OUB RECEPTION OF THE TRUTH OF CERISTS 
 
 MESSAGE, A PART OF OUB MORAL 
 
 PROBATION. 
 
 A SERMON, 
 
 PEEACHED BEFORE 
 
 THE UNIYERSITY OF OXFORD, 
 
 FIFTH SUNDAY IN LFNT, MARCH 9th, 1856. 
 
 SAMUEL, LOED BISHOP OF OXFOED, 
 
 CHANCELLOR OF THE MOST NOBLE OKDER OF THE GAKTEK, AND LOKD 
 HIGH ALMONER TO THE QXJEEN. 
 
 PUBLISHED AT THE REQUEST OF THE VICE-CHANCELLOR. 
 
 OXFORD, 
 
 AND 377, STRAND, LONDON: 
 JOHN HENRY and JAMES PARKEE. 
 
 M DCCC LVI,
 
 A SERMON 
 
 St. John iii. 12. 
 
 If I have told you earthly thinys, and ye believe not, how 
 shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things ? 
 
 It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the import- 
 ance of these words of our blessed Lord, placed as 
 they are at the opening of His ministry, as an inti- 
 mation to His Church throughout all time of the 
 difficulties and dangers to the hearers of Ilis words 
 which must attend His revelation of the Truth. For 
 here is the great Teacher from Heaven, the co-equal 
 Sharer with the Everlasting Father of all the coun- 
 sels of eternity, casting forward His gaze over all 
 the generations of men to whom His truth should 
 be proposed ; foreseeing the multitude whom the 
 working of that spirit which asked, "How can 
 these things be ?" would lead to reject the truth ; 
 and in the sorrow of thj,t sight sighing forth these 
 accents of an unspeakable compassion : " If I have 
 told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how 
 shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things ?" 
 
 A 2
 
 It is, then, to the caution which these words convey, 
 as specially applying to these times of restless in- 
 vestigation, and to you as to men brought here in 
 great part that your intellects may be developed, 
 and who through that very development will be the 
 more exposed to the danger against which our Lord 
 would warn you, that I would call your attention 
 this morning. 
 
 And first, I would have you observe that in these 
 words it is implied by our Lord, that whether a 
 man will or will not believe in the message which is 
 thus sent to him by God, is a part of his moral 
 probation here. 
 
 For our Lord here plainly declares that there is 
 in men under certain circumstances an incapacity of 
 believing them ; and a very little consideration will 
 shew us that it is to a self-created moral incapacity 
 that He points. For the disbelief, and so the non- 
 reception, of any message coming with authority, 
 must arise from some fault either in the bearer of 
 that message, — or in him who sends it, — or in its 
 receiver. 
 
 In this case, the Messenger being the Eternal Son 
 of God, God's Divine Word, there can be in the 
 delivery of the message nothing to prevent its re- 
 ception. Neither can there be in Him, the Father of 
 Lights, the All-wise and Almighty Creator, who 
 knoweth whereof we to whom He sends the message 
 are made. 
 
 It remains, then, that the cause of its not being 
 received must be in the receiver. 

 
 And then, further, the cause must be in the re- 
 ceiver, not in virtue of any natural inabihty to re- 
 ceive the message, but in virtue of that as to which he 
 has, under the circumstances in which he is placed, 
 power either to receive or not to receive it. For to 
 send a message which he to whom it is sent is in- 
 capable of receiving, implies fault in the sender, not 
 in the receiver. 
 
 The fault, then, in the unbelieving receiver of this 
 message from God must lie in that part of himself 
 over which he has power, and not in that over 
 which he has not power : that is, it must lie, not in 
 any necessary incapacity, — as, for instance, in any in- 
 tellectual inability to receive the message, (except 
 so far forth as it is in his own power to obtain or to 
 lose such intellectual ability,) — but in an incapacity 
 which it is in his ow^n power, under the circum- 
 stances in which he is placed, to cause to continue 
 or to remove. 
 
