are in a / 
 position to claim exemption and immunity, not from Satan's 1 
 attacks, but from his tyrannous power over us. He may make/ 
 his attacks, and he may say as Pharaoh said, " I will pursue;" 
 but when, like Pharaoh, he goes on to say, " I will overtake," 
 God says him nay, and puts a pillar of fire between Pharaoh 
 and the host of Israel, so that the one comes not near the 
 other. And why ? Because by the shedding of the blood of 
 sprinkling they had been redeemed, first from His own judg- 
 ment against their sin, and then, as a consequence, they were 
 redeemed from the hand of the enemy, and from the house of 
 bondage. Oh, children of the Resurrection, claim the full 
 benefits of redemption, lay hold of that which is your blessed 
 prerogative ! Dare to defy the enemy in God's name, who 
 hath redeemed you by His own offered life, redeemed you from 
 the power of the enemy, redeemed you from the body of death, 
 redeemed you from the beggarly elements of this passing 
 world. Believe in your redemption, and you shall find it a \ 
 Blessed and stupendous reality, not a barren legal fiction. 
 Tnus we are carried on to the next characteristic of the 
 highway of holiness. It is " a way of joy." This surely is 
 not to be wondered at ; for if we are saved from the lion 
 because we have been redeemed if we are living in the 
 fellowship of Christ, if, as wayfaring men, we are assured of 
 the right direction no wonder that we should be happy. Do 
 you think it is strange that the ransomed of the Lord should 
 return and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon 
 their heads? Why should they not rejoice? Well does one 
 of our fatmliar hymns put it : 
 
 " With steady pace the pilgrim moves 
 
 Towards that blissful shore, 
 And sings with cheerful heart and voice, 
 "Tis better on before.'" 
 
 But there is no real happiness out of the highway of holiness. 
 Who are the happy Christians ? They who follow the Lord 
 fully. Who are the miserable Christians ? Those who aim at
 
 The Highway of Holiness. 
 
 compromise, who lead a half-hearted life ; for the lion can tear 
 and wound them, if not utterly destroy them, as they stray 
 from time to time from the highway of holiness ; nor can they 
 enjoy fellowship, for they do not walk in the light ; nor can 
 they be sure of right direction, for " he that walketh in dark- 
 ness knoweth not whither he goeth." But the happy travellers 
 along the King's highway are so joyous that they are obliged 
 to sing ; they cannot keep their happiness to themselves ; nay, 
 their joy beams from their faces. The ancient masters used 
 to paint a halo round the heads of the saints, and very un- 
 natural some of these halos look. But there is a real halo 
 around the head of every child of God who walks in the high- 
 way of holiness. You have only to look into those faces to 
 see how bright their inner life is. The everlasting joy is upon 
 their heads, bathing them in a holy radiance of calm delight ; 
 and the more they sing of their God, the more the skin of 
 their countenance shines. They move on in that quiet con- 
 sciousness of His presence, and still as they sing they go 
 steadily forward marching and singing, singing and marching, 
 until the hymns of earth are lost in the triumph song of 
 heaven. 
 
 Oh, learn to sing, ye children of the Resurrection ! Let the 
 joy of the Lord be your strength. God wants you to be happy, 
 and you shall be happy if only you give yourself over to Him. 
 Do not be afraid to step out into the darkness along the high- 
 way of holiness. He will turn the darkness into light, and 
 make the rough places plain, only go on. When the Israelites 
 went up to Jerusalem they used to sing their songs of degrees 
 along the way; for every stage there was a particular song 
 appointed. They raised the familiar strain at each stage of the 
 journey, and as they sang it brought before their minds the 
 thought that they were so much nearer to Jerusalem, and to 
 the temple of the Lord. Even so, as \ve journey toward our 
 heavenly Jerusalem, let us sing our hymns of degrees, and as we 
 sing feel ourselves by one degree, and yet another degree, to 
 be drawing nearer, and still nearer, to the blissful place to 
 which we are bound. And if we pass through a sterile " valley 
 of Baca" our songs turn it into a well, and the pools shall be 
 full of the water of life, that flows from the throne of God, and 
 brings along with it wherever it goes fulness of joy and plea- 
 sures for evermore. 
 
 And thus we arrive at the last characteristic of the King's 
 
 14
 
 The Highway of Holiness. 
 
 highway of holiness. To recapitulate for a moment, we have 
 seen that it is first, the way of the purified; second, it is the way 
 of fellowship ; third, it is the way of right direction; fourth, it 
 is the way of wayfaring men ; fifth, it is the way of safety, 
 because it is trodden by the redeemed ; sixth, it is the way of 
 joy ; and now, seventh, it is the way that leads Home. 
 
 Yes, it leads to our true home. We love the word home, do 
 we not? And some of us who are a good deal away from 
 home perhaps love it better than other people do. What a 
 joy there is in going home even though we know our 
 earthly home is only a pilgrim's tent by the wayside, and that 
 we shall have to leave it again very soon. Yet we love it, 
 because it is the nearest approach to our true home that we 
 can have here. But after all this is only the semblance and the 
 type, the reality is yonder. If it be joy to revisit our earthly 
 home, though its pleasures are so uncertain and short-lived, 
 what will it be to be there ! And as we press onwards and 
 upwards along the way of holiness, and rise above the mist and 
 clouds that dim our sight, our vision stretches as from some 
 mountain height towards the distant view, and we seem to 
 catch a faint glimpse of the queenly city the New Jerusalem. 
 Yes, we are going home ! we are going home ! we are going 
 home ! We are on the King's highway, and every step brings 
 us a little nearer to that home where our own Father lives, and 
 where we shall receive such a welcome as only a father can 
 give ; where our brothers and sisters, who have gone before 
 brothers and sisters dear to us as life itself, and not lost because 
 they have gone before shall reach out to us the hand of wel- 
 come ; and familiar voices shall greet our ears, teaching us that 
 heaven is not a strange place. Then, as we gaze on the pure 
 and holy and godlike, we shall feel the rush of joy as the reign 
 of love begins, and our hearts shall beat with rapture at the 
 thought safe home at last, safe home at last ! 
 
 Oh, blessed are they who know they are going home ! Oh, 
 blessed they who delight in the thought that home is nigh, whom 
 each day's journey leaves a little higher above the plain of earth, a 
 little higher upon the mountain of God, and happy they who cheer 
 themselves amidst life's trials and difficulties 4vith the blessed- 
 ness of such anticipations. They tell us thaf*the ancient cru- 
 saders, as they marched towards Palestine, encountering untold 
 hardships and innumerable difficulties and trials, used to cheer 
 each other with a familiar war cry. You might hear it ringing 
 
 15
 
 The Highway of Holiness. 
 
 from rank to rank as the mighty host moved forward. Some- 
 times it would be in the morning, when they had just struck 
 their tents and had begun to move forward when the sun was 
 rising with all its glory in the east, and day was just breaking 
 upon them another day of hardship and toil. Then from the 
 vanguard of those serried ranks you would hear the shout arise, 
 " Dahin ! " " thither." And as they raised the cry the ranks 
 behind them, rank after rank, would take it up, until the country 
 resounded with theory "thither;" and withtheword their spirits 
 would rise superior to all the hardships of the way. " We are 
 bound for the Holy Land to plant the cross and overthrow the 
 crescent, and each day's march brings us nearer. Cheer up, 
 brave hearts and true, we '11 reach it by-and-by ! " And some- 
 times it would be at eventide, when the sun was setting and the 
 darkness coming on. As daylight disappeared, once more the 
 thrilling cry would rise up from ten thousand voices, " Dahin ! 
 thither ! We are a day's march nearer ; we won't give up we 
 will die first ! " Even so with us ; as we journey on amidst 
 discouragement and difficulty, should not we do well from time 
 to time to fix our eyes upon our Home? 
 
 " There is my portion fair : 
 My treasure and my heart are there, 
 And my abiding home." 
 
 Oh, cheer yourselves with the prospect, as you think of 
 those bright spirits that have gone before, and of the welcome 
 that awaits you there ! Surely if we could hear their voices 
 they would tell us that the highway of holiness is the way to 
 heaven, and that however steep and arduous, the end is worth 
 the effort. Heaven is worth gaining ; God is worth knowing ; 
 Christ is worth possessing. Oh, blessed will be our journey's 
 end, when " God is all in all ! " Are you going home ? Are 
 there any in this congregation now going away from their home ? 
 Are there any going the way that leads from the Father's house 
 into the outer darkness ? Oh, listen to the voice of Him who 
 is the Way ! Let Him wash you from your sins in His own 
 blood ; then may you press forward with joy along the Heavenly 
 way, until one day it shall be recorded of you also, " They 
 went forth to go unto the land of Canaan, and unto the land 
 of Canaan they came."
 
 "Co me to Itfee is Ciw'st" 
 
 "To me to live is Christ." PHIL. i. 21. 
 
 "\ ~\ 7"E were contemplating in our last discourse the King's high- 
 V way of holiness. We took occasion to observe that the 
 opening up of this highway was the distinguishing glory of the 
 gospel period. We further proceeded to point out several of the 
 features and prominent characteristics of this King's highway, 
 as indicated in that notable passage from which we took our 
 text, Isaiah xxxv. It may have occurred to some of you to 
 ask, " Well, but what is this highway of holiness ? We have 
 heard sundry of its features and characteristics described ; but 
 what is it? and ho\v may 1 walk upon it? What specific form 
 does it assume in the experiences of those who are favoured 
 to live in the gospel dispensation?" 
 
 Assuming that this question may have suggested itself to 
 your mind, I will call your attention to a sentence of St. Paul's, 
 descrintive of his own experience, which would seem to afford 
 an answer: "To me to live is Christ." Jesus Christ when He 
 was here on earth said of Himself, " I am the Way, the Truth, 
 and the Life : no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me." 
 Not only is He the door unto the way, but He is Himself the 
 Way. Not only does He provide in Himself a perfect type 
 or example of holiness, thus rendering it possible for us to 
 aspire to a like holiness, but He is Himself the power by 
 which we rise to the possession of holiness, and exhibit the 
 beauties of holiness in our lives. 
 
 Jesus Christ, formed within us by the operation of God the 
 Holy Ghost, is holiness. You cannot distinguish between the 
 holiness which is divinely infused and the Divine Person whose 
 presence within our nature infuses it. The Christ formed within 
 us is the form of holiness, and the holiness formed within us is 
 the moral forrn of Christ. 
 
 In considering this subject we are struck in the first place with 
 the contrast between this fervid utterance of St. Paul, regarded 
 ii. 17 c
 
 "To me to live is Christ" 
 
 as descriptive of his own experience, and much that goes by 
 the name of religion in our own day. "To me to live is 
 Christ." How many are there amongst us who consider them- 
 selves religious who have never even thought of measuring their 
 religion by such a standard as that ! Their religion is a kind 
 of appendage that they attach to the rest of their lives. There 
 are other things they live for and are occupied about ; but 
 there is a certain residuum of their life that they give over to 
 religious duties. When you have nothing better to do, then 
 take to religion. 
 
 It was very much the same with the ancient idolater, so 
 eloquently described by the Prophet. This pious man would 
 go into the forest and hew down his tree, and proceed to 
 turn its timber to various purposes. Some of it might do 
 for articles of furniture or husbandry, and most of it would 
 be useful for firewood ; but there is still a little left, and " the 
 residue thereof he maketh a god." It is an excellent use for an 
 awkward remnant that will serve no other purpose. 
 
 Even so, how many nominal Christians there are who spend 
 their lives upon a variety of different objects, while to ease their 
 consciences they reserve a certain residue of their existence for 
 the duties of religion the heartless and formal service of an 
 idol god. Yes; it is not "the only true God" that such worship; 
 for He declines to be thus treated. He demands the homage 
 of our whole being, and can only be worshipped with spiritual 
 worship. That which we call God, and to which some of us 
 present the paltry residue of a misspent life, is not the real 
 Jehovah at all, but a miserable creation of our own fancy a 
 god that we have manufactured after our own depraved imagin- 
 ations. St. Paul's religion was not the residue, but it was the 
 whole fabric of his life. " To me to live is Christ." 
 
 I cannot help thinking that it might have a very useful as 
 well as startling effect upon a large number of nominal 
 Christians if they were to put down these five words on 
 paper, and then fill in the sixth after careful self-examination : 
 
 " To me to live is " What ! Could I with any degree of 
 
 truth employ such language as this of my life? Is my ex- 
 perience at all like it? Am I even aiming at this point, or 
 expecting that anything like this should ever be attained by 
 me? "To me to live is Christ." And I would here point 
 out to you, my dear friends, that this is not a sort of rule of 
 perfection which only the greatest saints can hope to live up to ; 
 
 18
 
 "To me to live is Christ" 
 
 rather it is a description of true and normal Christian ex- 
 perience. We deserve the name of Christian just in so far as 
 this is true of us " To me to live is Christ ;" and if not true 
 of us we may perhaps deserve the name of Moralists or of 
 Legalists ; but the name of Christian we do not deserve, 
 because this is the differential feature of true Christianity. 
 
 Let us endeavour to get a clear view of what the Apostle 
 meant, and that we may do so we shall do well to dwell for a 
 few moments on the words, that we may be able to fathom 
 their depth, and to grasp their full significance. What are the 
 thoughts suggested to our minds by this utterance ? What did 
 he mean when he said, "To me to live is Christ?" 
 
 The first thought is surely this, that the Apostle had received ; 
 Christ into his nature by faith in Him ; that he had turned his 
 back upon the old life, and entered upon the enjoyment of the 
 new, which has its source in the Person of Jesus Christ Him- 
 self. St. John teaches us that to believe on the Name of Jesus 
 Christ is to receive Him, and here it is that true spiritual ex- 
 periences commence. Until we have received the new life we 
 cannot live the new life, and it is only he that hath the Son 
 that hath this life. It is evident then that we cannot say, " To 
 me to live is Christ" until Christ is our life, and He only 
 becomes our life when we throw open, as it were, our nature to 
 Him, and by faith take Him to be what He is God's gift of 
 everlasting life to us. Then it is that the Holy Spirit of Christ 
 enters the once desecrated heart, and occupies our nature, 
 takes possession of our affections, enlightens our understand- 
 ing, awakens our desire, moves our will. And this is what St. 
 Paul means when he says, " I live ; yet not I, but Christ 
 liveth in me : and the life which I now live in the flesh I live 
 by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Him- 
 self for me." 
 
 No man can say, " To me to live is Christ " until he has 
 thus received the Lord Jesus ; and I would press upon you, 
 dear friends, the enquiry, Have you thus received Christ 
 Jesus ? Whatever religious impressions may have been made 
 upon your mind, if you stop short of this your religion is 
 no better than a deception. You are still of the flesh, not 
 of the Spirit, and to be carnally-minded is death. 
 
 How many go wrong here, to begin with ! They desire that 
 the product of their life should be Christ ; but they do not 
 realize that for this it is necessary that the essence of their life 
 
 19
 
 "T0 me to live is Christ? 
 
 should be Christ. They know that, in nature, only the good 
 tree can bring forth the good fruit ; you cannot get " the full 
 corn in the ear " unless the seed of corn has first been sowed ; 
 you cannot make a briar stem bring forth a true rose ; and yet 
 they fondly hope that they may be able to produce the charac- 
 ter and attributes of Christ in their life without their having 
 first definitely received Him by faith to be their new life, re- 
 nouncing all confidence in their own resources, and trusting 
 Him alone to make them what they desire to be. 
 
 Dear friends, you can't make the new Adam 'grow out of the 
 ; old. Your fallen, ruined humanity can only reproduce itself. 
 | If the briar is to produce the rose, the rose-cutting must first be 
 ; grafted on to it, and it must express its life through the rose, 
 . and if we would exhibit the new nature, the new nature must 
 ; first be grafted on to us, and the new life introduced. " I live ; 
 'yet not I !" exclaims St. Paul ; "but Christ liveth in me," and 
 ; only they who can say that will ever be able to say, " To me to 
 /live is Christ." 
 
 But there is more in the Apostle's words than even this, though 
 indeed we have here the clue to all that they may contain or 
 imply. When St. Paul says, "To me to live is Christ," he means 
 doubtless not only that Christ has been received into His 
 nature, but that Christ is the source of the power by which he 
 lives ; he finds all his resources in Christ, and hence he is 
 " strong in the Lord and in the power of His might." He 
 says himself, "I can do all things through Christ, which 
 strengthened me ;" and in another place, speaking of his 
 outward work, he says, " I laboured more abundantly than they 
 all ; yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me." 
 
 Some of you are starting upon the new life, and you feel as 
 though a great deal were about to be expected and required of 
 such poor weaklings as you ; and your hearts sink within you 
 at the thought of your own infirmity and the inadequacy of all 
 your own resources. If any of you have such feelings as 
 these you will understand why St. Paul so earnestly prayed 
 for the Ephesian Christians, that they might know " what is the 
 exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe, 
 according to that working of the strength of His might, 
 which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the 
 dead, and made Him to sit at His right hand in heavenly 
 places." And you will see why, a little further on, the 
 same Apostle goes on to pray that Christ may dwell in the 
 
 20
 
 "To me to live is Christ? 
 
 hearts of these Ephesian Christians by faith. To know this 
 exceeding greatness of power, to realize this indwelling pre- 
 sence of Christ, is to find ourselves, in spite of our natural 
 infirmity, more than a match for any hostile force with which 
 we may be assailed. 
 
 Herein truly lies the secret of genuine Christian experience. 
 It consists in practical acquaintance with the power that worketh 
 in us, and in the application of that power by faith to all the 
 exigencies of daily life, and this power is, " Christ in us the 
 hope of glory." Where Christ dwells in the human heart there 
 power dwells, and every true Christian is thus possessed of 
 adequate resources, and whatever opposing force he may have 
 to meet he has nothing to fear, because he can say, "To me 
 to live is Christ." Take care only that in the practical battle 
 of life you draw your power from this quarter, and have no 
 kind of confidence in the flesh. The man who is able to 
 say, " The life I live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of 
 God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me," can face his 
 foe with a calm and quiet demeanour, assured of victory even 
 in the midst of conflict ; for although we may fail, Christ has 
 never been defeated yet, and never will be. 
 
 This leads us on to a third thought suggested by this 
 pregnant phrase "To me to live is Christ." What do the 
 words mean ? Surely they mean this, that inasmuch as 
 Jesus Christ had been received by the Apostle into his 
 nature, to be to him his new life, and inasmuch as he was 
 drawing all his resources from that present Christ, he was 
 himself becoming more and more possessed of those qualities 
 and attributes which go to constitute the Christ -nature. So 
 that we may say he was becoming not only more and more 
 Christ-like, but he was becoming more and more Christ- 
 possessed and therefore Christ-like. Because, as those who 
 are possessed of the devil must needs grow more and more 
 devil-like under the influence of the fiend that dwelleth in 
 them, even so it is the possession of our faculties by Christ that 
 renders us really Christ-like; as He dwells within us, so He 
 reproduces Himself in us. 
 
 When we render up our nature to God, and the Holy Ghost 
 is able to take more and more complete possession of us, He 
 proceeds to form within us a new nature the nature of the 
 new Adam, a nature which is a transcript of the divine per- 
 fection. When the old spirit of evil was supreme within us, it 
 
 21
 
 "To me to live is Christ" 
 
 sought to develop, and establish in us, the characteristic traits 
 of fallen humanity the old Adam, and thus it deformed us 
 more and more from our proper type and character. When, 
 on the other hand, the Holy Ghost dwells and works within 
 us, He forms there a new nature, with new propensities and 
 new moral characteristics, and this is really the Christ within 
 who, in His human perfection, is the brightness of the Father's 
 glory, and the express image of His person. Thus the glory 
 of God, emanating from His own Divine Person, is introduced 
 into our nature, along with the Christ whom we receive, and, 
 taking possession of our manhood, is reflected back upon the 
 source from which it proceeds. This would seem to be St. 
 Paul's meaning in a familiar passage, if we are to accept the 
 rendering of the Revised Version : " We all with unveiled 
 face reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are trans- 
 formed from glory unto glory, even as from the Lord the 
 Spirit." 
 
 Real holiness is " the real presence " of Christ in the 
 believer's heart. Thus it is not too much to say that every 
 true Christian should be in a certain sense an incarnation of 
 the Divine in human form. Don't think me irreverent for 
 using the word. I know there is a certain sense in which 
 Jesus Christ was God-man in which none of us can ever be 
 God-men ; but there is also a certain sense in which we can be 
 God-men ; that is to say, men taken possession of by God, in 
 whom the divine attributes are being developed and exhibited, 
 and on whom the perfections of the Deity are being stamped 
 men who are being prepared to share the glories of the Son 
 by their present assimilation to the divine ideal. 
 
 It is meet and fit that there should be a certain congruity 
 , of moral nature between the Bridegroom and the Bride. It 
 is not seemly that the Bride should be of altogether lower 
 moral order than her heavenly Bridegroom. It is the privilege 
 and the duty of every true child of God to aspire to the 
 glory of belonging to that elect company who shall constitute 
 the Bride of the Lamb throughout eternity. But remember 
 His Bride has to make herself ready, and unless we are thus 
 being made ready by the formation of the new nature within 
 our nature, we can hardly look forward with any degree of 
 confidence to occupying that august spiritual relationship with 
 the Son of God. 
 
 This great truth is eloquently taught us in that holy ordinance
 
 " To me to live is Christ? 
 
 in which we are about to participate. Not only are our hearts 
 stirred in the Holy Communion by the deed of commemoration, 
 but we also feed upon the bread and drink the wine ; by which 
 we are taught the great lesson, that it is the purpose of God 
 to impart to us a new life, and to form within us a new nature. 
 This new life, through the divine humanity of Jesus Christ, is 
 to flow into our life, and to form a new nature within our 
 nature, so that we may become in a certain sense God-men, 
 the Divine being communicated to and developing itself within 
 our humanity. And blessed are they in whom this transform- 
 ing process is going forward. But this ordinance is surely not 
 only a symbol of this mysterious truth, but a means whereby 
 the thing itself may be accomplished; for every time I 
 approach that ordinance, my faith is stimulated to lay hold of 
 this wondrous verity of the Christian religion ; I am brought 
 up to the point of receiving Christ as my new nature ; I am 
 brought up to the point of feeding on Christ, in order that 
 that new nature may be more and more completely formed in 
 me ; and thus I pray, as I approach that Holy Table, that my 
 sinful body may be made clean by His body, and my soul 
 washed by His most precious blood, that I may evermore 
 dwell in Him and He in me. He in whom this blessed 
 process of spiritual transformation is being carried on can 
 truly say, "To me to live is Christ." 
 
 Are we thus becoming an incarnation of the Divine? As 
 the holy Being, who was Himself God, took upon Himself an 
 earthly body, and introduced into that earthly body and that 
 human soul all the perfect attributes of Deity, even so are we 
 surrendering this earthly body of ours and our natural soul so 
 completely to the Divine, that God can actually take possession 
 of us, and make our nature the abode of Deity? Are we in 
 this sense of the word " living Christ " ? God grant that we 
 may be ! But, believe me, it is to this we are called ; and only 
 as we are rising up to this can we hope to obtain the proper 
 prize of our high calling, our proper place in the economy of 
 the universe. 
 
 This leads us to another thought, suggested by the words, 
 "To me to live is Christ." Wherever Christ is He cannot be 
 hid, and when He forms His own nature within it soon shows 
 its presence in our lives. Thus St Paul could truthfully 
 describe himself as a "living epistle, known and read of all 
 men," and as such he lived Christ before the eyes of his 
 
 23
 
 "To me to live is Christ'.' 
 
 fellow-men. Those with whom He associated looked at Paul 
 and saw Christ. As he moved up and down in the Church of 
 the Philippians or elsewhere, or went forth to evangelize among 
 the heathen, he carrried Christ with him, and in all his work 
 it was Christ that worked in him speaking through his lips, 
 looking through his eyes, and influencing the hearts of others 
 through that consecrated heart of his. So he could truly say, "To 
 me to live is Christ." The reproduction of Christ, so to speak, 
 before the eyes of men was the practical outcome of his life. 
 
 And when we are thus incarnations of the Divine, our light 
 will shine before men ; for it is with us as with him, where 
 Jesus is He cannot be hid. Dear Christian friends, remember 
 the eyes of many are upon us, we may be very sure, and they 
 are able to judge pretty accurately what the characteristics of 
 our lives are ; and they judge not so much by our profession 
 as by our conduct. Men do not see Christ now, but they see 
 us. And what do they see in us ? Do they see Christ in us ? 
 When Peter and John stood before the judgment-seat of old, 
 the rulers were constrained to take knowledge of them, that 
 they had been with Jesus. Why did they so conclude? Be- 
 cause there was so much that was Christ-like in them that 
 these men could not help seeing the connection. Is it so with 
 us ? The eyes of the world are upon us. Do they hear Jesus 
 speaking in our conversation? Do they see Jesus working in 
 our conduct? Oh, does the world, as it contemplates us, 
 discover that we are so many Epiphanies of that Christ who 
 is no longer visible Himself on earth? 
 
 Is it not a solemn thing to think of, that in a certain sense 
 Christ has committed His character to us? Worldlings won't 
 read the New Testament, won't study the character of Christ. 
 They form but crude and imperfect notions of what He was, 
 uttering occasionally vague platitudes about the perfection of 
 His character. They don't study Him, but they study you ; 
 and if they see any inconsistency, any imperfection, any lack 
 of beauty in your character, they will attribute that to your 
 Christianity, and not to your lack of it. It may be obviously 
 unfair and unjust to do so, as these infirmities may have been 
 far more conspicuous in us before we ever made any Christian 
 profession, but none the less they will do so ; and oh, how 
 careful we need to be, lest haply we give occasion to the 
 enemies of God to blaspheme ! 
 
 Let us take this to heart; for remember it is not enough 
 
 24
 
 "To me to live is Christ." 
 
 that we should abstain from what is grossly sinful. Men of the 
 world expect something more of us than that In Psalm xc. 
 we pray, " Let the glorious beauty of the Lord our God be 
 upon us ! " and it ought to be. If a Christian is fretful, 
 anxious, morbid, people will see it, and set it down to the dis- 
 credit of his religion ; and when this is the case, you are 
 found false witnesses of the Christ who has, as we have said, 
 submitted his character to your keeping. 
 
 Incarnations of Christ ! Alas ! strange distortions of the 
 Christ, some of us rather deserve to be called. Here are some 
 of us hard and censorious, with very little of the gentleness, 
 tenderness, and delicacy which were so conspicuous in Christ 
 about us. Others fretful, irritable, and flurried, as though we 
 were strangers to the quiet and the calm which is the atmos- 
 phere in which Christ lived. Others of us have positive faults 
 that lie on the very surface of our lives, known and read of all 
 men. Some Christians, for example, are great talkers, and a 
 great deal of their talk had far better be left unsaid ; aye, and 
 sometimes loose talkers too. People listen to the rattle of 
 their tongues till they are tired, and then they turn with a 
 feeling of profound scepticism from the profession of a faith 
 that leaves the little member so completely untamed. And 
 some not only talk, but gossip, and that is worse still ; 
 and some not only gossip, but gossip spitefully, and that is 
 worst of all. And all that sort of thing becomes an argument 
 against religion. And these faults and failings are only 
 samples of many more, which, lying upon the very surface of 
 the lives of us Christians, would contradict us were we to say, 
 " To me to live is Christ." 
 
 If we ask how it comes to pass that Christ is so little the 
 product and outcome of our lives, surely the answer must lie 
 here. We reproduce Him only very partially and indifferently 
 because we receive Him so reluctantly, and surrender ourselves 
 to Him so unwillingly. We are slow to be emptied of self, 
 and so He cannot fulfil us with Himself. We demur about 
 yielding our members, and so He cannot make them the 
 instruments of righteousness unto holiness, and we are not 
 transformed into His image, because we do not leave ourselves 
 plastic in His hands. 
 
 Christ cannot share the sovereignty with self. Where we 
 shrink from self-denial, the God within cannot assert Himself, 
 and so the "end of our conversation" (that is, the outcome of 
 
 25
 
 " To me to live is Christ" 
 
 our mode of life) ; is not Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, 
 and for ever, but a miserable travesty of His perfections. 
 
 This brings us up to another thought suggested by the 
 words. St. Paul, you will observe, is here specially referring 
 to the object and purpose of his life. He tells us that, so far 
 as his own enjoyment was concerned, to depart and be with 
 Christ was far better ; but he had his work still to do, and for 
 this work he was content to live, and this work was to repro- 
 duce Christ, as in his own life, so in the lives and hearts of 
 others. Hence to him to live was Christ in this sense, that it 
 was the great aim and object of St. Paul's life to extend the 
 supremacy of Christ over human hearts. 
 
 I What did Paul of Tarsus live for? Suppose the question 
 \ asked of any of his contemporaries, even of his enemies, do 
 /you think there would have been any ambiguity about the 
 Answer? They might have called him a fanatic, or enthusiast, 
 or an impostor, but there would have been no question as to 
 what it was that he lived for. All would have agreed in testi- 
 fying that his whole life was given up to the promotion of the 
 cause of Christ. 
 
 "^Would an equally unequivocal testimony be borne to our 
 lives by those who know us best? If I were to ask your 
 neighbour what you lived for, would he be constrained to 
 speak of you as a neighbour of St. Paul would have been 
 constrained to speak of him ? Or would he say, " Mr. 
 So-and-so is a smart man of business ; makes a lot of money ; 
 gets on very well in the world." " What does he live for ? " 
 " I am sure I don't know. What we are all living for, I 
 suppose to do the best he can for himself." " I thought he 
 was a religious man?" "Oh, yes; I forgot that. I believe 
 he does make some religious profession; but his religion doesn't 
 sit very heavily upon him, nor exercise any very apparent in- 
 fluence on his life." Would that be the testimony ? In other 
 words, "Mr. So-and-so is an active, energetic man of the world, 
 and in addition to his other qualities and qualifications he 
 possesses a certain modicum of religion." Could any neigh- 
 bour have even thought of describing St. Paul after that 
 fashion ? Could any have spoken of. him as one who lived 
 mainly for money-making, or for commercial success, or for 
 social and domestic enjoyment? Why his whole life would 
 have given the lie to any such description of him. 
 
 My dear friends, should we be equally free from any 
 
 26
 
 "To me to live is Christ" 
 
 danger of being so described? Do any of us seem to be 
 living mainly for our business concerns, or for our domestic 
 duties, as we call them, or for the enjoyments and occupations 
 of social life, while we tack on a certain amount of religious- 
 ness as a kind of appendage to a secular and worldly life? 
 Examine yourselves, my dear brethren, for the enquiry is of the 
 gravest importance. We are only down here for a very few 
 short years, and soon the dream of Hie will be dreamed out, 
 and it will be only a dream, unless we live for an object worthy 
 of life. For what are we living? What is the specific object 
 that we have before us? "To me to live is Christ" Can we 
 say that? To glorify Christ, to speak for Christ, to promote 
 the kingdom of Christ, to do the work of Christ, to set forth 
 the praises of Christ, to extend the influence of Christ, to pre- 
 pare the way of Christ, to hasten on the final revelation of 
 Christ, this is the life of him who can truly say, " To me to 
 live is Christ" How many of us can say so ? 
 
 Fancy anybody describing St. Paul after this fashion: "What 
 do I think of Paul of Tarsus ? Oh, he is a great man in the 
 tent-making line ! He is doing a very thriving business, and 
 making a very good thing out of his tents. He will be about one 
 of the largest tent-makers in Asia Minor soon, if he goes on at 
 this rate. What a number of orders he gets ! It is wonderful 
 how he is pushing his way in the world. I fancy he is a religious 
 man too, and takes a considerable amount of interest in 
 Christian enterprises ; but the main thing with him is the tent- 
 making." Imagine a man talking about him in that fashion. 
 How incongruous with what we know of his character the 
 bare suggestion seems ! How out of harmony with our ideas of 
 the great Apostle of the Gentiles ! But not even his slanderers 
 could speak so of him. No ; the motto of his life was, " One 
 thing I do," and he kept to it without deflecting to the right 
 hand or the left, and all other things were made to bend to 
 this. There could be no doubt or question what he was living 
 for. Oh, fellow-Christians, of how many of us can the same 
 be said ? Is this our law of life, " One thing I do " ? 
 
 I do not mean to say that you are to spend all your days in 
 prayer, or that you should give up your daily occupation, and 
 go abou^distributing tracts. There are other things to be done 
 besides that But whether you are a domestic servant or a 
 cabinet minister, a successful merchant or a chimney-sweep, a 
 wealthy lady or a poor seamstress, one golden rule is to cover 
 
 27
 
 "To me to live is Christ? 
 
 /the whole range of life's experiences, extending to the most 
 
 ^ important, and affecting the most insignificant. " Whether ye 
 
 ) eat or drink, or whatever ye do, do all to the glory of God." 
 
 / This is the one great end towards which all is to be made to 
 
 / contribute, and which is never to be lost sight of or superseded 
 
 / by other and lower aims, and it is the presence of such a pur- 
 
 f pose in life that sanctifies and hallows all. 
 
 St. Paul was glorifying God as well when he was making 
 his tents as he was when he was preaching the gospel. If 
 you and I had gone into his habitation, and seen him work- 
 ing away at the awl and thread after a hard day's labour 
 in preaching the gospel, and had said to him, " Is this worthy 
 of the dignity of a minister of Christ ? Have you nothing 
 better to do than to make tents?" I believe he would have 
 have smiled, and said, " I am pleasing God as much by driving 
 home this awl as I was in driving home His truth a few 
 moments ago, for I am doing it for Him. I do it that I may 
 be provided with the necessaries that I require in order that I 
 may lay out my strength for His service." But if he had been 
 constrained to say, " I am making the tents for my own emolu- 
 ments, to better my position, and to enable me to get on in the 
 world," how different it would all have been. 
 
 I do not wish to preach asceticism. I do not mean to say that 
 God grudges us reasonable enjoyment, or denies us a share of 
 the gratifications that may fall to our lot in life ; but I say that 
 when a man makes these an end when he goes out of the way 
 to seek for creature comforts, and devotes himself to what men 
 of this world call gain, and to push himself forward in the race 
 of social emulation when he makes these the object for which 
 he is living, he ceases to do one thing; he is doing many 
 things, and if we do many things the one thing needful will 
 very soon become an inconsiderable portion of our lives, and 
 no longer will it be true of us, "To me to live is Christ." 
 
 The service of Christ can never be a by-work. It must needs 
 be either everything or nothing; a great purpose running through 
 all our life and colouring all our experience, or a vapid senti- 
 mentality a hollow profession. The claims of the cross are 
 imperious " Ye are not your own ; ye are bought with a price : 
 wherefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which 
 are His ;" and we can only escape from these claims by turn- 
 ing our backs upon that cross. St. Paul accepted those claims, 
 and responded to them right loyally. His companion Demas 
 
 28
 
 " To me to live is Christ" 
 
 repudiated them, and so turned his back on the cross, and on 
 Him who was crucified upon it. " Demas hath forsaken me, 
 having loved this present world." And so, to St. Paul, to live 
 was Christ, and to die was gain ; to Demas, to live was the 
 world, and to die was the loss of all. 
 
 But do you think that Paul lost and Demas gained even in 
 this world ? Nay, verily there is yet a further significance in 
 these words, and this brings us to it. It shall be our last 
 thought, and it is this : When the Apostle says, " To me to live 
 is Christ," he is comparing earth with heaven, and the enjoy- 
 ments of earth with the enjoyments of heaven; and though he 
 admits that heaven is far better, he conveys the idea that such 
 a life as he led on earth contains, at any rate, one principal 
 feature of the blessedness of heaven. 
 
 This much at least is clear, when a man thus takes Jesus 
 Christ to be his life he will have Christ to enjoy as well as 
 Christ to live for, and as well as Christ to live by. This is 
 the true secret of a life of blessedness. Wouldest thou be 
 supremely happy ? Wouldest thou anticipate here on earth 
 the delights of heaven ? Wouldest thou share the felicity of the 
 bright beings that shall stand round the throne, or who even now 
 in Paradise are already with the Lord waiting for the fulness of 
 their final bliss ? Wouldest thou know something of the days 
 of heaven begun on earth ? Then respond to the aspirations of 
 thy soul by taking Christ for thine all. The man who splits 
 himself in twain, as it were, and lives a double life, partly for 
 Christ and partly for self partly for heaven and partly for the 
 world will neither be able to enjoy the pleasures of selfish- 
 ness and worldliness, such as they are ; nor will he be able to 
 enjoy the pleasures which emanate from Christ, such as they 
 are. The man who can say, " One thing I do," who turns his 
 back on lower aims, surrenders himself to the power and 
 influence of Christ, giving up body, soul, and spirit to be 
 transformed into the divine image that man shall know the 
 blessedness of enjoying Christ. 
 
 To live such a life is to be filled with Christ, is to f>^. 
 Christ ever near, to dwell in His society, to draw from His 
 presence continual consolation, to be strengthened by His 
 might and cheered by His smile ; and this is life indeed. To 
 such a Christian Christ becomes an earthly heaven. The 
 Lord is even now the portion of His people, and His own can 
 say, " The lots have fallen unto me in pleasant places, and I 
 
 29
 
 "To me to live is Christ" 
 
 have a goodly heritage. Come poverty or wealth, come loss 
 or gain, come sickness or health, come life or come death, 
 come time or eternity, nothing can rob me of the secret of my 
 joy so long as Jesus Himself is mine." Oh, do we know 
 what it is thus to live Christ ! how much we lose when we lose 
 this, how much we lose when we lose Him ! Talk about self- 
 denial. Ah ! this is the real self-denial, when we deny ourselves 
 the pleasure of knowing God, when we deny ourselves the glory 
 of being crowned by God, when we deny ourselves the deep 
 inward gratification of being satisfied with God, and we deny 
 ourselves the full fruition of our nature in being united to God. 
 
 This is the real self-denial. Talk about self-denial, what do 
 we deny ourselves if only we have Him if He becomes to us 
 more and more our all in all, our joy in sorrow, our light in 
 darkness, our strength in weakness, our victory upon the 
 battle-field, our heaven on earth ? Oh, if Jesus be all this to 
 us, speak not of self-denial ! Surely we are promoting our 
 own true self-interest, we are increasing our own wealth, we 
 are administering to ourselves the truest satisfaction, when we 
 count all loss for His dear sake, and suffer, if needs be, the 
 loss of all things that we may win Him. 
 
 " To me to live is Christ." I have done ; but ere I leave, 
 this pulpit one last word to any who have not yet entered upon 
 this life. My friends, to you to live is what ? what ? Go home, 
 take pen and paper, and just write out those words, "To me 
 
 to live is ," and then fill up truly the blank. What is 
 
 it? vanity, passion, sin, worldliness, impurity, covetousness 
 what is it? Do you answer, "Nothing?" Has your life no 
 object? Then write that "to me to live is nothing. I have 
 nothing to live for that deserves the name of an object, no 
 purpose in life worthy of the dignity of my manhood." " Vanity, 
 vanity of vanities, all is vanity and vexation of spirit." Which of 
 the two lives do you like best " To me to live is Christ" ? or, 
 "To me to live is emptiness, hollowness, unreality?" Make 
 your choice ; and if you long for something better than you 
 have hitherto known, dare to draw near to-day ; dare to draw 
 near to Him who is the true source of life. Cast yourself 
 down before before His mercy-seat, and cry 
 
 " Thou of life the Fountain art, 
 Freely let me take of Thee ; 
 Spring Thou up within my heart, 
 Rise to all eternity." 
 
 30
 
 Imitators of 
 
 " Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children." EpJi. v. I. 
 
 T ITERALLY : " Become ye therefore imitators of God, as 
 * ' beloved children." These words may be regarded as 
 indicating the great subjective object of our lives. God's 
 purpose concerning us is to conform us to the image of His own 
 blessed Son. Our purpose concerning ourselves in our own 
 life and conversation should be to become " imitators of God 
 as dear children." 
 
 Man was originally created in the image of God ; but 
 observe, in His image potentially rather than actually just 
 as the child is the image of the man, or, as we may say, 
 the acorn contains potentially the image of the oak, inasmuch 
 as it contains within itself that which will develop into the oak. 
 Man was made innocent and pure, and so far in the image of 
 God. But the positive attributes and qualities which are God's 
 highest glory, and by which His glory is to shine forth through 
 humanity, could not be exhibited till man had been submitted 
 to a probation. Only by the development of innocence into 
 holiness could man attain in the actual and full sense of the 
 words to the image, the moral image, of God ; and to attain 
 to this is the great object of human probation. 
 
 God placed man in an extraordinary and altogether unique 
 position. He who had created already no doubt countless 
 intelligences of the heavenly world, and placed them in such 
 a position as to be able to enjoy the light of His presence, and 
 live under the consciousness of His control, placed man in a 
 position altogether different, and submitted him to other con- 
 ditions. " What is man, that thou art mindful of him," ex- 
 claims the Psalmist, "and the Son of man, that thou visitest 
 him ? Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels that 
 thou mightest crown him with glory and honour." Man is 
 placed a little lower than the angels in that he lives in this lower 
 world and under the limitations of sense, and is not as yet 
 allowed to enjoy the vision of the Almighty. His sight cannot 
 penetrate into the world of mystery that lies beyond. He
 
 Imitators of God. 
 
 cannot as yet gaze upon the realities of the eternal world. He 
 has to walk by faith, and not by sight. He lives in a material 
 world, surrounded by the temptations that naturally arise from 
 such conditions of existence ; and in such a world he is called 
 to live a life of superiority to the conditions by which he is 
 surrounded. Amidst material objects he is called to recognize 
 and to contemplate the unseen, and to present all the faculties 
 of his nature in willing homage to a divine Being whom he has 
 never beheld, and of whose very existence he has had no direct 
 sensible evidence. 
 
 These extraordinary conditions of existence have been im- 
 posed upon him as a means of educating, training, and 
 developing him with a view to his attaining an ultimate 
 destiny of glory, as much more exalted than that of other 
 created intelligences, as his present position is inferior to theirs. 
 Man is designed, in the economy of God's grace, to attain a 
 position of unique glory, to which even the angelic beings, so 
 far as we know, cannot aspire. We are nowhere taught to 
 believe that angels are to be so united to the Son of God that 
 they are to constitute His Bride in the age that is to come. 
 But this is predicted of the Church of Christ. She is to be 
 passed through the purifying and developing processes of pro- 
 bation, in order that those moral qualities, which may justly be 
 designated divine, may be formed and matured in her ; so that 
 when at last her day of probation is past, and the great end 
 which God has had in view is accomplished, she may stand 
 forth before all, as the very reflex of God's moral glory, and 
 may thus be in a position to enjoy that complete union with 
 the Divine, without any loss of individuality or of individual 
 consciousness, which is the highest conceivable blessedness of 
 the creature. 
 
 , It is most important, then, that we should understand that 
 
 / this is the great object of our lives that we are called not 
 
 \ merely to escape from the terrible penal consequences of our 
 
 / sin, but to rise to so high a level of spiritual experience and to 
 
 /so exalted a moral condition. We should bear in mind that the 
 
 - fall of man from primeval innocence may be regarded as a sort 
 
 of accident in the history of the race. It was an accident of 
 
 course foreseen by God, and provided for before the foundation 
 
 of the world. But, so far as we can judge, it does not seem to 
 
 have formed any necessary part of the original plan of God 
 
 in His dealings with mankind. I mean to say that, so far as 
 
 32
 
 Imitators of God. 
 
 we can judge, it would appear that man could have risen to 
 his proper position in the universe, and have attained to the 
 prize of his high calling, without any such event as the fall 
 
 When the fall had taken place, the first great necessity was 
 that a remedy should be provided for it. That remedy had 
 already been foreseen and foreordained, and in due time it was 
 revealed in the atoning work of Christ. But I want you to observe 
 that the provision of the remedy did not occupy the Divine 
 Mind to the exclusion of the original purpose ; rather, in ' 
 the revelation of that remedy, God took care so to fashion the 
 remedial economy of grace as that it should contribute to the 
 promotion of His original design in calling man into existence. 
 It would seem that the death of Christ under any circum- 
 stances would have sufficed for the redemption of the world. 
 But Christ did something more than die ; He became incarnate, 
 and in our human flesh lived such a life as no other man had 
 /ever lived, in order that He might set forth in His own 
 I character, conduct, and experience what it is that God designs 
 to be the out-come of human probation. 
 
 Jesus Christ not only died, but lived lived a life of perfect 
 and complete obedience in order that by that life He might 
 bring within our view the image of God displayed in a truly 
 perfect man. Thus the divine image lost in the fall has been 
 restored to humanity in all the completeness of its moral 
 beauty in the incarnation, and as we contemplate it we learn 
 to admire it, and become enamoured of it. In that revelation 
 we have an opportunity of seeing both what God is and what 
 man is designed by Him to become. God is revealed to us in 
 human form, as a man possessed by the Divine Spirit and 
 perfected in the divine image, and hence the provision to 
 meet the necessities of our fall is also a contribution to the 
 original purpose of God with respect to humanity. 
 
 Thus it is that we have to thank God for our very fall, in 
 that He has brought a greater good out of our evil. If man 
 had not fallen, God would no doubt have devised some other 
 means of making a sufficient revelation of Himself to us to 
 meet and answer His divine purpose ; but it is difficult to see 
 how He could have made so wondrous an epiphany of moral 
 beauty and perfection under any other circumstances than 
 those which sprang out of the fall. But however that might 
 have been, this much is plain, God has not only provided a 
 remedy for our fall, but He has brought down His own moral 
 
 I'- 33 D
 
 Imitators of God. 
 
 glories within reach of our apprehension, clothed them in a 
 concrete form, and presented them to us in Him who is 
 the brightness of the Father's glory and the express image 
 of His Person, and who presents to us in His character 
 and conduct the hidden perfections of God, which must other- 
 wise have remained to a great extent a matter of speculation. 
 /Thus the special privilege of our position under the GospeK 
 Dispensation is surely this, that we have the infinite Father/ 
 V exhibited to us in the finite human form and in the life of His; 
 \Son. Hence, looking at Him, we behold as in a mirror the; 
 /glories of the invisible God reflected in the person of Jesus', 
 ) Christ ; and contemplating those glories, we are changed into 
 I the same image, from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of God. / 
 As we have endeavoured to show then, we need to have an 
 opportunity of becoming acquainted with the object to be 
 imitated, in order to imitate it ; and then, when this is granted, 
 we need carefully to study it. You cannot imitate the produc- 
 tions of a great painter unless you give your whole attention 
 to that painter's style. It is not sufficient for you to have a 
 general idea of the characteristics of his genius ; you have 
 to study the details of the works of art proceeding from his 
 pencil ; and only when you have made yourself acquainted 
 with the various peculiarities of his style and the features of 
 his work, are you in a position to become an imitator of that 
 painter. And as with painting, so with every other art : we all 
 know this. 
 
 My friends, it is even so with our spiritual life. If we are 
 to become imitators of God, as dear children, we first need 
 to have a model set before us in such a form as that we can 
 comprehend it, and next we need to study the model so set 
 before us. And we have reason to thank God that the divine 
 model is brought down within reach of our finite powers of 
 contemplation. If God had never been incarnate, and if 
 Jesus had not come down to show Him to us, we might have 
 been left to barren speculations about the divine character and 
 attributes, as were the ancient heathen philosophers. 
 
 But He has not left us in the dark in this respect. How often 
 has the thought that Philip of Bethsaida so simply expressed 
 been present to the yearning hearts of men : "Lord, show us the 
 Father, and it sufficeth us." Yes, that crowning revelation 
 would surely, we might well conclude, meet and satisfy all the 
 deepest longings of our heart. The vision of divine beauty 
 
 34
 
 Imitators of God. 
 
 would surely put us out of conceit of all lower ideals, of all less 
 perfect comeliness, and the world would be robbed of its power 
 to enthral, and the flesh of its power to enslave, if only we could 
 be satiated with the vision of God. And He who knows this 
 inward craving of our hearts replies to us through human lips in 
 the words that Philip heard : " Have I been so long time with 
 you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath 
 seen me hath seen the Father ; and how sayest thou then, 
 Show us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the 
 Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto 
 you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in 
 me, He doeth the works." 
 
 And this is surely the true answer to that dreary doctrine of 
 the incomprehensibility of the Absolute preached some time 
 ago by an eminent thinker amongst ourselves, a Christian 
 philosopher of no small repute a doctrine which, if carried to 
 its ultimate and practical issue, must be destructive alike of all 
 true religion and morality. It was advanced by this author 
 that because God is absolute, He is unknowable by the finite, 
 and because He is unknowable, therefore His moral qualities 
 may be totally different in kind from all that we understand 
 by the terms employed to indicate them ; that the "justice" of 
 God, for example, may be a totally different thing from what 
 we understand as justice, and His goodness a totally distinct 
 thing from what we understand as goodness, and so on with 
 each moral attribute in particular. 
 
 This position, as I have said, seems to me subversive of all true 
 morality, while it strikes at the root of all reasonable religion. For 
 if God's qualities are different in kind from what I understand 
 by *he terms employed, why may not the greatest criminals be 
 nearer the standard of divine perfection than the worthiest of 
 mankind ? And how is it possible for me to admire, love, and, 
 above all, trust a Being, of the nature of whose moral attributes 
 I know practically nothing? Atheism itself were a relief as 
 against the possibility of having to deal with such an unknown 
 God. 
 
 But the answer to such an appalling deduction of a pitiless 
 logic is to be found in the fact that the perfections of the 
 Absolute are presented to us in a concrete form in the Person 
 of Jesus Christ. As we gaze upon Him we see what God is, 
 and what He desires us to think and kno\v of Himself. And we 
 find here that God's moral perfections are identical in kind with 
 
 35
 
 Imitators of God. 
 
 those qualities which we recognize as such, and after which we 
 aspire ; that the justice of God is the same as that which we 
 understand bytheword justice; that the love, the purity, the truth, 
 the faithfulness, which we regard as attributes of Deity, are the 
 same in kind, though fuller in degree, as those virtues which 
 bear these names amongst ourselves. For we observe that never 
 were these so perfectly exhibited as in the life, character, and 
 teaching of Him who completely revealed to us the image of 
 God. 
 
 Jesus Christ is the answer to all such speculation as I have 
 referred to, and He silences once and for ever all difficulties that 
 might arise from an undue straining of the truth that the Absolute 
 cannot be known to the finite. " The Word was made flesh, and 
 dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the 
 only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." As word 
 is thought embodied in a definite form, so the Incarnate word 
 is the Absolute Deity clothed in concrete form ; but the word 
 reveals the thought, and even so the man Christ Jesus, the Incar- 
 nate word, reveals the Absolute, and makes known the Father. 
 
 Let me say, therefore, do not trouble yourselves because God 
 seems so vast that you cannot comprehend Him, or because 
 His attributes are so infinite that your imagination cannot 
 grapple with them. Do not allow yourself to lose hold of the 
 Divine Personality in the attempt to recognize His infinity. 
 Rather rest your soul on the thought " God hath in these last 
 days spoken to us in His Son, who is the brightness of His 
 glory, and the express image of His Person." We need erect 
 no altar to an unknown God, and worship we know not what, 
 with a philosophic indifference as to what His character or 
 attributes may be ; rather it is our privilege to know Him whom 
 we believe, and to " acquaint ourselves with Him, and be at 
 peace." For is not His name " Immanuel, God with us " ? 
 
 The Absolute apart from Christ is but a negation, an ab- 
 straction which we only reach by endeavouring to divest our 
 minds of all forms of limitation with which our experience has 
 familiarized us ; but how much have we left to love, and to 
 admire, and to trust in, when we have applied this denuding 
 process like a sort of moral air-pump to our hearts and minds? 
 The Christ is no abstraction, but a man moving amongst men, 
 the very embodiment of all moral loveliness, and we may 
 behold His glory, "the glory as of the only-begotten of the 
 Father, full of grace and truth." 
 
 36
 
 Imitators of God. 
 
 But to become closely acquainted with this model, and to 
 be able to imitate it, we need not only to have it, but to study 
 it. And hence the necessity of the careful, painstaking con- 
 templation of the Christ of the Gospels. Here we often fail. 
 It is a common thing to find Christians pretty familiar with the 
 Psalms, and tolerably well acquainted with St. Paul's Epistles, 
 while they really know but little of the Gospels. And you will 
 sometimes hear people speak as if the Epistles contained the 
 fuller development of Christian revelation, while the Gospels 
 only contained the germs of strictly Christian truth. Of course 
 there is a sense in which this is true, for the Gospels are not 
 doctrinal in the same sense in which Epistles are. But do let us 
 remember this, that the supreme revelation of Christianity is 
 given us, in the strict sense of the word, in the life of the 
 Lord Jesus Christ Himself. And it is therefore to the Gospels 
 you have to turn, in the first instance, for your Divine Model. 
 
 We cannot, of course, afford to dispense with the Epistles 
 and the doctrinal teaching which they contain ; but these both 
 derive their value from the facts of the gospel story, and lead 
 us back to that supreme and crowning revelation ; the conclu- 
 sion of the whole matter with them may be said to be "Jesus 
 Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." The Epistles 
 teach us how to use our model, and offer instructions upon 
 some of its more prominent features ; but the gospel story 
 presents us with the model itself, and only by studying this 
 can we become successful imitators. I believe that one of the 
 causes of defective piety amongst us is the neglect of the care- ) 
 ful study of the character of God, as revealed in Christ. We , 
 find justification in our Epistles, and then forget to seek the 
 perfect Man in the Gospels, and no wonder that we are so little 
 like Him if we do not even look at Him. 
 
 But to have the Model and to study it is not all that is 
 required to render our imitation of God in Christ all that it 
 should be. We must be careful not only to imitate the one 
 true Model, but to imitate it in the proper way. And the true 
 evangelical method of imitation is indicated to us in these 
 suggestive words, " Be ye imitators of God as dear children." 
 It is in the nature of things that the child should imitate its 
 parent. As a matter of fact, children for the most part do 
 imitate their parents. The child of a carpenter will probably 
 never be happier than when he can get a hammer and a few 
 nails and make as much noise with them as possible, while he 
 
 37
 
 Imitators of God. 
 
 is endeavouring to imitate the skill of his parent, although with 
 very poor success. The child of the soldier will naturally 
 select the toy sword or gun or a noisy drum for its plaything. 
 The child of the clergyman will delight in addressing an 
 imaginary congregation, or perhaps a congregation of chairs 
 and stools, with much vehemence, if with no great amount of 
 intelligence. But why multiply illustrations ? It is a fact we 
 are all familiar with, that the child imitates the parent, not 
 because it is constrained to do so, but because it finds a plea- 
 sure in doing so, and that just because it is, as we say, its 
 father's own child. 
 
 We may learn a great deal from this. The child receives a 
 certain disposition by his hereditary relationship with his 
 parent, and this disposition has a tendency to exhibit itself in 
 his future conduct. If the child or the parent checks it and 
 thwarts it, it may possibly be neutralized ; but if the tendency 
 is encouraged, it becomes a strong force in moulding the child's 
 character and shaping his life, so that he becomes in some 
 measure a reproduction of his parent, or perhaps even exhibits 
 the qualities of his parent in an aggravated or an intensified 
 form. 
 
 My dear friends, if we are true children of God, there have 
 been imparted to us certain instincts, desires, qualities, and 
 attributes which are in their nature divine, and these will have 
 a tendency to assert themselves in our life and conduct. To 
 yield to such a tendency is to become imitators of God ; to 
 check that tendency and it may easily be checked is to 
 neutralize the privileges of our new birth, and to lose the special 
 moral benefits which belong to us as the children of the Divine 
 Father. 
 
 How important it is then that in our own personal experience 
 we should watch over all within us that seems to come from 
 God watch over it with such care as the horticulturist 
 would expend on some lovely flower some rare and beautiful 
 exotic in his greenhouse. These holy aspirations and purer 
 instincts of which we are conscious have been introduced to 
 our nature by divine grace ; they come not of earth, they have 
 their home in the very heart of God Himself; and hence as 
 tender exotics they need to be guarded and protected against the 
 cold breath of the blighting frosts of this wintry world of ours, 
 which would kill and destroy if possible every flower of 
 Paradise. Give place at once to all that you have reason to 
 
 38
 
 Imitators of God. 
 
 believe comes from God, and respond at once to those inward 
 impulses and instincts which are of a divine origin. These 
 are the motives of sonship, and by surrendering ourselves to 
 these we shall fulfil the direction of our text " Be ye imitators 
 of God as dear children." 
 
 But there is something more than this suggested to us 
 by the words. It is not merely that there are certain heredi 
 tary instincts which descend from the father to the child, 
 but it is also the tendency of the close relationship which 
 exists between the son and the father to strengthen these 
 instincts, and to develop them into habits of life. In the 
 first place this relationship usually evokes on the part of the 
 child a feeling of admiration for the father. A little boy 
 naturally thinks his father the greatest man in the world. If 
 the Queen of England were introduced into his home, he would 
 regard her as altogether a less important person than his 
 parents. There is nobody so great in the eyes of a little child 
 as his father or mother ; and it is well that this should be so. 
 And if we are the children of the Most High God, is it not 
 more natural still that our whole being should be under the 
 influence of a feeling of admiration for the great Father of 
 spirits, from whom we derived our existence originally, and 
 from whom we have received that new spiritual life that life 
 by virtue of which we live indeed ? Oh, my friends, if I know 
 myself to be a child of God, can I feel less admiration for my 
 Heavenly Father than a little child feels for his earthly parent ? 
 There must be something strangely unreal about our sonship if 
 it do not produce such a disposition as this. 
 
 This feeling of admiration yields an additional stimulus to 
 those instincts of imitation to which I have already referred. 
 With what interest does the little child look on while his father 
 engages in his ordinary employment. What a wonder of skill 
 it all seems to him ! And this admiration prompts those unskil- 
 ful little hands to attempt an imitation, however feeble. He 
 would like to be able to do it because his father does it ; and 
 so he will not give it up, though his first clumsy efforts to imitate 
 might seem discouraging. He perseveres in his endeavours 
 because he has his father still before him, and because he is 
 his child. 
 
 I cannot help thinking that it is possible for us to exhibit in 
 our spiritual experience something like a servile imitation of 
 God, when we only endeavour to imitate Him because we 
 
 39
 
 Imitators of God. 
 
 think it is our duty to do so, and we may bring punishment 
 upon ourselves if we do not endeavour to fulfil this our 
 appointed task. This servile imitation must lead us into the 
 region of mere legality, and when this is the case our imitation 
 will be a travesty rather than a copy; for when this is our 
 motive one essential characteristic of a true imitation will 
 necessarily be absent the element of joyous spontaneousness 
 which makes the imitation so specially well-pleasing in the 
 great Father's eyes. And indeed an imitation of this servile 
 type, I cannot help thinking, may be painful to the Father 
 just because it ignores our filial relationship to Him. A true 
 imitation begins within, in the condition of the spirit, rather 
 than without, in our conduct ; though the lessons that the inner 
 spirit learns will surely express themselves in our outward 
 actions. 
 
 If therefore we desire the true imitation of God let us see 
 to it that we imitate Him as children, and as dear children. 
 We ourselves are accustomed to use the phrase here em- 
 ployed in a sense with which we are all familiar. There are 
 some children that are troublesome and wayward, and do 
 not seem to respond to the affection that is lavished on them. 
 Thus God is represented by the prophet Jeremiah as asking of 
 His rebellious people, " Is Ephraim a dear son, is he a pleasant 
 child ?" implying that although a child he was, or had been, "a 
 son that causeth shame." But there are other children who 
 are a constant cause of satisfaction and pleasure, and of them 
 we speak as " dear children." Thus it was that the Father spoke 
 of Jesus, " This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." 
 He was what Ephraim was not a dear Son and a pleasant 
 child, and such we are called to be. 
 
 A dear child is surely not only a child who is an object 
 of affection, but a child who reciprocates this feeling, and 
 who renders the parents' love all the more intense by the 
 warmth of its response to it. This word then, "beloved 
 children," suggests to our minds that it is love, above 
 everything else, that renders imitation easy. The child that 
 loves most truly will imitate most successfully. This will 
 take the weariness out of many an otherwise tedious task, 
 and turn duties into pleasures. He who seeks to emulate a 
 parent's proficiency in order to please that parent, and because 
 his love is strong, will make far more rapid and satisfactory pro- 
 gress in every respect than he whose efforts spring from mere 
 
 40
 
 Imitators of God. 
 
 compulsion. If you can once get your child's affection 
 enlisted in a sincere desire to please you, and lead him to 
 imitate you just because he loves you, you can carry on his 
 education with a pleasure and ease on both sides that cannot 
 otherwise be attained, and accomplish much that would other- 
 wise be impossible. Miss this and the education becomes a 
 drudgery you have to be continually urging on the pupil as 
 with a goad, and to be insisting upon this and that being done 
 until both the teacher and child turn with aversion from the 
 wearisome conflict. 
 
 All this is equally true of us. He who seeks to imitate 
 God because he loves the Father, and desires above everything 
 else to please Him, will succeed far more rapidly and satis- 
 factorily in his imitation than is possible under any other 
 conditions. Such an one God Himself finds a certain pleasure 
 in teaching, and to such He can make revelations of Himself 
 that are not accorded to any save the children of love. Nor 
 will He look with a censorious and critical eye upon our feeble 
 and imperfect efforts to imitate Him. He may indeed from 
 time to time check our vanity and deepen our humility by 
 showing us how very far short we come of the divine standard ; 
 but even while we feel ashamed of our failures, He seems to 
 whisper in our ear, "Who hath despised the day of small 
 things ? " Nor does He grow impatient with us, though some- 
 times we may be impatient with ourselves, but, like a true 
 Father, encourages our feeble efforts with the smile of His 
 approval when He sees that they spring from a filial desire to 
 please the Father's heart. 
 
 But, as I have said, imitation requires to be carried out in 
 detail, and we have to study the work imitated in all its various 
 parts if we would produce anything really resembling it. To 
 speak of the moral characteristics of Christ as a whole would 
 require not a single sermon, but a volume ; nay, rather a library, 
 if we were to do any justice to the subject. In the present 
 passage, however, St Paul calls attention to some of the more 
 prominent features of the divine character, in respect of 
 which we are to be imitators of God ; and we will confine 
 ourselves to a very brief consideration of these. 
 
 First he speaks of that kindness and tenderness which were 
 so characteristic of Jesus Christ : " Be ye kind." He says, "one 
 to another, tender-hearted." It is not enough that we should 
 abstain from being unkind. We are called upon to be 
 
 41
 
 Imitators of God. 
 
 positively kind, delicate, considerate, and courteous. How 
 kind He was whom we are to imitate ! how gentle ! how 
 tender-hearted ! There is scarcely anything in the life of 
 Jesus that impresses us more than this. As He goes through 
 the world, amidst all its sickening sights and sounds, He never 
 seems to lose His quick sensibility. Distress never appeals to 
 Him in vain ; sorrow ever finds in Him true consolation, and 
 want sure relief. Priest and Levite may pass by the stricken 
 traveller, but the Good Samaritan cannot. He must needs go 
 where he is, bind up his wounds, pour in the oil and the wine, 
 lift him on to his own beast, while he trudges at his side, and 
 bring him to the place of safety, and take care of him. Ah, 
 my brethren, what an exhibition of kindness and tender- 
 heartedness we have presented to us in every phrase that I 
 have quoted, and well we know that (perhaps unwittingly) the 
 master-hand that drew this wondrous picture was leaving us a 
 portrait of Himself. 
 
 It was not enough with Christ that He should go about 
 doing good, but He must needs do His good how kindly ! 
 How tender He was to that poor sinner that fell weeping at 
 His feet, of whom Simon thought so harshly ! How tender to 
 that timid one in the crowd, who, when she came trembling 
 and fell at His feet, heard Him call her " Daughter," as if He 
 had sought for the gentlest word language could supply Him 
 with : " Daughter, be of good cheer, thy faith hath saved thee." 
 How tender He was to the blind beggar, standing still on His way 
 to redeem a world until Bartimeus could be brought to Him ! 
 And not less tender to the rich Publican when he did the very 
 thing that censorious religionists would have shrunk from 
 doing invited Himself to his house. 
 
 But time would fail us if we were to pursue this enume- 
 ration of His deeds of tender-hearted kindness ; rather let 
 me point out how we may imitate Him here. Dear Chris- 
 tian brethren, if we would really be of service to the souls 
 of others, how much we need to cultivate this spirit of kind- 
 ness, this sensitive delicacy ! Take, for example, our work 
 in those after-meetings, how much harm may be done by a 
 rough intrusive manner, which gives those whom you seek to 
 help the idea that you intend to force yourself upon them. 
 How many are repelled from these helpful ministrations, just 
 because of the lack of tact and delicacy on the part of those 
 who engage in the work. Or, again, in Sunday-school and 
 
 42
 
 Imitators of God. 
 
 district-visiting work, how much of our failure is to be attri- 
 buted to this lack of sympathy and patient kindliness ! 
 
 Nor is this all. It is grievous to think of how much of actual 
 unkindness is from time to time exhibited by Christians in 
 their relations with one another. How often does unfriendly 
 gossip magnify faults that true charity should cover, and turn 
 the small "hole in our brother's coat" into a gaping rent' 
 How few have the true kindness to tell a brother faithfully but 
 tenderly of a fault an unpleasant task which, however, 
 neither Jesus Christ nor His Apostle St. Paul ever shrunk from, 
 just because they were so truly kind ! Or, again, when 
 Christians do attempt to speak the truth to each other's face 
 instead of behind their back, how often is it done in such a 
 harsh censorious way that those who should be helped are 
 repelled, and a feeling of annoyance and resentment is awak- 
 ened. Or peradventure the bruised reed is broken, and the 
 smoking flax quenched. Well might the Psalmist pray that 
 if the righteous did smite him friendly, and reprove him, their 
 precious balms might not break his head. I am afraid there 
 are a good many heads broken by these well-meant but 
 clumsy ministrations. 
 
 How much of this unkindness too do we see in the theologi- 
 cal world of to-day ! If a man is supposed to deviate in his 
 views from the lines which each party lays down as orthodox, 
 with how much censoriousness is he often treated by those who 
 regard their own opinion as the criterion of truth ! Ah, how 
 little of this kindness and tender-heartedness is there in the 
 virulent party spirit of the period ! 
 
 The next feature of the character of God mentioned here is 
 His divine readiness to forgive " Forgiving one another, as 
 God for Christ's sake has forgiven you." Here indeed the 
 obligation to imitate Christ is peculiarly strong ; for have we 
 not had much forgiven, and are we not continually requiring 
 the Divine forgiveness? All that we possess of grace and 
 inward peace and blessedness springs from the forgiving love 
 of the Father through Christ. We came to know Him first in 
 His exercise of His offices of mercy; and let us bear in mind 
 that in exercising the same spirit to our fellow-men, we are 
 imitating the most glorious function of Jesus Christ, and that in 
 which He first exhibits His Father's true character to us ; so that 
 in mastering a resentful and acrimonious spirit we do not merely 
 gain the moral triumph of overcoming ourselves, but also the 
 
 43
 
 Imitators of God. 
 
 spiritual distinction of emulating in our little degree the crowning 
 glory of the Deity. God shews forth His almighty power most 
 chiefly in shewing mercy and forgiveness. How God-like is the 
 man who by divine grace masters the resentments and animosities 
 which may from time to time be provoked by the untoward 
 conduct of others ! Very possibly there are times when we 
 know ourselves to have been treated badly, and it is impossible 
 to shut our eyes to the faults of others, just because those faults 
 are committed against ourselves. Nor is there any use in doing 
 so. Let us however, in such cases, remember that such treat- 
 ment affords us an opportunity that we should not otherwise 
 enjoy of imitating Christ, who prayed for His murderers, and 
 died for those who crucified Him. None who cherish a bitter, 
 unforgiving spirit, whatever their provocation, can ever be con- 
 formed unto the image of Christ. 
 
 This leads us to the third point in which St. Paul teaches 
 us here to imitate God as revealed to us in Jesus ; and it is the 
 grandest feature of all in the Divine Character that is brought 
 before us here. Nay, rather it is the common element in which 
 all other perfections meet; for "God is love." "Walk in 
 love," exclaims the Apostle, " as Christ also hath loved us, and 
 hath given Himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God 
 for a sweet-smelling savour." Kindness lies on the surface of 
 our lives, and has to do mainly with our outward manner and 
 conduct ; but love is of the heart, its domain is within, where 
 it lifts us from our native selfishness, and developes the divine. 
 It is the genial warmth of that life-blood that floweth forth 
 from the heart of God into ours, and makes us live indeed ! 
 Of love we can say no less than St. John has said of it : " He 
 that dvvelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him;" for 
 " God is love." It is the very essence of Deity, and he who 
 has most of it imitates God the best. We may indeed lay this 
 down as a criterion of Christian progress, that just in so far as 
 love becomes the dominant motive of our conduct just as all 
 other motives become subservient to this, so far are we rising 
 to the true type, and being conformed to the divine image. 
 
 Walk in love. Well, how shall we do it? How shall we 
 become imitators of God in this respect? We cannot create 
 love by a mere effort of our will ; but we may expose our- 
 selves to influences favourable to its development; we may 
 foster and cherish it, or we may check and hinder it a 
 thing which I fear too many Christians do. The instincts 
 
 44
 
 Imitators of God. 
 
 of love naturally exist within those who are born of God, 
 because we inherit the Father's characteristics ; and the dis- 
 position to feel a new love for all with whom we have to do, is 
 an instance of that hereditary imitation to which I have already 
 referred. 
 
 But love grows, and is developed by exercise. If instead 
 of checking these early impulses we encourage them, and go 
 on to love, not "in word or tongue, but in deed and in 
 truth," our disposition to love will be strengthened by loving 
 deeds and words performed or spoken in obedience to the 
 instincts of love. We may help love by watching against that 
 spirit of frigid reserve which is only too prevalent amongst 
 worldly people, or that spirit of reckless independence which 
 savours of Cain, but not of Jesus Christ, " Am I my brother's 
 keeper?" Love grows by cultivating habits of fellowship and 
 sympathy with those with whom such relations are possible, 
 and by cultivating habits of compassion, by putting on, as St. 
 Paul says, " bowels of mercies " for those with whom fellow- 
 ship is impossible. We may foster love negatively also by 
 watching against the narrowing instincts of selfishness, or 
 against anything that tends to render us self-absorbed, for 
 charity seeketh not her own ; and to seek our own is to 
 strangle the life of love at its very birth. 
 
 It is well too ever to endeavour to look at the lovelier side 
 of human character, for most men have a lovelier side, and in 
 Christian men this is the divine element Let us recognize the 
 divine, and love it, even while we may sometimes be pained 
 and disappointed by the human. And when we cannot love 
 with the love of congeniality, let us love with the love of 
 compassion, responding to the divine instincts of pity, which 
 are sure to make themselves felt within, by prompt efforts to 
 benefit those over whom our hearts yearn ; thus our love will 
 grow strong by exercise, and be kept burning hot, as it has free 
 course, and comes fresh and fresh into our nature as from the 
 very heart of God. 
 
 The mention of Christ's gift of Himself brings us to the last 
 point referred to here in which it is possible for us to imitate 
 God. Let us become imitators of God in self-sacrifice. For 
 self-sacrifice, wonderful to say, would seem to be the law of the 
 divine benevolence. Here, I confess, we are in deep water, 
 and it is difficult to escape being involved in paradoxes ; yet I 
 cannot believe that the Incarnation and the Atonement were 
 
 45
 
 Imitators of God. 
 
 any less a stupendous act of self-sacrifice on the part of the 
 great Father of spirits than they were on the part of His Son. 
 I cannot for a moment believe that the Father looked on 
 unmoved at the sorrows of His Son, or that His knowledge 
 of the certain blessedness of the result, as well to the Man 
 Christ Jesus Himself as to the human race at large, rendered 
 those sufferings in His sight no more than a mere histrionic 
 performance. Surely the great Father of all sacrificed Himself 
 in sacrificing His own Son. And Jesus stands before us as the 
 image of the Father in this respect also. Herein shines out 
 the wonder of divine beauty ; herein lies the mystery of divine 
 perfection. The gods of the heathen were supposed to demand 
 sacrifice, that they might be propitiated and disposed to love 
 mankind ; God Himself submitted to self-sacrifice because He 
 already loved the world. And because He would neither 
 sacrifice His own law nor sacrifice us who had broken it, He 
 sacrificed His own paternal love in permitting the sacrifice of 
 Christ on Calvary. 
 
 Be imitators of God in this. Selfishness is no attribute of 
 Deity, though for Him all exist. He fulfils His will in His 
 creatures by making them partakers of His own blessedness, and 
 nothing less than this will satisfy Him. Men seek for greatness 
 in self-assertion, in pushing their own fortunes, and advancing 
 their social status. But the divine secret of true greatness lies 
 in self-denial and self-forgetfulness, in the willing and cheerful 
 surrender of our own rights and comforts and pleasures for 
 the good of others. And although we do not this for the sake 
 of gaining happiness, it is well to observe that herein lies the 
 true secret of happiness also. The noblest joy is the product 
 of the exercise of the highest benevolence, and the highest 
 benevolence is the product of the most complete self-sacrifice. 
 Thus it is indeed true that in losing our lives we find them. 
 
 Well, there stands The Model, and here within us, if we are 
 really His, is the power to imitate it. Let us use that power, 
 responding to the filial instincts of our new nature, and then 
 the model will not have been presented to us in vain. And 
 by-and-by, when we wake up in His likeness, we shall be 
 satisfied with it. " Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and 
 it doth not yet appear what we shall be : but we know that, 
 when He shall appear, we shall be like Him ; for we shall see 
 Him as He is. And every one that hath this hope in Him 
 purifieth himself, even as He is pure" 
 
 46
 
 35rototl) anli 
 
 " And He said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed 
 into the ground ; and should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed 
 should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. For the earth 
 bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that 
 the full corn in the ear. But when the fruit is brought forth, imme- 
 diately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come." 
 
 MARK iv. 26-29. 
 
 "IVT ATURE is a volume written by the finger of God. Our 
 *^l blessed Lord was continually quoting passages out of 
 this volume, and enlarging upon them; and he who passes 
 through this world with his eyes open may find in the outward 
 objects, which will continually attract his attention, many 
 spiritual allegories full of important lessons. 
 
 Our blessed Lord in His allegorical teaching selected not un- 
 frequently for His illustrations various conventional usages, with 
 which his hearers were familiar. On other occasions, however, 
 He drew His lessons direct from nature, and I think we must 
 all be struck with this, that in this latter case the analogies are 
 much more perfect, and may be pushed much further than in 
 the former. Where our Lord's allegorical teaching is derived 
 from conventional usages, we must rememoer tnat the customs 
 of society are more or less capricious, and that therefore 
 beyond certain prominent points the analogies soon begin to 
 fail. But where our Lord teaches out of the book of nature, 
 He draws His lesson from a vast collection of objects, specially 
 designed for this purpose by that God of nature who is also 
 the God of grace. He who said to Moses, with so much 
 emphasis, "See that thou make everything," the smallest as 
 well as the greatest, " according to the pattern shown thee in 
 the mount," we may be very sure, in creating His own world, 
 took care so to fashion outward and material objects as that 
 they should be instructive illustrations of great spiritual verities. 
 
 The world, we believe, exists for a great moral object, not 
 merely for those lower purposes which were attained ere yet 
 man had come into existence. Earth was not merely designed 
 to be an arena for the display of vegetable life, nor even of 
 mere animal existence, but for a higher and grander because a 
 
 47
 
 Growth and Harvest. 
 
 moral purpose ; and therefore we may say, that just as Moses 
 in making the tabernacle was careful to comply with the 
 directions given him, in order that he might fulfil the moral 
 and spiritual purposes of the tabernacle, so God in creating 
 the world was careful to lay down such laws for that world, 
 and to create such outward material objects, and endow them 
 with such characteristics, as should serve for types and repre- 
 sentations of those great moral processes which He had in 
 view. The world was to be a book ready written for man to 
 read. 
 
 There are perhaps no lessons from nature more striking than 
 those which are presented to us from year to year in connec- 
 tion with the agricultural operations which supply us with 
 the bread, that we are wont to call the staff of life, and which 
 cover the whole course of the year, from seed time to harvest. 
 All these operations lead up to the harvest, Avhich is at once 
 the crowning event of the year, and the explanation of all that 
 has gone before. 
 
 In several passages in Holy Scripture our blessed Lord 
 enlarges upon lessons suggested to our minds in connection 
 with this subject; but in other passages His teaching has to 
 do with that which is incidental, and in some instances I 
 may say accidental ; whereas in this particular passage, and I 
 believe in this one only, he directs our attention to the 
 essential and normal lessons conveyed to us in our regular 
 agricultural operations and experiences. In the commence- 
 ment of this chapter we have the well-known parable of the 
 sower. There you will remember that there was seed 
 scattered by the wayside ; but that was an accident. No 
 man intends to scatter seed by the wayside ; it would be a 
 waste of labour, as well as a waste of seed. Then there 
 was seed scattered in stony places, and that we may say 
 was also an accident; for if the man had known that the 
 ground was not properly broken up, he would not have wasted 
 his seed by sowing it there. There was also seed scattered in 
 thorny ground, and that too was an accident. If the sower 
 had had any idea that the ground was full of thorn seeds, he 
 would have had it properly cleaned before he placed the seed 
 there. But here we are no longer dealing with accidents, but 
 with the normal and essential lessons which agricultural opera- 
 tions and experiences are intended to convey. Let us proceed 
 to consider them. 
 
 48
 
 Growth and Harvest. 
 
 And here I observe, in the first place, that we are in the 
 habit of speaking about " the fruitful soil ; " but has it ever 
 occurred to you to reflect that no soil, as far as we know, 
 is in itself fruitful? On the contrary, the mere earth, as 
 earth, possesses no kind of power of production. It is a 
 remarkable thing that it should have been reserved for a 
 materialistic age to call special attention to the scientific fact 
 for I believe a scientific fact it is now proved to be that 
 life must proceed from antecedent life, and that there is no 
 such thing known in nature as a spontaneous production or 
 ebullition of life. And it is more striking still that it should 
 have been reserved for one of the leading materialistic thinkers 
 in a materialistic age to call special attention to this truth, and 
 so far as a negation can be demonstrated, to demonstrate it. 
 
 The theory of the spontaneous generation of life from lifeless 
 matter is now, I believe, almost universally abandoned, and it 
 is generally admitted that life can only be propagated, so 
 far as we know, by germs from antecedent life. With this 
 conclusion the record of the world itself thoroughly agrees. 
 We look back upon remote geological periods, in the far 
 background of this world's history a history written not in 
 books, but in rocks and stones and we find at last a life- 
 less world. There are certain rocks well known to geolo- 
 gists, which are what they call azoic rocks rocks, that is to 
 say, that have no sign of life about them. It is supposed 
 that the world was at one time composed of materials such 
 as these, and only of materials such as these. Endeavour 
 if you can to form an idea of a lifeless world. Well, there is 
 one within our sight. Turn your eyes from earth for a moment 
 and gaze up at her whom we call the Queen of the night. 
 There it is, a lifeless world. Turn your most powerful telescopes 
 towards the moon, and you can discover mountains, valleys, 
 deep, dark shadows cast by vast hills upon the plains beneath; 
 but no sign of life all the wide moon over. 
 
 A lifeless world ! There is soil yonder, but it is not a fruitful 
 soil, and fruitful it never can be until some wondrous revolution 
 takes place in the constitution of that planet. Even so there 
 was a time when the world was a lifeless world. The elements 
 existed out of which life was ultimately to be developed ; but 
 life itself did not exist, and by no effort of nature that is 
 conceivable, by no birth pangs, or dire convulsion of a 
 labouring world, could the tiniest form of animal or vegetable 
 
 ii. 49 E
 
 Growth and Harvest. 
 
 life be brought forth until the Creator Himself intervened, and 
 created it. 
 
 Surely we have here a God-given parable, designed to illus- 
 trate a great spiritual verity. The Apostle speaks of the state 
 of the natural man as one of death. The unrenewed man is 
 " dead'm trespasses and sins." Let us understand what he means 
 by these familiar words. Such a man is not dead so far as his 
 physical life is concerned ; he possesses this as much as the 
 brute at his side. Nor is he dead as far as his reasonable soul 
 is concerned, for it is to this that God makes His appeal. We 
 conclude then that there is a higher spiritual nature in man, 
 whose special function it is to hold intercourse with the Divine : 
 it is indeed designed to be in each individual the connecting- 
 link between God and man. This spiritual nature was origin- 
 ally quickened by the breath of God, and was sustained by the 
 presence of God, and by intercourse with Him ; but when sin 
 cut man off from God the vital force was forfeited, and could 
 only be restored by a fresh gift of life on God's side. Hence 
 just as the azoic or lifeless world was powerless to produce life, 
 but contained within itself potentially all other capacities of 
 production when once this was introduced, so man's spiritual 
 nature exists as a potentiality, capable of producing the fruits 
 of spiritual holiness when once the new and divine life is im- 
 parted to it, but otherwise utterly impotent and incapable of 
 exercising its own proper functions. 
 
 Hence the necessity for that great change which St. Peter 
 describes where he says, "Being born again, not of cor- 
 ruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God which 
 liveth and abideth for ever." Hence the necessity of re- 
 ceiving with meekness, as St. James puts it, the engrafted (or 
 implanted) word which is able to save our souls. Hence the 
 necessity of receiving Christ, who is the word of the Father, 
 as St. John puts it " To as many as received Him, to them 
 gave He authority to become the sons of God, even to as 
 many as believe on His name, who were born, not of flesh, 
 nor of blood, nor of the will of man, but of God." And 
 hence St. Paul's statement, that if there had been a law that 
 could have given life, verily righteousness should have been 
 by the law. Herein the law failed, and so it left our spiritual 
 nature as fruitless as the world in the azoic periods of geology, 
 and hence his cardinal doctrine, that the gift of God is eternal 
 life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
 
 Growth and Harvest. 
 
 The first thing needed then, if fruit is to be produced, is that 
 the living seed should be sown in our spiritual nature, and this 
 is effected, according to the teaching of St. Peter, by the word 
 of God, which liveth and abideth for ever, and which in the 
 gospel is preached unto us. The gospel then is the word of 
 God without, preached in our ears ; but when this is received 
 by us it becomes, within, the Word of the Father the indwell- 
 ing Christ, the seed of the new life. When the gospel message is 
 preached to us, it is Christ that is preached to us ; and when 
 by faith we receive the gospel message, not only into our 
 minds, but into our hearts, it is Christ Himself that we receive, 
 and He becomes "the Word of God" to us "the implanted 
 Word that is able to save our souls." The word of God is 
 then no longer a law without, but a character within a law 
 written upon the fleshly tablets of our hearts. But this living 
 and incorruptible seed, once introduced into our spiritual nature, 
 acts upon it as the first germs of vital energy acted upon this 
 world of ours. It liberates, as it were, all our potential capa- 
 cities, and draws by the mighty energies of life from our other- 
 wise barren nature those forms of moral beauty, those fruits of 
 holiness, for the sake of producing which we may say our 
 spiritual nature exists. 
 
 Now let me ask, Has this seed been dropped into your 
 heart? Have you received it? Have you, my brethren, so 
 believed on Jesus' Name as to receive Him ? Has He 
 entered into your once dead natures and breathed eternal 
 life into your hearts ? If He has not done this, then under- 
 stand your efforts after holiness are all doomed to disappoint- 
 ment. You cannot live the life until you have the life; you 
 cannot bring forth the fruit until your barren heart has received 
 the incorruptible and life-giving seed. 
 
 The law, as we have seen, fails because it cannot give life ; 
 but here where the law fails the gospel is strong. It brings 
 within our reach the gift of life, and the first thing it does 
 when we receive it is to infuse life into our dead spiritual 
 nature, and by the power of that new life communicated to our 
 nature we are in a position to rise to the claims of righteous- 
 ness contained in the law. " The law of the Spirit of life in 
 Christ Jesus [that is, the incorruptible seed which has a law of 
 its own] hath made me free from the law of sin and death." 
 Now observe the object of this, as expressed in Rom. viii. 4 : 
 " That the righteous claim of the law might be fulfilled in us,
 
 Growth and Harvest. 
 
 who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." The first 
 great necessity then, if we are ever to have a harvest at all, is 
 that the seed should be sown, and that it should be received 
 and implanted in the soil of our spiritual nature, which then, 
 observe, becomes fruitful, but which previously was barren. 
 
 Now for the next lesson. Very remarkable is the language 
 employed by our blessed Lord in this parable, and very worthy 
 of notice. He goes on to say that when once the seed has 
 been sowed the man sleeps, and rises night and day, and the 
 seed springs up and grows he knows not how. But He adds 
 that " the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself? Now the word 
 used there is the word from which we get the common English 
 term " automatic," and I should not be wrong in rendering the 
 words, "The earth bringeth forth fruit automatically." The 
 earth may be regarded as a great automaton, containing certain 
 mechanical laws within itself, and possessing certain chemical 
 properties, which when once they are appealed to and set 
 working, by the introduction of life, go on with the regularity 
 which belongs to the movements of a machine. You don't 
 make the seed grow by any interference on your part. You go 
 forth into your field, and sow your seed, and having sowed it, 
 you leave it. You don't say, " I must help that seed to grow," 
 and then set to work to pick it all up, and submit it to some 
 chemical process in order that you may ensure a harvest. 
 Nothing of the kind. You leave Nature to herself. You 
 know that the earth will bring forth fruit automatically. The 
 great machine of nature goes working on ; all you have to do 
 is to comply with the conditions laid down by natural laws, 
 and when you have complied with those conditions you are 
 confident of the result, are you not? 
 
 Now for a lesson for ourselves. There are many of us who 
 are very anxious to be holy, and that is well. But perhaps 
 there are not a few of us who are somewhat petulant and 
 fretful and impatient with ourselves, because we don't become 
 holy as quickly as we should like. Years roll on, and the 
 process of growth in grace is not so rapid as we should wish. 
 We detect still within us the remnants of evil, and we fall far 
 short of that standard of perfection which we have set before 
 us in Jesus Christ. And the contemplation of this state of 
 things sometimes induces depression, and leads to doubts and 
 misgivings as to whether the work of grace has ever really 
 begun within us at all. But then these doubts and fears have 
 
 52
 
 Growth and Harvest. 
 
 the effect of throwing us back and render progress impossible, 
 and thus by our very efforts after holiness we seem to be kept 
 back from rising to a life of holiness. Are we not sometimes 
 like impatient little children, who sow their annuals in their 
 gardens, but because they do not see the tiny plants come up 
 as quickly as they expected, dig up the place to discover 
 whether or not the seed is germinating properly ? I have known 
 a great many Christians perform an experiment of that kind 
 upon themselves, and with what result ? Why with the same 
 result as falls to the lot of these little children. The process 
 of germination is not sufficiently rapid to attract their powers 
 of observation, and so they come to the conclusion that all is 
 a failure ; whereas if they had only waited and been patient, 
 in due time they would have found Nature doing her work. 
 
 Even so it often happens that in their impatience to see that 
 growth, which we ought to expect, Christians begin to doubt / 
 their standing before God, and to question whether their whole 
 religious life has not been a delusion, and thus their confidence 
 in God is shaken, and, this lost, progress is impossible. Or 
 again, it sometimes happens that a sense of disappointment - 
 induces a kind of recklessness in some. They lose heart, and 
 come to the conclusion that progress is not to be expected, 
 and holiness is not attainable, and so they sink down to a level 
 of experience altogether beneath their Christian profession. 
 Others, less indolent, but not more happy, seek to make them- 3 
 selves holy by adopting strict rules of life, and struggling 
 on wearily enough in their attempts at self-improvement; or 
 perhaps they seek for what they desire in the adoption of some 
 novel and perhaps very misleading theological system. 
 
 Ncnv all these mistakes alike spring from our attempting to 
 make ourselves holy, and from our impatience at our poor 
 success ; and from all these mistakes we might be saved, as it 
 seems to me, by learning the lesson of our text. 
 
 Let me lay down then, with Nature before us, this great 
 principle. It is not for you, my dear Christian brethren, by 
 any effort of your own, to make yourselves holy. You cannot 
 do it. First let the new seed fall. It is your place to receive it. 
 You have done that, have you? Very well, then you have 
 taken the first step. Secondly, let the new seed grow. Your 
 business in this matter is negafrve~rfBer than positive. It 
 consists not in making the new seed grow you cannot do 
 that by any effort of your own but rather in removing all 
 
 53
 
 Growth and Harvest. 
 
 obstacles to its growth in watching carefully over it, in 
 cherishing the tender plant, and in exposing it to those in- 
 fluences which are to foster and cherish it, and to cause its 
 development in due course. 
 
 What are those influences in nature? Well, there is sun- 
 shine, and unless there is sunshine there will never be a harvest. 
 Then there is rainfall, and the gentle dropping of the dew; 
 unless the rain and dew water the soil there will never be 
 harvest. The great lesson which nature teaches us in this 
 respect is surely a lesson of faith. There is the field, with 
 the seed planted in it, waiting, expecting, I may almost say, 
 trusting. There it lies with its face turned towards heaven as 
 though it would say, " Oh, sun, I look for thee to shine on 
 me ! Oh, rain and dew, I trust you to supply me with all the 
 moisture needed to develope my crop and to ensure the har- 
 vest ! " There lies the field in an attitude of expectancy, and 
 an expectancy not doomed to disappointment. 
 
 You may perhaps be disposed to ask, " Don't our wills come 
 into play at all then ?" Yes, certainly ; no harvest ripens without 
 labour having been expended on it; but how is the labour 
 expended? It is expended on the preparation of the soil to 
 begin with, or on the careful removal of all that might check or 
 injure the tender crop, or be a barrier to the action of those 
 natural forces to which I have just been referring. If there are 
 stones thickly scattered in your field they might shut out from 
 the infant germ the rays of sunshine that are so necessary to it, 
 or they might distort or repress the germ in the course of its 
 natural development. The careful agriculturist removes such 
 stones as threaten to spoil his crop. If he is careless the crop 
 may never grow at all, or may be a very imperfect one. Or 
 again, if it should unfortunately happen that the field has 
 received the germs of noxious weeds, and they are springing up 
 and threatening to choke the seed, it becomes the work of the 
 agriculturist to remove those evil things before they develope 
 themselves to such proportions as to spoil the crop. In some 
 parts of the world great pains have to be expended in clearing the 
 field of superfluous timber which would interpose its shadows 
 between the germ and the sunlight, or cut off the refreshment 
 that might otherwise be derived from the passing shower. Your 
 corn will not grow in the shade, and you must get your trees 
 cleared away if you desire a satisfactory harvest. In the 
 great American primaeval forests this would be a most difficult 
 
 54
 
 Growth and Harvest. 
 
 part of the work ; and there are cases in spiritual experience 
 where a similar clearance and sweeping away of useless um- 
 brage entails no slight exertion of all our faculties of will. 
 
 Now, dear children of God, here is our lesson. Our part in 
 the matter lies not in attempting to make ourselves holy, but in 
 putting off and honestly repudiating all that militates against 
 holiness, and in guarding against everything that would 
 prevent us from being exposed to the spiritual influences 
 that are to make us grow. Whatever comes between us and 
 our true Sun of righteousness, whose genial beams, falling on 
 our souls, alone can turn our barren heart into a fruitful field, 
 needs to be cut away. Whatever prevents us from receiving 
 the life-giving dew and rain of the Holy Spirit of God, must 
 with jealous care be removed; and whatever threatens to check 
 the new life, and prevent its proper development, must be 
 honestly renounced. Where this is done we may trust the 
 incorruptible Seed to act upon our human nature as the corn 
 seed acts upon the soil, and we may expect our nature to act, 
 as it were, automatically under the influence of the new life 
 . thus introduced ; and while we thus yield our members we / 
 shall have our fruit unto holiness, and the end eternal life. 
 
 Now as the result of this automatic operation of natural laws, 
 what have we ? We have described here a process of steady, 
 quiet, regular, systematic growth. There are some people > 
 ) whose idea of religious life would seem to be that it consists ,' 
 in a series of fits, and starts. Now we make a tremendous ; 
 rush under the influence of some passing excitement, and then 
 we fall back into a condition of stagnation or of backsliding. 
 Then there comes by-and-by another flood tide, and then 
 again another ebb. My dear friends, that is not a wholesome 
 experience. I am aware that Christians sometimes need a 
 special season of visitation to encourage and refresh them, 
 and rouse them out of any grooves that they have formed 
 out of a routine that from its very regularity is in some 
 danger of becoming barren; but too often such special calls 
 are rendered necessary by the languor and apathy that is 
 , exhibited in the lives of the Lord's people. Now surely true / 
 I Christians ought not to need this. The ideal of Christian life J _ 
 )is presented to us in what happens in our fields gradual, ) 
 's.steady growth. 
 
 With this lesson before us, let me guard you against two 
 opposite errors; first, the error to which I have already re- 
 
 55
 
 Growth and Harvest. 
 
 ferred of being too impatient and petulant because progress 
 is not as rapid as we expected; and, second, the error of 
 becoming contented with a life destitute of all real progress 
 whatsoever. 
 
 With respect to the first of these errors, let me point out 
 that growth is a very gradual thing, so gradual as to be alto- 
 gether imperceptible to the outward vision. You look at your 
 field to-day, and you see no change from yesterday. You go 
 to-morrow, and you discern no change from to-day ; but the 
 seed is growing all the while. Dear Christian brethren, we 
 shall not assist our progress by being too anxious to gauge 
 and measure it. Probably such attempts will only end in 
 disappointment, or they may induce pernicious consequences. 
 If we conclude that we are growing, we may be a little 
 elated ; or if we feel as if we had lost ground, we may be 
 depressed ; but in neither case is our real growth advanced 
 by the process. You never saw a farmer go through his field 
 with a foot rule and measure his crop. You never heard of 
 a farmer going home to his wife, with a smile upon his face, 
 and saying, " It has grown the ninetieth part of the eighth of 
 an inch since last night." That is not the way farmers comfort 
 themselves. They believe the seed is growing, although they 
 cannot detect day by day the measure of its growth. It will 
 not, they know, spring up in a night, like a mushroom it will 
 take its time ; but it is sure to grow if the seed is good, and 
 the weather seasonable, and the ground rightly prepared, 
 tt When, however, an agriculturist compares the state of his 
 field in June with its condition in April, he can see a dis- 
 tinct difference, can't he? Even so with ourselves, if we are 
 in a healthy condition, and we look back over a consider- 
 J -j able period of our spiritual life (and souls grow much more 
 '''slowly than corn, remember), we ought to be able to see 
 some distinct signs of progress, should we not? We ought to 
 \ift, a little less childish, a little more spiritually-minded, a little 
 stronger in faith, and a little more like Christ. Our besetting 
 sins should have lost much of their power, and temptation 
 should no longer influence us as we were once influenced by 
 it. But this progress could not be detected from day to day, 
 nor perhaps even from year to year, so gradual was its nature. 
 If an agriculturist went into his field in June and found the 
 condition of the crop no more advanced than in April, he 
 would come to the conclusion that there was something wrong
 
 Growth and Harvest. 
 
 somewhere, and he would endeavour to find out what it 
 was. And even so with us. If as years roll on we find we 
 don't make any progress, we had better examine ourselves for 
 the cause. 
 
 And this brings before us the second error that I have 
 referred to the error of being content to see no progress, 
 and of ceasing to expect it. The earth brings forth fruit 
 automatically, as we have seen ; it is the law of its nature to 
 do so. If it be not so then with us, surely there must 
 be a cause. If the incorruptible seed has fallen Tnto~my V 
 heart, and been implanted there by the Holy Ghost, it is in 
 the nature of things that I should bring forth fruit; and if ' -'< 
 I don't, it is necessary that I should ask myself the reason 
 why. Perhaps you jwilLfind,jJieieJs a^bjight. Alas ! it is too 
 often so. Some unhealthy, perhaps some deadly, influence 
 has been allowed to pervade our life, and to mar and injure 
 all. Modern science has not found out how to deal with the 
 blight that sometimes affects vegetable substances. But, 
 thank God, there is no destructive agency that can affect the 
 spiritual life in the heart of man, but God has a cure ready for 
 it. Blight, mildew, rust, or whatever it is, God knows exactly 
 where to find the remedy, how to supply the cure. The fresh 
 breath of eternal life from an all-healing God can sweep away 
 all those destructive agencies that are causing so much trouble, 
 and put the seed in a condition to grow again, if only you 
 will, with humble faith, apply to " Jehovah-Rophi the Lord 
 that healeth thee." 
 
 But, dear Christians, whatever you do, don't fall into the 
 terrible mistake the fatal mistake of supposing that pro- 
 gress is to be backward instead of forward. There are some 
 who profess to have been true Christians for forty or fifty 
 years, and they will tell you in mournful and lugubrious 
 tones, "My first days were my best days." "Oh, for the 
 sweet and ineffable joys of my spiritual youth ! How glad 
 I should be to have them back again ; but of course that 
 was in my ' first love.' " What would you think of an agri- 
 culturist who should talk in that fashion? who should go . 
 out into his field in August, and moan out, " Oh for the 
 green blade of spring ! Oh that I could only see my field 
 as fresh and verdant-looking as it was in the month of March 
 last!" What would you think of him? One thing I am 
 sure of, you would feel much relieved at the thought that 
 
 57
 
 Growth and Harvest. 
 
 he was not your tenant. We expect something very different 
 from the tender blade in autumn, don't we? and something 
 much more to the purpose. The world may put its best first ; 
 but not so the Master, of whom it was witnessed, " Every man 
 in the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men 
 have well drunk, then that which is worse : but thou hast kept 
 the good wine until now." And they who follow the Lord fully 
 will find things get better and better as the years roll on, if 
 only He lives in them, and they live by Him. 
 
 But now observe that while, as I have said, gradual, steady, 
 progressive development in the spiritual life is what we have to 
 look for, there may also be certain well-defined epochs or defi- 
 nite stages in Christian experience. Here these are indicated to 
 us in the words that follow : " First the blade, then the ear, then 
 the full corn in the ear." I turn to St. John's epistle for a com- 
 mentary upon this, and I find there a similar division : " I write 
 unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for 
 His name's sake. ... I write unto you, little children, be- 
 cause ye have known the Father." There is the blade. Are 
 your sins forgiven you ? You hope they will be. What, my 
 dear friend, have you not reached the first stage of develop- 
 ) ment yet ? Oh, take heed, I pray you, lest the harvest-time 
 ~] come, and find you not even yet in the blade ! Do remember 
 / that the blade comes at the commencement, not at the close of 
 the history of the crop; and forgiveness at the beginning, not 
 at the end of the Christian life. 
 
 What comes next? "I write unto you, young men, because ye 
 are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have 
 overcome the wicked one." What have we here ? " Then 
 the blade." Now here again Nature's object-lesson is very 
 helpful. The ear, as soon as it appears, differs from the blade 
 in this, that the plant has begun to assume its final and perfect 
 form, that form in which ultimately the likeness of the original 
 seed is to be reproduced. There is no apparent resemblance 
 between the blade and the original seed, is there ? But when 
 the ear begins to form, then you see something like an 
 embryonic representation of the perfect corn, and you can 
 easily believe that it is corn you are inspecting. The image 
 of the original seed is being reproduced. Now observe, St. John 
 says of the young men that the word of God abideth in them. 
 This Word, as we have seen, received through the gospel, 
 becomes within us the indwelling Christ, who is the Word of 
 
 53
 
 Growth and Harvest. 
 
 the Father, and when He abideth within us He reproduces 
 His own likeness in us. This likeness is scarcely discernible 
 in the spiritual child, although He possesses the image of God 
 potentially ; but when Christ is being formed within us His 
 image begins to appear, and men see in us a manifestation of 
 the Divine. The Christ who dwells within cannot be hid, and 
 they are constrained to admire Him for what they see in us. 
 
 Dear brethren, is it so with us? Does His word dwell in 
 us, transforming us into His image, and rendering us living ' >J ~ 
 epistles, seen and known of all men? But the question may 
 arise in your minds, Are these various stages distinctly marked, 
 so that we can tell when we pass out of one into another? I 
 reply, It is very hard to say, if indeed it can be said at all, 
 when the one stage ends and the other begins, and yet we 
 may be able to distinguish the different stages. To refer to 
 St. John's figure. When does the boy begin to be a young man, 
 and cease to be a little child? Nor can you say when the 
 full-grown man becomes a father in this sense of the word. 
 Yet you can say without any hesitation that one person is a 
 child, and that another is a young man. The one condition 
 of development is distinguishable from the other, and yet in 
 normal growth the one stage glides into the other almost 
 imperceptibly. It is even so usually in the Christian life the 
 babe gradually becomes the young man, even as the blade 
 gradually becomes the ear. Sa-^i 
 
 There are, however, cases in which the transition is more 
 definitely marked, and these cases too have their analogies in - ' 
 Nature. As a rule, the ear does not manifest itself in a "- 
 moment ; but under certain conditions there very often occurs 
 in your fields a remarkably sudden change about the time that 
 the ear begins to appear, that seems almost like a second birth. 
 You go out one day and see all the calyxes of the wheat 
 swollen, as if ready to burst. You know the ear is inside, but 
 it has not yet made its way through that thick environment 
 by which it is imprisoned. You say, " It will be out in a day 
 or two." In the night there comes a shower of rain, and the 
 morning sun rises with summer heat, and you go into your field, 
 and you exclaim, " Dear me, what a change ; the ears have all 
 come out ! " It has taken place, comparatively speaking, in a 
 moment. 
 
 Now I believe there is a somewhat similar experience not 
 unfrequently in spiritual life an experience in which we pass, 
 
 59
 
 Growth and Harvest. 
 
 as by a step, from the child's state into the young man's con- 
 dition, though I think they are in error who insist that so 
 marked a change will always take place at this point. It often 
 happens that, after years of elementary Christian experience, 
 there arises in our spiritual life a certain sense of dissatisfaction 
 with ourselves, a longing for something we have not yet 
 attained. There is a deepening of our inward conviction of 
 sin, of shortcoming, and of unworthiness. We are brought 
 back again to the place of birth; we lie at the foot of the cross. 
 There are within us strange searchings of heart shall I call 
 them the birth-throes of a new and higher life ? We cannot 
 continue as we are. There is a power within us struggling to 
 assert itself, the ear is almost ready to burst through its 
 environment, and shoot forth in all the beauty of its true form. 
 
 Ah, child of God, this is often a distressing experience ! 
 There is a hunger that nothing seems to satisfy, and thirst you 
 cannot slake ; and " blessed are they who " thus " hunger and 
 thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled." But perhaps 
 you don't as yet see your blessedness, you only feel your pain, 
 and you cry out in your distress, travailing in birth again, until 
 Christ be formed within you. And then it is that you find your- 
 self drawn again, as by an invincible attraction, to the cross, 
 and you begin to relearn the first great lesson that you feel 
 you had only learnt partially and imperfectly before ; and as 
 you lie there gazing, the deeper import of Calvary is, as it 
 were, burnt into your soul. There you see your old man 
 crucified together with Christ, that the body of sin might be 
 destroyed, that we should not henceforth serve sin. There 
 you learn afresh to judge with St. Paul, that if one died all 
 died, and that He died for all, that we who live should not 
 henceforth live unto ourselves, but unto Him. You begin to 
 see that He died to redeem us from all iniquity, and to 
 purchase us to Himself for a people of possession, zealous of 
 good works. And while the vision of our faith thus rests on 
 Christ we burst our chains, and break forth from our captivity 
 into a life of resurrection strength and beauty, and so rise, as 
 by a single step, into the second stage of the spiritual life 
 " first the blade, then the ear." 
 
 To those who are passing through such an experience let me 
 say, Be of good courage; there are better things in store for 
 you, and these sorrowful experiences are only leading you up 
 to them. You feel your bonds now as you never did before, 
 
 60
 
 Growth and Harvest. 
 
 just because you are on the point of breaking away from them; 
 the ear is endeavouring to burst through the folds and swathing- 
 bands that confine it. Fear not, the hour of liberty is nigh. 
 
 And to you who have passed through all this, and reached 
 the condition of the strong, vigorous young man, let me say, 
 Don't think that you have already attained the measure of the' /U 
 fulness of stature. There are better things still in store 
 you. " I write unto you, fathers, because ye have known Him 
 that was from the beginning." As little children we know the 
 father after a simple, childlike fashion ; but how little does the 
 child know of the father, of his thoughts, feelings, character ! ) 
 But in maturer years the son begins to understand the father, 
 and to associate with him on terms of sympathetic familiarity. 
 Even so in our early days we know God as our Father, and rejoice 
 to think of Him as such ; but how little do we know of Him ! 
 As, however, we grow up to be young men, and as His word 
 abides within us, we begin to know the eternal God revealed 
 in the Christ after a very different fashion. We behold His 
 glory, we contemplate with adoring admiration His perfections, 
 we enter into His thoughts, and apprehend His purposes, and 
 thus the full corn is formed in the ear. Such Christians are 
 being transformed into His image, and reproducing the char- 
 acteristic features of His perfection. There is about them a 
 certain mellowness of Christian experience, a ripeness for 
 glory, an absence of worldly-mindedness, and above all a quiet, 
 calm apprehension of God, a life in the land of vision, where 
 the sun never sets, and where^the light never fades away. 
 Thus God leads His ransomed on to the last stage of earthly 
 development, and waits with eager expectation for the comple- 
 tion of His own work. Just as the farmer goes out to his 
 field in autumn, casts his glance over his crop, and says, " If 
 we can only have fine weather, it will be ready in another 
 week," so the great God of heaven looks down upon the ripen- 
 ing soul with a smile of satisfaction. 
 
 "A few years more and the great work will be done. Look ! * ^ 
 he is ripening. I can see my own image in that man's life. I can *+* '- 
 hear my own voice in that man's words. Look, angels, principali- 
 ties and powers of darkness and light. Have you seen my servant 
 yonder, on whom my sun has shone, and on whom my rain 
 has fallen for many a year, and in whom they have done their 
 work ? See, the harvest-day is drawing near ! The ripeness and 
 the beauty of heaven is appearing in him. 
 
 01
 
 Growth and Harvest. 
 
 And by-and-by, when the eye of God, watching the whole 
 process with a tenderness and interest I cannot describe, dis- 
 covers at last that the great work is accomplished, and the fruit 
 is fully brought forth, " immediately He putteth in the sickle, 
 because the harvest is come." 
 
 I love the word " immediately " on the lips of St. Mark. 
 How many important lessons does it teach all through 
 the gospel ! but never does it speak more eloquently and 
 , forcibly to my mind than it does here. It is just as though 
 God were bending down, sickle in hand, waiting for the last 
 signs of spiritual ripeness, as if impatient for the moment of 
 fruition. Blaze down, O sun ! blow, soft autumn winds ! 
 descend, gentle dew of heaven, and bring the fruit to per- 
 fection ! And then when the proper moment arrives His love 
 will not let Him tarry. Why should the happy soul lose for 
 one hour the joys of Paradise, the blessedness of being for 
 ever with the Lord ! Quick as the flash of lightning, the sickle 
 is thrust into the field, and the whole hosts of heaven shout for 
 joy as the harvest of earth is reaped into the heavenly granary, 
 and God looks upon it with the satisfaction that springs from an 
 infinite love " Harvest-home ! harvest-home ! harvest-home !" 
 Here we find at last the fruit of all this toil, the reward 
 of this Divine perseverance ; this patient waiting through 
 the vast untold periods ere man began to exist ; this patient 
 waiting all through the long, dark ages of human history; 
 
 t * JL $ f this patient waiting in each particular case. The farmer 
 gets his reward at last, and shall not the great God get 
 
 ^_ His reward also? Think of the joy that wells up in His 
 heart. Think of the triumphant utterances that shall pass 
 from his lips as He calls the vast universe together, and 
 before all the intelligences of heaven exposes to view the 
 ' ransomed Bride of the Lamb. There she stands in all her 
 virgin beauty, in all the maturity of her grace, and God Him- 
 self rejoices over her with singing. Not in vain the tears 
 of Gethsemane, and the bloody sweat. Not in vain the pains 
 of Calvary, the darkness and the horrors of death. Not in 
 vain the mighty motions of the Holy Spirit. The end is 
 reached . at last. The harvest is reaped. " Harvest-home ! 
 harvest-home ! " Open the heavenly granary, and store it with 
 the fruits of the earth. God Himself hath sown in tears, let 
 Him reap in joy. " This is the Lord's doing, and it is mar- 
 vellous in our eyes ! " 
 
 62
 
 gnttctpatfons of JTattf;. 
 
 /*"" T 
 
 " Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed : \ 
 
 thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy habitation. The 
 people shall hear, and be afraid : sorrow shall take hold on the inhabi- 
 tants of Palestina. Then the dukes of Edom shall be amazed ; the 
 mighty men of Moab, trembling shall take hold upon them; all the 
 inhabitants of Canaan shall melt away. Fear and dread shall fall 
 upon them : by the greatness of thine arm they shall be as still as a 
 stone ; till thy people pass over, O Lord, till the people pass over, 
 which thou hast purchased. Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them 
 in the mountain of thine inheritance, in the place, O Lord, which 
 thou hast made for thee to dwell in, in the sanctuary, O Lord, which 
 thy hands have established. The Lord shall reign for ever and ever." 
 
 EXODUS xv. 13-18. 
 
 WE are perhaps hardly surprised at the tone of jubilant 
 confidence which pervades this glorious psalm of thanks- 
 giving. Very strong indeed is the language used on this 
 occasion ; but perhaps not stronger than might naturally have 
 been expected to spring from such circumstances ; for what a 
 wonderful event had just transpired ! A few short months ago, 
 and how improbable that anything like this vast and stupendous 
 revolution should ever take place ! How utterly improbable 
 that a nation of slaves, held down as with an iron hand by the 
 ruthless tyranny of the proudest monarch of the period, should 
 ever emerge from Egypt, assert their national independence, 
 and exult in the acquisition of liberty ! 
 
 And yet these most improbable events were actually accom- 
 plished facts ; and the Israelites, intoxicated with wondering joy, 
 gazed upon the heaving waters of the Red Sea, which was the 
 tomb of their foe, and beyond it to the distant shores of Egypt, 
 and knew that from that land, where they had endured so 
 much misery and had been so ground down and oppressed, they 
 were delivered for ever by the intervention of the God of their 
 fathers. Jehovah had shown Himself more than a match for 
 all the forces of Egypt; and as they contemplated the wonderful 
 deliverance that had been wrought, as they reflected upon the 
 circumstances of the case and considered the means by which 
 that deliverance had been wrought, it is not surprising that 
 
 63
 
 Anticipations of Faith. 
 
 they felt within their hearts that the God who had done this 
 could do anything ; that it was no longer reasonable to limit 
 His omnipotence. Whatever obstacles might still lie in their 
 way, and whatever difficulties were still to be encountered, one 
 thing was sure that He who had begun the good work for 
 them could carry it on to a triumphant issue. 
 
 I say we are hardly surprised at the strength of the language 
 that is here employed. And yet certainly it is* very strong ; 
 for when you come to think of their position at this moment 
 it was one that might have seemed very trying, and almost 
 forlorn. There they stood, on the farther shore of the Red 
 Sea, with a vast desert stretching before them, and a consider- 
 able distance to be traversed over those dreary burning plains 
 before they could hope to enter upon the conquest of the 
 land of Canaan, even supposing they were in a state to attempt 
 such a conquest. Through that desert who was to be their 
 guide ? And while they were making their way across it, who 
 was to find their needful supplies ? 
 
 It is well, my dear friends, in considering this narrative, 
 to try and present their case to our minds in such a manner 
 that we may realize the gravity of the difficulties that had 
 to be faced. Just reflect upon what has happened before 
 our eyes quite recently in that very country, and perhaps 
 not far from the very spot where the Israelites were standing 
 at this moment. Only a short time ago we were taking up our 
 newspapers morning after morning, and eagerly glancing at 
 their contents, and then flinging them down with a feeling of 
 disappointment, because the great victory which we were 
 looking forward to, and which was to put an end to the horrors 
 of war, seemed so long delayed. And what was the cause of 
 the delay? Just this, that our general was making sure that 
 his commissariat department should be in perfect working 
 order. He felt that it would be extreme temerity, amounting 
 almost to madness, to hazard a march across the desert with- 
 out a proper commissariat supply. By so doing he would have 
 been risking the lives of his soldiers, as well as the success of 
 the campaign. And we remember how much trouble he had 
 in ensuring the necessary supplies. Locomotive engines had 
 to be brought from a distance, mules and other beasts of 
 burden had to be purchased at a very large cost in distant 
 lands, and brought over to the scene of action, in order to 
 furnish the necessary commissariat appliances and to bring the 
 
 6 4
 
 Anticipations of Faith. 
 
 supply within reach of the army. And yet our army, after all, 
 was only a very small thing as compared with the hosts of the 
 Lord who went out of Egypt at the time of the Exodus. I 
 suppose they were between two and three millions strong, if 
 you include women and children, and you may imagine how 
 vast a supply would be required to meet the wants of such a 
 multitude as this. 
 
 Here they were then, on the other side of the Red Sea, the 
 vast wilderness stretching before them, their long weary march 
 not yet commenced, and wholly destitute of any adequate 
 supplies, and without either arms, or discipline, or any capacity 
 for warfare. Surely the prospect might have seemed most 
 discouraging. They must have known perfectly well what 
 they soon found out to be a fact that the wilderness swarmed 
 with wandering nomad hordes, Bedouins of the desert, men 
 of war, who might at any moment come down upon them, 
 cut off their stragglers, or even put the whole undisciplined 
 rabble to rout and make a prey of them. There was not, I 
 suppose, a single experienced soldier in the camp, nor had they 
 either weapons or skill in using them. Neither horses nor 
 chariots, nor even camels, that have well been called the ships 
 of the desert, were at their command, while there were sturdy 
 warriors of the desert who had to be faced before the Israelites 
 could make their way into the promised land. 
 
 And even supposing they should overcome these difficulties 
 of the journey, what then ? There lay Canaan before them, but 
 how were they, who could hardly hold their own against the 
 tribes of the desert, to undertake aggressive warfare against 
 nations dwelling in cities with walls great and high, and equipped 
 with all the appliances of ancient warfare? How chimerical 
 their enterprise would seem on reflection ! how improbable that 
 they would ever succeed in taking possession of the land which 
 God had promised to them ! In fact, although they had been 
 just witnessing so splendid a manifestation of divine power, if 
 they had paused to reflect upon the probabilities of the case, 
 they might have come to the conclusion that the undertaking 
 was, as I have said, wholly chimerical, and that their wisest 
 plan would be, even in the very hour of triumph, to make the 
 best terms with the Egyptians that they possibly could. 
 
 But faith looked on beyond all difficulties. Faith never stops 
 for commissariat supplies. Faith does not ask, Where is my 
 daily bread to come from ? Faith does not wait to be clothed 
 n. 65 F
 
 Anticipations of Faith. 
 
 with armour, save such armour as the power of God supplies. 
 Faith does not stop to weigh the adequacy of the means 
 within our reach to induce the end. Rather, Faith steps 
 boldly on, content to be persuaded that God makes no mis- 
 takes; that those who array themselves under Him shall, in 
 one way or another, find their resources sufficient, and that 
 He in whom they trust will never fail them. 
 
 So they stand there singing their song of expectation at the 
 very moment of triumph; at the commencement of their 
 career, they look right on to the close. They use not only 
 words of hope, but of anticipation, so confident and strong 
 that they speak of the victory of the future as though it were 
 a thing of the past. Here they are, on the banks of the Red 
 Sea, miles and miles before them with nothing but a waste of 
 desert, miles and miles of barren, burning sand, without water, 
 without pasture, without habitation ; all this has to be traversed 
 before Canaan can be reached. And yet listen to the words 
 of confident anticipation which they dared to utter: "Thou 
 in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast 
 redeemed." He had only led them forth a single night's 
 journey, but in that single" rughT's "journey "they saw the com- 
 pletion of the whole long journey they were to take. "Thou 
 hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed : thou hast 
 guided them in thy strength into thy holy habitation." Why 
 they have got there already ! Yes ; and they have too. In 
 the anticipation of faith they have already taken possession of 
 the promised land. In the anticipation of faith the walls of 
 Jericho are already prostrate, the sons of Anak already sub- 
 dued, the nations of Canaan have already melted away. In 
 the anticipation of faith victory is already obtained before the 
 war has commenced. 
 
 When we come to ask ourselves the secret of this triumphant 
 anticipation we shall find that it is all expressed in one single 
 sentence " Thou hast redeemed." Yes ; there it was. I would 
 have you observe that the joyful confidence of the Israelites, 
 sprang not merely from the abstract consideration that the 
 God who had shown Himself so strong to save already, was 
 capable of any further exhibition of strength that might be 
 demanded of Him. That was not all. That, no doubt, was 
 the supreme basis of their confidence that God who had 
 broken the yoke of Pharaoh, liberated them from his tyrant 
 sway, and brought them through the Red Sea in safety, could 
 
 66
 
 \ 
 
 Anticipations of Faith. 
 
 do anything that had to be done. No doubt that was so, but 
 their confidence did not merely rest on that Beyond all that 
 there was the consideration that the deliverance of the present 
 was a part of one grand purpose completed already in the 
 mind of God ; a purpose which had been indicated to them 
 in the mission of Moses. 
 
 Moses had been commissioned not merely to deliver the 
 Israelites from Egypt, but to take them into Canaan ; not only 
 to rescue them from the iron furnace, but to conduct them to 
 a land flowing with milk and honey ; and now, at the moment 
 of the triumphant completion of one part of this grand pur- 
 pose, they are in a position to conclude that He who has 
 already fulfilled His own promises will not fail them in what 
 remains ; and that He who has done what seemed to be by far 
 the hardest part of the undertaking, will be competent to carry 
 to a triumphant issue all that has yet to be done. 
 
 Yes, when we come to think it over, we must admit that it 
 was the hardest part of the undertaking that had been already 
 accomplished. If we had lived at that time, and if we had 
 visited the Israelites in Egypt, and contemplated their condition 
 under the tyrant sway of Pharaoh, we should have said that 
 nothing was more improbable than that in a few weeks or, 
 indeed, in any time whatever this nation of serfs should 
 suddenly spring up into the enjoyment of national life and 
 liberty, and be capable of throwing off the yoke of Pharaoh. 
 We all know how soon slaves lose what little courage they may 
 have possessed, and how incapable they are as a rule of rising 
 up against their oppressors. Moreover in the present case the 
 systematic destruction of the male children was robbing the 
 nation slowly but surely of all masculine power, and thus with 
 every year of their captivity their condition became more and 
 more utterly helpless and hopeless. 
 
 Then, too, we should have been bound to take into account 
 the power of Pharaoh ; remember he was the mightiest monarch 
 of the period ; consider the forces at the command of this 
 ancient monarchy, as witnessed by those colossal works that 
 the Pharaohs have left behind. Thus, with the contrast be- 
 tween the power of Egypt with the impotence of Israel before 
 our mind, let us reflect what event could have been more 
 improbable than that the Israelites should ever be delivered 
 from his control. 
 
 Or, again, if they were indeed to be delivered, who would 
 
 67
 
 Anticipations of Faith. 
 
 ever have thought of such a deliverance. But, ]o 
 stand, not only delivered, but delivered without drawing a 
 sword. They have simply had to stand still and see the 
 salvation of God manifested on their behalf. And who could 
 have expected so complete a deliverance ? For not only are 
 the people themselves set free, but their oppressors are 
 destroyed, so that the Egyptians are no longer in a position to 
 continue the pursuit into the wilderness, or to attempt to bring 
 them back into bondage. They themselves had never dared 
 to hope for such an emancipation, and had been slow in their 
 despondency to respond to the advances of Moses and Aaron ; 
 "the prospect had seemed too discouraging; and yet now the 
 thing was done. The hosts of Pharaoh are buried in the depths 
 of the Red Sea, while the ransomed of the Lord have crossed 
 over in safety; and as they stand on the other side, their 
 hearts filled with joy at the triumphant delivery which God 
 had just wrought for them, they draw the not unreasonable 
 conclusion that if God can fulfil and if God actually has 
 fulfilled this first portion of His divine purpose, He may be 
 trusted to fulfil the rest. If He has done the greater thing, 
 surely He can do that which, regarded from even a human 
 point of view, was certainly less difficult. And so in the 
 anticipations of their faith they saw it all done already. 
 
 Children of God, it is time we endeavoured to apply the 
 lessons suggested by all this to ourselves. We too have been 
 the subjects of a great deliverance, a deliverance as super- 
 natural in its character arid as astonishing in its conditions as 
 ever was the deliverance of Israel from Egypt. This deliver- 
 ance is also the product of redemption. We too have been 
 redeemed from the judgment of God against our sin, and from 
 the consequent tyranny of Satan, a more ruthless oppressor 
 than even Pharaoh was. None would ever have thought of 
 suggesting such means as have been employed for our redemp- 
 tion any more than they could have foreseen the circumstances 
 of the Exodus; and our deliverance from judgment and slavery 
 is also part of one grand divine purpose, towards the accom- 
 plishment of which this is only the first step. We are saved 
 in order that we may rise to the prize of our high calling, and 
 become inheritors of our true Land of Promise ; and the first 
 great deliverance is with us also surely an earnest and a pledge 
 of all that is to follow. 
 
 I suppose it is because we so imperfectly apprehend the 
 
 68
 
 Anticipations of Faith. 
 
 miracle of our deliverance and its completeness, and the new , 
 relations which it establishes between ourselves and God, and I 
 between ourselves and sin, that our feelings at the outset 7 
 of our new life are so often just the opposite of those depicted 
 in this triumphant song. 
 
 Instead of joyous anticipation, how common a thing it is to 
 meet with gloomy forebodings on the part of the newborn 
 children of God, fresh from the cross of Christ, just rising, as 
 we may say, spiritually out of the waters of the Red Sea. And 
 many of us have scarcely been saved from our position of con- 
 demnation and spiritual bondage before we begin to consider 
 the difficulties that lie before us, the enemies that we shall 
 have to encounter, the sacrifices that we may have to make, 
 the trials that we may have to undergo. The wilderness seems 
 so vast, the enemies so mighty, the supplies so inadequate 
 or precarious ; and while our eyes of unbelief are resting upon 
 all these adverse considerations, our heart seems to sink within 
 us until we are ready to turn back again into Egypt. 
 
 How common a thing it is to meet with young Christians 
 who seem indeed to be on the right side of the Red Sea, but 
 who appear to be more inclined to wring their hands in terror 
 than to " sound the loud timbrel " in exultation ! How shall 
 I ever keep my religion when the mission is over? How shall 
 I battle against the worldly influences by which I am surrounded? 
 How shall I face my old friends, and stand firm against their 
 efforts to seduce me from my new path in life? How shall 
 I ever master my besetting sins ? How can I hope to curb 
 my temper? says one. How shall I master my lust? says 
 another. How shall I overcome my sloth and indolence ? 
 says a -third. How shall I rise above my moral cowardice ? 
 says a fourth. 
 
 And thus our anticipations of coming disaster take all the 
 bloom off our early joy, and mar our triumph before it has 
 well begun. And thus we pave the way for failure ; for if we 
 begin by doubting the God who has redeemed us, at the very 
 outset of our Christian life, when the great fact of deliverance 
 lies fresh before our view, how can we expect to trust Him 
 better when the actual struggle has begun ? and not to trust 
 Him is to ensure necessary defeat and failure. 
 
 Now all this dismal apprehension, this cowardly misgiving, 
 comes of our not sufficiently realizing what it is that is con- 
 tained in redemption. We do not see that our justification is 
 
 69
 
 Anticipations of Faith. 
 
 not only a fact of the present, but a pledge for the future. In 
 fact, we treat the Atonement as if it were indeed what some 
 have slanderously reported it to be only a legal fiction, instead 
 of an actual source of new and spiritual power. We judge of 
 what lies before us as if we were to all practical intents and 
 purposes the same persons that we were before, forgetting that 
 " if any man be in Christ Jesus, he is a new creature : old 
 things have passed away, and all things have become new. And 
 all things are OF God." 
 
 We forget that we have passed from nature into grace, 
 
 and now we have to count upon divine resources. We 
 
 forget that Christ is the First and the Last ; that as He is 
 
 the Alpha, so He is also the Omega, and that He is all 
 
 the alphabet between the Alpha and Omega. There are some 
 
 people who can believe in Christ for Alpha, and in Christ for 
 
 /Omega ; they believe in Christ for conversion, and in Christ 
 
 i for the death-bed. He is to open your career, and close your 
 
 [ career, and then you are to struggle on and do the best you can 
 
 I between these two points. But I believe the Alpha and the 
 
 \Omega is the Alpha and Omega of comprehension, and not of 
 
 exclusion. The whole alphabet is contained within its two 
 
 terms. As He begins so He goes on, and as He goes on so 
 
 He concludes ; and as you stand upon the banks of the Red 
 
 Sea it is your privilege not only to see that He has drowned 
 
 the hosts of Pharaoh, but that He has conquered Canaan. 
 
 He has not only delivered us from Egypt, but He has, in a 
 
 certain sense, brought us into the Land of Promise, although 
 
 we have not yet set our foot on that Land of Promise, or 
 
 realized the blessedness God intends us to enjoy. 
 
 What do our doubts and fears and misgivings com* from ? 
 Surely it is easy to see that they come from our looking 
 away from the deliverance; just as the joyful anticipation of 
 Miriam and Moses came from their looking back on the 
 deliverance, and allowing themselves to be adequately im- 
 pressed with its solemn grandeur. They had their eyes full 
 of God, the glory of God, the power of God, the wisdom of 
 God, the love of God, the faithfulness of God, the care of 
 God. Their minds were taken up with God, and contem- 
 plating Him in the wonder of His work they looked back 
 with feelings of triumph, and forward with confident anti- 
 cipation. They did not stop to consider the difficulties and 
 dangers of their task ; they saw the whole thing already done, 
 
 70
 
 Anticipations of Faith. 
 
 although it was yet to do ; and, in the language of faith, they 
 represented themselves as already ascending up to God's ap- 
 pointed place, and offering their sacrifice of praise and thanks- 
 giving, while the Shechina blazed forth in all its glory, and 
 filled the house with the Divine Presence. 
 
 They foresaw it all as theirs already ; and even so may you, 
 dear children of God, if you are saved outright. There are 
 some Christians who seem to me tQ^sJic^jjiJh_^ed^jSejcU 
 They don't -get right through..and_on to firm Aground on the 
 other side. Or if they do get through at last, it is not till the 
 waters have begun to return ; and when they are pulled ashore 
 with friendly violence, they look more like shipwrecked 
 mariners who have been half-drowned than the triumphant 
 hosts of the Lord. But when a man is saved outright, he has 
 a clear idea of redemption. He sees his enemies drowned in 
 the Red Sea, and himself liberated by Omnipotence. When 
 a man sees this to have been his experience, then he can 
 afford to contemplate God with adoring confidence ; and while 
 his soul is full of God, the difficulties, the opposition he has to 
 encounter, and all the foes he has to overcome, dwindle down 
 into comparative insignificance. He has learnt the lesson, and 
 I want you, dear friends, to learn it also, that in one great 
 gift God gives us all. I don't mean to say we realize it all ; 
 I don't say we experience it all ; but I do say that God gives 
 us all. 
 
 I have sometimes compared the gift of God to us in 
 redemption to a property that contains concealed and unknown 
 wealth. A man pays a hundred thousand pounds for a fine estate 
 in Scotland. He surveys it, and says it is cheap at the money. 
 What grand scenery ! what splendid grouse-moors ! what a 
 fine river for my salmon ! It is a magnificent bargain. But he 
 does not yet know how rich he is. As he is going up the 
 mountain side one day his stick strikes against a rock ; he 
 turns around and looks at it ; he picks it up and finds it is 
 iron-stone. He thrusts his stick into the ground, and says, 
 " There is iron here ; I will have a civil engineer to look at 
 the place." He gets a mine surveyor on to his premises, and 
 by-and-by, after a careful examination has been made, the 
 inspector returns in high spirits " My dear sir, your fortune is 
 made. That mountain is very nearly solid iron." 
 
 Just such a gratifying discovery as this was made not so 
 lona; ago up in the North of England. A shrewd man of
 
 Anticipations of Faith. 
 
 business at Middlesborough bought a mountain, which turned 
 out to be pretty nearly so much solid iron, and he became 
 an enormously wealthy millionaire. My dear friends, we don't 
 know how rich we are, because we have not thrust our staffs 
 beneath the surface yet. The man who bought the estate 
 bought what was in the estate, and so when we appropriate 
 redemption we take with it all that is treasured in that re- 
 demption. It is all ours, and faith claims it as our own. 
 And by-and-by as the opportunity occurs, and as our spiritual 
 life developes, so we shall find out the wealth that is trea- 
 sured in that first great gift that God has given, and that 
 which faith anticipates becomes that which experience makes 
 proof of. 
 
 Now observe that redemption affects other people besides 
 the happy Israelites. " All the people shall hear, and be 
 afraid : sorrow shall take hold on the inhabitants of Palestina. 
 The dukes of Edom shall be amazed; the m\ghty men of 
 Moab, trembling shall take hold upon them ; all the in- 
 habitants of Canaan shall melt away. Fear and dread shall 
 fall upon them ; by the greatness of thine arm they shall be as 
 still as a stone; till thy people pass over, O Lord, till the 
 people pass over, which thou hast purchased." What shall 
 make these mighty men melt away? Seeing two or three 
 millions of unwarlike folks marching towards them an un- 
 armed rabble, without military discipline, and without the 
 appliances of war? Is it before such that the mighty men of 
 Moab are to fall back, that the chivalrous sons of Edom 
 are to be put to flight ; that all the inhabitants of Palestine 
 are to melt away? Nothing of the kind. Those Israelites 
 were not going to terrify all these nations these settled 
 and well-provided nations whom they were so soon to 
 meet face to face in battle with any display of their own 
 power or prowess. 
 
 It was the story of the Exodus, the story of a divided 
 sea, the story of a certain mysterious pillar of fire, which 
 showed the way to the Israelites, while it shed a hellish dark- 
 ness upon the Egyptians; the story of the wonderful over- 
 throw of Pharaoh and his hosts in the Red Sea ; it was this 
 that was to fill them with despair. As the story of all this 
 reached their hearts, their courage would fail them, their power 
 of defence become paralyzed, and they would become prepared 
 for the defeat that was to follow. 
 
 72
 
 Anticipations of Faith. 
 
 My dear friends, many of us are at the outset terribly 
 afraid ot" these hostile forces ; is it not a comfort to know 
 that on account of redemption they are actually afraid of us. 
 There is Edom. Esau was a man of the world, and his 
 descendants, the Edomites, are possibly the typical repre- 
 sentatives of the spirit and power of the world. The world 
 is very strong, and it is with it that many young Christians 
 have their severest struggles in the early days of their new 
 life. Not a few young Christians feel that, but for the world's 
 power against them, it would be an easy thing to be a 
 Christian ; but the world is strong and cruel, and they tremble 
 as they think of what the hostility of the world will be. Well 
 listen : " The dukes of Edom shall be amazed .... fear and 
 dread shall be upon them." Children of God, if you are 
 really His, take it for granted that the world is more afraid of 
 you than you are of the world. And you had better count 
 upon their fears instead of being afraid of them. 
 