 Further, it must, morally, lie in his power alone. 
 For if it were possible, consistently with the object 
 of sending it, for the sender or the deliverer of the 
 message, by any variation in the message, or in the 
 mode of its delivery, to remove the difficulty of its 
 reception, just in that degree must the fault of its 
 non-reception be in the sender, or in the bearer, 
 and not in him to whom it is sent. It follows, 
 therefore, from the perfections of the Eternal Father, 
 who sends, and of the Co-eternal Son, who bears, 
 the message of Revelation to man, that the cause 
 of its non-reception by man must lie wholly in
 
 6 
 
 man, under the conditions in which that message 
 reaches him ; that is to say, that whether man will 
 receive the message or not, is a part of that trial of 
 his free agency which, under the continual acting 
 of God's Holy Spirit, constitutes his probation 
 here: and when our Lord asked the question, "How 
 shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?" He 
 sighed forth His infinite compassion over His fallen 
 creatures, who would, as He foresaw in the mystery 
 of their trial, under all the assistances of His Spirit, 
 which should make them able to believe, if they 
 would be made able, still, to their own ruin, wilfully 
 refuse to accept His message. 
 
 And this we may see more clearly still if we now 
 take into consideration the subject, the circum- 
 stances, and the matter of this message. 
 
 For the subject of the revelation is the being 
 and nature of God and of Man ; their mutual re- 
 lation, the causes and the consequences of that 
 relation, and the acts God has wrought to modify 
 and change it. Now a message concerning these 
 cannot be a set of bare, abstract propositions ; for the 
 declaration and admission of these mutual relations 
 must reach to the w^iole series of affections and 
 actions in which those relations embody and ex- 
 press themselves. The message, that is to say, 
 must concern the whole life of him to whom it is 
 sent, both in his outward actions and in his inward 
 affections ; so that here, again, we must conclude, 
 that whether he receive it in this manner or in 
 that, is really the same question, as how he answers
 
 to his moral probation. And this we may see even 
 more plainly still, if we consider the circumstances 
 under which this message professes to be sent. 
 For it pm'ports to come from the All-perfect Crea- 
 tor to a fallen creature, unable of himself, in con- 
 sequence of that fall, to receive it, but who shall 
 be made able to receive it, if he seeks earnestly 
 from Ilim who sends it, the aid which he needs to 
 make him capable of receiving it. 
 
 So that here, in the alleged circumstances of the 
 message, it is plainly declared that it depends upon 
 the will of the receiver whether or no he receive it 
 aright. That is, again, that his reception of it is 
 a distinct part of his moral probation. And so 
 even more strongly still does the matter of the 
 message declare. 
 
 For its essential declaration is, that the creature 
 who receives it has fallen from his own perfection 
 by seeking for independence ; and that the first con- 
 dition of his restoration is the abandonment of His 
 self-will, and returning, as one unable to help him- 
 self, for all things to the Person, and will, and law, 
 and work of His Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. 
 
 Now such a revelation of Himself as this by the 
 Creator and Redeemer may, (as we know that in 
 fact it does,) contradict in ten thousand different 
 ways the different desires of different men. It may, 
 (as we know that it does,) require purity of the man 
 who loves impurity, meekness of the proud and 
 passionate, strictness of the soft and luxurious ; 
 and it may be rejected by the man for the sake of
 
 8 
 
 any one of these particular affections which he 
 would, by its admission, be required to mortify : 
 and in these cases we all, I suppose, see at once, 
 that the rejection of the message is a simple faihng 
 in the man's moral trial. And yet, as it is most 
 important to notice, no one of these does reach 
 down to the very true and central part of man's 
 probation. For the essence of that probation is, 
 whether he will submit his will to the will of God ; 
 and of the refusal to do this, there may easily be a 
 far more intense and malignant form than that which 
 is embodied in the unlawful submission of the man to 
 any one or more of these particular affections. For 
 from any of these (though, if they continue to hold 
 him from God, they must destroy him) he may, 
 with comparative easiness, be drawn off; and, 
 through God's grace, seeing the foul degradation 
 from which he has been raised, cast himself in 
 heart-broken gratitude before his Deliverer, to sit 
 for ever at His feet, clothed, and in his right mind. 
 But there are those to whom an entrance into the 
 kingdom of heaven is more difficult than for pub- 
 licans and harlots. And these are they in whom 
 the reign of self is strongest, — who reject the mes- 
 sage, not because it requires them to cast off this 
 or that separable accident of their present life, but 
 because it requires them to bow themselves before 
 God ; to receive His Revelation as the Truth ; not 
 to raise a single question concerning it ; not to 
 modify and adjust it according to their notions 
 of what is true, or what is good, or what is be-
 
 fitting; but simply to receive it as true, as the 
 Truth, because He has sent it to them, and re- 
 quires their reception of it. In these cases the 
 Tempter of man does really, as some skilful general, 
 contract, it may be greatly, his lines of defence, 
 abandon many outworks, and concentrate in the 
 citadel the whole strength of his forces, in order 
 that he may securely occupy that stronghold of 
 the heart ; in order that the rebellious will may, 
 with the least exposure of itself to external dis- 
 turbance, possess the inw^ard centre of the uncon- 
 verted soul. 
 
 Here then, again, we may see that at the very 
 central point of man's probation rests the ques- 
 tion of his receiving or rejecting the message of 
 Salvation. 
 
 Nor is it in any real sense true, that to hold this 
 doctrine is to make men's salvation depend upon 
 their intellectual capacity. For the part of the in- 
 tellect herein is to comprehend the propositions 
 subm^itted to it in the message ; and except in that 
 degree in which this power of comprehension is it- 
 self the result of moral action, there is in this simple 
 comprehension of the propositions submitted to him 
 no question of man's moral probation. God has so 
 constructed the message of salvation brought us by 
 Christ, that it is indeed fitted in all its essential pro- 
 positions for the comprehension of men of all de- 
 grees of mere intellectual capacity. If it were not 
 so, the fault of the non-acceptance of the message 
 by those for whose intellectual capacity it were
 
 ui\fit, would rest with the sender ; which, as we have 
 seen before, would be to impute imperfection to 
 Him who is all-perfect. But the rejection of the 
 message in these cases results, not from a non-com- 
 prehension of its propositions, but from a percep- 
 tion that those propositions contradict the pre- 
 conceived notions of him who rejects them, and so 
 implies in him who rejects it a refusal to yield up 
 those notions at the bidding of the supreme Lord ; 
 that is, the rejection is an assertion of the supremacy 
 of self-will of the creature against the supremacy of 
 the sovereign will of the Creator, and so is an act 
 of concentrated rebellion against His rule. 
 
 Here, then, we may reach a still further con- 
 clusion than that the acceptance of Christ's message 
 is a part of our moral probation ; for we may see 
 that it is not only a part, but it is the very chiefest 
 part, of that trial, and so we may come more fully 
 to understand the meaning of our Lord's words: " If 
 I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, 
 how shall ye beHeve, if I tell you of heavenly things ?" 
 For here is manifestly a contrast of two separate 
 parts of our probation. "If," He says, "ye fail 
 in receiving aright My teaching concerning earthly 
 things, much more must ye fail in receiving it con- 
 cerning heavenly." Much more manifestly, because 
 the difficulty there is greater ; because there you 
 reach a higher point of your trial ; because, for a 
 successful issue in it, you need a heart more entirely 
 subdued by greater measures of grace to make you 
 a submissive hearer. And now what are the sets of
 
 11 
 
 truths which our Lord describes under these two 
 heads? The 'earthly things' were manifestly the 
 working of His Spirit upon man in the mystery of 
 his regeneration ; the mixed operations wherein God 
 on the one hand, and man on the other, are con- 
 cerned ; and as to which, as affecting man, man 
 might, comparativ^ely speaking, have some natural 
 insight. Wiiat, then, the ' heavenly things' must he it 
 is easy to see : they are those which concern God 
 ordy : — His nature, His attributes, His operations in 
 heavenly places ; as to which, as lying altogether 
 without the range of man's observation and expe- 
 rience, except so far only as God reveals them to 
 him, man could have no knowledge. And, in point 
 of fact, it is to these that our Lord's discourse at 
 once passes on ; for He proceeds to speak of His 
 own coming down from heaven, and of the wonders 
 in the eternal counsels with which that coming 
 down from heaven was connected : of His death upon 
 the Cross : of the work of His Atonement. " If I 
 have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, 
 how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things ? 
 And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but He 
 that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man 
 which is in heaven. And as Moses lifted up the 
 serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of 
 Man be lifted up : tliat whosoever believeth in Him 
 should not perish, but have eternal life." 
 
 It is, then, specially as to the simple acceptance 
 of the message of God on these points, and pre- 
 eminentlv as to the work of His Atonement, thai
 
 12 
 
 our blessed Lord here represents the moral proba- 
 tion of mankind as being concentrated. 
 
 But there is one further point on which we must 
 touch, before we can bring all that has been said to 
 a directly practical conclusion ; and that is, wherein 
 consists, as to this revelation of Himself and of His 
 work, a simple acceptance of the message of the 
 Lord. 
 