 In a very memorable period in " our island story," when 
 Admiral Howard and Drake had defeated the Spanish 
 Armada after the first great battle, they continued to pursue 
 them for a fortnight without having a single shot or a single 
 charge of powder left in their ships. They had nothing left 
 but air to fill their guns with. Yet thus without any ammuni- 
 tion our fleet went sailing on and sailing on, while the terrified 
 strangers fled before them, until they were driven right into 
 the Northern Sea. Then the Admiral thought they could not 
 do much harm there, and so he left them and came back to 
 get powder and shot for his own ships. Our fleet with 
 empty guns chased their enemies because that enemy was 
 afraid of them. They had had one terrible defeat, and that 
 was enough. 
 
 And even so may we deal with the forces of this world. 
 Count upon your enemies being afraid of you. If instead of 
 being afraid of them you will only carry the war into the 
 enemy's camp, and seek to win them for Christ, intead of allow- 
 ing them to draw you away from Him, you will find that re- 
 demption has already stripped them of their courage, and 
 paralysed their power to do you any injury. Christ has told 
 us : " In the world ye shall have tribulation ; but be of good 
 cheer, I have overcorde the world." How did He overcome 
 the world ? By the cross. The cross of Jesus Christ was the 
 means whereby the world received its death-blow. He says, 
 
 73
 
 Anticipations of Faith. 
 
 just before His crucifixion, "Now is the judgment of this 
 world ; now is the prince of this world cast out." And so the 
 Apostle exclaims, " God forbid that I should glory, save in the 
 cross of the Lord Jesus Christ " whereby the world " is cruci- 
 fied unto me, and I unto the world." You are not of the 
 world, even as He who redeemed you is not of the world. 
 You belong to Him who has made you citizens of the king- 
 dom of heaven. Surely you may trust Him to keep His own, 
 and to show that heaven is stronger than earth ! Remembers 
 what St. John teaches us : " Whosoever is born of God over- \ 
 cometh the world," and this is the victory that overcometh the / 
 world, even our faith. 
 
 But there are other enemies mentioned here : " The mighty 
 men. of Moab, trembling shall take hold upon them." The 
 Moaj)ites, sprung from the incestuous daughters of Lot, may 
 serve to typify the lusts of the flesh, as Edom typifies the 
 power of the world. A very subtle and dangerous enemy 
 threatens us here, and one that in some one or other of 
 the many forms it assumes is even more difficult to deal with 
 than the world ; but from that also remember that redemption 
 saves us. From the power of flesh in every form Jesus Christ 
 has redeemed us, because our old carnal man has been crucified 
 together with Christ upon yonder cross that the body of sin. ( 
 might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. ', 
 "They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its affec- 
 tions and lusts." Thus by virtue of redemption Moab is 
 already trembling. You are more than a match for your / 
 lower nature, my friends^" tf "God "dwells in your nature. You 
 need not fear your own bodies if they are the temples of the ' 
 Holy Ghost'."" 
 
 Then there are the inhabitants of Canaan all the old forces 
 of evil which have formed habits of evil within our nature, 
 contributing each an element, so to speak, to perfect the old 
 Adam within the sloth, the pride, the vainglory, the anger 
 and malice, the secret things of darkness, the untruthfulness, 
 the dishonesty, the self-seeking, the self-pleasing, the love of 
 pleasure rather than the love of God ; all these old inhabitants 
 (some of them veritable sons of Anak) are already foredoomed 
 if you are redeemed from all iniquity, and are purchased to be 
 to the Lord a people of possession. Be not afraid of your 
 indwelling foes ; their defence has departed ; the Canaanites 
 share the common panic. You are redeemed as fully from 
 
 74
 
 Anticipations of Faith. 
 
 those evil propensities as you are from the authority of the 
 world. It is your blessed privilege to see your old Adam 
 crucified together with Christ, that the body of sin might be 
 destroyed that you should not henceforth serve sin ; it is your 
 privilege so to appropriate the benefits of the cross as to mortify 
 your members which are upon the earth, and by the Spirit so 
 to pursue to death the deeds of the body that you may truly 
 live. (Rom. viii. 13.) By faith in redemption we are to put off 
 the old man with his deceitful lusts, and put on the new, 
 which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. 
 The provision for this marvellous transformation is, you see, 
 already made, and the old inhabitants of the land may well 
 tremble ; for He who has begun the good work in us may be 
 trusted to carry it on until its triumphant issue. 
 
 Thus we may look right on, like the Israelites, until we find 
 ourselves contemplating the crowning glory of all. These 
 Israelites, standing on the shores of the Red Sea, seemed 
 already to see the magnificent form of the stately temple 
 rising in all its splendour, and themselves assembled to pour 
 out their adoring worship before a revealed God. Even so 
 with us, dear friends, at the very moment of our deliverance 
 from the spiritual Egypt, it is our privilege in faith and hope to 
 look right on into the heavenly places whither Jesus our Fore- 
 runner is for us entered, and to anticipate with joy unspeak- 
 able our introduction into that inner sanctuary, that presence- 
 chamber of God, where, with angels and archangels and all 
 the company of heaven, we shall cast ourselves prostrate 
 before the throne, and pour out our adoring praise unto 
 Him who has loved us and washed us from our sins in His 
 own blood, and has made us kings and priests unto God, even 
 the Father, for ever and for ever. 
 
 Blessed be God, it is a complete redemption, and the 
 more we dwell upon its completeness the stronger we shall 
 feel, and the more calm our lives will be. The glory of 
 true Christian experience is this I have already said it, and I 
 will say it again, because I want to print it upon your minds " 
 that in one great gift God has given us all, and it only now 
 remains for us to work out that wondrous gift into all the ful- 
 ness of practical wealth which actually is contained within it 
 There is no reason then, dear Christian friends, for gloomy 
 forebodings, for unbelieving fears. Tremble not, you who are 
 Just starting forth on the new life, for your foes are already 
 
 75
 
 Anticipations of Faith. 
 
 trembling ; but they may cease to tremble if they see you 
 begin. The unbelief that grieves and disappoints your God 
 weakens you and renews their strength : to fear is to create 
 good cause for fear. Pluck up a good courage, and commit 
 yourself fearlessly to your heavenly Guide, and then in God's 
 name go forward where He leads, following the pillar of cloud 
 and fire with the shout of jubilant confidence "Arise, O 
 God, and let thine enemies be scattered; and let them that 
 hate thee flee before thee." 
 
 And if you find it difficult to rise above your fears, then let 
 me urge you to do what Miriam and her followers did. Go 
 forth and contemplate again the wondrous deliverance. Think 
 of what is meant by the death and resurrection of Jesus, 
 and your death and resurrection in Him, and then begin to 
 sing sing with heart, aye, and voice too, as they sang then. 
 Give way to the spirit of praise which He has breathed 
 into you to take the place of the spirit of heaviness; out 
 of the mouths of you who are still spiritually babes and 
 sucklings let Him perfect praise, that He may still the enemy 
 and the avenger. 
 
 Ah! methinks many of us never get a fair start, just because 
 at first we praise so little. I like to see children childlike, 
 merry, bright, frolicsome, sunny ; it annoys me when I see a 
 child demure, artificial, and terribly proper. And spiritual 
 childhood should display its own proper characteristics, and 
 one of these David knew, and spake a good deal about 
 " He hath put a new song into my mouth, even a thanks- 
 giving to our God." Yes ; thank Him not only for the past, 
 but for the future, for all the faithfulness and truth which are 
 yet to be exhibited, but which already exist in the heart of 
 God for you. Do you remember a very instructive verse in 
 one of our hymns 
 
 " And a new song is in my mouth, , 
 
 To long-loved music set 
 Glory to God for all the grace 
 I have not tasted yet " ! 
 
 That 's the right note ; keep to it, and in this spirit face the 
 desert without murmuring, and the foe without fear, and you 
 will always find something to sing about in the present as well 
 as in the past and the future. 
 
 Oh that these singers had kept up their music a little longer I 
 
 76
 
 Anticipations of Faith. 
 
 Alas ! too soon they changed their jubilant songs for a mourn- 
 ful and discordant wail of murmuring at Marah, and there 
 their music got into a melancholy minor key, from which it 
 hardly ever afterwards seemed able to make its escape during 
 all their long years of wanderings. But of this I shall speak 
 in my next sermon, pointing out the warning that their sorrow- 
 ful story suggests. 
 
 To-day I would fain send you away singing, Victory, 
 victory, through the blood of the Lamb ! " Sing ye to the 
 Lord ; for He hath triumphed gloriously : the horse and his 
 rider hath He cast into the sea." I would have you go forth 
 conscious more than ever before of your own weakness, but 
 confident in divine power. The Lord hath done great things 
 for us already, whereof we rejoice, and "'tis better on before." 
 Fear not for the morrow. Has not the Master taught us to 
 " take no anxious thought for the morrow : for the morrow 
 shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient for the 
 day is the evil thereof"? We can clearly see from these words 
 of His that He intended us to trust Him for the ^outward 
 necessaries of life. Are we any less bound to trust Him for 
 the supply of our spiritual necessities ? " Thy snoes shall be 
 iron and brass ; and as thy day, so shall thy strength be." 
 What do we want more than this ? 
 
 Trials lie before you, perplexities, conflicts of course they 
 do. If you were not to be subjected to this friendly discipline, 
 you might as well be taken to heaven at once ; but is this all, 
 or only part of the truth? Does not "grace to help in every 
 time of need " lie before you too ? Wisdom given bountifully 
 and without upbraiding, and "victory through Jesus Christ our 
 Lord," are not these also elements in your prospect of the 
 future? And "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, to-day, and 
 for ever," is not that something to count upon? Surely you 
 " may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear 
 what man doeth unto me." 
 
 Take your timbrel in your hand, and join the exultant 
 chorus. Sing even now the song of Moses and of the Lamb. 
 Sing as the soldiers of Jehoshaphat sung in the valley of 
 Barachah before the battle. Shout for victory as the expectant 
 multitude snouted before the walls of Jericho fell down. The 
 Lord will never allow you to be the victims of great expecta- 
 tions, so far as He is concerned ; rather shall you ever find that 
 your expectations have come short of His gracious intentions 
 
 If
 
 Anticipations of Faith. 
 
 concerning you ; and by-and-by, when the march through the 
 desert is ended, the song of anticipation shall become the song 
 of celebration : "And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled 
 with fire : and them that had gotten the victory . . . stand on 
 the sea of glass, having the harps of God. And they sing the 
 song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, 
 saying, Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; 
 just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints." 
 
 " Thou dost conduct Thy people 
 Through torrents of temptation : 
 
 Nor will we fear 
 
 While Thou art near 
 The fire of tribulation. 
 The world with sin and Satan 
 In vain our march opposes ; 
 
 By Thee we shall 
 
 Break through them all, 
 And sing the song of Moses. 
 
 " By faith we see the glory 
 To which Thou shall restore us. 
 
 The world despise 
 
 For that high prize 
 Which Thou hast set before us. 
 And if Thou count us worthy, 
 We each, with dying Stephen, 
 
 Shall see Thee stand 
 
 At God's right hand 
 To call us up to heaven."
 
 Clje Disappointments of flMjelief. 
 
 " Wherefore have ye made us to come up out of Egypt, to bring us in unto 
 this evil place? It is no place of seed, or of figs, or of vines, or of 
 pomegranates ; neither is there any water to drink." Numbers xx. 5. 
 
 WHAT a contrast between the joyous outburst of tri- 
 umphant anticipation that sounded forth, as we saw 
 in our last sermon, on the shore of the Red Sea, and these 
 mournful utterances of bitter disappointment and cruel morti- 
 fication ! There are no " loud timbrels " now, no voice of 
 joyful song, no dances of the virgins of Israel, no antiphonal 
 responses of enthusiastic warriors. The only music now is the 
 mournful wail of regret ; the only refrain the repining murmurs 
 of mingled despondency and resentment. 
 
 As if to give point to the contrast, this chapter commences 
 with the mention of the death of that sweet singer who had 
 led the damsels of Israel in their songs and dances on the 
 shore of the Red Sea long years before. Miriam the prophe- 
 tess had passed away without ever realizing the triumphant 
 anticipations that had filled her "prophetic soul," without ever 
 setting foot in the land of promise; and her brother Aaron 
 was soon to follow her. The story of his death ends the 
 chapter which opens with the "mention of the death of his 
 sister. 
 
 Further, the very place where these sad and impatient 
 utterances were once again sounding forth was a place of evil 
 memories and mournful associations. Here it was, some 
 thirty-seven years before, the congregation had awaited with 
 eager expectation the return of the spies ; here it was that they 
 might have entered at on':e on their work of conquest and 
 acquisition ; and here it was that unbelief had triumphed over 
 faith, and shut them out of the promised heritage. If there 
 was one place more than another that it must have cost the 
 Israelites pain and humiliation to revisit, that place was Kadesh 
 Barnea. 
 
 79
 
 The Disappointments of Unbelief. 
 
 And between these two contrasted scenes the moment of 
 joyous enthusiasm and of triumphant anticipation in the past, 
 and the moment of deepest depression and disappointment in 
 the present well-nigh forty long, weary, tedious years of ap- 
 parently aimless and fruitless wandering, and a dreary story of 
 rebellion, and wilfulness, and disobedience running through 
 them all, relieved only now and then by the record of some 
 wondrous revelation of divine mercy, or some astonishing 
 display of divine power. 
 
 What shall we say? Was the expectation really too confident? 
 Had God really disappointed them? Was He to blame for 
 that they had proved, not His promise, but His " breach of 
 promise"? Let us pass over a few years, and ask the now 
 hoary-headed Joshua, ere yet he passes away, whether they 
 expected too much when they indulged in such confident 
 anticipations. Listen to his words ; they are a dying man's 
 testimony : "And, behold, this day I am going the way of all 
 JKhe earth : and ye know in all your hearts and in all your 
 souls, that not one thing hath failed of all the good things 
 which the Lord your God spake concerning you ; all are come 
 to pass unto you, and not one thing hath failed thereof. . . . 
 And God hath given you a land for which ye did not labour, and 
 cities which ye built not, and ye dwell in them ; of the vine- 
 yards and oliveyards which ye planted not do ye eat." With 
 such a testimony sounding in our ears, we have not much 
 difficulty in answering these questions. The Israelites were 
 indeed disappointed, but the disappointment was self-caused. 
 
 But now it is time we should turn from them to those whom 
 they represent only too faithfully the Christian men and 
 women who begin by " running well," and then who seem to 
 fall under the blight of a similar disappointment. Alas ! how 
 many do we meet with who confess in sorrowful and sometimes 
 in petulant language that their whole lives, after the first few 
 weeks of their Christian experience, have been miserable failures. 
 Certainly such Christians do not adorn the doctrine of Christ, 
 but rather disfigure it, by the witness of their lives. Judged 
 by the experiences and admissions of these professors, Chris- 
 tianity itself might well be regarded as weighed in the balances 
 and found wanting. What is the use of a religion which leaves 
 its votaries in no better condition, morally speaking, than they 
 were without it a religion that does not satisfy their legitimate 
 aspirations, nor answer the proper purposes of religion ? What 
 
 80
 
 The Disappointments of Unbelief. 
 
 profit is there in a religion that seems to bring no more enjoy- 
 ment of God, no more spiritual happiness, no more moral 
 power, no more capacity for usefulness, than if we possessed 
 none at all ? Is Christianity itself a failure ? Is the Christian's 
 hope foredoomed to disappointment ? 
 
 These questions are the more easily answered because there 
 are some, thank God, with whom, as with Joshua of old, the 
 case is quite otherwise. There are some, even amongst our- 
 selves, who speak of their own experience of the fulness of the .1 
 blessing of the gospel with as much of grateful satisfaction 
 as the good spies displayed in giving their testimony to the 
 land of promise. There are some who, so far as they have 
 gone in their career of victory and acquisition, are able to 
 say, as we have seen that Joshua said at the close of his 
 wonderful life, " Not one thing hath failed us of all the good 
 things which the Lord our God spake concerning us." And 
 this shows that the fault does not lie with Christianity, nor with 
 the God from whom our holy faith has proceeded. We are not 
 straitened in Him, but in ourselves; with us, as with the 
 Israelites, our failures and disappointments are self-caused 
 they are the product of our own willulness and unbelief. 
 
 Now in attempting to gather the lessons of this sorrowful 
 story of anticipation never fulfilled, and of hopes doomed 
 to disappointment, let us begin by considering what was God's 
 purpose in bringing His people into the wilderness, and in 
 keeping them there for a season; for it is just as clear that it 
 was the will of God that they should tarry there for a time, as 
 that it was not the will of God that they should spend their 
 lives, as most of them actually did, in wandering aimlessly 
 from place to place in these barren and desolate regions. The*, 
 passage through the wilderness, and the exposure of the/ 
 children of Israel to these peculiar conditions of trial, was all^" 
 part of God's gracious plan concerning them ; and from this( ' __ 
 we may learn to explain much that would otherwise be per- 
 plexing in the early experiences of young Christians, who, like/ 
 their Master, after the first great blessing, find themselves led'; 
 up into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. 
 
 We are taught something about these purposes of God long 
 after the event, when Moses was reviewing the marvellous 
 history in the book of Deuteronomy; and here I would remark 
 in passing, that it is always very much easier to see the reason 
 of things when we look back than when we either look for- 
 a. 81 s
 
 The Disappointments of Unbelief. 
 
 wards to, or are actually in the midst of, the circumstances that 
 need to be explained. And this should teach us patience, and 
 dispose us to trust in the superior wisdom of the " Divinity 
 who shapes our ends rough hew them how we may." How 
 different all the circumstances and conditions of life will seem 
 when we come to look back upon them by-and-by in the clear 
 light of Eternity, from the appearance that they bear now. 
 Still the Master has to say to us, as He said to His too self- 
 confident disciple of old, " That which I do thou knowest not 
 now, but thou shalt know hereafter." And we have to learn 
 to say with David, " Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the 
 great waters, and thy footsteps are not known ; but thou 
 leadest thy people like a flock, by the hand of" a Greater than 
 " Moses and Aaron." 
 
 Well, here then is Moses' statement of the purposes of the 
 sojourn in the wilderness. You will find it in Deut. viii. 2, 3 : 
 " Thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God 
 led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, 
 and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether 
 thou wouldest keep His commandments, or no. And He 
 humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with 
 manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know ; 
 that He might make thee know that man doth not live by 
 bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the 
 mouth of the Lord doth man live." 
 
 Here the first great object of the sojourn in the wilderness 
 is described in the words, "to humble thee." Yes, Israel 
 needed to be humbled, although it might have been supposed 
 that boasting would have been excluded by the very character 
 and circumstances of their deliverance, and the helplessness of 
 their condition as they started on their wilderness journey. 
 They had done nothing to compass their own salvation ; they 
 had performed no single deed of prowess. Their own reason 
 told them that they were utterly helpless and dependent. Yet so 
 subtle a thing is pride, that it creeps in even where you would 
 think there was nothing to encourage it, it finds an argument in 
 the very effects of free and unmerited grace ; and it feeds on 
 that divine bounty which you might have thought would have 
 been most unpalatable to it. 
 
 But yesterday these Israelites were slaves, now they were 
 free men ; yesterday they were without any national existence, 
 now they are a promising and powerful commonwealth; yes- 
 
 82
 
 The Disappointments of Unbelief. 
 
 terday they were a herd of panic-stricken fugitives, and now 
 they are the wonder and the terror of all beholders. It is 
 easy to see how a form of pride, not less perilous because 
 it was unreasonable, might spring out of the very thought 
 of the contrast thus presented between the past and the 
 present ; and had they been led straight into Canaan, and 
 launched upon a career of conquest in which they themselves 
 should have borne a part, who shall say to what an extent this 
 pride of heart might have been developed, and how disastrous 
 an effect it might have induced upon their subsequent history ? 
 They must learn in experience what they already know in 
 theory, that they are in themselves just as helpless now as 
 when they were slaves in Egypt, and they can best be taught 
 this by a sojourn in the great and terrible wilderness, where 
 they are necessarily dependent upon God for everything. 
 
 Is it not just so with us? The conditions of justification 
 have been so ordered of God as that boasting shall be ex- 
 cluded. "We have sold ourselves for naught, and we have 
 been redeemed without money ; " yet even out of this humilia- 
 ting process pride will seek to gather food for itself ; and if we 
 were to become at once possessed in conscious enjoyment of 
 all that is by redemption ours, who shall say how high our 
 vanity might rise ? So we have to learn in our own experience 
 our own utter helplessness and incapacity before the Lord can 
 use us, and make us mighty to pull down the strongholds of 
 evil without and within. We have to learn that we, in our- 
 selves, apart from divine grace and the indwelling Christ, are 
 just what we were before our conversion, as impotent and 
 worthless as ever. Nothing but the presence of His grace 
 within and the provisions of His care without make us to differ 
 from those who still are slaves. The new life that we live we 
 only live by faith in Him. And we learn this lesson best in 
 the wilderness, which is, as I may say, the elementary school 
 of Christ, where certain primary lessons have to be learned ere 
 we can proceed to " go on to perfection." 
 
 The Wilderness, lying as it did between Egypt and Canaan, 
 would seem to represent in type those earlier and intermediate 
 conditions of spiritual experience, in which the justified soul 
 begins to find out how much it has lost by turning the 
 back upon the world and sin, ere yet it begins to appre- 
 hend, with any degree of fulness, how much it has gained 
 in Christ. It is that condition in which negation seems to 
 
 83
 
 The Disappointments of Unbelief. 
 
 preponderate over acquisition, and longing, yearning desire to 
 be much more common than any sense of inward gratification. 
 " Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted within them." It is 
 that condition of experience in which we are almost over- 
 whelmed with a sense of helplessness and need, while we have 
 only very imperfectly begun to apprehend the completeness of 
 the divine supply. It is that condition of experience in which 
 all seems changeful and unsettled a Marah to-day, an Elim 
 to-morrow ; quails in abundance at one time, not even a drop 
 of water at another. I dare say many of you know what I 
 mean ; you are familiar perhaps in your own spiritual life with 
 such strange vicissitudes between satisfaction and want, enjoy- 
 ment and depression. It is that condition of experience in 
 which we are peculiarly disposed to think a great deal of our 
 feelings, and often seem to find very few pleasant feelings to 
 think about. The fruits of the Spirit may be in course of 
 production, but we do not seem to find many indications of 
 their presence ; we seem rather to sow in tears than to reap in 
 joy. It is that condition of experience in which our hearts are 
 ready to faint within us at the thought of all the difficulties and 
 dangers of the way, and in which we seem to be rescued, and 
 supported, and helped through by a series of Divine interven- 
 tions, manifested in response to the cry of our anguish I had 
 almost said our despair rather than by any fixed law of the 
 Divine operation with which our faith has become acquainted. 
 
 Look at Joshua struggling with the Amalekites, and then look 
 at the same Joshua triumphing over the four kings, and you 
 will see the full force of the contrast between wilderness ex- 
 periences and the life in the Land of Fulfilled Promises, In the 
 one case you see Amalek commencing the attack, and then 
 follows a terrible conflict, the tide of battle flowing now one 
 way, and now the other, until a looker-on might have regarded 
 the issue as most uncertain. You see upon the mountain-top 
 Moses supported by his two friends in an agony of prayer, and 
 only by this mighty effort of supplication is the victory at last 
 obtained. And even when it is obtained it leaves Amalek 
 still strong ; the work of crushing him is not completed till 
 centuries later. 
 
 In the other case you see the allied forces of the foe boldly 
 attacked by the confident Israelites, no thought of defeat, even 
 for a moment, crossing their minds. We contemplate the night 
 march, the onslaught in the early dawn of morning, the panic
 
 The Disappointments of Unbelief. 
 
 of the vast host, the promiscuous flight, the prolonged pursuit, 
 the shower of deadly hailstones, the challenge of Joshua to 
 sun and moon, the slaughter of the kings, the occupation of 
 their cities. This is the sort of warfare that one expects from 
 the hosts of the Lord, but they were not fit for such expe- 
 riences when first they left Egypt. No, they had to be humbled 
 first, and we have to learn this lesson too. Let us thank God 
 for conflicts that show us how weak we are, and wilderness 
 experiences which show us how utterly dependent we are for 
 everything. 
 
 The next object of the life in the wilderness may be ^ 
 described as the establishment of law. In the history of 
 other communities, the local habitation is first occupied, and / 
 then the political constitution begins to take shape, and not-f- 
 till then does the national law gradually begin to develop ' 
 itself. But when God undertakes to prepare a nation for 
 Himself, He gives them a law before He gives them a home, 
 so that when they enter upon their heritage they may be pre- 
 pared to hold it as for Him and to keep it undefiled. And 
 they must not only have a law given, but they must be tested 
 ,' as to their willingness to obey. They must, at any rate, learn ) 
 to assume the attitude of obedience before they can be trusted ' 
 \ in Canaan. 
 
 So Moses goes on to say in this passage that this wilderness 
 experience was permitted "to prove thee, to know what was 
 in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep His commandments, 
 or no." Alas ! how little did these triumphant singers know 
 what was in their heart ! If some one had dared to prophecy 
 to them, Before many hours have gone you will all be murmur- 
 ing at Marah ; in a few weeks you will be wishing yourselves 
 back in Egypt at Rephidim ; in some four months you will be 
 worshipping a calf in Horeb, and bowing before a graven image; 
 in less than a year you will be threatening to stone those who 
 dare to say that these present triumphant anticipations of yours 
 may then and there be fulfilled, and that Israel is able to take 
 possession of the promised land who would have listened for -4 
 a moment to such a prophet of ills ? Yet all this was in their ' 
 hearts, though they knew it not ; and who shall say what is in 
 ours? 
 
 One thing is certain, if the law of God is not graven there, 
 the law of self-will is ; and how needful then it is, ere we enter 
 upon the enjoyments of our Canaan, that we should be brought 
 
 85
 
 The Disappointments of Unbelief. 
 
 face to face with the claims of God upon our obedience, and 
 the question, Are we going to accept His will as the new law 
 within, or are we going to assert our own ? It is true that we 
 have to do with the perfect law of liberty, and that this has to 
 be written within, not exhibited as engraven on a table of stone 
 without j still, the regal claims of Christ upon our hearts and 
 lives have to be pressed upon our recognition, and we have to 
 be tested as to whether we are ready to submit and to obey ; 
 for until we have learnt what the new love-law is, and until 
 something like an attitude of obedience is honestly assumed, 
 our very Canaan would be in danger of becoming a Babylon 
 to us, and our very religion the parent of a little Antichrist. 
 
 Obedience the habit of obedience, that is to say can of 
 course be fully learned only in a lifetime ; it is a lesson that we 
 are ever to go on learning ; it is a lesson that Jesus Christ in 
 His Manhood had to learn ; but it is something, and indeed it 
 is no small matter, to have abandoned the attitude of defiance 
 or the habit of resistance, and to have made a full submission 
 of ourselves to God. We are then in a position to be trained 
 in obedience, and to learn how to fulfil His good pleasure ; 
 but until this full surrender is honestly made, the habit of 
 obedience can never be formed. 
 
 The third object of the wilderness life specified by Moses in 
 this passage was the inculcation of faith. This was the great 
 positive lesson that they had to learn, as humility was the 
 negative. They were not only to become practically con- 
 vinced of their own weakness and insufficiency, but also to be 
 fully_persuaded of His power and of the boundless extent of 
 God's resources. They were to learn that "man doth not live 
 by bread only, but by_ey^ryjvqrd that proceedeth out of the 
 mouth of God." Their raiment was not to wax old, nor their 
 foot to swell ; they were to drink water out of the stony rock, 
 or to dig wells with their staves in the burning sand ; they 
 were to fight battles by prayer, and to take journeys guided by 
 a pillar of cloud ; and thus, in all the details of their daily 
 life, they^ were to be educated and trained to trust. 
 
 And such is the lesson that we too have to learn ere we can 
 rise to the true level of our Christian privileges. It is not 
 enough to be unclothed; we need to be clothed upon. Not 
 enough that we should be humbled and stripped of all kind of 
 confidence in ourselves. We need not only to be justified by 
 faith, but to live by the faith of the justified. We have to learn 
 
 86
 
 The Disappointments of Unbelief. 
 
 by experience the great lesson of trust; and instead of 
 depending upon anything external, or even upon spiritual ex- 
 periences, \ve have to learn to live "by every word that 
 proceeded! out of the mouth of God." To move forward 
 with a divine uncarefulness, trusting the future, as the past, to 
 an unchanging love ; to face dangers without fear, and difficul- 
 ties without misgiving ; to march without asking where, and 
 expect supplies without asking whence this is to show that 
 we have learnt the great lesson that wilderness experiences are 
 specially designed to teach. 
 
 Humility, obedience, faith these are to Christian experi- 
 ence what the famous " three R's " are to modern elementary 
 education. We need to be well grounded in these before we 
 can go on to enjoy the Christian's Canaan the land of ful- 
 filled promise. And as these same "three R's" are seldom 
 learned without tears, so these fundamental lessons of the 
 wilderness are not for the most part learned without the appli- 
 cation of more or less of that gentle, fatherly discipline, 
 without which we might believe ourselves to be bastards, and 
 not sons. So Moses goes on to remind his hearers that "as a 
 man chasteneth his son, so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee." 
 The wilderness is not a pleasant place even to pass through, 
 much less to dwell in, and the conditions of existence in such 
 a place are sufficiently trying, but these elementary lessons 
 are more readily learnt there than elsewhere ; for the wilder- 
 ness itself, with all its terrible and depressing features, seems 
 to thrust the necessity of learning them upon our hearts. 
 
 We see then that the wilderness had its uses, although these 
 murmurers were doubtless right in describing it as a very un- 
 desirable place, and very different from the land flowing with 
 milk and honey which they had looked forward to ; but let us 
 ask, How came these Israelites to make such a bad use of that 
 place of trial; how had it become to them a vast prison a 
 convict's territory, instead of a school and training ground ? 
 
 We must go back a long way for the answer. The joyful 
 anthems of praise on the shore of the Red Sea had hardly 
 died away when the first false keynote was sounded, from 
 which we may say all the miserable discords of the future were 
 to flow in mournful cadences. They came to Marah, and 
 they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were 
 bitter. And the people murmured against Moses, saying, 
 "What shall we drink?" Oh, why did they murmur? Had 
 
 87
 
 The Disappointments of Unbelief. 
 
 they already forgotten the miracle of their deliverance ? Why 
 didn't they trust instead of murmuring? and then the first 
 trial might have proved, as it was doubtless intended to be, a 
 first victory. But, alas ! their confidence in God seems to 
 have been very short-lived, and soon to have given place to a 
 rooted mistrust, which remained, ever ready to break out in 
 fresh murmurings and repinings at each new trial. 
 
 Thus we see how they contrived by their petulance and 
 
 unbelief (to use the startling and terrible words of the prophet 
 
 r Malachi) to curse their blessings. Each fresh intervention 
 
 I of divine love and power on their behalf, instead of drawing 
 
 them nearer to the Lord, seems to produce a fresh estrange- 
 
 ;ment. They murmured at Marah, and the Lord by miracle 
 
 TrTacTe the bitter water sweet; but the bitter taste of their own 
 
 murmuring spirit remained long after the waters had been 
 
 healed. They murmured for food in the wilderness of Sin, 
 
 and the Lord sent them Manna; but the voice of solemn 
 
 warning against their untoward ways sounded even more sternly 
 
 than before, while they were informed of the provision that 
 
 God was about to make. They gained the outward good, but 
 
 they lost the inward blessing. 
 
 They murmured at Rephidim, and the Lord sent them 
 water by miracle; but their souls were unrefreshed, and the 
 
 ! poisonous thought still clung to their hearts, Is the Lord among 
 us or not? They murmured at the absence of Moses in the 
 mount, and supplemented their murmurings by gross idolatry 
 and licentiousness ; and thus the very blessing of a divinely- 
 given law was turned into a curse. They murmured at Taberah, 
 and there no blessing came of it at all, not even an outward 
 one, but only a desolating fire. They murmured at Kibroth- 
 Hattaavah, and God sent them the quails that they lusted after ; 
 but " while the flesh was yet between their teeth, the wrath of 
 God was kindled against the people, and the Lord smote the 
 people with a very great plague ; " and the tragic story of that 
 blessing closes with the mournful words, " There they buried 
 them that lusted." 
 
 So they went on murmuring and repining, tempting and 
 provoking God, and causing Him to curse their blessings, 
 until at last the crowning blessing, already within their reach, 
 brought upon them the crowning curse. They were already 
 within easy distance of Canaan, and the long-promised in- 
 heritance lay before them, when the spies were despatched
 
 T/ie Disappointments of Unbelief. 
 
 from Kadesh-Barnea. For forty days the people waited while 
 the spies examined the land, as they had waited once before 
 forty days for the appearance of Moses with the law. In both 
 cases alike, this precious waiting-time, which might indeed 
 have been a season of preparation for the full enjoyment of C 
 coming blessings, seems to have been turned to a bad use. It i 
 seems to have induced a feeling of petulance and impatience, 
 instead of a spirit of calm and reverent hope ; and when the 
 days were ended they were ripe for mischief. 
 
 Then the moment arrived which was the crisis in their history. 
 The spies returned to the expectant multitude, bringing with 
 them glowing accounts of the fertility and wealth of that favoured _< 
 land, and proving their description true by the exhibition of 
 the grapes of Eshcol and the other produce that they brought 
 with them. But, unhappily, their testimony did not end there. . 
 They went on to give exaggerated accounts of the strength of 
 the inhabitants of the land, until they succeeded in persuading 
 the people that the enterprise in which they were about to 
 engage was utterly chimerical, and could only end in disaster \ 
 and destruction. Vainly did Joshua and Caleb attempt to/ 
 still the people before the Lord. The long-smouldering dis- ) 
 content, kindled by earlier acts of unbelief, broke forth at last' 
 into a general flame a conflagration that consumed all their/ 
 hopes, and left them, homeless and comfortless, to wander in 
 the weary waste of desert. 
 
 How difficult it is to believe that these angry and blas- 
 pheming malcontents at Kadesh-Barnea are the very same 
 people as those who sang that song of jubilant anticipation on 
 the shores of the Red Sea. What a contrast between the 
 imagery of that triumphant song and the coward fears which -" 
 wearied out at last the long-suffering patience of God ! Listen H-JL 
 to their impious murmurings, that we may learn how far blind 
 unbelief will go in dishonouring the power and denying the 
 love of God. "ISecause the Lord hated us, He hath brought 
 us forth out of the land of Egypt, to deliver us into the hands 
 of the Amorites, to destroy us." "Would God that we had 
 died in the land of Egypt ! or would God we had died in this 
 wilderness !" " Let us make a captain, and let us return into 
 Egypt." And no wonder that God took them at their word, 
 ana sware in His wrath that they should never enter into His 
 
 And now well-nigh forty IOHL: years have roiled auay, and 
 
 89
 
 The Disappointments of Unbelief. 
 
 they seem no nearer Canaan than ever. Once more they are 
 in Kadesh, and once more they are engaged in their congenial 
 occupation of murmuring; and there seems to be more of 
 settled bitterness in their words now than of passion. They 
 tell of prolonged disappointment, of rebellion that has become 
 chronic, and discontent that may almost be described as the 
 normal state of things ; and yet a feeling of pity mingles with 
 our censure as we listen to their petulant wail. Alas ! there 
 was too much truth in their words, " And wherefore have ye 
 made us to come up out of Egypt, to bring us unto this evil 
 place ? this is no place of seed, or of vines, or figs, or pome- 
 granates." And certainly they were right it was an evil place, 
 but whose fault was it that they were still there ? Was it God's 
 purpose that kept them there, or their own unbelief? 
 
 Let us leave them and turn to ourselves. How many 
 Christians do we meet with now, who, to judge from their own 
 confessions and admissions, seem, like the Israelites of old, 
 shut out of the Land of Promise ? Their religious experience 
 has proved one long disappointment. They set out once with 
 bright prospects and fair hopes, and for a time they did run 
 well ; but all is altered now. Their first days were their best 
 days ; they have lost rather than gained as time has worn on ; 
 and now it would almost be difficult to say what advantage 
 they derive from their religion, unless it be a vague and distant/ 
 hope of heaven at last, that has not been wholly forfeited. 
 
 If we were to form our ideas of the Christian life from what we 
 see in such, we should probably conclude that it is indeed into 
 an evil place that the grace of God introduces those who 
 become the recipients of it. The man of the world, like the 
 Israelite in Egypt, has some pleasure and gratification in life. 
 There are carnal pleasures, which, although they may seem 
 beneath the true dignity of our nature, yet do yield a certain 
 amount of mere animal enjoyment. There are social and 
 domestic pleasures, and the distractions of a worldly life, 
 which, if they do not minister any very deep and lasting satis- 
 faction, at any rate divert the mind from melancholy reflec- 
 tions. Or, again, there are intellectual resources open to some, 
 which come nearer to furnishing the desired happiness than 
 anything else that earth can offer ; although here too men fail 
 to find what they really need, and often have to endorse the 
 verdict of the wise man, " In much wisdom is much grief: and 
 he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow." Still it must 
 
 90
 
 The Disappointments of Unbelief. 
 
 be conceded that they who have their portion in this life do 
 gain something, can point to some sort of acquisition, whether 
 valuable or otherwise. Egypt has its flesh-pots, if it has also 
 its iron furnace. 
 
 On the other hand, they who follow the Lord fully, like 
 Joshua and Caleb, find a wealthy possession in the Land 
 of Fulfilled Promises. "The lot has fallen" to them "in 
 pleasant places, and they have a goodly heritage." "The 
 Lord Himself is the portion of His people," and they can 
 testify that "the land does indeed flow with milk and honey." 
 But while the worldling has something to show for his choice, 
 and they who follow the Lord fully have much to say for theirs, 
 what can be said for the Christian who forfeits the good things 
 of Egypt, and yet never sets a foot in Canaan ; the Christian 
 who has too much religion to be able to enjoy the world, and 
 too little religion to be able to enjoy God? 
 
 What can such an one say of his experience but that he / 
 dwells in an evil place ? it is no place of seed, or vines, or figs, 
 neither is there water that we may drink. You had thought, 
 my dear friend, that your Christian career would have been 
 very different from what it has proved. You expected joy, and 
 peace, and power, and progress, and usefulness, and victory; 
 and you can only point at rare intervals to an occasional Elira 
 or Beer. Instead of peace there is the murmur of disappoint- 
 ment and the darkling doubt, " Is the Lord among us or not?" 
 And though here and there you may have emerged successful 
 from a terrible fray with some ruthless Amalek that has threat- 
 ened to extinguish the spiritual life within altogether, or with 
 some troublesome Arad, still your attempts at self-conquest 
 have proved abortive; the Amorites have chased you from 
 their hill, and you have well-nigh given up the hope of moral 
 victory over all that defiles and desecrates your being. 
 
 Progress ! Ah ! it seems to you as if you had gone backwards - 
 instead of forwards, and mournful reminiscences crowd into your 
 memory as you pitch in your Kadesh-Barnea and think of the 
 faded promise of the past. Who shall blame you if you speak 
 sorrowfully yes, even bitterly of your disappointments ? and 
 who can wonder if a cold and cruel scepticism steals over your 
 heart as to the reality of the blessing that you seem doomed 
 not to enjoy? Is this Canaan, after all, anything more than a 
 sentimental dream ? this land of promise, is it anything but a 
 mirage of the desert ? And those who profess better things, 
 
 91
 
 The Disappointments of Unbelief. 
 
 may they not after all be either deceivers or self-deceived garru- 
 lous talkers who wish to pass for saints, sentimental visionaries, 
 whose fervid imagination supplies them whatever experience 
 they desire ? 
 
 Stay, my dear friend, lest haply you make God a liar, and 
 rather ask yourself, Is there not a cause? May it not be with 
 you as with these Israelites, of whom it is written, "So we see 
 that they could not enter in because of their unbelief"? In the 
 early days of your Christian life you too were led into the 
 wilderness. That is to say, so far as I understand the figure, you 
 passed into a phase of experience in which you were conscious 
 of having parted company with the old without having grasped 
 the fulness of blessing that there is in the new. While in this 
 transition state God began to deal with you in His own wise 
 way. He gave you a Marah with its bitter waters, a loss of 
 sensible comfort, a season of spiritual depression. Did you 
 begin to think hard thoughts of Him, and emulate the mur- 
 murings of the Israelites ? Your lot was cast for a season in a 
 dry place, you had but few spiritual privileges. Did you repeat 
 the murmurings of Rephidim so that even that season of re- 
 freshment that followed, when the water flowed from the 
 stricken rock, left you with the baleful suspicion rankling in 
 your heart, " Is the Lord amongst us or not?" 
 
 You complained that you had to hear a tedious preacher, 
 sadly wanting in power and eloquence, and the services were 
 dull and heavy. You had the Manna provided for you in the 
 Sacramental Feast, in the Word, and in prayer, but you wanted 
 something better than " this light food." You thought of the 
 burning eloquence of the Evangelist from whose lips you first 
 received the gospel message in power, and of all the exciting 
 and spirit-stirring influences of that day of visitation. You 
 were lusting for your quails, and you got them. You found 
 yourself, to your great satisfaction, attached to the congregation 
 of that popular preacher, whose impressive manner and fresh- 
 ness of thought seemed just what you wanted. Yes; it was 
 the old story " He gave them flesh at their desire, and sent 
 leanness withal into their souls." You may be thankful you 
 are not buried in the graves of man-lust, as I fear too many 
 popular preacher-worshippers are. 
 
 Meanwhile what about the great lessons of the wilderness ? 
 Have you been so long time at school and yet made but little 
 way, even with our "three R's" that I spoke of just now 
 
 92
 
 - The Disappointments of Unbelief. 
 
 humility, obedience, faith? Surely it is no wonder then that 
 you cannot master the sons of Anak, or enter into the promised 
 rest that even here belongs to the people of God ! " When 
 for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one 
 teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of 
 God; and are become" (just as if they had grown backwards 
 into second childhood) " such as have need of milk, and not 
 of strong meat For every one that useth milk is unskilful in 
 the word of righteousness : for he is a babe." It is not by 
 unskilful babes that Canaan is to be won, but by those who 
 are "strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might." If 
 we are slow to learn these primary lessons we must remain in 
 that elementary school the wilderness ; nay, we may even sink 
 to the dunce's form ; and no wonder then that we are disposed/ 
 to complain that this is an " evil place." 
 
 Nay, is it so, that the worst is still to follow? Where you , 
 failed to learn the ABC of humility, obedience, faith, did you 
 learn unawares from another teacher, who is always skulking / 
 about the school premises, those counter lessons which he loves 
 to teach, and which are with such difficulty unlearned pride, 
 self-will, unbelief, the first letters of Satan's alphabet, and the first 
 principles of the Law of Darkness, as the other trio may be called 
 first principles of the Law of Light? Was this the fatal lore 
 that you acquired ? And has itjmmght forth its deadly fruit ? 
 
 When the claims of God upon you revealed in the lite 
 and teaching of Christ have appealed to your inner sensi- 
 bilities, when your theoretic knowledge of God's purposes 
 concerning you has advanced, like the spies, into your Land of 
 Promise, and your desires have been stirred and stimulated by 
 all that you have heard of its wealth and fruitfulness, by the 
 testimony of others or the teaching of the Word, have you 
 replied, all unbelievingly, "We are not able. No; I shall 
 never be any different; I shall never rise above my natural 
 infirmities ; I shall never lay aside every weight and master 
 the sins that do most easily beset me. It's all very fine in () 
 
 theory, this doctrine of sanctificatioa bv_ faith, but it breaks . 
 
 down in practice. The cities are great and fenced up unto 
 heaven, and the sons of Anak, men of great stature, defy our 
 powers. It 's no use ; we must make the best we can of the 
 wilderness, though it is such an evil place." And so have you 
 grown accustomed to failure, and cease to be surprised at it, 
 or indeed to expect anything better. 
 
 93
 
 The Disappointments of Unbelief? 
 
 But, oh ! it's weary work ; and sometimes your heart fails you 
 because of the way, as you ask, " Was it for this I came up 
 out of Egypt? for this I turned my back upon the world 
 and its pleasures and gains? I thought I had found some- 
 thing really worth having when I accepted the offer of the 
 Gospel ; but really now my religion seems to do so little for 
 me, that I am positively ashamed to press its acceptance on 
 others, or to speak as if it could ever do for them what it has 
 failed to do for me." 
 
 "And shall we then for ever live 
 At this poor dying rate ? " 
 
 O child of God, it is high time you got back again to the 
 place you started from. Go down into the water a second time, 
 and learn, better than you have ever yet learned, what it is to, 
 'be baptized into the death of Christ, and raised in His resur-/ 
 rection. Fall back upon the great fact of Redemption, and 1 ' 
 'rerTect'on what it means. Remember those triumphant anti- . 
 , cipations, which were as reasonable as your murmurings and \ 
 / unbelief have been unjustifiable, and dare to claim that they 
 ' shall even now be fulfilled in your experience. Move on to 
 Abel-Shittah, and blend your tears with those of the Israelites 
 as they mourn under the acacia-trees yonder (for such is the 
 significance of the name). Yes, for thirty days did they mourn 
 at Abel-Shittim, not more for the loss of their leader, as I 
 think, than at the recollection of how they had treated him ; 
 and well is it when we begin to mourn, not so much at our 
 own disappointments as at the thought of all the disappoint- 
 ments that we have caused Him. Ah, that we should ever 
 have hardened our hearts to tempt and prove the Holy One 
 of Israel ! Here let us humble ourselves at His feet ; here let 
 us descend once again into His tomb. Here let us renounce 
 once and for ever our miserable unbelief/Trul dare to go for- 
 ward, led by the Ark of the Covenant. 
 
 To-day He meets us in our wilderness, and speaks to our 
 hearts ; and He will give us vineyards from thence, and the 
 valley of Achor for a door of hope, and there we shall sing 
 once more as in the days of our youth, as when we came out 
 of Egypt ; and still our song shall be, " The Lord is a man of 
 war : the Lord is His name. He hath triumphed gloriously. 
 The Lord shall reign for ever and ever." 
 
 94
 
 Crossing of tije 
 
 " Sanctify yourselves : for to-morrow the Lord will do wonaers among you." 
 Joshua iii. 5. 
 
 WE were dwelling in our last sermon upon the sorrowful 
 contrast between the confident anticipations with which 
 the Israelites looked forward in their moment of triumph on 
 the shore of the Red Sea, to a career of success and victor}', 
 and the actual facts of that career as recorded in the history of 
 their wanderings in the wilderness. Forty long weary years 
 have passed away since that song of triumph re-echoed along 
 the shores, where the ransomed Israelites stood gazing in 
 wonder and awe upon the watery grave of their ruthless 
 oppressors. Forty years, and yet those confident anticipations 
 were still unjustified by subsequent facts ; they were not yet in 
 enjoyment of their promised heritage; the Canaanites were 
 not yet subdued, and the holy place was not yet in the hands 
 of the worshippers of Jehovah. We noticed, too, how soon 
 the singing gave place to murmuring, and how murmuring 
 bred unbelief, until at last they shut themselves out of their 
 Land of Promise, and brought down upon themselves a bitter 
 and a life-long disappointment. The moral of the sad story is 
 all summed up in one familiar sentence " We see that they 
 could not enter in, because of their unbelief." 
 
 We pass on now to consider no longer the anticipations of 
 faith, but the realizations of experience, the actual fufilment of 
 those bright hopes which for a time seemed dead and buried. 
 After all they were right, those joyful singers; they did not 
 expect a bit too much or feel too strong a confidence in the 
 divine purpose ; they were right in thinking that the first great 
 deliverance contained the pledge and assurance of all that was 
 to follow ; they went wrong only when they lost sight of this 
 cardinal truth, and began to doubt the faithfulness and the 
 changeless love of a God to whom they owed their all. Oh, 
 if they had gone on singing all the way in the same spirit of 
 jubilant confidence, what a different story would have been 
 
 95
 
 The Crossing of the Jordan. 
 
 left on record, and how much of misery, and suffering, and 01 
 bitter disappointment might they have been spared ! 
 
 From all this we drew the lesson that spiritual disappoint- 
 ments are self-caused. God does not break His promises, nor 
 fall short of the expectations of His people. If our experiences 
 do not come up to our expectations, we may safely conclude 
 that we have ourselves to thank for it. Either we have been 
 slow to learn those elementary lessons which we need to 
 acquire, before we can go on to enjoy the full privileges of a 
 Christian life, or we have failed to exercise the true courage of 
 faith, and to go forth against the sons of Anak in the same spirit 
 in which David went forth against Goliath of Gath. " I come 
 against thee in the name of the God of the armies of Israel 
 whom thou hast defied." We have in our hearts limited the 
 Holy One of Israel, and according to our unbelief so has it 
 been done unto us. 
 
 Such is the lesson of warning conveyed to us in the dolorous 
 tale. But there is also a lesson of encouragement to be gleaned 
 from the sequel, and it is to this we have to address ourselves 
 to-day. Although unbelief brought judgment in its train, and 
 the carcases of the rebels were left in the wilderness, yet the 
 nation itself, and it is with this that the type is concerned, did 
 at last enter into the promised land, and became possessed of 
 its long desired inheritance. And from this we may learn not 
 to despair even though we are thoroughly dissatisfied, and even 
 disappointed with ourselves and with our spiritual experience. 
 Thank God, we may wander long and wearily in the wilderness 
 and yet not perish in the wilderness ; and although we may 
 have caused no small provocation to our long-suffering God, 
 He may not yet nave sworn of us in His wrath that we shall 
 never enter into His rest. 
 
 Our subject to-day brings before us a scene, which in many 
 of its features reminds us of that memorable night in which 
 the Lord led Israel forth by that unexpected way, through the 
 waters of the sea, from the house of bondage into liberty, from 
 cruel slavery into the joy of a new national life. Now there is 
 much to be learned from considering both the points of simi- 
 larity and of contrast in those two memorable events. First we 
 notice that in both cases there was a going down into the 
 element of water, and a rising up out of it into an entirely new 
 position the mystical symbol of death, and burial, and of 
 resurrection. In both cases by this passage through water a 
 
 96
 
 The Crossing of the Jordan. 
 
 complete separation was effected between the old and the new 
 state of things, and in both cases the passage indicated the 
 commencement of a new and happy career. The life in the 
 wilderness, at any rate in its early days, was greatly preferable to 
 the grim slavery of Egypt, and the conquering progress through 
 Canaan was even more preferable still to the weary wanderings 
 through the desert. In each case the water, which naturally 
 should have been an obstacle, became, we may say, an assist- 
 ance, and that which naturally should have been a cause of 
 danger became a means of safety. And in both cases this was 
 caused by a distinct divine intervention, and in each case that 
 manifestation of supernatural power was associated with a 
 symbol of the divine presence, though the symbols in the two 
 cases were different- in the first it was the fiery pillar, in the 
 second it was the ark of the covenant. 
 
 Nor are the points of contrast less striking than the 'points 
 of agreement. The frenzied terror, the fearful excitement which 
 pervaded that terrified multitude at the Red Sea is conspicuous 
 by its absence on this occasion ; they are no longer fleeing from 
 destruction and death, but passing on to a higher and happier 
 kind of life. There all was confusion and dismay until the 
 panic-stricken multitude began to see their safety printed on 
 those strange watery walls that frowned over them on either 
 side. Here all was order and discipline the disorderly rabble 
 has become an organized army ; every tribe has its chief, its 
 officers, and its banner, and every man knows his proper place, 
 and takes good care to occupy it There the foe was behind, 
 aggressively pursuing ; here the foes were before, but only think- 
 ing of how they might defend themselves from so formidable 
 an adversary. There Israel feared, and the Egyptians were 
 confident. Here Israel is confident while their enemies are 
 terror-stricken. There in the end the enemy is overthrown 
 simply by the hand of God without any human assistance ; 
 the Israelites have but to stand still and see the salvation of 
 G6d. Here the enemy is to be faced by the warriors of Israel, 
 and to be overcome not less by divine power, but by that 
 power exercised and employed in the believing efforts of 
 courageous men. There they were passing from a fertile land 
 into a howling desert, where they would have to depend on a 
 miracle for every meal. Here they were passing from a waste 
 of desert into a fertile land a land that flowed with milk and 
 honey. There we hear an outburst of triumphant enthu- 
 ii. 97 H
 
 The Crossing of the Jordan. 
 
 siasm when the sea was crossed, and loud songs of triumph 
 rang forth from the vast multitude as the returning wave sub- 
 merged the Egyptians. Here all seems to have been calm and 
 solemn, the only expression of strong feeling was the setting up 
 of those memorial stones as if a deep and lasting recollection 
 of this great fact were aimed at rather than an evanescent 
 excitement. 
 
 In both cases, observe, we are contemplating a scene of 
 salvation, yet is there a great difference between the salvation 
 effected in the one case and in the other. In both cases the 
 salvation comes through a divinely-appointed Saviour; but 
 even between these there is a contrast. Moses was the 
 Saviour from, Joshua was the Saviour into. Moses was sent to 
 save Israel from the land of Egypt, and from the tyranny of 
 Pharaoh, and he did it when he led the people through the 
 Red Sea. His very name is suggestive in this respect, for you 
 remember he was called Moses because he was drawn out of 
 the water, and as he himself was saved from Pharaoh by being 
 put into the water, and from the water by being drawn out of 
 it ; so he was the means of saving the Israelites by leading them 
 into and guiding them through, and drawing them out of, the 
 water. The Church in the wilderness, like its leader, was 
 saved by being drawn out of the water, while the Egyptians 
 were left to perish in it ; and in that water they were cut off 
 from their old connection with the land of Egypt ; they were 
 separated from the house of bondage, and set apart unto the 
 Lord. They rose from the water a new nation a nation 
 regenerate by divine intervention, a nation of priests unto 
 God, and if they had only remained steadfast in faith it would 
 have been their privilege to have marched straight on to take 
 possession in a few short months of the promised land. 
 
 But while Moses was a saviour from, who drew his people 
 from the water, and brought them thus into liberty, so Joshua, 
 on the other hand, was a saviour into; his name means the 
 Lord, the Saviour, and is, as we all know, the same as that 
 which God appointed for the Saviour of the human race. The 
 great work of Joshua's life was a work of salvation ; but I wish 
 you to observe that it was, so to speak, a positive salvation 
 where Moses's was a negative one. It was a salvation into the 
 enjoyment of that good land which, however, it was an absolute 
 necessity that they should possess themselves of, unless, indeed, 
 as a nation, they were to become extinct. It was a salvation that
 
 The Crossing of the Jordan. 
 
 Joshua was the means of working out for Israel ; but it was a 
 salvation by aggression, not by resistance. It can hardly be 
 said that any of Joshua's wars were defensive except before the 
 period of the crossing of the Jordan. It was Joshua's part to 
 save the people aggressively, and he led them on and on in an 
 almost unbroken career of triumph until the whole land lay at 
 his feet ready to be meted out for the possession of the people. 
 Even so, my dear friends, the salvation we have to contemplate 
 to day is not so much a salvation from as a salvation into 
 not merely a salvation from the condemnation of God against 
 our sin, or again a salvation from the ancient tyranny of Satan 
 over our manhood as represented by the yoke of Pharaoh, 
 but it is a salvation into the full possession of our human 
 nature for His purposes, and in His name a salvation by 
 which we are to take possession of every faculty and element 
 of our being, and hold it for God, entering upon a blessed 
 experience in which we find all the promises of God yea and 
 amen to us. And this Land of Fulfilled Promises proves indeed 
 a land flowing with milk and honey a rich and fruitful inherit- 
 ance, where God can reap a harvest in us, and we ourselves 
 enjoy that fulness of blessing and spiritual gratification which 
 God designs for us, even while we are still here on earth. 
 
 Now observe and I wish you to lay stress upon this con- 
 sideration that this passing over the Jordan is in some 
 respects a sort of repetition of what occurred at the Red Sea, 
 and in many of their features the two events are closely 
 similar and parallel to each other. In both cases the Israelites 
 are brought face to face with a watery barrier, and in both 
 cases they are utterly unable to pass over it. In both cases an 
 act of faith is required ; in both cases the result of that act of 
 faith is a miracle ; and in both cases the water which seemed 
 to be a barrier becomes a shield and a protection. The Red 
 Sea threatened to prevent the Israelites from making their 
 escape from Egypt ; but at the touch of the finger of God that 
 barrier became a means of protection while they made their 
 escape. In the same way Jordan promised to be a barrier 
 between them and the promised land ; but at a touch from the 
 finger of God that very barrier became a means of protecting 
 them as they crossed over into the promised land. 
 
 But for divine intervention, they might have had to make a 
 bridge of boats, or of a multitude of rafts, or something of that 
 kind; and, as you are aware, there is no moment when an 
 
 99
 
 The Crossing of the Jordan. 
 
 army is more helplessly exposed to attack than when it is 
 crossing over a swollen river. That would have been the mo- 
 ment when the enemy could have done their worst. In thus cross- 
 ing an army cannot all go over at once ; one portion must go 
 over 'at a time, and this small force has to face the full strength 
 of the enemy, who may perhaps sweep down upon them with an 
 irresistible onslaught, and cut them in pieces, ere yet the main 
 body of the troops can be got across. And so we can easily 
 understand how difficult a thing it would have been to get the 
 Israelites safely across Jordan but for this divine intervention. 
 But as soon as God touched the waters of Jordan, that which 
 seemed to have been an impediment became their protection, 
 and on they went in perfect security ; while their enemies felt 
 their courage passing away from them, and their hearts sinking 
 for fear, as they witnessed this extraordinary intervention of 
 spiritual power. 
 
 But observe this : that this memorable miracle, which in its 
 salient features seems to be a repetition of that great and 
 glorious miracle that occurred at the exodus, was only rendered 
 necessary by the waywardness and unbelief which Israel had 
 exhibited in the wilderness. If you will look at your maps, you 
 will see that when first Israel approached the promised land 
 they came to Kadesh-Barnea. There was no Jordan there 
 (Jordan was perhaps a hundred miles up north), and there was 
 no kind of natural barrier between the wilderness in which 
 they were and the promised land into which they had to go ; 
 nor was there even any outward line of demarcation. As 
 they moved forward if they had been faithful to God from 
 Kadesh-Barnea, they would have found the desert soon change 
 into rich, verdant pasture-land ; they would soon have been in 
 the midst of the land which flowed with milk and honey, 
 without any very marked territorial limits being recognized. 
 In fact, after a few months in the wilderness, this happy people 
 might have gone on, carrying all before them, securing victory 
 after victory, and taking easy possession of the land without 
 any crossing of Jordan at all. The lesson of the Red Sea would 
 then have be.en fresh in their minds, and fresh in the minds of 
 their enemies ; and therefore God would never have had to 
 bring them back again to the waters of judgment, and cause 
 them to submit once more to a symbolical burial. Nor would 
 He have had a second time to impress the imaginations of 
 their enemies with a sense of His omnipotent power.
 
 The Crossing of the Jordan. 
 
 And all this may throw much light upon a question that 
 seems greatly to exercise the minds of some, especially just at 
 present. It is unquestionably a fact, that long after their 
 conversion some Christians pass through an experience so 
 marked and definite in its character, and leading to such 
 happy and unmistakeable consequences in their subsequent 
 lives, that some teachers give to this great inward change the 
 name of a second conversion. Others speak of it as entire 
 sanctification, and urge upon all indiscriminately the necessity 
 of passing through some such definite experience. Now two 
 things are equally plain from this narrative. The first is, that 
 the crossing of the Jordan did mark a very definite epoch in 
 the history of the Israelites, and served to emphasize a crisis 
 in their history, out of which they passed into a new and far 
 more satisfactory condition. The second is, that this crossing 
 of the Jordan, nevertheless, would not have been necessary at 
 all, but for the backsliding and perversity and unbelief of the 
 Israelites. The lesson of divine power exercised over the very 
 elements, and over that element which, but for the intervention 
 of an omnipotent hand, must have destroyed those whom it 
 now protected, and the pledge that such a miracle contained 
 for the future all this would have been fresh in the minds of 
 the Israelites when they first reached Kadesh-Barnea, and 
 would have required no repetition. But when their unbelief 
 had shut them out of Canaan, and forty long years had passed 
 away, then the lessons of the Red Sea had to be learnt again, 
 and an experience had to be passed through not less definite 
 than that which we witnessed there. 
 
 Here then, as it seems to me, is the key to the true doctrine 
 of sanctification furnished us in the type, as it is afterwards 
 taught us in plain terms in New Testament Scripture. We 
 nowhere find any doctrinal statement in New Testament 
 Scripture that an act of sanctification equally definite and 
 distinct with the act of justification is to be looked for in 
 Christian experience. Rather we may say that all New 
 Testament teaching on the subject of sanctification is based 
 upon an appeal to the true import and significance of justifi- 
 cation. It would seem as if the object of apostolic writers 
 were not so much to lead on to some fresh act of sanctification 
 as to induce a more full and adequate apprehension of the 
 benefits already secured to us by justification. It will be 
 found on careful examination that almost all the passages that
 
 The Crossing of the jordan. 
 
 are relied upon by the advocates of the theory that I am 
 speaking of refer to the moment of justification, and not to any- 
 subsequent epoch in spiritual experience to which the name of 
 sanctification may be given. And the reason of this is plain. 
 The atonement is the fountain and source alike of justification 
 and of sanctification. It is by the death and resurrection of 
 Christ that we are saved not only from the judgment of God 
 against sin, but from the sin that causes the judgment, and both 
 these aspects of our deliverance are presented to us simul- 
 taneously when we intelligently grasp the true significance of 
 the cross. Where this is the case we begin at once to feel the 
 sanctifying influence of the atonement ; and if we go on to 
 walk in Christ Jesus as we originally received Him, our 
 experience of the power of His resurrection will go on 
 deepening and extending until we find ourselves entering 
 upon a career of progressive self-conquest that must introduce 
 us into a veritable land of Canaan. 
 
 If, on the other hand, as is too often the case, we only learn 
 the lesson of the cross very partially and insufficiently to start 
 with, and go on carelessly and faithlessly, as the Israelites did, 
 proceeding to forget in great measure what we once have 
 learned, if we do not backslide and apostatize altogether, we 
 must needs at any rate entail upon ourselves a weary and 
 protracted sojourn in the wilderness, a loss of joy, and a loss 
 of power, and a degradation of our experience to a type alto- 
 gether lower than that which properly belongs to the healthy 
 Christian. And then it sometimes happens and a good thing, 
 under those circumstances, it is when it does happen that 
 after long weary years, possibly, of wandering in the wilderness, 
 there comes a great and very marked change in the experience 
 of the soul. We are brought back very much to our starting- 
 point. Once again we find ourselves face to face with the 
 water, the emblem of God's judgment against man's sin ; 
 once again we find ourselves buried between watery walls ; 
 once again we are brought back to learn again the primary 
 lesson of death and resurrection, and from sorrowful and 
 humbling experiences of this nature we pass on to an alto- 
 gether new level of life a life of conquest and power, where 
 our previous experience had been a life of failure and weak- 
 ness, a life of acquisition and possession, where our previous 
 experience had been one of perennial loss. 
 
 Thank God that it is so in some cases, even with those who
 
 The Crossing of the Jordan. 
 
 have spent a very long time in the wilderness. And yet while 
 we thank God that it is so, must it not remain a matter for deep 
 regret that such an experience should be necessary at all ? 
 How much more desirable it is that from the very first young 
 Christians should learn the first great lesson of the cross so 
 well, as that nothing like a repetition of it should be in any 
 way required. How much more satisfactory that they should, 
 from the very first, reckon themselves as dead indeed unto sin, 
 but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord ; as crucified 
 to the world ; their flesh, with its affections and lusts, nailed to 
 the tree ; and as bound over by the very terms of their re- 
 demption to live not unto themselves, but unto Him who died 
 for them and rose again. 
 
 These lessons may be learnt at first, and from the very first 
 we may begin to live in the power of them. Why should it 
 not be so? Above all, why should we so speak as if it were a 
 thing to be expected indeed the normal course of events 
 that after conversion there should, be a long dreary period of 
 wilderness wandering, followed by a marked and definite ex- 
 perience of a second inward change? If we have yielded to 
 unbelief, and forfeited the blessings that might have been ours, 
 because we were so slow to learn the lessons of the wilderness, 
 then by all means let us seek a passage through the divided 
 Jordan into our Promised Land, and learn afresh the lesson we 
 learned too imperfectly at the Red Sea. But better far that 
 we should from the first have the eyes of our understanding 
 enlightened, that we may know what is the exceeding greatness 
 of His power to usward who believe. (Eph. i. 18, 19.) 
 