 Now to answer this question aright, we must, my 
 brethren, however elementary it may at first sight 
 appear, remind ourselves that the message professes 
 to be only a partial revelation of the actual truth. 
 That it states from the first, that, in this state of 
 our being, w^e are unable to comprehend the whole, 
 and therefore, that only a part is communicated to 
 us, — "For now^ w^e see through a glass darkly:" 
 " For now we know in part''." Now it is, so far as 
 Ave can see, the necessary consequence of the partial or 
 incomplete knowledge of a subject, that there should 
 appear to us to be in it contradictions, w^hich a fuller 
 knowledge of the whole matter w'ould reconcile. It 
 follows, therefore, that it is essential to a simple re- 
 ception of this message, which professes to commu- 
 nicate to us only a part of the whole subject of 
 which it treats, that we should not (for any ap- 
 parent contradiction between its separate commu- 
 nications) reject the most natural meaning of any 
 portion of it, in order to reconcile these apparent 
 discrepancies. That if, for example, it appears to us 
 that the revelation of the infinite love of the Eternal 
 
 ^ 1 Cor. xiii. 12, and 9,
 
 13 
 
 Father towards His fallen creature is at variance 
 with the revelation that the death, as Man, of the 
 Co-eternal Son was necessary to turn aside His 
 anger from the sinner ; that we must not, if we would 
 receive the message simply, explain away the strict 
 and natural sense of this latter declaration, in order 
 that we may create for ourselves a manifest con- 
 sistency with the former, and so secure, as we 
 think, for the message, an agreement in its separate 
 parts ; but on the contrary, that we must simply 
 accept each of these propositions in their fullest ex- 
 tent, and refer their apparent contradiction to the 
 partial nature of our own knowledge. Here, then, 
 is one essential part of a simple reception of the 
 message, that we are ready to receive as true, even 
 its apparent contradictions, humbly referring them 
 to the imperfection of our own knowledge. 
 
 And closely connected herewith is another act of 
 submission which is essential to a simple receiving 
 of the message. For on this its heavenly side it pro- 
 fesses to reveal Ilim, as to whom, except so far only 
 as He reveals Himself to us, we can know nothing ; 
 and farther, even that revelation which He has 
 vouchsafed to us, does not undertake to declare Him 
 as He is in His own essential Being, but only so 
 much of His unapproachable glory as we can re- 
 ceive, through the manifestation of the Incarnate 
 Son. For so much is plainly declared in the 
 words : " No man hath seen God at any time. 
 The only-begotten Son, wliich is in the bosom of 
 the Father, He hath declared Him."
 
 14 
 
 To all created intelligences, indeed, even to the 
 highest and the purest it may be, as St. Chrysostoni 
 declares, this, the absolute fountain of Godhead, is 
 unapproachable and unrevealed: — " God, in the very 
 reality of His Nature, not only have the Prophets 
 never beheld, but not even Angels or Archangels. 
 For inquire of the Angels, and they will make thee 
 no reply concerning God's essence : but, — ' Glory 
 to God in the highest,' is all their song ; ' and on 
 earth, peace ; good-will towards men !' Or, if of 
 Cherubim and Seraphim thou desirest to learn aught, 
 the mysterious strain of thrice-Holy, is all the an- 
 swer thou wilt get, and the assurance that ' Heaven 
 and earth are full of His glory.' Nay, interrogate 
 the heavenly powers, and thou wilt learn nothing 
 save that their one occupation is God's praise^." 
 
 Assuredly, whatever be the beatific vision which 
 is granted to these elder-born sons of light, on us, 
 poor fallen children of the earth, who could bear 
 no more, He has bestowed but this partial revelation 
 of Himself From Scripture, (remarks St. Gre- 
 gory,) " it is plainly given us to understand that, 
 so long as we are in this mortal state, we can see 
 God only through the medium of certain images, 
 not in the reality of His own nature. A soul 
 influenced by the grace of the Spirit may see 
 God through certain figures ; but unto His absolute 
 Essence, it cannot attain. Hence it is that Jacob, 
 who testifies that he saw God, saw Him only in 
 the form of an Angel. Hence it is that Moses, 
 
 ^ From the xv'''. of Chr^'sostom's Homilies on Sf. John.
 