 I was much struck with the remark of a dear friend of 
 mine one who has taken a prominent part in recent efforts to 
 excite an interest on the subject of sanctification, and whose 
 teaching has, I believe, been the means of bringing many 
 across the Jordan. It was shortly after I had devoted myself 
 entirely to mission work that he said to me with great empha- 
 sis, " Now, my dear brother, you are going to give yourself up 
 to the work of preaching the Gospel, and I hope the Lord 
 will give you many converts. But let me say a word to you 
 about them. My dear brother, whatever you do, try and 
 bring them in at Kadesh-Barnea ; don't tell them that they Ve 
 got to go wandering in the wilderness for forty years." I have 
 never forgotten his words ; and how I long for you young 
 Christians who are just starting forwards from the Red Sea 
 
 103
 
 The Crossing of the Jordan. 
 
 that you may be spared these forty years of weary wandering ; 
 that it should not be necessary for you to go on year after year 
 murmuring over your doubts and fears, your disappointments 
 and your barrenness, your dulness and deadness, your infir- 
 mities and failures. Oh, it is weary work this ! I pray you 
 avoid it. My heart's desire for you is that from the very first 
 you may go on in one steady march of faith and hope, 
 seeking, like St. Paul, to know Christ and the power of His 
 resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made 
 conformable unto His death ; not as though you had already 
 attained, or were already perfect, because you have begun to 
 learn the lesson of the Red Sea, but pressing on to apprehend 
 that for which you are apprehended, stretching towards the 
 mark for the prize for your high calling in Christ Jesus. 
 
 We have seen that both the passage of the Red Sea and the 
 passage of the Jordan were miracles of salvation wrought for 
 Israel by God. We have also to notice that they are both in- 
 stances of salvation by water. _ We hear of another salvation by 
 water before either of these, and what we know about it may cast 
 some light upon the significance of this same element of water 
 in the typical teaching of these events, which seem to have 
 been so full of allegorical import. St. Peter, referring to this 
 earlier salvation, tells us that Noah and his family were saved 
 by water, and he adds that " baptism," as the antitype of this, 
 " doth also save us (not the putting away of the filth of the 
 flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by 
 the resurrection of Jesus Christ." Now here it is to be observed 
 that the salvation which St. Peter refers to is salvation by water, 
 not by the ark. That water signified God's judgment upon a 
 guilty world, and was the means of carrying out that judgment: 
 and herein is the key to the true significance of the element of 
 water in the symbolism of Holy Scripture. Water represents 
 overwhelming judgment, and salvation by water shadows forth 
 to us the great theological verity that spiritual salvation is by 
 judgment. It is by God's judgment upon sin that we are to 
 be saved from sin ; by His judgment upon the world we are 
 to be saved from the world. 
 
 Look at the words again, and observe carefully what they 
 state as to the connection of the type and antitype. St. Peter 
 is speaking of the ark, "wherein few," saith he that is, 
 eight "souls were saved" from water? No; that is not the 
 point of the parallelism, but, "were saved by water." The 
 
 104
 
 The Crossing of the Jordan. 
 
 water was the means of saving them. This may seem strange ; 
 for we naturally think of the water as that which caused them 
 danger ; but on reflection we see that they needed to be saved 
 with a double salvation. They needed to be saved from the 
 judgment of God, but they also needed to be saved from that 
 corrupt condition of things which had provoked the judgment 
 of God, so that as a family they might have an entirely new 
 start in a new world, which, by the waters of judgment, had 
 been swept clean of its pollutions. Thus the water was between 
 them and the world which God had cursed, and the ark was 
 between them and the water. Take away the ark, and they 
 would have been drowned in the water. Take away the water, 
 and they would have fallen back into the world which God had 
 condemned. The water was given them that they should be 
 saved from the world ; the ark was given that they should 
 be saved from the water. The antediluvian world represents 
 the old natural condition of fallen man, and from this we are 
 to be saved by death and burial together with Christ ; while 
 we are to be raised into the new life by participation in His 
 resurrection ; and thus St. Peter is careful to say that we are 
 saved through the waters of Baptism by the resurrection of 
 Christ. 
 
 This judgment operates to cut you off from the old, while 
 the passage from judgment serves to introduce you into the 
 new; and as you are in Christ, just as Noah was in the ark, the 
 judgment, which would otherwise destroy you, on the contrary, 
 saves you. The water saved Noah from the old world because 
 Noah was in the ark; and even so the waters of judgment, \ 
 that would destroy and overwhelm me, on the contrary, save 
 me from the sin that pollutes the world, from the powers of 
 darkness by which I am surrounded, and from the tyranny of 
 evil, because I am in Christ. And thus I am raised up through 
 Jesus into a new a resurrection life ; just as Noah came out 
 of the ark into a new a resurrection world. 
 
 Just see how complete the symbolism is, and let us learn 
 what it teaches. Remember that the waters of Baptism 
 drown you if you are out of Christ ; for they symbolize God's 
 judgment against your sin ; but if you are in Christ, they save 
 you from your former self. That the subject may not be need- 
 lessly involved, consider the plan of this sacrament in the case 
 of an adult, such an one as was Saul of Tarsus, to whom 
 Ananias exclaimed, "Arise, and be baptized, and wash away 
 
 105
 
 The Crossing of the Jordan. 
 
 thy sins, calling upon the name of the Lord." If such an 
 adult as Saul of Tarsus had ventured into the waters of Baptism 
 without first of all identifying himself with Jesus Christ by 
 faith in Him ; if he had gone down into the waters of Baptism 
 apart from Jesus Christ, and without seeing himself one with 
 and represented by Him, the waters would have been an out- 
 ward and visible sign of God's judgment against his sin, and 
 he would have been, so to speak, endorsing by his own act 
 God's condemnation against him. But when such an one goes 
 down to the waters of Baptism identifying himself with Jesus, 
 and in that very act seeing himself buried in Jesus' grave, in 
 order that he may be raised with Jesus a new creature, then, 
 instead of the waters drowning him, he comes up from the 
 water into newness of life. The waters of God's judgment 
 cannot overwhelm us, because they have already overwhelmed 
 Him, against whom they had no claim, save in so far as He 
 represented us. He could truly say, " Deep calleth unto 
 deep because of the noise of thy water-floods : all thy waves 
 and thy storms have gone over me." But because He has 
 voluntarily sounded those depths for us, the waters of judg- 
 ment have no claim against us. " There is therefore now no 
 condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." 
 
 Well this typical teaching given in the circumstances of the 
 flood is repeated at the Red Sea. Here again there is a sal- 
 vation by water. The presence of Christ with His people, 
 and His identification of Himself with them, saves them from 
 the water, while the water saves them from all the pollutions 
 of Egypt as well as from the tyranny of Pharaoh. But those 
 Israelites subsequently reproduced a sort of new Egypt within 
 themselves by their disobedience, sensuality, and idolatry, and 
 from this they had to be delivered once more by a fresh passage 
 through the water ere they entered Canaan. In this they were 
 once again saved from the water by the mystical presence of 
 Christ, by that Ark of the Covenant which was the outward 
 symbol of His presence with them ; but they were saved by 
 the water from their former selves, as we may say that old 
 Egypt-like manner of life into which they had fallen. 
 
 And now here lies our practical lesson. Whether we have 
 been baptized at the moment of our conversion, and actually 
 expressed our faith in Christ for justification in submitting to the 
 ordinance, as probably was the case with St. Paul, or whether 
 we are baptized in unconscious infancy before our faith became 
 
 1 06
 
 The Crossing of the Jordan. 
 
 operative, as is usually the case with .us Church-people, or 
 whether we are baptized long after justification, as in the case 
 with modern Baptists, we cannot become truly justified without 
 passing through that which the ordinance symbolizes death 
 and resurrection. But it may happen that our first appre- 
 hension of this wondrous provision may be somewhat incom- 
 plete. We may be so engrossed with the consideration of one 
 element in it as to lose sight of others, and hence while we 
 obtain that first great boon of justification to which our faith 
 is directed, we may not become participators in the full benefit 
 that redemption was designed to bestow. 
 
 I can well believe that there may have been many Christians 
 in apostolic times who, when they submitted themselves to 
 Baptism, had only this before their minds. They saw that 
 Jesus had borne their condemnation, and died their death ; 
 they went with Him into the tomb, and showed themselves 
 identified with Him in that condemnation ; they rose up from 
 that tomb to show themselves identified with Christ in His 
 justification, for he that has died is justified from sin. They 
 saw themselves corning under the judicial sentence in Christ's 
 death, and justified in His resurrection ; but their apprehension 
 stopped short here ; they saw this, and saw but little more. 
 
 But if this were so, I can imagine that there would come 
 a time when these Christians would begin to feel thoroughly 
 dissatisfied with themselves, and with their spiritual condition 
 and experience, just as perhaps some of us do. Now let us 
 suppose that, after this state of things had continued for some 
 time, in sore distress of soul such a Christian applied to 
 St. Paul, or any other apostolic preacher, for help and counsel, 
 can we doubt, from what we find in the Epistles, what the 
 response would be? Would not the Apostle take such an one 
 back to the waters of Baptism ? and though he would not have 
 repeated the ordinance (that seems never to have been done), 
 would he not endeavour to impress upon his mind the full 
 import of the ordinance, and of the redemption to which the 
 ordinance bears witness? and would he not also go on to 
 endeavour to lead up the man's heart to a definite, believing, 
 apprehension of the benefit within his reach ? 
 
 "To what then wast thou baptized, my brother?" I can 
 imagine him saying. " Or dost thou not know that all we who 
 were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death? 
 We were buried with Him through our baptism into His death, 
 
 107
 
 The Crossing of the Jordan. 
 
 that, like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of 
 the Father, even so should we also walk in newness of life. 
 Reckon thou thyself to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto 
 God through Jesus Christ thy Lord. Thou hast been cir- 
 cumcised with a circumcision not made with hands in putting 
 off the body of the sins of the flesh. Thou hast been buried 
 with Him in thy baptism, wherein also thou hast been raised 
 up with Him through thy faith in the operation of God. Put 
 off then by faith the sins and evil qualities that thou deplorest, 
 because in that baptism thou hast put off the old man, and put 
 on those holy qualities that thou desirest to be possessed of, 
 because thou hast already put on the new man. Knowest thou 
 not that Christ gave Himself for thee that He might redeem 
 thee from all iniquity, and purchase thee to Himself for His 
 own possession ? Knowest thou not that by the precious 
 blood of Jesus, as our brother Simon Peter has taught us, we 
 are redeemed from our old conversation received by tradition 
 from the fathers that unhappy heirloom which has been 
 passed down through the long ages from father to son all 
 along the line of Adam. From this thou hast been redeemed, 
 claim then the benefit of redemption, and thou shalt find that 
 sin shall not have dominion over thee; for thou art not under 
 the law, but under grace. Come with me once again to the 
 cross, and learn its lesson better than thou didst learn it 
 before, when thou earnest first." 
 
 Can we doubt, I say, that such would be St. Paul's 
 response ? But in giving such advice what would he be 
 doing? Why just what God in His providence did to the 
 Israelites when He led them a second time into the water, 
 and brought them through the water out into a new career 
 of obedience, of power, and of acquisition. 
 
 And now let us learn a few practical lessons from this inci- 
 dent ; and first, we saw in our last sermon how Israel mourned 
 at Abel-Shittim, not only as I judged for Moses, but at the 
 thought of the way in which they had used Moses ; and surely 
 such an experience of mourning and humiliation is the first 
 step towards better things. But regrets become vain when 
 they do not lead to new and better experiences ; and so there 
 comes to those mourners the call, " Moses my servant is dead ; 
 now therefore arise, go over Jordan unto the land that I do 
 give thee." Rise from the regrets of the past into the acqui- 
 sitions of the future. Dry your tears, and claim your heritage. 
 
 108
 
 The Crossing of the Jordan. 
 
 And here is the first step, " Sanctify yourselves, for to-morrow 
 the Lord will do wonders among you." 
 
 Sanctify yourselves. This is God's call to those of us who 
 would fain cross over the Jordan. Put away every unclean 
 thing all that interferes with the divine operation. Is there 
 anything that stands between you and God ? any sin that you 
 are cherishing ? any carnal lust that you are yielding to ? any 
 worldly desire that you are allowing yourself to be distracted 
 with, although you know it paralyses your energy, and keeps 
 you back from the proper enjoyment of God ? Sanctify your- 
 selves. Draw near towards the Most Holy ; expose your heart 
 to him. O God ! O God ! 
 
 " The dearest idol I have known, 
 
 Whate'er that idol be, 
 Help me to tear it from my throne, 
 And only worship Thee." 
 
 And the next lesson is, Expect! To-morrow the Lord will 
 do wonders amongst you. Only by a miracle of grace can 
 you be raised to your true level of Christian experience, and 
 brought into the land that flows with milk and honey. Your 
 heavenly leader seems to ask, " Believest thou that I am able 
 to do this ? " Oh, let Him be answered from the bottom of 
 your heart with a fervent "Yea, Lord; there is nothing too 
 hard for Thee !" 
 
 Then comes the great fact, the pledge and presage of all 
 coming victories : " Hereby ye shall know that the living God 
 is among you, and that He will without fail drive out the 
 Canaanites from before you. Behold, the ark of the covenant 
 ot the Lord of all the earth passeth over before you into 
 Jordan. . . . And it shall come to pass, as soon as the feet of 
 the priests that bear the ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the 
 eaith, shall rest in the waters of Jordan, that the waters of 
 Jordan shall be cut off from the waters that come down from 
 above ; and they shall stand upon an heap." Go down again 
 into the place of death and burial, but see your Lord there 
 before you, a pledge that when you pass through the waters, 
 because He is with thee, the floods shall not overflow thee. Go 
 down into the place of judgment, and see thine old wilderness 
 life, with all its waywardness and wilfulness, judged, condemned, 
 and left behind thee for ever. 
 
 Gaze upon the wondrous scene. At the bidding of God the 
 waters are divided, and the priests march down into the deep 
 
 109
 
 The Crossing of the Jordan. 
 
 channel which Jordan had worn in the plain. There they 
 stand quietly, calmly, patiently. They were not going to 
 move over until the last little tiny child of Israel had crossed. 
 Look ! the waters are rising higher and higher ; but the watery 
 mountain does not flow down. The great law of gravitation 
 seems for the moment suspended ; nature herself gives way 
 before the imperious command of the Deity. There stand the 
 priests while the people pass over, the ark of God's covenant 
 turning the waters of judgment into the mystery of salvation. 
 
 See, now they are emerging on the other side. The presence 
 of the Lord of the whole earth has restrained the impetuous 
 flood ; and now the last of the vast caravan has passed over, 
 and the twelve stones of memorial are taken from the depths 
 of the channel, and borne by stalwart warriors to the other 
 side ; and then at last the sacred ark moves also, and reaches 
 the shore of Canaan. Hark ! the thunder crash of waters. 
 The pent-up element, as if delighting in its new-found liberty, 
 sweeps down towards the Dead Sea ; but as the strange high- 
 way closes up, the Israelites find themselves cut off for ever 
 from the weary wilderness, and in that fresh miracle over 
 nature they see a pledge of future miracles over man. The 
 walls of Jericho are already staggering to their fall ; the kings 
 of Canaan are already doomed ; every place where their foot 
 falls is their own ; and the promises of God are proved to be 
 yea and amen at last. 
 
 Fear not, Christian brothers, the land is yours, and when 
 once the great lesson of redemption is fully learned, none can 
 keep you out of it. Go on triumphantly, for the ark of the 
 covenant goeth before. Dare to possess the land. Let your 
 Captain hear you say, "'Tis mine, my Lord, for thou hast 
 promised it to me ; 'tis doubly mine, for thou hast given it to 
 me. I will not fear the sons of Anak, nor despair before the 
 walls of Jericho." 
 
 " Where our banners lead us 
 
 We may safely go ; 
 Where our Chief precedes us 
 
 We may face the foe ; 
 His right arm is o'er us, 
 
 He our Guide will be : 
 Christ has gone before us, 
 
 Christians, follow ye." 
 
 God of our salvation, bring us in ! Bring us in, and the 
 kingdom shall be thine ! 
 
 no
 
 cannot JTotloto Cfcee noto?" 
 
 " Lord, why cannot I follow thee now." 
 John xiii. 37. 
 
 WHY could not Simon Peter follow his Lord and Master 
 there and then ? There could be no doubt of his sin- 
 cerity, nor could there be any question as to his attachment to 
 his Master. He loved that Master dearly, and for His sake 
 he had turned his back upon his little all. For more than 
 three years he had been walking about, sharing that Master's 
 lot, and yet when the last moment draws nigh, and our blessed 
 Lord is about to pass along that mysterious pathway of sorrow 
 and suffering appointed Him by the Father, and on through a 
 shameful death to a glorious resurrection, He had to tell His 
 favourite disciple, "Whither I go, thou canst not follow me 
 now." 
 
 I cannot believe that our blessed Lord merely referred to 
 the fact that the time for Simon Peter's departure into the 
 other world had not yet arrived. That, of course, was true ; 
 but I do not believe that our Lord would have used the ex- 
 pression " follow me " if that had been all He intended to 
 convey. He would rather have employed the language of 
 verse 33 : "Ye shall seek me : and as I said unto the Jews, 
 Whither I go, ye cannot come." But here He does not say, 
 " Thou canst not come ; " but, " Thou canst not follow me 
 now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards." The word is a 
 very suggestive one, and one ever employed in a definite sense 
 throughout the whole of the New Testament scriptures. 
 
 Further, as a matter of fact, Simon Peter did follow the 
 Lord Jesus Christ so far as he could have followed Him with- 
 out dying ; for there was still a considerable portion of ground 
 to be traversed by those sacred feet, and Christ's way from 
 that point was about to lie through the most perilous and trying 
 scenes of His earthly experience. There lay before Him the 
 sorrows of Gethsemane, the mock trial in the judgment-hall j
 
 " Why cannot I Follow Thee now ? " 
 
 there lay before Him the way of sorrows, crowned with the 
 cross on Calvary. Up to that point Simon Peter jnight have 
 faithfully followed his Lord ; but, as a matter of fact, he could 
 not and didjipt Now our Lord was, I believe, referrmg~to 
 this first, though His words may have reached on to the glory 
 that was at last to be revealed. The time of His departure 
 from earth was not yet actually come, though it was drawing 
 near ; but the time was already come when His disciples were 
 to be scattered every one to his own and to leave Him alone, 
 and yet not alone. And knowing this, He says, " Whither I 
 go, thou ^cangt not follow me now ; but thou shalt^ follow jne 
 afterwards." 
 
 And it is equally true that this same Simon Peter did follow 
 the Lord Jesus Christ afterwards in the same sense in which 
 he was now precluded from following Him ; and in my next 
 sermon we shall consider the question, " How came it to pass 
 that this same Simon Peter was enabled to follow the Lord 
 Jesus Christ after all, and to follow Him so fully ? " But our 
 inquiry to-day is, Why could not Simon Peter follow the Lord 
 Jesus then ? 
 
 As we ask the question, we are led to consider our own per- 
 sonal experience. Does not a similar sense of disability seem 
 familiar to us? Is it not true that there sometimes seems to 
 rise up in the very path of our inclinations and spiritual aspi- 
 rations a strange, indescribable barrier an inexorable "cannot" 
 that seems to bar the way to further progress, rendering it im- 
 possible for us to follow on to know the Lord, or to attain to 
 that conformity to the divine image for which our hearts are 
 longing? Do we not sometimes feel as though some stern 
 voice were sounding in our ear the mournful tidings, the very 
 death-knell of our higher hopes, "Whither Jesus goes, you 
 cannot follow Him now?" It is not so much that we want 
 the will or, at any rate, the wish. The earnest desire some- 
 times seems to burn within our hearts; and when we ask our- 
 selves why we have not done it, does it not appear to us as if 
 the reason were that we could not, rather than that we would 
 not ? We wish to follow Christ, and to rise to higher things ; 
 but some strange power which we cannot define, and whose 
 nature we cannot even discover, but of whose operations we 
 are perfectly cognizant, seems to meet us with a stern, 
 inexorable -"nay." " VV hither I go, ye cannot follow me 
 now." 
 
 112
 
 "Why cannot I Follow Thee now?" 
 
 If this should be so with any of us I do not say with all 
 (for I would be glad to believe that there are but few of us in 
 this case) but if it should be so with any of us, were it not 
 wise to put the question, " Lord, why cannot we follow Thee 
 now ? " I am speaking at this moment to those who are true 
 and sincere believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. You believe 
 you do love Him as Simon Peter loved Him you wish to 
 follow Him as Peter would, and yet you keep at a distance 
 from Him. You feel the strongest desire to live in closer 
 fellowship, but time passes away, and you seem to draw no 
 nearer. "Lord, why cannot I follow Thee now?" It is wise, 
 I say, to ask this question, for if it be honestly put, with the 
 unflinching intention to come by the truth, we may be assured 
 that the Holy Spirit of God will sooner or later discover to us 
 the secret cause of our failure will show us what gives strength 
 to this cruel and pitiless "cannot. 1 " 
 
 Now we may learn something on this point by studying the 
 experience of Simon Peter, and by considering what were the 
 barriers that kept him then from realizing in his own personal 
 experience what it is to follow Jesus. Why could not Simon 
 follow Jesus then ? I reply, in the first place, probably it was 
 because he thought he could. Yes, he felt sure he could. The 
 chivalrous Peter exclaims, with all possible assurance of his 
 own courage and determination, " Why cannot I follow Thee 
 now? I will lay down my life for Thy sake." And very likely, 
 had we been there, we should have seen the flush of enthusiasm 
 pass over his face, and should have been constrained to believe, 
 from his very manner and gestures, that he meant what he 
 said. And if we had been in the garden of Gethsemane, 
 and had seen him there draw his sword from its scabbard, 
 and at the risk of his own life smite at the head of the high 
 priest's servant on behalf of his Master, we should have felt 
 no uncertainty as to the reality of Simon Peter's devotion to 
 Christ. 
 
 And yet it was perfectly true that Simon Peter could not 
 follow Jesus then just because "he thought he could." There is 
 nothing more common amongst Christians than the admission 
 of our own frailty and weakness. We are all ready with such 
 assertions. Orthodoxy expects it of us ; and were a man to 
 make a contrary statement, he would hardly be looked upon as 
 a Christian at all. Were a man to say he could do this or that 
 in overcoming evil, without qualifying his assertion by some 
 11. n 3 ' i
 
 " Why cannot I Follow Thee now ? " 
 
 familiar phrase, such as " By God's help," you would regard 
 such an one as a religious braggart, and think of him as a 
 heathen man, or at best a Pharisee. But oh, what a great 
 difference there is between making in general terms these 
 orthodox admissions of our infirmity, and having a real inward 
 moral consciousness of our own personal helplessness and our 
 entire dependence on a higher power. 
 
 Sometimes, it may be, we get as far as feeling ourselves 
 to be a little weaker than we should be, and being a little 
 ashamed of our own infirmity; but that is a different thing 
 from a consciousness of helplessness. And sometimes we 
 go further, taught by many disasters, and entertain serious 
 misgivings and apprehensions about ourselves ; but it is 
 wonderful how elastic a thing is self-confidence, and how it 
 rebounds from the most distressing humiliations. We are quite 
 ' - determined to be more careful in the future. We will see to 
 it that the fault shall not be repeated ; our mind is fully made 
 up against it ; and so we struggle on till another fall lays us in 
 despair. But oh, how slow we are to abandon all confidence 
 in the flesh, to feel that we are not only weak, but absolutely 
 helpless. And it is not until we have learnt this lesson of our 
 complete and helpless dependence that we can hope to follow 
 Jesus. For flesh and blood can no more participate in the 
 fellowship of Jesus' sufferings than they can inherit the 
 kingdom of God. It is only by the Christ within, that I can 
 ; be raised to the level of the life of the Christ without. 
 
 But Simon Peter was a man of much natural resolution, and 
 of strong determination. Perhaps it may also be surmised 
 that he was a man of undisciplined mind and will ; and such 
 characters, while they possess some great advantages over 
 others, are specially liable to fall into this particular snare. 
 They find it very hard to renounce all confidence in this 
 moral vigour and natural courage and determination. And 
 such, like Peter, have a great deal to unlearn before they can 
 follow Jesus ; they have to be stripped before they can be 
 clothed, and emptied before they can be filled. And how 
 many of us shrink from this humiliating process ! 
 
 It seemed to him a thing incredible that he should turn his 
 back upon his Master. " What ! " he might have said, " have 
 I not already given sufficient proof of my affection ? When 
 the thousands who flocked around Him turned their backs, and 
 went away to their farms and their merchandize, and left Him 
 
 114
 
 " Why cannot I Follow Thee now ? " 
 
 alone, was I not one of the little group who still surrounded 
 Him in the synagogue at Capernaum ? and did I not hear Him 
 say, ' Will ye also go away ? ' And did I not respond, ' Lord, 
 to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.' 
 Surely I could never turn my back upon my Lord." 
 
 So Peter felt ; and so we often feel, do we not ? And we can 
 scarcely bring ourselves to believe that we could condescend to 
 the little sins, or perhaps to the great sin, which subsequently 
 we commit. No ; we feel, with a certain amount of assurance, 
 that we really are superior to that sort of thing ; and then 
 by-and-by we learn our weakness by some grievous fall, and 
 realize it amidst our bitter tears and grievous lamentations, as 
 Simon Peter did. For I would have you know, my dear Chris- 
 tian brethren, that if the Lord cannot teach us in any other 
 way, He will teach us by failure ; though, surely, that is the most 
 expensive school in which we can be taught. We have to pay 
 the highest fees there, and we have to receive our instruction 
 and education there under the least pleasant possible circum- 
 stances ; aye, and while you may learn there, you have to 
 remember, that you cannot receive such lessons without in- 
 curring much spiritual loss, and perhaps not without inflicting 
 injury on others as well as on yourselves. It is the least 
 desirable of all the schools that we can attend, this School of 
 Failure, which is really the discipline-class in the School ot 
 Experience ; and God does not send us there, I am quite sure, 
 till He sees that nothing else can bring us down to our true 
 level strip us of our self-confidence, and bring us into closer 
 fellowship with Himself. I believe He permits the evil one to 
 put a stumbling-block in the way of His self-confident children, 
 just that they may learn what a broken reed they rest upon 
 when they trust to their own determination and strength of 
 character. 
 
 Then comes the humiliating fall; and when the sorrowing 
 and downcast soul has been taught by such a fall to distrust 
 self and cling to Christ, he rises from it sore, and wounded, and 
 bruised perhaps, indeed, doomed to carry the scar of that 
 fall to his grave ; but in one respect stronger than he was 
 before, because he knows now, more than ever heretofore, how 
 real his weakness is. 
 
 But let me ask again the question, Why could not Simon 
 Peter follow Jesus then? And I would suggest the answer, 
 Because it would appear that he was at this time walking by
 
 "Why cannot I Follow Thee now?" 
 
 sight rather than by faith. In this answer we have the positive 
 lesson suggested to our minds, which may be regarded as the 
 complement of the negative lesson on which we have just been 
 enlarging. And the two come in this order; for we do not 
 reach the life of real faith till we have first of all become fully 
 conscious of our own helplessness. How can we really trust 
 Christ unless we have thoroughly learnt to distrust ourselves ? 
 If your confidence is built upon anything not Divine, you are 
 not in a position to trust yourself to the Divine, and really to 
 lean on Him ; but when we have begun to distrust ourselves, 
 and to rest on God, we find that all other forms of creature 
 strength are equally untrustworthy. The world, with its vain 
 appearances, is no more to be trusted than ourselves, and we 
 turn from that which seems, to that which is. 
 
 But all this is otherwise when we are living and walking 
 by sense rather than by faith; then we judge according to 
 appearances, and are depressed or elated according as things 
 seem to go well or ill ; and thus all is uncertainty, and we are 
 like a reed swayed to and fro, and remain quite incapable of 
 following that Master whose faith in the Divine will enabled 
 Him to triumph over sorrow and death, and to set His face 
 like a flint against all the opposing forces of earth and hell. 
 
 Now Simon Peter was walking, it would seem, rather by 
 sight than faith, and hence his courage and firmness were greatly 
 dependent upon outward circumstances. As long as he saw 
 Christ performing prodigies of spiritual power, or greeted by 
 the enthusiastic hosannas of the multitude, it appeared easy to 
 follow Him ; but when all His glory seemed departed when 
 that right arm of power was bound with an iron fetter ; when, 
 instead of boisterous plaudits, the air rang with the hoarse cry 
 of the bloodthirsty throng, " Crucify Him, crucify Him ! " his 
 courage forsook him, and the enthusiasm that sprang from the 
 things seen, with their disappearance began to melt away. 
 
 Ah ! how many of us are fair-weather sailors ! We seem 
 to get on very well as long as the sea is only rippled with a 
 friendly breeze ; but when favourable influences are withdrawn, 
 and opposition and hostility begin to manifest themselves, or 
 when God Himself tries our faith by allowing us for a time to 
 walk in darkness, then there is a terrible collapse, and the whole 
 fabric of our confidence seems to come down with a crash. 
 " We walk by faith, not by sight," says the Apostle. " We walk 
 by sight, not by faith," say the lives of many of us who bear 
 
 116
 
 " Why cannot I Follow Thee now ? " 
 
 the Christian name ; and the result is, we cannot follow Jesus 
 now; for Jesus in the reality of His manhood had to walk 
 by faith, even as we ; and it was by faith He worked, by faith 
 He suffered, and in faith He died. The passion indeed was a 
 triumph of faith, and hence those only who walk by faith can 
 tread in His steps. The Master was at this moment about to 
 step forth into the dark, and move along that gloomy and tragic 
 path of sorrow which the will of the Father had indicated to 
 Him; the disciple could not pursue His steps because He 
 lacked faith in that Father's will. 
 
 And if any of you feel as if you could not follow Jesus now, \ 
 I would suggest to you the enquiry, Am I really walking by \ 
 faith? Can I truly say, as St. Paul said, "The life I live in 
 the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God?" If so, God can 
 live in you ; and where He lives He can and will impart the / 
 needed strength to follow Him. But, alas ! how few there / 
 seem to be who in their daily life thus by faith lay hold of and / 
 possess themselves of God. 
 
 This leads us to a third answer to our enquiry very closely 
 connected with the one we have just been considering "Why 
 could not Simon Peter follow Jesus then ? " I answer, Because, 
 he was walking in the flesh rather than in the Spirit. This sarae 
 Simon Peter, only a few short weeks afterwards, when he was 
 baptized with the Holy Ghost and with power, stood before the 
 rulers of his country with unblanched countenance, and with a 
 calm and quiet heart could bear witness to that Master whom 
 he once denied. Now let us bear in mind that it was by^ the 
 eternaLSpirit that Jesus offered Himself; that Spirit was, as it 
 were, the fit Person, that led the Scapegoat of humanity into 
 the wilderness for us. And the Spirit was abla to complete 
 this sacrifice of the humanity of Christ, because all through 
 His human life Christ had been faithful to the leadings of 
 that Spirit. It was doubtless by the Spirit He was moved to 
 submit to the baptism of John, and that Spirit bore witness to 
 His obedience as He brooded over the head of the submissive 
 Son of man. It was by the Spirit that He was driven into the 
 wilderness to be tempted of the devil, and by that same Spirit 
 He was guided in His works and directed in His words. 
 Thus, like a true Son of God, He was ever led by the Spirit of 
 God, until, as Isaac was bound by Abraham, so by the eternal 
 Spirit, Christ was bound to a felon's cross. 
 
 And for us also that Spirit is given. There is a title which 
 
 117
 
 " Why cannot I Fottoiv TJiee now ? " 
 
 belongs exclusively to our blessed Lord. He only is the Christ, 
 the anointed One. But all who would follow Him need to be, 
 like Him, anointed. The precious ointment poured upon the 
 head is to run down to the skirts of the clothing, and only 
 they who are partakers of this divine unction can really know 
 the blessedness of following Christ. 
 
 This qualification for following Jesus is closely connected 
 Avith that other to which I have just been referring. They 
 /represent, I may say, the two sides of a normal and healthy 
 / spiritual experience. Faith on our side brings us into contact! 
 1 with the divine, and puts the soul in the attitude of reception ; \ 
 \ the gift of the Holy Ghost on God's side brings the divine into '; 
 \contact with us, and fills us according to our capacity for I 
 reception. St. Paul binds these two sides of Christian expe--' 
 rience together when he asks the Galatians, " Received ye the 
 Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith ? " 
 evidently expecting the answer that it was by the hearing of 
 faith that the Holy Ghost was received, as is illustrated by the 
 story of Cornelius. 
 
 Now the Holy Spirit does enter and take possession of 
 every heart that is fully surrendered to Christ, witnessing to 
 our sonship, wakening new desires, freeing from the old law of 
 sin and death. "But," says the Apostle," 7 ' IF we live in the 
 Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit ; " and his charge against 
 the Galatian Christians is that, having begun in the Spirit, they 
 had gone on to be made perfect in the flesh. Is not this 
 where many of us lose our capacity to follow Christ ? Instead 
 of believing in Him as the new indwelling Lord of their life, 
 and yielding themselves to be led by Him ; instead of watch- 
 ,ing for His holy impulses, in order to obey them, and ex- 
 pecting to be anointed by Him for spiritual worship and for 
 service, we substitute habit, routine, method, form, rules and 
 regulations, all the paraphernalia, in fact, of spiritual bondage 
 for His blessed presence and influence. We cease to be free 
 ' as the wind, as everyone that is born of the Spirit should be ; 
 and at last we come to deserve the Apostle's withering censure, 
 ^' Are ye not carnal, and walk as men ? " 
 
 m And the energies of the flesh may be never so strong and 
 / never so well intentioned, but they cannot take the place of the 
 / powers of the Holy Ghost ; and there is a point beyond which 
 I they cannot go in disposing us to follow Christ. Are we 
 walking in the Spirit, or are we walking as men ? that is to say, 
 
 uS
 
 "Why cannot I Follow Thee now?" 
 
 as those who are men only, and not men taken possession of, 
 and, as it were, inhabited by God. Upon the answer to this 
 question mainly depends our capacity or incapacity to follow 
 Jesus now. 
 
 But once again we ask, " Why could not Simon Peter follow 
 Jesus then ? " And another answer I would suggest to you is 
 this : He could not follow Him, because he was out of sym- 
 pathy and harmony with His mind. " Can two walk together 
 except they be agreed?" Simon Peter had thoughts of his 
 own, and Jesus Christ had thoughts of His own ; rather, let 
 me say, the thoughts of Jesus were the thoughts which the 
 Father inspired. He was meditating on the Father's will, while 
 the thoughts of Simon Peter were thoughts suggested by the mind 
 and will of man. " Tho.U- savourest not the things that be of 
 God, but the things that be of men;" and therefore Simon 
 Peter could not follow Jesus. And if we are really to follow 
 Him, how necessary it is that we should rise into the inner 
 circle of His fellowship, and see things from His point of 
 view. When we wander out of that charmed circle of true 
 moral and spiritual fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ, our 
 most strenuous efforts to make progress only end in our losing 
 ground, and falling further and further short of that to which 
 we desire to attain. It is not by saying, " I will follow thee, 
 thou blessed Jesus," that we succeed in following Him. It is 
 rather by bringing our minds into the attitude of submission, 
 and pur hearts into full harmony with His Divine will. And 
 the first step towards accepting the Divine will is taken when we 
 repose our full confidence in it. He who fears the Divine will 
 naturally will shrink from it, but He who is determined to 
 trust ijLwlLsoo_n_learn JOk..love, it^_and so it will be possible to 
 have full fellowship with Him who told us that it was His 
 meat and drink to do the will of the Father. 
 
 Jesus Christ was at this moment fulfilling in His own ex- 
 perience the language of the Psalm, " Lo ! I come to do thy 
 will ; I am content to do it. Yea, thy law is within my heart." 
 He was about to move forward in the lines of the divine 
 will, and this was to land Him in sorrow, loss, desolation, 
 and death. But He moved on and halted not, because 
 He had the fullest possible confidence in it, and was 
 persuaded that the will of God must ever mean the highest 
 good of the creature. Simon Peter, on the other hand, pre- 
 ferred to trust to his own will and to his own idea of what 
 
 119
 
 " Why cannot I Follow Thee now ? " 
 
 was seemly and fitting. He savoured not the things of God, 
 but the things of man. He had his own day-dreams of 
 material aggrandisement, national exaltation, and political 
 power. He was to be a great man, and his Master to rule 
 over the nations with a rod of iron, and break them in 
 pieces like a potter's vessel. These were the dreams that 
 filled Simon Peter's mind, so that he had no room for the 
 fellowship of the mind of Jesus Christ. And when Jesus 
 began to open up His own purposes to him, he shrank from 
 them with aversion. 
 
 Now here is our lesson. How can we follow Jesus if we, 
 are living for some other object than that for which Jesus 
 lived? You, my dear brother, who seek after popularity ; you, 
 my dear sister, who are wishing to be on good terms with the 
 world ; and you whose great object in life is to secure the 
 maximum of self-indulgence, how can you follow Jesus until 
 you are in sympathy with Him and with His aims and pur- 
 poses? Thus it is that the Master Himself has taught us, 
 " If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, take 
 up his cross, and follow me." We have to deny ourselves in 
 order to assert God. Self-assertion takes us out of fellowship 
 with the mind of Christ, and thus shuts us off from all possi- 
 bility of following Him ; whereas the recognition of God and 
 the according to Him of His proper position, which we may 
 call God-assertion as opposed to self-assertion, introduces us 
 into the mystery of the life of Christ, and renders it possible 
 for us to follow Him. 
 
 And thus we are led on to our last answer to the question, 
 " Why could not Simon Peter follow Jesus then ?" We reply, 
 Because in all probability, though he scarcely knew it, he was 
 inwardly clinging all the while to a besetting sin. That beset- 
 ting sin in his case appears to have been self-assertion, or self- 
 confidence, mingled with not a little worldly pride. As I have 
 already said, I suppose he was scarcely conscious of it ; but it 
 was there. We see this evil habit of soul exhibiting itself on 
 various occasions, as though it lay just beneath the surface of 
 his character a root of bitterness ever ready to spring up and 
 trouble him. We see it in his attempt to dissuade his Master 
 from facing the cross ; we see it in his conduct on this very 
 occasion at the supper- table, when once and again he set up 
 his own conceit and his own idea of what was fit against the 
 mind of Christ. And this sorrowful experience of his should
 
 "Why cannot I Follow Thee now?" 
 
 teach us that we can never cling to a besetting sin with one 
 hand and grasp Jesus Christ with the other. 
 
 This consideration may serve to throw light upon a very 
 large number of cases, where a very sensibly recognised barrier 
 seems to shut the soul out from this happy experience of 
 following Jesus. How many of you are kept back from 
 following the Lord Jesus now, by some secret sin some 
 cherished sin which you are not prepared wholly to renounce 
 and part company with? It may be a spiritual sin, as was 
 that of Simon Peter, or it may be a sin which the world thinks 
 lightly of some folly or foible which your fellow-men are not 
 disposed to judge harshly of; but none the less it comes 
 between you and Jesus Christ, and succeeds in preventing you 
 from following Him now. Or it may even be some gross and 
 shameful sin which common morality condemns as much as 
 your own heart. You know it is wrong, and yet you have ) 
 been trying to play tricks with your own moral sense, and to / 
 juggle your own conscience. 
 
 But whatever may be the character of the sin, you are 
 trifling and making compromises with the evil thing, instead 
 of repudiating it and forsaking it once and for ever. Like 
 Balaam, you are the victim of two conflicting emotions the 
 fear of God's wrath, the love of the wages of unrighteousness 
 such as they seem. You feel a certain reluctance to abjure for 
 ever that which you none the less in your better moments 
 deplore. "May I not make a league with this my pet infirmity 
 or my besetting sin, and restrain it within a certain limit, saying 
 to it, 'So far shall thou go, and no further'? Why must I 
 fight the battle of Hormah against it ? Why mete out to it a 
 complete and utter destruction ? Is it absolutely necessary that 
 I should have done with it altogether and for ever? Why 
 really it is like parting with an old friend." Oh, child of God, 
 dost thou know the price that thou art paying for this com- 
 promise? Thou art sacrificing for that evil thing, which thou 
 knowest to be thy bane, the fellowship of Jesus, and all 
 capacity to follow Him. Until thou art content to reckon 
 thyself as dead indeed unto every known form of evil, whether 
 thou thinkest it small or great, thou never canst follow Jesus. 
 
 Come, let us search ourselves to-day, just as if we had that 
 keen searching gaze turned upon us which met Simon Peter 
 but a little time after this, and broke his heart, and let us try 
 and find out if we are trifling with any thing that God hates. 
 
 121
 
 "Why cannot I Folloiv Thee now?" 
 
 Is it some habit of moral obliquity that brings condemnation 
 upon your conscience, something wrong and crooked in your 
 commercial transactions ? Is it some habit of self-indulgence 
 that you are yielding to, and that prevents you from presenting 
 your body as a living sacrifice to the God to whom it belongs ? 
 Is it some unfriendly feeling towards a neighbour or acquaint- 
 ance with whom you are not upon good terms for some reason 
 or other, some bitter, rancorous recollections ? Is it some un- 
 holy and impure affection that you feel winding its serpent-like 
 coils around your moral nature, and holding you prisoner in a 
 captivity that you have learnt to love, and with which you are 
 not altogether willing to part company? Peradventure you 
 shrink from gross and actual sin, and yet indulge in that 
 which leads up to sin, forgetting how early in God's sight such 
 sins may be perpetrated in the heart, long before any overt act 
 of impurity has taken place, or even any apparent approach to 
 such an act has been permitted. Oh, remember our God 
 searches the heart, and tries the reins ! You cannot follow 
 Him to the cross while you are secretly trifling with that which 
 crucified Him. 
 
 Or is it the very sin to which Simon Peter himself was 
 addicted the sin of self-seeking and self-assertion, the sin 
 which disposes us to serve self much, while we profess to 
 serve Christ a little? Are we burning incense to our own 
 vanity, even while we profess to be occupied in the service of 
 Christ the Lord, setting forth ourselves instead of Christ, 
 seeking for ourselves popularity and distinction, while we pro- 
 fess to be working for the glory of our Lord ? Are you anxious, 
 my dear Christian worker, not only to please your heavenly 
 Master, but also to win the approval of your Vicar, Sunday- 
 school Superintendent, or fellow-teachers ? Is there a double 
 object, dear labourer, in your toil ? are you ambitious to win 
 the Well-done of man as well as the commendation of Jesus 
 Christ? Oh, how these dead flies of corrupt motive make the 
 ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour ! 
 By these we are robbed of that purity which God demands of 
 His children, and without which we cannot do His will or 
 follow Him. And when we cling to these ambiguous motives, 
 and these impure and unholy desires, a stem and inexorable 
 "cannot" must still meet us in the midst of our best aspirations 
 and attempts to go forward, and bar the way of progress 
 " Whither I go, ye cannot follow me now."
 
 "Why cannot I Follow Thee now?" 
 
 Perhaps some of you, dear friends, are thinking that this is a 
 very discouraging sermon, and saying, " Can we not follow 
 Jesus without all that? Must we be brought down so very 
 low, and feel our own weakness so much, and be always 
 walking by faith ? Must we be filled by the Spirit ? Must we 
 be in sympathy with the mind and feeling of Christ if we are 
 really to walk with Him ? Must we forsake the sin to which 
 we are still clinging? It is asking a great deal. Can we not 
 /go to heaven without all this ? " My brethren, we are not dis- 
 cussing the minimum qualification for heaven. What it is 
 / God only knows, and I am by no means ambitious to share 
 His knowledge. We are talking of following Jesus, and that 
 is far more to the purpose, it seems to me, than questioning as^- 
 to what Js the smallest amount of religion with which we may 
 hope for heaven. I have no desire to solve the problem and 
 I hope I shall never attempt it with how little religion it is 
 possible for a man to get inside the gates of heaven. I do 
 not think that a profitable speculation, and we had better 
 leave it alone. But here is a consideration which is very 
 profitable : How much spiritual benefit is it possible for a man 
 to get out of his religion ? How much of the fulness of the 
 blessing of the gospel of peace is it possible for me to enjoy 
 while I am here on earth? Is not that much better? 
 
 And when you complain that it seems there is a great deal 
 to be done, and much to be given up, before you can rise to 
 the prize of your high calling, I answer, " Be of good cheer ; 
 the end is worth gaining, and it is within your reach." Simon 
 Peter did learn this lesson, and that very quickly, and you may 
 learn it too. The disciple to whom his Master had said, 
 "Whither I go thou canst not follow me now," a few short 
 weeks after was following Jesus fully with full devotion and 
 full enjoyment of spiritual power and blessing. God can teach 
 His lessons very quickly if we are willing and obedient, and 
 determined to learn. But in order to learn we sometimes 
 need to unlearn. And if my question this morning sets you 
 thinking, and leads you to go home to your closet and dis-/ 
 \ tinctly face the inquiry, " Lord, why cannot I follow Thee > 
 S^ngwJ* " I shall not have preached to you in vain. 
 \ Nay, we will not leave it till we get home to our closet, lest 
 the impression of this moment should have passed away by 
 that time. Let us ask the question now. The Master is here 
 in our midst ; His heart-searching gaze is fixed upon us now. 
 
 123
 
 " Why cannot I Follow Thee now f " 
 
 Let me ask it of myself, and you ask it of yourselves, " Lord, 
 why cannot I follow Thee now? If I have been lingering 
 and loitering, and losing ground, Lord, why cannot I even now 
 rise from my sin and folly and half-heartedness, and even now 
 begin to follow Thee ? Why cannot I ? I who am bound to 
 Thee by a stronger obligation than anything that Simon Peter 
 knew of at this moment when this was said to him ; I for 
 whom the blood of Calvary was shed ; I who am a child of 
 the resurrection, and who might well be expected to know 
 something of its power ; I whose conscience has been freed 
 from sin, and whose nature has been ransomed from death ; I 
 who understand the meaning of what seemed to Simon dark 
 and enigmatical ; I who have been crucified with Christ, buried 
 in His grave, and begotten again unto a lively hope by His 
 resurrection from the dead ; Lord, why cannot I follow Thee 
 now? 
 
 I am no stranger to the glories of Pentecost; I know 
 that the Holy Spirit has been given, and given for me ; I have 
 tasted of life through Him ; He has borne witness within me, 
 crying, Abba Father. Lord, why cannot I follow Thee now ? 
 I see Thee going forth in the power of Thy weakness, in the 
 dignity of Thy humiliation, Leader of the host of martyrs, 
 followed by the loyal and the true, who are content to count 
 all loss for Thy dear sake. Lord, why cannot I follow Thee 
 now?" 
 
 Yes, and let us lay special emphasis on that word now ; for 
 have we not too often deluded ourselves with good intentions ? 
 We mean to do better by-and-by ; we will live closer to God , 
 we will become imitators of Him ; we will be more careful and 
 circumspect. Ah, these good resolutions ! how oft do they 
 prove, when they have ended in a reiteration of failure, the 
 very fulcrum on which Satan rests his argument of despair. 
 
 Better far that we should pause and ask ourselves, as in 
 God's presence, " Lord, why should I dream of following Thee 
 by-and-by ? Lord, why cannot I follow Thee now ? What is 
 there to hinder my beginning to set forth now on this high 
 quest ? What is the latent hindrance, the secret stumbling- 
 block? Who is the Achan in the camp? Where is the wedge 
 of gold, the Babylonish garment? Bring it forth, bring it 
 forth to the light of day; bring it forth to the judgment of the 
 cross ! 
 
 O revealing Spirit, search our hearts as with lighted candles, 
 
 124
 
 " Why cannot I Follow Thee now ? " 
 
 and whatever it be that mars the operation of Thy grace, and 
 prevents us from listening to Thy call and following Thy steps, 
 teach us how to put it away. Show us how to bury our Achan 
 for ever in the grave of Jesus ; and then do Thou turn our 
 valley of Achor into a door of Hope, and give us vineyards 
 from thence, and teach us to sing as in the days of our youth, 
 as in the days when we were brought out of the land of Egypt ; 
 to sing for very joy of heart while we press joyfully forwards to 
 follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth. Lord, why cannot 
 1 follow Thee now ? " 
 
 125
 
 CJ)ou jfle." 
 
 "Follow thou Me." John xxi. 22. 
 
 IT will be in your memory that in our last discourse we were 
 considering and endeavouring to answer the question, Why 
 could not Simon Peter follow the Lord Jesus Christ at the time 
 referred to in those words of our blessed Lord spoken at the 
 last supper " Whither I go thou canst not follow me now " ? 
 We were led to conclude that Simon Peter could not follow 
 the Lord Jesus then ; first, because he thought he could ; and 
 next, because he was walking by sight, rather than by faith ; 
 as the result of this, in the third place, because he was walking 
 in the flesh, rather than in the Spirit ; and as the result of this 
 again, because he was walking out of sympathy and fellowship 
 with Christ. There was yet a further consideration suggested 
 to our minds, that probably Peter was at that very time cling- 
 ing to a besetting sin, the sin of self-assertion and self-seeking; 
 and the thought was brought before us that many of us are 
 precluded from following Christ just because of some one 
 particular sin that we are trifling with, and are reluctant to part 
 company with. Where there is this disposition to make terms 
 with sin, it is impossible for us to enter into the fellowship of 
 Jesus' life, or to follow Him fully. 
 
 You will also perhaps remember that I promised that we 
 would consider the opposite question in our next sermon, How 
 came it to pass that Simon Peter actually was enabled after- 
 wards to follow his Master, and to follow Him so fully? for 
 this inquiry seems a necessary and reasonable supplement to 
 that which has already occupied us. And if the lessons 
 suggested in our last address are of a kind to suggest deep 
 heart-searchings, and perhaps much humiliation of soul before 
 God, our present enquiry will, I hope, be found full of 
 encouragement and comfort. 
 
 I cannot but regard this special call to Simon Peter as a 
 
 126
 
 "Follow Thou Me." 
 
 distinct revocation, uttered by our blessed Lord, of that 
 sentence of disability which He Himself had previously 
 announced. At the supper table, before His passion, Christ 
 had said to Simon Peter, " Thou canst not follow me now." 
 Here, after the resurrection, by the sea of Galilee, the same 
 voice bids the same disciple, " Follow thou me ;" calling on 
 him to do the very thing which before He had told him that 
 he was unable to do. 
 
 What comfort there is for us all in this ! We know that 
 subsequently he did follow the Lord with wonderful fidelity 
 and devotion. Hence we may gather, that we ourselves may 
 have failed in following Jesus, and have come grievously short 
 of our own expectation, and we may be thoroughly humiliated, 
 distressed, and even despondent at the thought of our failures, 
 and yet out of all this weakness He can raise us up into the 
 glory of a life of power a life in which, by His own grace, 
 we shall be able to follow Him. 
 
 Nay, our blessed Lord, as it would appear to me, must 
 have been looking forward to this time at the very moment 
 when He pronounced the sentence of disability; for you re- 
 member He carefully goes on to say, " But thou shalt follow 
 me afterwards." He was already looking on to the time when, 
 through His resurrection, these carnally-minded men should 
 become the children of the resurrection, and go forth possessed 
 of true spiritual power, equipped and prepared to meet every 
 emergency. 
 
 Dear friends, if our conscience, or if God's Holy Spirit 
 acting on our consciences, indicates to any of us our inability 
 to follow Jesus now ; if we find ourselves standing face to 
 face with a stern and terrible cannot, don't think that this 
 is the key-note of despair, but rather the revelation of a wise 
 and merciful discipline, by which we are to learn some of the 
 most important of the great practical lessons of life. We are 
 brought to know the full force of this sorrowful cannot, in 
 order that in the very moment of the utter break-down and 
 collapse of all our own resources, we may find the rainbow of 
 promise span the portentous cloud of disappointment, and the 
 impotence of the present introduce us into the better know- 
 ledge of Him who is to be the omnipotence of the future. 
 
 The question which we have to ask this morning is, as I 
 have said, just the opposite of what we asked yesterday. It is 
 no longer, "Why could not Simon follow Jesus then?" but 
 
 127
 
 "Follow Thou Me." 
 
 " How came it to pass that he was subsequently enabled to 
 follow Jesus Christ so faithfully and well ? " And to obtain 
 our first answer, we must contemplate in our imagination that 
 sorrowful scene outside the hall of the high priest. There we 
 see Peter bowed in an agony of grief and shame, his breast 
 heaving convulsively with sobs of passionate distress ; while 
 the bitter tears are gushing from his eyes. There he stands, 
 lonely, desolate, heart-sick. Oh, what a break-down was there ! 
 All his self-confidence and self-sufficiency, what had become 
 of them? The assurances he had given, even to the very 
 last, that he was prepared to die for his Lord, what had become 
 of them ? The fruit of those three and a half blessed years of 
 continual fellowship with the Master all seemed to be lost. The 
 little progress which he had thought, perhaps, that he had made 
 in grace and knowledge of God under the teaching of Christ 
 seemed forfeited. The friendship with his fellow-disciples, and 
 the love which bound them all together in a common affection 
 for their Master, the smile of that Master's approbation, and 
 the voice of His benediction, all alike seemed irreparably 
 thrown away in one moment of weakness. It seemed to the 
 heart-broken man that he had nothing left but the anguish of 
 remorse and the horror and great darkness of despair. Where 
 was he to go ? what was he to do ? how could he ever hope 
 to reinstate himself in his lost position, or regain his self- 
 respect ? The fabric of his vain self-confidence was shattered 
 to fragments, as by an earthquake shock, and the ruin of this 
 house upon the sand was indeed great. 
 
 But, though he knew it not, in this complete overthrow, this 
 
 < utter ruin of all that he had built, this loss of all that he had 
 .plumed and prided himself upon, lay the very first step of all) 
 
 jto a. new and a higher and holier life ; for death must everi 
 
 4 come before resurrection, and the break-down of self beforej 
 
 I the manifestation of the power of God. 
 jj Do I speak to any in this congregation who have passed 
 through a similar experience? They too have had their 
 moments of bitter weeping over many a vow broken, many a 
 solemn resolution only made to be forgotten. Such tears have 
 been yours as Peter shed, when you have recalled your own 
 weakness, and wondered at it, and felt so overwhelmed with 
 shame and condemnation that you have nearly given all up for 
 lost, and abandoned yourself to despair. Cheer up, my dear 
 friend, Christ never breaks the bruised reed, nor quenches the 
 
 128
 
 "Follow Thou Me." 
 
 smoking flax. Jesus saw those tears of Simon's, and He has 
 heard us say, " Thou knowest, Lord, the sorrows of our heart. 
 Shut not thy gracious ear to our prayer," and He never does 
 and never will. 
 
 That moment of extreme darkness was the precursor of 
 the dawn, the dawn of a new day to Simon Peter, and we 
 too may hope to find, in our own experience, that they who 
 sow in tears shall reap in joy. Little did Simon Peter 
 think, as he stood there in his loneliness, sobbing for very 
 anguish of heart, that this terrible fall was the first means that 
 God was using to remove the barrier between him and his 
 Master, and to render it possible for him to begin to follow 
 Jesus. And yet so it was, and we at this distance of time can 
 see that it was so. And little do we think, when we are 
 thoroughly humbled before God, perhaps by some grievous 
 fall, or perhaps by the convicting influences of the Holy Spirit, 
 revealing inward evil and impurity where we had not known 
 of the existence of any such thing, and stripping us of all our 
 self-complacency little, I say, do we think that it is thus 
 that He is preparing us to rise to a higher life, and enter 
 upon the enjoyment of a new experience. 
 
 Oh, those bitter tears those bitter tears ! Better a thousand 
 times that we should be saved them, if this may be. But if 
 we cannot learn our first great negative lesson otherwise, 
 better learn it thus than not learn it at all ; for the lesson must: 
 be learnt, dear friends, ere we can follow Christ. Do I speak 
 to any to-day who are thoroughly disheartened and downcast, 
 scarce knowing where to look or what to do? Thank God 
 amidst your tears, my dear friends, if He has swept away once 
 and for ever all your confidence in yourself, stript you of your 
 self-complacency, and taught you that if you are ever to win 
 the battle it is He that must fight it in you. If this lesson be 
 only well learnt, the sorrows of defeat shall yet prove the 
 presage of victory. 
 
 But do not let us rest here. There is something more 
 needed than tears of penitence, if we would rise from our 
 falls to follow Christ, and this is brought before us in the next 
 answer to our enquiry How came Simon Peter to be able to 
 follow Jesus? Let us contemplate another scene, of which 
 indeed we liave no description. Perhaps some of us are rather 
 disposed to regret that this should have been so ; but no doubt 
 there was a reason why no record of it should be given. We 
 n. 129 K
 
 "Follow Thou Me." 
 
 only know that, after the resurrection, our Lord first sent a 
 message to Simon, and then took an early opportunity of seeing 
 Him alone. No human witness was allowed to hear what 
 passed between the Lord and the disciple who had denied 
 Him. We can only imagine what He said lo Simon, and 
 Simon to Him. Perhaps they did not say much to each other ; 
 looks may have spoken more eloquently than words, and the 
 feelings on both sides may have transcended the powers of 
 language. 
 
 I have sometimes thought, however, that there is a lesson 
 in this silence. When a backsliding soul is restored to the 
 conscious enjoyment of the favour and of the love of God, this 
 experience is not, as it seems to me, a thing to be talked of. 
 Better that its circumstances should be known only to the soul 
 and its God. When first the newly-converted sinner approaches 
 the cross he may well " tell his joys abroad " as the shepherds 
 of Bethlehem did after the wonderful revelation of the Saviour. 
 But when a backslider is restored through divine mercy, 
 humility and contrition alike suggest the expediency of a 
 certain amount of reticence. It seems more reasonable and 
 natural that, if such speak at all of their experience, they 
 should express grief and pain at the remembrance of their 
 own sin and moral perfidy rather than enlarge upon any 
 joy and rapture they may feel at their restoration. 
 
 But the very important truth which is impressed on our minds 
 by this circumstance is, that before there can be any progress 
 in grace, any real following Christ, there must needs be a 
 complete and full restoration to Divine favour if the enjoyment 
 of this has been forfeited. There are the two together once 
 again, but really nearer to each other than ever before, the once 
 fallen disciple and his restoring Lord ; and the disciple pours 
 forth his confession in the Master's ear, and the Master speaks 
 Ihe word of forgiveness, and they are as one again. 
 
 I fear that here lies the explanation of the "cannot" too often. 
 Many of us cannot follow Jesus now, because we .have not 
 been_..thus fully restored from our falls. Perhaps we have back- 
 slidden, and have been living after the flesh instead of the Spirit, 
 and there has sprung up a coldness between us and God ; but 
 we are awakened and stirred by some holier influence, and, are 
 led to set ourselves with a will to rise to higher things. ( But 
 we forget that there is something that has to be done first. 
 Before we can follow Christ we have to take the place of a 
 
 130
 
 "Follow Thou Me." 
 
 penitent to pour into His ear the confession of our coldness and 
 backsliding, j 
 
 You remember the advice given to four out of the seven 
 Churches of Asia in the book of Revelation the four who 
 had been most unfaithful. In each case the backsliding 
 Church is called upon to repent. This is the first step towards 
 improvement. Yes, let us get right back to the cross and 
 pour out our confession there cast ourselves afresh on the 
 atoning work of Christ, pleading the sufficiency of the re- 
 demption which He has worked out for us. Then, and not till 
 then, will you be in a position to hear the divine call "Follow 
 thou me," and to attempt to obey it. 
 
 This leads us on to a further answer to our enquiry How 
 came it to pass that Simon was able to follow Christ after all ? 
 We answer, Because he had been brought into close contact with 
 the risen Saviour. Not only had he heard the pardoning voice 
 ofTKe Tvtaster he had sinned against and denied, and had thus 
 been restored to favour, but he had gazed on the risen Christ. 
 Imagine what the effect of this upon him must have been ! 
 How all his gross mundane and carnal views of Christ would 
 be dissolved ! Christ stands before him now in the glory of 
 His spiritual nature as one whose kingdom is not of this 
 world. And though perhaps Simon scarcely knows what has 
 happened to him, unconsciously, by contact with the risen 
 One, he has become a child of the Resurrection. 
 
 Let us too, dear friends, remember that if we would follow 
 Jesus, it is necessary that we should gaze not only on the story 
 of His human life, not only contemplate His cross, and see 
 our redemption wrought out there, but above all things it is 
 necessary that we should apprehend Him as our risen Saviour, 
 and see in His resurrection a pledge of our own resurrection 
 life ! We may gaze upon the human life of Christ and yet get 
 no further than the ethics of Christianity; we may contemplate 
 the crucifixion, and yet only kindle the moral sentiments of 
 Christianity ; but to become acquainted with a risen Saviour 
 to know Him as our present life, is to become possessed of the 
 spiritual power of Christianity, and by this we are to be raised 
 
 ^to the proper level of the spiritual life, and to walk on our 
 high places as those who are alive from the dead. 
 For the effects of the death of Jesus Christ considered apart 
 from His resurrection may be described as mainly negative 
 the destruction of the old rather than the introduction to the 
 
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 "Follow Thou Me." 
 
 new. The positive benefits of redemption seem all to flow 
 
 from the resurrection, and to be connected with the Person of 
 
 the risen Christ. This same St. Peter tells us that we are 
 
 " begotten again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus 
 
 Christ," and we cannot peruse his own epistles without seeing 
 
 ,what a wonderful change the resurrection had made in him. 
 
 f Heavenly-mindedness and true spirituality are the leading 
 
 \ characteristics of those epistles, written by the man whose head 
 
 and heart were once so full of carnal dreams of worldly 
 
 ambition.]) He seems now to be living in sight, as it were, of 
 
 the " inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth 
 
 not away." He regards all things around him as doomed to 
 
 be dissolved, and he lives in the expectation of that new 
 
 heaven and that new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. 
 
 . He who had resented the idea of suffering, now rejoices at 
 
 being partaker of the sufferings of Christ ; he who had proved 
 
 the weakness and insufficiency of all human resolution, and of 
 
 all mere natural courage, now glories in the thought of being 
 
 kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation. 
 
 My dear friends, it is not mere sentimental admiration for 
 the character of Christ that will enable us to follow Him. 
 That is not unlike the knowing Christ after the flesh of which 
 St. Paul speaks in those memorable words, " Yea, also if we 
 have known Christ after the flesh, yet from henceforth know 
 we Him no more." Nor is it mere gratitude for His death, or 
 the love that may be kindled by the thought of all that we 
 owe Him, that will suffice for this purpose. We need to know, 
 and to know more and more fully, the power of His resurrec- 
 tion. We need to see ourselves raised in that resurrection 
 into new and wondrous relations with God in the risen One ; 
 to see ourselves not only cut oft" from the old, but introduced 
 into full connection with the new, and therefore in a position to 
 hold constant spiritual intercourse with the unseen, to walk in 
 heavenly places with Christ Jesus, as those who are alive from 
 the dead. 
 
 And when we take this, our true position, not as a matter of 
 theory, but as in the spirit of true faith, it then becomes 
 possible for us to follow Jesus, as otherwise we could never 
 even have hoped to do. For in that He liveth, He liveth 
 unto God, and we thus learn to regard ourselves as "dead indeed 
 unto sin, but alive unto God, through Jesus Christ our Lord." 
 Yet another step towards the removal of all incapacity to 
 
 132
 
 "Follow Thou Me." 
 
 follow Jesus was taken in the administering of that gentle dis- 
 cipline to which the disciple was subjected on this occasion, n 
 and in the stamping on his heart of the great lesson that / 
 accompanied it. It must have been no small trial to Simon to 
 have his love for his Master three times called in question. No 
 wonder that Peter was grieved because He said unto him the 
 third time "Lovest thou me?" But this thrice-repeated 
 questioning would seem to have been a thrusting of the probe 
 once more into a scarce closed wound. Simon Peter was wise 
 in appealing to His Lord's knowledge of himself rather than to 
 his own self-consciousness, and we shall find it well to imitate 
 him here. 
 
 But along with these great searchings of heart there - 
 comes the double lesson which we all have to learn if we y 
 would follow Jesus. First, that true love does not exist as a/ 
 mere passive emotion, but_musteyer express itself in unselfish 
 benevolence towards others ; and, second, that true love entails 
 self-surreader, and the submission of the human will to the_y 
 Divine. 
 
 The first of these lessons many Christians are slow to* 
 learn, and hence they cannot follow Jesus. How frequent a 
 thing it is to be consulted by Christians who complain that 
 they seem unable to make any sort of progress, and then to 
 find upon enquiry that they are leading a selfish and useless 
 life, while souls are perishing all around, and their own 
 neighbours and acquaintance are starving for lack of gospel 
 bread ! 
 
 Some Christians seem to hear the question " Lovest thou 
 
 me?" and repeat it over and over until they form a habit 
 
 of morbid and dreary introspection, and waste their lives in 
 
 torturing their own self-consciousness, instead of making over 
 
 such enquiries to the Master Himself as Simon Peter did. 
 
 / But they never seem to hear the second utterance " Feed my 
 
 / sheep," or certainly they do not act upon it if they hear it. Hence 
 
 they cannot follow Him who came not to be ministered unto, 
 
 ^-~lmt to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many. Simon 
 
 Peter seemed from that time forward to be filled with the 
 
 Master's Spirit in this respect, and so much true pleasure did 
 
 he feel in this work that years afterwards we find him passing 
 
 on the call to others in almost the same words as had been used 
 
 to him, as if to show us how well he remembered the lesson given 
 
 by the lake of Galilee " The elders amongst you I exhort, . . . 
 
 133
 
 "Follow TJwu Me." 
 
 Feed the flock of God which He hath purchased with His own 
 blood." The dream of personal ambition has been supplanted 
 by a holy enthusiasm for the good of others, which was really 
 the Master's Spirit infused into the servant. And we, dear 
 brethren, must learn to prove our love in the same way if we 
 do indeed desire to follow that Master, who, when on earth, 
 went about doing good, and healing all that were possessed of 
 the devil, for God was with Him. 
 