 15 
 
 who spake unto God face to face, ' as a man 
 speaketh unto his friend,' exclaims, in the midst 
 of that very colloquy, — ' Shew me Thyself plainly, 
 th|it I may see Thee !' meaning that he ardently 
 desired to see Him in the glory of His own infinite 
 nature^ — Him whom he had seen as yet only under 
 certain images '^" From which it follows that all the 
 revelation of" God is to us an accommodation to our 
 weakness. That we see not Him, but such a re- 
 presentation of Himself as conveys to our minds the 
 highest measure of truth concerning Him which 
 we are as yet capable of receiving. From which it 
 follows, further, that we cannot deduce from this 
 language of accommodation more than itself con- 
 veys ; that we cannot reason backward from it to 
 some abstract truth behind it ; that we cannot make 
 allowances, and strike them off to obtain some clearer 
 or more definite image of the truth, — all of which 
 we might do if the object of our adoration were Him- 
 self visible by us, and so we were able to correct 
 our own first deductions by others' observations : be- 
 cause that so to treat the message is really to seek 
 to improve it ; is to endeavour to put it in a more 
 distinct form than it has been put by Him that sent 
 it ; and so again is to impute imperfection to the 
 All-perfect. For that if it be, as it professes to be, 
 not the abstract truth, but that representation of it 
 which conveys to us the greatest amount of truth 
 
 * Exodus xxxiii. 18 to 23. 
 
 ^ From Gregory the Great's Moral Exposition of the Book 
 o/Jo6, lib. xviii. c. 28. •
 
 16 
 
 we are capable of receiving ; that the taking it strictly 
 in its most literal meaning is to receive it simply ; 
 and that to make deductions from it, or to intro- 
 duce qualifications of it, is really to impute imper- 
 fection to it, and to imply that in that form to 
 which we reduce it, it is a better vehicle of the 
 truth than it was in the state in which it was origi- 
 nally given to us, — instead of seeing, that if it were 
 thus capable of improvement, it would originally 
 have been given to us in that form, and not in 
 this. 
 
 And now, I think, we may see clearly why 
 our Lord represents the simple receiving His mes- 
 sage, when in it He declares to us " heavenly 
 things," as so eminent a part of our moral pro- 
 bation. 
 
 For to receive it thus is to receive it "as a little 
 child ;" and this is exactly that submission of the 
 independent self-will to the will of God, which, as 
 we have seen, is the central point of our proba- 
 tion. 
 
 It is, moreover, the harder just in proportion to 
 the degree in which we are naturally tempted to think 
 that we are entitled to be treated in a different way. 
 That is to say, the possession, and even more, the 
 consciousness of the possession, of high intellectual 
 powders ; the living, in great measure, for the exer- 
 cise of these ; the being used to apply them to the 
 rigid examination of all propositions submitted to 
 us before we admit their truth ; the having conquered 
 the lower affections, and through that conquest be-
 
 17 
 
 come in great part intellectual beings ; — all this must 
 expose men signally to the temptation of not re- 
 ceiving the message simply, — must make this emi- 
 nently their trial, — the point of their probation in 
 which the great question of submission or resist- 
 ance to their Creator and Redeemer is practically 
 decided. And this difficulty, or this strife, will be 
 increased, if they have formed to themselves systems 
 of morality and justice ; because they will neces- 
 sarily be tempted to try the details of the message 
 by their preconceived notions as to what, on their 
 theory, befits the character and acting of the Su- 
 preme Ruler, and so to accommodate its revelations 
 to what they feel assured is the true, and the just, 
 and the befitting ; and the more firm and self-reliant 
 is the man's spirit, the greater must be the struggle 
 and the more fearful the risk. So that we may see 
 that here must be, for those who in many respects 
 are of the highest natures, — for those who have 
 triumphed over the coarser allurements of animal 
 appetite, and even over the subtler temptations of 
 ambition, and the common love of power, and have 
 reached the calmer air and wider prospects which 
 await those who have scaled the heights of philo- 
 sophy, — that here must be for such the very especial 
 point of their trial ; that which is for every reason- 
 able soul of man the question of questions, whether 
 or no he will indeed seek for his salvation, and the 
 restoration to him of the hght of God's countenance 
 in the one only way in which the Lord has offered 
 it to him, and in which, therefore, only he can attain
 
 18 
 
 to it ; whether, in a word, he will believe when the 
 Incarnate Son tells him of ' heavenly things.' 
 