 But the second lesson is a much harder one to learn, and 
 one that nothing but love can teach us, and one, on the learning 
 of which, or, at any rate, upon our willingness to learn it, our 
 ability to follow Jesus, so far as we ourselves are concerned, 
 must in the main depend. It is the great life-lesson of the 
 surrender of the human will to the Divine. It is not a lesson 
 that can be learned in a day ; but it is no small point gained 
 when we recognize it as a lesson that has to be learned, and 
 cheerfully set ourselves to work to learn it. Then it does 
 become possible for us to follow Jesus ; for you will remember 
 we are taught of Him that He learned obedience by the 
 things which He suffered. 
 
 " Verily, verily. I say unto thee," exclaims the Master to the 
 disciple whose love He has just been subjecting to so rigorous 
 a scrutiny, " When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and 
 wentest whither thou wouldest : but when thou art old, thou 
 shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and 
 carry thee whither thou wouldest not." So the love that was 
 referred to the Master's judgment was found in His divine 
 foreknowledge to stand the test even of a martyr's death, and 
 the prophetic vision of his Lord traced out at a glance the 
 course of His disciple's career until He saw his distant future 
 crowned with another Calvary. Ah ! it was true indeed, 
 gloriously true ; and what comfort for Simon Peter, if he could 
 but have understood it. The once-fallen Apostle was to follow 
 his Lord after all ; to follow Him all the way, through evil 
 report and good report, until he too should glorify God by a 
 martyr's death upon a felon's cross. 
 
 But now let us look at these words, and find in them a con- 
 , dition of the faithful following of Jesus. Here are two modes 
 I of life and forms of experience brought into contrast with each 
 other. The life of spiritual youth, in which, although we love 
 the Lord, we gird ourselves and go whither we will ; and the 
 life of spiritual maturity, when we simply stretch out our hands 
 
 134
 
 "Follow TJwu Me." 
 
 in cheerful submission, and another girds us and carries us 
 whither we would not. All Christian life has its younger days, 
 and these are frequently characterized by not a little activity, 
 and sometimes by no small amount of impulsiveness and self- 
 will. Young Christians for the most part gird themselves, and 
 make up their minds to do what they please to do. Some 
 things commend themselves to their fancy, and these they 
 elect to undertake ; while other things are repulsive, and from 
 these they shrink. 
 
 So with Simon in his early days. There were some 
 things in his relations to Christ which commended them- 
 selves to his feelings. On one occasion he boasted of 
 having left all to follow Jesus. I don't suppose in itself he 
 would have felt this leaving all less than other people, but 
 there was a sort of heroism and chivalry about the man that 
 made such sacrifices for the sake of One whom he loved so 
 dearly, nothing less than a pleasure ; and while he shared the 
 privations, it was no small matter to him to feel that he was 
 also to share the glories of his Master. But it was a very dif- 
 ferent thing when he was called by that Master to contemplate 
 the cross, and to look forward to humiliation, suffering, and 
 shame as the end of such a career. 
 
 Is is not even so with us in our early days? There are 
 some forms of religious service which entail no considerable 
 amount of hardship, and don't involve anything like serious 
 self-sacrifice ; and when we are young we gird ourselves, and 
 select such forms of work as promise most gratification to 
 our natural tastes and feelings. Don't let us blame young 
 Christians or judge them harshly; the Lord does not. Let 
 them exercise what powers and gifts, whether natural or 
 spiritual, they may possess, and do the best they can with 
 them. Let them set themselves to their work, and throw all 
 their enthusiasm into the business of their new life. But the 
 Lord has deeper lessons for them to learn by-and-by, when 
 they begin to ripen. Hereafter, if they abide in His school, 
 they will shrink from girding themselves any more ; they will 
 no longer go whither they please, shape their own course, and 
 obey their own propensities. They will have to learn to 
 stretch forth their hands and allow themselves to be girded 
 by another, and carried whither they would not. 
 
 To Simon Peter, with his impetuous and uncurbed nature, 
 this must have seemed a hard lesson to learn ; but he soon 
 
 135
 
 " Follow Thou Me? 
 
 began to learn it. He soon had to stretch forth his hands 
 and be girded, and led whither he would not. It was all very 
 delightful to preach at Pentecost and win three thousand souls ; 
 but it was not so pleasant to be dragged before the rulers, and 
 to be threatened with the direst penalties, if he preached in 
 the name of Jesus any more. It was not contrary to his incli- 
 nation to exercise marvellous gifts of healing, but it was 
 another thing to be publicly beaten. It was a blessed task to 
 raise a Dorcas from her death-sleep, but it was a different 
 matter to lie bound between four soldiers in Herod's prison. 
 It was just what he liked, to preach the gospel to the Jews; but 
 he would, no doubt, have much preferred that some one else 
 should carry it to the Gentiles. But Another still girded him, 
 and sent him where he would not; and still he learnt to 
 " stretch forth his hands " " in full and glad surrender." 
 
 And so he was educated and prepared for that last solemn 
 girding, by which he was bound as to the horns of the sacrifi- 
 cial altar that martyr's death which set the crown upon a 
 martyr's life. Another girded him. To the outward eye, it 
 seemed to be a rude and heartless Roman soldier that drew 
 the unkindly girdle round him, and led him whither he would 
 not ; but when we look again, we see no more the cruel exe- 
 cutioner. The hand that had girded him for the sacrifice of a 
 life-time now girded him for a martyr's last battle and a 
 martyr's victory, and, while he obediently stretched forth his 
 hands, enabled him, as by his life so also by his death, to 
 glorify God. 
 
 Yes, that hand had girded him all the way; and only they 
 who are girded by it can do what Simon Peter did follow 
 Jesus ; and we too, if we also would follow Him, must learn 
 to stretch out our hands, and let ourselves be girded by that 
 Other and carried whither we would not. " Not as I will, but 
 as thou wilt." Oh, it is a long, strange, hard lesson ! but let 
 us comfort ourselves with the thought the Master Himself 
 found it hard to learn, and only learnt it fully in Gethsemane; 
 and so He must needs feel for us. His younger brethren, and 
 know how we shrink from what seems like the shadow of the 
 cross. But let us not be afraid so long as it is our Father that 
 girds us. He loves us too dearly to be indifferent to our in- 
 terests. If He carries whither we would not, let us remember 
 He is all the time carrying us whither He wills; and the 
 \ Father's will in this matter is one with His Son's, who said, 
 
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 "Follow Thou Me." 
 
 " Father, I will that those whom thou hast given me be with 
 me where I am ; that they may behold my glory, the glory that 
 thou gavest me before the foundation of the world." Oh, let 
 us not fear the will of God ! It may mean the cross ; it must 
 mean the crown. It may bring us to our Gethsemane ; it must 
 lead us to Olivet, and the mount of the Ascension. It may carry 
 us to our Calvary ; but it must bring us at last to the courts of 
 Zion, the city of vision and of peace. 
 
 The great lesson of life, dear Christian friends, is the sur- 
 render of the creature will to the Divine. He has learned the 
 lesson best who has most confidence in the will of God. Doubt 
 that will, and you may be a Stoic, you cannot be a martyr. 
 Believe in it, and the martyr's spirit is already yours, and by- 
 and-by the martyr's crown. For what is a martyr but a witness 
 a witness not merely that there is a God, but that His will 
 is good, and perfect, and acceptable, and therefore to be 
 accepted at any cost as the law of our highest well-being ? 
 
 " 111 that Thou blessest is but good, 
 
 And unblessed good is ill ; 
 And all is right that seems most wrong, 
 If it be Thy sweet will." 
 
 But be not impatient, if the lesson takes us long to learn. 
 We begin to say as little children, " Our Father which art in 
 heaven . . . thy will be done." Long years have passed away, 
 and still we have to learn what that prayer means and how to 
 pray it properly. Happy we if, even when we are old, we 
 shall have learned to let no hand gird us but His, that He 
 may carry us whither He will, and, in life or death, enable us 
 to glorify God. 
 
 But when we accept this cheerfully as our life-law, although 
 the lesson may as yet be only very partially learned, we are 
 now willing to be emptied, and therefore we can be filled ; and 
 so this brings us to our next answer to this question, How 
 came Simon Peter to be able to follow Jesus after all ? And we 
 reply, Because being now given over and surrendered to God, 
 God could fill him with the Holy Ghost ; and herein lay the 
 great positive cause of the change in the man, the cause of the 
 contrast between the Simon of the Gospels and the Simon of 
 the Acts, Already he was prepared to receive the baptism of 
 the Holy Ghost. He is now emptied of self-love, self-will, and 
 self-confidence, and he is in the very attitude of self-surrender.
 
 "Follow Thou Me." 
 
 Hence God can fill him. By-and-by the day of Pentecost has 
 come, and the tongues of fire descend. Simon, whose lips 
 had denied his Lord, who had quailed before the challenge of 
 a servant girl, stands now before the rulers of his nation with 
 unquivering lip, and bears testimony before all to his Master, 
 to His claims, and to the position which he occupied in the 
 economy of God's universe; and when the rulers saw the 
 boldness of this man, who had once played the coward, they 
 took knowledge of him that he had been with Jesus. 
 
 Even so, if we would follow the Lord Jesus fully, we need 
 that baptism of the Holy Ghost and power which Simon felt. 
 And we may have it. The conditions of receiving it would 
 seem to be, first of all, the loss of all confidence in our own 
 resources ; and next, the surrender and submission of our will 
 to the Divine will in the spirit of readiness to be ruled and 
 girded by Another; and third, the quiet believing, waiting 
 upon God for power from on high. This baptism of power 
 may come in different ways. It may perhaps fall upon some 
 of us on some notable occasion, even as it came on the 
 disciples at Pentecost, or more gradually it may fill our heart 
 with a strange sense of holy calm and the possession of grace 
 sufficient for our day. Or it may come upon us at the moment 
 of action or of need, enabling us to do or bear what otherwise 
 would be beyond us. There is nothing stereotyped in His 
 operations, but they are real and actual ; and would to God we 
 knew more of them in our own experiences ! 
 
 Why are we not filled ? Surely it is the will of God that we 
 should be ? It must be, then, because we are not willing to 
 be emptied, or because we shrink from full self-surrender ; or, 
 peradventure, because we are too impatient, and grow weary 
 of waiting upon Him. But let us bear in mind that, as it 
 was through the eternal Spirit that Jesus offered Himself, it is 
 only through that same Spirit that we shall be able to follow 
 fesus in offering ourselves a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable 
 unto God, which is our reasonable service. 
 
 Iff Thus, my dear friends, we are led on as by a necessary 
 inference to our last answer to the question, How came 
 Simon Peter to be able to follow Jesus after all? We reply, 
 Because, by the pover of Jesus's resurrection, and by the 
 entrance of the Holy Ghost into his nature, and by the afflatus 
 of that Divine Spirit, he was lifted up into the heavenly places 
 in Christ Jesus, and lived and walked as a citizen of the new 
 
 '38
 
 "Follow Thou Her 
 
 Jerusalem. Do you think he lost a great deal by giving up his 
 will to God, and renouncing his old life of self-assertion and 
 self-gratification? Do you think he was happier before than 
 afterwards ? happier when the rebel will was unsubdued, and he 
 girded himself, than when he surrendered himself, and Another 
 girded him ? 
 
 Turn to his own Epistle, and you shall get an answer. He 
 sits down to address his fellow-Christians, and has scarcely 
 begun to write before he feels his heart all aglow, and 
 breaks forth in words of joyful praise : " Blessed be the God 
 and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ," he exclaims, " which 
 according to His abundant mercy hath begotten us again 
 unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from 
 the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and 
 that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are 
 kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready 
 to be revealed in the last time. Wherein ye greatly rejoice, 
 though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness 
 through manifold temptations : that the trial of your faith, 
 being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though 
 it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour 
 and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ : whom having not 
 seen, ye love ; in whom, though now ye see Him not, yet 
 believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory' 1 
 
 Look ! he is living in heavenly places now, far above the 
 worldly aims and self-seeking projects which actuated him 
 once, and he is enjoying the very atmosphere of heaven, and 
 Christ has become to him more and more the very life he 
 lives. As he has been willing to follow his Master through the 
 trial of faith to which all loyal servants must be exposed, so 
 he is allowed already to taste something of a joy that is 
 unspeakable and full of glory. Do not say that he made too 
 great a sacrifice in stretching forth his hands to be girded by 
 Another. Do not say that he lost by permitting himself to be 
 emptied, that he might be so divinely filled. Do not say that 
 he forfeited too much when he gave up the earthly life for the 
 heavenly. Surely thus to lose our life is to find it, and to find 
 our life in any other way, what is it but to lose it ? 
 
 And the same voice that fell on Simon's ear upon the shore 
 of the lake of Galilee is sounding still. Loyal hearts and true 
 can still hear the Master calling, " Follow thou me." To-day 
 methinks Christ is passing through this church. To-day He 
 
 139
 
 "Follow Thou Me." 
 
 is standing before us, though we don't see Him. The cross is 
 on His shoulder, the thorny crown on His brow, the scars of 
 Golgotha on His sacred body. Now He turns His face 
 upon us, and those kind eyes seem to look us through and 
 through. 
 
 Perhaps He sees some of us weeping over past failures 
 and miserable shortcomings ; but still He calls us : " Follow 
 thou me. I am going a long way, all the way from earth to 
 heaven ; I am going, through good report and evil report, 
 through loss and through gain, through trial and prosperity, 
 in the path of the Father's will, that sweet and holy will 
 which is always good and perfect and acceptable. I want 
 companions in my journey. Friends, blood-bought followers, 
 come along, follow me. Take your cross on your shoulder. 
 Don't be afraid that it will crush you : as your day so shall 
 your strength be. 
 
 " Don't follow man, or measure yourself by this minister or 
 the other. Come along, rising higher and higher, drawing 
 nearer and ever nearer nearer to heaven to-day than you 
 were yesterday becoming more like God now than you were 
 a week ago. Come, ye ransomed ones, ye children of the 
 resurrection, follow me all along your earthly way until I lead 
 you Home and present you before my Father and your Father 
 on His throne in Zion. Follow me in my way of sorrow, and 
 by-and-by you shall swell the glories of my train, and follow 
 me in my triumphal progress in fairer worlds on high." 
 
 What shall we answer Him ? Thank God there are some, 
 at any rate, who respond to His call, and press forward in His 
 train. And they go from strength to strength, until at length we 
 lose sight of the wondrous procession in the light of the dawn 
 of the new day. When next we see them earth has passed 
 away with all its pomps and pageants, and a new world of 
 glory is opened up before us, and there we behold them follow- 
 ing Him still. The fellowship of time has become the union of 
 eternity. There they are, nearer and nearer still. " These are 
 they that are redeemed from among men, being the first-fruits 
 unto God and the Lamb ; these are they that follow the Lamb 
 whithersoever He goeth." Wouldst thou follow Him yonder, 
 my brother, in the glory ? Then listen to His voice, that falls 
 upon thy ear to-day, " Follow thou me." 
 
 140
 
 Jfflartija ; 
 
 OR, THOUGHTS ON THE ACTIVE LIFE. 
 
 "Now it came to pass, as they went, that He entered into a certain 
 village : and a certain woman named Martha received Him into her 
 house." Luke*. 38. 
 
 THE name of Martha suggests to the minds of most of us, 
 I fancy, the thought of an anxious, troubled, and perhaps 
 a somewhat fussy woman, with a short temper and a hasty 
 tongue. That I think is the picture that many of us have 
 drawn of Martha in our own minds. But you must remember 
 that there is something to be said on the other side, something 
 to be said on Martha's behalf; and while we do not shut our 
 eyes to Martha's faults, we may learn something from that 
 which is recorded to her credit. 
 
 Now here we have it said that "a certain woman named 
 Martha received Jesus into her house." I gather that Martha 
 was probably the ruling spirit of the household. She was very 
 likely the elder sister, and Mary, a person of gentle character, 
 was very much, I daresay, in the habit of submitting to 
 her implicitly; and Lazarus, probably also her junior, very 
 likely may have been equally under her influence. I have no 
 doubt Martha was a vigorous, strong-minded person, and a 
 woman of that kind, if she had set her face against receiving 
 Jesus into her house, would have made it very difficult indeed 
 for the others to have adopted an opposite course. I mean to 
 say that Mary and Lazarus would have found it very difficult 
 to welcome Jesus into their home, if Martha had set her face 
 against it. And even if they had been so audacious as to 
 invite Christ into their house in spite of their sister's opposition, 
 Martha could have made things very uncomfortable indeed for 
 Him, and I don't think Jesus would have repeated the visit. 
 
 Happily it was otherwise. Martha herself, the managing 
 spirit of the household, is the person who invites the Lord 
 Jesus Christ to come and take His abode for a season in her 
 house. And in doing so, she not only finds a benefit for 
 
 141
 
 Martha. 
 
 herself, but she also is the means of benefiting her brother 
 and sister, and both Lazarus and Mary owed their sister a 
 great debt of gratitude on this account. Mary would never 
 have had the opportunity of sitting at Jesus' feet, or of anoint- 
 ing them with the precious ointment, if Martha had not first 
 invited Him ; and Lazarus would never have been privileged to 
 become the friend of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, and to enjoy His 
 love, unless his sister had been prepared to give the Saviour a 
 warm and hearty welcome. 
 
 Nay, we may say more than this. Not only did that 
 brother and sister owe a debt of gratitude to Martha, but I 
 think the whole Church of Christ owes a debt of gratitude to 
 her j for had she declined to receive the Lord, certain touching 
 and most instructive incidents would probably never have 
 occurred, from which throughout the whole course of Christian 
 history the Church of Christ has derived so much consolation 
 and help. For it was because Martha willingly and cheer- 
 fully received Jesus into her house that we are in possession 
 of the lessons contained in three most instructive incidents of 
 our Lord's ministry. The first is that which lies before us in 
 this passage ; the second, that in which Jesus performed His 
 last great miracle at Lazarus' tomb, revealing Himself to all 
 mankind, and not only to those astonished mourners, as the 
 Resurrection and the Life ; the third, that in which Mary's pro- 
 phetic love led her to anoint her Lord for His burial. Those 
 of us who value the specially precious lessons connected with 
 these three incidents must I think feel that we all owe a great 
 debt to Martha. 
 
 And here let me say that it is a happy thing when 
 a strong mind and a vigorous will are turned in the right 
 direction, and employed for the right purpose. It is some- 
 thing to be thankful for if we have such qualities as a strong 
 mind and a vigorous will to present to the Lord for His 
 service ; and although these are not unfrequently coupled with 
 an ungentleness and hastiness which are not altogether lovely, 
 nay, may sometimes be repulsive and painful, yet let us ac- 
 knowledge the fact that God can utilize that element in our 
 temperament which Satan seeks to abuse, and that where a 
 strong will and a vigorous determination may be employed by 
 the devil with the worst possible results, such natural charac- 
 teristics, dedicated to the service and glory of God, may prove 
 of priceless value. 
 
 142
 
 Martha. 
 
 Now we must remember that Martha had to face a good 
 deal in inviting Jesus Christ into her household. The test 
 was a severe one to her, because it was to try her in her 
 weakest point. There were thirteen hungry men to be pro- 
 vided for, and then no doubt some of the neighbours would 
 also be expecting an invitation to meet this Jesus, who had 
 come among them, and about whom there was so much talk. 
 There was not only the expense of preparing for so many 
 guests, but there would be all the trouble and the fuss, which 
 would quite upset the household for a long time to come. 
 Would it not be better to make some other arrangement? 
 Would not a charitable gift to Jesus, which might enable Him 
 to provide Himself and His disciples with the necessaries of 
 life for a season elsewhere would not that do just as well? 
 An anxious, careful woman like Martha might naturally have 
 been expected to foresee all sorts of difficulties in carrying out 
 such an arrangement ; it was just the sort of thing most likely 
 to upset her, and she might easily have worked herself into a 
 fever of anxiety at the bare thought of such an intrusion upon 
 the quiet course of domestic life at Bethany. No doubt 
 Martha had taken account of all she would have to do, and 
 all the inconveniences that she would have to put up with, 
 and having done so, she makes up her mind that the thing 
 is worth doing, and that it must be done at all costs and 
 hazards. 
 
 Perhaps, too, there may have been other unpleasant 
 consequences that she may have had to think about Jesus 
 Christ not unfrequently may have seemed a troublesome guest, 
 in other ways besides those that I have referred to. His 
 presence may sometimes have exposed people to an amount of 
 hostile criticism and censure which they would fain have 
 avoided. Martha and Mary seem to have had a good many 
 friends, some of whom when Lazarus died came down from 
 Jerusalem to comfort them. I gather that many of those 
 friends were probably not believers in Jesus Christ ; nay, were 
 possibly bitterly opposed to Him. For even after that wondrous 
 miracle some of these appear to have gone straight to the 
 Pharisees with an account of all that had happened, and it 
 was their report which led to that memorable meeting of the 
 national council, at which Caiaphas tendered his worldly-wise 
 advice, which led ultimately to our Lord's arrest and cruci- 
 fixion. 
 
 H3
 
 Martha. 
 
 No doubt then many of those friends of hers would 
 be disposed to think very unfavourably of her for taking in 
 this prophet of Galilee, and she would have to bear their 
 remonstrances, and perhaps their reproaches, or worse still, 
 their slanders. " This is very discreditable to our good friend 
 Martha," we can imagine them saying. " Here she is identi- 
 fying herself with this strange prophet of Nazareth, whom we 
 know nothing good about, and whom all the highest authorities 
 of the period regard as a shameless impostor, a most unsatis- 
 factory person for her to have any dealings with." I dare say 
 many spoke of Christ then with as great contempt as the 
 world exhibits towards His followers in the present day. So 
 it seems reasonable to suppose that Martha had to face the 
 possibility of adverse criticism, and even of censure and scorn. 
 And yet she would not be deterred. One thing is clear, she 
 was a brave woman, whatever faults she may have had. It 
 required a good deal of moral courage to invite this much- 
 maligned and much-abused Man into her house, and to treat 
 Him as a loved and honoured guest. But Martha's courage 
 was equal to the occasion. 
 
 And, my dear friends, we too shall find it no light matter to 
 receive Jesus into our hearts and into our homes. And it is 
 as well that we should clearly understand what the consequences 
 may be if we take so important a step. He Himself tells us 
 what we may expect as the effect of His presence in our 
 homes : " Suppose ye," He says, " that I am come to send 
 peace into the world? I tell you nay but rather division; 
 for from henceforth a man's foes shall be they of his own 
 household." Yes, His presence may cause us a good deal of 
 trouble now, as it did then, and may expose us to no small 
 amount of hostile criticism ; for it not unfrequently happens 
 that when Christ is received into the household, the habits 
 and customs that previously prevailed in the household will 
 have to be reconsidered and revised. 
 
 The question will have to be asked over and over again, "Is 
 this and that in accordance with the mind of Him whom we 
 have received and welcomed as our guest?" for we must bear 
 in mind that wherever Christ goes He declines to occupy a 
 subordinate position. He brings authority with Him ; He 
 represents the sovereign claims of God ; He is not content to 
 be a mere passing guest. If He enters the household, you 
 must arrange the household in accordance with His ideas and 
 
 .144
 
 MartJta. 
 
 desires ; and the ideas and desires of Christ are often different 
 from those of the world, and of many whom He deigns to 
 visit. And so it comes to pass that a great many things have 
 to be reconsidered and remodelled ; many things we were in 
 the habit of doing we can do no longer, and many things we 
 were in the habit of leaving undone we can no longer leave 
 undone. 
 
 All this may cause a good deal of turmoil and stir, and may 
 seem to upset the peace of the household for a time ; nay 
 even this may not be all that has to be faced if we are 
 determined to receive Jesus Christ into our households. On 
 this occasion Martha happily was not separated from either 
 Lazarus or Mary by her decision in this matter. Happily 
 they were all of one mind in the house, and her brother and 
 sister were quite as willing and ready to receive Christ as she 
 was ; but, alas ! this is not always so. It sometimes happens 
 that a person who invites Christ into the household finds He 
 is very far from welcome to the other members of it. Your 
 own brothers and sisters mayhap do not greet Him cordially. 
 They rather look askance at Him, as if He were an intruder ; 
 and so sometimes the presence of the Prince of Peace causes 
 something akin to warfare in the domestic circle, and induces 
 variance between those who had previously been bound to- 
 gether by the closest earthly relationships. Cruel things may 
 be said and done by those who once seemed all gentleness and 
 affection, and the tranquil harmony of domestic life may seem 
 to have been forfeited. 
 
 Now this may perhaps appear to some a high price to pay 
 even for the presence of Christ ; but let us look at the other 
 side of the question. Reflect for a moment upon the honour 
 that was thus conferred upon Martha. She had the privi- 
 lege of doing what neither Mary nor Lazarus could have 
 done, or would have done, without her consent ; she had 
 the privilege of receiving Jesus into her house. Whatever 
 blessings flowed to Mary and Lazarus, they came through this 
 good deed of Martha's in receiving Jesus into her house. And 
 I would have you reflect a moment upon the honour and 
 privilege that is offered to you, dear friends, in this particular 
 respect. It is possible for some of you to do what Martha 
 did. You may be the means of introducing Jesus Christ into 
 your household ; and although His presence may cause a 
 disturbance, just think what an honour it is to be the means of 
 ii. 145 L
 
 Martha. 
 
 introducing the King of kings and Lord of lords into the 
 household which belongs to Him, but which has not previously 
 recognised His claims. Think of the beneficent results that 
 may flow from your action how the purifying and elevating 
 influences of the Divine Presence may reach one person after 
 another, until at last you can look around with holy joy, and 
 exclaim, " As for me and my house we now serve the Lord." 
 
 Not long since, at the close of a mission that I had con- 
 ducted in the North of England, a gentleman, a man of property, 
 returned to his country house, from the large town where I was 
 working, a changed man. On his arrival he summoned into 
 his dining-room all his household, servants and all ; and stand- 
 ing up before them all, he addressed them to this effect : " My 
 dear friends, I have to confess with shame and sorrow that 
 this has not been hitherto a Christian household. It has not 
 been regulated upon Christian principles. I, as your master, 
 have not been setting you a Christian example; but, on the 
 contrary, all my influence has been thrown into the wrong 
 scale. I cannot express the amount of sorrow I feel as I look 
 back over the past. But I have called you all together to tell 
 you that, through God's mercy, a great change has taken place 
 in me, and now my supreme desire is that this household 
 should be a Christian household, and that all that is done in it 
 should be done just as the Lord would have it done." Turning 
 to the butler he said, "We have never hitherto had family 
 prayers ; but now understand that at such an hour in the 
 morning, and such an hour in the evening, you ring the bell, 
 and we will all gather together and acknowledge God in our 
 family." And he added, "Be sure you make no difference; 
 whoever may be in the house, whether they be worldly or 
 whether they be religious people, make no distinction. From 
 this time forth Jesus Christ must be Master in this household ; 
 we have ignored and dishonoured Him too long." 
 
 It must have needed some courage, no doubt, to make such 
 a declaration as that. But, oh ! do you not think he had his 
 reward in the joy and satisfaction he must have felt as he knelt 
 for the first time, surrounded by his family, at the feet of a 
 reconciled God, and thus publicly received Jesus into his 
 house ? And remember you may be the means of introducing 
 Christ into your household, even if you be not at its head. 
 The humblest member of the family, or even one of the ser- 
 vants, may be the means of bringing Christ in, and by-and-by 
 
 146
 
 Martha. 
 
 the influence and effect of His presence may be recognized 
 and felt by all. 
 
 Dear friends, do you think Martha ever regretted receiving 
 Jesus Christ into her house? Do you think she regretted it, 
 even when she was worried and flurried by the cares and 
 pressure of occupation that His advent brought along with it ? 
 I wilj answer for it that, whatever else she may have found 
 fault with, she never found fault with herself for bringing all 
 this turmoil upon herself by receiving Jesus. You may be 
 sure that at each fresh visit she learnt to love Him more and 
 more, and to value His presence as the very thing she needed 
 to correct her faults, and to calm and soothe her amidst the 
 necessary frictions of life. I suppose that to her dying day 
 there was nothing that she thanked God for more than this, 
 that she had been led by the Holy Spirit to receive Jesus 
 Christ into her house. Now let me ask you, before we go 
 any further, Have you taken this step? Have you received 
 Jesus into your house, you who are heads of households? 
 Have you welcomed Him, and bid Him take the first place ? 
 Is it your object so to order your households, that His in- 
 fluence may be felt in everything ? 
 
 Martha received Jesus, but little did she know, when she 
 did so, how soon she was to stand in terrible need of His 
 sympathy and comfort and help ! A cloud was gathering 
 over that happy home, and by-and-by the tempest broke. 
 That first happy visit came to an end, and the months slid 
 by in the quiet routine of home-life, and then the day of 
 trial came. Lazarus lay dead ; the light of their domestic 
 life seemed extinguished for ever, and the whole world seemed 
 desolate and blighted, and their hearts sank within them under 
 the cruel weight of a great sorrow. Oh, the bitter tears that 
 Martha and Mary shed as they bent their last fond look on 
 their brother's face, and then followed the bier to the sepulchre, 
 where they poured out their last farewell, and came away to 
 their lonesome home with bleeding hearts ! 
 
 And in that hour of anguish and distress to whom did their 
 thoughts turn ? To the Man whom Martha had received. 
 I can fancy, as they sat watching long hours by that bed- 
 side, the one thought that would be constantly recurring to 
 their minds must have been, " Won't the Master come ? He 
 must know of our distress. Won't He save us from this 
 terrible calamity? He always seemed to love us. Won't
 
 Martha. 
 
 He prove a true Friend to us now in the hour of need? 
 But why does He not come? The long hours creep slowly 
 away, and still Jesus does not appear. Oh, if He were here 
 our brother would not die ! ; ' And then when the funeral was 
 over, and the first intensity of the anguish had passed away, a 
 rumour reaches them of His approach. Martha hears it. The 
 Master is coming, and Martha, with her natural impulsiveness, 
 rushes out to meet Him, and salutes Him with the words 
 which had been rising in her heart over and over again all the 
 time "Lord, if thou hadst been here my brother had not 
 died." 
 
 And there He stands gazing at her oh, how tenderly ! 
 and she hears Him groaning in His troubled spirit. Mary 
 has joined them now, and tears are flowing fast all round, 
 and His eyes are dry no longer. Oh, what a moment it must 
 have been for Mary and Martha when they knew that He who 
 loved them so truly was weeping as with their tears, and sharing 
 their sorrow ! "J^esus wept;" and the friends around said, as well 
 they might, "Behold, how He loved him !" Another moment 
 and Jesus was standing by the closed tomb, lifting up His heart 
 in that wonderful prayer, " Father, I thank thee that thou hast 
 heard me." They stood looking on, wondering what was to 
 come next. Then was heard the voice of power, " Lazarus, 
 come forth," and he that was dead came forth. The king of 
 terrors yields his prey and gives back his victim to the glories 
 of a new, a resurrection life. There he stands before them, 
 the very Lazarus that they had lost, their own dearly loved 
 brother still. Oh, what a moment it was when the man 
 whom they had mourned as dead clasped his sisters to his 
 bosom ! One can imagine the joy too deep for words that 
 filled their hearts and welled up in their brimming eyes, while 
 He who was the resurrection and the life looked on, smiling 
 on all the ecstasy which He had caused. Did Martha lose 
 anything by receiving Jesus into her house? 
 
 And shall we lose anything if we receive Him too ? Shall 
 we ever have to regret it? I suppose that, sooner or later, 
 trouble comes to us all. The blinds fall ; the sun is darkened 
 in our sky. It may be that our dearest earthly treasure is 
 snatched from us, and the world looks dreary. What do we 
 need in such an hour above everything else ? Surely it is the 
 Master's presence, and the knowledge of His sympathy. To 
 lie at the feet of the Christ while He reveals Himself unto 
 
 148
 
 Martha. 
 
 us as the Resurrection and the life, and in that great Temple 
 of Sorrow where, as it has been so well said, He Himself is 
 the High Priest, to be received into the fellowship of His own 
 suffering, and thus to be prepared for participation in His own 
 glory. Oh, this is indeed to reap in joy where we have sown 
 in tears ! 
 
 I remember once, when passing through a great sorrow, 
 being much helped by a letter that I received from a dear 
 Christian brother. " I would say to you, my dear friend," he 
 observed, after a few words of sympathy, " in this your sore 
 trouble, Put Christ Himself in the place that He has Himself 
 made vacant." I remember years ago losing a dear little 
 sister, to whom I was passionately attached, and in my sorrow 
 it seemed to me as if Christ assumed to me the form of a 
 little innocent child, all gentleness and affection, and I found 
 myself ever dwelling upon those features in His character 
 which savoured most of all that is attractive and lovely in 
 childhood. Some little time after I had another bereavement. 
 I lost my dear father, a father to whom I had ever been 
 accustomed to look up for guidance and direction, on whose 
 judgment I had always leaned, and whose example I had 
 sought to imitate ; and once again it seemed to me as if Jesus 
 Himself, in my heart's experience, stepped into the place 
 that He had made vacant, and to me He seemed such as 
 Isaiah describes Him, "Wonderful, Counsellor, The everlasting 
 Father," a Friend on whose judgment I could lean, and whose 
 example was to be my guide gentle still, but strong in His 
 gentleness ; innocent and pure, but wise in His innocence. 
 Thus He is to us what we have lost until we begin to find a 
 certain wondrous gain even in our losses. 
 
 Ah, dear friends, sweet are such uses of such adversity 
 as this ! blessed are the sorrows that bring out such new and 
 fresh revelations of our wealth in Christ ! It is only this 
 that can make our sorrows fruitful of good. Without this 
 sorrow must remain barren of any real profit. Nay, St. Paul 
 was right when he went so far as to say, " The sorrow of the 
 world worketh death." Oh, it is more than sad when we see 
 the children of this world emerging from their season of trial 
 soured and embittered, petulant and discontented, devoid of 
 comfort and devoid of hope ! But it is otherwise with those 
 whom sorrow brings to the feet of Jesus. What light His 
 presence throws on the mystery of sorrow, while it reveals to 
 
 149
 
 Martha. 
 
 us that it is after all only a thin veil that hides the world of 
 glory from the world of pain and sorrow, in which for a short 
 time our lot is cast. If He do not now bring back our dear 
 ones from the grave, He leads us on in thought and hope to 
 the glories of that resurrection morning, where all shall be 
 restored to us, and we to all them ; and thus He casts " the 
 roseate hues of early dawn " the true dawn upon the dark 
 thunder-clouds of our distress. And when our supreme moment 
 of trial comes, and heart and flesh shall fail us, shall we regret 
 that we have received Jesus into our heart and home then ? 
 
 Oh, my friends, if there is one thing that will calm us and 
 sustain us as we ourselves pass through the valley of the shadow 
 of death, one thing that will cause us to rejoice even amidst 
 bodily suffering, one thing tha,t will enable us to triumph even 
 amidst the break-down of all our natural powers, surely it will 
 be the thought that we have received Jesus, first into our hearts, 
 and then into our homes, and that He has been our travelling 
 companion all our journey through, and will never forsake us 
 at that journey's end. Then as we have welcomed Him into 
 our homes, so we know He will welcome us into His. 
 " Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me be 
 with me where I am, that they may behold my glory which 
 thou hast given me." As we were not ashamed to welcome 
 Him, and to give Him the place of honour here on earth, so 
 He will not shrink from welcoming us up yonder with His 
 " Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared 
 for you from the foundation of the world." Nay, He will re- 
 joice to present us as His brethren before the throne, and 
 confess us before His Father and His holy angels. Oh, my 
 dear friends, how small will all the trials and inconveniences 
 that His presence may have entailed appear in "that bright hour 
 of wondrous compensation ! 
 
 But it is time that we should look at the other side. So far 
 we have been saying all we could in Martha's favour, but we 
 must not shut our eyes upon her faults ; for there is much to 
 be learned from considering the faults and failings even of 
 those whose hearts are in the right place, if we approach the 
 consideration of these in the spirit of charity and humility. It 
 is evident that Martha got some harm as well as some good 
 out of Jesus' visit ; for she seems here to be sadly flustered 
 and flurried, and even somewhat peevish and irritable. She 
 seems indeed to have been out of temper with the Master as 
 
 150
 
 Martha. 
 
 well as with her sister, and to have implied some little reproach 
 on Him as well as on Mary. But why all this disturbance and 
 irritation ? Surely it all came of this, that she was thinking 
 more of serving Christ than of pleasing Him. If she had 
 paused to reflect, she must have seen that a sharp, half- 
 reproachful word, and the obvious loss of composure and 
 temper, would cause the Master a good deal more pain than 
 the best-served meal in the world could give Him pleasure. 
 She was busy about Christ, but she failed to enter into sym- 
 pathy with Christ. She waited upon Him outwardly, but she 
 did not understand how to minister to His inmost Spirit ; and 
 so even while inviting and welcoming Christ into her house- 
 hold, she forfeited that peace and calm which it is Christ's joy 
 to bring to His own. 
 
 Here we have a very important lesson taught us, and one 
 that we need to have impressed upon our minds as Christians 
 and as Christian workers. Our object in life should not be so 
 much to get through a great deal of work, as to give perfect 
 satisfaction to Him for whom we are doing the work. There 
 are many motives by which a person may be legitimately in- 
 fluenced in doing work for God. Some are influenced by 
 their own personal aspirations, by a mighty instinct of benevo- 
 lence ; some are influenced by a sense of duty ; some by con- 
 siderations of the shortness of time ; some by the thought of 
 the need of the world. All these influences may be legitimate 
 and salutary; but the one supreme motive that ought to 
 influence the true child of God, and which when it does in- 
 fluence us purifies our work as nothing else will purify it, is the 
 desire to please Him perfectly. As it has been so well ex- 
 pressed in two familiar lines, we should be 
 
 " Anxious less to serve Him much 
 Than please Him perfectly." 
 
 If Martha had looked at things from His point of view she 
 would have felt differently about Mary, differently about those 
 household cares that were troubling her. But Martha in her 
 attempts to serve Christ, though scarcely conscious of it, was 
 really serving herself. Her great desire was, that everything 
 should pass off well. Everything was to be clean and tidy, 
 and well served and well managed, so that nobody should 
 make any unfavourable criticism upon the whole entertainment. 
 All was to be in as good style, and as comely and as satisfac
 
 Martha. 
 
 tory, as sne could make it ; and with all a woman's sensitiveness 
 about appearances she set about the task of arranging the 
 feast, determined that it should be worthy of the household, 
 and worthy of herself as well as worthy of the honoured 
 Guest. 
 
 Was she wrong in giving Him her best ? Ought she to have 
 concluded that any rough-and-ready entertainment, any slovenly 
 reception, would be good enough for One who was only a 
 carpenter's son ? Would she have done better if she had imi- 
 tated the haughty negligence and discourtesy of her rich 
 neighbour, Simon the Pharisee, who no doubt was a highly- 
 respectable man, and probably a wealthy man, who could have 
 commanded the services of a retinue of servants, but who 
 seems to have thought that anything would do for Jesus of 
 Nazareth, anything was good enough for a poor wandering 
 prophet? If you gave Him a good dinner, that was surely all 
 He could expect. As for the little courtesies and refinements 
 of life, they would have been quite thrown away on such an 
 unimportant Person ! 
 
 If Gamaliel had come to see Simon, there would have been 
 a great preparation, no doubt. " Bring out the silver basin 
 for the great man's feet ; bring out the best linen, and let the 
 slave stand ready to offer him proper respect, and to wash his 
 feet as soon as he enters the house ; for a great man is this 
 Gamaliel, and we must treat as becomes his rank and position." 
 And when the great man entered, Simon would be ready 
 to greet him with a kiss, and would entertain him with all the 
 ceremony due to so distinguished a guest. But Jesus is only 
 a poor man, having no particular social rank or position. There 
 can be no need to make any fuss about Him. Give Him a 
 good dinner, and that is as much as He can expect, and He 
 should feel grateful for that. Such was Simon's way of treating 
 Jesus. How different to Martha's ! Do you think Simon 
 was right and Martha wrong? Never believe it. Our blessed 
 Lord felt Simon's discourtesy keenly, and took occasion gently 
 to reprove it, by pointing to the contrast between the reception 
 that He had met with in that respectable mansion and the 
 treatment He had received from a poor sinful woman, and 
 doubtless He would have been still more pained if He had 
 met with slight or discourtesy in the home of Martha. 
 
 Very different were her feelings. Her heart would have 
 said, "He must have the very best I can give Him ; everything 
 
 152
 
 Martha. 
 
 must be done just as well as if it were a prince coming to my 
 house. If Herod himself were coming in royal state, my 
 household should not make any more fuss. I will do all I 
 can, because I am going to receive Him whom I value so 
 highly and revere so greatly." Was she right or wrong? 
 Surely she was perfectly right, and her conduct may well be 
 regarded as an example in this respect. We are bound to 
 offer Christ our very best, and nothing done for Him should 
 be done in a slovenly, slip-shod, negligent way, as if anything 
 were good enough for God. 
 
 She was right in her principle, and yet she failed in carrying 
 it out, and in that failure denied her Guest the very thing that 
 pleased Him best. Yes, she was at this moment thinking 
 far more of herself than of Christ ; she was very eager that 
 all should be successful, that every one should acknowledge 
 her good management, and feel that she had done things 
 thoroughly well. She had her character to maintain, as an 
 excellent housewife, and on this occasion, at any rate, her 
 reputation must not be allowed to moult a feather. So all 
 unawares she is really serving herself in serving Christ, and 
 thinking more of the feast than of the Guest. And so when 
 she saw Mary sitting at Jesus' feet, she had no patience with 
 her, and not much with Him. Instead of fussing about, and 
 making sure that everything was in first-class order, there she 
 was sitting enjoying herself at Jesus' feet. 
 
 Martha is quite indignant, and doesn't care to conceal it. 
 And you know people of her class, while they are very useful 
 in a church, and do a great deal of work, are very frequently 
 indeed, like Martha, somewhat short-tempered. They have 
 a great deal of energy, and a great deal of enthusiasm ; but 
 when things do not go exactly as they wish, the hasty word 
 soon slips out, and the unpleasant thought is harboured, and 
 that soon takes all the joy and all the blessing out of Christian 
 work. How often is the work of the Church marred by this 
 hasty spirit, and the Master is grieved in our very attempts to 
 honour Him ! I will answer for it that Martha did not feel half 
 so happy after she had said those hasty words as she had been 
 doing till then ; nay, I can fancy how uncomfortable, and 
 abashed, and annoyed at herself she must have felt when the 
 calm reproof of the Master fell upon her ear, and her con- 
 science told her that it was all too true. There was something 
 better than being careful and cumbered about much service, 
 
 153
 
 Martha. 
 
 and Mary's quiet sympathy had given more real satisfaction 
 to the Master's heart than all her ceremonious civility could 
 have induced. I fear that hasty word, and the discovery that 
 with all her toil she had not fully pleased, nay, even had 
 pained, the Master whom she loved so dearly, must have gone 
 far to spoil Martha's enjoyment of that festal season. 
 
 And the same spirit still, I fear, not unfrequently mars a useful 
 life, and desecrates our sanctities. Yes, there is something 
 better than service ; there is something grander than doing. It 
 is well to serve ; but better still to offer acceptable service. It is 
 well to do ; but it is better still to do things in the right way. 
 Martha had her own idea of what the right way was, and it 
 was a worldly idea. If Martha had paused to think of Jesus 
 and His feelings, she would soon have arrived at a very 
 different conclusion, and have acted in a very different way. 
 She might have turned it over in her mind thus : " Let me 
 think now, which is Jesus getting most pleasure out of, Mary's 
 company, or my fuss ? Which gratify Him most, those earnest 
 eyes, which are fixed upon Him, that wondering gaze of 
 enquiry on my sister's face, while she seems as though she is 
 reading His inmost heart, or the careful garnishing of my 
 rooms? Which is He getting most pleasure out of, that strange 
 fellowship which seems to be established between Him and 
 her, that communion of spirit of which both He and she are 
 conscious; that, or a well-spread table?" If she had thought 
 the matter over, she would have come to the conclusion, I 
 think, that, while it must be right to do things decently and in 
 order, after all there is something He thinks of more than the 
 well-spread table, the cleanliness, the polished silver, the 
 pleasant ornaments, and the skilful service. He thinks far 
 more about the silent eloquence of those two eager eyes fixed 
 upon Him in adoring wonder, far more about that longing 
 heart which reveals through those eyes that inward hunger and 
 thirst of the soul which it is His supreme joy to fill. 
 
 What Martha needed was sympathy with Jesus Christ's spirit, 
 to come within the charmed circle of His inner life to under- 
 stand His object and aims, to appreciate His longing desire, not 
 to feed Himself with outward food, but to feed a famishing world 
 with the revelation of God in His human form ; to reciprocate 
 His spiritual desires for those He sought to lift to a high and 
 heavenly level of experience. This was where Martha went 
 wrong, and this where Mary went right. Now all this friction
 
 Martha. 
 
 might have been saved if only Martha could have made a little 
 time to do what Mary did, if she could only have spent a little 
 season at Jesus' feet hearing His words. Had she done so the 
 work would not have been neglected ; for no doubt Mary 
 would have taken her place, and have worked with a will while 
 her sister was better employed. And thus, when the season at 
 His feet came to an end, Martha would have gone back to the 
 work calm and tranquil, and therefore much better able to do 
 it, and to do it well. A few moments at Jesus' feet would, I 
 am persuaded, have set everything before her in an entirely 
 new light. It would have taken all the fuss, and fret, and fume 
 out of her busy toil ; it would have made her feel how small 
 those outward matters are after all ; it would have shown her 
 how much more the Lord is concerned with our motive in 
 serving Him than with the circumstances of our service ; and 
 thus both sisters would have had an equal and a double joy, the 
 joy of serving their Lord in His outward body, but still more 
 the joy of ministering pleasure and gratification to His heart. 
 
 As it was Mary chose the good part which could not be taken 
 from her, and Martha missed it, and by her very conduct 
 showed that the Master was right in describing that good part 
 as the one thing needful. Yes, Martha evidently needed it, 
 and for lack of it her occupation became a drudgery ; and we 
 all need it, for without it labour loses its value, and its dangers 
 are multiplied while its benefits decrease. We fly from one 
 thing to another, it may be, with great eagerness and breathless 
 haste ; but, alas ! while there is much doing there is but little 
 done ; much friction, but little work accomplished ; much 
 struggling, but few victories ; much noise, but little fruit. 
 
 Christian workers, let us learn our lesson. It is not enough 
 to receive Jesus into our homes and into our lives this we must 
 do before anything else but we need 10 sit at His feet, to gaze 
 on His spiritual beauty, to hear His words, to yield ourselves 
 wholly to His spiritual influence. Thus, and only thus, shall we 
 find ourselves possessed of the one thing needful ; and while 
 hands or feet or brain are busy or while all are busy to- 
 gether there shall be a great calm within ; there will be speed 
 without feverish haste, and activity without bustle, and our 
 work shall become sabbatic, and our lives an unbroken sanctity. 
 
 Whatever happens let us not be too busy to sit at Jesus' 
 feet. We shall not really lose time by enjoying this; nay, 
 we shall redeem the time ; for there is usually much more time 
 
 155
 
 Martha. 
 
 and strength forfeited by friction than by toil, and we shall 
 gain in blessedness and enjoyment of our work, and gain in 
 the quality of our work ; and, above all, we shall gain in that 
 we shall give Him pleasure where otherwise we might only 
 grieve Him. And this is indeed the crown of all our en- 
 deavours. He who pleases Him does not live in vain. 
 One of our poets has beautifully said 
 
 " The inward spirit sings 
 There is no joy but calm." 
 
 Surely we all know how much truth there is in the words. 
 Well, it is this habit of sustained fellowship with Jesus that 
 takes all the storms out of life. Life then begins to lose its 
 hurry, and we begin to feel how true it is, as a dear friend once 
 said to me when he saw me flurried, that we may be sure of 
 this, that God allows us sufficient time for all the work that He 
 intends us to do. And along with hurry we lose another evil 
 thing, which not only rhymes with it, but generally accompanies 
 it, and that is worry, and an excellent loss is that ; and along 
 with the worry the little shortness of temper, the fractious 
 pevishness which makes it sometimes seem as if our work were 
 injuring instead of benefiting us ; and instead of all these evil 
 things there is the presence of the Prince of Peace, and the 
 inward stillness which His presence brings. 
 
 And now let me end where I began, by asking you, Have you 
 received Jesus into your house? Go home, and take pen and 
 paper, and write out the verse, leaving a blank where the name 
 of Martha occurs ; and then solemnly ask yourself whether 
 you can fill in your own name into that blank space. If you 
 cannot, oh ! remember you are forfeiting the enjoyment of the 
 one thing needful, and robbing your life of its truest dignity 
 and its fairest crown. Oh, let us welcome Him into our hearts 
 and our homes ; and so shall our lives be sanctities, and the 
 end peace. 
 
 156
 
 OR, THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE. 
 
 "And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet, and heard 
 His word. " Luke x. 39. 
 
 '"PHESE two sisters have been regarded, and rightly regarded, 
 -L it seems to me, as illustrating to us, in their character, two 
 contrasted elements of spiritual experience. Martha represents 
 the active life, and Mary represents the contemplative life. 
 
 With a perversity which has been by no means unusual in the 
 history of the Christian Church, these two forms of life have 
 been so set the one against the other, as to leave the impres- 
 sion in religious minds that they are mutually incompatible 
 with each other. It has been taught that the one is a higher 
 form of spiritual experience than the other, and therefore, as 
 the corollary of this position, that those who would wish to rise 
 to the highest level of true Christian life and conduct, must be 
 content to follow the example of a Mary, and turn their backs 
 upon the occupations of a Martha. In other words, it has 
 been held that we cannot truly enjoy the contemplative life 
 unless we have done with the activities of life; and that to en- 
 gage in the ordinary duties of existence domestic, social, and 
 even religious is to prevent ourselves from rising to the 
 highest possible level of spiritual experience. 
 
 These theories began to prevail in very early days. Long 
 before Christianity existed, the idea of such a life seems to have 
 laid hold of the dreamy imagination of the Orientals, and to 
 have found expression in Buddhism. Early in the Christian 
 era, and long before gigantic systems of Monasticism cast their 
 shadow over Christendom, the anchorites of the desert gave 
 themselves up to a life of solitude, in order that they might be 
 the better able to enter into the mysteries of the contemplative 
 life, under the impression that only by shutting themselves up 
 from the world, and secluding themselves from activity, was 
 it possible for them to rise to the highest and most exalted 
 privileges that belong to Christian experience. Then followed,
 
 Mary. 
 
 as I have said, the rise and progress of that vast system of 
 Monasticism which has left so indelible a mark upon the char- 
 acter of the Christian world, and which has owed its fall in 
 many places as much to its own corruptions and abominations, 
 as to the jealousy of the secular power or to popular antipathies. 
 
 The system thus inaugurated, and which produced such a 
 prodigious growth in the congenial soil of mediaeval superstition, 
 was based upon the theory that the contemplative was the life 
 for those who listened to the counsel of perfection, and that 
 only by fostering and cherishing this in lives of retirement and 
 constant devotion could men attain to true saintliness. And 
 so it came to pass that those who in the dark ages (and they 
 were very dark) ought to have been giving light in the world 
 and leading the way to higher things, who ought to have been 
 doing a work that would have told for good upon mankind at 
 large, were shut off from beneficial contact with society, owing 
 to this perverse notion having taken possession of them, that 
 they could not be really saints unless they secluded themselves 
 from the world. The result was that those became dark ages 
 indeed, because what ought to have been a light was placed 
 under a bushel, instead of being placed in its proper position 
 and illuminating all in the house. 
 
 I notice, not without concern, that in our own day a disposi- 
 tion has been shown in some quarters within our own Church, 
 to revive the follies of mediaeval asceticism in this respect. 
 Any such attempt is greatly to be deplored ; but it is perhaps 
 another danger, that we have most to guard against, as evan- 
 gelical Christians, and that is the danger of ignoring the con- 
 templative life altogether. We live in proverbially busy times. 
 Everything seems to go at railway speed. Christian agencies 
 are being multiplied almost indefinitely. In the days of our 
 forefathers scarcely one of the numerous institutions to which 
 are now devoted so much of the time, thought, and enterprise 
 of Christian people had sprung into existence. Why, even 
 Sunday-schools had scarcely begun to come into operation, and 
 now it would be difficult to find a parish without one; and 
 then think of the multitudinous agencies for promoting the 
 glory of God and the well-being of humanity that have sprung 
 up since Sunday-schools began to become popular, and on 
 which the energies of the Church of Christ are at this moment 
 being expended. 
 
 We are all so very busy, that some of us feel almost over- 
 
 158
 
 Mary. 
 
 whelmed with the cares and anxieties of our work. There is 
 so much to be done, and so few who give their hearts and 
 minds to doing it, that those who would be real workers 
 soon find themselves overtaxed, and as a result they are not un- 
 frequently so oppressed with a feeling of responsibility and 
 care, that there is a real practical danger a danger which we 
 need carefully to guard against of letting our work slip in be- 
 tween us and the Person of Christ. 
 
 For we know, and do let us bear in mind, that Christian 
 work in itself is intensely interesting ; indeed, there is nothing 
 more likely to become engrossing. We all know how absorbed 
 men may become in their own special pursuits. For instance, 
 we have read about Sir Isaac Newton, and how absorbed he 
 used to be in his mathematical and astronomical researches, 
 until he was scarcely able to give a thought to the common 
 duties and circumstances of life, but used frequently to make 
 the most ridiculous blunders about common-place things, be- 
 cause he took so profound an interest in, and was so fully 
 occupied with, his own great discoveries. And so it is with 
 other branches of knowledge. When men devote their attention 
 to a particular branch of knowledge or science, it becomes a 
 sort of passion, and they no longer find it necessary to stimulate 
 themselves to exertion in that particular ; rather they have to 
 check or curb themselves, in order to prevent their minds from 
 becoming too deeply absorbed in their favourite studies. And 
 it sometimes happens that when the mind is given over to 
 some special pursuit, interest in their work becomes so keen 
 that men seem to lose all power of checking themselves, and 
 their brains go on working, as it were, automatically, when they 
 don't intend them to be working at all. 
 
 I well remember some years ago hearing a touching 
 story of a late Cambridge professor, who was one of the 
 greatest Greek scholars of our time. For some few months 
 before he died he was advised by his friends to shut up his 
 books, give up his studies, and go as much as possible into 
 social life, in order that he might be drawn away from those 
 subjects in which his mind had become so absorbed that his 
 constitution was impaired ; indeed, he was threatened with 
 softening of the brain. On one occasion he was in a drawing- 
 room surrounded by cheerful company, when a half-sad smile 
 passed over his countenance as he observed to a friend, "What 
 is the use of you shutting up my books and not allowing me to
 
 Mary. 
 
 work ? While I have been here I have traced the derivations 
 of three distinct Greek words, and detected their connection 
 with certain Sanscrit roots." Such was the force of his ruling 
 passion. 
 
 Now if we can become so absorbed in intellectual researches, 
 is it a wonder that we should become even more absorbed in 
 those higher pursuits in which it is the privilege of Christian 
 people to engage? To be doing God's work; to be endea- 
 vouring to make people happy; to be the means of regenerating 
 human hearts and lives, and of reforming the homes of the 
 vicious and degraded ; to be restoring those that are fallen, 
 and rescuing those that are tempted is not this necessarily a 
 most engrossing work, and one that should employ all our 
 energies? 
 
 It is well, my friends, indeed it is necessary, that we should 
 be interested ; for no man ever yet did anything well until he 
 threw his whole heart into it and felt an interest in it. Yet in 
 this very interest lies the danger; for may not the work 
 become everything to us, and He for whom we work be 
 allowed to fall into the background, and eventually be almost 
 forgotten ? And when this is the case our work soon loses the 
 divine blessing, and must needs fail of the end for which it was 
 designed ; for in spiritual work above all other work it is true 
 that " the blessing of the Lord maketh rich, and He adds no 
 sorrow with it." If, then, we forfeit His smile, all our work 
 must prove in the end sounding brass and tinkling cymbals. 
 
 Nor is it only our work that suffers. We suffer ourselves ; 
 for our very work has practically slipped in between us and 
 the Lord for whom we are working, and thus becomes to us, 
 instead of a means of grace, drawing us nearer to God, on the 
 contrary, rather a barrier between ourselves and God a means 
 of pushing us off to a little distance from Him, and that dis- 
 tance has a tendency to grow until the work becomes 
 everything and Christ next to nothing. 
 
 How shall we guard against this error? Yon mediaeval 
 monastic would reply, " Give up your work, tear yourself away 
 from the activity of life, seclude yourself in the desert ; and 
 then you will be able to enjoy the fellowship of Christ and to 
 enter upon the life of vision, the mystical blessedness of ap- 
 prehension of the Divine." That is one answer; but it is not 
 such as is given here, and we know what it has brought about in 
 bygone ages. Let us look for an answer to all such misappre- 
 
 160
 
 Mary. 
 
 hensions to the scene that lies before us. On the one side, 
 there is busy Martha; on the other, quiet, contemplative Mary. 
 On the one hand, a hard-working, fussy woman ; on the other, 
 a woman who is all ears and eyes, waiting to catch everything 
 that falls from Christ. But here in the middle sits the perfect 
 Man, and He it is that we are called upon to imitate. We are 
 not told to be imitators of either Martha or Mary, but we are 
 told to be imitators of the Lord Jesus Christ. Was there ever 
 such a busy life as Christ's ? Was there ever such a contem- 
 plative life as Christ's ? Wherever He went He carried power 
 along with Him for His work, just because He dwelt ever in 
 the secret place of the most High, and abode under the 
 shadow of the Almighty. He lived in the light of God ; the 
 smile of His Father was the sunshine of His whole existence ; 
 yet He worked so hard, that often He had scarcely time to eat 
 His bread. But in the midst of it all He seems to have main- 
 tained a sense of unruffled calm and composure. He moved 
 forward in the quietness of assured power. He was calm, be- 
 cause He lived in the presence of God; active, because He 
 lived in the presence of perishing men. He was a true 
 Quietist ; for His life was very still, and yet its very stillness 
 told. 
 
 We may learn a good deal in this respect from observing 
 outward objects. The mightiest things are not always the 
 noisiest things. You go down to one of your own quays, 
 and there you will see the little donkey-engine, on the deck 
 of one of your ships, that is being employed in loading or 
 unloading its freight. What a fuss it makes ! Your ear is 
 at once painfully arrested by its clatter and noise; but when 
 you come to examine it, you find it is only a small and insig- 
 nificant thing, in spite of the noise it makes. It is very useful 
 no doubt, and does its own work ; but it does it very fussily, 
 and that work is not a very great one. You descend into the 
 vessel, and there you see the colossal engine which is to take 
 the ship, donkey-engine and all, across the ocean ; and it does 
 all that work without making half as much noise as the little 
 insignificant piece of mechanism that you have been listening to. 
 
 Or take a picture from Nature. Look at yonder little bubbling 
 rill flowing down the mountain side, dashing in and out 
 between the rocks, and making a noise which can be heard a 
 considerable distance away. You follow the stream until 
 eventually it is absorbed in a great river, which flows 
 ii. 161 M
 
 Mary. 
 
 smoothly, calmly, and quietly along in all the majesty of 
 its strength. Perhaps it is strong enough to bear up the 
 navy of a great nation, and yet it does not make the 
 noise that the little stream did.. Do let us endeavour, 
 dear friends, in this somewhat noisy age, to distinguish between 
 noise and power. We sometimes think that noise is power, 
 and that if we can create a certain amount of bustle we are 
 doing a large amount of work. I think our work is done well 
 just in proportion to the absence of bustle from it. The man 
 who is quiet and calm, who goes forth in the strength and pre- 
 sence of God, seeking not his own glory, but the glory of his 
 Master, will do a work for eternity ; whereas in the case of the 
 man who rushes here and there, always in a flurry, as if he had 
 to keep the world from standing still, and had scarcely time to 
 think or pray, his work will be frothy and superficial, and there 
 will be very little solid result to show for all his labour. 
 
 Now to correct this noisy fussiness we need to learn to 
 imitate Mary and to sit at Jesus' feet, and in silence and still- 
 ness of soul to hear His words. No amount of service will 
 make up for the loss of this inward and secret fellowship of the 
 soul with Christ this hidden life of love, in which Christ and 
 the consecrated heart are bound together in a certain holy inti- 
 macy and familiarity. This it is that sanctifies even the most 
 common-place toil, and the loss of this robs even the holiest 
 things of their sanctity. At Jesus' feet that is our place of 
 privilege and of blessing, and here it is that we are to be edu- 
 cated and fitted for the practical duties of life. Here we are 
 to renew our strength while we wait on Him, and to learn how 
 to mount on wings as eagles ; and here we are to become 
 possessed of that true knowledge which is power. Here we are 
 to learn how real work is to be done, and to be armed with the 
 true motive-power to do it. Here we are to find solace amidst 
 both the trials of work, and they are not few, and the trials of 
 life in general ; and here we are to anticipate something of the 
 blessedness of heaven amidst the days of earth ; for to sit at 
 His feet is indeed to be in heavenly places, and to gaze upon 
 His glory is to do what we shall never tire of doing yonder. 
 
 Now all this is illustrated by what we read of Mary here and 
 elsewhere. Let me ask you to observe that on each occasion 
 on which she is mentioned we find her in the same place ; not 
 always in the same house, not always amidst the same scenes, 
 but always in the same place " at Jesus' feet '." And that is 
 
 162
 
 Mary. 
 
 the place we ourselves must occupy if we desire to enjoy the 
 blessedness of the contemplative life. Three times we get a 
 look at Mary, and each time she is there at Jesus' feet She 
 is at His feet when she is first introduced to us by St. Luke ; 
 and then again, in St. John xi., we hear of her falling down at 
 Jesus' feet in her sorrow; and then, a third time, in the feast at 
 Bethany, while Martha served and Lazarus sat at meat, Mary 
 was once more at Jesus' feet. Thus in her experience she 
 illustrated the words of Moses, " Yea. He loved the people ; 
 all His saints are in thy hand : and they sat down at thy feet ; 
 every one shall receive of thy words." For at His feet is the 
 place of reverence and godly fear ; at His feet is the place for 
 worship ; and at His feet we can but look up, and with adoring 
 awe continue to gaze upon the glories of His face revealed. 
 
 Notice then, first, Mary sat at Jesus' feet as a learner ; and 
 if we desire to learn, here it is that we must receive our lessons. 
 Several thoughts suggest themselves to our minds as we see 
 her sitting there. Let us dwell upon them for a few moments. 
 First, sitting at His feet, she is taking the place of the lowly ; 
 and only those who wish to be such can learn of Jesus. 
 The proud and self-confident, whether they be intellectually 
 proud, or morally proud, or spiritually proud, will ever have to 
 go empty away ; but " such as are gentle, them shall He learn 
 His way." Next, observe, it is the place of true honour and 
 dignity ; for it is better to be a junior scholar in the school of 
 Christ than to be a distinguished philosopher untaught by Him. 
 It used to be the boast of the ancient Christian apologists, 
 that the merest babe in Christ was familiar with the true 
 solution of problems that had vainly exercised the greatest 
 thinkers of the heathen world. We may still affirm that there 
 is an inward and practical knowledge of God and of His rela- 
 tions with us which can never be acquired by any acquaintance 
 with the mere theory of religion, nor by any educational pro- 
 cess save that which takes place when, in all humility of soul 
 and self-distrust, we sit at Jesus' feet 
 
 Next, let me point out to you that while she was sitting here 
 she was in a position, not only to learn by Him, but to learn 
 of Him. It was not merely that she heard the truth from Him ; 
 it was rather that she found the truth in Him. He was Him- 
 self to her the Truth. She found in Him the " word of God" 
 Everything about Him spoke, that tender earnestness, that 
 womanlike sympathy, that manly indignation against all that 
 
 163
 
 Mary. 
 
 was false, and mean, and hypocritical. His winsome manner; 
 His benevolent expression ; the eloquent glance of those eyes, 
 now sorrowful or plaintive, now kindling into vehement flame ; 
 His look, His features, nay, the very tones of His voice ; all 
 seemed to her a revelation, and such a revelation as rendered 
 her heart spellbound, as by the charm of some great Enchanter, 
 while she drank in the wondrous lessons and felt the new, 
 strange joy of such discoveries ifi her heart. 
 
 And we too, dear brethren, need to discern the difference 
 between learning about Christ or learning by Christ and learn- 
 ing Christ. We may be good theologians and yet bad Chris- 
 tians. I fear many are, but surely this must be because we do 
 'not learn Christ ; and perhaps we do not learn Christ because 
 we so little sit at His feet. 
 
 Oh, dear friends, that is the place to learn Him ! If, when 
 we read our Bibles from day to day, we would make a point of 
 putting ourselves at Jesus' feet to begin with ; if we would 
 regard our daily study as an opportunity of hearing God's 
 voice speaking to us through Christ ; if lying at His feet in an 
 attitude of humble expectancy, and, above all, in an attitude 
 of contemplation, we sought to "see Jesus," to obtain fresh 
 views of His moral beauty and know more of his character and 
 mind, don't you think we should soon find our Bible-reading a 
 much more satisfactory thing than it often is ? I cannot but 
 think that one glimpse of Christ seen before we enter upon our 
 daily life would so sanctify all our day's experience as to con- 
 tribute more than anything else to brand " holiness unto the 
 Lord " upon our character and upon our lives. 
 
 When Moses came down from the mount and stood before the 
 people, he wist not that the skin of his countenance shone while 
 he talked with them ; but the people looked with wonder upon 
 him, as in his countenance he reflected the glory of the God in 
 whose presence he had been. Even so they who thus enter 
 into the secret place of the Most High will carry the light of 
 Jesus' presence forth from His presence. Though there may 
 be no outward shining of the skin of our countenance, there 
 will be a certain air of holiness I know not how else to de- 
 scribe it which can neither be assumed nor successfully 
 imitated, about their life and conversation, which will witness 
 to the character of the society they have been enjoying. 
 
 We cannot sit with Mary now before a visible Christ, but we 
 can contemplate His moral features even as she gazed upon 
 
 164
 
 Mary. 
 
 His outward countenance, and we can hear his spiritual teach- 
 ing even as she heard His outward voice. And there is a 
 sense in which we may be said to know more of Christ than at 
 this time Mary did or could know ; for she had never gazed 
 upon the cross, and read the more perfect revelation of the 
 Divine character as it is written there. Nor had the Holy 
 Spirit as yet descended in all His Pentecostal power ; and let 
 us remember that it is His special office to take of the things 
 of Christ and show them unto us. Surely those advantages 
 may be regarded as compensating us in some measure for any 
 advantage that Mary had, in being able to enjoy Christ's bodily 
 presence ! 
 
 Oh, let us make the best of the glorious privileges which 
 do belong to us, instead of envying this blessed woman hers I 
 She gazed on Him who was fairer than the children of men, 
 and found that full of grace were His lips ; but let us remember 
 that we also may behold the glory of the Only-begotten of the 
 Father, full of grace and truth. And to gaze at Him is to admire 
 Him, and to admire Him tends to increase our love to Him, 
 and to love Him is to be assimilated to Him. Thus do we 
 become changed into the same image as by the Spirit of God. 
 
 Come, let us look at Mary, that we may learn to be a 
 learner. How impressed she is with His superior wisdom; 
 how little confidence has she in her own. Nay, the more she 
 learns, I doubt not, the more she feels her ignorance. Oh, 
 blessed is the ignorance that brings us so near to infinite 
 wisdom, and blessed the child-like simplicity that enables us to 
 understand what to the world may seem inexplicable ! Then 
 see how absorbed she is. I can never believe that Mary was 
 selfish and inconsiderate. If she had been, I feel sure Jesus 
 would have gently reproved and not commended her ; but she 
 was so completely absorbed in wondering interest, so rapt from 
 all other considerations of a lower order, that it seemed as if she 
 could only hear His voice, only see His face, only feel that He 
 was opening heaven to her soul. And surely to learn of Him 
 we must not only look, but look intently, and seek to be deaf 
 and blind to all else while we give ourselves to this. It is the 
 wandering eye, the wayward desire, the fugitive thought, that 
 so often mar our fellowship with Him and rob us of the true 
 blessings of the contemplative life. Dear friends, if we would 
 learn of Him, let us not only sit at His feet, but sit as Mary 
 sat. 
 
 165
 
 Mary. 
 
 When Mary is next introduced to our notice she is again at 
 Jesus' feet, and this time she is at His feet as a mourner. 
 Blessed are those mourners whom sorrow drives to Jesus' feet ; 
 for they shall indeed be comforted ! Refer for a moment to 
 the passage, John xi. 32 : "Then when Mary was come where 
 Jesus was, and saw Him, she fell down at His feet, saying, 
 Lord, if thou hadst been here, rny brother had not died." 
 And she didn't say any more. Martha said a good deal more, 
 and it would have been better if Martha had left unsaid some 
 of the things she did say. But Mary had nothing more to say; 
 she had placed the matter in Christ's hands, and there she lay 
 at His feet in her sorrow. Again I say, Blessed are those 
 mourners whom sorrow gently leads to Jesus' feet ! 
 
 The Christian's sorrows, dear friends, whatever their cause, are 
 not to be regarded as though they were distinct from the fellow- 
 ship of the sufferings of Christ. I have heard people say that 
 we cannot speak of the sorrows that come to us in the ordinary 
 course of nature, as if they were part of His sufferings, that 
 only those belong to this fellowship which are directly endured 
 for Christ's sake. I cannot agree with them. I believe that 
 we may. 
 
 I believe there is no tear wrung from a Christian's aching 
 heart but that it may become a part of the sufferings of 
 the Man of sorrows. I believe He took upon Himself the 
 sorrows as well as the sins of humanity, and that, when sorrow 
 is put upon us, it is in order that He may bring us into fellow- 
 ship with Him who is the great High Priest in the great 
 Temple of Sorrow. And when He does this, is there not a 
 strange, deep joy that wells up in our hearts in the midst of 
 our sorrow ? Is there not a kind of sweetness in our tears a 
 bright gleam of sunshine streaming through the riven cloud ? 
 
 Oh, blessed are the trials that bring us to Jesus' feet ! The 
 sorrows of this world harden and embitter some people. They 
 grow sour and selfish. When those nearest and dearest are 
 taken away from them, they seem to think there is nothing left 
 but self, and that the only thing is to fill up the empty place 
 by some fresh self-indulgence. And thus sorrow worketh 
 death ; for selfishness is the death of that which is highest and 
 noblest in our natures ; it is selfishness that keeps us aloof 
 from God, who is the true Source of all life, and in whom 
 alone life can be sustained. But while the sorrows of this 
 world sometimes harden and prove injurious to those that are 
 
 166
 
 Mary. 
 
 of the world, and tend to drive them further and further from 
 God, it is otherwise with the Lord's own children. When the 
 Lord sends us sorrow, and it drives us to His feet, we then 
 begin to learn more about Jesus than we ever knew before. 
 
 I don't suppose that Mary had seen Jesus weep before. She 
 had sat at His feet ; she had heard His voice. She knew He was 
 full of love, gentleness, and pity ; but do you think she knew 
 as much about that love, that gentleness, that pity, then, as she 
 did now when she gazed upon Him and saw the great tears 
 gathering in His eyes? And the people whispered one to 
 another, " Look at Jesus ! He is weeping. ' Behold how He 
 loved him !' ;> I dare say she felt as if she had never loved Him 
 so much before, as she loved Him then when she saw those 
 tears of His. 
 
 When we feel crushed with sorrow, do let us try to remember 
 that Jesus Christ Himself was the Man of sorrows. Let us 
 throw ourselves at once at His feet; that is the place for the 
 mourner. There you will find the flowers of paradise growing 
 amid the shadows of death ; there you will find the light of 
 a glorious day piercing through the dark and gloomy portal of 
 that sad and lonely vale. And as we thus are brought into 
 fellowship with His sorrow, in our very tears we find a pledge 
 and earnest of that tearless world, where, as we lie at Jesus' 
 feet, He Himself shall wipe our tears away. 
 
 But don't let your tears drive you away from Christ. 
 I once met with a lady who told me that her sorrows had 
 taken her from Christ. As long as things went well with her, 
 she thought she was making pretty good progress. She fol- 
 lowed Christ so long as He gave her sunshine, and smooth 
 water, and favourable breezes ; but when the storm arose her 
 faith gave way, and she turned her back on her Lord. There 
 came a terrible sorrow, a crushing sorrow ; and the fabric of 
 her confidence gave way beneath its weight I said to her, 
 " Oh, dear soul, you have learnt that lesson the wrong way ! 
 That sorrow was sent to drive you to Jesus' feet, and you have 
 allowed it to push you away from Him. Why did you not 
 do what Mary did ? Blessed would have been the sorrow 
 that would thus have brought you into closer fellowship with 
 Christ, but you have turned what might have been a blessing 
 into a curse, by running away from Him." 
 
 Now, dear friends, let us look at Mary once again. We have 
 seen her at the Lord's feet as a learner, and we have seen her 
 
 167
 
 Mary. 
 
 there as a mourner; and now, in John xii., we shall see her at 
 the Lord's feet as a worshipper. Turn for a moment to the 
 beginning of that chapter : " Then Jesus six days before the 
 passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was which had been 
 dead, whom He raised from the dead. There they made Him 
 a supper; and Martha served." Dear Martha ! how I love her 
 for it ! Always true to her character ; never weary of waiting 
 on such a Guest, and this time not even in her own house. 
 Even in the house of Simon Martha must wait upon her Lord ; 
 no mere hireling or slave shall be allowed to minister to Him 
 while Martha's willing hands and heart are near. 
 
 But she doesn't scold Mary this time, although her sister is 
 faithful to her character too, and still thinks more of pleasing 
 Him than of serving Him. I think Martha has learnt her lesson. 
 Don't you think she has ? It is not she that finds fault this time 
 when Mary pours the precious ointment on the Master's feet. 
 Careful, thrifty Martha leaves her sister's apparently reckless 
 extravagance alone. Perhaps, in spite of adverse comments, 
 Mary might be right again ; so Martha occupies herself with 
 her service, and leaves her sister to do as she was led. And 
 blessed was she in her service this time. 
 
 Oh, what a feast that must have been, where Christ and the 
 man whom He had raised sat together ! There was Martha, 
 as ever, busy; and Lazarus, happy in his Friend's society; but 
 where was Mary ? Our Lord peradventure may have glanced 
 round the table to see that well-known face, but He saw it 
 not. The meal proceeds, but Mary does not appear. Then 
 as the feast draws to a close, perhaps when there is a moment 
 of hush in the conversation, Jesus is aware of another presence; 
 and looking about Him, He sees one kneeling at His feet. 
 " Then took Mary a pound of ointment . . . and anointed 
 the feet of Jesus." She dare not anoint His head. At His 
 feet was the place for her. She is true to His feet still. Bound 
 as by a spell to those sacred feet, so soon to be pierced by the 
 executioner's nail, she takes her pound of ointment, "very 
 costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with 
 her hair;" and we read further, that "the house was filled with 
 the odour of the ointment." 
 
 Yes, dear friends ; and I think the world is filled with the 
 odour of that ointment. It has not lost its fragrance yet ; it is 
 as fresh now as it was 1800 years ago. Oh, what a thrill of 
 joy passed through His heart as He felt that there was one 
 
 1 68
 
 Mary. 
 
 person in the whole world in full sympathy with Him, and 
 perhaps only one ! Others were occupied with their carnal 
 dreams of earthly grandeur ; but there was one who saw before 
 her the corpse of her dear Lord, and, anticipating those kind 
 offices which were so soon to be performed on Him, Mary pours 
 the precious ointment on His living body. And Jesus says, "She 
 has done it for my burial ; " and at that moment He must have 
 felt that Mary's prophetic soul knew all about it. She had read 
 it all in His eye. She had discovered the latent sorrow press- 
 ing on her Master's heart ; for not in vain had she sat at His 
 feet and heard His words. Thus was she prepared for worship; 
 for to worship God we must know Him ; and to know Him we 
 must see Him, and observe Him, and delight in Him. 
 
 Dear friends, it is most important that we Christians should 
 have clear views about worship. What does worship consist of? 
 Surely not in prayer ; not merely in asking what we need. I 
 don't mean to say that prayer is not a constituent part of 
 worship ; but it falls very far short of being all, or even a very 
 considerable portion, of the worship that is due to God. Mary 
 lets us into the true secret of worship. What does it consist 
 of? Not merely of the repetition of time-honoured phrases, 
 which, though full of meaning, are apt to lose their meaning by 
 frequent repetition. It is well that we should use the words 
 that express our thoughts. But there is a danger in the use of 
 even the best words, lest by familiarity with them we lose sight 
 of their true import, and they cease to express any definite or 
 intelligible thoughts at all. There is a real danger of our utter- 
 ances becoming mere sounding phrases, and nothing else ; and 
 it is a danger we must jealously guard against We cry, 
 "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy 
 Ghost." How much do we mean by it? We may mean 
 everything, or we may mean nothing. 
 
 The truest form of worship is, first of all, the presentation to 
 God of all that is most precious, all that is most costly, that we 
 have or that we are. He worships best who presents himself, 
 and, above all, that heart of his, the home of his affections ; 
 that heart which Christ Himself has liberated, and set on fire 
 with holy love. He worships best who presents that heart of 
 his, just as Mary presented the ointment. None, I am per- 
 suaded, gives greater pleasure to the heart of Jesus than the 
 worshipper who pours forth at His feet the precious ointment 
 of adoring love. Oh, if we can but lie at His feet, and just 
 
 169
 
 Mary. 
 
 let our hearts flow forth to Him in the one all-absorbing 
 thought, " I am His, He is mine ; I am His, He is mine ; " so 
 we worship best. 
 
 And there is another thought closely connected with this. 
 Mary worshipped well, not only because she gave her best, but 
 because she saw the best that was in Him. The keen vision 
 of her love had penetrated into the secret of His nature, and 
 she observed what others did not. She entered into full sym- 
 pathy with Him, and she realized what others did not, because 
 she was raised to the level of His life, while others were only 
 walking as men. Dimly and indistinctly she discerned the in- 
 ward heroism which was to shine forth amidst the horror and 
 shame of Calvary, and she paid her humble tribute to the 
 glory of this divine benevolence as she anointed Him for the 
 burial. 
 
 How do they worship God in heaven ? They worship Him by 
 gazing upon Him till the whole being is filled and over-borne 
 with the consciousness of what He is. How do the Seraphim 
 worship Him? "With twain they covered their face, and 
 with twain they covered their feet, and with twain they did 
 fly. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, 
 is the Lord of hosts." What did it mean ? Although they 
 covered their faces in awe, yet they had seen enough of the 
 divine character to be overawed by the contemplation of God's 
 perfection ; and with every blazing forth of the divine glory 
 there is a fresh note of praise, " Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord 
 of hosts." Such is the worship of heaven, and such in measure 
 will our worship be if we enter in spirit into the secret place 
 of the Most High, and pass in review before our inner eye the 
 glory of His attributes. To worship God because He is what 
 He is, to rejoice in the thought that He is what He is, to 
 give thanks unto Him for His great glory this is indeed the 
 true secret of worship. They worship best who admire most ; 
 and they admire most who, like Mary, gaze most intently on 
 Him who is the centre of all perfection the altogether lovely. 
 To receive His glory upon our own hearts as it streams forth 
 from His Person in ail its moral splendour, and then to 
 reflect it back on Him and on all around, this is to worship 
 indeed. The faithful moon honours the sun, no longer visible 
 to earth, by catching his glories, and reflecting them back upon 
 a darkened world. And even so the worshipping church 
 mirrors forth the glories of her ascended Lord as those glories 
 
 170
 
 Mary. 
 
 invisible to the world fall full upon her, and thus she worships 
 Him. 
 
 Yet once again, they worship best whose worship springs 
 from love, and whose acts of devotion are simply the articulate 
 expression of a burning affection that throbs and glows within. 
 Cold prayers, spiritless praises, glorious words that have no 
 counterpart in our inward consciousness, oh, how distasteful 
 must these be to Him who inhabiteth the praises of Israel ! 
 Surely these vain oblations and this unhallowed incense must 
 be an abomination in His sight. But loving acts that spring 
 forth from the heaven-watered soil of loving hearts flowers of 
 Paradise in a too loveless world surely these must please the 
 Lord better than a bullock that hath horns and hoofs ; and 
 these love-offerings are only possible to those who lie much at 
 His feet. For love grows not by mere labour, still less by mere 
 mental knowledge ; love grows by communion (by spiritual 
 familiarity, shall I say ?) with the divine. Alas, how often do | 
 we fall from the proper level of the love-life, because we are so / 
 hurried in our visits to His feet ! We have scarce sat down / 
 and begun to gaze, ere some Martha-like care, or business, or 
 pleasure, diverts us from our resting-place. And thus the mystic 
 spell is broken which Love weaves around the once loveless 
 human heart, to bring it into the sacred fellowship of love. 
 
 Thus Mary passes from our view, last seen worshipping at 
 Jesus' feet. When next we see her, perhaps we shall find her 
 there still, and at home there for ever. I like to remember that 
 she had chosen that good part which could not be taken from 
 her. So we may look forward to the future, and think of brighter 
 scenes, when the humiliations and sorrows of Him whom she 
 loved will be passed for ever. Yonder in that better land I can 
 only think of Mary still in her chosen place. Others may sit, 
 the one on the right hand and the other on the left, in His 
 kingdom ; but Mary's good part will bind her still, methinks, 
 to the very feet of Christ, finding her heaven still in contem- 
 plation, ever making fresh discoveries of the divine beauty, 
 and feasting her soul on His revealed perfection. And this is 
 the one thing needful. The apprehension of Christ, as the 
 image of the invisible God the rest of the understanding ; 
 the joy of the imagination ; the satisfaction of the affections 
 all in Him to find this is to find what alone makes human 
 experience complete, and crowns our native emptiness as with 
 all the fulness of God. 
 
 171
 
 peril of 
 
 " Cast out the bondwoman and her son : for the son of the bondwoman 
 shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman. So then, brethren, we 
 are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free." Gal. iv. 30, 31. 
 
 r I ""HERE are two prominent dangers incident to the spiritual 
 A- life, against which we have to guard with equal care if we 
 would be Christians indeed. The one is the danger of legality, 
 and the other is the danger of antinomianism. Of the first of 
 these two dangers I have to speak to you to-day; and with respect 
 to the second I shall address you, God willing, in my next 
 sermon. 
 
 These two forms of danger began to exhibit themselves 
 very early in the history of the Christian Church. The 
 Galatians seem to have become the victims of the first, and to 
 some extent the Corinthians fell victims to the second. The 
 Galatians, after tasting the glorious liberties of the gospel of 
 Christ, fell under the yoke of legal bondage, forfeited their 
 liberty, and ran no small risk of falling from grace, to use the 
 Apostle's expression. The Corinthians, on the other hand, seem . 
 to have become somewhat lax in their notions of morality, and 
 to have been disposed to act as though the law of God were 
 ' abrogated by the gospel, and as if it were possible for men 
 to lead unholy and immoral lives, and still retain the benefits 
 of Christ's atoning work. 
 
 We cannot help noticing that St. Paul's tone in addressing 
 the Galatians is very severe; indeed there is -a contrast pre- 
 sented to us between his manner in addressing the Galatians, 
 and that which he usually adopts in commencing his epistles. 
 He begins his epistle to the Galatians, not with one of those 
 heartfelt exclamations of grateful praise to Almighty God for 
 the blessings which the Church was enjoying, and the fruits 
 of righteousness springing, from them, which are common 
 in his writings ; but he begins at once by sounding the note 
 of censure : " I marvel that ye are so soon removed from 
 Him that called you into the grace of Christ vmtQ^another 
 
 The severity of St. Paul's tone may lead us to the conclusion 
 
 172
 
 The Peril of Legality. 
 
 that the danger that he was referring to is a danger that we 
 have to regard with the utmost possible jealousy. It is a very 
 serious danger and a very practical danger a danger which, 
 if we give place to it, may be productive of the most serious 
 practical consequences in our personal life and experience. 
 Therefore I would ask you to bear in mind, if what I say this 
 afternoon may seem somewhat doctrinal rather than practical, 
 that it is just one of those cases in which Christian doctrine, 
 practice, and experience are so closely bound together that 
 you cannot dissociate them from each other. In fact, you \ 
 cannot fall into a doctrinal error in this particular respect ( 
 without grievously injuring the nature and character of your) 
 spiritual life ; and hence it is of the utmost possible import- 
 ance that we should have a clear apprehension of what our 
 relations to the Law actually are, and what the particular error 
 in regard to this may be, against which St. Paul in his Epistle 
 to the Galatians specially warns us. 
 
 The Galatians' error the error of legality arose from a 
 misconception of the nature of the effects of Redemption as 
 modifying our relations with the Divine Law. The Galatians 
 regarded Redemption as leaving them, so far as the Law was con- 
 cerned, very much in the same position as they occupied before 
 they accepted its benefits; and, starting from these false premises, 
 they proceeded to live out a thoroughly legal life, conforming 
 themselves to Jewish customs and usages, "and in their own 
 moral experiences allowing themselves to be affected only by 
 considerations of a strictly legal character. And so it came to 
 pass that St. Paul had to point out to them that really their 
 case was in no wise different from that of those who were still 
 under the law. They had fallen from the true level of Chris- 
 tian conduct to a level altogether beneath their dignity, and 
 ,he endeavours to arouse them to a sense of their loss in this 
 Srespect, by pointing out to them that if their position were the 
 \right one, then Christ has died in vain. The whole scheme of 
 /gospel redemption is altogether superfluous, if it be a fact that 
 we still continue as much under the law as though no Christ 
 had ever lived and died for us. 
 
 To establish this point, St. Paul endeavours to make as 
 plain as possible our relations with the Law of God. given on 
 mount Sinai, and he shows that this Law was given in the 
 childhood of the human race, that it was suited to the then 
 condition of those to whom it was given, but that it was,
 
 The Peril of Legality. 
 
 strictly speaking, provisional in its character, and does not 
 meet or satisfy the spiritual necessities of those who are raised 
 to the higher level of a more complete revelation, and a grander 
 and more advanced dispensation of divine grace. 
 
 To illustrate this point, St. Paul uses a figure which will com- 
 mend itself to the imagination of us all. He tells us in the third 
 chapter that " before faith came " (that is to say, before the 
 clear revelation of the object of faith, and of the operation of 
 faith in the salvation of man, was made known), "we were 
 kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should after- 
 wards be revealed." He goes on to say, "The law was our 
 schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ;" and then he adds, 
 "After that faith is come, we are no longer under a s'chool- 
 master." In the fourth chapter he enlarges further on the 
 idea : " Now 1 say, That the heir, as long as he is a child, 
 differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all ; but 
 is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the 
 father." 
 
 Here we have a picture which we may as well dwell upon 
 for a few moments. The word employed by St. Paul in 
 the third chapter may be regarded as having a double meaning. 
 First, in a strict etymological sense, the word indicates the 
 trustworthy confidential slave, whose duty it was to bring the 
 boys to school, and see that they did not play truant "a child- 
 leader," a person entrusted with the care of these young people 
 on their way to school, and who was responsible for seeing that 
 they got to school safely. But the word came to be used in a 
 higher sense to denote any one who was responsible for the 
 training of the young ; in fact, to mean much the same thing 
 as the terms used in the fourth chapter, where the heir is said 
 to be " under tutors and governors until the time appointed of 
 the father." 
 
 Very well then ; the Law was first of all our pedagogue or 
 child-leader, and the Apostle tells us that its office was to 
 bring us to Christ, who, under the Gospel, is our true Teacher. 
 The Law exercised this office by preparing the way for the 
 revelation of Christ. It brought man to Christ by showing 
 him his need of Christ ; for, as St. Paul teaches, by the law 
 was the knowledge of sin. It led men towards Christ by its 
 sacrificial system and ritual, which all witnessed to the necessity 
 of the atonement, and prepared the way for the revelation of 
 the great High Priest It led men towards Christ just because 
 
 174
 
 The Peril of Legality. 
 
 it awakened desires which it could not gratify, and witnessed 
 to the need of a life-power which it could not impart. 
 
 But St. Paul varies the figure in the commencement of the 
 fourth chapter, and proceeds to represent the Law itself as a 
 schoolmaster. "The heir, as long as he is a child, is under 
 tutors and governors, though he be lord of all." So has God 
 dealt with humanity, which is the heir of His own greatness. 
 It has been with the race as it is with the individual. In the 
 early days of our life we are placed under authority; rules are 
 laid down for us, which we are expected to obey without asking 
 any questions. We have to learn much that we see no reason 
 for, and to endure much that may seem to be irksome ; but all 
 this tends to form character, and fits the heir for the moment 
 when he shall become his own master. When that time arrives 
 he ceases to be a child, but does not cease to be a son ; rather 
 he begins now to take the place of a son, instead of the place 
 of a child. As a son he enters into his father's mind and 
 sympathizes with his thoughts and feelings. He no longer 
 obeys mechanically, without asking why; but if he be a dutiful 
 son he obeys intelligently, because he appreciates the purposes 
 of the father. Perhaps he works as hard now as he did when 
 a boy at school, perhaps a good deal harder; but he works 
 because he takes a pleasure in working, and feels that his father's 
 interests are identical with his own, and not because he is 
 obliged to work. He has laid aside bondage, and entered 
 upon liberty, and he finds a manly pleasure in exercising his 
 liberty in a rational way, that shall promote alike his father's 
 interests and his own. 
 
 Such is the contrast between the life of the Jews under the 
 imperfect law of bondage, and the life of the Christian under 
 the perfect law of liberty. The Israelite had to obey even 
 when obedience seemed scarcely reasonable, and to obey 
 without asking questions. Perhaps we do not sufficiently realize 
 how very trying and burdensome the ancient yoke of bondage 
 must have seemed to those who found precepts and regulations 
 confronting them in all the details of their daily life ; but thus 
 the imperious claims of God upon human nature were witnessed 
 to, and habits of reverence and obedience were formed which 
 were to prove a blessed and priceless legacy to happier ages of 
 gospel liberty. 
 
 So the dispensation of the law did its work, and then passed 
 away, to be succeeded in the fulness of time by the dispensa- 
 
 175
 
 The Peril of Legality, 
 
 tion of the Holy Spirit, whose supremacy in our nature was to 
 establish law within, and to form higher principles, from which 
 holy and devoted conduct should flow. 
 
 Now all this is illustrated by St. Paul in his own striking 
 way, by a reference to an episode in Old Testament story, 
 which, as he puts it, offers a wonderful spiritual allegory. We 
 are taken back to the origin of the favoured race, and referred 
 to the household of Abraham, "Tell me, ye that desire to be 
 under the law, Do ye not hear the law ? For it is written, that 
 Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by 
 a freewoman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born 
 after the flesh ; but he of the freewoman was by promise." 
 Which things are an allegory. The bondwoman and her son 
 represent, he tells us, the legal dispensation, or the legal spirit, 
 while Sarah is regarded in the allegory as the type of the 
 "Jerusalem which is above," and which is "the mother of us 
 all ;" and Isaac, who sprang from her, is a free-born citizen of 
 that heavenly country. 
 
 Now notice more particularly. The child of Hagar was born 
 after the flesh. For a time, however, he that is born of the 
 flesh occupies the position apparently of Abraham's heir. He 
 is Abraham's only child the sole representative of Abraham's 
 name and person, so to speak. But a clear intimation is given, 
 by divine promise, that not in Ishmael was the promised seed 
 to be called ; that not in Ishmael was the promise of God to 
 Abraham to be fulfilled. He that is of the flesh cannot inherit 
 the promise. We turn from him'to Isaac, and the moment we 
 do so we are confronted with the supernatural. 
 
 Everything about Isaac is supernatural. He is the child of 
 promise. His very existence is a miracle. Long after Sarah had 
 laid aside all thoughts of ever embracing a child of her own, 
 Isaac is given her by the divine intervention. He was born by 
 a miracle. And here, my friends, we learn our first great lesson 
 with respect to the contrast. It is only by the intervention of 
 the supernatural, only by divine power, that the spiritual Isaac 
 can be born ; only by a miracle can we be raised from nature 
 unto grace, and as children of grace become the true heirs, 
 according to the promise. What says St. John, speaking of those 
 who are of the promised seed ? " To as many as received Him, 
 to them gave He authority to become the sons of God ; even 
 to as many as believed on His name : which were born, not of 
 flesh, nor of blood, nor of the will of man, but of God." 
 
 176
 
 The Peril of Legality. 
 
 Thus it is, even to this day, that the spiritual Isaac is 
 born, and the new life begins. And the name of the child 
 thus born reveals his nature. He is the child of laughter, born 
 unto a new joy-world, where slavery is unknown. When 
 Sarah heard that she was to bear a child in her old age, an 
 incredulous smile had passed over her face. She could not 
 bring herself to believe that such a thing was possible. But 
 by-and-by the smile of unbelief was turned into a smile of holy 
 joy, as she found that all things were possible with God. And 
 when first the thought of the new life is presented to the human 
 soul it is not to be wondered that incredulously we should 
 smile with Nicodemus, and ask impatiently, How can a man 
 be born again when he is old ? It might be a thing much to 
 be desired, were it possible ; but who can compass so impossi- 
 ble a result ? 
 
 By-and-by, however, the incredulous sneer of unbelief is 
 turned into a smile of holy ecstasy, as we find there is a power 
 that can lift us out of nature into a new and glorious life, and 
 that we, by the grace of God, may become, like Isaac, the 
 children of laughter, the children of promise. 
 
 How frequently and how literally have I seen this name ful- 
 filled in the experience of those whom it is my privilege to lead 
 to Christ ! How often have I seen the birth of Isaac revealed 
 in the lighting up of the face that seemed so overshadowed 
 and sorrowful nay, I have sometimes even heard an actual 
 burst of holy laughter when the new light and joy has 
 suddenly rushed into the soul ! " The Lord hath made me to 
 laugh." 
 
 Ishmael was the child of the slave, and those whom he 
 represents inherit the slave spirit The fear of God is upon 
 them, and by it they are urged forwards or kept back ; but all 
 is bondage from first to last. But the child of laughter is also 
 the child of the Princess ; for such is the meaning of Sarah's 
 name. He is descended from the queenly city, that Jerusalem 
 which is above, which is free, which is the mother of us all. 
 And so he carries about with him the consciousness of his true 
 dignity ; for he is a prince with God, and free because God is 
 his Father and heaven his home. This consciousness of his 
 true dignity will keep him from grovelling earthly-mindedness 
 and lead him to despise sin ; not because, as a slave, he may 
 be punished for committing it, but because, as a son of God, it 
 would be a stain upon his true honour. 
 
 n. 177 N
 
 The Peril of Legality. 
 
 Now you observe these two sons don't get on well together. 
 Ishmael is laughing at him who is the child of laughter, and 
 this suggests to us that the name of the promised seed has a 
 double significance. He is a child of laughter because he 
 laughs, but he is also the child of laughter because he is 
 laughed at; indeed, we may say the true-born citizen of 
 heaven is laughed at just because he is the child of laughter. 
 The world derides the Christian's joy because it cannot under- 
 stand it, nor can it appreciate the enthusiasm of liberty which 
 distinguishes the heir of the promises. And carnal and legal 
 religion is even more bitterly opposed to the character and 
 genius of the new life, than is mere worldliness. The legalist 
 can understand what he would call sound, practical piety ; he 
 can appreciate outward earnestness and strict morality, but he 
 decries spirituality as mysticism, and the mighty impulses of 
 the new life appear to him no better than fanaticism. He that 
 is born after the flesh still persecutes him that is born after the 
 Spirit. The religious world cannot participate in the laughter 
 of the true child of promise ; it knows not the source from 
 which that laughter springs ; and that which men do not 
 understand they are usually disposed to deride. 
 
 And so it comes to pass that, as the two cannot live to- 
 gether, the edict has to go forth, " Cast out the bondwoman 
 and her child : for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir 
 with the son of the freewoman ; " and in that kingdom, of 
 which the sons of promise are already heirs, the sons of the 
 bondwomen will have no place. 
 
 But to come to ourselves. These two sons of Abraham re- 
 present, not only two distinct classes of persons, but two 
 contrasted states of soul and forms of experience, one or other 
 of which may be expected to be dominant in our lives. St. 
 Paul goes on to say, " So we, brethren, as Isaac was, are not 
 sons of the bondwoman, but of the free." And so it should 
 be with us all ; but there is another influence ever ready to 
 assert itself, and to rob us of our spiritual liberties. There 
 is a Hagar in every human heart, from whom may spring the 
 slavish progeny of a legal and unspiritual life. And this son 
 of the bondwoman is to be cast out, and not to be allowed to 
 share the heirdom with the child of laughter, the son of the 
 freewoman. 
 
 The Galatians exhibited legality in its grossest and most 
 undisguised forms. They went back to the bygone dispense- 
 
 178
 
 The Peril of Legality, 
 
 tion, and attempted to revive Jewish customs and observances 
 and ceremonies that had lost both their meaning and their 
 value, now that the fulness of time had come. This was about 
 as reasonable as if a young man who has just accepted a junior 
 partnership in his father's firm were to insist upon returning to 
 what was once his form in a public school, and determine to 
 submit himself once more to all the restraints of his earlier 
 years. 
 
 The error, as exposed by St. Paul, seems so strange and 
 grotesque that we wonder how any could fall into it, and are 
 not surprised at the almost impatient exclamation^ " O sense- 
 less Galatians, who has bewitched you?" But when we pass 
 on to study the history of the Christian Church, we soon find 
 that if the Galatians were the first certainly they were not the 
 last to fall into this snare. The history of mediaeval Christi- 
 anity, what is it but one long, sorrowful exhibition of the same 
 bondage of legality? only clothed now in a nominally Christian 
 instead of a Jewish garb. Hagar and Ishmael had it all their 
 own way in those long, dark ages, and cruelly did they persecute 
 any unfortunate representatives of Isaac, wherever they found 
 them. 
 
 In our own day there are not wanting some who seem very 
 eager to reinstate Hagar in all her mediaeval glories. If we 
 may nt emulate the Galatians in restoring Jewish ceremonies, 
 at any rate we can invent others like them ; if we may not 
 incorporate the code of the Pharisees into the Christian system, 
 at any rate we can frame equally elaborate rules of life ; if our 
 teachers are no longer called Rabbis, they may be called 
 "Father;" and if the tradition of the elders is no longer 
 supreme, the " voice of the Church " is ready to take its place. 
 
 I am no polemist, and I am little disposed to take part in 
 the theological strife of the times ; but here I see a grave 
 danger, and it would be a dereliction of duty did I not refer 
 to it I would like to ask the earnest and excellent men who 
 lead the van of this backward movement Did Hagar produce 
 such a desirable state of affairs in mediaeval times, when she 
 had things all her own way, that we need wish to restore her 
 supremacy? Is not this nineteenth century, with all its faults 
 and sins, a perfect millennium as compared with the condition 
 of society during those lengthy periods in which legality was 
 most supreme, and gospel light and liberty were almost 
 unknown? Before we endeavour to reimpose a broken yoke 
 
 179
 
 The Peril of Legality. 
 
 of bondage, surely it were well to reflect on the effects of that 
 same yoke of bondage on our forefathers of the Christian 
 name. 
 
 To any who are in danger of becoming thus entangled I 
 would say, Guard your Christian liberties. " The son of the 
 bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman." 
 You cannot patch up a compromise between Sinai and New 
 Jerusalem ; either we must be content to surrender the liberties 
 of heaven, or we must be determined to cast off the yoke of 
 bondage. 
 
 But most of those whom I am addressing to-day may 
 perhaps feel that they are not exposed to this form, at any 
 rate, of the legal danger. They have no sympathy with these 
 attempts to re-erect the fabric of mediaeval superstition ; indeed, 
 they regard all such attempts with suspicion and aversion. 
 Surely, then, they are free from this peril. Ah, my friends, this 
 danger of legality is a great deal more subtle than people think, 
 and I wish to point out to you how subtle it is ! I am per- 
 suaded there is not a little of downright legality legality in its 
 worst form, because in its most subtle form to be found 
 amongst those who call themselves evangelical Christians, and 
 perhaps in quarters where it is least expected. 
 
 The plain and sad truth is, that when the freeman does not 
 cast out the bondwoman and her son, the bondwoman and her 
 son will always contrive to cast out him. Isaac and Ishmael 
 can't get on together, and hence, if Isaac be missing, there is 
 fair ground for an inference that Hagar and Ishmael have cast 
 him out. Now we must, I fear, perceive that Isaac is con- 
 spicuous by his absence from the lives and hearts of too many 
 professing Christian people. Their religion is a matter of 
 restraint, rather than of joyous liberty ; of routine, and more or 
 less mechanical routine, rather than of love and devotion. 
 They measure things by an ethical rather than by a religious 
 standard, and are concerned to enquire whether things are 
 right or wrong, rather than to discover whether or not they are 
 pleasing to the Lord they profess to serve, and consonant with 
 His will. They are conscientious rather than enthusiastic, and 
 formal rather than devotional. They seem to think much 
 more of easing their conscience than of glorifying their God, 
 and of doing their duty than of enjoying their privileges. 
 
 This word Duty indeed may be taken as the key-note of the 
 lives of such Christians. Show them that any particular action 
 
 180
 
 The Peril of Legality. 
 
 or course of conduct is their duty, and they will endeavour to 
 perform it, although it may be with the feeling that it is an 
 irksome task, and with a great sense of relief to their conscience 
 when once the thing has been somehow or other got over. Or, 
 again, show them that it is their duty to abstain from any thing, 
 either wrong or doubtful, and they will abstain, albeit perhaps 
 somewhat regretfully. This idea of Duty is to them what the 
 idea of Law was to the ancient Pharisee it is the tutor or 
 governor under whom they live their life. 
 
 Now, perhaps some amongst us might be disposed to say, 
 " Yes ; and a very good governor too is this same Duty. 
 Would to God that his voice were more regarded, and that 
 men were more actuated than they are by a sense of duty." 
 " Never," said a correspondent in writing to me some little 
 time ago, " never, whatever you do, inveigh against that grand 
 old word Duty, now too much in danger of becoming obso- 
 lete." And no doubt there is a sense of the word which is 
 grand and heroic. There is, however, another sense of the 
 word, which is servile and very prosaic. We remember what 
 was the effect produced on one memorable occasion on our 
 English fleet, when all along the line the signal floated out, 
 " England expects every man to do his duty." But there 
 obviously duty was synonymous with devotion. Those who 
 saw that signal raised were expected to risk all, to sacrifice, if 
 needs be, even their very lives, at their country's call. 
 
 We may put the thing thus, considering our infinite obligation 
 to God, all devotion must be duty. We cannot do more than 
 it is our duty to do, but it is not equally true that all duty is 
 devotion. Think of one of Nelson's sailors called up on a 
 cold and wet night to take his turn at keeping watch on deck. 
 Hear his muttered grumble as he turns out of his comfortable 
 berth, and slowly drags himself upstairs, invoking all manner 
 of unimaginable evils on the head of the messmate that has 
 awakened him, and you have a picture of duty of the true 
 legal type. He is on duty now ; and this is just what so many 
 Christians feel themselves to be. When a man regards 
 religious obligation very much as that sailor regards naval 
 discipline, he is under the Law, not the Gospel ; he is a son 
 of the bondwoman, not of the free. 
 
 But now, to illustrate our point, look at that same sailor 
 when all his latent patriotism has been kindled by the sound 
 of the first gun at Trafalgar. Does he wait now to consider 
 
 181
 
 The Peril of Legality. 
 
 whether it is his duty to be the first to leap on board the 
 enemy's ship, and dash into the thickest of the fray ? True, 
 fight as bravely as he may, he is only doing his duty to his 
 country, according to Nelson's ideas of the meaning of his 
 own signal; but he does his duty because he yields to the 
 enthusiasm of devotion, and not because the thought of duty 
 ever crosses his mind. 
 
 Even so we Christians, whatever we may do, cannot do 
 more, as our Lord teaches us, than what it is our duty to do ; 
 but we shall then come nearest to doing our real duty when we 
 think least about it. He who refers all things to a higher 
 standard, and who thinks not of duty, but of Him whom he 
 loves and seeks to serve, will no doubt do his duty better than 
 another with whom the thought of duty is the source of obli- 
 gation ; but this will not be his motive, and hence his conduct 
 will be free and spontaneous ; his life will be a thing of joyous 
 liberty, a child of laughter, not a son of the bondwoman. 
 
 Put the two men side by side, and you shall see them con- 
 trasted in all the details of their daily life, and it is by contempla- 
 ting these that we shall best understand the difference between 
 legality and true evangelical freedom. Both the spiritual 
 Isaac and the spiritual Ishmael will begin the day with prayer. 
 The former will pray because he loves to have communion 
 with God, because he feels his need of God, and dare not 
 venture forth to meet life's trials without casting himself upon 
 the Strong for strength. The other would not feel comfortable 
 if he went out of the room in the morning without a prayer; his 
 sense of duty would not be satisfied if he did not bend the 
 knee and repeat over a certain number of time-honoured, or 
 perhaps time-dishonoured, words (for it sometimes happens 
 that frequency of repetition has robbed them of most of their 
 meaning). In the latter case the duty is done, in the former case 
 the privilege is enjoyed. How is it with you duty or privilege ? 
 Do you pray because you can't do without it, or because you 
 would feel condemned if you did without it? By the answer 
 to such a question as this you may judge whether your life 
 is Ishmael or Isaac. 
 
 Or> once again, consider the study of Holy Scripture. Both 
 men will probably read the Bible, but the one will read it very 
 much as a wife reads the letters of her absent husband. He 
 will read because he wants to know more of his Father's mind. 
 The other will read his Bible because it is his duty and his 
 
 182
 
 The Peril of Legality, 
 
 habit to do so, and the Bible is a book that ought to be read. 
 The one will not be content with his reading unless he finds 
 some spiritual help from it ; he expects to get a message from 
 God, and he will not be disappointed. The other is quite 
 content so long as the portion is read; his conscience is satisfied, 
 and there the matter ends. 
 
 And here let me sound a note of friendly warning. We are 
 living in a period in which great associations are coming into 
 existence, which have it for their object to induce the regular and 
 systematic reading of the Bible. No one can rejoice more at 
 the success of these Bible unions than I do. It is really very 
 important that our Bible reading should be careful and 
 methodical ; but do bear in mind, dear friend, that there is no 
 good thing that has not a special danger, and I would warn 
 you against the possible corruption of this good custom. Take 
 care lest you get into a merely mechanical way of reading a 
 certain portion, and then feeling as if you had done your 
 duty. 
 
 Remember that there is no charm in Bible-reading. It is not 
 by running your eye over so many lines, and getting a dim idea of 
 the meaning of so many words, that the soul is fed. We only 
 read the Bible to purpose when we learn something from it, or 
 have some old familiar lesson brought home with fresh power 
 to our hearts. How easily may our systematic Bible-reading 
 become as much a matter of mechanical routine and degrading 
 superstition as the telling the beads of a rosary, or the turning 
 of the wheel of a prayer machine. 
 
 Or take again, as another illustration of what I mean, our 
 use of that most holy ordinance to which our Lord hath 
 bidden us in memory of His death. I am one of those who 
 would always earnestly advocate regularity and system, both 
 in the study of the Word, in our daily prayers, and in our 
 participation in the Holy Communion. But sometimes there 
 is a danger connected with and springing from this most 
 desirable regularity. The child of the promise, and the son of 
 the bondwoman, both meet with the Lord's people on the first 
 day of the week to break bread ; but here the similarity in their 
 experience ceases. The one goes to the holy feast, because he 
 expects the Lord to meet him there with a special revelation of 
 His love, and to feed him with the spiritual food his soul requires. 
 It would be as natural for him to think of going to the dinner- 
 table, because it was his duty to do so, as to think of attending 
 
 183
 
 The Peril of Legality. 
 
 this blessed ordinance merely as a matter of duty. Of course 
 it is our duty to feed our bodies properly ; but it would argue 
 ill for your physical condition if you were in the habit of taking 
 your meals merely because it was your duty to do so. The other 
 attends at this ordinance, as he will tell you, in obedience to 
 the Lord's command. He thinks he ought to go // is his duty ; 
 he would feel condemned if he turned his back upon the Lord's 
 table. And when he has obeyed and participated in the 
 ordinance, his conscience is quieted ; he cannot charge him- 
 self with any dereliction of duty; but he does not trouble 
 himself to enquire whether the object of the sacrament has 
 been attained in his case. The habit has been maintained, 
 the duty has been performed. Ishmael seems to be satisfied, 
 and there the thing ends ; but the child of laughter and of joy 
 has had nothing to do with it from first to last. 
 
 Or take another illustration. Both the citizen of New Jeru- 
 salem and the legalist feel that the work of God has claims upon 
 them, and that it won't do to be idle. The true-born son works 
 because it is his Father's cause ; and his own interests and 
 his Father's are one. Souls are precious to his Father, and 
 so they are precious to him. Hence he works because he 
 wants to do good, and not because he is in duty bound to do 
 something. The more of the spirit of Isaac he has in him the 
 more does he delight in his work. He would not be idle if he 
 might ; for as it was with his Lord so to some degree, at any 
 rate, it is with him, his meat and drink to do the will of his 
 Father. 
 
 The other works because he thinks he ought to. The 
 sentiment of the Christian society with which he mingles is 
 favourable to it ; he would lose the respect of those with whom 
 he associates were he idle or indolent. God's word seems to 
 demand it. Very solemn things are said about the unprofitable 
 servant, and he does not want to bring down upon himself the 
 scathing utterance, " Thou wicked and slothful servant." 
 Besides it surely can't be right to be idle in a world where so 
 much needs to be done. We ought to try and do something ; 
 it is our obvious duty, and if we don't perform it our conscience 
 will be condemned. So, it may be, some of you to whom I am 
 now speaking have offered yourselves for work, not so much 
 because love impelled as because duty compelled. You offered 
 your services in some recognized branch of Christian labour, 
 and they have been accepted. Perhaps you became a Sunday- 
 
 184
 
 The Peril of Legality. 
 
 school teacher, and as such you have done your work in a 
 very regular and systematic way, and you feel some degree of 
 comfort in the thought that you can no longer now, at any 
 rate, be spoken of as a cumberer of the ground ; for are you not 
 a Christian worker? But, my dear friend, without unduly dis- 
 paraging the value of religious activity, let me ask you to 
 remember that the God whom we serve is even more concerned 
 with the quality than with the quantity of the work that we do 
 for Him. First let us consider the character of the work you 
 are doing. Will it stand the test of fire ? for every man's work 
 will be tried by fire. You have conveyed a certain amount of 
 historical, and perhaps of doctrinal, information ; but has your 
 teaching been of such a kind as to win these young hearts for 
 Christ ? You have taught them all about how David cut off 
 the head of Goliath, and how Sampson carried off the gates of 
 Gaza ; but that won't do them much good, will it ? unless they 
 also learn to find in Christ their David, and to see their liberties 
 secured by the resurrection victory of a Stronger than Sampson. 
 How many Christian teachers never seem to get beyond the 
 letter ! never seem to exercise that ministry of the Spirit which 
 giveth life ! Indeed, how can it be otherwise, if our motive is 
 mere duty rather than love for souls and love for God ? 
 
 It is the natural tendency of legality to produce a cold and 
 mechanical service ; for the legal spirit ever disposes us, as it 
 were, to drive a good bargain with God. We understand that 
 so much work is expected of us, if we are to continue to enjoy 
 the divine favour. Very well ; then God must have it. But 
 as long as the amount expected is rendered, it does not so 
 much matter what the results of the work may be. We may 
 leave results with God, provided only we furnish the modicum 
 of toil. Thus much of the work done in our day is practically 
 regarded as an end in itself, instead of its being a means to an 
 end, and men are satisfied with working, without ever asking 
 whether the work is really being done ; and hence we have to 
 deplore, the scanty results of so much apparently well-meant 
 toil. 
 
 And this is not the only ill result of this legal spirit. It not 
 only spoils the work, but it cuts off the blessing from the 
 worker. Our work brings us no nearer to the Lord. We do 
 not perform it in His power nor by His Spirit; hence we exer- 
 cise little or no faith, and we enjoy no unction. Instead of 
 beins; watered ourselves while endeavouring to water others, 
 
 185
 
 The Peril of Legality. 
 
 our souls are dry and cold, and our activities seem to make 
 them no warmer. Hence whatever interest we feel in our 
 work is natural rather than spiritual, and when this fails us the 
 work becomes a wearisome drudgery, and we feel what it is to 
 be children of the bondwoman. 
 
 And it might be so different ! Our work might be like our 
 new life a child of laughter, an heir of the promises. It 
 might be our very meat and drink to do our Father's business. 
 Service might be joy, and self-sacrifice might be privilege, if 
 only love were law. As the son who is true to the filial instinct 
 finds his father's work a matter of engrossing interest, and 
 works all the better because he is freeborn ; as he will not be 
 content with a mere mechanical routine of toil, but keeps the 
 end in view, and is only satisfied with his work when it really 
 contributes to and leads up to it ; so the true Christian, who is 
 of the new Jerusalem, finds his work a joy because it is God's 
 work, and does it well just because he is his father's son. 
 And when work is thus done, it brings him who does it all the 
 nearer to God. He cannot face his work without claiming 
 the divine presence; he cannot accomplish it without casting 
 himself on the divine power j and when it is wrought, his very 
 gratitude and joy bring him all the nearer to the God by whom 
 the work has been done. Thus work becomes twice blest. 
 Blest because it benefits others, and produces definite spiritual 
 results ; and blest because it brings our own souls into fuller 
 fellowship with God. 
 
 These illustrations will, I think, suffice to show the difference 
 between the life of legal bondage and the life of gospel liberty; 
 and now with these contrasted forms of experience before us, 
 " what saith the scripture ? Cast out the bondwoman and her 
 son : for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir together 
 with the son of the freewoman." The life of mere duty obli- 
 gation is incompatible with the life of liberty and love. " Cast 
 out the bondwoman." Don't attempt to produce a mongrel 
 Christianity, in which Law and Gospel shall be pretty much 
 mixed up together the life of compulsion and the life of 
 freedom. Refuse to be satisfied with stern and loveless Duty, 
 and let Love take her place. Make it your habit to consider 
 rather what you may do than what you must do. Think rather, 
 Will this please or will it grieve the Master ? than, Is it right 
 or wrong? Look upon His service as a pleasure rather than 
 as an obligation ; a privilege rather than a duty. So shall you 
 
 186
 
 The Peril of Legality. 
 
 find a joy in performing it that shall prove you to be a true 
 Isaac, a child of laughter. 
 
 And thus you shall show yourself also an heir of the promises. 
 All the promises of God will prove yea and amen to you, and 
 you shall laugh for very joy of heart as one by one these 
 exceeding great and precious promises are fulfilled, and as you 
 find out what it is to know the truth, and by the truth to be 
 made free. 
 
 And remember above everything else that the real secret 
 of liberty lies in the possession of the promised seed. Well 
 might St. Paul say to these Galatians, " My little children, 
 for whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in 
 you." Had Christ been formed within them they never could 
 have been reduced to this state of bondage ; for Christ would 
 have brought His own filial instincts along with Him, and 
 would have infused into their hearts the nature of the Son. 
 
 And it is this that will keep us from legality. Christ our life 
 will never be a slave ; Christ our new nature will never submit 
 to a yoke of bondage. But where He dwells there He must 
 bring His own love-law along with Him, and thus raise us up 
 to the liberties of heaven, where love is law and law is love, 
 because God is all in all 
 
 1*7
 
 Clje IPertT of 8ntfnomtantsnu 
 
 " What then ? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under 
 grace? God forbid." Rom.vi. 15. 
 
 /^HRISTIAN life, as we pointed out in our last sermon, is 
 ^^ exposed to two opposite dangers, against both of which 
 we have to guard with the greatest jealousy and care Legality 
 and Antinomianism, Of the latter I desire now to speak. 
 
 Both Legality and Antinomianism, it is true, as they spring 
 from, and are based upon, a misconception of divinely-revealed 
 truth, may be described as doctrinal or speculative errors ; but 
 they also have a very important bearing upon our experience 
 and conduct. A man who is under the influence of Legality will 
 live his life upon a lower level than that which properly belongs 
 to the true Christian. Even those actions of his which are 
 in conformity with the Divine Law, as to their outward character 
 and complexion, will be destitute of the desired intrinsic 
 quality, and will give little or no pleasure to the God for whom 
 they are performed. For we must never forget that God not 
 merely inspects the outward character, but weighs the inward 
 quality of our actions. He will be pleased only with those 
 good works which are done in such a spirit as He Himself has 
 inspired, and therefore can approve. 
 
 He who is under the influence of the Antinomian spirit, on 
 the other hand, will come short of the Christian standard in 
 his conduct, and will equally fail to please that God whose work- 
 manship he professes to be, but who creates us anew unto good 
 works, which He has before ordained that we should walk in 
 them. Thus it will be seen that in both these respects erroneous 
 or defective views are likely indeed, I may say are certain 
 to induce mischievous results in our conduct and in our lives. 
 
 Legality springs, as we have seen, from a false conception of 
 the nature of the Christian's relation to the Law. The Law was 
 given in the childhood of the human race for those who were 
 not yet prepared to receive a fuller and more spiritual dispen- 
 sation of God's love to men. While we are children, says the 
 
 188
 
 The Peril of Antinomianism. 
 
 Apostle, though we may be heirs, we are no better than hired 
 servants ; we are under tutors and governors until the time 
 appointed by the Father. When the time appointed by the 
 Father arrives, we are under tutors and governors no longer ; 
 we are free to act on principle, and in accordance with our 
 own enlightened sense of our proper self-interest. Under 
 these circumstances the true son recognizes the identity of his 
 interests with his Father's. He is no longer constrained by 
 external law, or directed by mere authority; but he is disposed 
 to fulfil his Father's will by an intelligent apprehension of its 
 true character, and of its harmony with his own real interests, 
 and its tendency to promote his well-being. Thus it comes to 
 pass that the Law, instead of being without, takes up its abode 
 within. Instead of being graven upon tables of stone, it is 
 written upon the fleshy tables of the heart, and becomes a 
 living power, in surrendering ourselves to which we fulfil the 
 purposes of God, and rise to our glorious destiny. 
 
 As the error of Legality springs from a misconception of the 
 nature of the Christian's relation to the Law from our failing 
 to see that the Christian is not under the Law, because he is 
 above the Law so the error of practical Antinomianism arises 
 from a misapprehension of the nature of the relation of that Law 
 which should exist within, to the Law which does exist without. 
 The Law, incomplete though it was, given when a perfect or 
 complete revelation would not have been acceptable to man, or 
 lather when man was not in a position to receive it, was none the 
 less the revelation of the Holy Spirit. It was by the Divine Spirit 
 that the Law was originally communicated to Moses. And as 
 it was originally given by the Holy Ghost, so its character has 
 been exhibited and illustrated its deep and concealed truths 
 made patent and manifest by the teaching of the same Holy 
 Spirit, shedding his lustre over the sacred page. Hence it is 
 obvious that there can be no kind of discrepancy, contrariety, 
 or antagonism between the law of God without and the subjec- 
 tive law written within by the same Divine Agent. In other 
 words, the Holy Spirit of God cannot write one thing on tables 
 of stone and another thing on the fleshy tables of the heart. 
 The law within will necessarily be in harmony with the law 
 without, if the law within is the product of the influence and 
 operation of the Holy Ghost 
 
 Hence, although we are no longer under the Law, we are not 
 without the Law. You will remember that St. Paul is careful to 
 
 189
 
 The Peril of Antinomianism. 
 
 qualify his own language in this respect. " To them that are 
 without law, as without law" then he checks himself lest he 
 should be misunderstood " though not without law to God, 
 but under law to Christ." There is no expression in our lan- 
 guage precisely equivalent to that which the Apostle here 
 employs. We speak of a man being outlawed, but we do not 
 speak of his being " inlawed." The word would seem to con- 
 vey the idea of his being under the influence of a law, which 
 binds him, in holy allegiance, to Christ. 
 
 Such being our position, it is impossible for us to be true to 
 the law within, and not fulfil the law without. This should 
 enable us to understand the bearing and significance of the 
 Apostle's words in Rom. viii., where he says, " That the 
 righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not 
 after the flesh, but after the Spirit." There has been not a 
 little controversy with respect to the proper significance of this 
 verse. In what sense, it has been asked, is the righteousness 
 of the Law to be fulfilled in us ? Some have taken the worb 
 righteousness in what is called its forensic sense, and have de- 
 lieved it to refer to the righteousness imputed to the believer, 
 which is regarded by God as a fulfilment of the Law. But against 
 that interpretation of the word is to be set the consideration 
 that the Apostle is here speaking of our walk. "Fulfilled in us 
 who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." How is the 
 righteousness of the Law to be fulfilled in our walk ? Not by 
 the original imputation of the Divine righteousness when we 
 were sinners. That has nothing to do with our walk and con- 
 versation or mode of life. It is fulfilled in our walk and 
 conversation when we are true to the law within. A man who 
 is led by the Spirit of God, who surrenders himself to the 
 inward leading and guiding of the Divine Spirit, will live up to 
 the level of the righteousness of the Law, and thus the object 
 of God in condemning sin in the flesh, and in communicating 
 to us a new law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, will be 
 answered. 
 
 The law without was weak in the flesh ; that is; through the 
 fleshly fallen nature of those to whom it was communicated. 
 The law within is strong in the Spirit ; that is to say, through 
 the union with our spirit of that Divine Spirit with whom 
 righteousness is a law of existence, and who prints upon the 
 prepared heart the reflection of Himself, rendering it to some 
 extent at any rate the counterpart of his own moral beauty. 
 
 190
 
 The Peril of Antinomianism. 
 
 Thus man is to be prepared for his glorious destiny, and fitted 
 to share the dignity, because he has become partaker of the 
 moral excellence, of the Supreme Being, to whom throughout 
 eternity he is to be united. 
 
 Now, in the present passage, the position of the Antinomian 
 is put in the strongest possible language. "What then?" 
 that is to say, What is the conclusion that we may draw from 
 all these evangelical considerations that have been passing 
 before our minds ? And it would be well indeed if from time 
 to time we were to ask ourselves the question, "What then?" 
 AVhat is the conclusion that we draw? What of all the 
 privileges which belong to us as members of the Christian 
 Church, and as heirs of the glory of the Christian dispensation? 
 What of the fact that we are purchased, not with corruptible 
 things such as silver and gold, but with the priceless blood of 
 Christ? What of the fact that we are set free from the old 
 life of bondage in which our forefathers were wont to live? 
 What of the fact that we are not come to the mount that 
 might be touched, but to mount Zion, and unto the city of the 
 living God, the heavenly Jerusalem? What is the practical 
 conclusion that we are to draw ? 
 
 Well, here is one suggested to our minds from the point of 
 view of the Antinomian. " Shall we sin because we are not 
 under the Law, but under grace ?" If we are no longer bound 
 by the Law of compulsion under which our spiritual forefathers 
 of ancient Israel lived and died if we are no longer within 
 reach of the terrors of Sinai why should we be careful about 
 our walk and conversation ? May we not freely sin because 
 we are not under the Law? 
 
 Let me say, in the first place, that there are very few persons 
 who will maintain this position in distinct terms. For one 
 reason, it is obviously opposed to the teaching of Holy Scrip- 
 ture. It is also clearly and manifestly subversive of all 
 morality. If it could be sustained, then the Gospel would 
 do more harm to mankind than any other system, religious or 
 irreligious, that you can refer to. But there is no intelligent 
 person who will not be slow to assume any such position, or to 
 put any such case as this. It is taken for granted that, in some 
 way or other, the Gospel must be opposed to human sin ; those 
 who are under the influence of it must be expected, to some 
 extent at least, to rise above their natural infirmities, and lead 
 a pure and godly life. 
 
 191
 
 The Peril of Antinomianism. 
 
 But, my dear brethren, while there is this general consensus 
 of opinion, I am afraid that underneath it all the spirit of 
 practical Antinomianism still lurks in too many of our hearts, 
 and that while we shrink from affirming in given terms that 
 the gospel of God's grace is not designed to set us free from 
 sin, a great many, almost unconsciously, act as though this 
 were really the case. 
 
 The position of the practical Antinomian amounts to this 
 He assumes that the Law, as originally given, set before man a 
 standard too high for him to attain to. God saw it was too 
 high, and that it was necessary to make some diminution of 
 its claims to bring down the standard of divine perfection 
 to the level of human infirmity. How was it to be done ? If 
 man were to be dealt with by an inexorably holy and pure Law, 
 there were nothing for it but the wholesale condemnation of 
 the human family. This must not be. Some scheme must 
 therefore be devised, however cunning and subtle, by means 
 of which the appearance of morality and religion should be 
 preserved, while at the same time a reduction or modification 
 of the claims of God upon the human heart should be per- 
 mitted and sanctioned. 
 
 The result of this would be to render it possible for men 
 to live calmly at their ease and without fear of condemnation ; 
 while, at the same time, they failed to rise to the level of that 
 life which the original law of God indicated, and the claims 
 of which are backed by such tremendous sanctions. In plain 
 terms, the substance of practical Antinomianism is this : that 
 the gospel of Christ is a cunningly -devised scheme for ren- 
 dering it possible for men to lead lives of imperfection and sin 
 with comfort, or, at any rate, without apprehension ; whereas, 
 under the Law, such lives could only be led with considerable 
 discomfort and misgiving. We are to go on sinning under the 
 Gospel as under the Law; but whereas under the Law sin 
 brought a sense of condemnation ; under the Gospel man shall 
 sin, and yet enjoy immunity from condemnation. Is not this 
 the latent thought with respect to the relation of the Gospel to 
 Law, present to the mind of only too many of us ? 
 
 And what is the practical result of this ? It is that we do 
 not expect our Christian righteousness even to come up to the 
 legal standard in too many respects, and are not distressed and 
 alarmed when it fails to do so. Suppose that some of us who 
 know something about the grace of God, who are instructed 
 
 192
 
 The Peril of Antinomianism. 
 
 evangelical Christians, were to put our lives side by side with 
 what we know of the life of those who witnessed to the ancient 
 Law the life, say, of a Scribe or a Pharisee would the com- 
 parison be in our favour or in theirs ? Let us search ourselves 
 for a moment with an honest intention of coming at the truth. 
 Have we not got it into our minds that, the yoke of the Law 
 having been very grievous in the time of the Pharisees, Christ 
 came to make it less grievous, to render it possible to go to 
 heaven comfortably, without putting ourselves to so much 
 trouble, or undergoing so much self-denial, or complying with 
 so many irksome obligations ? 
 
 Let us descend to details for a moment. The ancient 
 Pharisee made long prayers. We will admit that sometimes 
 he may have been hypocritical and unreal. At the same time 
 we know that a very considerable portion of his time was 
 spent in acts of devotion. Do any of us Christians draw the 
 conclusion that because the Gospel is considered to have 
 taken the place of the Law, therefore a few hurried words of 
 prayer is all that God actually expects of us ? Do we excuse 
 ourselves when we have hastily got over the devotions that we 
 conceive to be necessary, with the reflection, "I have other 
 things to think about; the pressure of life is so great that 
 I have very little time for these spiritual duties. Happily I 
 am under the Gospel ; I am a child of God, and therefore not 
 under legal restraint, and bound to give so much of my time 
 to prayer, to spend so many hours or days of my life in com- 
 munion with Him "? 
 
 The Pharisee would not have been so ready to excuse him- 
 self. He would have said, " It is my legal duty to spend so 
 much time in prayer ; if I do not do it I bring myself under 
 the condemnation of the Law." My dear friend, do you not 
 think our love ought to make us pray more than the Pharisee's 
 sense of duty made him pray? What is the Apostle's idea of a 
 Christian's life in this respect ? He says, " Pray without ceasing." 
 The Christian's life is to be one continuous prayer ; and he who 
 prays because he loves to pray, think you that he will pray less 
 than the man who prays because he feels it to be his duty to 
 pray? Will the Law induce an ampler and deeper devotion than 
 the Gospel ? Will the Gospel lead us to less intercourse with 
 God than the Law? If so, it were surely to be regretted that 
 the dispensation of the Law has thus been superseded ! 
 
 Take another illustration. The ancient Pharisee thought it 
 ii. 193 o
 
 The Peril of Antinoniianism. 
 
 a very important thing to be thoroughly acquainted with his 
 Bible. He studied the Old Testament Scriptures with a great 
 deal of care, paying, no doubt, a large amount of attention to 
 the letter; for the whole genius of Legality is mechanical. The 
 man's religious nature was regarded as a piece of machinery 
 designed to do a certain definite amount of religious work. 
 At the same time, mechanically or otherwise, the work was 
 done. The Bible was studied, and many of the ancient Legalists 
 could repeat large portions by heart. They could tell you all 
 about the various interpretations and glosses, showing that they 
 had spent a considerable amount of time and trouble in en- 
 deavouring to ascertain what God had said in the Scriptures. 
 
 Dear friend, you are free ; you are under the Gospel. Does 
 your freedom lead you to study your Bible less than the ancient 
 Pharisee would have done ? Do we spend less time instead of 
 more in the attempt to become acquainted with what God has 
 revealed here of his mind and will? Whereas the Pharisee 
 read and studied the word of God, because he was bound by 
 legal constraint to do so, do we pass the study of it over with 
 slight trouble and attention because, forsooth, we are free from 
 legal obligation ? That is what I mean by the spirit of practi- 
 cal Antinoniianism. 
 
 Take yet another illustration. The Pharisee, as we know, 
 paid carefully a tithe of all he possessed. Out of every pound 
 that belonged to him if he had lived in a day when money was 
 thus reckoned he would have paid two shillings into the 
 sacred treasury. He would no more have thought of keeping 
 it back than of robbing his neighbour. I do not know where 
 we shall find a better illustration of the Antinomian spirit than 
 in this matter. Do you say, " Thank God, I am not under the 
 Law ! It may have been necessary for the Israelite to pay two 
 shillings out of every pound into the treasury; but now, under 
 the Gospel, I am free from any such obligation " ? What, my 
 friend, has thy money become thine own because thou thy- 
 self art bought with a price ? Is the result of all that has been 
 done for thee, by the infinite compassion of Jehovah, to leave 
 thee under slenderer obligations and more dubious claims than 
 those which were recognized as binding on men who lived 
 under a dimmer dispensation ? Who told thee that tithes are no 
 longer required of thee ? Nay, has no one told thee that thou 
 and all that thou hast belong to the Lord, who hath bought 
 thee at the price of His own outpoured blood ? 
 
 194
 
 The Peril of Antinomianism, 
 
 Have you never read those searching words which fell from 
 the lips of Eternal Truth when here on the earth " Except 
 your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes 
 and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of 
 neaven " ? 
 
 Observe that if the Christian is living up to his privileges, he 
 will exceed in all these respects the righteousness of the Scribes 
 and Pharisees. He will exceed it by acting in a different way. 
 Very possibly he will not actually spend so many minutes 
 in the day in what seems to be prayer as the Pharisee 
 did ; but his whole life will be a prayer ; he will be in constant 
 communion and fellowship with God, opening his heart to 
 divine influences, rejoicing in a sense of the divine presence, 
 walking in the sunshine of the divine smile. That is the life 
 that belongs to the real Christian a life of liberty, but which 
 by this very liberty is lifted above the level alike of legal 
 bondage and of legal righteousness. 
 