 Now amongst these, as we have seen, our Lord 
 gives a prominent place to His teaching concerning 
 that mighty Sacrifice for man's sins which, when 
 lifted up as the Serpent in the wilderness, He offered 
 on the Cross. 
 
 And so surely we might expect that it would be ; 
 for if it has, as we have seen that it has, pleased 
 God that a great part of man's probation should lie 
 in his humbling himself to receive without doubt or 
 question the message of his Maker, we might ex- 
 pect that his humility would specially be tested by 
 his willingness to receive this central point of all 
 that vast economy whereby he is to be restored to 
 communion with his God. And experience un- 
 doubtedly confirms this expectation. For in this 
 point of the revelation are gathered up all those 
 truths against which unaided human reason has in- 
 variably most readily rebelled. 
 
 Always, wiierever the intellect of man has been 
 allowed to speculate on the possibility of this truth, 
 have the same objections to its simple statement 
 been reproduced ; as, — that it supposes a change of 
 purpose in the Unchangeable, — a harsh severity in 
 the Father of all mercies, — an unjust acceptance of 
 the punishment of the innocent for the guilty in the 
 All-just, — anger and resentment, and the appeasing 
 of such passions in Him in whom passions are not, 
 nor can be ; and that therefore all the multitude of 
 expressions in Holy Scripture which declare the
 
 19 
 
 Atonement, and the reconciliation, and the sacrifice 
 for sins, must be explained to mean the reconciling 
 estranged man to God by a vast scenic represent- 
 ation of that love in which he thus is won to put 
 his trust. 
 
 Now all these objections may be, and have been, 
 well answered in detail. It may be shewn that the 
 revelation which seems to attribute to the Almighty 
 these earthly passions, does but use, as it must use, 
 for our instruction, the language of the earth, even 
 as it speaks of the arm, and the eye, and the mouth 
 of the Lord^ Again, it may be shewn that even 
 our limited capacities can comprehend that it may 
 be inconsistent with the relations of the awful Centre 
 of all Justice to the reasonable creatures with whom 
 His hand has peopled the heaven and earth, and 
 all the countless worlds around us, that the guilty 
 should be pardoned by a simple act of arbitrary 
 mercy. And again, it may be shewn, that if an 
 assurance so stupendous as that which may be 
 read on the Cross of Christ was needed to enable 
 man to believe in God's forgiveness of his sin, and 
 so to reconcile him to God, that such an assurance 
 could not be truly given unless the sacrifice and 
 the Atonement made were real. 
 
 By these answers, and the like, the objections of 
 which I spoke as at all times besetting the doctrine 
 of the Atonement may assuredly be met ; but the 
 answer to them, to which I have sought to-day to 
 
 * Sec the Ordination Sermon preached by Professor Ilussey, 
 Dec. 23rd, 1855, on The Atoncmenl uf our Lord Jesus Chrisl.
 
 20 
 
 lead you, meets the whole flow of these difficulties 
 still higher in its course. For if the simple recep- 
 tion of God's message to you be a great part of your 
 probation, these difficulties Diust exist, in order to 
 provide for your trial ; and if so, they are to be met 
 rather by the docility of a humbled soul than by the 
 skill of a practised intellect : and so the Word of God 
 loves to represent this master truth. There the 
 Cross of Christ is to the Jews a stumbling-block, 
 and to the Greeks foolishness. It does contradict 
 the preconceived notions of the worldly-wise, and 
 the whole system of the self-righteous ; and yet it 
 is to them that believe, " Christ the power of God, 
 and the wisdom of God." 
 
 So that here, my brethren, our practical conclu- 
 sion becomes plain. It is not safe for us to smooth 
 down by our refinements such difficulties as those 
 presented to us by the great doctrine of the Atone- 
 ment : in doing so we run great risk of trying to 
 improve the message Christ has brought us from 
 the Father, and of failing in our probation. We 
 must take it in its simplicity. We must believe in 
 it as little children. We must believe simply that 
 Christ "bare our sins in His own body on the 
 tree," — and that by His stripes we ''were healed ^" 
 We must believe that it is only " by the blood 
 of Jesus" that we can "have boldness to enter 
 into the holiest^;" — that God "made Him to be 
 sin for us who knew no sin'';" — that "if any 
 man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, 
 ^ 1 St. Pet. ii. 24. s Hcb. x. 19. " 2 Cor. v. 21.
 