 So with respect to other things. The Christian whose time, 
 it may be, is largely taken up by other work, which is all, 
 whether secular or sacred (so-called), done for Christ, in the 
 pressure of daily employment, may find it difficult to set apart 
 as much time as the Pharisee, who may not have been so 
 fully occupied, for the study of the word of God. But the 
 Christian who is living in the Spirit will be meditating upon the 
 law of God all the day long. It will be continually recurring 
 to his mind. If it sometimes should happen and it will not 
 often happen that he has time only to read a few texts in the 
 morning, that will give him something to think about all day ; 
 so that, as he goes about his daily occupation, everything will 
 be sanctified by the word of God and the spirit of prayer. 
 This spiritual tone that possesses his nature will lead him up 
 to a higher level of practical righteousness than that of the 
 strictest Legalist. If our religion does not do this for us, is it 
 other than a specious, plausible system of Antinomianism, 
 which leads us to flatter ourselves that the Gospel delivers us 
 from obligations which are eternal and inexorable in their 
 character, and which spring from the very nature of the 
 relations between God and man ? 
 
 So with respect to money. One man may find it a far more 
 difficult thing to give a tenth of his income than it would be 
 for another man to give a half. Here is a poor labouring man 
 who earns ^50 a year. Out of that he has to support a wife 
 
 195
 
 The Peril of Antinomianism. 
 
 and, say, four or five children. Rents are high, and so are 
 prices ; expenses are numerous. Sometimes it is a matter of 
 serious difficulty to make both ends meet. Such a man may 
 possibly give a tenth of all he possesses to the Lord (I do not 
 believe he would be the poorer for it) ; but were he to do so, 
 he would be giving a great deal more, in proportion to his 
 means and his circumstances, than the man whose income may 
 stand at ^50,000 a year would be doing, if he gave ^40,000 
 out of that amount. I mean to say that the giving of a tenth 
 in the one case would entail more actual hardship and true 
 self-denial than the giving of so large a proportion as four- 
 fifths in the other. 
 
 As Christians, we are raised to the level of the law of liberty, 
 and therefore we shall consider, not what we are bound to give 
 by any ancient edict, but what we may give in proportion to 
 the amount of stewardship God has entrusted us with, and the 
 circumstances by which we are surrounded. The real Chris- 
 tian is not to think he has discharged the claims of God upon 
 him in this respect when he has paid a paltry tenth. My all 
 belongs to the Lord. I know He does not grudge me the 
 enjoyment of the good things of this life in moderation and 
 thankfulness. He does not call upon me to lead the life of an 
 ascetic. Every man must decide for himself how much it is 
 consistent with his Christian profession to spend upon himself, or, 
 rather, how little it is possible to spend without doing anything 
 that might injure his usefulness or militate against the influence 
 which, as a man, he is intended to exercise upon his fellow- 
 men in society ; for we have to bear in mind that anything 
 that savours of assumed poverty and ostentatious asceticism 
 will necessarily be repellant to the natural and not improper 
 instincts of mankind, and will lead men to look upon Chris- 
 tianity with aversion, as the enemy of all the amenities of 
 civilization and culture. We have to take this into consideration 
 in our decision upon such matters, and beware of laying down 
 hard and fast sumptuary laws for other people, or even for 
 ourselves. 
 
 But while in these particulars every man must judge for 
 himself what the Divine Will is, he will not judge by himself. 
 As a true child of God, he will instinctively refer to his 
 heavenly Father for guidance rather than for commands, fully 
 persuaded that he will derive real satisfaction from the use 
 of his means only in so far as they are laid out subject to 
 
 196
 
 The Peril of Antinomianism, 
 
 his Father's approval. And as his first and most important 
 interests are bound up in his Father's kingdom and glory, his 
 chief pleasure in the use of money will be experienced when 
 he uses it to promote these. Instead of Christian charity 
 being regarded as a duty, and other uses of money as a 
 pleasure, his estimate of things will be exactly the reverse of 
 this. It may be necessary for him to spend money upon 
 other things ; but the less the better. His true joy will be to 
 give to God. How impossible for such a man to say in his 
 heart, " If I were under the Law, I should have had to pay my 
 tenth ; fortunately I am under the Gospel, so I may be content 
 to give a fortieth." 
 
 The one question with the spiritually-minded in all such 
 cases will be, " How shall I best promote the glory of Him 
 to whom I belong by the use of my stewardship?" And 
 when this question is honestly asked, and the answer, so far 
 as it is discovered, acted upon, you may be sure that your 
 righteousness will exceed the righteousness of the Legalist, in 
 this respect as in others. 
 
 Alas ! my brethren, the facts are against us here. What 
 stronger proof can we have of the presence of practical Anti- 
 nomianism in our midst than the sorrowful fact, which I am 
 afraid the stern rules of arithmetic forbid us to doubt, that the 
 righteousness of the Christian Church does not even come up 
 to, or even distantly approach, the righteousness of the Pharisee 
 in this particular. Just consider how affluent the Christian 
 Church would be, and how liberally supported every charitable, 
 philanthropic, and religious cause, if only Christians, one and 
 all, offered even so small a proportion of their means as a 
 tenth to the Divine treasury.* 
 
 I have been speaking here of what I may describe as the 
 positive side of our obligations ; now let us turn to the negative 
 side. What about sin ? The specific question of our text is, 
 " Shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under 
 grace?" Yes; what about sin? Is it not very much the 
 
 * We would hope that there cannot be less than one million of professing 
 and possessing Christians in the United Kingdom (adults), probably many 
 more. Setting the rich against the poor, and remembering how many 
 belong to the respectable middle classes, their incomes cannot average less 
 than .100 per annum. At this moderate figure we should have ten millions 
 per annum to spend in the cause of Christ from the offerings of His people 
 only. To say nothing of what might be obtained from nominal Chris- 
 tians, if they came up to the Pharisee's standard in this respect. 
 
 197
 
 The Peril of Antinomianism. 
 
 same here as with respect to these various forms of moral and 
 religious duty which we have been considering? Have we 
 not got into a way of thinking that now that we are Christians, 
 certain forms of sin are to be tolerated, because we are not 
 under the Law, but under grace? Are not too many of us 
 ready enough to admit that the gospel of Christ will preclude 
 us from committing grave and serious crimes and offences 
 against public decency and universal right, but that the same 
 power is not to be expected to raise us above those little 
 infirmities, those smaller sins, that belong to human life, and 
 for which we are so ready to excuse ourselves, because our 
 falls are so frequent? 
 
 You do not expect a Christian to commit murder, or to 
 steal? Of course not. Why? Because he is a Christian. 
 Then you do not expect that he will ever lose his temper ? Oh 
 dear, yes ; of course he will ! Why should he ? Is that also 
 because he is a Christian ? Surely you do not mean to tell me 
 that murder is a sin, and temper is not ! You do not expect 
 a Christian to bear false witness ? Oh, certainly not ! Why 
 not? Because he is a Christian. Then you do not expect 
 him to whisper little slanders about his neighbours, or to 
 colour a story by exaggeration, do you ? Oh dear, yes ; that 
 may be ! Why may it be ? Is that also because he is a 
 Christian ? What ! for the same reason I am to be precluded 
 from sinning in the one case, and to be excused for sinning in 
 the other ! 
 
 If I am under the Law, interpreted by the sermon on the 
 mount, and interpreted there by the Lawgiver Himself, am I 
 not precluded from the one class of offences as much as from 
 the other? Is not the one class of offence as truly a violation 
 of the eternal law of right as the other class. The sin may 
 not be equally flagrant or heinous, but sin it is, and as sin it is 
 equally opposed to the Law of God. Surely it must be. If 
 this be so if in both cases I am equally offending, or if not 
 equally, at any rate, in both cases I am certainly offending 
 against the eternal law of righteousness will you tell me that 
 in the one case I am scarcely to be condemned because I am 
 a Christian, and in the enjoyment of Christian freedom ; 
 whereas in the other case of notorious sin, I am greatly to be 
 condemned for the same reason because I am a Christian, 
 and in the enjoyment of Christian freedom ? 
 
 Th'ere is some glaring inconsistency here somewhere. Where 
 
 198
 
 The Peril of Antinomianism. 
 
 does God draw this distinction between great sins and little 
 sins ? Where does He teach us that the grace of God is able 
 to save us from big sins, but nothing in the wide world will 
 save us from little sins ? Where are we taught that the gospel 
 of the Lord Jesus Christ leads us to regard ourselves as dead 
 to the more flagrant forms of iniquity that disgrace human 
 conduct, and as alive to these small peccadilloes which most 
 of us are disposed to look upon more or less indulgently? 
 Where do we find this teaching ? In our own wicked hearts ; 
 but not in God's word. 
 
 "Shall we sin because we are not under the Law?" The 
 answer is an ejaculation of holy horror. "God forbid," exclaims 
 the Apostle. Oh, my friends, if we are living up to the level 
 of true gospel privilege, and in the spirit of the gospel, we too 
 shall be constrained to utter a similar ejaculation, "God 
 forbid." 
 
 Let me guard myself against being misunderstood. A man 
 is not an Antinomian because he is overtaken in a fault. A 
 man is an Antinomian when he expects to be overtaken in a 
 fault He is not an Antinomian because he commits a sin, 
 little or great. He is an Antinomian when he is content with 
 a life in which he knows he is committing sin ; when he regards 
 this as the normal condition of Christian experience. 
 
 It is to me an amazing fact that in this nineteenth century, 
 when we have our Bibles, and can read and study for ourselves 
 the teaching of the great Apostle, there are to be met with, I 
 do not hesitate to say, hundreds and hundreds of Christians 
 who look upon Rom. vil as a description of the normal as 
 well as the actual condition of a true Christian man. Mark 
 you, it is not that they regard it as the description of an 
 abnormal and morbid condition into which a Christian man 
 may fall, but they regard it as the normal condition of the true 
 child of God. They believe that the true child of God, ran- 
 somed with the precious blood of Christ, and taken possession 
 of by the Holy Spirit, will yet be found saying, " I am carnal, 
 sold under sin." " The good that I would, I do not ; and the 
 evil that I would not, that I do." " I find another law in my 
 members warring against the law of my mind, and bringing 
 me into subjection to the law of sin that is in my members." 
 " Oh, wretched man that I am !" 
 
 What ! a child of God, a citizen of mount Zion, a heir of 
 all the glories of the eternal future, wringing his hands and 
 
 199
 
 The Peril of Antinomianism. 
 
 groaning out, " Oh, wretched man that I am ! Who shall 
 deliver me from the body of this death?" When Christians 
 are pressed upon the point they say, " Oh, yes ; that is our 
 position according to the old nature !" "What is the position 
 according to the new nature?" " Oh, that is in heavenly places 
 in Christ Jesus !" Then which are you old or new? To 
 the best of our information it would seem as though, while the 
 old nature is living in the prison, and while the new nature is 
 floating in some ethereal region, the Christian the real human 
 ego is somewhere between the two now up yonder, and now 
 down here. 
 
 Whence come these strange phantasmagoria, this indescribable 
 jargon of unmeaning terms ? Surely either we are walking at 
 liberty or in bondage. If we are at liberty, it is because Christ 
 has made us free. If we are in bondage, it is because we 
 have not taken our proper position of privilege, and are living 
 on a level that does not belong to us as servants of the Most 
 High God. 
 
 What does Paul say in the preceding verse ? " Sin shall not 
 have dominion over me." Will a man say, " Oh, wretched man 
 that I am ! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" 
 when sin has not dominion over him ? Will he say, " The 
 good that I would, I do not ; and the evil that I would not, 
 that I do," when sin has not dominion over him ? The very 
 fact that such an exegesis of this passage can be for a moment 
 considered as possible is, I much fear, an indication of the pre- 
 sence of the spirit of practical Antinomianism amongst the 
 followers of Christ. The sooner this foul spirit is, by God's 
 grace, exorcised from the Christian Church, the better for the 
 Church, and the better for the world at large. 
 
 Do we expect to rise above our sins? Do we, my dear 
 brethren, feel astonished and surprised when we fall? And 
 when we fall, do we at once go to the root of the matter, 
 inquiring the cause of our failure ? Instead of talking about 
 our old nature in the way I have described, and regarding it as 
 the natural thing that it should carry us along with it in the 
 steps of the old Adam, do we say, " My old nature has been 
 crucified, that the body of sin might be neutralized rendered 
 inoperative that henceforth we should not serve sin " ? I re- 
 peat, Do we go to the root of the matter and inquire how it 
 was we fell ; how we permitted ourselves to forfeit for a 
 moment our Christian liberty, and to take upon ourselves a
 
 The Peril of Antinomianism. 
 
 fresh yoke of bondage ? If such inquiries were more frequent ; 
 if we were surprised and astonished at our falls, and searched 
 our own hearts, and tried our reins, exposing ourselves to the 
 keen light of the illuminating Spirit, in order to discover how 
 we failed to use the power that belongs to us, we should very 
 soon see a different type of piety amongst ourselves. And men, 
 detecting the beauty of the Lord in the lives of His followers, 
 would be constrained to bend their knees and own the great- 
 ness of that Being who could produce by His influences such 
 moral greatness in His disciples. 
 
 One word ere I close. I have spoken of the danger; I 
 should be failing in my duty if I did not also speak of the cure. 
 What is the cure for the spirit of Antinomianism? If I am 
 exposed to real peril in this respect, how shall I rise above it ? 
 First, by apprehending in its completeness the great lesson of 
 the cross. Let me not say " the great lesson ; " it is more than 
 a lesson. The cross is not only a spectacle that teaches us 
 more eloquently than any other ; it is also a secret source of 
 power, from which we may draw forth as we need it such 
 hidden wealth of spiritual strength as shall stand us in good 
 stead in every hour of trial. When you thus apprehend your 
 own need, and, weary of the burden of your sins, and of the 
 tyranny of their dominion, turn your eyes upon Him who 
 hangs on the cross, you discover, first, redemption through His 
 blood from the curse of the broken law. If you have not made 
 that discovery, you will never make any other. Until it takes 
 place, your eyes are holden from discovering the power which 
 the cross of Christ contains. But oh, let me say to those who 
 have made that discovery as I trust most of you have, my 
 friends that is only half the revelation that you are contem- 
 plating ! There is more than this. It is true that the penalty 
 of the law has been fulfilled. It is true that justification has 
 been obtained by the substitution of Christ in our place. Is it 
 less true that our old man " has been crucified together with 
 Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed"? Is it less 
 true that Jesus Christ gave Himself for us (O God, carry the 
 word home to our hearts !), " that He might redeem us from 
 all iniquity " ? from " all iniquity I " 
 
 " We can only be saved from iniquity by being redeemed 
 from it. Iniquity obtains a certain right over us by force of 
 the law of habit. Man has yielded himself to be the slave of 
 that which he has voluntarily obeyed. How shall he be
 
 The Peril of Antinomianism. 
 
 delivered from this slavery? Only by redemption. When 
 this redemption is provided and accepted, the lawful captive 
 has been delivered, and the prey has been taken from the hand 
 of the mighty. 
 
 Now, have we grasped this view of the cross ? Do we con- 
 centrate our faith upon this point as if it were a reality, and 
 not a fiction ? He hath given Himself for me to redeem me 
 from all iniquity, so that the chains of habit shall no longer 
 bind me. My natural infirmities shall no longer exert an im- 
 perious sway over me. Has He done it? '''All iniquity." 
 That includes your temper, my friend. "All iniquity." That 
 includes your rattling tongue, my sister. "All iniquity." 
 That includes your pride of heart, my brother. "All iniquity." 
 That includes your love of money, my worldly-minded friend, 
 who art yet a Christian. Find it out, whatever it is, the latent 
 evil, the impurity of thought, subtle forms of self-deception ; 
 whatever they are, drag them from their hiding-places, bring 
 them out of the cave, as Joshua did the kings of old ; and as 
 you bring them out, put your foot upon their necks and cry, 
 " Christ has redeemed me from all iniquity, FROM ALL INIQUITY, 
 FROM ALL INIQUITY!" No more imprisonment within 
 the ribs of that stern skeleton of spiritual death ! No more 
 the plaintive cry of inward anguish, " Oh, wretched man ! who 
 shall deliver me?" The joy of life ; the boundless strength of 
 resurrection ; the inward God-like development that makes 
 man in some sense divine these are the blessed fruits of re- 
 demption, and the glories of the life which by faith in 
 redemption we, through God's mercy, are privileged to lead. 
 
 Ere I close, let me ask, Have you claimed the benefit of re- 
 demption in any wise ? I have spoken to you as Christian- 
 folk; addressed you as those who know the power and 
 preciousness of the blood of Christ. Do you not see that all 
 the teaching I have been endeavouring to give is utterly and 
 entirely beyond your reach unless Christ is yours? If the 
 heart has not been given to Him ; if the new life has not been 
 commenced within ; if the power of the Holy Ghost has not 
 taken possession of the consecrated temple, and made His own 
 that which formerly belonged to His rival ; if the Shechinah of 
 the divine presence has never flashed forth within the hallowed 
 fane then, my friend, what is thy religious life ? Thou must 
 drudge and toil at Sinai. Thou must keep company with 
 Hagar and Ishmael, live in the house of bondage, hugging thy
 
 The Peril of Antinomianism. 
 
 chains; and to the end of thy miserable career thou must 
 remain a stranger to that life of liberty and love which belongs 
 to the free-born citizens of heaven. 
 
 Are we redeemed? Yes, we are all redeemed. But have 
 we claimed our redemption ? That is the question I leave 
 with you, and I beseech you to put it to your own hearts. 
 Remember that it is only the ransomed of the Lord that can 
 walk on the King's highway of holiness. Only they can find 
 that security which is ensured by the presence of Jesus Him- 
 self upon the way. " No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous 
 beast shall go up thereon ; for He shall be with them." Only 
 they can experience that joy and holy ecstasy which shall 
 crown the head with songs of triumph. Only they can push 
 forward from strength to strength until, before the Lord of 
 lords, they appear every one of them in Zion. God grant that 
 such a life may be ours ! Amen. 
 
 203
 
 Cj)e Peril of 
 
 " Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man 
 love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in 
 the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride 
 of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world 
 passeth away, and the lust thereof : but he that doeth the will of God 
 abideth for ever." I John iL 15-17. 
 
 HOW many a hopeful beginning and fair promise of Christian 
 life is marred and spoiled by worldly influences ! How 
 many a flower of Paradise seems to perish in the bud at the 
 deadly touch of the world's cruel frost. Of all the many perils 
 that young Christians need to be cautioned against none are 
 more perilous than those which spring from the influences of 
 the world. It is wise then to call attention to this danger, 
 that, by God's blessing, we may be both forewarned and fore- 
 armed against it. 
 
 Now it is very important in considering this subject that we 
 should clearly understand who and what the enemy is from 
 whom we have to fear so much, and against whom we have 
 to guard so carefully. I am afraid that a very large number 
 of Christians are so uncertain in their views on this point that 
 they are scarcely in a position to detect the foe, and therefore 
 of course they are badly prepared to meet him and gain the 
 victory over him. 
 
 What is this world against which we are so frequently and 
 earnestly warned in Holy Scripture? Not a few Christians 
 have an idea that the word simply indicates certain forms of 
 worldly amusement and dissipation, in which gay and thought- 
 less people indulge. They suppose that in these consists 
 worldliness, and that to participate in these is to give way to 
 the world. Indeed you might judge from the language of some 
 that these even constitute what Scripture calls " the world." 
 
 Now obviously it cannot be correct to speak thus. The world 
 may have certain peculiar features and characteristics, but such 
 forms of dissipation as we have referred to do not constitute 
 the world, they rather belong to the class of objects specially 
 
 204
 
 The Peril of Worldliness. 
 
 spoken of here as " the things in the world." We must draw 
 a distinction between the world itself and the things that are 
 in it. These are necessarily distinct from each other. It is 
 therefore most important that we should clearly apprehend 
 what that world is which we are here cautioned not to love. 
 
 The term employed is obviously a most comprehensive one, 
 suggesting a very complex idea. Its meaning may perhaps 
 best be illustrated by reference to other complex terms with 
 which we are familiar. When you use the word England, 
 for example, how many thoughts are suggested to your mind 
 by that word used in its conventional sense. There is first the 
 country itself, so much of this world's surface, to which we give 
 the name of England. But we mean a great deal more than 
 that, don't we ? We mean the people who live therein ; and 
 we mean more than that. The nation, as it is, is in some 
 sense the product of its history. There are certain features of 
 the England of to-day, moral, mental, and physical, which may 
 be attributed to the circumstances of bygone ages, and to the 
 various conditions, physical, ethnological, social, and political, 
 under which the character of the nation has been formed. 
 There are certain institutions, customs, habits of thought and 
 action, which have all contributed to the formation of our 
 national individuality, and these may all be regarded as com- 
 prehended in the complex idea suggested by the term. 
 
 It is even such a term that we use when we speak of " the 
 world." Many thoughts are suggested by the word if we form 
 anything like a full and sufficient idea of its meaning. First, 
 there is this material earth the planet in which we live ; but 
 when holy Scripture speaks of the world here and elsewhere it 
 obviously means something more than this outward globe of ours. 
 At the same time do not let us forget that this is the first 
 meaning of the word, because much of what we understand by 
 worldliness is closely connected with, and indeed springs from, 
 the outward conditions of our existence in this respect We 
 are living in a material world, whose objects appeal to our 
 senses; while the world for which we have been created is 
 spiritual and supersensuous. The world itself is therefore apt 
 to exert a paramount influence over us as a result of the 
 conditions of our present existence; and herein lies, you may 
 say, the very root of worldliness. 
 
 But further we mean by the world, not only the place, but the 
 people, or at least some of the people, who live in it. Now, there 
 
 205
 
 The Peril of Worldliness. 
 
 are two classes of persons who inhabit this world. There are 
 some who do not belong to the world, although they live here, 
 and there are others who do ; some who, though their position 
 is on earth, have their home in heaven who can say, with the 
 great Apostle, that their citizenship is in heaven. These persons 
 have taken Jesus Christ for their King ; they are guided, or 
 desire to be guided, by His laws, and to live in accordance 
 with the maxims and customs which prevail in the heavenly 
 Jerusalem. Their treasure is laid up yonder; their hopes are 
 hid there; their truest and deepest joys are derived from 
 spiritual contact with that invisible world. While here on earth 
 they feel that they do not belong to earth, but that in a certain 
 sense earth belongs to them. They look forward to the day 
 when this earth of ours shall be reclaimed by its proper owner, 
 and become the recognized property of our Lord and His 
 saints ; but while they look forward to that period they feel 
 that at present the world is under the influence of a tyrant 
 and a usurper, whose authority and claims they ignore, and 
 whose will they endeavour to oppose ; while they continue to 
 recognize the supremacy of their invisible Lord, and seek to 
 promote His glory. These do not belong to the world at all ; 
 they are in, but not of, the world. They belong already to the 
 kingdom of heaven ; for heaven as a kingdom has as real an 
 existence now as any that can be revealed hereafter. 
 
 But there is another class of persons in the world, who are 
 described in a notable passage of Scripture. Of them St. Paul 
 says they " mind earthly things ;" that is, their affections and 
 desires are centred in this world. They do not recognize the 
 supremacy of the Lord Jesus Christ, nor do they desire to 
 recognize it. They are practically under the authority of him 
 whom Christ calls the prince of this world. His supremacy is 
 practically established in their hearts and wills and minds. 
 He is their ruler ; they shape their conduct in accordance with 
 his influence. He has a court, which bears the name of Society; 
 he has his laws, which are obeyed throughout Society. There 
 are maxims and fashions established by his influence, which 
 are generally accepted by Society. His mind and will have 
 printed themselves upon Society as it now exists, and have 
 made it what it is. 
 
 These two classes exist in this world of ours side by side; 
 and the two contending policies are continuously developing 
 their resources. The power of God the Holy Ghost is working 
 
 206
 
 The Peril of Worldliness. 
 
 in His Church, and the power of the prince of darkness is 
 working in the world. Through long ages the conflict between 
 these two opposed centres of dignity and power has been 
 continuing, and it will continue until at last the stronger 
 and the better shall win the day ; the world shall be crushed, 
 its ruler shall be dethroned, its power be broken, and its 
 kingdom and sceptre pass to its rightful Lord. 
 
 The world then, to speak definitely, is composed of those who 
 do not recognize the supremacy of the Lord Jesus Christ, nor 
 have given their hearts to Him. Those who have not accepted 
 Christ as their King are the children of the world. This 
 general definition is, I think, perfectly correct, as far as it goes. 
 Now in primitive times the distinction between the world 
 and the Church was very marked. Those who belonged 
 to the world did not even profess to accept the authority of 
 Jesus Christ ; on the contrary, they proclaimed outward war 
 against Him and His, and carried it on with cruel persecutions. 
 The world of that date possessed either no religion at all, or 
 a base and grovelling superstition ; but those who were called 
 Christians were everywhere despised and spoken against. Under 
 those circumstances it was easy to draw a comparatively hard- 
 and-fast line between the world and the Church. 
 
 But soon Satan began to change his tactics. He disposed 
 the world to respect the Church ; for he began to see that her 
 strength lay in opposition. He therefore set his wisdom to 
 work to rob her of this power, and he has attempted to com- 
 pass this end by seeking to confuse her as far as possible with 
 the world, and to obliterate as far as possible that clear, sharp, 
 well-defined line of demarcation which separated the children 
 \ of God from the children of this world. He is not content 
 ( with sowing tares in the world which shall grow side by side 
 s with the wheat until the harvest, but he seeks to blend the 
 ' tares with the wheat so skilfully that the superficial observer 
 cannot tell which is which. And, mark my words, any attempt 
 on our part outwardly to separate between the wheat and the 
 tares is altogether premature, and an act of disobedience. 
 Jesus Christ has told us that they are to grow together until 
 the harvest, and therefore we have no right to attempt to 
 separate them. 
 
 At the same time, brethren, do not let us ignore the fact that 
 the presence of evil in the Church is the work, not of God, 
 but of the subtle opponent of God, the prince of this world. 
 
 207
 
 The Peril of Worldliness. 
 
 Finding the infant Church too strong for him as long as 
 she was true to her principles, he endeavoured to infuse the 
 poison of the worldly spirit into the true Church by inducing 
 the world to patronize it. When the Roman Emperor and 
 other potentates demanded that all should accept the principles 
 of Christianity, they seemed to be doing a great deal to advance 
 the good cause. As a matter of fact, they were really doing it 
 the greatest harm ; for they were introducing more and more 
 of those elements of worldliness into it, of which we see such 
 sad examples in our own day. We see, for instance, kneeling 
 side by side in the same house^of prayer, before the same God, 
 the true and the false worshipper. In the same Church mem- 
 bership are those in whose heart Jesus Christ reigns, and those 
 in whose heart Satan reigns. 
 
 It is therefore much more difficult now to distinguish be- 
 tween the world and the Church than it was eighteen hundred 
 years ago. At the same time there is such a distinction, and 
 we ought in the first place to recognize that fact, and in the 
 second place look to God for wisdom to discern it as clearly as 
 we can. Let our judgments of others be always kind and 
 tender, and inclined towards the more charitable side ; but at 
 the same time there is no true charity shown in shutting our 
 . eyes to palpable facts. You do not prove yourselves charitable 
 towards worldly people when you leave them to conclude that 
 you regard them as true servants of God, while you have 
 abundant grounds for believing that their hearts have not been 
 yielded to the Lord. Your truest charity lies in recognizing 
 the facts as they are, and in endeavouring to bring such to 
 realize their position, to turn their back on the world to which 
 they belong, and to submit to Christ, who is their rightful 
 Lord. 
 
 Do you ask, How shall we discern between the world and 
 
 the Church ? How shall we make the distinction ? I reply, 
 
 In a large number of instances it is not difficult to discern, 
 
 /because there are a great number of persons whose lives speak 
 
 / for themselves ; evidently their object in life is not to glorify 
 
 V God, or yield to His claims. You see that they take no real 
 
 interest in things spiritual ; it is difficult to persuade them to 
 
 attend the services in which you so much delight ; nor do they 
 
 understand. you_r ^ieasure^Jhejrn. Under such circumstances 
 
 it is not only not uncharitable to conclude that they belong to 
 
 the world, but it is simply silly to do anything else. If their 
 
 208
 
 The Peril of Worldliness. 
 
 actions show the power and the presence of the spirit that now 
 works in the children of disobedience, you are bound to be- 
 lieve the testimony of your senses, and act accordingly. 
 
 In another large number of instances, where the lines are 
 not so hardly drawn, a tolerably good idea of the character can 
 be obtained from indications proceeding from the lives of those 
 by whom you are surrounded. When it is apparent that the 
 regal claims of Christ upon the human heart are not recog- 
 nized ; when there is no confession of Christ in either words 
 or actions ; when lower objects obviously engross the atten- 
 tion, and nothing in their character or conduct indicates that 
 the will has been surrendered to Christ, and that the life is 
 being lived for the glory of God, then the honesty of true love 
 constrains us to regard such persons as belonging to the king- 
 dom of this world, and as destitute of the new life and life- 
 instincts which belong to citizens of the New Jerusalem. 
 
 Nor must we allow ourselves to be misled by the fact that 
 most people are nominally Christians, and have been baptized 
 into the fellowship of the Christian Church. It is only by our 
 own deliberate choice that we can become members of that 
 spiritual kingdom over which Christ is king; and if our will 
 has never made submission we may be traitors and deserters, 
 but real members of the spiritual kingdom we cannot be. 
 Before we can take comfort from the fact of our Baptism we 
 must ask ourselves, Have we been true to our baptismal cove- 
 nant? Have we taken our stand under the banner of the 
 cross? He is not a Jew which is one outwardly, nor is that 
 circumcision which is outward in the flesh. What was true of 
 the ancient theocracy is not less true of the outward visible 
 church. Those who belong to the outward visible church by 
 Baptism are not necessarily subjects of Christ unless they 
 accept that position, and yield their hearts to Him who is 
 their hearts' true Lord. 
 /* Now then do we clearly understand what is meant by " the 
 I world?" It consists of those whose hearts are not yielded to 
 ) God, who do not recognize Christ as supreme, but who recog- 
 ~\ nize the customs, habits, maxims, modes of thought and lines 
 / of conduct prevalent in that society where the supremacy of 
 / Jesus Christ is not practically admitted. 
 
 ^* What then is our relation to the world? Christ answers, 
 " Ye are not of the world, even as I am not of the world." In 
 the world Christ was, but of"the world He certainly was not 
 u. 209 p
 
 The Peril of Worldliness. 
 
 He was not like John the Baptist, an ascetic of the desert, 
 living away from the haunts of men, a life of solitude and 
 seclusion. He went in and out amongst those who invited 
 Him. He was found now at the table of Zacchsus, now at 
 the Pharisee's house. His voice was heard at the wedding 
 feast ; He was present at the funeral, where He stood weeping 
 in sympathy with human sorrow. He was a man amongst 
 men, thoroughly human in His human life. At the same time 
 \ as He went in and out He carried with Him a principle of 
 I jyjirilualjsjalation, which rendered Him separate from sinners 
 even while surrounded by them. Wherever Jesus Christ was 
 He carried along with Him the spirit of heaven, which was 
 always in contrast with the spirit of the world. For the whole 
 life of Jesus Christ was one of loyalty to the will of the Father, 
 while the lives of the children of this world were continuously 
 disloyal to the will of the Father. He was the standing repre- 
 sentative of the Father's authority; while worldly people were as 
 continually in opposition to the divine authority. So it came 
 to pass that He was continually condemning the world, and 
 arousing its hostility. 
 
 Now remember, as He was so are we in this world. We 
 are placed here for our trial, and, observe, the presence 9f 
 worldliness all around us is intended by God to have that'' 
 effect upon us. By constant contact with the world, and by 
 exposure to the temptations which arise in our daily life, we 
 are to be driven more and more to realize the fact that 
 we are citizens of a heavenly country. We learn thus the 
 necessity of walking by faith rather than by sight, and we find 
 that St. John was right when he said, "This is the victory that 
 overcometh the world, even your faith." 
 
 But there is more to be said about our relations with the 
 world than that we are in it but not of it. We notice that our 
 text says we are not to love the world, neither the things that 
 are in the world ; and it goes so far as to say, " If any man 
 love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." 
 
 Now, side by side with this direction we must place another 
 text, with which we are equally or more familiar : " God so 
 loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son." What 
 shall we say then ? If God loved the world, are we precluded 
 from doing that which we thank God for having done ? 
 
 In answer to this enquiry, let me point out that there are 
 two kinds of love by which we flfcty be affected. There is the
 
 The Peril of Worldliness. 
 
 love of benevolence, and there is the love of congeniality. The 
 love of benevolence is that which God felt towards the human 
 family. God loved the world benevolently, and the proof of 
 His benevolent purpose towards the world was the mission of 
 His Son Jesus Christ. Christ Himself loved the world bene- 
 volently, and He showed His benevolence by passing through 
 the world as One who was separated from it ; not by coming 
 down to the world's level, and allowing Himself to be influenced 
 and affected by the world's spirit. Had He done that He 
 would have shown the very opposite of true benevolent love ; 
 but by rising above the level of worldliness, by keeping Himself 
 separate from sinners, and witnessing through the whole course 
 of His life to the Father's sovereign rights in man, Christ 
 showed His true love to the world. 
 
 But there is another kind of love the love of congeniality. 
 This love of congeniality God can never feel towards the world; 
 on the contrary, in this respect the friendship of the world is 
 enmity towards God, and in this particular sense God is the 
 enemy of the world ; no kind of love of congeniality can exist 
 between the two. Now, "as He is, so are we in this world." It 
 is equally impossible for the true disciple to love the world with 
 the love of congeniality. Of those who do we are told that the 
 love of the Father is not in them. 
 
 Let me point out to you that not only is there a clear dis- 
 tinction between these two forms of love for the world, but 
 that they are mutually exclusive. He who is true to the one 
 cannot entertain the other ; he who insists on maintaining the 
 second cannot exhibit the first Further, I believe that the 
 one love is intended to counteract and oppose the other. We 
 are to be kept back from the love of congeniality by calling 
 the love of benevolence into play ; and just in so far as this 
 true God-like affection for the world is strong in our heart, the 
 danger of anything like this lower love will be diminished. 
 
 Let us contemplate a man in whose heart the love of 
 benevolence is strong towards the world. That benevolence 
 will induce him to recognize the world's present position ; to 
 bear in mind the truth that the world has rebelled against God, 
 and that God's edict of wrath and condemnation has already 
 gone forth against it. Then the world is in a position of danger : 
 the wrath of God abides upon it. Realizing this its terrible 
 peril he will shrink from adopting any attitude towards the 
 world that would be likel^to make the world feel as if its 
 
 211
 
 The Peril of Worldliness. 
 
 \danger were a mere doctrinal or sentimental unreality, and this 
 
 /will keep him from associating with the world on terms of 
 
 ( reciprocal amity. He will go into the world indeed, but it will 
 
 / be for the same reason as his Master, of whom it was stated, 
 
 / " This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that 
 
 Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." 
 
 Yes, we may have to go into the world for the same object ; 
 but let us, as He did, keep this object ever in view, and then 
 contact with sinners will do us no harm. Christ might have 
 wrought miracles of salvation from heaven, but he preferred to 
 come into the world to save sinners ; and so we may go into the 
 world too, provided it is to save sinners. This should be the 
 great work of our lives. But when instead of this we associate 
 with the world as if it were congenial to us, it is far_moie likely 
 to drag us down than our friendship is to lift it up. 
 
 Or, again, we may show the incompatibility of the two kinds 
 of love thus : St. John says, " If any man love the world, the 
 love of the Father is not in him." Now, the only power that can 
 enable me to exercise true benevolence towards the world is 
 the love of the Father present in my soul. This was the secret 
 of Christ's benevolence ; He loved man because He loved God. 
 If, therefore, by condescending to entertain the love of con- 
 geniality towards the world I forfeit the love of the Father, 
 I also forfeit the power of doing the world any good. When 
 I go into the world in this spirit, not only am I dragged down 
 myself, and personally injured by worldly influences, but I also 
 lose the faculty of benefiting those whom I should be saving ; 
 and thus, by allowing the love of congeniality to assert itself 
 in my heart, I am precluded from exercising the love of 
 benevolence. 
 
 ) I am afraid it must be sorrowfully admitted that too many 
 
 ^professing Christians are leading two distinct kinds of lives, 
 
 ) worldly with the worldly, and Christian with the Christian. 
 
 You would hardly think them the same persons were you to 
 
 meet them under different circumstances. They cannot be 
 
 distinguished from the citizens of this world to-day, and they 
 
 might pass for excellent saints to-morrow. But, dear friends, 
 
 tsuch people as these really exercise their influence for the 
 
 /world, and not for God. I am sure the world sees through it. 
 
 'They are the very persons who in the long run keep__wjorldjings 
 
 back from Christ, because they do not carry the love of the 
 
 Father with them into their worldly relations. Their influence
 
 The Peril of Worldliness. 
 
 tends to drive persons further off from God rather than draw 
 them nearer to Him. 
 
 Now this consideration of the incompatibility of these two 
 forms of love for the world will throw a wonderful amount of 
 light on problems that would be otherwise very perplexing. 
 Over and over again practical questions are asked bearing 
 upon our relations with the world, which represent a large 
 amount of painful perplexity upon the part of the enquirers. 
 Young people come to us with questions as to whether they 
 should join in certain forms of worldly amusement, or fall 
 in with certain customs of social life. Perhaps I had better 
 put in a concrete form some of the enquiries which con- 
 stantly meet me. " Do you think," asks one, " that I ought 
 to go to balls ? " " Is there any harm in going to the 
 theatre?" asks another. "Is there any objection to my going 
 to the race-course ? " enquires a third. I observe too that the 
 practical answers which some young Christians give to such 
 enquiries are sometimes very arbitrary and capricious. The 
 line, it would seem, must be drawn somewhere, and custom 
 rather than reason, prevalent opinions rather than distinct 
 convictions, are permitted to suggest to us where we are to 
 draw it. We may go, some would say, to the race, but we 
 must not bet. We may go to the pantomime, but not to an 
 ordinary theatrical performance. Some will go to the opera, 
 but not to the theatre. Some will go to a friendly dance, but 
 not to the ball. 
 
 Now many of these decisions seem to be perfectly arbitrary, 
 and for my own part I am disposed to be very doubtful 
 of the value of any line that is drawn arbitrarily in accordance 
 with commonly-received opinions or habits of life rather than 
 reasonably and in harmony with some recognized fixed prin- 
 ciple. You cannot lay down general rules for others, nor 
 concoct a tabulated statement of what the child of God may 
 and what he may not do. Christians must form their decision 
 with much heart searching on their knees, and with their open 
 Bibles seek for guidance on such subjects, endeavouring to form 
 their opinions rather in accordance with the general principles 
 they discover there than with the dicta of their friends, whether 
 religious or worldly. Now in seeking to be guided by principle 
 it will not be by principles of mere morality that you will be 
 guided. You have more to think of than this. Of course, 
 moral obligations are all that the worldly man can be expected 
 
 213
 
 The Peril of Worldliness. 
 
 to be influenced by, and only very slightly by these. But all 
 this is changed when we become true Christians. 
 
 As Christians we no longer consider merely whether a thing 
 is right or wrong ; we have to enquire, Will it or will it not be 
 in harmony with that great love-law towards God and man by 
 which in all our conduct we ought to be actuated. Now, it is 
 wonderful, as I have said, how much light this love-law casts 
 on the details of our social life. My young friend, instead of 
 asking the question, Is there any sin in going to the ball, or in 
 going to the theatre? you will ask yourself the question, Is 
 this such an indulgence as will be thoroughly in accordance 
 with the law of the love of benevolence which I have adopted 
 to regulate my conduct in my relations with the world? That 
 will be your enquiry. Turn the matter over from that point 
 of view. 
 
 Quite possibly many persons may go into a ball-room, and 
 come out again with a mind perfectly uncontaminated. It 
 is not only possible, but it doubtless very often is the case. 
 But, on the other hand, I am afraid it must be admitted that 
 the customs of the ball-room have contributed and are con- 
 tributing largely to the production of the very low tone of 
 morality which does largely prevail in the upper classes of 
 society. There is nothing gained by denying facts. We know 
 as a matter of fact that more immorality is to be found in 
 the lowest stratum of society and in the highest stratum of 
 society than is to be found in the intervening classes. The 
 middle classes of the country are, comparatively speaking, 
 pure. Immorality of that particular kind exists most largely 
 in the two extremes of the social scale. Looking at the lower 
 classes, it is easy to detect the demoralizing agencies. The 
 public-house, with its degrading influences ; the low places of 
 amusement and entertainment provided for the poorest ; and 
 the huddling together of whole families in a single room these 
 causes tend to produce social immorality amongst the poor. 
 
 Turn from the poor to the rich. You cannot shut your eyes 
 to the conclusion that the habits of society in the higher social 
 circles tend exactly in the same direction ; and here, as in the 
 other case, effect follows cause. The way in which young people 
 are thrown together through long nights of folly and dissipation; 
 the premium upon vanity and display; the frequent opportuni- 
 ties offered for flirtation and other forms of levity, which are 
 opposed to true modesty; the conditions of social excitement, 
 
 214
 
 The Peril of Worldliness. 
 
 which are so suggestive of sins of thought and desire these 
 features are characteristics of the ball-room, and all tend to pro- 
 duce that low state of morals which, I am sorry to say, prevails 
 in the highest, as much as in the lowest, class of society. 
 
 The child of God then will be led to say, " I am living 
 by the law of benevolence. My desire is to show a practical 
 love to my fellow-creatures; 1 therefore cannot do anything 
 opposed to the claims of this love-law by which my life 
 is guided. If, therefore, I find that any particular form of 
 amusement or diversion tends in the direction of moral danger, 
 and is obviously productive not perhaps in my case, but in 
 numerous other cases of evil consequences, then it is my 
 plain duty to abstain from joining in it, or in any way 
 sanctioning it." 
 
 Further: not only is social impurity fostered by such customs, 
 but also other forms of evil, not less opposed to the mind of God, 
 which are referred to in this particular passage. St. John, in 
 speaking of the things of the world, mentions first the lust of the 
 flesh, of which I have spoken ; but then he goes on to mention 
 the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, and says all these are 
 "not of the Father, but of the world." If they are of the 
 world, we cannot love them because they are not of the Father; 
 they are opposed to the new feelings and sentiments of our 
 life. Now, eliminate these three things from the ball-room, 
 and how much have you left ? Take away the lust of the flesh : 
 let our young men and young women dance separately, for 
 instance, so that there shall be no temptation to any form of 
 impurity, no excitement of unholy thoughts or desires ; take 
 away the dressing and adorning of ourselves, the display, the 
 flippancy, the flirtation, the love of flattery, the seeking for 
 admiration ; in other words, " the lust of the eye, the pride of 
 life;" take away all these elements, and how much is left? 
 Why, just this You sit down at the piano and play a waltz, 
 and your sisters dance round the room ! Who could find fault 
 with that ? There is, of course, no sin in the act of dancing ; 
 but how many would be satisfied with this remnant of the ball- 
 room ? The plain truth is, when you reduce the thing to that 
 level, you have eliminated from it the very elements that, I 
 fear, constitute its attractiveness ; you have practically removed 
 its raison d^etre. 
 
 The Christian, acting from this point of view, would ask, " Do 
 these things contribute towards anything that I have renounced ? 
 
 215
 
 The Peril of Worldliness. 
 
 Even if I could trust myself to exercise sufficient self-control 
 to rise above vanity, and flirtation, and impurity of thought, 
 and love of admiration, would others be likely to do so ? " If 
 the answer is " No," then your course is clear, because you are 
 not acting on the principles of mere morality, but in accordance 
 with the claims of true Christian love. 
 
 Take the same ground with respect to the theatre. I 
 suppose there is no radical evil connected with histrionic art ; 
 nor do I say that the mere performance of a dramatic part is 
 in itself a sin. Some people have a great aptitude for acting, 
 and the exercise of that aptitude I cannot count an evil in itself; 
 but there are many things that as a Christian I have to take 
 into account. I have to look at things as they are, to consider 
 the baleful influences which seem to surround our theatres, the 
 immorality that fills our streets in their vicinity; I have to 
 think of the hapless outcasts that swarm by the thousand in 
 the Strand and the Haymarket around these very institutions ; 
 I have to consider the character of the drama in our days, and 
 whether its tendency is elevating or otherwise ; I have to con- 
 sider whether the stage can be shown to be doing real good, 
 or whether it is not doing harm. Nor is even this all. When 
 I have duly considered these accessories, there still remains 
 the main question, which I will state thus : Should I like to 
 see my own sister acting on the stage, even in one of our 
 grandest Shakespearian dramas, in a part that necessitated the 
 representation of sin, or a part that necessitated the laying 
 aside, for the time being at any rate, of that proper delicate 
 modesty which we must needs prize so highly in woman ? 
 Should I like to see my own sister acting before a thousand 
 people in a love scene ? Should I like to see her acting in a 
 love scene where adultery is involved in the plot? Then if 
 not, the matter at once presents itself to me thus : Can the 
 playing of such a part have a wholesome effect upon the person 
 I employ to minister to my pleasure by occupying such a 
 position? Once let me conclude, in sound quiet judgment, 
 that the profession of an actor or actress is one of special 
 temptation, and that in order to minister to my pleasure these 
 persons put themselves in abnormal and unnatural relations to 
 each other, of a kind to diminish that proper modesty which 
 belongs to women, and break down those barriers which God 
 in social life has established as a safeguard against sin, then in 
 such circumstances the law of the love of benevolence decides 
 
 216
 
 The Peril of Worldliness. 
 
 the case. No further argument is necessary. How can I 
 employ persons to occupy such positions of temptation, and to 
 expose themselves to such evils for the sake of my personal 
 gratification ! 
 
 I refer to these two subjects only to illustrate this principle 
 that I have laid down, and to shew what light it may cast upon 
 practical problems of life. How many questions of this kind 
 would solve themselves if we only understood and bore in 
 mind that God intends us to love the world intensely with the 
 love of true benevolence, and that for that very reason we 
 must avoid all that might militate against its true well-being, 
 though in doing so we may expose ourselves to its contempt. 
 
 Now you will see ho\v much better it is to be guided in our 
 conduct in these matters by Christian principle, than by mere 
 ethical obligations on the one hand, or by the dicta of Christian 
 friends, or the customs of Christian society on the other. How 
 much better to ask, " Will this, or will it not, promote the well- 
 being of mankind ? " than to feel one's way about with timid 
 and irresolute steps amidst the mazes of casuistry, asking over 
 and over again, " Is this right, and is the other wrong?" 
 
 But observe, this love of benevolence, while it renders us 
 indisposed to participate in social customs which seem to be 
 of a questionable tendency, will not induce us to turn our 
 backs upon the world altogether. It is selfishness, and not true 
 love, that would lead Christian men to retire within the hermit's 
 cave, or to immure themselves within the walls of a monastery. 
 And it is selfishness rather than true love that disposes some 
 Protestant Christians, who have no monastic tendencies, to 
 turn their backs on former friends and acquaintances, as if 
 they now no longer took the least interest in those, whom in 
 ^worldly days they professed to love and care for. As we have 
 /already seen, like our Master, we shall go into the world to 
 save sinners; but it will be for this object, and not to seek for 
 self-gratification there. 
 
 Hence in our intercourse with the world we shall select 
 those opportunities in which we shall least find ourselves 
 involved in a worldly atmosphere those occasions on which 
 the characteristic features of worldliness are least displayed, 
 and in which ' therefore we shall least be in danger of com- 
 promising ourselves. In fact we may indicate the line of true 
 Christian expediency thus : We shall ever seek in our inter- 
 course with the world to obtain the maximum of influence 
 
 217
 
 The Peril of Worldliness. 
 
 with the minimum of compromise, or of anything that may be 
 mistaken for compromise. We shall seek to increase and 
 extend our influence over worldly people by habits of courtesy 
 and friendliness ; but we shall shrink from condescending to 
 any forms of conduct that may diminish our real influence or 
 involve a concession to the worldly spirit. But if we go into 
 the world simply for the sake of self-gratification, we shall soon 
 find ourselves involved in the maximum of compromise along 
 with the minimum of influence. For remember worldly people 
 frequently have very much more correct views than you would 
 perhaps expect, of what is and what is not consistent with a 
 Christian profession. And worldly people usually despise 
 those who, while making a profession of Christianity, live 
 practically on the world's own low level, 
 
 But I cannot let you go without referring to the solemn 
 closing words of the verse : " The world passeth away, and 
 the lusts thereof/' Do I speak to any here this morning who 
 are of the world, who have not recognized the supremacy of 
 Jesus Christ, nor yet given their heart to Him, and who are 
 kept back from doing so by their love for the world, and for 
 the things of the world ? Dear friends, let me say to you to- 
 day, Reflect for a moment or two upon the inevitable ; think, I 
 beseech you, of what it is that lies before you. Do you complain, 
 " I shall have to give up the world if I come to Christ " ? Yes, 
 my friend ; but you will also have to give up the world if you 
 don't, and long before you give it up probably the world will 
 have given up you. How would you like that ? Give up the 
 world, and find in place of it the kingdom of God, that new 
 world that is never to pass away : this is the claim of Christ. 
 Turn your back upon God and His kingdom, and cling to the 
 world until you find that you can no longer keep the thing you 
 have chosen. This is the claim of Satan. To which will you 
 accede ? 
 
 The world passeth away, and the lust thereof, and you 
 cannot keep it, do what you will. Go down to the sea-shore 
 and fill your hand with sand. Grasp those grains as tightly as 
 you can, but you find that you cannot retain them. The sand 
 is still slipping away, slipping away, till by-and-bye nothing is 
 left. And such are the acquisitions of life; you grasp them, 
 but cannot keep them. The world passeth away, and the lust 
 thereof. 
 
 You love it very dearly, do you ? But does it love 
 
 218
 
 The Peril of Worldliness. 
 
 you? What does it care for you? Ah, false and heartless 
 world, how many of thy victims hast thou deceived, and left 
 them stranded and shipwrecked on the extreme shore of time ! 
 Oh, hollow, fading, fleeting world, is it for thee men and 
 women will barter an everlasting heaven ? Passeth away ! 
 The funeral knell rings out over the plains of time ? Passeth 
 away ! passeth away ! The dreams of early boyhood, the 
 hopes of youth, the promise of vigorous manhood, when with 
 the firm steps of a determined will we push on in life's high- 
 way our minds made up to carry all before us what do 
 they all end in? As the years roll on our hopes dissolve, 
 friends fall off, and the shadow of death is cast across our 
 path. Pleasures cease to please, and employments lose their 
 interest. It passeth away all that we loved, and valued, 
 and clung to, and vainly do we attempt to clutch the receding 
 phantom. 
 
 What is happening around us here to-day? Women who 
 have outlived their youthful comeliness make futile appeals 
 to certain ingenious operators, who have raised the art of 
 rejuvenation to a science, and who by a wonderfully skilful 
 manipulation of dyes and cosmetics, by duly painting and 
 furbishing and enamelling the human person now well-stricken 
 in years, contrive to impart a sort of travesty of youthful bloom 
 which can deceive no one except those who affect it. Poor 
 things, they axo. passees, and they know it, though they do the 
 very best they can to conceal the very unpleasant fact How 
 melancholy it seems that they cannot keep what they seem 
 disposed to prize so dearly ; but it 's all no use ; the sand slips 
 through their fingers, the world passeth away, and the lust 
 thereof. And, dear young friends, it will pass from you too. 
 
 But there is something that does not pass away. He that 
 doeth the will of God abideth for ever ! For that will is the 
 law of heaven, and the harmony of eternity, and he who does 
 it becomes partaker of the divine stability and participator in 
 the divine triumph for ever ! Oh, think of that ! The world 
 dissolves the vain pageant melts into nothingness but the 
 portion of him who doeth the will of God, crowned with its 
 wealth of blessedness, extends beyond the furthest limits of 
 our thoughts when God is all in all. 
 
 219
 
 " Let us feeep tlje 
 
 " Even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us : therefore let us keep the 
 feast." I Cor. v. 7, 8. 
 
 I DARE say that there are many of us who feel the force of 
 these pronouns to-night as we never did before : " Christ 
 our passover is sacrified for us" The great truth, that Jesus 
 Christ has died as a sacrifice for sin, may be accepted by the 
 mind as an historical fact or as a theological verity, and yet the 
 heart may remain unmoved and our spiritual condition un- 
 changed. But when, moved by a consciousness of need, we 
 see in Jesus Christ our Passover; when we discern in Him the 
 very Paschal Lamb, whose blood was shed for our sin ; when 
 by faith we dip the hyssop in the basin, and sprinkle the blood 
 on the lintel over our head, that it may be between God's 
 righteous judgment and our ill desert ; and on the door-posts, 
 that it may be between us and the world, which is condemned 
 already then, and not till then, do we begin to understand the 
 full meaning of these words : " Christ our passover is sacrificed 
 for us" The redeeming work of Christ brings no real advan- 
 tage to us until we thus appropriate the benefit, dwelling upon 
 its relation to our individual needs ; until we can say, each for 
 himself, " Christ my Passover is sacrificed for me." 
 
 But St. Paul calls our attention to a practical inference that 
 we are to draw from this recognized fact, and I would do the 
 same. " Therefore," exclaims the Apostle (and remember that 
 ""therefore" loses its force unless we have appropriated to our- 
 selves the benefit of the Paschal sacrifice), "let us keep the 
 feast." When we know that for us the Paschal blood has been 
 shed, that word "therefore" indicates a logical conclusion 
 which must follow from gospel premises ; and this inference is 
 so patent and powerful, that there is no escape from it. 
 " Christ our passover is sacrificed for us : therefore let us keep 
 the feast." 
 
 And what that feast is to be we may learn from the 
 consideration of the Paschal feast to which our text refers. 
 That Paschal feast was intended to foreshadow the perpetual
 
 "Let us Keep the Feast" 
 
 feast which belongs to Christian experience, and to indicate its 
 distinctive features. They kept a feast on a single occasion, 
 but we are privileged to keep a feast all our lives through. 
 
 But ere I proceed to point the lessons suggested by this paral- 
 lelism, it will not be out of place to say a few words about that 
 sacred and spiritual feast in which we Christians are privileged 
 to participate, and which is intended to bring vividly before our 
 mind the divine provision for human need. He who knows 
 our human infirmity, and understands how apt we are to forfeit 
 our highest privileges because we don't sufficiently value them, 
 has of His own infinite love appointed a special ordinance, the 
 object and aim of which is to present to our minds more 
 eloquently than any words could speak, in the striking and im- 
 pressive language of symbol, the purposes of God with regard 
 to our present experience and our relations with Himself. 
 
 When the Apostle calls upon us to keep the feast, I do not 
 suppose that he was actually referring to the communion feast. 
 Very likely no thought of it may have been present to his 
 mind, but he was speaking of that experience, to the necessity 
 and importance of which our sacramental feast bears witness. 
 
 I believe that when our Lord instituted the Holy Communion, 
 He designed that this blessed ordinance should present to us in 
 a vivid and forcible manner an idea of what the true character 
 of our Christian life was to be ; for it is not too much to say 
 that our whole life is intended by God to be one continuous 
 feast, and that, in both the two senses in which the word is used. 
 
 First, the word suggests the idea of a sacred season, a festival; 
 and thus we are taught that our lives are to be sanctities. The 
 old distinction is no longer to be drawn in our lives between 
 things secular and things sacred ; all is to be sanctified. 
 
 And, in the second place, the word suggests the thought of 
 enjoyment. Our life is to be a feast ; that is to say, a season 
 of continuous happy festivity. Not only when we reach that 
 etter land, and sit down at the marriage supper of the Lamb ; 
 not only then are we to be privileged to feast with Him. The 
 feast of heaven begins on earth, and only those who know 
 from their own experience what it is to feast with Jesus now 
 will ever feast with Him yonder. 
 
 In both these senses then our lives are to be festal, and this 
 holy ordinance has been appointed as the special feast of the 
 Christian, in order to keep ever before our minds the true idea 
 of what our lives are to be and will be if we live up to our
 
 "Let us Keep the Feast." 
 
 privileges. We shall not do wrong then in spending a few 
 moments in considering the import and efficacy of this ordi- 
 nance, so that in understanding how to keep our sacramental 
 feast we may be the better fitted to keep the feast of the 
 Christian life. 
 
 And here, first, you will observe that, as the Jewish Passover 
 was a continuous commemoration of a deliverance wrought out 
 for Israel, so the Holy Communion, whenever celebrated, is 
 designed to be a perpetual remembrance of that wonderful 
 deliverance which has been wrought out for us on the cross of 
 Calvary. Do we need any reminder ? We may at first be dis- 
 posed to say, " Surely not ; never can we forget that." But, as 
 a matter of sorrowful fact, it must be admitted that human 
 gratitude is apt to be short-lived, and only too many of us 
 Christians in our daily lives do get out of sight of the cross ; 
 and when we do, the true love-power very soon passes away 
 from our life and experience. 
 
 This feast then was instituted by One who was perfectly 
 conversant with our human frailty, for a perpetual memory ot 
 His most precious death and passion, and in order that, if ever 
 we are in danger of forgetting how much we owe to His dying 
 love, we may straightway be brought back again, full in view of 
 His cross ; and further, in order that, being thus from time to 
 time brought face to face with Calvary, we may obtain fuller 
 and deeper views and clearer apprehensions of what that cross 
 of Calvary really imports, and of the benefits that redemption 
 brings within our reach. 
 
 So use it, dear young Christians, and never be tempted 
 to think it a small thing that God has made this provision 
 to meet your need, nor allow yourselves to imagine that you 
 can well dispense with that which Jesus Christ has seen to be 
 so necessary for you. You may rely upon it, He knows your 
 human nature better than you do your own ; and if He, as His 
 last act ere He left His Church, instituted this sacred ordi- 
 nance, you may be very sure He attaches considerable import- 
 ance to it, and that we cannot neglect it with impunity. You 
 will find that, although at this moment your hearts seem so 
 full of joyous love and gratitude to Jesus, who died for you, 
 that it scarce seems credible that you could ever forget His 
 benefits or need a reminder ; yet as time wears on other things 
 will obtrude themselves on your attention, and there may be a 
 danger God grant you may never give way to it ! of your
 
 "Let us Keep the Feast" 
 
 losing the freshness of your first love of Jesus, in which you are 
 now rejoicing. 
 
 It is in order to guard against this danger that the Lord 
 has instituted this blessed sacrament ; and don't think that you 
 have communicated rightly unless your memory of the cross 
 has been, so to speak, quickened and refreshed ; unless your 
 spiritual sensibilities have been stirred within you, while you 
 have approached and gazed once more upon this great sight ; 
 unless you have once again been moved to pour out your soul 
 in heartfelt utterances of love and devotion to Him by whose 
 death eternal life is yours. 
 
 The first object then of this sacred feast is commemoration, 
 as it was the object of the ancient Passover; and in this sense 
 I say to you, in the words of the text, " Christ our Passover has 
 been sacrificed for us : therefore let us keep the feast." Let us 
 keep it in order that we may remind ourselves of that love 
 which we are too apt to forget, and which, if we do forget, our 
 spiritual condition is sure to suffer for it. 
 
 But once again notice that the Paschal feast was furnished 
 by the very lamb whose blood secured the safety of the house- 
 hold. The lamb was not only a paschal victim, but was also 
 the paschal feast; and of this lamb, whose death had been 
 their life, the Israelites were taught to partake. They were to 
 gather together around the table all the members of the house- 
 hold, and all were to partake of the lamb whose death had 
 been their life. 
 
 Now here observe we have our second lesson, and it is 
 one of such importance that our Lord will not trust it to 
 mere words. This great truth is set forth in Holy Scripture in 
 language as powerful as it was possible to employ. But this 
 was not enough. Its extreme importance must be witnessed 
 to by an outward sign that shall speak more forcibly than 
 words. Jesus, Himself the victim, is Himself the feast ; Jesus 
 is Himself the food on which His followers have to feed. 
 
 Now let me point out that if the only object of the Holy 
 Communion had been a commemoration, it would have been 
 enough for this purpose that the bread should be broken and 
 the wine should be poured forth. The purposes of commemo- 
 ration are abundantly answered so soon as these two acts have 
 been performed, and what follows after this has nothing com- 
 memorative about it ; for there was nothing in the fact of our 
 Lord's crucifixion to answer to the eating and the drinking. 
 
 223
 
 "Let us Keep the Feast? 
 
 Why then are we not only to break the bread and pour out 
 the wine, but to receive both? Obviously for the purposes of 
 commemoration this was quite unnecessary ; for, as we all 
 know, the body of Jesus Christ was never devoured by His 
 enemies. It was broken, and the blood poured forth ; and 
 as that was all that happened so it is all that we can com- 
 memorate. To eat and drink the body and the blood would 
 be superfluous and even revolting to our sentiments if com- 
 memoration were the only object of this sacrament. 
 
 It is perfectly evident then that more than this is intended 
 by this ordinance. As I have said, in ordaining this feast 
 Christ bears witness to a truth which is of the last importance 
 to us in the whole course of our spiritual experience ; and it is 
 this, that as our physical bodies are continuously dependent 
 upon the material world, and as we are constantly drawing our 
 supplies from Nature without us, and cannot live unless we do 
 so, even so that new life of the human spirit, quickened by the 
 Spirit of God within our being, which commences at our new 
 birth, is constantly dependent upon a divine supply; and only 
 as we appropriate that supply to ourselves can we be strong in 
 the Lord, and grow in grace, and accomplish the work that has 
 been assigned to us, or attain to the prize of our high calling. 
 
 I would therefore say to you, Bear this in mind as the most 
 /important feature of the Holy Communion. You draw near 
 I there to feed upon the Lord Jesus Christ Himself " by faith with 
 ' thanksgiving," to satisfy your needy soul out of His fulness. 
 
 And do remember that this Holy Communion is designed 
 to impart, as well as to symbolize, this spiritual sustenance 
 of the new life ; for it is A-rjaeans^of grace_as well as a sacra- 
 ment or a sign of God's love. But in order to receive the 
 real benefit which it is intended to convey, something more 
 is needed than the mere partaking of the consecrated elements. 
 The outward act is specially designed to enable you to concen- 
 trate your mind upon the divine provision, to bring your faith 
 to bear upon the thought that God is then and there through 
 Jesus Christ imparting the divine nature to you, that God is 
 then and there through Jesus Christ communicating the divine 
 life to you ; and as you bring your faith to bear upon that act 
 of God's love towards you, you will be indeed a communicant. 
 For the bread which we break, is it not a common participa- 
 tion in the body of Christ ? and the cup that we bless, is it not 
 a common participation in the blood of Christ ? 
 
 224
 
 "Let us Keep the Feast" 
 
 But very likely the question may occur, " Why the body and 
 blood?" What is meant by the words "This is my body, and 
 this is my blood " ? I reply, It is sufficiently evident that the 
 words must be used in a mystical and spiritual sense. For if we 
 could have actually partaken of the material body and the 
 material blood of Jesus Christ at the time of His crucifixion, 
 that would have produced no inward or spiritual change, no 
 moral revolution in our nature. The substance so received 
 would have simply assimilated itself to our bodily tissues in 
 the usual way, and there the whole thing must have ended. 
 
 Similarly, if a supernatural act of transubstantiation were to 
 transpire at that holy table, and if that bread were actually 
 changed into the body of Jesus Christ, and that wine into His 
 blood, the mere reception of these would leave us, so far as our 
 moral and spiritual condition is concerned, just where we were 
 before. This being so, we are constrained to look beneath the 
 surface for the proper significance of these sacred but familiar 
 expressions the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ 
 
 Let us find our answer by observing the use of similar 
 language elsewhere. We are taught in the ancient Law, and 
 that not qnce or twice, that " the life is in the blood ;" and we 
 are taught by St. Paul that the nature is in the flesh. You will 
 remember his words in i Corinthians xv. : " There is one kind 
 of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and 
 another of birds." The nature of the animal organism is, you 
 may say, contained in the flesh, just as the life is in the blood. 
 We are able to form a conclusion as to the nature of an 
 object by considering a portion of the flesh which is sub- 
 mitted to us. 
 
 The use of this language then surely brings us to this. As I 
 receive the blood it is my privilege by faith to drink in the life 
 of God which flows through the Incarnate Saviour into my 
 soul,- and as I receive that bread it is my blessed privilege to 
 receive more and more fully that new and divine nature in 
 which my humanity is to express itself, and in the formation of 
 which I am to be raised to my true character and level" of 
 experience. For thus the attributes of perfection which belong 
 to the Deity are communicated through the man Christ Jesus 
 to my poor frail human nature, making me partaker of the 
 divine. Thus eating His flesh and drinking His blood, we are 
 privileged to grow up " unto the measure of the stature of the 
 fulness of Christ Jesus." 
 
 ii. i, 225 Q
 
 "Let us Keep the Feast" 
 
 And now I will ask you to observe the part that the ordinance 
 plays in contributing to this great end. First, it brings our 
 faith to a definite issue. We all know too well how apt faith is 
 to lose power when it is not very definitely exercised. We may 
 believe that Christ is to dwell in our hearts by faith, and that 
 this is to be the source of all power for true godliness, but are 
 we likely to exercise our faith definitely and frequently upon 
 this point? If it is by faith that He is to dwell in our hearts, 
 obviously there is a danger of our losing His indwelling 
 presence, and all the benefits it brings along with it if faith be 
 not in active exercise. Now the Holy Communion, properly 
 understood, brings us right up to this point. Its symbolism 
 points us to the divine provision, while our part in the matter 
 suggests the very spiritual attitude which it is so all-important 
 that our souls should assume. The outward taking and eating 
 appeals to our faith, calling upon us then and there to receive 
 and appropriate to our spiritual nature God's wondrous pro- 
 vision to meet its needs. Our faith is brought by the sacra- 
 mental act to a definite issue, just as the magnifying-glass 
 collects the diffused rays of the sun, and projects them on a 
 definite focus, thus causing a heat that will kindle a flame. 
 I am to believe that the Holy Ghost is now actually im- 
 parting to my spiritual nature more and more fully the life and 
 nature of God through the man Christ Jesus, and according to 
 my faith it will be done unto me. 
 
 r- Thus I would further point out that, in the second place, 
 while the ordinance stimulates my faith, it gives my God the 
 opportunity of conveying to me the very blessings of which 
 the ordinance is a symbol, and thus the ordinance becomes 
 a means of effecting those spiritual results which its imagery 
 suggests. Does not this seem more reasonable than to describe 
 the sacrament as the channel through which, on God's side, 
 grace passes into the soul? God needs no channel ; He is ever 
 ready by His Holy Spirit to deal most directly with His 
 creatures ; but God does require that His creatures should be 
 in an .attitude .of believing receptiveness, and He has ordained 
 the ordinance to bring this about. When then, in the obedient 
 use of the ordinance, this state of soul is induced, God can at 
 once communicate to us the specific blessing of which the 
 ordinance is at once the symbol and the pledge, and thus we 
 find in the ordinance that His flesh is meat indeed, and His 
 blood is drink indeed. 
 
 226
 
 "Let us Keep the Feast" 
 
 This same consideration also perhaps suggests the true 
 answer to the question, Is it only in the Holy Communion 
 that we thus receive Christ? Whenever our faith is concen- 
 trated upon this particular truth no doubt the divine supply is 
 vouchsafed ; but as this ordinance has been ordained specially 
 to lead our faith up to this point, so we may believe that this is 
 God's regular and, so to speak, normal manner of feeding His 
 people. 
 
 But it is time to return to the Paschal feast, and the lessons 
 that it offers on the subject of our Christian experience; for 
 you will remember that I said, a short time ago, all our lives are 
 to be in a certain sense a feast, and not only those short 
 portions of them which we spend around the holy table. Here 
 we may learn much as to the character of our lifelong feast from 
 considering what we know of this Jewish festival of the Pass- 
 over, to which St. Paul here refers. 
 
 What then were the characteristics of the Paschal feast ? Let 
 us take them one by one. First and foremost, it was the feast 
 of safety. The destroying angel was passing through the land 
 of Egypt, the drawn sword was in his hand, the work of death 
 was being done ; but the happy Israelites were able to feast in 
 safety, because they knew that they were safe under the blood- 
 stained lintel. Bear that in mind, dear friends, it was because 
 they knew. They did not hope about it or think about it, but 
 they knew they were safe. How did they know? Why did they 
 feel safe ? How came it to pass that they were able to feast at 
 all amidst such terrors ? Surely it was because they had God's 
 w-Qjd for their security. " When I see the blood I will pass 
 over you," "and will not suffer the destroyer to come in unto 
 your houses to smite you." 
 
 My friends, think for a moment how impossible it would 
 have been for them to feast if this had not been secure. 
 You who are a mother ask yourself whether you could have 
 feasted if you had been uncertain as to the safety of your first- 
 born son. Suppose that you had known that the angel of death 
 was going to pass through the land that night, and you had not 
 been sure as to the fate of your own child, could you have kept 
 the feast? But the blood was shed, the life was safe, and so 
 they feasted 
 
 And so it must be still. If your life is to be a festal life 
 you need a similar consciousness of safety; if you have not 
 that you will never keep the feast. There are a good 
 
 227
 
 "Let us Keep the Feast" 
 
 many religious people who seem much more like keeping a 
 
 funeral than keeping a feast. A very lugubrious life is theirs, 
 
 while they are always complaining of their doubts and their 
 
 fears. The real truth is they are not quite clear in their own 
 
 mind as to whether they have sprinkled the blood, or, if they 
 
 have done so, they do not take to themselves the full comfort 
 
 which belongs to those who have ; they don't rest upon the 
 
 distinct declarations of eternal truth " I will pass over ;" " He 
 
 /that believeth on the Son hath eternal life." We must thank 
 
 I ourselves for our own miseries if we insist on doubting the 
 
 Mivine faithfulness. We strip the table that love has spread, or 
 
 at any rate deny ourselves the pleasures of participation, when 
 
 we decline to accept and rejoice in the provision which has 
 
 been made for our safety. 
 
 But this was not all. I next observe that the feast which 
 the Israelites kept was a feast of deliverance. They were happy 
 not only because they were safe, but because they were free. 
 Yes, they were in the " house of bondage " still ; the Egyptians 
 were all around them. Pharaoh might still exert all his tyrannous 
 power against them, but in their hearts they already felt the 
 throbbings of a new and wondrous national life ; and their 
 glad anticipations told them that, whatever appearances might 
 say to the contrary, from that moment they were free. 
 
 And it is even so with us. Beloved children of God, re- 
 member Romans vi. is just as true as Romans v. The fifth 
 chapter tells us about our justification ; the sixth chapter tells 
 us about our deliverance deliverance from the power and 
 tyranny of sin. The moment that Israel was reconciled to 
 God by the Paschal blood, that moment Israel was free from 
 the tyrannous power of Pharaoh. The enemy said, " I will 
 pursue." He might pursue. The enemy said, " I will over- 
 take;" but God in His providence said, "Nay, you never 
 shall." And so He interposed the pillar of fire and cloud, and 
 the pillar was darkness to the Egyptians but light to the 
 Israelites, and so the one came not near the other all night, 
 because God was responsible for their liberty. 
 
 Remember this, dear child of God, that the moment you trust 
 yourself fully and utterly into the hands of Jesus the chains of 
 your captivity are snapped ; you are the slave of sin no longer. 
 It is your blessed privilege to sing, " The year of jubilee is 
 come; no more for me the bondage of the oppressor; no 
 more for me the land of captivity, the iron furnace, the cruel 
 
 228
 
 "Let us Keep the Feast" 
 
 taskmasters ; I am free. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ 
 Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death, and it 
 is my glorious privilege to come forth out of the 'house of 
 bondage,' and to find myself standing in the land of liberty, 
 even as the Israelites stood triumphant on the further shore of 
 the Red Sea." 
 
 Remember, I don't say to you young Christians that you are 
 to have no more temptation ; that is quite a different matter. 
 But I do say you are no longer under the dominion of sin. 
 /The Israelites had not done with enemies when they crossed 
 l \the sea, but they had done with slavery ; and so it is with us. 
 Indeed, they had hardly got out of Egypt before Amalek at- 
 tacked them ; and you will not have gone very far along your 
 spiritual journey before temptation will attack you. But I 
 want you to see that it is a very different thing to be attacked 
 by Amalek and to be kept in the slavery of Pharaoh. Can't 
 you see the difference between the state of the Israelites 
 beneath the tyrant's yoke, and the position of the same 
 Israelites when, journeying through the wilderness, they are at- 
 tacked by the aggressor ? From the hand of Amalek they had 
 to be delivered by the same God that had delivered them out of 
 the power of Pharaoh ; but observe the difference between the 
 two cases. In the one case they are in a condition of slavery, 
 being gradually destroyed and exterminated ; and in the other 
 case they are in a condition of liberty, fighting to ensure their 
 liberty and to hurl back the attack of an aggressor. 
 
 And even so now you are free if you are in Christ ; but you 
 will have to guard your liberties by employing the same divine 
 power that set you free to defend you against the foe. But do 
 remember it is only as we realize our liberty that we can feast. 
 No man can feast when he is crying out woefully, " O wretched 
 man that I am ! who will deliver me from the body of this 
 death?" Guard your liberties, dear children of God, or you 
 can never know the true joy of the Paschal feast; for it is the 
 feast of the free-born citizens of the New Jerusalem. 
 
 This leads us on to another consideration. It was the feast 
 of separation. The Egyptians were not allowed to keep it. 
 Up to that time the Egyptians and the Israelites had lived as 
 neighbours, but now there was a line of separation to be 
 drawn between the Israelites and the Egyptians. The stranger 
 and the foreigner, or even the hired servant, were not to eat of 
 the feast, because it was the Lord's passover. Remember, if 
 
 229
 
 "Let us Keep the Feast" 
 
 there are any of you here who have not sprinkled the paschal 
 blood, you have no right at the table of the Lord ; the feast is 
 not for you. 
 
 Nor can you participate in that feast of life which the Chris- 
 tian is' privileged to keep ; for you belong to the world, and 
 the world has no part in the Paschal feast. The world has a 
 feast of its own ; its children feast on ashes. They seek to 
 slake their thirst with the vintage of Sodom and the grapes of 
 Gomorrah, but they cannot share the Christian's feast or parti- 
 cipate in his deep and true joy. But to you, my Christian 
 brethren, let me lay stress on the consideration. Your feast is 
 
 / a feast of separation, and yoju.j:annot properly enjoy it unless 
 
 '.you are content to be separate from the. .world. 
 
 ^Tmeet with not a few Christians from whose life all festal 
 happiness seems to have departed just for this reason. They 
 are not willing to be separated, and so they cannot keep the 
 feast. They shrink from being cpji^idej^d__r>ecyJiaL ar >d so 
 they can no longer be a kingdom of priests, the Lord's own 
 peculiar treasure. Hence their enjoyment of the Lord is im- 
 possible, while they are spoilt for the enjoyment of the world ; 
 and thus, while they seek to find a place at both tables, they 
 find that they are not able to feast at either. They can't 
 rejoice in the Lord ; they can't be merry with the world. Oh, 
 dear children of God, if you desire to be real Christians, be 
 
 /whole-hearted Christians; and remember that the Paschal 
 
 \ blood is on the door-posts as well as on the lintel, cutting you 
 ioff from the world as well as from the judgment of God! If ' 
 
 Syou would keep the feast, learn, like St. Paul, to regard the ( 
 wQrld_..asL. .crucified to you by the cross of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ. While you are crucified to it, so shall you be able to ( 
 keep the feast. 
 
 But to return once more to the Passover. Let me point out 
 that it was not only the feast of safety and the feast of de- 
 liverance and the feast of separation, but it was also the feast 
 of purification. And to this the Apostle here calls special 
 attention, " Not with the old leaven, nor with the leaven of 
 malice and wickedness." Careful search was to be made, and 
 all that was leavened was to be excluded from their habitations. 
 
 ^ And here is a very important lesson for us. We may be de- 
 livered from the tyranny of sin, and yet how much of latent 
 
 v evil may still lurk within ! Perhaps we are ignorant of its 
 presence until the Lord Himself reveals it to us, and then we
 
 "Let us Keep the Feast" 
 
 are quite astonished at the discoveries that we make. We have 
 need to pray with David, " Search me, O God, and know my 
 heart : try me, and know my thoughts : and see if there be any 
 wicked way in me." 
 
 And it is encouraging while we seek for inward purity to 
 know that this is one of the special offices of Christ through 
 the Holy Spirit. He sits like a refiner and purifier of silver, and 
 purifies the sons of Levi, so that they may offer to Him the 
 sacrifices of righteousness. When He brings His clear light to 
 bear on His people, how much of latent evil do they not un- 
 frequently discover pride, vainglory, discontent, selfishness, 
 impurity, crookedness of motive, wilfulness, self-seeking ! Ah ! 
 these are mournful discoveries ; but, thank God, He who shows 
 us the old leaven can give us grace to purge it away, and we 
 must be satisfied with nothing short of this, if we would keep 
 the Paschal feast 
 
 I remember hearing a friend of mine describe what he him- 
 self once saw in Palestine, and of all places in Palestine in 
 Nazareth, and of all places in Nazareth in a carpenter's shop 
 there. The carpenter would not allow him to witness the 
 search in the house lest his presence should defile the home ; 
 but he allowed him to enter the shop and witness the search 
 there. The man went about the work with a will; he was 
 evidently thoroughly in earnest ; he girded up his loins as if he 
 had a day's work before him, and then proceeded to search 
 with the utmost zeal. 
 
 Carefully and conscientiously he turned over every board, he 
 moved all his tools, he swept out the whole place, he opened every 
 drawer, looked into every cupboard ; there was not a crevice 
 or a cranny in the wall that was not inspected lest there might 
 be a tiny crumb of leaven anywhere in the shop. As he drew 
 towards the close of his search my friend suddenly heard him 
 utter an exclamation of horror, and looking round he saw him 
 standing as though he had seen something most alarming. If 
 he had found a viper or a cockatrice he could not have been 
 more horrified than he seemed to be. What was it ? In the 
 last corner that he had visited, under some shavings, he had 
 come across a little canvas bag, and in this little bag there 
 were a few crumbs of leavened bread ; one of the workmen 
 had left it on some former occasion. It was enough ; it defiled 
 the whole place. 
 
 With the utmost possible gravity and solemnity, and with a 
 
 231
 
 "Let us Keep the Feast" 
 
 most anxious expression of countenance as though it were a 
 most critical and important business, the man took hold of 
 two pieces of wood, and using them as a pair of tongs he 
 raised up the bag, and holding it off at arm's length, marched 
 out of the shop and dropped the leavened crumbs, bag and all, 
 into the centre of a fire that he had burning outside ready for 
 such a contingency, and so he purged out the old leaven. 
 
 Here then is our lesson. Whatever remnants of evil, either 
 in propensity or desire, that we discover within us, there is a 
 power that can purge it out. There is a Holy Spirit of burn- 
 ing that can and will consume the dross if only we are willing 
 to be cleansed. And remember what the standard is, as 
 / indicated to us in Holy Scripture " Every one that hath this 
 V. hope in him purifieth himself, even as He is pure/' This is to 
 b'e the standard of our purity, and we can be satisfied with 
 nothing short of it. It is not to be expected that we shall attain 
 to this level of life all at once. The Lord may go on making 
 fresh revelations to us of latent impurity from time to time, 
 but as the light discovers secret things of darkness within, purge 
 them out by faith in the Purifier ; purge them out by invoking 
 the mighty and cleansing energies of the Holy Ghost ; purge 
 them out by claiming the full benefit of that atonement by 
 which we are redeemed from all iniquity, and purchased by the 
 Lord, to be only His. 
 
 Once more ere we close let us look at the Paschal feast, and 
 this time observe it is the feast of wayfaring men. They were 
 to eat it in haste, with shoes on their feet, and their staves in 
 their hands. It was the Lord's Passover. If you want to 
 enjoy the Passover you must gird your loins, and take your 
 staff in your hand, and assume the attitude of a wayfaring man. 
 And it must not be the mere assumption of an attitude. 
 Endeavour to realize that you are a wayfaring man, and shape 
 your life accordingly. 
 
 Some Christians too many, indeed are sorely troubled 
 about their lack of happiness. They will say, " Oh dear, I 
 should like to be a great deal more happy than I am ! I 
 sometimes fear I can't be right, because I am not so happy as 
 I ought to be." I very often think that such people defeat 
 their own desire, because they make happiness an end of 
 itself. Supposing God desires us to be happy, let us be happy; 
 supposing He wishes us to have ecstasy and joy, let us have it, 
 and thank Him for it. But suppose He says, " Now, my child, 
 
 232
 
 "Let us Keep the Feast" 
 
 you must be content to follow Me without my gifts. For a 
 season walk in darkness, and walk by faith." Then ought we 
 not to be equally ready to thank Him for His kindly discipline, 
 and so go on bravely walking in darkness ? 
 
 I believe, and am fully persuaded, that the true secret of 
 happiness lies in complete acquiescence in the Divine Will. 
 Suppose that He should say, "Instead of rapture be con- 
 tent with calm quiet and peace." Let us take the peace and 
 thank Him for that blessed gift which is not of earth. But 
 when we make happiness, even religious enjoyment, an end of 
 itself, and insist upon enjoying it, we, as it were, try to turn 
 earth into heaven. I do not say we shall not have happiness, 
 but I do say that when we make happiness our aim, we are 
 putting the wrong thing before us, and must not be surprised 
 if it is denied to us. 
 
 Our proper end is to glorify God by doing and suffering and 
 enjoying His perfect will here on earth, rejoicing in that will, 
 whatever it may be. We are to feast on the way; but it is a feast 
 of wayfaring men. It was not a sumptuous feast, this passover. 
 The lamb was to be eaten with bitter herbs, and it was to be 
 eaten and done with as on a journey. Even so our enjoyments 
 here on earth, religious or otherwise, are comparatively short- 
 lived ; but there may be a deep, quiet, calm undercurrent of 
 real joy, running through all our experiences, while we wait 
 for the fulness of joy, till we find it at His right hand for 
 evermore. 
 
 Many, too, lose their paschal joy because they make them- 
 selves too much at home in this sin-blighted world of ours. 
 /They surround themselves with comforts and luxuries. Their 
 / professions affirm that they are pilgrims and strangers ; their 
 [ manner of life suggests that they are citizens of this country, 
 V and well-established citizens too. They speak of having their 
 ' treasures in heaven ; but it would appear that they also have no 
 small share here on earth. They talk of seeking the things that 
 are above ; but it would be difficult to believe that they do not 
 set their affections on the things that are on the earth. And so 
 they fail to keep the feast ; for such Christians are not generally 
 happy, neither are their lives really holy. Neither the joy, nor 
 the satisfaction, nor the sanctity of the paschal feast seems to 
 fall to their lot. Is it not with them as with the lustful Israel- 
 ites? God gives them their hearts' desire, but He sends 
 leanness withal into their souls. And well is it in the case of 
 
 233
 
 "Let us Keep the Feast: 1 
 
 such if they do not find a burying-place in Kibroth-Hattaavah, 
 instead of a portion in Canaan. Oh, if we would keep the 
 feast, let us remember that the table is spread now in the 
 wilderness, and in the very presence of our enemies ; and only 
 those who have their loins girded, and their staff in their hand, 
 can either appreciate or enjoy it. But to such it is a pledge of 
 the banquet which awaits the faithful followers of Christ 
 the marriage supper of the Lamb. Then we shall truly rest, 
 and that, with a blessed consciousness of security denied 
 us here. But do let us remember that the one feast leads up 
 to the other, and that those who have not kept the life-long 
 feast here on earth would not be able to value and enjoy, even 
 if they were allowed to participate in it, the banquet which 
 Love has provided yonder. 
 
 Such is the feast that we have the privilege of keeping the 
 feast of security, the feast of deliverance, the feast of separation, 
 the feast of purification, the feast of wayfaring men. Now let 
 us keep it ! If all this wealth of blessedness may be ours, let 
 us make up our minds that it shall be. Why should we starve 
 when the board is spread? Why should our lives be sombre 
 and gloomy when the voice of Love bids us feast ? " Eat, O 
 friends ; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved." Thus may 
 our festal days pass happily away, and pass without vain and 
 sorrowful regrets ; for the Master of our feast ever keeps the 
 best till the last, and we need not grudge the flight of time 
 if our feast, begun on earth, is to be continued throughout 
 eternity. 
 
 By-and-by the King will come in to see the guests, and then 
 we shall know the full festal joy that restful and complete 
 happiness which cannot be ours as yet. We shall have laid 
 our staff aside then, and no longer eat our feast in haste ; for 
 the Lord shall no longer be passing over us, but dwelling 
 amongst us, and we shall see His face, and His name shall be 
 in our foreheads, and we shall know what now we sing about 
 
 " His ineffable name our foreheads proclaim, 
 
 His glories our bodies display ; 
 A day without night we feast in His sight, 
 And eternity seems like a day ! " 
 
 Let us keep the feast ! But are some of you saying, " I 
 cannot keep the feast. If it be such a feast as you have de- 
 scribed, I cannot keep it. I cannot keep the feast of safety, 
 
 234
 
 "Let us Keep the Feast" 
 
 for I am not safe; nor the feast of deliverance, for I am 
 not free; nor the feast of separation, for I belong to the 
 world; nor the feast of purification, for my nature is per- 
 meated by the old leaven, and I cannot bring myself to purge 
 it out ; nor the feast of wayfaring men, for I am a citizen of 
 this country " ? Ah, my brother, thou sayest well, this feast is 
 not for thee ! So long as thou art content with thine Egyptian 
 bondage, and art singing in thine heart, " Let us alone, that we 
 may serve the Egyptians," thou mayest enjoy the flesh-pots of 
 that land of bondage, but in the feast of the free thou canst 
 not participate. And as those carnal and earthly gratifications 
 cannot satisfy thee, thou art already in the condition of the 
 prodigal in the famine land ; thou art beginning to be in want. 
 It is a feast of Tantalus that is spread before thee. Ever and 
 anon the groaning board, laden with richest dainties, seems 
 spread before thine eyes ; and ever and anon the phantom 
 banquet melts away, and leaves thee only the hunger of the 
 soul. It is " as when a hungry man dreameth, and, behold, he 
 eateth ; but he awaketh, and his soul is empty : or as when 
 a thirsty man dreameth, and, behold, he drinketh ; but he 
 awaketh, and, behold, he is faint, and his soul hath appetite." 
 
 Why wilt thou deny thyself the feast of love, and elect to 
 perish of want? For thee, my dear brother, for thee also 
 Christ our passover hath been sacrificed. Thou too mayest 
 sprinkle the paschal blood upon the lintel and the door-post ; 
 and then thou too mayest keep the feast, and join the blessed 
 company of the redeemed as they set out on their way to 
 Canaan ; and thou too mayest know the blessedness of them 
 that are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb. Come 
 and dip the hyssop of thy faith in the blood that streams from 
 our Paschal Victim, and sprinkle it to-night in the presence of 
 God; so shalt thou too be free to share the feast of the 
 redeemed, safe under the blood-stained lintel 
 
 235
 
 Clje 
 
 Armour of 
 
 " Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His 
 might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to 
 stand against the wiles of the devil." Eph. vi. 10, II. 
 
 SO we come to our finally. Everything here must have an 
 end, and our short period of mission services has very 
 rapidly passed away. One after another its opportunities have 
 presented themselves to us, one after another they have passed 
 by, and here we are to-night at out finally. 
 
 A wonderful epistle is this to the Ephesians. Throughout its 
 course St. Paul deals with some of the most profound mysteries 
 of the Christian faith, expatiating upon these in their relation 
 to Christian experience and conduct ; and now at the end of 
 his letter, ere he takes his leave of those whom he was address- 
 ing, he makes a last appeal to them to turn to practical account 
 the lessons that they have been taught, and equipped with that 
 knowledge which is power, to quit themselves like men on the 
 battle-field of life. 
 
 And this final exhortation of the Apostles is indeed worthy 
 of all that has gone before it. I suppose that last words are 
 generally the words best remembered. We treasure the words 
 of the dying; there are utterances that have fallen from the 
 lips of our friends, while we have stood upon the border-land 
 of the other world, wistfully gazing, as it were, after their re- 
 ceding forms, that we shall never, never forget so long as 
 memory itself shall last. And last utterances from the lips 
 of those who are to be separated from us otherwise by force of 
 circumstances are often more deeply impressed on our mind 
 than any other words they may have ever spoken. And here 
 the closing words of an Apostle, very weighty and powerful in 
 themselves, seem all the more impressive from their position at 
 the close of this memorable epistle. And perhaps it may be so 
 with what I say to-night. My words may perhaps sink all the 
 deeper into your heart just because they are the last that you 
 
 236
 
 The Whole Armour of God. 
 
 will hear in this mission, perhaps the last that some of you will 
 ever hear from my lips. 
 
 Finally I I think we must all feel this is a grand close, and 
 worthy of the remarkable epistle that it concludes, and it 
 suggests thoughts that are indeed worthy of our circumstances 
 to-night. St. Paul begins by bidding us "be strong in the Lord, 
 and in the power of His might" It is our duty to be strong ; 
 it is our privilege to be strong; it is our joy to be strong ; it is 
 our glory to be strong. Many a young Christian, when he 
 looks forward to that which lies before him, the untried path 
 of duty and privilege, is conscious of an inward shrinking and 
 misgiving under a sense of weakness. Does it not seem as 
 though you were starting forth on a chimerical enterprise? 
 Does not the demand upon our powers seem great, and our 
 resources to meet it inadequate ? How often in the early days 
 of our Christian life, like the prophet's servant, are we ready 
 to wring our hands and exclaim, " Alas ! my master, what shall 
 we do?" 
 
 Oh that God may use my words to-night to impress on the 
 minds of all who have trusted themselves to Jesus, that more are 
 they that are for us than all that can be against us, and that the 
 feeblest child of God, with an omnipotent Jehovah on his side, 
 is more than a match for all the malignant skill, or all the 
 spiritual power of the hosts of darkness ! " Finally, brethren, 
 be strong." It is not for you to compute the probabilities of 
 your fall from considerations connected with your own natural 
 infirmity. You have not to argue within yourselves, " I have 
 failed before, I shall fail again." Oh, how many bring failure 
 to themselves by entering upon their career in that spirit of 
 unbelief! How slow we are to realize that our natural infirmity 
 and peculiarities of temperament have nothing to do with the 
 matter, except to make us feel all the more our utter and 
 absolute dependence on the divine ! Whatever circumstances 
 may arise, my dear brethren, your strength is out of self and in 
 God, so long as God dwells in you and you dwell in Him. It 
 is your privilege not to tremble at the fact of your weakness, 
 but to rejoice in the consciousness of your power. 
 
 Don't misunderstand me. I do not for a moment mean to 
 say that we are not to recognize our own weakness ; but it is 
 one thing to recognize our own weakness and another thing to 
 tremble at the thought of it. If the trembling is simply the 
 fear and trembling which the Apostle elsewhere speaks of, 
 
 237
 
 The Whole Armour of God. 
 
 springing from the sense of your own insufficiency a fear and 
 trembling that drives you nearer to God the trembling of a 
 little child, that makes it cling all the more tightly to its mother's 
 hand ah ! then I would not say one word against it ; but if it 
 be the trembling of apprehension and unbelief if it be such a 
 fear as David expressed when he said, " I shall now one day 
 perish by the hand of Saul " then let me remind you that fear 
 of this kind is and must be a source of weakness, and to in- 
 dulge in it is to commit a sin. The man who goes forth to the 
 battle-field with a heart palpitating with terror, expecting dis- 
 aster and overthrow, must not be surprised at defeat. Accord- 
 ing to his unbelief, so will it be done unto him. The man that 
 has the courage of his faith, that goes forth in the same Spirit as 
 David did against Goliath " Thou comest to me with a sword, 
 and with a spear, and with a shield : but I come to thee in the 
 name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, 
 whom thou hast defied" that is the man who, like David, 
 will do exploits. 
 
 And here let me point out to you what many Christians 
 need to be reminded of, that our career is one of conflict and 
 fighting with foes that are ever seeking to regain their empire 
 within. Remember they have been ejected from their position 
 of authority within you, if you are a true child of God. The 
 spirit of evil that once reigned in your nature has now been 
 dethroned, and a new and mightier Spirit has taken its place ; 
 but do bear in mind that it will still be the object of our great 
 enemy to seek to obtain re-admittance into that consecrated 
 nature of yours, and when he gets a foothold, ah ! then it is 
 that all will begin to go wrong. As long as he is kept outside, 
 and can only make attempts to regain a position in your heart, 
 so long you are in a position to ensure victory ; but so soon as 
 you allow him a footing in your nature, you are at once placed 
 in a condition of peril, and the probable sequel will be disaster 
 and defeat. But there are and always will be foes without, 
 and against these you have to do battle in the power of God. 
 
 And let me say to young Christians, Don't be surprised at 
 conflict. Instead of its being a bad sign when Satan surrounds 
 you with temptations, on the contrary, this is in itself an indi- 
 cation that the new life has begun. You never were much 
 distressed at temptation in the days when your heart was not 
 given to God ; nay, even when you had yielded to temptation, 
 and had fallen into sin, it cost you no great pain. Surely no 
 
 238
 
 The Whole Armottr of God. 
 
 small change must have come over you now, when even tht. 
 attacks of Satan cause you so much distress ! But don't be 
 surprised or cast down. "Blessed is the man that endureth 
 temptation ; for when he hath been tried he shall receive a 
 crown of life." By all means expect conflict, and be ready 
 armed to meet it, and don't shrink from it ; but do not, on the 
 other hand, play the foolhardy, and wilfully expose yourselves 
 to Satan's attacks. Remember God pledges Himself to secure 
 the safety of those who are His loyal servants by the very fact 
 of providing them with His own armour, but you can only 
 wear His armour when you are on His errands ; and he who 
 invites temptation goes out of the lines of the divine will, and 
 so must leave his armour behind him. 
 
 But bear in mind also that you are called not only to con- 
 quest, but to victory. All the promises are made to Him that 
 overcometh. Of course, we can never overcome unless there 
 be conflict ; but remember conflict can only mean defeat 
 unless we are properly equipped. So we are brought back to 
 the words of our text, " Be strong in the Lord ; " but that ye 
 may be strong, "put on the whole armour of God." Now 
 before we proceed to consider this wondrous panoply which a 
 Father's love has provided for our security, let us spend a 
 moment or two in considering these forces which are arrayed 
 against us. 
 
 Our conflict is described as being against the principalities 
 and powers of spiritual wickedness, and particularly against the 
 rulers of the darkness of this world. Observe then, dear 
 friends, that this world has rulers of its darkness. The whole 
 world lies in darkness ; those who are out of Christ are 
 in darkness; and this dark world has rulers of its own, and 
 they have a court, and authority, and laws, and regulations, and 
 influence of their own, which are exhibited in the lives and 
 conduct of those who do not belong to the kingdom of God. 
 
 Now observe that your conflict has to be carried on, not only 
 directly against the intelligences of evil, who seek your over- 
 throw, but also indirectly against those influences of the world, 
 through which the forces of evil are at work. I cannot sufficiently 
 impress upon your minds this thought. Remember, young Chris- 
 tians, that the world is your ruthless and your implacable enemy. 
 The world is in some sense a more dangerous enemy than the 
 devil himself when he attacks us directly, just because it is 
 much less alarming. You will understand what I mean. 
 
 239
 
 The Whole Armour of God. 
 
 When Satan approaches one of you, and suggests some terrible 
 sin, you at once start back with horror at the thought, and say 
 with Joseph of old, " How can I do this great wickedness and 
 sin against God ? " And he knows that ; so very probably he 
 may not attempt to approach you in that way, but he will 
 attack you through the world, when your alarm will not be 
 similarly awakened. 
 
 The world presents a much less terrible aspect It ap- 
 proaches you with blandishments, seeking to woo you back to 
 its fellowship. The voices of the rulers of this world will 
 sound through its children as they urge you not to be too 
 rigorous and strait-laced. It is a very good thing to have a 
 little religion, if you don't carry things too far. You must not 
 be fanatical, you know. It won't do to let religion run away 
 with you. Of course all decent people are more or less 
 religious ; it is only a question of degree. Some are a little 
 more so than others ; but it is quite possible to go too far, and 
 to make yourself peculiar, and even absurd. So it is the 
 world seeks to weaken you with her plausible sophistries, and 
 thus render you an easy prey to Satan when he assaults you 
 with some direct attack. And thus the rulers of the darkness 
 of this world use the very darkness with which they blind the 
 eyes of those who believe not to perplex and bewilder those 
 who believe, and so rob them of their proper power. Ah ! 
 how many Christians fall wounded on life's battle-field just 
 because they have been robbed of their armour by the in- 
 sidious friendship of the world ! The false friend has proved 
 more perilous than the armed foe, and the victory has been lost 
 because we did not till too late recognize our danger. 
 
 Believing then that the world is both a false and a most 
 treacherous foe, how are we to guard against it ? It seems to 
 me that the true answer is, By putting on the armour of light. 
 The rulers of darkness are to be defeated by the scattering of 
 the darkness, and this is to be effected by the manifestation of 
 light. For light is aggressive ; wherever it exists it wars upon 
 darkness. They who live to rob the rulers of the darkness of 
 this world of their sway over human hearts by infusing the true 
 light into those hearts are safest from the treacherous influence 
 of the world. So I would say, So far as the rulers of the dark- 
 ness of this world threaten you through the world, your wisdom 
 lies in attacking them instead of waiting for them to attack you. 
 Carry the war into the enemy's country, and you will find that 
 
 240
 
 The Whole Armour of God. 
 
 the world won't be able to do you any harm while you are 
 living to do it good. 
 
 But remember you are on the enemy's ground when you 
 are in the v orld, and we go into our enemy's country to fight, 
 not to enjoy ourselves. We are safe there or anywhere else 
 so long as we are doing the King's work, but we begin to be 
 in danger so soon as we enter upon relations of friendship 
 with them. 
 
 When, on the other hand, you are dealing with these 
 rulers of the darkness of this world directly, and not through 
 those whom they rule, it becomes necessary for you to stand 
 on the defensive, meeting the attack, and overcoming it by the 
 skilful use of the divine armour. It is to this warfare that our 
 text more particularly refers ; but whatever be the character of 
 the warfare, whether aggressive or defensive, whether waged 
 against the rulers of darkness directly or against their subjects 
 and dupes, nothing is to be done without putting on the whole 
 armour of God. With it, and only with it, are we to overcome 
 the world ; with it we are to conquer Satan and his hosts, and 
 having done all to stand. 
 
 Bear in mind then that our conflict is twofold. We have to 
 wage war directly with the powers of darkness, and indirectly 
 with their influences operating in the world around us, and ex- 
 hibiting itself in the lives of the children of this world. And 
 remember that both these hostile forces have to be contended 
 against and overcome, and that if we fail with either we shall 
 fail with both. I want to press this upon you. Mark my 
 word : ^do not believe that we shall succeed in fighting God's 
 battle in our hearts and in our inner experience unless we also 
 are ready to fight God's battle in the world outside. Nor do I 
 believe we shall prevail in fighting God's battle in the world 
 unless we are also at the same time overcoming the wicked one 
 in the region of our own personal experience. The two forms 
 of conflict are to be maintained simultaneously, and a double 
 victory is to be won. 
 
 If we deliberately purpose in our hearts to keep our re- 
 ligion indeed, but to keep it to ourselves if we don't intend 
 to obtrude it upon the attention of others, or seek to win 
 others to the enjoyment of a similar benefit, we shall soon 
 find that we shall have little or no religion to keep. Where 
 there is no aggressive action against the world, the aggressive 
 influences of the world, which are very subtle but very potent, 
 n. 241 R
 
 The Whole Armour of God. 
 
 will very soon rob us of the little religion that we have. If. 
 on the other hand, we give place to the devil within, and let 
 him master us in our secret conflicts with him, our testimony 
 will very soon lose its power, and our voice in the world will 
 be as sounding brass or tinkling cymbal. Our victory needs 
 to be complete all round if it is to be victory at all. 
 \ But now let us pass on to consider the provision here 
 j made for our victory. In order to be successful in this 
 great conflict, the Apostle warns us to " put on the whole 
 armour of God." Let us contemplate this wondrous panoply 
 that we are to wear. Just let me remind you in passing of 
 the points we have already touched on. First, we are to 
 be strong ; but " strong in the Lord, and in the power of 
 His might." Second, we are to expect conflict, and to be 
 ready for it. Third, we have considered the nature of our 
 foe ; we are to fight against the powers of darkness without 
 us in the world and in our inner life when they attack us, and 
 endeavour to establish their footing within. And fourth, we 
 have seen that in both those regions this war has to be carried 
 on successfully ; for to fail in either is to fail in both. And 
 now, fifth, we proceed to observe that there is a special pro- 
 vision made for our success in that divine armour which God 
 Himself has provided. 
 
 Let us consider what is meant by its being "the whole 
 armour of God." Surely we gather from this expression, first, 
 that it can only be supplied by God ; we cannot forge for our- 
 selves this suit of mail. It was never produced by any terres- 
 trial Vulcan. No skill of ethical philosopher or religious 
 reformer can bring it within our reach. This leads us to the 
 second thought, that it is the armour of God, because we can 
 only wear it when we are in the full enjoyment of our proper 
 relations with God. It is only as we are constantly drawing 
 from Him that we can be equipped for the war, and thus we 
 are led on to the third point that this armour is the armour of 
 God, because the possession of it is the direct product of the 
 presence of God within. Where the Spirit of God inhabits 
 our nature, His presence insures our possession of this armour 
 of proof. Or perhaps, in the fourth place, we may call it the 
 armour of God because Jesus Christ, the God-man, was 
 clothed in it, and in it defeated the foe. At any rate, we may 
 learn what this armour is, and how best to use it, by studying 
 the use that Christ made of it. We may learn how to use our 
 
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 The Whole Armour of God. 
 
 arms properly by watching the motions and methods of a skil- 
 ful and experienced soldier, and so, it seems to me, we may 
 form some idea of how to use the armour of God by observing 
 how it was employed by Him who is our great Exemplar in this 
 as well as in every other respect. 
 
 Now observe the direction given us here, " Take unto you ;" 
 as though he would say, The thing belongs to you, this wondrous 
 panoply is yours already, but you have to claim it as your right- 
 ful possession, to grasp it with a believing hand, and to equip 
 yourselves with it, as those who believe that God means it for us. 
 Now many an unbelieving prayer is offered for treasures which 
 all the while are really ours, if we would but have the courage, 
 and faith, and the decision of will to take them. 
 
 Well then the first step towards arming ourselves is taken 
 when we have our loins girt about with truth. Now mark 
 carefully two senses of that word truth. First, it signifies the 
 inward condition or habit of soul ; and second, the apprehen- 
 sion of external verities, the "agreement of thought with 
 thing." 
 
 This inward condition is usually called subjective truth, or, 
 as we frequently name it, truthfulness, or honesty, and sin- 
 cerity of heart the single eye, the pure desire, the straight- 
 forwardness of purpose. Now it is obvious that as we gird our 
 loins, so as to be the stronger for our work, even so, unless we 
 are perfectly sincere and honest in our intention to make no 
 kind of terms with recognized evil, we never can be in a posi- 
 tion to enter upon the conflict or to bring it to a successful 
 issue. It is easy to see how necessarily weak a divided heart 
 must be. He who loves the wages of unrighteousness, like 
 Balaam the son of Bosor, while all the time he seeks to main- 
 tain his relations with God, must ever fail on the battle-field of 
 life, or, if indeed he fights at all, like Balaam, he will fight on 
 the wrong side. St Barnabas exhorted his disciples to cleave 
 to the Lord with full purpose of heart, and such is the exhor- 
 tation that I would address to you now. 
 
 Observe these two senses of the word truth are much more 
 closely connected with each other than we might think. Our 
 Lord teaches us that if any man WISHES to do God's will is 
 only desirous, that is to say, to be inwardly true to the one 
 great purpose of life he shall know of the doctrine. When 
 we cultivate a habit of honesty of heart, this will bring along 
 with it honesty of mind, and to such the Lord can reveal His 
 
 243
 
 The Whole Armour of God. 
 
 truth. Now as falsehood is the strength of the kingdom of 
 Satan, so truth is the strength of the kingdom of God; and 
 those who know the truth will find that their loins are girded 
 with that which is a real source of power. The father of lies 
 will all along attack you with his lies, but the light of truth 
 will rob these of their influence. He who walks in the truth 
 sees through Satan's sophistries and learns to despise his snares, 
 and finds that, in spiritual as well as in natural things, knowledge 
 is power. 
 
 But, observe, that your loins may be girt about with truth, 
 you must study the truth, and become acquainted with it. 
 Hence, dear young Christians, the necessity of studying your 
 Bibles, and becoming more and more acquainted with God's 
 will as revealed there. Let me remind you of our blessed 
 Lord's own words, " If ye continue in my word, then are ye 
 my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the 
 truth shall make you free." It is only by continuing in His 
 word that we can become His disciples indeed, and feel the 
 liberating power of the truth. 
 
 But I must hasten on. " Put on the breastplate of right- 
 eousness." We are considered righteous when first we come 
 to Christ because of the gift of righteousness which comes 
 from God, and is to be received by faith ; and it is most im- 
 portant that we should not allow anything to rob us of that 
 sense of justification which flows from redemption. But while 
 this is the foundation of all righteousness in our hearts and 
 lives, I do not believe that it is of righteousness in this limited 
 sense that St. Paul is speaking here. Observe he is here deal- 
 ing, not with our standing, but with our experience, and he 
 seems to have before his mind that practical righteousness 
 which indeed is only possible to the justified, but which may 
 reasonably be expected to flow from justification. He himself 
 tells us that the righteous claim of the law is to be fulfilled in 
 us "who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." St. 
 Paul tells us of himself in this respect, that herein did he 
 exercise himself to have always a conscience void of offence 
 before God and man. 
 
 Now perplexing but very deeply interesting questions as to 
 what amount of perfection, negative or otherwise, may be 
 expected in this life are very frequently asked at present, and 
 we are often asked, Is it possible to live without sin ? The best 
 answer to such enquiries, it seems to me, is a very practical 
 
 244
 
 The Whole Armour of God. 
 
 one. It is possible for those who walk by faith in the Son of 
 God, so long as they do so walk, to retain a conscience void of 
 offence before God and man. That is our calling. It is 
 possible for you, by the grace of God, to be kept from doing 
 anything that you know to be opposed to the mind and will of 
 God, and when that is your condition you are wearing the 
 breastplate of righteousness. 
 
 Think for a moment how very necessary and indispensable 
 a portion of your spiritual armour this is, and how in- 
 capable you are of fighting when this has been laid aside or 
 forfeited. If you are betrayed into a sin, and that sin is still 
 upon your conscience unforgiven, oh, how weak you are ! 
 You go forth to labour for God, but you cannot labour ; your 
 words are like sounding brass. You go forth to meet the 
 enemy on the battle-field of your own inner experiences, and 
 when you are exposed to temptation you cannot resist him, but 
 fall again, because your breast is not clean. It is not covered 
 with that breastplate of burnished steel on which the light of 
 heaven's purity can be reflected. The sin of yesterday pro- 
 duces the sin of to-day. You are weak because you have 
 fallen. There is a weight upon your conscience and a mis- 
 giving in your heart, and you are not in a position to draw 
 your sword and to do battle bravely and well. 
 
 But it may perhaps be asked, How shall we keep our breast- 
 plate bright, and ever wear it ready for action? Well, first 
 be very careful and watchful in guarding against the begin- 
 nings of sin, and trust to the power of God in Christ to keep 
 you from sinning. And next, if unhappily you should ever be 
 betrayed into anything you feel to be a sin, don't keep it upon 
 your conscience. Go straight to the mercy- seat and confess it, 
 and humble yourself before God. Ask God to give you deep 
 and penitential sorrow because you have grieved that Christ who 
 loves you so well, and to whom you are so deeply indebted ; 
 but, even while you confess, claim by faith His forgiving mercy. 
 " These things," says St. John, " write I unto you, that ye sin 
 not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the 
 Father, Jesus Christ the righteous : and He is the satisfaction 
 for our sins." Don't carry about with you a load of unforgiven 
 sins. There is nothing thrusts us off to a distance from God 
 more surely than an accumulated mass of unforgiven sin. 
 
 Next, we are to have our feet shod with the preparation of 
 the gospel of peace. Thus it was that the feet of Christ Him- 
 
 245
 
 The Whole Armour of God. 
 
 self were clad. Wherever Christ went mercy winged His feet. 
 He went about doing good ; He was guided by love. I have 
 already spoken of the danger of going into the world except 
 on one errand. Look at the illustration here. It was frequent 
 in ancient warfare to prepare the ground against an invading 
 army by scattering over it sharp and cutting materials, such as 
 broken glass or potsherds, that would soon disable an ill-shod 
 enemy. 
 
 And even so when you go into the world. Remember 
 you are only safe when you wear your gospel greaves. He 
 who goes into the world on his Master's service shod with the 
 preparedness or readiness of gospel benevolence will remain 
 uninjured by all the snares that the world spreads for him ; 
 but he who goes into the world on furlough won't take his 
 armour with hinv soldiers never do and so what wonder if his 
 feet are torn and lacerated because they are not properly shod. 
 
 The word here translated preparation might perhaps be 
 better rendered "readiness." The Apostle tells us elsewhere 
 that we are to be ever " ready to give an answer of the hope 
 that is in us with meekness and fear," and the thought sug- 
 gested here seems to be a very helpful and a very practical 
 one. We cannot always speak, but we may always be ready 
 to speak; and if our feet are shod with readiness, then we 
 shall be able to rush in wherever a door is opened. We know 
 how unfit we feel for any active exertion when we are unshod. 
 If anything has to be done of considerable moment our first 
 business is to put on our shoes, and if we are lazy and indolent 
 in bestirring ourselves to do this the opportunity of doing 
 our work may have passed away. 
 
 Even so how many a spiritual opportunity do we miss 
 because we are not shod with "readiness !" We are feeling as 
 if we were " off duty." Perhaps too we are somewhat out of 
 communion, or perhaps we are conferring with flesh and blood, 
 and, like Jonah of old, considering whether or not the task is 
 likely to be a pleasing one, and so the privilege is lost, and we 
 fail to prove ourselves good soldiers of Jesus Christ, or to exert 
 our proper influence upon a perishing world. 
 
 Oh, Christian soldier, hold thyself in readiness, even as 
 Philip did in the wilderness (surely, if anywhere, he might have 
 taken his greaves off there), and then, like his, our ear shall 
 hear the orders that fall from the Master's lips, and, like Philip, 
 we shall be able to run ! Remember, no man ever runs to do 
 
 246
 
 The Whole Armour of God. 
 
 God's work unless he is shod with the readiness of the Gospel 
 of Peace. 
 
 Now we come to perhaps the most important point of all : 
 "Above all take the shield of faith, whereby ye shall be able 
 to quench the fiery darts of the wicked one." Here, first, 
 is encouragement for us all. The fiery darts are sure to come; 
 but, if we only use that shield, however fiery the darts of the 
 wicked one may be, we shall be able to quench them. Many 
 are these fiery darts, and well does Satan know how to use 
 them. 
 
 With the young Christian, fresh to the new life, they are 
 frequently venomous suggestions that Satan throws out with 
 respect to God. Don't think that you are a child of God, 
 nor venture to dream that all is right between you and Him. 
 You have not the joy and the rapture that belongs to God's 
 children ; nay, you have not even a sufficiently calm and deep 
 and unbroken peace. These are fiery darts, and many a young 
 Christian do they grievously wound. Long years ago I was 
 attacked by the enemy after that fashion. When I was a mere 
 boy, and not long after I had given myself to Christ, the 
 enemy came in like a flood upon me. "You are not con- 
 verted," said the tempter, " don't you think it. You would feel 
 very different to what you do if you were." Well, at first I was 
 very much cast down, and began to wonder whether I could 
 be ; but after a time I took up the shield, and faced him with 
 it ; that perhaps may seem a big shield for a child to lift, but 
 it adapts itself to all ages, and thus armed even a child is a 
 match for the devil. Wearied out with uncertainties, at last I 
 appealed to facts. I asked myself, as a matter of distinct and 
 definite moral consciousness, " Now look here, Have I trusted 
 my soul into the hands of Jesus Christ, or have I not?" My own 
 personal consciousness answered, "Yes, I know that I have. 
 If ever I have performed any inward act I know I have done 
 this I have rested my soul on Christ and left myself in His 
 hands. Very well then, if I have put myself in Jesus' hands 
 there I am ; and now, Satan, if you want me you must go 
 to Jesus Christ for me ; if He won't give me over to you, then 
 you can't have me." That was enough ; he was not able to 
 get his darts through that shield. His darts may be fiery, but 
 there is something in that shield that is sure to quench them. 
 Alas ! he has obtained many an advantage over me since then, 
 because I have been too careless in using my armour; but 
 
 247
 
 The Whole Armour of God. 
 
 from that day to this he has never been able to shake my con- 
 fidence in a God-forgiving love. If Christ be the Christ of the 
 New Testament I am quite sure that I can't be wrong in trust- 
 ing myself absolutely to Him, and so there I rest. 
 
 But these are not the only fiery darts that he will shoot at 
 you ; he will suggest evil thoughts, and endeavour to awaken 
 unholy desires, or to stir rancorous feelings or unlovely tempers. 
 Remember that we are to resist him " steadfast in the faith," 
 believing without doubt in God's ability to raise us above 
 temptation, and to keep us from its power. Or perhaps he 
 will assail you through others with cruel persecutions and gibes 
 and jeers, which none of us find it very easy to bear, and 
 then when all seems against you he will whisper blasphemies in 
 your ear, and tell you that God doesn't love you or He would 
 never suffer you to be so severely tried, and allow you to be 
 exposed to such hostile influences. Yes, dear child of God, 
 you too may perhaps, as David did, hear the enemy say 
 " God hath forsaken him : persecute and take him ; for there is 
 none to deliver him." But now is the time for the shield of 
 faith "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him;" or, 
 better still " I shall not die, but live, and declare the works 
 of the Lord. The Lord hath chastened and corrected me ; 
 but He hath not given me over unto death." " In Him I trust 
 that He will yet deliver me." 
 
 Remember your strength lies on changeless confidence in a 
 changeless God. Let appearances say what they will, God is 
 love, and we will believe it, come what may. We walk by 
 faith, and not by sight. Up with the shield, and the fiery darts 
 may smite hissing hot upon it, but your defence is sure ; you 
 shall be able to quench them. 
 
 And take the helmet of salvation. Obviously the head is a 
 most important part ; for a wound here may easily prove fatal, 
 and even a severe blow may rob you of all power elsewhere, 
 and leave you stunned and senseless on the battle-field. Hence 
 the importance of the helmet to the warrior, and of our helmet 
 to us. Let us take care that we wear it, otherwise we must 
 not be surprised if Satan smites us on our head. And indeed 
 I am afraid there are not a few Christians who seem to have 
 fared thus on the battle-field of life. They think that they can 
 dispense with this God-provided helmet ; indeed, some seem 
 to believe that it is very presumptuous to wear it. They seem 
 to think that doubts and fears as to their salvation are more 
 
 248
 
 T/te Whole Armour of God. 
 
 appropriate to the experience of blood-bought Christians than 
 joyous confidence and a happy sense of security, and so they 
 go bareheaded into the battle-field ; and what wonder if Satan 
 sees his advantage and smites them down, and robs them of 
 all ability to do God's work properly, or to fight His battles. 
 
 How many stunned Christians do we meet with Christians 
 who seem to have lost all capacity for usefulness, just because 
 they have been struck on the head by the enemy ! They have 
 invited doubt, and declined the enjoyment of their proper 
 confidence, and now doubt has paralyzed all their energies, 
 and there they lie stricken and helpless, just because they 
 would not wear the helmet that divine love had provided for 
 them in those words which belong to all true believers : " By 
 grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it 
 is the gift of God." 
 
 Oh, dear young Christians, put on this helmet of salvation, 
 and wear it before all, with all true humility, but with a holy 
 boldness ; so shall you be proof against those attacks which, if 
 successful, must rob your whole spiritual nature of its power 
 and capacity, and leave you a mere incumbrance on the battle- 
 field, requiring the assistance of other Christians to apply 
 restoratives, instead of being able to contribute to the general 
 victory. 
 
 So far we have been considering our weapons of defence ; 
 but as we are to act on the aggressive against the rulers of the 
 darkness of this world, that is not enough. So the Apostle 
 goes on to say, "And take the sword of the Spirit, which is the 
 word of God." It has often been pointed out that it was by 
 this weapon that our blessed Lord overcame Satan, referring 
 again and again to this written Word; and we may observe 
 that He used this sword, not only to parry and foil Satan's 
 attacks, but also to inflict a mighty home-thrust on his foe, for 
 as such I always regard the answer to the third temptation. 
 Self-worship, self-idolatry, had been apparently the first great 
 sin of the devil, and against this Christ launched out when He 
 answered the third and most attractive of all the temptations, 
 as it would have appeared to us, with the quotation, "Thou 
 shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou 
 serve." This was just what he had failed to do, and when he 
 is thus reminded of his first great sin, he turns his back and 
 flies : the rebuke was too well merited for him to be able to 
 endure it 
 
 249
 
 The Whole Armour of God. 
 
 But it was not only in hand-to-hand conflicts with Satan that 
 our Lord used this weapon ; it was ever where a warrior's 
 sword should be at his side, ready to hand. So He was pre- 
 pared to overthrow alike Pharisee and Sadducee, and indeed 
 to silence every hostle tongue by His skilful use of the same 
 weapon ; and even when He hung upon the cross, in that last 
 and most terrible conflict, the word of God was still on His 
 lips, and with this weapon He triumphed over Satan in His 
 last fierce onset, dying with a text upon His lips. 
 
 Dear young Christians, learn to use this weapon, and have 
 confidence in it. Meet your doubts and difficulties with the 
 word of God. Resist the attack of Satan, the temptations and 
 worldly influences with which you may be assailed, with the 
 word of God ; carry on your friendly warfare against the world 
 by the word of God, and seek to become acquainted with it 
 that you may use it, and so drink of the very spirit of it that 
 it may be a power in your life and on your lips. 
 
 But those of you who have read Pilgrim's Progress will remem- 
 ber how, when Christian was sorely pressed, there came a time 
 when even his good sword seemed of little service to him, and 
 then in his emergency he had recourse to another weapon 
 unknown to the armouries of earth, and that weapon was all 
 prayer. The Apostle knew nothing about modern artillery, or 
 perhaps he might have found a sufficient figure there ; but 
 we may say that what artillery is to modern warfare, that all 
 prayer is to our spiritual conflict; for as the use of artillery 
 puts some of the mightiest forces of nature at the disposal 
 of the soldier, so all prayer puts us in possession of the very 
 forces of Omnipotence. The hand that holds the thunderbolts, 
 and could crush a world, is lifted up on behalf of the praying 
 soul. 
 
 Dear Christian friends, believe in the power of prayer, or 
 rather in the power of the God who hears and answers prayer. 
 And remember the two words here used always with all 
 prayer. If one sort of prayer does not seem to suit your 
 spiritual condition or your circumstances, and you don't seem 
 making much way with it, try another ; if your prayers for 
 yourself don't seem to be very spiritural or powerful, perhaps 
 it is a sign that you should pray for others ; if you don't feel 
 drawn to pray for individuals, pray for your church or your 
 country; if you don't feel liberty in any of these respects, 
 begin and pray for the Lord's coming ; if you don't find it easy 
 
 250
 
 The Whole Armour of God. 
 
 to pray for anything, lift up your heart in praise. Thus pray 
 with all manner of prayer. If your mind wanders in long 
 prayers, then pray short, but more frequently; if you cannot 
 make consecutive and well-arranged prayers, you may yet lay 
 hold of God with simple ejaculations. 
 
 And this brings us to our last point "fray always" By all 
 means have your fixed times for prayer, but don't confine prayer 
 to these ; your lives are to be prayers. Take the presence of 
 God with you wherever you go, speak to Him of everything, 
 consult Him about everything, recognize Him everywhere, and 
 thus shall your whole life be a sanctity, and you shall find good 
 in everything. Your very needs and trials shall be blessings, 
 your very temptations shall be benefits, because all alike will 
 drive you nearer to Him whom having not seen yoir love, and 
 love the more because He is your constant companion and 
 your most intimate friend. 
 
 Farewell ! " Watch ye," Christian soldiers, stand fast in 
 faith, quit you like men, and be strong, and one day peradven- 
 ture you too will be able to say, with the brave soldier St. Paul, 
 " I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I 
 have kept the faith : henceforth there is laid up for me a 
 crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, 
 shall give me at His appearing." " To him that overcometh and 
 keepeth my works, to him will I give power over the nations, 
 and He shall rule them with a rod of iron, and as the vessels 
 of a potter shall they be broken to shivers." " To him that over- 
 cometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also 
 overcame, and am set down with my Father in His throne." 
 
 251
 
 IVORKS 
 
 BY THE 
 
 Rev. W, HAY M, H, AITKBN, M.A., 
 
 /HMssion ipreacber. 
 
 New Edition, Crown 8vo, price 4'-, cloth. 
 
 THE SCHOOL OF GRACE. 
 
 This Volume is printed in large type, and forms a complete treatise on 
 some of the most practical points of the Christian's life. 
 
 The Author writes in his Preface that 
 
 "It is in the hope of furthering the full apprehension and enjoyment 
 of all that our Christian privileges have brought within our reach, that 
 this little icork is offered to those who wish to be true disciples of Christ. " 
 
 New Editions, price Three Shillings each. 
 EASTERTIDE: 
 
 THOUGHTS ON THE PASSION AND RESURRECTION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 Death the Condition of Fruitf ulness 
 
 The Hosannahs and the Tears. 
 
 The Perfect Humanity of Christ 
 
 The Flight of the Disciples. 
 
 The Courage of Christ. 
 
 The Fall of Simon Peter. 
 
 The Self-forgetf nlness of Christ. 
 
 The Treachery of Judas. 
 
 The Obedient Submission of Christ. 
 
 "The same Night that He was 
 
 Betrayed." 
 
 Armed with the Mind of Christ. 
 The Judgment of the Sin-bearer. 
 Buried with Christ. 
 The Power of His Resurrection. 
 The Victor in His Glory. 
 Children of the Resurrection. 
 
 AROUND THE CROSS. 
 
 Some of ti&t jFtrst principles of tf)? Sottrtne of Jjn'st 
 
 Around the Cross. 
 
 Conviction. 
 
 Repentance. 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 Justification. 
 
 Assurance. 
 
 The Visit of Salvation. 
 
 Effects of the Visit of Salvation. 
 
 Salvation from Sin. 
 Neglect of Salvation. 
 Unworthy of Eternal Life. 
 To-Day. 
 To-Morrow. 
 Behold, He Cometh. 
 The Opened Books. 
 The Harvest Past.
 
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 Price Three Shillings each. 
 
 MISSION SERMONS. First Series. 
 
 Christ Manifested to Destroy the 
 
 Works of the Devil. 
 God Glorified in the Fall of Pride. 
 See Thy Way in the Valley. 
 Cast Out but Found. 
 The Wounds of Jesus. 
 Philip and the Eunuch. 
 The Sprinkled Blood. 
 The Double Deliverance. 
 I am My Beloved's, and He is Mine. 
 The Invitation. 
 
 Ittai the Gittite. 
 
 How Long Halt Ye ? 
 
 Cornelius. 
 
 The Soul's Pleas. 
 
 Prisoners of Hope. 
 
 Christ in the Scriptures. 
 
 Reconciliation. 
 
 Joseph and His Brethren. 
 
 Counsels to Young Christians. 
 
 Workers together with Christ. 
 
 MISSION SERMONS. Second Series. 
 
 Where art Thou ? 
 
 Failed of his Life's Purpose. 
 
 Rescue the Perishing. 
 
 The Good Samaritan. 
 
 Out of Company with Jesus. 
 
 Self-Destruction God-Salvation. 
 
 Self-Dedication. 
 
 The Wandering Sheep. 
 
 Self-Denial. 
 
 The Past and Future. 
 
 Feeding on Christ. 
 
 The Heroism of the Crucified. 
 
 The Rejection by the Pharisees. 
 
 What are we not to Say, &c. 
 
 The Marriage of Cana. 
 
 Abounding in Love more and more. 
 
 Be ye also Ready. 
 
 The Goodly Price of Jesus. 
 
 MISSION SERMONS. Third Series. 
 
 Loss of the First Love. 
 
 Who Touched Me P 
 
 Wrestling Jacob. 
 
 The Call of the Bride. 
 
 Christ at the Door of the Heart. 
 
 Can Two walk together ? 
 
 True Manliness. 
 
 Saved by Grace. 
 
 What Manner of Love ? 
 
 The Trustworthiness of Christ. 
 
 The Good Old Way. 
 
 The Centurion's Faith. 
 
 The Last Great Prayer-Meeting. 
 
 Children Gathering Sticks. 
 
 Nothing to Pay. 
 
 This One Thing I Do. 
 
 The Conversion of St. Paul. 
 
 The Solitude of the Sin-Bearer. 
 
 NEWNESS OF LIFE. 
 
 SCtje jFrutts of iHfOrmptum ana tlje Claims of tlje 
 
 Newness of Life. 
 
 Led by the Spirit. 
 
 Jesus in the Midst. 
 
 The Little City and Poor Wise Man. 
 
 Fellowship in Christ's Sufferings. 
 
 The Christian' s Walk and its Obj ect. 
 The Messenger and His Mission. 
 The Holy War. 
 The Broken Altar. 
 &c. &c.
 
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 THE LOVE OF THE FATHER. 
 
 A SERIES OF SERMONS ON THE PARABLE OF THE 'PRODIGAL SON,' 
 
 ana otfjtr Subfrtta tlluatrattbt of ttj? jFatijrrlj? lobe of Goo. 
 Leaving Home. God's Goodness a Motive for 
 
 Repentance. 
 God's Challenge. 
 The Moral Limit of the 
 
 Divine Resources. 
 Ephraim and King Jareb. 
 
 The Wasted Substance. 
 Returning Sanity. 
 Decision. 
 
 The Welcome Home. 
 The Elder Brother. 
 God's Call to the Fallen. 
 How to Return to God. 
 "Thou God Seest Me." 
 
 The Holy One the Purifier. 
 The Living Way. 
 The Two Rocks. 
 
 THE HIGHWAY OF HOLINESS. 
 
 HELPS TO THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. 
 
 The Highway of Holiness. 
 To Me to Live is Christ. 
 Imitators of God. 
 Growth and Harvest. 
 The Anticipations of Faith. 
 The Crossing of the Jordan. 
 Why Cannot I Follow Thee Now ? 
 Follow Thou Me. 
 
 Martha ; or, The Active Life. 
 
 Mary ; or, The Contemplative Life. 
 
 The Dangers of Legality. 
 
 The Dangers of Antinomianism. 
 
 The Peril of Worldliness. 
 
 The Solemn Assembly. 
 
 Let us Keep the Feast. 
 
 The Christian Armour. 
 
 THE REVEALER REVEALED. 
 
 THOUGHTS UPON THE REVELATION OF CHRIST TO 4- IN HIS PEOPLE. 
 
 Christ as a Saviour. 
 Christ as a King. 
 Christ as the Teacher. 
 Christ as our Life-power. 
 Christ as the Bridegroom. 
 Mirrors of Christ. 
 Faith. 
 Watchfulness. 
 
 Love. 
 
 Joy. 
 
 Peace. 
 
 Perfection through Suffering. 
 
 Not Our Own. 
 
 Walking with God. 
 
 The Washing and the Bathing. 
 
 Not Hearers Only. 
 
 GOD'S EVERLASTING YEA. 
 
 Dtbitu IJvobt'ston for lintman Nero. 
 
 God's Everlasting Yea. 
 
 The Fading and the Fadeless Life. 
 
 The Valley of Achor. 
 
 The Blessing and the Curse. 
 
 The Mighty Constraint of Love. 
 
 The Song of the Ransomed. 
 
 Love Commended. 
 
 The Brazen Serpent. 
 
 The Story of a Great Deliverance. 
 
 The Reward of the Sin- Bearer. 
 
 Rest for the Weary. 
 
 The Cry of the Penitent. 
 
 Blind Bartimaeus. 
 
 The Two Ways. 
 
 The Voices that Call us Home.
 
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 Price Three Shillings each. 
 
 THE GLORY OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 The Glory of the Gospel. 
 
 The Convicting Spirit. 
 
 The Strange Plea. 
 
 What shall we do with Jesus ': 
 
 The Wedding Feast 
 
 The Story of a Great Love. 
 
 Faithful unto Death. 
 
 The Men of Keilah. 
 
 What Must I Do to be Saved? 
 Believe and be Saved. 
 Why, What Evil hath He Done ? 
 Lying Vanities. 
 
 The Valley of Decision. [ness. 
 Reasonings Concerning Righteous- 
 Reasonings Concerning Temperance. 
 Reasonings Concerning Judgment. 
 
 WHAT IS YOUR LIFE? 
 
 ADDRESSES SPECIALLY SUITED TO YOUNG MEN. 
 
 What is Your Life ? 
 Young Man, Arise. 
 Esau's Fatal Bargain. 
 The Shipwreck of the Soul. 
 One Thing Thou Lackest. 
 The Sure Foundation. 
 The Three Preferences. 
 The Invitations. 
 
 The Excuses. 
 
 The Atonement a Necessity. 
 
 The Difficulties of Unbelief. 
 
 To Whom Shall we Go ? 
 
 False Shame. 
 
 My Son, Give Me Thine Heart. 
 
 Burning the Roll. 
 
 Full and Unconditional Surrender. 
 
 New and Revised Edition. 
 
 "THE DIFFICULTIES OF THE SOUL." 
 
 Price ONE SHILLING, limp cloth ; 1/6, cloth boards. 
 
 HYMNS & LITURGIES for a PAROCHIAL MISSION. 
 
 With accompanying Tunes. Revised and Enlarged Editions. 
 
 Officially adopted by the Church Parochial Mission Society as its 
 
 authorised Hymnal. 
 
 Words only. Id., sewed; 2d., cloth. 
 
 Words, Tunes, and Liturgies. 1/6, sewed; 2/-, cloth. 
 
 Hymns and Liturgies in One Volume. 2d., sewed ; 3d., cloth limp. 
 Short Liturgies for Mission Services. Id., sewed. 
 
 A MANUAL FOR PAROCHIAL MISSIONS. 
 
 Giving instructions to workers on all points connected with a Mission. 
 ONE SHILLING, cloth. 
 
 SPECIAL TERMS FOR MISSION SERVICES. 
 
 LONDON : JOHN F. SHAW & Co., 48, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.G.
 
 1U7 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Santa Barbara 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW. 
 
 Series 9482