 21 
 
 Jesus Christ the righteous, and that He is the 
 propitiation for our sins';" — that "by His own 
 blood He entered in once into the holy place, 
 having obtained eternal redemption for us''." 
 
 Infinite, believe me, is the peril of trifling, in 
 the least degree, with the simplest statement of 
 this master-doctrine. Through it, pre-eminently, the 
 powder of God works for man's conversion and re- 
 newal. To this truth, stated in its simplest form, 
 the heart of man has ever yielded up itself This 
 truth, in its naked simplicity, has been the strength 
 of missions, the converter of nations, and the true 
 stay of every separate soul. Only the sight of 
 Christ hanging on the Cross, the Sacrifice for man's 
 guilt, can shew the curse and evil of sin ; only that 
 sight can shew God as "just, and the Justifier of 
 him that believeth in Jesus." Any obscuration of 
 this master-truth must rob the ministry of its 
 strength, and the sinner of his hope. 
 
 There are times in the life of every man in whom 
 convictions of sin are deep and real, when this 
 truth only, in its most naked simplicity, stands be- 
 tween him and an infinite despair. It may not 
 seem so to you now ; but, depend upon it, it will 
 seem so amidst the terrors of death and the realities 
 of judgment. Then, when conscience has awoke 
 indeed ; when the remembered sins of years press 
 heavily upon your shuddering soul ; when the awful 
 vision of God's infinite justice appals your shrinking 
 spirit; and when the voice of your inmost being sighs 
 i 1 St. John ii. 1,2. ^ Heb. ix. 12.
 
 09 
 
 forth in broken accents, "O wretched man that T 
 am ! who shall deliver me from the body of this 
 death?" — then, depend upon it, there is no refuge, 
 there is no comfort, but in clinging closely with the 
 simplest hold to the Cross of Christ, and believing 
 with the most child-like apprehension in His death 
 for THEE. That is no time for subtleties and meta- 
 physics. " I thank God, through Christ Jesus my 
 Lord," — that, and that only, will stand in that awful 
 hour ! No wonderful display of heroic virtue, no 
 scenic representation intended to assure thy soul, 
 will then bear up thy soul. If God have mocked 
 thee once by an apparent sacrifice to reassure thy 
 heart, how canst thou trust His perfect truth in 
 that crisis of thy terror ? Only in the marvellous 
 truth of Christ's death /or thee, — of His bearing thy 
 sin in His own body on the tree, — canst thou then 
 find rest. Oh, then, trifle not with the simplicity 
 of this master-truth ! Meet the difiiculties which 
 oppose its reception by earnest prayer for grace, and 
 the crying of your soul for its enlightenment. Meet 
 the subtleties of the Tempter with the simplicity of 
 the Gospel. And when the sophist whispers to 
 thee his objections to the simple truth of Christ's 
 Atonement, remember that it is God's message to 
 thee ; and that to strive to mend it, is to disbelieve 
 its truth, — and that to disbelieve its truth, is to 
 throw away thy soul.
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 ROME— HER NEIV DOGMA AND OUR DUTIES. 
 
 A SERMOIs^ PREACHED BEFOEE THE UNIVERSITY, 
 AT ST. MARY'S CHURCH, OXFORD, on the Feast of the 
 Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 1855. 
 Octavo. \s. 
 
 THE ENGLISH REFORMATION. 
 A SERMON PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY, 
 
 Nov. 5, 1855. Octavo. Is. 
 
 SERMONS PREACHED AND PUBLISHED ON 
 SEVERAL OCCASIONS. 
 
 1854. 
 Octavo. 105. 6J. 
 
 CHRIST, THE HEALER: A SERMON PREACHED AT 
 CLEWER, 1855. 
 
 SIX SERMONS PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVER- 
 SITY OF OXFORD. 
 Second Edition. 4s. 6f/. 
 
 SERMONS PREACHED BEFORE THE QUEEN. 
 Fifth Edition. 6s. 
 
 FOUR SERMONS PREACHED BEFORE THE QUEEN 
 
 IN 1841 AND 1842. 
 
 Third Edition. 4s. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN 
 
 AMERICA. 
 
 Second Edition. 6s. 
 
 A PRIMARY CHARGE, DELIVERED IN 1848. 
 Second Edition. 
 
 A CHARGE DELIVERED IN 1851. 
 Octavo. 
 
 A CHARGE DELIVERED IN 1854.

 
 
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